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March 31, 2008

MA: Senate Bill # 884: mandatory minimum reform for people convicted of first time drug offenses

Senate bill # 884 allows non-violent first-time drug-offenders who have mandatory minimum sentences to be considered for parole after serving 2/3 of their sentence. It is now in the Massachusetts House of Representatives Judiciary Committee awaiting referral for passage by the legislature.

This will remedy an injustice caused by the current mandatory minimum sentencing law, which takes away the consideration of mitigating circumstances a judge might normally consider.

I would greatly appreciate your help in supporting this bill as I believe that it will enable persons who have shown a sincere effort to reform themselves in prison to get a second chance at a life once broken but now restored.

Please call your State Representative and Senator and tell them you favor Senate Bill 884 be taken out of committee and be referred favorably to be enacted by the legislature.

Posted by lois at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)

NY: A Saturday Night Deal Means 4 Adult Prisons Stay Open

"By late Sunday, deals were in place to resolve some of the most difficult issues that have vexed all three parties for weeks. According to officials who had been briefed on the talks, tentative agreements were reached to provide $1.8 billion in additional aid to schools across the state, of which $400 million would go to schools in New York City. Raises for state judges and legislators were not part of the deal, but an additional tax on cigarettes was. And the four prisons upstate that Eliot Spitzer proposed closing when he introduced his budget in January would remain open, the officials said."

March 31, 2008
Hope in Albany for Passing Budget on Time
By JEREMY W. PETERS
NY Times

ALBANY — Legislative leaders and the Paterson administration said Sunday night that it was possible they could complete the state budget close to Monday’s midnight deadline, a task that seemed all but unattainable just hours earlier.

At the same time, the equally complicated and contentious plan to charge drivers a fee to enter the busiest parts of Manhattan inched closer to being voted on by the City Council and the State Legislature.

A budget passed by the Legislature and delivered to Gov. David A. Paterson’s desk near the deadline would be a significant victory for the new governor, who has had less than three weeks to broker a budget deal. It would be all the more welcome to Mr. Paterson and his administration considering he has spent much of his time in office so far deflecting embarrassing questions about his personal life.

The agreement came as quickly as it did partly because the state is confronting an unforgiving economic outlook, and there are few spare dollars to spread around. During the talks on Sunday, Mr. Paterson likened the state’s financial situation to that of a family with a maxed-out credit card, telling the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Sliver “we are over the limit,” according to one person who sat in on the discussions.

They were short on specifics, but Mr. Paterson, Mr. Bruno and Mr. Silver emerged from the governor’s office suite in the Capitol on Sunday evening and said they had agreed to keep spending growth for the fiscal year that begins on April 1 limited to about 4.4 percent more than the current budget.

That would leave the state with a total spending plan of $124 billion.

“We will start passing bills tomorrow in pursuit of meeting the deadline at midnight tomorrow,” said Mr. Paterson, a Democrat. “You’re always racing against the clock in budget negotiations, but this time we’re racing together against the clock.”

Mr. Bruno, a Republican, who said hours earlier that the budget negotiations were proving to be very challenging, sounded confident as he stood with Mr. Paterson. “We’re there,” he said.

By late Sunday, deals were in place to resolve some of the most difficult issues that have vexed all three parties for weeks. According to officials who had been briefed on the talks, tentative agreements were reached to provide $1.8 billion in additional aid to schools across the state, of which $400 million would go to schools in New York City.

Raises for state judges and legislators were not part of the deal, but an additional tax on cigarettes was. And the four prisons upstate that Eliot Spitzer proposed closing when he introduced his budget in January would remain open, the officials said.

Adding another layer of complexity to the tense budget discussions, the Republican Senate majority introduced amendments to a bill that would put in place Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plan to charge drivers to enter parts of Manhattan. The amendments addressed concerns that legislators have voiced about the plan — known as the congestion pricing plan — and appear to have improved its chances of passing the Legislature.

“It’s now more viable than it’s ever been,” said one senior official closely involved in the budget deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because negotiations were continuing.

The amendments to the Senate congestion pricing bill would, among other things, ensure that New Yorkers who are eligible for the low income tax credit be reimbursed for congestion pricing fees, and commit the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to contribute $1 billion over the next five years to the capital plan of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In exchange for the $1 billion contribution, drivers crossing into Manhattan from New Jersey would pay the standard $8 toll and not an additional congestion fee.

The City Council is expected to vote on the plan in the next few days. Approval from the Council would pave the way for the Legislature to act.

The Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, issued a statement on Sunday that hinted a vote could come any day. “I am increasingly optimistic that these developments will help make it easier for members of the Council to seize this important moment,” she said.

Still, the fate of the congestion pricing plan is uncertain in the Legislature. Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester, blasted the Senate amendments, saying the plan “remains an unfair regressive tax on the middle-income people from the outer boroughs.” He added: “The mayor’s plan doesn’t have the votes, and this won’t get them.”

In Albany on Sunday night, budget negotiators still had some major obstacles to overcome even as budget bills were being drafted and readied for the printer.

Some independent budget analysts questioned the wisdom of spending nearly double the rate of inflation, especially when many economists believe the country is already in a recession.

“They’ve tightened their belts some, but it hasn’t been nearly enough,” said Elizabeth Lynam, deputy research director of the Citizens Budget Commission.

The speed with which Mr. Paterson and legislative leaders reached agreement on Sunday was the type of policy achievement that the Paterson administration and members of both parties in Albany were hoping they could deliver.

“This has been a very rocky time,” said Assemblyman Jeffrion L. Aubry, a Democrat from Queens. “I think the confidence that people have in us as an institution could use the reinforcement of an on-time budget.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/nyregion/31budget.html

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

NY: Parole ---"Truth in Numbers"

By contrast, 1.6 percent of A1 felons who were paroled from 1999 through 2003 were returned to prison for committing a crime within three years. And something else changed has well -- the number of violent felons paroled increased from 12 percent in 2006 to 18 percent in 2007. That makes the zero recidivism rate even more remarkable.

Times Union
Albany, NY
Editorial
First published: Monday, March 31, 2008

Truth in numbers

Were New Yorkers put at risk when parole rates for violent offenders increased under former Gov. Eliot Spitzer? Until last week, the answer was still a cause for debate. Republican critics insisted that Mr. Spitzer, a Democrat, was placing the public in peril as more and more offenders were released back into society, where they might well return to their criminal ways.

At the time, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno was accusing Mr. Spitzer of being soft on crime, and demanding that a list of inmates and the dates they would be eligible for parole be posted on the Web site of the state Division of Parole. He also made this outrageous accusation: "This administration's philosophy seems to be very soft on criminals and they're doing everything and anything they can to get prisoners who have committed murders out of prison."

But supporters noted, correctly, that that parole decisions, far from representing a shift in policy under Mr. Spitzer, were being made by parole boards whose members were largely appointed by Mr. Spitzer's Republican predecessor, George Pataki.

Now the debate has been settled, or at least it should be. According to an Associated Press report reprinted in this newspaper last week, not one of the 456 violent felons paroled in the last four years is now back in prison for committing another crime after returning to society.

Not one.

Perhaps now Mr. Bruno will think twice about legislation he introduced back in February that would make it more difficult for violent felons to be granted parole.

If not, then he should consider these statistics. The 456 violent felons paroled from 2004 through 2007 are categorized as A1, meaning they were serving time for crimes such as murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and arson in the first degree.

By contrast, 1.6 percent of A1 felons who were paroled from 1999 through 2003 were returned to prison for committing a crime within three years. And something else changed has well -- the number of violent felons paroled increased from 12 percent in 2006 to 18 percent in 2007. That makes the zero recidivism rate even more remarkable.

Mr. Bruno has his reasons for making parole an issue, of course. Most state prisons are situated in upstate communities, where they add jobs to the local economy and where the inmates are counted as residents of Senate districts largely held by Republicans. If the census declines, Republicans could lose seats in the Legislature. That is one reason why Senate Republicans had opposed Mr. Spitzer's proposal to close several upstate prisons, and why they continue to protect their turf as they negotiate a final budget with Mr. Spitzer's successor, David Paterson. But the Republicans are wrong -- wrong on the numbers and wrong on the reasons for keeping prisons full.

THE ISSUE: No felons who were recently paroled have returned to crime. THE STAKES: Republicans should stop stirring false fears.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=676387&category=OPINI
ON&newsdate=3/31/2008

Posted by lois at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)

1980: Olympic Village First and Prison Second

This is a really great article on anti-prison organizing...don't forget to click on the link in this article so you can see the poster made by Stop the Olympic Prison.

Some lesson on protest from the 1980 Olympics

Michael A. Kroll

Monday, March 31, 2008

The hoopla in San Francisco surrounding the forthcoming Olympic torch runner and the promised demonstrations focused on China's human rights abuses reminded me of an earlier Olympic protest against human rights abuses - except those abuses were far closer to home.

In 1980, the Winter Olympics were held in Lake Placid, N.Y. As the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) contemplated housing the large number of athletes, they went to Congress asking for federal money to build temporary quarters. Congress responded that the federal government was not in the business of providing public money for private enterprises, and advised that if the committee could suggest a permanent public after-use, then the money might be forthcoming.

In record time - working closely with the Federal Bureau of Prisons - the USOC came up with their suggested "public" after-use: a new federal prison. Without the congressional oversight that had always been required for such a massive project, Congress appropriated the money, borrowed a blueprint from an existing federal prison complex, clear-cut a large swath of forest between Lake Placid and Saranac Lake, and construction began.

At that time, I coordinated a project from Washington, D.C. ,called the National Moratorium on Prison Construction. Along with affiliate groups, we launched a campaign to focus attention on the inhumanity of using U.S. tax dollars to pay for a temporary "Olympic Village" - complete with discothèque, movie theater, fancy food services and many other amenities - for the 1,100, mostly white, European athletes, which later would become a permanent prison complex of young, mostly black and Latino men from the urban centers of New York City and Philadelphia.

We called our campaign Stop The Olympic Prison (S.T.O.P.), and we designed a poster showing a black arm thrust through the Olympic rings under the slogan, Stop The Olympic Prison ( www.docspopuli.org/articles/STOP/STOP.html ).

Soon, we received a letter from the USOC threatening to sue us for copyright infringement. Instead, we sued the USOC for an "anticipatory breach" of our First Amendment rights. Just before the Games began, a federal judge ruled in our favor, noting that there was little likelihood of anyone confusing our poster with the corporate goals of the Olympic Committee.

But then came the Olympic torch run through the streets of Washington and onto the steps of the U.S. Capitol. On the morning of that Senate-sponsored welcoming ceremony (to which the public had been invited), I arrived with a banner: "Olympic Torch = Freedom, Olympic Prison = Slavery." I stood at the back of the crowd so as not to obstruct anyone's view, and raised the banner.

Soon, a Capitol Hill Police captain approached and inquired if I had a permit to demonstrate. I answered that I did not, but asked if the many others in the crowd with signs welcoming the torch runner had permits. The captain told me they did not, but that my sign was "not in the spirit of the ceremony," and ordered me to put it down.

I replied that I believed the First Amendment protected my speech, and that if he arrested me, I would sue. Again, he ordered me to relinquish the banner. Again, I refused. Two other officers then arrested me. I was released some hours after the ceremony ended, and the charges were dropped. I sued.

While our campaign to Stop The Olympic Prison was unsuccessful (today, more than 1,200 young men are incarcerated there), my lawsuit succeeded. The result may be instructive both for those contemplating how they might express their opposition to the upcoming Olympic Games in China, and for the government that hopes to impose "time, place and manner" restrictions on such demonstrations. In a word, what my case determined is that where there is "no obstruction of pedestrian or vehicular traffic" by a single demonstrator (who does) "not threaten or provoke violence," there is no right to impose the kinds of restrictions allowed on larger, organized gatherings.

San Francisco officials might also want to consider this from the court's decision: "Freedom of expression would not truly exist if the right could be exercised only in an area that a benevolent government has provided as a safe haven for crackpots." (That would be me...) "(W)e do not confine the permissible exercise of First Amendment rights to a telephone booth or the four corners of a pamphlet..."

A word to the wise...

New America Media contributor Michael A. Kroll is the founding director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/31/EDOIVSD68.DTL
This article appeared on page B - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Posted by lois at 05:30 PM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2008

OR: PRISONTOWN MYTH- The promise of prosperity hasn't come true for Oregon's rural communities

APRIL 2008: RURAL DEVELOPMENT
PRISONTOWN MYTH
The promise of prosperity hasn't come true for Oregon's rural communities
OregonBusiness.com

By Ben Jacklet

The facility sits on a sweeping expanse of land so remote that it is difficult to determine the nature of its business without moving closer to investigate. Only then do the details come into focus: sniper towers, a firing range and spirals of razor wire extending into the horizon.

This is the Snake River Correctional Institution, Oregon’s largest prison, home to 3,000 inmates. Watching over these inmates, feeding them and caring for them, are 872 state employees, 1,000 if you count the contract jobs, putting the Snake River Correctional Institution even with the Ore-Ida plant, where the Tater Tot was invented, as the largest employer in Malheur County.

Down in the center of Ontario, population 12,000, there is no sign of the prison. But its economic presence is palpable, even at the coffee shop owned by one of its biggest former critics. Todd Heinz, who owns Making Tracks Cyclery and three Jolts & Juice coffee shops, led an unsuccessful recall effort to oust the local officials responsible for turning Ontario into a prison town in 1991. Today he is having coffee with two of his best customers, both 27-year veterans of the corrections industry, and his views on the prison have changed profoundly.

“There were a lot of opponents when it was being built, me being one of them,” says Heinz. “But it’s a huge part of our economy. If you were to pull that prison out of here now the impact would be disastrous.”

Support for the prison is nearly unanimous within Ontario’s business community. The prison brought jobs that did not exist previously: stable, relatively high-wage positions with full benefits. Local people doubled their salaries. New residents moved in with money to spend. The hospital got new patients and the community college grew. Business picked up at the taco stand, the tire repair shop and the hardware store as healthy state salaries worked their way through the local economy.

Ontario is not alone. Since 1985, Oregon has expanded its prison system from three institutions based in Salem to 14 prisons scattered throughout the state, many of which were built in economically depressed, remote cities such as Ontario, where land is inexpensive and jobs are welcome. From Lakeview to Umatilla to Madras, business leaders praise their new prisons as stabilizing tools of development.

It is hard to find a business owner in Ontario or Umatilla who questions the wisdom of having a prison as the city’s largest employer. In Umatilla, where the president of the Chamber of Commerce works at the Two Rivers Correctional Institution, local business owners, such as Cathy Putnam of Carlson Drug, can’t find anything negative to say about the prison that dominates the local economy. “You have people with jobs that are spending their money,” she says. “I don’t see a downside.”

But travel a few blocks away from Ontario’s downtown, and you will find abject poverty: dilapidated shanties, rusted-out cars and trailers parked amid towering piles of old tires and garbage. Before the prison opened in 1991, Malheur County was one of the poorest counties in Oregon. Today it is the poorest, with 21% of the county’s residents living in poverty.

The prison brought jobs, but it did not bring prosperity.

OREGON EXPANDED ITS PRISON system dramatically during the 1990s, partly because of national trends toward stricter sentencing and partly because of the state’s defining tough-on-crime law, Measure 11, which passed in 1994 and established mandatory minimum sentences for violent criminals. Since 1990, Oregon has built seven correctional facilities and more than tripled the budget of the Department of Corrections (DOC). Oregon already spends a larger percentage of its general fund on prisons than any other state, and that expense could grow as voters this fall consider stiffer new sentencing laws that could again swell the prison population.

During the prison boom of the 1990s, the DOC was able to overcome local resistance by touting the economic benefits to municipalities struggling to recover from the downfall of Oregon’s natural resources economy. For those communities, a prison where the median wage is $3,849 per month is seen as a prize rather than a burden.

But recent research shows that prisons are not effective tools of rural economic development. A phalanx of researchers from the University of Colorado at Denver, Pennsylvania State University, Washington State University, Ohio State University and the Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization The Sentencing Group analyzed data from across rural America and concluded that prisons do not significantly improve employment rates, poverty rates or median incomes. No studies have focused solely on Oregon, but based on economic statistics from Umatilla and Malheur counties, the Oregon counties that rely most heavily on prisons, these conclusions hold true there as well.

The national studies cite a number of problems with using prisons to boost economies. First, prisons do not pay local taxes. Second, they rarely if ever purchase goods and services locally, and while they sometimes try to hire locally, they do not always succeed because of union requirements that promotions must be based on seniority. Third, prison employees tend not to live near their place of employment, preferring to settle in outlying areas and commute. For example, 62% of the employees from the Ontario prison don’t live in Oregon but next door in Idaho, where property taxes and home prices are lower.

Finally, prisons supply inmate laborers at low or no cost, taking jobs away from the local community.

In addition to those specific shortcomings, there is the broader notion of “opportunity costs,” the cost of pursuing one choice rather than another. The idea is that operating large prisons in small, remote towns requires so much accommodation that it crowds out other opportunities that might lead to clusters of related, competing businesses propelling each other to innovate and expand. In other words, there is nothing entrepreneurial about a prison economy.

Academic researchers aren’t the only ones re-evaluating the economic promise of prison expansion. Max Williams, director of the Oregon Department of Corrections who was appointed by Gov. Ted Kulongoski in January 2004, says it is a misnomer to think of prisons as an engine of economic development.
“We are not a profit center,” says Williams. “We are a cost center. We’re taking tax dollars that could be spent on a whole variety of things, and we’re spending them on prisons.”

This is a significant reversal for the DOC, which promoted prisons as catalysts of development during the prison-building frenzy of the past 20 years. Williams says he would prefer to spend less money on prisons and more on “evidence-based” solutions to crime. But the DOC’s steps toward reining in spending on prisons are jeopardized by the looming prospect of two prison initiatives on the ballot in November.

Both initiatives would increase spending on corrections. The more expensive measure, backed by Republican activist Kevin Mannix, would set up mandatory prison sentences for first-time property and drug criminals, adding a projected 4,000-6,000 inmates to Oregon’s prison system at an annual cost of $128 million to $200 million. There currently are 13,500 inmates in the state. Legislators reacted to that imposing price tag by cobbling together an alternative measure that would focus on punishing repeat offenders and expanding drug treatment programs. Their less-expensive alternative would still add about 1,400 new inmates at a cost of $52 million annually.

If both initiatives pass, the one that receives the most votes will become law. If history repeats itself, the odds are with Mannix. More than 150,000 Oregonians signed the petition to put Mannix’s measure on the ballot, and the state’s voters have a history of embracing tough anti-crime measures.

It’s unclear exactly how the state would house the flood of prisoners that would accompany the Mannix initiative, but the DOC would have to move quickly to make room; new prisoners could start pouring into the system next March. The DOC owns undeveloped property in White City, outside of Medford, and has preliminary plans to build a 2,000-bed prison in Junction City. But the department’s construction plans were based on forecasts that did not consider the thousands of extra inmates that would result from harsher sentencing laws.

THE OREGON STATE PENITENTIARY was built in Portland in 1851 and relocated to Salem in 1866, where it remained the state’s only major prison for 100 years. Other facilities were built to supplement the penitentiary’s mission, but with the exception of a forest work camp in Tillamook, Oregon’s prisons were confined to Salem until 1985, when the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution opened in Pendleton.

Then came the great expansion: the Powder River Correctional Facility was completed 350 miles east of Salem in Baker City in 1989, followed by a barrage of prisons named after bodies of water rather than towns: Mill Creek, Columbia River, Shutter Creek, Snake River, Two Rivers, Coffee Creek and Warner Creek. With the opening of the Deer Ridge Correctional Institution in Madras last October, Oregon’s prison industry has grown to 14 facilities, 13,500 inmates, nearly 5,000 jobs and a DOC budget of $1.26 billion. The state now spends more on prisons than on higher education.

As the new prisons were built, wages in rural Oregon stagnated. So it’s not surprising that rural communities have embraced prisons and the jobs they bring. “There’s not a lot of industry knocking at your door in these rural areas,” says Oregon Employment Department regional economist Dallas Fridley, who tracks North Central Oregon. “Given the isolated nature of some of these communities, there may not be that many options for development beyond a prison.”

State economic development specialists were intimately involved in DOC’s selection process. A brochure sent by the DOC to Madras residents in 2002 prior to the construction of the Deer Creek prison promoted jobs, training and business opportunities. The DOC commissioned economic impact studies to win over local officials with promises of jobs and economic development. But it has not studied whether those promises have been kept.

Employment and income numbers indicate that Oregon’s massive investment in prison expansion has brought local gains that are modest at best. The rural counties that gambled biggest on large prisons after the passage of Measure 11, Malheur and Umatilla, have continued to struggle. In Malheur County, non-farming jobs have increased slightly since the completion of the Snake River prison, but wages have been sluggish. Malheur County has the state’s highest poverty rate, its lowest median income, and is 31st out of 36 Oregon counties in earnings per job.

The situation also looks grim in Umatilla, where the main street through downtown features boarded-up storefronts, vacant lots, run-down $25-a-night motels and sprawling trailer lots in varying stages of decay. In Umatilla County, state jobs grew after the Two Rivers prison opened in 2000, but private sector jobs fell and wages have held flat. The 430 employees of the Two Rivers Correctional Institution, by far the largest employer in the City of Umatilla, spend money locally, but the prison does not. Of the $56.6 million that DOC spent to purchase goods and services for its prisons in 2007, only $29,928, or .05%, went to Umatilla businesses.

Local purchasing figures are only slightly higher in Ontario, an agricultural center for potatoes and onions. Mark Nooth, superintendent for the Snake River prison, explains that the facility’s hands are tied when it comes to supporting local business.

“We’re too big,” Nooth says. “We serve 9,000 meals a day. Local businesses can do a portion of it, but we need someone who can handle the whole thing.”

Statewide, just 42.5% of the goods and services used in prisons are purchased from Oregon companies.

Then there is the matter of prison labor. In 1994, the same year Oregon voters passed Measure 11, they also approved Measure 17, which requires inmates to work a 40-hour week. As a result, Oregon prisoners work inside and outside of their facilities, cleaning parks, sorting mail, printing business cards, building cabins and making telemarketing calls for private companies, including Timeline Industries and National Marketing Solutions.

At the Eastern Oregon Correctional Facility in Pendleton, inmates produce the Prison Blues brand of jeans for the Array Corporation, a division of Portland-based Yoshida Group. In Ontario, minimum-security inmates sort potatoes bound for the Ore-Ida factory and spruce up the Four Rivers Cultural Center, the location of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. In Umatilla inmate crews work at the Finley Butte Landfill and unload rail cars for CRL, a subsidiary of the Denver-headquartered Broe Group.

Larry Clucas, Umatilla’s city manager, frequently hires inmate crews. “Yeah, they’re jobs that might have been taken away from somebody,” he says, “but realistically they probably wouldn’t have gotten done.”

That may be true for menial tasks, but prisoners also fill jobs that might otherwise provide meaningful income. In Umatilla and Ontario prison laborers helped expand the prison to make room for more inmates, a project that might otherwise have been filled by well-paid construction workers working for an Oregon contractor.

DOC director Williams emphasizes that Oregon Corrections Enterprises, which oversees prison work programs, studies each contract to make sure jobs are not being taken from the community. He also points out that, while prisons do not pay taxes, they do pay a negotiated portion of the costs to expand utilities, which often enables municipalities to do needed upgrades to sewage systems and other infrastructure. But the most important asset the DOC brings to communities where the prisons are built, Williams argues, is the employees.

“We’ve been able to win communities over by the way we run our facilities and the people we hire,” he says.

PRISON EMPLOYEES MAKE good money, especially in comparison to what other jobs pay in Ontario and Umatilla. Rather than just scrambling to pay the bills, there are some prison workers with entrepreneurial leanings and discipline who are able to save enough capital to go into business for themselves.

Ron Rouse worked for the Ontario prison for 17 years, starting at $1,500 per month and working his way up through step increases and promotions to nearly $6,000 per month, enough to support a family of five children, a nephew, plus a “kid from the neighborhood who came to stay with us and never left.”

Rouse and his wife, Sandra, worked two jobs for two years and poured their savings into building a Gandolfo’s Deli franchise in Ontario to serve the lunch crowd from the prison, as well as shoppers who cross from Idaho to Oregon to avoid paying sales tax. They plan to open seven sandwich shops over the next seven years.

Rouse says the entrepreneurial spirit is not unusual among his friends from the prison. Other prison employees raise cattle, run service companies and invest in rental properties. “There’s so much talent to pull from the prison, and it brings so many new things into the community, it’s just phenomenal,” says Rouse.

Tony Shaver is another example. He was one of the first 75 people hired to work at Snake River, doubling his salary. That was in 1991, when it was a small minimum-security facility. Since then the prison has vastly expanded, and Shaver has increased his earnings in sync, enabling him to buy six rental houses as well as his own house in New Plymouth, Idaho.

After 16 years on the job, Shaver bought a local business in the north end of town, TRS Plumbing. “I always had ideas, but I never had the means,” he says. “The prison gave me the means.”

But business is slow, Shaver admits. “I went from earning $4,200 a month to no income,” he says. “It’s a good thing my wife works.”

Unfortunately, Shaver’s business is located on the opposite side of town from a Home Depot that is better positioned to snag shoppers flowing in from Idaho. In that regard, Shaver may be a victim of the same prison economy that allowed him to start his business. Studies show that the tendency of prison employees to make good money and drive great distances to work has not escaped the attention of big-box retailers, which have followed new prisons into rural America, often to the detriment of locally owned businesses.

FOR EVERY REMOTE TOWN in Oregon that got a prison during the 1990s, there is another that did not. One municipality that tried to bring in a prison several times only to lose out to Ontario and Umatilla was Boardman, in Morrow County. In 1989, when the DOC was trying to locate the prison that eventually was built in Ontario, Morrow County’s unemployment rate was 16.5%, the highest in Oregon.

“Our economy was in tough shape,” recalls Gary Neal, general manager of the Port of Morrow. “We thought it might be a good fit to create some good-paying jobs. But folks didn’t want a prison. We heard that loud and clear. At the time I was disappointed. But I just went on and looked for the next opportunity.”

Rather than floundering after failing to attract a prison, Morrow County’s economy has steadily improved, particularly at the sprawling industrial properties of the Port of Morrow, which is now Oregon’s second-largest port. Two gas-fired power plants run cooperatively by Portland General Electric and Avista pump out power. Two major factories broke ground last fall: a Pacific Ethanol plant that is Oregon’s first fuel refinery and a joint venture involving R.D. Offutt and the Japanese food company Calbee to make potato snacks for Japanese consumers. Portland-based Greenwood Resources is spending $35 million on a new sawmill and a dry kiln to produce sustainably harvested timber. The Tillamook County Creamery Association has invested $100 million in Morrow County and will soon have the capacity to make twice as much cheese here as in Tillamook County. There are two parcels of land leased out to speculating biofuel companies, a staging area for wind turbines and a proposed NASCAR track that could draw thousands of racing fans. It adds up to about 1,000 new jobs on port property created since Boardman lost out to Ontario for a prison.

It is impossible to know whether the lack of a prison helped spur the diversification of the Port of Morrow. Furthermore, it would be a stretch to describe Boardman — population 3,500 — as a boomtown, with just two real estate companies, one grocery store and a median home price of about $100,000. But jobs are being created in Boardman and clusters are forming in the specialty food and renewable energy sectors. Private employment grew by 27% from 2000 to 2006. During that same period, neighboring Umatilla County, home to two large prisons, lost 1,460 jobs in the private sector.

In 1989, Umatilla County had a higher median household income than Morrow County, $23,207 to $22,944. By 2005, Morrow County’s median income had jumped to $43,776, well ahead of Umatilla County’s median of $39,003.

The income numbers are far lower in Malheur County, which beat out Boardman in the contest to host Oregon’s largest prison. Local leaders in Ontario say they do not regret welcoming the prison and the stable jobs it brought. But they acknowledge that the prison did not solve the ingrained problems that stem from the downfall in agricultural jobs and generational poverty.

With that in mind, they are freeing up agricultural land for development, hoping to attract new businesses — preferably a large employer that pays as well as the prison, but one that is different from the prison. They nearly succeeded in 2003, when Gov. Kulongoski traveled to Ontario to announce the impending arrival of an innovative biorefinery to be built by Treasure Valley Renewable Resources. But the deal fell through before construction began, and Ontario’s search for new jobs continues.

“We’ve got huge parcels of land, we’ve got tax benefits, and we’ve got people who are looking for work,” says Jim Jensen, a former president of the Malheur Bell phone company and the director of Malheur County Economic Development Department. “We need to attract new companies to the area so we can raise the bar.”

After 17 years of living with the prison, Ontario is left looking beyond the facility to find the answer to its economic troubles. As Oregon considers pouring even more money into prisons, turning more rural communities into prison towns, the question remains: Is it worth it?

For map of prisons in Oregon and links to papers sited go http://www.oregonbusiness.com/.docs/action/detail/rid/32114/pg/10002

OREGON PRISONS
BY THE NUMBERS
1 Number of Oregon Prisons, 1851–1951

14 Number of Oregon Prisons, 2008

10.9% Percent of Oregon general fund spent on incarceration

2.6% Percent of Alabama general fund spent on incarceration

$1.06 Dollars spent on incarceration for every dollar spent for higher education, Oregon

$0.16 Dollars spent on incarceration for every dollar spent for higher education, Minnesota

90% Earnings per job in rural Oregon in 1969, as percent of national average

70% Earnings per job in rural Oregon in 2001, as percent of national average

$3,849 Median monthly wage, Oregon Department of Corrections

$4.79 million Monthly payroll, Snake River Correctional Institution, Malheur County

19.3% Malheur County Poverty Rate, 1989 (pre-prison)

21.3% Malheur County Poverty Rate, 2006 (post-prison)

23,303 Umatilla County private sector jobs, 1999 (pre-prison)

21,697 Umatilla County private sector jobs, 2006 (post-prison)

Sources: Oregon Department of Corrections, Pew’s Center on the States, U.S. Census Bureau, Oregon Employment Department, OSU Rural Studies Program

Posted by lois at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)

Dith Pran, ‘Killing Fields’ Photographer, Dies at 65

March 31, 2008
Dith Pran, ‘Killing Fields’ Photographer, Dies at 65
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
NY Times

Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died in New Brunswick, N.J., on Sunday. He was 65 and lived in Woodbridge, N.J.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, which had spread, said his friend Sydney H. Schanberg.

Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation.

He had been a journalistic partner of Mr. Schanberg, a Times correspondent assigned to Southeast Asia. He translated, took notes and pictures, and helped Mr. Schanberg maneuver in a fast-changing milieu. With the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, Mr. Schanberg was forced from the country, and Mr. Dith became a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communists.

Mr. Schanberg wrote about Mr. Dith in newspaper articles and in The New York Times Magazine, in a 1980 cover article titled “The Death and Life of Dith Pran.” (A book by the same title appeared in 1985.) The story became the basis of the movie “The Killing Fields.”The film, directed by Roland Joffé, portrayed Mr. Schanberg, played by Sam Waterston, arranging for Mr. Dith’s wife and children to be evacuated from Phnom Penh as danger mounted. Mr. Dith, portrayed by Dr. Haing S. Ngor (who won an Academy Award as best supporting actor), insisted on staying in Cambodia with Mr. Schanberg to keep reporting the news.

A dramatic moment, both in reality and cinematically, came when Mr. Dith saved Mr. Schanberg and other Western journalists from certain execution by talking fast and persuasively to the trigger-happy soldiers who had captured them.

But despite frantic effort, Mr. Schanberg could not keep Mr. Dith from being sent to the countryside to join millions working as virtual slaves.

Mr. Schanberg returned to the United States and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Cambodia. He accepted it on behalf of Mr. Dith as well.

For years there was no news of Mr. Dith, except for a false rumor that he had been fed to alligators. His brother had been. After more than four years of beatings, backbreaking labor and a diet of a tablespoon of rice a day, Mr. Dith, on Oct. 3, 1979, escaped over the Thai border. Mr. Schanberg flew to greet him.

Mr. Dith moved to New York and in 1980 became a photographer for The Times, where he was noted for his imaginative pictures of city scenes and news events. In one, he turned the camera on mourners rather than the coffin to snatch an evocative moment at the funeral of Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger, a rabbi murdered in 1990.

Outside The Times, Mr. Dith spoke out about the Cambodian genocide, appearing before students, senior citizens and other groups. “I’m a one-person crusade,” he said.

Dith Pran was born on Sept. 23, 1942, in Siem Reap, Cambodia, a provincial town near the ancient temples at Angkor Wat. His father was a public-works official.

Having learned French at school and taught himself English, Mr. Dith was hired as a translator for the United States Military Assistance Command. When Cambodia severed ties with the United States in 1965, he worked with a British film crew, then as a hotel receptionist.

In the early 1970s, as unrest in neighboring Vietnam spread and Cambodia slipped into civil war, the Khmer Rouge grew more formidable. Tourism ended. Mr. Dith interpreted for foreign journalists. When working for Mr. Schanberg, he taught himself to take pictures.

When the Khmer Rouge won control in 1975, Mr. Dith became part of a monstrous social experiment: the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people from the cities and the suppression of the educated classes with the goal of recreating Cambodia as an agricultural nation.

To avoid summary execution, Mr. Dith hid that he was educated or that he knew Americans. He passed himself off as a taxi driver. He even threw away his money and dressed as a peasant.

Over the next 4 ½ years, he worked in the fields and at menial jobs. For sustenance, people ate insects and rats and even the exhumed corpses of the recently executed, he said.

In November 1978, Vietnam, by then a unified Communist nation after the end of the Vietnam War, invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. Mr. Dith went home to Siem Reap, where he learned that 50 members of his family had been killed; wells were filled with skulls and bones.

The Vietnamese made him village chief. But he fled when he feared that they had learned of his American ties. His 60-mile trek to the Thai border was fraught with danger. Two companions were killed by a land mine.

He had an emotional reunion with his wife, Ser Moeun Dith, and four children in San Francisco. Though he and his wife later divorced, she was by his bedside in his last weeks, bringing him rice noodles.

Mr. Dith was either separated or divorced from his second wife, Kim DePaul, Mr. Schanberg said.

Mr. Dith is survived by his companion, Bette Parslow; his daughter, Hemkarey; his sons, Titony, Titonath and Titonel; a sister, Samproeuth; six grandchildren; and two stepgrandchildren.

Ms. DePaul now runs the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, which spreads word about the Cambodian genocide. At his death, Mr. Dith was working to establish another, still-unnamed organization to help Cambodia. In 1997, he published a book of essays by Cambodians who had witnessed the years of terror as children.

Dr. Ngor, the physician turned actor who had himself survived the killing fields, had joined with Mr. Dith in their fight for justice. He was shot to death in 1996 in Los Angeles by a teenage gang member.

“It seems like I lost one hand,” Mr. Dith said of Dr. Ngor’s death.

Mr. Dith nonetheless pushed ahead in his campaign against genocide everywhere.

“One time is too many,” he said in an interview in his last weeks, expressing hope that others would continue his work. “If they can do that for me,” he said, “my spirit will be happy.”

Posted by lois at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2008

Virginia's prison gravy train

Virginia's prison gravy train

Roanoke Times, March 28, 2008
By Ronald Fraser
Fraser has a Ph.D. and writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization.

In Virginia's booming prison economy there are winners and losers. Inmates face financial ruin and state taxpayers lose too -- about$29,000 per year, per inmate. Prison entrepreneurs, for whom each inmate is a government subsidized business opportunity, are the big winners.

Growing nationally by 3.4 percent a year for the past 10 years, federal, state and local prisons hold 2.3 million inmates -- one half of whom are nonviolent and small-time drug law offenders. In 2006, prison populations went up in 41 states, including an increase of 1,344 inmates in Virginia. From 2000 to 2005 the state's prison population has grown at a steady 3.2 percent per year.

Virginia's annual taxpayer contribution for state prisons and local jails, $1.7 billion in 2005 and rising, keeps the prison market hot. Here is how that money is used to exploit the losers and enrich the winners.

Public jobs

Of the 720,000 state and local corrections employees in the U.S. in 2005, 21,570 worked in Virginia guarding 57,444 inmates. That means for every three new inmates locked up in Virginia, one new corrections job follows. That is good news for job seekers but bad news for the three inmates who actually create each new job.

Private profiteers

A new book by Tara Herivel and Paul Wright titled "Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration" tells how the prison gravy train actually works. In addition to supplying food, clothing and medical care, private companies profit in other, less visible, ways. Here we learn from a University of Michigan professor how telephone companies and prisons charge extra high rates for collect calls from inmates.

Once MCI, Sprint and others began competing with the Baby Bells and AT&T, end-user rates for collect calls from prisons went up, not down, as was the case in the nonprison market. Exclusive phone service agreements went to firms offering price-gouging rates and large payments to operators of prisons. In the 1990s, 90 percent of the correctional systems nationwide received a percentage of these telephone profits and, by 2000, the share going to the prisons ranged from 44 percent in California to 60 percent in New York.

Prisoners, of all people in the country, have the greatest need to rely on collect calls, especially to stay in touch with their families. What excuse is there for price-gouging these families, many of whom are already suffering the loss of a breadwinner?

More than 1,579 prisoners in Virginia, and nationally more than 85,000 inmates, are held in private, for-profit facilities. To sell their services in state capitals, we learn in another chapter that "Corporations with a stake in the expansion of private prisons invested $3.3 million in candidates for state office and state political parties in 44 states over the 2002-04 election cycle."

On top of that, these companies support the American Legislative Exchange Council, an influential behind-the-scenes interest group working with state legislators to pass tougher sentencing laws that will increase prison populations.

Cheap labor

While U.S. laws prohibit importing products made by prisoners in other countries, Gordon Lafer, a University of Oregon professor, reports that about 80,000 U.S. inmates work in 30 states where laws permit private firms to use convict labor. In Ohio, for example, a Honda supplier pays prison workers $2 per hour. These private firms do not pay for vacations, sick leave or overtime and workers can be dropped at will.

Liberty for sale

According to a recent New York Times article, bail bondsmen occupy a unique, for-profit niche in the American justice system. In all states except Illinois, Kentucky, Oregon and Wisconsin, to avoid going directly to jail an accused person must pay a bondsman a nonrefundable fee -- often 10 percent of the bond -- even if he or she appears for all court proceedings. In some states the bondsman is even permitted to hunt down and capture a client who fails to appear in court, breaking into homes without a warrant if necessary.

What can be done to end this tax-subsidized prison gravy train? First, the laws and policies made in Richmond must stop filling state prisons with nonviolent drug users who should be in drug treatment facilities, not prisons. Second, lawmakers must stop passing ever-longer, one-size-fits-all mandatory minimum sentences that only tie the hands of courtroom judges and needlessly fill our prisons.

Until then, prison profiteers will continue to exploit both Virginia inmates and its citizens in whose name the state prisons are built and operated.

http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/commentary/wb/156157

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

March 27, 2008

NY Times Editorial: NY Legislature Should Close 6 Residential Detention Centers for Juveniles

New York Times
Editorial
New Day, Line by Budget Line
Published: March 27, 2008

Moving beyond the steamy executive headlines, the New York Statehouse had better show taxpayers something more promising than business as usual as it tackles the deficit-threatened state budget. One quick test, buried in the fine print, would strike a blow for both juvenile justice and budget savings by shutting six of the state's 31 residential detention centers for juveniles.

Studies show such centers ‹ which warehouse largely nonviolent offenders far from their families ‹ are counterproductive and prohibitively costly. Center alumni have higher rates of recidivism compared with those placed in alternative programs in their home communities.

What should be a budgetary no-brainer, however, is already being undermined by the Senate Republicans. In an obvious move to protect upstate jobs for local constituents, they are insisting on keeping open three of the expendable and virtually unused centers. One of the centers the Senate would spare would be staffed even though there are no youths residing there in its 24 slots. Each empty bed costs taxpayers more than $140,000 annually to maintain. A second has 25 beds and three residents, while the third has 11 children for its 25 beds.

The millions that would be wasted in this proposed shell game present a small but revealing indicator of whether Gov. David Paterson can live up to his inaugural promise to end the turf struggles and get something better from government.

There are far larger budget fights looming, dollarwise. But here is a worthy chance for Governor Paterson to show business as usual will not always trump justice and economic sense in a supposedly chastened Albany.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/opinion/27thu4.html

Posted by lois at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)

ID: Lawmakers won't consider plan for $190 million 1,500 cage prison

Times-News
3/27/08
ID lawmakers get late-session sticker shock, nix $190M prison
By JOHN MILLER

BOISE, Idaho - State lawmakers have told Department of Correction leaders it's too late in the session for them to even consider a proposal for a new 1,500-bed prison that would cost the state more than $190 million.

Brent Reinke, the head of the state prison agency, had been meeting with House and Senate leaders since last week but says the plan is now finished, at least for this year. He had a bill drafted, but it never got a hearing.

Lawmakers told him selling 30-year bonds to finance a new prison south of Boise was too expensive an item to consider quickly in the waning days of the session. Now, Reinke says he'll refine his proposal over the summer and may present a new plan to the 2009 Legislature, as part of his solution to house a growing Idaho prison population.

"Neither the House nor Senate leadership is interested in hearing this," Reinke told The Associated Press on Wednesday. "Mostly it's sticker shock. They said, 'Let's talk about it next year.' "

The result of delaying the matter another year is more Idaho inmates will stay out of state longer, he said.

His agency is in charge of 7,400 inmates, but lacks sufficient capacity to house them all. As a result, 500 have been shipped to private prisons in Texas and Oklahoma, with another 240 more expected to leave Idaho by July.

One reason the prison discussion was delayed was that Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter originally insisted a new facility be accompanied by legislation allowing it to be a privately built, privately owned and privately operated prison. Companies such as The GEO Group Inc. and Corrections Corp. of America had lobbied legislators furiously for just such a plan, spending more than $40,000 on campaign contributions.

But lawmakers balked, saying such an arrangement would give up too much control over an important state institution. Finally, Otter agreed a new facility would be owned by the state but run by a private company, mirroring the Idaho Correctional Center south of Boise that's operated by Corrections Corp. of America.

Rep. Margaret Henbest, D-Boise, said lawmakers decided Otter had come to them with the prison proposal too late for it to receive full consideration.

"It's a big decision," Henbest said. "It's not one of those last-minute decisions."

Another obstacle to the new prison is the Legislature's newfound interest in substance abuse treatment programs, rather than building new prisons.

Otter and lawmakers are engaged in a veto fight over $16.8 million in drug treatment funding. The Senate overrode Otter's veto Wednesday, but the House is still considering accepting a compromise.

Idaho lawmakers already have approved 1,288 new prison beds during the 2008 session, split among a secure mental health facility, new drug treatment prisons and a 324-bed expansion at the Idaho Correctional Center. With the proposed new 1,500-bed prison, the new facilities together would cost about $106 million annually to operate.

"I don't know where $106 million a year is going to come from," said Rep. Maxine Bell, R-Jerome and co-chairwoman of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee. "It seems to me the most effective solution is to try and keep those folks in treatment."

http://www.magicvalley.com/articles/2008/03/27/ap-state-id/d8vlfr480.txt

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

'Angola 2' Leave Solitary Cells in La. After 36 Years....changing cells is not enough!

Listen to the story....
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89140779

'Angola 2' Leave Solitary Cells in La. After 36 Years
by Laura Sullivan
Morning Edition, March 27, 2008 • Two former Black Panthers imprisoned in Louisiana are out of solitary confinement for the first time since the 1970s. State corrections officials say Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were moved into a "maximum security dormitory" earlier this week. Louisiana prison officials once said the men, known as the Angola 2, would never be moved.
Nick Trenticosta, lawyer for Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, two of the "Angola Three," issued the following statement in response to Louisiana State
Penitentiary's decision to move his clients from solitary confinement to a separate dormitory:

"Herman and Albert need to be released from prison because they are innocent: they were framed for a murder they did not commit.

"After thirty-six years of solitary confinement, recent media scrutiny, a press conference by Louisiana House Judiciary Committee Chairman Cedric Richmond, and a visit by
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers have caused the Angola prison authorities to panic and move the two men into new quarters without informing them or their lawyers about the terms of their new situation at the prison.

"We will redouble our efforts to gain justice and therefore freedom for Wallace and Woodfox. Changing their cells is not enough."

Posted by lois at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)

NY: None of hundreds of people convicted of violent felonies who were released returned to prison

Out, on good behavior: Paroling violent felons is a controversial practice, but none of the hundreds released in the last 4 years has had to return to prison

By MICHAEL HILL, Associated Press Writer
Adirondack Daily Enterprise

Posted on: Monday, March 24, 2008

ALBANY — Caught in a political crossfire over the release of violent felons, New York parole officials report that none of the 456 violent felons paroled in the last four years was sent back to prison for committing a new crime.

Parole for murderers and other violent felons flared into a political issue recently after their release rates increased under former Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The controversy is unlikely to fade away under Gov. David Paterson, with Republican critics still pressing for changes. When asked by a reporter, Paterson called the violent felon release rates ‘‘a serious concern.’’

The issue centers on parole of so-called A1 felons — those convicted of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping or arson in the first degree. Republicans called the higher release rates under Spitzer alarming. Administration officials countered that parole boards, still dominated by members appointed by Republican George Pataki, must by law consider not only the applicant’s crime, but his prison record and prior criminal record.

‘‘We’re very sensitive in terms of who we are releasing,’’ said Division of Parole Chairman George Alexander. ‘‘But we’re bound by law to consider certain factors.’’

Alexander said boards are making safe decisions and his agency released parole data as evidence. The return rate for violent felons committing a crime within three years was 1.6 percent from 1999 through 2003. Division records show none of the 456 A1 felons released from 2004 through 2007 were returned to prison for a new crime, including the 440 murderers and attempted murderers in that group.

Those figures do not include parolees sent back to prison in that time for technical violations, such as failing drug tests. And the no-return run does not include violent felons paroled before 2004 who committed a crime in that period. For instance, a murderer paroled in 1994 was imprisoned in December 2006 for burglary.

Although their crimes are among the most heinous, paroled murderers are statistically unlikely to commit a new crime. State prison officials studying inmates released between 1985 and 2002 found 3 percent of murderers were returned to prison for new crimes after three years. Return rates for some others, such as those convicted of grand larceny, were above 20 percent.

Why are so-called recidivism rates for killers so low? Criminologists note that many killers act impulsively in a fight or during an act of passion — as opposed to ‘‘career’’ criminals who rob or sell drugs as a vocation. Also, murderers usually are not released until they are at least middle-aged, and older people are less likely to break the law, according to Columbia Law School Professor Jeffrey Fagan, co-director of the Center for Crime, Community and Law.

‘‘When you’re 23 years behind the walls, you have a lot of time to think about what you’re doing and change your life around,’’ said Jay Pobliner, who was paroled in 2002 after serving decades in prison and then on work release for killing his wife in 1968. Pobliner, 67, proudly talked about being a lieutenant in his local volunteer fire department and becoming certified last year as an emergency medical technician.

‘‘I like to think of myself as that I did a criminal act,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m not a criminal.’’

But Republican state Sen. Michael Nozzolio said focusing on low recidivism rates misses the point. He said allowing violent criminals out early undercuts New York’s ‘‘zero tolerance’’ for those crimes and chips away at respect for the law.

‘‘My constituents are not going to take comfort in the fact that when ax murderers get out of jail through their early release process that they’re statistically less likely to commit another crime. That’s not the issue,’’ said Nozzolio, chairman of the state Senate’s criminal justice committee. ‘‘The issue is: Why are we letting violent felons out of jail early in the first place?’’

Nozzolio said he has the same concerns with Paterson as he did with Spitzer in office. A bill backed by Senate Republicans would require unanimous votes by three-member boards before felons convicted of violent crimes can be paroled.

Politicians know that despite low recidivism rates for killers, it only takes one to create a political disaster. The most infamous case involved Willie Horton, the convicted murderer who raped a woman and beat her boyfriend while on a weekend furlough in Massachusetts. The case dogged former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis during his unsuccessful 1988 presidential campaign.

Liz Gaynes of the Osborne Association, a criminal justice advocacy group, argued that violent felon releases are more a political issue than a public safety issue, given the low recidivism rates.

She said it’s impossible for a politician to say: ‘‘Yes. I favor the release of violent, vicious dangerous people,’’ particularly in an election year in which Democrats want to wrest control of the state Senate from Republicans. On the other hand, she suggested politicians seeking to keep inmates in jail longer might be concerned about proposed prison closures in their upstate districts amid decreasing inmate counts.

‘‘They clearly do not endanger public safety,’’ Gaynes said of paroled violent felons. ‘‘What they endanger is the necessity of keeping all the upstate prisons open forever.’’

http://www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/articles.asp?articleID=10977

Posted by lois at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

NY: The Juveniles Are Gone, Yet the Jails Remain

March 26, 2008
About New York
The Juveniles Are Gone, Yet the Jails Remain
By JIM DWYER

The public pays about $500 a night for each of the 25 beds in the Auburn Residential Center — a place for teenagers who have gotten into lower-grade trouble with the law, a junior-varsity jail. For the last two weeks, the beds in Auburn have been empty. And state officials expect them to remain empty, permanently.

But even with no one under the sheets, each bed will continue to cost as much as $200,000 a year, the officials say.

Auburn, near Syracuse, is one of three state facilities for teenagers that are becoming high-priced ghost jails. Brace Residential Center, in Delaware County, with 25 beds, has just two teenagers staying there, watched over by a staff of 24; Great Valley in Cattaraugus County has 10 young people and a staff of 24. Soon, Brace and Great Valley, like Auburn, will no longer have teenagers staying there.

Yet if the State Senate has its way, all three will remain open until at least January 2010.

“I believe the number of juveniles was deliberately reduced this year and the kids sent elsewhere” to justify closing Great Valley, said State Senator Catharine M. Young, a Republican from Cattaraugus County, which is in the western part of the state, near the borders of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Senate has passed a resolution that requires Great Valley and the others to remain open.

Nearly all politicians fight to keep jobs in their districts. Prisons, jails and juvenile facilities have been a source of political and economic power to upstate areas that have little other industry. Most of the inmates came from the five boroughs and the metropolitan area.

In the battle over the ghost jails, though, the fight is not simply about the local economy, but also about a system of juvenile corrections that has been in a quiet state of collapse for nearly a decade, particularly for teenagers who are not in trouble for serious offenses.

New York City has found better, cheaper ways to move teenagers onto safer ground, said Ronald E. Richter, the city’s family services coordinator.

For offenders whose home lives are filled with problems, the city now provides intense programs for the entire family, buttressing the role of adults in the lives of the teenagers. Last year, about 275 teenagers and their families were sent into these programs rather than the state juvenile system.

So instead of sending the teenagers off to state facilities that cost $140,000 to $200,000 a year per person, the city is spending about $17,000 a year, Mr. Richter said. And while the state’s juvenile recidivism rate is 80 percent, the city program had a rate of about 35 percent in its first year, he said.

Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the state’s Office of Children and Family Services, which administers the juvenile centers, says straightening out teenagers who have committed minor offenses is a job better done in community-based systems. The juvenile centers, she said, should be reserved for “young people who are a danger to themselves and their communities.”

“For most of the kids, we don’t need these facilities, and we don’t need to be shipping them hundreds of miles away from their families,” she said. “That money can be reinvested in programs that work better for these young people.”

The prison economy is a central feature of New York’s political economy. The state Public Employees Federation, which represents some of the employees in the juvenile centers, has bought advertisements in small newspapers in towns near the centers, arguing that the state is jumping the gun.

“We think it’s premature,” said Darcy Wells, spokeswoman for the union. “The police say that juvenile arrests are up by 8 percent in New York City.”

Ms. Carrión said that there would be plenty of space if serious juvenile crime rose sharply. “Even after I close the facilities, I will have 20 to 30 percent excess capacity, so I have the flexibility in the system,” she said.

Senator Young said that the community-based programs like the one in New York needed to be studied before the existing system was shut down. The current data, she said, is not adequate.

Ms. Carrión says there is no need to wait: The current juvenile system catapults needy youngsters far from the families they will eventually return to, with no changes in the households that they left.

“Almost all of the kids are black and brown,” she said. “This is the alternative boarding school system for children of color. We can do better than this.”

Posted by lois at 09:13 AM | Comments (0)

GA: Jail and Prison Cells ncrease as beds in psychiatric hospitals decline

"The chief justice's task force noted that in the past 20 years, Georgia jails have added 23,000 beds and prisons have added 35,000, while the number of psychiatric hospital beds has declined."

Atlanta Journal Constitution
Mentally ill strain state jails with $70M services

By ANDY MILLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 03/26/08

Fifteen percent of the inmates in Georgia's county jails have been diagnosed with a serious mental illness and receive medication for that condition, according to a task force created by Georgia's Supreme Court chief justice. In addition, 15.5 percent of those in state prisons have similar diagnoses.

The disproportionate number of people with mental illness in the state's jails and prisons is the result of a lack of community mental health services, the task force said.

In comparison, 5 percent of all Georgians have been diagnosed with serious mental illnesses, which include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression.

Mentally ill people often become trapped in the criminal justice system instead of getting needed treatment, task force leaders Tuesday told a state commission studying reforms of the mental health system.

Most of the county jail inmates with mental illness also are addicted to drugs, the task force said.

The annual cost of mental health services in Georgia jails and prisons is $70 million, according to the report of the task force, chaired by Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears.

"It's an enormous drain on resources in regard to jails and the court system,'' said Judge Winston Bethel of DeKalb County Magistrate Court.

The chief justice's task force noted that in the past 20 years, Georgia jails have added 23,000 beds and prisons have added 35,000, while the number of psychiatric hospital beds has declined.

Criminal defendants with mental illness often face a long wait before transferring to forensic units of state mental hospitals for evaluation, the task force report added.

If community services are fully funded ‹ such as hiring case managers to check on mental health patients' medication ‹ ''it will reduce our caseloads,'' Judge John Allen of Chattahoochee Circuit Superior Court said. "We can keep some of these people out of jail.''

Georgia is one of seven states selected for a federal grant to study mental illness in the criminal justice system. The resulting task force began meeting last summer. The 73-member group includes judges, consumer advocates, law enforcement officials and officials in Gov. Sonny Perdue's administration.

"Large numbers of people with mental illness repeatedly make their way into our courtrooms, our jails and our prisons,'' Sears said recently in public remarks. "Mental illness is not a crime. But these citizens too often fall through the cracks of our social safety net. When they do, they enter a vicious cycle of arrest, prosecution, incarceration, release and re-offense.''

The mental health commission listened to the task force presentation mostly without comment.

The panel was created by Perdue after a series of articles last year in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Georgia's state-run mental hospitals were chronically overcrowded, underfunded and understaffed, leading to widespread medical errors and other problems.

The newspaper reported that at least 115 state hospital patients died under suspicious circumstances from 2002 through 2006. As many as 21 more questionable deaths occurred during 2007, the newspaper reported in December. In addition, dozens of substantiated cases of physical or sexual abuse of patients were reported. The articles have led to an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department.

The task force's recommendations include making sure people with mental illness have proper medication; providing housing for mentally ill people who are homeless; and starting a program of special case managers who would help link newly jailed offenders to community services.

The Department of Human Resources, which runs the public mental health system, said the task force's report was not surprising. Spending for community services in Georgia has historically lagged, but that funding has increased in recent years, said Gwen Skinner, head of the division for mental health services.

Perdue's original budget for next year would continue that growth, she said.

Several areas in Georgia have started mental health courts to divert some mentally ill offenders into treatment. Superior Court Judge Stephen Goss of Dougherty County, who runs a mental health court and is a Perdue commission member, said, "Jails have become de facto treatment centers.''

In addition, Georgia Hospital Association members told the commission that gaps in community services also have led increasing numbers of mental health patients to seek care in emergency rooms across the state. Lack of available beds in the state-run mental hospitals cause long delays in patients being transferred from ERs, the GHA members said. They called for the creation of a single state agency to oversee all spending and services for mental health, developmental disabilities and substance abuse.

Perdue recently formed a commission to reform DHR, singling out mental health as one area that needs improvement.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2008/03/25/mental_0326.html

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

IL: Families fight closing of Stateville Prison

"Built north of Joliet in 1925, Stateville is home to 3,280 prisoners and is the closest state correctional facility to Chicago and its growing suburbs. Rather than spend an estimated $100 million to refurbish Stateville to the level of other maximum-security prisons, Blagojevich wants to close the section that houses the most violent criminals and ship them to more secure rural prisons hours away. While the closing could mean the loss of hundreds of jobs at Stateville‹and deal a financial hit to the communities around it‹state officials acknowledge the blow to families could have the most far-reaching effect."

Chicago Tribune
Families fight Stateville plan
Inmate transfers may cut ties to relatives

By Joel Hood | Tribune reporter
March 25, 2008

Seven days a week, the families gather in the small visitor's center outside the immense stone walls of the Stateville Correctional Center. They come in groups or one by one‹mothers, fathers, sons and daughters‹leaving one world and entering another.

Their reunions with inmates can last up to two hours, just once a week. While that's not much time, families say it's enough for talk and reflection, for the occasional smile and laugh.

So when plans surfaced last month to close the maximum-security wing of Stateville, relocating up to 1,600 inmates all over Illinois, the impact hit hard in this network of families.

"I'm honestly afraid we'll lose my brother if we can't see him and talk with him face to face," said Paula Carballido, 25, of Waukegan, whose 21-year-old brother, Juan, is four years into a 35-year murder sentence. "We don't want him to disconnect, to break off from the family."

Some of the families have begun writing letters and speaking to lawmakers at budget forums, such as one held Tuesday at Kennedy-King College on the South Side. They are organizing a bus trip to Springfield, where legislators must vote on Gov. Rod Blagojevich's budget proposal for the coming fiscal year. In the process, the families are casting light on their crucial but often overlooked contribution to the care and rehabilitation of prisoners.

There is a public safety element to the debate. Studies by the Washington, D.C.-based Vera Institute of Justice and elsewhere have shown inmates who had regular contact with family and friends while incarcerated were less likely to commit crimes once they were released. While family involvement does not guarantee a prisoner will stay on the right side of the law upon re-entering society, experts say there is perhaps no greater indicator of future success.

"The impact of separation is very significant," said Malcolm Young, executive director of the non-profit John Howard Association of Illinois, an inmate advocacy group. "In a lot of instances we're talking about children [of inmates]. And no matter what people say about the people who commit these crimes and go to jail, it's not the children's fault. They shouldn't be punished."

Built north of Joliet in 1925, Stateville is home to 3,280 prisoners and is the closest state correctional facility to Chicago and its growing suburbs. Rather than spend an estimated $100 million to refurbish Stateville to the level of other maximum-security prisons, Blagojevich wants to close the section that houses the most violent criminals and ship them to more secure rural prisons hours away.

While the closing could mean the loss of hundreds of jobs at Stateville‹and deal a financial hit to the communities around it‹state officials acknowledge the blow to families could have the most far-reaching effect.

"We understand families are a very important part of an inmate's success when they go out. That's part of what makes this so tough," said Department of Corrections spokesman Derek Schnapp. "But the No. 1 issue for us is safety and security."

On a recent rainy weekday, two dozen people crowded the one-room waiting area inside Stateville's visitor center. Carballido came with her younger sister Lucy, who was just 13 when Juan began his sentence. Now when she visits him, the older brother lovingly grills her about her friends and how she's spending her time out of school.

"He tells me not to hang out with certain kinds of people," Lucy Carballido said.

Similarly, Cicero resident Pearlie White frequently comes to Stateville to visit the father of her 17-year-old son. The man, Steve Robinson, has been serving a life sentence, but White often brings her son so the two can have some kind of a relationship. Despite his incarceration, Robinson is a "father figure" for her son and teenage daughter, she said.

"They would not have a man in their lives if not for [Robinson]," White said. "It might not be the best situation, but it's all we've got."

White, who travels the 30 miles between Cicero and Stateville by bus, said she wouldn't be able to visit Robinson if he transfers to a prison farther away. "The only contact we'd all have is over the phone. And that's just not the same," she said. "They can't close this place."

Schnapp said proximity to family is factored into where inmates are assigned. But it's not the deciding factor, he said, and inmates are often shipped from one prison to another to improve safety, alleviate crowding or for other reasons. If Stateville closes, some prisoners will be sent to the maximum-security wing of the next closest facility in Pontiac, 100 miles from Chicago. But others could be transferred to Thomson, which is 150 miles away from Chicago; to Menard, 350 miles away; or Tamms, 363 miles away.

Young, whose John Howard Association officially supports the closing, called the family element a "wrenching issue."

"These are families who typically don't have a lot of means to begin with," said Young, who is encouraging the state to work out cheaper bus and train fares for families visiting rural prisons.

For Paula Carballido and her family, the concern is not only that Juan remains free of the drug use and gang activity that is so common in prison life, but that he has a support system in place when he is released.

"He's in there for a long time, but not for life," Paula Carballido said. "He's going to come out eventually. When he does, I think everybody should want him to have the best chance he can."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-stateville_26mar26,1,2153695.st
ory

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

Adelanto CA: Home to two prisons. "In Adelanto, a low ebb for a high desert town"

In Adelanto, a low ebb for a high desert town
Alleged drowning of dozens of kittens by the animal control chief is only the latest in a litany of scandals to plague the town.

By David Kelly, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 26, 2008

Adelanto may mean "progress" in Spanish, but many say this scruffy high desert community -- founded in 1915 by the inventor of the Hotpoint Electric Iron -- is perpetually stuck in a quagmire of corruption and scandal.

Recent accusations of animal cruelty against Kevin Murphy, head of the city's animal control department, have once again fueled notions of a Wild West town operating on the fringes of the law.

Murphy, 36, was charged last week with drowning more than 50 kittens in cages over a four-month period last year. He faces six years in prison if convicted and has been placed on paid leave pending his May 19 arraignment. Fellow animal control officer Patrick Cornell is also on leave but hasn't been charged.

"I have a hunch they were newborn kittens, not cats picked up on the street," former Mayor Mary Scarpa said, quickly adding: "Not that it makes it OK, of course."

Scarpa, 81, is part of Adelanto's old guard. She was mayor in 1997 and knows Murphy personally.

"We haven't had as many problems as the newspapers say we do," she said, relaxing at the town's senior center recently. "We are a growing city, and that sent some people over the edge. I think it's a very unfair charge to say the town is corrupt."

Perhaps. But the town's past is, to say the least, checkered.

Jim Nehmens and his wife were arrested last year and charged with embezzling $20,000 from the local Little League fireworks sale. Nehmens, a former Little League president, denies the charges and has kept his post as Adelanto's mayor after being released on bail.

"It's still just allegations. He hasn't been through the system yet," City Manager James Hart said. "It has nothing to do with the city. Adelanto has no problem with the mayor. Not once, not once since he was charged has a member of the public asked him to step down."

Hart said the city's growth has brought in those who appreciate "good government." "I tell people we have entered a new era," he said.

Nehmens did not respond to numerous calls seeking comment.

He's not the first local official to get into trouble.

Tom Thornburg was appointed mayor in 1994 despite having served a year in prison on federal drug smuggling charges.

Former Police Chief Philip Genaway was sentenced to four years in prison in 1997 for stealing $10,000 from the department's canine unit. Two other officers were jailed for beating a handcuffed suspect and forcing another to lick his blood from the floor. Another officer was convicted of child molestation.

In 1996, the mayor and two council members were recalled after promoting a gold-mining operation in town that would have used deadly cyanide in the leaching process. Cuban-born Zoila Meyer, a City Council member, resigned last year because she wasn't an American citizen. She pleaded no contest to voter fraud.

When Tristan Pelayes became mayor in 2000, he said several council members pulled him into a room and told him that although he was the mayor, they ran the town.

"I was highly offended by that," said Pelayes, a lawyer and former San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy. "I thought at first it was a normal city, but then I realized I got a corrupt council and a corrupt Police Department. Once I began learning more about the town, I was amazed. The first thing I did was disband the Police Department."

It was an ugly fight, and Pelayes said he was targeted with death threats and recall petitions. One police officer, he said, tailed him around town.

Scarpa opposed getting rid of the police.

"I think our old police force did an adequate job," she said. "We didn't have any problems. Well, we had some problems, but not many."

Pelayes said the problems were legion.

"The police used excessive force. They lost drugs. Money was missing," he said. "They would take people's cars and use them for their personal use. You name it and they did it."

Pelayes finally persuaded enough council members to replace the force with San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies. He worked to bring in Adelanto's first supermarket and helped change its motto from "A Film Friendly City" to "City of Unlimited Possibilities."

Pelayes left the job in 2003 with a sense of accomplishment. His replacement, Jim Nehmens, was later indicted -- and now Murphy has been charged with killing kittens.

"For every one step forward, there seems to be five steps back," said Pelayes, an attorney in Riverside.

Hart, the city manager, knows the allegations against Murphy are bad for Adelanto's image -- so bad that he's hired an outside public relations firm to cushion the fallout. But he said he is focused on the future.

"We have a whole new population . . . and the City Council wants to move forward. If these latest charges turn out to be true, then I can't allow that to stop our progress," he said. "We are focusing on economic development. There are 7,000 households in town and one supermarket. The city sees the need to change, and we are focusing on long-term priorities."

Since 2000, Adelanto has grown from about 18,000 residents to more than 27,000. It is home to two prisons, in addition to one at the former George Air Force Base nearby. Housing tracts spread across the flat desert off U.S. 395. Older parts of the city have decayed, with boarded-up homes lining dirt roads.

As Los Angeles residents flock here for cheaper housing, crime has accompanied growth. Local law enforcement now contends with street gangs, methamphetamine abuse and a rash of copper wire thefts.

According to statistics from the Sheriff's Department, Adelanto saw homicides rise by 150%, burglaries by 50% and aggravated assaults by 28% between 2006 and 2007. Total crime rose 8%.

"We used to have crime here 10 years ago but not as much as today," said Irmeline Gomez, who runs a 99 Cents store. "A lot of the people who come in are on welfare and they ask if they can have two things for 99 cents, or they get mad if we charge tax and the price is over 99 cents."

Longtime residents acknowledge the town's problems but say they love it too much to consider leaving.

No one has lived here longer than Charlie Hattendorf, 87, who arrived at age 3 from Pine Bluff, Ark. Back then, he said, Adelanto was full of peach and apple trees. "We used to be surrounded by desert out here and now we are surrounded by houses," he said, waiting for lunch at the senior center just off 395.

Frank Snoddy, 85, and his wife, Kay, 81, moved to Adelanto from Pomona.

"It was the cheapest piece of ground we could find," he said. "We used to drive down 395 and see maybe one or two cars, and it's now bumper-to-bumper. I joined the citizens' patrol. They told us, 'You know the gangs are coming up here,' and we had to be prepared for that and, sure enough, they came."

Former City Councilman John Snyder said Adelanto has been experiencing growing pains.

"This town was founded by E.H. Richardson, the inventor of the Hotpoint Iron," he said. "He came out here for his health and bought the land. There were pears and grapes, and then came the chicken ranches. The pace of development picked up, but we still have 300 miles of unpaved road and a lot of open space."

He denied Adelanto has a checkered past. "And I do not want to comment on the current mayor," he said resolutely.

Kay Snoddy smiled. "My friends ask me, 'What kind of town are you running up there?' " she said.

Local bingo caller Julius Giorgi, 85, watched mischievously from another table. He likes to answer most questions with a sharp "Who the hell knows?," but when it came to City Hall he had a snappy reply. "They're all crooks," he exclaimed. "And they all should be thrown into jail!"
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-adelanto26mar26,0,4963705,full.story

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

Private Prisons Share Prices Rise

Sector Snap: Private Prisons Rise
Private Prison Operators Rise in Afternoon Trading; Analysts Expect Strong Year for Geo Group
March 24, 2008
NEW YORK (Associated Press) - Shares of for-profit prison operators are rising after analysts reacted positively to meetings with Geo Group management.

Banc of America analyst T.C. Robillard said Geo Group Inc. expects to win contracts for more than 10,000 new beds in 2008, and said that tighter state budgets won't hurt prison operators. He wrote that the company is benefiting from strong demand and he believes it will reach his profit forecasts.

Avondale Partners analyst Kevin Campbell said the Boca Raton, Fla., company has several opportunities to surpass his expectations this year.

The broader markets climbed Monday, with the Dow Jones industrial average rising more than 200 points.

Geo Group shares rose $1.42, or 5.3 percent, to $28.25 in afternoon trading.

Shares of Houston-based Cornell Cos. Inc. added 69 cents, or 3.3 percent, to $21.63.

Nashville, Tenn.-based Corrections Corp. of America gained 39 cents to $27.63.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/apwire/a402ec81326958416a3700e0
e37a8e0b.htm

Posted by lois at 08:56 AM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2008

How low can you go? Alabama sheriffs may pocket leftover food money of $1.75 a day after feeding inmates at county jails.

Alabama attorney general rules that Alabama sheriffs may pocket leftover food money of $1.75 a day after feeding inmates at county jails.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008
KIM CHANDLER
News staff writer

MONTGOMERY - Alabama sheriffs may pocket leftover food money after feeding inmates at the county jails, the Alabama attorney general has ruled.

The opinion issued March 17 offered guidance on the controversial practice of sheriff's keeping whatever is left over from the $1.75 a day per inmate the state pays sheriffs to provide food in the jails.

The director of the Alabama Sheriffs Association praised the opinion and said it gives sheriffs incentive to wisely manage jail grocery costs.

"The code is very explicit, the excess belongs to the sheriff," said Bobby Timmons, executive director of the Alabama Sheriffs Association.

Some county officials have argued the surplus money should not be the personal income of the sheriff.

"Our disagreement with the attorney general is, if there's a surplus, it ought to be used for law enforcement purposes and not be put into the personal income of the sheriff," said Buddy Sharpless, executive director of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama.

The opinion cited a section of state law that states fees collected by the sheriff shall be paid into the county's general fund, "excluding the allowances and amounts received for feeding prisoners, which the various sheriffs of the various counties shall be entitled to keep and retain."

The phrase "keep and retain" has been interpreted in other fee-for-service situations to mean that "the officials retain the fee as personal income," the opinion read.

The Etowah County Commission and the city of Gadsden requested the opinion, asking, among other questions, if the sheriff could keep the surplus funds as personal income and if it was proper for the sheriff not to pay sales tax on food purchases for the jail.

Timmons said the extra income to the sheriff could be zero dollars because of rising grocery costs, or it could be tens of thousands of dollars in a year when the sheriff is able to find good deals.

"You can't just give them an apple and two crackers. You got to give them a nourishing balanced meal," Timmons said.

County commissions can direct the surplus funds to be deposited into the county general fund, but only if the county takes over the responsibility of feeding prisoners, according to the attorney general's office.

E-mail: kchandler@bhamnews.com
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/120643830716840.xml&coll=2

Posted by lois at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)

Supermax Subscriptions at Tamms Supermax

Hello all,
Two weeks ago, Supermax Subscriptions sent a mailing asking every man incarcerated at Tamms C-Max unit if they would like to receive magazine subscriptions: free gifts from people with surplus airline award miles that they'd like to exchange for gift subscriptions. Tamms C-Max is a no contact, permanent solitary confinement prison in Southern Illinois. The men have been there for years on end — many for ten years. They have no communal activity, no phone calls, no programs, no education, no work, no librarian, and virtually no reading.
Already, over ten percent of the population has replied to our mailing. The magazine requests are pouring in and we have men who would like to receive everything from Newsweek to the Wall Street Journal to Horse Illustrated. Clearly the need for reading materials is dire and we are excited to start the process of helping these guys out.
Here's where you come in.
1) If you have award miles on Delta or American Airlines, please contact us at:
supermax@temporaryservices.org
Tell us how many miles you would like to donate. The minimum number needed for the least expensive subscription is 400 miles.

2) We will then send you the name, inmate number and address of a prisoner(s), along with his/their subscription requests.

3) You can then log in to your award miles account, find the page that lets you give a gift subscription, fill in the prisoner's information and send them the magazine(s) they've requested. Note that the prisoner will not see your personal information or even who gave them the subscription unless you send them a postal letter. The gift subscription interface can only send the gift recipient an email note, and prisoners at Tamms do not have access to the internet.

4) After you send a gift subscription to a prisoner, PLEASE email us and tell us the name of the prisoner(s) and the magazine(s) you sent. At this point we will note that they have been taken care of to avoid people sending out duplicate subscriptions.

Thank you for your interest and possible participation! If anything is unclear, please don't hesitate to ask!

all the best,

Supermax Subscriptions
[Tamms Poetry Committee, Sarah Ross, Temporary Services (Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin, Marc Fischer)]
More about Supermax Subscriptions: http://www.temporaryservices.org/supsub.html

More about activism against Tamms: http://www.YearTen.org/

Major article about abuses at Tamms on Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/story/80440/

Posted by lois at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2008

The Sentencing Project guide to 2008 Presidential Candidates' Platforms on Criminal Justice

The Sentencing Project guide to 2008 Presidential Candidates' Platforms on Criminal Justice. This guide provides information on a range of key criminal justice issues, including sentencing policy, reentry, felony disenfranchisement, and the death penalty.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/tmp/File/PresidentialCandidatesPlatforms.pdf

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

FL: Proposed funding cuts to successful drug treatment programs may leave thousands untreated

"Proposed cuts at the corrections department -- which could total almost $30 million -- would eliminate all substance-abuse treatment for prison inmates and those on probation, said Gretl Plessinger, an agency spokeswoman. The drug treatment cuts would be the deepest in agency history. At DCF, administrators have included an $11 million cut to programs that provide treatment services to parents at risk of losing their children. And the juvenile justice agency is eliminating a youth drug court in Alachua County among other possible trims."

Miami Herald

DRUG TREATMENT
Budget cuts put drug addict's lifelines on the line

Proposed funding cuts to successful drug treatment programs may leave thousands untreated

Posted on Mon, Mar. 24, 2008

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com

A year ago, Esther Guzman wanted her crack pipe more than her kids. In her heart, she hoped to come clean for her children's sake, but her cocaine addiction lured her to the rock.

Guzman got high just minutes before she grabbed a cab on March 14, 2007, to appear before a judge who would decide if she could get her four children back. A day earlier the state had taken her kids, ages 5 to 13, into foster care because she had neglected them for months.

On Friday, Guzman walked with dozens of other moms in a ''graduation'' ceremony from The Village drug treatment center in Miami, and left the residential complex to begin a new life -- with her children. Fighting tears, she said she will never return to the center -- except to encourage other drug-addicted moms.

Other mothers struggling with addiction might not get that opportunity. Faced with as much as $9 billion in state revenue shortfalls, Florida lawmakers are considering at least $40 million in cuts to drug treatment centers throughout Florida. The Village's program may be forced to shutter.

''Let us all pray to a power greater than ourselves that this doesn't happen,'' Janet Nichols, a Village program administrator, told the graduates during Friday's commencement.

More than two in three adults who serve time in Florida prisons are battling a drug problem. And almost all of the parents entering the state's child welfare system risk losing their children forever because their addictions are more powerful than their desire to protect their children.

As lawmakers grapple with one of the worst budget crises in state history, administrators at the Department of Corrections, the Department of Children & Families and the Department of Juvenile Justice are considering deep spending cuts. The result would be to lock out tens of thousands of Floridians from treatment programs.

DEEPEST CUTS

Proposed cuts at the corrections department -- which could total almost $30 million -- would eliminate all substance-abuse treatment for prison inmates and those on probation, said Gretl Plessinger, an agency spokeswoman. The drug treatment cuts would be the deepest in agency history.

At DCF, administrators have included an $11 million cut to programs that provide treatment services to parents at risk of losing their children. And the juvenile justice agency is eliminating a youth drug court in Alachua County among other possible trims.

The consequences, both agency administrators and advocates say, could be
staggering: Prison administrators predict an increase in crime.

''This would literally wipe out drug treatment both in the community and in prison,'' said Pam Denmark, a DOC deputy assistant secretary. ``We don't want to lose [the programs]. We know that they work.''

Said Broward Circuit Judge Marcia Beach, who oversees Drug Court in Fort
Lauderdale: ``This is going to be pretty severe. Without addiction treatment, we better be ready to build more jails and prisons. This is turning the clock back.''

Another possible consequence: Thousands of children already in foster care may be unable to return to their parents, and some will have to be adopted by substitute families, advocates say. Other children likely would enter state care for the first time, and remain there.

''This is a nightmare,'' said Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen, who presides over a drug court for parents accused of abusing or neglecting their children, and refers hundreds of parents every year into drug treatment in an effort to improve their parenting skills. ``This will cause a flood of parents into court, and it will cause more children to enter care.''

The Department of Corrections now operates 20 substance-abuse treatment programs in 19 prisons across the state, with a total of 1,755 beds. Last year, DOC administrators eliminated 525 treatment beds.

In budget year 2007, 6,771 Florida inmates participated in a treatment program. Almost 70 percent of the inmates completed the program successfully.

DOC pays for another 9,680 outpatient slots outside prison through contracts with private-treatment programs, and 31,724 Floridians were treated by the providers in budget year 2007. About 58 percent of the patients successfully completed the outpatient treatment, DOC records show.

In all, DOC was asked to identify $214.7 million in cuts to the agency's $2 billion annual spending plan, said Plessinger.

DOC Secretary Walter McNeil, at a legislative session last week, told lawmakers that eliminating addiction treatment, as well as other proposed trims, would ``compromise public safety.''

TREATMENT IMPACT

In the long run, advocates say, offering drug treatment is more cost effective than allowing addictions to persist. The Florida Alcohol and Drug Abuse Association, an industry group, estimates it costs, on average, $9,450 to treat an addict for seven months -- considerably less than the $44,377 it costs to house the addict in prison for 1,004 days -- the average sentence.

''We don't want these cuts at all,'' Plessinger said. ``We believe drug treatment lowers recidivism; we have numbers that say it does. Not only does it cost less, but people don't come back to prison after treatment, and you have fewer victims.''

At DCF, eliminating the residential programs for parents would provide about $11 million in federal public assistance dollars that could pay for other services that currently deplete scarce state general revenue dollars. Like prison administrators, DCF officials are strongly opposed to the trims -- though they acknowledge they may have no choice.

''It is a major threat,'' said Bill Janes, the state drug czar and DCF's assistant secretary for substance abuse and mental health. ``We are doing everything we can to keep this money there.''

''If we lose this money now,'' Janes said, ``it would devastate our efforts to keep these families together.''

Recent studies show the vast majority of families entering state care crumble under the weight of a drug addiction. The first three weeks in January, for example, DCF Miami administrator Alan Abramowitz tracked about 128 children sheltered by the state. All but 33 of the kids allegedly were being raised by a drug-abusing parent, records show.

Guzman, 30, said she refused to pick up the phone at midnight on March 13, 2007, even though she knew DCF was calling to tell her she had lost her children. A teacher had called the state's abuse hot line to report one of her children appeared unkempt and unhealthy, Guzman said.

`I FELT BAD FOR MY KIDS'

``I had feelings of despair, and I was angry with myself. I felt bad for my kids. I was disappointed and disgraced.''

But not enough to put down the crack pipe. Guzman got wasted only minutes before she left for court the next day -- and promptly admitted it to her judge, Cohen. She also said she wanted treatment, and wanted her children back. Three weeks later, clean and sober, Guzman got her children back, but Cohen required Guzman to continue months of treatment to avoid a relapse. The children were allowed to remain with Guzman at The Village.

Now, Guzman is in a GED program, earning money as a waitress, and raising her children.

''These are families with kids,'' Guzman said of her peers. ``Maybe the parents made choices, but the kids had nothing to do with it. The children didn't have a choice. It's a sickness.''

And, without the treatment?

''I would not be here,'' said Guzman, who had been a foster child herself. ``I don't know if I'd even be on this earth. My kids definitely would not be here with mom. They would be wondering where their mommy is, like I did.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/top_stories/story/467783.html

Posted by lois at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)

Torture in Our Own Backyards: The Fight Against Supermax Prisons

Torture in Our Own Backyards: The Fight Against Supermax Prisons
By Jessica Pupovac, AlterNet
Posted on March 24, 2008

Imagine living in an 8-by-12 prison cell, in solitary confinement, for eight years straight. Your entire world consists of a dank, cinder block room with a narrow window only three inches high, opening up to an outdoor cement cage, cynically dubbed, "the yard." If you're lucky, you spend one hour, five days a week in that outdoor cage, where you gaze up through a wire mesh roof and hope for a glimpse of the sun. If you talk back to the guards or act out in any way, you might only venture outside one precious hour per week.

You go eight years without shaking a hand or experiencing any physical human contact. The prison guards bark orders and touch you only while wearing leather gloves, and then it's only to put you in full cuffs and shackles before escorting you to the cold showers, where they watch your every move.

You cannot make phone calls to your friends or family and must "earn" two visits per month, which inevitably take place through a Plexiglass wall. You are kept in full shackles the entire time you visit with your wife and children, and have to strain to hear their voices through speakers that record your every word. With no religious or educational programs to break up the time or elevate your thoughts, it's a daily struggle to keep your mind from unraveling.

This is how Reginald Akeem Berry describes his time in Tamms Correctional Facility, a "Supermax" state prison in southern Illinois, where he was held from March 1998 until July 2006. He now works to draw attention to conditions inside Tamms, where 261 inmates continue to be held in extreme isolation.

Once exclusively employed as a short-term punishment for particularly violent jailhouse infractions, today, 44 states hold "supermax" facilities, or "control units," designed specifically to hold large numbers of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. A concept that spread like wildfire in the 1990s, today an estimated 20,000 prisoners live in these modern-day dungeons, judged to be "unmanageable" by prison officials and moved from other penitentiaries to the nearest supermax.

Life in supermax institutions is grueling. Inmates stay in their cells for at least 23 hours per day, and never so much as lay eyes on another prisoner. While many live under these conditions for five years, others continue, uncertain of how to earn their way out, for ten, 15, or even 20 years.

The effects of such extended periods of isolation on prisoners' physical and mental health, their chances of meaningful rehabilitation, and, ultimately, on the communities to which they will eventually return are coming under increasing fire, from lawyers, human rights advocates and the medical professionals who have treated them. Bolstered by growing concern over the U.S.' sanctioning of torture, and the effect that has on the country's international standing, their calls to action are gaining ground. In 2000, and again in 2006, the United Nations Committee Against Torture condemned the kind of isolation imposed by the U.S. government in federal, state and county-run supermax prisons, calling it "extremely harsh." "The Committee is concerned about the prolonged isolation periods detainees are subjected to," they stated, "the effect such treatment has on their mental health, and that its purpose may be retribution, in which case it would constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

"Sending someone to a supermax is punishment"

Defense attorney Jean Maclean Snyder, who has represented several Tamms prisoners, says the U.N. declaration is dead-on. "It is suspected that many [Tamms] prisoners have been sent there in retaliation for filing lawsuits about prison policies; because serious mental illnesses cause them to be disruptive; or simply because wardens at other prisons do not like them," she wrote in 2000, shortly after the original declaration was issued. Allan Mills of the Uptown People's Law Office in Chicago, IL thinks that the ambiguity surrounding how and why inmates are sent to supermax facilities constitutes a violation of due process. "Sending someone to a supermax is punishment," Mills told AlterNet, "and before someone gets punished, they have a right to a fair hearing." "Just like if you were to get a traffic ticket, you have a right to say 'I didn't do it' and bring witnesses, and the police would have to come and testify against you," he said. "The same should go for prisoners who are being subjected to this horrendous long-term confinement." Mills claims he has "tracked a pattern of prisoners being sent to Tamms because of them filing grievances or lawsuits and being jailhouse lawyers."

Assistant Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) Director Sergio Molina told AlterNet that, "Their behavior is their input," and although he claims the decision to transfer an inmate to Tamms is made on a "case-by-case basis," he wasn't able to expand further on the process.

Reginald Berry says he believes he was sent there for being "influential," among the general prison population. A former five-star leader of Chicago's infamous Vice Lords gang, he says he had the opportunity to turn in the "pistol" in a murder case, in return for a five-year sentence. However, he says, cooperating with the police against a fellow Vice Lord would have been "against the code," -- so instead he fought a first-degree murder charge in court and wound up with a 33-year jail sentence.

At first, life in Illinois state penitentiaries -- he was transferred to several over the years -- was manageable, since, in his words, "the animals were running the zoo." Through what he describes as a vast web of corruption and incompetence, "the guys who was the beast of the place were being rewarded by the warden," and were granted preferential job placements and access to coveted programs. "Might made right."

Following a series of prison riots and attacks on staff in the early 1990s (neither of which Berry had ever witnessed or been involved in) the Illinois General Assembly decided to construct the Tamms Closed Maximum Security Facility, or "CMAX." With a price tag of $72 million, Tamms CMAX opened its doors on March 10, 1998. The prison is capable of housing up to 500 of the department's "most disruptive, violent and problematic inmates," according to an IDOC brochure. IDOC also claims it costs approximately $60,000 per inmate per year to keep the facility running, a figure over three times higher than the per-inmate annual cost at other IDOC facilities.

Berry says that although he heard supermax rumors swirling throughout the jailhouse, he never imagined that he would end up in one. As he tells it, he hadn't been involved in a violent altercation for years. Nonetheless, "they came back and punished all the guys they had given fringe benefits to, and I had been one of those brothers." Days after the Tamms facility opened, ten police officers in full riot gear came to his cell and escorted him out. One of those guards offered him what would be his last cigarette for the next eight years, before putting him on an IDOC van and sending him off to Tamms.

"Many of these inmates have become psychotic"

The moment he arrived at Tamms, Berry says, he knew "it was a different world." All his belongings were immediately confiscated, right down to his underwear. He was then cavity searched before being escorted, in full shackles and leg irons, to his cell. "Imagine if you've been smoking 20 years," he says. "Overnight you can't smoke no more, overnight you can't talk to your kids no more." The coffee was gone. Work and educational programs were gone. Human interaction was out of reach. Guards barked orders and harassed him.

After about a month of sitting in his cell, he began to hear other inmates' mental health slipping. "You get these guys and they don't know how to acclimate so they start cutting themselves up," he recalled, adding that some would go so far as "taking a pen and sticking it all the way up into their penis," or even worse, attempting suicide.

One expert on the effects of solitary confinement, Dr. Terry Kupers, who consults prison agencies on mental health services, says it is not uncommon for "psychiatric symptoms [to] emerge in previously healthy prisoners … in this context of near-total isolation and idleness." Psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Stuart Grassian concurs. In 2005 he told the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons that he had evaluated of "scores of inmates" who "psychiatrically deteriorated during the course of their confinement in solitary." "Many of these inmates," he said. "have become psychotic, and many have engaged in self-injurious and self-mutilatory behavior."

Annibal Santiago, who has been incarcerated at Tamms since 1998, describes how it feels from the inside: "The mentally ill prisoners drive the normal prisoners crazy by screaming, crying, yelling into the pod at all hours of the day and night for days non-stop, by banging on toilets, doors, walls, and/or by shaking or kicking the doors so hard that it sounds like rumbling thunder, flooding the wing with toilet water, and by throwing feces at other prisoners or inserting feces into the air vents so that the whole wing receives a dose of the smell for months." "The constant bombardment of unrelenting stress takes its toll like a flurry of well-placed punches on a tired boxer's head," he wrote in a survey compiled by Tamms Year Ten Campaign, and activist group working to shut down the facility.

The Innocent Victims

Berry says that when he was first sentenced, he told his wife, Denise, that he would understand if he had to let her go. "I told her, you didn't commit this crime, you had no part of it and I love you enough not to punish you with the hardships that's to come," he recounted. But she didn't. When he was transferred to Tamms, six hours south of Chicago, she moved the family to nearby Springfield so that they could visit as often as possible. Since the Illinois General Assembly approved funding for Tamms with IDOC's claim that it would serve as nothing more than a temporary, one-year-long "shock treatment" for problem inmates, Mrs. Berry thought it would be temporary move. However, two years later, when it became clear that IDOC had no intention of transferring Berry in the foreseeable future, the family moved back to Chicago. Denise says she wasn't prepared for how difficult it would be to see her husband deteriorate so rapidly at Tamms, after having spent ten years in the general prison population. It was particularly hard for his teenage son, who watched as his father grew emaciated from a meager diet and lack of exercise and saw dark circles form under his eyes from lack of sunlight. "What I had a problem with, being an inmate's wife," Denise says, "was how they degraded the inmates." She described her husband being shackled and forced to sit on a small cement stool for the duration of their visits. When officers would deny him a trip to the restroom, encouraging him to instead prematurely end their visit, she says it made her feel like an accomplice to his suffering.

Berry says one thing that kept him going was keeping his family at the forefront of his mind. It bothered him that Tamms prisoners were only allowed to keep 15 pictures in their cells. "Every time my wife sent me pictures, she'd send me sets of 24, and I'd say, 'ok, I got to decide right here which ones I want,' because if you get caught with more than that they can give you a ticket and send you back down to seg [disciplinary segregation, a unit in which inmates have only one shower and one yard visit per week]." Inmates remain in 'seg' for a minimum of 90 days and are not allowed visits for the duration. Once, says Berry, in what would be a devastating error, he tried to mail a picture to his son rather than throw it away. Because in the photo his son's hat was tilted to one side, the officers gave Berry a disciplinary ticket, allegedly for participating in gang-related activity. "My heart dropped to my knees," he says, "I told them, 'ya'll let this picture in here!'"

The violation earned him a ticket to "seg" for six months -- months that were tacked onto his sentence, which had been reduced for "good time." The decision meant that Berry's sentence would effectively be extended, forcing him to miss his youngest son's college graduation. "I was thinking, 'You missed the eighth grade graduation, you missed the high school graduation, you've got to make this college graduation," Berry recalls. According to Denise, prison officials told her that if she could get proof that the people in the picture -- Berry's brother, Michael, his oldest son, Reggie Jr, and Willie Ware Jr., his nephew -- were not affiliated with gangs, they would reconsider his punishment. "I had to obtain their birth certificates," she says. Denise went to 28th Ward Representative Anazette Collins's office, as did the three men, with their IDs. Their efforts proved futile. In the end, she says, "all this was compiled and sent to Tamms and they did nothing."

Berry's son, Joe, graduated in May of 2006. Berry got home four months later. "I missed my son's graduation," he said, "and it crushed me."

Long-Term Effects

A 2007 Federal Bureau of Prisons (BoP) report lists family ties as integral to rehabilitation and successful re-entry into the general community. However, for many Tamms inmates, the lack of phone access, a prohibitive visitation process, and the distance from Chicago, where two-thirds of Tamms inmates are from, makes it nearly impossible to maintain those ties. The scheduling and approval process at Tamms requires weeks of planning and multiple rounds of paperwork. If a visitor arrives late for their appointment, they are forced to begin the process all over again. With no public transportation near the site, the process become more than some people can handle -- or realistically afford.

The BoP also cites access to educational and vocational programs -- especially for minority populations -- as another key element in prisoner rehabilitation. Yet no such opportunities exist in supermax prisons, other than upper-level, self-guided study for the few inmates who have "earned" it.

According to a March 2008 study published in Prisons Journal, "the rapid expansion of the supermax has occurred despite no empirical evidence substantiating its effectiveness or value." Yet Tamms is just one portion of the billions of dollars that have been invested in supermax prisons. IDOC officials confirmed that they do not collect separate recidivism [or return] statistics for Tamms prisoners -- an alarming admission for prisoners, their families, and the broader community that many critics say points to a massive cover-up surrounding the human cost of supermax facilities.

As Paul Beachamp, a Tamms prisoner since 2002, puts it, "What happens when you lock up a dog in a cage for years at a time and constantly harass the dog and treat it bad while it's in the cage? Do you actually think that dog will act right once you let it out?" Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation, issued a similar warning before a Senate hearing in 2006. "The experiences inmates have in prison -- whether violent or redemptive -- do not stay within prison walls, but spill over into the rest of society," he said. "Federal, state, and local governments must address the problems faced by their respective institutions and develop tangible and attainable solutions."

Meanwhile, a range of alternative responses have yet to be explored. A 2006 national survey of 601 prison wardens, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and administered by the Urban League, showed 62.5% of wardens agreeing or strongly agreeing that "staff training" would be an "effective alternative to supermax prisons." It was the number one choice selected in the survey. Other popular alternatives, in order of preference, were to "use segregation cells in each prison facility," "provide targeted rehabilitative services," and "provide opportunities for spiritual development."

Prison activists across the country are working to shed light on this. Enlisting the support of lawmakers and lawyers who share their concern over the treatment of supermax prisoners -- and the rationale behind it -- they are fighting for legal precedents that would bring more services to supermax prisons, grant prisoners more mobility and opportunity and, ultimately, shut the facilities down. The Tamms Year Ten Campaign is one such coalition; it recently persuaded the Illinois House of Representatives to hold a hearing, scheduled for April 28th, to consider arguments for and against the effectiveness and legality of Tamms.

Reginald Berry is part of that movement in Chicago, organized under the banner of the Tamms Ten Year campaign, which works to draw attention to the 88 prisoners who have been at Tamms since the day it opened its doors. Today, in addition to raising awareness of conditions inside supermax prisons, he's also working to cut off the "school-to-prisons pipeline" in his community by sharing his experiences in Tamms with Chicago teenagers, through an organization he founded, "Saving Our Sons."

Berry's work is one of the reasons he counts himself among the lucky ones. After spending eight years in a facility where he was told he would have to "relinquish everything, even your personality," Berry has done more than survive; he has thrived, and he is fighting back. Within the current debate over state-sanctioned torture abroad, his voice is an important reminder of the cruel, unusual, and too-often ignored contradictions of our own criminal justice system.

Jessica Pupovac is an adult educator and independent journalist living in Chicago.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/80440/

Posted by lois at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2008

Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation

"Some health economists contend that the disparities between rich and poor inevitably widen as doctors make gains in treating the major causes of death.
Nancy Krieger, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, rejected that idea. Professor Krieger investigated changes in the rate of premature mortality (dying before the age of 65) and infant death from 1960 to 2002. She found that inequities shrank from 1966 to 1980, but then widened.
“The recent trend of growing disparities in health status is not inevitable,” she said. “From 1966 to 1980, socioeconomic disparities declined in tandem with a decline in mortality rates.”
The creation of Medicaid and Medicare, community health centers, the “war on poverty” and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 all probably contributed to the earlier narrowing of health disparities, Professor Krieger said."

March 23, 2008, NY Times
Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for the Nation
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.

Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers said, but affluent people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a widening gap.

One of the researchers, Gopal K. Singh, a demographer at the Department of Health and Human Services, said “the growing inequalities in life expectancy” mirrored trends in infant mortality and in death from heart disease and certain cancers.

The gaps have been increasing despite efforts by the federal government to reduce them. One of the top goals of “Healthy People 2010,” an official statement of national health objectives issued in 2000, is to “eliminate health disparities among different segments of the population,” including higher- and lower-income groups and people of different racial and ethnic background.

Dr. Singh said last week that federal officials had found “widening socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy” at birth and at every age level.

He and another researcher, Mohammad Siahpush, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, developed an index to measure social and economic conditions in every county, using census data on education, income, poverty, housing and other factors. Counties were then classified into 10 groups of equal population size.

In 1980-82, Dr. Singh said, people in the most affluent group could expect to live 2.8 years longer than people in the most deprived group (75.8 versus 73 years). By 1998-2000, the difference in life expectancy had increased to 4.5 years (79.2 versus 74.7 years), and it continues to grow, he said.

After 20 years, the lowest socioeconomic group lagged further behind the most affluent, Dr. Singh said, noting that “life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000.”

“If you look at the extremes in 2000,” Dr. Singh said, “men in the most deprived counties had 10 years’ shorter life expectancy than women in the most affluent counties (71.5 years versus 81.3 years).” The difference between poor black men and affluent white women was more than 14 years (66.9 years vs. 81.1 years).

The Democratic candidates for president, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, have championed legislation to reduce such disparities, as have some Republicans, like Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi.

Peter R. Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said: “We have heard a lot about growing income inequality. There has been much less attention paid to growing inequality in life expectancy, which is really quite dramatic.”

Life expectancy is the average number of years of life remaining for people who have attained a given age.

While researchers do not agree on an explanation for the widening gap, they have suggested many reasons, including these:

Doctors can detect and treat many forms of cancer and heart disease because of advances in medical science and technology. People who are affluent and better educated are more likely to take advantage of these discoveries.

Smoking has declined more rapidly among people with greater education and income.

Lower-income people are more likely to live in unsafe neighborhoods, to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior and to eat unhealthy food.

Lower-income people are less likely to have health insurance, so they are less likely to receive checkups, screenings, diagnostic tests, prescription drugs and other types of care.

Even among people who have insurance, many studies have documented racial disparities.

In a recent report, the Department of Veterans Affairs found that black patients “tend to receive less aggressive medical care than whites” at its hospitals and clinics, in part because doctors provide them with less information and see them as “less appropriate candidates” for some types of surgery.

Some health economists contend that the disparities between rich and poor inevitably widen as doctors make gains in treating the major causes of death.

Nancy Krieger, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, rejected that idea. Professor Krieger investigated changes in the rate of premature mortality (dying before the age of 65) and infant death from 1960 to 2002. She found that inequities shrank from 1966 to 1980, but then widened.

“The recent trend of growing disparities in health status is not inevitable,” she said. “From 1966 to 1980, socioeconomic disparities declined in tandem with a decline in mortality rates.”

The creation of Medicaid and Medicare, community health centers, the “war on poverty” and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 all probably contributed to the earlier narrowing of health disparities, Professor Krieger said.

Robert E. Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said one reason for the growing disparities might be “a very significant gap in health literacy” — what people know about diet, exercise and healthy lifestyles. Middle-class and upper-income people have greater access to the huge amounts of health information on the Internet, Mr. Moffit said.

Thomas P. Miller, a health economist at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed.

“People with more education tend to have a longer time horizon,” Mr. Miller said. “They are more likely to look at the long-term consequences of their health behavior. They are more assertive in seeking out treatments and more likely to adhere to treatment advice from physicians.”

A recent study by Ellen R. Meara, a health economist at Harvard Medical School, found that in the 1980s and 1990s, “virtually all gains in life expectancy occurred among highly educated groups.”

Trends in smoking explain a large part of the widening gap, she said in an article this month in the journal Health Affairs.

Under federal law, officials must publish an annual report tracking health disparities. In the fifth annual report, issued this month, the Bush administration said, “Over all, disparities in quality and access for minority groups and poor populations have not been reduced” since the first report, in 2003.

The rate of new AIDS cases is still 10 times as high among blacks as among whites, it said, and the proportion of black children hospitalized for asthma is almost four times the rate for white children.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last month that heart attack survivors with higher levels of education and income were much more likely to receive cardiac rehabilitation care, which lowers the risk of future heart problems. Likewise, it said, the odds of receiving tests for colon cancer increase with a person’s education and income.

Graphs at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/us/23health.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Posted by lois at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)

"Through The Wire" by Charlotte Hill O'Neal after a visit with Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace

This poem was written in March 2008, after a first time visit to Brother Albert Woodfox and Brother Herman Wallace, political prisoners who have been locked down unjustly for 40 years in Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, 36 of those years spent in solitary confinement.

This poem is dedicated to them, their strength and perseverance and their FREEDOM!

Through the Wire
by
Charlotte Hill O’Neal

I heard the tambourine tinkle of the shackles before my eyes met their faces,
one
with the cool calm demeanor of Malcolm
the other,
with the bob and weave energy of Ali

I was astonished by their ram rod stature as they crouched
with backs to that slit in the doorway,
in easy grace and Zen composure
in a dance like, practiced motion,
that served for easier release of the cold steel handcuffs binding them
or
was that steel hot and fiery,
powering and releasing electrified surges of Shango energy
to
pumped up cut muscles and solar powered minds
and
to fingers
leaving sweat trails of wisdom on dog eared law books,
searching for ‘that’
that others might have missed

And
their strength shone through the heavy mesh wire separating us
Wire that achieved the exact opposite of intended purpose
failing to dim the brilliance of their spirits
as they stood there,
let loose from their bonds,
tall and relaxed and smiling in greeting
that
changed that tiny walled space of confinement
into
an Airy Room
a
Living Room
a
Sitting Room
a
Front Room
(or whatever you like to call it),
filled with light
and ferns
and fragrant incense
and herb smoke
and crowded book shelves
and internet pings
and soft jazz purring
and wet splashes of laughter out by the pool
(with its Panther tiled bottom)

The prison doors seemed open and wide
and surely, I felt,
at any moment
wooden trays full of hot tea and fresh brewed coffee
or
maybe mango juice with crushed ice and mint leaves,
would appear,
to refresh our palates
and
dampen the light sweat on our fingertips
that touched and scraped at the wire

And meanwhile,
we stumble and bump into each others words
and
enjoyment of the four-way conversation,
nicking and flecking and cutting right through years
of
‘not knowing’ each other
but
‘knowing’ still
and
acknowledging and making real
that notion that a Panther meets no stranger down paths of shared existence,
only
brother-sister-comrades…
and Universe,
and
a unique sameness under it all

And
the wire opens
like soft paper flower petals
bright with visions of dusty roads and crackling cornfield sounds
and
migrating animal feet
and
parting clouds off Kilimanjaro
that we (Pete and me), see with our eyes
through
their dreams
through
our eyes,
visions that have been kept jarred up tightly, for years

And
they (Herman and Albert),
screw the lid off slowly…
finally…themselves…

At last
catching the sharp pungent aroma of three decades of bottled up dreams
and
tamped down tears
and
plumped up hope
and
wild wet laughter,
finally released with a rocket engine
WHOOSHHHHH!!
of
FREEDOM
flying right out that heavy metal wire

And
the wire becomes a curtain woven of hand corded soft fleece
snagging and unraveling slowly…
carefully…
untangling nightmares of confinement
unraveling…
undoing…
and
it moves lightly (that curtain)
and sways
and shivers
under the force of their dreams
of
FREEDOM realized…
at last

Charlotte O'Neal is a poet, artist, musician, community activist and co-founder of the United Afrian Alliance Community Center. She and her husband Pete O'Neal, are former Black Panthers from Kansas City who have lived in Tanzania for 35 years. They continue to serve their community through the programs of the UAACC which include a school, recording studio, radio station and cultural exchange programs.

Posted by lois at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2008

ID: Governor vetoes $16 million for drug treatment but wants $70 million for max. security prison with 300 cages

"The services benefit many participants in drug courts, said Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert and co-chairman of the Joint Finance-Appropriations budget writing committee. "The legislature over the last several years has had a paradigm shift. We don't want to be building more prisons. We want to be investing in treatment," Cameron said. "It's obvious some haven't made that shift. We're disappointed."

Otter vetoes $16.8 million for Idaho drug treatment programs

By JOHN MILLER - Associated Press Writer
Edition Date: 03/20/08

BOISE, Idaho ‹ Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter on Thursday cut $16.8 million from two drug treatment funding bills, saying that the programs to help addicts on probation as well as some people not yet convicted of crimes haven't proven their effectiveness.

Lawmakers sought to use the appropriations to preserve efforts that began in 2005 with a three-year, $21 million federal grant. The federal money ran out in 2007, and lawmakers opted to continue with state money, 80 percent of which goes to fund drug courts and treatment for probationers and parolees.

Some funds also go to community-based treatment for priority populations, including women, children and teenage addicts.

In a letter accompanying his line-item veto, his first of the legislative session, Otter said lawmakers should have limited the state's contribution to $7 million annually but instead more than doubled it before Office of Drug Policy Director Debbie Field had documented the program's effectiveness to his satisfaction.

He also objected that the money went for direct treatment services although the federal grant was intended to develop community-based resources, he said.

"There is no question that we need an effective, community-based substance abuse treatment system in Idaho," Otter wrote. "However, the item vetoed in this bill goes far beyond the scope of what state policy makers had in mind when our treatment program was created or what Idaho taxpayers should be expected to accept."

Otter also said he questions whether some of the federal grant was misused for patients' needs beyond treatment.

Lawmakers who approved the funding earlier this month said the substance abuse programs were worthwhile and deserved state support because they offer hope of reducing the number of state prison inmates whose incarceration costs about $15,000 each.

The veto essentially halves funding for Idaho's state- and federally supported drug abuse treatment programs, said Rep. Margaret Henbest, D-Boise. Of the measures Otter vetoed, $2.4 million was for drug abuse-related funding through June 30 and $14.4 million was for programs in the year beginning July 1.

The services benefit many participants in drug courts, said Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert and co-chairman of the Joint Finance-Appropriations budget writing committee.

"The legislature over the last several years has had a paradigm shift. We don't want to be building more prisons. We want to be investing in treatment," Cameron said. "It's obvious some haven't made that shift. We're disappointed."

With the veto, Cameron said, lawmakers have the choice of reopening the Office of Drug Policy's budget to adjust funding levels or attempt to override the governor's veto.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/531/story/329594.html

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

March 20, 2008

Los Angeles: Small Businesses Offer Alternatives to Gang Life

March 20, 2008, NY Times
Entrepreneurial Edge
Small Businesses Offer Alternatives to Gang Life
By JAMES FLANIGAN

IN Los Angeles, a corporation that runs several small businesses is demonstrating that the training and discipline of working in a small company can make a big contribution to changing the lives of former gang members.

The corporation, Homeboy Industries, runs a silkscreen business, for example, that produced revenue of $1.1 million last year from sales of custom T-shirts and other apparel for radio stations running promotions and college and private groups holding events. The business employs former gang members to make the T-shirts and uses the money to help offset the corporation’s expenses. Homeboy Silkscreen started 12 years ago in a converted warehouse under a freeway overpass near downtown Los Angeles and now has 18 employees.

Homeboy Bakery has a new plant that has $3 million in ovens and machinery and its managers hope to produce millions of dollars in revenue within a year or two, said the master baker, Alvaro Ocegueda. He supervises 25 former gang members who have become bakers under his guidance and with professional training at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, a two-year community college.

There is also a Homegirl Café, that has a staff of 27 girls who were “gang impacted” either as auxiliary gang members or as residents of neighborhoods under gang influence. The cafe has brought in more than $220,000 in five months of serving breakfast and lunch six days a week, said Patricia Zarate, who cooks for and manages the business.

Homeboy Maintenance takes in about $6,000 a month, and a Homeboy retail store sold $25,000 in Homeboy shirts and caps in a recent three-month period.

Though it may sound like a budding conglomerate, Homeboy is a nonprofit charitable corporation that last year had a budget of $5 million and goals that emphasize rehabilitation over revenue.

“The aim of the cash-producing businesses is that they bring in enough to pay for the free services,” said the Rev. Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who founded Homeboy Industries in East Los Angeles two decades ago and is now its executive director. Those services include mental therapy for former gang members, housing assistance, job development counseling and tattoo removal treatments.

The tattoo removals are not a fashion statement but a safety concern. Gang tattoos are a marker of the rivalries among the 26,000 members of Los Angeles’s 250 gangs, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. Many gangs have been in existence for decades, and, police department figures show, their activities in the last five years have resulted in 12,000 assaults, 10,000 robberies, 784 homicides and 500 rapes.

Twenty years ago, when he was assigned to Dolores Mission Church, the poorest parish in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles , Father Boyle decided to try employment as a way to break the cycle of gangs, crime and imprisonment for the neighborhood’s young men. He tried to persuade businesses to hire reforming gang members through a parish organization he called Jobs for a Future. Then, in 1992, he bought an abandoned bakery with a contribution from Ray Stark, the Hollywood producer (“Funny Girl,”, “California Suite,” and “Annie” among others). Father Boyle put a half dozen former gang members — “homeboys” in street parlance — to work cleaning up the bakery and producing tortillas for sale. Tortilla sales led to making bread for a large baking company that supplied restaurants.

That ultimately led to Homeboy bakers being trained at Mi Vida-My Life, a family bakery run by Mr. Ocegueda, who tutored them in the mystical tradition of baking. “You knead the dough by hand and all of the tensions and the spirit you are feeling go into the bread,” Mr. Ocegueda said in an interview.

Homeboy Bakery was offered a grant to buy an automatic dough mixer, Mr. Ocegueda said. “But Father Greg said no, it is better to have them knead by hand because we can employ more people.”

The assignment seems anachronistic because Homeboy Bakery, with its gleaming new ovens and storage bins, is now housed in the Fran and Ray Stark Homeboy Industries headquarters, an $8.5 million center built with philanthropic contributions and opened last October.

But Homeboy’s emphasis is on putting gang members to work. “Our most important task is job training,” Father Boyle said in a telephone interview from Italy, where he is on a three-month sabbatical to write a book on Homeboy’s work in reclaiming lives. Indeed, Mr. Ocegueda’s assignment is to double the number of Homeboy bakers to 50 next year. The jobs pay $9 to $10 an hour, with health benefits after the employee is on the job three months. The aim is to introduce gang members to the discipline of work and eventually to graduate them to jobs in the commercial marketplace.

The Homeboy organization conducts thousands of job development interviews every year, with Father Boyle seeing more than 50 people a day. In his current absence, the chief operating officer, Veronica Vargas, is taking on that work. The organization is now compiling a database of all the people who have been helped or treated through the years, said Mona Hobson, director of development.

The organization is also anticipating expansion. The new Homeboy headquarters, a few blocks from Los Angeles City Hall, “gives us a chance to reach out to African-American gangs; our focus is countywide,” Father Boyle said.

The new center has spurred ideas for growth among supervisors of the businesses, some of whom were once troubled youths but not gang members. “I was a tagger,” a graffiti painter, said Rosaliano Mendez, who heads the maintenance business. “I dropped out of school, but I went back and now I’m studying for an associate degree in business.”

Mr. Mendez sees opportunity for expansion in commercial office cleaning. Eric Bennett, who heads the retail operation, said he “met Father Greg when I was in some trouble.” Mr. Bennett said he was hopeful that “we can spread the Homeboy brand in off- campus stores not only in California but across the country.”

Homeboy Industries’ board, whose members are business and professional people, would like to see expansion. “I think the bakery should be bringing in $4 million to $5 million in revenue per year,” said David Adams, the chairman of real estate investment firms in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles and the chief fund-raiser for the new Homeboy headquarters.

At the moment, the bakery is close to signing a big order for bread and pastries from a chain of coffeehouse restaurants and is seeking other big customers.

Ruben Rodriguez, who with his wife, Cristina, heads the silk screen business, also says he believes expansion is possible. A big factor for Mr. Rodriguez, one of the longest-serving Homeboy supervisors — “I met Father Greg at a bad time in my life.” — is that “Father Greg does all the marketing” for Homeboy products and services.

A question for Homeboy Industries, which is common to all small businesses, is whether the company could go on and prosper without its entrepreneurial founder. Father Boyle, 54 and healthy today, survived leukemia six years ago.

“Several years ago, I might have doubted that it could,” said Michael Hennigan, president of the Homeboy directors and founder of a Los Angeles law firm. “But today I think the organization is large enough and talent from the Jesuit order and elsewhere would come forward. The organization will go on and prosper.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/20/business/smallbusiness/20edge.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Homeboy+businesses&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Posted by lois at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)

AZ: Napolitano's Bill to Bring Private Prisons Under the State's Authority, Dies

Napolitano's recurring prison bill dies, unsupported by locals
By LINDSEY GEMME, Editor March 20, 2008

Senate Bill 1142, a piece of legislature which came out of Governor Janet Napolitano's office this year to bring private prisons under state authority, has just died before making it to a second hearing this month.

Lawmakers had found support in Republican Senator Robert Blendu of Litchfield Park, who sponsored the bill after two felons had escaped from a Florence private prison facility back in September. If it had passed, the bill could have had a substantial impact on how Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) conducted business in its six Arizona prisons, which house over 9,000 prisoners, and subsequently have a negative impact on Pinal County and the city of Eloy.

* The bill had identified a wish list for private prisons to:

* Comply with state capacity and construction standards.

* Immediately notify the Arizona Dept. of Corrections about any major incidents at any prison, and allow state officials to investigate. Prisons who did not comply with this law could face stiff penalties.

* Not be allowed to house inmates classified as maximum security, were convicted of a sexual offense, or any offense that would be a Class 1 or 2 felony in the state or Arizona (e.g. murder), have a history of escape, rioting, or are infected with HIV, hepatitis, or tuberculosis.

* Not be allowed to release another state's inmates in Arizona.

* Have to provide the Arizona Dept. of Corrections with profiles and other information on each and every prisoner that private prisons incarcerate.

Though this particular one died, it isn't the first time state lawmakers have introduced bills similar to SB 1142. Besides the last two years, legislation had been introduced trying to regulate private prisons in Arizona even as far as 10 years ago. That recycled, decade-old bill was introduced by then-senator Pete Rios (D-Hayden). But since then, Rios has done an about-face, and voiced a strong dissent for SB 1142 this time around.

The initial concerns he had had that had moved him to introduce that bill 10 years ago have been greatly alleviated after seeing the effect CCA has had on area communities they've decided to site their prisons. They provide jobs, he says, a good wage, and fringe benefits.

"But more importantly, we have not had a major problem with prisoners escaping...The fact remains that we have not experienced what I feared 11 years ago," Rios stated in an interview with the Enterprise last week.

"Certainly, public safety is our number one issue - making sure that we're safe and secure has to be number one," Brad Regens, CCA lobbyist told the Enterprise last month when asked about the security lapse at the Florence incident possibly inspiring the bill. "I think if you look at our record, we've been very successful, both in Arizona and nationwide. Even the state of Arizona itself contracts with us. We hold about 2,100 Arizona inmates in Oklahoma. I think they entrust us with their offenders, because they know that we are operating a professional environment, and we're safe and secure."

He added that the escape in September was "unfortunate," and was glad that no one was hurt.

"No system wants to see that. When those kinds of things happen, everyone re-examines themselves and looks at their operations and makes sure that if there are any changes that need to be made, that they are made."

The bill also seemed to stem from a discomfort on the part of the state of being unaware of the kinds of inmates being shipped into Arizona, with neither city nor state governments having a say in it.

California is a state that does not allow any private prisons at all for fear of security - which would explain the overcrowding. But despite the state's disallowance of private prisons inside state borders, it hasn't stopped them from utilizing private correctional centers out of state. Case-in-point, CCA's newest prison under construction in Eloy, La Palma, will be housing over 3,000 medium level risk California prisoners once it is complete. Without that option, California would be in a bind.

And those additional heads will count as part of the city's population, boosting up state shared revenue funds to Eloy, and bolster rank in local political decision making.

But Rios doesn't believe that restricting inmates for private prisons is the answer, but rather more open communication between the two entities; especially since state prisons would be housing the very types of prisoners denied private prisons.

"What I would support is a little bit more sharing of information that possibly CCA could do a little better job at. Let local law enforcement know what type of inmates you do have in case they do have an escapee, and the Pinal County Sheriff's Office knows readily because it's in their computer base who this guy is, what he looks like, and what he's in for."

Locally, though, the Eloy Police Department feels they've been communicating extremely well with CCA.

"I believe CCA has been open with us as to what they are doing and any issues that arise or may arise," Police Chief Bill Pitman comments. "They have always informed us of major events, such as getting large numbers of new inmates or having us on alert for an internal operation. I believe we have a good rapport with the CCA wardens and administrators. We meet on an as-needed basis, so that we know what to expect from each other.

"As to what information the public receives, that is up to CCA."

Another major concern that Rios expressed was that CCA could curtail, if not completely stop, further expansion in Arizona, "and would take their facilities to other states that did not have those types of restrictions."

And his concerns are indeed valid. According to a study provided by CCA at last month's Economic Development Group of Eloy (EDGE) meeting, the company has invested a lot over the last 15 years in Arizona, specifically Pinal County. Should the company pack up and leave (at worse case scenario), the economical benefits would go with it.

CCA provides more than 2,300 stable jobs in the state, and is ranked one of the top 60 employers in the state, and in the top 10 in Pinal County. Its payroll is in excess of $100 million, pays approx. $7 million in property taxes, and $8.5 million in annual utility payments, with $21 million of onetime transaction privilege tax payments on three major prison projects going right now in Arizona.

Eloy, too, benefits greatly. The new La Palma facility will provide more than $1 million in construction related fees including: approx. $600,000 in onetime standard impact fees, which covers additional fire and police services, over $500,000 in building permit fees, and will increase the city's population by about 10 percent for additional state shared revenue funds without directly costing the city for infrastructure or upkeep. Almost 2,000 jobs are located in CCA's four Eloy prisons, 90 percent of whom are local hires.

Residents have expressed a contentedness with the prisons in their community, which supply jobs and help stimulate the local economy, Rios adds. Locals have told him that prison jobs "'beat the heck out of working out in the field,' where many of these people had to work before."

Eloy mayor, Byron Jackson, had been in continual contact with the governor's office since the bill had been proposed, but wasn't completely sold on the idea, either.

"I have always been supportive of pretty much anything the governor has ran by me that could potentially have an impact on my community," Jackson says, "but I did have some concerns about some of the stipulations that would be placed on private prisons - CCA in particular. It could have a substantial effect on CCA's ability to management certain inmates in the city of Eloy, which is CCA's largest hub of private prisons in Arizona.

"I am sure the bill will rise again, and honestly, I do believe the Department of Corrections should have some regulatory applications that all private prison should be accountable, too, but as written; as the mayor of the city, and having some knowledge of private corrections, I just don't believe all of the stipulations listed have validity."

Jackson expressed a willingness to sit down with the governor and Arizona Department of Corrections Director Dora Schriro before speaking with CCA, "so we can be on the same page to mediate any future conversations that possibly could lead to some sort of compromise in the future."

Arizona, like many other states, sends its prisoners to other states for incarceration due to overcrowding. And one caveat Arizona State Rep. Rios adds is the idea of reciprocal legislative action on the part of partnering states.

"Are we sending just the darlings of the correctional server system [to other states]? No, we're sending some real bad guys to other facilities, as well. What's to keep Oklahoma and some of the others making the same restriction for Arizona inmates?

"So, we got to be careful what we start-because once you start rolling this ball down the hill, it's going to be awfully hard to stop."
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19409687&BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=222077&rfi=6

©Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. 2008

Posted by lois at 06:58 PM | Comments (0)

Support For The Angola Three IS Growing

Support For The Angola Three Appears To Be Growing
Men Placed In Solitary Confinement For Upwards Of Three Decades
By Val Wilson Story
Mar 19, 2008
Watch The Video--
http://www.nbc33tv.com/news/local/16841931.html

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have been held in solitary confinement at Angola State Penitentiary since the murder of a prison guard back in 1972. A third man -- Robert King -- was placed in isolation for allegedly killing a fellow inmate. He was released in 2001.
State Representative Cedric Richmond, of New Orleans, says the men were wrongfully convicted.
He will lead a press conference Thursday morning on the steps of the State Capitol.
NBC 33 News has learned a national civil rights activist wants to help with the cases.
Congressman John Conyers, of Detroit, Michigan, is expected to arrive in Baton Rouge Thursday.

Posted by lois at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

OH: Gov. signs bill to bring faith-based groups in to work with prisoners being released

Associated Press, Mar 18, 2008

Faith groups to help inmates being released from state prisons

By JOHN McCARTHY
Associated Press Writer

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Any assistance inmates can get before being released from prison is helpful and a bill now awaiting Gov. Ted Strickland's signature will bring faith-based groups and other volunteers into the mix, the state's prisons chief said Tuesday.

The help is needed more than ever because the Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections must trim $74 million from its budget over the next 15 1/2 months, including $14 million over the next 3 1/2 months, because of an expected shortfall of at least $733 million in the budget year beginning in July.

The Ohio House passed the final bill last week and on Tuesday sent it to Strickland, who is expected to sign it, his spokesman Keith Dailey said. It sets up programs for the prisons department and the Ohio Department of Youth Services, which oversees prisons for juveniles.

The bill grew out of the Ohio Correctional Faith-Based Task Force, which issued recommendations in 2006 on ways to use faith-based and other volunteer groups to help inmates both during and after their incarceration. The goal is to help inmates ease back to life outside prison and reduce return trips to Ohio's overcrowded prisons, DRC Director Terry Collins said. Collins and one of the bill's co-sponsors, Rep. John White of Kettering, chaired the task force.

About 29,000 inmates were released last year.

Returning to life outside prison involves more than finding a place to live and a job, Collins said. Inmates often are abandoned by family and friends even though they've served their time, he said.

"The issue of re-entry and people re-entering society, it's not just a prison problem, it's a state of Ohio problem," Collins said. "All 88 counties will get somebody back in their county. ... We all have a hand in this."

Volunteers already help prisoners re-enter communities, but the program created by the bill gives it organization, Collins said. Along with the faith-based groups, business, professional, civic and educational groups are encouraged to register with either department.

All groups, faith-based or not, will be screened and neither department will be allowed to endorse a religious message. No inmates will be required to take part in a faith-based program.

The task force held community forums to explain the program to the volunteer groups. One role will be to better prepare the public for released inmates and ease the stigma of ex-offenders.

"We're already working on a lot of these things. We've seen an increase in volunteers, we've seen an increase in community involvement," Collins said. "I'm pleased that after we had these leadership forums, the communities are involved.

On the Net:
Correctional Faith-Based Initiatives Task Force: http://www.drc.state.oh.us/web/fb.htm

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OH_PRISONS_RELEASE_HELP_OHOL-?SITE=OH
TOL&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Posted by lois at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

ID: House approves $70 million for maximum security prison for mentally ill prisoners

House approves funding to plan for mental health facility

The Associated Press, Edition Date: 03/18/08
Idaho Statesman

BOISE, Idaho ‹ The House has approved $3 million in funding to draw up plans for a maximum security facility for mentally ill prisoners and others in Idaho.

House lawmakers voted 66-4 Tuesday to begin planning for the estimated $70 million, 300-bed structure.

The building would house both mentally ill prisoners who need treatment as well as violent mentally ill people who have been found unfit to stand trial.The two populations would be kept separate and tended to by different state agencies.

The Joint Finance Appropriations Committee has recommended that the state issue bonds for the facility, which could open as soon as 2013.
The proposal will now move to the Senate.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/531/story/327100.html

Posted by lois at 06:04 PM | Comments (0)

AL: Faith-based organizations partner with state to provide services from prisoners returning to communities

"Faith-based organizations have a long history of volunteer and missionary work in the state's prisons. The new program will expand and formalize the arrangement, Allen said. After the meeting of church leaders, charity managers and state officials, which was closed to the public, Riley said he has no concerns about issues related to separation of church and state. And there will be no limits placed on churches' using the program to proselytize to inmates."

State to partner with faith-based organization to provide services for newly released inmates

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 STAN DIEL, News staff writer

MONTGOMERY - The state of Alabama will partner with dozens of faith-based organizations to provide services for newly released inmates, Gov. Bob Riley announced Tuesday.

Churches and charities statewide will be asked to work with state agencies to help the 7,000 inmates released from Alabama prisons each year find jobs, child care, housing and social services such as counseling or drug rehabilitation, he said. The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs and the Department of Corrections will manage the program, which has an initial goal of determining what faith-based help is available for inmates in every county in the state.

"A lot of people who leave prison have not had to deal with society for 10 or 20 years," Riley said.

Richard Allen, commissioner of the state Department of Corrections, said that more than a third of the inmates released each year re-enter society without any supervision. They get little or no guidance and often have trouble finding the support necessary to keep them from returning to prison.

Under the new program, every inmate will be made aware of state and church-based programs in his area before his release, he said.

Elana Parker, who is helping coordinate the program for the Department of Corrections, said she's already identified about 50 churches and organizations that are willing to help, and expects to find many more after the governor asked for assistance at a Tuesday meeting of an advisory council that includes church leaders.

Bill Johnson, ADECA director, said the state also will solicit help from the churches attended by inmates' families.

"We're going at this from the inside," he said.

Faith-based organizations have a long history of volunteer and missionary work in the state's prisons. The new program will expand and formalize the arrangement, Allen said.

After the meeting of church leaders, charity managers and state officials, which was closed to the public, Riley said he has no concerns about issues related to separation of church and state. And there will be no limits placed on churches' using the program to proselytize to inmates.

"You're more likely to stay out (of prison) if you're a part of something larger than yourself," the governor said.

http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/120591468528750.x
ml&coll=2

Posted by lois at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2008

NY Times Editorial: Mr. Obama's Profile in Courage

NY TIMES
March 19, 2008
EDITORIAL
Mr. Obama's Profile in Courage

There are moments - increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns - when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.

Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.
Mr. Obama had to address race and religion, the two most toxic subjects in politics. He was as powerful and frank as Mitt Romney was weak and calculating earlier this year in his attempt to persuade the religious right that his Mormonism is Christian enough for them.
It was not a moment to which Mr. Obama came easily. He hesitated uncomfortably long in dealing with the controversial remarks of his spiritual mentor and former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who denounced the United States as endemically racist, murderous and corrupt.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama drew a bright line between his religious connection with Mr. Wright, which should be none of the voters' business, and having a political connection, which would be very much their business. The distinction seems especially urgent after seven years of a president who has worked to blur the line between church and state.
Mr. Obama acknowledged his strong ties to Mr. Wright. He embraced him as the man "who helped introduce me to my Christian faith," and said that "as imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me."

Wisely, he did not claim to be unaware of Mr. Wright's radicalism or bitterness, disarming the speculation about whether he personally heard the longtime pastor of his church speak the words being played and replayed on YouTube. Mr. Obama said Mr. Wright's comments were not just potentially offensive, as politicians are apt to do, but "rightly offend white and black alike" and are wrong in their analysis of America. But, he said, many Americans "have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagree."
Mr. Obama's eloquent speech should end the debate over his ties to Mr. Wright since there is nothing to suggest that he would carry religion into government. But he did not stop there. He put Mr. Wright, his beliefs and the reaction to them into the larger context of race relations with an honesty seldom heard in public life.

Mr. Obama spoke of the nation's ugly racial history, which started with slavery and Jim Crow, and continues today in racial segregation, the school achievement gap and discrimination in everything from banking services to law enforcement.
He did not hide from the often-unspoken reality that people on both sides of the color line are angry. "For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation," he said, "the memories of humiliation and fear have not gone away, nor the anger and the bitterness of those years."

At the same time, many white Americans, Mr. Obama noted, do not feel privileged by their race. "In an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero-sum game," he said, adding that both sides must acknowledge that the other's grievances are not imaginary.

He made the powerful point that while these feelings are not always voiced publicly, they are used in politics. "Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition," he said.

Against this backdrop, he said, he could not repudiate his pastor. "I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," he said. "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother." That woman whom he loves deeply, he said, "once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street" and more than once "uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

There have been times when we wondered what Mr. Obama meant when he talked about rising above traditional divides. This was not such a moment.
We can't know how effective Mr. Obama's words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy - he raised the discussion to a higher plane.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

If you didn't see the speech, click on the link below to watch it.
http://colorofchange.org/obama/video.html?id=2131-200043

Posted by lois at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

Workshop from CURB: CAN CALIFORNIA BUILD ITS WAY OUT OF THE PRISON CRISIS?

CAN CALIFORNIA BUILD ITS WAY OUT OF THE PRISON CRISIS?
A workshop available from Californians United for a Responsible Budget, CURB

We want to bring this workshop to you, your school, community group, union or organization across the state.

To schedule a workshop or for more information, contact us at
curb@riseup.net or call
Fresno: 559-266-5901
Bay: 510-444-0484 x 4
L.A.: 310-709-8602 or laprisontimes@earthlink.net

California's prisons are in crisis. They are overcrowded despite that fact that we have opened one new prison per year for the past 23 years. The federal courts have taken over the prison medical system that was killing one prisoner a week and is considering taking over the entire system. The ever-growing prison budget is squeezing funds from education, human services, higher education and other state programs and in May 2007, the legislature and the Governor enacted AB900, which, at a cost of $15 billion for construction and debt service alone, would add 53,000 more prison and jail beds to this disastrous system.

The ever-growing prison budget is squeezing funds from education, human services, higher education and other state programs and in May 2007, the legislature and the Governor enacted AB900, which, at a cost of $15 billion for construction and debt service alone, would add 53,000 more prison and jail beds to this disastrous system.

Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) has put together a lively, informative illustrated workshop that will explain why California can’t build its way out of this crisis, why prisons matter to those with and without people locked up and what your organization can do to reverse a quarter century of "the largest prison building project in the history of the world." We want to bring this workshop to you, your school, community group, union or organization across the state.

Posted by lois at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2008

New Mexico: Immigration advocates say prison expansion will only compound problems

Immigration advocates say prison expansion will only compound problems

Bryan Gibel | For The New Mexican

3/17/2008 - 3/13/08

A privately operated prison designed for detained immigrants will be ready to open three months from now in a remote location in Otero County.

Last May, the county issued more than $62 million in bonds to pay for the 1,086-bed processing center. The facility will be able to admit up to 250 immigrants per day and generate more than $25 million in annual revenue for the county when it reaches full capacity.

Because of more aggressive enforcement actions, demand for facilities like this to house people accused of running afoul of U.S. immigration laws is growing. The U.S. government detained 283,000 people last year, according to Detention Watch Network, a national coalition of organizations advocating for humane reform of immigration laws, while the number of beds available for them increased by 6,000.

Even before construction began in Chaparral, N.M., Immigration and Customs Enforcement indicated an interest in expanding the facility to 2,000 beds, according to documents prepared for Otero County.

As the numbers of people detained has grown, so have complaints about their treatment in privately operated facilities. ICE pulled all 600 of its detainees from the Regional Correction Center in Albuquerque last year, citing serious doubts about the ability of Cornell Companies to provide a "safe and humane environment."

The new Otero County Processing Center will be operated by Management and Training Corp., a Utah-based company that manages more detainee beds for ICE than any other private contractor. Management and Training ran the Santa Fe County jail from 2001 to 2005. During that time, a federal Department of Justice audit found deficiencies, and the family of a man beaten to death at the jail sued both the county and the company.

The company also operates a facility for immigrant detainees in Raymondville, Texas, along the Mexican border, which earned the nickname "Tent City" because many of the beds were in windowless pods. Last year, the Willacy County Commission approved an expansion of the center.

Management and Training currently manages the Otero County Prison Facility next door to the new processing center in Chaparral. Immigrant-rights advocates say they repeatedly hear complaints about practices there.

ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa declined to comment on when the new facility will open. She said the deal with the county hasn't been finalized.

ICE will pay $78 a day to house detainees awaiting deportation or transfer in Otero II. It will have courtrooms and administrative offices as well as a fleet of at least 15 buses and vans.

Conditions for detainees in Chaparral

Detainees who come to El Paso for immigration court hearings often complain of poor conditions in the Chaparral facility, which also holds federal and local criminal inmates, said Ilian Olguín, executive director of Diocesan Migrant and Refugee Services, a Catholic ministry in El Paso that provides free legal services to immigrant detainees.

"We hear repeatedly from people that beg us if there's anything we can do so that they can stay here and not have to go back to the Otero facility," Olguín said. "We've gotten reports of lack of access to medical care. There's virtually (no) library. They are very, very secluded out there."

DMRS is the only organization with regular access to the Otero prison, and that is limited, according to Olguín. It is difficult to obtain first-person stories from most immigrants because when they leave the facility, they are deported.

However, some detainees have complained of being held in solitary confinement in Chaparral, even though many are detained without criminal charges, said Edgar Maldonado, a DMRS representative who visits the prison once a week to give a presentation on the deportation process.

"We'll hear that detainees are put in the "shu" because they didn't do this or that. It's kind of like solitary," he said. "They're put in there if they don't behave, cause problems or don't follow the rules. It varies. Sometimes they'll be in a week."

Olguín also said her organization has seen problems gaining access to health care, and had to contact ICE directly to get at least one issue resolved.

"We had to intervene in the particular case of one man," she said. "His family was frantic, because when he'd been detained, he'd been detained without his medication, which he needed to have, and his health was really deteriorating. We had to complain to the ICE officials here in El Paso to try to finally get that man his medication."

Maldonado said the incident happened in the summer of 2007. The man was probably a diabetic and was having trouble walking, he said.

In the Albuquerque Correction Center case, Chief U.S. District Judge Martha Vázquez sent a letter last year to the operator saying she was worried about medical care, physical conditions and nutrition at the lockup. She recounted stories inmates told her during visits in the summer of 2007 to the jail about missing property, allegations of sexual misconduct and of inmates who were punished for speaking out. Federal detainees were later removed and, according to Zamarripa, will not be returned there.

Federal authorities are also investigating the death of a Korean woman who died at an Albuquerque hospital while in the center's custody in 2006. The woman's repeated requests for medical attention were ignored, according to lawyers familiar with the case.

It is not clear where the detainees went after ICE pulled them out last July. But Otero County bond documents suggest the government was hoping they could be transported to the new detention center in Chaparral. The documents say ICE requested the new facility be ready by Aug. 1, 2007.

Zamarripa declined to comment on any of the specific allegations of mistreatment "because of the detainees' privacy rights." But she said ICE regularly monitors complaints from its detainees in Otero County to make sure ICE detention standards are met and, "We haven't encountered any complaints of the nature that have been described." A Management and Training spokesman referred all questions to ICE.

Limited access to legal representation

In addition to complaints about harsh conditions, detainees in Chaparral hardly ever have legal representation because there are no free legal services in New Mexico for immigrants in deportation proceedings, according to Maldonado.

That means lawyers have to travel in from El Paso to meet with detainees in Otero County, he said.

"If you talk to most attorneys, they don't really want to go out there," he said. "It's not very far, but when you factor in the travel time and the time it takes them to bring the detainee over to you, it adds up. That makes it more difficult for people who are detained out there to get representation."

DMRS has repeatedly raised issues with ICE about detainees' inability to make phone calls to nonprofit organizations for legal advice, Olguín said.

"One of the prison standards requires that detainees be able to make free calls to the nearest nonprofit organization that can potentially provide assistance," she said. "With Otero, detainees needed to give the prison staff the numbers they want to call so they can be placed on a special permission list. The problem is, if you're an immigration detainee, you don't know our number, so you can't give it to the detention facility staff."

The situation has improved since the prison posted contact information for nonprofit legal services for immigrants, but detainees still complain of difficulty getting a working line and having to pay for their phone calls with calling cards, Olguín said.

Maldonado said providing legal advice and responding to the grievances of immigrant detainees at the Otero County prison is already an uphill battle, and the problem will get worse when the new expansion opens.

"I hear complaints, and the reality is that we don't really have the resources to get involved and to double check that things have been resolved," he said. "The new facility is almost ready to be opened up. I'm not sure what we're going to do when that happens, because we're already swamped."

BY THE NUMBERS

283,000: Number of people detained on immigration charges in FY 2007

30,000: Number of beds available for detainees

400: Number of facilities to house detainees

1,086: Capacity of Otero II

$25 million: Anticipated yearly revenue to the county from Otero II
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/SantaFeNorthernNM/otero-county-More-detaine
es--more-complaints

Posted by lois at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)

Transcript of Barack Obama's Speech on Race

March 18, 2008
Transcript
Barack Obama’s Speech on Race

The following is the text as prepared for delivery of Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia, as provided by his presidential campaign.

“We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation’s original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution – a Constitution that had at is very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign – to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either “too black” or “not black enough.” We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we’ve heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we’ve heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely – just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country – a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems – two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

“People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend’s voice up into the rafters….And in that single note – hope! – I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories – of survival, and freedom, and hope – became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn’t need to feel shame about…memories that all people might study and cherish – and with which we could start to rebuild.”

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America – to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments – meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today’s urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What’s remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it – those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who's been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American – and yes, conservative – notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright’s sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds – by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don’t have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn’t look like you might take your job; it’s that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should’ve been authorized and never should’ve been waged, and we want to talk about how we’ll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation – the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

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

March 17, 2008

Getting Out and Staying Out

Executives Teach Inmates
How to Be Employees
By CAROL HYMOWITZ
Wall Street Journal- March 17, 2008

Mark Goldsmith didn't expect to go to jail when he volunteered to be "principal for a day" at a New York City school. But after requesting a "tough school," he was assigned to Horizon Academy, a high school for inmates ages 18 to 24 at Rikers Island prison.

Mr. Goldsmith, a former executive at Revlon and Shiseido, was ushered through locked gates to the prison's classrooms. Standing in front of his new class, he looked at the young students and saw in them signs of his own difficult youth. He had never committed a crime; but he told the students he thought he was dumb, and graduated near the bottom of his high-school class. He enrolled in college at night because his wife insisted, but he didn't think he could achieve anything. Then, he landed his first business job at 29 at Coty, a fragrance company then owned by Pfizer, and proved his hard work could earn him advances.

"I started at the bottom, got in earlier than anyone and left later, and then I got promoted -- and you can do this, too," he explained to the class.

Mr. Goldsmith felt the teaching experience was rewarding for both sides and volunteered again for the program. After, he decided he needed more than just one day a year with these inmates if he were to help them turn their lives around. In 2005, he launched his own nonprofit, Getting Out and Staying Out. GOSO, as it is called, now is working with 275 inmates serving sentences in upstate New York prisons and 150 at Rikers.

Mr. Goldsmith and 14 other current or retired executives who volunteer at GOSO, based in Harlem, plus a paid staff of six, are working to counter the familiar story of prisoners getting released without skills, jobs, money or a place to live, and then resorting to crime only to get locked up again. Fewer than 10% of the 400 released inmates GOSO has worked with have been arrested again since the group was formed three years ago. That figure compares with two-thirds of prisoners released annually nationwide who have been rearrested, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

In addition, three-quarters of the former prisoners counseled by GOSO, which receives private and public funding, are employed or attending school.

As former business executives, Mr. Goldsmith and other GOSO volunteers offer something else that's different: They understand who gets hired and promoted in a variety of industries and can teach inmates how to turn the entry-level jobs they typically get after prison into a career.

"A lot of programs for prisoners are run by former prisoners or social workers, but Mark brings a business perspective, he's a role model of success and he tells kids who have never thought they can be successful that they're entitled to that," says Anthony Tassi, executive director of adult education in the mayor's office, New York.

GOSO also urges participants to keep returning for counseling so they can keep advancing.

"GOSO is successful because unlike other groups it works with young prisoners to plan for re-entry from the day they're incarcerated, and then sticks with them over the long term," says Hazel Beckles, head of the planned re-entry for incarcerated adolescents program at Community Service Society of New York, a nonprofit organization.

Mr. Goldsmith and Richard Block, the retired CEO of a 2,000-employee entertainment-packaging company, spend several days a week at Rikers, counseling inmates studying for their high-school equivalency diplomas. The pair believe that the same motivation principles -- including perseverance and adventuresome ambition -- that they used to help their employees build a career can help young prisoners.

On a recent morning, the two men gathered with 10 inmates in a classroom watched closely by prison guards.

"What's going to be hardest for you when you get out of here?" asked Mr. Goldsmith.

"Staying away from the friends I got into trouble with -- and getting a job," one inmate quickly answered.

The group fell silent, though, when asked what jobs they wanted after prison. "What are you good at, what do you like to do?" insisted Mr. Block.

One inmate blurted that he had taught his cousin how to play basketball and might like to be a school basketball coach. Another said he loved to cook. "We have three GOSO members who are now in culinary school," said Mr. Block, who promised to bring him restaurant menus on his next visit to Rikers. He wants inmates to know there are hundreds of different jobs and they don't have to choose between crime and menial labor.

Because GOSO works only with young prisoners who are attending school, and haven't been in prison long, it has a better chance of success, acknowledges Mr. Goldsmith. Even this select group, however, faces steep hurdles after release -- from steering clear of gangs and violence in their neighborhoods, to avoiding drugs, to following strict parole rules and to mending relationships with relatives.

GOSO members are urged to come to the group's office within a week of their release. They are each given an alarm clock, mass-transit cards for commuting, a subway map and a calendar to keep track of appointments.

Roberto Moran, GOSO's career-development manager, provides individual job education coaching. The group maintains a job bank of openings with employers willing to hire former prisoners, helps them to write resumes, gives out college and other education scholarships, and holds seminars. A retired construction-industry executive, for instance, teaches what is required to become a skilled tradesperson.

Mr. Goldsmith tells everyone who gets a job interview that "the three most important things to say are, 'I'm never late, I work very hard. I never get sick.'" He warns them to dress in conservative clothes, avoid faddish hairstyles and to remember to turn off their cellphones for the interview.

He encouraged Larry, who spent eight months at Rikers before the robbery charge against him was dropped, to talk directly to the hiring manager when he applied for a job at Target. When Larry wasn't selected from a crowd of other applicants, he stuck around until the manager noticed him and invited him to his office. Within an hour, he had a job.

"I got lucky," he told Mr. Goldsmith.

"You made your luck," Mr. Goldsmith replied.

Not everyone sticks with the program. "There are disappointments," says Mr. Block. He says he felt most let down when a Rikers inmate he'd spent hours mentoring and loaned money to never came to GOSO's office after his release.

But those who do show up say GOSO is a "home" they can keep returning to for help. Some former inmates drop by just to chat or to share good news about a job, or talk about a problem they are having with their mother, girlfriend or boss. Many call the office daily, or bring by their relatives. Others return for counseling whenever they lose or don't land a job, want a different one, or decide to go back to school.

"I know it's up to me to change, but GOSO always receives me like family and helped me change my life," says Mark, who was in and out of prison three times between the ages of 16 and 23 on drug dealing and robbery convictions. He met Mr. Block at Riker's when the former executive held a workshop on how to write a business plan for a small company. After Mark got out of prison last year, Mr. Block urged him to recall his worst experiences to remind himself why he never wanted to return. "The food was nasty, I missed my family so much and you're dependent on the guards for everything," Mark said. "No one thinks about kindness in prison."

Now 25 and off parole, he worked at the delicatessen counter of a supermarket when released 11 months ago, but he was fired when he threw out some turkey he hadn't sliced properly. He talked to Mr. Block, who told him, "don't bury your mistakes, it's all right to make some."

Now he has a job driving patients to and from hospital appointments. Last week, when he passed the test required to drive a van with 40 passengers, he immediately called Mr. Block.

When Mr. Block first volunteered at GOSO nearly three years ago, Mr. Goldsmith told him that if felt ambivalent about helping people convicted of crimes, he shouldn't get involved. He has turned away other executives who were afraid to use their real names with inmates. Some of his friends tell him he's crazy to spend so much time with convicts.

"If they'd get to know some of these kids better, they'd know they're not hopeless, he says. "A lot of them are as smart and talented as anyone you meet in business, they just haven't had anyone to help them."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120553488750437965.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Posted by lois at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)

Angola 3 Story featured on NBC News

NBC ran this last night-
Angola 3 Story

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#23661740

Posted by lois at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2008

The Population of America’s Prisons

This was printed in response to the Prison Nation Editorial in the NY Times which is posed on the Real Cost of Prisons blog at www.reacostofprisons.org/blog

March 16, 2008
Letters, NY Times
The Population of America’s Prisons

To the Editor:

Re “Prison Nation” (editorial, March 10):

The United States prison population is out of control. Minimalist efforts such as alternatives to incarceration and parole reform may be politically palatable, but they will have no significant effect.

The real magnitude of this issue can best be grasped through comparison with incarceration rates in Western Europe. The United States incarceration rate is five times that of Britain or Spain. If we reduced our prison population in half, then in half again, and finally in half again, we would have fewer than 300,000 men, women and children in our prisons and jails, rather than 2.3 million, yet our incarceration rate would still be greater than that of Germany and France.

The only way to meaningfully reduce our prison population is to decriminalize drug use and provide drug substitution and treatment to those in need. A national program of harm reduction is the only way to reverse what you have aptly described as a “Prison Nation.”

Robert L. Cohen
New York, March 11, 2008

The writer, a former medical director of the Montefiore Rikers Island Health Services, was appointed by the federal courts in Michigan, Connecticut and New York to monitor the medical care of prisoners.

•

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

March 15, 2008

NY: With Spitzer gone senators reject plan to close three prisons

Senators rejected Spitzer's plan to close three correctional camps and one prison..."

"The Senate proposal also amends Corrections Law to require that the governor give 24 months notice for the closure of a correctional facility, rather than the 12 months notice required under current law. Another Senate budget amendment requires that a plan for a facility's adaptive re-use be given at the same time as the notice of its closure, rather than six months prior to the actual closing date."

" Mr. Saland described Mr. Fischer [NYS DOCS Chief] as "a bit less confrontational" during that meeting than he has been on past occasions. And he said he was feeling somewhat positive about prospects for the facility's remaining open. "What has happened in these types of situations in the past is that, if the Senate has been willing to locate and provide the funds to keep a facility open, prior governors of either party have acquiesced and agreed," said Mr. Saland. "Lt. Governor Paterson is a vastly different person in terms of approach to the issues than is Governor Spitzer. Hopefully there will be greater receptivity."
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19390413&BRD=248&PAG=461&dept_id=4
62341&rfi=6

The Independent
Hillsdale, NY

Will Governor Paterson save prison?
By RICHARD ROTH
03/13/2008

HUDSON-State and local politicians joined about 75 union members on the lawn of the Columbia County Courthouse Wednesday, March 12, for a rally protesting a plan to close the Hudson Correctional Facility.

Governor Eliot Spitzer had announced his resignation two hours before the rally began, and many of those present said they hoped Lt. Governor David Paterson, who is scheduled to be sworn in as governor Monday, March 17, would take a fresh look at the proposal. Advertisement

"I would hope he would provide a more sympathetic, evenhanded approach and a more studious look at what is happening at Hudson Correctional Facility," Senator Steve Saland (R-41st) told the crowd.

Budget negotiations are currently underway in Albany, and Mr. Saland said the Senate budget proposal restores $5 million for continued operations at the Hudson facility. But he acknowledged that the Assembly will not necessarily agree to the funding. "Attempts to reconcile [budget proposals] will begin Monday," Mr. Saland said during a telephone interview on Thursday.

The Senate proposal also amends Corrections Law to require that the governor give 24 months notice for the closure of a correctional facility, rather than the 12 months notice required under current law. Another Senate budget amendment requires that a plan for a facility's adaptive re-use be given at the same time as the notice of its closure, rather than six months prior to the actual closing date.

HCF employees were taken by surprise when the state Department of Correctional Services announced earlier this year that the department planned to close the prison. So were union officials. "I got a call January 11 at 10:45 a.m. from the governor himself," said Larry Flanagan, president of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association (NYSCOPBA), who took part in Wednesday's rally. "That was the first we'd heard."

Elected officials and union representatives attending this week's the rally said that prisoners from the Hudson facility have a lower recidivism rate than other prisons in the state, and that relations are better between inmates and guards.

"In most jails there's a sense of friction between staff and inmates, but we get along a little better," said HCF union steward Brad Peck. "It's more cohesive. The inmates are out on work crews in the community and they see jobs through."

Kevin Walker, the union's mid-Hudson regional vice president, said the Hudson facility's "guidance, care, custody and control aid inmates re-entering into society in a successful way," making it important not only to the surrounding area but to the state at large. "Hudson Correctional Facility is a vital part of the Department of Corrections," said Mr. Walker.

Inmates learn a variety of useful skills at the facility, according to Kinderhook Town Supervisor Doug McGivney. "It's exactly the kind of prison that should stay open because of its rehabilitation possibilities," said Mr. McGivney. "[Hudson mayor] Rick Scalera taught masonry when he worked there. That's the kind of thing that's going to help an inmate later on."

In one form or another, the prison in Hudson has been in operation since the late 1800s.

Mr. McGivney did not attend Wednesday's rally. But he joined Mr. Scalera, a fellow Democrat, and Columbia County Board of Supervisor's Chairman Art Baer (Hillsdale), and Senator Saland, both Republicans, at a meeting with Department of Correctional Services Commissioner Brian Fischer last week.

Mr. Saland described Mr. Fischer as "a bit less confrontational" during that meeting than he has been on past occasions. And he said he was feeling somewhat positive about prospects for the facility's remaining open.

"What has happened in these types of situations in the past is that, if the Senate has been willing to locate and provide the funds to keep a facility open, prior governors of either party have acquiesced and agreed," said Mr. Saland. "Lt. Governor Paterson is a vastly different person in terms of approach to the issues than is Governor Spitzer. Hopefully there will be greater receptivity."

To contact reporter Richard Roth, e-mail rroth@IndeNews.com.

______________

http://www.stargazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080314/NEWS01/803140
330/1001/NEWS

Star Gazette
Albany, NY

Assembly, Senate OK two budgets
Now it will be up to Paterson to work out final plan on deadline. March 14, 2008

By Cara Matthews
clmatthe@gannett.com
Star-Gazette Albany Bureau

ALBANY -- While most people's attention was focused this week on Gov. Eliot Spitzer's resignation, the state Assembly and Senate passed versions of a roughly $125 billion budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year.

The two budgets are vastly different, with the GOP-led Senate rejecting the so-called "millionaire's tax" being pushed by the Democrat- controlled Assembly. Increasing the state income tax for people who earn more than $1 million a year would raise $1.5 billion, according to the Assembly.

The Assembly budget would spend a total of $124.8 billion, about $500 million more than proposed by Spitzer. The Senate proposal would spend about $13 million less than the governor's plan, said Scott Reif, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, Rensselaer County.

But with the Spitzer scandal engulfing the state Capitol, neither house had publicly released a financial plan as of Thursday on how its budget would be balanced.

One of the first tasks for Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who will be sworn in as governor Monday, will be to negotiate a budget with the Assembly and Senate. The 2008-09 fiscal year starts April 1, a mere two weeks away. The Assembly and Senate were supposed to start negotiating today, but that got pushed back to Monday.

Paterson said he would spend the weekend with financial advisers "hammering out the details of this budget.

"We cannot afford to waste another second. We have a budget that's due and a deadline to meet," he said.

The budget was adopted a day late last year. Lawmakers usually add spending to what the governor recommends, but that could prove difficult this year because of the poor economy.

Spitzer announced Wednesday that he was leaving office after nearly 15 months. That followed revelations Monday that he was connected with a high-priced prostitution ring.

Spitzer's plan would have hiked spending by 5 percent and closed a $4.4 billion budget gap. Two weeks ago, the Legislature and governor reduced revenue estimates by $250 million because of the economy.

The Senate issued a news release and a Senate Finance Committee report on the budget. Besides rejecting the "millionaire's tax," the Senate voted not to approve other tax and fee hikes in Spitzer's budget, such as higher fees for motor-vehicle registration and new taxes on hospitals, nursing homes and health insurance. Senators rejected Spitzer's plan to close three correctional camps and one prison, and they rejected his plan to redeploy nearly 100 state troopers who work as school resource officers.

The Senate would make up the money by finding places where government could save money, estimating higher collections on cigarette taxes and catching more incidents of Medicaid fraud. The budget includes a total of $900 million in cuts.

"This is a realistic budget plan that holds the line on spending, rejects tax increases, provides critically important tax relief and makes common-sense investments in education and health care," Bruno said in a statement.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, had planned to release details of his house's budget earlier this week, but the news conference was rescheduled to next week because of the Spitzer scandal.

Still, the Assembly passed a "complete budget" this week and does not think the Senate's budget is balanced, said Sisa Moyo, a Silver spokeswoman.

Assemblywoman Susan John, R-Rochester, said the Assembly put off hospital cuts proposed by the governor until Jan. 1 "so that the hospitals would have a better opportunity to analyze the impact and negotiate with the Department of Health." The budget would make up that money with revenues from the millionaire's tax. John said she doesn't think the Senate makes up for in revenue the fee hikes it rejects in the governor's budget.

Posted by lois at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

States reconsider life behind bars for youth

March 12, 2008
States reconsider life behind bars for youth
With nearly 2,400 inmates sentenced to life as juveniles, the U.S. is the only nation imposing the mandate on children.

By Amanda Paulson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Chicago

How should a society treat its youngest criminal offenders? And the families of victims of those offenders?

Half a dozen states are now weighing these questions anew, as they consider whether to ban life sentences for juveniles that don't include a option for parole – and whether those now serving such sentences should have a retroactive shot at parole.

Here in Illinois, proposed legislation would give 103 people – most convicted of unusually brutal crimes – a chance at parole hearings, while outlawing the sentence for future young perpetrators.

The proposal has victims' families up in arms, angry that killers they had been told were in prison for life might be given a shot at release and that they'd need to regularly attend hearings in the future, reliving old traumas, to try to ensure that these criminals remain behind bars.

Advocates of legislation, meanwhile, both in Illinois and elsewhere, note that the US is the only country in the world with anyone – nearly 2,400 across the nation – serving such a severe sentence for a crime committed as a juvenile. They criticize the fact that the sentence is often mandatory, part of a system devoid of leniency for a teenager's lack of judgment, or hope that youth can be reformed.

"Kids should be punished, and held accountable. The crimes we're talking about are very serious crimes," says Alison Parker, deputy director of the US program of Human Rights Watch and author of a report on the issue. "But children are uniquely able to rehabilitate themselves, to grow up and to change. A life-without-parole sentence says they're beyond repair, beyond hope."

The sentence is automatic for certain crimes in more than half of all states, part of a wave of "get tough" laws aimed at cracking down on rising crime rates during the 1980s and '90s. Which means judges often have little to no discretion when they mete out punishment. In many instances, they are prohibited from considering age or even whether the juvenile was the one who pulled the trigger. About a quarter of the juveniles serving life without parole sentences nationally were convicted of what is known as "felony murder," says Ms. Parker. They participated in a felony in which murder was committed, but they weren't the ones who did the actual killing.

In Illinois, that list includes Marshan Allen, a 15-year-old who accompanied an older brother and some friends on a drug-related mission, and says he didn't know they were going to kill several people.

In California, another state considering doing away with the sentence, it includes Anthony, a 16-year-old painting graffiti with a friend when the friend produced a gun and decided to rob an approaching group of teenagers. His friend pulled the trigger, but Anthony – who turned down a plea bargain because he couldn't imagine paying for a crime he didn't feel he'd committed – got a life-without-parole sentence.

"There are people in prison for crimes they committed as juveniles that should never see the light of day," says Rich Klawiter, a partner at the law firm DLA Piper and part of the Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children, which produced a report on the issue last month and advocates reform. "But those that show themselves worthy of redemption ought to be given an opportunity before a parole board."

The frequent citing of cases like Allen's bothers supporters of the sentence, who say such examples are hardly representative. Generally, the mandate is saved for such extreme offenses as multiple murders, killing of a police officer, aggravated sexual assault, and murder of a child.

"These guys are the worst of the worst," says Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, whose pregnant sister and brother-in-law were murdered by a 16-year-old in their Winnetka, Ill., townhome in 1990. She acknowledges automatic sentencing has probably punished a few juveniles unfairly, but notes that such individuals can always appeal for clemency. What she doesn't understand is bringing offenders back for hearings that, in her mind, would only unearth the past for the families of victims who thought they'd seen their loved ones' killers put away forever.

Ms. Bishop-Jenkins and her sister, Jeanne Bishop, are both prominent victim activists against the death penalty, and helped in the case that got the juvenile death penalty overturned by the Supreme Court three years ago. Now, they both say, they feel betrayed by the same allies with whom they fought against the death penalty, who never sought their input on this issue.

"Once you say this person could get out someday through this mechanism, you've just placed a crushing burden on the hearts and minds of the victims' families," says Jeanne Bishop, a Cook County public defender who has also defended juveniles. She and her sister both support getting rid of the mandatory sentencing and giving judges more discretion, but worry that in all the talk of the human rights of juvenile offenders, the rights of victims are being forgotten.

The current legislation in Illinois is unlikely to go anywhere, with its key sponsor backing away last week and saying more time is needed to dialogue with victims. Reform advocates hope to have new legislation introduced in the near future. Colorado outlawed juvenile life without parole in 2006, and legislation is pending in Michigan, Florida, Nebraska, and California, while a few other states are experiencing grass-roots efforts.

Some activists against the sentence say they hope they can work with victims' families to take their concerns into account even as they do away with the sentence. In Michigan, where a set of bills is before both the Senate and the House, activists have had some success building dialogue with victims, says Deborah LaBelle, a human rights attorney based in Ann Arbor and director of the ACLU's Juvenile Life Without Parole Initiative.

"We need to allow both voices to be heard," says Ms. LaBelle. But she feels strongly that the sentence is inappropriate for youth. "As every parent knows and as every social scientist understands, this is a time of ill-thought-out, impulsive lack of judgment, problematic years… To throw them away and say you're irredeemable as a child is a disturbing social concept."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0312/p01s03-usju.html

Posted by lois at 12:40 PM | Comments (0)

In Alabama, a Crackdown on Pregnant Drug Users

March 15, 2008
In Alabama, a Crackdown on Pregnant Drug Users
By ADAM NOSSITER
NY Times

ANDALUSIA, Ala. — A day after she gave birth in 2006, Tiffany Hitson, 20, sat on her front porch crying, barefoot and handcuffed. A police officer hovered in the distance.

Ms. Hitson’s newborn daughter had traces of cocaine and marijuana in its system, and the young woman, baby-faced herself, had fallen afoul of a tough new state law intended to protect children from drugs, and a local prosecutor bent on pursuing it. She made arrangements for the baby’s care, and headed off to a year behind bars.

“I couldn’t believe it,” recalled Ms. Hitson, who was released in November after spending much of the first year of her daughter’s life at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Alabama.

Two worlds are colliding in this piney woods backcountry in southern Alabama: casual drug use and a local district attorney unsettled that children or fetuses might be affected by it. The result is an unusual burst of prosecutions in which young women using drugs are shocked to find themselves in the cross hairs for harming their children, even before giving birth.

Over an 18-month period, at least eight women have been prosecuted for using drugs while pregnant in this rural jurisdiction of barely 37,000, a tally without any recent parallel that women’s advocates have been able to find. The district attorney, Greg L. Gambril, acknowledges the number puts him at the “forefront,” at least among Alabama prosecutors. Similar cases have come up elsewhere, usually with limited success. But Alabama, and in particular this hilly, remote terrain just above the Florida Panhandle, is pursuing these cases with special vigor.

In Maryland, the state’s highest court in 2006 threw out the convictions of two women whose babies were born with cocaine in their bloodstreams, ruling that punishment was not the right deterrent. Last year, the New Mexico Supreme Court rejected a woman’s child-abuse conviction in a similar case, declaring a fetus was not a child. Some doctors and advocacy groups maintain that the effects of drugs on pregnant women and their fetuses are not fully known; in Alabama, though, these arguments have yet to be officially made.

A cultural clash, unfolding within the confined world of Covington County, is at the origin of this prosecutorial crusade. Here, unlike in other jurisdictions, women are not appealing their convictions, and lawyers and doctors talk about these cases reluctantly, if at all. Too many people know one another in these quiet little towns that fade abruptly into the countryside.

There has not been a murder here in over three years, the prosecutor said. But a year ago a newborn died at the local hospital, and the mother had traces of methamphetamines in her system. Doctors told the police that the infant’s premature birth could be attributed to maternal drug use, and she was charged with “chemical endangerment of child,” which carries a sentence of 10 years to life in prison.

“In my jurisdiction, a baby being born dead because of drug abuse is a huge deal,” Mr. Gambril said.

Mr. Gambril makes little distinction between fetus and child. He said his duty was to protect both — though the Alabama law he uses makes no reference to unborn children, and was primarily intended to protect youngsters from exposure to methamphetamine laboratories.

“When drugs are introduced in the womb, the child-to-be is endangered,” Mr. Gambril said. “It is what I call a continuing crime.” He added that the purpose of the statute was to guarantee that the child has “a safe environment, a drug-free environment.”

“No one is to say whether that environment is inside or outside the womb,” he said, and no judge or other authority in Alabama has so far disagreed.

Covington County is an isolated rural terrain where drugs are a recreational outlet in the absence of others, where the police found nearly 200 methamphetamine laboratories in the first years of the decade, and where they made more arrests for abusing the drug than anywhere else in the state.

“This is a meth town,” said Ms. Hitson’s grandmother, Shirley Hinson, who helped take care of the baby while Tiffany was in prison. Speaking of youth here, Ms. Hinson said, “There’s nothing for them to do.”

The county is the kind of place where young women — white, working-class, on probation for other offenses — sometimes take a chance while pregnant.

“I made the biggest mistake of my life & did some drugs with her father right before I went into labor, unaware I was about to have her,” Ms. Hitson wrote to the court from the Covington County Jail, in neat schoolgirl script, pleading to be released after her arrest in October 2006. “Please, please let me spend this most important time with my baby,” she wrote.

But the judge had set bond at $200,000 — Ms. Hitson had earlier been charged in connection with a break-in, and with credit-card fraud — and in jail she stayed.

The environment can be unforgiving. Rachel Barfoot, 31, who had been charged before with beating her niece, told her probation officer that she was pregnant. When she tested positive for cocaine, she was arrested.

“I was in shock,” said Ms. Barfoot. “I told the truth, but the truth got me nowhere,” she said in an interview. Three months pregnant, already a mother of four, she spent five weeks in the Covington County Jail.

“It was hell,” said Ms. Barfoot, now jobless and struggling. Police affidavits make it clear that local doctors are cooperating in these investigations.

The women are sent off to county jails, state prisons, or drug rehabilitation clinics, and often emerge bitter at the collaboration of police, prosecutors, judges, doctors and social workers they say is less keen on help — Mr. Gambril insists otherwise — than punishment.

“In Covington County, I don’t think they’re interested in helping mothers,” Ms. Hitson said. “They’re just sending people straight to prison. It doesn’t help their drug problems.”

A few of the local defense lawyers express similar sentiments: “None of those cases should have been brought,” said Rod Sylvester, who represents another woman charged with chemical endangerment. “It’s an overreaching.”

But others bring up the powerful, unspoken community sanction against the combination of drugs and pregnant women. And so far, none of the women have risked trial.

“Our ultimate goal is to protect mothers and children,” Mr. Gambril said.

Meanwhile, Shirley Hinson, Ms. Hitson’s grandmother, is still furious over Tiffany’s year of imprisonment. “They took something away from my granddaughter and my grandbaby they can’t give back,” she said. “They made an example out of Tiffany. That’s all they did.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/15/us/15mothers.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Alabama&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Posted by lois at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

Forbes: Cornell Locks-Up A Strong Quarter

Forbes.com
Market Scan
Cornell Locks-Up A Strong Quarter
Ruthie Ackerman, 03.13.08

When federal and state governments run out of prison beds who are they going to call?

The answer: private operators that run prisons and provide treatment services to federal and state agencies. And one such operator, Cornell Companies, a provider of correction and detention services for adults and juveniles, is thriving.

On Thursday Cornell Companies reported its fourth-quarter earnings jumped 14.9% to $5.4 million, or 37 cents per share, from $4.7 million, or 33 cents per share, during the same period the previous year. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected earnings per share of 31 cents. Cornell’s shares shot up 10.1%, or $1.63, to $17.78 at the close.

The company attributed the rise in profit to a 5.0% reduction in operating expenses to $67.7 million during the quarter from $71.3 million during the year-ago period, which more than offset the 2.1% drop in revenue to $92.1 million from $94.1 million a year earlier.

But Cornell’s shares have fallen 22.9% since the beginning of 2008 as jittery investors sell off shares amid a shaky U.S. economy. Yet it is precisely the weakened economy that have made companies like Cornell and its competitors Corrections Corp of America, the nation's largest privatized prison operator and the only pure play on adult prisons, and Geo Group good buys. Geo added 15 prisons and 8,000 beds when it bought competitor Correctional Services in 2005. In October 2006, Geo announced the acquisition of CentraCore Properties Trust, a prison REIT.

Corrections Corp. was named Forbes' best business services and supplies company for 2007.

The sagging U.S. housing market has hurt public budgets, causing local governments to look to privatize services they traditionally have performed. By outsourcing a prison, states can save money, boosting profits for companies that provide these services.

With federal and state prisons packed with 33% more inmates than they were built to house and the Department of Homeland Security cracking down on illegal immigrants by imprisoning those they catch, demand for prison beds is soaring. Most prisons are still owned and operated by federal and state governments; fewer than 10% are outsourced to the free-marketeers. But with the government slow to build new lockups, the increased demand is enabling private operators to expand and to charge government more to handle the overflow. Prison contracts pre-2006 were in the $40-per-bed-per-day range, now they're over $60.

Shares of both Corrections Corp., and Geo have reflected this. On Thursday Corrections' shares closed up 0.5%, or 12 cents, to $26.70, and are up 3.8% over the past 12 months. Geo's shares closed up 0.5%, or 14 cents, to $26.06, and are up 16.7% for the past 12 months. Both have outperformed the Standard & Poor's 500 over the past year, which has returned -4.5%.

Meanwhile, Cornell’s revenue was impacted by a previously announced withdrawal of inmates by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from the Regional Correctional Centre in New Mexico in July 2007. It was also affected by the management contract terminations at the Alexander Youth Services Center and the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Center, the company said.

Cornell said it expects to earn between 27 cents and 31 cents per share during the first quarter.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial, on average, forecast earnings of 31 cents per share for the quarter.

For the full year, Cornell expects earnings to range between $1.21 and $1.27 per share, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $1.27 per share.

Reuters contributed to this article. ttp://www.forbes.com/2008/03/13/cornell-corrections-update-markets-equity-cx_ra_0313markets40_print.html

Posted by lois at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)

March 13, 2008

Henrietta Bell Wells, a Pioneering Debater, Dies at 96

March 12, 2008
Henrietta Bell Wells, a Pioneering Debater, Dies at 96
By DOUGLAS MARTIN, NY Times

Henrietta Bell Wells, the only woman, the only freshman and the last surviving member of the 1930 Wiley College debate team that participated in the first interracial collegiate debate in the United States, died on Feb. 27 in Baytown, Tex. She was 96.

Her friend Edward Cox confirmed the death.

The story of the team, called the Great Debaters in last year’s movie of the same name, began in 1924 at Wiley College, a small liberal arts college in Marshall, Tex., founded a half century earlier by the Methodist Episcopal Church to educate “newly freed men.”

Melvin B. Tolson arrived at the all-black school that autumn to teach English and other subjects. He also started a debate team.

Mr. Tolson, who would win wide distinction as a poet, saw argumentation as a way to cultivate mental alertness. Wiley was soon debating and defeating black colleges two and three times its size.

In 1930, Mr. Tolson decided to break new ground. He managed to schedule a debate with the University of Michigan Law School, an all-white school. Wiley won. Other debates with white schools followed, culminating with Wiley’s 1935 victory over the national champion, the University of Southern California.

Mr. Tolson’s stunningly successful debate team was portrayed in “The Great Debaters,” directed by Denzel Washington. Describing the cinematic young debaters in The Chicago Sun-Times, the critic Roger Ebert wrote, “They are black, proud, single-minded, focused, and they express all this most dramatically in their debating.”

In the fall of 1930, Henrietta Bell, who would later marry Wallace Wells, was a freshman in an English class taught by Mr. Tolson. The professor urged her to try out for the debate team, because she seemed to be able to think on her feet. She was the first woman on the team.

In an interview with The Houston Chronicle in 2007, she said the boys “didn’t seem to mind me.”

But the work was far from easy. Miss Bell attended classes during the day, had three campus jobs and practiced debating at night. The intensity of debating was reflected in Mr. Tolson’s characterization of it as “a blood sport.”

But the hard work paid off. In the interview with The Chronicle, Mrs. Wells declared, “We weren’t intimidated.”

Henrietta Pauline Bell was born on the banks of Buffalo Bayou in Houston on Jan. 11, 1912, and raised by a hard-pressed single mother from the West Indies. When riots broke out in 1917 over police treatment of black soldiers at a World War I training camp, the family’s house was searched. Mrs. Wells recalled being unable to try on clothes in segregated stores.

She did not debate in high school but was valedictorian of her class. She earned a modest scholarship from the Y.M.C.A. to go to Wiley, Episcopal Life reported.

In the spring of 1930, Miss Bell, her teammates and her chaperone arrived at the Seventh Street Theater in Chicago. It was the largest black-owned theater in town, because no large white-owned facility would admit a racially mixed audience, according to an article in The Marshall News-Messenger. Mrs. Wells remembered a standing-room-only crowd.

She wore a dark suit and had her hair cut in a boyish bob. In an interview with Jeffrey Porro, one of the screenwriters of “The Great Debaters,” she felt very small on that very big stage. “I had to use my common sense,” she said.

She remembered Mr. Tolson urging her to punch up her delivery. “You’ve got to put something in there to wake the people up,” he had said.

Mrs. Wells told The Chronicle, “It was a nondecision debate, but we felt at the time that it was a giant step toward desegregation.”

She debated for only one year, because of the need to work for money. She kept up with drama, which Mr. Tolson also coached. After graduating from college, she returned to Houston, where she met Mr. Wells and married. He was a church organist and later an Episcopal minister. She worked as a teacher and social worker.

Mrs. Wells advised Mr. Washington on the movie, using her scrapbooks as visual aids. She urged him to play Mr. Tolson, something he at first was not inclined to do. He called her “another grandma.”

Mr. Wells died in 1987. Mrs. Wells left no immediate survivors.

Her advice to today’s students was straightforward: “Learn to speak well and learn to express yourself effectively.”

She learned this lesson directly from Mr. Tolson, whom she called her crabbiest and best teacher. He was known for issuing intellectual challenges immediately upon entering the classroom.

A typical salutation: “Bell! What is a verb?”

Posted by lois at 06:18 PM | Comments (0)

CCA Top Lawyer and Federal Judicial Nominee Gus Puryear Implicated in Private Prison Cover-up Scheme

CCA Top Lawyer and Federal Judicial Nominee Gus Puryear Implicated in Private Prison Cover-up Scheme

March 13, 2008 – Private Corrections Institute

P R E S S R E L E A S E
For Immediate Release

Federal Judicial Nominee Gus Puryear Implicated in Private Prison Cover-up Scheme;
Watchdog Group Calls for New Hearing Following Whistleblower Disclosures

Nashville, TN – Today, Time magazine implicated Gustavus A Puryear IV, general counsel for Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and a federal judicial nominee who is pending confirmation, in a scheme whereby certain incidents at CCA-operated prisons were excluded from the company's internal quality assurance reports before such reports were disclosed to contracting government agencies.

According to CCA whistleblower Ronald T. Jones, who until last year was employed as a senior manager in the company's quality assurance division, CCA reportedly maintained different sets of quality assurance reports. The unredacted reports were for internal use only under "attorney-client privilege," at Mr. Puryear's instruction. Mr. Jones worked under Mr. Puryear's direct supervision for over two years after CCA's quality assurance division was placed under the company's legal department in 2005.

As reported by Time magazine, CCA’s use of redacted internal reports was part of a larger corporate culture in which the company's employees had financial incentives to withhold or downplay the reporting of adverse incidents at CCA-operated facilities. Even the company's own board members may have received doctored reports.

"If these allegations are accurate, they raise significant concerns about Mr. Puryear’s involvement in failing to fully disclose adverse incidents at CCA's for-profit prisons," stated Alex Friedmann, Vice President of the Private Corrections Institute. "That is certainly not conduct worthy of a federal judicial candidate."

Mr. Puryear had a rocky nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 12, and since has been questioned about his conflicts of interest; his lack of trial and litigation experience; his comments related to a prisoner's death at a CCA-operated jail; and his membership in a private, almost exclusively-white club where women members are unable to vote or hold office.

Based upon the recently disclosed whistleblower information, the Private Corrections Institute, which opposes Mr. Puryear's nomination, has called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to hold another evidentiary hearing to consider Mr. Jones' testimony. Mr. Jones initially contacted the Private Corrections Institute concerning his allegations involving Mr. Puryear and CCA's questionable internal quality assurance reporting practices.

The Private Corrections Institute is a non-profit agency that works to educate the public about the significant dangers and pitfalls associated with the privatization of correctional services. PCI maintains an online collection of news reports and other resources related to the private prison industry, and holds the position that for-profit prisons have no place in a free and democratic society.

For further information, please contact:

Ken Kopczynski, Executive Director
Private Corrections Institute
1114 Brandt Drive
Tallahassee, FL 32308
(850) 980-0887
www.privateci.org

Alex Friedmann, Vice President
Private Corrections Institute
5341 Mt. View Road
Antioch, TN 37013
(615) 495-6568

Dee Hubbard, President
Private Corrections Institute
P.O. Box 88
Sterling, AK 99672
(907) 252-3155

Time magazine article
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1722065,00.html

For additional information on the opposition campaign against Mr. Puryear’s federal judicial nomination:

www.againstpuryear.org

Posted by lois at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)

Former CCA Top Lawyer Proposed by Bush to the Federal Bench Scrunitized by Senate Judiciary Cmte

Thursday, Mar. 13, 2008
Scrutiny for a Bush Judicial Nominee
By Adam Zagorin/Washington

As the top lawyer for America's biggest private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Gus Puryear IV, is known to sport well-pressed preppy pink shirts, and his brownish mop of hair stands out among most of President Bush's graying nominees to the federal bench. A favorite of G.O.P. hardliners, Puryear, 39, prepped Dick Cheney for the vice presidential debates — both in 2000 and 2004 — and served as a senior aide to two former senators and onetime presidential hopefuls, Bill Frist and Fred Thompson.

Political connections, though, may not be enough to get Puryear a lifetime post as a federal district judge in Tennessee. Puryear recently confronted tough questions about his conduct, experience and potential conflicts of interest from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which must approve him before a full Senate vote. Now, a former CCA manager tells TIME that Puryear oversaw a reporting system in which accounts of major, sometimes violent prison disturbances and other significant events were often masked or minimized in accounts provided to government agencies with oversight over prison contracts. Ronald T. Jones, the former CCA manager, alleges that the company even began keeping two sets of books — one for internal use that described prison deficiencies in telling detail, and a second set that Jones describes as "doctored" for public consumption, to limit bad publicity, litigation or fines that could derail CCA's multimillion dollar contracts with federal, state or local agencies.

CCA owns or operates 65 prisons, housing some 70,000 inmates across the U.S. According to the company's website, it has a greater than 50% share of the booming private prison market. CCA is also a major contributor to Republican candidates and causes, and spends millions of dollars each year lobbying for government contracts. (Puryear enjoys a friendship with Cheney's son-in-law, Philip Perry, who lobbied for CCA in Washington before serving as general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, which has millions of dollars in contracts with CCA, from 2005 to 2007.) The company has likewise given financial support to tax-exempt policy groups that support tough sentencing laws that help put more people behind bars. Like other prison companies, CCA has faced numerous lawsuits that stem from allegedly inadequate staff levels that can be a cause of high levels of violence in the prisons. Though hundreds of such lawsuits are often pending at any given time, many brought by inmates in its own facilities, CCA under Puryear has mounted an especially vigorous defense against them, refusing to settle all but the most damaging.

Jones knows CCA intimately. Until last summer, the longtime Republican was in charge of "quality assurance" records for CCA prisons across the U.S. He says that in 2005, after CCA found itself embarrassed on several occasions by the public release of internal records to government agencies, Puryear mandated that detailed, raw reports on prison shortcomings carry a blanket assertion of "attorney client privilege," thus forbidding their release without his written consent. From then on, Jones says, the audits delivered to agencies were filled with increasingly vague performance measures. "If the wrong party found out that a facility's operations scored low in an audit, then CCA could be subject to litigation, fines or worse," explains Jones. "When Mr. Puryear felt there was highly sensitive or potentially damaging information to CCA, I would then be directed to remove that information from an audit report." Puryear would not comment on the allegations. Jones resigned from CCA last summer to pursue a legal career.

According to Jones, Puryear was most concerned about what CCA described as "zero tolerance" events, or ZT's — including unnatural deaths, major disturbances, escapes and sexual assaults. According to Jones, bonuses and job security at the company were tied to reporting low ZT numbers. Low numbers also pleased CCA's government clients, as well as the company's board, which received a regular tally, and Wall Street analysts concerned about potentially costly lawsuits that CCA might face.

In 2006, for example, Jones says CCA had to lock down a prison in Texas to control rioting by as many as 60 inmates. Despite clear internal guidelines defining the incident as a ZT, Jones says he was ordered not to label it that way. Instead it was logged as, "Altered facility schedule due to inmate action". And this was not unusual, says Jones: "Information was misrepresented in a very disturbing way concerning the company's most important performance indicators, which included escapes, suicides, violent outbreaks and sexual assaults."

Companies often try to show their best face to customers, and safeguard internal records with "attorney-client privilege." But according to Stephen Gillers, a leading expert on legal ethics at New York University, CCA's use of that privilege seems like "a wholesale, possibly overreaching claim," similiar to the blanket assertions of major tobacco companies that tried to keep damaging internal documents from public view. Those assertions of privilege have been rejected by federal judges as an attempt to improperly conceal their internal data on the dangers of smoking from customers, the courts and legal adversaries. CCA could also be in legal trouble if it minimized the tally of serious prison incidents and, by implication, its possible financial liability. As chief legal counsel, Puryear would have also had an obligation to ensure his board had all the information it needed, good or bad, to make decisions. If Puryear's reporting system had the effect of withholding information relevant to official prison oversight, that could bear on his suitability as a federal judge by suggesting his "disdain for the proper operation of an important function of government," notes Gillers.

Contacted by TIME, CCA says that Puryear, "has served the company well and honorably as general counsel and will be an outstanding judge." The company denies allegations that it keeps two sets of books, saying: "A final audit report is made available to our customers. Appropriate information gathered in the audits is separately provided to our legal department." The company adds that "CCA has produced all relevant, non-privileged documents in litigation," that its board is regularly apprised of the most serious prison incidents, and that "all appropriate" information is given to the financial community.

President Bush recently called Puryear and his 27 other judicial nominees facing Senate confirmation "highly qualified." Whether or not the Senate agrees on Puryear, Bush is likely to leave the White House with fewer judges approved than Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, both two-term chief executives.

* http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1722065,00.html

Posted by lois at 05:25 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Prisons closing in doubt due to Spitzer's resignation

Times Union, Albany, NY
Spitzer's exit means hope for prison
Governor sought closure of Hudson site; Paterson seen as more receptive
By BOB GARDINIER, Staff writer

First published: Thursday, March 13, 2008

HUDSON -- Opponents of Gov. Eliot Spitzer's call earlier this year to close the Hudson Correctional Facility found a ray of hope Wednesday amid the scandal consuming the state Capitol.

More than 100 prison guards, family, friends and supporters gathered on the lawn in front of the Columbia County Courthouse carrying signs and listening to speakers. The rally was held a couple of hours after Spitzer announced his resignation in the wake of a prostitution scandal. Lt. Gov. David Paterson will take over Monday.

"Mr. Paterson is a union person and he listens, so we now certainly have high hopes that this proposal could be turned around," said Hudson Mayor Rick Scalera. "It may also put Senator Joseph Bruno into a position of more bargaining power and he has already spoken out against the closure."

If the prison is closed as planned next January, 277 workers will either lose their jobs or have long commutes to jobs at other state prisons.

"My commute of 10 miles could turn into 60 miles one way," said Brad Peck, a steward with the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association.

During his budget announcement in January, Spitzer said he would cut costs by closing one medium security prison (Hudson), three low-security "camps," and six centers for troubled youths.

Along with the Hudson Correctional Facility, the much smaller Camp McGregor in Saratoga County is targeted for closing by January 2009.

The Hudson prison can house 422 inmates and currently has about 415, officials said.

"I worked in the prison for 29 years and the place is unique, with an enormous amount of interaction between inmates and staff, and there are very few assaults," Scalera said.

If it closes, the city would also lose about $100,000 paid by the state for water and sewer services at the prison, Scalera said.

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=671677&category=FRONTPG&C
Code=HOME&newsdate=3/13/2008

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

March 12, 2008

MI: State says it will close women's prison in Detroit area in 2009

State says it will close Detroit-area prison in 2009
3/11/2008, 6:34 p.m. ET
By DAVID EGGERT
The Associated Press

LANSING, Mich. (AP) ‹ The state announced Tuesday it plans to close a female prison located in suburban Detroit.

The Robert Scott Correctional Facility in Wayne County's Plymouth Township will close in May 2009. It has been open since 1991.

Michigan Department of Corrections officials said closing the prison will save $12 million in the next budget year starting Oct. 1 and $36 million a year after that. The state corrections system costs $2 billion a year.

About 860 female prisoners at Scott will be transferred to the Huron Valley Complex-Men in Ypsilanti, whose male prisoners will be moved elsewhere.

Scott is a reception center for women entering the prison system, and it also houses minimum-, medium- and maximum-security female inmates.

Corrections spokesman John Cordell said the closing will help consolidate female prisoners into a geographic location, reducing costs to transport them to health care visits. The prison also is the only one in the state with a population cap set in law ‹ limiting management options, he said.

Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections Organization, a union representing corrections officers, expressed concern over the announcement.

"It's terrible news for the officers," he said. "It has the potential to drastically disrupt a lot of people's lives."

Grieshaber said there are rules about male guards working in female prisons, meaning officers now working at Scott and Huron Valley will be affected. Another concern is that male prisoners at Huron Valley often have serious mental illness and can't function adequately in the general prison population.

"These are prisoners who are going to be dispersed throughout the system," he said.

Cordell said men at Huron Valley will be moved to facilities where their health care needs can be addressed. A decision on their eventual placement will be made at a later date.

Of the 50,035 inmates in state prisons, 2,043 are women.

The state closed two prisons and a reception center last year to save money.
http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/business-15/120527874388150.x
ml&storylist=newsmichigan

Posted by lois at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)

Second Chance Bill Passes Senate

CQ TODAY PRINT EDITION – LEGAL AFFAIRS
March 11, 2008 – 10:29 p.m.
Senate Clears Legislation for Programs Aimed at Reducing Recidivism

The Senate cleared legislation late Tuesday aimed at helping former inmates readjust to society after they are released from prison.

The Senate cleared the bill (HR 1593) by voice vote after adopting a concurrent resolution (H Con Res 270) that made several minor changes to the measure. The resolution, which was crafted to allay Senate concerns about the bill, also was adopted by voice vote.

The underlying bill, sponsored by Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., aims to reduce recidivism by helping former prisoners obtain housing, employment, education and health care. It would authorize $362 million over fiscal 2008 and 2009 for Justice Department programs to improve inmate treatment and to help offenders re-enter communities.

The bill also would authorize $20 million over the same time period for initiatives at the Bureau of Prisons to prepare prisoners for successful re-entry into the community. The House passed the legislation Nov. 13 by a vote of 347-62.

According to the Justice Department, nearly two-thirds of the 650,000 prisoners released annually from state and federal prisons end up incarcerated again within three years. “We shouldn’t be surprised that the prison door is, more often than not, a revolving door,” said Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., the sponsor of a companion Senate measure. The bill “will go a long way to help these ex-offenders reintegrate into the community and become productive, contributing members of our community,” Biden added.

The concurrent resolution changes language related to grants for state and local government prisoner re-entry programs to allow for in-kind contributions to count toward the required match of federal funds.

It also changes the definition of “eligible elderly offender” to drop a requirement that the offender satisfy federal statutory requirements for seeking the reduction of a prison term.

Posted by lois at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)

Second Chance Bill Passes Senate

CQ TODAY PRINT EDITION – LEGAL AFFAIRS
March 11, 2008 – 10:29 p.m.
Senate Clears Legislation for Programs Aimed at Reducing Recidivism

The Senate cleared legislation late Tuesday aimed at helping former inmates readjust to society after they are released from prison.

The Senate cleared the bill (HR 1593) by voice vote after adopting a concurrent resolution (H Con Res 270) that made several minor changes to the measure. The resolution, which was crafted to allay Senate concerns about the bill, also was adopted by voice vote.

The underlying bill, sponsored by Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., aims to reduce recidivism by helping former prisoners obtain housing, employment, education and health care. It would authorize $362 million over fiscal 2008 and 2009 for Justice Department programs to improve inmate treatment and to help offenders re-enter communities.

The bill also would authorize $20 million over the same time period for initiatives at the Bureau of Prisons to prepare prisoners for successful re-entry into the community. The House passed the legislation Nov. 13 by a vote of 347-62.

According to the Justice Department, nearly two-thirds of the 650,000 prisoners released annually from state and federal prisons end up incarcerated again within three years. “We shouldn’t be surprised that the prison door is, more often than not, a revolving door,” said Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., the sponsor of a companion Senate measure. The bill “will go a long way to help these ex-offenders reintegrate into the community and become productive, contributing members of our community,” Biden added.

The concurrent resolution changes language related to grants for state and local government prisoner re-entry programs to allow for in-kind contributions to count toward the required match of federal funds.

It also changes the definition of “eligible elderly offender” to drop a requirement that the offender satisfy federal statutory requirements for seeking the reduction of a prison term.

Posted by lois at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)

MA: State needs to explore alternatives to jail, prison

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, MA)
State needs to explore alternatives to jail, prison
To the editor:

Despite the unconscionable wreckage to lives and ever-increasing financial cost, Massachusetts, like the rest of the country, continues its jail and prison building boom. Gov. Deval Patrick's bond bill filed in January includes funding for 56 additional cells for women at the Chicopee jail. The new jail cost $26 million to build but that is only the tip of the iceberg since caging a woman in one of the current 210 cells for a year costs more than $43,200.

Approximately half the women are incarcerated at the jail because they are too poor to make bail of $200 to $500. They can easily be held pretrial for months. Most of the time, they will be homeless and without income upon release, further destabilizing their lives and placing the well-being of their children in serious jeopardy.

The Massachusetts prison and jail budget did not suddenly grow to 98 percent parity with the state's funding for education. It happened over a period of 20 years, driven not by a sustained rise in crime but by long mandatory sentencing, imprisonment of people convicted of non-violent drug convictions, and a reliance on incarceration as the primary response to substance abuse and mental illness. Almost 85 percent of all women at the Hampden County Correctional Center, pretrial and sentenced, are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol.

If it is to stop, Governor Patrick and our elected officials need to hear from taxpayers that they want humane, cost-effective alternatives to our prison state and nation.

Lois Ahrens

Northampton
http://www.dailyhampshiregazette.com/storytmp.cfm?id_no=84275&CSAuthResp=1205341736777312%3APIr2ZBL6q02t2A%3D%3D%3ACSUserId%7CCSGroupId%3Asuccess%3A4lQ2iqJwnMqxBIz96UqJ2Q%3D%3D&CSUserId=8254&CSGroupId=5

Posted by lois at 01:04 PM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2008

Center for Uban Pedagogy Launches Making Policy Public

CUP launches Making Policy Public
1 message
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CUP Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 4:23 PM
To: info@anothercupdevelopment.org
1. MPP launch party, NY
2. MPP call for proposals
3. MPP for sale
................................................................
1. MPP launch party, NY
Please join us this Thursday at Printed Matter to celebrate the launch of Making Policy Public, CUP's new series of collaborative publications.
Making Policy Public launch party
Thursday, March 13, 5 – 7 pm
Printed Matter Inc.
195 10th Avenue
New York, NY
C/E to 23rd Street

What do you get when you put together policy wonks and cutting-edge visual thinkers? Find out on March 13 as CUP celebrates the publication of The Cargo Chain and Social Security Risk Machine. These are the first two issues of Making Policy Public, CUP’s new series of fold-out posters that uses innovative graphic design to explore and explain public policy. Each poster is the product of a commissioned collaboration between a designer and an advocate. The series aims to make information on public policy truly public: accessible, meaningful, and shared. We hope you join us in Chelsea for a night of cross-disciplinary celebration.

The Cargo Chain is an organizing tool for longshore workers that shows the players and pressure points in today’s globalized shipping network. How do commodities get from factory to shopping mall? Who really has the power to move today’s global economy? This fold-out poster was produced through a collaboration between the Longshore Workers Coalition, Labor Notes (a quarterly journal of labor journalism and research), cartographer Bill Rankin, and the graphic design office Thumb.

Social Security Risk Machine explains the mechanics of this "social machine": how it works, why it was created, where the money comes from and where it goes. Most importantly, the publication shows the many adjustments that can be made to keep the machine running. This publication was written by Sam Stark and designed by David Reinfurt and CUP’s Damon Rich.

CUP provides Making Policy Public collaborators with a stipend, manages the project, and provides additional support. Partnering organizations receive half of the print run to use in their education and advocacy work.

Making Policy Public is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the Diane Middleton Foundation, and the Brooklyn Arts Council.

2. MPP call for proposals
CUP is currently accepting proposals for the next issues of Making Policy Public. We are looking for advocates, writers, and researchers with complex policy issues that need visual explanation. Advocates chosen through the juried submission process will receive 1000 copies of the color publication to distribute directly to their constituents and an honorarium of $1000. To dowload the application, click here
http://www.anothercupdevelopment.org/resources/call%20for%20proposals.pdf

3. MPP for sale
We are also happy to announce that the first two issues of Making Policy Public are available for purchase through our website. Bring the wonders of Social Security or the international shipping network home today! Click on "Project Description" and scroll down to purchase.
http://www.anothercupdevelopment.org/projects/detail/54
______________________________
the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)
at the Old American Can Factory
232 Third Street #B402B
Brooklyn, NY 11215
(718) 596–7721
www.anothercupdevelopment.org

Posted by lois at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)

The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?

The prison industry in the United States: big business or a new form of slavery?

By Vicky Pelaez

Global Research, March 10, 2008
El Diario-La Prensa, New York

Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million - mostly Black and Hispanic - are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don't have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don't like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, "no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens." The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world's prison population, but only 5% of the world's people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.

What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?

"The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners' work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself," says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being "an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps."

The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States and its investors are on Wall Street. "This multimillion-dollar industry has its own trade exhibitions, conventions, websites, and mail-order/Internet catalogs. It also has direct advertising campaigns, architecture companies, construction companies, investment houses on Wall Street, plumbing supply companies, food supply companies, armed security, and padded cells in a large variety of colors."

According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.

CRIME GOES DOWN, JAIL POPULATION GOES UP

According to reports by human rights organizations, these are the factors that increase the profit potential for those who invest in the prison industry complex:

. Jailing persons convicted of non-violent crimes, and long prison sentences for possession of microscopic quantities of illegal drugs. Federal law stipulates five years' imprisonment without possibility of parole for possession of 5 grams of crack or 3.5 ounces of heroin, and 10 years for possession of less than 2 ounces of rock-cocaine or crack. A sentence of 5 years for cocaine powder requires possession of 500 grams - 100 times more than the quantity of rock cocaine for the same sentence. Most of those who use cocaine powder are white, middle-class or rich people, while mostly Blacks and Latinos use rock cocaine. In Texas, a person may be sentenced for up to two years' imprisonment for possessing 4 ounces of marijuana. Here in New York, the 1973 Nelson Rockefeller anti-drug law provides for a mandatory prison sentence of 15 years to life for possession of 4 ounces of any illegal drug.

. The passage in 13 states of the "three strikes" laws (life in prison after being convicted of three felonies), made it necessary to build 20 new federal prisons. One of the most disturbing cases resulting from this measure was that of a prisoner who for stealing a car and two bicycles received three 25-year sentences.

. Longer sentences.

. The passage of laws that require minimum sentencing, without regard for circumstances.

. A large expansion of work by prisoners creating profits that motivate the incarceration of more people for longer periods of time.

. More punishment of prisoners, so as to lengthen their sentences.

HISTORY OF PRISON LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES

Prison labor has its roots in slavery. After the 1861-1865 Civil War, a system of "hiring out prisoners" was introduced in order to continue the slavery tradition. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying out their sharecropping commitments (cultivating someone else's land in exchange for part of the harvest) or petty thievery - which were almost never proven - and were then "hired out" for cotton picking, working in mines and building railroads. From 1870 until 1910 in the state of Georgia, 88% of hired-out convicts were Black. In Alabama, 93% of "hired-out" miners were Black. In Mississippi, a huge prison farm similar to the old slave plantations replaced the system of hiring out convicts. The notorious Parchman plantation existed until 1972.

During the post-Civil War period, Jim Crow racial segregation laws were imposed on every state, with legal segregation in schools, housing, marriages and many other aspects of daily life. "Today, a new set of markedly racist laws is imposing slave labor and sweatshops on the criminal justice system, now known as the prison industry complex," comments the Left Business Observer.

Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom's, Revlon, Macy's, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call "highly skilled positions." At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.

Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.

Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix recently urged Nike to cut its production in Indonesia and bring it to his state, telling the shoe manufacturer that "there won't be any transportation costs; we're offering you competitive prison labor (here)."

PRIVATE PRISONS

The prison privatization boom began in the 1980s, under the governments of Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr., but reached its height in 1990 under William Clinton, when Wall Street stocks were selling like hotcakes. Clinton's program for cutting the federal workforce resulted in the Justice Departments contracting of private prison corporations for the incarceration of undocumented workers and high-security inmates.

Private prisons are the biggest business in the prison industry complex. About 18 corporations guard 10,000 prisoners in 27 states. The two largest are Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and Wackenhut, which together control 75%. Private prisons receive a guaranteed amount of money for each prisoner, independent of what it costs to maintain each one. According to Russell Boraas, a private prison administrator in Virginia, "the secret to low operating costs is having a minimal number of guards for the maximum number of prisoners." The CCA has an ultra-modern prison in Lawrenceville, Virginia, where five guards on dayshift and two at night watch over 750 prisoners. In these prisons, inmates may get their sentences reduced for "good behavior," but for any infraction, they get 30 days added - which means more profits for CCA. According to a study of New Mexico prisons, it was found that CCA inmates lost "good behavior time" at a rate eight times higher than those in state prisons.

IMPORTING AND EXPORTING INMATES

Profits are so good that now there is a new business: importing inmates with long sentences, meaning the worst criminals. When a federal judge ruled that overcrowding in Texas prisons was cruel and unusual punishment, the CCA signed contracts with sheriffs in poor counties to build and run new jails and share the profits. According to a December 1998 Atlantic Monthly magazine article, this program was backed by investors from Merrill-Lynch, Shearson-Lehman, American Express and Allstate, and the operation was scattered all over rural Texas. That state's governor, Ann Richards, followed the example of Mario Cuomo in New York and built so many state prisons that the market became flooded, cutting into private prison profits.

After a law signed by Clinton in 1996 - ending court supervision and decisions - caused overcrowding and violent, unsafe conditions in federal prisons, private prison corporations in Texas began to contact other states whose prisons were overcrowded, offering "rent-a-cell" services in the CCA prisons located in small towns in Texas. The commission for a rent-a-cell salesman is $2.50 to $5.50 per day per bed. The county gets $1.50 for each prisoner.

STATISTICS

Ninety-seven percent of 125,000 federal inmates have been convicted of non-violent crimes. It is believed that more than half of the 623,000 inmates in municipal or county jails are innocent of the crimes they are accused of. Of these, the majority are awaiting trial. Two-thirds of the one million state prisoners have committed non-violent offenses. Sixteen percent of the country's 2 million prisoners suffer from mental illness.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=8289

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

Western MA: Editorial: The high price of prisons

The high price of prisons
Editorial: Daily Hampshire Gazette
Northampton, MA
03/10/2008

America's criminal justice system has reached a dubious milestone: For the first time ever, one in 100 Americans are now serving time in either a jail or prison, according to a new study by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

As a result, the study found, the amount of money available for other public services - such as education - continues to decline as states struggle to build and operate prisons to keep pace with a growing population of inmates. In Massachusetts, the state is spending almost as much from its general fund on prisons as on education - about $1 billion every year, according to the study.

The stunning rise in America's prison population is a result of efforts over the last two decades to extend prison terms, particularly for drug crimes, and impose mandatory sentences, which take away a judge's discretion to place nonviolent offenders in community-based rehabilitation programs that are often more effective in lowering the rate of recidivism.

Last year alone, the states spent a total of $49 billion on their corrections systems, an $11 billion increase from 20 years before.

At the start of this year, more than 2.3 million Americans were being held in prisons or jails - more than any other country including China, which has 1.5 million people behind bars, and Russia, which has 890,000 inmates.

In Massachusetts, at the start of the year, the state's prison population stood at 11,364, a 3 percent increase from the year before. More than 7 percent of the state's employees are part of the corrections work force.

Minorities continue to make up a disproportionate share of prisoners nationwide. Among white men 18 years and older, the rate of incarceration is one in 106; that compares to one in 36 for Hispanics, and one in 15 for African-Americans.

States across the nation are struggling to contain the soaring costs of their prison systems. In California, for example, prison spending totaled $8.8 billion last year; that doesn't include the $7.9 billion in spending, through lease revenue bonds, authorized last year for 53,000 more prison and jail beds. As California attempts to deal with a projected $14.5 billion budget shortfall, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed the release of more than 22,100 nonviolent offenders from the state's prisons to save an estimated $1.1 billion.

With money rapidly being siphoned off from other public services, states have been considering a number of reforms aimed at keeping some nonviolent offenders out of prison. These include community-based reporting centers, drug-treatment programs, electronic monitoring systems and community service.

Clearly, the nation can't sustain its current rate of spending on prisons. In Massachusetts, and elsewhere, lawmakers need to rise above their fear of being perceived as soft on crime and seriously consider sentencing reform. Otherwise, we'll continue on the path to becoming a nation that places a higher priority on putting people behind bars than giving children a decent education.

Posted by lois at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

NY Times Editorial: "Prison Nation"

March 10, 2008
Editorial, NY Times
Prison Nation

After three decades of explosive growth, the nation’s prison population has reached some grim milestones: More than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are serving time, as are 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men.

Nationwide, the prison population hovers at almost 1.6 million, which surpasses all other countries for which there are reliable figures. The 50 states last year spent about $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11 billion in 1987. Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much money or more to corrections as they do to higher education.

These statistics, contained in a new report from the Pew Center on the States, point to a terrible waste of money and lives. They underscore the urgent challenge facing the federal government and cash-strapped states to reduce their overreliance on incarceration without sacrificing public safety. The key, as some states are learning, is getting smarter about distinguishing between violent criminals and dangerous repeat offenders, who need a prison cell, and low-risk offenders, who can be handled with effective community supervision, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug treatment programs, combined in some cases with shorter sentences.

Persuading public officials to adopt a more rational, cost-effective approach to prison policy is a daunting prospect, however, not least because building and running jailhouses has become a major industry.

Criminal behavior partly explains the size of the prison population, but incarceration rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen. Any effort to reduce the prison population must consider the blunderbuss impact of get-tough sentencing laws adopted across the United States beginning in the 1970’s. Many Americans have come to believe, wrongly, that keeping an outsized chunk of the population locked up is essential for sustaining a historic crime drop since the 1990’s.

In fact, the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky. Some portion of the decline is attributable to tough sentencing and release policies. But crime is also affected by things like economic trends and employment and drug-abuse rates. States that lagged behind the national average in rising incarceration rates during the 1990’s actually experienced a steeper decline in crime rates than states above the national average, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group.

A rising number of states are broadening their criminal sanctions with new options for low-risk offenders that are a lot cheaper than incarceration but still protect the public and hold offenders accountable. In New York, the crime rate has continued to drop despite efforts to reduce the number of nonviolent drug offenders in prison.

The Pew report spotlights policy changes in Texas and Kansas that have started to reduce their outsized prison populations and address recidivism by investing in ways to improve the success rates for community supervision, expanding treatment and diversion programs, and increasing use of sanctions other than prison for minor parole and probation violations. Recently, the Supreme Court and the United States Sentencing Commission announced sensible changes in the application of harsh mandatory minimum drug sentences.

These are signs that the country may finally be waking up to the fiscal and moral costs of bulging prisons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/opinion/10mon1.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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

March 09, 2008

Crime pays for US prison companies

Crime pays for US prison companies
by Justin Cole
Sunday, March 9, 2008 - 04:30
France 24

Financiers, real-estate agents and car salesmen might be suffering
from America's economic malaise, but bulging jails have triggered a
profit boom for corrections companies.

The United States leads the world in the number of people it
incarcerates and government figures show the country's prison
population grew by three percent to a record 2.3 million inmates in
2006.

Harsher sentencing policies have put more criminals behind bars and
prison management firms such as the Corrections Corporation of
America (CCA) and The GEO Group are racing to build new jails or expand existing facilities to house more convicted felons.

CCA, the largest US private prison operator, is spending 205 million
dollars to build a new prison in Eloy, Arizona, to house 3,060
prisoners. It is also constructing a 105-million-dollar jail near
Natchez, Mississippi, to hold 1,668 inmates.

"As states struggle with overcrowded facilities, growing populations
and no meaningful supply of beds coming online, they are finding that
private correction companies, such as CCA, can deliver beds more
quickly and less expensively than they can develop themselves," CCA's
chief executive John Ferguson said in an email to AFP.

CCA's profits swelled to 35 million dollars in the fourth quarter of
last year, rising from 32 million in the same period of 2006, as
revenues jumped to 382 million dollars.

George Zoley, The GEO Group's chief executive, told analysts on a
conference call in February that 2007 had been a bonanza year and
predicted that "2008 will be an even better year" as more detention
facilities are filled.

A company spokesman declined to comment further on GEO's operations.

Its profits rose 10 percent to 11.5 million dollars during the fourth
quarter of 2007.

The GEO Group is expanding a leased detention center it manages in
Clayton County, Georgia, so it will be able to house almost 200 extra
inmates, and executives have said they are pursuing contracts in
Britain and South Africa.

CCA and GEO Group shares have declined as US stock markets have been
ravaged by a credit squeeze in recent months tied to an ongoing
housing slump, but they have not been singed nearly as badly as some
other industries.

Most jails in the United States are run by the federal government or
states, but corrections firms are winning more and more concessions.

Tennessee-based CCA; The GEO Group, which is headquartered in
Florida; and Cornell Companies, based in Texas, have recruited
veteran money managers and former federal officials and lawmakers to
bolster their executive and lobbying clout.

William Andrews, the chairman of CCA's board of directors, is also a
top executive at Kohlberg & Company, a large private-equity firm, and
has held a host of other high-ranking executive posts.

Norman Carlson, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons
(BOP), sits on GEO's board, and the resume of James Hyman, the chief
executive of Cornell Companies, highlights stints at General Electric
and McKinsey & Company.

Private groups guard over 100,000 federal and state prisoners,
according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, but that number is
expected to climb higher.

Advocacy groups say the "war on drugs" and changes in sentencing
laws, not rising crime rates, explain America's ballooning prison
population. A majority of those locked up are racial and ethnic
minorities.

Ryan King, a policy analyst with The Sentencing Project, said tougher
sentences and a reduction in the use of parole have fueled around a
sixfold rise in the US prison population since 1970.

"Generally, we don't believe that incarceration should be part of a
business model for profit. This is a public good, it's an effort to
rehabilitate, it's an effort to provide public safety and it should
be governed by those principles rather than principles of profit,"
King said.

Whether companies or the government can run prisons more cost-
effectively is a difficult question to answer and has stymied some
government investigators.

"BOP does not have the data necessary to do a methodically sound cost
comparison of its various alternatives for confining inmates in low-
and minimum-security facilities," the Government Accountability
Office said in a detailed October report.

The GAO judged that without such data it was impossible to say
whether private jails are more cost effective than government-run
facilities.

Comparisons are tricky because prisons vary in size, have different
rehabilitation programs and varying staffing needs.
http://www.france24.com/en/20080309-crime-pays-us-prison-companies

Posted by lois at 05:56 PM | Comments (0)

March 08, 2008

Foundation Is Questioned After Memoir Is Exposed

March 6, 2008, NY Times
Foundation Is Questioned After Memoir Is Exposed
By MOTOKO RICH

The author who confessed this week to making up her memoir, “Love and Consequences,” about growing up as a foster child in gang-ridden South-Central Los Angeles, appears also to have made up a foundation that she claimed was helping “to reduce gang violence and mentor urban teens.”

Margaret Seltzer, who wrote under the pseudonym Margaret B. Jones, referred to the International Brother/SisterHood in the author biography that appeared on the back flap of the book. The memoir was published by Riverhead Books, a unit of Penguin Group USA, and released last Thursday. With help from her agent, Faye Bender, Ms. Seltzer also set up a Web site, brothersisterhood.com, in October to describe the foundation and promote her book. Since the revelations about the book, however, Ms. Bender has taken down the Web site.

No record of the foundation could be found with the Internal Revenue Service or the states of Oregon, where Ms. Seltzer lives, or California.

Ms. Bender said she helped set up Ms. Seltzer’s foundation Web site because the author said she lacked money to buy Internet server space. “She explained several times that it was a budding organization,” Ms. Bender said. “She said that the people involved were gang members and they were working to help other gang members and help other kids not get into gangs.” Ms. Bender said she asked no further questions, but added that Ms. Seltzer did not solicit funds on the site.

Ms. Seltzer’s cellphone was not taking messages on Wednesday, and she did not return an e-mail message or a message left with Ms. Bender. But in a telephone interview on Monday, Ms. Seltzer said she met many gang members and their families through her activism. “You meet one person, you meet their friends, you meet their family and that’s your friends,” she said. “All I can say is it’s a very, very small world.”

Leaders of several other groups combating gang violence in Los Angeles who were listed on Ms. Seltzer’s Web site said they did not know of the International Brother/SisterHood or of Ms. Seltzer or Margaret B. Jones.

“I’ve never heard of her before in my life,” said Malik Spellman, an intervention prevention specialist at Unity T.W.O., which works to provide social services and stop gang activity in many South-Central Los Angeles neighborhoods and was listed on Ms. Seltzer’s site. “I believe if she was active, I would probably know her by name or the organization.”

Ms. Seltzer claimed in the book to be part American Indian and said she grew up with an African-American foster family in South-Central Los Angeles running drugs for the Bloods. In fact she has no such heritage and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of suburban Los Angeles with her biological family and graduated from a private Episcopal day school.

Khalid Shah, executive director of Stop the Violence, Increase the Peace Foundation, another organization listed by Ms. Seltzer, said he had not heard of Ms. Seltzer or her foundation. “She’s been doing her homework if she has all those organizations listed,” he said. “She must know something about something, or has done a lot of reading. It’s easy to get a lot of stuff off the Internet.”

Constance L. Rice, a co-director of the Los Angeles office of Advancement Project, a civil rights advocacy group, who wrote a report last year about reducing gang violence for the Los Angeles City Council, said that there were 50,000 to 80,000 gang members in Los Angeles County, and it was always possible that Ms. Seltzer worked with some of them. But Ms. Rice said that she did not know Ms. Seltzer or her foundation and noted that, as a white woman, Ms. Seltzer would have likely stood out in most neighborhoods of South-Central Los Angeles.

Ms. Rice said it was just as likely that Ms. Seltzer had taken her inspiration from television and movies. “She’s been watching too much of ‘The Shield,’ ” said Ms. Rice, referring to the rough-edged police drama on FX set in Los Angeles. “All you have to do is go to a couple of movies or watch ‘The Wire,’ ” the Baltimore street drama on HBO. “You could riff off that forever,” she said.

Ms. Seltzer said on Monday that although she fabricated the personal story, many of the incidents in the memoir were based on experiences of friends in the gang world.

Geoffrey Kloske, publisher of Riverhead, said that all he knew about the foundation was the wording that Ms. Seltzer asked to include on the book jacket. The publisher agreed to do so, no questions asked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/books/06fake.html?ex=1205470800&en=cd11e8eb072dbadb&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Posted by lois at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

Bill Clinton says he regrets crack sentencing disparity, Hillary disagrees

"And Mrs. Clinton opposed a moderate proposal by the United States Sentencing Commission that would have retroactively reduced the draconian penalties for possession of crack cocaine — a proposal supported by Mr. Obama, and by liberal as well as conservative judges."
From a March 1, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor, New York Times
A Card-Carrying Civil Libertarian
By JEFFREY ROSEN

Bill Clinton admits 'regret' on crack cocaine sentencing
By DeWayne Wickham

PHILADELPHIA — It was an expression of regret that didn't seem to register with the knot of journalists who came to cover the event — an apology that deserves more than fleeting attention.

In a keynote address last week at a University of Pennsylvania symposium commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Kerner Commission report on the causes of racial disturbances in the 1960s, Bill Clinton did what many politicians find hard to do: admit he made a big mistake.

"I regret more than I can say that we didn't do more on it," he said about his administration's failure to end the disparate sentencing for people convicted of crack and powder cocaine offenses. "I'm prepared to spend a significant portion of whatever life I've got left on the earth trying to fix this because I think it's a cancer," the former president said of the devastating impact this sentencing imbalance has had on blacks.

(Photo - Clinton: At race symposium last week. / By Matt Rourke, AP)

And, indeed, it is a cancer. Since they were first enacted in 1986, the federal sentencing guidelines have mandated the same prison terms for people convicted of selling 5 grams of crack cocaine as someone found guilty of selling 500 grams of powered cocaine.

Blacks impacted most

This disparate treatment of cocaine offenders has had a stark racial element to it since blacks are disproportionately more likely to be incarcerated for selling crack cocaine than whites and Hispanics who are more likely to be convicted of selling powered cocaine.

In 1995, when the U.S. Sentencing Commission first recommended eliminating the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity, President Clinton opposed that change. Two years later, during a White House meeting with members of The Trotter Group, an organization of black columnists, Clinton said he would support a reduction in sentencing ratio.

The following month, his administration urged Congress to narrow the crack-to-powder sentencing disparity down to 10-to-1. But federal lawmakers refused to do so, an inaction that has left black drug offenders to linger behind bars — serving nearly as much time in federal prisons as whites who were incarcerated for violent crimes.

Congressional inaction

Last year, the Sentencing Commission issued guidelines that will give judges the power to order a small reduction in the sentences of people imprisoned for selling crack cocaine. But Congress has shown little inclination to wipe out the sentencing guidelines.

When I asked Clinton during an onstage interview after his speech whether he regretted not eliminating the sentencing disparity, he said that while it was "politically impossible" to get the reduction he sought through Congress, he now believes the 1986 guidelines were a mistake that have taken a heavy toll on blacks.

"We sentenced with a shotgun instead of a rifle," he said of the congressional act.

In addition to calling on Congress to end this disparity, Clinton said there also needs to be "an aggressive effort to pass federal legislation to restore voting rights to people as soon as they get out of jail." Blacks, who are just 13% of the nation's population, were 41.6% of state and federal prisoners in 2006 and as a result far more likely to be hurt by state laws that deny convicted felons the right to vote.

While this was not the first time Clinton called for an elimination of the crack-to-powder sentencing disparity — he did so in a November 2000 Rolling Stone interview — it's the first time he has done it so unequivocally and forcefully.

Of course, it's a good bet that what Clinton said last week won't sit well with many critics, who will say this is too little, too late. But I don't think his apology — or his pledge to help repair the damage done by the sentencing disparity — should be summarily dismissed.

Of this nation's 43 presidents, Bill Clinton is one of a handful who has forged a meaningful bond with blacks. And I think the apology he offered last week is proof of his desire to maintain this friendship.

DeWayne Wickham writes on Tuesdays for USA TODAY.
Posted at 12:15 AM/ET, March 04, 2008
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/03/bill-clinton-ad.html

But what is Bill doing, other expressing regret, with his time left on earth to correct this injustice?)

Posted by lois at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2008

Western MA: Man sentenced to Hampden County Jail for Drug Possession Hangs Himself

Westfield man hangs self in jail
Thursday, March 06, 2008
By GEORGE GRAHAM
Springfield Republican
LUDLOW - A 41-year-old Westfield man hanged himself on Tuesday at the Hampden County Correctional Center.

Kevin J. Small, of Westfield, hanged himself with a bed sheet that he had tied to the top bunk in his cell, said Richard J. McCarthy, spokesman for the Hampden County Sheriff's Department.

A corrections officer discovered Small hanging from the bunk at 5:35 p.m. and immediately cut him down, McCarthy said.

Facility medical personnel worked to revive him, but to no avail, McCarthy said.

Outside paramedics joined the effort at about 5:50 and Small was pronounced dead at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield at about 6:35 p.m., McCarthy said.

Small's death, as with all correctional facility deaths, was investigated by state police detectives, McCarthy said.

Small had been alone in his cell. Although his cell door had been unlocked, there was no evidence that anybody else had played a role in his death, McCarthy said.

The unit's on-duty officer is expected to make rounds every 30 minutes. Electronic and video information verified that he had done so.

McCarthy said Small was serving time for drug possession.

Small was screened at the start of his sentence, and there was no indication that he might be suicidal, McCarthy said.

Small was in a special unit for short-term inmates deemed to be low risk. He was serving the 14th day of a 90-day term, McCarthy said.

The unit, McCarthy said, was not crowded. It has a capacity of 77. Small had been one of 54 inmates there.

The facility has had other suicides, one in January 2006 and another in April 2003, McCarthy said. http://www.masslive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-13/1204791655257180.xml&coll=1

©2008 The Republican
© 2008 MassLive.com All Rights Reserved.

Posted by lois at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2008

MA: Breakdown: The Prison Suicide Crisis (3 articles)

3 articles in the Boston Globe
BREAKDOWN | THE PRISON SUICIDE CRISIS
A system strains, and inmates die
December 9, 2007
This story was reported by Globe Spotlight Team members Beth Healy, Michael Rezendes, Francie Latour, Jonathan Saltzman, and editor Thomas Farragher.
It was written by Healy.
First of three parts

His mother couldn't understand how he got the shoelaces.

After all, everyone knew Jarred Aranda was in danger. He had just tried to kill himself in jail.

Now, the handsome 27-year-old, with a to-do list in his pocket and a smile that hid his troubles, was being evaluated for mental illness at the state prison hospital in Bridgewater. He should have been safe there.

Locked up for stealing sneakers and violating probation, Aranda was deeply depressed. His mind was ravaged by crystal meth and other drugs his mother had begged him to quit. He'd been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and he was hearing voices.

But he told prison doctors he didn't want to die, and they believed him. Then they forgot about him.

No one from the prison clinical staff checked on him for 10 days. When a doctor finally did show up again, Aranda said he felt hopeless, and couldn't sleep. But the next day, he was allowed to walk into a shower, unattended, for 17 minutes. He had a set of shoelaces with him.

When an officer found him hanging from the shower door and sounded the "Code 99" alert last March, Aranda became the next in a series of 15 suicides in Massachusetts state prisons since early 2005. The deaths were coming at an alarming pace, roughly triple the rate in other states.

Last year alone, seven inmates killed themselves, and another's attempt left him brain dead; four have taken their lives so far this year.

Department of Correction officials say the suicides are random and unrelated. But a Globe Spotlight Team investigation of the deaths and detailed reconstruction of how they occurred found that they were far from random.

Most of the suicides came after careless errors and dangerous decisions by correction officials and the staff at UMass Correctional Health. And the trail of violence is far wider than the number of dead would indicate, as hundreds more inmates each year have wounded themselves or attempted suicide.

In fact, such incidents are soaring.

So common has it been to find a man with a makeshift noose around his neck that some correction officers have taken to carrying their own pocket tools to cut them down. The tally of suicide attempts and self-inflicted injuries - 513 last year and more than 3,200 over the past decade - tells a story of deepening mental illness and misery behind the walls of the state's prisons, despite repeated calls for better training of officers and safer cells for mentally troubled inmates.

The Globe found that background screens were botched as inmates arrived at prison. Medical and mental health records went missing or were never reviewed. Security rounds were skipped. Inmates in distress were punished for behavior that amounted to a cry for help, or at least a signal that greater precautions were needed.

"You're taking people who are vulnerable and can't cope in society," said Dr. Carl Fulwiler, a psychiatrist who consults to prisons and is an assistant professor at University of Massachusetts Medical School, "and putting them in the worst situation imaginable."

The Department of Correction guards the details of these events in secrecy, revealing little to the public, or even to the families of the suicide victims.

But internal investigative reports obtained from other prison sources by the Globe show that, in case after case, the suicides occurred at times when inmates were predictably at risk - within days or hours of arriving at prison, being sent to isolation, or withdrawing from drugs. Or, as with Jarred Aranda, in the tenuous period after a prior suicide attempt.

Aranda's grandfather was the first to get the call that he was dead. Then his mother.

"Who let him go in the shower alone?" Leslie Aranda would later ask tearfully. "I thought he was safe."

A system under strain

They are people whom society has, in many cases, written off.

Among the 15 suicides, almost all of them men, half were criminals convicted of murder or rape. Some were small-time thieves or drug dealers. A few hadn't been convicted of anything; they were in prison awaiting trial. The one woman was in only to detox.

Virtually all of them were troubled long before they were locked up, with mental health issues or drug abuse dating back to their youth. They and others like them increasingly are populating prisons in Massachusetts and across the country.

Today, one-quarter of the state's 11,000 prisoners are being treated for some kind of mental illness, up from 15 percent in 1998. It's a legacy, in part, of the elimination of many state mental institutions in the 1980s and half the state's detox beds in 2004. In June, there were 1,097 inmates taking antipsychotic medications, up from 595 in December 1998.

The suicides are just the most visible signs of a system under strain. State taxpayers spend $55 million a year on medical and mental health care for inmates in the state prisons, and nearly half a billion dollars for all prison costs. And while troubled inmates are dying and hundreds more are trying to die, most will serve their sentences and one day be released - often sicker than when they arrived.

"That's the danger of the larger prison culture we're creating," said Dr. Scott A. Allen, a former prison physician in Rhode Island and now co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University. "As a society now, we've taken mental health problems into this prison setting, and we're dealing with them in a punitive way."

The casualties are people like Andrew Armstrong, 22 and mentally ill, who hanged himself eight hours after being locked in an isolation cell for getting into a fight.

Or Nicole Davis, 24, who was found hanging after asking for medical help all night; she was depressed and detoxing, alone in her cell.

Or Nelson Rodriguez, 26 and mentally retarded, who killed himself in MCI-Cedar Junction's dungeon-like "10-Block" wing, despite warnings by the mental health staff that solitary confinement would likely harm him. New rules put in place after his death have proved far from foolproof: In July, a mentally ill man killed himself in 10-Block, prompting the US Marshals Service to investigate and to remove some federal detainees from the Walpole prison.

Case study in disaster

Anthony Garafolo is a case study in how a difficult situation can turn to disaster at the Department of Correction.

The 46-year-old Ludlow native, admitted to MCI-Shirley in June of 2006, had spent a third of his life behind bars, convicted time and again of stealing to support a drug habit. In one 1990 robbery, he took a bullet in the back that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

He was an angry man in prison, and often hard to handle.

Garafolo had been emotionally broken since being abused by a notorious priest at age 15. And he was depressed at the disability that left him using a wheelchair and made basic bodily functions a difficult chore. Over the years, he racked up a stack of disciplinary reports for breaking rules and verbally abusing prison staff. He had twice before tried to kill himself in prison, once while in isolation.

On June 19 last year, he was caught in a downward spiral that was steep and violent. It was 90 degrees outside the walls of the prison that day, and behind the thick, locked door of Garafolo's prison infirmary room, it felt even hotter.

A wound had reopened after a recent surgery - an ulcerated sore from sitting long hours in a wheelchair. He had a fever and kept asking for pain medication, records show. He couldn't reach the sink for water. He was filthy and needed to bathe, but the shower in the corner of his room wasn't wheelchair-accessible.

And he wasn't making his care any easier, angrily banging on his door, shouting and cursing at the staff.

No doubt, the recent change in his prison circumstances had also inflamed him. Garafolo had gone from an unshackled interlude at UMass Memorial Medical Center for surgery - a comparatively happy time with family visits and a birthday celebration - to a stopover in the locked-down wing of the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Boston, to the infirmary at Shirley.

And for reasons top department officials cannot explain, at Shirley he was being held in segregation - the prison regime for troublemakers - meaning he was in isolation for 23 hours a day with no basic privileges, no phone calls, no TV. And, it seemed to Garafolo, no air. Despite his pleas, the officers on duty would not unlock the food trap in his door, about the size of a large mail slot, according to his cell-block neighbor, Miguel Perez, who said he was allowed the small bit of ventilation.

When Garafolo's mother visited, she had to talk to him through a glass window - a punishment reserved for segregated prisoners.

"I couldn't touch him," said Lorraine J. Jaillet, who last saw her son three days before his death. "He was crying. I've never seen so many tears."

Virtually every safety measure that might have helped Garafolo in the last six days of his life failed, prison records show.

First, the booking officer at Shirley looked up Garafolo's suicide-attempt history but did not tell the mental health staff what he found. Second, his prison records didn't arrive with him that night, so the intake nurse never examined them. She relied on Garafolo to say if he had any mental health issues, and he said no.

Third, the medical staff failed to alert mental health clinicians that Garafolo had been prescribed psychiatric medication at the hospital. MCI-Shirley's mental health director, Merleen Mills, told department investigators she was away when Garafolo arrived and didn't know he was there until his fifth day. Records show that no one from her staff went to see him.

That was particularly troubling, given the dangerous confusion over Garafolo's segregation status. Reports filed by correction officers say he was being protected from inmate enemies. But that was not reflected in the official prison record. As a result, Garafolo was never seen by a mental health clinician, as required when an inmate is segregated, to ensure he can handle the psychic strains of isolation.

It seemed everyone knew Garafolo was in crisis except the jailers and medical staff charged with his care. His half-brother, Dennis, also incarcerated at Shirley at the time, heard Anthony was in trouble and managed to visit him briefly. A sympathetic officer unlocked the slot in the door, Dennis Garafolo recalled, so he could reach his arm through it. Anthony just held his hand and cried.

"The way I saw that room, it was like being in the hole," Dennis Garafolo said, using prison slang for isolation.

For the last 20 hours of his life, Anthony Garafolo lashed out at staff members and beat on his door. He threatened to harm the wife and children of a sergeant, and demanded to be sent to another prison. When Garafolo smashed his cell window, his neighbor, Perez, feared for him.

The commotion stretched into the early-morning hours, but no one called the mental health staff, records show. Not the captain who threatened Garafolo with four-point restraints. Not the nurses, who had to have him shackled to give him care. Not the officers who had him locked down in segregation.

At 5:56 a.m. on June 20, Garafolo was found hanging from a sheet tied to the shower knob - a long reach from his wheelchair.

A handwritten letter by his bed said: "I can't fight any longer. . . . I going crazy just being in here this long. Don't let this happen to nobody again."

To this day, Lorraine Jaillet insists her son did not kill himself and plans to sue the Department of Correction. Family and friends say Garafolo would not have ended his life without writing to his mother. A pastor who visited Garafolo several times, Paul Suckling of the United Church of God in Worcester, was stunned. "There was frustration, sometimes depression, but nothing close to suicide," Suckling said.

His brother Dennis said, "Either my brother was pushed to that, or he felt doomed."

Desperation in isolation

Emotional desperation is common among those in isolation. It makes even healthy people sick and has a disastrous effect on people with mental illness, according to psychiatrists familiar with the effects of solitary confinement.

"It leaves you alone with your own delusions," said Dr. Matthew P. Dumont, a Cambridge psychiatrist. "It is actually the stupidest and most dysfunctional thing to do to a mentally ill prisoner."

And yet it remains a common form of discipline. In October, there were 345 inmates segregated in Massachusetts prisons, not including those held in other isolated settings, like Garafolo's infirmary room. Nationally, there were 80,870 segregation beds in 2000, following a political push, begun in the mid-1990s, for harder time for convicts and more maximum security cells, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, a research group.

But the Spotlight investigation found that, even as the suicide rate climbed, the prison system continued to rely on this dangerous tool, saying it had no alternative for violent inmates. Nine of the Massachusetts's suicides since 2005 have involved inmates held in isolation.

Dr. Robert B. Diener, a psychiatrist and medical director at Bridgewater State Hospital, regularly sees men who have been in isolation at Walpole, kept in a 9-by-6-foot cell 23 hours a day. He said it is psychologically unhealthy for inmates to be confined that way for long periods.

"They're deprived of normal life experiences," he said. "They can become outrageous."

Even a short period of isolation can be too much for some. It was for Miguel Velasquez.

He was not a convict but rather a federal detainee awaiting trial on gun possession charges when he arrived at MCI-Cedar Junction, the maximum security facility in Walpole, just over a year ago. He had a history of mental illness for which he was being treated, and his behavior behind bars had been generally good.

But then in July he punched another inmate. The price for that would be steep: a trip to the infamous 10-Block isolation unit, home to some of the system's most difficult prisoners. Facing that prospect, Velasquez snapped, records show. He resisted a mandatory strip search, then angrily refused to put his clothes back on. And so he was shackled and marched naked down the hallway to a tiny, windowless cell, according to written reports of the incident.

An officer locked the door with bars, and then, as punishment, shut the outer, solid door as well. Velasquez, 33, was dead three hours later, having hanged himself with a piece of the shirt he wouldn't wear. He was the third inmate in two years to take his life behind a solid door in 10-Block.

The last hours of Velasquez's life were marked by two critical failures by prison and medical staff, the department's preliminary suicide report says.

The nurse who cleared Velasquez for isolation did not examine his mental health records, according to the report. Then, the officer who closed the solid door of his cell door did so without telling his commander or ensuring that mental health clinicians were notified, as department rules require.

His death alarmed Miriam Conrad, the lawyer in the federal defender's office who had represented Velasquez. "Pretrial detainees have a basic right, as well as a constitutional right, to be treated humanely," she said.

The US Marshals Service was paying the Department of Correction $90 a day for Velasquez's "housing, safekeeping, and subsistence." Yvonne Bonner, the acting US Marshal in Boston, said Velasquez's assignment to the state's bleakest prison was purely by chance.

"It's an old facility. It's a depressing site," Bonner said. But, she observed, "I would think being in segregation would be the safest place they could be."

When first contacted by the Globe, Bonner said her office had no plan to probe Velasquez's death beyond a cursory review of the Department of Correction's report. But after learning from the Globe of the errors reflected in prison documents, Bonner reopened the investigation. She said that no federal detainees would be placed at Cedar Junction until the investigation was completed. Several detainees with known mental health issues have since been moved to other prisons.

James R. Bender, the Department of Correction's deputy commissioner, said staff members who failed to follow protocol in the Velasquez case could be disciplined.

A man unraveling

Glen Bourgeois lasted four months in 10-Block.

He landed at Walpole in August 2006 after getting caught in a relationship with a female employee at Old Colony Correctional Center and for having a hacksaw and other contraband in his cell. At 44, he had served 21 years for his role in a murder during a robbery, and he had allegedly been planning to escape. Bourgeois had recently lost hope about his appeal attempts, according to a friend of his and correction officers, and was grappling with the life sentence ahead of him.

In letters to his brother, Bourgeois complained about the oppressive boredom of "the hole." He read books and newspapers, and wrote letters to a pen pal.

For the most part, Bourgeois didn't give correction officers trouble in his final months. But the preliminary prison report on his suicide describes a man falling apart.

Bourgeois complained of panic attacks soon after arriving at 10-Block, saying the noise made him want to bash his head against a wall. But when a clinician came to see him, he said he was "all set."

Twice Bourgeois refused orders to allow the solid door of his cell to be closed, once sticking his arm through the bars to block it. For that he was to receive further punishment: No radio until mid-December and no telephone calls until Jan. 21, 2007, a date he wouldn't live to see.

By October, Bourgeois had been suffering from migraine headaches for two months. He was prescribed Prozac for stress.

In November, Bourgeois went on a hunger strike, but records show he wasn't seen by mental health, as required. They did finally visit him on Nov. 16, for the 90-day mental status checkup required for all inmates in segregation.

On Dec. 27, Bourgeois was found hanging at 4:34 a.m. No one could see him do it because his solid door was closed. Prison officials say he asked for it to be shut, for quiet.

Bourgeois's brother, Michael Hook-DiMarino, was disturbed when he saw the text of his brother's suicide note, a note he said prison officials had told him did not exist. "Consider my sentence paid in full," it said. "I did the only thing I felt I could do to stop my headaches. I have plan this for almost a month, there was no one I could ask for help without being put in worse living conditions than I am in already."

With Bourgeois's death, Hook-DiMarino lost the last member of his immediate family. He said of his brother: "You have to pay for your crime. But you're still human."

A sentence without a crime

The warning signs are often obvious. But prison staff, hardened by what they consider inmates' manipulative behavior, can be blind to them.

Last December, Nicole Davis was sent for detox to MCI-Framingham, the state women's prison, for 30 days. She was not serving a sentence for a crime.

Her family had filed court papers to have Davis civilly committed, to help her shake the drugs she had been addicted to for years - and to head off the arrest warrants she was facing for several open theft cases, and for using a credit card her boyfriend had stolen.

Her parents had hoped to commit her to a private facility. And Davis's lawyer argued to send her to a New Bedford treatment center used by the state as an alternative to prison for women in detox. But Judge Robert G. Harbour at Taunton District Court felt she should be sent to a "secure facility."

"The judge told us she'd be safe at Framingham," said Nicole's mother, Rosamond.

But that was not to be. Judge Harbour told the Globe, "It's something that I'll never forget."

The detox regime was primitive. Coming down off heroin, the antianxiety drug Klonopin, and possibly other substances, Davis was locked in a room at night, with correction officers periodically watching her door. She told a mental health clinician that she had been depressed since the death of her baby boy, Nathan, in foster care seven months earlier.

She denied feeling suicidal, according to prison records. But her parents said they saw real distress on their visit Dec. 19, the day after Davis's 24th birthday. Davis begged them not to leave.

"She said, 'I want you to stay because if you don't stay, I have to go back up in the hole,' " her mother recalled. Davis hated to be alone, her father said.

That night, Davis was left alone in a spartan cement cell in the infirmary. She was kept there after alleging that a male officer had groped her. It was a claim the officials doubted, according to the investigative report of her death.

Around midnight, Robert and Rosamond Davis were awakened by police at their Norton home. They called MCI-Framingham, as directed, and soon heard prison Superintendent Lynn M. Bissonnette tell them their daughter had died in a "bizarre incident," Robert Davis recalls.

Throughout her last evening alive, Nicole Davis repeatedly asked for medical care, Dr. Philip DeChavez said in the department's suicide review. The staff checked on her but thought she was just seeking drugs or attention. At 10:29 p.m., an officer found her, sitting on the cell floor with a sheet around her neck.

Clinicians and staff members involved in Davis's suicide review mulled some fundamental questions. Might inmates undergoing drug or alcohol withdrawal be at risk to themselves once they're sober? Should they have a new mental health check-up after detoxing?

The panel members decided such assessments would not help. However, Bissonnette, the superintendent, did propose that women no longer be left alone. According to the report, she was concerned that heightened feelings of isolation could "result in an increase risk of self-harm."

"The women," Bissonnette told the Globe, "can't tolerate it."

At great risk

Sean Turner was another left to fight through detox on his own.

Turner was alone in a cell at MCI-Concord, withdrawing from daily intravenous heroin use without proper medical oversight on the day he took his life.

According to the Department of Correction's own procedures, Turner should not have been admitted to Concord at all on July 11, 2005. At that time, the old prison on Route 2 had no beds for inmates going through withdrawal. The department's review of Turner's suicide says, "MCI Concord does not have detox protocols in place and all detox patients are transferred to infirmary sites or the local hospital for care." But, it goes on to say, "Mr. Turner was released to population," meaning to an ordinary cell.

When Turner, 47, arrived at Concord that night - awaiting trial on motor vehicle and drug charges - he was experiencing nausea from withdrawal. A physician reviewed his intake report, and the nurse ordered detox medication, according to the department's reports. But she did not write a progress note or notify the on-call physician of the detox plan.

Over the next two days, Turner was quiet, according to inmates interviewed by the department. He sat alone in the chow hall, played dominoes, and went to the library, they said, but he was depressed and fearing a long prison term.

On the morning of July 13, Turner went to the medication line at 8 a.m., an inmate said, but was turned away. He took a shower about 10:30 a.m., went to lunch, and was seen lying on his bunk at 1:45 p.m. An inmate says he asked Turner for stamps at 2:10 p.m.

At 2:30 p.m., when most inmates were out in the yard and his cellmate was away at court, Turner was found hanging from a sheet attached to a wall vent. He'd had plenty of time to do it: Two correction officers on duty failed to make their scheduled hourly rounds that afternoon, according to department investigators' review of a prison videotape. The officers lied in the investigative interview, claiming they had made the rounds. They received 30-day suspensions.

"I just can't imagine that they would put anyone in his circumstance into a room and just leave them," Turner's mother, Dianne Hawkes, said of her eldest child, a smart student with a knack for mechanics, woodworking, and photography. "I think they were completely negligent."

Aside from the physical dangers, psychiatrists and prison officials say detoxing can bring on severe depression. For some inmates, it's the first time they've been sober in months or years, and they find themselves suddenly facing the reality of incarceration, said Karin T. Bergeron, superintendent at Bridgewater State Hospital.

"Many of these men are at great risk for suicidality," she said.

Falling through the cracks

That was certainly the case for Jarred Aranda. By the time he arrived at Bridgewater last spring, he'd been at the Bristol County jail in North Dartmouth for three months.

Aranda was in the midst of the longest stretch of sobriety he'd experienced in recent memory, he told a Bridgewater psychiatrist, and he was feeling poorly. He had all but forgotten the comforts of his youth: the house with the big lawn, the swimming pool, the dinners in his grandmother's kitchen. He hadn't wanted his mother or sister to see him at Bristol County, where he stole a correction officer's lunchbox and fought with him. He tried to hang himself with shoelaces, then cut his wrist with a plastic knife.

Days later he spent his first night at Bridgewater, alone in a treatment unit, but under frequent watch. The next day, he was removed from seclusion but kept under close observation. Two days later, he was sent to a less restrictive area.

That's when Aranda fell through the cracks. No one took responsibility for him for nearly two weeks, according to the department's records.

On his last full day alive, Aranda told a psychiatrist his depression was getting worse. On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being worst), he felt like a seven or eight. The doctor prescribed Lithium and Seroquel for Aranda's bipolar symptoms and Wellbutrin for depression. It's unclear if Aranda took the medication; he had refused it since arriving at the hospital.

Just a few days before, Aranda's father and stepmother had visited him. They said he talked about the future, about changing his life. He didn't complain; he never wanted his family to worry.

But on the night of March 30, prison records show, Aranda took the laces out of his roommate's sneakers. And headed for the shower.

Left in uncertain hands, a haunted life ends tragically

December 10, 2007

Second of three parts

This story was reported by Globe Spotlight Team members Francie Latour, Michael Rezendes, Beth Healy, Jonathan Saltzman, and editor Thomas Farragher. It was written by Latour.

To the teen mother who struggled to raise him, he was slow, abnormal, and often out of control.

To the counselors who tried to steer him from trouble in Springfield, he was a child trapped in the body of a pudgy young man, the charmer who couldn't count the change in his own pocket.

And to prison clinicians who knew him behind bars, he was, above all, a "frequent flier," their code for inmates who require the constant attention of the mental health staff.

By the time Nelson Rodriguez walked through the heavy metal doors of state prison in 2004, convicted in a stabbing case, he had long since been diagnosed as mentally retarded and mentally ill - a man unable to grasp even the most basic concepts.

But as an inmate, the 26-year-old Rodriguez was routinely punished for acting out in ways he could not control. Time and again, his jailers used the same blunt tools - isolation and loss of basic privileges - to deal with him.

The discipline never improved his behavior; in fact, he got worse. It ran directly against warnings by prison clinicians. But it kept coming - for him as for many of the mentally ill who have overwhelmed the prison system.

During 18 months in state custody, the young man with the lazy eye and troubled mind spent a quarter of his time - about 145 days - in solitary confinement.

On Dec. 20, 2005, five days after his last transfer into the forbidding Walpole prison unit known as 10-Block, Rodriguez's isolation was pressed to the extreme. Officers shut an outer solid door over the bars of his cell and walked away.

Sometime in the next four hours, Rodriguez tied a strip of bed sheet to the metal cover around his cell's smoke detector. He wrapped the other end around his neck, and hanged himself.

When it comes to suicide behind bars, it is impossible to expect total prevention, state Department of Correction officials say. With some determined inmates, Associate Commissioner Veronica Madden said, "It seems that they really wanted to die."

But the death of Nelson Rodriguez in cell 49 is not that kind of story. Rather, his is the story of the kind of inmate now flooding the corrections system: the mentally ill for whom prison is increasingly the asylum of last resort. The Globe Spotlight team dwelled in depth on his short life and sorry end as a way to understand why men like Rodriguez wind up behind bars and why too many die there.

Rodriguez was a man-child with a hard-wired inability to learn at the mercy of a system where punishment and more punishment is often the only real response to inmates with little or no ability to control their behavior.

It is a practice that amounts, in some cases, to an invitation to give up on life.

"He is someone who definitely should not have been put in isolation because of his condition. There's no question about that," said Terry Kupers, a national specialist on mental illness in prisons, who reviewed Rodriguez's records. "Putting [mentally ill inmates] in segregation and then closing the solid door to their cell is like asking them to commit suicide."

Madden told the Globe that Rodriguez's suicide was a tragedy, for him, his family, and for her department.

"This was a deeply troubled young man presenting with a very complex set of circumstances in a very noncomplex system that we run," she said.

Madden also said that she had not known that Rodriguez was mentally retarded.

"We hear now that he was mentally retarded," she said. "I don't have any documentation on that. Did that come up in court? Where was that prior?"

In fact, court records and internal reports are peppered with references to Rodriguez's mental retardation. Those records include a 2006 suicide review in which Madden herself was an observer. They stretch back to Rodriguez's first contact with the Department of Correction in 2003, and among those who treated him it was anything but a secret.

"You could talk to him about skills and ways to cope and strategies, but he wouldn't retain it," said one of Rodriguez's former clinicians, who treated him for about a year and who asked not to be named because of department policies that forbid discussing inmates. "He didn't have the skills to say, 'If I'm good for three more days, I'll be out of [solitary confinement].' He just couldn't do that."

Instead, Rodriguez lashed out - and fell apart.

Yet he wasn't on the radar screen of the mental health staff as a high-risk inmate, according to one internal Correction Department review obtained by the Globe.

At Walpole, no one in charge seemed to know anything about a doctor's warning that placing Rodriguez in solitary confinement posed a serious danger to his mental state, and to his safety.

Instead, after he cut his arms and throat, he was sent to one of the most restricted and bleak holding units Walpole had to offer: 10-Block.

"He'd never make it there," Rodriguez's former clinician said of Rodriguez's transfer. "I mean, he didn't make it there, obviously."

A troubled child

When he was a little boy, Nelson Rodriguez was haunted by a monster. It tormented his dreams and lurked around corners.

At age 10, he told a psychologist that the monster would kill his friends, eat his mother, and throw him into water burning with fire. Naturally, he gave the monster a name: Freddy, as in Freddy Krueger, the horror movie serial killer.

If Rodriguez's fantasy world was horrific, his boyhood reality was filled with frustration and pain.

His IQ was well below normal. He had a seizure disorder, and tests strongly suggested some form of brain damage. As he approached his 11th birthday, he still wet his bed. And he had no friends. Instead, his peers taunted him mercilessly.

All the while, the mother he dreamed that Freddy would devour was at once the focus of all the boy's devotion, and his rage.

Mildred DeJesus, 18 years old when she gave birth to Rodriguez, couldn't handle her son's violent outbursts, or any of the burdens of raising a child who, in her words, "was not normal." After Rodriguez began exhibiting strange, hypersexual behavior - exposing himself and preying on his toddler stepbrothers - DeJesus grew desperate. Ultimately, she signed over custody of her son to the state.

To his relatives in Springfield, it was clear what had happened. In an interview, Rodriguez's aunt, his grandmother, and his youngest half-brother described young Nelson as a torment, even as they acknowledged that his disability and mental illness were to blame.

"You wanted to trust him," said Dezi Rodriguez, who at 20 has just begun to forgive the brother who once menaced him. "You wanted to give him a chance, but you couldn't."

When told that Rodriguez would speak of his mother with longing to almost anyone he would meet, all three looked up, stared, and fell silent. "Believe me," Mary DeJesus, Rodriguez's aunt, said finally of her sister, who died of AIDS in 1999. "She would try so hard to love that kid."

As Nelson grew into adolescence, little changed. Clinicians still saw traits bordering on psychosis. At 17, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for six weeks. He bounced erratically between foster families and group homes.

And in a system already awash with unwanted children who soon grow into unwanted teenagers, Rodriguez became his own worst enemy: He was just smart enough to know he did not want to be labeled "retarded," and just verbal enough to try to convince people that he wasn't.

Jim Nash, a Springfield-area advocate for the disabled, was one of several counselors who took Rodriguez in for short periods of time as a young adult. Rodriguez was 18 at the time, but, with his goofy grin and impossible naiveté, he struck Nash as more like his own two toddlers than as a young man.

"He was able to posture and hold himself and look like some regular dude walking down the street," Nash said. "But in reality, there was nothing below the surface. There was no good framework for how to face the world."

At a critical period, between the ages of 18 and 22, Rodriguez's posturing fooled many of those charged with determining his future. In 1999, clinicians and the courts deemed him competent to care for himself without a guardian.

To the frustration of advocates, Rodriguez was in a social services limbo. He was too old for DSS services and would not ordinarily be eligible for services from the Department of Mental Retardation until age 22, although local DMR caseworkers tried to intervene.

At the same time, no one could force him to accept help. That was key, because Rodriguez was fed up with services, rules, and restrictions.

Jason Nelson, a part-time counselor and Comcast worker who lives in Chicopee, was one of the last people to help Rodriguez, and one of the most determined. In the year he spent as Rodriguez's guardian, he faithfully drove him to his night job washing dishes at a local restaurant and coaxed him to take the medications Rodriguez hated.

But after a year of hostile, unexplained outbursts from Rodriguez, Jason Nelson found himself hitting the same brick wall Rodriguez's mother had reached years earlier.

"I was at my wit's end," he said. "I was emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted from it."

Rodriguez was spiraling. Between 1997 and 2002, he was in and out of coun ty jail on various misdemeanors - petty larceny, breaking and entering, property damage.

Inexorably, he was slipping into the growing ranks of the wandering mentally ill, whose outbursts and episodes eventually lead to arrest, prosecution, and prison.

A changing diagnosis

For years, Rodriguez had been fascinated by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Something about a cartoon team of mutant reptiles, isolated from society and trained as warriors, clearly spoke to him. And he obsessed over martial arts. One day in the early summer of 2003, while living at a Springfield homeless shelter, he began taking kung fu classes. Then he bought a sword at a local pawn shop.

The next day, Rodriguez used the sword to stab another homeless man in the stomach inside the shelter's bathroom. It's unclear how the conflict began, but, according to police and witnesses, the scene was bloody. The victim, 29-year-old Marcus Roberts, arrived at the hospital holding in his intestines with a towel.

Roberts recovered fully. But despite an unusually passionate appeal by a court-appointed lawyer, this would not be another misdemeanor for Rodriguez. "He wasn't crazy, but he was retarded," said David Burgess of Concord, who asked the judge to send his client to a county jail instead of prison. "He's not as culpable as I would be, or you would be, if we pulled a knife on somebody."

Still, even Burgess could not argue with the judge's bottom line: A person should be able to enter a shelter and not have to worry about being stabbed. The court sentenced Rodriguez to four to seven years.

He was now in the hands of a prison system that struggles to adequately treat or even track mentally ill prisoners and has little capacity to deal with the mentally retarded.

"We don't have enough expertise," said Dr. Kenneth L. Appelbaum, the former mental health director for the UMass Correctional Health, which served the prison population until this summer. "And we don't have the services that those people need in the system. It is, in my opinion, a significant unmet need."

In Rodriguez's case, it was worse than that.

An internal staff review of his death, obtained by the Globe, said clinicians focused far too much on whether Rodriguez was really mentally ill, instead of realizing the danger he posed to himself.

"Despite the fact that his entire mental health history was well documented within the medical record," the report said, "the mental health clinicians at MCI-Cedar Junction seemed to either underemphasize, or simply be unaware of, some of the more critical information contained within his record."

That record, one of distress and breakdown, began even before Rodriguez had been officially sentenced to serve state time.

In November 2003, while still awaiting trial in a county jail in Ludlow, he tried to hang himself, an incident that landed him at Bridgewater State Hospital, the prison system's facility for the mentally ill.

The doctor who evaluated him concluded that while Rodriguez was not profoundly mentally ill, he was a danger to himself. Using italics in her report to stress her point, she noted that clinical staff and correction officers should be aware of the "very real, very substantial" risk of self-harm.

By June 2004, and convicted of the crime, he was an inmate at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, the state's modern maximum-security facility in Shirley. There, his outbursts triggered escalating punishment. He broke his food tray, exposed himself, and repeatedly attacked officers. As a result, he was kept in isolation.

By October 2004, Rodriguez was back for further observation at Bridgewater, where, his relatives say, prison officials should have recognized the severity of his illness and kept him for treatment indefinitely. And for a moment, it looked like that might happen.

In a report correction officials themselves say was crucial, the doctor who evaluated Rodriguez, David W. Holtzen, found that Rodriguez was hallucinating, had thoughts of suicide, was suffering from major depression, and was losing his grip on reality. Holtzen not only wanted Rodriguez admitted, he also wanted a court order to force Rodriguez to take antipsychotic medications.

Then something changed.

About two weeks later, Holtzen evaluated Rodriguez again and deemed him no longer seriously mentally ill but rather "antisocial" and "bored." According to an internal review of Rodriguez's suicide, Holtzen changed his mind after members of Rodriguez's treatment team said they believed Rodriguez was improving.

But Bridgewater's own records show that Rodriguez was still deeply unwell. Shortly after the reevaluation, officers at Bridgewater reported he was punching the cell walls and acting out of control. Despite those warning signs, Rodriguez was back in prison 72 hours after the new diagnosis. And his disciplinary record worsened again.

Through representatives of UMass Correctional Health, Holtzen declined to comment about the change in diagnosis, citing privacy laws of patients. A UMass spokesman called Holtzen's assessment "reasoned."

Even though Holtzen's interpretation of Rodriguez's behavior had changed radically, the doctor did warn that if Rodriguez was placed in conditions akin to solitary confinement, his mental health would be in jeopardy.

"[Holtzen] clearly puts in the chart: Watch this guy, he's a serious suicide risk," said Terry Kupers, the national specialist on mental illness in prisons. "From that moment on, this is a person who should have been tracked."

Instead, the Department of Correction kept losing track of Nelson Rodriguez.

Off the radar screen

By the spring of 2005, Rodriguez began bracing himself for life inside the state's toughest prison: MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole.

The clinicians at Souza-Baranowski understood his problems and even found him likeable. But prison officials transferred him after finding themselves overwhelmed by his chronic misconduct.

His state of mind was clear in a letter he wrote to his grandmother, Elsie "Bita" Miranda, and his brother Lorenzo Rodriguez. Using almost no punctuation, he wrote: "I'm trying really hard to survive in jail. . . . My tears been rolling down my cheekbone like crazy. . . . Look I'm gonna be moving to another jail is called Walpole. . . . Pray for me please."

At Walpole, he quickly slipped off the radar screen. His name never appeared on the prison's risk list. And his lengthy mental health history did not catch the attention of the two people at Walpole most responsible for his mental health care: his assigned clinician and her boss, Erika Grandberg, MCI-Cedar Junction's mental health director.

Grandberg would later tell investigators that she knew nothing about the prior warnings that more isolation could hurt Rodriguez or should, at least, trigger more vigilant care. She also defended Rodriguez's absence from the risk list, saying, "At the time, he wasn't somebody who we considered high risk."

But in two months at Walpole, Rodriguez just couldn't follow the rules. He was cited for various outbursts.

Still reasoning like a child, Rodriguez tried to appeal the punishments in the only way he knew how. In November, a month before his suicide, he pleaded to have his television, telephone, and visitation privileges restored. "They don't understand that I'm mildly mentally retarded," records say he told a clinician. "I got a dangerous mind. I can cut myself, hang myself." But nothing came of the appeals.

Rodriguez was 19 months into his prison sentence. He was due for an update on his treatment plan, but the deadline came and went without one, according to the department's review. Rodriguez's clinician told investigators that she had updated it, but that the plan "was not in his chart and she does not know where it went."

In early December, Rodriguez cut his arms and throat, triggering an emergency medical call. He spit on responding officers and bit one of them, records show, and was shackled by his arms and legs. Two days later, he was put on a 15-minute interval watch - a clear sign that he was a high risk for suicide.

And then prison officials decided to send Rodriguez to 10-Block. The prospect led him to further unravel.

On Dec. 14, 2005, a prison psychiatrist discontinued two medications Rodriguez was taking - Remeron, an antidepressant, and Seroquel, an antipsychotic drug - while upping his dosage of a third drug, a mood stabilizer. Department records reviewed by the Globe provide no explanation for the adjustment. The very next day, Rodriguez entered Cell 49 in 10-Block, a foreboding 60-bed, two-story unit where inmates are confined to closet-size cells 23 hours a day.

His brief time in custody had been as volatile as any inmate's. But when Rodriguez underwent a routine assessment as 10-Block's newest guest, the clinician's words had the uneventful tone of a weather report. "Stable, no evidence of psychosis, delusions, or hallucinations. Monitor [patient] per Treatment Plan, [as needed]."

Five days later, officers sounded an alert - Code 99, inmate hanging. They entered Cell 49 and removed the ligature from around Rodriguez's neck. They carried his body down the tier to a landing on the second floor. Chest compressions were begun. An ambulance was called. A Walpole rescue team responded.

He was pronounced dead at 4:44 p.m.

Investigators would later conclude that there were 22 officers assigned to patrol 10-Block that day; 11 of them were responsible for the upper tiers that included Rodriguez's cell. But no one made the required half-hour checks on Rodriguez for four hours, even though the log book for that day contained entries indicating the proper rounds had been made.

And in its review of his suicide, officials seemed to struggle to explain how an inmate like Rodriguez - mentally retarded with a well-chronicled history of dangerous misconduct - could be described as an inmate "not on the radar screen."

The answer, they concluded, may lie in Cedar Junction's operating ethos.

"Due to the overall culture of the institution, mental health staff at MCI-Cedar Junction have a rather high threshold for how they assess and address an inmate's acting-out behaviors and overall mental health status," the confidential internal review concluded.

Conclusions like that ring hollow for people who still remember Rodriguez as the child trapped in a man's body, the inmate who could never learn the rules.

"He never had a chance to have a childhood," Jason Nelson, his former guardian, told state lawmakers three months after his death. "To place a man in a maximum-security prison that is not equipped or staffed to help or even understand the type of mental illness Nelson was plagued with is beyond my understanding."

Part 3
BREAKDOWN THE PRISON SUICIDE CRISIS
Guards, inmates a volatile dynamic

December 11, 2007

Last of three parts

This story was reported by Globe Spotlight Team members Jonathan Saltzman, Michael Rezendes, Beth Healy, Francie Latour, and editor Thomas Farragher.

It was written by Saltzman and Farragher.

On a damp Saturday last fall, Scott A. Flaherty collected a stack of papers and notebooks that chronicled his decade as a state correction officer and set them ablaze in a cemetery near his home in Randolph.

Flaherty had liked his first eight years at MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole, but his last two had turned hellish. He hoped the graveyard bonfire would exorcise memories of his work behind the walls of the state's toughest prison.

Especially his memory of what happened there one night in late 2000.

Shortly before 10 that November night, a deeply disruptive inmate lay shackled to a concrete slab in a cramped cell. As Sergeant Flaherty stood watch, a captain and three other officers swept in, the captain grabbing, as he went by, a foam cup that Flaherty had been using to catch tobacco juice and sunflower seeds.

Flaherty said he watched as the captain tilted the cup over the mouth of the prisoner. Sickened, he turned away. But he could hear the parting admonition to the 33-year-old inmate, Hakeem Obba: If you don't behave, my officers will pour [excrement] down your throat.

"Because I can do anything I want to you," Captain Ronald R. Picard told Obba, according to a four-page complaint Flaherty filed with supervisors.

Two months later, Obba hanged himself with elastic from his underpants and bed sheets.

Flaherty, now an investigator for the State Police in Bristol County, said it would be wrong to draw a straight line from the alleged abuse of Obba - which Picard was punished for, but denies - to his suicide. But the larger point was hard to miss: Some correction officers, he said, are unfit to deal with the mentally ill or deeply troubled inmates who are increasingly their charge. The result is an incendiary dynamic between inmates and officers, a climate ripe for abuse.

"The inmate was restrained. He had no way to defend himself," said Flaherty, 37, one of two officers who reported the incident. "It would be akin to a police officer raping somebody. There's no gray area there."

The treatment of Obba - who was in four-point restraints for nearly 40 hours over four days - is one of the most flagrant of the cases examined by the Globe of abuse of inmates whom prison officials or prisoner advocates say had acute mental problems.

But it is hardly an isolated example. A Spotlight Team investigation into a recent surge in prison suicides and suicide attempts found other cases in which correction officers, with scant training in how to handle the burgeoning number of mentally ill in prison, brutalized, mistreated, or neglected inmates.

Indeed, as prisons increasingly become the asylum of last resort for the mentally ill - with the closure of state hospitals and the deinstitutionalization of their residents - desperation, frustration, and violence are rising on both sides of the cell door.

About 50 times a month, according to department statistics, members of its staff are assaulted by inmates. And, at the same time, the correction department has disciplined scores of officers for assault and other misconduct involving inmates.

As the number of inmate suicides has soared to roughly three times the national rate, prison officials say correction officers deserve credit for saving dozens of inmates who attempt suicide. Still, it is not hard to find cases where officers abused mentally ill prisoners.

In a 2004 episode at MCI-Cedar Junction, a correction officer twice punched a handcuffed inmate in the head as the prisoner lay face-down on the floor, giving him a bloody eye. The incident was captured on videotape, and the state fired the correction officer. But a civil service panel reduced the punishment to a 90-day suspension, in part because the prison superintendent was merely demoted for using excessive force in an unrelated incident. The prison system is appealing the reduced punishment in the courts.

In September 2006, prison officials sustained a complaint by an inmate that correction officers at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center locked him in a shower cell overnight in 2004 and shoved feces and urine into the stall with a mop. The prisoner -who suffers from panic disorder, depression, and possible bipolar disorder, according to medical records - has cut his own Achilles tendon and repeatedly swallowed razor blades, batteries, and push pins.

"I understand that when people do bad things, they have to go and pay for them," said Amelia Bargoot, the sister of the inmate, Eric R. Bargoot, a convicted bank robber. "But there's a difference between torture and rehabilitation."

Well-trained correction officers are crucial for recognizing suicidal inmates and preventing many deaths, according to Lindsay M. Hayes, a national specialist in prison suicide prevention hired by the state in 2000 to study Bridgewater State Hospital. Because many suicides take place at night and on weekends, when mental health clinicians have gone home, correction officers are the only ones who can intervene.

However, when Hayes returned to the prisons late last year for a follow-up study, he found that the state had ignored his recommendation to increase suicide-prevention training for new officers from two and a half to eight hours. Prison officials said they have since complied.

Still, the volcanic cellblock dynamic scares relatives and friends of prisoners.

"Between mental illness and the fact that these people have committed crimes, they're going to throw them away," said Kathleen Connolly, who worries that her boyfriend and father of her two children, mentally ill inmate John Nowell, will never make it out of Walpole alive.

"We'll take his dead body out of there," she said. "He's not going to make it. He does not belong in there. Either someone is going to kill him or he's going to kill himself."

The DDU

The place where Hakeem Obba died and where John Nowell now lives, sits at the extreme end of the gone-to-seed Walpole complex, just minutes and a world away from Gillette Stadium, the gleaming home of the New England Patriots.

It is a walled-off, cinder block bunker where inmates are locked up 23 hours a day. From a glass-paneled, high-tech silo at its inner core, correction officers monitor the inmates' every move on video screens. Prisoners can leave their cells for an hour of exercise in cages that are the human equivalent of small, fenced-in dog runs.

Prison officials call the bunker the Departmental Disciplinary Unit, or DDU for short.

The solitary confinement inmates who live there have a nickname for it, too: the hole.

Its 124 cells are reserved for "the worst of the worst," inmates who earn their spot in the system's most secure unit by assaulting correction officers or other inmates, or by committing other serious misconduct. It is a place, some officers say, where inmates feel they have nothing to lose by lashing out, because there is no place worse to go.

Correction officers who spoke to the Globe under the condition of anonymity, citing department rules that restrict their ability to speak to the media without permission, said a thick emotional callous is a virtual job prerequisite.

"It's a survival tool," one officer said. "That's exactly what it is."

But the officers did not hesitate to confirm what many maximum-security prisoners in solitary confinement told the Globe: Sometimes, in anger and frustration, they taunt inmates who threaten to kill themselves, telling them: "Hang it up!"

"You can't help it, it just comes out," said one Walpole officer who guards prisoners in an isolation block. His message to inmates he feels are using threats of suicide to gain leverage? "You know what? Do it!"

Or, said a Cedar Junction colleague assigned to a segregation unit where some of the toughest cases are confined, frustrated officers will respond to a threat of imminent suicide this way: "I'll be back in 10 minutes. Twenty maybe."

The officers, three 20-year veterans from a medium-security facility in Bridgewater and two relative rookies who work at MCI-Cedar Junction, said they are easy scapegoats when something goes wrong. They said they have become marginalized by mental health clinicians who no longer listen to what they have to say. They do stressful work that, they said, almost nobody wants.

"Morale has never been this low," one veteran officer said in an interview. "I've never seen guys despise coming to work. . . . They treat you like you're a guard at a mall."

A good night at Walpole, they said, is when everyone on the cellblock is breathing when they walk in, and everyone is breathing when they walk out.

Given the frustrations and dangers the correction officers confront, there is little reservoir of empathy for inmates who arrive with or descend into psychosis.

"We do have a lot of frequent fliers who swallow nails, spikes, glass," said Steve Kenneway, president of the 5,000-member Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union. "If you leave a light bulb laying around, they'll eat that, too. I mean they will just put everything in their system and then they'll tell you because it's their way of manipulating where they're going to be housed. There are definitely some inmates who are crazy, and they need help. They need treatment."

But treatment is not the responsibility of Kenneway's union members. They are trained to maintain safety and security.

"Let's think about why the person's sitting in the cell for 23 hours a day locked down," he said. "Because he murdered somebody. Stabbed an officer. Did something so egregious inside the prison system that now he has to be locked away even from the inmate population. So I'm never going to sympathize with the inmate. That's not my job."

Lack of sympathy is one thing. Urging self-destruction is something else.

Prison officials said such conduct is not tolerated and would be met with swift discipline if substantiated. Staff members have been suspended for making "derogatory comments" to inmates, they said. But the department could not supply an instance in which action was taken against an officer for encouraging an inmate's suicide or expressing glee after a hanging.

Correction officials say they do want to know who posted a jubilant message on a website used by MCI-Cedar Junction officers after a former inmate was found dead of a drug overdose shortly after he left prison earlier this year.

"Released last Thursday and found dead in Somerville Saturday. Hooray!" the Aug. 14 anonymous message read.

Prison management has disciplined staff for a wide array of other offenses.

From January 2003 to June 2007, the prison system's Office of Investigative Services investigated 1,126 allegations of serious misconduct by employees, some of which remain open cases, department statistics show.

Most of the cases involved correction officers. The alleged offenses ranged from 73 assaults - on inmates, employees, and civilians - to 98 cases of sexual misconduct with inmates, female and male.

Prison investigators sustained 312 allegations, more than a quarter of the 1,126. Because of the gravity of the offenses, the vast majority of those cases then went to hearings before the commissioner, who has the authority to issue significant punishments, ranging from an unpaid suspension of more than a week to termination.

The prison system ultimately fired 112 correction officers from January 2003 to June 2007, according to department statistics. But correction officers often appeal firings to the state Civil Service Commission or arbitrators - and some win back their jobs.

Sometimes correction officers have been found to be neglectful rather than abusive.

In 2005, for example, prison investigators found that correction officers failed to make required checks on three inmates who killed themselves at prisons in Walpole, Concord, and Shirley. Two of the inmates were severely mentally ill, and the third was undergoing withdrawal from a heroin addiction.

In two of the deaths, officers said they had made required checks but were contradicted by prison videotapes.

One of the suicides was that of Andrew Armstrong, who was serving 15 years for assault with intent to murder after a home invasion, and who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He had made two previous suicide attempts and was discharged from Bridgewater State Hospital four days before his death.

Before he hanged himself, he used a bar of soap to scrawl a message near the stainless steel mirror in his cell.

"Dust in the wind," it read.

'I'm not an animal'

No episode more starkly illustrates the toxic relationship between seriously troubled inmates and correction officers than the encounter between Obba and Picard.

And none more boldly underscores what can happen when the officers' cellblock code of solidarity is violated than what happened later between Picard and Flaherty.

Obba was one of the most disruptive prisoners at Cedar Junction, records show. He urinated on the floor. He spread feces on his walls. He was cited 210 times for misconduct in the hole.

But he never received a thorough mental health evaluation in prison, a psychiatrist retained by his family to advise them on a wrongful death suit said. He said Obba's behavior was so extreme it should have raised red flags for prison mental health staff.

Once, when a correction officer was passing out coffee to inmates in solitary confinement, Obba reached through the grill of his cell and stabbed him in the neck.

"There, deal with that, mother [expletive]," he said, according to department records. For that attack, he received 13 to 15 years on top of his sentence, three to five years for breaking and entering.

On Nov. 12, 2000, after officers said they saw Obba smear the door and window of his cell with feces, they received permission to shackle his wrists and ankles until he agreed to stop his disruptive behavior.

"This is cruel," he said in comments captured on videotape provided to the Globe by the correction officers' union. "This shouldn't be for a dog. . . . I'm a human being. . . . I'm not an animal."

Flaherty came on duty at 3 p.m. on Nov. 14 and volunteered to relieve an officer who had Obba on an "eyeball watch." Flaherty said his job was to monitor Obba through the window of his cell and to note his condition in a log every 15 minutes.

Flaherty, a Randolph native, had joined the department in 1992 at the age of 21. Like many correction officers, he hoped to use the job as a stepping-stone to a career as a police officer. But he said he ended up enjoying the rigors of the work - it required a combination of firmness, common sense, and fairness - and the camaraderie with other officers.

His view of correction, he said, was influenced by his granduncle, George F. McGrath, who was former governor John A. Volpe's correction commissioner in the early 1960s.

"He believed that inmates are going to get out some day, and you've got to give them programs to prepare them for when they get out," Flaherty said. "He was progressive, and I wanted to be like that."

Instead, what Flaherty found at Walpole, he said, was a bureaucracy that crushed idealism and muzzled dissent. Officers who cozied up to top prison officials enjoyed choice job assignments and got away with abusing inmates and staff, he said. Those without influential benefactors struggled for years to get off the night shift.

"We used to call it the Department of Corruption and Favoritism," he said.

Picard joined the Department of Correction in 1987 after working about a year as a part-time Bellingham police officer. He was ultimately promoted to captain, a job in which he oversaw about 20 officers.

Around 9:50 p.m., the captain and three other officers entered the observation ward, according to the incident report Flaherty filed. As the three underlings surrounded the inmate, Flaherty said, Picard tipped the cup of spit over Obba's mouth.

"It actually sickened me," Flaherty recalled in a sworn deposition he gave in April in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Obba's family. "I turned away. I couldn't look."

The four officers left the cell, and Picard handed the cup back to Flaherty. One of the officers bragged, "You could hear [Obba's] jaws clenching," Flaherty wrote in his complaint to supervisors.

After Picard and his coterie were gone, Obba shouted to Flaherty, "Tell the Captain if he pours [expletive] in my mouth, I'll kill him and his family," Flaherty recalled in his complaint. He could have disciplined Obba for the threat but opted not to. "I probably would have said the same thing," he said in his deposition.

Flaherty said he agonized about whether to report the alleged abuse.

He had filed a complaint about Picard only four months earlier because the captain accused him of faking an illness when it turned out that Flaherty had a fever of 103 and strep throat, he said. Picard retaliated by giving him lousy assignments, leading scores of shackled inmates to showers and mopping the hallways, Flaherty said.

Flaherty got so uneasy that he began carrying a small notebook to record any problems with Picard and his allies.

But Flaherty said he felt he had no choice but to report the treatment of Obba.

"Picard was just sadistic," Flaherty said in an interview. "He thought this was the way to rule. Sometimes you have to use force in the prison. It's just the dynamics. But the way I was schooled, once you're in restraints, it's over."

In response to Flaherty's complaint, prison officials began an internal investigation. Picard and two officers who accompanied him into the cell, Lieutenant Edward Marvelle and Sergeant Edward Mack, denied that anyone threatened Obba or poured anything on him. Marvelle told the investigator that Flaherty had been overheard in the past saying he was out to get Picard, according to the investigator's report.

But another officer, James E. McParlin Jr., who was assigned to the control room and said he could see Obba through the window, backed Flaherty's account. He said in his own incident report that he saw Picard extend his arm and tilt a foam cup over Obba's head.

"What happened that day was totally wrong," McParlin told the Globe. "You're in four-point restraints. You can't do anything. That's torture."

The department, citing internal records, said Obba confirmed Picard's threat but told investigators the cup's contents did not enter his mouth.

Before the Department of Correction completed its internal investigation, Obba hanged himself in his cell on the observation ward in the DDU.

Not long afterward, the inquiry into the alleged abuse concluded that Picard had threatened Obba and interfered with the investigation

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

Biased system packs prisons with young black men

Biased system packs prisons with young black men
3/6/2008
Rochester MN Post Bulletin

By Les Payne

Legal scholars pondering reports that one of every 100 U.S. adults is in jail or prison need look no further than Roger Clemens to see why it is blacks who mainly choke the jails. Men such as Clemens -- unlike their counterparts such as, say, Barry Bonds -- enjoy a white privilege conveying a sense of immunity from prosecution, or even suspicion.

Clemens' raised right hand seemed steady while he swore before a House committee that he'd never, ever used steroids or human growth hormone. His self-righteous duplicity, however, was too much even for the U.S. Congress. Defending what passes for its honor, the committee has called in the Justice Department to sort through the baseball star's inconsistencies. The more credible Andy Pettitte, as well as the man who admits to injecting illicit chemicals into Clemens' butt, testified to a different set of facts.

Baseball and some other professional sports and pseudo-sports -- football, wrestling, speed skating, bodybuilding, track and field -- are awash in illicit drugs designed to enhance performance. Can it be that the athletes punished as poster children for drug abuse, such as Bonds, Marion Jones, Jose Conseco, Ben Johnson, etc., are either Latino or black?

Yes, for this is the American way of justice. This racial pattern of enforcement imprisons one of every nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34. This '06 national figure was disclosed by the Pew Center, which ranks the United States as the world's lone incarceration superpower. Its 2.3 million inmates in jails and state and federal prisons far outdistanced China, which has a population four times greater. The U.S. prison rate also tops that of other "police-state" nations such as Russia and former Soviet republics.

Concentrating on the overall incarceration, however, the media downplay the vastly disproportionate impact of the harsher sentences that courts hand to blacks.

Another recent study revealed a stark contrast in the way blacks and whites are jailed for drug offenses, which account for a high percentage of prison populations. The Justice Policy Institute studied drug arrests in 198 of the largest U.S. counties, making up over half the nation's population. All but two of these counties incarcerated blacks at a higher rate than whites. Suffolk County, N.Y., where my wife and I raised three children, sent black drug offenders to prison at a rate some 36 times that of whites.

Such a shameful, national disparity in incarceration rates, according to the institute, occurred even with a pattern showing no appreciable difference between whites and blacks in illegal drug possession, use and sale. Some 8.5 percent of whites were found to use illicit drugs in '02, compared to 9.7 percent for blacks. Despite this similarity, blacks, the report found, were "admitted to prison for drug offenses (at) nearly 10 times the rate for whites."

Much has been made of the federal sentencing policy -- softened by a recent Supreme Court decision -- that punished crimes involving crack cocaine at a 100-1 ratio compared with powder cocaine. This Draconian law was mocked in this space as if, say, during Prohibition Congress found that whites drank mainly Coors and blacks Colt 45 and the lawmakers then proceeded to enact a policy punishing crimes involving Colt 45 some 100 times more severely than those involving Coors.

The sinister court system reaches well beyond even the de jure strictures of policy to ensure, de facto, that blacks are hauled off to prison at a much greater rate. Some 24 percent of crack cocaine users were reportedly black, for example, and 72 percent were Latino or white. Yet, the institute says, "more than 80 percent of defendants sentenced for crack cocaine offenses were African-Americans."

This disparate rate of black incarceration appears to result from unfair police and court policies at every level. "Cash-strapped" states that last year spent some $50 billion on corrections, so called, reaped no clear benefits in recidivism rates or overall crime, the institute concluded.

Treating blacks the same as whites -- whether it's Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens -- would be a cost-effective way out of this national shame of incarceration. Besides, it's the right thing to do.

Payne is a columnist for Newsday on Long Island in New York.
http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=12&a=331712

Posted by lois at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2008

America Behind Bars: Why Attempts at Prison Reform Keep Failing

America Behind Bars: Why Attempts at Prison Reform Keep Failing
By Liliana Segura
AlterNet
Posted March 5, 2008.

A bloated prison system is against the country's best interests. Yet "tough on crime" rhetoric has gotten in the way of reform.

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared plans in January 2005 to reform California's prisons, starting with a rebranding campaign (it's the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation now), his announcement signaled much-needed relief for California taxpayers, whose overstretched, scandal-prone prison system was screaming for an overhaul.

But three years later, California maintains the second-highest prison population in the country (171,444 in January 2008) and the highest recidivism rate (a staggering 70 percent).

From the start, people familiar with the embattled prison system were skeptical. "Everybody's going to get new business cards and letterheads," said Lance Corcoran, vice president of the powerful California Correctional Peace Officers Association, "but we haven't changed with respect to providing inmates anything different."

Gov. Schwarzenegger's largely failed attempts at prison reform -- e.g. reducing the overall prison population and releasing low-risk, nonviolent offenders early -- is a reflection of a larger economic and political dynamic playing out across the country. On one hand, people are starting to realize that bloated prison systems are a resource suck on an already troubled economy. On the other hand, many people -- even in that liberal bastion, California -- cling to the misguided idea that locking up large numbers of lawbreakers will keep the public safer. That leaves politicians like Schwarzenegger trying to straddle a line between appearing "tough on crime" and pushing for meaningful reform. So far, the former has won out. In many ways, California is a microcosm of the American prison crisis -- one that has reached alarming proportions.

The most recent proof is summarized in the title of a report released last week by the Pew Center on the States: "One in 100: Americans Behind Bars 2008." The study examines the state of adult America (no juveniles were
included) to deliver a sobering new measure of our incarceration nation. The title statistic alone is jaw-dropping, representing a historic high (or new low, depending on how you look at it) when it comes to American justice. With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in its prison population, well ahead of China (1.5 million) and leaving Russia in the dust (890,000). "Beyond the sheer number of inmates, America is also the global leader in the rate at which it incarcerates its citizenry," the study reports, "outpacing nations like South Africa and Iran."

As always, it turns out the "citizenry" disproportionately consists of black men over 18 (one in 15 are imprisoned) -- and particularly those between the age of 20 and 34 (1 in 9). Recidivism rates are also sky-high. According to the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than a third of the people admitted to prison in 2005 were arrested on parole violations. "Nationally, more than half of released offenders are back in prison within three years," the Pew study reports, "either for a new crime or for violating the terms of their release." In 1998, thanks in large part to the War on Drugs, the number of nonviolent prisoners hit 1 million -- and has risen since then. The number of women prisoners is also rising, and black women are a microcosm of the national prison epidemic: One in 100 black women in their
mid- to late 30s is behind bars.

It's a clarion call for reform, no doubt, but beyond its record-breaking numbers, the Pew study breaks no news -- at least not in the larger scheme of the American criminal justice system. It's a crisis decades in the making, and a 50-state Pew analysis released at the same time last year provided similarly startling projections of where our prisons and jails are headed, to far less fanfare. But one in 100 is a stark figure (and, in fact, the exact number is worse: 1 in 99.1). Thus, both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran stories -- with the Post holding an online Q&A with one of the study's authors the day after it was released. The report even nudged its way into the presidential race: Hillary Clinton issued a press release on her campaign website that day bemoaning the "heartbreaking statistic" and invoking the need for "a president who will be tough on crime, but smart about it too." (As a senator representing a state whose rural regions are littered with the architecture of a prison explosion fanned during her husband's administration, it's an important statement -- if only a statement).

While public shock and dismay over the criminal justice system is a good thing, policy reform usually only comes once those in power recognize public support for measures otherwise considered too politically risky. (Iraq war
notwithstanding.) Indeed, a significant part of the Pew study (which was written mainly with politicians in mind) is devoted to showing that policy makers are starting to come around on the prison issue, increasingly talking about being "smart" rather than "tough" on crime. The hope is that others will take their lead. "There's a shift away from the mindset of lock them up and throw away the key," one Ohio Republican legislator is quoted as saying. Alternatives include investing in drug treatment for prisoners -- as well as "drug courts" -- relaxing stringent parole rules and curbing mandatory minimums.

Ironically (if necessarily) the states that appear to be paving the way on prison reform are the ones who lock up the most people. Take Texas: Between 1985 and 2005, its prison population rose by 300 percent, a growth rate even the state's death row machinery couldn't offset. Now, with an estimated prison population of 171,790, according to the Pew study, the Lone Star State is forging "a new path," with a bipartisan decision last year to authorize a "virtual makeover" of the prison system. The overhaul will include more drug treatment for prisoners and "broad changes in parole practices" aimed to curb recidivism rates. If all goes according to plan, the state may be able to shelve emergency blueprints for three new prisons. "It's always been safer politically to build the next prison, rather than stop and see whether that's really the smartest thing to do," the Houston-based chair of the Texas senate's criminal justice committee said. "But we're at the point where I don't think we can afford to do that anymore."

Financially, this is certainly true. Politically, Texas lawmakers will likely face serious challenges when it comes to implementing these reforms. In California, months after tacking the word "rehabilitation" to its Department of Corrections, an organization called Crime Victims United of California created TV ads accusing the governor of abandoning crime victims and endangering Californians by easing up the punishments for people on parole. In concert with the CCPOA, the effort successfully derailed one of the central components of Schwarzenegger's plan. Rather than receive drug counseling or anything comparable, parole violators would be shuttled back to prison.

The move was a big step backward. "Eliminating alternative sanctions as an option for parole violators will undoubtedly drive up the inmate population and exacerbate overcrowding in the California prison system, already jam-packed to nearly twice its design capacity," reported the Los Angeles Times in April 2005. "Experts say such conditions -- with inmates stacked in triple-decker bunks and wedged into gyms, hallways and other spaces not intended as housing -- are a recipe for riots."

In fairness, regardless of what happens in Texas, it's hard to begrudge honest-sounding and measured rhetoric about an issue that historically has attracted so much belligerent posturing. But at the same time, for those who have watched the American criminal justice system consume not just state budgets but whole city blocks, it's also somewhat infuriating. Warehousing massive populations of men and women is, on its face, bad public policy. For politicians to be just waking up to this maddening reality seems dubious. What's more, the dollars and sense tone so many strike when espousing the benefits of prison reform leaves out a major factor -- a veritable elephant in the room when it comes to the prison boom: the powerful incentives that continue to keep the prison population high. From construction to prison security to healthcare, prisons are an industry -- and a highly lucrative one at that. "Profits oil the machinery, keep it humming and speed its growth," wrote criminal justice expert Judith Greene in an essay recently published in Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money From Mass Incarceration (New Press). With states spending $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, prisons are an enormous cash cow for private companies.

In its 2005 annual report, the Corrections Corporation of America laid out what's at stake for a prison industry facing reform:

Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities ... The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.

... Legislation has been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some nonviolent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release ... Also, sentencing alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation with electronic monitors who would otherwise be incarcerated. Similarly, reductions in crime rates could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities. The reforms described by the rather alarmed-sounding CCA mirror those that Pew and other advocates herald as a way to curb the growing prison crisis -- and it appears that lawmakers are finally willing to hear them. "What we're seeing is state leaders around the country starting to call time out," said Pew researcher Susan K. Urahn during the Post's online chat. "We are seeing activity in several states where legislators from both parties are saying, 'We aren't getting our money's worth out of prisons.'" So, for example, "for the same amount of money, you could keep one inmate behind bars for an additional year, or you could provide treatment and intensive supervision for several others -- and cut the recidivism rate considerably." But who will provide treatment -- and how about those electric monitors? Like prison construction itself, prison "reform" will largely amount to trading in one set of services for another.

Reform as it stands mostly means managing a massive pre-existing population that is already mired in the prison-to-parole-to-prison pipeline. With the numbers so high, any small adjustments in the system will yield results. In Texas' case, "even a small tweak -- such as the 5 percent increase in grants by the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole between 2006 and 2007 -- can have an appreciable thinning affect on the prison population." It is too soon to tell how effective such reforms will be in the long term.

Going beyond managing the prison population from state to state to effectively reduce it nationwide will take much more than implementing piecemeal alternatives. The fact that we're no longer seeing an all-out race to the bottom in prison expansion is a good thing, but deeper change will require dismantling the pervasive attachment to conventional wisdom that, despite being erroneous and counterproductive, is still used to justify the record-breaking rise in the American prison population. "One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense," a Utah-based law professor and former federal judge told the New York Times last week, directly contradicting the conclusions of the Pew study, which focused much attention on the pitfalls of locking up nonviolent and drug offenders.

Others continue to defend the sweeping policies that got us here in the first place. "The fact that we have a large prison population by itself is not a central problem because it has contributed to the extraordinary increase in public safety we have had in this country," conservative sociologist James Q. Wilson told the Washington Post. Hardly unbiased criticism, given that Wilson was one of the intellectual engines behind the "broken windows" theory that helped get us into this mess. (And tell that to black or Latino families who experience the criminal justice system's harshest excesses -- from children growing up without their parents to parents paying crippling phone fees to reach their children. Or tell that to now-elderly prisoners living out their final days behind bars, whose threat to society is negligible and whose failing health makes them highly vulnerable -- and hugely expensive to care for.)

Besides, connecting the prison boom to an increase in public safety is a classic canard. Studies by organizations such as the Vera Institute of Justice have found only a small correlation between prisons and reduced crime. As Urahn puts it, "incarceration is not the dominant force in crime control that many people assume ... despite having quadrupled the prison population over the past 25 years, we have not quadrupled public safety."

What has soared is the cost for taxpayers -- $50 billion per year at the state level and an additional $5 billion at the federal level, according to the Pew study. Perhaps more than even the stunning one in 100 figure, these are the numbers that should shake people awake. But regardless of all proof to the contrary, many Americans remain attached to the idea that prisons keep them safe. "We are jammed up in this situation right now because we have fallen in love with one of the most undocumented beliefs," California Sen. Don Perata said in 2007. "That somehow you get safer if you put more people in jail."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/78648/

Posted by lois at 05:22 PM | Comments (0)

Women in N.Y. prisons seek better child custody protections

Women in N.Y. prisons seek better child custody protections
BY DAN OSBURN
Albany Bureau
Press and Sun Bulletin, Binghamton, NY

ALBANY-- Advocates for women in prison were joined by 250 formerly incarcerated women in Albany Tuesday to demand better treatment of women in prison and ask for $1.5 million in state aid for programs to allow incarcerated mothers to keep custody of their children.

The coalition is also supporting state legislation to give foster agencies greater discretion when determining whether an incarcerated mother would lose custody of their child.

Currently, state law requires that foster-care agencies file a petition to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the last 22 months, a shorter time than most mothers' prison stays, Coalition for Women Prisoners Project Director Tamar Kraft-Stolar said.

But groups said that foster-care agencies shouldn't be held to such stringent guidelines.

"Parents and women were not sentenced to lose their children," Kraft-Stolar said. "Bad choices don't mean bad mothers."

There are about 2,800 women in the state's prison system, with 84 percent of them incarcerated for non-violent crimes, according to the coalition. About 72 percent of women in prison report being mothers, and more than 5,180 children have a mother in the state's prison system.

When a parent is incarcerated, children need support or they are at an increased risk for criminal behavior themselves, advocates said.

Yvette Dennis, from Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, left her four children with her family while she served a two-year sentence for bouncing checks. Davis said she rarely got see her children.

"It's too far, where they lock women up, it's far upstate," she said. "The woman has already lost her freedom, but the child shouldn't be doing time."

Serena Alfieri, Women in Prison project coordinator, said when mothers get to interact with their children in prison it provides an incentive for rehabilitation and decreases the chance for recidivism upon release.

"Any family support that you have when you are going through something like that is incentive," Alfieri said.

Assembly Corrections Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, is sponsoring legislation to give greater rights to women in prison. He said the state should provide transportation for downstate families trying to visit family members incarcerated in upstate prisons, and prisons should arrange for longer stays for visitors.

"You want these women to be close to their families," so that "they will be able to come back a whole and complete person," Aubry said.

The Senate has yet to take a stand on the issue and Aubry's bill doesn't have a Senate sponsor.

Earlier this week, the state adopted new rules to make it easier for female inmates in county jails to get reproductive health services.

Posted by lois at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)

Supermax Subscriptions

Supermax Subscriptions seeks to connect the surplus of well-traveled citizens to a population that never goes anywhere: prisoners in American supermax prisons.

As most of you know, frequent flyer miles often expire before it is possible to save enough of them for a free airline ticket, seating upgrade, or other costly prize.

Supermax Subscriptions asks people with these surplus miles to exchange small quantities of unused miles for magazine subscriptions to supermax prisoners. For as few as 300 miles, you can give the gift of a yearly magazine subscription to a prisoner with little or no reading material.

The first goal of Supermax Subscriptions is to provide every prisoner in Tamms C-MAX supermax prison with at least one magazine subscription. Men in Tamms are in their cells 23-24 hours a day in permanent solitary confinement. The men have been there for years on end—many for ten years. They have no communal activity, no phone calls, no programs, no education, no work, no librarian, and
virtually no reading (mostly children’s books). A magazine subscription is one way to give these men your support. Your gift will not be taken for granted.

In conjunction with the Tamms Year Ten campaign, we are kicking-off the Supermax Subscriptions project on the day of the ten-year anniversary of the opening of Tamms supermax prison. Together, we will sign letters to each man in Tamms C-MAX, asking them to pick their magazine preferences. Please join us—each handwritten signature will show them that someone on the outside knows and cares about their situation.

This project is a collaborative effort by Tamms Poetry Committee, Sarah Ross, Temporary Services, and you!

CONTACT US: supermax@temporaryservice.org
FURTHER INFORMATION: www.YearTen.org

Coming Soon: Participating prisoners! Watch this page (http://www.temporaryservices.org/supsub.html)to learn which Tamms prisoners will participate and how to send them gift subscriptions.

Airlines: Check these airlines to sign up for a mileage awards plan, check your travel mile balance and to find out how to redeem miles for magazine subscriptions: American Airlines (http://www.aa.com/), Delta (http://www.delta.com/home/index.jsp), other airlines may apply.

Overview of Prisoners' First Amendment Rights (download a copy in PDF form:
http://www.temporaryservices.org/rights.pdf)

Posted by lois at 04:20 PM | Comments (0)

Government Starts Cutting Sentences Of Crack Prisoners. Bureau of Prisons Processes 400 Orders

Government Starts Cutting Sentences Of Crack Inmates
Bureau of Prisons Processes 400 Orders

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 5, 2008; A02

The federal government said yesterday that it has received hundreds of court orders reducing the prison sentences of crack cocaine offenders in the two days since new sentencing guidelines took effect.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons could not say how many prisoners have already been released under the U.S. Sentencing Commission's new guidelines, but the bureau has processed about 400 orders modifying prison terms nationwide.

Some activists say the guidelines bring a much-delayed sense of equity, but the Bush administration asserts that they will result in the release of violent criminals.

More than 3,000 crack offenders are eligible for release within the year, according to an analysis by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The commission modified a 100 to 1 ratio disparity between sentences meted for crack and powder cocaine possession, saying that it was unfair because the drugs are virtually the same.

The Bush administration opposed the U.S. Sentencing Commission's decision to make the new guidelines retroactive for inmates currently serving sentences for crack cocaine crimes. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said that crack offenders would clog the courts with petitions requesting a release, and that "violent criminals" would eventually be returned to the streets.

Mukasey and other Justice Department officials asked Congress to block the commission's decision in several meetings of the House and Senate judiciary panels, but lawmakers declined to act.

As early as January, inmates started filing motions for sentence modifications. Judges reviewed the motions and notified federal prosecutors and public defenders that their petitions were being considered.

In the Eastern District of Virginia, which has the largest number of crack cocaine convictions and nearly 2,000 inmates who are eligible for release within the next year, one federal public defender, Michael Nachmanoff, said he submitted petitions for the release of 16 clients, one of whom was freed as of yesterday.

A D.C.-based activist group, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, issued the names of four people who were released in Florida and California, including Natasha J. Marshall, 48, who walked out of Victorville Federal Correctional Complex on Monday.

"It was a beautiful day," Marshall said. A friend, Kathy Harden, picked her up outside the prison gate near San Bernardino, Calif., and Marshall, who served nearly 11 years of a 15-year sentence for possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, said she was overjoyed because "I could hug my friend, and she didn't have to go one way, and I didn't have to go another. I could go with her."

The Sentencing Commission joined federal judges, public defenders, probation officers and activists in condemning the sentencing disparity because of cases such as Marshall's. She was arrested with her husband, Archie, a drug dealer, in August 1996 and convicted, she said, even though she never touched the drugs or counted the money he earned from dealing it.

"We had been married a long time before he got involved," she said. Marshall was unaware of the sentencing disparity or that a sentence for possessing or distributing crack can be increased if a gun is present at the time of arrest, no matter who it belongs to.

"I had never been in trouble before," Marshall said. "I just couldn't understand why they wouldn't ask, 'Why would someone wait until they were 36 years old to get in trouble?' "

In congressional testimony and in speeches, Mukasey said not every offender eligible for release is like Marshall. Eighty percent have prior criminal records and are likely to commit another crime.

But a Sentencing Commission analysis said most of the convicts eligible for immediate release were small-time offenders who are nonviolent. A 2005 analysis found that nearly 90 percent of crack offenses were nonviolent, about the same as powder cocaine offenses.

Vernon Watts is the kind of major drug dealer that Mukasey is concerned about. He received a 22-year sentence for possessing 559 grams of crack cocaine and served 16 years before he was freed Feb. 12 because of the sentencing reduction.

Watts, who took computer programming classes and drug rehabilitation classes even though "I've never used drugs in my life," said he will have to earn Mukasey's trust.

Although he felt his sentence did not seem to fit his offense, he said, "it was what it was. We were out there doing wrong. When you're destroying people and communities, I'm not going to say I was done wrong. I accept my responsibility."

Meanwhile, the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board called today for more "proportionality" in the way some governments prosecute drug offenders. The 2007 annual report of the INCB, an independent body under the auspices of the United Nations that monitors compliance with international treaties, cited lengthy mandatory sentences in the United States for personal drug possession and use, and it noted that other countries draw sharper lines between such use and drug trafficking and sales.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/04/AR2008030402578_pf.html

Posted by lois at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2008

NY: Commission issues guidelines on reproductive care, including mammography, for county jails

Times Union
Albany, NY
New health rules for female inmates
Commission issues guidelines on reproductive care, including mammography, for county jails

By IRENE JAY LIU, Capitol bureau

First published: Tuesday, March 4, 2008

ALBANY -- Female inmates in New York's county jails may now have better access to reproductive health services because of new state guidelines issued Monday.

The memorandum from the Commission of Correction outlines county jails' legal obligations to provide reproductive health services to incarcerated women, including reproductive health screenings such as breast exams, pelvic exams, pap smear, and baseline mammography.

The memo also outlines an inmate's rights to contraception, abortion, prenatal care and delivery services and recommends county jails review and amend written policies and procedures to reflect their legal obligations and community health care standards.

"We were thrilled and really applaud the state commission for finding that women's health care needs were different from general inmates and that jails need services tailored to the needs of women," said Corinne Carey, director of the Reproductive Rights Project at the New York Civil Liberties Union. NYCLU will release today a report that surveyed the policies regarding reproductive health care access at county jails across the state. It found relatively few counties have written policies, and those that do vary widely.

NYCLU shared the preliminary report of its findings with the commission in December, which used it to shape policy.

NYCLU's survey suggested that while jails generally adhere to legal standards regarding reproductive rights and other health services for women prisoners, many hadn't put the standards in writing, said Daniel L. Stewart, chairman of the Commission of Correction.

While the commission has "no reason to believe" any prisoners were denied services to which they were entitled, Stewart said, written policies that comply with the law are essential.

"I was pleasantly surprised that the state commission was so receptive to these ideas. I think they were so receptive because these recommendations are just common sense," said Carey. "These recommendations show the unique opportunity jails have to address public health issues."

Rates of breast and cervical cancer, pelvic inflammatory diseases, and sexually transmitted infections are much higher among women who have been jailed than those who have not, and women who have been incarcerated have higher rates of domestic and sexual violence, NYCLU reported.

The memo was mailed to every county Monday, and Stewart said he was confident there will be full compliance from local sheriffs and their staffs.

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=668919&category=STATE&newsdate=3/4/2008

Posted by lois at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

VT: House Bill Begins Corrections' Transformation

The Senate Institutions Committee will include money in the proposed capital budget to pay for renovations needed if the department reorganizes how it used some prison space. A plan under consideration would move women out of the Dale Women's Facility in Waterbury and close it because it is the most expensive prison in the system. Women would be housed at the Northwest Regional Correctional Facility in St. Albans Town. The Southeast Correctional Facility in Windsor, which along with Dale houses female inmates, would become a large work camp."

House bill begins corrections' transformation
Burlington Free Press
Published: Saturday, March 1, 2008
By Nancy Remsen
Free Press Staff Writer

MONTPELIER -- The House sent the Senate a bill Friday that's intended to spark a transformation in the way the state treats non-violent offenders, many of whom abuse drugs and alcohol.

The need for change is apparent in the findings the House included in the legislation:

Spending for correctional services is on track to have increased by $30 million in five years.

People found guilty of property and drug offenses are the fastest growing segment of the prison population.

Three-quarters of those sentenced for property and drug offenses have a drug or alcohol disorder.

The bill takes aim at the causes for the mushrooming prison population and high recidivism -- both of which have led to Vermont's spending more on corrections than higher education. The bill sets new expectations that the Department of Corrections will identify substance-abuse problems early, will expand treatment options especially in the community and will develop housing to help inmates transition from prison to life on the outside.

"We want to make offenders much more likely to succeed," said House Institutions Chairwoman Alice Emmons, D-Springfield. "We will have offenders who will be productive members of the community, who give back to the community instead of being a drain on the community."

This bill, which passed the House on Friday without any dissenting voices after clearing a few procedural and political hurdles, is part of a package of reforms lawmakers are assembling this year.

The House already passed a bill that requires inmates up to age 26 who don't have high school diplomas to attend class to earn that diploma. Education is one of the factors that help offenders succeed rather than return, yet Rep. Jason Lorber, D-Burlington, noted that 90 percent of the youngest inmates never finished high school.

The Senate will take up another facet of correction reform when the Legislature returns from its town meeting break -- a bill that would change probation policies concerning alcohol to focus on treatment rather than punishment. Unless an offender's crime involved substance abuse, probation conditions would no longer include bans on drinking.

Also, public drunks would no longer be put in jail for their safety if they hadn't committed a crime.

The bill also authorized statewide use of electronic monitoring equipment -- another alternative to help alleviate the need to imprison so many people.

The Senate Institutions Committee will include money in the proposed capital budget to pay for renovations needed if the department reorganizes how it used some prison space. A plan under consideration would move women out of the Dale Women's Facility in Waterbury and close it because it is the most expensive prison in the system. Women would be housed at the Northwest Regional Correctional Facility in St. Albans Town. The Southeast Correctional Facility in Windsor, which along with Dale houses female inmates, would become a large work camp.

Many of these correction reform ideas grew from research and a report provided by the Council of State Governments. The House and Senate have divided up the suggestions.

"Once all the parts come together," said Senate Democratic Leader John Campbell, D-Windsor, "we believe very strongly we will have ground-breaking legislation."

The Douglas administration has been working closely with legislators as they develop the package. Jason Gibbs, spokesman for Gov. Jim Douglas, said the work looks good.

Emmons noted that lawmakers are sketching the big picture, but will only fund a small portion. The Department of Corrections must find $600,000 within its $130 million budget to take an array of small steps to enhance identification and treatment of drug and alcohol abuse among offenders.

Lawmakers are banking that these small steps will produce better, less expensive outcomes, resulting in financial savings. The plan is to plow savings into more treatment and transitional housing.

This strategy could save the state $54 million over 10 years, lawmakers say.

"It's a multi-year process," Emmons said. "This is an investment to better people's lives and make our communities safer."

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080301/NEWS0
2/803010326/1007/NEWS02

The DOC website is http://doc.vermont.gov and the report can be found at http://doc.vermont.gov/cost-reduction-plan-is-completed.

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

March 03, 2008

Western MA: Governor's Bond Bill Could Add 56 More Cells for Women at Chicopee Jail

"Hampden County Sheriff Michael J. Ashe Jr. originally planned for a 176-cell facility, but project delays and rising costs resulted in a smaller facility. The governor's bond bill filed in January includes funding for county jails, including the women's jail here. If approved, an additional 56 cells could be added."

Chicopee gets 2nd check from state for jail
by The Republican Newsroom
Friday February 29, 2008
By HOLLY ANGELO

CHICOPEE - The city was presented a check for $960,000 from the state today that represents mitigation costs associated with locating the new $26.1 million Western Massachusetts Regional Women's Correctional Center in Chicopee.

"The city has realized a good deal in terms of a state investment in that project," Wagner said.

The city received $1.34 million from the state for selling the land on Center Street, where the 120-cell jail opened in September. Legislation passed 12 years ago included mitigation costs for communities where jails are constructed. Under the legislation, host communities receive $10,000 for each medium-security cell. The women's jail here has 96 medium-security cells and 24 minimum-security cells, which adds up to $960,000.

Bissonnette said the money will go into the city's stabilization fund.

"This really is representational of a win-win situation," Bissonnette said. "It was a difficult development site. The state made a commitment to dig into the side of that hill."

The 210-bed facility is a regional partnership between the Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin and Berkshire sheriff's departments, but is operated by the Hampden County sheriff's department.

Most of the women are there because of non-violent offenses, such as property crimes, prostitution and drugs. Before the jail opened, the female inmates were housed at the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow, where they were outnumbered 10 to 1 by male inmates.

Knapik praised the state for getting the mitigation funds to the city in a timely manner. In the past, there has been a lag time of two, three or four years, he said. Ludlow was given $10 million for opening the jail there in 1992.

"We like to do what we can to make sure those resources are brought back to Western Massachusetts," Knapik said.

The city could get more mitigation money if the state funds an expansion of the jail.

Hampden County Sheriff Michael J. Ashe Jr. originally planned for a 176-cell facility, but project delays and rising costs resulted in a smaller facility. The governor's bond bill filed in January includes funding for county jails, including the women's jail here. If approved, an additional 56 cells could be added.

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/02/chicopee_gets_2nd_check_from_s.html

Posted by lois at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

Western MA: Prisoners sew cloth grocey bags

Inmates sew cloth grocery bags
Monday, March 03, 2008
By NANCY H. GONTER
Springfield Republican
NORTHAMPTON - A group of inmates at the Hampshire House of Correction are working with a Cummington woman to change the way people bring home their groceries.

Nearly a year ago, artist Leni F. Fried and others in a hilltown "sustainability group" created the Bag Share Project. They worked with hilltown residents to use donated fabric to create hundreds of cloth grocery bags that were placed at small food stores, including the Old Creamery in Cummington and Cooper's Corner in Florence.

The goal is to have shoppers use them for their groceries instead of plastic bags and then return them so they can be used again and again, Fried said.

"We wanted to know, 'Can we change people's habits?' We decided to give these away and ask people to return the bags," Fried said.

Now, with the assistance of teacher Amy P. Stamm and Cathy J. Rigali, community relations coordinator at the jail, Fried is working with inmates who are housed in the pre-release center to use donated fabric and sewing machines to make more bags to place in more community stores.

Stamm said she first taught the men about how there is six times more plastic on Earth than there are plankton in the ocean and the connection between our "disposable society" and the destruction of the environment.

Many of the men working on the bags said they hadn't touched a sewing machine since their high school home economics classes or working with their moms as boys. But all were happy to help out.

"This is a retreat to my old skills," said Mark C. LaMontagne, of Northampton. He said he'd won't be using plastic bags after his anticipated release in June. "I think plastic bags have served their purpose," he said.

Gary J. Butts, of Springfield, who said he is incarcerated because he "got caught," said he likes to have the chance to contribute to society. "It's great for the environment to recycle, to get rid of plastic," Butts said.

Ted C. Ilnicky, of Leverett, incarcerated on motor vehicle charges, said he considers himself an environmentalist. His family always recycled to some extent, he said.

"Mass production of these bags is really an epidemic in this country. This is taking it a step further and recycling old material," Ilnicky said.

Joseph E. DiLeo, of Millbury, sews as a hobby. When he is released in an estimated six months, he plans to make himself a set of cloth bags.

"This is a wonderful project. It saves trees. We need to stop wasting resources. God gave us this planet and we are abusing it," DeLeo said.
http://www.masslive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-2/1204532467218930.xml&coll=1

Posted by lois at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2008

MD: A second chance is their first priority

"Since first offering, in June 2005, to provide ex-offenders with information about jobs and job-training services - with the outrageous idea that this might actually reduce crime in Baltimore and maybe even lower the state's rate of incarceration - nearly 6,000 men and women have contacted The Sun for help."

Dan Rodricks
Baltimore Sun
March 2, 2008

How is everything on the outside?" Willie Turner asks in a letter from Western Maryland. "I will be an ex-offender when I hit the streets in the year of 2012. So now I need your help please. I was told to write to you for an ex-offender job package that will help me get a job once I am out. I do not want to go back to prison. This is my first time and it is hell.

"Well, I did do it myself," he added, not saying what "it" was. "But now I know that crime does not pay off no kind-of-way. And the prisons are gotten [sic] worse. If you have questions, please write, or just send me the job package please."

Willie's return address is the Western Correctional Institution, our maximum-security prison in Cumberland.

His letter fell out of a pile of prison mail that has been building on my desk for the past six months.

Since first offering, in June 2005, to provide ex-offenders with information about jobs and job-training services - with the outrageous idea that this might actually reduce crime in Baltimore and maybe even lower the state's rate of incarceration - nearly 6,000 men and women have contacted The Sun for help.

A good many of those seeking information about employment, housing and drug treatment are still in our prisons, jails and detention centers.

"My current situation finds me with no outside support, homeless and jobless," wrote Adolphus Smith from Baltimore's jail annex. "I have been proactive since being in here contacting shelters and rehab programs. ... A return to my pre-incarceration lifestyle is not an option. My background includes management (Dollar Store + warehouse), forklift, night stock, deli counter, waiter, car detail high line. I am open to any and all opportunities."

Most of those who write from prison have a date for release.

Most seem to be serving terms ranging from five to 20 years. Most say they have been incarcerated for drug-related offenses, though the mail includes letters from inmates serving life terms for murder.

Most don't seem to have a clue about what to do when they get out of prison, and they say the Maryland prison system has done little to prepare them for the great outdoors.

The majority claim to have no place to live after release.

Many say they are estranged from family - or have no relatives who can support them once they get out of prison.

"I am about to be released in six months," wrote Robert McBee, also housed at the WCI. "I am writing you myself since I have nobody to call or e-mail you for the resource packet."

They all have earnestness about them but express fears they will never be able to find employment because of their criminal records.

"I am about to be released," wrote William Ketchum from a transition center in Baltimore. "I don't have anywhere to stay or work. And me being a ex-offender it will be tougher."

"I have atless [sic] another year but I am trying to prepaid myself because I am sure a lot has changed in the 16 years that I've been incarcerated," wrote another Maryland inmate, Lamont Smith. "I am writing [for] information on programs that assist ex-offenders that are re-entering society wanting to be a productive member of society and not apart of the recidivism rate."

Fears of relapse into drug abuse and criminal activity are well-founded.

One of the reasons the United States leads the world in incarceration, with one out of every 100 adults in prison or jail now, is that too many offenders violate the conditions of their probation - usually by committing new crimes. More than half return to the system within three years of release.

Some do this because they remain addicted to drugs and binge upon release.

Some are just ignorant, arrogant and stubbornly criminal.

But many try to adjust to the outside world and fail.

Too many cannot find employment - always a serious problem, but more pronounced since the terrorist attacks of 2001, as thresholds for security rose across the country. Many companies large and small refuse to hire adults with criminal records, even those whose offenses date from seven to 10 years ago.

In Maryland, we can expect even more ex-offenders returning to the Division of Correction as the O'Malley administration launches a new effort to identify potential parole violators and get them off the street if they so much as spit on it. "Improving public safety in our neighborhoods and communities is the most important duty we have as a state," Gov. Martin O'Malley, the former prosecutor, said Friday. (The FBI reported in January nationwide drops in violent crimes and property crime in 2007, with significant declines in rape, robbery and homicides.)

O'Malley vetoed a bill last year that would have reduced mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders from 20 to 10 years, but the administration has proposed adding only $5 million to the state budget for drug treatment.

The lack of drug treatment is one of the reasons the prisons are full; men and women who should be hospitalized for their addictions are too often sent into the DOC. Polls show that most Americans support drug treatment over incarceration, yet throughout the heroin epoch and the crack surge, Democratic and Republican administrations alike took corrections out of corrections and adopted a hard line to score points with voters. Taxpayers funded new prisons when we should have been building hospitals.

So, here we are, with one out of 100 behind bars.
ww.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.rodricks02mar02,0,2945779.column

Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun

Posted by lois at 06:02 PM | Comments (0)

KY: Leads the nation in prisoner growth rate

Sunday, March 2, 2008
Louisville Courier Journal
Nation of prisons

The study of America's prison population by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States should shock citizens and provoke fresh thinking at every level of government.

The statistics are breath-taking. For the first time in history, more than 1 percent of the nation's adults are in prison or jail. For some demographic groups, the figures are far higher. Among black men between the ages of 20 and 34, to pick the most distressing example, one in nine is behind bars.

The nation leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it imprisons. And Kentucky leads the country with a prisoner growth rate of 12 percent.

The roots of the problem are deep. They lie not in dramatic increases in actual crime but in 30 years of policy decisions to get tough through longer and often mandatory sentences.

Remedies won't be obvious. Racial imbalance among prison inmates, for example, reflects genuine differences in how black and non-black criminal defendants often are treated by the courts. But they also result from disparities in crime rates.

Any discussion must ultimately rest on what Americans expect imprisonment to accomplish. Clearly, locking up violent and chronic offenders for long terms enhances public safety, reduces repeat violations and provides punishment that is deserved.

On the other hand, many prisoners, especially the non-violent drug offenders who swell prison populations, could be handled just as effectively, perhaps more efficiently, and at less expense through drug treatment programs, mental health care, family counseling, community supervision and electronic monitoring.

Since that is also the class of criminals likely to be released after serving a sentence, they may be significantly less likely to commit new offenses if underlying drug, alcohol, emotional and family problems have been addressed; if they continued to be engaged with society, and if they have remained able to earn a livelihood or receive job training.

Meanwhile, the price tag of the expanding prison populations -- $50 billion a year for state governments and $5 billion for the federal budget -- is a double-edged sword.

Taxpayers foot the bill, of course, but political pressure to provide relief will run into a strong countervailing force: The nation's prison network obviously has become a massive "industry," one with tens of thousands of employees and economic stakeholders.

That will be hard to undo, just as it will be difficult to sell alternatives to lock-'em-up approaches. But we must try. Surely, throwing people in prison is not an area in which the United States wants to surpass China, North Korea and Iran.

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20080302&Category=OPINION01&ArtNo=803020392&SectionCat=&Template=printart

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

CT: Cost of prisons soar. Medical training costs almost as much as a year in prison

Sunday, March 2, 2008 5:21 AM EST
As prison population soars, so do costs

BY PAUL HUGHES REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
HARTFORD -- Locking up convicted murderers costs almost as much as training medical students at the University of Connecticut.

The difference is only $1,675 annually, but that small sum says a lot about the soaring costs of prisons. Today, the state government spends $665 million on the prison system and $700 million on the higher education system.

Every taxpayer dollar spent on prisons is one dollar less for tax relief, education, roads and highways, health care or economic development.

The average yearly cost of keeping an inmate in prison jumped $9,125 in last five years to $44,165, according to figures from the legislature's budget office.

"I think you are going to see these costs go up," said Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, D-East Haven, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "The inmate population is trending upward."

The population of the state's 18 prisons was 19,984 on Feb. 1. This was a two-year high for the Department of Correction. Prisons average 19,160 inmates a day. This is more people than live in two-thirds of Connecticut towns.

More prisoners means more bodies to feed, clothe, house and supervise and more medical, dental and psychiatric care at taxpayer expense.

Today, the Department of Correction has the fourth largest budget in state government. The department's budget has increased $269 million from $395 million a decade ago. Yet, all this prison spending isn't enough.

The Department of Correction is looking at a budget gap of $18.2 million this year, including $3.8 million for staffing and overtime costs associated with supervising an increasing prison population, $6.5 million for food, clothing, bedding and other living supplies, and $6.5 million for medical care.

There are enough savings elsewhere in the state budget to make up the department's overruns.

But the Rell administration expects a $25.6 million gap for the department in the upcoming 2009 fiscal year. This is because of the carry-over from this year's shortfall. The administration proposed a plan to the legislature for plugging that hole within the approved state budget for 2009.

Aside from that money, Gov. M. Jodi Rell also is seeking an additional $35.1 million in new funding next year, including $10 million more for prison staffing, $6.9 million more for medical services and more than $7.3 million for supporting inmates released into the community.

"I think every state is facing the same thing," Rell said.

"I think every state is facing the same thing," Rell said.

A new report from the Pew Center on the States supports the governor's assertion. According to the report, state spending on corrections hit an all-time high in 2007 as the U.S. prison population reached historic levels.

The Pew Center reported more than 2.3 million men and women were incarcerated in federal, state, county and local prisons and jails at the start of 2008, or one in every 99.1 adults. This gives the U.S the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world.

The center's report attributed the ballooning prison population to tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Researchers at Central Connecticut State University linked the rise in the state's prison population to such legislation being enacted here.

"States are paying a high cost for corrections," said Susan K. Urahan, managing director of the Pew Center on the States in Washington, D.C.

The center calculated that states spent more than $49 billion on corrections last year, an increase of $38 million from 20 years ago. Its report said rising prison populations are expected to cost state governments an additional $25 billion by 2011.

In Connecticut, there are twice as many convicted criminals in state prisons today than 20 years ago. In that time, the budget of Department of Corrections rose more than $540 million.

Today, the cost of keeping an inmate locked up here varies up to $70,000 depending on the state prison, according to legislature's budget office.

http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2008/03/02/news/321838.txt

Posted by lois at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)

A Card Carrying Civil Liberterian

"And Mrs. Clinton opposed a moderate proposal by the United States Sentencing Commission that would have retroactively reduced the draconian penalties for possession of crack cocaine — a proposal supported by Mr. Obama, and by liberal as well as conservative judges.
The real concern about Hillary Clinton’s record on civil liberties is that her administration would look like that of her husband. Bill Clinton’s presidency had many virtues, but a devotion to civil liberties was not one of them. After the Oklahoma City bombing, the Clinton administration proposed many of the expansions of police power that would end up in the Patriot Act. (They were opposed at the time by the same coalition of civil-libertarian liberals and libertarian conservatives that Mr. Obama has supported.) The Clinton administration’s tough-on-crime policies also contributed to the rising prison population, and to the fact that the United States has a higher incarceration rate than any other country."

March 1, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor, New York Times
A Card-Carrying Civil Libertarian
By JEFFREY ROSEN
Washington
IF Barack Obama wins in November, we could have not only our first president who is an African-American, but also our first president who is a civil libertarian. Throughout his career, Mr. Obama has been more consistent than Hillary Clinton on issues from the Patriot Act to bans on flag burning. At the same time, he has reached out to Republicans and independents to build support for his views. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, has embraced some of the instrumental tacking of Bill Clinton, whose presidency disappointed liberal and conservative civil libertarians on issue after issue.

Mr. Obama made his name in the Illinois Legislature by championing historic civil liberties reforms, like the mandatory recording of all interrogations and confessions in capital cases. Although prosecutors, the police, the Democratic governor and even some death penalty advocates were initially opposed to the bill, Mr. Obama won them over. The reform passed unanimously, and it has been adopted by four other states and the District of Columbia.
In the Senate, Mr. Obama distinguished himself by making civil liberties one of his legislative priorities. He co-sponsored a bipartisan reform bill that would have cured the worst excesses of the Patriot Act by meaningfully tightening the standards for warrantless surveillance. Once again, he helped encourage a coalition of civil-libertarian liberals and libertarian conservatives. The effort failed when Hillary Clinton joined 13 other Democrats in supporting a Republican motion to cut off debate on amendments to the Patriot Act.
That wasn’t the first time Mrs. Clinton tacked to the center in a civil-liberties debate. In 2005, she co-sponsored a bill that would have made it a federal crime to intimidate someone by burning a flag, even though the Supreme Court had struck down similar laws in the past. (Mr. Obama supported a narrower bill that would have satisfied the Constitution.) And Mrs. Clinton opposed a moderate proposal by the United States Sentencing Commission that would have retroactively reduced the draconian penalties for possession of crack cocaine — a proposal supported by Mr. Obama, and by liberal as well as conservative judges.
The real concern about Hillary Clinton’s record on civil liberties is that her administration would look like that of her husband. Bill Clinton’s presidency had many virtues, but a devotion to civil liberties was not one of them. After the Oklahoma City bombing, the Clinton administration proposed many of the expansions of police power that would end up in the Patriot Act. (They were opposed at the time by the same coalition of civil-libertarian liberals and libertarian conservatives that Mr. Obama has supported.) The Clinton administration’s tough-on-crime policies also contributed to the rising prison population, and to the fact that the United States has a higher incarceration rate than any other country. Hillary Clinton’s conduct during the Clinton impeachment does not inspire confidence in her respect for privacy. Kathleen Willey, one of the women who accused President Clinton of unwanted advances, charges in a new book that Mrs. Clinton participated in the smear campaigns against her. A federal judge found that the Clinton White House had “committed a criminal violation” of Ms. Willey’s privacy rights by releasing her private letters. (An appellate court later criticized the judge’s “sweeping pronouncements.”) Whether Hillary Clinton’s administration would, in fact, look like Bill Clinton’s on civil liberties is hard to judge. In many areas, she has demonstrated an impressive commitment. She proposed a privacy bill of rights that would require consumers to “opt in” before their commercial data is shared and would allow them to sue companies for the misuse of data. She has called for the resurrection of a federal “privacy czar” who would balance the privacy costs and benefits of regulations. She made an eloquent speech in the Senate opposing the suspension of habeas corpus. And she has emphasized the importance of Congressional oversight of executive power, promising as president that she would consider surrendering some of the authority that President Bush unilaterally seized. Clearly, she would be immeasurably better on civil liberties than George W. Bush.
But Mrs. Clinton’s approach to the subject is that of a top-down progressive. Her speeches about privacy suggest that she has boundless faith in the power of experts, judges and ultimately herself to strike the correct balance between privacy and security.
Moreover, the core constituency that cares intensely about civil liberties is a distinct minority — some polls estimate it as around 20 percent of the electorate. A polarizing president, who played primarily to the Democratic base and refused to reach out to conservative libertarians, would have no hope of striking a sensible balance between privacy and security.
Mr. Obama, by contrast, is not a knee-jerk believer in the old-fashioned liberal view that courts should unilaterally impose civil liberties protections on unwilling majorities. His formative experiences have involved arguing for civil liberties in the legislatures rather than courts, and winning over skeptics on both sides of the political spectrum, as he won over the police and prosecutors in Chicago.
As a former grass-roots activist, Mr. Obama understands the need to make the case for civil liberties in the political arena. At a time when America’s civil-libertarian tradition has been embattled at home and abroad, his candidacy offers a unique opportunity.

Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, is the author of “The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries That Defined America.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/opinion/01rosen.html?sq=Obama%20and%20civil%20liberties&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

VA: For want of $100, some stuck in jail

For want of $100, some stuck in jail
Richmond sheriff seeks options for accused as they await trial

By DAVID RESS, TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Friday, Feb 29, 2008 - 12:09 AM Updated: 10:54 AM

About one of every 30 people waiting in Richmond's jail for a trial
is behind bars because he or she can't afford a $100 bail bond.

Add in those who can't afford to pay $150 to $300 for a bond, and the
total is one of every seven awaiting trial.

They'll stay in jail for weeks -- usually well over a month -- often
for such misdemeanors as trespassing or disorderly conduct, a
Richmond Times-Dispatch review of jail and court records found.

Many are ill. Most don't do well with some of the basics of life,
such as keeping in touch with families and friends.

Sheriff C.T. Woody Jr. said they are among the roughly one-third of
inmates he believes don't really belong in the city's aging,
overcrowded jail. The jail, designed to house 882, routinely has more
than 1,500 inmates, more than 450 of whom are awaiting trial.

"I've got a lot of family, a lot of connections," says Tobias
Johnson, who spent six weeks in jail last fall when he was unable to
come up with $150 for a bond on charges of trespassing and possessing
marijuana.

The trespassing charge -- he fell asleep in the lobby of VCU Medical
Center -- eventually was dropped. He got a suspended sentence of 30
days for the marijuana charge and walked out of court a free man
after his brief trial.

He stayed out for three weeks. Then, he was charged with trespassing
at Gilpin Court -- he'd just been robbed of $40, he rattles off, and
was on his way to pick up some clothes. If he can come up with $75,
he could wait outside jail for his March 11 trial.

"You know what relentless is? I've been relentless, trying to get out
of here," he said, in the intense mile-a-minute way he outlines his
career as a banker, a machinist and a backhoe operator, or talks
about his plans to go to law school in Georgia and become an
accountant, or how he used to be in the care of the Richmond
Behavioral Health Authority until he missed a doctor's appointment
and an appointment with a pastor -- and the story continues.

Johnson, 43, finally managed to find a bed in the jail's tough F-1
tier after six weeks of sleeping on the floor in the crowded
dormitory cell. He's been robbed twice of the snacks he'd scrimped to
buy. Had four fights. Won two.

. . .

Like Johnson, a one-time All-Metro guard from the powerhouse
Armstrong-Kennedy High School basketball team of 1984, about 40
percent of those low-bond inmates are in jail on trespassing,
disorderly conduct or other nuisance misdemeanor charges, the Times-
Dispatch review found.

About one-third are there for minor drug offenses -- possession of
small amounts of marijuana or crack cocaine, usually. The rest are
there for a range of driving, petit larceny, bad check or misdemeanor
assault charges.

It costs taxpayers $374 a week to keep them in jail.

The costs for Johnson, whose 18 trips to jail include charges ranging
from cocaine possession to prostitution to trespassing, are higher
because of the three prescriptions he takes for a chronic medical
condition.

"I do think it is worth looking again at the very low bonds and
asking what's the point," said Commonwealth's Attorney Michael N.
Herring, who said he was startled by the newspaper's findings.

"Somebody who is getting a $300 bail, should we be asking me as a
taxpayer to spend thousands of dollars to keep him in jail awaiting
trial?" Herring asked.

"But then what if this is a person who is homeless or who is
challenged or ill; do we want to put him out with no place to go in
the winter? . . . If you put them on the street, they'll be
trespassing again in a few weeks or maybe be subject to someone who
is a predator."

. . .

General District Court Judge David E. Cheek says setting a bond is
one of the hardest decisions a judge makes.

"It's very complicated and it is a case-by-case thing," he said.
"You've got to weigh Eighth Amendment rights, and the thought that
someone could spend a long time in jail but be found innocent against
the possibility that someone will be hurt if they are on the street."

The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bans excessive bail as
well as cruel and unusual punishment.

Woody says many men and women behind bars with very low bonds don't
need to be incarcerated at all. He's calling for alternatives,
including check-ins with the city's pretrial services officers or
electronic-monitoring devices.

"Some people don't have the financial means to post a bond, no matter
the amount of the bond," he said.

A Times-Dispatch review of nearly 1,500 inmate records from a single
day in December found more than a dozen behind bars because they
couldn't afford a $30, $50, $80 or $100 bail bond.

It discovered 50 more who couldn't afford $150 to $300 bonds.

The review also found:
# Jose Sanchez, who couldn't pay $50 to get out of jail after his
arrest for driving on a revoked license Nov. 24. At his trial three
weeks later, he was assessed a $100 fine.
# Alice Graves, unable to find $30 to get out of jail after her Nov.
10 arrest for trespassing. She was found guilty a month later and
sentenced to two months in jail.
# Michael McCarter, who couldn't afford a $100 bond after his Aug. 30
arrest on a hit-and-run charge. At his Jan. 31 trial, he was
sentenced to 12 months in jail.

. . .

Bail bondsmen don't always want the headache of writing small bonds,
and sometimes defendants know they're guilty and decide they might as
well get an early start on their sentence -- time spent waiting for
trial is credited against sentences, defense attorney Stephen
Benjamin said.

Many of the low-bond inmates have mental illnesses, and the number of
them in jail is yet another sign of how the area tends to deal with
the troubled by locking them up, Benjamin said.

"And Richmond City Jail is not a pleasant place, but it is warm and
they do serve three meals a day," he said. "For some people, that
looks better than going back on the street and being homeless and
cold and hungry."

That's not his situation, inmate Johnson said. He's been homeless,
yes. But he's got people, lots of people, on the outside -- just not
for posting bonds.

"I've called my friends, but they lose patience," he said. "I know
one girl, she's a real estate broker, she told my mother she'd do
what she could to help. I want to say, 'Pay my bond, pay my bond.'"
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-
RTD-2008-02-29-0135.html

Posted by lois at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

In Alabama, a Fight to Regain Voting Rights Some Felons Never Lost

By SHAILA DEWAN
NY Times
March 2, 2008

DOTHAN, Ala. — The Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, onetime criminal and founder of a ministry called The Ordinary People Society, spent years helping people with criminal records regain the right to vote in Alabama, where an estimated 250,000 people are prohibited from voting because of past criminal activity.

Then he discovered that many of them had never actually lost the right.

Because of a quirk in its Constitution, Alabama disqualifies from voting only those who have committed a “felony involving moral turpitude.” Those who have committed other felonies — like marijuana possession or drunken driving — can cast ballots even if they are still in prison, according to the state attorney general.

But it has been slow work cajoling public officials to enforce and publicize the law. Until Friday, the secretary of state’s Web site advised, incorrectly, that those with any kind of felony conviction could not register unless they had served their time and their right to vote had been restored by the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Because neither the Legislature nor the attorney general has offered a definitive list of crimes involving moral turpitude, there is no way of knowing how many inmates are eligible to vote. But state agencies generally agree that those convicted of drug possession — at least 3,000 of Alabama’s 29,000 prison inmates and thousands more on probation — are eligible. Most felons and former felons, however, assume that they have lost the right to vote.

“This is an issue that’s never come up before,” said Richard F. Allen, the commissioner of corrections. “I would think that if there were any latent feeling out there that they wanted to vote, they would have expressed it by now.”

Mr. Glasgow, who is the half-brother of a far less obscure crusader based in New York, the Rev. Al Sharpton, believes that not only do inmates and former convicts want to vote, but also that their ballots could alter the political landscape in this Republican-leaning state, adding that his group has registered more than 500 people by visiting a handful of county jails.

“There would be a lot of difference in our legislators, our elected officials and our presidents that we’ve had,” he said. “It would definitely change the political spectrum of Alabama.”

Republicans agree. They railed against a statute passed in 2003 that made it easier for some former felons to regain their voting rights by side-stepping a lengthy and backlogged pardon process.

“There’s no more anti-Republican bill than this,” said Marty Connors, the chairman of the state Republican Party, according to news reports at the time. “As frank as I can be, we’re opposed to it because felons don’t tend to vote Republican.”

In the two years after the 2003 statute took effect, more than 5,500 former felons had their rights restored, and interest in the November presidential election is running high, said Sarah Still, manager of the pardons department. In January, Ms. Still received more than 280 applications for voting rights, up from an average of 140 a month last fall.

Nationally, 5.3 million people are barred from voting because of their criminal history, according to a 2004 estimate cited by the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice policy group. In the last decade, as criminals who were swept into prison during the drug war have been released and the difficulty of re-integrating them into society has become clear, at least 16 states have made it easier for former felons to vote.

But in the South, where restrictions on former convicts are among the most severe and in many cases date to Jim Crow laws, there have been fewer changes. Last Monday the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in protest of a 2006 Tennessee law that requires former convicts to pay back child support before regaining the right to vote. In Alabama, the Republican attorney general, Troy King, has proposed a constitutional amendment that would delete the moral turpitude clause, prohibiting all felons from voting.

Though he is an active Democrat, Mr. Glasgow, 42, says his main goal is not to aid his party but to help former inmates become productive members of society.

But for most of his own life he was hardly an exemplar of civic engagement. Mr. Sharpton, in his memoir, “Go and Tell Pharaoh,” says his parents’ marriage was wrecked when his father, Al Sharpton Sr., had an affair with his mother’s teenage daughter from a previous marriage, resulting in the birth of Kenneth.

By the time Kenneth was a teenager, his mother had taken him to her hometown, Dothan, Ala., where he began to get in trouble for selling drugs, became addicted to crack cocaine and did time in Alabama and Florida for armed robbery and other crimes.

It was during his longest stint in prison, nine years, that the genes of activism and oratory that run in Mr. Glasgow’s family emerged and he began to preach. When he was released in 2001, the bondsman who had repeatedly bailed him out of jail became treasurer of The Ordinary People Society and paid for Mr. Glasgow to attend seminary.

Mr. Glasgow opened a soup kitchen, held church services under a white tent and began to help former convicts like Anna Reynolds, a recovering addict, regain the right to vote — a process often made onerous by the moral-turpitude clause.

As a legal concept, moral turpitude refers to conduct that would be immoral even if it were not illegal, unlike, say, speeding. The delegates to the 1901 constitutional convention who used the term also took away voting rights for other infractions that they believed blacks were more likely to commit, like wife beating, adultery and vagrancy. In 1985 the United States Supreme Court struck down most of the law on the grounds that it was racially discriminatory, but the moral-turpitude clause remained.

Most officials in Alabama were unaware of the clause until 2005, when it came to light after a man on probation tried to vote in St. Clair County. The parole board requested clarification, and the attorney general responded with an incomplete categorization of felonies based largely on previous court decisions.

The opinion leaves a large gray area, said Ms. Still of the pardons department. It says, for example, that rape is a crime of moral turpitude and that assault is not, but offers no clarification on variations like statutory rape or assault with intent to kill.

The parole board settled on a policy of treating drug possession and drunk driving as crimes devoid of moral turpitude, but that has not put an end to the confusion, Mr. Glasgow said.

Initially Ms. Reynolds, 52, was told by the local registrar that she could not vote because of a conviction for drug possession. She applied to the parole board, which told her that it could not restore her right to vote because she had never lost it. Finally, The Ordinary People Society helped cut through the red tape.

On Feb. 5, Ms. Reynolds stood outside the public library handing out sample ballots before casting her own. “Voting, that’s part of getting back to normal life,” she said. “I’ve been out of the loop for a long time, and it was good to have help getting back into the loop.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/us/02felons.html?_r=1&sq=Alabama&st=nyt&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&scp=2&adxnnlx=1204473648-cWbxoAYTy5eI6xEz3aPH3g

Posted by lois at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2008

German comic book on the Holocaust

February 27, 2008, NY Times
Abroad
No Laughs, No Thrills, and Villains All Too Real
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

BERLIN — The other morning Jens Augner, slight and owlish, a schoolteacher in his 40s, quizzed his eighth-grade class of 13- and 14-year-olds at the Humboldt Gymnasium, a local school. As part of a trial program, he has just introduced a new history textbook into the curriculum: to be exact, a comic book about the Holocaust, called “The Search.”

Among other things, the book, building on the obvious precedent of Art Spiegelman's "Maus," shows how far comics have come as a cultural medium taken seriously here, but also that the Holocaust has come a long way too, as a topic to be freshly considered by a new generation of German teenagers.

As it happens, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, just recently made headlines across Europe and elsewhere when, seemingly out of the blue, he announced that beginning next fall, French fifth graders should each study the life of one of the 11,000 French children killed during the Holocaust. (“Obscene,” responded a dumbstruck Pascal Bruckner, the philosopher. He wasn’t alone in that sentiment.)

On the new comic book’s cover, a teenager named Esther sprints from a truckload of Nazi soldiers. She faces a choice in the book: a policeman will let her flee, if she wants, rather than follow her parents to the camps.

Standing before the blackboard, Mr. Augner asked the students what they might have done in Esther’s place. Hands shot up.

“Her parents would have wanted her to hide,” one girl speculated. A boy pointed out that the policeman, and not only Esther, had to make a difficult decision, because he could have been punished for letting her escape.

Many students said they would have gone after their parents. One declared that she would die for them.

At which point a quiet classmate spoke up: “It’s a question of whether you want to die alone.”

With the Second World War passing from living memory, the Holocaust remains a subject taught as a singular event and obligation here, and Germans still seem to grapple almost eagerly with their own historic guilt and shame. That said, few German schoolchildren today can go home to ask their grandparents, much less their parents, what they did while Hitler was around. The end of the war is now as distant from them in time as the end of the First World War was from the Reagan presidency.

Paradoxically, this seems to have freed young Germans — adolescent ones, anyway — to talk more openly and in new ways about Nazis and the Holocaust. Passing is the shock therapy, with its films of piled corpses, that earlier generations of schoolchildren had to endure.

In the comic Esther recounts to her grandchildren what happened to her family, and in the process facts emerge about Hitler’s rise, about deportations and concentration camps. Without excusing anyone or spreading blame, the story, rather than focusing on Hitler and geopolitics, stresses instances where ordinary individuals — farmers, shopkeepers, soldiers, prison guards, even camp inmates — faced dilemmas, acted selfishly or ambiguously: showed themselves to be human. The medium’s intimacy and immediacy help boil down a vast subject to a few lives that young readers, and old ones too, can grasp.

As for Mr. Sarkozy’s plan, his education minister suggested that instead of having each school child study a specific Holocaust victim, an entire fifth-grade class might study the life of one child so as not to traumatize every 10-year-old in France. A committee is meeting now to study both proposals. Even if uncooked, the president’s original notion about personalizing and revivifying a moral turning point in modern history reflected a broad change afoot.

Ask many Germans now in their 20s, 30s and 40s, and they will describe elementary and high school history classes that virtually cudgeled them into learning about Nazis and the Holocaust. The other morning Jutta Harms recalled her class in a small town in the north of West Germany during the late 1970s. Ms. Harms now works for Reprodukt, a leading Berlin publisher of graphic novels.

“Students had to fight to talk freely about the war,” she recounted, “and, being confronted in class by the emotions of the teachers, there wasn’t any space to feel for ourselves.” The comic book, she went on, is therefore a welcome sign of change.

Mr. Augner, the schoolteacher, echoed Ms. Harms’s recollection: “Teachers with good will used to make German children feel it was somehow their fault, that they had a weight on their shoulders. The war was still a fresh wound.” This new comic book, he added, speaks to “a different generation of students.”

“It teaches the subject,” he continued, ”so that it’s no longer just about victims and perpetrators.”

When a visitor asked Mr. Augner’s students how much they identified with the Germans who fought the war, they looked blank and slightly baffled. “It was another generation,” one said with a shrug. In that response a page of history seemed to turn.

“The result, I find, is that interest in the subject is actually increasing,” Mr. Augner later commented. “These students don’t have the same discomfort we did talking about it.”

Older Germans can recall an American television mini-series, “Holocaust,” that shocked people when it was shown here in the late 1970s and helped transform public opinion, giving many permission to break the long silence about Nazi atrocities. It recounted the war from the perspectives of two families, one Jewish, the other Nazi.

“The Search” takes this approach further, beyond the realm of commercial entertainment and into much subtler territory. The Anna Frank Haus in the Netherlands put it together by joining a team of experts with Eric Heuvel, a Dutch comic artist, whose previous book about the war in the Netherlands was distributed to 200,000 schoolchildren there. Some 20 classrooms, grades 7 to 10, here in Berlin and in North Rhine-Westphalia, are testing the new book. There are versions in Dutch, German, Hungarian, Polish and English.

“It would not have been possible as a history text 10 years ago, when people here assumed comics were only for those who couldn’t read properly,” Ms. Harms, from Reprodukt, the comics publisher, said.

The visual style of “The Search” is clear, simple, pastel-colored, in a classic Belgian-Franco comic tradition. “Less is more,” Mr. Heuvel, the artist, said in a recent telephone conversation, acknowledging that he pilfered liberally from Tintin’s inventor, Hergé. “We spent endless hours making sure that the Nazi costumes were kept to a minimum because boys can glorify these things.”

Thomas Heppener, director of the Anne Frank Center in Berlin, said, “There was also a lot of discussion about color.” Black-and-white, he noted, is now a cliché of art and movies about the Holocaust. Color is less melodramatic. “And you know the trees were still green at Auschwitz,” he added.

It’s a bright autumn day in the book when Esther’s parents are rounded up and sent off to die. The comic is more heartbreaking for being understated and cautious about violence. Ruud van der Rol, one of the writers, explained: “There are no piles of bodies, because we knew from experience that this could block children from dealing with the whole subject. Also — and we had endless conversations about this — we decided not to show Hitler as a beast or inhuman because the Nazis, after all, were human beings. That’s the point. Anyone can be a perpetrator or a hero. The choice is yours.”

The other afternoon Dilek Geyik, a 30-year-old schoolteacher in training, was preparing to introduce the comic to her students at another Berlin high school. The students there come mostly from working-class families, and from time to time tensions flare between immigrants and right-wing teenagers. A petite, dark-haired woman, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, Ms. Geyik is accustomed to answering the question Where are you from? Unlike many of the people who ask, she was born and reared here, a native Berliner. But with a Turkish name, she’s simply presumed to be an outsider by many Germans.

“When I was taught about the Holocaust in high school, I felt I could step away from the topic in ways German students couldn’t, because it wasn’t about me,” she recalled. “History was something they were supposed to bear in silence. But now you don’t have so many witnesses, so the direct connection isn’t there for children. And also I came in time to see it myself in a larger context.”

She added: “More and more young German students do too. They are sensitive to the idea that the subject is not just about Germans and Jews. It’s about people and life.”

Posted by lois at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)