The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog: November 2008 Archives

« October 2008 | Main | December 2008 »

November 30, 2008

Black World Conference in New Orleans Discusses How to Advance Policies Critical to the Black Community

BMORENEWS.com : News, video and live radio for the black community in the Washington D.C. and Baltimore area

BLACK LEADERS GATHER IN NEW ORLEANS TO DISCUSS POLICY AGENDA

Fresh off the historic victory of Senator Barack Obama as the first African American to win the White House, Black leaders will gather in New Orleans November 19-23 for the State of the Black World Conference (SOBWC) to explore ways to seize the opportunity to advance policies critical to the Black community, labor, the middle class and poor people.

(New York, NY - BlackNews.com - November 14, 2008) - Fresh off the historic victory of Senator Barack Obama as the first African American to win the White House, Black leaders will gather in New Orleans November 19-23 for the State of the Black World Conference (SOBWC) to explore ways to seize the opportunity to advance policies critical to the Black community, labor, the middle class and poor people. Convened by the New York-based Institute of the Black World 21st Century under the leadership of veteran scholar-activist Dr. Ron Daniels, SOBWC will be the first major gathering of African Americans after the election. As such, organizers view the conference as a veritable post-election political convention where an agenda of priority public policy proposals will be developed to present to participants who will be asked to return to their home districts to mobilize/organize for change.

"We're excited to be able to utter the words President-Elect Barack Obama," Dr. Ron Daniels commented, "but we must work to create and advance a progressive agenda to fulfill the aspirations of millions of people, including an unparalleled number of African Americans who marched on ballot boxes to achieve this milestone victory." A number of Black leaders have observed that the crises afflicting New Orleans, before and after Katrina, is a metaphor for the conditions facing Black communities across America. Concurring with this view, Dr. Daniels said, "We must not make the mistake of believing that the new President will be able to resolve these crises without a powerful grassroots movement to promote our agenda. This is very much in keeping with Barack Obama's position that change comes from the bottom up."

Building on a process began by Rev. Jesse Jackson at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition's Convention this summer, Dr. Daniels has tapped Dr. Ronald Walters, Professor of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, and a team of scholars to develop a succinct series of priority proposals to comprise the agenda. The need for a holistic urban policy to rebuild New Orleans, rebuild America's cities and generate jobs; improving the quality of public education; combating the epidemic of gun violence devastating inner-cities communities; ending the explosive growth of the prison-jail industrial complex; and, expanding labor rights to improve the quality of life for workers and the middle class will be key focal points of the agenda. Instead of developing new initiatives, Dr. Walters is expected to recommend that bills which address these issues which are already in the Congressional legislative pipeline be highlighted, e.g., the Employee Choice Act. Proposals on policy toward Africa and the Caribbean will also be recommended. The policy agenda will initially be discussed at the National Town Hall Meeting, November 20, 7:00 PM at the Ernest Morial Convention Center, the first public function of the Conference.

Commenting on the potential impact of the agenda, Dr. Daniels observed, "While the agenda developed at SOBWC will emanate from Black concerns, ultimately its enactment will be beneficial to American society as a whole. In the spirit of Obama's campaign, moving forward, it's about building a new progressive movement to create a more just and humane society for every excluded, marginalized and disadvantaged constituency in this country."

Moderated by Bev Smith, Host of the Bev Smith Show/American Urban Radio Networks and Charles Ogletree, Harvard Law School Jesse Climenko Professor of Law, the National Town Hall Meeting will include: Marc Morial, President/CEO National Urban League; Rev. Al Sharpton, President, National Action Network (NAN); Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, President, National Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; Dr. Julianne Malveaux, President, Bennett College for Women; Dr. Elsie Scott, President/CEO, Congressional Black Caucus Foundation: Dr. Iva E. Carruthers, General Secretary, Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc.; Attorney Faya Rose Sanders, Founder, Voting Rights Museum, Selma, Alabama; Dr. E. Faye Williams, President, National Congress of Black Women. Dr. Ronald Walters, will also be part of the Panel. Benjamin Jealous, the new President/CEO, NAACP, has been invited to be a Panelist as well.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, Leader of the Nation of Islam is also confirmed to be the Keynote Speaker for the concluding session of the conference, Sunday, November 23, 9:30 AM at the Convention Center.

With enthusiasm at a fever pitch because of the election of Barack Obama to the office of President, SOBWC is expected to attract the who's who of Black America as speakers, workshop presenters as well as hundreds of grassroots/community based activists and leaders. Congressman John Conyers, Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus; Detroit Councilwoman JoAnn Watson; New York Councilman Charles Barron; Susan Taylor, former Editorial Director, Essence Magazine; Jim Clingman, author of Blackonomics and Convener of the Back to Black Movement; Makani Themba-Nixon, Executive Director, Praxis Project; Dr. Maulana Karenga, Creator of Kwanzaa, Professor of Africana Studies, California State University at Long Beach; Haki Madhubuti, author, poet and Distinguished Professor, Chicago State University; Sonia Sanchez, internationally acclaimed author and poet; Danny Glover, actor and humanitarian; George Fraser, President/CEO, FraserNet; Hip Hop pioneers Grand Master Mele Mel and Kool Moe Dee; Hip Hop Journalist Davey D; Fox News Commentator Marc Lamont Hill, Fox News Correspondent; Malika Sanders, Twenty-First Century Leadership Foundation; Bakari Kitwana, author/cultural critic; Monifa Akinwole Bandele, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; Melanie Campbell, Executive Director, National Coalition of Black Civic Participation; and, Dr. Kimberly Ellis, scholar/activist/artist are among the broad cross-section of leaders who will participate in the conference.

About Dr. Ron Daniels, President, IBW
Dr. Ron Daniels is a Distinguished Lecturer at York College, City University of New York. He is a former Executive Director of the National Rainbow Coalition and served as Southern Regional Coordinator and Deputy Campaign Manager for Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign. Dr. Daniels was an independent candidate for President in 1992. From 1993 - 2005, he served as Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. A frequent guest on local and national media outlets, Dr. Daniels hosts An Hour with Professor Ron Daniels on WWRL 1600 AM and Night Talk of WBAI, 99.5 FM in New York.

SOBWC Planning Committee
Rick Adams, Co-Convener, West PA Black Political Assembly, is Chairman of the National Planning Committee; Kimberley Richards, People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, is Co-Chairperson. Larry Hayes, National Association of Black Social Workers and Walter Umrani, Millions More Movement, are the Liaisons in New Orleans.

http://www.bmorenews.com/politics/black-leaders-gather-in-new-orleans-to-discuss-pol.shtml

Posted by lois at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2008

Private Prison Profits Soar Through Prisoners in the Immigration System

Private Prison Profits Soar Through Bipartisan Pork

by Dave Bennion

Published November 26, 2008 @ 08:00AM PST

Tom Barry at Border Lines, a blog I just added to my feed list, discusses the commodification of prisoners in the immigration system.

Keep in mind that most immigration violations are civil, not criminal, violations. Even crossing the border without a visa is only a misdemeanor.

To understand how well the prison business is faring and how immigrants are key to prison profits, you can listen in on the prison firms’ quarterly conference calls with major Wall Street investment firms. In early November, the country’s prison corporations reported soaring profits.

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country’s oldest and largest prison corporation, boasted that it enjoyed a $33.6 million increase in the third quarter over last year, while earnings rose 15%. Formerly known as Wackenhut, GEO Group, the nation’s second largest prison company, saw its earnings jump 29% over 2007. Another private prison firm that imprisons immigrants is Cornell Companies, and it reported a 9% increase in net revenues in the third quarter.

This at a time when the rest of the economy is tanking. And these profits come straight from taxpayers' pockets, when we are already bailing out the financial industry.

Private prisons have been booming over the past eight years. From 2000 to 2005, the number of private prisons increased from 16% of all prisons to 23%. All of the increase in federal prisons has been in prisons owned or operated by private firms.

Immigrants are the fastest growing sector of the federal detainees and prisoners, and there’s hundreds of millions of dollars to be made by enterprising businesses and governments. The annual ICE budget for “detention and removal” is $1.2 billion.

In addition, the Justice Department’s Office for the Detention Trustee has hundreds of contracts with local governments and private prison firms that provide beds for immigrants. Both ICE and OFDT have special offices that oversee the outsourcing of its immigrant prisoners. OFDT even boasts of its “enterprise” system of detention.

Private prison companies aren’t worried that the Democratic Party sweep will mean that fewer immigrants are sent their way because of party promises of enacting comprehensive immigration reform. GEO Group’s chairman George Zoley on Nov. 3 assured investors: “These federal initiatives to target, detain and deport criminal aliens throughout the country will continue to drive the need for immigration detention beds over the next several years and these initiatives have been fully funded by Congress on a bipartisan basis.”

Not only has the DHS crackdown on illegal immigrants have bipartisan support in Congress, it was the Democratic Congress, say private prison chiefs, that increased the 2009 budget for the crackdown. “The President only asked for a program funding of $800 million,” noted Zoley, “It was the Democratic chairman [Homeland Security subcommittee] … that added another $200 million to this program.”

That would be Senator Byrd of West Virginia. Is this what we can look forward to from "more and better Democrats"?

Democrats should not be fattening profits of private prison operators on the backs of immigrants. End corporate subsidies to immigration jails!

http://immigration.change.org/blog/view/private_prison_profits_soar_through_
bipartisan_pork

Posted by lois at 03:43 PM | Comments (0)

To fight drugs, U.S. must cut demand

"The Office of National Drug Control Policy, under which Plan Colombia and other drug control programs operate, spends 65 percent of its $12 billion annual budget on supply-side efforts and only 35 percent on the demand side. In 1971, when the Nixon administration initiated the war against drugs, the pragmatic goal was to have the exact opposite: two-thirds of funding for treatment and prevention and one-third for law enforcement, crop reduction and drug interdiction."

To fight drugs, U.S. must cut demand
By Duncan Smith-Rohrberg Maru
11/28/2008

A recent report by the Government Accountability Office, commissioned by Sen. Joe Biden, has come to an unsurprising conclusion: After more than $6 billion spent, the controversial drug control operation known as Plan Colombia has failed by large margins to meet its targets.

The goal had been to cut cocaine production in Colombia by 50 percent from 2000 to 2006 through eradication of coca crops and training of anti-narcotics police and military personnel. In fact, cocaine production in Colombia rose 4 percent during that period, the GAO found. With increases in Peru and Bolivia, production of cocaine in South America increased by 12 percent during that period. In 1999 it cost $142 to buy a gram of cocaine on the street in the United States, according to inflation-adjusted figures from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. By 2006 the price had fallen to $94 per gram.

President-elect Barack Obama won his historic victory by promising pragmatic, results-oriented solutions aimed at the common good. The recent report demonstrates that Plan Colombia does not fit those criteria.

The primary lesson for the new administration to take from Plan Colombia's failures is something that many economists have been saying for years: Efforts to decrease the supply of drugs in America without major efforts to curb demand for them will only increase the profits of drug dealers and the associated crime rates.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy, under which Plan Colombia and other drug control programs operate, spends 65 percent of its $12 billion annual budget on supply-side efforts and only 35 percent on the demand side. In 1971, when the Nixon administration initiated the war against drugs, the pragmatic goal was to have the exact opposite: two-thirds of funding for treatment and prevention and one-third for law enforcement, crop reduction and drug interdiction.

During the Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations, however, strict laws were put in place aimed at reducing the availability of drugs on the streets. These have served to give the United States the highest incarceration rates in the world, with over one in 100 Americans in jail or prison. Mass incarceration has broken up families and communities, at a huge economic cost. In general, it costs about $34,000 to lock someone up for a year and only $3,300 to provide year-long substance abuse treatment.

There are no magic bullets for the socially and medically complex problem of substance abuse. Still, several demand-side strategies have proven effective at achieving the key goals of the drug war: reduced consumption of drugs, improved health outcomes among substance users and a decrease in drug-associated criminal activity.

Of the first 100,000 drug users benefiting from President Bush's primary demand-side initiative - the $300 million Access to Recovery program - 71 percent successfully completed therapy and abstained from illicit drugs, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Of those with criminal histories, 85 percent remained out of the criminal justice system. Other research has shown that drug treatment programs can reduce drug use by over 70 percent and criminal activity by 50 percent.

There is a simple strategy that Obama and his congressional colleagues could take that would save about $6 billion a year: Cut supply-side spending by the Office of National Drug Control Policy and require that two-thirds of its funding be spent on demand-side programs. While that is simple, it won't be easy. Fighting against these basic, common-sense changes are entrenched special interests, including defense and prison contractors and prison guards unions.

A broad coalition of Democrats and Republicans got us into the drug-war morass. It will require a pragmatic, results-oriented administration to get us out. Plan Colombia and much of the supply-side programs in the war on drugs should be drastically scaled back.

The writer is an epidemiologist in the MD/PhD program at the Yale School of Medicine and directs the medical relief organization Nyaya Health. His research is aimed at improving health outcomes among drug users.

Times-Post News Service
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2008 All rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2008/11/28/fight-drugs-us-must-cut-demand

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

November 27, 2008

MA: DOC Commissioner Clarke gets an earful at a local hearing

"If there was a magic button that, if pressed, would instantly rehabilitate all prisoners and reduce recidivism to zero, with a show of hands, those who believe that the Department of Corrections would not press that button." Most hands shot up." "

Boston Prison Blues
Commissioner Clarke gets an earful at a local hearing
By Cara Bayles

Last Tuesday, approximately 100 people filed into St. Paul's Cathedral for a public hearing with Department of Corrections (DOC) Commissioner Harold Clarke. The event was organized by the End the Odds Coalition, a group of activists (among them, former state Rep. Mel King) promoting a humane culture within the Massachusetts prison system.

The testimony spanned a range of voices, some emanating from behind prison walls. A letter penned by Joseph Wood, who's currently incarcerated in Walpole, cited several passages of state laws the DOC had broken, particularly those mandating re-entry arrangements one year prior to release. The DOC's plans for Wood's December 12th release began a month ago, and don't involve housing or health care (though he suffers from Hepatitis C and rheumatoid arthritis). "I'm being released back into society mentally unstable and more dangerous than I was when I was admitted in 2004," wrote the Seattle native. "I'll be homeless because they refuse to comply with release preparation regulations."

Many advocates discussed the challenges of release. Kevin Wayne Thomas, of STRIVE, an organization that trains for workplace re-entry, said prisoners need to begin preparing for release the moment they're incarcerated. Lyndia Downie, president of the Pine Street Inn, said that between 2006 and 2008, she'd noticed a 46-percent increase in ex-offenders coming to the shelter, adding that criminal records are an obstacle to employment and housing. Leslie Walker, director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said the DOC must avoid over-classification (unnecessarily placing prisoners in maximum security) and institute a step-down system (to medium or minimum security) prior to release. "Prisoners have said to me the rules inside are the exact opposite of the rules outside," Walker said of the assimilation process. "Somebody bumps you in line in prison, you'd better react. Somebody bumps you in line at the CVS, you better not react."

Robert Dellelo, a former prisoner and member of the American Friends Criminal Justice Program, passed out a 19-page packet chronicling how rehabilitative programs were dropped with former Gov. William Weld's promise to "re-introduce inmates to the joys of busting rocks."

Commissioner Clarke took the microphone to defend the DOC, encouraging the attendees to focus on institutions that fail people before they get to prison. "We want to make a change. That's why we are here today," he added. "We started this morning at 6:45 and here we are here tonight without having supper yet." Someone shouted back, "Me neither!" Susan Mortimer held up a photograph of her brother Glenn after he'd been beaten by prison guards in MCI-Shirley.

Clarke also mentioned a cost-benefit plan he's preparing for the governor this December. "In a sense, [it's] an argument for re-entry," he said, adding that the DOC didn't have enough resources or authority to implement changes. "That's why I encourage you all to not just spend your time talking to DOC ... but to get with your representatives, get with your senators, and make sure that they too understand what it is you think ought to be done."

Sonia Chang-Díaz, who just won the senatorial seat for the 2nd Suffolk district, was the only elected official knowo to have attended the hearing, according to Joanna Marinova, an End the Odds organizer. "These are important issues," Chang-Díaz said after the hearing. "We need to address them from all angles." She linked criminal justice to problems with youth violence and education.

According to Marinova, End the Odds invited 16 legislators. Only Sen. Gale Candaras, D-Wilbraham, and Sen. Patricia Jehlen, D-Somerville, sent staffers. Marinova was peeved at the absence of Rep. Eugene O'Flaherty, D-Chelsea. "I think it's a great oversight on his part, as head of the Judiciary Committee," she said. "His constituents suffer the highest rate of violence in Massachusetts. If this system isn't working for anyone, it's them." Rep. O'Flaherty's office declined to comment.

King wrapped up the hearing. "It's easy to be on the commissioner's case. He's here. How do we get on our legislators' case?" King asked. "I don't talk about hope. I talk about expectations ... We need to make sure these recommendations come true."
http://www.weeklydig.com/news-opinions/news-us/200811/boston-prison-blues

Posted by lois at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2008

Great News: Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3 to be released on bail after 37 years.

Woodfox and Wallace were each held in solitary confinement from the time of the murder until last March, after a federal court concluded that their suit alleging that such confinement for three decades constitutes cruel and unusual punishment could go forward. A third man, Robert King Wilkerson, was held in solitary at Angola at the same time for a different crime; he was released in 2001 after showing that he had been wrongfully convicted. The three are known as the "Angola 3." All black men, they had been organizing nonviolently for an end to gang-enforced sex slavery and for better conditions inside the prison. Angola at the time was known as the "bloodiest prison in the US."

Angola 3 Member to Be
Released On Bail After 37 Years
Conviction Overturned, Judge Rules Albert Woodfox Must be Free During Appeals or Re-trial

Albert Woodfox, who has spent 37 years in prison at Angola Penitentiary, must be released on bail, according to a ruling issued today by United States District Judge James Brady. On September 25th, Judge Brady overturned Woodfox's conviction for the 1972 murder of prison guard Brent Miller. Though the State has announced its intention to appeal that decision, until such an appeal is successful, according to today's ruling, there is no conviction on which to hold Woodfox.

In his decision, Judge Brady wrote:
"[Woodfox] is a frail, sickly, middle aged man who has had an exemplary conduct record for over the last twenty years. At the hearing before this Court on October 14, 2008, testimony was adduced that if released Mr. Woodfox would live with his niece and her family in a gated subdivision in Slidell, Louisiana. Mr. Woodfox has withdrawn that request because of fear of harm to his niece and her family by members... This change was brought about by counsel representing the State of Louisiana contacting the subdivision home owners association and providing them with information regarding Mr. Woodfox. The Court is not totally privy to what information was given to the association but from the documents filed it is apparent that the association was not told Mr. Woodfox is frail, sickly, and has had a clean conduct record for more than twenty years...this Court GRANTS Mr. Woodfox's motion for release pending the State's appeal."

Herman Wallace, who was also convicted in the murder, remains in prison at Angola. He has an appeal pending with the Supreme Court of Louisiana, which is similar in content to Woodfox's successful appeal. The two men were wrongly convicted based largely on the testimony of a fellow prisoner, Hezekiah Brown, a serial rapist who was promised and received a pardon in exchange for his testimony against them. Brown was the sole professed eyewitness to the murder, and none of the physical evidence put Herman or Albert at the crime scene.

Woodfox's legal team is now working with the court to reach an agreement on a suitable release location and plan for Woodfox; once they agree to a plan, Woodfox will be able to leave Angola. The lawyers anticipate the process to take several more days.

Woodfox and Wallace were each held in solitary confinement from the time of the murder until last March, after a federal court concluded that their suit alleging that such confinement for three decades constitutes cruel and unusual punishment could go forward. A third man, Robert King Wilkerson, was held in solitary at Angola at the same time for a different crime; he was released in 2001 after showing that he had been wrongfully convicted. The three are known as the "Angola 3." All black men, they had been organizing nonviolently for an end to gang-enforced sex slavery and for better conditions inside the prison. Angola at the time was known as the "bloodiest prison in the US."

"This is a major victory in a case where justice is long overdue. Albert went into Angola in his twenties, and he's walking out in his 60s. There is no conviction against him now, and the state should not take another day of his life," said Chris Aberle, Woodfox's lawyer.

"In 37 years, Albert never gave up hope that someday he would walk out the gates of Angola. We continue to hope that Herman will join him soon. Neither of these men should have spent a day in Angola for this crime," said Nick Trenticosta, also a lawyer in the case.

The case has attracted attention on the state and national level. Last spring, US House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) visited the men, along with Louisiana House Judiciary Committee Chair Cedric Richmond (D-101). Richmond has announced his intention to hold hearings on the case, and Conyers continues to monitor developments.

The state had sought a stay of Judge Brady's ruling ordering a new trial until the appeal process plays out. Judge Brady granted that request. The State must now either win its appeals, or will need to either release or retry Woodfox within 120 days of the end of its appeals.

Judge Brady held an initial bail hearing on October 14th; he postponed issuing a decision at that time to allow for additional depositions to be taken from Angola Warden Burl Cain and from a doctor who had examined Woodfox and his medical records. The State has now conducted both of those depositions.

Posted by lois at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)

November 25, 2008

A Victory in PA: Pittsburgh jury awards $185K to state prisoner

From the Human Rights Coalition---FedUp! Chapter
Andre Jacobs, a captive of SCI Fayette in the PA DOC, was awarded $185,000 in compensatory damages by a jury today for violations of his constitutional rights while being hled in the Long Term Segregation Unit in SCI Pittsburgh in 2003.

Andre represented himself at trial, and prevailed despite being forced to wear a remote-controlled electro-shock stun belt throughout that was controlled by DOC staff. Two of Andre's witnesses testified to Judge Conti that prison guards working the Special Management Unit (SMU) in Camp Hill threatened them for their participation in the case, with both testifying that C/O Uler assaulted one of the witnesses.

In the first of three upcoming jury trials (the other two are scheduled for January and February) in Federal Court, Mr. Jacobs out-lawyered the state's attorneys throughout, eventually winning guilty verdicts against Lt. Gregory Giddens, ex-Captain Thomas McConnel, and Superintendent's Assistant Carol Scire.

Don't believe the hype: Andre never broke the hand of a federal marshal, but rather was beaten unconscious by federal marshals while in cuffs and shackles after he violated a direct order not to speak by having the criminal audacity to tell his grandmother, Elizabeth, that he loved her. To cover up their criminal assault they charged Andre with assault under federal statutes.

Here is an article from the Pittsuburgh although it repeats the same official slander: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_599980.html
Human Rights Coalition - FedUp! Chapter
5125 Penn Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15224
hrcfedup@gmail.com
www.thomasmertoncenter.org/fedup/

Here's the article....
Pittsburgh jury awards $185K to state prisoner
By Jason Cato
Pittsburgh TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Monday, November 24, 2008

A federal jury today awarded $185,000 to a state prison inmate who represented himself in a civil trial against the state Department of Corrections and several employees.

Andre L. Jacobs, 26, claimed that prison guards at SCI-Pittsburgh illegally confiscated and destroyed about 150 pages of his legal documents after discovering they were part of a lawsuit against them. After deliberating for three days, eight jurors returned a unanimous verdict against two guards and a prison spokeswoman.

The jury found that former Capt. Thomas McConnell and Lt. Gregory Giddens interfered with Jacobs' access to the courts by taking his legal papers. Those men, along with prison spokeswoman Carol Scire, retaliated against Jacobs and conspired to violate his civil rights, the jury concluded. Giddens also defamed Jacobs by harming his reputation and causing mental anguish and humiliation, the jury ruled.

"I didn't ask for any money (at first). I didn't ask for any guards to be punished," Jacobs said last week while delivering closing arguments following a three-week trial before U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti. "The only thing I asked for throughout the whole process was that my legal documents be returned so I could proceed with my legal matters."

The jury exonerated 10 corrections employees, including state corrections Secretary Jeffrey A. Beard.

Department of Corrections officials could not be reached for comment.

Jacobs claimed staff at the state prison in Woods Run in September 2003 confiscated his legal documents from another inmate helping with his case. The next day, Jacobs said guards searched his cell and seized more documents.

He accused prison employees of creating fake documents and conducting bogus investigations to refute his claims against them. Court records show Jacobs was accused of refusing an order, possessing contraband and loaning or borrowing property following the seizures, which resulted in 30 days' confinement.

During an impassioned closing argument, Jacobs urged the jurors to send a message.

"Within the Department of Corrections, prisoners have no voice. Prisoners have no avenue for valid claims or relief," he said. "You are the only voice. You are the only ears for prisoners."

Assistant Attorney General Scott Bradley told jurors that Jacobs was using this lawsuit "as a ploy" to revisit his criminal case by smearing correctional employees.

"If all the defendants were lying, why wouldn't all of their testimony be the same?" Bradley asked. "Why would there be inconsistencies?"

Jacobs, originally from Harrisburg, has been in state custody since 1998, when he was 15 years old, according to court documents. He is serving five to 18 years in state prison. Details of his original conviction are unclear.

He is currently being held at the state prison in Fayette County.

In 2006, Jacobs was convicted of attacking federal marshals inside the U.S. District Courthouse, Downtown, following another civil trial that he lost. Prosecutors said Jacobs used his handcuffs during the March 2005 assault outside an elevator to injure a marshal's wrist. He was sentenced to 17 years and five months in federal prison, to run concurrently with his state time. If he is released from state prison early, he would have to serve out the remainder of the federal term.

Jacobs has two additional civil cases pending against the Department of Corrections and its employees. They are tentatively scheduled to go to trial next year.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_599980.html

Posted by lois at 08:32 PM | Comments (0)

OK: Good News Theresa Lee Hernandez

Empowering Oklahoma women & girls
Monday, November 24, 2008
Theresa Lee Hernandez- Follow-up
Dear Amici, Activists, and Allies:

We are so pleased to let you know that on November 19, 2008, after serving only one year from the date of sentencing, Theresa Lee Hernandez was released from prison.

As you know, Ms. Hernandez was arrested in 2004 and charged with first-degree murder (a crime with a potential penalty of 25 years-to-life imprisonment) and second-degree murder for having suffered a stillbirth. The state claimed -- without any scientific basis -- that the stillbirth was caused by her methamphetamine use.

In 2007, as her case approached trial, national and state-based organizations, advocates and experts organized, educated and spoke out against the prosecution. These efforts were instrumental in helping Ms. Hernandez avoid a life sentence and in enabling her counsel, Robin Shellow and Jim Rowan, to negotiate a plea bargain. That plea, entered last November, resulted in a sentence of 15 years, to be revisited after Ms. Hernandez served one year in prison.

As the Tulsa World reported: "Theresa Lee Hernandez, 31, appeared before Judge Virgil Black for a sentencing modification hearing. At the request of prosecutors, Black agreed to "suspend the remainder of her sentence and ordered her released from custody." Ms. Hernandez will go to a private treatment program for 90 days and will be on probation for 10 years.

Just a week before Ms. Hernandez's November 19 release, the second of two public forums regarding pregnancy, parenting and drug use was held. This forum, held at the Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, was co-sponsored by the local chapters of the National Association of Social Workers and of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the YWCA Oklahoma City, and Oklahoma State University's Gender and Women's Studies program. The panel discussion included local experts, doctors Eli Reshef and Dana Stone, and continued a conversation that drew upon evidence-based research concerning pregnancy, parenting and drug use. This conversation had begun at an Oklahoma forum one year earlier, in anticipation of Ms. Hernandez's sentencing.

The extent to which the organizing and public education effort made a difference is not only evident in Ms. Hernandez' early release, but also in what happened on the day of her release, how the media reported the decision, and what the prosecutor, District Attorney David Prater is now saying and doing.

Ms. Hernandez' release was not typical. Even in cases where a conviction is completely overturned, prisoners are almost always returned to prison for processing – something that can take weeks or even months - before they are finally released. In Ms. Hernandez' case, the judge ordered that her handcuffs be removed right in the courtroom and that she be allowed to leave straight from the courthouse to her awaiting family and friends. Ms. Hernandez was thus able, that day, to have her first taste of freedom in four years.

The media reporting was also an amazing example of what can be accomplished through meaningful education, outreach and activism.

The Channel 9 news story: "Freed from Prison" began by noting that "The case created a firestorm with doctors and women's advocates who rallied to the woman's side." Both print and television coverage noted that her release was met by the applause and cheers of family, onlookers, and supporters.

The entire Channel 9 news story was framed in a positive light. The correspondent on the Channel 9 story was asked to report about, "how authorities are now working to prevent another case like this from occurring." The correspondent began his report again referencing the experts: "Medical experts questioned whether the drug use actually caused the death of the baby, and the District Attorney heard those pleas and today asked that the prison sentence be suspended."

Kathleen Wallace, an Oklahoma City University law student, NAPW legal intern, and Oklahoma activist, appeared in the broadcast news report explaining, "It is bad precedent to charge pregnant women with a crime when what they did was try and take their pregnancy to term in spite of a drug addiction." According to Channel 9 news, "the district attorney agreed. . ."

District Attorney David Prater's actions and statements also indicated the extent to which education, outreach and activism made a difference. On the one hand, Mr. Prater stuck to the junk science story that pregnant women who use illegal drugs kill their babies, and the fable that imprisonment serves a social good by giving bad people like Ms. Hernandez a chance to prove themselves and to taking advantage of prison-based treatment programs.

(Surely, though Mr. Prater is aware of a recent case in which Oklahoma county had to pay $385,000 in damages to a woman who suffered a stillbirth as the result of horribly inadequate health care and treatment while imprisoned in the very same County Jail that Theresa Hernandez was held in for three years. )

On the other hand, Mr. Prater emerged as a meaningful spokesperson regarding the value of drug treatment and the need to increase access that treatment. On Channel 9 news, he said, "Drug and alcohol addiction is something that most people don't understand and that people need help in dealing with their drug and alcohol addiction." According to the Channel 9 news report, "Because of this case, Prater is now working to put a pilot program in place to divert pregnant women on drugs into treatment instead of locking them up. And state lawmakers will be asked to fund the program once it is developed."

Significantly, there has not been a single new OK County arrest of a pregnant woman or of a woman who suffered a stillbirth since the state-based organizing and education efforts began.

Nevertheless, while there is real cause to celebrate, there is no cause to stop working to ensure justice for pregnant and parenting women who struggle with drug problems. Although Ms. Hernandez was released to a treatment program, this was only made possible by a private benefactor willing to pick up the costs of her private treatment program – a program that may or may not facilitate her recovery and ensure that she will remain free.

The state needs to address the appalling lack of access to drug treatment and other services that will help pregnant women and families address drug and other health problems and stay together. On June 30, 2004 the Oklahoma Legislature established the Joint Task Force on Prenatal Addiction and Treatment. At their first meeting on Dec. 20, 2004, Sally Carter, an employee with the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services reported, "More than 80 percent of pregnant women in OK who need substance abuse treatment do not have access to it." Nearly three years later, on May 23, 2007, the Commissioner of the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, Terri White, stated:

"Although we are making progress in providing better perinatal services to pregnant women addicted to drugs or alcohol, a large gap in access to services still remains. . . . Not enough resources are going toward this group of women, among the most vulnerable in our society. . . Greater access to services is key[.]"

For Ms. Hernandez's sake and the sake of so many other women and families, we need to keep the pressure on to ensure that health problems are addressed through the public health system, not the criminal justice system, and that supportive, accessible and appropriate services are fully funded and made available to the people who need them. In other words – treatment must become available not as a matter of diversion from the criminal justice system but rather provided as a matter of human rights.

We know that many of you are committed to developing new interventions, programs and policies to support pregnant and parenting women, and we look forward to continuing to work with you on these efforts.

Sincerely,

Lynn Paltrow, JD
Executive Director
National Advocates for Pregnant Women
This and other news about women and organizing can be found at www.realcostofprisons.orgmpowering Oklahoma women & girls
Monday, November 24, 2008
Theresa Lee Hernandez- Followup
Dear Amici, Activists, and Allies:

We are so pleased to let you know that on November 19, 2008, after serving only one year from the date of sentencing, Theresa Lee Hernandez was released from prison.

The media reporting was also an amazing example of what can be accomplished through meaningful education, outreach and activism.

Significantly, there has not been a single new OK County arrest of a pregnant woman or of a woman who suffered a stillbirth since the state-based organizing and education efforts began.

Sincerely,

Lynn Paltrow, JD
Executive Director
National Advocates for Pregnant Women
To read the stories and see some of the video coverage, please visit:

1. http://www.news9.com/global/story.asp?s=9382106Meth Mom in Stillborn Case Leaves Prison, (with featured video), News 9, staff and wire reports - News9.com, posted and updated: Nov. 19, 2008.

2. http://www.koco.com/news/18019393/detail.htmlRecovering Meth Addict Gets Second Chance, Teresa Hernandez's Unborn Baby Died From Her Drug Use, KOCO 5, koco.com, posted and updated: Nov. 19, 2008.

3. http://newsok.com/okc-meth-mom-wins-early-release/article/3323593OKC Meth Mom Wins Early Release: Woman Was Convicted of Murder in Her Unborn Son's Drug-Related Death, Oklahoman (Oklahoma City), Jay F. Marks, Nov. 20, 2008.

Posted by lois at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2008

Tired of the Guilt, Fugitives Line Up to Give Up

November 24, 2008
Tired of the Guilt, Fugitives Line Up to Give Up
By KAREEM FAHIM

CAMDEN, N.J. — A church served as the police station house, and central booking was set up in a community center. An apartment building for the elderly doubled as the courthouse. And though many of the hundreds of people who lined up in the cold last Thursday were fugitives from the law, the authorities said most of them would not be sent to prison.

That still didn’t calm all the nerves. “I got my long johns on in case they lock me up,” said a 34-year-old man who gave only his first name, Anthony. He owed thousands of dollars in parking tickets.

Last week, Camden became the 12th city in the country to hold a federal program that encourages primarily nonviolent fugitives to surrender, promising them at best a clean slate, and usually a favorable hearing by a judge. In the three years that the program, called Fugitive Safe Surrender, has been in existence, more than 17,000 people have turned themselves in at churches from Nashville to Rochester.

The program was started after a police officer in Cleveland was shot and killed in 2000 by a man wanted on a parole violation. Camden, an impoverished city of 79,000 with a crime rate that sometimes ebbs but never seems to really drop, was seen as an especially good candidate for the initiative. So far this year, 48 people have been killed in the city, giving it a homicide rate more than 10 times that of New York City.

“We arrested thousands of people here,” said James T. Plousis, the United States marshal for New Jersey, who was behind the notion of bringing the fugitive program to Camden. “We had to do something. We couldn’t arrest our way out of being the most dangerous city.”

So over four days last week, more than 2,200 people waited outside the Antioch Baptist Church on Ferry Avenue, waiting for a chance to start again. They were not just from Camden: There are about 10,000 outstanding warrants in the towns surrounding Camden, according to a spokesman for the Camden County prosecutor’s office.

The people in line included young men wanted on minor drug charges, and mothers taking care of lapsed parking fines. A man convicted of sexual assault came to turn himself in, and so did plenty of people who mistakenly thought there were warrants out for their arrest.

The turnout last week stunned officials, who said it was higher than in any city where the program has been held except Detroit, which is about 12 times the size of Camden. When the four-day program was held in Philadelphia in September, 1,200 people turned out.

In Camden, there were many people like Renee Felton, 48, who had spent more than a decade in the shadows and was finally ready to see a judge.

In 1995, Ms. Felton said, she was pulled over and an officer found marijuana in her car. After she failed to show up for a court date, the charge became a warrant, and a red flag on background checks by employers.

Her niece saw a flier for the fugitive program, and encouraged Ms. Felton to turn herself in. She had been skeptical, and called the Rev. Michael T. Mannion, the community relations director for the Camden Diocese, whose name she had found on a Web site for the fugitive program. He eased her mind, she said.

Now, as she sat waiting for Judge Robert T. Zane, Ms. Felton started to cry. It was almost over. Besides fearing background checks during job interviews, she also had not been able to drive because her license had been revoked. “You know how many times I wanted to turn myself in? But I’ve never been to the jailhouse,” she said.

The judge called her forward, and dismissed her old charges, noting that they had not been prosecuted in a timely fashion.

“Aren’t you glad you came in today?” he said to Ms. Felton, who loudly thanked the judge and Jesus.

Not all the endings were so happy. About 10 people were arrested after turning themselves in, including Domingo Placencia, a 37-year-old cook who had pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a minor in 1992, but who never showed up for his sentencing.

His court-appointed lawyer, Michael Friedman, argued that Mr. Placencia could have left the country long ago, but instead was here, turning himself in. “We’re starting fresh,” Mr. Friedman said. But the judge ordered Mr. Placencia held without bail.

The fugitive program took years to come to Camden. A plan to bring the initiative to the city in 2006 was scuttled when the chief justice of State Supreme Court at the time, Deborah T. Poritz, forbade judges to participate because of concerns about court proceedings in a church. A compromise fixed the problem, and last week the makeshift courts were set up across the street from the church.

So many people showed up in Camden that officials had to send hundreds away, telling them to appear — with the same promise of favorable treatment and with their paperwork already processed — for future court dates.

According to nationwide statistics compiled at nine of the program sites other than Camden, 46 percent of the people who surrendered said they would have done so only at a church, and more than 60 percent of the people came with another family member. As for the reasons people give themselves up, respondents said, in order of highest percentage, that they wanted to start over, get a driver’s license, feared getting arrested, or did so for their children.

For Eric Frisby, 28, surrendering was a chance to escape from a self-imposed prison. “You limit yourself. You stay in the house,” said Mr. Frisby, a contractor who had come to sort out warrants for traffic fines and a drug offense.

Elsewhere in line, Joanne Derry, 50, a nurse, worried perhaps a bit too much about the punishment she would receive for unpaid parking tickets. “They don’t say ‘amnesty,’ ” she noted, wondering if she might be locked up.

It was Thursday, and Mr. Frisby and Ms. Derry stood near the end of a long line. Tempers flared at the front of the line, and a 50-year-old volunteer named Michael Williams tried to calm everyone. “It’s worth staying in this line,” he said. “You can walk the streets again. You don’t have to worry about harassment.”

He knew of what he spoke: Mr. Williams said he had spent half his life in prison, and had gotten some of his own outstanding warrants dismissed last week.

In the courtroom across the street, Judge Zane adjudicated cases at an impressive clip. “This is justice on the fly,” he said. Some of the charges that came before him veered toward the absurd. One fugitive had an open charge for failing to properly validate a ticket on the River Line, the train that runs from Trenton to Camden. “That charge is dismissed,” Judge Zane said.

Mr. Frisby finally had his day — his moment, really — in court, and seemed happy that some of the charges were dismissed. “I feel good,” he said outside the courtroom.

With a grin, he added: “Standing amongst police officers.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/24/nyregion/24fugitive.html?scp=1&sq=Camden%20New%20Jersey&st=cse

Posted by lois at 03:24 PM | Comments (0)

Kansas discusses closing 2 El Dorado prisons

EL DORADO, Kan. (AP) -- Impending budget cuts have prompted the Kansas Department of Corrections to consider closing two minimum-security prisons in El Dorado, although no final decision has been made.

"Every aspect of our operation is under review for potential reductions or eliminations in funding" because of state revenue shortfalls, department spokesman Bill Miskell said Friday.

The Corrections Department is trying to find ways to cut more than $5 million this fiscal year and more than $13 million for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

"We have in the past discussed the possibility of closing several of those minimum-security satellite units at El Dorado, at Lansing and at Norton in Stockton," Miskell said.

The department recently said that it is ending contracts for its day reporting centers in Wichita and Topeka and for the women's camp in Labette County. Inmates at the day reporting centers will remain on parole.

The two minimum-security facilities in El Dorado employ 37 people and any cuts or closings would also cost the town hundreds of volunteer hours from inmates, El Dorado officials said.

The maximum-security unit at El Dorado Correctional Facility, where inmates such as BTK serial killer Dennis Rader are housed, has not been discussed as a closure target.

"This is all budget," Miskell said. "We have got to go through and review everything we are doing to determine what kinds of cuts we can make that will have a minimum negative impact on public safety and on other aspects of department operation."

David Alfaro, director of economic development for Butler County, said any cuts to the minimum-security prisons would hurt. Besides providing jobs, the facilities buy supplies from El Dorado and Butler County businesses.

"It would make a big impact on us," Alfaro said.

The inmates' volunteer work also would be missed, said Linda Jolly, executive director of El Dorado Inc., a nonprofit economic development organization that works with the city.

One of the units held 93 inmates Thursday and the other unit held 68. Many are nearing the end of their prison term and are preparing for release.

Jolly said the inmates volunteer work maintains El Dorado Lake park areas, provides labor for large community events, runs the city's recycling center and helps her organization with small remodeling projects.

"The program to have inmates work in your community is different than I thought it would be before I came here," she said. "They're very skilled, courteous individuals that work in our community. You don't have the fear like some might have."

Jim Phillips, chairman of the El Dorado Prairie Port Festival, said he has prepared a draft letter to state officials asking that the units not be closed.

Every year for 23 years, inmates from the honor camp have spent hours helping prepare for the festival, Phillips said.

"That would not be possible, and I mean that sincerely, it would not be possible to do without the inmate labor," he said. "Most events that happen in town do so with some inmate labor. So it would be a real tragedy for our community."

------
http://www.hdnews.net/wirestories/k1020-BC-KS-Corrections-Budge-1stLd-Writethru-11-23-0643

Posted by lois at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

(Bad) Choices for Possible Obama Drug Czar

Ramstad Seen as Possible Obama Drug Czar
November 21, 2008

News Feature
By Bob Curley

As President-elect Barack Obama's transition team gathers steam, word is leaking out that recently retired Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.) -- a strong advocate for addiction treatment and recovery -- could be in the running for the position of Obama's "drug czar."

Drugs -- and the addiction issue in general -- got very little attention during the recently concluded presidential campaign, but now that Obama has won, his duties prior to taking office on Jan. 20 include selecting candidates for some of the top positions for his forthcoming administration. And although the job of director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has seemed almost invisible in recent years, in fact the "drug czar" is officially part of the president's Cabinet -- technically on par with the Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State.

No candidates for the drug czar's job have been officially announced by the team running Obama's search for a successor to current ONDCP head John Walters; the search is reportedly being led by Christopher Putala, Washington, D.C., consultant and former senior Senate Judiciary Committee staffer for then-Chairman (and now vice-president elect) Joseph Biden (D-Del.); and Donald Vereen of the University of Michigan School of Public Health, a former NIH researcher and deputy ONDCP director between 1998 and 2001 under President George H.W. Bush.

The Capitol Hill newsmagazine Politico first reported that Ramstad was being considered as a possible head of ONDCP in the Obama administration. Dean Peterson, a Ramstad spokesperson, told Politico it was "gratifying to hear Jim's name being mentioned for drug czar"; however, a Ramstad spokesperson contacted by Join Together would not comment on whether the nine-term Congressman was in the running for the job.

More Reputed Candidates

Other potential candidates for drug czar floating around the blogosphere and Washington have included Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, drug-policy researcher and author Mark A. Kleiman of the UCLA School of Public Affairs, current Center for Substance Abuse Treatment director H. Wesley Clark, and Tom McLellan, Ph.D., director of the Treatment Research Institute.

However, Bratton told L.A.'s City News Service that he's not interested in the job, stating, "That is not something I am seeking, it's not something I have been approached about." Likewise, Kleiman recently posted the following to his blog: "I am not, have not been, and could not be under consideration for Drug Czar. Not only have I taken positions that make me politically radioactive, I'd also be absolutely terrible at actually doing the job, which is 10 percent thinker, 30 percent manager, and 60 percent schmoozer."

Ramstad co-founded the bipartisan Congressional Addiction, Treatment and Recovery Caucus with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-Mass.) and has been an outspoken advocate for addiction treatment service, candid about his own recovery from alcoholism, and a driving force behind the recent passage of the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008.

Eric Goplerud, Ph.D., director of Ensuring Solutions to Alcohol Programs and a research professor at the George Washington University Department of Health Policy, said that the next drug czar needs to be someone who takes a public-health approach to drug issues, not a military one. "Ramstad would definitely have that orientation," he said. "He's inspiring; he has a broad vision of how substance use related to the issues of health and mental health in this country, and he has the credibility to work with Capitol Hill and the administration. He would be a strong leader."

However, word that Ramstad might be under consideration as Obama's drug czar has not sat well with some drug-policy reform groups. "While we applaud Rep. Ramstad for his courageous and steady support for expanding drug treatment access and improving addiction awareness, and honor his own personal and very public triumph over addiction, we have strong reservations about his candidacy for the drug-czar position," states a sign-on letter being circulated by the congressional office of the Drug Policy Alliance. "In his 28 years in the U.S. House, Rep. Ramstad has consistently opposed policies that seek to reduce drug-related harm and create common ground on polarizing issues."

The letter portrays Ramstad as being out of step with some of Obama's stated positions on drug policy, noting that the GOP Congressman voted to permanently ban federal funding for needle-exchange programs and to block federal efforts to prevent the arrest of medical-marijuana users in states where such use is legal. "We urge you to nominate for drug czar someone with a public-health background, who is committed to reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and other infectious diseases, open to systematic drug-policy reform, and able to show strong leadership on the issues you believe in," the DPF letter said.

The Qualities of a Future Leader

Peter Reuter, professor of the School of Public Policy and Department of Criminology at the University of Maryland and founder of RAND's Drug Policy Research Center, sees two key qualification for an effective drug czar under Obama: stature and substantive balance.

"The office has lacked prestige since William Bennett; though General McCaffrey was a visible public figure he did not have much standing in the senior levels of government," Reuter told Join Together. "If the new director is to be taken seriously by cabinet agencies, he or she must be sufficiently well known and respected to get phone calls returned. Without that, the director reverts to a minor budget and operational coordinator."

Added Reuter: "The major challenge for the new director is to tame the enforcement machine, initially at the federal level but then at the state level. This requires someone whose credentials will not be challenged by law enforcement but who has enough knowledge of the rest of the field to make a good case for what can be accomplished through other programs."

Goplerud said that the Whole Health Campaign, a coalition of more than 70 addiction and mental-health organizations, has been working with the Obama transition team to ensure that treatment and prevention issues are considered as appointments are made throughout the government, from the Department of Labor (which will play a role in parity implementation as well as drug-free workplace issues) to the Interior Department (which includes the Department of Indian Affairs) and the Medicaid program, which directly impacts addiction treatment for thousands of Americans.

Goplerud also had praise for Obama's nomination of former Sen. Tom Daschle as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, noting Daschle's past work on the issue of fetal alcohol syndrome. "We will have a healthcare reform czar who knows our issues," he said.

Other announced nominations, such as Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, Eric Holder as Attorney General, and even Joseph Biden as Vice President have received some criticism from drug-policy reform groups, who view the trio as "pretty aggressive drug warriors," in the words of columnist Radley Balko. Similar complaints have been aired regarding ONDCP transition team leader Donald Vereen, called a "a completely unreconstructed drug warrior" by one respected source who spoke to Join Together but did not wish to be identified by name.
http://www.jointogether.org/news/features/2008/ramstad-seen-as-possible.html?log-event=sp2f-view-item&nid=46673271

Posted by lois at 09:52 AM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2008

WI Books to Prisoners: artwork by prisoners and others wanted

WANTED – ARTWORK BY PRISONERS AND OTHERS

Wisconsin Books to Prisoners was the recipient of a powerful set of posters created by 20 printmakers from the JUSTSEEDS Visual Resistance art collective. These posters were created in anticipation of the 10th anniversary of Critical Resistance, a prison abolitionist movement, and call attention to the human rights catastrophe in U.S. jails and prisons, and the use of policing, prisons and punishment as a “solution” to social, political and economic problems.

The posters and artwork by prisoners and others will be displayed at a gallery in Madison at the end of January 2009. Art that addresses the condition of prisons and the daily drudgery and cruelties of prison life would be particularly appreciated.

Please do not send anything that you want returned or is not copyright free. Also, please let us know how you wish to be (or not be) identified. We welcome artwork year around.

Many thanks in advance to those who make contributions to this event.

Please send artwork:

Wisconsin Books to Prisoners
Rainbow Bookstore
426 W. Gilman St.
Madison, WI 53703

WI Books to Prisoners was banned by the WI DOC from sending books to Wisconsin prisoners. They are fighting that ban now and continue sending books to other prisoners.

Please feel free to forward this email. Thank you.

Posted by lois at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)

Inspiring Rikers Teacher Runs Afoul of Jail's Rules

By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: January 25, 2006

JEFF KAUFMAN, a teacher at the Rikers Island jail, has a reputation as a good educator who cares about his student inmates. In 2004, without the aid of computers, his students finished first in a citywide stock market game competition against more than 50 high schools.

Jeff Kaufman taught at Island Academy, the Rikers Island jail school, for eight years. After a complaint from the principal, he was removed from Rikers and reassigned despite praise from peers and inmates.

Elizabeth Lesher, who oversees the competition, said that at most schools, "students gather around computers, research stocks via Web sites such as Yahoo Finance, Market Watch or Nasdaq and enter their transactions online."

"The classroom environment at Rikers was very sparse," said Ms. Lesher, a director for the Foundation for Investor Education. "No attractive bulletin boards, no computers with Internet access and no industry specialists visited the classroom to provide investment ideas." Mr. Kaufman's students relied on the newspaper and his class lessons. That, she said, "speaks volumes about the teacher. Obviously I was very impressed."

In 2003, Mr. Kaufman's students won a citywide playwriting competition. In 2000 and 2001, he arranged for the student chorus at Louis Armstrong Middle School in Queens to visit Rikers at Christmas and perform for his students.

Don Murphy, a fellow teacher, said Mr. Kaufman became so popular during his eight years at the jail that in 2004 he was unopposed in the election for union representative at Island Academy, the Rikers school, which serves about 1,000 teenage inmates.

David Lee, an inmate serving time for assault, who earned a General Educational Development diploma with one of the highest scores ever at Rikers, said no teacher worked harder. Mr. Kaufman made special arrangements for Mr. Lee to take college correspondence courses, spent his lunch hours tutoring him and then proctored each of the three-hour exams from Excelsior College.

In July 2003, Mr. Kaufman was off for the summer, but made special trips to Rikers so Mr. Lee could take his next college exam. "All the teachers were on vacation and school didn't begin until September," Mr. Lee wrote in a letter sent to this reporter from Rikers. "But Kaufman comes here to Rikers not once, but twice just so that he could give me the test on a hot summer day. He didn't have to come; he could have stayed home with his wife and kids."

"Mr. Kaufman wasn't only a teacher or test proctor," said Mr. Lee. "He inspired me to aim higher in life."

But on Friday, Mr. Kaufman received notice from his principal that he was no longer permitted to teach at Rikers.

His crime? "Undue familiarity."

Mr. Kaufman had given Mr. Lee his home address so the two could correspond by mail and try to arrange for Mr. Lee to take another of those Excelsior College exams while the inmate was in solitary confinement in the summer of 2004.

There is no allegation of anything improper about the content of those letters. Copies of 20 letters provided to a reporter by Mr. Kaufman and Mr. Lee mainly talked about learning. In one, the inmate thanked the teacher for sending books to him in solitary ("the Bing") and wrote that he was spending so much time reading, up to 12 hours a day, that he was getting headaches. "I don't mind being here at the Bing but I want to be able to take the test," wrote Mr. Lee.

Mr. Kaufman wrote back urging patience, saying that he was trying to work out arrangements with correction officials. "If your head begins to hurt from reading, stop. Your body is telling you it's enough."

How did school and correction officials know that Mr. Kaufman had given out his home address? Mr. Kaufman told them.

On Sept. 12, 2005, the Rikers principal, Frank Dody, sent out a security memo, in which he spelled out in writing, for the first time, what was meant by the prohibition against undue familiarity: "All contact with current/former students outside of the school area (home, upstate facilities) in the form of letters or phone calls must be authorized by the principal."

Mr. Kaufman read the memo, requested authorization and showed the principal a recent letter from Mr. Lee. Within days Mr. Kaufman was yanked from Rikers and placed in a holding room in Brooklyn for teachers under investigation.

Mr. Kaufman says he thinks the real reason he was investigated was that he had testified at a City Council hearing in December 2004 about how bad the Rikers school's services were for inmates being released. "That really upset Frank Dody," Mr. Kaufman says. "He wouldn't talk to me for months. He's using this incident to get me."

Mr. Dody said he was upset, but that's not why there was an investigation. He said that even though he had been principal six years and had only recently spelled out the rules in writing, anyone who had been at Rikers as long as Mr. Kaufman knew you weren't supposed to give out your address. "Teachers here have to live by the corrections rules," Mr. Dody said. "While the rules don't always make sense, even to me, they're in place for a reason, to keep everyone safe."

Mr. Dody acknowledged that the letter Mr. Kaufman showed him had nothing compromising in it. "From my reading of it, I didn't really see anything of any nature that would raise my eyebrows," Mr. Dody said.

Thomas Antenten, a corrections spokesman, said that once the principal made the decision to refer the case, officials had to investigate. "We take undue familiarity very seriously," he said. "Giving an inmate a personal address could lead to deadly consequences."

Inmates like Mr. Lee say Rikers has lost a rare, good teacher. "It was a wrong decision to demote Kaufman," Mr. Lee said. "I'm the one who initiated contact in order to see what options I had in seeking a better education."

David Lee was a 16-year-old junior with a B+ average at Francis Lewis High in Queens in January 2002. He says he got mixed up with the wrong people, and was at a Flushing apartment when a fight broke out and a man was stabbed to death. Mr. Lee pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in return for an eight-year sentence and is being held at Rikers pending the trial of a co-defendant charged with murder.

Within four months at Rikers, Mr. Lee took the G.E.D. In the middle of the test, he says, a brawl broke out and someone threw a chair at him, bruising a rib. Still, he comes from a family of good students, and even bruised, he finished with a top score. His younger sister, Sonia, is an A student in her sophomore year at George Washington University, and travels from Washington every other week to visit her brother in jail, bringing books he requests.

At the Rikers school, Mr. Lee became a favorite. He showed Mr. Murphy, the computer teacher, how to use several desktop publishing programs. He was given a job doing janitorial work. With Mr. Kaufman's help, he took three college business courses and got A's. Neither he nor Mr. Kaufman knew what material was going to be on the tests and which chapters to focus on, so Mr. Lee read everything. "I would read 450, 500 pages of a textbook from cover to cover three to four times so I would truly understand," he said.

AS Mr. Lee was about to take his fourth college exam, in May 2004, he was caught with 17 packs of Newports. Smoking was banned at Rikers in 2003; cigarettes are considered contraband. Mr. Lee said he was offered a "slap on the wrist" if he'd give up his supplier but did not. For each pack of Newports, he was given 15 days in solitary, 9 months altogether in a 6-by-9-foot cell.

Mr. Antenten, the corrections spokesman, said he did not know the details of the case but added that Rikers makes no distinction between cigarettes and heroin when it comes to contraband. "It can lead to disputes between inmates that have bloody consequences," he said.

Mr. Lee said the teacher's letters helped keep him sane those nine months. "Not only did Kaufman help me pursue educational studies, but he offered moral support through the letters," he said.

The illegal letters sent to Mr. Kaufman's home are often quite moving. A July 28, 2004, letter begins with Mr. Lee thanking the teacher for the latest package of books. "You want to know what's funny," wrote Mr. Lee. "Before I was incarcerated, I never used to really read. I could honestly tell you that I read less than 10 books during my life outside and it was during my elementary school years. I wouldn't even bother to look at the cover of a book if I came across one.

"Now that I'm incarcerated, I treasure them. I'm not just talking about novels which enhance your vocabulary and reading comprehension but also self-help books. What I like about self-help books is that from reading just one significant quote which catches your eye, it could change your whole perception of life itself. From reading books you tap into the most brilliant minds of the present and past. In here they're like my most trusted friends."

At times, in the letters, Mr. Kaufman sounds like a stern father. Referring to the cigarette infraction that got Mr. Lee removed from the school and landed him in the Bing, Mr. Kaufman wrote, "We were all upset at your sudden leaving, but we have talked about consequences."

Mr. Kaufman, 50, said his background - he is a Cornell grad, a former police officer and lawyer for the indigent - makes him well-suited for teaching inmates. He will appeal the decision. "It's a place I feel I can be of most use to my students," he said.

In December, after spending more than two months in the Brooklyn holding room, Mr. Kaufman was sent to Queens Academy, where he is mentoring three new teachers. An Education Department spokesman, David Cantor, said Mr. Kaufman would soon be given a job teaching at an alternative high school.

Mr. Dody, the principal, said Mr. Kaufman's removal was solely a Correction Department decision.

But a November 2005 memo by the department's investigator, Capt. Matthew Boyd, indicates that the principal had a significant role. "Dr. Dody reports that he has determined that Mr. Kaufman's actions violate undue familiarity and I concur," the memo says.

Mr. Dody says he's not a doctor and the corrections memo is wrong.

Mr. Lee's younger sister, Sonia, wrote about his jail experiences in a term paper at George Washington that won a top a prize and was featured at a student lecture series. The paper includes the hardships her brother knew growing up, including the suicide of their mother, who suffered from manic depression. Sonia Lee plans to get a master's degree in public policy specializing in the prison system. Her prize paper calls for prisons that devote more resources to rehabilitation and education.

(http://www.ice-uft.org/newsNYT01-25-06.htm)

Posted by lois at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Editorial: Time to pay for getting tough on crime

Editorial: Time to pay for getting tough on crime
Published Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008
Sacramento Bee

There's an old kids' joke, "How do you know if there's an elephant under your bed?" Answer: "Your nose is touching the ceiling."

As California lawmakers and the governor grapple with the reality of multibillion-dollar deficits stretching into the future, they can no longer ignore the elephant in the rotunda: prison spending. That elephant has become a mammoth because lawmakers over the last 25 years have created longer and longer sentences and reduced the ability of prisoners to shave off prison time for good behavior.

The charts show the result. A greater proportion of the state's population now is in prison and a greater share of the prison population is aged. Older people have greater health needs and so cost a lot to keep in prison. They are taking up beds, producing overcrowded prisons.

Those in prison aren't eligible for Medicare, the federal health program for the nation's elderly. Nor are they eligible for Medi-Cal, the health program for the poor in which costs are shared between the state and the federal government. So the entire cost of health care for older, sick prisoners falls on the state.

All of this is now in the federal courts because the state has refused to create alternatives for dealing with feeble, chronically ill prisoners to reduce prison population – or to pay for building facilities to house these prisoners.

One court is examining whether to cap prison population. Another is looking at whether to force the state to pay for seven 1,500-bed facilities. Both courts could make decisions as early as January.

The need for lawmakers and the governor to act is urgent – before the courts impose solutions. They should get on this immediately, working on three fronts:

• There's no avoiding building some 1,500-bed facilities to house older, infirm prisoners. Some remain dangerous, and alternatives to prison for those who aren't dangerous would take some time to implement.

J. Clark Kelso, the court-appointed prison health care receiver, has a plan for three phases of building. Phase I would build three facilities at a cost of $3.43 billion. Unless the state in the next two years has alternatives for 4,800 to 5,900 older, infirm prisoners who can't function in a regular prison,the state must build these facilities.

But if they take steps now to reduce the older, infirm prison population before 2012 , lawmakers can avoid building four more facilities in Phases II and III.

And they can avoid having the court take money directly out of the general fund by passing a bond package that would spread costs over 25 years and begin payments three years from now. Senate Republicans who killed that option need to revive it.

• Corrections officials should evaluate all 22,500 prisoners age 50 and over and determine which of them pose a public safety risk.

This is not about releasing prisoners out of compassion. It is about economic reality.

Even prisoners who committed violent crimes should be evaluated – such as a guy who murdered someone when he was 28 and has spent the last 30 years in prison, but who now is blind, diabetic, in a wheelchair, and has failing kidneys.

The evaluations should look at their behavior in prison and what percentage of their sentence has been served. For those who do not pose a safety threat, the state should find alternative placement in the community – and help them apply for Medi-Cal and/or Medicare if they have no family with insurance.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have urged the federal government to help California during the financial crisis. Getting low-risk prisoners out of state prison is a way for the state to tap federal health care dollars.

• The Legislature should establish an independent sentencing commission, as other states have, to provide new sentencing guidelines. The commission is needed to organize California's 1,000 sentencing laws and create guidelines that constrain judges' discretion but also provide for some flexibility in sentencing.

If California does not change its sentencing system, the number of prisoners age 50 and over is projected to go from 22,500 today to more than 40,500 – a whopping 25.6 percent of the prison population – by 2018.

It's no mystery what prevents the state from dealing with this issue: Politicians of both parties fall over each other to see who's tougher on crime. The latest is Attorney General Jerry Brown asserting, falsely, that if Californians want "top-drawer care," they have to "go to prison." You can tell who's running for governor in 2010.

So here's another joke on California. What did lawmakers and the governor say when the elephant moved into the Capitol? Nothing! They didn't notice.

Except this is no longer a laughing matter. Our nose is flat against the ceiling already, and the elephant is still growing.
http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/1418918.html

Posted by lois at 03:24 PM | Comments (0)

OK: Audit: State’s prisons crowded, underfunded

Audit: State’s prisons crowded, underfunded
November 23, 2008
Muskogee Phoeniz
— TAFT — Velita Nash says she does not have a drug or alcohol problem.
“I have a problem shoplifting clothing,” she said. “I steal clothes from a retailer.”
Nash, 40, of Lawton, is serving five years in prison and “five years on paper” — five years suspended. Nash has been a “Level 4,” the highest possible rating, at Dr. Eddie Warrior Correctional Center since April. She has completed available programs and education. Her conduct has remained good, supervisors said.
The Pardon and Parole Board issued her a parole certificate last month and recommended she be paroled Dec. 1, after one-third of her five-year prison sentence has been served.

“Parole is a slow progress,” Nash said. “I’m a nonviolent offender — there are so many nonviolent offenders incarcerated.”
Nonviolent inmates accounted for 51.8 percent of the inmates incarcerated in Oklahoma on Aug. 29, 2008, DOC spokesman Jerry Massie said.
Oklahoma prison facilities are overcrowded, underfunded and undermanned, according to the latest Department of Corrections Performance Audit.
The state’s prison population has been estimated to go from 25,416 to 26,316 in fiscal year 2008. By fiscal year 2016, that total is estimated to be 28,872, according to the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Research Center.
Overcrowding is one of the biggest problems facing the state prison system, Massie said.
“Our incarceration rate is fourth in the country,” he said.
And more prisoners are on the way, according to a DOC performance audit for fiscal year 2007.
State prisoners awaiting transfer to DOC can be 1,300 on any day, the audit states. Muskogee County/City Detention Facility usually has between 45 to 50 inmates awaiting transport to DOC, said Ida Thompson, jail administrator.
The audit also states Oklahoma’s rate of female incarceration is the highest in the nation.
Nonviolent inmates are one of several concerns facing the state’s prison system, including undermanned facilities.
At Jess Dunn Correctional Center, 10 miles from Muskogee, there was one officer on duty recently for every 81 inmates, said spokeswoman Cheryl Bryant.
The facility has 84 employees but is funded to fill 106 positions. DOC has established a budgetary policy of filling 82 percent of authorized staffing levels, according to its latest performance audit report.
“We (Oklahoma prisons) are at 98.21 percent capacity,” Massie said. “Ninety-five percent or below is what you should be for management flexibility. Some people can’t be in the same cell together.”
Prison facilities that weren’t built to be prisons and how well they are retrofitted as correctional centers is of concern to the state legislature, Massie said.
Whether DOC should build some new facilities or look toward more private prisons — “that will be the debate,” Massie said.
There are at least six private prisons in the state, three of which DOC contracts with, he said. The other private prisons contract for out-of-state prisoners because they can get more revenue from other states, Massie said.
Massie said the state lost access to one private prison for that reason.
The audit shows in 2006, private prisons in the state had exactly twice the percentage of serious incidents per 1,000 inmates as that of public prisons.
Sentencing guidelines also have an impact on overcrowding prisons.
DOC statistics also show that in December 2000, 53 inmates were serving sentences for which they had to serve 85 percent of that sentence. Regardless of their progress, the law does not allow for an early parole for those inmates.
In April 2007, 3,671 state inmates were serving sentences for 85 percent crimes. The longer sentences are part of the reason for the overcrowding, experts agree. There are now 19 crimes that carry a penalty of serving 85 percent of a sentence, officials said.
The MGT performance audit found “virtually all” of the projected growth in the number of inmates “is a consequence of longer periods of imprisonment associated with the 85 percent sentence laws, accompanied by a very low parole grant rate.”
The percentage of inmates eligible for parole or commutation who were released from prison in 1991 was 40.8 percent. In 2006, the number was 18.9 percent. There has been a 39 percent drop since 2003 and a 54 percent drop since 1991, according to DOC.

Parole decision doesn’t mean immediate release
A Pardon and Parole Board recommendation for parole doesn’t necessarily mean an inmate will be paroled.
The number of paroles or commutations signed by the governor has fallen from 2,868 in 2001 to 846 in 2006, a 71 percent drop, according to DOC records.
There is a backlog because of overcrowding throughout the system.
But because of overcrowding, Nash can’t move to a halfway house and prepare further for re-entry into society.
Nash completed a program at Eddie Warrior called “Boundaries” and says she’s learned to set boundaries for herself.
She plans to move to Oklahoma City if she can get paroled, instead of returning to Lawton, where she said it would be harder for her to stay in boundaries she sets “and make the right decisions.”
She’s a good cook and hopes to take training in culinary arts and get a job as a cook.
It’s hard for her to understand if the DOC budget is so stretched why the governor doesn’t parole more people recommended for parole.
Nash said she knows he is a very busy man and has to study parole recommendations in addition to his other duties. But the delay is costing the state, she said.

Oklahoma Constitution impedes parole process
Paul Sund, spokesman for Gov. Brad Henry, agrees he’s the only governor in the nation who has to sign every parole.
The performance audit recommended removing the governor from the parole process. But, there’s a hitch.
The governor’s personally signing off on each parole “is in the Oklahoma Constitution,” Sund said. “Our Constitution says the governor has the final word on parole.”
Reading each probation file is very time consuming, so Sund says the governor can see both sides of the issue.
Victims of crime enjoy one more set of eyes before someone is released to the streets, Sund said.
“The bottom line — the people will decide this issue (in a statewide vote),” he said.
After the Pardon and Parole Board recommends a parole, all information on a parolee application has to be verified, including where they would live and where they would work, Then the governor assigns an attorney to review the file and make a recommendation. Then the governor goes through the file.
Sometimes its months and months before the review process is over and it’s in the governor’s office, he said.
“We get several hundred every month,” Sund said. “Some have expressed frustration how long it takes.”
But the governor wants to be right, he said.
“It’s a public safety issue,” Sund said.

Costly incarceration
Cost of incarceration in FY 2007 for state inmates according to the security ranking of each facility — per inmate:
• Maximum — $69.23 daily and $25,270 annually.
• Medium — $56.02 daily and $20,447 annually.
• Minimum — $51.99 daily and $18,976 annually (includes Jess Dunn and Eddie Warrior).
• Community — $53.79 daily and $19,634 annually (includes one facility in Muskogee).
• Work Centers — $40.64 daily and $14,835 annually.
DOC’s FY 2009 appropriated budget is $503,000,000.
Source: Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

On the web
An Oklahoma Department of Corrections performance audit for 2007, authorized by the Legislative Service Bureau of the Oklahoma Legislature, can be found on the DOC Web site.
http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/local/local_story_328001407.html/resources_printstory

Posted by lois at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)

MA: "Reform is Needed" letter by Barbara Dougan of FAMM

Letters to the Editor - The Boston Globe
Reform is needed
November 23, 2008

"PRISON TO double-bunk inmates" highlights the urgent need for sentencing reform in Massachusetts. Our prisons are bursting, due in large part to costly and inflexible mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Almost 17 percent of state prisoners are serving a mandatory sentence, a 32 percent increase over the past 10 years. Many are serving these harsh sentences for first-time, nonviolent offenses. These prisoners are also ineligible for parole or participation in work-release programs, which are key tools to relieve prison overcrowding.

Massachusetts currently spends, on average, about $48,000 per year on each state prisoner. Building new prisons is costly too - about $1 million for each new prison bed. Repealing mandatory minimums for drug offenders would lead to significant savings of taxpayer dollars.

Harold Clarke, commissioner of the Department of Correction, is correct to say that costly prison space should be for those who pose a public safety risk, not for those needing drug treatment or for low-level offenders. The coming legislative session offers the Commonwealth an opportunity to save money by adopting sensible sentencing reform.

Barbara J. Dougan
Newton
The writer is Massachusetts project director with Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

Posted by lois at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2008

Phone and Fax for Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim

PhonSF 8 defendants Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim (aka Anthony Bottom) are being held in intolerable conditions in the San Francisco County jail, a facility designed to hold arrestees for only a day or two.

The Free the SF 8 committee is are asking that you phone and fax California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger every Wednesday demanding that California return Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim (Anthony Bottom) to New York state for their parole hearings. Please also send us an email when you have done so at FreetheSF8@riseup.nete and Fax for Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim

In order for this to be a success, we need you to help spread the word and take a few minutes to make the call and send the fax.

You can print out and fax the attached form letter and use the phone script below.

********* Phone Script **************

Phone (916) 445-2841

Governor Schwarzenegger,

I call upon you to immediately transfer Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom (aka Jalil Muntaqim), back to New York State custody. Mr. Bell and Mr. Bottom have been languishing in the San Francisco County Jail for over two years, while their case – the San Francisco 8 – has no trial date in sight. The San Francisco County Jail is not meant to hold people for an extended period of time, and two years in sub-standard living conditions has had devastating effects on Mr. Bell and Mr. Bottom and their families.

California State prosecutors and the judge have already agreed to transfer Mr. Bell and Mr. Bottom. I urge you, Governor Schwarzenegger to follow through and implement this agreement. Stop reneging and do what’s right! Transfer them now!

AND
PHONE (518-474-8390) Governor David Patterson of NY to grant clemency/commutation to Jalil. And to ask Gov. Patterson to allow Jalil and Herman Bell to appear before the parole board.

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

Gail Collins- NY Times " Time for Him to Go"

November 22, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist- NY Times
Time for Him to Go
By GAIL COLLINS

Thanksgiving is next week, and President Bush could make it a really special holiday by resigning.

Seriously. We have an economy that’s crashing and a vacuum at the top. Bush — who is currently on a trip to Peru to meet with Asian leaders who no longer care what he thinks — hasn’t got the clout, or possibly even the energy, to do anything useful. His most recent contribution to resolving the fiscal crisis was lecturing representatives of the world’s most important economies on the glories of free-market capitalism.

Putting Barack Obama in charge immediately isn’t impossible. Dick Cheney, obviously, would have to quit as well as Bush. In fact, just to be on the safe side, the vice president ought to turn in his resignation first. (We’re desperate, but not crazy.) Then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would become president until Jan. 20. Obviously, she’d defer to her party’s incoming chief executive, and Barack Obama could begin governing.

As a bonus, the Pelosi presidency would put a woman in the White House this year after all. On the downside, a few right-wing talk-show hosts might succumb to apoplexy. That would, of course, be terrible, but I’m afraid we might have to take the risk in the name of a greater good.

Can I see a show of hands? How many people want George W. out and Barack in?

A great many Americans have been counting the days all year on their 2008 George W. Bush Out of Office Countdown calendars. I know a lot of this has been going on because so many people congratulated me when the Feb. 1 Bush quote turned out to be from one of my old columns. (“I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth from the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth.”)

This was not nearly as good as Feb. 5 (“We ought to make the pie higher”) or Feb. 21 (“I understand small business growth. I was one.”) But we do what we can.

In the past, presidents have not taken well to suggestions that they hand over the reins before the last possible minute. Senator J. William Fulbright suggested a plan along those lines when Harry Truman was coming to the end of a term in a state of deep unpopularity, and Truman called him “Halfbright” for the rest of his life. Bush might not love the idea of quitting before he has a chance to light the Christmas tree or commute the execution of one last presidential turkey. After all, he still has a couple more trips planned. And last-minute regulations to issue. (So many national parks to despoil, so many endangered species to exterminate ... .) And then there’s all the packing.

On the other hand, he might want to consider his legacy, such as it is.

In happier days, Bush may have nurtured hopes of making it into the list of America’s mediocre presidents, but somewhere between Iraq and Katrina, that goal became a mountain too high. However, he might still have a chance to avoid the absolute bottom of the barrel, a spot currently occupied by James Buchanan, at least in my opinion. Buchanan nailed down The Worst President title in the days between Abraham Lincoln’s election and inauguration, when the Southern states began seceding and Buchanan, after a little flailing about, did absolutely nothing. “Doing nothing is almost the worst thing a president can do,” said the historian Michael Beschloss.

If Bush gives up doing nothing by giving up his job, it’s possible that someday history might elevate him to the ranks of the below average. Better than Franklin Pierce! Smarter than Warren Harding! And healthier than William Henry Harrison!

The person who would like this plan least probably would be Barack Obama. Who would want to be saddled with the auto industry’s problems ahead of schedule? The heads of America’s great carmaking corporations are so dim that they couldn’t even survive hearings run by members of Congress who actually wanted to help them. Really, when somebody asks you exactly how much money you need, the answer should not be something along the line of “a whole bunch.”

An instantaneous takeover would also ruin the Obama team’s plan to have the tidiest, best-organized presidential transition in history. Cutting it short and leaping into governing would turn their measured march toward power into a mad scramble. A lot of their Cabinet picks are still working on those 62-page questionnaires.

But while there’s been no drama with Obama, we’ve been living a Technicolor version of “The Perils of Pauline.” Detroit is tied to the railroad tracks and the train is coming! California’s state government is falling into the sea! The way we’re going now, by the time the inauguration rolls around, unemployment will be at 10 percent and the Dow will be at 10.

Time for a change.

Posted by lois at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2008

MA: Testimony by Lois Ahrens to DOC Commissioner Clark on barriers to speaking to Lifers Group at Norfolk

From Cell Block to City Block: Strategies for a Successful Re-Entry

My name is Lois Ahrens. I am the founder and Director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project, a Northampton-based national organization. With Donald Petigny-Perry, I also organized the Western Massachusetts CORI Education Project.

The Real Cost of Prisons Project created three comic books focusing on drug policy, the financing and siting of prisons and the incarceration of women. 125,000 comic books have been printed and more than 100,000 have been sent free of charge to people around the country. More than 15,000 have been sent to prisoners including some to prisoners in Massachusetts.

A request for comic books is why I was first contacted by someone from the Lifers Group at Norfolk Prison. Over several years, I corresponded with various members of the Group. Approximately 7 moths ago, one of the Group’s members, asked me to speak. He would submit an application and I would hear from the staff member in charge. The application was submitted on June 9, 2008. After waiting almost two months, I called the staff member. He said the request was denied but I could appeal the decision by writing to the Assistant Superintendent. In my conversation, he said my request was denied for three reasons: 1) it was made directly by the Lifers Group rather than by me; 2) the subject of the talk, submitted by the Lifers Group, was unacceptable and 3) because of the organization I represented---The Real Cost of Prisons Project. I briefly want to address each of the reasons for denial.

1. It was the belief of the person submitting the application, that the Lifers Group could directly request a speaker. This turned out to be untrue. The procedure is for a prospective speaker to approach the administration at Norfolk. The speaker must not be directly asked by a member of the Group. Doing so can result in a denial. Somehow, people on the outside must know of the Lifers Group, know that they would like to have a speaker and then find and contact the appropriate person at the prison and make a request. This appears to be a rather large barrier to speaking to the Lifers Group.

2. The topic the Lifers Group wrote on the application was for me to report on a national conference focusing on maximum security prisons and other forms of prison segregation. The conference was organized by the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia. On June 29th, I spoke with the Deputy Superintendent for Programs at Norfolk; she informed me that the only subject one could speak to the Lifers about was “re-entry.” I said I could speak about this topic based on my work with the CORI Education Project and would send an appeal letter and documentation about my work in this area and await her response. In the intervening months, I made numerous calls to the prison checking on the status of my appeal. In September, I received permission to speak and did so on October 7th, 5 months after the original request was made. More than 150 men attended the talk including many Long Termers. While “re-entry” issues are not a priority for the Lifers, I think the large audience reflected their desire for contact with the outside.

3. As I noted, initially I was turned down because the person filling out the application wrote that I was to speak on behalf of the Real Cost of Prisons Project. The Real Cost of Prisons Project is an educational organization begun in 2000, which brings together justice activists, artists, researchers and people directly experiencing the impact of mass incarceration to create educational materials and other resources which explore the immediate and long-term costs of prisons. We believe that all people benefit from knowing more about the circumstances of their life. This includes Lifers, who, it seems to me need continued contact with people from the outside to maintain their mental health and intellectual engagement so that they can do their time in a way that does not negate or even destroy their humanity.

We know that for men and women serving lesser sentences, contact with the outside through classes, talks and letters is a crucial component to their ability to come back home with a more positive and expanded view of themselves and the world. While a workshop on CORIs is important, more important is the intellectual and emotional growth which regular contact with people from the outside can help to foster.

Over the last 20 years, prisons and even most jails have become fortresses. Prisoners have far fewer opportunities to be part of GED programs, Pell Grants ended despite the fact that year they proved be a major deterrent to recidivism and relevant vocational programs are scarce. Add to this the obstacles placed in the way of people who want to speak and create programs on non-religious subjects. It seems to me, that these limitations run counter to the goals of successful re-entry and do not serve the people of the Commonwealth.

November 12, 2008

Posted by lois at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)

Cheney, Gonzales Indicted in 'Prisonville'

The Bond Buyer
November 20, 2008 Thursday
SECTION: THE REGIONS; Pg. 1 Vol. 365 No. 33012
The Bond Buyer
November 20, 2008 Thursday
SECTION: THE REGIONS; Pg. 1 Vol. 365 No. 33012
Cheney, Gonzales Indicted in 'Prisonville'
BYLINE: Richard Williamson

DALLAS - Indictments of Vice President Dick Cheney, former Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales, and other public officials represent the latest ina series of unusual episodes in an impoverished South Texas county nicknamedPrisonville.

Through the issuance of $141 million of revenue bonds since 2002, Willacy County has made incarceration its major industry, supplanting onion farming.The construction of the private prisons has made the county a hub for detentions by the Department of Homeland Security.
BYLINE: Richard Williamson

As of yesterday, the indictments had not yet been signed by a judge, alegal requirement before they become official.

The indictments handed down Tuesday by the Willacy County grand jury reportedly accuse Cheney of illegally profiting from his investments in the prisons through mutual fund manager Vanguard Group and using his position to increase payment for housing federal inmates, held for the Department of Homeland Security.

A Cheney spokeswoman declined to comment on the indictment, saying that the vice president had not yet received a copy.

Gonzales is accused of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons. In a written statement, Gonzales' attorney, George Terwilliger 3d, called the charge "bogus" and said he hoped Texas authorities would take steps to stop "this abuse of the criminal justice system."

Also indicted were state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., who lobbied for the
private prisons. Lucio is accused of using his elected office for private profit when he acted as a consultant for Management and Training Corp., CorPlan Corrections, Aguirre Inc., Hale Mills Corp., TEDSI Infrastructure Group Inc., and Dannenbaum Engineering Corp.

Lucio sought to have the indictments dismissed in a hearing in
Raymondville, the Willacy County seat, yesterday. Outgoing Willacy County district attorney Juan Angel Guerra, who was himself indicted recently, has been involved in long-standing political disputes with Lucio.

"This is not the first time that Guerra has attempted to turn the justice system into a circus," Lucio's attorney, Michael R. Cowen, said in a statement. "Sen. Lucio is completely innocent and has done nothing wrong."

Judge Manuel Banales of the Fifth Administrative Judicial Region last month dismissed indictments that charged Guerra with extorting money from a bail bond company and using his office for personal business. An appeals court had earlier ruled that a special prosecutor was improperly appointed to investigate Guerra.

This week's indictments are related to the beating death of an inmate in a private prison operated by the GEO Group, a Florida private prison operator.

A Willacy County grand jury last month indicted the GEO Group on a murder charge in the 2001 death of Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. a few days before his release. According to the indictment, the GEO Group allowed other inmates to beat de la Rosa to death with padlocks stuffed into socks. The death happened in 2001 at the Raymondville facility.

In 2006, de la Rosa's family was awarded $47.5 million in a civil
judgment. The Cheney-Gonzales indictment makes reference to the de la Rosa case.

Scandals have plagued Willacy County's development as private prison operator. Willacy County commissioners Israel Tamez and Jose Jimenez pleaded guilty to accepting cash bribes in exchange for their votes to award a contract for the Marshals Service jail in 2005. Later, a former Webb County commissioner, David Cortez, was convicted of funneling the bribes to several county commissioners.

That project came in response to a November 2005 promise by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to end the federal policy of "catch-and-release" of illegal immigrants. To detain the illegals, new detention centers funded by congressional appropriations would have to be built. But Chertoff gave the companies an October 2006 deadline to build the Willacy County facilities.

The unrated revenue bonds were structured by Connecticut-based Herbert J. Sims & Co. and Dallas-based Municipal Capital Markets Group Inc., the latter of which was involved in 11 of 23 revenue-financed jail projects in Texas in the last 10 years, according to the State Bond Review Board.

URL: http://www.bondbuyer.com/

LOAD-DATE: November 19, 2008

Posted by lois at 09:51 PM | Comments (0)

2 articles on closoing Pontiac IL prison-- Mistakes of black youth keep Pontiac prison in business Union fights closing, wants more paroles revoked

Mistakes of black youth keep Pontiac prison in business
Union fights closing, wants more paroles revoked
November 20, 2008 Chicago Sun Times
BY MARY MITCHELL marym@suntimes.com

Pardon me while I make this real plain. If you have worn your knees out trying to pray a hard-head off the corner, or if you suspect that the baggy pants and puffy jacket he is wearing are hiding a gun, maybe what I'm about to say will get through to him.

Pontiac prison in Downstate Illinois is eager to welcome him.

So much so, the union representing prison employees has been fighting every step of the way the state's plan to close the facility.

On Monday, Scott McCoy, Pontiac's mayor, went on record with a local reporter, blasting Gov. Blagojevich and Roger Walker, director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, for Chicago's alarming murder rates.

"What it comes down to for me is the state is releasing people when they violate their paroles, the state is not re-violating them, bringing them back into the system," McCoy told a local TV reporter.

McCoy pointed to the case involving William Balfour, a suspect in the murders of three members of Jennifer Hudson's family, as an example of the state's negligence.

"This person should have been behind bars. He was arrested this summer, and he should be behind bars, and that family would be alive today if it turns out he actually committed that crime," McCoy said.

Balfour has been questioned but has not been charged with the murders.

But he is in prison awaiting charges on a parole violation. Balfour served seven years in prison for a 1999 conviction for attempted murder and vehicular hijacking.

Allegedly, Balfour failed to meet his anger-management requirements stemming from that decade-old conviction.

On June 19, Balfour was arrested for possession of one gram of cocaine. A judge dismissed the drug charge. Balfour was given a break instead of a trip back Downstate.

So McCoy has a point.

But the debate over closing Pontiac has little to do with keeping felons like Balfour off the street.

This debate is really about this prison town keeping its jobs.

It doesn't matter that there are open beds at other facilities, and that there is a near-empty $140 million, seven-year-old prison in Downstate Thomson.

That's why three lawsuits have been filed by AFSCME, the union representing Pontiac's workers, in an attempt to stop Pontiac's closing.

On Tuesday, a judge in southern Illinois issued a temporary restraining order barring the state from transferring any more prisoners out of Pontiac.

These prisoners weren't being released into the street to wreak havoc. They were being transferred to other prisons with open beds so the state could close Pontiac -- one of the oldest prisons in the Department of Corrections.

Pontiac is slated to be closed Dec. 31, and about 500 employees will be moved to other prisons.

Trina Keller, wife of a correctional officer, told ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7 reporter Paul Meincke how difficult she expected things to get.

"[E]very day I ask how are we gonna handle this? Am I gonna have to declare bankruptcy?" she said.

Bereft of industry, Livingston County, where Pontiac is located, has depended on Chicago sending it its criminals for the last 137 years.

Think about that.

Generations in that area of the state have paid for their homes, sent their children to college and retired on the backs of criminals.

And let's face it.

Many of those criminals, too many in fact, are young black men from the South and West sides.

So if Downstate communities are desperate to keep the prison industry going, where is the real incentive for legislators to reduce recidivism?

The fight the union is putting up to keep Pontiac open (and before that Stateville) tells me there isn't any.

That would be like the liquor industry urging its patrons to stop drinking.

Even when Blagojevich argues that "statewide reforms have led to historic reductions in crimes by former offenders,'' and that is a savings for taxpayers, he is fighting a whirlwind.

Given the recent heinous crimes, it isn't difficult for prison towns to convince the public that the state has accomplished its goal by ignoring parole violators.

Young black men who fall into the prison trap are indeed fools.

They should have figured out by now that their poor choices have become the stuff that builds other people's dreams.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/mitchell/1290133,CST-NWS-mitch20.article
*********************************************************

Adams: Hudson 'link' a red herring in prison saga
By PAM ADAMS
Journal Star
Posted Nov 19, 2008 @ 11:48 PM

Prisons don't die easy.

Pontiac Mayor Scott McCoy has made the strongest accusations yet against a state prison system and a governor accustomed to strong accusations. The horrible situation in Pontiac goes much farther than the state's plan to close the century-old prison there.

Basically, according to Mayor McCoy, the murders of Jennifer Hudson's mother, brother and nephew are partly the governor's fault. Basically, according to the mayor, the Hudson family deaths could have been avoided. Basically, he said, state officials are deliberately allowing dangerous parole violators free to roam the streets, rather then returning them to prison, in a cynical scheme to make the governor's prison-reduction programs look successful.

According to the mayor, the person of interest in the Hudson family tragedy is one of those dangerous parole violators, thus some of the blame for their deaths should land at the governor's doorstep. But the governor was too concerned about his public face to consider the public's safety. With the prison population down, the state not only saves money but state officials can use the alleged reductions as the logic for closing a prison.

Bottom line, Mayor McCoy explained during a much-hyped press conference earlier this week, no one is safe.

The situation, he suggested, is what put the Hudson family in harm's way and, as he told reporters, is "putting my family and every one of your families in harm's way."

The implication is, of course, that if Pontiac prison remains open we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Pontiac residents and their supporters rallied again this week in Springfield. The mayor is scheduled to speak at a House committee hearing today. Though a Johnson County judge has temporarily halted the transfer of Pontiac inmates prior to the scheduled closing later this year, a few other judges have yet to weigh in on lawsuits filed to save the prison.

You can't blame a town for fighting to save its second-largest employer. You can't blame Pontiac for being suspicious of the Department of Corrections' logic for closing Pontiac Correctional Center, coming as suddenly as it did after the change of mind about closing Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet.

The mayor is right when he says closing Pontiac prison is a lot bigger than Pontiac. There may be cause for concern regarding the record-setting reductions in the number of Cook County parole violators returned to prison since 2002. But his data should have undergone a lot more scrutiny before he threw in the Hudson family as a trump card in a desperate bid to keep Pontiac open.

William Balfour, the parole violator who piqued the mayor's interest, remains only a "person of interest," not a suspect in the Hudson deaths. The mayor's numbers on parole violations in Cook County don't separate violent offenders from the non-violent ones who contributed to the bulk of the incarceration boom, nor do they offer firm evidence that parole violators are responsible for Chicago's rising murder rate. Nor do they make mention of the judicial role in revoking parole.

Coincidentally, a day after the mayor's press conference, Illinois State Police reported crime, from murder to theft, dropped statewide again last year, continuing a 13-year slide.

Mayor McCoy admitted he didn't know much about recidivism rates - that is, the number of felons who return to prison within a year of their release. "And if it wasn't for the Hudson case, I probably wouldn't have looked at this as much as I'm doing."

If he keeps looking, he'll realize Pontiac's rural pain is Chicago's inner-city misery. Inner cities and rural communities share similar problems - high unemployment rates, as well as poor access to decent, affordable housing, health care, transportation and grocery stores.

The jobs and the families McCoy is trying to protect are intimately linked to the jobs and the families who weren't helped when a confluence of interests conflated incarceration into economic growth beginning 30 years ago, not to the tragic deaths of a celebrity's relatives.

Pam Adams is a columnist with the Journal Star.
http://www.pjstar.com/opinions/x2067099653/Adams-Hudson-link-a-red-herring-i
n-prison-saga

Posted by lois at 09:44 PM | Comments (0)

The Agents of Change on Obama's Transition Team

The Agents of Change on Obama's Transition Team
David Corn, Mother Jones
eams, which, according to the office of the president-elect, will examine key departments, agencies, and commissions, as well as the White House, to provide Barack Obama and his key advisers “information needed to make strategic policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions prior to the inauguration.” As the media and most political consumers focus on who will get what senior position in the Obama administration, this group of about 130 people will do the nuts-and-bolts work of preparing the agendas for the incoming decision-makers. It’s an important band of policy wonks and government experts. Many of the positions were filled, as might be expected, by Washington players who served in the Clinton administration. For instance, Reed Hundt, who chaired the Federal Communications Commission during the Clinton years and who now works for a strategic consulting firm, is leading the team responsible for international trade and economic agencies. And Tom Donilon, a partner at the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, who was assistant secretary of state for public affairs in the Clinton administration, is in charge of the group focusing on Foggy Bottom. (The bio for
Donilon released by the transition office neglected to mention his stint as general counsel and executive vice president at Fannie Mae.)

Last week, the Obama transition team announced its agency review

The transition team has its share of lobbyists--despite that Obama once vowed he was “running to tell the lobbyists in Washington that their days of setting the agenda are over.” But while most of the transition team members possess the conventional resumés of Washington insiders—albeit Democratic ones--there are several transition team appointments that stand out as harbingers of change. Or at least potential harbingers. These are people whose careers have been anti-Bushian in a deep and profound sense that extends beyond partisan difference. They are academics or policy advocates who have devoted much—if not all—of their adult working lives to advancing the public interest. Their presence on the review teams—even though the transition could use more of such people—enhances the prospect for change beyond the usual. Here’s a sampling:

Sarah Sewall is leading the transition’s national security team. She is the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. According to her bio, her “research focuses on U.S. national security strategy, civil-military relations, and the ethics of fighting insurgencies and terrorism.” The ethics of fighting terrorism? That’s about as non-Bush (or non-Cheney) as it gets. She also started a project to create “a military concept of operations for intervening to halt mass atrocity.” Not even Bill Clinton did that.

Clark Kent Ervin heads the Homeland Security Program at the Aspen Institute. He was the first Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security—a Bush appointee. During his tenure at DHS, he released several reports assailing mismanagement and security screw-ups. Not surprisingly, when his appointment expired, Ervin was not re-appointed by Bush. With Rand Beers, who worked on counterterrorism for the National Security Council in both the Clinton and Bush II administrations, Ervin will oversee the transition’s review of the Department of Homeland Security. His participation sends a signal: competence and diligence matter.

Thomas Perez is head of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation. He has spent years as a consumer advocate and civil rights lawyer. He’s also been a law professor specializing in poverty law and public health issues. During the Clinton years, he was a federal prosecutor in the civil rights division of the Justice Department. For the transition, he’s working on both the team in charge of justice and civil rights issues and the unit zeroing in on the Department of Health and Human Services. A Justice Department influenced by Perez will be quite different than one influenced by Monica Goodling.

Theodore Shaw is president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., a prominent civil rights law outfit. He has handled school desegregation and capital punishment cases. Shaw represented a coalition of African-American and Latino students in the historic case involving the use of affirmative action at University of Michigan for undergraduate admissions. The US Supreme Court struck down the school’s undergraduate admissions policy but ruled that race can be considered during the admissions process by a university seeking to foster diversity on its campus. Shaw is part of the transition’s Department of Justice unit.

Cruz Reynoso was the first Chicano person to serve on the California Supreme Court. There, he was a consistent liberal, often ruling in favor of environmental protection, individual liberties, and civil rights. He voted often to overturn death penalty sentences. Largely because of that, Reynoso, along with two other justices, became targets of conservatives and were ousted by the voters in 1986, under the state’s unusual judicial election system. Prior to becoming a state judge, Reynoso was director of California Rural Legal Assistance. Reynoso was a awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Clinton. For the Obama transition, he is reviewing the Commission on Civil Rights.

Spencer Overton, a professor at George Washington University law school, wrote the book, Stealing Democracy: The Politics of Voter Suppression. The book’s website says, “Voters don't choose politicians--politicians choose voters by manipulating election rules. What can we do to restore power to the people?” It continues: “While politicians spew shallow sound bites that describe a ‘free’ American people who govern themselves by selecting their representatives, in reality politicians from both parties maintain control by selecting particular voters. Incumbent politicians maintain thousands of election practices and bureaucratic hurdles that determine who votes and how votes are counted--such as the location of election district boundaries, long lines at urban polling places, and English-only ballots.” Overton is someone who has questioned the fundamentals of the voting system. He has called for “making voting easier for all Americans” and for “removing redistricting power from self-interested partisans.” He’s leading the team assessing the Election Assistance Commission.

For twenty-six years, Alan Houseman has been executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy, a nonprofit, public interest law firm that has focused on issues affecting low-income persons. Houseman has tried to develop innovative anti-poverty strategies and to ensure that low-income Americans have access to civil legal assistance. He is the model of a non-corporate lawyer. Houseman is working on the transition team’s review of the Legal Services Corporation.

Pamela Gilbert is a former executive director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. For two decades, she was a leading consumer advocate in Washington. She served as consumer program director at the US Public Interest Research Group and was executive director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch. At the CPSC, she helped coax a 40-percent funding boost out of Congress and the Clinton administration. Then came the Bush years, and the CPSC was hollowed out. She will be reviewing the CPSC—think dangerous toys and poisonous pet food from China--for the transition team.

Bill Corr heads the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, one of the leading anti-tobacco nonprofit groups. He joined the outfit after spending 23 years working on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch. That is, he did not become a lobbyist for private interests. He is leading the evaluation of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Xavier de Souza Briggs is an associate professor at MIT. His specialty, his bio says, is “the ‘geography of opportunity’--a policy and research field concerned with the consequences of segregation by race and income and with efforts to respond, such as through ‘housing mobility’ programs that help families exit high-poverty, high-risk neighborhoods in search of better places to raise their kids.” Was there anyone in the Bush administration who had expertise in this field? Briggs is part of the transition unit looking at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Housing Finance Board, and the Interagency Council on Homelessness. (Joining him on that team are Roberta Achtenberg, who during the Clinton years became the first openly lesbian or gay federal official who had to be confirmed by the Senate, and Bruce Katz, a longtime housing policy wonk in Washington, who now runs the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution.)

With a presidential transition team led by an academic who has specialized in the ethics of fighting terrorism, it’s clear a major shift is under way in Washington. Certainly, there will be Democrat-on-Democrat policy battles ahead—during the transition and within the Obama administration. Centrist and conventional-thinking Democrats will play critical roles, especially during debates on economic matters. But the composition of Obama’s transition team shows there’s potential for significant change designed by public interest-minded people who possess deep policy expertise and are dedicated to their fields. These folks are the opposite of Michael Brown.
//www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/11/10948_obama_tranistion_team_members_change.html

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

This is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House

AlterNet
This is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House
By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet
Posted on November 20, 2008, Printed on November 20, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/107666/

U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet. And, frankly, when it comes to foreign policy, it is not looking good.

Obama has a momentous opportunity to do what he repeatedly promised over the course of his campaign: bring actual change. But the more we learn about who Obama is considering for top positions in his administration, the more his inner circle resembles a staff reunion of President Bill Clinton's White House. Although Obama brought some progressives on board early in his campaign, his foreign policy team is now dominated by the hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990s. This has been particularly true since Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the Democratic primary, freeing many of her top advisors to join Obama's team.

"What happened to all this talk about change?" a member of the Clinton foreign policy team recently asked the Washington Post. "This isn't lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time."

Amid the euphoria over Obama's election and the end of the Bush era, it is critical to recall what 1990s U.S. foreign policy actually looked like. Bill Clinton's boiled down to a one-two punch from the hidden hand of the free market, backed up by the iron fist of U.S. militarism. Clinton took office and almost immediately bombed Iraq (ostensibly in retaliation for an alleged plot by Saddam Hussein to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush). He presided over a ruthless regime of economic sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and under the guise of the so-called No-Fly Zones in northern and southern Iraq, authorized the longest sustained U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam.

Under Clinton, Yugoslavia was bombed and dismantled as part of what Noam Chomsky described as the "New Military Humanism." Sudan and Afghanistan were attacked, Haiti was destabilized and "free trade" deals like the North America Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade radically escalated the spread of corporate-dominated globalization that hurt U.S. workers and devastated developing countries. Clinton accelerated the militarization of the so-called War on Drugs in Central and Latin America and supported privatization of U.S. military operations, giving lucrative contracts to Halliburton and other war contractors. Meanwhile, U.S. weapons sales to countries like Turkey and Indonesia aided genocidal campaigns against the Kurds and the East Timorese.

The prospect of Obama's foreign policy being, at least in part, an extension of the Clinton Doctrine is real. Even more disturbing, several of the individuals at the center of Obama's transition and emerging foreign policy teams were top players in creating and implementing foreign policies that would pave the way for projects eventually carried out under the Bush/Cheney administration. With their assistance, Obama has already charted out several hawkish stances. Among them:

-- His plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan;

-- An Iraq plan that could turn into a downsized and rebranded occupation that keeps U.S. forces in Iraq for the foreseeable future;

-- His labeling of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a "terrorist organization;"

-- His pledge to use unilateral force inside of Pakistan to defend U.S. interests;

-- His position, presented before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that Jerusalem "must remain undivided" -- a remark that infuriated Palestinian officials and which he later attempted to reframe;

-- His plan to continue the War on Drugs, a backdoor U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in Central and Latin America;

-- His refusal to "rule out" using Blackwater and other armed private forces in U.S. war zones, despite previously introducing legislation to regulate these companies and bring them under U.S. law.

Obama did not arrive at these positions in a vacuum. They were carefully crafted in consultation with his foreign policy team. While the verdict is still out on a few people, many members of his inner foreign policy circle -- including some who have received or are bound to receive Cabinet posts -- supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Some promoted the myth that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. A few have worked with the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, whose radical agenda was adopted by the Bush/Cheney administration. And most have proven track records of supporting or implementing militaristic, offensive U.S. foreign policy. "After a masterful campaign, Barack Obama seems headed toward some fateful mistakes as he assembles his administration by heeding the advice of Washington's Democratic insider community, a collective group that represents little 'change you can believe in,'" notes veteran journalist Robert Parry, the former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter who broke many of the stories in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.

As news breaks and speculation abounds about cabinet appointments, here are 20 people to watch as Obama builds the team who will shape U.S. foreign policy for at least four years:

Joe Biden

There was no stronger sign that Obama's foreign policy would follow the hawkish tradition of the Democratic foreign policy establishment than his selection of Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. Much has been written on Biden's tenure as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but his role in the invasion and occupation of Iraq stands out. Biden is not just one more Democratic lawmaker who now calls his vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq "mistaken;" Biden was actually an important facilitator of the war.

In the summer of 2002, when the United States was "debating" a potential attack on Iraq, Biden presided over hearings whose ostensible purpose was to weigh all existing options. But instead of calling on experts whose testimony could challenge the case for war -- Iraq's alleged WMD possession and its supposed ties to al-Qaida -- Biden's hearings treated the invasion as a foregone conclusion. His refusal to call on two individuals in particular ensured that testimony that could have proven invaluable to an actual debate was never heard: Former Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Hans von Sponeck, a 32-year veteran diplomat and the former head of the U.N.'s Iraq program.

Both men say they made it clear to Biden's office that they were ready and willing to testify; Ritter knew more about the dismantling of Iraq's WMD program than perhaps any other U.S. citizen and would have been in prime position to debunk the misinformation and outright lies being peddled by the White House. Meanwhile, von Sponeck had just returned from Iraq, where he had observed Ansar al Islam rebels in the north of Iraq -- the so-called al-Qaida connection -- and could have testified that, rather than colluding with Saddam's regime, they were in a battle against it. Moreover, he would have pointed out that they were operating in the U.S.-enforced safe haven of Iraqi Kurdistan. "Evidence of al-Qaida/lraq collaboration does not exist, neither in the training of operatives nor in support to Ansar-al-Islam," von Sponeck wrote in an Op-Ed published shortly before the July 2002 hearings. "The U.S. Department of Defense and the CIA know perfectly well that today's Iraq poses no threat to anyone in the region, let alone in the United States. To argue otherwise is dishonest."

With both men barred from testifying, rather than eliciting an array of informed opinions, Biden's committee whitewashed Bush's lies and helped lead the country to war. Biden himself promoted the administration's false claims that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, declaring on the Senate floor, "[Saddam Hussein] possesses chemical and biological weapons and is seeking nuclear weapons."

With the war underway, Biden was then the genius who passionately promoted the ridiculous plan to partition Iraq into three areas based on religion and ethnicity, attempting to Balkanize one of the strongest Arab states in the world.

"He's a part of the old Democratic establishment," says retired Army Col. Ann Wright, the State Department diplomat who reopened the U.S. embassy in Kabul in 2002. Biden, she says, has "had a long history with foreign affairs, [but] it's not the type of foreign affairs that I want."

Rahm Emanuel

Obama's appointment of Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff is a clear sign that Clinton-era neoliberal hawks will be well-represented at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. A former senior Clinton advisor, Emanuel is a hard-line supporter of Israel's "targeted assassination" policy and actually volunteered to work with the Israeli Army during the 1991 Gulf War. He is close to the right-wing Democratic Leadership Council and was the only member of the Illinois Democratic delegation in the Congress to vote for the invasion of Iraq. Unlike many of his colleagues, Emanuel still defends his vote. As chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, Emanuel promoted the campaigns of 22 candidates, only one of who supported a swift withdrawal from Iraq, and denied crucial Party funding to anti-war candidates. "As for Iraq policy, at the right time, we will have a position," he said in December 2005. As Philip Giraldi recently pointed out on Antiwar.com, Emanuel "advocates increasing the size of the U.S. Army by 100,000 soldiers and creating a domestic spying organization like Britain's MI5. More recently, he has supported mandatory paramilitary national service for all Americans between the ages of 18 and 25."

While Obama has at times been critical of Clinton-era free trade agreements, Emanuel was one of the key people in the Clinton White House who brokered the successful passage of NAFTA.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

For all the buzz and speculation about the possibility that Sen. Clinton may be named Secretary of State, most media coverage has focused on her rivalry with Obama during the primary, along with the prospect of her husband having to face the intense personal, financial and political vetting process required to secure a job in the new administration. But the question of how Clinton would lead the operations at Foggy Bottom calls for scrutiny of her positions vis-a-vis Obama's stated foreign-policy goals.

Clinton was an ardent defender of her husband's economic and military war against Iraq throughout the 1990s, including the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which ultimately laid the path for President George W. Bush's invasion. Later, as a U.S. senator, she not only voted to authorize the war, but aided the Bush administration's propaganda campaign in the lead-up to the invasion. "Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability and his nuclear program," Clinton said when rising to support the measure in October 2002. "He has also given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members … I want to insure that Saddam Hussein makes no mistake about our national unity and for our support for the president's efforts to wage America's war against terrorists and weapons of mass destruction."

"The man who vowed to deliver us from 28 years of Bushes and Clintons has been stocking up on Clintonites," New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently wrote. "How, one may ask, can he put Hillary -- who voted to authorize the Iraq war without even reading the intelligence assessment -- in charge of patching up a foreign policy and a world riven by that war?"

Beyond Iraq, Clinton shocked many and sparked official protests by Tehran at the United Nations when asked during the presidential campaign what she would do as president if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," she declared. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Clinton has not shied away from supporting offensive foreign policy tactics in the past. Recalling her husband's weighing the decision of whether to attack Yugoslavia, she said in 1999, "I urged him to bomb. … You cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?"

Madeleine Albright

While Obama's house is flush with Clintonian officials like former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Defense Secretary William Perry, Director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning Greg Craig (who was officially named Obama's White House Counsel) and Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, perhaps most influential is Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton's former Secretary of State and U.N. ambassador. Albright recently served as a proxy for Obama, representing him at the G-20 summit earlier this month. Whether or not she is awarded an official role in the administration, Albright will be a major force in shaping Obama's foreign policy.

"It will take time to convince skeptics that the promotion of democracy is not a mask for imperialism or a recipe for the kind of chaos we have seen in the Persian Gulf," Albright recently wrote. "And it will take time to establish the right identity for America in a world that has grown suspicious of all who claim a monopoly on virtue and that has become reluctant to follow the lead of any one country."

Albright should know. She was one of the key architects in the dismantling of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. In the lead-up to the 1999 "Kosovo war," she oversaw the U.S. attempt to coerce the Yugoslav government to deny its own sovereignty in return for not being bombed. Albright demanded that the Yugoslav government sign a document that would have been unacceptable to any sovereign nation. Known as the Rambouillet Accord, it included a provision that would have guaranteed U.S. and NATO forces "free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout" all of Yugoslavia -- not just Kosovo -- while also seeking to immunize those occupation forces "from any form of arrest, investigation or detention by the authorities in [Yugoslavia]." Moreover, it would have granted the occupiers "the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without payment." Similar to Bush's Iraq plan years later, the Rambouillet Accord mandated that the economy of Kosovo "shall function in accordance with free-market principles."

When Yugoslavia refused to sign the document, Albright and others in the Clinton administration unleashed the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia, which targeted civilian infrastructure. (Prior to the attack, Albright said the U.S. government felt "the Serbs need a little bombing.") She and the Clinton administration also supported the rise to power in Kosovo of a terrorist mafia that carried out its own ethnic-cleansing campaign against the province's minorities.

Perhaps Albright's most notorious moment came with her enthusiastic support of the economic war against the civilian population of Iraq. When confronted by Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” that the sanctions were responsible for the deaths of "a half-million children … more children than died in Hiroshima," Albright responded, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it." (While defending the policy, Albright later called her choice of words "a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy, and wrong.")

Richard Holbrooke

Like Albright, Holbrooke will have major sway over U.S. policy, whether or not he gets an official job. A career diplomat since the Vietnam War, Holbrooke's most recent government post was as President Clinton's ambassador to the U.N. Among the many violent policies he helped implement and enforce was the U.S.-backed Indonesian genocide in East Timor. Holbrooke was an Assistant Secretary of State in the late 1970s at the height of the slaughter and was the point man on East Timor for the Carter Administration.

According to Brad Simpson, director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, "It was Holbrooke and Zbigniew Brzezinski [another top Obama advisor], both now leading lights in the Democratic Party, who played point in trying to frustrate the efforts of congressional human-rights activists to try and condition or stop U.S. military assistance to Indonesia, and in fact accelerated the flow of weapons to Indonesia at the height of the genocide."

Holbrooke, too, was a major player in the dismantling of Yugoslavia and praised the bombing of Serb Television, which killed 16 media workers, as a significant victory. (The man who ordered that bombing, now-retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, is another Obama foreign policy insider who could end up in his cabinet. While Clark is known for being relatively progressive on social issues, as Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, he ordered bombings and attacks that Amnesty International labeled war crimes.)

Like many in Obama's foreign policy circle, Holbrooke also supported the Iraq war. In early 2003, shortly after then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the UN, where he presented the administration's fraud-laden case for war to the UN (a speech Powell has since called a "blot" on his reputation), Holbrooke said: "It was a masterful job of diplomacy by Colin Powell and his colleagues, and it does not require a second vote to go to war. … Saddam is the most dangerous government leader in the world today, he poses a threat to the region, he could pose a larger threat if he got weapons of mass destruction deployed, and we have a legitimate right to take action."

Dennis Ross

Middle East envoy for both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Ross was one of the primary authors of Obama's aforementioned speech before AIPAC this summer. He cut his teeth working under famed neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon in the 1970s and worked closely with the Project for the New American Century. Ross has been a staunch supporter of Israel and has fanned the flames for a more hostile stance toward Iran. As the lead U.S. negotiator between Israel and numerous Arab nations under Clinton, Ross' team acted, in the words of one U.S. official who worked under him, as "Israel's lawyer."

"The 'no surprises' policy, under which we had to run everything by Israel first, stripped our policy of the independence and flexibility required for serious peacemaking," wrote U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller in 2005. "If we couldn't put proposals on the table without checking with the Israelis first, and refused to push back when they said no, how effective could our mediation be? Far too often, particularly when it came to Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, our departure point was not what was needed to reach an agreement acceptable to both sides but what would pass with only one -- Israel." After the Clinton White House, Ross worked for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a hawkish pro-Israel think tank, and for FOX News, where he repeatedly pressed for war against Iraq.

Martin Indyk

Founder of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Indyk spent years working for AIPAC and served as Clinton's ambassador to Israel and Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, while also playing a major role in developing U.S. policy toward Iraq and Iran. In addition to his work for the U.S. government, he has worked for the Israeli government and with PNAC.

"Barack Obama has painted himself into a corner by appealing to the most hard-line, pro-Israel elements in this country," Ali Abunimah, founder of ElectronicInifada.net, recently told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, describing Indyk and Dennis Ross as "two of the most pro-Israel officials from the Clinton era, who are totally distrusted by Palestinians and others across the Middle East, because they're seen as lifelong advocates for Israeli positions."

Anthony Lake

Clinton's former National Security Advisor was an early supporter of Obama and one of the few top Clintonites to initially back the president-elect. Lake began his foreign policy work in the U.S. Foreign Service during Vietnam, working with Henry Kissinger on the "September Group," a secret team tasked with developing a military strategy to deliver a "savage, decisive blow against North Vietnam."

Decades later, after working for various administrations, Lake "was the main force behind the U.S. invasion of Haiti in the mid-Clinton years," according to veteran journalist Allan Nairn, whose groundbreaking reporting revealed U.S. support for Haitian death squads in the 1990s. "They brought back Aristide essentially in political chains, pledged to support a World Bank/IMF overhaul of the economy, which resulted in an increase in malnutrition deaths among Haitians, and set the stage for the current ongoing political disaster in Haiti." Clinton nominated Lake as CIA Director, but he failed to win Senate confirmation.

Lee Hamilton

Hamilton is a former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and was co-chairman of both the Iraq Study Group and 9/11 Commission. Robert Parry, who has covered Hamilton's career extensively, recently ran a piece on Consortium News that characterized him this way: "Whenever the Republicans have a touchy national-security scandal to put to rest, their favorite Democratic investigator is Lee Hamilton. … Hamilton's carefully honed skill for balancing truth against political comity has elevated him to the status of a Washington Wise Man."

Susan Rice

Former Assistant Secretary of Sate Susan Rice, who served on Bill Clinton's National Security Council, is a potential candidate for the post of ambassador to the U.N. or as a deputy national security advisor. She, too, promoted the myth that Saddam had WMDs. "It's clear that Iraq poses a major threat," she said in 2002. "It's clear that its weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that's the path we're on." (After the invasion, discussing Saddam's alleged possession of WMDs, she said, "I don't think many informed people doubted that.")

Rice has also been a passionate advocate for a U.S. military attack against Sudan over the Darfur crisis. In an op-ed co-authored with Anthony Lake, she wrote, "The United States, preferably with NATO involvement and African political support, would strike Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. It could blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan's oil exports flow. Then U.N. troops would deploy -- by force, if necessary, with U.S. and NATO backing."

John Brennan

A longtime CIA official and former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, Brennan is one of the coordinators of Obama's intelligence transition team and a top contender for either CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence. He was also recently described by Glenn Greenwald as "an ardent supporter of torture and one of the most emphatic advocates of FISA expansions and telecom immunity." While claiming to oppose waterboarding, labeling it "inconsistent with American values" and "something that should be prohibited," Brennan has simultaneously praised the results achieved by "enhanced interrogation" techniques. "There has been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has, in fact, used against the real hard-core terrorists," Brennan said in a 2007 interview. "It has saved lives. And let's not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the death of 3,000 innocents."

Brennan has described the CIA's extraordinary rendition program -- the government-run kidnap-and-torture program enacted under Clinton -- as an absolutely vital tool. "I have been intimately familiar now over the past decade with the cases of rendition that the U.S. Government has been involved in," he said in a December 2005 interview. "And I can say without a doubt that it has been very successful as far as producing intelligence that has saved lives."

Brennan is currently the head of Analysis Corporation, a private intelligence company that was recently implicated in the breach of Obama and Sen. John McCain's passport records. He is also the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA), a trade association of private intelligence contractors who have dramatically increased their role in sensitive U.S. national security operations. (Current Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell is former chairman of the INSA.)

Jami Miscik

Miscik, who works alongside Brennan on Obama's transitional team, was the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war. She was one of the key officials responsible for sidelining intel that contradicted the official line on WMD, while promoting intel that backed it up.

"When the administration insisted on an intelligence assessment of Saddam Hussein's relationship to al-Qaida, Miscik blocked the skeptics (who were later vindicated) within the CIA's Mideast analytical directorate and instructed the less-skeptical counterterrorism analysts to 'stretch to the maximum the evidence you had,' " journalist Spencer Ackerman recently wrote in the Washington Independent. "It's hard to think of a more egregious case of sacrificing sound intelligence analysis in order to accommodate the strategic fantasies of an administration. … The idea that Miscik is helping staff Obama's top intelligence picks is most certainly not change we can believe in." What's more, she went on to a lucrative post as the Global Head of Sovereign Risk for the now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers.

John Kerry and Bill Richardson

Both Sen. Kerry and Gov. Richardson have been identified as possible contenders for Secretary of State. While neither is likely to be as hawkish as Hillary Clinton, both have taken pro-war positions. Kerry promoted the WMD lie and voted to invade Iraq. "Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try?" Kerry asked on the Senate floor in October 2002. "According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons … Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents."

Richardson, whose Iraq plan during his 2008 presidential campaign was more progressive and far-reaching than Obama's, served as Bill Clinton's ambassador to the UN. In this capacity, he supported Clinton's December 1998 bombing of Baghdad and the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq. "We think this man is a threat to the international community, and he threatens a lot of the neighbors in his region and future generations there with anthrax and VX," Richardson told an interviewer in February 1998.

While Clinton's Secretary of Energy, Richardson publicly named Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, as a target in an espionage investigation. Lee was accused of passing nuclear secrets to the Chinese government. Lee was later cleared of those charges and won a settlement against the U.S. government.

Robert Gates

Washington consensus is that Obama will likely keep Robert Gates, George W. Bush's Defense Secretary, as his own Secretary of Defense. While Gates has occasionally proved to be a stark contrast to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, he would hardly represent a break from the policies of the Bush administration. Quite the opposite; according to the Washington Post, in the interest of a "smooth transition," Gates "has ordered hundreds of political appointees at the Pentagon canvassed to see whether they wish to stay on in the new administration, has streamlined policy briefings and has set up suites for President-elect Barack Obama's transition team just down the hall from his own E-ring office." The Post reports that Gates could stay on for a brief period and then be replaced by Richard Danzig, who was Clinton's Secretary of the Navy. Other names currently being tossed around are Democratic Sen. Jack Reed, Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (a critic of the Iraq occupation) and Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, who served alongside Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Ivo H. Daalder

Daalder was National Security Council Director for European Affairs under President Clinton. Like other Obama advisors, he has worked with the Project for the New American Century and signed a 2005 letter from PNAC to Congressional leaders, calling for an increase in U.S. ground troops in Iraq and beyond.

Sarah Sewall

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Assistance during the Clinton administration, Sewall served as a top advisor to Obama during the campaign and is almost certain to be selected for a post in his administration. In 2007, Sewall worked with the U.S. military and Army Gen. David Petraeus, writing the introduction to the University of Chicago edition of the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. She was criticized for this collaboration by Tom Hayden, who wrote, "the Petraeus plan draws intellectual legitimacy from Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, whose director, Sarah Sewall, proudly embraces an 'unprecedented collaboration [as] a human rights center partnered with the armed forces.'”

"Humanitarians often avoid wading into the conduct of war for fear of becoming complicit in its purpose," she wrote in the introduction. "'The field manual requires engagement precisely from those who fear that its words lack meaning."

Michele Flournoy

Flournoy and former Clinton Deputy Defense Secretary John White are co-heading Obama's defense transition team. Flournoy was a senior Clinton appointee at the Pentagon. She currently runs the Center for a New American Security, a center-right think-tank. There is speculation that Obama could eventually name her as the first woman to serve as defense secretary. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported: "While at CNAS, Flournoy helped to write a report that called for reducing the open-ended American military commitment in Iraq and replacing it with a policy of 'conditional engagement' there. Significantly, the paper rejected the idea of withdrawing troops according to the sort of a fixed timeline that Obama espoused during the presidential campaign. Obama has in recent weeks signaled that he was willing to shelve the idea, bringing him more in line with Flournoy's thinking." Flournoy has also worked with the neoconservative Project for the New American Century.

Wendy Sherman and Tom Donilon

Currently employed at Madeline Albright's consulting firm, the Albright Group, Sherman worked under Albright at the State Department, coordinating U.S. policy on North Korea. She is now coordinating the State Department transition team for Obama. Tom Donilon, her co-coordinator, was Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Chief of Staff at the State Department under Clinton. Interestingly, Sherman and Donilon both have ties to Fannie Mae that didn't make it onto their official bios on Obama's change.gov Web site. "Donilon was Fannie's general counsel and executive vice president for law and policy from 1999 until the spring of 2005, a period during which the company was rocked by accounting problems," reports the Wall Street Journal.

***

While many of the figures at the center of Obama's foreign policy team are well-known, two of its most important members have never held national elected office or a high-profile government position. While they cannot be characterized as Clinton-era hawks, it will be important to watch Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert, co-coordinators of the Obama foreign policy team. From 2000 to 2005, McDonough served as foreign policy advisor to Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle and worked extensively on the use-of-force authorizations for the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which Daschle supported. From 1996 to 1999, McDonough was a professional staff member of the House International Relations Committee during the debate over the bombing of Yugoslavia. More recently, he was at the Center for American Progress working under John Podesta, Clinton's former chief of staff and the current head of the Obama transition.

Mark Lippert is a close personal friend of Obama's. He has worked for Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, as well as the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Democratic Policy Committee. He is a lieutenant in the Navy Reserve and spent a year in Iraq working intelligence for the Navy SEALs. "According to those who've worked closely with Lippert," Robert Dreyfuss recently wrote in The Nation, "he is a conservative, cautious centrist who often pulled Obama to the right on Iraq, Iran and the Middle East and who has been a consistent advocate for increased military spending. 'Even before Obama announced for the presidency, Lippert wanted Obama to be seen as tough on Iran,' says a lobbyist who's worked the Iran issue on Capitol Hill, 'He's clearly more hawkish than the senator.' "

***

Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to bring change to Washington. "I don't want to just end the war," he said early this year. "I want to end the mindset that got us into war." That is going to be very difficult if Obama employs a foreign policy team that was central to creating that mindset, before and during the presidency of George W. Bush.

"Twenty-three senators and 133 House members who voted against the war -- and countless other notable individuals who spoke out against it and the dubious claims leading to war -- are apparently not even being considered for these crucial positions," observes Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy. This includes dozens of former military and intelligence officials who spoke out forcefully against the war and continue to oppose militaristic policy, as well as credible national security experts who have articulated their visions for a foreign policy based on justice.

Obama does have a chance to change the mindset that got us into war. More significantly, he has a popular mandate to forcefully challenge the militaristic, hawkish tradition of modern U.S. foreign policy. But that work would begin by bringing on board people who would challenge this tradition, not those who have been complicit in creating it and are bound to continue advancing it.

Jeremy Scahill pledges to be the same journalist under an Obama administration that he was during Bill Clinton and George Bush's presidencies. He is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army and is a frequent contributor to The Nation and Democracy Now! He is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/107666/

Posted by lois at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)

Larger Inmate Population Is Boon to Private Prisons

Wall Street Journal
NOVEMBER 18, 2008

Larger Inmate Population Is Boon to Private Prisons
By STEPHANIE CHEN

Prison companies are preparing for a wave of new business as the economic downturn makes it increasingly difficult for federal and state government officials to build and operate their own jails.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons and several state governments have sent
thousands of inmates in recent months to prisons and detention centers run by Corrections Corp. of America, Geo Group Inc. and other private operators, as a crackdown on illegal immigration, a lengthening of mandatory sentences for certain crimes and other factors have overcrowded many government facilities.

Prison-policy experts expect inmate populations in 10 states to have
increased by 25% or more between 2006 and 2011, according to a report by the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts.

Private prisons housed 7.4% of the country's 1.59 million incarcerated adults in federal and state prisons as of the middle of 2007, up from 1.57 million in 2006, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, a crime-data-gathering arm of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Corrections Corp., the largest private-prison operator in the U.S., with 64 facilities, has built two prisons this year and expanded nine facilities, and it plans to finish two more in 2009. The Nashville, Tenn., company put 1,680 new prison beds into service in its third quarter, helping boost net income 14% to $37.9 million. "There is going to be a larger opportunity for us in the future," said Damon Hininger, Corrections Corp.'s president and chief operations officer, in a recent interview.

California has shipped more than 5,100 inmates to private prisons run by Corrections Corp. in Arizona, Mississippi and other states since late 2006, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered emergency measures to control a ballooning state-prison population. Prisons were so overcrowded that hundreds of inmates were sleeping in gyms, according to one report. An additional 2,900 prisoners are scheduled to be transferred to private prisons outside the state by the end of next year, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

"Private prisons are a short-term solution while we work on long-term
solutions, rehabilitation programs and recidivism strategies," said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the state's corrections department.

Prison overcrowding, partially due to a crackdown on illegal immigration and longer mandatory sentences for certain crimes, could spur state and federal officials to increase the use of private prisons like this one in Otay Mesa, Calif. Geo Group, of Boca Raton, Fla., the second-largest prison company, has built or expanded eight facilities this year in Georgia, Texas,
Mississippi and other states, and it plans seven more expansions or new prisons by 2010. Last month, Geo Group was awarded a contract by Florida's Department of Management Services to design and build a 2,000-bed special-needs prison in that state. Cornell Cos., the nation's third-largest prison company, recently broke ground on a 1,250-bed private prison for men in Hudson, Colo.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons, the government agency that operates all federal prisons and manages the handling of inmates convicted of federal crimes, has awarded 13 contracts since 1997 to prison companies to build prisons and detention centers that house low-security inmates, primarily "low security criminal aliens," says Felicia Ponce, a spokeswoman for the agency. The contracts give the bureau "flexibility to manage a rapidly growing inmate population and to help control overcrowding," Ms. Ponce says.

Outsourcing incarceration to prison companies can reduce a government's cost of housing those prisoners by as much as 15%, according to a study by the Reason Foundation, a research organization in Los Angeles. Private operators say they can build prisons more quickly and operate them less expensively
than governments because their payroll costs are lower and they can
consolidate prisoners from many far-flung jurisdictions into facilities located in areas where land and building costs are very low.

Some groups accuse the private prisons of neglecting inmates or of putting them in bad conditions. "Profit is still a motive and it's structured into the way these prisons are operated," says Judy Greene, a justice-policy analyst for Justice Strategies, a nonprofit studying prison-sentencing issues and problems. "Just because the system has expanded doesn't mean there is evidence that conditions have improved."

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed lawsuits involving several prison companies over the past decade alleging poor treatment of inmates. Last year, the organization and other parties filed a lawsuit against Corrections Corp. and the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm in federal court in San Diego, alleging that the company was operating an overcrowded, unsafe immigrant-detention center in that city. Detainees were routinely assigned in groups of three to sleep in
two-room cells -- meaning one had to sleep on the floor near the toilet -- or to temporary beds in recreation rooms and other common spaces, according to the complaint. The suit also alleged that detainees had little access to mental-health care.

"We have serious concerns about for-profit prison companies because they are notorious for cutting essential costs that need to be provided to maintain a safe and constitutional environment for prisoners," says Jody Kent, a public-policy coordinator for the ACLU's National Prison Project.

The lawsuit was settled in June, with Corrections Corp. and Homeland
Security agreeing to limit immigrant detainees to the number of inmates the facility was designed for. Louise Grant, a Corrections Corp. spokeswoman, says the company's prison practices complied with federal standards and that it regularly discloses capacity levels and other information in federal
filings.

"Our government partners monitor us daily," Ms. Grant says. "There is no cutting corners."

Posted by lois at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2008

NY: Guards Oppose Closing of Empty Prisons which would save $84 million

Correctional officers oppose proposed cuts

Tuesday, November 18, 2008 12:45 PM EST

By James V. Franco
The Record

TROY — The plan to save money by consolidating prisoners within the respective prisons where they are held is coming under fire by corrections officers.

The plan would consolidate housing units at 14 medium and minimum security prisons, merge two infirmaries into one and shut down the dozen prison farms among other measures. All told it will save about $8.7 million according to Erik Kris, a spokesman for the state Department of Correctional Services.

Last month, DOCS came out with plan that would save approximately $84.1 million.

The two plans are answers to Gov. David Paterson’s call for all departments to cut their budgets by at least 3.35 percent.

However, Donn Rowe, president of the state Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, said the plan puts inmates, guards and civilians at risk because the prisons are already filled to over capacity with not enough guards. Under the DOCS plan, some 334 correction officers would be out of a job, most through attrition and by not filling vacancies.

DOCS believes safety will not be compromised because over the last decade the inmate population has shrunk by 14 percent from 71,000 to about 61,000. The system has 1,000 empty beds, Kriss said. But, rather than consolidate and cut, Rowe is pushing for an examination of the entire system.

“We don’t want to see a time like in the late 1990s when we were warehousing inmates in a gymnasium type setting,” he told members of The Record’s Editorial Board Monday. “We have a responsibility to the taxpayer to look at the entire system and not just warehouse inmates. It presents a dangerous situation and the outcome could cost more than any savings at this time.”

In medium and minimum security prisons, inmates are housed in dormitory-like settings rather than cells and there may be more than 50 prisoners in one room. The plan is to take the prisoners in one dorm and scatter them through the other dorms where there are empty beds. Less dorms requires fewer guards to watch them.

“We’ve been losing inmate population for years now. Every correction officer is trained to adequately supervise housing units with a certain number of inmates in them, and right now they are supervising housing units that are less populated than what they are trained for because we lost population,” Kriss said. “We are not adding any beds. We are not adding any double bunks and we are not laying off any correction officers.”

Locally, the facility at Mount McGregor, in Wilton, which is both minimum and medium security, will see two dorms close for a reduction of 74 beds and 16 CO positions under the first round. Under the second round, another dorm will close for a reduction of 36 beds and five CO positions. Kriss said with each CO position not filled, the state saves an average of $52,000 a year.

Kriss and Rowe disagreed on how full the prisons actually are. Rowe said they are at 107 percent capacity but Kriss said when other factors are taken under consideration, like those inmates who are in the infirmary or in special housing units, the truer number is more like 95.6 percent.

The two also disagreed with the guard-to-inmate ration.

Rowe said it is about 60 to 1 while Kriss said, when following guidelines established by the American Correctional Association, as of Sept. 30, 2006, the ratio is one guard per every 3.4 inmates. The U.S. average, when looked at by the same guidelines, is one guard to every 6.7 inmates.

DOCS is also looking to close down a dozen farms operated by their facilities at a savings of $3.4 million a year. The farms employ 39 correction officers and some 41 civilians. While Rowe said DOCS is not taking into account the produce that the farms generate, Kriss said they lose $3.4 million a year. Also, he said while the farms do provide a valuable experience, most inmates will not return to a rural lifestyle after they are released.

“We want to teach them hard work and responsibility, but we also want to give them practical skills so they can get a job when they get out,” Kriss said.

Rowe also took exception with the “six or seven” supervisory layers above the correction officers and their immediate supervisors. Kriss said there are vacancies at those levels too that will not be immediately filled.

Also, Rowe took aim at what he called the wasteful capital program, where money is spent renovating basketball courts and purchasing flat screen televisions.

“The commissioner is taking the easy way out. His approach last year to close four facilities. It’s irresponsible at best,” Rowe said, while calling for a top to bottom examination of the state’s entire prison system. “The commissioner is taking a simplistic approach by keeping inmates in dormitories and making the correction officers do more with less.”

Kriss said since 2003 there have been 31 or fewer inmate assaults on staff in medium security prisons, which equates to fewer than one per facility per year.

To the capital projects, he said the facilities have to be kept up and “if you don’t keep them up, in the long run, you pay more.

“Things like basketball courts and recreation, along with education and vocational training, is all part of keeping inmates busy and occupied and doing things that will help them in the long run.

“We are not called the Department of Prisons, we are called the Department of Correctional Services and 99 percent of those we serve are going home at some point and we have to get them ready to go home and not come back to us,” Kriss said.
http://www.troyrecord.com/articles/2008/11/18/news/doc492263accc239707040759
.txt

Posted by lois at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

Trial begins over California prison crowding

By DON THOMPSON -Nov. 19, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Attorneys for the state and inmates' rights groups clashed Tuesday at the opening of a high-stakes trial over whether California's jam-packed prisons have led to unconstitutionally poor medical and mental health care.

If the special panel of three federal judges rules against the state, another trial will be held next year to determine remedies. Possible solutions include an order to release inmates before they have completed their full sentences, a move opposed by the Schwarzenegger administration.

Attorneys for the inmates want the prison population reduced from about 156,300 inmates to 110,000.

Trial begins over California prison crowding
Further delay in solving California's prison crowding will mean only "additional pain, suffering and death for our clients," Michael Bien, one of the attorneys representing inmates, said during Tuesday's hearing.

"The California prison system is dangerous and broken," he said.

At issue is whether overcrowding is the leading cause of medical and mental health care that the federal courts already have found to be substandard — and in some cases so negligent that it has directly contributed to inmates' deaths.

The Schwarzenegger administration says steps already are being taken to reduce the population and an early release plan would endanger the public.

The state argues there are many causes for poor inmate health care, not just crowding, and that conditions are improving without releasing inmates.

Paul Mello, an attorney for the state, said California's spending on inmate medical care has increased from $345 million in 1995 to nearly $2.2 billion today. The amount spent per inmate on medical care has grown from $2,700 to nearly $14,000 a year, Mello said.

"The state has put its money where its mouth is," he said. "There have been significant improvements."

Attorneys representing inmates cited national experts who have found that overcrowding is aggravating efforts to improve medical care in the state's prisons.

The hearing in San Francisco is expected to last through mid-December, but it's not clear when the panel will rule.

Republican lawmakers and law enforcement officials already are planning their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if the panel orders inmates to be released early.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/arti/ALeqM5gunrXFtgHU0w1G5y0fQGyKutU0
ygD94HO5S00

Posted by lois at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)

IL: Judge Halts Pontiac Prison Closing

Judge Halts Pontiac Prison Closing
By Paul Meincke

November 18, 2008 (PONTIAC, Ill.) (WLS) -- One of the state's cost cutting measures is closing the Pontiac prison.

But a lot of people in Pontiac are fighting to keep the prison open. And on Tuesday they got some help. A judge in southern Illinois issued a temporary restraining order, barring the state from transferring any more prisoners out of Pontiac.

Over the last several weeks, more than 200 inmates have been transferred from the state prison at Pontiac to other prisons in preparation for Pontiac's closing.

Tuesday afternoon's ruling by a circuit judge in southern Illinois puts a halt - at least temporarily - to those transfers. And that's welcome news in a community fighting to keep its prison.

Pontiac has had a prison for 137 years. Come December 31, it is to be closed. Pontiac's inmates would be transferred to other prisons, so will its 500-plus correctional officers. Livingston County would lose its second-largest employer.

"I don't know about you sitting here, but every day I ask how are we gonna handle this? Am I gonna have to declare bankruptcy?" said Trina Keller, wife of a correctional officer.

"So many people will have to move that houses will be left unpaid for," said Kristy Evans, wife of a correctional officer.

"We do everything here. These are our schools, our hospitals," said Cherie Kling, wife of a correctional officer.

The families of those who work in the prison are furious. They say their lives, their schools, churches and businesses have been turned upside down. Stephanie DeLong and her correctional officer husband run a restaurant.

"If the economic impact is what they've projected, I'm probably not gonna survive here," DeLong said.

Many of Pontiac's inmates, most of whom are maximum security, would be transferred to other prisons. The bulk would wind up at the state's newest prison in Thomson, which has been sitting largely empty for seven years.

The department of corrections says it'll be safer and operate at far less cost then the state's oldest prison. But critics say with the entire prison system overcrowded, closing anything now is foolhardy.

"The reason we built Thomson was to help relieve the pressure of 137 percent of capacity throughout the system. It was not to move from A to B and then close A," said State Sen. Dan Rutherford, (R) Chenoa.

"The cost in the long run will be more than what they thought they'd save at Pontiac," said Danny Jarrett, AFSCME, correctional officer.

Prison guards say maximum security inmates at Pontiac are being moved to facilities not equipped to handle them, and that presents a clear and present danger. The DOC argues that staff safety is not being sacrificed, and that the closing, however painful, will move forward.

Angry residents say they'll fight but know the clock is ticking.

"Maybe we're starting to run out of hope, run out of time," said Deb Zega, wife of a correctional officer.

The ruling from the judge in Johnson County Tuesday afternoon focuses on the union argument that other prisons are not now equipped to receive Pontiac's inmates and forcing it is a dangerous idea. That issue will be argued the first of December, and at the very least, Tuesday's decision will likely make December 31 an unrealistic date for closing Pontiac.
(Copyright ©2008 WLS-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

Posted by lois at 02:38 PM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2008

More children going hungry in U.S.

More children going hungry in U.S.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Staff Writer

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

WASHINGTON - Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year's sharp economic downturn, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department's annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than 50 percent above the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who didn't have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.

Almost a third of those, 11.9 million adults and children, went hungry at some point. That figure has grown by more than 40 percent since 2000. The government says these people suffered a substantial disruption in their food supply at some point and classifies them as having "very low food security." Until the government rewrote its definitions two years ago, this group was described as having "food insecurity with hunger."

The findings should increase pressure to meet President-elect Barack Obama's campaign pledge to expand food aid and end childhood hunger by 2015, said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

He predicted the 2008 numbers will show even more hunger because of the sharp economic downturn this year.

"There's every reason to think the increases in the number of hungry people will be very, very large based on the increased demand we're seeing this year at food stamp agencies, emergency kitchens, Women, Infants and Children clinics, really across the entire social service support structure," said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

Weill said the figures show that economic growth during the first seven years of the Bush administration didn't reach the poorest and hungriest people. "The people in the deepest poverty are suffering the most," Weill said.

The number of adults and children with "low food security" - those who avoided substantial food disruptions but still struggled to eat - fell slightly since 2000, from 24.7 million to 24.3 million. The government said these people have several ways of coping - eating less varied diets, obtaining food from emergency kitchens or community food charities, or participating in federal aid programs.

like food stamps, the school lunch program or the Women, Infants and Children program.

Among other findings:

-The families with the highest rates of food insecurity were headed by single mothers (30.2 percent), black households (22.2 percent), Hispanic households (20.1 percent), and households with incomes below the official poverty line (37.7 percent).

-States with families reporting the highest prevalence of food insecurity during 2005-2007 were Mississippi (17.4 percent), New Mexico (15 percent), Texas (14.8 percent) and Arkansas (14.4 percent).

-The highest growth in food insecurity over the last 9 years came in Alaska and Iowa, both of which saw a 3.7 percent increase in families who struggled to eat adequately or had substantial food disruptions.

---

On the Net:

Report: http://ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR66/ERR66.pdf

Posted by lois at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

Amherst MA: Justice for Jason Campaign

On February 3, 2008, two white men appeared at the window of the dormitory room of Jason Vassell, a black student who was majoring in Biology at UMass Amherst. The two men subjected Jason to racial invective and threats of violence. They kicked in his window and later gained access to an outer lobby of his dorm, where they attacked Jason, breaking his nose and causing a serious concussion. Injured and attempting to defend himself, Jason wounded his assailants with a small knife while the police were on the way to the site of the crime.

Jason faces two felony charges that could result in 30 years in prison.
http://www.justiceforjason.org/

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

MS: Southern Poverty Law Center Calls for Closing Mississippi Youth Prison

11/17/2008
SPLC Calls for Closing of Mississippi Youth Prison

The Southern Poverty Law Center today called for the state of Mississippi to abandon the use of large youth prisons following a report showing that after almost four years, the state's Oakley Training School has made virtually no progress in ensuring that children held at the prison are safe and receiving effective suicide prevention and mental health treatment.

"It is time for Mississippi to face the facts — large training schools that warehouse children do not work," said Bear Atwood, director of the SPLC's Mississippi Youth Justice Project. "They are an expensive and ineffective relic of the past. We must stop wasting the taxpayers' money and actually start helping these youths."

The state spends $300 a day per child at Oakley, where approximately 76 percent of the children are non-violent offenders. A substantial number of these children could safely go home and receive treatment in their community at a cost of about $23 a day — a more efficient use of tax dollars during the current economic downturn. The remaining youths at Oakley could go to smaller, regional facilities, Atwood said.

"Mississippi's youth court judges should be aware that children are not getting the help they desperately need when they are sent to Oakley," Atwood said.

Nearly four years ago, Mississippi agreed to stop the abuse and neglect of children detained at its youth prisons. The latest report by court monitors was filed Nov. 12. They inspected Oakley to determine if the state is meeting the conditions of a consent decree with the Department of Justice.

The report found the state is in "substantial compliance" with only 16 percent of the consent decree's provisions almost four years after the agreement. This is a 1 percent increase since March 2008. It also found the prison has been stagnant on 69 percent of the provisions — showing neither progress nor decline.

The report noted that Oakley still does not have adequate staff to monitor and supervise its residents. The report noted the staff is "creating an unsafe environment, and encourages a culture in which youth become afraid and instinctively resort to violence."

Oakley is in compliance with only 22 percent of the suicide prevention provisions. It found that "youth are not being appropriately identified at risk of suicide" and that treatment plans for suicidal youths are not being developed. The report also noted it is unacceptable that the director of program services described the daily assessments of suicidal youths as a "work in progress."

Oakley is in compliance with only 4 percent of the provisions for mental health care and rehabilitative services. The monitor said that the mental health staff is not aware of what occurs in psychiatric treatment, and individual behavior modification plans are not being written. Also, not all of the youths requiring individual therapy are receiving it.

Only 70 percent of the youths referred to substance abuse groups are receiving treatment, the report found.

Four months after the last inspection of Oakley, it remains in a state of disrepair. The report found that the "cottages are in such disrepair that if they cannot be repaired to proper specifications, they should be demolished."

The monitors toured the facility during the last week of September and into early October. Their previous visit was in early June. This was the first monitors' report since the closing of the Columbia Training School, which came in response to a lawsuit filed by the SPLC.

The consent decree with the Department of Justice lawsuit came after a 2003 department study that found shockingly inhumane conditions at Oakley. In addition to being hog-tied and left for days in pitch-black cells, children ages 10 to 17 were sometimes sprayed with chemicals during mandatory exercises and forced to eat their own vomit. Others were forced to run with automobile tires around their necks or mattresses on their backs.
http://www.splcenter.org/legal/news/article.jsp?site_area=1&aid=347

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

LA: State takes steps to close Jetson prison for youth

State takes steps to close Jetson

* By SANDY DAVIS

* Published: Nov 15, 2008 - Page: 1B

The state is on its way to closing Jetson Center for Youth and making steps toward reforming the state’s juvenile justice system, Mary Livers, head of the state’s Office of Juvenile Justice, told a state commission Friday.

“We are in the process of shrinking Jetson,” Livers said. “We feel good about what’s happening there.”

Livers made the remarks at a hearing of the Juvenile Justice Implementation Commission at the State Capitol. The commission was created in 2003 to help reform the state’s juvenile justice system.

Jetson is one of three juvenile prisons — also known as secure care facilities — operated by the state’s Office of Juvenile Justice.

Jetson came under fire earlier this year after allegations surfaced of brutality and sexual abuse being committed by both staff and inmates at the facility.

The Legislature voted during the last session to close the 800-acre facility by next year and replace it with smaller, regional facilities where young lawbreakers can be closer to their homes while not living in a large, state institution.

Livers said Friday that Jetson’s population has been reduced from a high of about 215 teenage offenders earlier this year to 81 on Thursday.

It is still under discussion how the facility will be used, Livers said.

Also providing testimony to the commission on reform efforts were members of other state offices including the Departments of Social Services, Health and Hospitals and the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

Susan Sonnier, deputy secretary of the Department of Social Services, told the commission one of the more difficult hurdles facing the state is the large number of children living in poverty.

“Louisiana has the second highest rate of child poverty in the nation — 26.8 percent of Louisiana’s children live in poverty,” she said noting that the national average is 18 percent.

Sonnier said the state continues to struggle with the problem.

“I don’t know that we’re moving up,” she added. “People living in poverty is increasing in the state.”

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, chairman of the commission, said that the number of children living in poverty is “unacceptable.”

“I am expecting at some point in time a detailed approach with specific timetables and outcomes to deal with that issue,” Landrieu said to Sonnier.

Landrieu called the statistic “sobering.”

“Juvenile justice cannot be separated from that,” Landrieu said. “When you have a poverty rate like ours, one of the highest in an industrialized nation, we have a tremendous amount of work to do for all of the children of Louisiana.”
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/politics/34502744.html

Posted by lois at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

KY: Study Blames Repeat "Offender" Law for Overcrowded Prisons

Study blames Ky. law for overcrowded prisons
November 17, 2008 @ 07:30 PM
2008/The Herald-Dispatch

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky’s repeat offender law shoulders much of the blame for overcrowded prisons, according to a new study by the man who wrote the state’s penal code.

The report by University of Kentucky professor Robert Lawson called the state’s repeat offender law “draconian” because, unlike in most other states, it is not limited to violent or serious crimes.

He said the law originally was reserved for the worst criminals, but legislators have extended it so much over the years that it has “pushed the state’s corrections budget off the charts.”

Earlier this year, lawmakers authorized releasing some prison inmates early as a cost-saving measure aimed at relieving some of the mounting financial pressure Kentucky’s prison system is putting on an already cash-strapped budget.

The study comes as a state panel on sentencing reform is considering the issue and will make recommendations to the Kentucky Criminal Justice Council, which will report to Gov. Steve Beshear.

The panel’s chairman, Deputy Justice Secretary Charles Geveden, said it will vote to recommend eliminating the part of the law that provides enhanced sentences for offenders with only one previous felony conviction.

Panel member and public defender Ed Monahan said he would propose limiting the law to violent offenders.

The president of the Kentucky Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys, prosecutor Chris Cohron, told The Courier-Journal for a story published Monday that his group is opposed to limiting the law to serious or violent offenders. Cohron says offenders who repeat crimes should have additional penalties.

Geveden said it will be difficult to get lawmakers to change the law because they “don’t want to be perceived as soft on crime.”

State Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, who has been chairwoman of the House Judiciary Committee, said she expects a “full frontal assault” from prosecutors.

In a rebuttal to Lawson’s report, Fayette County prosecutor Ray Larson said 20 persistent felons cited in the study had been convicted of more than 300 felonies and misdemeanors. He said the 3,200 persistent felons his office prosecuted in the 12 years ending in 2007 were convicted of 45,000 felonies and misdemeanors.

“The average citizen wants to be protected from these predatory repeat criminals,” Larson said.

Attorney General Jack Conway said he is willing to “listen and to talk about what offenses ought to trigger the PFO laws.”

But he says a more effective way to slow the growing prison population is to refer nonviolent drug offenders for treatment and to set a sliding scale of sentences for theft offenses.

“You shouldn’t be punished the same for stealing $500 as embezzling a half-million,” he said.
http://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/briefs/x2077109477/Study-blames-Ky-law-for-overcrowded-prisons

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

More Native Americans Now In Prisons

Indianz.Com, Posted: Nov 17, 2008 Review it on NewsTrust

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The number of incarcerated Native Americans has risen sharply over the last five years, reports Indianz.Com.

The figures come from a federal Department of Justice study that found that in Indian Country jails as of mid 2007, there were 2,163 inmates up from 1,745 in 2004, an increase of 24 percent. The figures for Native Americans in tribal, federal and state facilities jumped from 68,177 in 2004 to 71,274 in 2007 an increase of 4.5 percent. More disturbingly, the study found that poor conditions in the prisons contributed to a large number of suicides, attempted suicides, deaths and escapes.

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

November 16, 2008

CO: Fort Carson has sent thousands of troops into action overseas. But nine may have brought too much of the war home with them and have been linked to violent crimes.

Deadly duty for Fort Carson
Fort Carson has sent thousands of troops into action overseas. But nine may have brought too much of the war home with them and have been linked to violent crimes.
By David Olinger
The Denver Post
11/16/2008

COLORADO SPRINGS — Erica Ham was walking to a bus stop, heading for work as a nursing-home housekeeper, when a car struck her from behind.

Three men jumped out. "Get on the ground!" one with a gun ordered. Another stabbed her repeatedly, puncturing a lung and slitting her left eyelid. Police found her unconscious but alive, her cellphone at her ear.

Matthew Orrenmaa was shot as he walked to get gas for his truck, Zachary Szody as he talked with a friend in front of a Colorado Springs house. Cesar Ramirez-Ibanez and Amairany Cervantes were gunned down as they posted a garage-sale sign. Kevin Shields was shot to death on his 24th birthday, Robert James for the cash in his wallet, Jonathan Smith in an attempted robbery, Sara
Link

Sherwood by a husband who then killed himself. Judilianna Lawrence was murdered by a rapist who slit her throat. Jacqwelyn Villagomez was beaten to death.

The victims had just one thing in common: The men accused of attacking them all went to war in Iraq with the same Fort Carson unit, the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division.

In three years, nine men from that single 3,700-soldier Army brigade have been charged in 10 murders and attempted homicides, all but two in or around Colorado Springs. Some of the attacks appear frighteningly random; victims were shot and stabbed by men they had never seen before. Four of the victims — Orrenmaa, Szody, Shields and James — also served at Fort Carson.

Of the accused, one had been sent home early from Iraq with mental-health problems. Another had been hospitalized with post-traumatic stress disorder. Another had become addicted to painkillers prescribed for his wounds.

Another had been allowed to enlist despite a juvenile record of killing a 12-year-old boy with a shotgun. He was sent to a second tour in Iraq despite a head injury and a felony charge of threatening his girlfriend with a gun. Even after he was court-martialed for threatening officers, the

The string of killings has drawn the attention of the Pentagon, and an investigation has been ordered by Maj. Gen. Mark Graham at Fort Carson to determine what, if anything, the Army could have done to prevent the off-post killings and attacks.

While that is underway, soldier advocates and families of the victims are asking questions of their own.

"They're your problem"

Debra Shields, Kevin Shields' mother, wonders why the Army didn't take stronger action when one of the soldiers accused in her son's murder was discharged after making threats against officers in Iraq.

They areyour problem," she said. "Well, your problem became my problem. They killed my son."

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, contends that inadequate mental-health treatment for returning war veterans is partly to blame. He contrasts the policies of big-city police departments, which place officers involved in shootings on paid leave and refer them to counselors, with the brief mental-health questionnaires handed to soldiers returning from a war that demands split-second decisions about shooting people in raided houses and moving cars.

"This is a pattern we're starting to see around the country. This is a national problem. We consider it the tip of the iceberg of a social catastrophe caused by President Bush's
failure to plan for hundreds of thousands of physical and psychological casualties," Sullivan said.

Other Army posts have seen returning soldiers accused of murder, but "the largest cluster that we're aware of is at Fort Carson," he said. "Fort Carson is clearly the peak of the problem."

Graham has formed a task force of experts, including some from the Army surgeon general's office, to investigate whether there is any "commonality" among the homicides that could help identify warning signs and prevent future cases.

"Our hearts and condolences go out to the families of those who were lost to the soldiers. We don't train soldiers to do things like this," he said.

Graham said the Army trains soldiers to quickly discern right from wrong — when to shoot and when to hold fire. And it is striving to encourage those who have been wounded psychologically "that it's a sign of strength, not weakness, to come forward for help."

In the past three years, 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers have served in the 4th Brigade during two tours in Iraq. The vast majority have caused no trouble for police or MPs during their time at home, which will end again soon as they prepare for a spring deployment to Afghanistan, Graham said.

"We are very proud of our soldiers and our officers," he said. "They're doing wonderful things for the nation. We don't want to see the great work these soldiers have done marred by the acts of a few."

Bookings of soldiers on rise

El Paso County jail records show that bookings of service members, largely from Fort Carson, nearly tripled in three years, from 162 in 2004 to to 451 in 2007. With 516 and counting, the 2008 bookings of service members already have surpassed those from last year. Most of the cases were minor — traffic violations, disorderly conduct, DUIs — but a growing number of service members have also been arrested on assault, harassment and robbery charges, restraining-order violations and property crimes, mainly theft.

In Colorado Springs, public defenders concerned about the growing arrest numbers have been talking to legislators and a judge about setting up a "veterans court" that could intervene at the first sign of criminal trouble.

At war in Iraq, soldiers aren't allowed to drink alcohol.

"We just see them coming back and getting blackout drunk, and that's where all their criminal activity's coming out," said Deana Feist, a deputy state public defender in Colorado Springs.

Many returning soldiers don't feel comfortable without a gun and many suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. "You add alcohol, and it's a pretty dangerous combination," she said.

"We've been seeing it for about 1 1/2 to 2 years now — soldiers sometimes picking up violent offenses," she said. "In a really short period of time they can pick up three or four felonies and end up in prison when they've never been in trouble before."

PTSD diagnoses increasing

The 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division — formerly the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division — has had a series of long and sometimes bloody deployments. Its soldiers had already been deployed to South Korea when they were transferred to war-ravaged Ramadi, Iraq. In 2006 they went back to Iraq for a second, 15-month deployment. During the two deployments, 113 soldiers were killed in action.

Pfc. Stephen Sherwood was the first soldier in the brigade who killed after coming home. On Aug. 3, 2005, a week after he returned from Iraq, neighbors watched him take down the American flag at his Larimer County home and remove the "Support our troops" sticker from his vehicle. Hours later, he shot his wife, Sara, five times in the face and neck, then killed himself with a single shotgun blast.

In one pocket of his jeans, a sheriff's deputy found a typewritten note from Sara explaining that she loved another man. "I love you but I'm not in love with you," she had written. In another pocket, the deputy found an Associated Press report that 30 percent of troops returning from Iraq developed mental-health problems three to four months later.

From 2003 to 2007, nearly 40,000 U.S. troops were diagnosed by the military with post-traumatic stress disorder. The number diagnosed has been growing each year, along with multiple deployments.

Anthony Marquez was the second soldier to kill out of uniform. On Oct. 22, 2006, a botched attempt to rob a marijuana dealer, Jonathan Smith, led to gunfire. Smith was shot in the chest and died.

Marquez, a wounded soldier who had met President Bush at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, was charged with murder. In a plea agreement, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

"I knew I needed help. I knew I was out of control," he said in a recent interview at the Bent County Correctional Facility. But he also feared his sergeant would say, "You're lying; you're just trying to get out of work."

Marquez had been wounded in Ramadi on June 21, 2005, after an improvised explosive device detonated under a Bradley fighting vehicle. He and other soldiers scrambled out, only to be hit by machine-gun fire. Four bullets shredded his leg. Two of his friends died. He later learned that in the smoke and confusion, he may have been shot by soldiers in the convoy behind him.

After three months and 17 surgeries at Walter Reed, Marquez came to Fort Carson, where he grew addicted to morphine and Percocet. He said he was getting 90 pills at a time of each drug.

At first he took them for pain, but "it could also make you feel really good. Take it on an empty stomach. Drink some alcohol with it," he said. "I was hooked on those pills pretty good."

When he couldn't get enough, he said he persuaded a doctor at Fort Carson to write a prescription off-base at a Walgreens pharmacy by claiming his drugs had been lost or stolen. Sometimes he and his friends shared pills.

"I started going downhill, coming to work late, not showing up, not in uniform," he said.

Of the shooting, "my mind was clouded up. I put myself in a bad situation," he said, and "I always carried a weapon."

Concerns were raised

Deana Feist was one of Marquez's defense lawyers. She described him as "your all-American kid" before he went to war — likable and polite, a high school prom king whose mother worked as a police officer.

Before Marquez was arrested, Feist said, his mother had called Fort Carson to voice concern about her son's deteriorating mental condition.

"There was enough information to raise the flags," she said, "that somebody needs to take a look at this kid and oversee, evaluate, treat."

Marquez said after he was arrested, the Army called his mother, seeking to test him for traumatic brain injuries. "She told them he's already in jail," he said. "They told her I slipped through the cracks. Well, I guess I did."

He is not the only one.

Last December, Colorado Springs police arrested three men who had served together in the 4th Brigade. The men were charged with a six-month crime spree, including the assault of Erica Ham and the murder of fellow soldier Spec. Kevin Shields.

Police accused Louis Bressler and Pfc. Bruce Bastien of murdering another soldier, Pfc. Robert James, then robbing him of $45, and attempting to murder Matthew Orrenmaa. Bastien had told police that Bressler shot Orrenmaa because Bressler's wife had complained that "some guys" were following her earlier that night.

Orrenmaa said he had run out of gas on his way home from a party. He hopped out of his truck and was walking toward a Diamond Shamrock station when he heard someone firing a gun from a car.

Then the car pulled up beside him. One of the men inside said, "Come here" — and then "something about a girl and me saying something to some girl," Orrenmaa recalled. "He pulled out a gun, shot at me once, hit me in the shoulder. I ran. He shot at me three or four more times."

Orrenmaa wracked his brain afterward, trying to figure out why the man shot him. "Maybe I talked to somebody's wife? It might have happened that week, that month, that year. I couldn't figure out why somebody would do something like that. I was married, kept to myself."

Bressler also was accused of shooting up a house. Kenneth Eastridge, a third soldier from the same brigade, admitted participating in the assault of Erica Ham and helping to cover up the murder of Kevin Shields.

Histories of violence

It wasn't the first time Eastridge had been arrested for misusing a gun. As a child in Kentucky, he killed a 12-year-old friend, Billy Bowman, with a shotgun. The shooting was treated as accidental, a conclusion Billy's father doubted. Kenneth had previously shot Billy "many times" with a BB gun, Bill Bowman said. "I told the judge, there's no doubt in my mind we'll see this boy again."

In 2006, Eastridge was accused of menacing his girlfriend by grabbing her neck and pointing a .45-caliber handgun at her head, a charge that was pending when Fort Carson sent him to a second round of war in Iraq.

Last week, Eastridge testified that his best friend, Bressler, shot and killed Kevin Shields after a night of marijuana smoking and heavy drinking at two bars — and after Bressler lost a fistfight with Shields.

Under cross-examination, Eastridge acknowledged that he had been court-martialed on nine counts during his second tour, including threatening an officer and two noncommissioned officers in Iraq and getting caught with 463 Valiums. "They sent me to Kuwait to a hard-labor camp," he said, then brought him to Colorado to discharge him.

He said he was falsely accused — by Bastien — of killing innocent people in Iraq.

He talked about the MySpace Web page he created in Iraq, where he wrote, "Killin is just what I do!!!" and that he liked violence, death, destruction, mayhem, carnage, chaos — and flowers. He had posted photos of himself standing over a dead body, holding a dead cat by the tail and brandishing a stolen AK-47.

In response to a jury question, Eastridge said he was thrown from a vehicle by an explosion during his first tour in Iraq, an injury that knocked him unconscious, afflicted his memory and injected "cerebral fluid" in his right ear. "I never left Iraq after I was wounded," he added.

Bastien, who has been sentenced to 60 years in prison, violated his plea agreement last week by refusing to testify about the murder of Kevin Shields. He too had faced domestic-violence charges after returning from Iraq. Twice in 2007, police arrested him for allegedly assaulting his wife. The second time, an officer noticed "four marks to her upper chest" from cigarette burns.

Bressler, who has pleaded not guilty, was medically retired from the Army last year, according to Fort Carson. His wife, Tira, told The Gazette in Colorado Springs that he had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and was taking medicine for depression.

This year, four more soldiers from the same brigade were arrested on homicide charges.

On May 5, Zachary Szody was shot twice on a residential street by someone in a passing car. On June 6, Amairany Cervantes and Cesar Ramirez- Ibanez were shot to death as they tried to post a garage-sale sign at a Colorado Springs intersection.

Police traced both shootings to the same AK-47. In August, another Iraq war veteran at Fort Carson, Pfc. Jomar Falu-Vives, was charged with two murders and an attempted murder, and Spec. Rodolfo Torres-Gandarilla as an accomplice.

Szody, a captain at Fort Carson, said he does not know the man accused of shooting him. "I was just visiting my old platoon sergeant, standing outside in front of his house," he said. "The people in the car said nothing. They just drove by, I heard shots, hit the ground — and that's when I realized I was shot." He had been shot twice, in his left hip and right knee.

Marta Vives, Falu-Vives' mother, cannot picture her son doing such things. He told her he was innocent, "and I believe him."

They were deployed in Iraq together, mother and son. She went to Baghdad as a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and he enlisted to follow her. "He didn't want his mother to go to war and not be there. He wanted to be with me, protect me."

She said he had no drug or drinking problems, no criminal record, not even a tattoo. "He was a good guy. He actually did his job. He came back alive," she said.

At worst, "I truly believe Jomar got caught up in something way above his head."

Personality shift

On Labor Day this year, sheriff's deputies responding to a complaint of an argument in a San Clemente, Calif., condo found a naked 25-year-old veteran at the door and subdued him with a Taser. In the bedroom, they found a severely beaten 19-year-old woman, Jacqwelyn Villagomez. She died the next day.

John Needham became the eighth veteran of the 4th Brigade to face homicide charges.

Family members have described Needham as an easygoing young man whose personality changed dramatically in Iraq. His commanding officer there "would not allow him to seek medical help for his emotional and mental situation," said his father, Michael Needham.

In a November 2007 letter to Maj. Gen. Graham at Fort Carson, Needham complained that his son had been flown to Walter Reed for treatment of physical and mental injuries after becoming so despondent that he tried to kill himself in Iraq — and that Fort Carson officers had removed him against a psychiatrist's advice, intent on returning him to active duty.

Needham commended Graham and his staff, saying they enabled his son to continue medical treatment in his home state of California. He now believes that help came too late.

On Oct. 13, 2008, a ninth member of the 4th Brigade was arrested on murder charges.

Judilianna Lawrence, a 19-year-old woman with a learning disability, had disappeared two days earlier after communicating with a stranger on the Internet. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office concluded that stranger was Spec. Robert Marko, a soldier who declared on his MySpace page that he was becoming "a cold hearted killer and can kill without mercy or reason."

Detectives said Marko had led them to a remote wooded area, off a chained dirt access road, where Lawrence's naked body was found. Her throat had been cut.

Devastated lives

Families of the victims and alleged victims of the nine Fort Carson soldiers have no answers for whether war turned the soldiers into community dangers. But they are asking many of the same questions being addressed by Graham's task force.

In Colorado Springs, Debra Shields has been living in a hotel room during the trial of the soldier accused of shooting her son.

She mourns that Kevin's 4-year-old son "will never have a dad to throw a ball around," that the baby daughter born six months after his death "will never have a dad to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day. It's really hard. Sometimes Andrew will ask when Daddy's coming home. His mom tells him, 'Daddy's not coming home, he's in heaven.'

"He thinks Daddy's still off fighting the war."

She wishes "it was mandatory that those men go through a period of psychological evaluation and counseling" after returning from war, because "if it's made mandatory, then that stigma of being weak is removed."

These men "devastated our lives. They've also devastated their own families' lives. They're putting their families through hell," she said.

"I can't imagine what it's like to have a child charged with murder, what it must feel like for them. At least they can go visit their child. I have to visit mine in a crypt."

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_10996605

Posted by lois at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)

MN: Veterans taking care of their own with new business center Founded by former soldiers, center will help vets start — and sustain — businesses

Rubén Rosario: Veterans taking care of their own with new business center
Founded by former soldiers, center will help vets start — and sustain — businesses
By Rubén Rosario, Pioneer Press
Article Launched: 11/16/2008 12:01:00 AM CST

Jimmie Lee Coulthard remembers them still. One was a former Twin Cities firefighter. The other was another Vietnam War veteran from the South. Both were homeless. Both were dealing with substance abuse and other ills.

As a licensed chemical-dependency counselor and advocate for homeless military veterans, Coulthard had seen potential and talent and aspirations in many a troubled soul.

He saw it in bundles in both men, excellent cooks, particularly in Southern cuisine.

"I know if they had a restaurant, you couldn't have gotten inside their place, that successful it could be," Coulthard said last week. "But they were dealing with the other stuff. They talked about it, but it was too big of a thing for them."

Years later, on Friday, Coulthard and a group of similarly minded military veterans stood inside Building 11 at the VA Medical Center campus at Fort Snelling. The men alongside Coulthard this day — Guy Gambill, Jack Scharrett, local attorney John Baker and others — were there to get the word out of their plans to give entrepreneurial-minded veterans in Minnesota the business.

"I had a five-year plan for this back in 1998,'' Coulthard, 63, said of the Veterans' Initiative Center & Research Institute. Its acronym — VICTRI — is pronounced "victory."

"But there were lack of resources and other veteran priorities, like finding places for the homeless and setting up sober houses," Coulthard added.

VICTRI, slated to open in
Advertisement
January, is being billed as a one-of-a-kind, state-of-the-art nonprofit venture that could become a national model. It will help veterans and their family members start, build and sustain successful businesses or initiatives through education, services and support.

Staffed by veterans and their relatives, the center has already partnered with public and private universities to offer a short-term business education course. It also will provide needed tools to navigate the world of small business, subcontracting and other ventures.

The goal: help veterans to not only put up a shingle but also to keep it there and watch the business grow.

IT WORKED IN IRAQ

Center staffers note that 90 percent of all startup businesses fail in their first year. Scharrett, 39, a business-development consultant and major in the U.S. Army Reserve's Civil Affairs division, said the reasons for the belly-ups have little to do with passion and energy. They have more to do, he said, with the owner's lack of business acumen, which includes skills to set up financial statements, manage cash flow and understand tax laws.

Scharrett, a West Point graduate and New York native, said the intent of the center parallels that of a similar center he helped establish while stationed in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. The Kirkuk Business Center was set up in that city as a business development and incubation center managed and staffed by Iraqi residents in an attempt to jump-start the war-torn nation's small-business economy.

Scharrett helped establish and maintain seven Iraqi-owned ventures. Perhaps the most ambitious is what is now Iraq's largest agricultural cooperative, including 750 member families and stretching over 6 million acres.

Scharrett returned to Minnesota with thoughts that such an effort easily could be set up here to benefit veterans seeking to open businesses following their deployments.

After doing some research, he said, "I was shocked to find that although there are many veteran service organizations out there, I could not find one that was focused on helping veterans to start and sustain businesses."

What he did find were fellow vets like Coulthard who had similar ideas jelling.

Besides a business library set up in partnership with the James J. Hill Reference Library in St. Paul, the center will provide computers, phones, office space and a boardroom for use by vets as they shape their startup businesses.

It also will include a research institute, another reported first, that will produce, assist with or critique studies on veterans and related issues.

Gambill will head the institute. He's another Vietnam-era veteran who was a member of Gov. Tim Pawlenty's Beyond the Yellow Ribbon Task Force for the Minnesota National Guard, and he serves as an advocacy coordinator and lobbyist for the nonprofit Council on Crime and Justice.

The center, which has received the backing of federal and state government officials and various veterans groups, is seeking corporate or other funding for the building's infrastructure.

A CONCRETE VISION

Coulthard is well aware of the funding difficulties ahead in a time of a recession and economic instability. But he has taken on battles before.

The Iowa-raised farm boy survived numerous skirmishes as a combat infantry rifleman in Vietnam with Company C, 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry, 196th Light Infantry Brigade.

As CEO of Minnesota Assistance Council for Veterans, Coulthard developed and helped build 200 units of permanent housing for homeless veterans on two VA campuses and three outstate centers. Two sections of those units sit squarely behind Building 11, which once served as the home of the VA director.It's all about can-do with this bunch of local vet-loving vets — damn the torpedoes or the challenges.

"I believe what many returning veterans possess is a great desire to catch up with their peers again," said Coulthard, who founded the center and will serve as board treasurer and the center's director. "They also bring a lot of energy and are very mission-focused. We hope this place is where they can come and get the help they need and have someone always there to help them walk through things."

The number of the building is a promising sign: In numerology, 11 stands for higher ideals, invention, fulfillment and vision.

Rubén Rosario can be reached at rrosario@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5454.

ONLINE

To learn more about the Veterans' Initiative Center & Research Institute, go to victri.org.

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

Alaska: Prison Privateer Gets Fine and 6 months jail time

Weimar gets 6 months in prison, fine
By LISA DEMER
Published: November 12th,2008

Bill Weimar, who built a lucrative business in Alaska working with criminals, was sentenced to federal prison Wednesday as a convicted felon.

Weimar, 68, tall and silver-haired, his voice faltering at times, stood before a federal judge and said he did wrong. He has admitted funneling $20,000 in 2004 to help a state legislative candidate, knowing that if elected the candidate would support his interest in building a private prison.

"This is my fault. I did this. Nobody made me do it. I had the means to do it. I went ... and got the cash. I sent it through the mails," Weimar told U.S. District John Sedwick. "I committed a crime."

In August, Weimar pleaded guilty to two felonies: conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and a charge called "structuring financial transactions" for dividing the money into smaller payments, to avoid U.S. Treasury reporting requirements.

On Wednesday, the judge ordered Weimar to serve six months in federal prison, then another six months on home detention while on supervised probation. He also must pay a sizable fine of $75,000, which is more than either the prosecution or the federal probation office recommended and goes above what federal guidelines call for.

"It was the kind of offense that does great damage to our community because ... it allows for the corruption of a public process that we all really depend upon," Sedwick said.

Weimar started and owned Allvest Inc., which operated the state's only chain of private halfway houses, provided drug treatment, and ran other services including animal control. In 1998, he sold five halfway houses to Cornell Corrections Inc. and the next year, retired to Montana. In all, he lived 30 years in Alaska.

Weimar quickly admitted his guilt and cooperated with the investigation, defense lawyer David Bukey of Seattle noted to the judge.

He told investigators what he knew about the candidate and the candidate's political consultant, and provided follow-up documents when requested by the FBI, Bukey said.

But assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Bottini stressed that Weimar - while providing a fascinating historical perspective - hasn't really helped the on-going federal investigation into Alaska political corruption.

"While he did provide a substantial amount of information, the bottom line was it didn't advance the ball one inch for the government, and that's just the hard reality of it," Bottini said.

Another cooperating defendant, former lobbyist Bill Bobrick, testified against former state Rep.Tom Anderson in a trial last year. Anderson was convicted of seven felonies including bribery and money laundering after being caught on secretly made recordings agreeing to do Cornell's bidding and accepting payments he thought came from the company, but actually were from the FBI. Cornell was unaware of the scheme.

"We're not even in the same league as far as Mr. Weimar's effort to cooperate," Bottini said.
http://www.adn.com/news/politics/fbi/story/586614.html

Posted by lois at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

MA: Prisoners to be double bunked due to sentencing/war on drugs

Prison to double-bunk inmates
Sentencing changes urged to ease overcrowding in system
Boston Globe
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | November 16, 2008

MILFORD - The number of inmates in Massachusetts prisons is projected to reach about 12,000 next year for the first time, prompting the head of the prison system to call for sentencing changes that ease overcrowding and to proceed with a controversial plan to double-bunk inmates at a maximum-security facility.

About two weeks short of his one-year anniversary as commissioner of the Department of Correction, Harold W. Clarke said last week that he hopes Governor Deval Patrick reintroduces legislation to reform "mandatory minimum" sentences, which Clarke said have led to a surge in inmates, many with no history of violence.

"We've been really concerned with mandatory sentencing laws," Clarke, 57, said at the department's headquarters here. "We don't want people backed up in prison that are not posing a risk to the community at large."

On Nov. 3, the state's 18 prisons held 11,380 inmates, putting them at 44 percent above capacity, Clarke said. The number is projected to grow by 5 to 7 percent next year, which would put the population at between 11,949 and 12,176.

The prison population declined steadily from 10,990 in 1999 to 9,825 in 2005, but it has surged since then, according to department statistics. The totals include convicted offenders, people awaiting trial, and individuals committed involuntarily - even though they have finished their sentences - because they still pose a danger, such as some sex offenders.

With crime rates remaining relatively stable, Clarke said, the main reason for the surge is mandatory-minimum sentences passed by Massachusetts since the 1980s. Many of the laws were approved as part of a harsh nationwide crackdown on drug offenses, but a growing number of judges, defense lawyers, prison administrators, and advocates for prisoners say they often do more harm than good.

As of Sept. 22, about 1,917 inmates were serving a mandatory minimum sentence for a drug offense, said Diane Wiffin, a prison system spokeswoman. Those inmates are ineligible for parole and are forbidden from participating in work-release programs or halfway houses that could ease overcrowding.

Patrick filed legislation last year that would have let drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences participate in work-release programs, but the bill did not win passage. He has refiled it for the new legislative session. The Patrick administration is also scheduled to complete a master plan in December that will discuss construction projects that could relieve overcrowding, said a spokesman for the governor.

In the meantime, Clarke is moving forward with a plan to double-bunk some inmates at a maximum-security prison. As early as year's end, he said, he plans to move 400 inmates from maximum-security MCI-Cedar Junction at Walpole to Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.

Each of the 400 inmates would share a cell with another prisoner at Souza-Baranowski, which has 1,028 inmates. Cedar Junction would become a medium-security prison that takes in new inmates until they are classified, a role currently played by MCI-Concord. And Old Colony Correctional Center, a medium- and minimum-security prison in Bridgewater, would mostly house inmates with diagnoses of mental illness.

The plan to put two inmates in a cell at the 10-year-old Souza-Baranowski has drawn fire from prisoner rights activists and the union that represents correction officers.

Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said that double-bunking at Souza-Baranowski - where prisoners spend scant time outside their cells - would probably lead to violence.

"You're taking two prisoners that the department has deemed of maximum-security dangerousness and you're locking them together in a cell for over 20 hours a day," she said. "I think it's a very risky measure that should be taken only in desperation."

Her comments reflect a rare agreement with Steve Kenneway, the president of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union. He told the Globe last month that putting two inmates in the same cell would provoke fights, stabbings, and killings.

"There are some inmates out there who are going to make a choice whether to accept a roommate or kill their roommate," he said. "That's not an exaggeration."

But Clarke, who headed the prison systems of Nebraska and then Washington State before Patrick appointed him last November, said prisoners already share cells or dorms in the state's 16 medium- and minimum-security prisons. He said many other states double-bunk prisoners, as does the federal Bureau of Prisons. And Souza-Baranowski cells were originally designed to house two inmates, he said.

"We don't have many options - one, releasing offenders, and two, building more capacity - and I'm not sure that either of those are now palatable," he said.

In another matter, Clarke and Walker said in separate interviews that they hoped a federal suit filed last year by the Disability Law Center against the Department of Correction over treatment of mentally ill inmates will be settled soon.

The center, a nonprofit advocacy group that provides legal help for the disabled, alleged in a March 2007 suit that hundreds of seriously mentally ill prisoners were held in cells 23 hours a day in inhumane conditions, leading to self-mutilation, the swallowing of razor blades, and at least seven suicides since November 2004. The group, which has been assisted by Walker's organization, urged the creation of special treatment units similar to those in at least six other states.

Clarke said last week that settlement talks have been under way for a year and that soon "we're hoping to be able to say, 'We don't have to go to court, we can avoid litigation,' which I'm certain will serve all parties best," he said.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/11/16/prison_to_double_bunk_inmates?mode=PF

Posted by lois at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

November 14, 2008

NY: Judge Supports Soldier With Police Record Seeking to Join Force

November 14, 2008
Judge Supports Soldier With Police Record Seeking to Join Force
By ANNE BARNARD
NY Times

They called themselves a “band of brothers,” and they all wore their paratrooper badges as they stood in front of the judge: Specialist Osvaldo Hernandez, recently returned from a 15-month tour in Afghanistan; his lawyer, James D. Harmon Jr., a former prosecutor who served in Vietnam; and their expert witness, Randy Jergensen, a retired New York police detective who parachuted into battle in Korea.

They appeared in court on Thursday to argue that Mr. Hernandez, who served a year on Rikers Island for illegal gun possession, a felony, before joining the Army, had turned his life around so impressively that he deserved the judge’s help to realize his dream: joining the New York police force.

Justice Henry Kron, who had presided over Mr. Hernandez’s guilty plea in State Supreme Court in Queens in 2002, granted their wish Thursday by issuing a certificate that restores certain civil rights that New York State strips from felons, such as the right to vote, and prevents employers from automatically refusing to hire them. On Monday, his parole board had issued a certificate of good conduct that allows him to apply to carry a gun legally and states explicitly that the board would not object to his bearing arms as a police officer.

Mr. Harmon believes those actions remove any legal barriers to Mr. Hernandez’s joining the police force.

The decision is now up to police officials, who have said that no matter how exemplary an applicant, the city’s administrative code forbids hiring anyone with a felony conviction as a police officer. The Police Department declined to comment on the case Thursday.

Mr. Hernandez’s allies acknowledge that military service does not in itself qualify someone for police work, but they do hope that Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, himself a combat veteran, will be moved to make him the first reformed felon on the force. They put their hope not only in the soldier’s high score on the police entrance exam and the glowing character references from his military commanders, but also in the impassioned support from the court that sentenced him.

“He’s done his penance,” Robert Masters, who prosecuted Mr. Hernandez in 2002, told the judge on Thursday. “He’s paid his debt to society.”

In granting the certificate, Judge Kron cast the soldier as a model of rehabilitation. “The whole point,” he said, “is for someone who’s made a mistake in the past to have a chance to reclaim their life. Mr. Hernandez has done so in very concrete and epic terms.”

Mr. Hernandez, who is now in the Reserve, grew up in Corona, Queens. In 2002, when he was 20, the police found a semiautomatic .380 pistol under his car seat. He told them that a friend had given it to him and that he had never used it himself. Justice Kron sentenced him to the minimum one year.

After his release, the Army granted him a waiver allowing him to sign up despite the felony; it is an exception that has been granted more frequently in recent years as the overtaxed military struggles to fill its ranks.

Waivers have often been criticized as a lowering of standards, but Maj. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick of the Army Recruiting Command defended them in discussing recruitment on Oct. 10.

He said that the Army has accepted 372 felons so far this year, down from 511 last year, and that a recent military study showed that such recruits were promoted faster, were more likely to re-enlist, and received more awards.

Mr. Hernandez ended up serving in Nawa, Afghanistan, on an isolated firebase near the Pakistani border, where he received several citations and medals.

Capt. Chris DeMure, his commanding officer, said that he was a role model to other enlisted men, and that had not looked for praise but had always done “the right thing,” like taking the initiative to help set up a radio station for villagers in the remote area.

Mr. Harmon read about the soldier’s problem in The New York Times earlier this year and enlisted his friend, Mr. Jergensen, to help.

“I would be glad to have Specialist Hernandez as my partner,” Mr. Jergensen said on Thursday.

If the police job does not work out, Mr. Hernandez said, he will look for other ways to serve his community.

“A paratrooper always has a reserve chute,” Mr. Harmon said. Continuing the military metaphor, Mr. Hernandez said he was now just waiting on the police: “Right now we’re hooked up and standing by.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/nyregion/14soldier.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=nyregion&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)

Vt. readies for prison deal in Ala.

Nov 13, 2008
Vt. readies for prison deal in Ala.
By Daniel Barlow Vermont Press Bureau
MONTPELIER – Vermont is poised to sign a contract with a new for-profit prison in Alabama, planning to relocate up to 80 of the state's prisoners.

Vermont Department of Corrections Commissioner Robert Hofmann told lawmakers Wednesday that the new contract with LCS Corrections Services, Inc. will focus on offenders in prison who are "unacceptable to be placed with a majority of other prisoners."

The agreement, which is yet to be finalized, would allow Vermont to send between 60 to 80 violent offenders to LCS Corrections' two-year-old Perry County Correctional Center, a 734-bed facility in Uniontown, Ala..

Hofmann said the new prison contract was not directly related to the massive reorganization of prisons here in Vermont, but instead because the state has been challenged over the last half-dozen years with offenders who are difficult to relocate.

Vermont may pull some of its offenders currently at prisons in Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arizona and move them to the new Alabama facility, Hofmann added. Once the transition is complete, about 10 percent of the state's out-of-state prisoners will be in Alabama and most of the remaining 90 percent at another facility in Kentucky.

Hofmann said it is cheaper for the state to send offenders to facilities in other states. It costs about $140 a day to house an offender in a Vermont prison, he explained, as opposed to the $50 a day bid that was placed by LCS Corrections.

"There is no final count yet, but we are looking to move about 40 offenders from West Tennessee and 20 from Oklahoma," Hofmann said.

In its brochure touting the Alabama prison, LCS Corrections describes itself as a "privately owned and operated correctional company" with contracts with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, United States Marshals Services and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A Web site or phone number for the company could not be located Wednesday.

The company operates several large, for-profit prisons in the south, including Louisiana and Texas. But Perry County Correctional Center appears to be its newest facility, with construction completed in April 2006.

A September 2006 story in the Birmingham News newspaper about the prison notes that officials spent $20 million to build it under the assumption that the state of Alabama would contract to house some of its prisoners.

However, according to the newspaper article, the state rejected LCS Corrections' offer and went with a lower bidder. Instead the company got a contract with the federal government to house immigrants in the United States who are here illegally.

Members of the Vermont Legislature's Corrections Oversight Committee, a body that includes Democrats and Republicans from the House and the Senate, expressed interest Wednesday in closely watching this transition of out-of-state prisoners.

Sen. Richard Sears, D-Bennington, the committee chair, said his main concern was the atmosphere in these out-of-state prisons and if Vermont offenders would be changed for the worse by the experience of staying there.

Sears said some Vermont prisoners who spent time at a Virginia prison came back to the state with racist beliefs and violent tendencies. He remembered meeting with one Bellows Falls man who returned to Vermont from an out-of-state prison covered in "White Power" tattoos. That man later went back to prison for raping a woman, Sears said.

"He went from being a nonviolent offender to becoming a rapist," Sears said. "It was like night and day the difference between offenders who went to Kentucky and those who went to Virginia."

Hofmann also gave lawmakers an update Wednesday on the reorganization of Vermont's prisons, which is aimed at reducing the overall costs of the state-run system.

Details include:

# The St. Albans prison is now under reconstruction and is on track to reopen as a women's facility in January 2009

# A new exterior fence is being placed at the Windsor facility and that location is on schedule to become a male-only work camp in March 2009

# Waterbury's Dale facility is in the process of shutting down as some staff relocate and move on into other parts of the corrections system

Hofmann also had a piece of bad news for lawmakers: Vermont's prison population is on the rise again after dipping in the last year.

Since July 1, there are 100 more people incarcerated than before, he said, but the total number is still about 100 below the state's highest population level reached 18 months ago.
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081113/NEWS01/811130373/1002/NEWS01&template=printart

Posted by lois at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

November 12, 2008

NY Times Editorial: That’s Two for Me

November 12, 2008
Editorial
That’s Two for Me

We’ve all heard of close elections. But consider the strange (and outrageous) case of the 2006 City Council election in Anamosa, Iowa.

According to census figures, Anamosa’s Ward 2 has nearly 1,400 residents, about the same as the town’s other three wards. The problem is that 1,300 of the ward’s “residents” are inmates of the Anamosa State Penitentiary. Minus the prisoners, Ward 2 has only 58 actual residents. A councilman won his election to represent the ward with two write-in votes: one from his wife and one from a neighbor.

While Anamosa’s case is extreme, the phenomenon is not. It is called prison-based gerrymandering when politicians draw legislative districts around prisons and count inmates — who are denied the vote in all but two states — as residents.

At the state level, prison-based gerrymandering exaggerates the political power of the mainly rural districts where prisons are built. And it dilutes the power of the mainly urban districts where inmates come from and to which they nearly always return. But as the Anamosa case shows, this kind of gerrymandering is also a problem within cities and towns.

Anamosa’s voters were so outraged that they have passed a referendum that will require its City Council members to be elected at large beginning in 2009. And other states and localities are beginning to wake up to the problem. But a study by the Prison Policy Initiative, an advocacy group, has found 21 counties across the nation where at least one in five people counted as residents were actually prison inmates.

The ideal solution would be for the United States Census Bureau to count prison inmates, not as residents of prisons, but at their actual home addresses. Until the bureau gets around to that, state and local lawmakers should make sure that prisoners are excluded from the population counts when legislative districts are drawn. The current arrangement undermines the most basic democratic principle of one person, one vote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/opinion/12wed3.html

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

NC: New women's prison to hold open house

New women's prison to hold open house
November 11,2008
SWANNANOA – A new prison for women in Swannanoa is holding an open house next Tuesday with tours of the facility.
Advertisement

Officials will hold a dedication ceremony at 2 p.m., Nov. 18, at the Swannanoa Correctional Center for Women, located off of Old U.S. 70.

Inmates at the Black Mountain Correctional Center for Women were transferred to the new facility in July.

Under a plan approved last year by the N.C. General Assembly, the Department of Correction moved its operations to the northern part of the Swannanoa Valley Youth Development Center while the Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention operates a youth development center for male juvenile offenders in the southern section of the campus.

The facility is increasing to 192 inmates by February 2009. The long-term goal of both departments is for a complete transition of the campus to DOC and to increase the number of female inmates at the center to 454 by late 2010.

Speakers for the dedication ceremony will include Secretary of Correction Theodis Beck, Division of Prisons Director Boyd Bennett and Steve Bailey, Western Region director for the Division of Prisons. Swannanoa Superintendent Debbie Hughes will recognize employees of the facility.

Tours of the facility will be conducted following the dedication ceremonies.
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200881110039

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

NY Cuts Funding for Treatment Programs Aimed at People Who Have Been Incarcerated

N.Y. Cuts Funding for Treatment Programs Aimed at Ex-Offenders
November 10, 2008

Massive state budget cuts are leaving some New York ex-convicts without addiction treatment, the New York Times reported Nov. 7.

The state Division of Parole will be ending its drug-treatment programs at the end of November. In addition, the Department of Corrections did not renew an annual contract with prominent drug-treatment facility, Stay'n Out that aids ex-convicts in their transition from prison to communities. A total of $8.6 million in contracts has been cut.

A spokesperson said that the corrections department will continue funding a drug-treatment program inside prisons, which serves 11,000 inmates, costing the state $20 million a year – the more "cost effective" alternative, according to Kriss.

"It is a panicky response," said Harry K. Wexler, who conducts research for the National Development and Research Institutes, a New York-based nonprofit. "They are cutting their nose off to spite their face." Wexler's research suggests that community drug-treatment programs halve re-arrest and re-incarceration rates over five years.

The state's Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services will receive an additional $2 million for parolees to offset the cuts, said Matt Anderson, a spokesman for the state's Division of the Budget. "With the state facing record budget deficits, the unfortunate reality is that there will be many worthy programs with laudable goals that will experience reductions in funding," he said.

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2008/ny-cuts-funding-for.html?log-event=sp2f-view-item&nid=46318312&print=t

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

November 11, 2008

Idaho private prison has triple assault rate

Idaho private prison has triple assault rate
Associated Press - November 10, 2008 5:44 PM ET

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Idaho's only in-state private prison, the Idaho Correctional Center, has a violence rate that is three times higher than other Idaho prisons, and state officials say gangs are to blame.

Documents from the Idaho Department of Correction obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request show that between September 2007 and September 2008, there were 123 offender-on-offender assaults at the Correction Corp. of America-run prison near Boise. That compares to 42 assaults during the same period at the Idaho State Correctional Institute and 31 assaults at the Idaho Maximum Security Institute.

Put another way, half all inmate assaults at prisons statewide last year occurred at ICC.

ICC Warden Phillip Valdez says the private facility has taken steps to reduce the violence. Staff assignments have been shifted to allow more guards to work in the most violent units, and the center is upgrading its camera system by the end of the year.
http://www.montanasnewsstation.com/Global/story.asp?S=9325335&nav=menu227_8

Posted by lois at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

Malik Rahim running for Congress

After a century of politicians, it's time to elect a community organizer
After Hurricane Katrina, Malik founded Common Ground, an organization which:
* opened the first free health clinic in the city of New Orleans
* helped MLK Elementary and other schools to re-open
* gutted over 3,000 homes and provided direct services to nearly 200,000 returning residents
http://www.votemalik.com/

Posted by lois at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

MS: "The Wrongful Conviction of Jamie and Gladys Scott" Written by Jamie Scott

Forwarded from the Facebook page dedicated to reversing "The Wrongful Conviction of Jamie and Gladys Scott"
Written by Jamie Scott

Posted by Nancy R. Lockhart, M.J., CLA
email: TheWrongfulConviction@gmail.com

Fourteen years ago in a small town, Forest, MS, two young Black women, who are sisters, were given a double life sentence. This sentence was for a crime, in which they did not commit. The alleged crime was Armed Robbery of two Black men. No one was killed or harmed during this alleged robbery.

Three young Black men confessed to the robbery. They also implicated that Gladys and me, Jamie Scott, were involved and participated in this crime. On December 24, 1993, Scott county Sheriff's Department arrested Gladys and me for armed robbery. This was the beginning of a real life nightmare for everyone in our family: our parents, our children, and especially us.

Our trial began on October 4, 1994. Gladys, nineteen, and I, Jamie, were twenty-two years old. The three young men called the "Patrick Men" because they were related. Through coercions, threats and promises they chose to turn states evidence against Gladys and me. These men were promised a lenient sentence, in return for their testimonies.

During our trial, the tale began to unravel. One of the Patrick men testified he didn't write the statement used as evidence against Gladys and me. He testified that the police coerced and threatened him with a long sentence at Parchman State Prison, if he didn't sign the written statement. The Scott county Police used feat, threats, and intimidation against the Patrick Men to sign a statement against us.

This man testified regarding the coerced statement on the witness stand; however, the jury found Gladys and me guilty. We received a double life sentence.

Prior to our trial, the two victims who had been robbed went to our parents with a bribe. They requested a large sum of money in exchange for there disappearance and unavailability to testify against us. However, our attorney advised our parents to cease all communications with the victims.

We contend our innocence. Our parents believe in our innocence and the Patrick Men know we are innocent.

In 1998, one of the Patrick Men wrote a sworn affidavit clearing Gladys and me. But, the courts never heard the affidavit. The most devastating and unfair thing about this is the police and investigators know we are innocent.

What began as an implication and outright miscarriage of justice, has catapulted to destroyed an entire family. These accusations and subsequent convictions have totally destroyed mine and Gladys' life. Causing a chain reaction which has led, Gladys, a nineteen year old, mother of a seven year old daughter and pregnant with another child, myself, Jamie, a twenty-two year old mother of three children; seven, three and one years of age, during the time of our arrest, conviction and sentencing for a crime
we did not commit. Before being eligible for parole, we will have to serve a total of twenty years. We have exhausted all of our appeals in our fight for freedom. We now realize we are unable to receive justice within the Mississippi Judicial System. Our hopes and dreams of freedom lie with the American people. Who can become our voice and assist us with our plight for freedom. By voicing their opinions, speaking our against this atrocious miscarriage of justice, and a court system that has denied us our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We are compelled to plead and ask for a public outcry. Attention needs to be given to public officials and a county that refuses to let justice be served.

Our situation is complex, multidimensional, and heart-wrenching. We will never cease speaking out against the disservice done to us. However, we have discovered our voice carries very little weight, especially now, we are convicted as violent offenders serving a double life sentence.

Horror, frustration and humiliation of being subjected to life in prison for a crime, we did not commit, has made both of us feel hopeless and helpless at certain times; but we will continue to fight for our lives. This is a story that could happen to anyone.

My mother, Evelyn Rasco, decided to leave the state of Mississippi due to this "miscarriage of justice" inflicted upon Gladys and me. There is a great deal more to our story than what we are revealing presently. Events which have happened to us during fight for freedom. Hopefully, someone will find this story worthy enough to be exposed and to show what has happened in a small town in Mississippi, during this time in America. Someone may decide to come forward and speak out against what has happened to my sister and me. We pray this will happen.

This is not a movie, it is a real-life situation, this happened to real people. An untruth has taken away our lives. A life that included our parents and children (now grandchildren). Unless someone decides to take a stand against the county, it's officials and not allow intimidation and fear to discourage them from helping us with our fight for freedom; our children will be adults before we are free citizens.

The injustices that have occurred are pattern within this county and their police departments. This type of injustice and exploitation has been done to many African-Americans who have lived in this county for many years. They have been very successful in destroying many lives. This should not be happening in America today. This is a time we show Americans what really occurs in most small towns in the state of Mississippi. We are convinced that once this chain of events is exposed and unraveled, the events that occurred, the lives that have been destroyed, the pain and suffering the citizens of Scott County have endured; everyone will be utterly amazed, astonished and compelled to assist us in our plight for freedom. We pray, the people would insist upon an investigation into their misconduct and miscarriage of justice.

The officials in this community should be exposed and reprimanded for all they have done and continue to do to others and us. Once this has occurred, and revealed; perhaps, it will bring an end to this horrific story we have endured and experienced for the past fourteen years.

We need someone willing to take a stand for our families, to be our voice nd us. Also, to assist, guide and lead our mother, because she is fearful.Our mother and children need us. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

May God Bless You,
Jamie Scott

NOTE [from volunteer Nancy Lockhart in South Carolina]:

I was introduced to this case while a Master of Jurisprudence student at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. I supported myself as a community services consultant for RainbowPUSH Coalition and received a letter from Mrs. Rasco seeking help for her daughters. Mrs. Rasco stated that she had been writing for 11 years, I was compelled to respond.

The months after would yield in depth research, as I needed to ensure the validity of this case. After completing the M.J. I left Chicago with a commitment to continue the quest of seeking justice for The Scott Sisters.

Our goal is to make this case public. Please feel free to contact

Volunteer, Nancy R. Lockhart at:
TheWrongfulConviction@gmail.com
OR
P.O. Box 389 Green Pond
South Carolina 29446

Thank You,

Nancy Lockhart, M.J., CLA

Contact Info
Email:
Website: http://www.freewebs.com/nlockha/
http://www.squidoo.com/WRONGFUL-CONVICTI...
Location: P.O. Box 389
Green Pond, SC

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

November 10, 2008

IL: AFSCME sues again to stop Pontiac prison closure

AFSCME sues again to stop Pontiac prison closure
Sat. November 08, 2008; Posted: 04:44 AM

PONTIAC, Nov 08, 2008 (The Pantagraph - McClatchy-Tribune
Widening its effort to stop the closure of Pontiac Correctional Center, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees filed a second lawsuit against the state on Friday.

AFSCME argues state officials failed to meet their legal obligation to bargain with the union before implementing layoffs and job transfers related to the closure. It asks a Livingston County judge to halt the closure, which is scheduled to be completed by Dec. 31, until the bargaining issue is settled.

"The Blagojevich Administration has ignored safety, economics and plain common sense in its rush to close Pontiac," said AFSCME Council 31 Executive Director Henry Bayer in a statement issued Friday.

"It is also ignoring its duty under the law to bargain with our union before implementing any layoff or closure plan," Bayer said. "We will defend the rights of AFSCME members and have asked the court to stop the state from going forward with any layoffs or inmate transfers."

Illinois Department of Corrections spokeswoman Januari Smith said she could not comment on pending litigation, but she did say the state will provide help for prison workers and the community as part of the closure process.

"The administration has assembled a task force consisting of social, family, economic, educational and employment services agencies to assist the families, business and the town of Pontiac," Smith said. "We are also in daily communication with representatives in the collective bargaining units."

A court date has yet to be set.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich announced in May his intention to close the 137-year-old, 1,600-bed, maximum-security prison and transfer about half of the inmates to the new but largely unused prison in Thomson. The state argues the closure will save the state millions of dollars, but local officials fear the loss of nearly 600 jobs at the prison will devastate the area's economy.

In the latest lawsuit, the union alleges the state began the closure process without the required bargaining that would define workers' rights in the process. The union also complains that the state moved the closure date from early 2009 to Dec. 31.

"We've demanded several times over recent months that they make their intentions clear, and they delayed and didn't provide notice of intent to close until very late in the game," said AFSCME Council 31 spokesman Anders Lindall. "And when they finally did so, they moved up the date of closure to Dec. 31 and never told lawmakers."

While Pontiac prison workers have an option to transfer, the open jobs could be all over the state. Relocation would "place terrible strains on AFSCME members and their families, especially given the recent severe slump in the housing and job markets," the lawsuit said.

Employees will hear in meetings Monday about job transfer opportunities, but AFSCME said those meetings are coming before the terms for job transfers have been agreed to.

This is AFSCME's second lawsuit aiming to stop the closure. In September the union, joined by local leaders and some prison workers, sued, alleging the state could not close the prison because the fiscal 2009 budget already had funding for Pontiac prison in it.

That lawsuit is still pending.

To see more of The Pantagraph, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.pantagraph.com. Copyright (c) 2008, The Pantagraph, Bloomington, Ill. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2006786/?relatestories=1

Posted by lois at 10:35 PM | Comments (0)

Miriam Makeba, Singer, Dies at 76

November 11, 2008
An Appraisal
Taking Africa With Her to the World
By JON PARELES

To be the voice of a nation speaking to the wider world is a tough mission for any performer. To be the voice of an entire continent is exponentially more difficult. Both were mantles that the South African singer Miriam Makeba took on willingly and forcefully. Despite her lifelong claim that she was not a political singer, she became “Mama Africa” with an activist’s tenacity and a musician’s ear. She died Sunday, at 76, after a concert in Italy.

Treating her listeners as one global community, Ms. Makeba sang in any language she chose, from her own Xhosa to the East African lingua franca Swahili to Portuguese to Yiddish. She also took sides: against South African apartheid and for a worldwide movement against racism, to the point of derailing her career when she married the black power advocate Stokely Carmichael in the late 1960s. (They were divorced in the mid-1970s.) Even during three decades of life as an exile and expatriate — the South African government revoked her passport in 1960 — she made it clear that South Africa was her home and her bedrock as an artist.

Her voice, more properly voices, were unstoppable. Always cosmopolitan, Ms. Makeba knew her Billie Holiday as well as old Xhosa melodies like “The Click Song,” with its percussive syllables, which became one of her international hits. She could sound light, lilting and girlish; she could be flirtatious, bluesy or utterly exuberant. Her voice also held a layer of rawer, sharper exhortation: the tone of village songs and spirit invocations, the traditions that were her birthright — songs she revisited on her 1988 album “Sangoma” (Warner Brothers). Her huge repertory didn’t feature strident protest songs but in love songs and lullabies, party songs and calls for unity there was an indomitable will to survive: a joyful tenacity that could translate as both deep cultural memory and immediate defiance.

She must have been an exotic apparition in the 1960s, upbeat and already a star in South Africa, wowing Europe and then arriving in the United States with support from Harry Belafonte. She had already, bravely, sung in an anti-apartheid documentary, “Come Back, Africa.” In exile she was still an ambassador, showing America and the world an Africa full of vibrant, irresistible sounds: the loping mbube grooves that Paul Simon would rediscover decades later, the flow of African words, the grain of her voice.

Videos on YouTube from 1966 show Ms. Makeba, with her musicians in jackets and ties, performing in an elegant long dress that also happens to have a leopard-skin pattern: supper-club Africana that’s at home on any continent. Her music was different but not forbidding, especially with her own charisma to introduce it. Before anyone was tossing around terms like “world music,” she was creating it, making her heritage portable while preserving its essence.

She was never a purist, but always proud of her roots.

Ms. Makeba arrived during America’s civil-rights struggles and performed at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s marches. A visible reminder that discrimination stretched beyond the United States, she denounced apartheid in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1963. It’s impossible to guess what she may have been thinking when she sang her 1967 “Pata Pata,” with its bits of English narration — “ ‘Pata Pata’ is the name of a dance we do down Johannesburg way” — in the full knowledge that she herself would not be welcome back in Johannesburg until a regime change.

Prohibited from returning to South Africa, she settled instead in Guinea, in West Africa, where she participated in that country’s government-assisted movement toward musical “authenticité” — merging traditional styles with new instruments — and let her repertory stretch further. For a while she also joined Guinea’s United Nations delegation.

Ms. Makeba didn’t have the career of a pop singer, thinking about hits and trends and markets. She followed conscience and history instead, becoming a symbol of integrity and pan-Africanism — lending her imprimatur, for instance, by performing on Mr. Simon’s 1987 “Graceland” tour, which carried South African music worldwide while implicitly pointing to the apartheid that still prevailed at home. Through five decades of making music, down to her final studio album, “Reflections,” in 2004 and concerts till the day she died, she sang with a voice that was unmistakably African, and just as unmistakably fearless.

November 11, 2008
Miriam Makeba, Singer, Dies at 76
By ALAN COWELL
NY Times
LONDON — Miriam Makeba, a South African singer whose voice stirred hopes of freedom among millions in her own country though her music was formally banned by the apartheid authorities she struggled against, died overnight after performing at a concert in Italy on Sunday. She was 76.

The cause of death was cardiac arrest, according to Vincenza Di Saia, a physician at the private Pineta Grande clinic in Castel Volturno near Naples in southern Italy, where she was brought by ambulance. The time of death was listed in hospital records as midnight, the doctor said.

Ms. Makeba collapsed as she was leaving the stage, the South African authorities said. She had been singing at a concert in support of Roberto Saviano, an author who has received death threats after writing about organized crime.

Widely known as “Mama Africa,” she had been a prominent exiled opponent of apartheid since the South African authorities revoked her passport in 1960 and refused to allow her to return after she traveled abroad. She was prevented from attending her mother’s funeral after touring in the United States.

Although Ms. Makeba had been weakened by osteoarthritis, her death stunned many in South Africa, where she stood as an enduring emblem of the travails of black people under the apartheid system of racial segregation that ended with the release from prison of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and the country’s first fully democratic elections in 1994.

In a statement on Monday, Mr. Mandela said the death “of our beloved Miriam has saddened us and our nation.”

He continued: “Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us.”

“She was South Africa’s first lady of song and so richly deserved the title of Mama Afrika. She was a mother to our struggle and to the young nation of ours,” Mr. Mandela’s was one of many tributes from South African leaders.

“One of the greatest songstresses of our time has ceased to sing,” Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said in a statement. “Throughout her life, Mama Makeba communicated a positive message to the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the certainty of victory over the dark forces of apartheid and colonialism through the art of song.”

For 31 years, Ms. Makeba lived in exile, variously in the United States, France, Guinea and Belgium. South Africa’s state broadcasters banned her music after she spoke out against apartheid at the United Nations. “I never understood why I couldn’t come home,” Ms. Makeba said upon her return at an emotional homecoming in Johannesburg in 1990 as the apartheid system began to crumble, according to The Associated Press. “I never committed any crime.”

Music was a central part of the struggle against apartheid. The South African authorities of the era exercised strict censorship of many forms of expression, while many foreign entertainers discouraged performances in South Africa in an attempt to isolate the white authorities and show their opposition to apartheid.

From exile she acted as a constant reminder of the events in her homeland as the white authorities struggled to contain or pre-empt unrest among the black majority.

Ms. Makeba wrote in 1987: “I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realizing.”

She was married several times and her husbands included the American black activist Stokely Carmichael, with whom she lived in Guinea, and the jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela, who also spent many years in exile.

In the United States she became a star, touring with Harry Belafonte in the 1960s and winning a Grammy award with him in 1965. Such was her following and fame that she sang in 1962 at the birthday party of President John F. Kennedy. She also performed with Paul Simon on his Graceland concert in Zimbabwe in 1987.

But she fell afoul of the U.S. music industry because of her marriage to Mr. Carmichael and her decision to live in Guinea.

In one of her last interviews, in May 2008 with the British music critic Robin Denselow, she said she found her concerts in the United States being cancelled. “It was not a ban from the government. It was a cancellation by people who felt I should not be with Stokely because he was a rebel to them. I didn’t care about that. He was somebody I loved, who loved me, and it was my life,” she said.

Ms. Makeba was born in Johannesburg on March 4, 1932, the daughter of a Swazi mother and a father from the Xhosa people who live mainly in the eastern Cape region of South Africa. She became known to South Africans in the Sophiatown district of Johannesburg in the 1950s.

According to Agence France-Presse, she was often short of money and could not afford to buy a coffin when her only daughter in 1985. She buried her alone, barring a handful of journalists from covering the funeral.

She was particularly renowned for her performances of songs such as what was known as the Click Song — named for a clicking sound in her native tongue — or “Qongoqothwane,” and Pata Pata, meaning Touch Touch in Xhosa. Her style of singing was widely interpreted as a blend of black township rhythms, jazz and folk music.

In her interview in 2008, Ms. Makeba said: “I’m not a political singer. I don’t know what the word means. People think I consciously decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us — especially the things that hurt us.”

In a tribute, Jacob Zuma, head of the ruling African National Congress, said the party “dips its banner in tribute to an African heroine, Miriam Zenzile Makeba, a freedom fighter and outstanding African cultural figure.”

“Miriam Makeba used her voice, not merely to entertain, but to give a voice to the millions of oppressed South Africans under the yoke of apartheid,” Mr. Zuma said.

Celia W. Dugger contributed reporting from Johannesburg and Rachel Donadio from Rome.

Posted by lois at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

California Youth Defeat ‘Lock ‘em Up’ Politics -Prop 6

New America Media, Commentary, Raj Jayadev //
Posted: Nov 08, 2008 Review it on NewsTrust

Eclipsed by the enormity of a nation voting in a black President, and a statewide cultural war over gay marriage, is that fact that California registered one the most dramatic and significant shifts in attitude over incarceration policies in state history this past election.

The quintessential “tough on crime” initiative, Proposition 6, was overwhelmingly rejected by voters across the state, a count of 70 percent to 30 percent, and did not win a majority in a single county. With little news coverage, and no commercials on either side leading up to the election, the trouncing of Prop. 6 was a near unadulterated reflection of California's new mind-set on criminal justice policies. The numbers point to a repudiation of “lock 'em all up” politics that has dominated the state for decades.

Prop. 6 was an ambitious, catch-all initiative that targeted youth, immigrants, and even families of those who had been involved in the criminal justice system. The proposition would have created more than 30 changes in the law. It would have turned some nonviolent misdemeanors into felonies, dramatically increased prison sentences for "gang-related" crimes, put 14-year-olds in the adult system, mandated regular criminal background checks on families in public housing with aims of removal, and denied bail to undocumented immigrants facing certain felony charges. It would have cost an estimated $965 million to fund annually.

But as far-reaching, perhaps even arrogant, of an attempt Prop. 6 was to balloon incarceration rates, proponents knew they were facing good odds given the track record of previous tough on crime proposals. The three strikes law, that doubles sentences for second offenses, and gives life on their third, was passed by voters in 1994 with numbers inversely mirroring the Prop. 6 results (72 percent in favor), and has withstood repeated legal and legislative attempts to be removed. Prop. 21 passed in 2000 despite the birth of a California youth movement that fought tooth and nail to defeat it. That proposition further cemented anti-gang laws and lowered the age for minors to be convicted and sentenced as adults. It won with the approval of more than 60 percent of voters.

Ironically, though, it may have been the consequences of these tough on crime laws that caused voters to depart from their previous voting pattern.

California, upon the governor's orders, is in a Prison Overcrowding State of Emergency. The legislature was forced to authorize $7.7 billion to create more beds at state prisons over the next 10 years. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the state's prison population is more than 170,000 inmates housed in facilities designed for 100,000.

Proponents of tough crime laws typically extol their proposals by arguing that they would "take more criminals off the street," but, more accurately, they just put more people in prison – to a point well beyond the state’s infrastructure capacity and budget.

Any policy that would increase prison rates, given the current crisis, would seem irrational. And with the financial crisis facing California, plus the $8 billion for prisons we still need to come up with, any proposition with a billion dollar price tag was going to be a hard sell -- whether it was beds for prisons, or even books for kids.

But outside of the fiscal argument against Prop. 6, California has been witness to the devastating impact of tough on crime laws on communities of color. Statewide, roughly 75 percent of those serving second and third-strike sentences are minorities. In Santa Clara County, black youths are arrested at a rate of seven times their proportion in the general population. Any new law that would increase incarceration would simultaneously increase the conscience-shocking racial disproportionality as well.

And of course we knew who was at the polls this time around: youth and people of color – those more likely to know firsthand how prison destroys families, those more likely to know personally the man given his third strike for stealing a candy bar, or the juvenile who is deemed a gang member just because he liked a certain sport team or was from a certain neighborhood. Indeed, the contradiction would be too large for an electorate to overwhelmingly vote for a black man to be president, yet at the same time seal the fate of thousands of black men to a life behind bars.

Many families who were victims of three strikes and Prop. 21 – having learned how quickly a public policy can become a personal nightmare – also became the most vocal advocates against Prop. 6.

Without the gloss of a campaign public relations firm, their efforts took on the dynamism and energy of a movement rather than a campaign. Immigrant youth, the same group that in 2006 sparked the largest protest marches in this country's history, already knew what tactics worked. Young people from East Palo Alto sent weekly fact texts like, "Did you know Prop. 6 would lock up youth as adults? Pass it on." In San Jose, they held rallies in front of the jails, calling out their relatives’ names, and getting inmates to flash their lights on and off to signal their support. Across the state, youth posted YouTube videos, made rap songs and MySpace pages.

While Californians battle among themselves over gay marriage, and collectively rejoice and marvel at their new president, the biggest change in history ushered in by voters may be the one that didn't make the news.

The impact may be felt across the country in coming years. We know from three strikes, Prop. 21, and anti-gang laws that originate from California that such proposals become the template laws for other states and even federal legislation if they make the grade in California. Currently, more than half of all the states in the country now have anti-gang laws that are based on the language of California legislation, and there are eight similar proposals pending in Congress.

Stopping Prop. 6 may be have the biggest "change" that never made headlines.
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=f046d9d7c84cbc1724f01206edaf4749

Posted by lois at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

CA: Press Release from Pro Prop 9 Orgnaizers which passed- harsher parole- more power to "victims rights "

PRESS RELEASE
California Voters Pass Historic Crime Victims' Bill of Rights Act of 2008
Prop. 9 Gives Victims in California Unprecedented Constitutional Rights

Last update: 12:26 p.m. EST Nov. 5, 2008
SACRAMENTO, Calif., Nov 05, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Crime Victims throughout California celebrated the historic passage of Proposition 9: The Crime Victims' Bill of Rights of 2008. Proposition 9 is a constitutional amendment that gives crime victims 17 enumerated rights in the California Constitution.

"This is a historic moment for all crime victims throughout our state and nation," said Harriet Salarno, mother of homicide victim Catina Salarno and President and Founder of Crime Victims United of California. "California voters have acknowledged the need for crime victims to be fully recognized in our criminal justice system. As a mother of a murder victim, I have worked for 29 years to ensure that my rights and those of other victims are treated with the same respect and importance as the rights of criminals in our justice system. Proposition 9's success has made that a reality."
Written by crime victims, Proposition 9 - Marsy's Law provides victims with rights to justice and due process by creating a constitutional Crime Victims' Bill of Rights, streamlines the parole system, and prevents politicians from releasing dangerous inmates solely to alleviate prison overcrowding, while ensuring resources to keep Californians safe without the state incurring additional costs.
"Voters throughout California agreed that California's crime victims deserve better," said Senator Jim Nielsen, former Chair of the Board of Prison Terms and a leader in the Yes on Prop. 9 campaign. "Proposition 9 not only gives victims and their families constitutionally protected rights, including the right to information and the right be heard, but it also ensures the criminal sentences, handed down by judges and juries, are enforced and adhered too."
"I am absolutely thrilled that the voters of California have approved Proposition 9," said Bilenda Harris-Ritter, who lost her parents to a double homicide and served as a Parole Commissioner in California. "I hope others will never face the terrible crimes and tragedies that inspired this proposition, but in the event that they do, they can rely on Proposition 9 as it has given them a voice in the system as they seek justice. Proposition 9 provides California real solutions with lasting impacts including true justice, due process for all and accountability."
A true grassroots effort inspired by the real life injustices suffered by crime victims throughout California, Proposition 9 was supported by a broad based coalition including crime victims, law enforcement officials, and elected officials.
"California voters have ensured that the state will no longer favor the rights of criminals over the rights of the victims as they seek justice in the criminal process," said Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, statewide Yes on Prop. 9 chairman. "Now victims will have an equal voice in the criminal justice process that, all too often, has treated them as second class citizens."
"Proposition 9 does not bring Marsy back to me or my son, but it has helped my family turn a personal tragedy into a positive for society," said Marcella Leach, mother of the initiative namesake. "We are proud to have been a part of the effort and are grateful for the support from California voters."
About Prop. 9
Proposition 9, the Crime Victims' Bill of Rights Act of 2008: Marsy's Law, provides constitutionally-protected rights for victims in California, ensuring they are treated with fairness and human decency throughout the criminal justice process. Proposition 9 has strong bipartisan support from Crime Victims Advocacy Organizations including Justice for Homicide Victims, Crime Victims United, Parents of Murdered Children, District Attorneys, Sheriffs, Police Chiefs, community organizations and public safety leaders throughout California and the nation. For more information on the initiative and to view a complete list of supporters, please visit www.marsyslaw.com.

SOURCE: Yes on Prop 9 - Marsy's Law

Posted by lois at 11:09 AM | Comments (0)

CA: Prop. 9 passed, but there's no money to pay for new jailing costs

Prop. 9 passed, but there's no money to pay for new jailing costs
Shasta County
By Kimberly Ross
Thursday, November 6, 2008

Voters passed Proposition 9 on Tuesday, which aims to give teeth to victim's rights, partly by prohibiting early releases from county jails and state prisons.

But what that means for Shasta County, which releases more inmates early each year because of jail capacity restrictions, is unclear, county officials said Wednesday. Between 2003 and 2006, the jail gave early releases to about 2,000 inmates each year.

Most of those early releases are unsentenced inmates charged with misdemeanors, Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko said. They must be released because of existing state mandates not to exceed the jail's 381-bed capacity.

It'll be up to the courts to decide how to resolve those apparently conflicting state requirements, Bosenko said.

But his hope, like Shasta County District Attorney Jerry Benito's, is that Proposition 9's passage will spur the state to expand its jails and prisons, ending the need for early releases. Both endorsed the initiative, but neither knows how much the extended incarcerations will cost the county or where the money would come from to pay those added bills.
To Read more go to this link....

http://www.redding.com/news/2008/nov/06/prop-9-passed-but-theres-no-money-to-pay-for-new/

Posted by lois at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)

CA: Prop. 5 and 6 defeated in election

2 of 3 CA crime measures fail at polls
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
AP

LOS ANGELES -- Two of three crime initiatives on California's ballot were rejected Tuesday by voters who may have been deterred by the hefty cost to taxpayers in hard economic times.

In a one-two punch, voters defeated two competing measures that appeared consecutively: Proposition 5, which would have increased drug rehabilitation programs, and Proposition 6, which would have cracked down on gang crimes.

They were narrowly favoring a third measure that would write crime victims' rights into the state Constitution.

Proposition 5 failed with 62 percent voting in opposition and 38 percent in favor with 28 percent of precincts reporting. The measure would have diverted an estimated 84,000 drug offenders - including those able to convince judges that their serious crimes are drug-related - into treatment programs each year.

Proposition 6 failed with 69 percent opposed and 31 percent in favor, also with 28 percent of precincts in. The initiative would have stiffened penalties for many gang crimes, including allowing gang members as young as 14 to be tried as adults. It would have made methamphetamine possession a felony.

A majority of voters were favoring Proposition 9, however. The measure was leading with 54 percent in favor and 46 percent opposed with 28 percent of precincts tallied. The measure would expand on the "Victims' Bill of Rights" approved by voters in 1982 while making it more difficult for criminals to be paroled.

Both of the failed measures carried hefty price tags at a time when California faces a growing state budget deficit.

"I think they both signify more money and I think people are tightening their belts," said Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who opposed Proposition 5 and favored 6 and 9.

Proposition 5 would have eventually cost $1 billion a year for expanded rehabilitation programs for 84,000 drug offenders annually, projected the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office.

However, incarcerating fewer offenders would cut the number of inmates in California's crowded prisons by 17 percent, the analyst estimated. That could have eventually saved the state $1 billion in annual prison costs and $2.5 billion for new prisons.

The initiative was backed by billionaire investor and liberal activist George Soros, who also sponsored a less sweeping drug diversion measure approved by California voters in 2000.

Critics - including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and all four of his living predecessors - say the measure is one step in a nationwide drive to decriminalize drugs.

"I think people saw through that initiative," Baca said. "Those who perpetuate the crimes, because they're drug users, are almost given an incredible free ride."

They likely rejected get-tough Proposition 6 after opponents highlighted its cost to taxpayers, Baca said.

Proposition 6 would have cost the already stressed state budget $500 million a year in increased payments to local police, prosecutors, probation and rehabilitation services, plus $500 million for new prisons, the state analyst projected. It also includes $15 million to monitor the movements of sex offenders through global positioning systems.

Costs were tougher to project for Proposition 9, the crime victims' rights measure.

The initiative would require state and local officials to spend whatever it takes to avoid releasing inmates early to ease crowding in prisons or jails. That sets up potential legal conflicts with federal court orders capping the number of inmates who can be housed in 20 jails throughout the state.

"I think the empathy is on the side of the victims," Baca said, though he expects the crime initiative to face court challenges.

Both 6 and 9 were backed by billionaire Broadcom co-founder Henry T. Nicholas III, who was indicted in June on federal securities fraud and drug charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/politics&id=6489380

Posted by lois at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

OR: Measure 57 goes into effect

Mannix-sponsored anti-crime measure won't go into effect
Posted by The Oregonian November 04, 2008 21:28PM

Voters were narrowly approving Measure 61, an anti-crime initiative, but it won't go into effect because a competing measure received more votes.

Measure 61 would have set three-year mandatory minimum prison sentences for first-time drug dealers, burglars and identity thieves.

It would have sent an estimated 6,000 non-violent offenders to prison -- a 44 percent increase in the state's prison population -- and cost an estimated $797 million over the next five years. It also would have required the state to borrow as much as $1.3 billion for prison construction.

Measure 61 was sponsored by former Republican lawmaker Kevin Mannix. Measure57, a competing anti-crime proposal, received more votes so only it will go into effect.

Measure 57 will also send career criminals to prison, but it provides drug treatment to first-time non-violent offenders. Written by the Legislature,it includes a provision that says if voters approve both measures only the one with the most votes takes effect.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/elections/2008/11/m61.html

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

November 07, 2008

"Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Next Administration and Congress" -The 2009 Criminal Justice Transition Coalition

"Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Next Administration and Congress" -The 2009 Criminal Justice Transition Coalition, 21 national organizations, released a collaborative report identifying critical needs for federal policy reform. The report
contains comprehensive policy recommendations at every stage of the justice system for the new Administration and Congress.
Included among the recommendations to overcome these challenges are:

·Eliminate the crack cocaine sentencing disparity;
·Expand alternatives to incarceration;
·Fund prisoner reentry through the Second Chance Act;
·Extend federal voting rights to people released from prison;
·Restore welfare and food stamp eligibility to individuals with drug felony convictions; and
·Analyze and reduce unwarranted racial and ethnic disparity in the federal judicial system.

http://sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/inc_transition2009.pdf

Posted by lois at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2008

MA: Prison mitigation cuts in prison towns

Town Meeting OKs budget cuts
By Keith Ferguson/Daily News staff
Daily News Transcript
Posted Nov 06, 2008 @ 01:06 AM
WALPOLE —

To make up for losing $750,000 in state money, Town Meeting last night enacted $350,000 in budget cuts, but drew on financial reserves to soften the blow.

Amid the protests of the local firefighters union, Town Meeting on a voice vote tightened its belt to accommodate the loss of $750,000 in money the town receives for being home to MCI-Cedar Junction, the maximum security state prison.

As part of its budgeting, Town Meeting left unfilled a vacancy in each of the Police and Fire departments, saving a total of $60,000.

The town drew on $415,000 in free cash to avoid making more draconian budget cuts.

"We are part of the town," Police Chief Richard Stillman said, "reluctantly" giving his blessing to the cut. He said he realized all towns in the country are experiencing difficult times and he is will to take the measure in stride.

Firefighters, who spoke out against the cuts a week ago as the selectmen, School Committee and Finance Committee drew up the new budget plans, were not so accepting, however.

Not hiring a new firefighter to replace one who left for another town threatens the safety of all residents, said fire Lt. Paul Barry.

"This is not a scare tactic," he said. "This is a reality."

The decision not to fill the position will leave one shift with only seven firefighters instead of eight.

"That's a dangerous situation," Barry said.

On that depleted shift, a firefighter assigned to a fire engine was transferred to ambulance duty. Now, according to Barry, there are only three firefighters on one of the engines - leaving one firefighter to enter a burning home and two to man the truck.

Federal regulations dictate that there should be two-men teams while fighting a fire, Barry said.

"It makes an already unsafe scenario extremely unsafe," he said.

In an interview after the meeting, Barry said he and his department would "continue to work with the town to provide safe staffing."

The town's budget cuts would have been worse had not the assessors identified $187,000 in new growth revenue coming from newly taxable property. Of that money, $157,000 will go to soften local service cuts.

Town Administrator Michael Boynton said such property assessment is routine and normally done in the early fall. The process was delayed this year due to construction schedules, he said, but was luckily completed in time for the meeting.

The $350,000 in cuts will be made up primarily of reductions in classroom materials in the schools, individual town department reductions and salary savings.

Boynton said some people suggested the town simply make up for the loss state prison money with the town's free cash.

"It would have been easy. I assure you it would have been easy," said Boynton, but it wouldn't have been fiscally responsible.

Taking the easy way out, said Boynton, would just be delaying the problem - a problem they will inevitably have to deal with in six weeks or so when they begin talking about the fiscal year 2010 budget (which already has a predicted $1.7 million shortfall).

Before the meeting, the town had an available $2.7 million in free cash, down from $4.6 million last year. Following the vote, the town is left with about $200,000 in floating free cash. Other free cash is earmarked for necessary funds like litigation protection and snow and ice removal, said Boynton.

According to Boynton, Walpole representatives on Beacon Hill recently met with Lt. Gov. Tim Murray regarding the prison cuts.

"Certainly (there was) no commitments with immediate restoration," Boynton said, adding state officials did say they would look into the matter in the future. "Translation: Don't hold your breath."

http://www.dailynewstranscript.com/news/x1807579014/Town-Meeting-OKs-budget-cuts

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

November 05, 2008

MA: Voters approve marijuana law change

The Boston Globe
QUESTION 2
Voters approve marijuana law change
By David Abel, Globe Staff | November 5, 2008

Voters yesterday overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, making getting caught with less than an ounce of pot punishable by a civil fine of $100. The change in the law means someone found carrying dozens of joints will no longer be reported to the state's criminal history board.

With about 90 percent of the state's precincts reporting last night, voters favored the Question 2 proposition 65 percent to 35 percent. (from Lois: MA presidential tally: Winner Obama- 1,838,746 or 62% McCain,075,007 or 36%)

"The people were ahead of the politicians on this issue; they recognize and want a more sensible approach to our marijuana policy," said Whitney Taylor, chairwoman of the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy, which campaigned for the ballot initiative. "They want to focus our limited law enforcement resources on serious and violent crimes. They recognize under the new law that the punishment will fit the offense."

The proposition will become law 30 days after it is reported to the Governor's Council, which usually meets in late November or early December. But the Legislature could amend or repeal the new law, as they have done with prior initiatives passed by the voters, said Emily LaGrassa, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Opponents of the proposition said they are concerned about the potential consequences of the vote. "The administration is clear in its opposition to the decriminalization of marijuana, and we are concerned about the effects of ballot Question 2's passage," Kevin Burke, secretary of the state's Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, said in a statement.

He would not comment on whether the administration will try to repeal the law, which will require violators younger than 18 to complete a drug awareness program and community service. The fine would increase to as much as $1,000 for those who fail to complete the program.

Proponents of the initiative, who spent about $1 million promoting it, argued the change in the law would maintain the state's existing penalties for growing, trafficking, or driving under the influence of marijuana, while ensuring that those caught with less than an ounce of pot would avoid the taint of a criminal record.

The opponents, who include the governor, attorney general, and district attorneys around the state, argued that decriminalizing marijuana possession would promote drug use and benefit drug dealers at a time when they say marijuana has become more potent. They warned it would increase violence on the streets and safety hazards in the workplace, and cause the number of car crashes to rise as more youths drive under the influence.

In a statement, the Coalition for Safe Streets, which opposed the initiative, blamed the loss on being outspent by supporters of Question 2, which included the billionaire financier George Soros, who spent more than $400,000 in favor of decriminalizing marijuana.

"Now these pro-drug special interests will move on to another state as part of their plan to inflict a radical drug-legalization agenda on as many communities as possible," said the statement.

The Rev. Bruce Wall, pastor of Global Ministries Christian Church in Dorchester, was among several prominent black ministers in Boston who called on fellow clergy to oppose the initiative.

"I guess there are a lot of people smoking the stuff, and they don't see what we see," Wall said.

The initiative's success last night sparked loud cheers from supporters gathered at the Silvertone Bar & Grill in downtown.

"I think this points to how our Legislature is unwilling to represent their constituents on these issues," said Bill Downing, president of the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition.

Globe correspondent Matt Negrin contributed to this report.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/11/05/voters_approve_marijuana_law_change/

Posted by lois at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2008

CA: Prop 5 vs. the prison-industrail complex

From the Los Angeles Times
Prop. 5 vs. the prison-industrial complex
The officials and special interests who oppose the drug rehabilitation measure are doing so to protect their own power and money.
By Ethan Nadelmann
November 3, 2008

If Proposition 5 goes down to defeat on Tuesday, the five governors who lined up to condemn it Thursday will have won a Pyrrhic victory. Not one has offered an alternative to Proposition 5 for dealing responsibly with California's prison overcrowding crisis, the exploding prison budget or the outlandish power of a union whose interests lie in incarcerating as many of their fellow citizens as possible.

Each of them has given lip service to the need for treatment instead of incarceration in dealing with drug convictions and other nonviolent offenders with drug problems. But not one of them has shown any willingness to take seriously decades of empirical research on what works best in reducing drug addiction, crime and recidivism.

This has always been an area of government action in which rhetoric drives policy. But what's so depressing about this Gang of Five's united opposition to Proposition 5 is their combination of dishonesty and myopia.

A duplicitous TV ad that features Sen. Dianne Feinstein and is paid for by the prison guards union, beer distributors and casino interests tell us that Proposition 5 will cost too much. But those ads do not acknowledge, cite or even bother to challenge the analysis of the state's legislative analyst's office. Estimated annual cost: $1 billion. Estimated annual savings: $1 billion. One-time savings in capital outlay costs: $2.5 billion. That makes Proposition 5 a wash on annual costs and a true bargain for taxpayers. In fact, it's only the third ballot initiative in the last decade that contains quantifiable cuts to state spending. Only one of those ballot initiatives has passed: Proposition 36, California's first treatment-instead-of-incarceration initiative, which voters passed in 2000.

So why the effort to deceive voters?

It's all about -- no surprise -- resources and power. Why is the prison-industrial complex rearing its fearsome head right now? Because Proposition 5 would effectively transfer $1 billion from prison and parole to treatment and rehabilitation. That means fewer jobs in a massive prison system now consuming about 10% of the state's budget and more resources for programs proven to reduce drug abuse, crime and recidivism more cheaply and effectively than prison and parole.

The opposition to Proposition 5 is grounded in America's tragic exceptionalism when it comes to incarcerating its own citizens. The United States makes up less than 5% of the world's population but claims almost 25% of the world's incarcerated population. We rank, shamefully, first in the world in reported per-capita incarceration rates. But not one of those governors stops to ask why California, with rates of drug use and nonviolent crime roughly equal to those in other advanced industrialized countries, relies on incarceration at a rate five to 10 times higher.

Proposition 5's opponents keep claiming, falsely, that the initiative would make it impossible to hold nonviolent offenders accountable. In reality, Proposition 5 is chock full of accountability, not just for the offenders who get a second chance to get their lives together but also for those charged with enforcing the laws. Ask why California has evolved from the state of higher education into the state of higher incarceration. Ask why the state has built just one new University of California campus but 21 new prisons over the last 25 years. It's because the prison-industrial complex has exercised its political power to ensure that it is never held accountable -- that its budgets grow unchecked and that its exercises of discretion and prejudice are never balanced by independent oversight and objective judgment.

Proposition 5 would provide just that balance. Its provisions incorporate several of the major expert recommendations on prison, parole and treatment diversion reform as put forth by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's hand-picked advisors, the Deukmejian commission, Schwarzenegger's Rehabilitation Strike Team, the governor's Corrections Independent Review Panel, UCLA experts, the Little Hoover Commission, the state Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections' Expert Panel on Adult Offender and Recidivism Reduction Programming, the VERA Institute of Justice and others.

That's what ultimately makes Proposition 5 unacceptable to powerful vested interests within the political and criminal justice system. It dares to speak truth to power and take the politics out of criminal justice -- which is why that motley crew of statehouse residents ganged up Thursday to condemn it. Now it's the voter's turn to lead.

Ethan Nadelmann is the founder and director of the Drug Policy Alliance Network (drugpolicy.org), a major proponent of Proposition 5.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-nadelman3-2008nov03,0,3924232.story

Posted by lois at 07:05 PM | Comments (0)