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October 30, 2008

MN: Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder present challenges for the criminal justice system. Alternatives put into place.

"Minnesota is ahead of the curve when it comes to making concessions for veteran offenders. With help from veterans’ advocate Guy Gambill, the state Legislature this year amended a state statute to take into account the mental health status of veterans during the sentencing phase of criminal proceedings.
Now, if a defendant in Minnesota is convicted of a crime, it’s recommended that the court ask if he or she is a veteran. If the defendant is a veteran and has been diagnosed as having a mental illness, the court may consult with the federal or state Department of Veterans Affairs to determine treatment options in lieu of or along with a jail sentence."

Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder present challenges for the criminal justice system
by Dan Heilman Associate Editor
Minnesota Lawyer
October 24, 2008 9:50 AM CST

• As of Sept. 10, 1.717 million U.S. troops have been deployed to war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• About 300,000 have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
• A further 320,000 have been diagnosed with symptoms related to traumatic brain injury.

When Hector Matascastillo found himself in an armed standoff with eight police officers on the front yard of his Lakeville home early in 2004, in his mind he was doing what he’d been trained to do, and what came naturally to him: operating on survival mode, with no thought for the context of his actions.

It was only after he was arrested and jailed that Matascastillo, a Bronze Star recipient who served in Iraq with the 75th Ranger Regiment of the U.S. Army, realized first-hand the challenges that veterans face on their return to society, and the precarious position more and more of them find themselves in when they encounter the criminal justice system.

Matascastillo, who now works as a veterans’ employment representative for the state Department of Employment and Economic Development, told a recent seminar sponsored by the Ramsey County Bar Association that some combat veterans have “an addiction to chaos” that can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD, in turn, can often lead to conflicts not only within the veteran’s home life, but also with authorities.

“We have a mentality that says there’s nothing we can’t do, and that we have to be on 100 percent of the time,” he said of combat veterans. “We have to be in survival mode.

“One of the soldiers I served with is facing jail time for two DWIs in two months. Another one gets in fights in bars because he can’t stop wanting to fight,” Matascastillo said. “Neither of them was like that before they joined the military.”

A new kind of veteran

PTSD — or what used to be called by such less euphemistic names as combat fatigue and shell shock — has been a reality of war for centuries. In “The Iliad,” which dates back to the 8th or 9th century B.C., Homer depicts Achilles’ psychological breakdown during the Trojan War.

But the abolition of the draft has brought about a new kind of veteran, one who is called up for two, three and sometimes more tours of duty. According to experts who spoke at the seminar, the criminal justice system is due for a flood of offenders with military backgrounds unless something proactive is done to get them the help they need.

“We’ve had 1.7 million people deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and almost half of them have gone back more than once,” said Minneapolis criminal defense attorney Brockton Hunter, who works extensively with veteran defendants. “About 600,000 of those people have PTSD or TBI [traumatic brain injury], and less than half of them get the help they need. Those are the ones who pop up in the criminal courts.”

Hunter said combat trauma can be linked to criminal behavior in two ways: Symptoms of PTSD can incidentally lead to criminal behavior, or offenses can be directly connected to the trauma the veteran experienced. For example, he noted, hundreds of thousands of Vietnam veterans are homeless, addicted or incarcerated 35 years after the last American troops were brought back from that war.

The numbers from the Iraqi and Afghani wars are shaping up to be even more troubling. Recent figures from the U.S. Veterans Health Administration show that more than half of the veteran patients are being treated for disorders deriving from PTSD and other mental health issues.

“We’ve asked more of [troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan] than we’ve asked of any force in history,” Hunter said. “To me, the path these people follow is a no-brainer: self-medicate, hair-trigger temper, encounter with police. We will pay the price in the long run.”

Progress in Minnesota

Strides are being made in how the criminal justice system deals with veterans, but, for a number of reasons progress is slow.

For one thing, a veteran’s pride in his military career will often keep him from identifying himself in criminal court, for fear of dishonoring his uniform. Also, because veterans come from a warrior culture, they often see a diagnosis of PTSD as a concession to weakness, so often mental illnesses among veterans go undiagnosed.

“What’s helpful in war isn’t so helpful in society,” said Lt. Col. Cynthia Rasmussen, a mental health nurse in the Army Reserves. “Vigilance in war means being suspicious of everyone. In war, anger is useful and protective. Back here, those mindsets get you in trouble.”

Fortunately, Minnesota is ahead of the curve when it comes to making concessions for veteran offenders. With help from veterans’ advocate Guy Gambill, the state Legislature this year amended a state statute to take into account the mental health status of veterans during the sentencing phase of criminal proceedings.

Now, if a defendant in Minnesota is convicted of a crime, it’s recommended that the court ask if he or she is a veteran. If the defendant is a veteran and has been diagnosed as having a mental illness, the court may consult with the federal or state Department of Veterans Affairs to determine treatment options in lieu of or along with a jail sentence.

The amended bill was unusual in that it had broad, bipartisan support — not only from Republicans and Democrats, but from such naturally contrary bodies as the Minnesota County Attorneys Association and the Minnesota State Public Defenders.

The amended statute was modeled in part on a 2007 California initiative that lets judges depart from presumptive prison sentences in cases involving veterans with PTSD, and, when suitable, order treatment in lieu of jail time.

While the Minnesota bill is somewhat stripped down in that it doesn’t provide for a registration system for veterans with PTSD or for psychological evaluations, it’s a good start, said Gambill.

“We’re in the lead in the country when it comes to this,” he said. “It gives the court treatment options it didn’t have before.”

Hunter said that the military is doing more to screen and treat PTSD. The Veterans Administration is also expanding its treatment capacity, he added.

Rasmussen, who often speaks on behalf of veterans’ issues, said the key to preventing veterans from becoming criminal defendants is to create an understanding that when they come home, they’re entering what has become a foreign world.

“Going off to war is easy,” she said. “Coming home, nobody knows what to expect.”

http://www.minnlawyer.com/article.cfm/2008/10/27/Returning-veterans-with-posttraumatic-stress-disorder-present-unique-challenges-for-the-criminal-jus

Posted by lois at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2008

MA: prison towns to loose mitigation money

News Wicked Local Walpole News
Walpole to lose $750k prison mitigation money
By Jeb Bobseine
Fri Oct 17, 2008, 12:09 PM EDT
WALPOLE -

Walpole will lose $750,000 it gets for being home to a state prison, according to the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.
As a result, Town Administrator Michael Boynton is predicting cutbacks throughout Town Hall, possibly including layoffs.
The $750,000 cut is part of a sweeping attempt by Gov. Deval Patrick to balance the state budget in the turbulent economy, state spokesman Terrel Harris said.
"As I understand it, it's unsustainable, especially in these economic times," Harris said. "It's an earmark that we just can't afford."

Local and state officials are fuming over Patrick cutting prison mitigation funds after his recent promise to secure local aid funds to towns and cities across the state.
"It's absolutely inexplicable and utterly indefensible," said state Sen. James Timilty, D-Walpole.
The prison mitigation program, which compensates towns like Walpole for hosting prisons, is a "significant and transparent piece of local aid," Timilty said.
"I'm beyond frustrated" that aid to Walpole has been cut "under the guise of eliminating earmarks," Timilty said.
Boynton agreed.
On Wednesday, Oct.15 Gov. Patrick said local aid would be preserved for all cities and towns, Boynton said. But that's simply not accurate, he said.
"Our community is a great host (to MCI-Cedar Junction) and has been asked to continue on without the appropriate level of funding," he said.
The results will be felt across all town departments, Boynton predicted, from the schools, to police, to fire. "We will, in fact, have cutbacks, and likely layoffs," he said.
Anytime a cut is made in the middle of the fiscal year, "it's a problem," Boynton stressed.
Norfolk, which hosts MCI-Norfolk, saw its nearly $200,000 mitigation money cut as well.
Walpole's portion of a different mitigation program is about $67,000, Boynton estimated.
http://www.wickedlocal.com/walpole/news/x1348676575/Walpole-to-lose-750k-prison-mitigation-money

Posted by lois at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2008

PA: State hopes new prisons, early release cut crowding

State hopes new prisons, early release cut crowding
Monday, October 27, 2008
By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG -- A steady rise in the number of inmates and the political risks of paroling prisoners early are complicating the state's efforts to ease crowded conditions in its prisons.

The 27 existing lockups now hold nearly 47,000 inmates, which is up from a population of just over 36,000 in 1998. The number of inmates is now 8 percent over the current capacity of 43,300.

And the tide keeps on rising. State Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard estimates that the overall prison population could top 57,000 by the end of 2012. Legislators' desire to be "tough on crime" and the public's fear of rising drug-related crimes have led to longer and more mandatory sentences.

Correctional costs, at $1.6 billion for 2008-09, are the third biggest item in the $28 billion state budget, after education and welfare costs.

Progress to ease the crowded cells is going slowly. The Department of Corrections wants to build three new state prisons, each costing $200 million and holding 2,000 inmates. But the first of the three new prisons won't be open before mid- to late 2011.

The state Legislature has enacted a new law, one advocated by House Speaker Dennis O'Brien, R-Philadelphia. It's aimed at making more nonviolent prisoners eligible for early release. They would have to complete programs to ease their transition back into society, such as anger management and overcoming drug use, before being paroled.

By paroling more appropriate prisoners, officials believe they can moderate the rising tab for prison construction and operational costs, and thus ease the financial strain on state taxpayers.

But giving parole to the wrong inmate -- one who later commits another crime -- can spell political disaster. It happened in September, when an inmate released early from the State Correctional Institution Frackville shot and killed a Philadelphia police officer just a month after getting out of prison. The parolee had been jailed for a 1998 robbery and aggravated assault.

Gov. Ed Rendell, a former mayor of Philadelphia, found himself under pressure from police unions and citizens groups, and imposed a temporary moratorium on all parolees, nonviolent as well as violent.

The moratorium was lifted last week for nonviolent prisoners, whom Mr. Rendell defines as prisoners "with no history of a violent offense."

The corrections department and the Board of Probation and Parole will decide if an inmate qualifies as nonviolent and thus can be let out of prison early.

But deciding if an inmate is truly nonviolent can be tricky, said Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo. Sometimes an inmate is jailed for a nonviolent offense, such as drug buying or selling, burglary or other crimes against property, but more serious charges had been dismissed or plea-bargained away.

Violent crimes include things like murder, assault, robbery and rape. State parole and prisons officials will take an inmate's complete history into account before allowing him to be released on parole, Mr. Ardo said.

Mr. Rendell named a Temple University official, John S. Goldkamp, to study whether nonviolent inmates could be safely paroled. He recommended last week that parole "be restarted for nonviolent offenders [only]."

Mr. Rendell said, "The moratorium on paroles for all violent offenders remains in effect."

Prisons spokeswoman Susan McNaughton said a thorough review will be made of all inmates considered nonviolent, but she couldn't say how many of them would eventually be eligible for paroles or when the paroles would start.

As for the three new prisons, the first will go on the grounds of the existing SCI Rockview in Centre County. A construction manager and an architect will soon be chosen by of the state Department of General Services. A ground-breaking is expected in 2009 and the project would take about two years to complete.

"Rockview was selected because there is plenty of state-owned land there to build upon and the new prison can share functions, such as warehouses and a business office, with the prison that's already there," said Ms. McNaughton.

A second new prison is to be built somewhere in Fayette County, which already has one. Corrections officials are now scouting several other sites in Fayette County for the second prison, with a decision expected by next spring.

There are several counties where the third new prison could be built, including two sites in Schuylkill and one each in Northumberland, Huntingdon and Luzerne. Another possibility is on the grounds of Graterford state prison outside Philadelphia.

Mr. O'Brien this fall pushed for House Bill 4, which is designed to help nonviolent inmates turn their lives around while behind bars and qualify for early release. A judge would outline the incentive program to a convict at his post-trial sentencing.

"The incentives would encourage nonviolent inmates to follow a path that gives them a much better chance at re-entering society without committing new crimes," Mr. O'Brien said.

Such programs would include recovery from drug and alcohol abuse or addiction; literacy and high school diploma equivalency courses; job training; and anger management.

The program for inmates "will enhance public safety and provide large financial benefits to governments and taxpayers," Mr. O'Brien said.

First published on October 27, 2008
Copyright ©1997 - 2008 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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

Bureau of Prisons Institutes Revised Policy on Shackling Pregnant Women

Feminist Daily News Wire
October 27, 2008
Bureau of Prisons Institutes Revised Policy on Pregnant Inmates

The Bureau of Prisons recently announced a policy change that bans shackling of pregnant federal prison inmates except in extreme circumstances. According to the ACLU's Blog of Rights. Past policy allowed for shackling pregnant women during labor and delivery, a practice that poses significant health risks to pregnant inmates.

The new policy applies only to federal prisons. Forty-seven states currently do not prohibit shackling pregnant women and US Immigrant and Customs Enforcement refuses to prohibit putting restraints on the pregnant immigrant women they detain, according to the ACLU. A 2006 New York Times article that focused on state prison policies noted that 23 state corrections departments expressly allow pregnant women to be restrained during labor. (See articles below)

Media Resources: ACLU Blog of Rights 10/20/2008, The New York Times 3/2/2008
Bureau of Prisons Revises Policy on Shackling of Pregnant Inmates
(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)
posted 10-20-08
The ACLU welcomes the Bureau of Prisons’ recent policy change barring the shackling of pregnant inmates in federal prisons in all but the most extreme circumstances.

This new policy represents a sea change in the United States, where the shackling of pregnant women during transport, labor, and even delivery has long been routine in jails and prisons. Currently, only California, Illinois, and Vermont have enacted state laws restricting the practice of shackling pregnant women. By contrast, international human rights bodies have repeatedly expressed concern about policies that permit shackling of pregnant women.

Such reform is long overdue: As the stories from Amnesty International’s 1999 report, “Not Part of My Sentence”: Violations of the Human Rights of Women in Custody” make clear, shackling is not only dangerous and inhumane, but also poses serious and unnecessary risks to the wellbeing of the mother as well as her child. Warnice Robinson, who was imprisoned for shoplifting, explains,

“Because I was shackled to the bed, they couldn’t remove the lower part of the bed for the delivery, and they couldn’t put my feet in the stirrups. My feet were still shackled together, and I couldn’t get my legs apart. The doctor called for the officer, but the officer had gone down the hall. No one else could unlock the shackles, and my baby was coming but I couldn’t open my legs.”

Maria Jones, who was incarcerated for violating drug laws, tells the story of having labor induced two weeks prior to her due date, but being “kept in shackles, leaving 18 inches between her ankles, and told to pace the hallway for several hours. ‘It was so humiliating. My ankles were raw,’ she said. ‘I had shackles on up until the baby was coming out and then they took them off for me to push…It was unbelievable. Like I was going to go anywhere.’”

Of course, shackling is just one of the many dangerous and inhumane practices that pregnant women face in prison. Far too many women lack access to adequate prenatal care or even adequate drinking water, and in nearly all facilities throughout the country newborns are almost instantly separated from their mothers — a practice that experts stress denies children crucial bonding time with their mothers.

The new policy represents a huge victory for the thousands of women incarcerated in federal prisons throughout the country — a victory hard won by groups like The Rebecca Project for Human Rights and other organizations that have advocated for this change.

But this is only the beginning. In 47 states there is no legislation to restrict the practice of shackling pregnant women; state and local prisons are not subject to the new federal policy. And the U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which increasingly detains immigrant women who have never committed a crime, has refused to specifically end the use of restraints on pregnant women.

In the U.S., where one in 100 people is behind bars and where women represent the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population (their numbers have increased at nearly double the rate of men since 1985), shackling continues to affect thousands of women each year.

The ACLU has responded to The Rebecca Project’s call for the formation of an Anti-Shackling Coalition to work together to end the practice of shackling incarcerated mothers during transport, labor, delivery and post-delivery in state prisons and jails and all immigration facilities. Stay tuned and prepare to call your representatives.

For key findings from Amnesty International’s 2005 follow-up report regarding the use of restraints on pregnant women in custody, click here; the full report appears here.

Amy Fettig, ACLU National Prison Project, Diana Kasdan, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, Lenora Lapidus, ACLU Women’s Rights Project, Vania Leveille, ACLU Washington Legislative Office
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http://blog.aclu.org/2008/10/20/bureau-of-prisons-revises-policy-on-shackling-of-pregnant-inmates/
------------------
March 2, 2006
Prisons Often Shackle Pregnant Inmates in Labor
By ADAM LIPTAK

Shawanna Nelson, a prisoner at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Ark., had been in labor for more than 12 hours when she arrived at Newport Hospital on Sept. 20, 2003. Ms. Nelson, whose legs were shackled together and who had been given nothing stronger than Tylenol all day, begged, according to court papers, to have the shackles removed.

Though her doctor and two nurses joined in the request, her lawsuit says, the guard in charge of her refused.

"She was shackled all through labor," said Ms. Nelson's lawyer, Cathleen V. Compton. "The doctor who was delivering the baby made them remove the shackles for the actual delivery at the very end."

Despite sporadic complaints and occasional lawsuits, the practice of shackling prisoners in labor continues to be relatively common, state legislators and a human rights group said. Only two states, California and Illinois, have laws forbidding the practice.

The New York Legislature is considering a similar bill. Ms. Nelson's suit, which seeks to ban the use of restraints on Arkansas prisoners during labor and delivery, is to be tried in Little Rock this spring.

The California law, which came into force in January, was prompted by widespread problems, said Sally J. Lieber, a Democratic assemblywoman from Mountain View.

"We found this was going on in some institutions in California and all over the United States," Ms. Lieber said. "It presents risks not only for the inmate giving birth, but also for the infant."

Corrections officials say they must strike a balance between security and the well-being of the pregnant woman and her child.

"Though these are pregnant women," said Dina Tyler, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, "they are still convicted felons, and sometimes violent in nature. There have been instances when we've had a female inmate try to hurt hospital staff during delivery."

Dee Ann Newell, who has taught classes in prenatal care and parenting for female prisoners in Arkansas for 15 years, said she found the practice of shackling women in labor appalling.

"If you have ever seen a woman have a baby," Ms. Newell said, "you know we squirm. We move around."

Twenty-three state corrections departments, along with the federal Bureau of Prisons, have policies that expressly allow restraints during labor, according to a report by Amnesty International U.S.A. on Wednesday.

The corrections departments of five states, including Connecticut, and the District of Columbia, the report found, prohibit the practice. The remaining states do not have laws or formal policies, although some corrections departments told the group that they did not use restraints as a matter of informal practice.

Many states justify restraints because the prisoners remain escape risks, though there have apparently been no instances of escape attempts by women in labor.

"You can't convince me that it's ever really happened," Ms. Newell said. "You certainly wouldn't get far."

About 5 percent of female prisoners arrive pregnant, according to a 1999 report by the Justice Department. The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group, estimates that 40,000 women are admitted to the nation's prisons each year, suggesting that 2,000 babies are born to American prisoners annually.

Illinois enacted the first law forbidding some restraints during labor, in 2000. "Under no circumstances," it says, "may leg irons or shackles or waist shackles be used on any pregnant female prisoner who is in labor."

Before that, said Gail T. Smith, the executive director of Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers, the standard practice was to chain the prisoner to a hospital bed. "What was common," Ms. Smith said, "was one wrist and one ankle."

The California law prohibits shackling prisoners by the wrists or ankles during labor, delivery and recovery. Until recently, prisoners from the Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, Calif., were routinely shackled to their beds after giving birth at the nearby Madera Community Hospital.

"These women are mostly in for minor crimes and don't pose a flight risk," said Ms. Lieber, who met with 120 pregnant women at the prison in August. "Madera Community Hospital is in one of the most remote parts of California. It's hard to walk to a filling station, much less a bus stop."

Washington State has also forbidden the use of shackles during labor, though as a matter of corrections department policy rather than law. Pamela Simpson, a California nurse, described in an e-mail message to Ms. Lieber the practice in Washington before the policy was changed.

"Here this young woman was in active labor," Ms. Simpson wrote, "handcuffed to the armed guard, wearing shackles, in her orange outfit that was dripping wet with amniotic fluid. Her age: 15!"

Arkansas has resisted an outright ban on restraints, though Ms. Nelson's case may change that.

Ms. Nelson was serving time for identity fraud and writing bad checks when she gave birth at age 30. She weighed a little more than 100 pounds, and her baby, it turned out, weighed nine and a half pounds.

The experience of giving birth without anesthesia while largely immobilized has left her with lasting back pain and damage to her sciatic nerve, according to her lawsuit against prison officials and a private company, Correctional Medical Services.

Ms. Nelson, now known as Shawanna Lumsey, and lawyers for the defendants did not respond to requests for comment. In court papers, the defendants denied that they had caused any harm to Ms. Nelson.

Partly as a consequence of Ms. Nelson's suit, Arkansas has started using softer, more flexible nylon restraints for prisoners deemed to be security risks. They are removed, Ms. Tyler said, during the actual delivery.

Ms. Newell considers that slight progress for the approximately 50 women in Arkansas prisons and jails who give birth each year.

"Childbirth should be a sacred event," said Ms. Newell, a senior justice fellow at the Soros Foundation. "Just because they're prisoners doesn't mean they shouldn't get the usual care."

Dawn H., an Arkansas prisoner who delivered a baby in custody in 2002, said her guard wanted to shackle her to the bed.

"Fortunately," she said, "I had a very wonderful nurse who told the guard I was in her care. I was her patient. And no one was going to shackle me." (She asked that her full name not be used because her employer did not know about her imprisonment for passing bad checks.)

The Wisconsin Corrections Department has also recently changed its approach, after a state newspaper, The Post-Crescent of Appleton, reported on the issue in January. The department said it would end the use of restraints during labor, delivery and recovery.

Merica Erato, serving time for negligent homicide after a car accident, went through labor with chains around her ankles in Fond du Lac, Wis., in May, her husband, Steve, said in an interview.

"It is unbelievable that in this day and age a child is born to a woman in shackles," Mr. Erato said. "It sounds like something from slavery 200 years ago."

In most cases, people who have studied the issue said, women are shackled because prison rules are unthinkingly exported to a hospital setting.

"This is the perfect example of rule-following at the expense of common sense," said William F. Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A. "It's almost as stupid as shackling someone in a coma."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/national/02shackles.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

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

October 27, 2008

Girls are the fastest growing segment of national juvenile justice population

Number of girls arrested in Cape Girardeau not matching national trend
Monday, October 27, 2008
By Bridget DiCosmo
Southeast Missourian

Though young women are the fastest growing segment of the national juvenile justice population, according to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, local numbers do not reflect a dramatic increase in the number of girls arrested as juveniles.

Through Tuesday, 34 percent of juveniles arrested in Cape Girardeau ages 18 or younger this year were female, while 27 percent of those arrested under age 15 were girls.

In 2006, girls also made up 34 percent of the number of juveniles 18 or younger arrested in Cape Girardeau, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Last year, 87 girls younger than 15 were arrested in Cape Girardeau, of a total 243 arrests of juveniles in that age group.

The number of girls cited in Cape Girardeau County Court has crept up, but not spiked as figures have in some areas, said Randy Rhodes, Cape Girardeau chief juvenile officer.

"It's more than it used to be, but it's not the national average," Rhodes said.

Nationally, the rate of juvenile delinquency for girls is decreasing much slower than for boys, meaning girls are making up more of the incarcerated juvenile population, and a handful of states reported incarceration rates for girls rising by more than 30 percent per year, said Vanessa Patino, senior research adviser at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

On Oct. 20, two girls were cited in Cape Girardeau for assault after getting into a fight at a local school, but not nearly as many girls were cited for assault so far this year as in 2007, Rhodes said.

Last year, there were more female assault offenders than male, he said.

Cape Girardeau's juvenile statistics have stayed within the range of the typical numbers for rural demographics, whereas in areas like St. Louis, female offenders make up a bigger portion of the juvenile population, Rhodes said.

Truancy and curfew violations still make up a significant portion of the female juvenile population. Boys tend to account for more of the stealing and property damage delinquency offenses, Rhodes said.

Less than 20 percent of the children younger than 15 arrested in 2008 in Cape Girardeau for stealing were girls. Between ages 15 and 18, however, 28 percent of the juveniles arrested for stealing were female.

Of all youth incarcerations, 42 percent of girls are 15 and younger, compared to 31 percent of boys 15 and younger, according to Patino.

Rhodes said typically, female offenders tend to commit offenses related to family problems, such as being reported as a runaway when they are simply living with an estranged parent who does not have custody.

So far in 2008, 48 percent of runaways younger than 18 in Cape Girardeau were girls, and in 2007, there were more runaways who were girls than boys.

It's not uncommon for a situation to arise with a girl refusing to go to school, and juvenile officers find it's part of a larger family-related argument, Rhodes said. In many of those situations, the court will order counseling.

"Give me a simple boy stealing a car any day," Rhodes said.

More girls attribute their juvenile delinquency record to assaults or problems arising from family-related conflict than boys do, Patino said.

"There are few programs addressing those issues," Patino said.

Because of the size of the holding cells at the Cape Girardeau Juvenile Detention Center, girls are usually transported to a separate facility in Charleston, Mo., if they need to be held for longer than 24 hours.

Rhodes described the facility in Cape Girardeau as a long cell block with 10 rooms, five on each side of the hall.

The Cape Girardeau facility is not designed for treatment, merely a temporary holding place for children pending their court date.

"We're bare bones. We provide classrooms for education and a bed to sleep in and as much food as they can eat, but we don't treat them," he said.

After their court appearances, they would be sentenced to a specific treatment facility of the Division of Youth Services.

One pattern that has emerged with boys and girls involves substance abuse, Rhodes said.

Every child is tested for the presence of drugs and alcohol in their system before being admitted to the Cape Girardeau County Juvenile Detention Center for the purpose of maintaining a safe environment, though they aren't cited if they test positive.

Girls tend to test positive for drug and alcohol usage more frequently than boys, and when they do, it's usually a cocktail of drugs, whereas boys are more likely to have just marijuana or alcohol in their system, Rhodes said.

By the numbers: Statistics for Missouri assault arrests

20
Simple assault arrests involving males 18 or younger in Cape Girardeau in 2008

12
Simple assault arrests involving females 18 or younger in Cape Girardeau in 2008

50 percent
The percentage of males arrested for aggravated assault in Cape Girardeau in 2008 (one male,
one female)

257
The number of Missouri females ages 15 to 18 arrested for aggravated assault statewide in 2007

78 percent
The percentage of offenders ages 15 to 18 arrested for aggravated assault in Missouri in 2007 who were male

http://www.semissourian.com/article/20081027/NEWS01/710279989/-1/news01

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

Campaigns butt heads over felons' voting rights

Campaigns butt heads over felons' voting rights
The Roanoke Times
October 25, 2008
RICHMOND -- Republican John McCain's presidential campaign is accusing Democratic rival Barack Obama and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine of making a coordinated effort to add felons to the state's voter rolls, a charge that Democrats said is a sign of GOP desperation in the closing days of the race.

McCain's campaign said Friday that Kaine was restoring the voting rights of convicted felons at an accelerated clip to help Obama in the Nov. 4 election.

Trey Walker, McCain's mid-Atlantic regional campaign manager, accused the governor of participating in a "conspiracy" with the Obama campaign, a charge that Obama's campaign and the governor's office called baseless.

"I think it's pretty clear that this is just a smear tactic," Kaine spokeswoman Delacey Skinner said.

Virginia has one of the nation's most restrictive processes for restoring the civil rights of convicted felons who have served their sentences.

Kaine has restored the rights of 1,484 felons this year, including 1,261 who were convicted of nonviolent, nondrug-related offenses, according to the governor's office.

To become eligible, the convicted felons had to complete their sentences and probation periods and observe specified waiting periods. It is unclear how many actually registered to vote.

Kaine has restored civil rights for more than 2,600 felons since taking office in 2006. His predecessor, Democrat Mark Warner, restored rights for nearly 3,500 in his four-year term.

McCain's campaign relied on footage from a Martinsville cable television show to argue that Obama's campaign was working with Kaine to register felons.

In a clip of the June program provided by McCain's campaign, Democratic activist Penny Blue identifies herself as an Obama coordinator for Henry, Pittsylvania and Franklin counties and discusses the process for felons to get their rights restored. She said Kaine promised to review applications from nonviolent and nondrug offenders by Aug. 1 so that those who got their rights restored could vote in the Nov. 4 election.

"It seems clear to me that, in an effort to get felons restored and get them on the voting rolls so they can vote for Obama, that the governor's office has made a joke out of the restoration process," said former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore during a McCain campaign conference call.

Obama campaign aides said Friday that Blue is not a paid staffer and was not authorized to speak for the campaign. Skinner said the deadline was widely known for submitting paperwork to restore rights and become eligible for the November election.

Obama's campaign released a statement from supporter Lilibet Hagel, the wife of U.S. Sen, Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, decrying "desperate tactics meant to distract hard-working Virginians from the tough economic issues we all face."
http://www.roanoke.com/politics/wb/181729

Posted by lois at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

MA: State cuts endanger jail diversion program

State cuts endanger jail diversion program
By Dan McDonald/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Oct 21, 2008 @ 11:44 PM
FRAMINGHAM —

Gov. Deval Patrick's recent budget cuts effectively eliminated an innovative jail diversion program that aimed to help the mentally ill in town.

The program partnered the police department with the nonprofit agency Advocates Inc. Lauded as a first-of-its-kind initiative and a model for other departments in the state for the past six years, the program saw $60,000 of its funding, or 50 percent, cut in last week's Beacon Hill belt-tightening, meaning the program will likely end Dec. 31.

The original $120,000 state allotment had allowed Advocates to have two medical clinicians respond with police to situations that may involve the mentally ill.

"It's almost like a paramedic going to the scene of a medical emergency," Deputy Police Chief Craig Davis said yesterday.

Once engaged, clinicians can connect the mentally ill with key services, said Advocates President and CEO Bill Taylor.

"We carry the ball carefully to make sure they're involved with treatment before we let go of them," said Taylor. "But we don't provide the ongoing treatment."

In 2007, Davis said, there were 457 joint interventions of police and clinicians under the program.

That same year, 82 people were diverted from arrest for nuisance-related crimes.

"We wanted to deliver compassionate justice for the mentally ill," said Davis.

The program is designed to divert individuals with mental illness, substance abuse or behavioral problems from the more expensive and less effective criminal system to the less expensive and very effective human services system for appropriate treatment and case management, wrote Taylor in an e-mail.

It was established with private foundation money six years ago and received state funding for the last three.

Now in its sixth year, the collaboration has evolved into a nationally recognized pilot program replicated by numerous other communities.

Framingham Police have traveled to Milford, Lawrence, and Quincy to advise those police departments about the program.

"We had established ourselves as a proven commodity and we're confident that this is a proper approach that we hope is a model not only in a state but nationally," he said.

He added,"Now more than ever it's a crucial partnership."

Taylor had similar thoughts.

"The seed must remain to be replanted, once funds are again available," wrote Taylor in an e-mail. "At $120,000 per year, only $60,000 stands between closure and an ongoing Jail Diversion program in Framingham and Massachusetts."

Funding for a handful of other jail diversion programs was also cut in half, said state Rep. Ruth Balser, D-Newton. Balser is the house chairwoman of the joint committee for Mental Health and Substance Abuse.

"Rather than just prosecute and incarcerate there's a growing awareness of the phenomenon of the mentally ill people...that comes from closing hospitals and treatment centers," said Balser.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x849595537/State-cuts-endanger-jail-diversion-program

Posted by lois at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)

PA: State hopes new prisons, early release cut crowding

State hopes new prisons, early release cut crowding
Monday, October 27, 2008
By Tom Barnes, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau

HARRISBURG -- A steady rise in the number of inmates and the political risks of paroling prisoners early are complicating the state's efforts to ease crowded conditions in its prisons.

The 27 existing lockups now hold nearly 47,000 inmates, which is up from a population of just over 36,000 in 1998. The number of inmates is now 8 percent over the current capacity of 43,300.

And the tide keeps on rising. State Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard estimates that the overall prison population could top 57,000 by the end of 2012. Legislators' desire to be "tough on crime" and the public's fear of rising drug-related crimes have led to longer and more mandatory sentences.

Correctional costs, at $1.6 billion for 2008-09, are the third biggest item in the $28 billion state budget, after education and welfare costs.

Progress to ease the crowded cells is going slowly. The Department of Corrections wants to build three new state prisons, each costing $200 million and holding 2,000 inmates. But the first of the three new prisons won't be open before mid- to late 2011.

The state Legislature has enacted a new law, one advocated by House Speaker Dennis O'Brien, R-Philadelphia. It's aimed at making more nonviolent prisoners eligible for early release. They would have to complete programs to ease their transition back into society, such as anger management and overcoming drug use, before being paroled.

By paroling more appropriate prisoners, officials believe they can moderate the rising tab for prison construction and operational costs, and thus ease the financial strain on state taxpayers.

But giving parole to the wrong inmate -- one who later commits another crime -- can spell political disaster. It happened in September, when an inmate released early from the State Correctional Institution Frackville shot and killed a Philadelphia police officer just a month after getting out of prison. The parolee had been jailed for a 1998 robbery and aggravated assault.

Gov. Ed Rendell, a former mayor of Philadelphia, found himself under pressure from police unions and citizens groups, and imposed a temporary moratorium on all parolees, nonviolent as well as violent.

The moratorium was lifted last week for nonviolent prisoners, whom Mr. Rendell defines as prisoners "with no history of a violent offense."

The corrections department and the Board of Probation and Parole will decide if an inmate qualifies as nonviolent and thus can be let out of prison early.

But deciding if an inmate is truly nonviolent can be tricky, said Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo. Sometimes an inmate is jailed for a nonviolent offense, such as drug buying or selling, burglary or other crimes against property, but more serious charges had been dismissed or plea-bargained away.

Violent crimes include things like murder, assault, robbery and rape. State parole and prisons officials will take an inmate's complete history into account before allowing him to be released on parole, Mr. Ardo said.

Mr. Rendell named a Temple University official, John S. Goldkamp, to study whether nonviolent inmates could be safely paroled. He recommended last week that parole "be restarted for nonviolent offenders [only]."

Mr. Rendell said, "The moratorium on paroles for all violent offenders remains in effect."

Prisons spokeswoman Susan McNaughton said a thorough review will be made of all inmates considered nonviolent, but she couldn't say how many of them would eventually be eligible for paroles or when the paroles would start.

As for the three new prisons, the first will go on the grounds of the existing SCI Rockview in Centre County. A construction manager and an architect will soon be chosen by of the state Department of General Services. A ground-breaking is expected in 2009 and the project would take about two years to complete.

"Rockview was selected because there is plenty of state-owned land there to build upon and the new prison can share functions, such as warehouses and a business office, with the prison that's already there," said Ms. McNaughton.

A second new prison is to be built somewhere in Fayette County, which already has one. Corrections officials are now scouting several other sites in Fayette County for the second prison, with a decision expected by next spring.

There are several counties where the third new prison could be built, including two sites in Schuylkill and one each in Northumberland, Huntingdon and Luzerne. Another possibility is on the grounds of Graterford state prison outside Philadelphia.

Mr. O'Brien this fall pushed for House Bill 4, which is designed to help nonviolent inmates turn their lives around while behind bars and qualify for early release. A judge would outline the incentive program to a convict at his post-trial sentencing.

"The incentives would encourage nonviolent inmates to follow a path that gives them a much better chance at re-entering society without committing new crimes," Mr. O'Brien said.

Such programs would include recovery from drug and alcohol abuse or addiction; literacy and high school diploma equivalency courses; job training; and anger management.

The program for inmates "will enhance public safety and provide large financial benefits to governments and taxpayers," Mr. O'Brien said.

First published on October 27, 2008
Copyright ©1997 - 2008 PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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

October 26, 2008

Great Britian: Number of babies born in prison soars

Number of babies born in prison soars
By Ben Russell, home affairs correspondent
Monday, 27 October 2008
The Independent (UK)
The number of children born behind bars has almost doubled since Labour came to power, with new figures showing women prisoners currently giving birth at nearly four a week.

Figures from the Ministry of Justice show that 283 children were born in prisons in England and Wales between April 2005 and July this year, an average of 1.7 a week. But 49 babies were born between April and the beginning of July this year alone, almost four a week, meaning the 2008 total could reach nearly 200 if births continue at the same rate, more than double the 64 prison births recorded in 1995-96 before Labour came to power.

Prison reformers demanded that women should be locked up only in extreme circumstances, saying that keeping mothers and young babies in prison can harm young children and does nothing to cut crime.

The number of women in jail has nearly doubled in the past decade and stands at more than 4,500. Most women are in for non-violent offences, with about a third jailed for theft or handling stolen goods; in 2006, nearly two-thirds served less than six months.

The Ministry of Justice said sentencing decisions were the responsibility of judges and magistrates. But penal reformers and Opposition MPs expressed anger at the increasing numbers of babies born in custody.

Frances Crook, director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: "No pregnant woman should be held in prison. It is an outdated and inhumane practice, penalising a baby for something that is no fault of its own. Fewer than one in four women is in prison for serious violent offences. Most women who come into contact with the criminal justice system could be sentenced to community programmes with no danger to the public and with a hugely positive impact on the health and well-being of the child."

Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: "Apart from people who have committed extremely serious or violent offences it is difficult to see how jailing a young mother is going to do anything other than damage her and her baby. The conditions in prisons may no longer be Dickensian but young mothers are still going to jail for the same reasons they were in Victorian times, poverty, debt, addiction and mental illness."

The latest sentencing guidelines stress that in cases where jail is not regarded as essential courts may regard pregnancy as a mitigating factor. There are seven specialised mother and baby units in prisons across England. New babies can stay with their mothers for between nine and 18 months, and often leave when their mothers finish their sentences. Older children of women serving longer sentences are taken either to live with relatives outside prison or are put into care.

Prison Service guidelines insist young children behind bars must have contact with their family and see the world outside prison, with trips outside jail with nursery nurses to go shopping and visit local parks. Officials say women do not give birth inside jails – except in medical emergencies – and they offer special units to provide a calm environment for babies to bond with their mothers.

But the Liberal Democrats, who obtained the new figures from parliamentary questions, blamed the rise in prison births on the Government's desire to look tough on crime. David Howarth, the Liberal Democrat Justice spokesman, said: "There can be fewer worse starts in life than being born to a mother in prison. Labour's obsession with looking tough has led to a near doubling of the number of women in prison in the past decade.

"It is little surprise, therefore, that this year looks set to break the unenviable record for the number of babies born in incarceration. Not only should there be fewer women in prison but smaller prison units, closer to home, would surely be a more appropriate environment to bear and raise children than exists in prison today."

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, will use a speech today to criticise prison reformers, saying: "We should not shy from the fact that the sentences of the court are first and foremost for the punishment of those who have broken the law, broken society's rules." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/number-of-babies-born-in-prison-soars-974458.html

Posted by lois at 09:03 PM | Comments (0)

Pahrump NV: CCA Detention Tabled for Now

Oct. 24, 2008
Detention center pact tabled
By MARK WAITE
Pahrump Valley Times (NV)

Action on a proposed development agreement with Corrections Corporation of America for a federal detention center was postponed another two months until Dec. 16 by Nye County commissioners Tuesday.

A crowd of bystanders showed up anyway to voice comments about the project, though it was reported there wouldn't be any action taken.

That delays a vote on the agreement until well after the election. CCA Senior Director of Site Acquisition and Development Brad Wiggins, said when the project was tabled last month commissioners made a critical timeline even more critical.

Consultant Ira Cotler, managing director of Correctional Finance and Consulting Solutions, just gave his comments on the development agreement back to CCA officials Monday. The two sides are said to be far apart on the conditions.

Cotler, who was given a $50,000 contract by county commissioners to work on the development agreement, said he drafted an outline with all the issues that were raised in the past.

"We've had two meetings with CCA, going through that outline in very general terms, just to throw out the topics on the table," Cotler told commissioners.

Cotler also gave his input to Mark White, the attorney who represents Nye County on the drafting of development agreements, for inclusion in the agreement. More meetings between Cotler and CCA were scheduled Wednesday.

"Our goal has been to expand the original development agreement to more than just a development agreement to any other style of project and address the thoughts and concerns associated with a correctional facility," Cotler said.

Nye County Commission Chairman Joni Eastley said commissioners didn't have a copy of the revised development agreement as CCA hasn't had time to reply to Cotler's remarks. She proposed tabling the discussion until Dec. 16, as there will only be one regular commission meeting in November due to the election and the Thanksgiving holiday.

Nye County Manager Rick Osborne asked about scheduling a special meeting. Eastley said her schedule was totally booked the rest of this month and the first week or two in November. She said a second public hearing would have to be scheduled during a regular commission meeting with adequate public notice.

When Judith Holmgren asked for a copy of the revised development agreement, Osborne replied, "It's all confidential negotiations at this point until we get a draft that we feel is suitable to present to the board, and at that point it becomes a public document."

The crowd booed.

Asked for a comment after the delay was announced, Louise Grant, CCA's vice-president of marketing, said, "CCA is disappointed that the development agreement is not yet finalized. Assuredly, our government partners are eager for us to have that last component of the plan final and secure so we can move forward with this exciting project. We trust that the commission will work to help us make final arrangements by the date they'd just indicated. CCA will continue to operate in good faith to move forward this very important agreement."

Eastley ran a tightly-controlled public comment period, with two minutes allowed for each speaker. They were restricted to commenting on suggestions to be included in the development agreement, not whether they liked the project or not.

Eastley indicated her exhaustion at being bombarded with comments about the detention center, asking speakers not to talk about things like a "60 Minutes" news special on CCA or similar topics. The crowd spilled into Room B, where a television monitor was installed.

Frank Smith, representing the Private Corrections Institute, was cut short after two minutes..

"Nobody did the most basic research on this," Smith said. "The development agreement is predicated on certain premises. One is that somehow this would be an economic benefit to the community. We found no evidence the prison has stimulated growth. In fact, we found evidence the prison has impeded economic growth."

County commission candidate Harley Kulkin wanted a public hearing where the public isn't limited to two minutes. Jeff Wiiest asked commissioners to table action until January, so the new board can take responsibility for their actions.

Numerous suggestions were made by Pahrump residents.

* Bob Howard said CCA should implement water conservation measures, like officials at the Indian Springs prison over Wheeler Pass.

"Every acre-foot of water we don't have is a house we can't build," he said.

* Butch Clendenen, a nearby neighbor opposed to the project who engaged in a heated conversation with Commissioner Butch Borasky after the meeting, said there need to be more roads to the detention center than Mesquite Avenue.

* Joanie Kelley wanted Mesquite Avenue paved and also possibly a second access point from Blosser Ranch Road. Kelley also asked for a traffic light at Highway 160 and Mesquite Avenue, which she said is bad enough already for accidents.

* Rolf Koss also pushed for a second access road.

* David Wright wanted a four-lane road on Mesquite Avenue and Highway 160 widened.

* Karen Letourneau wanted a clause mandating prisoners wouldn't be released in Pahrump, possibly by providing a bus service to Las Vegas.

* Caitlin May, who said CCA had a bad record when it came to escapes, wanted the company to pay for her water.

* Stan Davis was concerned over the flight pattern to the Calvada Meadows Airstrip over the detention center.

* John Koenig said more deputies should be provided for the Nye County Sheriff's Office.

* Robin Lloyd questioned the $6.9 million price paid for the property, which was valued at only $44,000 in 2004.

"That leads us to believe there are some kind of shady dealings going on," Lloyd said.

Neighbor Ed Velarve pointed out county commissioners approved the zoning change over the objections of the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission.

Eastley said four county commissioners voted to override the RPC. The property was rezoned to the new municipal facilities zone, which was created just for projects like the detention center in the new zoning code.

George Gingell, a regular attendee at county commission meetings, said people who complain they didn't know about the project before this weren't paying attention.

"I'm tired of hearing the same thing, 'I only heard about it last week, two weeks ago,'" Gingell said. "There's been a least 15 meetings with CCA explaining all the information they were giving out. If these people don't read the paper, don't watch TV, what are you supposed to do, knock on their door and lead them over here?"

After another hour or more of heated discussion, Eastley proclaimed, "I don't think we got anything of substance to use in the development agreement."

While Kenny Bent presented a petition with 541 signatures opposing the project, Pahrump Valley Chamber of Commerce Director Lucy Ivins spoke about 100 letters submitted by business owners in favor of the detention center.

Theresa Moran from the Mankins Family Trust, spoke in favor of the facility as providing "severely needed tax dollars."
http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2008/Oct-24-Fri-2008/news/24688419.html

Posted by lois at 04:52 PM | Comments (0)

CA: "California's prison healthcare mess"- op-ed by Franklin Zimring

From the Los Angeles Times
Opinion
California's prison healthcare mess
Judicial action might be quietly welcomed by some officials under political and economic pressure.
By Franklin E. Zimring

October 25, 2008

The continuing saga of federal court efforts to reform medical care in California's prisons is a textbook example both of why constitutional courts are unpopular in this country and why we need them. At a hearing Monday, a panel of three federal judges will consider whether the governor and comptroller should be held in contempt of court for failing to provide a cash down payment of $250 million on an $8-billion court-ordered plan to build seven medical facilities for prisoners.

The political timing for this shootout couldn't be worse if Stephen King had written the script. The U.S. is in the middle of a financial meltdown in which short-term cash for even creditworthy states is endangered. Meanwhile, California's finances are imploding. The state just passed a budget that cuts spending programs for the poor and the elderly and engineers accounting strategies last seen at Enron.

So now three federal judges demand that California pay out $8 billion to serve rapists and drug pushers ahead of the fiscal and service needs of innocent citizens. How can such an outrage be justified?

The start of this story is the extraordinary growth of prisons in the Golden State -- just under a 700% expansion in less than a generation. The 172,000 prisoners in this system would be the state's 28th largest city if they were in a central location instead of spread over 33 isolated locations, usually far from medical centers. The cost of this penal explosion has not been modest -- a $10.3-billion operating budget this year alone -- but building and staffing prisons has been the dominant public priority in California since the early 1980s.

The medical problems of California prisoners have been growing even faster than the inmate population. AIDS has provided one set of dangerous complications. Longer prison terms also guarantee an aging and less healthy population.

While filling prisons has been a political priority in California, the care and feeding of convicted criminals hasn't. The result is dozens of dungeons without any programs of improvement or work for prisoners, and they have been stuffed more than full. The state has just passed a $7.1-billion prison expansion package, but it made no investment in the long-deferred medical facilities. That was democracy at work: Only the control and punishment of criminals carries any priority with the average citizen.

In this court case, two matters are beyond controversy. There is and must be a constitutional duty imposed on states to provide the inmates they lock up with decent medical care. Imprisonment forces the inmate into a total dependency on the state, and once the state chooses to impose this dependence -- as California has on more individuals than any other state -- it cannot abuse its absolute power.

It is equally clear that the current dysfunctional mess of medical services in the California system is dangerously below any civilized minimum standard. The court found that medical neglect in the prisons was not infrequently the cause of unnecessary deaths. The irony here is that inadequate medical care is responsible for far more deaths in 33 prisons than the underemployed executioner at San Quentin. You will read excuses for inaction in this newspaper from the people in charge of the prison system -- but no credible assertion that the state is doing its duty.

But do we really need a federal court to come in and demand that the state fix this mess now? The test question here is how long would it take for the state's political process to make reform of prison health services a multibillion-dollar priority? One millennium or two? When discrete and unpopular minorities are at risk of exploitation in the political system, it often will be necessary for the legal system to save the minorities (and our standard of civilized government) from the consequences of punitive populism. As long as California continues to build and fill prisons, its government must be compelled to pay the full cost of those prisons before any discretionary spending.

Prison medical care is yet another problem on which government leaders know better than they do. The Legislature may not be able to pass a budget to do the right thing, but a substantial number of well-informed people in Sacramento know that the system must be repaired. When the state is in fiscal crisis, however, they lack the power or the will to push it through.

So perhaps there is less of an angry struggle between the governor and the judges than seems apparent. When governmental actions are necessary but unpopular, external pressure like a court order can provide political cover to do the right thing by giving politicians a federal court to blame for it.

And that is one reason why I suspect a settlement may be closer than the current posturing suggests. There are plenty of decent people in the executive and legislative branches of California's government who are silently grateful that federal courts have the authority and the courage to rescue this state from its populist excesses.

Franklin E. Zimring is a professor of law at UC Berkeley.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-zimring25-2008oct25,0,1224548.story?track=ntothtml
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times

Posted by lois at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)

Hepatitis C Treatment Is Cost-effective For The US Prison Population

Hepatitis C Treatment Is Cost-effective For The US Prison Population

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2008) — Treating all U.S. prisoners who have hepatitis C with the standard therapy of pegylated-interferon and ribavirin would be cost-effective, according to a new study.

U.S. prisons incarcerate more than 2 million inmates each year, and between 12 and 31 percent of them are infected with chronic hepatitis C (HCV), mostly related to high rates of intravenous drug use. The current standard treatment for HCV has been shown to be cost-effective in the general population and the Federal Bureau of Prisons recommends HCV treatment for those who meet the AASLD's criteria for treatment, as long as therapy is likely to be completed. However, each state adopts its own set of treatment guidelines, and many prisoners do not ultimately get treated.

Proponents for treatment argue that we have an ethical duty to provide prisoners with the best medical practices available, and treating HCV could reduce new infections as well as future medical expenses from advanced liver disease. Opponents point out that treatment is expensive and must be paid for by taxpayers, while many non-imprisoned HCV patients who don't have health insurance are denied access to this care.

Researchers, led by Sammy Saab of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, sought to determine if HCV treatment would be cost-effective in the male prison population (men make up over 87 percent of U.S. prisoners). They examined published literature for relevant studies and constructed a decision analysis model employing Markov simulation, using the generally accepted cost-effectiveness threshold of $50,000 per quality-adjusted life years.

"Our model found that treatment was cost-saving for prisoners of all age ranges and genotypes when liver biopsy was not a prerequisite to starting antiviral therapy," they report. "In other words, treatment resulted in both decreased costs and improved quality of life." Treatment was also cost-saving in most situations that included a pre-treatment liver biopsy.

The authors had not expected treatment to be cost-effective, because of the high re-infection rates and non-liver mortality rates in the prison population. However, they write, "our results demonstrate that pegylated-interferon and ribavirin is cost-saving in the prison population, both in strategies with and without biopsy. Incorporating a pre-treatment liver biopsy may be the most cost-effective approach, however, as one could potentially exclude certain patients with no fibrosis from therapy."

"If the decision to treat is based on pharmacoeconomic measures," the authors conclude, "the results of our analysis suggest that treatment is cost-saving and should not be withheld in U.S. prisoners with hepatitis C."

Since the efficacy of treatment would be diminished by relapse to injection drug use and re-infection, treatment should be coupled with educational and substance abuse programs, they suggest. And because mental illness is widespread in the prison population, and can often be exacerbated by treatment, careful mental health screening and follow-up would be required.

This research is published in the November issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).
Adapted from materials provided by Wiley-Blackwell, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020150617.htm

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

October 25, 2008

NY youth center staffed at $1.7M cost, but no kids

NY youth center staffed at $1.7M cost, but no kids
Associated Press - October 24, 2008 1:05 PM ET

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) - New York, buffeted by the economic meltdown and facing billions in deficits, is spending $1.7 million in taxpayer money to keep open and staff a western New York juvenile detention facility that has no residents.

The Great Valley Residential Center in Cattaraugus County was chosen for closure by the Office of Children and Family Services in January of this year, but was saved by state lawmakers during budget negotiations in April.

OCFS officials say there are fewer youth now in the state system - nearly 500 empty beds - as the agency moves from a residential model toward a more community-based approach. An OCFS official described the situation at Great Valley as "absurd," blaming lawmakers and union leaders for the incredulous circumstances.

"In these trying times, with the state faced with its budget issues, it's absolutely crazy to have to keep open a facility that is empty," said Edward Borges, an OCFS spokesman.

Meanwhile, lawmakers and union leaders pin the fault on OCFS, accusing Commissioner Gladys Carrion of charging ahead with her conversion plans even as a Gov. David Paterson's Task Force on Transforming New York's Juvenile Justice System plots how to develop an overall plan to change the system.

"We agree there are some youths who can succeed in community programs but you don't do a blanket emptying of these facilities so you can shut them down as a cost savings," said Darcy Wells, director of public affairs for the Public Employees Federation, a union that represents 58,000 state workers, including OCFS teachers, instructors and counselors. "We think she is doing a disservice to the youth and she's not allowing our members to do their jobs."

"It is a case of blatant mismanagement on the part of the agency," said state Sen. Catharine Young, a Republican who led the effort to protect Great Valley, which is in her district.

"OCFS has deliberately and systematically stripped these kids from the Great Valley facility to fulfill its anti-upstate New York agenda," Young said. "Right now, there are at least 17 youth from the Western New York region who are being shipped around the state. They could be receiving services near their homes in Cattaraugus County."

A report in 2007 showed that under the present residential system, 80% of the children entering the state's juvenile justice system return or go to prison within three years of their release. As a result, OCFS has been moving aggressively toward more community-based alternatives and keeping youth closer to their homes and families, more than 70% of which it says are from the New York City area.

Missouri, which has become a national model for the community-based approach, has cut its recidivism rate to 30%. But that doesn't mean the same strategy will work in New York, Young said.

"Evidence is needed in order to determine the best programs. These kids deserve to receive treatment based on fact, not fiction," Young said.

In January, OCFS announced it would close six underused residential youth facilities across the state by January 2009 as part of its restructuring, a move that also would save the state $16 million a year.

Besides Great Valley, targeted for closing were the Adirondack Wilderness Challenge in Clinton County; Auburn Residential Center in Cayuga County; Brace Residential Center in Delaware County; Gloversville Group Home in Fulton County; and the Pyramid Reception Center in The Bronx.

Backed by PEF, legislators kept open the Bronx reception center, the state's primary processing point for male residents. Auburn and Gloversville have closed and their staff was transferred to other OCFS facilities or state agencies, Borges said.

The Adirondack Challenge program - a four-month residential and outdoor experiential education program - was taken over by the Adirondack Residential Center. However, the 11 staffers assigned to the program are now working at the Adirondack center and have thus far declined voluntary reassignment, Borges said.

The situation is the same at Brace, empty but with 15 staffers still holding out and filling their time doing inventory, cleaning and winter preparations, Borges said.

Borges said state law required OCFS to give workers 12 months notice before shuttering a facility. That deadline is up Jan. 11, 2009. Borges said the agency will soon be sending out letters to workers reminding them that after that date OCFS will reassign them.

Borges said Great Valley, which has 25 beds, is empty because of the success of the community-based approach. The facility has a staff of 31.

"Everyone keeps saying we are hiding the kids," he said. "We don't have the kids to hide. We aren't getting them."

As of Oct. 20, there were 1,003 youth in the state system, leaving 493 empty beds, Borges said. OCFS has reduced its size by nearly 600 beds since 2002. OCFS estimates that each empty bed costs taxpayers around $200,000 per year. Young, however, said the actual cost is about one-fifth of that figure.

"If the state truly is looking to save money, they would keep Great Valley open. Because it is a 25-bed or less facility, it qualifies for federal funding, which pays half the cost of treatment. It would cut our expenses dramatically," Young said.

Assemblyman Joe Giglio, R-Gowanda, also has defended the decision to keep Great Valley open. The state has invested heavily in recent years in sewer and water projects and other upgrades at the facility. Additionally, it is 1 of only two facilities serving the eight-country Region 1 area, he said.
http://www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=9234140&ClientType=Printable

Posted by lois at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)

VA: R.I.H.D: Advocacy conference promotes rehabilitation, not warehousing

Advocacy conference promotes rehabilitation, not warehousing
By Lillie (Ms. K) Branch-Kennedy

More than 150 people came to Richmond from across the country to attend a conference that had a simple but profound message: prisoners and inmates are people too, and deserve to be treated as such. And doing so will benefit not only the incarcerated, but society as a whole.

The non-profit, all-volunteer organization Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged (R.I.H.D.) held its 2nd annual "Reducing Crime and Recidivism Awareness Conference" and "Prisoner Art Show Fund Raiser" Oct. 11 at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church in Richmond’s East End. Participants came from as far away as California.

The days event’s began on the church’s steps, as the Wesley Memorial’s Rev. Rodney Hunter offered a prayer for those assembled. Then Blacks, Hispanics, whites, adults, youth and children in strollers set off and walked through the community, past the City Jail and the Oliver Hill Courts Building, chanting in English and Spanish: "Stop the war on the poor!" and "Education, not warehousing!"

The conference itself offered a forum for the professional exchange of knowledge and the interaction between the Virginia criminal justice system, the state’s legislative branch, faith-based community organizations and concerned members of the community.

It also called on Virginia state politicians to pass proposed restoration of voting rights legislation that would affect more than 377,000 presently disenfranchised Virginia citizens.

R.I.H.D.’s goal was to raise awareness of how concerned people can mobilize in their respective areas and be proactive in the legislative process. The organization states that communities must ensure that our elected officials are working towards keeping our communities safer through new and innovative approaches to reducing crime and recidivism.

R.I.H.D. contends that incarceration should not merely punish, but should also foster rehabilitation through education and "earned" second-chance re-entry programs. Additionally, programs that deter criminal behavior before a crime is ever committed should be expanded. The safety of the public and adequate rehabilitation for the offender can co-exist by passing "Fair & Smart" laws.

Conference panelists included: former Richmond City Councilman Sa’ad El-Amin, speaking on "Reform Advocacy;" Rev. J.E. Gash, from the Active Hand Ministry; Rev. Claude Gunn, form Virginia Re-entry in Lynchburg ; Carroll Malik, from Re-entry Housing for Men; Delegate Joe Morrissey, speaking on "Restoration of Rights;" Harold (Universal) Richardson, a former Virginia prisoner; Janet (Queen Nzinga) Taylor, from Prisoners and Families for Equal Rights & Justice; Larry Valentine, a former Virginia Supermax prisoner; Richmond Defender Editor Phil Wilayto, speaking on "Prisons as a Continuation of the Slave Labor System;" Jeff Winder, from People United, speaking on "Immigration;" and Cathy Woodson, from the Virginia Organizing Project.

Congressman Robert "Bobby" Scott was unable to attend the conference, but was interviewed about the issues later that evening by California TV reporter Lisa Lake. The entire conference and the Scott interview was filmed for future national broadcast. A DVD is expected to be released sometime in November.

For more information, including times and channels for the TV broadcast and DVD availability, visit www.rihd.org.

Lillie (Ms. K) Branch-Kennedy is Executive Director of R.I.H.D.

http://www.defendersfje.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/RD4-5.pdf

Posted by lois at 03:32 PM | Comments (0)

NY Times Editorial: The California Prison Disaster

October 25, 2008
The California Prison Disaster
Editorial NY Times

The mass imprisonment philosophy that has packed prisons and sent corrections costs through the roof around the country has hit especially hard in California, which has the largest prison population, the highest recidivism rate and a prison budget raging out of control.

According to a new federally backed study conducted at the University of California, Irvine, the state’s corrections costs have grown by about 50 percent in less than a decade and now account for about 10 percent of state spending — nearly the same amount as higher education. The costs could rise substantially given that a federal lawsuit may require the state to spend $8 billion to bring the prison system’s woefully inadequate medical services up to constitutional standards.

The solution for California is to shrink its vastly overcrowded prison system. To do so, it would need to move away from mandatory sentencing laws that have proved to be disastrous across the country — locking up more people than protecting public safety requires.

In addition, the state also has perhaps the most counterproductive and ill-conceived parole system in the United States. More people are sent to prison in California by parole officers than by the courts. In addition, about 66 percent of California’s parolees land back in prison after three years, compared with about 40 percent nationally. Four in 10 are sent back for technical violations like missed appointments or failed drug tests.

Later this year, the state is expected to begin testing a new system that redirects the lowest-risk drug addicts to treatment. But that will only work if the state and the counties dramatically expand treatment slots.

The heart of the problem is that California’s parole system is simply too big. Most states keep dangerous people behind bars or reserve parole supervision for the most serious offenders. California puts virtually everyone on parole, typically for three years.

Under this setup, about 80 percent of the parolees have fewer than two 15-minute meetings with a parole officer per month. That might be adequate for low-risk offenders, but it’s clearly too little time for serious offenders who present a risk to public safety.

A good first step would be to place fewer people on parole. The second step would be to reserve the most intensive supervision for offenders who present the greatest risk.

State lawmakers, some of whom are fearful of being seen as soft on crime, have failed to make perfectly reasonable sentencing modifications and other changes that the prisons desperately need. Unless they muster some courage soon, Californians will find themselves swamped by prison costs and unable to afford just about anything else.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/opinion/25sat1.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

U.S. Judge Orders Arpaio to Improve Jails

October 24, 2008
U.S. Judge Orders Arizona Sheriff to Improve Jails
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
NY Times

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., who has built a national reputation with his get-tough tactics, and county health officials have violated the Constitution by depriving jail inmates of adequate medical screening and care, feeding them unhealthy food and housing them in unsanitary conditions, a federal judge has ruled.

Sheriff Arpaio, whose jurisdiction over the Phoenix metropolitan area includes one of the country’s largest jail systems, must make a number of changes under an order issued Wednesday by Judge Neil V. Wake of Federal District Court in Phoenix.

Judge Wake said that disciplinary practices against mentally ill inmates had caused “needless suffering and deterioration” and that the jails must ensure they receive prescription medication.

Inmates who spend more than 24 hours in initial processing, Judge Wake said, must have a bed or mattress and receive food that meets nutritional guidelines. Many inmates, he added, consume moldy bread and rotten fruit, and the “court does not believe” a jail dietitian’s claim that it was adequate.

Unclean cells, Judge Wake said, pose “an unconstitutional health risk.”

Sheriff Arpaio, a Republican who is seeking a fifth term in November, has drawn a great deal of attention in recent years for a crackdown on illegal immigrants.

But Judge Wake’s ruling throws light on Sheriff Arpaio’s handling of the county jails, which brought him notoriety for tactics like building a sweltering “tent city” for convicts and cladding them in black-and-white striped uniforms and pink underwear.

The ruling does not apply to inmates of the tent city, only to detainees awaiting trial in other facilities, who make up nearly two-thirds of the 10,000 inmates housed in the jails each day.

“This is a total victory for the hundreds of thousands of inmates who are going to be coming to Sheriff Joe’s jails in the next couple years,” said Debbie Hill, a lawyer who worked on the case with the American Civil Liberties Union. “We will ensure they will have adequate supervision, mental health care and food.”

In a court hearing last summer, lawyers for the A.C.L.U. gave the example of a mentally ill inmate who was denied medication and severely beaten by other inmates.

Experts who testified for the A.C.L.U. said the jails had substandard cells and lacked adequate supervision and health screening for inmates.

Last month, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, based in Chicago, withdrew its accreditation of the jails’ health system. But the accreditation remains in place while county officials appeal, saying the action was taken without sufficient evidence.

During Sheriff Arpaio’s tenure, Maricopa County has paid at least $30 million, by the sheriff’s count, and up to $43 million, according to local news media, as a result of lawsuits alleging deaths, injury, mistreatment and other claims in the jails.

A deputy chief in the sheriff’s office, Jack MacIntyre, said officials would not decide whether to appeal Judge Wake’s ruling until they had reviewed it completely. But he said Judge Wake had misunderstood jail procedures in some instances or imposed measures that were impractical or would be an economic burden.

“The A.C.L.U. flies into town,” Chief MacIntyre said, “wrings their hands and moans and groans, and gets out of town without making anything work.”

Over all, Chief MacIntyre said, conditions have improved since a consent decree was first placed on the jails 30 years ago. In some instances, Judge Wake agreed, lifting certain requirements at some facilities.

In 2001 Sheriff Arpaio went to court seeking to have the decree lifted, setting off seven years of litigation that culminated in Judge Wake’s ruling. A hearing is scheduled for December to determine out how to carry it out.

Betty Adams, the director of the county agency that provides health care to inmates, said the agency would review the ruling and make appropriate changes.

“There is always room for improvement,” Ms. Adams said, “but we feel the health care is adequate.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/us/24maricopa.html?_r=1&sq=Sheriff%20Joe%20Arpaio&st=cse&oref=slogin&scp=1&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 03:17 PM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2008

Anamosa IA: 58 non-prisoners and 1,300 non-voiting prisoners make up one ward

October 24, 2008
Census Bureau’s Counting of Prisoners Benefits Some Rural Voting Districts
By SAM ROBERTS, NY Times

Danny R. Young, a 53-year-old backhoe operator for Jones County in eastern Iowa, was elected to the Anamosa City Council with a total of two votes — both write-ins, from his wife and a neighbor.

While the Census Bureau says Mr. Young’s ward has roughly the same population as the city’s three others, or about 1,400 people, his constituents wield about 25 times more political clout.

That is because his ward includes 1,300 inmates housed in Iowa’s largest penitentiary — none of whom can vote. Only 58 of the people who live in Ward 2 are nonprisoners. That discrepancy has made Anamosa a symbol for a national campaign to change the way the Census Bureau counts prison inmates.

“Do I consider them my constituents?” Mr. Young said of the inmates who constitute an overwhelming majority of the ward’s population. “They don’t vote, so, I guess, not really.”

Concerns about so-called prison-based gerrymandering have grown as the number of inmates around the nation has ballooned. Similar disparities have been identified in upstate New York, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Critics say the census should count prisoners in the district where they lived before they were incarcerated.

“The Census Bureau may count prisoners in the wrong place, but that doesn’t mean that democracy must suffer there as a result,” said Peter Wagner, executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, an advocacy group that favors alternatives to prison sentences and urges that inmates be counted in their hometowns.

In 2006, experts commissioned by the Census Bureau recommended that the agency study whether prison inmates should be counted in 2010 as residents of the mostly urban neighborhoods where they last lived rather than as residents of the mostly rural districts where they are temporarily housed against their will.

Any such change would probably require Congressional approval. It could benefit Democrats, since it would add population to the party’s urban strongholds and subtract from the Republican-dominated rural areas where most prisons are.

“With only one exception nationwide,” Mr. Wagner said, “every time a community learns that prison populations are distorting their access to local government, the legislature has reversed course and redrawn districts based on actual population, not the Census Bureau’s mistakes.”

The sole exception he cited is St. Lawrence County in upstate New York. Each legislator on the county board represents about 7,500 residents, Tedra L. Cobb, the board’s vice chairwoman, said, but in two districts well over 1,000 of those residents are prison inmates. Ms. Cobb hopes to place a referendum on the ballot to change the apportionment process before the 2010 elections.

“The outcome is almost like weighted voting,” Ms. Cobb said.

Pending legislation in New York would require the state to use prisoners’ home addresses in apportioning legislative districts.

“In New York and several other states, the regional transfer of a minority population does have a representational impact,” said Prof. Nathan Persily, director of the Center on Law and Politics at Columbia Law School. “There’s no reason why a community ought to gain representation because of a large, incarcerated, nonvoting population.”

Prof. James A. Gardner of the University at Buffalo Law School, said that because “prisoners don’t want to be there, leave at the first opportunity, and there’s no chance they can vote, it is taking advantage of a completely inert population for the purpose of sneaking out extra political power.”

The Prison Policy Initiative found 21 counties across the country where at least one in five people, according to the Census Bureau’s count, were actually inmates from another county.

In Lake County, Tenn., Mr. Wagner said, 88 percent of the population in one county commissioner district are prisoners at the Northwest Correctional Complex. In Chippewa County, Wis., he said, redrawing the districts of local supervisors on the basis of an influx of inmates to new prisons this decade would create one district in which 72 percent of the population would be prisoners.

Anamosa, population 5,700, is best known as Iowa’s pumpkin capital, the birthplace of the artist Grant Wood and the home of the American Motorcycle Museum. It is also the home of the Anamosa State Penitentiary, in Ward 2, where more than 95 percent of the population is in prison, according to the census.

Bertha Finn, a 76-year-old retired writer and court clerk, was instrumental in organizing a referendum last year to allow for the election of council members at large, rather than from wards.

Patrick Callahan, the city administrator, said the change would take effect in November 2009. Councilman Young said he was undecided on whether to seek re-election to the seat that he won, more or less, by default.

“The people of Anamosa have the right idea,” Mr. Wagner said. “A small group of people should not be allowed to dominate government just because the Census Bureau counted a large prison there.”

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/us/politics/24census.html
Map of Anamosa districts and information on other places discussed in
article:
http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/2008/10/24/anamosa/

Posted by lois at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2008

PA: Prison offers benefits to German Twp.

Prison offers benefits to German Twp.
By Amy Revak , Herald-Standard
10/23/2008

When the newest state prison for Fayette County opens in a few years, the institution will be by far the largest employer in German Township.
"Basically, everybody is on the same page. We all think it's good," said German Township Supervisor Dan Shimshock about the prison coming to the township. "It's the right thing to do for the township. How can you turn down 700 state jobs?"

Shimshock said the township is in the midst of a sewerage project and has only half the funding necessary for the work. With the new state correctional institution, the township will be ensured to receive the remainder of the money needed.

Shimshock said without infrastructure such as sewer and water lines, townships can't attract businesses. The announcement that a new prison was coming to the township came earlier this year.

With the 700 new positions at the site, which may be named the State Correctional Institution at German, state employees who work there can have careers instead of jobs.

"They are family-sustaining jobs," Shimshock said.

He added that the township's largest employer now is either Hranec Corp., Anthony Crane or Brodak's Shop 'N Save supermarket, which employ 30 or 40 people each.

"It is definitely an economic boost to German Township," Shimshock said.

He added that Masontown would benefit as well.

As a result of the new jobs and additional traffic, upgrades to Route 21 and a new Masontown Bridge will likely follow, Shimshock said.

"I haven't heard any negative comments," Shimshock said.

The potential location of the new prison has been narrowed to two sites, Shimshock said.

Earlier this week Shimshock and fellow supervisors Bob Belch and Bob Croushore hosted state Rep. Bill DeWeese, D-Waynesburg; state Sen. Richard Kasunic, D-Dunbar; Elizabeth O'Reilly, deputy secretary for public works with the state Department of General Services, and two staff engineers to look at two proposed prison sites.

Shimshock said the two sites are located behind Brodak's Shop 'N Save on Route 21 and near the township building on Route 166 and are owned by the Wolf and Tiberi families, respectively. He said they are within a half a mile of each other.

O'Reilly said she and two staff engineers accompanying her obtained all the information they need to proceed with the selection of the site of the new prison to be built in German Township. Touring the two properties were O'Reilly; Gary Taylor, director of the Bureau of Engineering and Architecture; and Dan Weinzierl, director of construction.

Shimshock said others who were included in the meeting were Barb McMillen of the Rural Utility Service and representatives of Widmer Engineering and the Southwestern Pennsylvania Water Authority.

"We are looking at millions of dollars in infrastructure, both water and municipal sewage, that this area will receive as a result of the prison's construction," said DeWeese, whose efforts have resulted in the construction of the prison.

In addition to the infrastructure, DeWeese said the local economy will immediately benefit from building the prison, which is anticipated to cost $200 million. Materials, including concrete, asphalt and stone, will be obtained locally, infusing those dollars as well as construction employees' wages into the local economy.

Once opened, the new facility will employ about 700. The current starting salary for a corrections officer is $29,815, with 3 percent increases starting this year.

"These are family sustaining, recession-proof, out-sourcing proof jobs," said DeWeese.

Kasunic summarized the work session succinctly.

"This is another forward step in a project that will provide an excellent economic benefit to Fayette County," he said.

O'Reilly said she anticipates that the final site will be selected around Thanksgiving. Geo-technical work will be conducted and design-build contracts will follow. The anticipated opening of the facility is 2012.

Two other state prisons are currently located in DeWeese's legislative district - SCI-Greene in Franklin Township, Greene County, and SCI-Fayette in Luzerne Township.

http://www.heraldstandard.com/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=2280&dept_id=480247&newsid=20174177

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

Hiding Out In Prison Bonds---How Lease Revenue Bonds Work

For more information on this, you can go to:
http://www.realcostofprisons.org/materials/comics/prisontown_flowchart.pdf

Hiding Out In Prison Bonds
Adviser Soapbox
Alex Anderson, Forbes Tax Advantaged Investor 10.22.08

Prison bonds are a subset of a fixed income security class called lease revenue bonds (LRBs). Lease revenue bonds used to finance prisons have a few characteristics that make them attractive to investors--not the least of which is their relative safety compared to their yield. Further, they are exempt from state taxation for residents of the state of issue.

If you're looking for enhanced yield without imprudently ratcheting up your risk, read on.

Shoving aside the legal fiction created by these transactions, a lease revenue bond is actually a loan made to the state by the bond holders that is repaid by income (revenue) generated by the project. Lease revenue bonds are most commonly used for revenue-generating projects such as toll roads, bridges, hospitals, parking facilities, recreational projects, telephone systems and colleges. Voters don't have to approve LRBs because they are supposed to be self-sustaining from the lease revenue they generate and don't take money from the general fund.

When voters began rejecting general obligation bonds for prison construction, state treasurers, along with law firms and investment bankers, worked a way around the constitutional and statutory restrictions on such debt. They began using lease revenue bonds to construct correctional facilities.

On the plus side for investors, prisons are a growth industry and the lease revenue bonds to construct correctional facilities are exempt from state income tax. California has led the charge in using LRBs to build its prisons since the 1980s. Other states active in this financing technique include New York, Texas, Florida, Alaska and Michigan.
Special Offer: Provident Energy Trust now yields more than 18%, but should you buy the Canadian royalty trust--or others, like Harvest? Click here for clear guidance in the Forbes Tax-Advantaged Investor.

The difference between traditional revenue bonds and lease revenue bonds is one of mechanics. Traditional revenue bonds fund construction of a facility that actually generates revenue for use in debt repayment. Since prisons don't generate any revenue, the crafty state treasurers had to figure out a way to create some.

Here's what they came up with: The state creates an entity or agency to build the prison. The agency floats bonds to the public to cover construction of the facility. The agency then leases the right to use the completed prison to the state. The state pays the entity lease payments. The entity uses the lease payments to service the bond debt. Essentially, the state takes money from one pocket (the general fund appropriations to the prison system) and puts it into another pocket (the agency created for the facility), and then the agency distributes the money to the bondholders.

The state dips into the general fund for payment as if this were a regular lease. Title to the facility cedes to the state once the bonds are repaid and retired. You may ask if this is state-sponsored debt? Technically, no. It does not appear on the state's balance sheet because the state doesn't own an asset on which it is obligated to pay. Instead, the state can stop making the lease payments if it so chooses. However, if the state did that, there would likely be a downgrade of its credit rating. Further, the resulting cost in higher interest on future bond issues would likely far exceed any savings.

These bonds are tax exempt at the state level if issued by the holder's state of residence. Lease-revenue bonds pay interest at tax-exempt rates. Yields are slightly higher than yields on general obligation bonds.
Click here for recommended municipal bond funds in Forbes Tax-Advantaged Investor.

Where can your money feel safe? Not many places lately. For the muni bond market, it seems that all the usual suspects for bond repayment--property tax, sales tax and income tax--are declining fast. This can place the revenue stream in jeopardy, which could also place your coupon payments in jeopardy. Not so for prison bonds. Since these are state lease obligations, the state has the authority to raise taxes if necessary to pay its obligations.

One caution: Prison bonds of the lease revenue variety pay a higher interest rate for a reason--they're more risky than regular general obligation bonds. The state's general fund does not back repayment as it does general obligation bonds. Instead, continued repayment of prison bonds is subject to lease payments from the states, which are themselves subject to legislative appropriations. Should appropriations cease, the bonds will default.

Prison systems incarcerate offenders. Any state that would stop making lease payments on its correctional facility bonds and set incarcerated offenders out on the streets would have some explaining to do. The stakes are too high for society to permit such default. We think the risk is minimal for prison bonds.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/22/prison-correctional-bonds-pf-ii-in_aa_1022fixedincome_inl_print.html

Posted by lois at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2008

Activists publish comics exposé on 'real cost of prisons': A Q&A

Activists publish comics exposé on 'real cost of prisons': A Q&A
By Larry Parnass
10/22/2008 - 13:57

NORTHAMPTON - All this decade, Lois Ahrens of Northampton has been working to reveal the social, emotional and plain old dollar cost the country faces by jailing 2.3 million people.

Tonight at 7 p.m., she and Ellen Miller-Mack will talk about their "Real Cost of Prisons Comix" project at Broadside Bookshop, at 247 Main St. in Northampton.

Three comic books they and other writers and artists created over the past several years - works that explore the consequences of the nation's policies on incarceration - have been gathered in a single volume by PM Press of Oakland, Calif., with a new preface, introduction and reader statements.

Without taking any pay for her labors, Ahrens has mailed 100,000 copies of the three earlier comic books to readers around the country - a place that jails seven times as many people per capita as Canada.

Ahrens spoke about her ongoing work.

QUESTION: Will collecting the comics into a single paperback book enable this work to reach a wider audience?

LOIS AHRENS: I'm hoping that the book will allow the comics and the materials that go with them to reach a different audience. My big hope is that places like public libraries buy it and that it will be used in college classes. That it will be sold to the public in a way the comics never were, since they were given away. It will reach maybe not a wider audience, but a different audience.

QUESTION: How do you overcome the belief, held by some, that prisons make everyone outside safer?

LOIS AHRENS: It's an ill-informed belief. Criminologists have never been able to prove that there is a correlation between incarceration and the rise and fall of the crime rate. Incarceration has been going steadily up. From the end of WWII to 1970, there were 200,000 people in prison in the U.S. From then to now, it has grown to 2.3 million people - and the crime rate has not really changed. There are all of these studies now that show that when you have the kind of intense incarceration that goes on in cities, the crime rate goes up, because whole neighborhoods become eviscerated. It doesn't cause less crime, it causes more crime.

QUESTION: Now that a massive prison-industrial complex is built, what realistic hope is there of dismantling it?

LOIS AHRENS: The hope is that it hasn't existed for centuries, it's been built over the last 30 years. It's been built because people have been willing to pay for it. It could be that people are starting to see they haven't gotten much for their money. In Massachusetts, the budget has more for prisons than for higher education. Maybe people would rather pay for higher education than for prisons. Maybe the days of pure punitive policy are not something people still want to pay for, especially now. It's going to take people saying they think this is a bad idea - and they're tired of paying for it.
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2008 All rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2008/10/22/activists-publish-comics-expos%C3%A9-039real-cost-prisons039-qampa

Posted by lois at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2008

LAPD officers more likely to stop, search and arrest minorities than whites, report says

LAPD officers more likely to stop, search and arrest minorities than whites, report says
The report by a Yale professor also found that LAPD officers were less likely to find weapons or drugs on blacks or Latinos than whites when they frisked them or subjected them to consensual searches.
By Andrew Blankstein
From the Los Angeles Times
October 21, 2008

Los Angeles police officers are far more likely to stop, search and arrest minorities than they are whites -- even after statistics were adjusted for high- and low-crime areas -- according to a nongovernmental report released Monday.

The report by Yale Law School professor Ian Ayres for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California found that once stopped, African Americans were 29% more likely to be arrested than whites. Latinos were 32% more likely to be arrested in an identical category.

The percentages were far higher when minorities were stopped on the street or ordered out of their vehicles (blacks 166% and Latinos 132% more often than whites), frisked (blacks 127% and Latinos 43% more often than whites) or subject to nonconsensual searches (blacks 81% and Latinos 77% more often than whites).

At the same time, the report found that LAPD officers were less likely to find weapons or drugs on blacks or Latinos than whites when they frisked them or subjected them to consensual searches.

Police Chief William J. Bratton said he strongly disagreed with the report's findings. Among other criticisms, Bratton said the study was flawed because it used data collected four years ago and did not reflect the department's current practices.

Tim Sands, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, also took issue with the report, calling it a misguided attempt to read the minds of all officers during traffic stops.

"Dr. Ayres' conclusions completely misread situations that are not nearly as black and white as he would want them to be," Sands said. "It's an exercise that might work on a spreadsheet at Yale but doesn't work on the streets of Los Angeles."

Union officials noted that the LAPD is a "majority minority" department, mirroring the demographic trends of Los Angeles, and that most officers work in pairs that represent more than one race.

They also pointed out that traffic stops often start at a distance, where race "is unknown to the officers."

But the LAPD acknowledged it needed to adjust its policies after it was reported in The Times that the department found that none of the 320 complaints of racial profiling against its officers had merit. That marked six consecutive years that all allegations of racial profiling against LAPD officers had been dismissed.

The Los Angeles Police Commission voted in August to approve changes to training that would allow officers to be more sensitive to the issue and to more rigorously investigate complaints.

Commissioners also sought to redefine racial profiling to include claims based on race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

In the report, Ayres recommended that the inspector general be given oversight of investigations into racial profiling complaints. It also urged the LAPD to further overhaul the complaint process, as well as the implementation of an early-warning system to determine if officers were engaging in racial profiling.

The report found that complaints of racial profiling should trigger mandatory analysis of the patterns of the officer, unit or station so that supervisors could determine if extra training was necessary.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-aclu21-2008oct21,0,4850652.story

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

PA: State parole freeze bloating prison populations

State parole freeze bloating prison populations
By Joseph A. Slobodzian
Inquirer Staff Writer
October 13, 2008
Two weeks after Gov. Rendell halted paroling state inmates, the population of Pennsylvania's 27 prisons continues to swell.

Officially, the Sept. 30 monthly census - taken one day after Rendell froze paroles in response to the killing of Philadelphia Police Officer Patrick McDonald by a paroled felon - showed that the inmate population of 46,883 was eight percent above what prison officials say is needed to maintain "quality of life and safety for both staff and inmates."

Prison experts now say overcrowding is actually closer to 17 percent above capacity and they worry about how the system will hold up without that monthly release of 1,100 parolees.

"If this lasts two months, you're talking about enough people to fill a completely new large prison," said William DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, a 221-year-old inmate advocacy group.

Rendell named John S. Goldkamp, head of Temple University's criminal justice department, to do a top-to-bottom review of how the Board of Probation and Parole decides who gets paroled. Goldkamp's review will presumably be expedited, though Rendell set no deadline.

"We're awaiting [Goldkamp's] recommendation," Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said. "Clearly, the danger posed by an error for a citizen outweighs the impact on the system."

Still, Ardo said, Rendell will keep open the option of restoring parole for inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes if prison conditions warrant.

Meanwhile, the parole freeze is being felt throughout Pennsylvania.

"A lot of people involved in the system are beside themselves," DiMascio said. "They think the freeze was unnecessary, or could have been done without freezing all paroles."

Betty Jean Thompson, state leader of Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants, said several families had called her about relatives whose release was stopped.

Thompson, a Philadelphia teacher who got involved with CURE 12 years ago when her son was in prison, said the freeze meant those about to be paroled could lose promised jobs, places to live, and the chance for new lives.

"Many of these people are men and women who deserve a second chance," Thompson said.

The action affects more than inmates; correctional officers have long complained about being outnumbered by often-volatile prison populations, a situation that is likely to become more uneasy as the moratorium increases inmate populations - and potentially explosive stress.

Roy Pinto, vice president of the 10,500-member Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association, said that there were 500 vacant officer jobs and that 200 more officers were on active duty with the National Guard or reserves.

Pinto said he was also worried that the parole moratorium comes at the same time the U.S. economy is flagging, traditionally a time when more people wind up in prison.

"We're trying to cut a few people loose early, but they're pouring in the other end," said Pinto, an officer for 17 years at Rockview in Central Pennsylvania.

Correctional officers have reason to worry.

Overcrowding was considered a major cause of the Oct. 25, 1989, riot at Camp Hill prison near Harrisburg. The four-day rampage injured 138 prison officers and 70 inmates and destroyed half the prison.

Pinto said demand for cell space has been so high that the old state prison in Pittsburgh, closed in January 2005, was reopened last year.

"It's even worse for parole agents," Pinto added. "Their workload has increased so much they can't really do their job."

Sherry Tate, a spokeswoman for the Board of Probation and Parole, said agency officials would not comment until after the parole review.

County prisons will also feel the impact of the freeze.

Bob Eskind, spokesman for the Philadelphia prison system, said the city system typically released 630 people a week who made bail, completed a county sentence, or were released on probation or parole. Some are state inmates who, for various reasons, are housed in county facilities.

An additional 89 local inmates a week are sent to serve state prison sentences.

In a seriously overcrowded system - Philadelphia's prisons now hold about 145 percent of their rated 6,433-bed capacity - Eskind said officials depend on "one in and one out."

As the moratorium continues, some prisoner advocates are considering a lawsuit.

Angus Love, a veteran prisoner advocate and executive director of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, said, "There is nothing in the statute [creating parole] that says the governor has a unilateral right to end parole."

Love said many people assumed that Rendell's order was just for inmates convicted of violent crimes; they were stunned to learn the moratorium affected all potential parolees.

Rendell issued the moratorium just days after he signed a package of bills that allow early release of nonviolent offenders who agree to complete education and job-training programs and who show good behavior in prison.

CURE's Thompson said she found the wholesale halt to parole illogical: "If a surgeon kills his patient, we don't stop all surgeries."
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/30881134.html

==========================
Posted on Wed, Oct. 1, 2008
Temple professor ponders role in Phila. parole review
By Mario F. Cattabiani and Andrew Maykuth
Inquirer Staff Writers
The Temple University professor who hastily accepted Gov. Rendell's request Monday to conduct a "top-to-bottom" review of Pennsylvania's parole system knows very little about the new assignment or how long it will take to complete.

John S. Goldkamp, head of Temple's criminal-justice department, said yesterday that he planned to focus on how other states release violent offenders into society and whether those practices can be used here.

Rendell asked Goldkamp to take on the task in the wake of the second slaying in four months of a city police officer by a paroled felon.

Goldkamp said yesterday that he did not yet know what his budget is, whether he can hire consultants, or his deadline. He did not even know until he read about it in yesterday's newspapers that Rendell had put a hold on all early prison releases until Goldkamp gets his job done. Each month, about 1,000 prisoners typically are released on parole from Pennsylvania's prisons.

"That makes for a lot of pressure," Goldkamp said. "I have the pressure of knowing that to some extent, our work is holding up the release of some people who are fully prepared to be released."

As part of the review, Goldkamp said he would examine the cases of the parolees who gunned down Sgt. Patrick McDonald last week and Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski in May. But he stressed yesterday that he was "not interested in finding blame, although that seems to be the environment right now."

Instead, he added, he plans to "look at the process of the system, and its strengths and weaknesses and what might be done to make it better."

Rendell contacted Goldkamp on Monday afternoon, hours after the Fraternal Order of Police and Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey called on the state to declare a moratorium on paroles pending a systematic review.

Speaking outside McDonald's funeral yesterday, John J. McNesby, president of FOP Lodge 5, expressed gratitude for Rendell's quick action.

"It seems like there's some light at the end of the tunnel, when the governor agreed to do that yesterday," said McNesby. "He's doing the right thing, and that means a lot for the cops on the street."

Goldkamp, a nationally recognized expert on corrections and parole issues, said he expected to meet with Rendell administration officials soon to set the scope of the review and other logistics, including a time frame.

The last time he was hired to do a systemwide review was in 2005, when he examined crowding in Philadelphia's prisons.

That review took a year to complete, he said, adding, "This won't take a year."
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/29989909.html

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

Medical Neglect Is the Norm in Women's Prisons

Medical Neglect Is the Norm in Women's Prisons
By Betty Brink, Ms. Magazine. Posted October 20, 2008.
Women inmates die and suffer from medical neglect in a prison system that is much more of a threat to them than they are to anyone else.

My name is Janice Pugh. I was released from FMC Carswell [the only federal prison facility in the U.S. that includes a hospital for inmates] on January 10, 2000. ... The reason for me being at Carswell was for medical treatment. I have a history of lung cancer. ... The last six months I was coughing up blood, and a lot of it. ... There was sputum tests done and a test where they put a scope down your nose. Well, I received NO results from these tests. ... [Pugh went home to Alabama after her release; she had served 18 months for drug possession.] On January 20 at the Southern University of Alabama Medical Center there was a test done. ... On January 24 I was admitted. ... A bacteria was found growing in my lungs ... and a mass was found on my top right lobe. They done a biopsy today, January 31, 2000. This is just a few things I have to say and proof that it's true.

On March 27, 2000, two months after I received this letter, Janice Pugh died of metastasized cancer in a Mobile, Ala., hospice. She was 52 years old. She had served her sentence at FMC (Federal Medical Center) Carswell, near Fort Worth, Texas, because of her medical needs, yet her symptoms went undiagnosed and untreated there.

"We were told by the oncologist who treated Mama [in Alabama] that she was 'very neglected' at Carswell," said her daughter, Tracy Ingram.

I wish I could write that Janice Pugh's case is an aberration. It is not. For almost a decade, I have been writing about the Janice Pughs of FMC Carswell -- women as old as 80 and as young as 18, from all races and all classes, who have needlessly suffered or died from what a former Carswell doctor described as "medical mistakes, substandard care and unconscionable delays" in treatment.

Behind the nation's razor-wire fences, egregious medical neglect has been the norm for decades. But for the most part, this dark side of prison life is ignored by the mainstream media and lawmakers, and too often accepted by the general population as just another price paid by those committing crimes. The Carswell women's debt to society, however, shouldn't have included their lives.

The hospital at Carswell is located on a former World War II Air Force base. The facility opened in June 1994 after the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) closed its women's hospital in Lexington, Ky., following a scathing General Accounting Office report that cited the bureau for failing to provide adequate medical care in its federal prisons and singled out the Lexington hospital's care as particularly egregious. Little has changed since then, critics say.

According to Bureau of Prison figures, more than 32,500 women were incarcerated in the nation's federal prisons as of this June. That's far fewer than men, but women's rates at all prisons (federal, state, local) are increasing at nearly double the men's.

Medical neglect is not the only hazard faced by women at Carswell. This May, Vincent Inametti, the prison's Catholic chaplain for the past seven years, was sentenced to four years in jail for what the judge called "surprisingly heinous" sexual crimes against two imprisoned women. He is now the eighth sexual predator since 1997 to be convicted after working at Carswell. Most were professionals in high positions, including another chaplain, a gynecologist, a counselor, a supervisor of food services and three guards.

Most women currently behind bars in local jails, state prisons, federal penitentiaries and private for-profit penal institutions will eventually return to their communities. Their health care while incarcerated can thus have a huge social impact, financially and otherwise. If not treated effectively in prison hospitals, released inmates return to their homes with a host of mental and medical problems, including untreated AIDS and hepatitis.

Calls for an investigation of Carswell have been made to no avail by inmates' families for years. Their voices have now been joined by Ross Sears, a retired Texas appellate judge and former Harris County district attorney. He was drawn into the Carswell quagmire when a friend asked him in 2005 to help a breast-cancer victim who suffered from what he terms "grossly negligent follow-up care" at Carswell. He then contacted U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a longtime political friend, asking him to open a congressional investigation. Cornyn's staff contacted the Bureau of Prisons and got a response, but it was of the no-problems-here variety, so the senator took no further action.

What will get Congress' attention quicker than anything is media exposure and citizen outrage. In the meantime, little has changed for the Janice Pughs of Carswell, who remain largely forgotten as they continue to die and suffer needlessly from medical neglect in a prison system that is much more of a threat to them than they ever were to anyone else.

The full text of this article appears in the Summer issue of Ms. magazine, available on newsstands or by joining the Ms. community at www.msmagazine.com.
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/103136/medical_neglect_is_the_norm_in_women%27s_prisons/
This and other news about women and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Posted by lois at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2008

MS: Assistant DA hleps to reduce jail overcrowding

ADA helps Rankin jail reduce crowding
Clarion-Ledger
October 20, 2008
BRANDON — The number of inmates at Rankin County's jail last week hit 380 - 71 inmates above the jail's suggested 309 capacity.

But that number could have been higher if not for the county's new assistant district attorney, Dan Duggan, who so far this year has shifted 125 of the county's oldest cases into plea bargains or verdicts. That's 125 fewer people filling the jail at taxpayers' expense.

And it's good news to county officials who worry the jail's $7 million, 96-bed expansion - which will be completed early next year - won't be empty long.

"It'll probably be full the first 10 minutes it opens," quipped District 2 Supervisor Wood Brown.

The criminal histories of the 125 inmates run the gamut, but what they have in common is their lengthy stays - 400 days, 600 days, 800 days and even 1,300 days - in what should be short-term lockup.

One is sex offender Devin Groover, who, after nearly four years of delays, pleaded guilty in April. A requested mental evaluation took two years to come through.

Groover was sentenced to 15 years in prison with 10 years suspended and five to serve. Since the 21-year-old had been in the county jail so long, he is serving only one year inside the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility. He will be released in June 2009.

Groover's case was one of the first Duggan addressed. He is now a poster child of sorts in Duggan's mind, representing the kind of inmate that shouldn't be taking up space in the county jail.

"We've moved these guys through the system by speeding up mental evaluations, reducing bonds and IDing those we can plea bargain with," said Duggan, a 54-year-old former public defender and Houston police officer.

Added Duggan: "We've also prioritized who we want in jail."

The jail should not be for first-time offenders or those caught using drugs, he said. It's meant as a temporary holding space for hardened, violent offenders before they are turned over to the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

In recent years, however, the jail has morphed into an extended-stay facility, which puts pressure on jail personnel to find space to squeeze in an ever-growing inmate population that waits on backlogged courts.

"You get inmates in here who are stressed and wondering about their situation, and the longer they are here the bolder they get," Jail Administrator Capt. Eddie Thompson said. "It's a safety issue more than anything else."

One of the things Rankin-Madison District Attorney Michael Guest first saw bogging down the system was the waiting list for Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield, which performs all of the state's mental evaluations.

"What we discovered is that there was an 18-month waiting period," Guest said. "So, we met with the judges and told them the current system wasn't working."

Guest brokered a deal to have a Flowood psychologist - already contracted by the state to perform mental evaluations - to take on Madison and Rankin counties' evaluations. Now, mental evaluations take two weeks at most.

Rankin County Circuit Court judges William Chapman and Samac Richardson could not be reached for comment.

Besides problems with crowding, too many inmates at the jail also drive up the county's medical costs.

"When you house some of these guys in excess of 400 days, some of them are going to get sick," Rankin County Sheriff Ronnie Pennington said. "And that means we have to drive them to the hospital. Sometimes it can last three to four days. It costs money, and there is nothing we can do about it."

Pennington said some inmates face serious illnesses like cancer, hepatitis C and diabetes.

"To house a healthy inmate is costly enough, but to take care of an inmate's cancer treatments, for example, is very costly," Duggan said. "The county has to take on those payments until we move them over to MDOC, for example. Then it becomes the state's problem. That's our goal."

Duggan is paid $80,000 and is one of nine ADAs in the district attorney's office.

Rankin County public defender Aafram Sellers said he appreciates what the DA's office is doing.

"I've had cases low on the docket, and they've called to see if we could work it out with a plea or a bond reduction," he said. "It's great for both sides. There's no point holding some of these guys for months on end when we can reduce a bond or work out a plea agreement and let them rehabilitate on the outside."

In Hinds County, the district attorney's office constantly battles inmate populations at the county's 594-capacity jail. But District Attorney Robert Schuler Smith does not have an attorney assigned to do what Duggan does.

"I think all assistant district attorneys should do what he does and mine do," Smith said. He points out that his office in the last year has shifted exponentially more inmates than Rankin's 125.

The latest U.S. Bureau statistics put Hinds County's population at about 250,000. Rankin County is hovering around 138,000 people - and growing.

The growing population is why Rankin will never be able to fully eradicate the situation. Duggan and Guest can only tamp it down, but Brown said he has a long-term solution for convicted criminals.

"Why not start a penal farm like the one in Hinds County?" Brown said. "There's plenty of work to be done in the county with painting and litter. We have the land available to do it too. Let's put these inmates to work."

Although Pennington has said he is on board with the farm, the idea has gained little traction. In the meantime, inmates awaiting sentencing have become admirers of Duggan's work.

"I get letters from them now asking for us to look at their case," he said. "The ones that are eligible we review, but there are plenty of serious offenders we have to ignore. But it's really something. These guys don't want to be in there any longer than they have to. Neither do we."
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20081020/NEWS/810200339/1001/news

Posted by lois at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2008

CA: Phone Companies Rip Off Prisoners Families

Phone Companies Rip Off Inmate Families
Phone Rates from Inside Jail Are Unregulated

By Charles Montaldo, About.com

An Investigation by the Associated Press in California has found that telephone companies and county governments have been bilking millions of dollars from the families of jail and prison inmates by charging high rates for collect calls home.

Those who are incarcerated in jail or prison in California cannot make direct calls outside, but must make collect calls. Rates for these calls are not regulated, therefore telephone companies can charge whatever rates they want.

According to the AP investigation, collect calls made from California jails are charged an average of seven times as much as the same call would be charged if made from a public pay phone. These charges total about $120 million a year on the phone bills of families and friends of county jail inmates.

The contracts for providing telephone services from county jails is so lucrative that telephone companies offer counties huge signing bonuses to let become their provider. Los Angeles County was paid $17 million in signing bonuses, the AP report said.

'Obscene' Telephone Rates
The counties get about half of the revenue from the calls, while the telephone companies keep the rest. The Associated Press investigation found that California counties received more than $303 million over the past five years in revenues from collect calls, calling cards and signing bonuses.

The higher charges are necessary, telephone companies claim, because jail telephone systems require specialized equipment and security features such as call blocking and monitoring.

"It's a gouging of family members, those who have never committed a crime," said Charles Carbone, a lawyer with Prison Focus, a prisoner rights group in San Francisco.

"It's obscene. It's a tax on a population that can't afford it," said Kay Perry, coordinator of the Equitable Telephone Campaign, which is lobbying to reduce phone rates in state prison systems.
http://crime.about.com/od/prison_families/a/inmate_calls.htm

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

VA: Richmond Investors Plan to Cash in on Immigrant Detainees

Richmond Investors Plan to Cash in on Immigrant Detainees
by Jeff Winder

Changing immigration enforcement policy has left federal authorities struggling to cope with rapidly rising numbers of detainees. A controversial partnership in Farmville, VA proposes to address the crisis with a 1,040 bed, for-profit immigrant detention center.

During 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has conducted raids of historic proportions, arresting hundreds of undocumented workers at a time in Iowa, California, Mississippi and most recently, South Carolina. Virginia has not been immune to this trend. 2008 saw a sharp increase in ICE activity with raids in Amelia, Harrisonburg, northern Virginia and the high-profile arrest of 33 construction workers at the nearly completed Richmond federal courthouse.

ICE, a federal agency hastily created under the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of September 11th, is floundering as they try to cope with this influx, creating dangerous conditions for those detained. Recent investigations by the Washington Post and New York Times thoroughly document a pattern of medical neglect in ICE detention that has resulted in dozens of preventable deaths.

A partnership between ICE, the city of Farmville, VA and a private company proposes to address this crisis with a new 1,000-plus bed immigrant detention center in the small, southside Virginia town. Immigration Centers of America - Farmville (ICA) plans to break ground on October 15th and be operational by June of 2009.

Information about ICA and their qualifications to run a detention facility has been withheld from the public. The company, owned by two real estate developers and the CEO of a company that sells industrial mixers to bakeries, does not have a web site.

According to the Virginia Corporation Commission website, they first filed in June of 2007. This was just one month before the first of two grants was requested from the Virginia Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, a state-administered fund whose stated purpose is "to make payments to farmers to compensate for the decline of tobacco quotas and to promote economic growth and development in tobacco-dependent communities." The fund awarded the projects two grants totaling nearly $600,000 to pay for water, sewer, roads, parking lots and fencing.

Spokesperson Tim Pfohl said the grants were awarded based on a formula that projects how quickly a community will "recapture" the grant monies in the form of tax revenues. When questioned on the qualifications of ICA to manage this facility, he said, "Our job is not to weigh their ability to do the job. That is for the federal folks to figure out. We accept the receipt of a federal contract as proof of their qualifications."

But during an October 2nd interview, ICE spokesperson Richard Rocha denied that there is any commitment yet by the federal government to house prisoners at the Farmville facility. "We have only signed a transportation agreement with Farmville so far. We have not committed to using any facility if it was built. We are, however, working with the city to ensure that any facility built would be to ICE standards." When asked about the qualifications of ICA to run the facility, Rocha said, "It would be premature to talk about staffing or process, but our only contract is with the city of Farmville. You will have to talk to the town manager."

Gerald Spates, Farmville town manager, had this to say about ICA, "Well, I'll grant you, they are new at this, but they have been trying to get this project going for five years. The key is in the highly qualified personnel that they will bring in." He suggested contacting ICA directly but also agreed to respond to a series of question about the background of ICA, the roster of upper-level employees that they plan to bring in and the financial arrangements by October 7th. He failed to provide any of this information and has not returned phone calls since then.

An unidentified spokesperson at the offices of ICA declined to answer any questions and said that all information about the plans would have to come from Gerald Spates. A call to real estate developer and partner in ICA Warren Coleman resulted in this statement, "We have a policy of not giving any information about this project. All of that has to come from ICE."

"We've been hearing horror stories about detainees being put into prison with other criminals when all they have done is be here without documentation. Our goal is to keep them safe," Spates continued, "But I want to be honest with you. We do stand to gain financially from this."

During a public meeting in Farmville, ICA spokesperson Ken Newsome projected that at 85% capacity the facility will generate $322,000 annually in fees for the City in addition to an estimated $450,000 in tax revenue for Farmville and Prince Edward County. According to the Washington Post, if the facility does run at the projected capacity, ICA stands to gross $20 million in federal tax dollars annually.

Privately-run immigrant detention centers of this type have been plagued by scandal, lawsuits and controversy. The private-prison watchdog group Grassroots Leadership, has documented a pattern of abuses. They cite examples including a center in Elizabeth New Jersey that was shut down temporarily when immigrants were awarded $2.5 million in damages after an investigation showed that poorly trained guards served rotting food and physically and mentally abused prisoners. ICE turned the facility over to Correctional Corporation of America (CCA), despite this group also having a documented history of abuses in its facilities. In March of last year, nearly 1,000 immigrant prisoners in the 1,500 bed facility run by CCA in Lumpkin, GA, went on a hunger strike protesting conditions including lack of medical care.

Private companies like ICA profit from inefficiency in the immigrant detention system. A recent article by the Washington Post documents immigrants languishing in ICE custody for months even after signing a voluntary deportation order. This means more days of space "purchased" from companies like ICA at taxpayer expense.

The demand for these spaces is at an all-time high with the recent increase in ICE raids and all indications are that it will continue to rise. Under the Secure Communities plan, ICE will be expanding enforcement efforts and initiating deportation proceedings against any noncitizen, documented or not, who is arrested.

Viable alternatives to immigrant incarceration do exist at a fraction of the cost. With their Appearance Assistance Program, the Vera Institute for Justice achieved a 93% appearance rate in court including final appearances at a cost of $12 a day. ICA's $63 dollar per day rate is at the low end of the range of per diem charges in the region where Alexandria tops the list at $113 daily.

Shenandoah Valley community organizer Patrick Lincoln questions the role of corporate lobbyists in setting immigration policy, "The criminalization of immigrants is about feeding a profit driven prison system. It's no coincidence that alarm about immigration has mirrored a national decrease in crime, a slow-down in the growth of the prison system and a shrinking in the profits of companies like the Corrections Corporation of America."

Community activists express concerns about the impact plans for the prison are having on the immigrant community in Virginia. Prince William County (PWC) is the most noteworthy in a series of new state and local level laws that target immigrants. Despite vigorous community opposition, the PWC board of supervisors unanimously passed a resolution that denies social services to immigrants and increase powers of local law enforcement officers to inquire into immigration status. This trend, along with the increase in ICE raids has helped to create a climate of fear among immigrants and resulted in many families leaving the area.

"For a lot of the people I have talked to this new prison is the last straw," said community activist Sue Frankel-Streit, speaking of her involvement with the Louisa Pan-American Friendship Committee. The Louisa County group was started by Latin-American immigrants who met at an English class. They work to dispel myths about immigration by hosting dinners at local churches where immigrants and citizens can get to know each other. "Knowing that a 1,000 bed immigrant prison is opening just 40 miles from here is causing people to think maybe it is time to leave this country. It disgusts me that we treat people this way."

"We are seeing people who have already been hurt by our economic policies victimized again," said Teresa Stanley of the advocacy group Sowers of Justice. "These people are only trying to work to support their families. They contribute hundreds of millions to the Virginia economy and they are being locked up so that corporations can reap a profit." This was a reference to a study released this year by the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis which found the annual tax contribution of undocumented workers in Virginia to be over $400 million.

As an increasingly popular immigrant destination and home to some of the most repressive local immigrant ordinances in the country, Virginia is often in the national spotlight. "We want this facility to be a model that other localities can use," said Spates. For better or worse, it does appear that the fate of this facility will be an indication of how communities will respond to immigration during the years to come.
http://www.thepeopleunited.org/immigrantJustice.php?id=7

Posted by lois at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2008

VA: Editorial: A sensible call for sentencing reform

"The cost to build and operate the prisons needed to hold all of these people is enormous: States spent about $2 billion on construction alone in 2006."

Editorial: A sensible call for sentencing reform
Virginia's junior senator insists on taking an honest look at the high cost of the war on drugs.

Sen. Jim Webb will be moderating a symposium Wednesday on illegal drug trafficking and the nation's hugely expensive fight against it.

The symposium at George Mason University could not be more timely for Virginians and their policymakers, who last week heard Gov. Tim Kaine's latest -- but by no means last -- budget cuts to match steep shortfalls in state revenues.

Webb's interest, of course, is at the federal rather than state level, but the concerns he has been raising -- during two earlier Senate hearings and now at the upcoming symposium -- apply equally in both spheres.

Webb is gathering law enforcement and criminal justice experts, along with advocates of sentencing reform, both to collect facts and to educate the public about a policy failure most politicians consider too politically dangerous to broach:

The so-called war on drugs has produced the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world -- 750 inmates for every 100,000 people. Most criminal justice experts attribute a leap in imprisonments since 1991 to tougher sentencing laws, particularly for drug offenses, that have ensnared a whole lot of low-level, nonviolent offenders.

Webb cites statistics that show four out of five drug arrests in 2005 were for possession, one out of five for drug sales.

The cost to build and operate the prisons needed to hold all of these people is enormous: States spent about $2 billion on construction alone in 2006. And the cost to society is compounded by the loss at an early age of lives that might have been productive, but end up in a cycle of sharply limited opportunities, recidivism and reimprisonment.

In a phone interview last week, Webb was careful to state, "I'm all for incarcerating violent offenders and people involved in gang activities." Given the electorate's enthusiasm for tough-on-crime rhetoric, he knows his congressional colleagues will be loath to take up sentencing reform: "People running and in office get nervous.

"But we have to be able to address the dynamic in some way because it's all so skewed."

Webb has no legislative fix in his back pocket, but insists on having the conversation to get the country working toward one. That's necessary and brave.

In the midst of painful budget cuts, Virginia lawmakers should ponder the problem and heed Kaine's pointed suggestion to look for policy changes that would yield long-term savings, such as prison reform.
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/180264

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

VA: Regional jail could benefit from prison closing

Regional jail could benefit from prison closing
The state prison in Dublin will close next year, while the regional jail is looking to hire 130 more officers.
10/14/08
Roanoke Times
By Kevin Litten

It's too early to tell how big an impact Gov. Tim Kaine's decision to close the Pulaski Correctional Center will have on an already lethargic local job market, county officials say.

"Anytime you have an established facility -- no matter what it is -- and they're laying off and shutting down, it does have an impact as far as what materials, food or other type of needs they have," especially when the facility uses local vendors, Pulaski County Board of Supervisors Chairman Joe Sheffey said.

Sheffey should know. The county has dealt with a string of private-sector layoffs the past eight years at the Volvo Trucks North America plant in Dublin and at furniture and textile manufacturers in Pulaski. Additionally, it is dealing with a diminished tax base as the county's population declines.

Pulaski County's unemployment rate, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, jumped from 4.7 percent in January to 9.4 percent in August, according to preliminary reports.

But if there's a bright spot in the correctional center's closing, New River Valley Regional Jail Superintendent Gerald McPeak has found it in his staffing needs for the jail's expansion now under construction. The regional jail serves seven counties and the city of Radford.
http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/180370

Before Kaine announced the correctional center's closing Thursday as part of a round of sweeping budget cuts statewide, McPeak said he had worried whether the jail could attract the 130 officers needed to supervise about 1,100 more inmates. The regional jail currently employs more than 150 full time, according to its Web site.

"The job market in this area is not all that great, but the layoffs have generated some applications for us" and some interest from officers at the state facility, McPeak said. "We're kind of breathing a sigh of relief that the job market has opened up for us."

The expansion is scheduled to open in late 2009.

McPeak said he has scheduled a meeting for today with Pulaski Correctional Center Warden Al Hollar to discuss how to reach out to the 62 employees affected by layoffs.

Hollar did not return a call seeking comment Friday and his office was closed for the Columbus Day holiday Monday.

The New River Valley Regional Jail had been in competition for applications with the new Western Virginia Regional Jail now under construction near Dixie Caverns.

That facility, which will house up to 800 inmates and serve Roanoke, Montgomery and Franklin counties, is far enough along in the process that the competition for jobs has died down, McPeak said.

And while McPeak said "we are kind of saddened at the closing" of the state's Pulaski facility, it's also "bittersweet" because it will provide more qualified applicants to the regional jail.

The New River Valley jail now employs only a method of "indirect supervision," which means guards are not physically inside locked-down areas with employees at all times.

But that will change with the jail's expansion, McPeak said, "so that will be a plus for us to have officers who are familiar with a direct supervision facility" such as the Pulaski Correctional Center.

Pulaski County Administrator Pete Huber said the county will try to assist the two facilities with any transitions and will also work to help any laid-off employees who are eligible for unemployment insurance.

Huber also said he wants to "work with the state in exploring any kind of options" the county has in minimizing the impact of the cuts, but he said it was too early to get into specifics of what actions the county will take.

"Our primary concern is with the folks being laid off at this point," Huber said. "Hopefully, there will be an opportunity there for folks affected by the governor's cut" at the New River Valley Regional Jail.

Posted by lois at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

Utah prison inmates building homes for state

Utah prison inmates building homes for state
October 14th, 2008 @ 10:05pm
By Lori Prichard

The State of Utah is now in the business of building and selling homes, in the hopes of providing those homes to lower- and middle-income families. The catch is some of those homes are being built by prison inmates.

Thirty-one-year-old Ervin Brafford showed off the one thing he's most proud of: a house. "Because when you get there, it's a dirt path. And at the end of it, you've got this," Brafford explained.

It's a 5-bedroom, 2-bath house in Salt Lake that a group of inmates from the Utah State Prison built. The prison system, along with the state-run Utah Housing Corporation, teamed up to build homes to offer them to lower-income families.

"We're in partnership in building affordable homes. We provide the kind of service that's just not done in the private sector," said Grant Whitaker, senior vice president of the Utah Housing Corporation.

Here's how it works: Inmates, like Brafford, who are on their way to being paroled are paid $1.50 an hour. Once the house is built, Utah Housing Corporation sells the home at a below-market mortgage rate to lower- and middle-income families.

"The equity is passed on to the homeowner by a lower mortgage amount," said Scott Harmon, housing program manger for the Utah Housing Coporation.

That means the buyer of the house will likely get $40,000 instant equity -- equity gained from paying these guys well below the $20 an hour they would otherwise get.

Brafford says that's OK with him. "I really enjoyed doing it. I learned so much. I get really excited. I think my boss is sick of hearing it because I ask a million and one questions," he said.

Brafford says the days of "sneaking his way by" are over. This house helped him turn his life around.

The house is just over 1,800 square feet and is being sold for just under $240,000. If you'd like more information, you can contact the Utah Housing Corporation at (801) 902-8200 or via e-mail by clicking here.
http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=4529894

Posted by lois at 10:44 AM | Comments (0)

NV: Article on Frank Smith Fighting Detention Center

Oct. 15, 2008
Opponent plans meeting on detention center
By MARK WAITE
Pahrump Valley Times (Nevada)

Officials from Corrections Corporation of America don't plan to be in attendance when the Private Corrections Institute hosts a meeting on the pros and cons of a federal detention center in Pahrump at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Hafen Elementary School Auditorium.

Frank Smith, field organizer for the Private Corrections Institute will be the featured speaker. He invited prominent local opponents of the project to join him on a panel.

A biography on the Private Corrections Institute Web site states Smith has been a social justice activist for four decades, involved in criminal justice research, worked on a medical marijuana initiative in Alaska, labor organization, moratoriums on prison construction, restoring civl rights, alternatives to incarceration and programs offering substance abuse treatment.

If his resume looks as if he's committed to finding alternatives to incarceration, that's a correct assumption.

"That makes sense to the taxpayer," Smith said in a telephone interview. "We have way too many people in jail for way too long."

During comments at the public hearing on the development agreement for the federal detention center at the Nye County Commission meeting Sept. 16, Smith said the new president inaugurated Jan. 20, 2009, could change the country's immigration policy. The CCA facility would house prisoners awaiting a hearing in federal court and illegal immigrants awaiting deportation.

"There will be an enormous surplus of beds which the (private prison) industry tends to ignore," Smith predicted.

Smith said he has dealt with CCA, the nation's largest private prison operator, for 12 years and warned, "A deal is never a deal."

"If you look at a town like Shelby, Mont., you'll find out how many times a deal gets negotiated in CCA's favor," he said at the public hearing.

Smith said CCA uses a central purchasing system, which means they don't spend as much money in town.

Smith and CCA Vice-President of Marketing and Communications Louise Grant exchanged words at the conclusion of the public hearing. Grant said the Private Corrections Institute was founded by the Florida Police Benevolent Association, a union representing prison workers.

"They're completely opposed to privatization because unions are (opposed)," Grant said. She charged the organization receives funding from the American Federation of State, Federal, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

"They are paid or they volunteered to come into communities specifically to go against privatization. That's their sole purpose," Grant said.

Smith, who is from Love City, Kan., denied Grant's accusations. He said the Private Corrections Institute was formed by several people active in the area of private prisons. He downplayed executive director Ken Kopczynski's role with the Florida Police Benevolent Association, though his resume on the institute's Web site states Kopczynski has been a legislative and political affairs assistant for the FPBA since 1993, the largest collective bargaining agent for law enforcement, correctional and probation officers in Florida.

"I can assure you that we won't be there," Grant said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "We have stated publicly what the agenda of the Private Corrections Institute is, and certainly our relationship is with the county and we are continuing to very proactively work on the development agreement. That's where our focus is today."

Grant said the company has held numerous public hearings, spoke at length at two recent town hall type meetings, posted information on its Web site and had community officials visit their facilities in other communities.

Smith will provide extensive data regarding the harmful consequences for host communities of detention centers, the advertisement states. He will discuss media, political and legal strategies to keep Pahrump from being victimized by CCA.

http://www.pahrumpvalleytimes.com/2008/Oct-15-Wed-2008/news/24520518.html

Posted by lois at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

OK: Lawmakers say private prisons can save the state money

Lawmakers say private prisons can save the state money
October 16th, 2008
Tulsa Beacon

Private prisons are safer and can be built and operated at much lower costs than public prisons, the two highest-ranking public safety lawmakers noted after recently touring a privately controlled correctional facility in Lawton.

State Representatives Rex Duncan and T.W. Shannon, the chair and vice-chair respectively of the House of Representatives Judiciary and Public Safety Committee, visited the Lawton Correctional Facility to gain a better understanding of how private prisons can save taxpayer dollars and increase safety throughout the state.

“It’s an eye-opening experience to learn how well some of our private prisons are operated,” said Shannon, R-Lawton. “Private prisons place far less burden on the public and increase safety among our prison employees and within our communities. I’m very encouraged by what I learned and I think we have an opportunity to use these lessons to move our state forward and improve our correctional system as a whole.”

Several studies have shown private prisons generate cost savings of 15 to 25 percent on construction and 10 to 15 percent on management compared to publicly operated facilities.

Not only do private prisons potentially save taxpayers millions of dollars each year, the competition also forces public prisons to innovate and lower costs, noted Duncan.

“Competition breeds excellence,” said Duncan, R-Sand Springs. “Our current correctional system could be more effective and more efficient, and I believe the private-prison system could begin taking us in that direction.”

Studies by the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice have shown that states with a greater share of inmates housed in private prisons have lower overall costs of housing public prisoners.

In addition, states without any private prisons see per-prisoner cost increases on average of 9 percent per year, compared with a 4 percent per-prisoner annual increase among states that operate both public and private prisons.

Shannon said those average cost increases are more than compelling support for the state to begin considering expansion of private prison usage throughout the state.

“Currently, it costs nearly $18,000 per year to house a single inmate in our state prison system, and the experts believe our prison system will continue to expand by nearly 1,000 inmates per year,” said Shannon. “That is an additional $18 million of taxpayer money spent each year that could be used for other needs. It’s time to take a hard look at using private prisons so we can bring our state to the national forefront as a model of effective corrections management.”

The Oklahoma Criminal Justice Resource Center reports that the state’s current prison population is approximately 24,463. Of those, fewer than 6,000 inmates are housed in private prisons.
http://www.tulsabeacon.com/?p=1035

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

October 15, 2008

PA: Editorial-"Push state to build prison here"

EDITORIAL: Push state to build prison here
Altoona Mirror
POSTED: October 14, 2008

What would the area do to obtain 600 well-paying jobs in what could be termed a recession-proof industry?

It's not a rhetorical question. Those jobs could happen. But it's important that our local and state leaders don't drop the ball.

The industry is the state Department of Corrections, which already has a sizeable presence in central Pennsylvania with facilities at Huntingdon, Smithfield, Rockview, Houtzdale and Cresson employing thousands of area residents.

There is a chance for that to grow. State officials have cited the need to construct more prisons to handle the burgeoning inmate population.

At one point, it seemed like Huntingdon was almost a lock to get one of the state's new correctional institutions. Rockview also was favored for a second prison.

While the area remains in the running, a recent announcement is a bit troubling.

The Rendell administration said last month that the state will build a new $200 million prison in Fayette County at a site to be determined.

It appears the decision was made to boost embattled state House Democratic Leader Bill DeWeese, who represents part of Fayette County. DeWeese has been under fire after 12 people associated with the House Democratic Caucus were indicted on corruption charges. DeWeese, head of the caucus, was not indicted. Still, some of his colleagues are calling for him to step aside.

Our concern is what impact the state's decision to build in Fayette County will have on our chances of getting another prison in Huntingdon.

It would seem that Huntingdon would be a logical choice. A new $200 million prison could be built on land already owned by the Department of Corrections and could share the resources with the current Huntingdon and Smithfield state correctional institutions.

But are we doing enough to persuade state officials to look at Huntingdon and the central Pennsylvania area? Fayette County officials reportedly met twice this year with the state corrections secretary. The new prison is expected to employ 600 and create about 600 spin-off jobs. That would be a nice economic boost.

The Department of Corrections told the Tribune-Review that the starting salary for a corrections office was $29,815, with a 3 percent increase under a new contract that takes effect this year. The average salary of corrections officers from trainees through majors is $59,317.

Those are family-sustaining wages that are comparable to manufacturing positions, which often are considered the top rung in economic development.

And the more jobs any community has with salaries like those, especially when they aren't subject to the whims of the economy, the better and more stable the area is. Let's get them here.

The Associated Press says the state is looking at Armstrong, Centre, Huntingdon, Philadelphia, Luzerne and Northumberland counties as potential sites for a second new prison.

Given the competition, our state and local officials should leave nothing to chance and do everything possible to persuade the state to locate a new prison in central Pennsylvania.

We don't want to see those needed jobs slip through our fingers.
http://www.altoonamirror.com/page/content.detail/id/512094.html

Posted by lois at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)

Supreme Court Rejects Troy Davis' Execution Appeal

October 15, 2008
Supreme Court Rejects Execution Appeal
By ROBBIE BROWN

ATLANTA — Three weeks after temporarily sparing a Georgia inmate from the death penalty, the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear his appeal, a decision that will probably lead to a quick execution.

The inmate, Troy A. Davis, 40, was convicted in 1991 of murdering Mark A. MacPhail, a Savannah police officer. The court’s decision, made without comment or explanation, allows Georgia officials to obtain a new death warrant and schedule the execution, probably in the next few days or weeks.

The case has led to an outpouring of support for Mr. Davis, largely because seven of nine witnesses against him have recanted their testimony, with two claiming that the police had pressured them to testify against him. Prosecutors presented no physical evidence and no murder weapon, and three witnesses have said another man admitted to the murder.

World leaders including former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Pope Benedict XVI have challenged the fairness of Mr. Davis’s conviction.

“Georgia is willing to risk the credibility of its whole death penalty system in carrying out this one very questionable execution,” said Steven B. Bright, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. “The death penalty should really only be enforced in cases where there is no question about guilt, and that just cannot be said about this case.”

Prosecutors have rejected the claims of the witnesses who recanted, and both the Georgia Supreme Court and the State Board of Paroles and Pardons have denied Mr. Davis’s requests for new trials and clemency.

Members of the family of the slain police officer expressed relief at the Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday.

“My son will always be missed in our hearts,” said Anneliese MacPhail, the mother of Officer MacPhail. “But at least we can relax now and don’t have to worry about whether justice will be served.”

The Supreme Court granted a stay of execution last month, two hours before Mr. Davis was scheduled to die by lethal injection. A judge is expected to set a new time frame for the execution by next week, said Spencer Lawton Jr., the district attorney in Chatham County, Ga., where the case originated.

Mr. Davis’s lawyers had asked the court to determine whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment bars the execution of the innocent. They wrote in a petition in July that the case “allows this court an opportunity to determine what it has only before assumed: that the execution of an innocent man is constitutionally abhorrent.”

Martina Correia, Mr. Davis’s sister, said his lawyers were planning another request to the state parole board for a new hearing. “We have to keep on battling,” Ms. Correia said. “But my brother told me, ‘Even if they succeed in killing me, it will dismantle the death penalty system in Georgia because people are tired of injustice.’ ”

Jared Feuer, the Southern regional director for Amnesty International, said he was “shocked and saddened” by the court’s action on Tuesday.

“This decision shows how flawed and immoral the death penalty is,” Mr. Feuer said. “The court had been asked to rule on the basic question of guilt and innocence and the constitutional right of an individual to not be executed when there is doubt of his guilt. The court ducked its obligation.”

Mr. Lawton, the district attorney, said Mr. Davis received a fair trial and benefited from “an international firestorm of public relations campaigning” on his behalf. He pointed out that Mr. Davis’s conviction had been upheld by “29 judges in seven different types of reviews, over the course of 17 years, before today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Officer MacPhail was shot and killed early on the morning of Aug. 19, 1989, as he tried to break up a fight between two men in a Burger King parking lot. Several witnesses testified that they had heard one of the two men, Sylvester Coles, threaten the other and then begin pistol whipping him over the head.

Officer MacPhail, who was moonlighting as a security guard, interrupted the fight and was shot before he could remove his gun. Mr. Davis testified that he had been at a nearby pool hall but had left before Officer MacPhail arrived.

Ms. MacPhail said, however, that she was confident Mr. Davis had committed the murder. “He didn’t give my son a chance,” she said. “He just shot him down in cold blood.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/washington/15execute.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin.

Posted by lois at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2008

U.S. Sentencing Commission is considering endorsing options including treatment programs for nonviolent users of drugs such as crack.

Sentencing Panel Mulls Alternatives to Prison
The U.S. Sentencing Commission is considering endorsing options including treatment programs for nonviolent users of drugs such as crack.
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 12, 2008; Page A02

As the nation's inmate population climbs toward 2.5 million, the U.S. Sentencing Commission is considering alternatives to prison for some offenders, including treatment programs for nonviolent drug users and employment training for minor parole violators.

The commission's consideration of alternatives to incarceration reflects its determination to persuade Congress to ease federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws that contributed to explosive growth in the prison population. The laws were enacted in the mid-1980s, principally to address a crime epidemic related to crack cocaine. But in recent years, federal judges, public defenders and probation officials have argued that mandatory sentences imprison first-time offenders unnecessarily and disproportionately affect minorities.

If the commission moves ahead with recommending alternatives to Congress, it would send a strong signal to state sentencing commissions and legislatures, and could pave the way for a major expansion of drug courts and adult developmental programs for parolees, advocates said.

"We are leading the world in incarcerating adults, and that's something Americans need to understand," said Beryl Howell, one of six members of the commission, which drafts federal sentencing guidelines and advises the House and Senate on prison policy. "People should be aware that every tough-on-crime act comes with a price. The average cost [of incarceration] across the country is $24,000 a year per inmate. . . . It's going up far faster than state budgets can keep up."

About 2,000 drug courts nationwide spend between $1,500 and $11,000 per offender, according to the National Drug Court Institute. Those scattered courts handle only a small fraction of the 1.5 million nonviolent drug offenders who are arrested and charged with a crime, said C. West Huddleston, chief executive of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

The courts operate under similar principles: At sentencing, a judge gives a nonviolent offender the option of going to prison or committing to a rigorous treatment program, where he or she submits to frequent tests and supervision. The aim is to reduce the 67 percent recidivism rate of addicted offenders.

The government has established a discretionary grant program, operated by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which is distributing $13 million to drug court programs this year.

"Drug courts are the most successful strategy in terms of reducing crime, but they're tremendously underutilized," Huddleston said. "I think a Sentencing Commission recommendation to U.S. courts would create momentum. It'll wake up state legislatures. It's a conversation that should have been had years ago."

The commission held a symposium to discuss alternatives to incarceration in July after a study this year by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States revealed that more than one in 100 American adults are in jail or prison. That study was followed by a Bureau of Justice Statistics report in June that showed that a record 7.2 million people are under supervision in the criminal justice system. The cost, about $45 billion a year, has forced states such as California to export inmates to private prisons as far away as Tennessee.

Jeffrey L. Sedgwick, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's office of justice programs, said the burgeoning prison population might be worth the cost. Research has shown that crime rates decline as the incarceration rate rises, he said. "In other words, as the number of people under correctional supervision goes up, crime goes down."

Sedgwick said the cost of housing prisoners should be weighed against other factors, such as the cost for victims of violent crimes to piece their lives back together. He said conservative estimates put the cost of violent crime at about $17 billion.

But the Justice Department is open to discussing options that might reduce prison overcrowding and costs, and is waiting to see what the commission recommends, Sedgwick said. "We're not necessarily going to oppose it out of hand, but we say be real careful, we recommend more study," he said.

Sentencing Panel Mulls Alternatives to Prison

Howell said maintaining a prison population equal to the size of a major U.S. city "is inconsistent with what Congress had in mind with the Sentencing Reform Act" of 1984, which created the commission.

"Our purpose is not just to issue guidelines setting forth the severity of punishment, but to provide guidelines to judges for the form of that punishment," Howell said. "The commission has spent most of its time on the severity. It is somewhat new for us to look at the form of the punishment, and that's where alternatives come in."

The commission's consideration of alternatives comes the year after it defied the Bush administration by relaxing tough sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine offenders and making its decision retroactive, so that thousands already in prison could seek release before the end of their terms. About 4,000 mostly nonviolent offenders have taken advantage of the policy so far, according to members of the commission and the federal Bureau of Prisons.

The Justice Department, U.S. attorneys and the National District Attorneys Association strongly opposed easing the guidelines for crack cocaine offenders and making them retroactive. But the reaction to possible prison alternatives has not been as pronounced.

"My experience tells me that if the drug court is properly constituted and has the buy-in of judges, prosecutors and parole officials, they are very effective," said Tom Sneddon, interim executive director of the district attorneys group and a former Santa Barbara, Calif., prosecutor who helped establish a drug court there.
"But there are some courts that are shadow programs that they use to cycle people back into society and not send them to prison, and have no real substance at all," Sneddon said.

Another program under consideration would allow judges to develop rehabilitation programs for parolees based on their needs -- such as employment, education or drug treatment. Parolees could join the program upon their release from prison or after committing a minor parole violation, such as failing to update an address or a telephone number.

Texas criminal district court Judge John Creuzot said drug courts have worked in his state. He said he established a program after Texas got tough on minor drug offenders, jailing them for two years.

"Well, that thing started to break down by the late 1990s," he said, ". . . because then we had so many people in penitentiaries that we were actually letting murderers and rapists out to make room for these small violators, low-risk violators. And so we started rethinking what we were doing."

The 18-month program accepts low-level drug offenders with no felony records or histories of violence. "We did a study of that program, and we have a 68 percent reduction of recidivism in that program," Creuzot said. "It's a phenomenally successful program."

For parolees, job training is seen as the chief remedy to repeated incarceration, said Judge Robert Holmes Bell, chief U.S. district judge for the Western District of Michigan. "In the old days, the warden of the prison used to give the person a bus ticket and $20 and say, 'Godspeed to you,' and away they went."

The Sentencing Commission's staff is drafting a proposal amending its guidelines that the panel could submit for public comment in late December. The commission could make a final decision by May 1. Congress would then have 180 days to reverse the decision.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/11/AR2008101102051_2.html?sub=AR

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

MA: DOC Commissioner Seeks More Work-Release

“As you well know, we are crowded and that’s why we need to better manage our system with an eye toward re-entry. That’s why work release is important,” said Clarke, who became prison chief last November. “We ought to be locking up folks we are afraid of, not folks that we’re mad at.” MA DOC Commission Harold Clarke.

Chief: ‘Angry’ felons to be freed
Swamped prisons seek work-release programs
By Laura Crimaldi | Sunday, October 12, 2008
Boston Hearld

Faced with exploding costs and a record-high inmate population, the state prison chief is warning that Massachusetts can’t afford its incarceration rate and must alter laws or deliver “angry and unprepared” felons back to society.

“The message to policymakers is we have very limited resources to continue to incarcerate at the rate we’re doing so now,” Department of Correction Commissioner Harold W. Clarke said in an interview with the Herald. “As we speak, I believe we’re right about 144 percent of capacity in the DOC. All the sheriffs will tell you that they are also very crowded. Where are we going from here?”

Clarke is pushing to better prepare inmates to return to society by setting up more work-release beds, implementing a new method of tracking prisoners’ readiness for release, and promoting a Patrick administration proposal to let certain drug offenders participate in work release. The state’s Anti-Crime Council is supposed to develop a re-entry plan by December.

“As you well know, we are crowded and that’s why we need to better manage our system with an eye toward re-entry. That’s why work release is important,” said Clarke, who became prison chief last November. “We ought to be locking up folks we are afraid of, not folks that we’re mad at.”

The state’s inmate population reached a record 11,445 on Sept. 29, a 10 percent increase since 2005. Of those inmates, there is a waiting list of 120 prisoners vying for 250 full pre-release beds, said Deputy Commissioner Veronica M. Madden. The DOC’s budget is $530 million, a giant jump from last year’s $474 million spending plan.

Last year, 2,562 inmates were released from prison, including 158 that went to the street from maximum security, the DOC said. National studies show that 97 percent of inmates return to society.

Clarke cited statistics that show 50 percent of inmates were unemployed when they were jailed and 80 percent are drug addicted or in prison because of drug crimes.

Non-violent drug offenders convicted of a drug crime that carries a mandatory sentence are prohibited by law from participating in work release. As of Sept. 22, there were 1,917 inmates serving a mandatory minimum sentence for a drug offense, the DOC said.

Patrick filed legislation to let drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences participate in work release, but lawmakers did not take up the measure.

“We have seen again, not just in Massachusetts but elsewhere, that mandatory sentences can unnecessarily crowd systems,” said Clarke. “Inmates are not going to benefit from just sitting there. And it’s going to impact their attitudes as well. They are going to leave there angry. Who’s well-served then?”

Steve Kenneway, president of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, said a push for more inmate work-release opportunities is risky.

“Although an inmate might be eligible to go down to a lower-security, he may not be suitable for moving down,” Kenneway said. “That’s how the Willie Hortons happen. Inmates can escape from lower security when they should not have been there in the first place.”

State Sen. James E. Timilty (D-Walpole), chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and Security, said it’s in the state’s “best interest to see a low recidivism rate,” but added, “I hope this effort isn’t just to solve overcrowding. I think the mission is always to punish and protect,” he said.

Leslie Walker, director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said “real work needs to be done with the governor and Legislature to modify sentencing laws.”

“If there were fewer prisoners in prison, the deparment would be able to devote resources to drug treatment, education and job training in an effort to prepare prisoners to reintergrate into their home neighborhoods,” she said.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1125030

Posted by lois at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2008

MA: The Catastrophic Failure of Corrections by by John Feroli, Old Colony prison, Bridgewater, MA.

The Catastrophic Failure of Corrections
by John Feroli, Old Colony prison, Bridgewater, MA.

“The state, whether we like it or not, is in loco parentis
and serves as one of the most powerful
moral teachers we have.”
-Justice Brandeis-

The Technical Assistance Report on Suicide Prevention within the Massachusetts Prison System, February 2007 reports that, “…the suicide rate within the Massachusetts Department of Corrections during the past 10 years was 26.9 deaths per 100,000 inmates. According to the most recent national data the suicide rate in the federal, state and private prisons throughout the country during 2002 was 14 deaths per 100,000 prison inmates. As such, the suicide rate within the MA DOC was almost double the national average during this 10 year period, and several times greater than the national average in 2006.” Following this report there have been additional suicides in the Massachusetts prison system.

While these statistics are alarming, little if anything has been done to curtail the suicide rate, especially in the maximum security Souza-Baranowski prison in Shirley, MA. Prison officials there have recently adopted or allowed a number of questionable and even risky practices that defy logic and common sense.

In an effort to reduce costs the mental health director and MHM Services, the agency that provides mental health care to prisoners discontinued all prescriptions for Adderall, Ritalin, Klonopin and other necessary psychotropic medications Without reason or warning inmates were advised by Dr. Fletcher that their meds were stopped. Another mental health clinician, Nurse Johnson claimed it was for, “security reasons,” because, “men are being raped for their meds.” But considering that these drugs are crushed, placed in a cup of water and then consumed in view of a c.o. who inspects the inside of each mouth, it is obvious that Ms. Johnson was not being truthful.

Because this move has directly contributed to prisoners’ instability, repeated trips to the Special Management Unit (SMU) by inmates whose medication had been discontinued, and has created an angrier and a more volatile population that endangers the lives of both staff and prisoners, one must wonder why the DOC is allowing the health care agency to control the atmosphere inside Massachusetts prisons.

Another new directive has recently been issued by the director of the health care services, Russell Phelps. While inmates have always had to be evaluated by a mental health clinician prior to being moved to the SMU, in the past there have always been a physician available. Not so at SBCC where there are no therapists on site on weekends. So from Friday afternoon until Monday morning prisoners are kept naked with only a large vest secured with Velcro, under 24 hour watch in an empty cell until cleared to be moved to the segregation unit. Even if a prisoner’s issue is a minor one, and has never had suicidal ideations or exhibited irrational behavior he will be held for up to 72 hours without even a bar of soap, a toothbrush or toothpaste.

Once he is approved to be taken to the segregation unit he’s again placed in an empty cell. This time he will only be allowed on item for the first 24 hours. He will not receive a book, a Bible or rosary beads. He will not be allowed a pen, a pencil or a writing pad. And he won’t get a shower, a phone call or even cosmetics. But he will be given a bedroll. In other words, after days of psychological torture this prisoner, who may be suffering from mental illness, substance abuse issues or withdrawal symptoms, is given absolutely nothing except a set of sheets with which to hang himself.

It is important to mention two very significant points: 1) Every prisoner who has committed suicide in the SMU has hung himself, and; 2) Every inmate is given a manual containing a complete and comprehensive set of rules and regulations which govern the SMU. And nowhere in this or any other manual is it written or even hinted that prisoners are not entitled to anything for the first 24 hours in the segregation unit.

It is absolutely imperative that these arbitrary policies be addressed. Are Superintendent Thomas Dickhaut, and Deputies Bruce Gelb and Anthony Mendonsa so inept as not to have the capacity to understand the potential consequences of their mindless and oppressive rules? Or are they intentionally aiding and even causing the suicides that are being committed in the SMU? In either case, their actions are inexcusable.

Psychiatrist Stuart Grassian, formerly at Harvard has researched the mental damage solitary confinement inflicts on healthy people. But what about the prisoners suffering from mental illness? Professor Grassian told Time Magazine this year, “We’re taking criminals who are already unstable and driving them crazy.”

A U.S. Justice Department study in 2006 says that upwards of 2/3 of all prisoners report mental health problems. Why? According to criminologist Bernard Harcourt in a January 2007 New York Times op-ed piece entitled, “The Mentally Ill Behind Bars,” “Over the past 40 years the United States dismantled a colossal mental health complex and rebuilt an enormous prison, bed-by-bed.”

While bills to establish both an inspector general office to review charges of staff misconduct and an external oversight board to review general practices and policies languish in the legislature, rogue prison officials continue to overclassify the mentally ill to maximum security where their condition worsens dramatically.

Globe correspondent Michael Naughton, in an April 23, 2007 article wrote, “An independent study of the state’s handling of inmates at risk of committing suicide.” “The report, commissioned after a sharp increase in prisoner suicides, concluded that prison policies and practices were contributing to the problem.” What’s worse is that SBCC was never needed in the first place.

Dr. Michael W. Forcier testified before the Joint Committee on Public Safety on October 28, 203. Professor Forcier, a sociologist with over 25 years’ experience in the criminal justice and corrections arena testified, “I will never forget that I was called by Associate Commissioner Ernest Vandergriff who asked: ‘Based on your research findings what types of security level beds should the DOC be requesting?’ I responded, “Minimum Security.” One week later I learned that the DOC had requested 1,000 maximum security beds, and hence came Souza-Baranowski.”

Now, to perpetuate the fraudulent necessity of maximum security beds the DOC has decided to double-bunk some of the cells in that violent and hostile prison, which will obviously make that maximum security warehouse more dangerous for both staff and inmates.

Built to house, “the worst of the worst,” and, “only the most incorrigible,” SBCC is home to men serving multiple and consecutive first and second degree life sentences for murdering cellmates and other inmates prior to being transferred to that facility. There are also men there who are still awaiting trial dates and have yet to be convicted of a crime, men serving county jail sentences who should be in a House of Detention, and men whose point-based score is so low the belong in medium and even minimum security. Which was another serious issue addressed by the Harshbarger Commission following the murder of defrocked and overclassifed priest, John Geoghan.

The Boston Globe reported in a May 2, 2007 edition that State Legislators were seeking assurances from prison officials that they were taking greater precautions with mentally ill prisoners to prevent further suicides. One proposed solution is more funding for better training of guards, including a new protocol to check on potentially suicidal prisoners, and inmates in the SMU every 15 minutes instead of every half hour.

The reason this “band-aid” approach will fail is because guards and prison officials can’t be trained to care and have compassion for other human beings.

In his capacity as a lieutenant at MCI Concord, now Deputy Superintendent of Operations at SBCC, Bruce Gelb, placed human feces in a box and offered it to a mentally handicapped inmate who was constantly missing his door for lock-in. He told the inmate that it was a box of donuts.

In May 2008, a county jail inmate Sage Edenjacques, who had been in the SMU at SBCC for several months told a c.o. on the tier, “I’m sick of this @#$%, and I’m tired of waiting on you mother%$&@*%s! I’m gonna hang it up! The guard responded, “I’ll get you a rope.” The prisoner replied, “I’m not f’n with you! I’ve got a razor in my mouth.” The c.o. was saying “Yeah, yeah, yeah, as he walked off the tier. He never returned to check on the inmate. And fortunately, the prisoner, who was in the cell next to me did not attempt to hurt himself.

Even though additional funding had been approved to implement even stricter measures for guards to follow, as of June 2008, security rounds were still being conducted every half hour in the SMU. But instead of pretending to be able to curb suicides by making rounds more frequently in the segregation unit, in the interest of common sense, why not change the oppressive and punitive conditions that are causing feelings of hopelessness, despair and anger? Because if and when a prisoner has made up his mid to take his own life, the only thing a guard can do is cut him down after he’s hung himself.

The critical issue at stake is there are human beings locked away in these so-called “correctional” facilities, and they’re dying on an unprecedented scale. And those that aren’t killing themselves are returning to the community at a rate of 20,000 per year. How they return is determined by the way they’re treated while they are incarcerated.

State Legislators and concerned constituents have argued for decades for the creation of a citizen’s advisory and oversight committee to monitor the DOC’s treatment of prisoners, and its policies. And while administrators and guards promise transparency and claim to be the epitome of all that is honorable, professional and committed to positive change, they have continued to fight aggressively against the proposal. So why are they trying so hard to conceal what’s really going on inside Massachusetts prisons? For one reason, offenders are coming out of prison much worse than when they went in. So, of course, officials don’t want anyone to know that MA prisons only make offenders more violent.

The bottom line is that the citizens of the Commonwealth are paying with their taxes for every facet of the prison industry, from the construction of each cell to the wages of employees, and have every right to see for themselves how their billions are being spent. But because prison officials have been allowed to subvert rules and regulations, cut corners and abuse the mentally ill for so long, some members of the community are also paying with their lives, their property and their peace of mind as released offenders take out their rage and frustration on an unsuspecting society.

This agency that has the audacity to refer to itself as a Department of “Correction” has been creating any angry and violent underclass unabated for decades and releasing them directly to the community from maximum security. No one is asking to be coddled. But the DOC and prison officials must be held to the same degree of accountability as offenders. And until a citizens advisory & oversight panel is established to hold administrators responsible for their counterproductive and dangerous policies, both the prisons and the community will remain unsafe as society and the mentally ill continue to pay the toll.

Post Script

The Catastrophic Failure of Corrections was written in an effort to educate legislators, the media and the concerned citizens of the Commonwealth about the Massachusetts prison system. It is the hope of all prisoners that someone in a position of leadership will have the courage and the integrity to take a close look at SBCC and the officials in charge there, do the right thing and make the necessary changes.

Superintendent Thomas Dickhaut, the Deputies Anthony Mendonsa and Bruce Gelb are in a position of authority at SBCC, with the ability and the means to improve the quality of life of offenders and make it possible for them to become a responsible and productive asset to their communities following release. Instead, they have chosen to become a sort of infectious disease, intentionally inflicting emotional and psychological harm, and then sending into the community an angry and potentially dangerous ticking time bomb.

Commissioner Harold Clarke claimed that he wanted to be out front inside prisons, out front in the community, and he wanted to monitor the relationship between staff and offenders. Mr. Clarke has visited SBCC but has never spoken to a single inmate. Instead, officials there work round the clock prior to his arrival waxing floors and painting walls. So it appears that the Commissioners’ main concern is how shiny everything is, rather than the issue of suicides and the atmosphere at that facility.

Until the concerned citizens affected by crime demand accountability for the rogue officials, and until Commissioner Clarke actually makes public safety, and reentry & reintegration a priority, instead of a lot of hot air, people in prison and out in society will continue to die. And “corrections” will continue to be a catastrophic failure.

Copies of this article have been sent to various newspapers and publications, State Representatives, Legislators, Prison Officials, members of the Public Safety Committee, the Governor, Attorneys and concerned constituents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

John Feroli is currently being housed at the Old Colony prison in Bridgewater, MA.

Posted by lois at 05:46 PM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2008

FL: Juvenile justice: Don't ignore girls

The Florida Times-Union
October 4, 2008
Juvenile justice: Don't ignore girls

Lock 'em up.
That's the approach Florida has been taking to an extreme in recent years.

This expensive approach to justice has been so overused that prisons now are providing much of the mental health treatment in the state.

Juvenile justice is overlooking smart treatment that is less expensive and more effective than prison-style treatment facilities, the Blueprint Commission on Juvenile Justice reported several months ago.

So it's no surprise that girls are caught in the same backward dynamic.

Overly harsh

Too many girls with minor infractions are being referred to programs for serious offenders, reports the Children's Campaign, an impressive collaboration of the Women's Giving Alliance, the Jacksonville Community Foundation and the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, among others.

This hard approach away from rehabilitation to a more punitive approach began in 1999, reported the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in a report titled "Educate or Incarcerate," which focused on girls in Duval County. It was funded by the Jessie Ball duPont Fund.

This approach resulted in the tragic case of the Florida Institute for Girls, a maximum security prison, which was closed in 2005 after a grand jury found evidence of abuse and victimization of the girls.

The result of the hard-edged approach is twofold:

1. Too many girls are not receiving the help they need.

2. When they do get help, it is much more expensive than necessary.

The Children's Campaign is trying to target more effective treatment.

"The philosophy of the Children's Campaign is that local communities are best suited to develop and implement local solutions based on their unique and personal perspectives," the campaign reported in a press release.

Duval County needs to be the center of such studies for good reasons. This county leads the state in the number of girls admitted for misdemeanors and non-law violations, though Duval is far from the most populous county in the state.

Statewide, over half of the girls admitted to residential programs had committed minor offenses such as disobeying a court order, reported the Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability in 2006.

And girls are more likely to be admitted for less serious offenses than boys.

Too little treatment

The admissions often are made because the facilities have the only treatment programs.

"The Legislature could achieve savings by reducing beds in residential delinquency programs and creating community treatment programs for at-risk girls," the accountability office reported.

The state office proposed that community-based programs with records of success would cost less than placing girls in facilities.

Lawanda Ravoira, former president of the PACE Center for Girls, is director of the Children's Campaign's Justice for Girls: Duval County Initiative. This project is designed to promote more effective treatment of girls in the juvenile justice system.

Better models

One role model comes from PACE, with its amazing record of success; about 90 percent of its graduates stay free of the justice system.

The Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability proposed eliminating 50 beds in girls' facilities and replacing them with community programs that have shown success.

That makes sense. The wonder is that this more cost-effective approach takes so long to implement throughout the juvenile justice system.

Girls have special treatment needs. Roughly two-thirds of girls in commitment programs have experienced abuse or neglect, the state reported. Over 90 percent have mental health problems.

There is hope, however. A group of 319 girls who participated in the 2006 National Council on Crime and Delinquency study showed resiliency. Many did well in school, staying drug-free and having a positive self-image.

These girls often need mental health and substance abuse treatment, family-focused services, specialized medical care, educational and job placement help, and transitional placement.

As a society, we have taken imprisonment to the extreme, resulting in too much cost and too little effectiveness.

"A major issue is the fact that every year the Legislature increases the budget for adult corrections and the budget for juvenile justice from the inception has been woefully inadequate," Ravoira said in an e-mail.

"Public safety should start with kids, and we need a Legislature that will invest in juvenile justice at the same parity/level that we invest in adult prisons."

The Children's Campaign is on the right track and deserves wide support. preventive spending Floridians are willing to spend money on crime prevention programs.
A scientific poll conducted in 2005 for the Children's Campaign and the Eckerd Family Foundation produced these key results: - 60 percent of Floridians believe first in prevention and rehabilitation to fight juvenile crime.
- 81 percent believe in early intervention with juveniles with behavioral or mental problems.
- 91 percent believe we would have fewer adult criminals if we did a better job helping juveniles in trouble.
- 76 percent believe in specially targeted programs for young women in trouble.
Source: Barcelo & Co. Telephone survey in 2005 of registered active voters. Margin of error is plus or minus 3.5 percent. Lockups Girls' admissions to juvenile facilities for minor infractions: Duval: 61 Hillsborough: 48 Pinellas: 47 Palm Beach: 40 Miami-Dade: 48 Source: 2006 report from the Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability

This story can be found on Jacksonville.com at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/100408/opi_339977858.shtml.

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

VA: Southampton Correctional Center to close and be demolished

Prison to close--State will lay off 116 employees, transfer inmates, tear down facility
By Jena Passut | Tidewater News

Published Friday, October 10, 2008

CAPRON—The Southampton Correctional Center, a medium-security prison near Capron, will be closed and demolished, and 116 employees will lose their jobs, according to a budget plan announced by Gov. Timothy Kaine on Thursday.

The prison closing is just part of a detailed plan announced by the governor to address a $973 million revenue shortfall for the current fiscal year. A total of 570 jobs will be cut across state government, 800 unfilled positions will be eliminated, hiring freezes will be continued, and employee raises will be postponed.

The 116 layoffs in the governor’s plan represent the largest proposed reduction of employees in the Department of Corrections.

“I know that the layoffs associated with the cuts come at a challenging time for state employees, and I regret that they are necessary,” Gov. Kaine said in a press release. “I have instructed the Virginia Employment Commission and our Human Resources Department to help those state employees who are laid off through this difficult transition.”

Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said the Southampton Correctional Center would be closed by Jan. 25.

The prison, located northwest of Capron at the intersection of Three Creeks Road and Old Belfield Road, currently holds about 650 inmates. Under the governor’s plan, those inmates will be transferred to other correctional facilities in the state.

The state will also use inmates to strip the old prison buildings before they are demolished.

The announcement came as a surprise to local officials. Capron had made efforts to forestall the prison’s closure only a few years ago.

“The town council had sent a letter to them at one point when they were thinking of closing (the prison) before,” said Dianna Sexton, the town clerk. “I think it helped a little bit to keep it there. We had no warning this time.”

County officials were also stunned by the news.

“Certainly it was a surprise,” said Jay Randolph, assistant administrator for Southampton. “We were aware that the state was looking at making some cuts to close the budget gap. We were certainly not aware that any of our local facilities might be affected. We were not expecting one of our major employers would be closed.”

The prison was the fourth-largest employer in Southampton in 2007, according to data supplied by the county. It was the fifth-largest employer in the area when combined with the city of Franklin.

Traylor said the prison currently has 359 employees. He emphasized that despite the layoffs, some workers would be transferred to other jobs in the prison system.

“We are going to try and put a lot of those employees in other open positions,” he said.

Three other prisons in the immediate area — Deerfield Correctional Center, Southampton Work Center for Men, and Southampton Pre-Release and Work Center for Women — are not affected by the budget cuts, Traylor said.

The state plans to continue its agribusiness activities at the site of Southampton Correctional Center with inmates from the other prisons, according to the governor’s plan. Also, the power plant will be kept operational, and some maintenance and support staff will be retained.

According to Traylor, the age of the prison was a factor in the governor’s decision to close and demolish it. The oldest building at the site was built in 1938.

“It’s old,” said Cathy Pope, one of the owners of Pope’s Slip-In in Capron. “We knew they were going to have to do something to it. Once something gets a certain age, it’s cheaper and more cost effective to just do away with it and build another one.

“But it’s just the way that they all of a sudden just brought it on everybody,” Pope said. “We’ve got a lot of friends (working) over there. They didn’t give them any warning, even the warden.”

Warden James V. Beale declined to comment on the governor’s plan.

The state intends to one day build a new prison at the site “when the prison population increases sufficiently to warrant an additional prison,” according to the governor’s plan.

But that announcement was met with some skepticism.

“The confidence level in the state’s construction programs is not real high,” Randolph said. “It’s a nice gesture. I’ll be a little more comfortable at the ribbon-cutting.”
http://www.tidewaternews.com/news/2008/oct/10/prison-close/?print

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

October 09, 2008

WI: Jail expansion not as urgent

Jail expansion not as urgent
By Cheryl Scott
Daily News staff writer
Published: Wednesday, October 8, 2008 11:27 AM CDT
Alternative programs, rough economy make waiting a better idea

JANESVILLE - Rock County Sheriff Robert Spoden has delayed plans for a jail expansion because alternative programs have reduced the number of inmates and because a costly project would burden taxpayers too much during tough economic times.

Instead of a one-time expansion, the county will spend $42,500 to study a phased construction approach, which should be presented by the end of the year, Spoden said. When The Samuels Group of Wausau, Wis., finishes a phasing plan, the county board can decide whether to undertake any construction.

The areas of the jail that would be addressed in phases include the kitchen, medical area, booking and storage; the housing tower; and sheriff's administrative area, Spoden said.

Jail expansion studies have been done for the last 10 years, but Spoden said the phased construction study is necessary because alternatives to incarceration weren't factored into the other studies.

The average jail population was 588 in 2006 and 581 in 2007, when talks of a jail expansion were common, Spoden said. This year, the jail population has ranged from 480-520 per day so far. The rated capacity of the jail is 477, but there are 525 beds for inmates, Spoden said.

With alternatives to incarceration - the Electronic Monitoring Program, the Workender Program/Workender Midweek Program and Community RECAP (Rock County Education and Criminal Addictions Program) - the county has been able to reduce the number of inmates in jail, Spoden said.

“It takes off the pressure of needing to build sooner rather than later,” Spoden said.

Rock County used to ship 90 inmates a day to other jails at the cost of $52-$55 per inmate per day, due to overcrowding, Spoden said. Yet since June, the county hasn't been sending its inmates to other jails, and Spoden has not requested money in the 2009 budget to pay for shipping inmates out of Rock County.

Besides alternative programs, the economy in Rock County also played a factor in Spoden's decision to hold off on a jail expansion project.

With the GM assembly plant in Janesville closing, record foreclosures and difficult economic times, Spoden said he did not want to embark on a costly project.

“For me to ignore that (bad economy) and continue to ask the taxpayers to spend millions of dollars � I didn't think it was responsible, not only as an elected official, but also as a citizen,” Spoden said, adding he knows people who have lost their jobs and fallen on tough times.

Predicting trends in the jail population is difficult, but Spoden said he thinks the county can hold off the jail expansion because alternative programs can address many of the crimes that might be committed. In the past when the county faced tough economic times and a high unemployment rate, more crimes occurred that involved petty theft, alcohol or domestic situations, Spoden said.

Even though the jail project will be on hold now, Spoden said eventually the county would need to renovate parts of the jail. The infrastructure is more than 20 years old, but now may not be the right time for an expensive project.

Spoden said, “I can't reiterate enough that there have to be some responsibilities as an elected official to take into account the current economic conditions in Rock County.”

By the numbers

Jail

520 - inmates in jail on Monday, which Spoden said was slightly higher than average because of weekend arrests

525 - total number of beds in jail

477 - rated capacity of the Rock County Jail

$64/day - cost to house each inmate at the Rock County Jail

$52-$55/day - cost to house additional inmates outside of the county, which has not been done since June

Alternative programs
85 - on the electronic monitoring bracelet

40 - in Workender program

62 - Community RECAP (Rock County Education and Criminal Addictions Program)

187 - total number of inmates diverted into alternative programs at the moment

Source: Rock County

Sheriff Robert Spoden

http://www.beloitdailynews.com/articles/2008/10/08/news/local_news/news04.prt
Copyright © 2008 - Beloit Daily News

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

Curbing the Right to Vote

October 9, 2008
States’ Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal
By IAN URBINA
NY Times
Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.

Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.

Some states allow such voters to cast provisional ballots. But they are often not counted because they require added verification.

Although much attention this year has been focused on the millions of new voters being added to the rolls by the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, there has been far less notice given to the number of voters being dropped from those same rolls.

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and remove the names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters.

In addition to the six swing states, three more states appear to be violating federal law. Alabama and Georgia seem to be improperly using Social Security information to screen registration applications from new voters. And Louisiana appears to have removed thousands of voters after the federal deadline for taking such action.

Under federal law, election officials are supposed to use the Social Security database to check a registration application only as a last resort, if no record of the applicant is found on state databases, like those for driver’s licenses or identification cards.

The requirement exists because using the federal database is less reliable than the state lists, and is more likely to incorrectly flag applications as invalid. Many state officials seem to be using the Social Security lists first.

In the year ending Sept. 30, election officials in Nevada, for example, used the Social Security database more than 740,000 times to check voter files or registration applications and found more than 715,000 nonmatches, federal records show. Election officials in Georgia ran more than 1.9 million checks on voter files or voter registration applications and found more than 260,000 nonmatches.

Officials of the Social Security Administration, presented with those numbers, said they were far too high to be cases where names were not in state databases. They said the data seem to represent a violation of federal law and the contract the states signed with the agency to use the database.

Last week, after the inquiry by The Times, Michael J. Astrue, the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, alerted the Justice Department to the problem and sent letters to election officials in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio. The letters ask the officials to ensure that they are complying with federal law.

“It is absolutely essential that people entitled to register to vote are allowed to do so,” Mr. Astrue said in a press release.

In three states — Colorado, Louisiana and Michigan — the number of people purged from the election rolls since Aug. 1 far exceeds the number who may have died or relocated during that period.

States may be improperly removing voters who have moved within the state, election experts said, or who are considered inactive because they have failed to vote in two consecutive federal elections. For example, major voter registration drives have been held this year in Colorado, which has also had a significant population increase since the last presidential election, but the state has recorded a net loss of nearly 100,000 voters from its rolls since 2004.

Asked about the appearance of voter law violations, Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees elections, said they could present “extremely serious problems.”

“The law is pretty clear about how states can use Social Security information to screen registrations and when states can purge their rolls,” Ms. Rodriguez said.

Nevada officials said the large number of Social Security checks had resulted from county clerks entering Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers in the wrong fields before records were sent to the state. They could not estimate how many records might have been affected by the problem, but they said it was corrected several weeks ago.

Other states described similar problems in entering data.

Under the Help America Vote Act, all states were required to build statewide electronic voter registration lists to standardize and centralize voter records that had been kept on the local level. To prevent ineligible voters from casting a ballot, states were also required to clear the electronic lists of duplicates, people who had died or moved out of state, or who had become ineligible for other reasons.

Voting rights groups and federal election officials have raised concerns that the methods used to add or remove names vary by state and are conducted with little oversight or transparency. Many states are purging their lists for the first time and appear to be unfamiliar with the 2002 federal law.

“Just as voting machines were the major issue that came out of the 2000 presidential election and provisional ballots were the big issue from 2004, voter registration and these statewide lists will be the top concern this year,” said Daniel P. Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University.

Voting rights groups have urged voters to check their registrations with local officials.

In Michigan, some 33,000 voters were removed from the rolls in August, a figure that is far higher than the number of deaths in the state during the same period — about 7,100 — or the number of people who moved out of the state — about 4,400, according to data from the Postal Service.

In Colorado, some 37,000 people were removed from the rolls in the three weeks after July 21. During that time, about 5,100 people moved out of the state and about 2,400 died, according to postal data and death records.

In Louisiana, at least 18,000 people were dropped from the rolls in the five weeks after July 23. Over the same period, at least 1,600 people moved out of state and at least 3,300 died.

The secretaries of state in Michigan and Colorado did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Louisiana secretary of state said that about half of the numbers of the voters removed from the rolls were people who moved within the state or who died. The remaining 11,000 or so people seem to have been removed by local officials for other reasons that were not clear, the spokesman said.

The purge estimates were calculated using data from state election officials, who produce a snapshot every month or so of the voter rolls with details about each registered voter on record, making it possible to determine how many have been removed.

The Times’s methodology for calculating the purge estimates was reviewed by two voting experts, Kimball Brace, the director of Election Data Services, a Washington consulting firm that tracks voting trends, and R. Michael Alvarez, a political science professor at the California Institute of Technology.

By using the Social Security database so extensively, states are flagging extra registrations and creating extra work for local officials who are already struggling to process all the registration applications by Election Day.

“I simply don’t have the staff to keep up,” said Ann McFall, the supervisor of elections in Volusia County, Fla.

It takes 10 minutes to process a normal registration and up to a week to deal with a flagged one, said Ms. McFall, a Republican, adding that she was receiving 100 or so flagged registrations a week.

Usually, when state election officials check a registration and find that it does not match a database entry, they alert local election officials to contact the voter and request further proof of identification. If that is not possible, most states flag the voter file and require identification from the voter at the polling place.

In Florida, Iowa, Louisiana and South Dakota, the problem is more serious because voters are not added to the rolls until the states remove the flags.

Ms. McFall said she was angry to learn from the state recently that it was her responsibility to contact each flagged voter to clear up the discrepancies before Election Day. “This situation with voter registrations is going to land us in court,” she said.

In fact, it already has.

In Michigan and Florida, rights groups are suing state officials, accusing them of being too aggressive in purging voter rolls and of preventing people from registering.

In Georgia, the Justice Department is considering legal action against the state because officials in Cobb and Cherokee Counties sent letters to hundreds of voters stating that their voter registrations had been flagged and telling them they cannot vote until they clear up the discrepancy.

On Monday, the Ohio Republican Party filed a motion in federal court against the secretary of state to get the list of all names that have been flagged by the Social Security database since Jan. 1. The motion seeks to require that any voter who does not clear up a discrepancy be required to vote using a provisional ballot.

Republicans said in the motion that it is central to American democracy that nonqualified voters be forbidden from voting.

The Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, said in court papers that she believes the Republicans are seeking grounds to challenge voters and get them removed from the rolls.

Considering that in the past year the state received nearly 290,000 nonmatches, such a plan could have significant impact at the polls.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?ei=5070&pagewanted=print

-----------------------
October 9, 2008
Letter
Protecting Voting Rights
To the Editor:

I applaud your editorial highlighting the potential damage the mounting foreclosure crisis may inflict on the nation’s voting system (“Foreclosures and the Right to Vote,” Oct. 5). Indeed, the cooldown in the housing market puts millions at risk of being frozen out at the polls.

As the editorial notes, voter registration is “based on people’s residences.” But more than 7,000 Americans each day are losing their homes — many in pivotal battleground states. These voters become subject to partisan political challenges and contravention at the polls.

This raises a disturbing specter: could the election turn on the number of eligible voters who are turned away?

So, when a Republican Party county chairman in Michigan pledged to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters, we in Congress went to work. My colleagues and I crafted legislation to prohibit such challenges and uphold voters’ rights.

Despite our attempts, the measure was not included in the multibillion-dollar emergency financial rescue package.

It would be a national scandal if more than a million people who have lost their homes also wound up losing their votes. When Congress resumes work, members from both parties must come together and do more to prevent foreclosures and to protect the franchise.
(Rep.) Jesse L. Jackson Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/opinion/l09foreclosure.html?sq=voting%20and%20foreclosures&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print
Chicago, Oct. 8, 2008
--------------------------------
October 5, 2008
Editorial
Foreclosures and the Right to Vote

The foreclosure crisis could do considerable damage to the nation’s voting system. More than a million people have lost their homes in the past two years. And because voter registration is based on people’s residences, they could face politically motivated challenges at the polls.

The problem may be especially acute in the presidential battleground states. In Ohio, more than 5 percent of home mortgages are seriously delinquent or in the foreclosure process, and there were more than 67,000 foreclosure actions in the first half of 2008. Michigan and Florida have also been hard hit.

There are a large number of advocacy groups and other programs that work to ensure that minorities, the disabled and students are able to cast ballots. Because the foreclosure crisis is so recent, not much work has been done to ensure that people who lose their homes do not also lose their chance to vote.

Many of the hardest-hit neighborhoods are low- income and minority areas, which tend to vote Democratic. That means officials have to be extra vigilant to ensure that Republicans do not use foreclosure lists to challenge voters. There was a dust-up recently in Michigan, after a progressive Web site quoted the Republican chairman of Macomb County as saying that his party planned to do just that. He and the party insist there are no such plans, but the Barack Obama campaign has filed suit to block foreclosure-based challenges.

Whatever happens in Macomb County, where nearly one in every 100 households is in foreclosure, it is likely that in at least some parts of the country there will be challenges to voters who have lost their homes. There is also a real danger that voters who are in foreclosure will be misled or intimidated into not casting ballots.

It is important that state and local elections officials do everything they can to help people caught up in foreclosure to cast ballots. They should make clear that in many circumstances, people in foreclosure still have the right to vote where they have been living. The rules vary by state. They should also widely advertise how people who leave their homes can change their registration, to vote from their new addresses.

Election officials should also ensure that there are enough poll workers to handle the disputes and confusion that could arise — and that they are properly instructed in the law.

Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s secretary of state, is doing a good job. She has sent an advisory out to local boards of election reminding them that the fact that a voter is involved in a foreclosure is not, by itself, sufficient basis for challenging his or her right to vote.

It has been a long time since there were property requirements for voting. Election officials must not impose them now, by disenfranchising people because they have lost, or are losing, their homes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05sun2.html?sq=voting%20and%20foreclosures&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 09:01 PM | Comments (0)

Northern VA-Profit-making venture for huge immigrant "detention center"

Southern Exposure
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
As immigrations sweeps overwhelm detention systems, some private companies look to benefit
This week’s large-scale immigration raid at Columbia Farms, a chicken processing plant near Greenville, S.C, where more than 300 were arrested, is just the latest in a stepped-up federal enforcement effort that has resulted in the deportation of thousands of illegal workers in recent months, reports the L.A. Times.

The disruption to families and communities remains a huge issue. Alternet reports this week that Northern Virginia is one of the places where the immigration debate has been the most heated. With aggressive local policies such as ones requiring law enforcement to inquire about the immigration status of people who are arrested, the Latino population in the city of Manassas and Prince William County has plummeted.

Other deportation problems are on the rise as ICE detention centers are overwhelmed by the large new numbers of illegals being arrested. Immigrants are often detained by ICE for months longer than they should because of a detention and deportation system beset by waste and dysfunction, reports the Washington Post.

According to the Washington Post:

Federal officials regularly misplace files or fail to bring detainees to court hearings, resulting in needless additional jail time at taxpayer expense.

During recent court proceedings before an immigration judge, in more than half the cases the government was missing detainee files, did not know where detainees were being held or failed to bring a detainee to a facility with proper videoconferencing equipment.
...
Legal advocates say the system is rife with errors as it grows more clogged. In records gathered this summer by the District-based CAIR Coalition, which provides legal services to immigrants in Virginia jails, government prosecutors came to court without detainees' files in 60 of 162 cases. In 81 cases, ICE failed to bring the detainee to his or her mandatory court hearing.

Handwritten letters from detainees seeking help from immigrant advocacy groups, obtained by The Washington Post, relate tales of lost and inaccurate records and detainees' inability to get even the simplest information about their case status.
...

For detainees, hiring a lawyer is the best way to avoid falling through the cracks. But for those who cannot afford one, ICE is not obligated to provide legal counsel. With little chance of contacting an ICE case officer, advocates say, detainees are often left in jail for months, awaiting a flight or bus ride to their native countries.

With more sweeps, space is becoming a large issue. The larger detention population may in fact begin to feed the expansion of for-profit detention facilities, much in the same way the jump in the U.S. prison population fed the private-prison boom of the last decade.

The Washington Post reports that ICE officials are now making plans to create the largest immigration detention facility in the mid-Atlantic region in Farmville, Virginia. The $21 million project will also be a profit-making venture for many private individuals who plan to reap massive benefits.

As the Washington Post reported:

The 1,040-bed facility will be unique not only because it will dwarf many of Virginia's jails but also because it is a private venture aimed at capitalizing on the massive influx of detainees into the [ICE] system over the past year. A small group of Richmond investors looks to reap millions of dollars in profit by building what has been described as the "mid-Atlantic hub" for ICE operations in a town just three hours south of the nation's capital.
...
Although ICE has not guaranteed that even a single detainee will be sent to the facility, the investors plan to break ground Oct. 15 and believe they will have the facility filled to 85 percent of capacity a year from now as part of a contract between the town and ICE. There is room to expand the detention center to 2,500 beds.

The facility is being built and run by a private subcontractor, and it will be a huge boon for the private investors, who have secured as part of the ICE contract a rate of almost $63 per detainee per day -- that means that if the estimated 322,000 detainee days are achieved each year, the company could gross $20 million in federal tax dollars annually, according to the Washington Post.

Labels: ICE raids, immigration, virginia
posted by Desiree Evans at 8:38 PM |
http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2008/10/as-immigrations-sweeps-overwh
elm.asp

Posted by lois at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)

OK: Millions more sought for prison system

Millions more sought for prison system
By TOM LINDLEY World Capitol Bureau
10/9/2008
The proposed $591 million budget includes increases for operations and construction.

OKLAHOMA CITY — A new budget proposal approved Wednesday by the Oklahoma Board of Corrections calls for $88 million more in operating funds and more than $318 million in new construction in fiscal year 2010.

As part of its $591 million budget request, the Corrections Department wants more money to:

Pay for a projected 2.5 percent increase in the prison population next year, most of which is linked to the Legislature's "85 percent" sentencing laws.

Put employee wages in line with those of contiguous states with a $36 million compensation package.

Update the aging prison system, including $184 million for more than 1,500 new maximum-security beds at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

The department budgeted an additional $6.1 million for inmate population growth, $9.6 million in security improvements, $7.6 million in mandatory costs, $7.1 million in operating equipment and $2.8 million in treatment programs.

Director Justin Jones said the budget proposal that will go before the Legislature next year includes recommendations from a performance audit authorized last year by
lawmakers.

With a drop in prison receptions, Jones said, the overall prison population would be in decline if not for the rule requiring a large number of inmates to serve at least 85 percent of their prison sentences.

"We have enhanced punishment, so people are staying longer," he said.

The system also is experiencing an influx of women and Hispanics, he said.

At the current rate, the number of female inmates is expected to increase by 11 percent by 2013. Oklahoma already has the highest incarceration rate of females in the country, the latest Bureau of Justice statistics show.

Jones said the number of Hispanics incarcerated has increased by 45 percent to 1,700 since 2005 and that the growth rate is expected to increase by 86 percent by 2013.

Although the department has experienced some recent hiring success, Jones said, the average pay for correction officers in state-operated facilities is $400 a month less than in surrounding states.

The new budget also anticipates 84 percent staffing, compared with 81 percent in the current budget.

Although the need for millions of dollars to fund new construction has become a routine budget request item in recent years, its urgency was highlighted in the recent review of the Corrections Department.

Jones said there is a need to replace practically everything inside OSP's walls and to add more than 1,200 medium-security beds and 900 minimum-security beds.

Commission members also were told Wednesday that the department is on track to experience a $9 million deficit in the current fiscal year. But Jones cautioned that it is still early in the fiscal year and that department officials expect that it will make up the deficit.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=20081009_16_A4_Tepooe7
05519

Posted by lois at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)

October 08, 2008

MA: Double bunking expected at prison. Shirley prisoners stage protest

Double bunking expected at prison
Shirley prisoners stage protest
Boston Globe
By Julie Masis, Globe Correspondent | October 7, 2008
Many inmates at the maximum security prison in Shirley may soon have to double up in their cells, under a plan by the state Department of Correction to contend with the highest inmate count in 20 years.

Department spokeswoman Diane Wiffin confirmed that the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center would become the only maximum security facility in the state to have double-bunking, but she would not specify how many beds are being added or when inmates will be moved in together.

Steve Kenneway, president of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, said the corrections commissioner told him that the agency is installing 500 beds. That would increase the inmate count by 40 percent to 50 percent.

Inmates at the Shirley prison, who sometimes spend more than 20 hours a day in their cells, protested the installation of additional beds last week. On Sept. 29, a group of about 50 prisoners took over the dining hall from 6 to 9:30 p.m., ripping a door off at least one refrigeration unit and turning broomsticks and mop handles into weapons, Kenneway said. According to the Department of Correction, no one was injured in the incident.

"What we witnessed there was a peaceful demonstration, a sit-in if you will," Kenneway said. "I don't think we'll be as lucky next time."

Leslie Walker, executive director of the not-for-profit Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said her office received dozens of letters and phone calls from prisoners threatening to protest double bunking. (She could not share the prisoners' letters with the newspaper without their permission.)

"That type of confinement is difficult on anyone, but it's especially difficult if you have two people in a small cell," she said. "There are people who have had single cells for 20 and 30 years, and they are not looking forward to sharing a very small space."

Across the country, double-celling has been allowed since 1981, when the US Supreme Court ruled that state prisons can house two inmates in a cell designed for one.

Still, Kenneway argues that putting two Souza-Baranowski prisoners, including murderers, mass murderers, child murderers, rapists, and pedophiles, into the same cell will lead to an increase in violence.

"There are some inmates out there who are going to make a choice whether to accept a roommate or kill their roommate. That's not an exaggeration," he said. "There are going to be not just fights and stabbings; there may be murders."

This is a fear that has come up in inmates' letters, Walker said.
"There are many prisoners at Souza-Baranowski who are mentally ill - who are not violent but vulnerable - and they are terrified of the potential for violence this will create," she said.

Double-bunking at maximum security facilities is done in many other states and by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
In New York, 5,233 inmates, or about 20 percent of all maximum security prisoners, are sharing a cell, said Linda Foglia, a spokeswoman for the New York Department of Correctional Services. Connecticut has double-celled inmates at maximum security prisons for as long as the prison system existed, according to Andrius Banevicius, a spokesman for that state's Department of Correction.

In California, some inmates in maximum security prisons are double-celled, although not those on death row, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

"There have been instances where two cellmates got into fights and unfortunately we had some in-cell homicides as well," she said.

"You just have to be very careful about which two inmates you put in a cell."
MCI-Cedar Junction, a maximum security prison in South Walpole, installed bunk beds in the early 1990s, but never implemented double-celling because the Correction Officers Union challenged the plan, Kenneway said. Now some Cedar Junction inmates are being told by prison staff that they will be moved to Souza-Baranowski once double bunks are in place there, according to Walker.

The correction officers union is negotiating with the prison's management on double-bunking at the Souza-Baranowski facility. Kenneway says staffing might become an issue because double bunking would "double the workload for every correctional officer," but he said the department also needs to figure out how to take care of the additional prisoners.

"How are you going to feed this many more inmates? How are you going to provide recreation and showers?" he asked. "They have no answers."

The next meeting between the Department of Correction and the correction officers union is scheduled for Thursday, Wiffin said.

Posted by lois at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

MA: Town scrambles as 70 inmates register to vote

Town scrambles as 70 inmates register to vote
Civilly committed act on court ruling
Boston Globe

By Christine Legere, Globe Correspondent | October 1, 2008

BRIDGEWATER - More than 70 sex offenders and substance abusers from the local correctional facility have registered to vote here next month, following a recent court ruling that civilly committed prisoners are eligible to participate in elections.

The decision, which affects inmates who have finished their prison terms but remain committed for other reasons, has officials scrambling in this college town that hosts a psychiatric hospital, substance abuse center, and prison all under the authority of the state Department of Correction.

The Superior Court ruling stemmed from a case filed in 2004 by inmate William Stevens, who was civilly committed to the Massachusetts Treatment Center in Bridgewater because he was considered sexually dangerous. Stevens argued that Bridgewater Town Clerk Ronald Adams acted improperly in denying him the right to vote in the town because of his status as a prisoner.

Adams had also argued Stevens could not claim Bridgewater as the place where he lived simply because he was being held by the Department of Corrections in a Bridgewater facility. "He doesn't own a home here or rent here, pay taxes here, or have a car," Adams said. "All the things that usually define 'domicile.' "

Under state law, felons cannot participate in elections while in prison. But Superior Court Justice Richard Connon argued that the ban does not apply to civilly committed inmates, who have officially completed their criminal sentences but remain incarcerated because they have been deemed dangerous either to themselves or society.

In an August ruling, Connon said Stevens should not only be allowed to vote, but could also register as a Bridgewater resident because he didn't appear to have a strong tie to any other place.

Adams did not take any immediate action when the court decision arrived, but instead waited to see whether Stevens would follow through. Stevens did, and was followed by more than 70 inmates, who in the last two weeks have forwarded their voter registration cards to Adams, listing Administration Road in Bridgewater as their place of residence - the address of the prison facilities.

Adams has sent all of their names to the Department of Correction's central records office in Concord to determine whether each is still a prisoner or civilly committed. "Some of them, but not all, will qualify to vote," Adams said yesterday. "If they're not felons, the records division will tell us they're free and clear."

Corrections spokeswoman Diane Wiffin confirmed yesterday that Concord officials are working on Adams's list.

"All the Department of Correction will do is verify the status of the inmates," Wiffin said. "Then it will be up to the town clerk to decide who votes," based on whether they are eligible to claim residency in Bridgewater.

Assistant Town Clerk Jolie Martin said her office has never faced this problem.

"Before, I guess they just sent requests to their hometowns for absentee ballots," Martin said.

Selectmen Chairman Herbert Lemon said his board was asked by Adams to discuss the issue during last night's meeting. But he and Adams decided legal clarifications should be obtained prior to any public discussion.

"I wasn't even aware this was going on," Lemon said yesterday. "We have to find out how many this applies to, where they are going to vote, and what it's going to cost the town."

Asked his opinion on the developing situation, Lemon said: "It doesn't matter what I think about it, if that's what the court ruled."

"The time and effort involved in this, with the staff I have, is unbelievable," Adams complained, adding that prisoners number in the thousands. "But I will abide by what the court ruled."

Christine Legere can be reached at christinelegere@yahoo.com
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/10/01/town_scrambles_as_70_inmates_register_to_vote/

Posted by lois at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2008

CA: Justice issues collide on ballot

Justice issues collide on ballot
By Andy Furillo
Monday, October 6, 2008
Sacramento Bee

Law and order activists, critics of California's drug laws and victims rights groups independently have loaded three separate crime measures onto the Nov. 4 ballot, and they're not making it easy for state voters to sort them out.

Together, Propositions 5, 6 and 9 cover 115 pages, would change scores of laws and would affect billions of dollars in state spending.

"My mom asked me if I have positions on all of them, and I told her I'm still working on it," said Assembly Public Safety Committee chairman Jose Solorio, D-Santa Ana, who presided over nine hours of hearings on the measures. "There's a lot to digest."

On Nov. 4, voters will decide whether to drastically change the way the state prosecutes drug addicts and the lower-level property crimes they commit, to the tune of diverting an estimated 18,000 offenders from prison into treatment programs. That's the basic thrust of Proposition 5.

They're also being asked to give local law enforcement more money, protect what funds they already get, and toughen laws aimed at street gang members, methamphetamine cookers and serious ex-cons who possess guns in public. Those are the basics of Proposition 6.

The third measure seeks to put victims at or near the center of the entire criminal justice process and give them a constitutional right to participate in plea bargaining and parole decisions. It also wants to make life-term inmates wait 15 years between parole hearings, stop early inmate releases and have counties build tent jails to handle inmate overflow. That's Proposition 9.

"The skies are getting crowded," UC Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring said of the air traffic over the criminal justice system. "It's become a two-sided process, with the left using it as well as the right."

Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, whose office opposes Propositions 5 and 9 and has deep reservations about Proposition 6, said the ballot campaigns represent criminal justice policy-making at its worst.

"It only takes $2 million or $3 million to put any nice-sounding piece of junk into the constitution," Cooley said.

Big money is behind all three initiatives.

Billionaire financier George Soros contributed $1.4 million and three other out-of-state businessmen put in $2.6 million for Proposition 5. Soros and friends financed the Proposition 36 drug treatment initiative to victory in 2000.

Orange County high-tech tycoon Henry T. Nicholas III – now fighting a federal stock fraud, drug and prostitution indictment – gave $5.85 million to Propositions 6 and 9. His cash helped kill a ballot measure to overturn key provisions of California's "three-strikes" law in 2004.

At Solorio's hearings last month, police management and labor groups, prosecutors (minus Cooley) and crime victims led the fight for 6 and 9. Their opponents included criminal defense lawyers, teachers unions and civil rights activits. Proposition 5 had Soros' National Drug Policy Alliance, public defenders and drug treatment providers lined up against police and prosecutors (this time, with Cooley on their side).

The initiatives have reached the ballot as crime in California has descended to its lowest level in decades. Last year, violent crime, including the murder rate, had dropped to less than half its 1992 level. Property crime fell 44 percent in the same 15-year period.

Meanwhile, the state's prison population has more or less stabilized at just above the 170,000 mark. The system now houses a rising number of violent felons (52 percent, compared with 45 percent eight years ago) and a lower rate of drug offenders (20 percent, compared with 28 percent in 2000), according to California corrections statistics.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers also have prodded prison officials last year to do a better job of rehabilitating offenders. Their Assembly Bill 900 plan last year allocated billions in bond money to build more prison space tied to improved rehab programs. Partisan politics since have snagged its but prison officials still think the AB 900 plan will work.

Competing sides in the debate about California crime mostly see problems that only their measures can fix.

Proposition 5 supporters cite prisons crammed to twice their designed capacity, rising corrections budgets that now make up 10 percent of state general fund spending and nation-worst 70 percent recidivism rates.

Advocates for Propositions 6 and 9 worry about 420,000 street gang members in the state and constitutional protections that favor perpetrators more than their prey.

Emotions are running high.

At Solorio's hearings, Oakland attorney Keith Wattley, an opponent of the victims' rights measure, called Proposition 9 a "revenge initiative."

The statement outraged the measure's supporters.

"This is not a revenge initiative at all," said Harriet Salarno, president of Crime Victims United of California. "All we're asking for is the same rights. They (the convicted) have that right in the constitution. Why can't we have that right? Equal justice, that's as simple as it could be."

L.A.'s Cooley said Proposition 5, the drug initiative, was "vague" and filled with 60 pages of "minutiae that is incomprehensible."

Initiative spokesman Daniel Abrahamson said Proposition 5 needs to be long and complicated to "unravel" the state's heavy-handed approach to criminal justice.

"It's a complicated mess that requires nuanced responses," Abrahamson said.

Opponents of Proposition 6 questioned why the state needs it when crime has plummeted, but the initiative's point man, state Sen. George Runner, R-Lancaster, disregarded the overall statistics.

"Just listen to the victims," he said, referring to parents of murdered children who testified at the hearing. "Tell the victim, tell the mother of a child that's been shot, that crime's down."

In an interview after the nine hours of hearings, Solorio described the measures as containing "a kitchen sink of policy ideas and new programs that cost the taxpayer money."

He said there has to be a better way to set criminal justice policy.

"If there's a way to simplify them, that might be a good idea," Solorio said of the initiatives. "I hope the voters figure out what they all mean."
http://www.sacbee.com/111/v-print/story/1290837.html

Posted by lois at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)

October 04, 2008

Des Moines Register: Voters, demand change in sentencing laws

Guest column: Voters, demand change in sentencing laws
Des Moines Register
FRAN and RAY KOONTZ live in Des Moines. Their son, John, is serving his 12th year in prison on drug and weapons charges. Contact: October 4, 2008

When Americans go to the polls this November, they will elect state and federal representatives ultimately responsible for what's become a travesty of justice and a waste of taxpayer money: the long sentences being served by nonviolent offenders, especially in federal prisons.

In Iowa, we'll decide whether our current representatives in the U.S. House and one of our senators, Tom Harkin, deserve to continue in office. They do not, unless they pledge to follow their constituents' wishes and change unjust sentencing laws.

Nationally, we imprison 2.3 million of our sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. That's more per capita than any other country in the world, including Russia and China - hardly something to be proud of. Prison-building is one of America's fastest-growing industries. And in both state and federal prisons, up to 80 percent of those incarcerated are nonviolent offenders, primarily addicts who used an illegal drug. Many of them started the path that led them to prison as alcoholics and drunken drivers, mostly hurting only themselves and those who love them.

Most politicians who are supposed to represent our wishes in powerful seats of government have run on platforms of being "tough on drugs." They've voted for mandatory minimum sentences for illegal drug use, imposing long sentences for those whose main crime is that they're addicted and ill.

As the mother and father of a son now in federal prison, we and other relatives of drug offenders nationwide watched in horror as their lives plummeted downward in an ever-speeding spiral of despair and defeat. We begged for long-term treatment instead of prison.

Addicts need training in behavior modification, life skills and marketable career skills so they can work in jobs away from industries where a beer after work is "just the thing we do." But our begging has fallen on deaf ears.

In the mid-1980s, Congress removed parole from the federal prison system. According to then-Rep. Berkley Bedell of Iowa, the provision was tucked in a large bill, and many members of Congress didn't even know what they were approving. The result is that federal prisoners must serve 85 percent of their sentences. In the case of someone convicted of drug charges, the mandatory minimum sentence is often far longer than the sentence for a pedophile.

We've heard from an inmate at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth who's serving a life sentence for using an illegal drug. Not dealing, using.

These long terms of imprisonment come at incalculable cost to families and to taxpayers. Keeping a prisoner in a state prison in Iowa costs about $26,000 a year. The cost for federal prisoners is about $40,000. Multiply that by 2.3 million prisoners (more than $60 billion), and ask yourselves about other uses: How many children could we give the best education in the world? How much health care could we provide to the 46 million without insurance? How many bridges, roads, parks and playgrounds could we build?

If not for compassion, then at least for cost-effectiveness, we must demand a change. As candidates ask for our votes, we must remind them that we're their constituents, we have loved ones in prison, we care about how our tax dollars are spent, and we vote.

In this election cycle, call or write candidates and your elected representatives and demand that their first act in office be to restore parole in the federal prison system; institute treatment instead of incarceration (costs are about 10 percent of prison costs); and treat and train prisoners for life and jobs, rather than warehousing them. Return those we love who have served too long already to our homes and arms.

We write not just for our family but for all families across Iowa and the nation who scrape together the money as often as they can to trek to far-flung prisons to see their loved ones. We've watched small children run to their daddy's arms, then weep when they're pulled away for the long drive home. Those prisoners could be working, supporting their families and raising their children.

This election, insist that candidates pledge to stop this insanity.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20081004/OPINION01/810040316/-1/NEWS04

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

Justice Policy Institute Report: Moving Target: A Decade of Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex

The Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released a new report this week examining the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)--the relationship between government and private interests that use imprisonment, policing, and surveillance as a solution to social, political, and economic problems. Moving Target: A Decade of Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex, examines the progress of reform 10 years after Critical Resistance first launched its efforts to dismantle the PIC. The report underscores:

Despite crime rates at 30-year lows, the criminal justice system has under its control more people than ever.

* More than seven million people live their lives under the control of the criminal justice system in the United States.
* More than seven million people live their lives under the control of the criminal justice system in the United States.
* Spending on the criminal justice system, including police, corrections, the judiciary, has increased 64 percent between 1996 and 2005 to a total of $213 billion.
* The prison system disproportionately impacts communities of color. African Americans and Hispanics make up one third of the U.S. population but makeup 61 percent of the imprisoned population.
* Incarceration rates continue to increase whether crime rates are up or down.

Economic incentives encourage the growth of prisons and support increased surveillance, arrests, and imprisonment.

* Private Prisons: Corrections Corporation of America's stock price has been steadily rising. CCA recently posted a $35 million profit in the last quarter of 2007, up from $32 million in the same period in 2006.
* Prison Industries: Federal Prison Industries, a corporation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, has an online catalogue of merchandise for purchase by other federal agencies, including office furniture and clothing. State prison industries employed 56,000 people in prison in 1999 and, according to research published in Labor Studies Journal in 2002, generated $3 billion in sales and $67 million in profits for the states.
* Private Industry in Prison: In 1979, Congress established the Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program to authorize private companies to employ people who are held behind bars and to execute contracts. Companies frequently pay people in prison below minimum wage for these "low-skilled" jobs and prisons garnish their wages further by charging for room and board. This process ensures that resources are pumped back into prisons and that individuals see little of their earnings.
* Industry for Surrounding Communities: Although public officials will often claim that prisons will bring jobs to rural or economically depressed areas, actually there is often little or no economic improvement or revitalization of the community.

Investments in policing and surveillance have increased, thereby widening the gateway to the criminal justice system.

* Although local police still receive the majority of funding, increases at the federal level are the most dramatic. Between 1982 and 2005, federal expenditures on police protection have increased 945.1 percent, from $2.15 billion in 1982 to $22.5 billion in 2005.
* Law enforcement agencies have significantly increased their surveillance capacity and presence in certain areas: in just three years the number of police departments using video cameras increased 15 percentage points. In 2000, 45 percent of local police departments regularly used video cameras. By 2003, 60 percent regularly operated video cameras, and an estimated 48,800 in-car cameras were in use.
* Cop-watching groups are increasing and becoming more organized in cities across the counties as a way to monitor police behaviors.
* Specialized police, particularly in schools, has also increased dramatically. In 1999, 54.1 percent of students ages 12 to18 reported the use of security guards and/ or assigned police officers at school, compared to 67.9 percent in 2005.

The prison industrial complex relies on the criminalization of certain actions to thrive.

* Federalization of certain offenses: The U.S. has added one new federal crime to the books every week for the past 7 years. This increase in crimes has directly added to the federal prison system, which has grown at triple the rate of state prison populations.

* War on Drugs: The war on drugs is increasingly waged with paramilitary-style tactics. In the past 20 years, there has been a 1,400 percent increase in the total number of SWAT team deployments.

* Criminalizing Poverty: More cities are relying on policies that are meant to address "quality of life crimes" by having a zero tolerance approach to behaviors such as panhandling, loitering, and "camping." A report in 2006 that surveyed 224 cities around the country on their laws involving the criminalization of homelessness and found that 27 percent of cities prohibited sitting or lying in certain public places and 43 percent prohibited begging in certain places.

* Criminalization of Immigration: The number of USBP agents nearly tripled between 1990 and 2005. In FY 2006 alone, 1,500 more agents were added. Since 1995, the number of people held by ICE in prisons and jails has increased more than 200 percent.

Media messages, public opinion, social policy, and government agencies legitimize the criminalization of certain behaviors to the benefit of the prison industrial complex.

* Crime and Public Safety: The frequency with which media reports crime does not fluctuate with actual crime rates. In 1994 when the violent crime rate was at its peak, there were more than 2,500 media crime stories. But as the violent crime rate continued to fall, the number of crime stories continued to fluctuate for the next 10 years, regardless of trends in violent or property offenses.

* Criminalization of Poverty: Researchers have found that television media relies on stereotypical assumptions about poverty and the symptoms of poverty (crime, drug use, mental illness) by linking those symptoms to visual cues and language ("abandoned house" or "drug-infested"). In one study, of the 239 news stories that mentioned symptoms of poverty, approximately 147 stories showed crime, drugs, and gangs as a manifestation of poverty.

* Criminalization of Immigration: Public opinion polls document public fear about Latino immigrants coming to the United States not to commit a terrorist act but to take jobs and use services typically guaranteed to U.S. residents, and to commit crimes. This is despite research which shows that while the number of undocumented immigrants increased 57 percent from 1990 to 2000, crime rates plummeted to some of the lowest in U.S. history.

Communities of color and people living in poverty are overwhelmingly disproportionately affected by the prison industrial complex.

* Data shows that in 2002, 8.5 percent of whites used illicit drugs, compared to 9.7 percent of African Americans. However, African Americans are admitted to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of whites.

* Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed that 83.5 percent of people in jail in 2002 earned less than $2,000 per month prior to arrest.

* People of color are disproportionately affected by poverty and, thus are also more likely to be imprisoned. African Americans made up about 13 percent of the general population but approximately 22 percent of the people living in poverty and 40 percent of people in prisons and jails in 2006.

The report concludes that advocates must be just as innovative and flexible as the prison industrial complex in order to dismantle the system, while resisting so-called reforms that inadvertently expand the reach of the criminal justice system. Positive social investments in education, employment, mental health services, and substance abuse treatment are cost effective means of creating strong communities
Find the report here:
http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/08-09_REP_MovingTargetCR10_AC-PS.pdf

Posted by lois at 11:46 PM | Comments (0)

Message from Justice Action in Austraila on Abolition

Message to "Discovering Balance" Conference, Perth October 2, 2008.

Justice Action attended the prison abolition conference "Critical Resistance" CR10 in San Francisco last weekend presenting a workshop and talking with key organisers. We also were in London in July for the International Conference on Penal Abolition ICOPA X11, and facilitated its final report.

Last week we achieved a landmark success forcing the NSW government to transfer the prison hospital from Corrective Services to Health, following a six month campaign involving the patients, nurses, psychiatrists, mental health and community organisations Australia-wide. It meant gaining hospital conditions
including late lock-in for the patients.

Here we share the lessons we learnt from those experiences.

Prisoners themselves should be central to our effort. Prisoners must be listened to and trusted as good people, but under immense stress without their normal supports. This acknowledges their humanity and gives us grounded strength, with their faces seen and voices heard, along with their communities outside. We are twenty-five thousand plus, strong. This means that access and interaction, the vote, visits and all communication should be defended. The
latest prisoners newspaper JUST US was distributed in five states and
territories, rejected in three. The NSW Supreme Court said any proposed rejection must be justified by the administration.
Recidivism can only be reduced if prisoners are involved, agree and participate with support from their own communities.

Tackle difficult cases head on. These capture media attention. The fear generated justifies laws like the indefinite detention of people charged with child sex offences, and this affects other sentencing. We should believe that the people accused are not "others." The recent example of Dennis Ferguson in Queensland is useful. The government admitted that it couldn't pacify the public
fear that was generated by his exclusion and the media exposure of his reentry. We entered the furore offering refuge and claiming him as a member of our community. We got a resolution supporting him from the international conference ICOPA X11 and now he has secure housing and mentoring support from Queensland groups and with JA in constant contact. Sixty percent of a 7,000 people poll said that his whereabouts should not be exposed in future.

Therapeutic communities with restorative justice and mentoring are effective solutions to community problems. Our own experience of positive responses to trust and sharing are entirely applicable in the area of crime. The Alexander Maconochie's Norfolk Island experience, Jimmy Boyle's story of the BarlinnieUnit in Scotland, and the Special Care Unit in Long Bay are documented examples of how they work effectively.

Link with allies in mainstream services. The health and education
communities are strong and will defend their principles. Our win in the Long BayPrison Hospital was a win for them as well as us.

Abolition of prisons is achievable. Slavery is the prison precursor. The old penal colony of Australia has a special role in civil reconciliation. The goodness of our people in the dungeons, the damage done, the human rights breached, the unreasonable fear generated by the exclusion, the outrageous cost and the
documented failure of prisons to create public safety, all ensure our eventualsuccess.

JUSTICE ACTION
Trades Hall, Suite 204, 4 Goulburn St, Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
PO Box 386, Broadway NSW 2007 Australia
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http://www.justiceaction.org.au
http://www.churcheswa.com.au/2008/08/discovering-balance/

Posted by lois at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Prop 5 Would Overhaul Sentencing of Poepole with Non-Violent Drug Convictions

Prop. 5 would overhaul sentencing of drug offenders
The far-reaching measure would increase treatment and eliminate incarceration for those convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes. But opponents see another agenda.
By Michael Rothfeld
Los Angeles Times

October 2, 2008

SACRAMENTO — In a state that has consistently boosted penalties for criminals, packing California's prisons to bursting, sponsors of the far-reaching Proposition 5 are asking voters in November to go in the opposite direction.

The Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, funded in part by billionaire George Soros, would be "the most ambitious sentencing and prison reform in U.S. history," according to the Drug Policy Alliance Network, a primary sponsor.

By 2010, the measure would commit the state to spending at least $460 million a year, mostly to increase treatment -- and eliminate incarceration -- for those who commit nonviolent crimes involving drugs or fueled by them.

Even when drugs aren't involved, the state no longer could seek to return many ex-convicts to prison for low-level parole violations, as occurred nearly 18,000 times last year, or revoke parole for actions that would qualify as misdemeanor crimes.

Parole terms for some offenders would decrease from three years to six months. A new prison bureaucracy devoted to rehabilitation would be created. And possession an ounce or less of marijuana would be an infraction, instead of a misdemeanor.

The measure could eventually cost Californians up to $1 billion, but also could ultimately save that much by reducing incarceration, according to the state's nonpartisan legislative analyst.

Opponents contend that the drug treatment offered in lieu of incarceration would be toothless, a "get-out-of-jail-free card" for addicts. They say the Drug Policy Alliance Network -- a spinoff of Soros' New York-based Open Society Institute, which fights against punitive drug laws -- is using the initiative to chip away at its true agenda: legalizing drugs.

"It is very well-crafted to move several steps in the direction of decriminalization," said Douglas B. Marlowe, chief of science, policy and law for the National Assn. of Drug Court Professionals. The backers "don't think that drugs should be illegal to begin with."

Law enforcement groups said the initiative would be difficult to change, requiring a four-fifths vote of the state Legislature, and lead to an increase in crime. And they object to a provision that would allow the expunging of some records, saying that, for example, a methamphetamine addict who steals cars can avoid prison, if a judge agrees, and have his record sealed after completing treatment.

Opponents have raised less than $300,000 for their campaign against the initiative, mainly from law enforcement groups and a San Diego County Indian tribe, the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, state records show. Supporters have raised more than $5 million, mostly from wealthy donors in other states.

The out-of-state contributors are interested in prison and sentencing issues nationally, said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, the backers' deputy campaign manager. California, in part because of its size and its giant prison system, "has a significant impact" on the national debate, she said.

Dooley-Sammuli said the measure would advance sensible policy with respect to drug treatment, prisons and at-risk youth, for whom programs are also funded.

"It's looking at all of the places in the system where our policies are failing," she said.

Dan Macallair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco, said the initiative is needed to combat the power wielded by law enforcement lobbyists in Sacramento.

"My biggest reason for supporting it is its emphasis on parole reform, which we've never been able to get through the Legislature because all the interest groups come in and block it," he said.

Proposition 5 would require dozens of new employees in the sprawling state prison and parole system, which already costs more than $10 billion a year. The agency would become two-headed, with a new secretary for rehabilitation and parole appointed by the governor to a six-year term, in addition to the existing secretary for corrections.

Each of the state's 33 prisons would be required to have a chief deputy warden for rehabilitation. And inmates would have to be given rehabilitation programs, which often are unavailable, at least 90 days before their release.

New state boards would be created, including one with 23 members to oversee treatment programs and another with 21 members, including a former inmate, overseeing parole. The new parole oversight board would implement additional credits that could allow inmates to cut their sentences by more than half -- the maximum they can reduce them now -- if they complete treatment, work in prison and behave.

The existing Board of Parole Hearings, which revokes and grants parole but is heavily backlogged, would increase from 17 to 29 members, and the state Senate would lose its power to confirm them.

On the drug treatment side, the measure would vastly expand an earlier initiative, Proposition 36, approved in 2000, which appropriated $120 million a year initially for drug treatment. The state allocated $108 million to those programs this year.

UCLA researchers who studied the original measure found it saved the state money on incarceration costs but said only a third of participants completed the program and many spent too little time in treatment.

The new system would expand the pool of criminals who could take part, creating three "tracks" for offenders to receive treatment, including, at the discretion of judges, those who commit nonviolent crimes such as theft to feed their habits. Depending on their crimes, their records and their number of treatment failures, they would gradually move from the least intensive programs to the most intensive -- drug courts -- and the possibility of jail or prison.

Advocates say that some of the initial sanctions that can be imposed on offenders who have problems, such as performing community trash pickup, are appropriate. But judges complain that they too rarely will be able to threaten incarceration, which they believe is most effective at coercing offenders to cooperate.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan said the measure would be "like throwing money down a rat hole."

"Most drug court judges are in favor of treatment for these people," Tynan said. "We want it to meaningful."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-drugs2-2008oct02,0,6714466.story

Posted by lois at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)

OR: Measure 62 may take a bite out of crime as well as school budgets

Measure 62 may take a bite out of crime as well as school budgets
by Janie Har, The Oregonian
Thursday October 02, 2008, 12:07 AM

Oregon voters will have to choose between public safety and public schools on the November ballot.

Under Measure 62, a yes vote would set aside 15 percent of state lottery profits for district attorneys, sheriffs and state police investigations that measure co-sponsor Kevin Mannix says get short shrift by Oregon lawmakers. The 15 percent amount would be carved into the state constitution.

A no vote would allow lawmakers to continue to spend that money on schools. At stake is about $200 million every two years. Because roughly half of Oregon's lottery money is tied up by state law or the constitution, most of the $200 million would come from schools.

For Doug Harcleroad, retiring district attorney for Lane County, the question is easy in a county that's been hammered by low property taxes and the loss of federal timber money. The county operates only 93 of 500 jail beds, he says, and releases about a dozen people a day because of overcrowding.

"We let out sex offenders and gun violators and domestic violence offenders. We let out terrible people who shouldn't be let out, and some of them re-offend," Harcleroad says.

But opponents say the measure would hurt classrooms and give an unexpected windfall to counties and to specific Oregon State Police units.

The Defend Oregon Coalition, which includes unions, teachers, seniors citizens and human services groups, figures schools would lose about $185 million and economic development about $20 million.

"I'm afraid in the absence of a campaign, people's attitude might be: 15 percent for crime? Sounds good to me. And the question is whether they know it's at the expense of education," says Steve Novick with Defend Oregon.

Each school district would deal with the loss in different ways, says Chuck Bennett of the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators.

"But ultimately, district budgets are personnel costs ... and this kind of stuff results in fewer teachers for the kids."

The measure calls for 15 percent of lottery profits to go into a public safety fund starting July 1. In 2007-09, the Oregon Lottery transferred about $1.4 billion to the state.

Half of the set-aside would go to fund criminal investigations and forensics work at Oregon State Police. That amounts to about $100 million in lottery money, compared with $65 million the divisions got in general support from the state in 2007-09.

About $40 million -- or 20 percent -- would go to counties for "early childhood" programs. Mannix says programs such as Head Start could help reduce crime in the long run.

District attorneys and sheriff's offices would get the rest for investigations and operations. The proposal specifically prohibits using the extra money as a substitute for county support.

Polk County Sheriff Robert Wolfe said he'd use the extra $653,000 to hire more detectives. His budget is roughly $7 million a biennium, and he has two criminal detectives handling 100 cases, 30 of which require daily checks.

"Overworked is kind of an understatement. They're just swamped," Wolfe says. "They're carrying cases that are dating back five years."

Dedicating lottery money isn't new. Voters created the lottery in 1984 with the idea of using proceeds to create jobs and boost Oregon's economy.

In 1995 and in 2002, Oregonians amended the state constitution to slice off 18 percent of profits for an education reserve fund. In 1998, they agreed to reserve 15 percent for salmon restoration and parks.

The rest of the dedicated lottery money goes to economic development for counties, debt service, gambling prevention programs and college athletics.

A portion goes for state economic development, but the bulk of discretionary lottery money goes to public schools. In 2007-09, that was about $650 million for a K-12 school budget of more than $6 billion.

Mannix argues schools won't miss out because lottery revenue has been increasing rapidly and should continue to grow.

But opponents say that's far from guaranteed, and the latest state revenue forecast projects lottery earnings to grow just 0.1 percent in 2009-11.

The forensics and criminal investigations units provide support to local law enforcement. The divisions analyze DNA and fingerprints, register criminal sex offenders, investigate major crimes and narcotics cases, and root out potential bomb threats.

Extra money could reduce the turnaround on DNA samples from four months to several weeks, says Randy Wampler, director of the forensics services division.

On the other hand, the Department of Education says it needs all the money it can get to meet tougher new high school diploma standards.

Ed Dennis, deputy state schools superintendent, says it costs $42 million a year to trim class sizes by one student in kindergarten through fifth grade and $51 million to send all at-risk students to summer school to get them caught up.

"It would be the worst of all possible times right now if Oregonians dealt us this kind of blow," he says.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/measure_62_may_take_bite_out_o.html

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

Two and a Half Hours a Week. An Inside/Out Class at the Hampshire County (MA) Jail

Two and a Half Hours a Week
An Inside/Out Class at the Hampshire County (MA) Jail
By Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne '01

Greg was flipping through pages of class readings. He was looking for a specific example to support his point about changing gender roles among Cambodian refugees fleeing the Pol Pot regime. He flipped one page, then another and another.

“I can’t find it right now,” he told a classmate. “I don’t have a highlighter.... I’d like to have one, a couple different highlighters, so I could...” His voice trailed off as he mimed the act of marking up the passages by topic.

Greg had pored over the readings; every page bore the penciled-in marginalia of a determined student. But he isn’t just any Amherst student, and the giveaway was that he had only a pencil at his disposal. The Hampshire Jail and House of Corrections has strict rules, and as long as Greg was imprisoned there, he had to follow them, even during the two and a half hours each Wednesday that he spent taking Regulating Citizenship, an Amherst political science course taught by Kristin Bumiller, a professor of political science and women’s and gender studies.

Most of the cinderblock visiting room at the jail is painted an institutional cream color that might well be called “bleak” in the Benjamin Moore catalog. One wall, though, showcases a colorful mural with a number of scenes that are meant to be uplifting: a man in a graduation cap and gown, family crowded around in pride; a multicultural group of men and women holding hands around the earth; what looks like a camel wearing an orange robe, a city of skyscrapers on his back, his angel wings poised for flight. Crooked posters of the beach at sunset hang on the other walls, extolling such gems as “Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” This is made-to-order inspiration, with none of the real thing. Posters and paint cannot hide the red line taped in front of the door that leads out of the jail, the red line that no resident of the facility can put even a toe across. Luckily for the students in Bumiller’s class, inspiration was dependent not upon the decorations but upon the conversation occurring within the room.

For 13 weeks last semester, 10 students serving terms in the Hampshire Jail and 11 Amherst students met in this room for Bumiller’s course. They read and discussed Foucault, Locke, Thoreau, Arendt and Kafka, among others, as they examined what citizenship means and how the state can take it away.

Is it possible for an educational system to be conducted by a national state and yet the full social ends of the educative process not be restricted, constrained and corrupted?
—John Dewey, Democracy and Education, from the course readings

Today, there are few educational opportunities in U.S. prisons, and the ones that do exist focus mostly on secondary education. Programs for college credit are scarce, despite research by the U.S. Department of Justice showing that convicts with some college education are less likely to end up in jail again. In 1994, Congress ruled that prisoners are ineligible for Pell grants for higher education, a decision that proved disastrous for college-level education in prisons. In 1983, 41 state prison systems offered post-secondary education courses, enrolling nearly 5 percent of the total prison population, according to a 2005 Ford Foundation report. By 1997, only 21 states offered such programs, and less than 2 percent of the prison population was enrolled. In 2005, enrollment was back near 5 percent, but the educational focus had shifted: two-thirds of the offerings were vocational programs as opposed to courses that count towards a bachelor’s or graduate degree.

One of the most important of these programs, and the one that got Bumiller into the Hampshire facility, is the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which is run by Lori Pompa, a professor at Temple University. In 1997, Pompa took one of her Temple classes to a Pennsylvania state prison. When the students talked with several prisoners, a man serving a life sentence suggested that Pompa ought to turn these conversations into a semester-long class. Pompa agreed, and Inside-Out was born. For seven years, the program existed only at Temple, but Pompa realized that others might be interested in a similar partnership. In 2004, she began to offer training for professors to take the program back to their own colleges and universities. Today, the program has trained 130 professors from 33 states and has enrolled more than 5,000 students.

When Bumiller first heard about Inside-Out, she was intrigued. She had long wanted to teach inside a prison: much of her research has to do with discrimination, power and social justice, and a prison seemed a natural place to examine how all those social influences come together. Pompa’s program held special appeal. “I think what drew me to this was that the inside students and the outside students learn as equals,” says Bumiller. “That’s what is so exciting about this: having groups of people that interact with each other in ways that they wouldn’t without this program.”

Last spring was Bumiller’s third time teaching the course. She began the semester with the question “What is a citizen?,” and went on to ask students to consider how we theoretically imagine a citizen; how democratic societies exclude people from the rights of citizenship; and what impact poverty, consumerism, education and war—and imprisonment—have on a society’s definition of itself. Bumiller wants her students to understand how a democratic society decides who belongs and who does not. “I’m deliberately creating a class that is focusing back on prisons in the United States,” she says, “by getting people to imagine and learn more about other contexts where people are living in highly restrictive conditions.”

The jail itself can function almost as a text. Once, Bumiller remembers, she led a discussion on the bureaucratic authority behind a uniform and how the uniform itself becomes a symbol of power. As she spoke, a prison guard, dressed in uniform, came into the room and stood behind her to take the first of the afternoon’s two head counts. The class laughed. “I thought it was one of those perfect learning moments,” Bumiller says. “It’s one of those things that create clarity by concrete example. Sometimes, the situation or the scene itself becomes an opportunity to learn something about how power operates, without putting the inside students on the spot and having them tell their story.”
Professor Kristin Bumiller and students on
the last day of the semester.

Bumiller’s emotional investment in the course and the students is apparent. That commitment comes partly from her belief that most of her students shouldn’t be incarcerated in the first place. One in 100 Americans is currently in jail, according to the Pew Center on the States, and this fact strikes Bumiller as evidence of American society’s failure to provide for its citizens equally. If it were up to her, only those who pose a violent threat would be in prison. The rest would benefit from social support systems such as job training and job provision, education and mental health and addiction services. “They need to have employment, they need to have social connections, and they need to have mental and physical health,” Bumiller says. “That’s my ultimate goal: not just ‘get everyone out of prison’ but ‘create a system that is going to encourage people’s success in society.’”

But she is not in charge of that system. Her response, then, is to provide access to the best education she can within the limits of the prison system. For the traditional Amherst students, she is unabashedly political in her goals. “I want them to leave with a sense of the real tragedy of the incarceration rate in the United States,” she says. The course costs the college about $5,000 per semester, an amount that covers course packets, transportation for the outside students and entertainment, such as pizza on the last day of class. Amherst’s Office of the Dean of the Faculty paid the first two years; last year, the college’s Center for Community Engagement footed the bill.

Students have to follow a number of special rules. A dress code, much of it set by the Hampshire Jail, is laid out in a contract that the entire class must sign. The students cannot wear clothing that resembles staff uniforms or prison clothes; they cannot wear sleeveless shirts, spaghetti straps or anything else “that reveals the skin inappropriately”; they cannot wear jewelry, underwire bras “or other items sensitive to metal detectors.” Also forbidden are hooded sweatshirts, tank tops, white T-shirts, bandanas, hair ties, colored shoelaces, baseball caps, coats and open-toed shoes. Bumiller recalls with a laugh that on the first day she taught in the facility, an Amherst student showed up for the van in a Che Guevara T-shirt. She had to send him home to change. “Amherst is okay—but not Che Guevara,” she said.

The rules go well beyond a dress code. In class, the traditional Amherst students are called “outside students,” the others “inside students.” Bumiller wants them to see one another as equals. According to the contract, outside students are not in the class “to study the inside students, to ‘help’ the inside students, to find out why the inside students are incarcerated, or for the inside group of students or outside group to ‘teach’ the other group.”

Students know each other by first name only. (To maintain that sense of privacy, Bumiller asked Amherst magazine to use only their first names.) Students are not allowed to exchange contact information. After the end of the semester, they can never communicate again. The regulation is in place as a security measure. “I certainly never felt any kind of danger, threat or trepidation about any of the students in the course,” says Martha Saxton, an associate professor of history and women’s and gender studies who, after learning about Regulating Citizenship, taught a history course at the jail last year. “On the other hand, since all systems are imperfect, it’s possible you could get someone in the course who isn’t completely reliable and who might, when [the course is over], do something foolish.”

Of course, for the students to even have weekly access to one another is far from a given. Not every jail is willing to have a professor come in and teach about civil disobedience, as Bumiller does every year. The Hampshire Jail, which is roughly 10 miles southwest of the Amherst campus, has, for some of its prisoners, a focus on rehabilitation and education, with classes on everything from Spanish to GED preparation. There is a classroom, called “the school,” in the main building that has computers (without Internet access), books and movies. Several inside students describe the Hampshire Jail as “a jail, but not really” because of the focus on rehabilitation and education. Robert, one of the inside students, speaks of Sheriff Robert Garvey as someone who genuinely believes in “helping you address the issues that need to be addressed, making sure that when you are released, you can be a part of society, living in it rather than surviving it.” Robert adds, “He doesn’t want us treated like inmates. He wants us treated like people. When you have a sheriff that will give you a two-liter of soda and pizza for the jail passing inspection, that says a lot about a facility.”

The perception is so strong that a popular name for the jail is “Camp Hamp.” Still, when the bulletproof-glass doors clank shut in “the trap,” a holding pen near the facility’s entrance, where only one door can open at any time and only with the approval of an unseen guard in a booth, there is no denying that this is a place that functions upon the denial of freedoms.

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
—Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” from the course readings

The inside and outside students last semester studied the same readings, dressed in similar clothes and were, in most cases, about the same age, but it was hard not to hear echoes of their vastly different lives. Once they began talking, it was easier to distinguish between the two groups in the room. It was not an intelligence difference—the inside students brought as much intelligence and arguably more passion to the course. It was more the way each group had of speaking.

The Amherst students tended to pad their comments with academic jargon, dropping in words such as “acculturation” and “assimilation.” The inside students’ comments came from a less lofty place, and perhaps a less showy place, but they were just as insightful. In a small-group conversation on how Cambodians received refugee status after fleeing the Pol Pot regime, I heard the following exchange:

Marcella: And then also there was this whole movement to not allow any communists in, that the biggest goal was to screen out all communists, so any sort of little implication that they may have had some sort of communist leanings would automatically disqualify them. But because there [were] so many people, [the decision about communist leanings] was based on hearsay and people just talking bad about other people—

Greg: Or somebody else trying to get you to not come....

Marcella: ...Based on these totally arbitrary facts—

Greg: Throwing you under the bus gives me a better chance to get in than you.

In 15 words, Greg had just summed up the point of the questions that Bumiller had raised during the class session.

Bumiller acknowledges that the inside and outside students leave class having learned different things. For the inside students, she says, it’s about opening a door. She aims to give them the chance to talk about their points of view with people who want to listen. “They are getting a sense that they are confident in their own abilities to learn,” she says, “and that they can take full advantage of the situation, just like any Amherst student.”

Some of the inside students described the class as an escape. “It’s been really great to have you guys come here,” said Geremie, an inside student, at the last session. “After our second class, I was really upset it was over, like, ‘Wow, we have to go back to jail now.’ Our time here was really like we weren’t even in jail. So thanks, everyone, for embracing us like we weren’t inmates.”

For the purposes of Bumiller’s class, they were not inmates. The inside students get Amherst credit for the course, meaning that if they go on to college, they will be a few credits ahead. Bumiller describes herself as a tough grader. She won’t publicly discuss her grading for the course, except to say that, so far, everyone has passed. At least one of Bumiller’s students has written to her to say he’s gone on to a university. (The national Inside-Out Program does not keep official numbers on what happens to its students after release from prison, but Pompa, the founder, says the program has transformed many lives.)

The Hampshire Jail selects eligible students from residents of a unit in which men live in dorm-like rooms and spend the bulk of their days in various classes and programs. Bumiller then interviews each potential student individually. She is interested, she says, in students for whom the course could be a springboard to community college or beyond. “I saw this as an opportunity,” says Robert, one of the inside students. Tony Jack ’07, who took Regulating Citizenship his senior year, saw such commitment in his fellow students. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t gone to Head Start,” Jack says, referring to the early education program for at-risk children. “This could be their head start.”

Every outside student I spoke with used the word “experience” when asked why he or she had taken the course. They wanted to experience a jail in so far as they could. (One student admitted that she really had no idea what the topic of “regulating citizenship” would be about.) “If you haven’t committed a crime,” said an outside student named Chris, who’s in the Class of ’10, “if the state hasn’t stepped in and started to change your life yet, it’s easy to not even think about the ways that the state can come in and change lives.”

Robert wanted the outside students to see people like him in a new light. “I just hope that they realize,” he says, “that even though we’re here, we’re still citizens. Eventually we’re going to be part of society again, so don’t cast us off. Even though we’ve made mistakes, that doesn’t mean we can’t change, that we can’t be good people.”

Beyond making them think in new ways, the class also made the outside students behave in new ways. “I think Amherst students regularly go to class without doing the reading,” Bumiller says. “If they come to this class without doing the reading, and they’re sitting next to an inside student who has read it three times, has markings all through it, has five pages of notes, I think they feel pretty embarrassed.” For an Amherst ’08 named Marina, doing hours of homework was more about a sense of responsibility she felt to the inside students. “We can’t be disrespectful and not put in the effort, because we’re part of this class and we’re making the experience for these people. We knew that for them it was a privilege.”

Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.
—Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, from the course readings

The second-to-last class was about prison abuses. “Jails are predicated on violence,” argued guest speaker Phil Scraton, a penal abolitionist from Northern Ireland. It was as if Scraton had turned on a faucet. Stories came pouring out; stories that were worse than the outside students could have imagined, stories that the inside students had come to accept as normal.

Robert told the class he’d spent 19 months in solitary at another prison where, he alleged, he was beaten severely. He believes he was in solitary due to a case of mistaken identity. “Eventually, I just stopped asking questions,” he told me later. “I stopped asking what was going on. ... I stopped asking for the phone, I stopped asking for the showers.” (He said he got a shower about every three days.) “And I stopped asking for my food to be hot, because my food was coming cold. Eventually, I just gave up.” For Robert, totalitarianism is reaching the point where you stop asking, “Why am I here?” Totalitarianism is policing yourself so well that the existence of an actual prison becomes almost irrelevant.

Robert’s story continued to resonate after the class had ended. “To know him well,” Marina says, “and to know that he was just forgotten about by the system for such a long time, is really upsetting. He’s really kind and thoughtful. There is no place for that in solitary.”

There’s something compelling about reading scholarly work about prison abuse and then hearing from those who live inside the system. “There is something about the visceral,” Marina says, “about hearing the clang of the trap, about holding your badge up to the person you can’t see and saying, ‘Now, I’m subject to you’—that was pretty powerful.”

Chris ’10, who describes himself as a political centrist and as the most conservative member of the class, says that Regulating Citizenship fundamentally changed his views on the prison system. “I was unaware of how horrific it was and how unjustifiable the abuse and conditions really are,” he says. “That was something that I had not thought about before.”

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. ... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
—Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, from the course readings

Marcella was pissed. Robert was resigned.

“What?!” she exclaimed.

“He came to this building when he wasn’t supposed to.”

“Why’d he come down here?”

“To work on his project.”

“But it’s the last day!”

Robert shrugged.

Marcella had just been told that one of their classmates, a baby-faced inside student named Mike, showed up at the prison “school” a half hour earlier than he was supposed to the day before, and because of that, even though he was in the school and with the prison-employed teachers, he was punished. (Jail officials confirm that Mike was kept from the last class for showing up at the classroom early the day before. However, they add that Mike had told the guards he was going elsewhere, and that this was his third disciplinary offense, which automatically results in a suspension from programming activities.)

How do you punish a man who is learning? Take away the opportunity to learn. The guards would not let him come to class that day, the last day of the semester and his last chance to see the outside students.

The students were angry, none more than Marcella. When her small group took its place at the head table to give a presentation on prison monopolies of the phone and commissary systems, she opened by saying, “Mike is also in our group, but he is not here today, apparently because he was working a little too hard on this project. So I am going to read Mike’s portion of the paper. I’m not really going to summarize it, because I don’t feel right speaking for him, so I’m just going to read his words.”

Later, when each student was presented with a certificate for completing the course, Bumiller took Mike’s certificate and said, “I will make sure Mike gets this, and that he passes the course.” Marcella came away thinking that, even in prisons with a rehabilitative focus, “the power struggle will always take precedence,” she says. “I understood the prison in a new light.”

At the end of class, the students gathered in a double circle, the inner circle facing the outer. Bumiller asked a series of questions: Name one thing you’ll remember from this course. What is fugitive democracy? Imagine where you’ll be in 10 years. “Out of jail,” Greg responded to that last question. “Hopefully I’ll have a good job.”

The students milled around, wistfully enjoying their last few moments together. The Amherst students left first, crowding into the trap, dutifully showing their badges to the guard in the booth. For Marcella, as well as for some others, this was her very last Amherst class. Senior Week in Cape Cod with eight friends beckoned, as did graduation, a month of kayaking and then, of course, real life.

The inside students watched the outside students leave. They put away the chairs and tables the class had used and ate the last of the pizza. They waited in the classroom until they absolutely had to leave. The only thing awaiting them on the other side was the long walk back down the prison’s bleak hallways to their unit. They were back in jail—their regularly scheduled date with freedom had just walked out the door.
https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/issues/2008_summer/prison

Posted by lois at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

October 03, 2008

Helping Mothers and Children Stay Connected-During and After Prison Coalition for Women Prisoners helps bring Family Reunion Program to New York's largest prison for women

Helping Mothers and Children Stay Connected-During and After Prison
Coalition for Women Prisoners helps bring Family Reunion Program to New York's largest prison for women

September 2008
Correctional Association of NY

The Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) has begun the process of establishing a Family Reunion Program (FRP)—which allows incarcerated people to have extended, overnight visits with family—at Albion Correctional Facility, New York’s largest prison for women. Our Women in Prison Project (WIPP) and its Coalition for Women Prisoners have long pressed for the implementation of an FRP at Albion and, with the efforts and full support of DOCS and Commissioner Brian Fischer, helped secure an allocation of $200,000 for the program in this year’s State Budget.

By establishing this FRP at Albion—which is located near Rochester, more than eight hours from New York City—DOCS will enhance the limited opportunities many mothers at Albion currently have to stay connected with their families. Also, experience tells us that FRPs provide an incentive for people to maintain good behavior while in prison and help reduce recidivism by assisting with the post-release reunification process.

In addition, the FRP at Albion will play a role in helping incarcerated mothers safeguard their parental rights. New York’s Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) almost always requires foster care agencies to terminate parental rights if a child has been in foster care for 15 of the last 22 months. One of ASFA’s exceptions does allow a foster care agency to refrain from filing termination papers if they document a “compelling reason” why termination would not be in the child’s best interest. The new FRP at Albion will increase opportunities for mothers to strengthen relationships with their children and show foster care caseworkers that maintaining mother-child bonds is critical to their children’s health and well-being. In so doing, the FRP can help incarcerated mothers with children in foster care reduce the risk of losing their parental rights forever.

Click here to read the Women in Prison Project’s 2007 monitoring report on Albion Correctional Facility. For more information about this issue, please download When “Free” Means Losing Your Mother, which presents WIPP’s comprehensive analyses and recommendations for making the criminal justice and child welfare systems more responsive to the needs of families separated by incarceration.
Read report at this URL:
http://www.correctionalassociation.org/publications/download/wipp/reports/When_Free_Rpt_Feb_2006.pdf

Posted by lois at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)

NEW POLL: Americans Oppose Mandatory Minimums,Will Vote for Candidates Who Feel the Same

NEW POLL: Americans Oppose Mandatory Minimums,Will Vote for Candidates Who Feel the Same
August 25, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new poll released today by Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) shows widespread support for ending mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenses and that Americans will vote for candidates who feel the same way.
· Fully 78 percent of Americans (nearly eight in 10) agree that courts – not Congress – should determine an individual’s prison sentence.
· Six in 10 (59 percent) oppose mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders.
· A majority of Americans (57 percent) polled said they would likely vote for a candidate for Congress who would eliminate all mandatory minimums for nonviolent crimes.

“Politicians have voted for mandatory minimum sentences so they could appear ‘tough on crime’ to their constituents. They insist that their voters support these laws, but it’s just not true,” says Julie Stewart, president and founder of FAMM. “Republicans and Democrats support change and that should encourage members of Congress to reach across the aisle next year and work together to reform mandatory minimums. Mandatory sentencing reform is not a partisan issue, but an issue about fairness and justice that transcends party lines.”

During a time of financial crisis and uncertainty in the United States, reviewing current criminal justice policies and reforming mandatory minimums for nonviolent drug offenders is an option that Democratic and Republican lawmakers are considering. Although neither is endorsing FAMM’s poll or report, Senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) are both concerned about America’s prison and sentencing system.

“America is locking up people at astonishing rates. In the name of ‘getting tough on crime,’ there are now 2.2 million Americans in federal, state, and local prisons and jails and over 7 million under some form of correction supervision, including probation and parole. We have the largest prison population in the world,” says Senator Jim Webb (D-Va.), who is chairing a symposium on criminal justice and prison issues in October. “This growth is not a response to increasing crime rates, but a reliance on prisons and long mandatory sentences as the common response to crime. It is time for America’s leadership to realize what the public understands – our approach is costly, unfair and impractical.”

“Mandatory minimums wreak havoc on a logical system of sentencing guidelines,” says Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.). “Mandatory minimums turn today’s hot political rhetoric into the nightmares of many tomorrows for judges and families.”

"This poll suggests that a majority of Americans are open to re-examining this issue and moving to a court-driven sentencing model,” said Sparky Zivin, Research Director at StrategyOne.

The poll bolsters the findings of FAMM’s comprehensive new report, Correcting Course: Lessons from the 1970 Repeal of Mandatory Minimums, which describes how Congress repealed mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses in 1970 – and had no trouble getting reelected. Report at
http://www.famm.org/Repository/Files/8189_FAMM_BoggsAct_final.pdf

“Our report and poll show that lawmakers can vote to reform mandatory minimums for nonviolent offenses and live to tell the story. Republicans and Democrats alike don’t want these laws. They don’t work, they cost taxpayers a fortune, and people believe Courts can sentence better than Congress can. Another repeal of mandatory drug sentences isn’t just doable, it’s doable right now,” says Molly Gill, author of Correcting Course.

The report details how Congress created mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenders in 1951 and repealed them in 1970 because the laws failed to stop drug abuse, addiction and trafficking. It also finds that after 20 years of experience, current mandatory minimums have failed as badly as those enacted in the 1950s. Correcting Course concludes that mandatory minimum sentences:

• Have not discouraged drug use in the United States.

• Have not reduced drug trafficking.

• Have created soaring state and federal corrections costs.

• Impose substantial indirect costs on families by imprisoning spouses, parents, and breadwinners for lengthy periods.

• Are not applied evenly, disproportionately impacting minorities and resulting in vastly different sentences for equally blameworthy offenders.

• Undermine federalism by turning state-level offenses into federal crimes.

• Undermine separation of powers by usurping judicial discretion.

Eric Sterling, counsel to the House Judiciary Committee when mandatory sentences were enacted, says, “In 1986, we got stuck with some of the most punitive, least effective criminal sentencing laws ever created. Mandatory minimums haven’t stopped the drug trade. They haven’t locked up the big dealers and importers. They’re applied to small fries, not kingpins. It’s a waste of taxpayer dollars to lock up a street-level dealer for 10 years when that money could be spent on treatment, drug courts, or going after the people bringing in boatloads of drugs every year. Getting rid of mandatory minimums is about getting our priorities straight.”

Correcting Course includes comprehensive strategies for how Congress can repeal these ineffective laws today and better reflect the popular attitude among Americans, as brought out in the findings of the poll.

“Mandatory minimums are among the worst criminal justice policies ever adopted in this country. They treat all offenders the same, when the most sacred principle of American sentencing law is that punishment should fit the individual and the crime. Repealing these laws isn’t impossible – it’s been done before. The next Congress should do it again,” says FAMM founder and president Julie Stewart.

FAMM’s poll was conducted by the independent public opinion research firm StrategyOne. The survey was conducted by telephone between July 31 and August 3, 2008 with 1,000 adults randomly selected across the United States. The margin of sampling error for the poll is plus or minus 3.1 percent for 95 out of 100 cases.
Poll:
http://www.famm.org/Repository/Files/FAMM%20poll%20no%20embargo.pdf

Posted by lois at 12:06 AM | Comments (0)

October 02, 2008

CA: Billions for building jails may not materialize

Billions for building jails may not materialize
By Hudson Sangree - hsangree@sacbee.com
Thursday, October 2, 2008

As residents of rural Yolo County fight a proposal to build a re-entry prison near Madison, billions of dollars in funding for prison and jail construction are in jeopardy statewide.

State lawmakers failed to vote on a bill last month that would have allowed the state to issue more than $7 billion in bonds to finance thousands of new prison and jail beds.

Meanwhile, the nation's credit crisis has put in doubt the state's ability to sell bonds to pay for projects.

"Even if the legislation was in place, the credit window is closed; the capital markets are locked up tight," said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state Department of Finance.

On Wednesday, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer warned that a failure by Congress to adopt an economic recovery plan threatened the state's ability to sell bonds.

Those who live in the tiny community of Madison and other rural areas of Yolo County are moving forward as if the prison funding were not in question.

"We can't stop," said Madison resident Carla Phillips. "The funding could be there someday."

On Saturday, prison opponents, who have named their group "Save Rural Yolo County," plan to demonstrate their opposition to passing motorists at the busy intersection of Highway 16 and County Road 89. They also are waging a letter-writing campaign to state officials and planning a mass mailing to area residents. They say a rural area is no place to build a re-entry prison, which lawmakers urged should be built in urban areas, near inmates' families and social services.

Created last year by Assembly Bill 900, the re-entry prisons are intended to provide counseling and job training to inmates serving the last year of their sentences. The goal is to keep parolees from returning to prison.

The bill also allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to expand county jails.

Counties that agreed to site a re-entry prison, and came up with a workable location, got priority for the jail funding.

Yolo County received a provisional award of $30 million to expand its crowded Monroe Detention Center in Woodland after offering corrections officials the Madison site.

While AB 900 authorized the jail and prison funding, the office of Attorney General Jerry Brown said the bill's language needed to be fixed.

The fixes were contained in a bill attached to the state budget. During last-minute wrangling, Democrats and Republicans differed on other aspects of the bill, including a provision that affected good-time credits for state prisoners. The result was that the bill never came up for a vote.

Now, lawmakers and corrections officials have to decide what to do next. Possibilities include calling an emergency session of the Legislature or introducing a new measure when lawmakers return in January.

Another possibility is to persuade the attorney general to let the bonds be issued without clean-up legislation, said Seth Unger, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The department is going forward with the process of planning re-entry facilities, he said.
http://www.sacbee.com/101/v-print/story/1282578.html

Posted by lois at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

October 01, 2008

Race is a factor in this election

Guest Column: Race is a factor in this election
Tatishe M. Nteta
Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, MA)
Created 10/01/2008

Last week, Senator Barack Obama, in a nationally televised interview, was asked if his race will be a detrimental factor in his presidential run.

Obama, repeating the mantra of his campaign, emphasized the minimal role that race will play with presidential vote choice saying, "Now are there gonna be some people who don't vote for me because I'm black? Of course. There are probably some African Americans who are voting for me because I'm black. Or maybe others who are just inspired by the idea of breaking new ground. And so I think all that's a wash."

Obama's view of the impact of race on presidential vote choice, although optimistic, shields just how much of an influence race may have in the 2008 presidential election. According to a recently released AP/Yahoo public opinion poll, close to 40 percent of white Americans hold negative stereotypes of African Americans that include the belief that they are lazy, unintelligent and prone to criminal behavior. Partisanship does not undermine these beliefs, as one-third of both white Democrats and independents also support these views.

Support for negative stereotypes concerning African Americans was found to significantly lower the likelihood that the respondent would vote for Obama, according to this study.

The study also found that among the nationally representative sample of Americans, that 2.5 percent of all potential voters said that they will not vote for Obama because he is an African American and that support for Obama would be six percent higher if not for continued white racial prejudice directed at African Americans.

These findings, while seemingly shocking, are in line with much of the political science literature on bi-racial electoral contests.

Over the past 25 years, political scientists have found that not only do a substantial percentage of whites on election day when faced with a minority candidate of their own party decide to cross party lines to support the white candidate, but also hide their intentions of doing so when asked by public opinion pollsters. This phenomenon popularly known as the "Bradley Effect," after former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley, has plagued African American candidates of statewide or federal offices for the past half century.

The impact of race is not only confined to vote choice, but to the tenor of campaigns as well. In the post Civil Rights Era, white candidates in bi-racial elections have consistently used the "race card" to garner the support of racially conservative whites. These candidates have done so through their strict and vocal opposition to the policies of welfare and affirmative action and stringent support for state's rights and anti-crime measures. These policies have historically been associated negatively with African Americans, and researchers have found that these campaign messages activate anti-black sentiments among white voters which leads to greater electoral support for the white candidate.

Will these trends uncovered by political scientists influence the 2008 presidential election and serve to undermine Obama's electoral prospects?

Many in Obama's camp have argued that given his success in heavily populated white states such as Iowa, Utah, Idaho and Alaska, that he has in effect transcended his status as an "African American candidate" and the negative electoral consequences of this identity. Some point to the recent success that African American candidates, such as Governor Deval Patrick, have enjoyed in statewide elections and the declining incidence of the Bradley Effect in bi-racial contests around the country as further evidence that race no longer has the same grip over electoral campaigns.

This evidence has led many Obama supporters to fully believe, and sometimes chant, that race no longer matters. However, it must be noted that much of Obama's previous success has occurred in Democratic primaries, and although Obama is the first African American candidate to garner the Democratic presidential nomination, he is by no means the first African American to win a statewide Democratic primary.

The true test of the impact of race in electoral contests has always been in general elections, as the Bradley Effect and the use of the race card have historically occurred in contests between Democrats and Republicans.

Current events surrounding the campaign point to the potential for race to rear its ugly head once again in our national politics. Some argue that the Bradley Effect best explains Obama's defeat in the New Hampshire Democratic primary and is a harbinger of Election night results among white Americans of all political persuasions.

Others believe that McCain, the Republican Party and conservative political action groups have already begun to court racially conservative white Democratic and independent voters through campaign advertisements that emphasize McCain's support for state's rights, his opposition to affirmative action, and Obama's supposed support for the tenets of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In fact, Floyd G. Brown, the producer of the infamous Willie Horton ads in the 1988 presidential election, has produced a number of ads that portray Obama as soft on violent crime.

These events indicate that race will not be a "wash" in the presidential election, but may be used to ensure Obama's defeat. So what, if anything, can be done?

Recent public opinion polls that have Obama either tied or slightly ahead of McCain point to a repeat of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. However, unlike the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the results from the AP/Yahoo survey coupled with the extensive literature in political science suggest that race will be a key factor in determining the next president of the United States.

Obama, in order to ensure that race is indeed a "wash," must continue to focus on issues and ideas that unite Americans, to mobilize new voters, and emphasize his message of change in order to continue to ignite passion and interest in his vision for America among people of all races. However, at the same time, Obama must publically challenge any and all attempts by the opposition to employ the race card and hold Senator McCain to his declaration to focus on the issues and not on racial fears.

Will Obama overcome half a century's worth of scholarly work on race and campaigns? Can Obama ease the fears of white voters concerned about his racial background? Yes he can.

Tatishe M. Nteta is an assistant professor of political science at UMass Amherst.
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2008 All rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2008/10/01/guest-column-race-factor-election

Posted by lois at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

PA: Rendell orders halt to release of parolees

Rendell orders halt to release of parolees
By Andrew Maykuth and Mario F. Cattabiani
September 30, 2008
Inquirer Staff Writers

Responding to mounting criticism of the judicial system after a paroled felon killed a Philadelphia police officer, Gov. Rendell yesterday ordered a halt to the release of parolees until an independent expert can conduct "a top-to-bottom review" of how the state releases violent offenders.

The assessment will be conducted by John S. Goldkamp, chairman of the Temple University Department of Criminal Justice, who Rendell tapped to review a system that each month paroles about 1,000 inmates out of a prison population of about 47,000.

The move came on the eve of today's funeral of Police Officer Patrick McDonald, 30, who was killed last Tuesday by Daniel Giddings, a recently paroled violent criminal.

In May, Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski was gunned down after he intercepted three men - all parolees with histories of violent crime - who had just robbed a bank.

"Heartbreaking losses such as these have shed light on the need to thoroughly review the process by which Pennsylvania paroles violent offenders," Rendell said in a letter to Goldkamp. "Therefore, I am asking you to review the way in which these two cases were managed by the Department of Corrections and the Board of Probation and Parole in order to minimize the likelihood that these kinds of scenarios will be repeated."

Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey and representatives of the Fraternal Order of Police yesterday also called for the moratorium until the Governor's Office or the legislature conducts a review of the state Board of Probation and Parole.

"Our police officers are angry and they're outraged," John J. McNesby, president of the FOP's Lodge 5, said at a news conference attended by about 200 uniformed officers and police supporters.

McNesby called for an "all-out assault" on parole board members who prematurely release violent offenders and on judges who he said go easy on offenders charged with assaulting police officers. Lenient judges, McNesby said, would be targeted in the press, on billboards and in advertisements.

"We're out there putting our lives on the line," McNesby said. "What we didn't sign up for was to be executed. What we didn't sign up for was not to have the backing of the Philadelphia judicial system."

Ramsey, angry about the loss of three officers since he took over the department at the beginning of the year, said he was weary of hearing concerns about overcrowded prisons, and urged public officials to build more jails.

"I'm not trying to minimize the complexity of crime and the social ills and all that stuff," Ramsey said. "But the bottom line is: How many times do you have to give a person an opportunity, to find out they ain't going to be rehabilitated?"

Rendell's order to halt the releases of parolees would not affect prisoners who have completed their sentences.

Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said the order affects both the Corrections Department and the parole board, an independent state agency whose nine board members are all Rendell appointees with experience in corrections and law enforcement.

Ardo said it was unclear how long the review would take to complete.

"I can tell you it will be faster than most people expect," he said. "It is our intention to have a thorough examination of the issues, however long that takes. We want it done quickly, but it is far more important to have it done correctly."

Goldkamp, nationally recognized as an expert on incarceration, did not respond to telephone and e-mail messages yesterday. His research over a quarter-century has focused on, among other things, bail and pre-trial release.

Susan McNaughton, spokeswoman for the Corrections Department, said prison officials would follow Rendell's directive and would monitor the prison population during the moratorium on paroles. "We're going to cooperate with the review," she said.

Sherry Tate, the spokeswoman for the parole board, did not returned telephone messages or e-mail questions yesterday.

The outrage from law-enforcement officials has been directed at the judiciary as well as the parole board for a range of perceived offenses.

Ramsey and McNesby singled out Municipal Court Judge Jacquelyn Frazier-Lyde, who last week downgraded a felony aggravated-assault charge against a 19-year-old man accused of punching a police officer in the throat.

Frazier-Lyde reportedly made dismissive comments about crimes against police at the time she downgraded the charges, and then was upset with police when her comments were published in Friday's Philadelphia Daily News.

Ramsey joined the call to target elected judges such as Frazier-Lyde when they come before voters for retention.

"If judges are elected, maybe people need to know what goes on inside those courtrooms," said Ramsey, "and when it's time to cast that ballot, actually who you're voting for in terms of what they bring to the table."

But most of the rage was directed at the officials who sentenced Giddings in 2000 and then released him about a month before he killed McDonald.

Giddings was released Aug. 18 after serving 10 years of a six-to-12-year sentence for aggravated assault and robbery - he shot a man in the knees in 1998 after robbing him of $100.

Within a week of his release, Giddings skipped out of a South Philadelphia halfway house and vowed to family members that he would not go back to jail.

Police said Giddings shot McDonald numerous times as he lay wounded on a North Philadelphia street, then shot and wounded another officer who responded to the scene. That officer returned fire, killing Giddings.

Police were upset that Giddings was released before completing all 12 years of his sentence, although state officials noted that he served four years longer than his minimum sentence because of misbehavior in prison.

Parole board Chairwoman Catherine C. McVey said last week that Giddings was released on the recommendation of corrections officials, who noted that Giddings' behavior had improved since 2006, the last time he was turned down for parole.

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham and police have also faulted retired Common Pleas Court Judge Lynn B. Hamlin, the judge who in 2000 gave Giddings the six-to-12-year mandatory minimum sentence despite recommendations from prosecutors for a stiffer penalty. Giddings had amassed a juvenile record of violent crime since he was 10, including assaults against the staff of juvenile detention facilities.

Hamlin, who retired in 2002, did not return a phone call yesterday to her Haverford home.

According to court records, Hamlin sentenced Giddings to the minimum sentence - despite her misgivings - because he had gotten good grades while obtaining his high school diploma while incarcerated.

C. Darnell Jones II, the president judge head of the First Judicial District, yesterday cautioned about blaming judges for decisions often beyond their control.

"Blaming the judiciary is not an appropriate response to this type of terrible criminal conduct," Jones said in a statement. "The judges of the Philadelphia court system are unwavering in their commitment to justly adhere to the rule of law in addressing all legal issues brought before them."

McDonald is scheduled to be buried today at Resurrection Cemetery in Bensalem following a noon Funeral Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul.

Ramsey encouraged the public to attend the Mass and to line the streets of the funeral procession to Resurrection Cemetery in a show of support.

"I think it's important for officers to see community support," said Ramsey. "Everybody has to stand up against this foolishness that's going on."
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/home_top_stories/20080930_Rendell_orders_halt_to_release_of_parolees.html

Posted by lois at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)