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June 30, 2008

2 Editorials on Expanding Democracy & Disenfranchisement

June 30, 2008
Editorial, NY Times
Expanding Democracy in Florida

Among the world’s democracies, the United States is uniquely unforgiving in denying ex-offenders the right to vote. Nowhere is the problem worse than in Florida, where criminal justice experts estimate that as many as 950,000 felons are barred from the voting booth.

Last year, Gov. Charlie Crist pushed through new rules that made it easier for some ex-offenders to become full citizens and helped restore voting rights to more than 100,000 former prisoners. But this is well short of what’s needed — a complete overhaul of a wildly illogical system.

In most states, inmates win back their voting rights as soon as they are released from prison or when they complete parole or probation. One big reason that does not happen in Florida is that state law requires felons to first make restitution to their victims. And until their voting rights are restored, former prisoners are barred from scores of state-regulated occupations for which the restoration of voting rights is listed as a condition of employment.

Quite apart from the fact that it is undemocratic to bar people from the voting booth because they owe money, the system is transparently counterproductive since it prevents people from landing the jobs they will need to make restitution. Denying ex-offenders a chance to make an honest living is a sure way to drive them back to jail.

The system also requires extensive and unnecessary background checks before voting rights can be restored for some applicants, making it hard to reduce the backlog. Florida could clear up that backlog in a hurry, treat all ex-offenders fairly and enhance democracy by automatically restoring voting rights to inmates who have completed their sentences.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/opinion/30mon3.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

GLOBE EDITORIAL
Out of jail, on the rolls

June 24, 2008

VOTING IS a fundamental right, not a privilege for the virtuous. And yet 10 states permanently restrict the voting rights of some or all felons, and 25 more deny the franchise to those out on parole, according to a compelling new report by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. While these measures might satisfy a desire to punish law-breakers, they also add to the alienation of ex-cons - and are therefore likely to hurt rather than help public safety.

The voting rights of ex-felons are - bizarrely - decided on a state by state basis. Until a ballot question tightened the rules eight years ago, Massachusetts allowed incarcerated prisoners to vote. Even now, the Commonwealth restores prisoners' right to vote upon their release - a practice that the Brennan Center urges more restrictive states to adopt. The center is also touting federal legislation that would guarantee 4 million released prisoners the right to vote at least in federal elections.

Bans on voting by ex-cons bespeak a kind of paranoia - as if politically astute criminals would take control of the government and repeal all the laws. In fact, ex-cons are likely to be disconnected from politics and economic life. Their disenfranchisement also dampens the voting power of African-Americans and other minority communities with high incarceration rates.

The long-term disenfranchisement of ex-cons creates opportunities for mischief. In 2000, Florida denied the vote to innocent people with names similar to those in a national database of felons.

But there are more hopeful signs. In 2006 Rhode Island voted to restore the franchise to prisoners upon their release, and the report points to reforms in Iowa, Maryland, and even Florida. Legislators and voters are realizing that most prisoners eventually get out, and need to find a place in society. Restoring their right to vote can only help.

Posted by lois at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)

JJPL AND FFLIC WIN HISTORIC VICTORY WITH CLOSURE OF JETSON YOUTH PRISON

The results of years of litigation, media advocacy and family organizing reached a high point in 2003-2004 with the closure of the hyper-violent Tallulah youth prison and sweeping juvenile justice reform legislation, requiring a change from a punitive juvenile system to a rehabilitative system based on the highly effective Missouri model. The Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2003 required the move away from large youth prisons to small, regional, home-like secure care facilities close to children's homes, an increase in evidence-based alternatives to incarceration programs and a decrease in the number of non-violent children sent to secure care.

In spite of the ground-breaking legislation, juvenile justice reform had come to a standstill over the past year, with the three large youth prisons deteriorating, new reports of abuse in Jetson, and no movement to build the small, regional rehabilitative facilities and alternative programs required by the sweeping reforms JJPL and FFLIC helped pass in 2003. Jetson was the site of both widespread violence and, recently, the tragic death of a child who was just three weeks away from his release date.

JJPL and FFLIC stepped up pressure for reform through widespread media
coverage including a series of articles in the Baton Rouge Advocate such as, "Prison Problems Return: Juvenile Prison Reform has Stalled, Critics Say" (4/17/08) and "Jetson Closure Pushed" (4/19/08) and two New York Times editorials "Louisiana Tries Again" (5/29/2008) and "Louisiana: Closing an Abusive'Center for Youth'" (6/18/08)[1] Media profiles of youth who were incarcerated in Jetson for minor offenses, such as a teenager who served four years for stealing his mother's necklace to give to his girlfriend for Christmas and suffered violence and brutality in the facility,[2] drew attention to the fact that more than 60 percent of youth in Louisiana's juvenile prisons are non-violent.

The bill passed unanimously in the House and with only one opposition vote in the Senate, signaling a renewed commitment to reform. This means that smaller more regionalized facilities that focus on rehabilitation will be built, more children will be directed into community-based alternatives to incarceration, and that the antiquated youth prison known as the Jetson Correctional Center for Youth will no longer house children as of 2009.

Posted by lois at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2008

CA: Dispute over California prison crowding to go to trial. A court-appointed referee tells federal judges that state officials and others have failed to settle the case of poor inmate healthcare.

From the Los Angeles Times
Dispute over California prison crowding to go to trial
A court-appointed referee tells federal judges that state officials and others have failed to settle the case of poor inmate healthcare.
By Tim Reiterman
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 28, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO — Attempts to settle a case on California's crowded prisons have reached an impasse over the issue of how many inmates the lockups should hold.

The failure paves the way for a trial Nov. 17 that could lead a three-judge panel to order mass releases.

On May 30, federal judges gave the parties in the complex litigation a 30-day extension to strike a deal. After hearing a court-appointed referee's report Friday on the stalled talks, the judges said they would go ahead with a trial to determine whether overcrowding is the primary cause of unconstitutionally poor medical and mental healthcare in the state's 33 prisons.

Referee Elwood Lui, who presided over negotiations among state officials, prisoners' rights attorneys and other parties, said, "We were not able to bring the ball across the goal line."

Andrea Hoch, the governor's legal affairs secretary, said: "Agreement on a population level is key because all other settlement terms flow from that one item."

Lui and Hoch expressed hope that an accord still could be reached before the trial.

Currently, 158,000 inmates are housed in California's adult prisons. Liu proposed setting the population at 158% of designed capacity -- which under existing conditions would translate to 132,500 people -- by Sept. 15, 2012.

To help reduce the gap, parole violators and prisoners with short sentences would be sent to county-run programs instead of state penitentiaries.

But in a report unsealed Friday, Liu said state officials and plaintiffs in two civil rights suits could not agree on a population level, benchmarks for achieving such a goal or a completion date for a population reduction.

Republican lawmakers and 20 district attorneys, who intervened in the case, questioned whether overcrowding is the primary cause of inadequate healthcare. They opposed population caps and the diversion of low-risk inmates, citing public safety concerns.

They also argued that overcrowding would be addressed through Assembly Bill 900, which passed last year and authorized $7.4 billion in bonds to add 53,000 beds, and through a court-appointed receiver who has sought $7 billion in borrowing for 10,000 additional medical beds.

"With all the promising work in progress designed to alleviate the conditions that gave rise to the possible need for a prisoner release order . . . a settlement . . . does not need a prison population cap in order to succeed at this time," wrote William Mitchell, Riverside County assistant district attorney and lead counsel for the intervening district attorneys.

Steven Kaufhold, a lawyer for the Republican legislators, said in an interview, "These are large problems and are not going to be solved in a month or by November. . . . Turning [prisoners] loose is not necessarily going to help medical or mental health."

The judges expressed skepticism about the ability of legislative action or the court-appointed receiver in charge of prison healthcare to solve the long-standing care problems any time soon.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson said the receiver estimated it would take three to five years to get the system in order.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton said: "We're told there are people dying [unnecessarily] every day."

Don Specter of the Prison Law Office, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said talks broke off Monday.

"Even if we do resume talks," he said, "the trial will go ahead unless we settle the case."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisons28-2008jun28,0,7495253.story

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

June 26, 2008

The Sentencing Project's response to George Will's Column: "More Prisons, Less Crime"

The Sentencing Project
www.sentencingproject.org

Do More Prisoners Equal Less Crime? A Response to George Will

In a recent syndicated column (“More Prisons, Less Crime,” Washington Post, June 22, 2008), commentator George Will argues that the world record incarceration rate in the United States has produced safer streets and has been beneficial in particular to African Americans, who are disproportionately victims of crime. Will’s selective use of data and limited vision provide an inaccurate portrayal of current criminal justice policy and its effects. Following is an assessment of some of the key arguments raised in the column.

“Liberalism likes victimization narratives and the related assumption that individuals are blank slates on which ’society’ writes. Hence liberals locate the cause of crime in flawed social conditions that liberalism supposedly can fix.”

Decades of research documents that people in low-income, minority communities are at greater risk of entering the criminal justice system because of the paucity of prevention programs, early intervention programs, and alternatives to incarceration. While privately run social services programs are widely available in most middle and upper class communities, their limited presence where they are most needed means that the first “intervention” that those less fortunate encounter is often prison.

Evidence-based social programs that address the contributing factors to crime have been demonstrated to be more cost-effective than incarceration. Research shows that quality preschool programs can save the public $17 for each dollar that is invested. Other programs with documented cost-effectiveness include initiatives to improve high school graduation rates and a variety of substance abuse treatment strategies.

“…Obama said that ‘more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities.’ Actually, there are more than twice as many black men ages 18 to 24 in college as there are in jail.”

Will is technically correct that Senator Obama misspoke in his reference to young black men, as opposed to black men of all ages. But current and projected rates of incarceration for black men are indeed dramatic. One of every nine black males in the age group 20-34 is in prison or jail on any given day, and if current trends continue one of every three black males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime.

“…from 1999 to 2004, violent offenders accounted for all of the increase in the prison population”

Will is both wrong and misleading on this statistic. First, the violent offense proportion of the state prison population increase, 75%, was substantial, but did not account for “all of the increase.” More importantly, the crisis of incarceration in the U.S. did not begin in 1999. In fact, the incarcerated population has been rising at a dramatic rate for more than three decades. The combined prison and jail population has risen by more than 600% since 1972, increasing from 300,000 to 2.3 million today. A longer term view of the rise in the prison and jail population shows that changes in drug policy have been most significant in contributing to this expansion. From 1980 to today, the number of drug offenders in prison and jail has risen by 1100%, from 41,000 to 500,000.

“In the overwhelming majority of cases, prison remains a lifetime achievement award for persistence in criminal offending. Absent recidivism or a violent crime, the criminal-justice system will do everything it can to keep you out of the state or federal slammer.”

The unprecedented rise in the prison population described above was brought about primarily as a result of changes in policy, not crime rates. State and federal legislatures passed numerous “tough on crime” laws intended to put more people in prison and keep them there longer than in the past. An analysis of incarceration patterns between 1980 and 2001 by noted criminologists Alfred Blumstein and Allen Beck concluded that fluctuations in crime rates played no role in the 316% growth in imprisonment. The researchers found that the entire growth was related to changes in sentencing policy, with 53% attributable to an increased likelihood of incarceration following an arrest and 47% resulting from increased time served in prison.

“But [Heather] Mac Donald cites studies of charging and sentencing that demonstrate that the reason more blacks are disproportionately in prison, and for longer terms, is not racism but racial differences in patterns of criminal offending.”

While differential crime offending is one contributing factor to racial disparities in prison, a wealth of research documents that it only explains a portion of the patterns in imprisonment. A comprehensive review of research in the field conducted for the National Institute of Justice concluded that "race and ethnicity do play an important role in contemporary sentencing decisions. Black and Hispanic offenders -- and particularly those who are young, male, or unemployed -- are more likely than their white counterparts to be sentenced to prison; in some jurisdictions, they also receive longer sentences...than do similarly situated white offenders."

“As for the charge that the incarceration rate of blacks is substantially explained by more severe federal sentences for crack as opposed to powder-cocaine defendants…[citing Mac Donald] ‘it’s going to take a lot more than 5,000 or so [federal] crack defendants a year to account for the 562,000 black prisoners in state and federal facilities at the end of 2006.’”

The movement to reform federal penalties for crack cocaine offenses is not based on the assumption that these policies represent the entire problem of disparity in the criminal justice system. Instead, as respected organizations including the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the American Bar Association have documented, the crack penalties are both ineffective as drug policy and contribute to unwarranted racial disparities. They are also representative of many of the misguided policies and practices of the “war on drugs,” which has resulted in over-incarceration of low-level offenders and disproportionate targeting of communities of color.

“ . . . 10 years of scholarly studies ‘have shown that states that sent a higher fraction of convicts to prison had lower rates of crime . . . [a] high risk of punishment reduces crime. Deterrence works.’”

The relationship between incarceration and crime is far more complicated than is suggested by this quote. During the 1990s, a time of historic declines in crime, there was no discernible correlation between incarceration rates and criminal offending. Between 1991 and 1998, states with above average increases in the rate of incarceration (72%) experienced a 13% decrease in crime rates. But states with below average increases in the rate of incarceration (30%) actually experienced a greater decline in crime rates, 17%. During this time the notable “tough on crime” state of Texas experienced a 144% rise in incarceration between 1991 and 1998, and its crime rate fell 35%. However, New York’s crime rate declined by a greater extent, 43%, during this period, despite an increase of incarceration of only 24%. New York continues to experience historic lows in crime while its prison population continues to decline, and there is widespread discussion of closing four prisons in the state because of excess capacity.

In truth, imprisonment has only played a limited role in reducing crime. An analysis of the drop in crime during the 1990s estimated that the growth of imprisonment accounted for about one-quarter of the decline in violent crime. Other contributing factors likely included a growing economy, changes in drug market dynamics, strategic policing, and community engagement in crime prevention efforts. While imprisonment may work at some level to reduce crime through deterrence and incapacitation, there is little evidence supporting the deterrent effect of increasingly longer prison sentences. Research suggests that any deterrent effect is more a function of the certainty of punishment, not the severity.

“‘Deterrence works.’ [Quoting Heather MacDonald] It works especially on behalf of blacks, who are disproportionately the victims of crimes by black men.”

While prison has had only a limited impact on crime, it is increasingly resulting in negative consequences for individuals, families, and communities. As a result of mass incarceration there are now 1.5 million children with a parent in prison, including 1 in 14 African American children.

African American communities are also affected by the challenges of reentry for the 700,000 people leaving prison each year. Many persons leaving prison are ill-equipped to handle life on the outside because they have received few services for mental health, substance abuse, education, and vocational skill-building programming while incarcerated.

Upon leaving prison or jail, individuals encounter a tangle of legal restrictions which severely limit their ability to become productive members of society. In addition to longstanding barriers to employment and education, in recent years policymakers have enacted a host of restrictions, many applying solely to drug offenders. These include a federal ban on welfare and food stamps for those with a felony drug conviction, a federal mandate that limits access to public housing, and restrictions on student loans for higher education.

An estimated 5.3 million individuals are unable to vote because of laws that deny this fundamental right to participate in the democratic process to those with felony convictions. These restrictions fall disproportionately on African Americans, with13% of black males currently unable to vote. These policies affect black communities as a whole, whereby even persons who are not disenfranchised experience vote dilution as a result of high rates of legal disenfranchisement in their communities.

Conclusion

Issues of crime and justice are critical ones for all Americans. As such, we need to encourage a national dialogue on promoting safety that assesses the appropriate balance of approaches among prevention, strengthening communities, and criminal justice sanctions. For more than three decades our nation has made unprecedented investments in prison expansion at the expense of other policy options. We now need a national dialogue that is centered on evidence-based research regarding the relative effectiveness of various interventions. Such a dialogue would produce better public safety outcomes for all Americans.

June 28, 2008

Posted by lois at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2008

UK: Plan to shut women's jails is shelved

From (London) Times Online
June 24, 2008
Plan to shut women's jails is shelved
Richard Ford, Home Correspondent

Radical proposals to close all 13 women's jails in England and Wales and replace them with small house units holding up to 20 offenders were today rejected by the Government.

A working party within the Ministry of Justice finally buried the key plan from a review of women in the justice system after concluding that shutting the existing jails over the next decade and replacing them with up to 150 smaller units was impractical.

Today's announcement is a bitter blow to penal reform groups who had put their trust in key female members of the Government, including those in the Justice Ministry and Attorney-General's office, being able to deliver the biggest shake-up in the way female offenders are treated in prisons.

Instead the Ministry of Justice highlighted initiatives to support women including pilot projects in five jails in which a new search technique is being used which does not require them to remove their underwear.

The women's prison population is currently 4,502 — three lower than the all time record — and Ministry of Justice sources said that no women’s jails are to close.

Baroness Corston proposed closing women’s jails and replacing them with a network of small units located in city centres and run by families of women but even as her report was published last year Ministry of Justice sources made clear there was no money to implement such an ambitious and controversial proposal.

The Ministry of Justice review concluded that the model of small units would be unable to provide on site all the facilities needed to support and help women prisoners including making it easier for families to visit and meeting their resettlement needs. Although the review team accepted the principle of small units it said there were weaknesses including providing the full range of services including education, drug treatment and running courses to deal with the offending behaviour.

"A particular risk would be to the delivery of small scale services to meet particularly complex needs, as we may not be able to gather enough offenders in any one location to deliver efficiently without increasing movement around the estate," the Justice Ministry said today.

It also said that some women consulted about the proposal had expressed concern about the increased likelihood of bullying in a potentially claustrophobic environment of small units.

The Justice Ministry also said that creating small units might mean women having to be moved more frequently to other units where services for particular problems such as drug and alcohol abuse are available.

It also warned that there would a significant challenge for the prison service to handle high to low risk women offenders in up to 150 units around England and Wales.

Instead of the radical reform outlined by Baroness Corston, the Ministry is to create a 77-place wing within Bronzefleld women's jail in Middlesex which has been designed specifically to meet women’s needs. At two other women's prisons accommodation is to be provided adjacent to the jail for women to spend time with their children.

The Prison Reform Trust, a penal reform group, said that progress towards implementing the proposals from Baroness Corston's review was painfully slow. Juliet Lyon, director of the trust, said: "‘It’s clear that this government is so busy planning how to waste billions of public money on so-called ‘Titan’ prisons that it cannot find the time or money to create a decent, effective justice system for women. A national network of women’s supervision and support centres would enable women offenders to beat addiction, receive mental healthcare, get out of debt and gain skills to work and look after their children."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4205516.ece

Posted by lois at 06:57 PM | Comments (0)

MA CORI Reform Update

June 24, 2008
MA CORI Reform Update
The following information regarding the status of CORI legislation is based on an update by Aaron Tanaka of the Boston Worker's Alliance (BWA), an organizational member of the Mass. Alliance to Reform CORI to which CJCP belongs. There are four sections:

1) New Health and Human Services Regulations
2) Urgent CORI Bill Update
3) Call for Action!
4) Fact Sheets and Background

1) Executive Office of Health and Human Service (EOHHS) CORI regulations

In January of 2008, Governor Deval Patrick signed Executive Order No. 495 "Regarding the Use and Dissemination of Criminal Record Information." The campaign to secure an Executive Order on CORI was led by the BWA, the Union of Minority Neighborhoods, the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, and Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner along with the CJPC. While broader efforts for CORI reform were still stalled in the legislature, advocates pressed Patrick to make good on his campaign promises to take timely and meaningful action on CORI. While the Executive Order and the proposed CORI bill falls short of the Governor's lofty campaign rhetoric, several key provisions will have positive, broad scale impacts for job seekers across the Commonwealth.

Within the Executive Order, three central reforms have been identified as key victories for the CORI reform movement.

CORI Reform Update

The first major reform is a requirement for employers receiving CORI reports to complete training on how to properly read the records. CORI reports are written in difficult to decipher code and employers are often unable to distinguish between cases that were dismissed or found not guilty and those resulting in a conviction. A single incident also often results in multiple entries on a CORI, leading employers who are unable to read records to assume that the applicant was arrested more than once. Under the new regulations, employers must pass a written examination on reading a CORI before being certified to receive the sensitive data.

A second major reform will create Fair Hiring policies for all state agencies that hire public workers. Through the Executive Order, a CORI check can only be conducted after an applicant has received an interview and is considered otherwise qualified for the position. The Executive Order moves the CORI check to the last step in the hiring process, and prevents applicants from being weeded out before having their resume, references and motivation considered. As the largest employer in the Commonwealth, these changes to the state's internal hiring policies will have broad implications for tens of thousands of government jobs.

Third, the Executive Order broadly reformed regulations that prevent those with CORI from working in health and human service fields. Previous Health and Human Service regulations required employers to follow a crime table that disqualified many CORI applicants from work. Additinally, an employer was only allowed to hire people with certain CORIs by obtaining a positive letter from a law enforcement agent or by paying a certified counselor for a mental health evaluation of the applicant. This impractical requirement had effectively barred qualified health care professionals with CORI from obtaining work.

Changes to the Executive Office of Health and Human Service regulations have now reopened this large employment sector to those with criminal records. The new regulations remove the assumed disqualification of those with CORI, and instruct health agencies to only consider misdemeanors that are less than 5 years old and felonies that under 10 years old. The requirement to obtain a letter from law enforcement or from a therapist has also been removed, and a number of crimes have been removed from the crime tables. New EOHHS are also expected to remove the criminal record check box from initial job applications forms.

These EOHHS regulations affect 495 state health and human service agencies, and also apply to the tens of thousands of businesses and agencies that receive contracts from the Health and Human Services Department. In total, the new CORI friendly regulations will affect over 180,000 employees in the human services field across the Commonwealth.

2) Urgent CORI Bill Update

The state legislature is planning to bring a CORI reform bill to a vote before the end of this session. If a bill does not pass before summer recess on July 31st, no new reforms will be considered until 2009. Currently, CORI reform has been stalled in the Judiciary Committee chaired by State Rep. Eugene O'Flaherty (D., Chelsea,) and State Senator Robert Creedon (D., Brockton). The next month represents a critical window to gain desperately needed reforms.

Sealing Old CORI

The Judiciary Committee has settled on Governor Patrick's timid recommendations to reduce the sealing periods to 5 years for misdemeanor and 10 years for a felony from the current 10 years for misdemeanor and 15 or felony. Because the forthcoming bill does not go far enough, the Mass Alliance to Reform CORI continues to build legislative support for 3 and 7 years respectively and will introduce an amendment once a bill is released.

"Ban the Box"

The Chairs are still undecided regarding whether to include our key demand to remove the CORI question from all initial job application forms. Divulging a criminal history in an initial application discourages employers from considering resumes, references or relevance of the offense.

Based solely on the job form, employers are 50% less likely to offer interviews to white applicants and 64% less likely to callback black applicants with a record (Statistics from the BWA factsheet. See below for a more complete discussion.) Ending upfront discrimination by banning the box would visibly improve job access for residents across the state.

As O'Flaherty and Creedon are still undecided on this provision, widespread public pressure can help ensure that the "ban the box" is included in the upcoming bill. Boston and Cambridge have already removed the criminal question from job applications, and we are calling on the state to expand those model guidelines to all Massachusetts employers.

3) Call for Action!

* Call your legislators and tell them to support CORI Reform. Ask your representative to speak with Chairman O'Flaherty in support of removing the criminal history question from all initial job applications and moving the bill out of committee with a positive recommendation.

Find out who your state representative is at www.wheredoivotema.com / then call the State House operator at (617) 722-2000 to get connected.

* Target the following key decision makers. Write an email, make a phone call or request a meeting! We are a grassroots coalition, so please gather your friends or share your organizational clout to help influence these key politicians.

Rep. Eugene O'Flaherty - 617 722-2396 / :Rep.GeneOFlaherty@Hou.State.MA.US
"Please remove the criminal record question from all initial job application forms. Employers should only consider criminal records for applicants who are otherwise qualified for the job. "

Speaker Sal DiMasi - 617 722-2500 / Rep.SalvatoreDiMasi@Hou.State.MA.US
"Please ensure that a CORI bill is passed this session before summer recess. Reduce the sealing period to 3 and 7 and take the CORI question off of all job applications."

Governor Deval Patrick - 617 725-4005/ Governor Patrick email -
"Please fulfill your campaign promises and your public commitment to pass CORI reform this year. Ensure that the criminal record question is removed from all initial job application forms."

Please email info@cjpc.org to let us know what you have done and any response you receive so we can track legislators. If you need help in meeting with your legislator, call Joel Pentlarge, CJPC Interim Executive Director at 617-426-5222 or Jpentlarge@cjpc.org .

Please help spread the word and thank you for supporting this grassroots movement for jobs, dignity and justice. The time for change is now!

4) Fact Sheets and Background

(a) Remove the Question from Initial Job Applications

The proposed amendment removes the criminal record question from initial jobs application forms. This measure encourages employers to consider the skills and qualifications of an applicant before considering the existence of a criminal history. Removing the criminal record question from initial job applications alters the timing of a criminal record inquiry, but does not limit an employers' access to such information.

Employers who use job applications to screen ex-offenders must delay criminal record inquires until after the applicant is interviewed and deemed otherwise qualified for a position.

According to the BWA employers who use initial employment applications to screen ex-offenders have grown from 56% in 1996 to over 80% of all employers in 2004. Once someone with a CORI record self-reports a criminal history on a job application, most employers will not consider resumes, references or personal character. Based solely on the criminal record question, employers are 50% less likely to offer interviews to white applicants and 64% less likely to interview black applicants. This type of job discrimination effectively bans people with CORIs from most entry-level jobs, and causes employers to overlook skilled members of our workforce.

In 2004-2005 Boston instituted model CORI reforms by removing the criminal history question from all municipal job applications and requiring over 8,000 private city vendors to also revise their application forms. Following Boston's lead, cities across the country including Cambridge, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Austin, San Francisco, and Oakland removed the question from job applications and moved criminal history inquiries to the last step in the hiring process. Any state level CORI reform should begin with the expansion of the Boston and Cambridge successful hiring model to all Massachusetts state, municipal and private employers.

(b) Reduce the Waiting Period to Seal CORIs

Reduce the sealing period of CORI reports to 3 years for misdemeanors and 7 years for felonies after court supervision is complete.

Studies across the country by state Departments of Corrections show rates of recidivism are high in the first two years after release, but are significantly lower in the third year, and approach zero risk by the fifth year. Someone who has not re-offended within 7 years have less than a 1% recidivism rate.. "Almost half (47%) of inmates who recidivated did so within one year of being released; by 18 months after release, 67percent of those who recidivated had returned to prison."(Massachusetts Recidivism Study, pg.2) Those individuals who have not re-offended within 7 years have less than a 1% recidivism rate..

Key elements of the proposed amendments are:

· Law enforcement agencies as well as agencies that work with vulnerable populations would maintain access to sealed records.

· Records can only remain sealed if a person does not violate the law again. Any new conviction revives the old convictions, and restarts the waiting period.

· Sex offense records and crimes against children would not be changed by this proposal

Other States

Other states have adopted sealing periods that are significantly shorter than the current Massachusetts waiting time of 10 years for a misdemeanor and 15 years for a felony. Massachusetts should join other states and adopt CORI reform that increases the opportunities for people with CORI records to become fully integrated members of society.

Sample States:

· Michigan: An individual convicted of no more than one offense can have the conviction record set aside 5 years after imposition or completion of sentence, whichever is later. Certain traffic offenses, certain sexual offenses, and some serious offenses cannot be sealed. (In Massachusetts, traffic offenses which carry no incarceration penalty are not a part of CORI, according to CMR 803.203)

· Utah: 15 years for certain multiple "class B and C" misdemeanors, 10 years for alcohol- or drug related traffic offense; otherwise 7 years for most felonies and 3-5 years for a misdemeanor. .

· Oregon: Except for certain violent, sexual, and traffic offenses, many adult convictions may be sealed after 3 years after the completion of the sentence, including class C felonies, misdemeanors for which imprisonment may be imposed.

· Ohio: Non-convictions can be sealed. First offenders may apply to have their record expunged 3 years after a felony conviction, or 1 year after a misdemeanor conviction. Except for murder and certain sexual offenses, juvenile adjudications of unruliness and delinquency may be sealed after 2 years have elapsed since discharge.

Reducing the long waiting period to seal CORIs promotes the idea that employers should only access records that matter, and to the degree that it increases employment of those with criminal records, and employment of ex-offenders is major factor in reducing recidivism which reduces crime.

Posted by lois at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2008

Venezuela: Amid Despair in a Venezuelan Prison, Strains of Hope From a Music Program

June 23, 2008
Los Teques Journal
Amid Despair in a Venezuelan Prison, Strains of Hope From a Music Program
By SIMON ROMERO
NY Times

LOS TEQUES, Venezuela — When Nurul Asyiqin Ahmad was taken seven months ago to her cell at the National Institute of Feminine Orientation, a prison perched on a hill in this city of slums on the outskirts of Caracas, learning how to play Beethoven was one of the last things on her mind.

“The despair gripped me, like a nightmare had become my life,” said Ms. Ahmad, 26, a shy law student from Malaysia who claims she is innocent of charges of trying to smuggle cocaine on a flight from Caracas to Paris. “But when the music begins, I am lifted away from this place.” Ms. Ahmad plays violin and sings in the prison’s orchestra.

In a project extending Venezuela’s renowned system of youth orchestras to some of the country’s most hardened prisons, Ms. Ahmad and hundreds of other prisoners are learning a repertory that includes Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and folk songs from the Venezuelan plains.

The budding musicians include murderers, kidnappers, thieves and, here at the women’s prison, dozens of narcomulas, or drug mules, as small-scale drug smugglers are called. The project, which began a year ago, is expanding this year to five prisons from three.

“This is our attempt to achieve the humanization of prison life,” said Kleiberth Lenin Mora, 32, a lawyer who helped create the prison orchestras, modeling them on the system that teaches tens of thousands of poor children in Venezuela classical music. “We start with the simple idea that performing music lifts the human being to another level.”

Few nations have prison systems as much in need of humanizing as Venezuela, where 498 inmates out of a total population of 21,201 were killed in 2007, according to the Venezuelan Prison Observatory, a group that monitors prison violence.

The women’s prison, the scene of gang fights and hunger strikes by inmates in recent months, is not immune to this violence. But it is not all bleak. Inmates have free access to the Internet. They can pay to use cellphones. A commissary sells soft drinks and junk food.

And now INOF (pronounced like the word “enough”), the acronym the prison is known by in Spanish, has its orchestra, which most of the more than 300 women incarcerated here opt to avoid. But the 40 or so who have joined find themselves enmeshed in an experience that was unexpected in their lives in prison and in their lives out of prison.

“Before this my music was reggaetón,” said Irma González, 29, a street vendor serving a six-year sentence for robbery, referring to the fusion of reggae, hip-hop and Latin pop that is widely popular in Venezuelan slums. Now she plays the double bass. Her proudest moment, she said, was when her four children, ages 14, 13, 10 and 9, recently came here to watch her play.

“When they applauded me, I finally felt useful in this life,” said Ms. González. Like other participants, she hopes to reduce her term by playing in the orchestra, which judges may consider the equivalent of hours of study.

Officials say it is too early to tell whether the project will improve overall conditions here and at the two prisons for men where it started, in the Andean states of Mérida and Táchira. No stars have emerged like Gustavo Dudamel, the 27-year-old from the youth-orchestra system named as the next music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

For now, the project, which receives $3 million in funding from President Hugo Chávez’s government and the Inter-American Development Bank, takes baby steps. It staged its first public performance last month in Teresa Carreño Theater in Caracas. And it insists its participants hew to a few specific rules.

For instance, no one can threaten the professors, many of whom are drawn from the youth-orchestra system. Everyone must speak clearly during discussions in the daily practice sessions. Everyone must stand up straight and take care of his or her instrument. Smoking and chewing tobacco are not allowed.

The orchestra at INOF is one of the most cosmopolitan in Venezuela. Many of the inmates are foreigners arrested on drug-smuggling charges. Women from Colombia, Spain, Malaysia and the Netherlands play instruments or sing in the chorus alongside Venezuelans.

“I drain away my bad thoughts in the orchestra,” said Joanny Aldana, 29, a viola player serving a nine-year sentence for kidnapping and auto theft. Like some of the other inmates, she is imprisoned here with her child, a 2-year-old daughter. Still, she despairs sometimes.

“There’s the pain of my children, of having destroyed my life, my youth,” Ms. Aldana said.

Perhaps no amount of music can make up for such loss. Perhaps that explains the fervor with which some of the women play their instruments or sing. It is not uncommon to see one of them shedding a tear when a certain note is struck.

For Yusveisy Torrealba, 18, that moment comes when the chorus sings a few words from “Caramba,” the folk song by the Venezuelan composer Otilio Galíndez performed with the cuatro, a four-string guitar. Ms. Torrealba was caught in April taking cocaine on a flight to Orlando, Fla.

In her soft voice, she sang these lines for a visitor one recent afternoon:

Caramba, my love, caramba

The things we have missed

The gossip I could only hear

Between the rocks of the river.

“Caramba,” she repeated quietly, as if contemplating how much time remained in an eight-year sentence that began last month. “The only thing keeping me together is this music.”

Sandra La Fuente P. contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/world/americas/23venezuela.html?scp=3&sq=Venezuela&st=nyt

Posted by lois at 09:37 PM | Comments (0)

Faith takes a leap in jailhouse conversions. New programs test theory that religion can salvage "criminals"

"Bolstered by President Bush's recent signing of the Second Chance Act, which promises more money for faith-based programs to help rehabilitate prisoners,corrections officials and religious volunteers are testing the largely unproven theory that faith can not only salvage criminals, but ‹ in the long run ‹ make the rest of us safer, too."

June 22, 2008
Faith takes a leap in jailhouse conversions
New programs test theory that religion can salvage "criminals"
By KEVIN SIMPSON
Denver Post
DENVER — Like countless others before him, Jonathan Willis rediscovered God in the solitude of a jail cell, 10 months after he'd been thrown into the Adams County lockup to await trial for murder.

The blur of his crimes crystallized: The coke binge, the break-in, the brutal beating. Then desperation, arrest and, once in jail, the hell-raising that landed him in solitary.

"It went from dream to reality," recalls Willis, 25. "When you reflect, with all the distraction cut away, you're left with the core of life — what matters."

He cried out to God, who answered with a challenge to get serious about his faith. He read the Bible, and the words spoke to him anew. His heart changed.

It was a classic jailhouse conversion.

"It's natural to reach out to God in a period of duress," said Michael Spotts, a volunteer assistant chaplain at the Adams County facility who witnessed the change in Willis. "The thing that tinges the jailhouse conversion with cynicism is that people like Jonathan killed someone. It's inexcusable, horrible. But the genuineness of conversion can be found in absolute confession of what was done wrong, a seeking of repentance."

Spiritual transformation
Against the advice of his lawyer, Willis pled guilty, knowing that he was essentially sentencing himself to life without the possibility of parole.

His spiritual transformation began a chain reaction that already has touched others locked up around him. And, in a broader sense, it touched on a concept of faith-based rehabilitation that's gaining traction as a burgeoning prison population now is going back into the community.

Bolstered by President Bush's recent signing of the Second Chance Act, which promises more money for faith-based programs to help rehabilitate prisoners, corrections officials and religious volunteers are testing the largely unproven theory that faith can not only salvage criminals, but — in the long run — make the rest of us safer, too.

Nearly 700,000 inmates return to the community each year nationwide.

Faith and prisons have been intertwined since the dawn of corrections, with criminal behavior often addressed as a moral issue. But church-and-state legal concerns temper the search for new faith-based ways to attack recidivism, which approaches 70 percent, according to one Department of Justice report.

A new solution?
In Colorado, a volunteer network of chaplains offers 216 programs and the Department of Corrections recognizes 36 faiths. Although those traditions range from Asatru, a polytheistic Norse religion, to Native American rituals to nature-based Wicca, the vast majority of volunteers represent Christian denominations.

Credible research on the effectiveness of faith-based programs remains sparse and inconclusive. But corrections experts and volunteers agree that such efforts, coupled with education, counseling and other therapies, could be part of the solution.

"I get asked all the time what's the best predictor of success when somebody's coming out of prison," says Ari Zavaras, executive director of Colorado's DOC. "Without question, if somebody had a true spiritual conversion — not the jailhouse kind that gets all the jokes, but the kind where they develop a spiritual base — I'd be almost able to bet a year's pay without worry that they're not going to re-offend."

On a pleasant spring evening, about 70 offenders — roughly half the inmates at the minimum-security Camp George West in Golden — crowd a concrete-floored gymnasium to take in two hours of music, humor, feats of strength and Christian testimony.

Strongman and ex-con Mike Benson, who experienced his own jailhouse conversion, takes the stage and proceeds to tear a deck of cards in half, twist a horseshoe into an "S," roll a frying pan into a burrito shape and snap a wooden baseball bat.

After breaking the bat, he briefly holds the two pieces before him to form a cross.

"Before I knew Jesus, this was malicious destruction of property," jokes Benson. "Now, it's ministry."

Prison Fellowship Ministries claims more than 22,000 volunteers at 1,800 institutions.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5849277.html

Posted by lois at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

CA: Editorial: Turn prisons into places of learning

June 23, 2008
Lompoc Record (CA)
Turn prisons into places of learning

There is a high-noon showdown approaching, and the outcome may have a profound effect on California's future.

The state's massive prison system health-care operations are technically in receivership, and a federal court-appointed overseer last week accused lawmakers and the governor of “deliberate obstruction” with regard to the $7 billion he says is needed to build seven new prison medical facilities.

He threatens to seize the funds needed from the state budget, which is already an estimated $15 billion-plus in arrears.

Lawmakers can laugh about it, if that suits them, but it's no idle threat.

Receiver Clark Kelso, appointed to oversee prison operations the courts believe are being poorly managed by the state, has the power to order such a seizure, and the state would be compelled to pay.

There is more than a little irony here. As of last year, the state was spending more on prisons than on its university system. Prison spending is escalating at the rate of 9 percent a year, compared to 5 percent increases in higher education spending.

By the 2012-13 fiscal year, state spending on its prison system is predicted to average $15.4 billion annually, compared to $15.3 billion for the university system.

Compounding the irony is the fact that California's taxpayers don't get much of a return for the bucks spent on prisons. University graduates, on the other hand, are the keys to our future.

There is direct linkage between education and incarceration spending. While about 4 percent of the general U.S. population is illiterate, in California prisons, the rate runs about 21 percent. More than half of the state's 175,000-plus inmates read below the seventh-grade level, the accepted standard for functional illiteracy.

Perhaps that explains why California, which has the nation's largest inmate population, also has the nation's highest recidivism rate.

We certainly can understand the court receiver's enthusiasm for getting better medical care for inmates in the state system. That would help address the “cruel and unusual” aspect of punishment.

But our elected leaders also need to take their heads out of the sand, and face the fact that one of California's leading growth industries is its prison system. It's very expensive, and the costs are only going to go up - as long as the system operates in such a way as to all-but-guarantee a revolving-door environment that sees the same people recycling through the system.

A good place to start a reform movement would be to offer more education to inmates, who are a true captive audience. Just teaching them to read and write would probably cut the recidivism rate significantly.

Once they learn to read and write, they can be given job skills, maybe some tutoring on how to interact with other humans - without trying to rip them off, or apart.

In other words, take the same approach with prison inmates as the public education system takes with teens in high school.

A solid education in the basic core disciplines, coupled with some refinement of people skills, could pay enormous dividends to the inmates when they walk out of prison, and to California's taxpayers, who now foot the ever-rising bill for warehousing lawbreakers.

This is not a soft-on-crime approach. The worst of the worst among us should and will be punished. All we're saying is that this state spends tens of billions on its prisons, and gets absolutely nothing in return.

If we're going to have a prison industry, at least it should be an industry that has a useful product. Just teaching inmates to read and write effectively would be a good start.

June 23, 2008
http://www.lompocrecord.com/articles/2008/06/23/opinion/062308a.txt

Posted by lois at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

June 22, 2008

VA: Despite Halt in Bed Rentals, Va. Strains to House Inmates

By Anita Kumar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 22, 2008; C05

RICHMOND -- Even though Virginia halted a program to rent 1,000 prison beds to other states last week, it still needs to build six prisons in the next six years to keep pace with its escalating inmate population.

A recent report to the secretary of public safety projected that Virginia will add about 1,000 prisoners a year, resulting in an inmate population of 44,700 by 2013. Each new prison would cost an estimated $100 million to build and $25 million a year to operate.

"That's a projection of what's going to be required. We don't have a choice,'' said Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax), chairman of the Virginia State Crime Commission. "It's the way it is."

Despite the state's looming prison bed shortage, the Department of Corrections had planned to rent out 1,000 beds over the next two years to offset $38 million in budget cuts. But Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) on Tuesday ordered the department to stop importing prisoners after local sheriffs complained.

The state spent $32 million last year to add an 800-bed wing to the St. Brides Correctional Center in Chesapeake, but the opening has been indefinitely postponed because the state does not have enough money to operate it, officials said.

Gene M. Johnson, state corrections director, said that without additional out-of-state inmates, he might be forced to lay off some of his 13,000 employees or close some of the agency's 43 facilities.

States across the country are grappling with budget shortfalls because of the sluggish economy. In response to rising construction costs, some have halted prison-building programs and chosen instead to release inmates early or house them in other states.

But Virginia remains on track to build prisons.

Since 1990, the General Assembly has approved spending more than $1 billion for 21,000 additional beds, according to a Senate Finance Committee report. Often the state has built or expanded prisons in rural areas, where land and construction costs are lower and communities view the facilities as an economic plus.

The state spent $74 million to build the 1,024-bed Green Rock Correctional Center in Pittsylvania County, $69 million to build the 1,024-bed Pocahontas State Correctional Center in Tazewell County and $22 million to add 600 beds to the Deerfield Correctional Center in Southampton County. It is spending $101 million to build a 1,024-bed medium-security facility, expected to open in 2010 in Grayson County.

In April, the General Assembly approved spending $8.7 million to begin planning a new prison in Charlotte County and $300,000 to begin planning an $8.6 million, 200-bed expansion in Bland County. The Charlotte prison is expected to become the second in the state run by a private contractor.

Although the state's inmate population is increasing, the rate of incarceration in Virginia remains in line with other states.

The rising number of prisoners can be attributed to several factors, including an increase in new offenders, longer prison sentences, more probation violators and a drop in the number of inmates granted parole. The state abolished parole for crimes committed after Jan. 1, 1995, but thousands of inmates are still eligible for parole under the old law.

This year, legislators considered allowing technical offenders -- a description often used for those who break the terms of probation or parole by using drugs or alcohol -- to be eligible for reduced sentences, diversion programs or cheaper, dorm-style prisons. The Department of Corrections estimates that more than half of technical offenders could be eligible for alternative programs.

Robert Vaughn, staff director for the House Appropriations Committee, said legislators considered a proposal related to technical offenders that would have eliminated the need for 900 prison beds. But legislators abandoned that idea when they could not agree on which offenders would qualify.

Local officials have long sought more state prison beds to relieve crowded jails.

Virginia Beach Sheriff Paul J. Lanteigne sued to force the Department of Corrections to enforce a law that requires the removal from local jails any state inmate sentenced to more than a year in prison. Fairfax County Sheriff Stan G. Barry had considered joining the lawsuit but said all 80 state inmates were removed from his jail days after his complaint was made public.

Virginia began housing out-of-state inmates a decade ago but largely abandoned the practice in 2004, as officials said the space was needed for a growing inmate population. They had resumed renting beds a few weeks ago after the budget shortfall became clear, but Kaine abruptly halted the program last week.

The state will keep about 300 inmates from Wyoming who are at the Pocahontas State Correctional Center and the Wallens Ridge State Prison, both in the southwestern part of the state, bringing in about $14 million over two years. The number of inmates from Wyoming might increase, but no inmates from other states will be accepted.

Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle (R-Virginia Beach), vice chairman of the Virginia State Crime Commission, said the projected increase in prisoners is not a surprise to those who monitor the criminal justice system.

Stolle said the Department of Corrections does not have many options for housing inmates, which is why it is sometimes forced to keep inmates in local jails. "It doesn't have any elasticity in the system,'' Stolle said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101503.html

Posted by lois at 10:05 AM | Comments (0)

June 21, 2008

Jamie Fellner: Onward and Ever Upward -- But Not in a Good Way

June 21, 2008
Onward and Ever Upward -- But Not in a Good Way
Huffington Post
by Jamie Fellner
NEW YORK -- Two new federal reports highlight the profound disconnect in the United States between crime and punishment.

According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, the US prison and jail population has now grown to all-time high of 2.3 million. The United States not only incarcerates the greatest number of people in the world, it also incarcerates at the highest rate: last year 762 out of every 100,000 people in the United States were behind bars, a rate five to ten times that of other western democracies.

The endlessly growing rate of incarceration does not, however, reflect growing rates of crime. The newest FBI crime report shows that violent and property crime declined last year, and remain near historical low levels. Indeed, over the last two decades, prison populations have grown steadily regardless of whether crime was up or down, and for some years now the trend has been down.

So why the never-ending prison growth?

The short answer is that for at least a quarter of a century American criminal justice policies have not been very sensible. Prison should be used parsimoniously, reserved for those who have committed such dangerous or egregious crimes that imprisonment is the only commensurate response. Using prisons this way would protect the public, save money and meet human rights requirements.

But this is not how US prisons are utilized. Three ill-considered policies drive incarceration rates.

First: the war on drugs. Launched more than two decades ago, it is still going strong. About one third of all people entering prison with new sentences were convicted of drug charges. Few of them are kingpins or major traffickers. US prisons are swollen with men and women who sell drugs at the retail level or have menial jobs in the drug business as couriers or lookouts. More than two decades of punitive drug policies should have taught the nation a few things: That as long as a demand for drugs exists, there will be a supply. That aggressive drug law enforcement has little effect on the proportion of adults who regularly use hard drugs or even marijuana. That for every low-level drug seller sent to prison, someone else will take his or her job. Unfortunately, politicians seem to be slow learners: they continue to fund this futile and costly war rather than embracing effective and less expensive public health and harm reduction approaches to drug use.

Second: draconian sentencing laws. Politicians running on "tough on crime" platforms in the 1980s and 90s ratcheted up prison sentences by adopting a spate of laws that require imprisonment even for low-level nonviolent crimes and that require long sentences based on one or two criteria - for instance, weight of drugs sold, or a prior record. But in 2008, who really believes a life sentence makes sense for someone whose third offense consists of stealing some videos from Kmart? Who really believes that selling a small quantity of drugs to an adult should yield a decade or more behind bars?

Third: punitive parole practices. Last year, 240,000 people entered prison because their parole had been revoked, about one third of the total incoming population. Parole should be a time of supervision and support to enable former offenders to get their lives together. But too often it's a game of "gotcha." In most cases parole is revoked not because the parolee committed a new crime (although that happens) but because he or she failed urine tests for drug use, did not come to treatment meetings, or in some other way committed a technical violation of the conditions of parole. Offenders on parole should be held accountable for not complying with parole requirements. But there are cheaper and more productive ways to encourage compliance than automatic returns to prison.

The extraordinary rate of incarceration in the US is not necessary to protect the public -- community-based sanctions and treatment for addiction would be even more effective at reducing most kinds of nonviolent crime and at far less cost. Meanwhile, the unnecessary incarceration of Americans damages individuals (few are better off for being in prison), families (children suffer when parents are sent away) and communities (the social capital of already vulnerable communities is further frayed by high incarceration rates.)

People who care about racial justice have spoken up to challenge a prison population that is overwhelmingly black and Hispanic. People who believe punishment should fit the crime have spoken up to criticize unduly severe sentences.

But Americans who are concerned about taxes and who want a sound return on public investments, including criminal justice investments, have remained silent in the face of the needlessly expanding, wildly expensive ($49 billion last year) prison population. It is time for them to speak up too. Until they do, the prison population may just continue endlessly and senselessly upward.

Jamie Fellner is senior counsel at Human Rights Watch and author of numerous works on US criminal justice policies.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-fellner/onward-and-ever-upward_b_108382.
html

Posted by lois at 10:04 PM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2008

VA won't take prisoners from out of state

Va. won't take inmates from out of state
After sheriffs complain, governor abandons plan to raise money for prisons

Thursday, Jun 19, 2008 - 12:09 AM

By TYLER WHITLEY
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

After protests from sheriffs, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has directed the Virginia Department of Corrections to stop housing out-of-state prisoners.

Virginia has taken in 300 inmates from Wyoming, which brings the state $7.2 million annually under a contract that runs through June 20, 2010. Virginia had planned to bring in an additional 700 inmates from other states.

In abandoning a plan his administration proposed, Kaine said the Department of Corrections will have to develop options to make up for the $12 million annual shortfall that will occur because of the loss of additional out-of-state inmates.

The sheriff of Virginia Beach sued to stop the practice, saying it made no sense to lease prison space to other states when more than 1,800 state prisoners are in local Virginia jails.

Last year, the Richmond City Jail averaged a little under 200 inmates at any one time who should have gone to state prison because they were past the deadline for transfer, which comes 90 days after sentencing, sheriff's officials reported.

Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee agreed yesterday with Virginia Beach Sheriff Paul J. Lanteigne, although the General Assembly had endorsed the original Kaine administration plan to lease space to 1,000 out-of-state inmates to generate revenue.

Gene Johnson, director of the Department of Corrections, told the budget committee he will have to limit hiring and maintenance, delay equipment purchases and monitor other costs to make up for the budget shortfall.

Lanteigne was not available for comment. When he filed suit, his jail was holding 67 inmates required to be in a state prison under Virginia law. That figure is down to 44, a spokeswoman said.

John W. Jones, executive director of the Virginia Sheriffs' Association, said the association did not agree with the lawsuit but said it was up to the governor to decide how to run the prison system.

In a Tuesday letter to Jones announcing the reversal, Kaine noted that the prison-housing plan was developed, in part, because "I heard no complaints from sheriffs during the budgeting process."

The plan to generate $38 million in revenue over two years by bringing in 1,000 inmates would have allowed two new prisons to open, as well as two major prison expansions, Kaine noted.

Kaine also noted that the 1,800 state inmates being held in local jails is lower than recent historical levels. The number exceeded 3,000 in late 2006, he noted.

In addition to the state prisoners in local jails, about 2,100 federal prisoners are being housed there. But Johnson said the federal government pays so much money that some sheriffs welcome the federal prisoners.

In other news at the budget committee's meeting:
# Jody M. Wagner, secretary of finance, told the Appropriations Committee that state revenues are likely to meet revenue goals for the fiscal year ending June 30, despite a poor May showing. But she said there are some disturbing economic trends in sales and withholding taxes that may cause some further downward revisions in fiscal 2009, which begins July 1.
# Richard F. Sliwoski, director of the Department of General Services, said the state is in the final stages of negotiations to buy two downtown Richmond office buildings, the Main Street Centre at 600 E. Main St. and the former corporate headquarters of United Dominion Realty Trust at 400 E. Cary St. The trust is moving its corporate headquarters to Denver.
# Sliwoski said the state received inquiries from 18 companies on a public-private partnership venture to build a 10-story office tower on the vacant lot fronting East Broad Street in Richmond between North Eighth and North Ninth streets.
Contact Tyler Whitley at (804) 649-6780 or twhitley@timesdispatch.com.
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-06-19-0158.html

Posted by lois at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)

AZ: Senate rejects ban on certain inmates in private prisons

The Arizona Daily Star
Published: 06.19.2008
Senate rejects ban on certain inmates in private prisons
By Howard Fischer
CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES
"It has historically been the county and communities that have welcomed the prisons because they provide jobs and economic security to the community."
Sen. Rebecca Rios
D-Apache Junction
PHOENIX — State lawmakers refused Wednesday to limit the kind of criminals who can be housed in private prisons in Arizona.
On a 10-8 vote, the Senate rejected a proposal by Sen. Debbie McCune Davis to bar any private prison that houses inmates from another state from accepting prisoners who have committed murder, rape and various other serious crimes, or have a history of escape.

McCune Davis, D-Phoenix, said she wants to keep other states from exporting their most serious offenders to Arizona, where private companies are paid to incarcerate them.
But the wording would have placed similar restrictions on the ability of the Arizona Department of Corrections to contract with private prisons to house the same kind of inmates.
Sen. Robert Blendu, R-Litchfield Park, said the net effect would be to put the private prisons out of business in Arizona.
Central to the debate is the safety of Arizona citizens.
McCune Davis cited an incident where an inmate from Alaska, rather than being returned to his home state after completing his sentence, was instead put into an Arizona nursing home. She said he assaulted two women in that home.
"They are not being returned to their home states," she said. "They are being dumped out into our community."
Sen. Tom O'Halleran, R-Sedona, said the proposal makes sense. He said Arizona does not send maximum-security inmates to private prisons in other states.
"We shouldn't be taking back people that we don't know who they are, we don't know what they've done at the other criminal institutions," he said. "No state should be sending their murderers to Arizona."
But Sen. Linda Gray, R-Glendale, said Arizonans are in no danger because of the private prisons.
She said there are about 9,000 inmates in privately run facilities in the state, yet only two people have escaped, both of whom were soon recaptured.
Sen. Rebecca Rios, D-Apache Junction, said her objections to the proposal were based on pure economics.
"It has historically been the county and communities that have welcomed the prisons because they provide jobs and economic security to the community," she said.
Rios, whose district includes several private prisons, said they are the largest private employers in Pinal County and pay more in property taxes than anyone else.
Sen. Chuck Gray, R-Mesa, said that if private prisons can't take certain types of inmates, whether from Arizona or elsewhere, they will close. He said that will make the state less safe because the state can lock up more people in private prisons than it can in state-run prisons for the same amount of money.
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/printDS/244490

Posted by lois at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

Locked and Loaded. CCA, the private jailer and one of Nashville’s richest companies, is facing heightened scrutiny after a year of particularly heinous controversies

June 19, 2008
Locked and Loaded
CCA, the private jailer and one of Nashville’s richest companies, is facing heightened scrutiny after a year of particularly heinous controversies
by Matt Pulle

Located in a bland, almost anonymous Green Hills office park of fake lakes and fountains is the headquarters of the nation’s largest private prison company, which, at the moment, may be the most disparaged corporation in the country. Since its inception in 1983, CCA has encountered legions of angry detractors who believe that the business of punishing criminals should not be—well, a business. But if the company has become accustomed to criticism over the years—like a best-selling author whose novels garner predictably bad reviews—it is now mired in a series of scandals, embarrassments and public-relations catastrophes that may tar its reputation for years to come.

In the last 18 months alone, CCA has been the target of several stinging lawsuits supported by detailed affidavits and third-party reports alleging dangerous and inhumane practices that have put inmates’ lives at risk. Whistle blowers, once in positions of trust at CCA, have emerged from the shadows to tell vivid tales of corporate misconduct. Federal authorities have castigated the publicly traded corporation for operating an immigration detention facility in Texas on the cheap. And at that CCA complex—which at one point forced children of immigrant detainees to dress in prison garb—dozens of incarcerated women and children have come forward with gut-wrenching tales of anguish and neglect.

Here in Nashville, CCA’s officers volunteer on the boards of noble nonprofits. But the company’s local detention center, far removed from the world of tony fundraisers and white-tie dinners, has been the setting for a string of grim events. One inmate beat his cellmate to death. A mentally ill man apparently went nine months without being allowed a shower. And another inmate lost his ear in a fight.

So considering the company’s problems in its own backyard, not to mention its near-epic failings in Texas, it may seem odd to begin our story at a CCA facility in West Tennessee, where last May a few inmates brawled inside a prison chapel. The disturbance at the Hardeman County Correctional Center, located in the tiny town of Whiteville, was no different from any other jailhouse scuffle, and it’s not clear that anyone was even hurt. But an inmate who saw the fight—and maybe even threw a punch or two—got a lesson about the workings of CCA’s particular brand of law and order and its longtime penchant of avoiding scrutiny.

On May 16, 2007, James Ingram, an inmate from Memphis who battled a drug problem, was serving a 17-year sentence for aggravated robbery at the medium-security prison. Clean-cut and not much older than 30, Ingram was walking to his pod at the time of the brawl and overheard a group of inmates fighting at the chapel. Ingram fell into a fetal position to demonstrate, in his lawyer’s words, “a spirit of surrender and cooperation.” If that sounds implausible, consider the next part of the inmate’s story.

After prison officials quelled the fight, they took Ingram to a back room and demanded that he give up the names of the prisoners who squared off. Ingram saw who was involved, but he wouldn’t talk. So the warden, a 40-something man named Glen Turner and the brother of one of CCA’s corporate vice presidents, placed him in solitary confinement. Shortly after, Turner shoved him to the ground and Ingram fell on his back. The warden then punched him in the face, opening a 2-inch cut below his eye.

Typical convict hogwash, right? The state didn’t agree. Ingram called a lawyer, who called the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) to look into what happened. Joined by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, TDOC investigated the incident and determined that Turner assaulted Ingram by “throwing him to the floor and striking him at least twice in the head with the closed fist of his right hand.” In August, Ingram resigned as warden. A month later, he pled guilty to a charge of official oppression.

It’s not clear when CCA’s headquarters learned what happened at its West Tennessee prison. But state authorities hint that company officials were slow to act. In an email to his colleagues, Jerry Lister, then TDOC’s acting director of internal affairs, notes that it was only when his department learned of the allegations from Ingram’s lawyer that “anyone at the facility [began] to acknowledge the excessive use of force by Warden Turner.”

As a private company, CCA doesn’t have to answer for what happened at its prison. It refused a request from the Scene to review Turner’s original résumé, job application and disciplinary file. Meanwhile, TDOC never issued a press release about the findings of its investigation. As a result, the publicly traded company escaped the rounds of bad publicity that a state-run prison would have endured had one of its wardens pummeled an inmate. Until now, the media has never reported the details of Turner’s attack on Ingram.

But if CCA was able to dodge a PR nightmare last summer, its luck has since faded. Now it can’t seem to serve so much as a cold meal without landing in hot water. The well-heeled company finds itself embroiled in an array of ugly incidents, both in Nashville and throughout the country, that have been featured on the pages of national newspapers and magazines and in the bold type of heavy-hitting lawsuits. Taken separately, the company’s struggles may not seem extraordinary. The business of incarceration is a rough one, even for those who don’t view it as a business. But for CCA, which for most of the decade has been able to avoid criticism from everyone other than a thin cast of anti-privatization foes, there seems to be a growing series of corroborated accounts that sketch a new portrait: that of a reckless, callous enterprise that treats inmates—even those who haven’t been convicted of a crime—as if they were cattle. Maybe, then, it’s appropriate that we move our story to cattle country.

Elsa is a sturdy woman in her mid-20s with soft, round cheeks and straight, black hair that she sometimes pulls behind her head. Before she found herself locked up in a dusty Texas town, she lived in Honduras with her two children, Richard and Angelina. Here is her story:

Elsa was happy in her native country and “didn’t need anything from anyone to be well-off.” Then one day, while walking on a quiet road, a man grabbed her hair and put a gun to her head. He forced her to take off her clothes, and then he hit her. He called her a “perra” or bitch and laughed as he ran his weapon over her body.

Elsa cried and screamed and then, after being raped, begged for her life. “Please don’t kill me. I have two children.” The man struck her again, but let her live so that he could haunt her once more, showing up on a whim at her friend’s place to let her know he could have her again whenever he chose.

The man’s father worked for the local police department, and Elsa knew the only way to flee him was to flee Honduras with Richard and Angelina. When she arrived in the United States, an immigration agent took her and her family to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, 30 miles north of Austin. It would be anything but a safe haven.

In 2005, Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division (ICE), ended the practice of “catch-and-release”—which permitted undocumented immigrants like Elsa to remain free at-large while they awaited their day in court. Under catch-and-release, no-shows were common. So after 9/11, the specter of illegal immigrants from all over the world roaming the country became a security issue. Pilot programs sprung up that tracked immigrants with electronic bracelets, though Chertoff went with a draconian plan instead: Throw many of these men, women and children in Hutto, a former medium-security prison that was surrounded by a 15-foot fence topped with rings of barbed wire when it reopened in 2006 as a place for immigrant families.

After she arrived in Taylor, Elsa and her family shared a tiny living area, where they’d be loudly awoken at 5:45 a.m. Elsa, Richard and Angelina then had 20 minutes to eat breakfast. When they didn’t finish on time, guards would just snatch their food and throw it in the trash. “When this happens, the children cry and cry,” Elsa later explained in an affidavit that chronicled her plight.

The detention center was very cold, so much so that the guards walked around wearing gloves. But they’d yell at Elsa if she asked for a blanket. One time they came into her cell and confiscated two of her sweaters.

“They don’t care that we are cold,” she said. “They don’t care if we eat or if we don’t eat.”

Elsa and her children wore prison uniforms and spent hours in their pod, often with no toys or books for the kids. One day, Elsa and her family were in the doctor’s office, where all the kids were playing with crayons. Angelina drew a picture, but a guard grabbed the girl’s artwork. She cried a lot at Hutto, wondering what her family had done wrong.

“Mommy, where is God that he doesn’t want to help us? Mommy, tell God to come and take us out of here and take us to our house,” Elsa recalled her daughter saying. “Mommy, why do they have us as prisoners if we have never killed anybody?”

In March 2007, the ACLU helped bring suit against Michael Chertoff and the immigration officers who ran Hutto. As a part of that litigation, attorneys collected more than 20 affidavits from detainees like Elsa, nearly all of whom were bidding to receive political asylum from their home countries. The detainees hail from different continents—some are adults, others young children—but they all tell the same story because they lived it together.

Raouitee Pamela Puran fled her home country, where her husband was kidnapped and murdered. Seeking political asylum in the United States, she and her daughter Wesleyann wound up at Hutto. The young girl, just 4 years old, had trouble sleeping. It was always cold, and it didn’t help that the guards kept turning the lights on and off in their living quarters. The food was awful too. When Wesleyann would talk to her aunt on the phone, she’d plead with her to cook her chicken curry and rice. That always stung her mom.

Even worse, Wesleyann would hear the guards threaten the children who acted up. If you don’t behave, they’d tell them, we’re going to separate you from your parents. Wesleyann was terrified.

A sixth-grader at a junior high school in Ohio, Aissha Ibrahim came to Hutto with his mother, brother and sister on Nov. 30, 2006. Aissha, whose family had fled war-torn Somalia, said in an affidavit that when his sister Bahja got in trouble, the guards threatened to take her away from her family. Another guard told Aissha that if he complained, he would never see his mother again.

“I would be scared if I never got my mom back, and I would think of how she took care of me when I was a baby,” he said.

Just about every affidavit from a child or mother portrayed Hutto the same way—as a rough and cold place, where kids lie awake at night hungry and crying in the dark. And if they act up, like children often do, a guard would threaten to remove them from their families. To hear the stories from inside the walls, Hutto seems more like a medieval dungeon than a 21st century facility run by a wealthy company.

“The conditions were shocking,” says Barbara Hines, a University of Texas law professor who spent many hours inside the facility representing detainees. “There were children in prison garb dressed like their parents; it was like an adult prison system. Seven times a day parents and their children were required to stay in their pods so they could be counted. Laser beams shined through the cells at night.”

Just about everyone else who walked through the gates at Hutto, including federal authorities, saw it as a deeply troubling facility. In March 2007, ICE inspectors visited Hutto and, in their own distinct bureaucratic language, corroborated the anguished accounts of the detainees. The inspectors noted that their “overall review of the facility can be accurately rated as deficient” and determined that the staff wasn’t following basic standards of detention.

“The Review Team’s observation of CCA’s overall attitude is of disinterest and complacency in their work performance,” the agency noted in its report.

A month later, an interoffice memo from ICE said that at Hutto, CCA is “losing staff as quick as they can hire them.” That’s because the company was only paying its detention officers around $10 an hour, nearly $4 less than what they could make at the county jail.

“As long as CCA continues to hire employees at this rate per hour, they will continue to experience the problems they are currently experiencing on the floor,” read the memo. “The current problems CCA is experiencing are a direct result of what ‘they are paying their employees for.’ Unfortunately, it is at ICE’s expense.”

Among other issues, the Scene asked CCA to address the portrayal of Hutto that emerges from both federal officials and the people who lived there. The company declined to comment on any and all matters in this story, instead emailing news clips and a U.S. magistrate’s report of the facility. That report, which came three months after the ACLU filed its federal lawsuit, depicted a more humane place than other earlier accounts and noted, “there have been attempts to ‘soften’ the feel of the building.” The magistrate observed that the staff removed door locks and hung murals on the walls, “although the building still retains a very institutional feel.”

In August, the ACLU announced a settlement with ICE over the treatment of immigrant families at the Hutto facility. The settlement called for several common-sense measures, including installing privacy curtains around toilets in common areas and letting kids play with toys in their rooms. All 26 children and their parents who took part in the suit were released into the custody of family members who are legal residents of the United States.

By all accounts, Hutto is no longer as oppressive as it was when Elsa and her family first arrived from Honduras. But why didn’t CCA get it right from the start? Or to put it more bluntly, why did a rich company—one with $388 million in revenues last quarter—have to be told by the ACLU to cease treating innocent children like criminals?

“The point I’d like to make is that none of these changes were done voluntarily,” says Hines, the attorney. “When you look at CCA and ICE, the question is, how would this facility have been if no one found out about it?”

The apathetic treatment of Hutto’s immigrants was hardly an anomaly. CCA also operates a detention facility in San Diego that drew a separate ACLU lawsuit last year. In the complaint, the group claims that CCA routinely denied basic medical care to immigrant detainees with hepatitis, diabetes and other serious illnesses. One man from Ghana died from heart failure after the center’s staff allegedly asked him to fill out some paper work—even though he was seen kneeling on the floor of his cell and complaining of chest pains.

At jails and prisons across the country, inmates routinely die under dire circumstances; some commit suicide after nurses fail to fill their anti-psychotic prescriptions, others find themselves on the wrong end of a baton stick. And in fairness, CCA doesn’t have a monopoly on jailhouse horror stories. For every dark tale of cruelty at CCA, there is an equal travesty in a county jail or federal penitentiary. The difference, though, is that CCA can duck responsibility for what happens inside its walls, whereas a government-run facility can’t. CCA doesn’t have to turn over the disciplinary file of a disgraced guard or give a press conference when one of its inmates escapes over the fence. It has the luxury to operate in the shadows and turn a booming profit without having to explain how it runs the business.

We don’t know a lot about Patrick Perry, a onetime captain for CCA’s Metro Detention Facility, located on Harding Road in South Nashville. But we do know that on the morning of Jan. 31, 2008, Perry arrived at the Metro Health Department to talk about his employer and offer a glimpse into some of its secret practices. Metro Health officials would later write a memo detailing what the captain told them.

Perry was worried about a troubled inmate named Frank Horton, who was imprisoned on a drug conviction and had stayed in the same segregation cell since May 2007. Perry said that CCA’s policy dictates that an inmate has to leave his cell at least once every three days or else guards need to remove him by force. But at CCA’s Harding facility, the warden reprimanded the staff if they followed this policy. That’s because every time they had to escort an inmate against his will, it raised the facility’s “use of force” numbers. And that placed the Metro Detention Center in a negative light when CCA officials evaluated it against its other jails and prisons across the country.

At first blush, the warden’s directive may not seem out of order. If an inmate doesn’t want to leave his cell, why should the guards care? But Frank Horton was a special case. As Perry told Metro officials, the 23-year-old inmate seemed disoriented and was speaking gibberish. At the very least, he needed medical care. (Metro Health Department officials say they made sure Horton received a psychiatric screening after their visit with Perry, but say they can’t divulge any more details due to privacy concerns.)

Horton’s mother, Cytherea Braswell, had tried to visit her son before Christmas but says that a guard couldn’t find the necessary forms. She later had a lawyer, John Clemmons, drop in to see him in March, after she learned her son wasn’t well.

When Clemmons arrived, a guard told him that Frank was just fine, that he’d received a shower and a shave. But when he went to see his client, what he saw troubled him.

“He had a big, unkempt goatee, and some stubble on his face and lint on his hair,” Clemmons says. “He was completely naked except for a blanket draped around him, and when they walked me back there, they didn’t act like this was unusual.”

Now contemplating a lawsuit against CCA, Clemmons says that his client went nine months without taking a shower, which dovetails with Perry’s account of how Horton went the better part of 2007 without leaving his cell. Even worse, Horton appeared as if he were completely oblivious to the outside world and lost in his own muddled thoughts.

Brawell says that, as a child, her son was diagnosed with hyperactivity and mild to moderate bipolar disorder. As a young adult, he worked at a Waffle House and played basketball with his friends. With the right treatment, she says, he could live a normal life.

“He was an average person,” she says. “He had a job, he went to work every day, he had friends. He knew how to take care of himself.”

But when Clemmons went to visit Braswell’s son, he was talking in the same mysterious language that Perry described in his visit with Metro officials. It was an odd blend of broken Spanish and English, and Horton spoke it as if it were his native tongue, repeating the same incoherent phrases to identical questions.

“When I saw him, he was in a state where he had no awareness of his mental capacity,” Clemmons says.

With the help of the Metro Legal Department and the Davidson County Sheriff’s office, Clemmons was able to transfer Horton to a state facility for inmates with special needs. Now in the process of researching his case, Clemmons isn’t sure what kind of, if any, mental health treatment his client received behind bars. For that, he may subpoena Patrick Perry to discover whether the CCA facility risked Horton’s health to polish its internal data.

“When I was there, the only medical staff I saw was a nurse who merely walked from window to window and looked at the inmates through a slot in the door,” he says. “It just looked like all they were concerned with was that their physical well-being was intact.”

In his meeting with Metro Health officials, Patrick Perry also said that an alarm for inmates to trigger in the event of an emergency wasn’t working. He added that CCA knew the call system was a problem “but did nothing about it.” The former captain may find himself testifying about that observation as well.

Two weeks before Perry came forward, Gerald Townsend, a 36-year-old inmate at the Harding facility who loved scary movies, died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center after being diagnosed with internal bleeding. His spleen was ripped open and blood had flooded his lungs. In his final hours, Townsend told a nurse that Ronnie Sullivan, his 22-year-old cellmate, assaulted him. Metro police later charged Sullivan with Townsend’s murder.

Attorney Blair Durham is representing Townsend’s mother, Jackie, who plans to file a suit against CCA this week. Durham says he’s learned that inmates were banging on their cells as Sullivan began to assault his cellmate. But no one rushed to help. Durham also heard that the alarm, which could have saved Townsend’s life, wasn’t working.

A month after Townsend’s death, an inmate fled the same jail through an air vent. At first, the company announced that the man, who had a history of escape attempts, was simply hiding inside the grounds. A day or so later, when the Scene called to see if he had been found, the company refused to comment.

Earlier this year, after CCA endured a series of PR nightmares at the Metro Detention Center during which the company largely ducked interviews with the media, the private jailer reassigned the facility’s warden, Brian Gardner. For the Davidson County Sheriff’s office, which contracts with CCA to run the Harding jail, the company needed to reevaluate its management of the facility.

“We are satisfied that CCA has responded with a policy change as well as the fact that they have changed their management since these incidents have occurred,” says Karla Wiekal, the sheriff’s spokesperson. “At some point, (CCA) recognized there needed to be a leadership change and at this point forward we will see if these changes are effective.”

In June 2007, President George Bush nominated CCA corporate counsel Gus Puryear to a federal seat in the U.S. District Court of Middle Tennessee. Initially viewed as a safe bet to receive a lifetime appointment, Puryear faltered badly in his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February, appearing to some as arrogant and unprepared. The 39-year-old nominee, who twice served as debate coach for Vice President Dick Cheney, struggled in particular to explain how his company handled the brutal 2004 death of Nashville inmate Estelle Richardson, at one point wrongly stating that the guards initially charged in connection with her murder were “exonerated.” Now Puryear’s bid has turned into an unofficial referendum on CCA, and it appears unlikely that the Senate will confirm him before the end of Bush’s presidency.

It’s been that kind of year for the private jailer. Puryear’s struggles, playing out awkwardly on a big stage, make up just the latest bout of bad publicity for the Nashville company, which has also been battered in the national press. In February, The New Yorker reported the definitive story about the company’s Hutto facility in Texas. The magazine detailed how immigrant families shared a tiny cell with a bunk bed, thin mattress and an exposed toilet, while ill-trained guards rounded them up seven times a day for a head count. Then in March, Time.com detailed the accusations of a former high-ranking CCA official who claimed that the company repeatedly misled state and local authorities about the rate of violent incidents at the prisons and jails it had under contract.

In May, The New York Times chronicled how an ailing detainee was treated at a CCA facility in New Jersey just before he lapsed into a coma and died. The paper uncovered records that show that the man, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who overstayed a tourist visa, was “shackled and pinned to the floor of the medical unit.” He vomited and moaned and then was dumped in a disciplinary cell for 13 hours, even though he was foaming at the mouth.

Operating 65 facilities in the country with more than 70,000 inmates and detainees in its custody, CCA will never have a perfect record. But what may say more about the company anchoring a Green Hills office park is not the middle-aged detainee who died of a heart failure or the sinister warden who struck an inmate, but the 9-year-old boy who was forced to live like a common criminal.

Kevin Yourdkhani, whose parents fled from torture in their native Iran, wound up at CCA’s Hutto facility on Feb. 9, 2007. There, he shared a small cell with his mother and had to climb a tall ladder to get to his bunk bed. He slept right next to an open toilet that smelled. The boy also complained about the food—he called it “garbage”—saying that all he was ever fed were beans.

“We are lucky if we get 30 minute to eat,” he said an affidavit for the ACLU’s lawsuit against the place. “It is usually 20 minutes, and they are always rushing.”

In his pod, a small living area that he shared with other detainees, the children were always sick. Lots of kids had eye infections. Kevin attended school but rarely learned anything. All he did was watch “Spanish movies” and color and draw pictures.

One day his father, who was being kept at another part of the facility, came to visit Kevin. That infuriated a guard, who told Kevin that he would be placed in foster care if his dad ever dropped by to see him again.

“I cried and cried so much that I lost my energy and went to sleep.”
http://www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/Cover_Story/2008/06/19/Locked_and_Loaded/index.shtml#

Posted by lois at 09:24 AM | Comments (0)

Homeland Security's Enemy Next Door

Americas Program Commentary
Homeland Security's Enemy Next Door
Tom Barry | June 10, 2008
What began as a war on terrorists has become a war on immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security says that it prioritizes its immigration enforcement actions by "targeting the greatest national security and public safety threats"—an approach not taken prior to 9/11.

At home, like abroad, the war on terrorism has lost its focus. Faced with failure, the Bush administration's stated resolve to dismantle international terrorism has devolved into an attack on a far more vulnerable and proximate target—Latin American immigrants.

President George W. Bush has asked for a 6.8% increase in Homeland Security's 2009 budget, while the department's immigration enforcement operations will receive a 19.1% increase. Since the incorporation of immigration enforcement into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003, the two DHS immigration agencies—Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have received a greatly disproportionate share of Homeland Security's annual budget increases.

In the president's 2009 budget proposal, DHS says its main priority is "to prevent terrorist attacks against the nation and to protect our nation from dangerous people." DHS "will continue to prevent the entry of terrorists while facilitating the legitimate flow of people by strengthening border security efforts and continuing to gain effective control of America's borders."

Department Secretary Michael Chertoff can point to many numerical indicators of progress. Border Patrol agents and detention beds have doubled; arrests by ICE fugitive operation teams doubled in 2007; and the "removal" of "criminal aliens" increases each year.

DHS spends more than $12 billion annually for operations "to protect our nation against dangerous people." Partnering in immigration enforcement, the Justice Department has also enjoyed hundreds of millions of dollars in budget increases over the past few years. Large increases for the DOJ's role in immigration enforcement are included in its 2009 request for "National Security Efforts," specifically under its budget requests for "Fighting Criminal Activity on the U.S. Southwest Border."

A large sector of the U.S. population—12-13 million—that, prior to the creation of Homeland Security in March 2003, were described by DHS and DOJ as "illegal aliens" are now commonly labeled "dangerous people" because they lack proper documentation and may be falsifying their documents to obtain work, go to school, or pay taxes.

Homeland Security has launched waves of new anti-immigrant initiatives, many with militaristic names: Operation Streamline, Operation Jumpstart, Community Shield, Fugitive Operations, Return to Sender, Border Security Initiative, among others.

Why all the anti-immigrant fervor in government? What are the politics behind this offensive?
Restrictionists Set the Pace

The rising influence of the immigration restrictionists—including Minuteman vigilantes on the border, the Immigration Reform Caucus in Congress, and such policy institutes in Washington as Numbers USA, Center for Immigration Studies, and Federation for American Immigration Reform—has moved the immigration debate decidedly to the right and they have succeeded in framing immigration as a "rule of law" issue.

In the debate on comprehensive immigration reform, the forces that have traditionally shaped immigration politics—the "immigrants are good for profits" leaders of the Republican Party and the "immigrants are part of our electoral coalition" leaders of the Democratic Party—were overpowered and out-maneuvered by the restrictionist leaders and their deep reservoir of grassroots activists.

Those concerned about the rights of immigrants and the ethical obligations of a host country were pushed to the margins of the debate by restrictionists. These hardliners insisted that there could be no discussion of legalization or temporary work programs until the government secured its borders, enforced its immigration laws, and re-established the "rule of law" in the country.

With all proposals for comprehensive immigration reform blocked by the restrictionist grassroots lobby and their Washington representatives, leading elements of both parties accepted the "enforcement-first" agenda of the restrictionists.

Congress has approved billions of new dollars for immigration enforcement to double the number of Border Patrol agents, double the number of beds in detention centers, construct a 670-mile border fence, mount a high-tech virtual fence, and hire brigades of immigration attorneys, judges, and U.S. marshals at the Justice Department.

Many in Congress, especially liberal Democrats, hoped that by authorizing a full-throttle enforcement agenda they would be creating more political space for a comprehensive immigration reform that includes legalization. But comprehensive reform was quashed in the Senate along with other bills that opponents deemed to be pro-immigrant. By caving to the enforcement agenda, they actually lost political space as the immigrants-as-criminals, or worse, terrorists, image took even deeper hold in the media and national consciousness fueled by a barrage of images of fences, armed border guards, etc.

But the restrictionist camp did not declare victory. Instead, anti-immigration organizations quickly moved a step beyond the enforcement-first agenda and began brandishing an enforcement-only immigration policy. The restrictionist policy institutes call this their "attrition through enforcement" plan.

In effect, the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Defense have adopted an enforcement-only approach. With no legalization proposal on the horizon, the government has stepped up the pace of immigration enforcement, increasing workplace raids, opening new immigrant detention centers, and encouraging local governments to join in the national immigrant hunt—spreading terror throughout immigrant communities.

There is no plan to deport all illegal immigrants. Rather the crackdown aims to sow fear among immigrants so that large numbers decide to leave the United States and to deter others from migrating north. While the Bush administration publicly supports immigration reform, it has done little to advance a reform policy during its two terms.

A month after immigration reform failed in the Senate in June 2007 the administration announced a 26-point plan of administrative measures to increase immigration enforcement, such as extending the border fence and hiring more Border Agents. The plan also included measures to streamline the temporary worker program, an apparent attempt to assuage businesses that were complaining about congressional failure to expand the HB2 program. The Bush administration has unsuccessfully promoted the corporate proposal to expand temporary work programs, providing cheap labor without acquiring broader obligations to workers.

There is widespread speculation that the administration has unleashed DHS on immigrants with the hope that the resulting shortages of immigrant workers will create more political room for a renewal and expansion of temporary worker programs.

The administration recently adjusted the HB2 visa program to allow temporary workers to stay three years rather than ten months. This underscored the criticism that on the one hand the administration is detaining and deporting historic numbers of immigrants, while on the other hand it is opening the doors for business to employ foreign workers temporarily in resort hotels, shipyards, and golf courses.

All involved parties—the restrictionists, both political parties, the president, and the federal agencies charged with carrying out the immigration crackdown—bear some responsibility for the immigration crisis that is deepening in America. But the lion's share of the blame lies with President Bush. His leadership gap allowed restrictionist proposals to gain momentum, he has spent billions of dollars on trumped-up border security, and he has unleashed DHS to pursue a war of terror on immigrants.

The politics of immigration restrictionism do not fully explain the war on immigrants. Anti-immigration and anti-immigrant forces would not have advanced so quickly without Sept. 11. The new national commitment to homeland security set the stage for an enforcement-only immigration policy and serves as the ideological framework for the immigration crackdown.
Immigrants as Criminals and Terrorists

At Homeland Security, which was established in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks, there is no confusion about what is the driving force behind the immigration crackdown. As DHS explains, "The National Strategy for Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Act of 2002 served to mobilize and organize our nation to secure the homeland from terrorist attacks." Its mission is to "lead the unified national effort to secure America. We will prevent and deter terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to threats and hazards to the nation."

ICE explains that its predecessor, the Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS), was folded into the new Homeland Security department to allow it "to more effectively enforce our immigration and customs laws and to protect the United States against terrorist attacks." ICE says it does this "by targeting illegal immigrants: the people, money, and materials that support terrorism and other criminal activities. ICE is a key component of the DHS 'layered defense' approach to protecting the nation."

Similarly, CBP, whose main component is the Border Patrol, boasts of its national security mission: "We are the guardian of our Nation's borders. We are America's frontline. We safeguard the American homeland at and beyond our borders. We protect the American public against terrorists and the instruments of terror." There is no mention of immigrants in CBP's mission, even though obstructing illegal immigration is its most prominent function.

DHS points to statistics that testify to its progress in arresting, detaining, and deporting immigrants. The Justice Department, responsible for prosecuting immigrants and transporting them to jails, points to the mushrooming of immigration cases as evidence of its commitment to upholding immigration law.

But what does all this immigration enforcement have to do with protecting the country against terrorists and criminals that threaten our security and safety?

A 2007 study by the Transnational Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University found that there has been no increase in terrorism or national security charges against immigrants since 2001. In fact, despite the increased enforcement operations by Homeland Security, more immigrants were charged annually in immigration courts with national security or terrorism-related offenses in a three-year period in the mid-1990s (1994-96) than in a comparable period (2004-06) since Sept. 11.

According to the TRAC study, "A decade later, national security charges were brought against 114 individuals, down about a third. Meanwhile for the same period, terrorism charges are down more than three-fourths, to just 12."

"Despite repeated claims by high officials of the Bush administration that fighting terrorism has been the central mission of the Department of Homeland Security," reported TRAC, "the data show that in the last three years a claim of terrorism was made against only 12 (0.0015%) out of individuals against whom the DHS has filed charges in the immigration courts." Of those 12 charges, "six were withdrawn by the DHS, one was not sustained, two are still pending, one was otherwise dealt with, and only four were sustained."

Although ICE claims it targets immigrants accused of crimes that threaten national security and public safety, in practice the agency has made undocumented immigration itself a crime thus blurring the lines between immigration violations and serious crime. Immigrants are now being charged with federal crimes for actions that were in the past considered administrative violations. The criminals that DHS, ICE, and Border Patrol are arresting and imprisoning are increasingly immigrants who have falsified documents or Social Security numbers to obtain and hold jobs—often with the tacit cooperation of employers.

ICE has mounted a national dragnet with 75 teams stationed around the country looking for "fugitive immigrants." ICE says its new operation is intended "to dramatically expand the agency's efforts to locate, arrest, and remove fugitives from the United States." But most of these fugitives are not criminals on the lam but rather immigrants who have failed to respond to administrative orders issued by immigration courts.
New Administration Needs to Delink Security and Immigration

By merging Homeland Security and Border Patrol into one department, the Bush administration has created a monster agency that has betrayed its original mandate on terrorism, diverting a tremendous amount of resources to hunting down and "removing" immigrants who represent no threat to national security.

Some immigrants might be terrorists, just as some citizens might be terrorists. However, by having such a large population to monitor—as many as 30 million non-citizen (legal and illegal) immigrants in addition to foreign visitors—DHS is unable to focus on homeland security. Instead it has clumsily taken on the administration of a badly flawed immigration system.

Incorporating immigration agencies into Homeland Security has further complicated and distorted what was already a dysfunctional immigration system. The administrative merging has created a merging in the public mind between "threats" of terrorists and immigrants. ICE and Border Patrol agents now regard immigrants lacking proper documents as criminals and potential terrorists, and they are encouraging local law-enforcement officials to do the same.

Immigration policy and homeland security have become so entangled that for DHS and its component immigration agencies the mission of protecting America has become synonymous with cracking down on immigrants. It's one more policy mess from the Bush legacy that the next administration will need to untangle.

The politics of restrictionism can be defeated. More difficult, though, for a new Congress and president will be a rolling back of the Homeland Security apparatus that has taken over immigration policy. A real focus on terrorism and organized crime could make those programs more professional and more effective. But the unfocused and punitive enforcement-only measures on the border need to be defunded and shut down.

Immigrants aren't the enemy next door. They are our employees, coworkers, and neighbors.

The challenge for the next president and a new Congress will be to articulate an immigration policy that is independent of the national security imperative. No doubt that the immigration system is in crisis, but it's a failure to set sustainable immigration flows and fair practices—certainly not a national security crisis.

Tom Barry is a senior analyst with the Americas Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org) of the Center for International Policy.
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5286

For More Information

See other articles in this series of new reports on the immigration crackdown:

Reframing the Immigration Debate: The Actors and the Issues
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/2959

The Deterrence Strategy of Homeland Security
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5269

County Jails Welcome Immigrants
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5253

Paying the Price of the Immigration Crackdown
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5234

Truth about Illegal Immigration and Crime
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4903

Posted by lois at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

June 18, 2008

Federal prosecution of illegal immigrants soars. The White House lauds the dramatic increase, but critics cite higher priorities.

"This is an effort to use the federal criminal justice system in immigration enforcement," Long said. "What it means is that immigration cases are dominating the federal court system these days. The volume of cases is
really huge. This is a big deal."

Federal prosecution of illegal immigrants soars
The White House lauds the dramatic increase, but critics cite higher priorities.
By Nicole Gaouette
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 18, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has sharply ratcheted up prosecutions of illegal immigrants along the U.S.-Mexico border in the last year, with increases so dramatic that immigration offenses now account for as much as half the nation's federal criminal caseload.

In the widening crackdown, administration officials prosecuted 9,350 illegal immigrants on federal criminal charges in March, up from 3,746 a year ago and an all-time high, according to statistics released Tuesday. Those convicted have received jail sentences averaging about one month.

The prosecutions are among the most visible steps in a larger effort that includes work-site raids, increased border patrols and the use of technology and fences. Often controversial, the patchwork of measures represents the administration's response to failed congressional attempts last summer to overhaul federal immigration laws.

Administration officials and conservative groups have lauded the increase in prosecutions. But critics say data show illegal immigrants are still trying to enter the country. And some lawyers argue that the push is overwhelming a federal court system with limited resources and higher priorities.

Even so, administration officials announced this month that they would be funneling more resources toward the effort, called Operation Streamline.

"The results of this criminal prosecution initiative have been striking," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Chertoff's agency and the Justice Department, which oversee the effort, recently announced a plan to assign 64 attorneys and 35 staff members to prosecutions along the Southwest border.

The program began as a pilot around Del Rio, Texas, in 2005 and spread to other areas. Officers and prosecutors participating in it practice "zero tolerance," and jail times can range from two weeks to six months.

"The reason this works is because these illegal migrants come to realize that violating the law will not simply send them back to try over again but will require them to actually serve some short period of time in a jail or prison setting, and will brand them as having been violators of the law," Chertoff said. "That has a very significant deterrent impact."

The statistical analysis released Tuesday was compiled by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, considered an authoritative source for such figures. It called the increase "highly unusual."

Operation Streamline's larger aim is to give the administration another tool to use in its crackdown on illegal immigration, said Susan B. Long, a TRAC co-director and Syracuse University professor.

"This is an effort to use the federal criminal justice system in immigration enforcement," Long said. "What it means is that immigration cases are dominating the federal court system these days. The volume of cases is really huge. This is a big deal."

Of 16,298 federal criminal prosecutions recorded nationwide in March, immigration cases accounted for more than half, Long said. The next-highest number, 2,674, was for drug offenses, followed by 702 for white-collar crime.

TRAC researchers found that all but 142 of the 9,350 new federal immigration prosecutions in March occurred in certain areas along the border with Mexico. Texas was most active, followed by Southern California.

California is not formally a part of the program. But prosecutions of people who smuggle illegal immigrants across the state's border have increased sharply in the last five years, nearly doubling to 118 cases in March.

The deluge of prosecutions is overwhelming some lawyers involved in the process.

Heather Williams, a federal public defender in Tucson, said the operation had a crushing effect when it was begun this year on a limited basis.

Defense attorneys fear for clients who are hustled into court, en masse, after spending days crossing the desert.

"We have to be concerned our clients are competent to plead, that they understand what's going on," Williams said.

Other immigrant advocates were critical of the increase in federal prosecutions.

"It doesn't mean we have an end to illegal immigration or a way of dealing with it," said Angela Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center.

A recent study showed that would-be border crossers were more concerned about heat and harsh conditions than border enforcement, she said. The study, by Wayne A. Cornelius, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at UC San Diego, found that 98% of immigrants from the Mexican state of Oaxaca were eventually able to enter the U.S.

But groups that want to see immigration tightly controlled applauded the new statistics.

"It sounds like very good news," said Roy Beck, director of NumbersUSA, which advocates stricter immigration controls.

"It's part of a pattern we've seen since last August where the administration, on the border and in the interior, seems almost monthly to be tightening the vise," he said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-immig18-2008jun18,0,7626509,print.story

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

Free Speech Radio News Report on StopMax Conference

Free Speech Radio News Report on StopMax Conference
An estimated 20,000 people in the United States live in concrete cells, 6 foot by twelve foot wide for 23 hours a day. With their lives on lockdown, these prisoners are deprived of educational programs, adequate physical and mental health services and have little contact with their families or other inmates. Denouncing these conditions as human rights violations and utterly failed policy, hundreds of people gathered in Philadelphia at the Stop Max Conference to put an end to Solitary Confinement. Andalusia Knoll reports from the conference.
http://www.fsrn.org/content/solitary-confinement-disputed/2473

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

California prisons receiver says he needs $7 billion now for healthcare

California prisons receiver says he needs $7 billion now for healthcare
The state's failure to give him money to build seven facilities is the result of 'deliberate obstruction,' he says. He may seek a federal court order to obtain the funds.
By Michael Rothfeld
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 18, 2008

SACRAMENTO — In his broadest, harshest critique of state officials yet, the court-appointed overseer of healthcare in state prisons said Tuesday he would run out of money soon and had begun preparing to seize the funding he needs with an order from a federal judge.

Receiver J. Clark Kelso, who had previously directed most of his displeasure at state lawmakers for refusing to approve his $7-billion plan to construct prison healthcare facilities, on Tuesday adde