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April 30, 2009

The Montana Town That Wanted to Be Gitmo

The Montana Town That Wanted to Be Gitmo
By PAT DAWSON
Hardin Thu Apr 30, 2009
The coils of razor wire glint in the prairie sun like silver tumbleweeds piled against the tall chain-link perimeter fences of the forlorn Two Rivers Detention Facility in Hardin, Montana. Two years ago, the town (pop. 3,600) celebrated the completion of the state-of-the-art private jail capable of holding 464 inmates. Convinced that it would provide steady employment for over 100 locals, as well as accompanying economic benefits, the residents financed it through the sale of revenue bonds and turned it over to a for-profit prison-management corporation. On a 40-acre field at the edge of town where pronghorn antelope once grazed, they built it. But nobody came.

Hardin tried to recover. It sued the state for supposed mixed messages of encouragement - even though Montana prohibits the incarceration of prisoners convicted out of state. But though Hardin won the case, Two Rivers stayed empty and the $27 million of bonds went into default a year ago.

And then, a new source of hope appeared. A campaign pledge from President Barrack Obama to close the U.S. facility holding suspected terrorists at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, became an executive order. Quickly, the jail's backers made a new pitch. Why not house those 240 detainees at Two Rivers? Hardin's City Council two weeks ago passed a resolution to entice the detainees their way, saying they could provide "a safe and secure environment, pending trial and/or deportation." Hardin naturally assumed their federal politicians would lobby their cause.

Well, once again, Hardin's heart was broken. Reaction from Montana's three-man Congressional delegation was swift and unanimous, but hardly supportive. "I understand the need to create jobs, but we're not going to bring al-Qaeda to Big Sky Country - no way, not on my watch," said Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat.

Many local taxpayers are livid at Hardin officials. "It's been a complete fiasco since the beginning, and I don't see how they built it without any solid contracts," says Mike Carpata, a forester with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as he shopped for reloading supplies at Lammer's Trading Post, where locals and members of the Crow Tribe come to buy guns and ammo, beading supplies, or to sell for quick cash their saddles, buffalo robes and beaded-buckskin ceremonial costumes. But others remain supportive of the jail project - and the enterprise of the town's administrators. The store's fourth-generation owner, George Lammers, noting the drastic difference between subtropical, humid Gitmo and dry, wintry Hardin, says, "This place would be torture for some of those boys." But, he allows, "I think it would be great for all the law enforcement people to be here. It would help our housing market. Our city fathers wanted the economic benefits, but I guess they didn't foresee the political controversies."

For months, correction officers Glyn and Rae Perkins, husband and wife, were the only employees at the 96,000 sq. ft. Two Rivers facility. They were laid off on Jan. 23. "Those of us who were involved had such high hopes," she says. "The state blocked us at every stage. It could've been such a good thing. I sit here now, watching businesses close and people wondering if they'll lose their houses. It's sad. But the idea of housing Gitmo prisoners here just floors me. It would be scary."

It is easy to understand the economic appeal of the project, as the county's unemployment rate hovers around 10% and Hardin's central business district has seen much better days. On a Saturday morning, two 30ish sisters who had been up all night partying, wobbled along the sidewalk then slouched in the sun against one of many vacant storefronts lining Center Avenue. They said they needed a ride out of town and were afraid they might be picked up by the police and jailed, but then laughed with some relief when reminded that the closest lock-up, the Big Horn County Jail, was now so overcrowded that it was turning away misdemeanor offenders.

Posted by lois at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)

NV: Senators Vote to Reverse Governor's Recommendation to Close NSP

Nevada Lawmakers order state prison to remain open
By Geoff Dornan
Lake Tahoe Bonanza News Service

CARSON CITY, Nev. — Lawmakers Tuesday voted to reverse the governor’s budget recommendation and keep Nevada State Prison open for the next two years.

That decision and others made by the joint Senate Finance/Assembly Ways and Means subcommittee put a near $30 million hole in the Department of Corrections budget — a hole Director Howard Skolnik said they will need to fill somehow. He has warned repeatedly his department’s budgets can’t be cut any further in other areas without jeopardizing the safety of inmates and his staff.

Closure of NSP would actually have saved the department more than $33 million over the biennium.

Lawmakers also voted against Gov. Jim Gibbons’ recommended closure of the Tonopah Conservation Camp, which will add $1.98 million to the hole.

In addition, they voted to delete $5.47 million each year the governor’s budget had included as revenue form leasing Southern Nevada Correctional Center to the federal immigration service.

The panel chaired by Sen. Joyce Woodhouse, D-Las Vegas, offset part of the cost by reducing the budget $4.4 million to reflect new, lower projections for how many inmates Nevada will have in prison over the next two years.

They saved even more by voting to delay the opening of High Desert Prison Phase 5 — $11.2 million. In addition, the panel voted to delay the opening of Three Lakes Valley Conservation Camp two years. With Tonopah still open, the system doesn’t need the capacity and keeping it closed covers most of Tonopah’s operating costs — $1.6 million over the coming two years.

When all those numbers are put together, the total lawmakers will have to find to balance the Department of Corrections budget is $27.84 million.

Skolnik said he is concerned that lawmakers don’t also decide to eliminate the project to begin expanding Warm Springs prison in Carson City — which will replace NSP when that 146 year old institution is finally closed. The latest Capital Improvement Projects list includes $62 million in bonding to expand culinary and other core operations at Warm Springs — located next door to NSP — and add three new housing units.

He said he is also worried about protecting the plan to build a Southern Regional Medical Center for the prison system. At present, the only medical center in the system is located in Carson City.

Both of those projects are in danger because falling property tax revenues statewide may take as much as $126 million out of the $400 million in bonding capacity the CIP program is counting on.

Skolnik recommended closing NSP in the first place saying it was the only way he could meet the governor’s budget targets. The move was strongly opposed by unions representing the nearly 200 people who work there. They enlisted Carson City officials as well, who argued now is not the time to put all those people out of work.

Skolnik has said most of those jobs will come back as jobs at Warm Springs. But expanding that prison will take time.

He said the other thing he is concerned about is the decision to eliminate an additional warden’s position he requested for High Desert. He testified that southern Nevada prison is just too large to manage properly — more than double the size of Northern Nevada Correctional Center. His proposal would divide it into two adjacent prisons by basically building a fence through the middle of High Desert. One side would be medium security and the other close custody.

The committee agreed to add the two associate wardens so each prison would have two in that position. But they saved about $100,000 by eliminating the second warden, arguing one warden could still manage both institutions.

The proposals were approved unanimously by both Senate and Assembly members on the subcommittee.

The decisions must still be ratified by the full Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means committees, including finding a way to fill the hole in the corrections budget.
http://www.tahoebonanza.com/article/20090428/NEWS/904289967/1061&ParentProfile=1050

Posted by lois at 12:51 PM | Comments (0)

April 29, 2009

Obama Administration Calls for End to Crack-Powder Sentencing Disparity

Obama Administration Calls for End to Crack-Powder Sentencing Disparity
by Jasmine Tyler, Anthony Papa
Huffington Post
April 29, 2009

On President Obama's 100th day in office the White House asked Congress to address the issue of disparity in penalties for the use of powder/crack cocaine. This historic request follows a national lobby day held yesterday that was co-sponsored by a dozen advocacy groups.

The day brought together voters from Utah, California, Oklahoma, New Jersey, South Carolina and other states to pressure key members of Congress to eliminate the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences.

The groups held a breakfast briefing with members of congress and victims of the federal disparity on Tuesday morning. Chocolate bars weighing fifty grams, the equivalent weight that would trigger a 10 year mandatory minimum sentence for crack cocaine, were on hand to demonstrate to members of Congress just how small that quantity is compared to the 5000 grams -- five kilos -- of powered cocaine that garners the same penalty.

The 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts created a disparity in sentencing between two forms of cocaine, crack cocaine and powder, at the federal level even though scientific evidence, including a major study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has proven that crack and powder cocaine have similar physiological and psychoactive effects on the human body. It takes only five grams of crack cocaine (the equivalent of the contents of two sugar packets) to receive a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, while it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to receive the same sentence.

As a presidential candidate, then-Senator Obama said the "war on drugs is an utter failure" and that he believes in "shifting the paradigm, shifting the model, so that we focus more on a public health approach." He also called for eliminating the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity, repealing the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs to reduce HIV/AIDS, and stopping the U.S. Justice Department from undermining state medical marijuana laws. Within 24 hours of taking office, the White House website made clear that Obama's campaign commitments to eliminate both the crack/powder disparity and the ban on syringe exchange funding were now official administration policy.

The Obama Administration has articulated the need to address this issue by completely eliminating the disparity. Current penalties for crack cocaine are excessively harsh and have little to do with an individual's actual culpability and more to do with the color of their skin. It's not fair and it's not working. While two-thirds of crack cocaine users are white or Latino according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than 80 percent of those convicted in federal court for crack cocaine offenses in 2006 were African American.

Last year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission moderately reduced sentences for crack cocaine offenses and the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled that judges have the right to sentence people below the guidelines in Kimbrough v. the United States. However, judicial discretion is still undermined by the statutory mandatory minimum sentences that Congress enacted over 20 years ago, and those mandatory minimums are the source of the crack/powder disparity.

Thus far, two legislative proposals have been re-introduced in the House -- one by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-TX, and one by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-VA. Both would end the disparity between powder and crack cocaine sentences. The Senate Crime and Drugs subcommittee will hold a hearing to discuss crack cocaine sentencing on Wednesday, April 29. The House Crime, Terror and Homeland Security committee also will hold a hearing on this issue on May 21.

The stars are aligning to ensure Americans will no longer be subjected to the same draconian policy set in the late 80s, which flies in the face of scientific and legal research. Congress and the administration have an obligation to fix this and show the country that our criminal justice practices will be fair and sentences proportional to the offense. We can no longer prioritize precious federal resources solely on the incarceration of individuals who are low-level, nonviolent drug users and sellers nor permit any racial group to continue to be unjustly targeted.

Jasmine L. Tyler is the Deputy Director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. Anthony Papa is the author 15 to Life.

* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jasmine-tyler/obama-administration-call_b_193028.html

And....
Justice Dept. Seeks Equity in Sentences for Cocaine

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By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: April 29, 2009

A senior Justice Department official urged Congress on Wednesday to lower the mandatory minimum prison sentence for the sale and possession of crack cocaine to match the punishment for powder cocaine, eliminating arbitrary sentencing disparities that have resulted in many more African-Americans’ being jailed for longer terms.

It was the first time such a high-level law enforcement official has endorsed legislation to eliminate inequities in cocaine sentencing. Barack Obama, while campaigning for the White House, had called for an end to the disparity.

“Most in the law enforcement community now recognize the need to re-evaluate current federal cocaine sentencing policy and the disparities the policy creates,” the official, Lanny A. Breuer, the chief of the Criminal Division in the Justice Department, testified before the Crime and Drugs Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Under current federal laws, conviction for the sale and possession of 50 grams of crack cocaine is punishable by a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison; it takes 5,000 grams of powder cocaine to trigger the same punishment under the guidelines.

Mr. Breuer said that as of 2006, 82 percent of people convicted of federal crack cocaine offenses were African-American, and 9 percent were white. In that same year, 14 percent of federal powder cocaine offenders were white, 27 percent were African-American and 58 percent were Hispanic.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the subcommittee chairman, said he was a proponent of the two-tiered sentencing structure when it was adopted in 1986 during an epidemic of crack cocaine use. But Mr. Durbin said that he and other early supporters, including Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is now vice president, changed their minds as they learned more about the drug.

“Each of the myths upon which we based the disparity has since been dispelled or altered,” Mr. Durbin said. “Crack-related violence has decreased significantly since the 1980s, and today 94 percent of crack cocaine cases don’t involve violence at all.”

Mr. Breuer and other witnesses testified that the sentencing disparities eroded trust in the justice system, overstressed the prison system, and diverted federal law enforcement resources from prosecutions of organized crime and other priorities.

In 2007, the United States Sentencing Commission, a panel that advises federal courts on appropriate prison terms based on legislation, reduced the average sentence for crack cocaine possession to 8 years, 10 months from 10 years, 1 month.

That change was expected to reduce the federal prison population by about 3,800 inmates over 15 years.

So far, 19,239 offenders who were sentenced under the earlier guidelines have applied to have their terms reduced. About 70 percent of those motions have been granted.

Further sentencing reductions would require Congress to pass new legislation. Mr. Breuer said he was leading a working group at the Justice Department that was looking at how to reduce the sentencing disparity while preserving public safety.

Although many law enforcement groups have generally sided with reducing disparities in cocaine sentences, they disagree with the administration about how that might be achieved.

James Pasco, a lobbyist for the Fraternal Order of Police, suggested that prison sentences for powder cocaine should be raised to the level of crack sentences.

“The Obama administration just says they want the disparity addressed,” Mr. Pasco said. “So somewhere between our position for raising sentences for powder, and their position for doing away with disparities there’s room for discussion.”

Jasmine Tyler, of the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group supporting the reduction of drug crime sentences, said increasing penalties for powder cocaine would further burden the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is 140 percent beyond its capacity.

“I would be shocked if that were ever vetted as a real possibility,” Ms. Tyler said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/us/30cocaine.html?_r=1

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

"The Real Cost of Prisons Comix"

"The Real Cost of Prisons Comix"
Lois Ahrens, editor
PM Press of Oakland, Calif.
Book Bag, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA
This book is a collection of three comic books, including accompanying essays, that explore the social, emotional and financial cost the United States faces by keeping approximately 2.3 million people behind bars. The book also includes comments from community organizers around the country discussing how they have used the book in their work.

This country's imprisoned population is a number that has steadily grown. From the end of World War II to 1970, according to Ahrens, there were 200,000 people in prison. Though there are more than 2 million people jailed now, the nation's crime rate, she says, has changed little.

In a recent interview with the Gazette, Ahrens noted that Massachusetts currently spends a larger portion of its budget for prisons than for higher education. "Maybe people would rather pay for higher education than for prisons. Maybe the days of pure punitive policy are not something people still want to pay for, especially now." For change to occur, she said, "It's going to take people saying they think this is a bad idea - and they're tired of paying for it."

Ahrens, who lives in Northampton, edited the volume and is a contributing writer. Other writers include Ellen Miller-Mack, also of Northampton, along with Craig Gilmore, Susan Willmarth and Kevin Pyle. Illustrations are by Kevin Pyle, Sabrina Jones and Susan Willmarth, with an introduction by Craig Gilmore and Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

Last month, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a private organization that defines its mission as working for responsive and effective criminal justice, juvenile justice and child welfare systems, named "The Real Cost of Prisons" one of nine winners in the literature category of a PASS award (Prevention for a Safer Society.) Awards were also given in the categories of film, magazine, newspaper, radio, television/video, and the Web.

The council says it grants the awards "in recognition of thoughtful and factual coverage of the issues."
http://www.gazettenet.com/2009/04/29/book-bag

Posted by lois at 08:25 AM | Comments (0)

April 28, 2009

NACDL: "Minor Crimes, Massive Waste: The Terrible Toll of America’s Broken Misdemeanor Courts"

Washington, DC (Apr. 28, 2009) – Nationwide, state and local governments are wasting millions of tax dollars to prosecute petty offenses, creating huge deficits in their budgets and violating the constitutional rights of citizens haled into court. That is the conclusion of "Minor Crimes, Massive Waste: The Terrible Toll of America’s Broken Misdemeanor Courts", a report released today by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) that comprehensively examines misdemeanor courts across the country.

The report, (http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/defenseupdates/misdemeanor/$FILE/Report.pdf), recommends that states divert non-violent misdemeanor cases that do not impact public safety to programs that are less costly to taxpayers and repay society through community service or civil fines.

Misdemeanors—infractions such as curfew violations, loitering and open container laws—lead to expensive prosecutions on the taxpayers’ dime. The volume of cases is staggering. A median state misdemeanor rate of 3,544 cases per 100,000 citizens indicates that taxpayers are burdened with paying the costs of more than 10 million misdemeanor prosecutions per year, the report said.

With courts this clogged, public defenders and probation officers are forced to handle hundreds more cases than they can ethically manage, spending just minutes preparing for each case. And some defendants are completely deprived of their constitutional right to counsel, putting states at risk for expensive lawsuits on top of the heavy financial burden of unnecessary incarceration costs.

Research and drafting of the report was a collaborative effort between NACDL and Professor Robert C. Boruchowitz of the Seattle University School of Law. In addition to compiling of misdemeanor courts in a number of jurisdictions, NACDL conducted interviews with key criminal justice personnel in misdemeanor courts across the country, including judges, defense counsel, prosecutors and accused. Where possible, NACDL site teams also gathered data on misdemeanor prosecutions, public defender caseloads, and other relevant statistics. The authors also conducted a national survey of defense lawyers seeking information on misdemeanor practices in respondents’ jurisdictions. In 2008, NACDL held misdemeanor practice conferences in New York and Seattle with over 150 public defenders, prosecutors, judges and policy persons in attendance.

Posted by lois at 03:12 PM | Comments (0)

ACLU files suit about double-bunking in Mass. prisons

ACLU files suit about double-bunking in Mass. prisons
By Associated Press
Monday, April 27, 2009
Boston Herald

BOSTON — A lawsuit is demanding answers about Massachusetts inmates doubled up in cells originally used for one person in a maximum-security prison.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts said Monday a new plan to move as many as 450 additional prisoners to the Souza Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley is causing prisoners to fear being placed in a cell with a known enemy or someone else who might attack them.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services. It asks the Massachusetts Department of Correction to release documentation of the system it uses to decide who is put into double cells and with whom. The lawsuit says prisoners report some of the decisions seem arbitrary.

The Department of Correction says it does not comment on pending litigation.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1168489

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

April 27, 2009

Time to decriminalize drugs? The Portuguese experiment

"...the Portuguese government decided to create a high-level commission, dominated by health care professionals, to recommend a solution. The commission's surprise recommendation: Don't officially legalize all drugs. Instead, decriminalize them, take away all criminal penalties."

Time to decriminalize drugs?
By By Neil Peirce, syndicated columnist
By Daily Hampshire Gazette
Created 04/27/2009

The criminal factor is being lifted from marijuana use in California. The other 12 states where marijuana is permitted for medical use can't be far behind.

And if 13 states now, then all 50 in the next years?

That's the future some see flowing from a decision announced Feb. 25 by Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. The federal Drug Enforcement Agency, Holder announced, would stop its raids on marijuana dispensaries in states where marijuana is legal for medicinal purposes.

The order spells a refreshing respect for states' rights. In California, where hundreds of new dispensaries are springing up to meet demand, customers need only produce a physician's recommendation in order to buy marijuana. California law allows pot to be dispensed for "any illness for which marijuana provides a relief." Back pain, anxiety, sleeplessness, glaucoma, virtually any condition can now be claimed.

Perhaps no line can be drawn between serious conditions for which marijuana is a godsend, relieving many patients suffering excruciating pain, and simple recreational use.

And then there's the sheer numbers issue. Surveys show 100 million Americans at some point in their lives have smoked pot. It's time to ask: What's government doing prohibiting marijuana in the first place?

In California alone, the marijuana market is already estimated to total $14 billion a year. Legislation pending in Sacramento would regulate the trade and yield the state $1.3 billion in revenues. In an America whose revenue-hungry state governments have already gone hog-wild legalizing another practice once thought evil, gambling, what's so different about marijuana?

And there's a parallel. At the height of the Great Depression, state governments drowning in red ink seized the opportunity to repeal prohibition of alcohol as a way to institute legal taxes and fill their empty coffers.

The myth we need to break is that the use of mind-altering drugs is really different from a whole range of activities, sometimes sheer fun, sometimes dangerous, that humans have engaged in since the dawn of time.

I'd put gambling on that list, but even more deeply entrenched are alcohol, drugs and sexual practices. All have legitimate roles; each, depending on its form and application, can be seriously abused. A mature society warns of problems but holds back on prohibition ## and sensibly, because rules of total denial will be broken anyway.

What's missing on the marijuana front, suggests Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, is any fair, open debate about its use. How serious is it, for example, if a high school student gets "stoned"? Is "binge drinking" really less serious? Would a successful prevention model aim mostly at abstinence or some safer, moderate form of use?

We've been so preoccupied with a total prohibition model for drugs, says Sterling, that we've not had the sane conversation we need.

Hopefully, California and the other medical-marijuana states will now oblige us to open up a fuller debate.

By good fortune, a fascinating new European study has become available to us. In the late 1990s, Portugal was faced by seemingly runaway drug usage, together with record arrest levels and imprisonments. (Sound familiar?)

So the Portuguese government decided to create a high-level commission, dominated by health care professionals, to recommend a solution. The commission's surprise recommendation: Don't officially legalize all drugs. Instead, decriminalize them, take away all criminal penalties.

"I think it's bizarrely underappreciated what's been done in Portugal," says analyst Glenn Greenwald, author of a just-published study on the Portuguese experiment for the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank.

The Portuguese parliament didn't "go soft" on drug traffickers, they're still liable to arrest and criminal prosecution. Police can still issue citations to drug users. But under the new law, in effect since 2001, the worst fate an apprehended drug user can expect is mandatory appearance before a "dissuasion commission", which in turn is most likely to suggest a course of treatment.

The crucial advantage of decriminalization, says Greenwald, is that it removes citizens' fear of government punishment. So they feel free to seek out help for treatment or stopping drug use altogether. The money formerly spent on "putting drug users into cages," as he puts it, is going for counselors and psychologists conducting quality treatment programs.

America's "drug war" myth has been that anything short of severe criminal penalties leads to massive drug abuse, escalating crime and worse. But in Portugal, none of the predicted parade of horrors has occurred. Drug use among youth has actually declined, and surveys show use of marijuana, cocaine and dangerous substances like heroin are all well below Europe-wide averages.

Decriminalization rather than legalization, could this be the sane middle ground we need here too?

Neal Peirce's email address is nrp@citistates.com.
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2008 All rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2009/04/27/time-decriminalize-drugs

Posted by lois at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

Before Census, a Debate Over Prisoners Critics Say Current Method of Counting Inmates Distorts Rural, Urban Tallies

Before Census, a Debate Over Prisoners
Critics Say Current Method of Counting Inmates Distorts Rural, Urban Tallies

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 26, 2009

NEW YORK -- Elizabeth O'C. Little, a Republican state senator, represents a rural Upstate district larger in square miles than Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. But more than 13,500 of her constituents are not living there by choice, they could not vote for her if they wanted to, and most will leave the first chance they get.

Those unwilling constituents are incarcerated in one of 13 prisons -- 12 state and one federal -- that have given her district the nickname "Little Siberia." Without the prisoners, the district, which stretches to the Canadian border, may not have the minimum population required to earn a seat in the state Senate.

And while the inmates live behind bars, there is a recurring question as to whether prison is where they actually "reside."

In Little's opinion, the inmates reside in her 45th District, and her district is where they should be counted as residents during the 2010 Census.

"I think the inmates, like everyone, should be counted at their place of residence on that particular day," Little said. She said the inmates are no different than other temporary residents -- students living in dormitories, or developmentally disabled people in a center -- living away from their permanent addresses but counted where they reside on Census Day, April 1, 2010.

But for some civil liberties groups and the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative, which has analyzed the last census numbers, counting inmates in prisons distorts population numbers in New York and several other states. Rural areas are shown to be more populous than they are, these critics say, while urban areas -- which produce most of the inmates -- are routinely under-counted.

States and counties rely on population numbers from the census to draw their legislative districts. In New York and some other states, Republicans continue to have clout in legislatures because they are elected from safely conservative, rural districts even as those areas lose people. The exception to that population decline: inmates, whose numbers have grown because of tough mandatory sentencing laws.

"It's systemic distortion," said Peter Wagner, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Initiative. "You have a disproportionately black and Hispanic male population that is counted in the wrong spot."

In Albany, Alice Green, founder and executive director of the Center for Law and Justice, which works on criminal justice issues, said that "when I saw the huge number of African Americans in some of these counties, I was shocked."

"In Upstate New York in some of the counties, the [black] people in prison outnumber the free African Americans," said Green, who is from an Adirondack mining town and earned her doctorate in criminal justice in Albany. Because the prisoners cannot vote but are counted as constituents, she said, "they are not represented, and they are totally exploited."

"The people elected in those districts with high prison populations are more conservative and support more mass incarcerations and the existence of prisons," Green said. "They use the numbers to get elected, but they don't represent [the prisoners'] interests."

The question of how to properly count prisoners has been a long-standing concern for the NAACP. "It's been troubling us for quite some time," said Hilary O. Shelton, a vice president and director of the Washington office.

"Over 40 percent of America's prison population is African American, and we make up 13 percent of the American population," he said. "Virtually all of these prisons are outside the inner cities where most African Americans live."

The Census Bureau has no plans to change the way it counts prisoners in 2010. Spokesman Robert Bernstein said, "We're following the concept of 'usual residence' -- where the person lives and sleeps most of the time."

Under the concept, as explained on the bureau's Web site, people who are temporarily away from their usual residence on Census Day -- vacationers or business travelers, for example -- will be counted as residents wherever they live "most of the time." People "without a usual residence . . . will be counted where they are staying on Census Day."

One problem with that method of counting, critics say, is that most prisoners do not stay in the area after their release. "More often than not, they go back to the community they came from," Shelton said.

An alternative would be to count prisoners at their last known address -- an approach favored by the NAACP and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I).

"The city supports a change in the residency rule for prisoners in the 2010 Census from the address of the institution where they are incarcerated to the last known permanent residence prior to incarceration," said Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Bloomberg. "This would allow for a more fair allocation of political representation and dollars for New York City, which has a substantial prison inmate population in institutions outside of its boundaries."

Little, a law-and-order Republican who voted against the recent overhaul of the state's drug laws, thinks counting the prisoners as residents of her district makes sense. "Actually, it was the influences at home that got them into trouble in the first place, so maybe they'd be better off someplace else," she said in a phone interview.

She said the prisons in four of the six counties in her district have a big economic impact -- including on the water supply, the sewers and the roads traveled by prison workers and visiting relatives.

Whether temporary residents "are in a dormitory, a nursing home, student housing or a prison, they are using the infrastructure," Little said.

Besides, she said, the reason her district has so many prisons is "because no one else wanted them."

There is a practical side to the arguments, as well. A New York Senate district is supposed to have 306,000 people, though that number is allowed to vary by 5 percent. According to the state's 2002 Census task force and the Prison Policy Initiative, the 45th District had 299,603 residents, within the 5 percent margin.

However, without the 13,500 prisoners, the 45th would need to be redrawn to remain a separate district. Other New York districts similarly have large numbers of prisoners, including the 59th, which includes Wyoming County, where Attica maximum security prison is located. The 59th District is home to about 9,000 prisoners, according to the 2000 Census.

Wagner, of the Prison Policy Initiative, found in a recent analysis that seven Upstate districts would not meet the population requirement without including inmates.

At a minimum, he said, the Census Bureau should disclose where the prisons are located in their tally. "This is one of the things that gives that region extra influence," he said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/25/AR2009042501403.html?hpid=topnews

Posted by lois at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2009

CA: State prisons chief proposes $400 million in cuts

State prisons chief proposes $400 million in cuts
afurillo@sacbee.com
Published Friday, Apr. 24, 2009

California corrections officials today unveiled $400 million in cost-cutting proposals that would reduce the state prison population by 8,000 inmates by next summer.

Agency Secretary Matt Cate said a proposed change in parole policies would cut the prison population by 4,000.

He said it would result in fewer offenders being returned on technical violations while at the same time lowering parole agent caseloads so they can spend more time supervising more serious and violent parolees when they are released.

The other half of the population reductions would come through expanded good behavior credits for inmates who complete education or job programs and through changes in the dollar value of property crimes, which would turn some thefts now prosecuted as felonies into misdemeanors.

The proposed changes in parole policies, the time credits and the adjustment on property crimes each require approval from the Legislature. Cate said the agency plans to submit a package of bills to the Legislature next week.

Cate said the department also plays to cut 150 of the 2,000 position at its headquarters office in downtown Sacramento. He also said that corrections officials are planning to close down one Division of Juvenile Justice youth prison.

The cuts came in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's open-ended $400 million line-item veto earlier this year on Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spending budget, issued as part of the state's recent resolution to close its $40 billion budget gap.
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/v-print/story/1808030.html

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

Judge orders changes in medication distribution at women's prison

Judge orders changes in medication distribution at women's prison
By John Diedrich of the Journal Sentinel
Apr. 24, 2009

A federal judge ruled Friday that the Wisconsin Department of Corrections must make changes to its inmate prescription system at Taycheedah Correctional Institution and hire licensed practical nurses to hand out drugs there, all within two months.

Chief U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa's order came in response to an American Civil Liberties Union motion for an injunction forcing the state to make changes.

The action is part of a federal class-action lawsuit the ACLU filed in 2006 on behalf of inmates at the state's largest women's prison.

The ACLU contends the state is violating the rights of Taycheedah prisoners by having guards without medical training dispense drugs to inmates, routinely resulting in the wrong medications or wrong dosages being given to inmates.

The state admits there are problems but says it is working to fix them. It argued that it has a plan to hire nursing assistants to hand out drugs and that the ACLU's timetable was unreasonable.

Randa disagreed, writing that "matters of administrative convenience must ultimately give way when constitutional rights are in jeopardy."

Randa ordered the state to draw up a plan to hire licensed practical nurses for Taycheedah within a week and have them in place in 60 days.

On the issue of computerizing the prescription system, Randa gave the state two months to take "interim steps" to improve drug distribution accuracy.

It's unclear what the financial effect of the changes will be or whether they could ultimately be applied at all Wisconsin prisons.

Department of Corrections spokesman John Dipko said he did not know how many nurses would be hired or how much it would cost. In 2006, the department estimated it would cost $5.2 million a year to have 102 nurses dispense medication at all state prisons. Randa's order pertains to only Taycheedah, but Dipko said the agency is "always looking at making improvements" to all institutions.

Dipko said agency officials had not determined whether they will appeal the order, but even if they do, they will comply with the order in the meantime.

Larry Dupuis, legal director for the ACLU of Wisconsin, said, "Judge Randa has taken a huge step toward alleviating the needless pain and suffering caused by Taycheedah's failed medication system."

The ACLU's lawsuit, which addresses medical, mental health and dental care at the prison, is separate from an agreement reached between the state and U.S. Department of Justice last year over mental health care at Taycheedah.

The state promised to make wide-ranging mental health improvements at the prison. The agreement was struck under the threat of a lawsuit by the federal government against the state, which according to a federal complaint, has shown "deliberate indifference" to the mental health needs of Taycheedah inmates. A lawsuit is still possible if the state doesn't live up to the agreement.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/43627792.html

Posted by lois at 01:53 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2009

MT: Jail Desperate for Prisoners Tries for Prisoners at Guantanamo

Hardin jail tries for detainees from Gitmo

By BECKY SHAY
Of The Gazette Staff
Economic development officials in Hardin are looking at the soon-to-close detention facility in Guantanamo Bay as a possible fix for the jail sitting empty in Hardin.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order Jan. 22 to close the Guantanamo detention facilities in Cuba where hundreds of enemy combatants have been held since 2002. The closure is to occur in a year, during which time remaining detainees must be returned to their home countries or detained elsewhere.

Meanwhile, a 460-bed detention facility sits empty in Hardin. Built by Two Rivers Authority, the city's economic development arm, the facility was meant to bring economic development to Hardin by creating more than 100 high-paying jobs.

While leaders continue to look for contracts to open the jail, which was completed in 2007, people in Hardin have approached Two Rivers executive director Greg Smith saying they have the answer: Get the contract to hold those prisoners from Guantanamo.
Smith said he started looking into the process to contract - which still isn't clear - and has talked to other possible players, including federal agencies and staffs of the Montana congressional delegation.

It's also not yet clear which agency would operate the facility that ends up holding the detainees.

The Hardin City Council voted Tuesday to support Two Rivers' efforts.

The council resolution states that the city "fully supports the efforts of the Two Rivers Authority to contact State and Federal officials for the purpose of inquiring into the possibility of housing Guantanamo detainees at the Two Rivers Authority in Hardin, Montana, and to determine whether the Two Rivers Detention Center could provide a safe and secure environment for housing said detainees."

Nationally, the focus has been on Alexandria, Va. The town boasts a detention facility and is close to federal courts.

That's nothing on Hardin, Smith said.

Although federal court services are in Billings, Smith contends that the 45 miles of interstate is very likely easier to traverse than several blocks in a metropolitan area.

Any city that takes the detainees is going to have issues to deal with, Smith said. But the federal government won't just dump detainees into an area without bolstering the system to provide them with the due process that is part of Obama's executive order.

"There are 50 states, and some state is going to get this and they're all going to have issues and they're all going to need money," Smith said. "But we have something the others don't."

Smith said Two Rivers Detention Center is a modern, empty facility. It is built so that with just minor conversions it can be upgraded from medium to higher security. Because the detainees would be the only prisoners in the facility, it would be easy to accommodate prisoners' dietary, language and religious requirements.

If someone were to escape, Smith said, there aren't any huge buildings nearby to dodge into. Montana is pretty homogenous, so detainees, many of Middle Eastern descent, would not easily blend into crowds, he said.

And bringing detainees to this area has happened before, Smith said. There were prisoner-of-war camps in Laurel during World War II. There were also internee camps in Missoula and near Powell, Wyo.

Offering a turnkey facility is practically a patriotic duty, Smith said.

"We're offering our president an option," he said. "If he wants it, we have it available. We want to step forward and say, 'Mr. President, we have a solution. How can we make it happen?' "

Smith said there's really no reason for Hardin not to be considered.

"We have to look at the obstacles to overcome and then overcome them," he said. "A lot of it is just getting people to think how it could work."

Two Rivers Authority ran into troubles shortly after construction on the facility finished in July 2007 when the state had no prisoners to send there. Hardin sought contracts with other states to bring in their prisoners, an effort that was shut down for months while the city sued Montana and eventually won the case but hasn't succeeded in finding contracts.

Without prisoners, TRA hasn't been able to repay $27 million in revenue bonds that paid for construction. The project went into default last year. The bond payments are being made from a reserve fund, which would have to be repaid along with the ongoing payments once the facility starts generating revenue.

For Smith and many in Hardin, that can't come soon enough. Smith said it is his job to "uncover every rock" to find ways to get the detention center operating. He knows there are options available, it's just a matter for finding them and seeking out contracts. People who don't like the idea of alleged enemy combatants coming to town can help, he said.

"To those who don't want it, help us find something so we can fill it," Smith said.
http://billingsgazette.net/articles/2009/04/23/news/state/21-hardin.txt

Posted by lois at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

The phone rip-off for Massachusetts prison inmates, families

The phone rip-off for Massachusetts prison inmates, families
By Daily Hampshire Gazette- Northampton, MA
Created 04/24/2009

Prison inmates who use the telephone to maintain strong family ties will be better prepared to rebuild their lives upon returning home.

Why then do Massachusetts elected officials allow price gouging phone companies to drive prison telephone rates for interstate calls sky high, isolating state inmates from the outside world?

The cost of long distance calling has dropped drastically for most people in Massachusetts, but not families of inmates. According to the Federal Communications Commission, nationally, domestic interstate calls in 2006 were billed at just six cents per minute.

Yet the Kalamazoo, Michigan-based Campaign to Promote Equitable Telephone Charges, reports that the families of Massachusetts inmates pay Global Tel*Link, Massachusetts' current prison phone service monopoly, much more.

For a 15-minute call, including per-call and usage charges, the campaign calculates that inmate families in Massachusetts pay a very reasonable 15 cents per minute for intra-state long distance collect calls, but a whopping 89 cents per minute for interstate collect calls. A similar interstate call using a debit, or pre-paid, card would cost a lot less but Massachusetts prisons do not permit the use of debit cards.

In other states inmate families pay less per minute for 15-minute collect interstate calls: Florida, 12 cents; Michigan and New York, 15 cents; Missouri, 17 cents and 18 cents in New Hampshire.

These Massachusetts rates include "commissions" (a.k.a. kickbacks) negotiated during the contracting process and paid to state prison operators as a percentage of prison phone revenues. Eager to win lucrative contracts competing phone companies in the U.S. sweeten their bids by offering generous kickbacks, some as high as 65 percent. Only seven states - Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma and Rhode Island - do not accept such commissions from phone companies and pass the savings on to inmates.

While competition among phone companies in the open market drives long distance calling rates down, competition in the prison telephone market, with help from greedy phone companies and uncaring prison operators, actually drives rates up for inmates and their families.

Studies on file with the FCC show that nationally, including special security features attached to prison phones, it costs phone companies between 12 and 17 cents per minute to provide interstate collect calling, and between six and 12 cents per minute to provide interstate debit calling. These estimates include transport and termination costs and six cents for collect calls to cover billing and uncollectible costs.

Using these cost estimates, in Massachusetts Global Tel*Link is making a profit on collect interstate calls in the 80-86 percent range. Nationally, estimates are that prison phone companies make similar profits on these calls.

It's not that no one has noticed the prison telephone rip-off. The 2006 Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons reported that inmate phone rates are "extraordinarily high" and that lower rates will "support family and community bonds." Even the American Bar Association has formally called for inmate calls to be set at the "lowest possible rates." And the American Correctional Association says sound correctional management includes reasonably priced phone services.

Perhaps the low rates in Florida, Michigan and New York will shame phone companies and prison operators in Massachusetts and many other states into ending their abuse of prison inmates and their families. But just in case these phone companies and prison officials are, in fact, shameless, Martha Wright and other inmate family members have filed a formal proposal asking the FCC to use its authority under the federal Communications Act to impose a reasonable interstate phone rate in all U.S. prisons.

Following a review of industry costs and the low rates now charged in several states, the proposal asks the FCC to mandate that inmates making interstate collect calls are charged no more than 25 cents per minute, and interstate debit calls no more than 20 cents per minute. The proposal also asks that the debit calling card option be provided in all U.S. prisons.

The FCC proposal only addresses interstate long distance calls. However, if the FCC does set lower interstate rates, this will pressure states from coast-to-coast to also adjust downward their intra-state long distance, inmate calling rates.

It is time to end telephone price gouging in U.S. prisons. If phone companies in Florida, Michigan, New York and Missouri can provide inmates with reasonable rates, so can Massachusetts. Doing so will help strengthen prisoners' family ties, and make our communities safer.

Ronald Fraser writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization. He can be contacted at fraserr@erols.com.
Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2009/04/24/phone-ripoff-massachusetts-prison-inmates-families

Posted by lois at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

MT: ACLU says CCA discriminates against Native American Prisoners

ACLU says private Montana prison discriminates
By LEN IWANSKI --AP
April 23, 2009
A spokesman for the Montana Corrections Department says they're investigating allegations that Native American inmates were mistreated and discriminated against at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby.

The private prison operates under a contract with the state.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that Crossroads violated the rights of Native American inmates. The ACLU of Montana filed a complaint with the state Human Rights Bureau alleging the inmates were subjected to en-masse strip searches, were denied the ability to properly celebrate sweat-lodge ceremonies and were retaliated against when they complained about the mistreatment.

The complaint says the strip searches took place between mid-August and mid-October 2008.

"While the en masse strip searches appear to have been suspended ... there is no assurance that they will not resume, and reports indicate that the searches could readily continue," the complaint says.

Bob Anez, spokesman for the state Corrections Department, said the department "is aware of these allegations against Corrections Corporation of America ( CXW - news - people ) and took appropriate action with CCA to resolve these claims, as indicated in the complaint."

"As with all such allegations, the Department of Corrections takes these accusations seriously," Anez said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "The department is investigating the allegations and will respond to the ACLU complaint."

Crossroads spokeswoman Christine Timmerman referred questions about the complaint to Anez.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/04/23/ap6328394.html

Posted by lois at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

Another War America Cannot Afford

Another War America Cannot Afford
By Bill Haney
Huffington Post
April 23, 2009

Senator Obama swept into national prominence with his prescient view that an American war in Iraq was one we should not start and could not win. By 2007, years of carnage in Iraq had taught many Americans how foolish the Bush Administration's promises of a simple and flower-strewn victory were. Now President Obama has honored his campaign pledge, committing to a substantial withdrawal of American troops from Iraq within 18 months. But there is another drawn-out war America is embroiled in -- a war that was launched with rosy expectations; a war that has led to unacceptable burdens for our country. It is well past time to withdraw from this war as well.

When President Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971, American prisons held fewer than 200,000 people and the prison population was declining.

Back then, prison was seen as a last resort: mandatory minimums had been repealed, prisons were not-for-profit and less than 1 in every 1000 American adults was behind bars, few for drug crimes. This wasn't because drugs didn't exist, of course, or because Presidents like Eisenhower and Truman were soft on crime, but rather because the threat of non-violent marijuana smokers to American security was deemed unworthy of a "War".

Today, every 17 seconds an American is arrested for a drug-related crime. That's about as long as it will take you to read this sentence.

There are now more than 2.3 million Americans in jail or prison. In fact, the United States now has the world's largest prison population.

China is second, with only 1.5 million people in jail. That's right, although the American population is roughly 300 million and China's is over 1.3 billion, we have nearly 50% more people in prison than China.

Since the early days of Nixon, we have gone from having less than one adult in prison per thousand to having roughly one adult in prison per hundred, more than 500% of the global median. Who says we don't lead the world in anything anymore?

Not all of the folks in prison are there for drug offenses, of course, but more than half of federal prisoners are locked up in connection with nonviolent drug offenses, frequently for mere possession. With profits from drug crime high enough to destabilize important democracies like Mexico and fuel terrorist groups like Afghanistan's Taliban, it will surprise no one that many non-drug crimes are themselves fueled by the profits of the drug business. Despite these labeling challenges, the Federal Bureau of Prisons lists more than 50% of its convicts as drug violators. Sweeping up explosives, arson, and weapons violations into a single category makes up the next-largest Bureau of Prisons grouping, at 15% of convicts. There can be no doubt that the War on Drugs consumes an outlandish percentage of federal and state law enforcement resources.

The expense of this almost 40-year war is horrendous any way you measure it. Millions upon millions of American adults have been convicted as felons. Millions of American children have been left in single parent destitution as their fathers, and increasingly mothers, are locked up. Studies suggest as many as 70% of these children are destined to become prisoners themselves.

Thirteen million Americans live among us as convicted felons right now, and federal and state restrictions on their housing, medical, education and voting rights have greatly diminished their job prospects and their standing in civil society. As convicted felons, their ability to legally earn a living is greatly reduced, and so is their ability to pay taxes.

Not only is this a tremendous burden on their families, it is a burden on all American taxpayers.

It's difficult to measure the full economic costs of the War on Drugs, as it has been for the War in Iraq, but even a simple accounting suggests that they are staggering. The costs of hiring, training, equipping, paying and providing facilities and pensions for an appropriate portion of police and drug task force officers must be added to the costs of doing the same for corrections officers and management -- as well as the federally funded DEA. The costs of supporting struggling democracies like those in Columbia, Mexico and Afghanistan would surely be less if they weren't battling narco-fueled violence. The costs of the full drug war infrastructure run well north of $40 billion a year, with expenditures on corrections now outstripping spending on higher education in some states. Is there any wonder that cries to legalize and tax marijuana are now beginning to come from state legislators, and even law enforcement officers?

Decriminalization of all drugs is not the answer. We all know that drugs can be a scourge, as we know that other addictive substances wreak havoc in our society. Still, 76% of Americans polled by Zogby in September 2008 believe that the War on Drugs is a costly failure, and most believe that policies of narrowly targeted illegality, education and treatment should replace it.

Prohibition was repealed during the Depression of the 1930s, as the costs of enforcing draconian anti-alcohol laws became too expensive for society to bear. Today we have laws limiting alcohol use, tax revenues that result from its legal sale and a virtual elimination of violence resulting from its black-market distribution. With our economy staggering and the social, financial and strategic costs of our failed drug policies mounting, it is time for President Obama to bring an end to this ill-conceived "War". The active search for peace with principle must begin.

Bill Haney is the writer and producer of American Violet, a film based on the true story of an innocent woman arrested in a drug raid. Samuel Goldwyn Films will release the film across the country this month.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-haney/another-war-america-canno_b_190726.html

Posted by lois at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2009

Prison population, corrections budget spike during truth in sentencing

"If a crime policy is gauged by its ability to lower crime rates and rehabilitate inmates to prevent return trips to prison, then truth in sentencing has failed."

Prison population, corrections budget spike during truth in sentencing
Jessica VanEgeren
April 21, 2009
Capital Times- Madison, WI

When the tough-on-crime mantra was all the rage in the 1990s, Wisconsin, like the rest of the nation, got caught up in the movement.

Michael Lew got caught up in it, too. As one of eight assistant chiefs of probation and parole for the state Department of Corrections, Lew was tapped to research the financial impact of a new sentencing policy being debated at the Capitol.

Known as truth in sentencing, the policy -- which had the blessing of then-Attorney General Jim Doyle -- took effect Dec. 31, 1999. It replaced the possibility of early release for good behavior, or parole, with a system where a 10-year sentence meant 10 years served. Time behind bars was followed by years out of prison under extended state supervision.

Because inmates under the then-existing parole system were only serving, on average, about 50 percent of their sentences, Lew and about a dozen colleagues estimated the truth in sentencing program would contribute to a Department of Corrections budget increase of $50 million to $70 million a year. Their estimates hit the mark.

Between 1999 and 2009, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections' budget grew 71 percent, from $700 million to $1.2 billion, or an average of $50 million a year, according to information released earlier this month by the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a national organization funded in part through the U.S. Department of Justice.

"Truth in sentencing is one of the reasons we have so many people in prison right now," said Lew, a 36-year veteran of the state corrections system who retired in 2006. "We are bankrupting ourselves."

The national organization further found that statewide between 2000 and 2007, the number of reported violent crimes increased by 28 percent, from 12,700 incidents to 16,296, and the prison population grew 14 percent, from 20,508 to 23,476. A majority of inmates are incarcerated because they re-offend or violate the terms of their release. In 2007, 55 percent of prison inmates had violated terms of their parole, probation or extended supervision or were re-offenders who had committed a new crime.

If a crime policy is gauged by its ability to lower crime rates and rehabilitate inmates to prevent return trips to prison, then truth in sentencing has failed. Costs are also up, threatening to become even more of a burden on an already cash-strapped state. These facts are not lost on state policy makers, who reached out last year to a national organization for policy assistance. While that group is delivering its recommendations to the Legislature this week, Governor Doyle has already put forward changes in his 2009-2011 budget, which is attempting to close a $5.2 billion deficit. The governor's plan proposes new ways for inmates who exhibit good behavior to get out of prison early. Parole, though not referred to as such, would make a comeback. Under these guidelines, roughly 1,000 inmates immediately would be ready for early release. More would be eligible in the months and years ahead.

Not surprisingly, the plan has critics, including state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, victim's rights advocates and the Wisconsin Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs Association.

At a press conference earlier this month, Van Hollen argued that undoing truth in sentencing by "opening up prison doors is indefensible." He said the state should instead spend money on alternatives to incarceration in appropriate cases.

But Department of Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch, who worked with Doyle on the proposals, says they are a step in the right direction.

"Inmates can go back one of two ways ... treated, with a positive attitude and a job skill, or they can go back angry," Raemisch said. "Under truth in sentencing there was no incentive for inmates to improve themselves behind bars. What's being proposed is the start of a major movement toward sentencing reform in Wisconsin."

Positive reinforcement

Joe Gunter, a 40-year-old Madison resident, has spent nine of the last 18 years behind bars. His offense: driving under the influence. His drinking problem began when his stint in the Army ended in 1990. Over the next two years, he was caught and sentenced four times. His drinking has cost him everything, he says, including his marriage and the ability to see his three children. On July 15 he was released from a minimum security prison after serving a two-year sentence for his ninth drunken driving offense.

Employed in the construction business, Gunter says he would have liked to have taken a vocational training course in prison, but the programs were full. He did attend a month-long alcohol treatment program during his most recent prison term, the first substance abuse help he received after multiple incarcerations. The help he received worked. He has been sober ever since.

"I don't disagree with the law for putting me in prison," Gunter said. "But I would have benefited from treatment sooner."

He said limited space in programs and general overcrowding is making the prison environment more hostile. "Guys were testy," he said. "There were more fights this time around."

The governor's budget policy recommendations, if approved by the Legislature, aim to ease some of the strain on the system due to swelling prison ranks. The objective is to entice inmates like Gunter to improve themselves by rewarding good behavior with a shot at early release.

Specifically, non-violent felons could get out of prison early through a beefed-up version of the "earned release program." The program began in 2004, but was only available to an extremely narrow subset of inmates that included non-violent felony offenders who needed alcohol or drug treatment. For a number of reasons, what now is being proposed is drastically different.

First, all but the most violent felons could earn release not only by participating in drug or alcohol treatment but by taking advantage of educational, employment readiness and vocational training opportunities while in prison. Upon completing a program, the inmate would need approval from the Earned Release Review Commission, the new name for the Parole Commission, before being released into the community and onto extended supervision.

The state estimates roughly 1,000 felons would be immediately eligible for early release. Sex offenders and the top two categories of the most violent felons would never be eligible for early release.

Second, the proposals would be retroactive to Dec. 31, 1999, the date truth in sentencing took effect, making sentences handed down during the past 10 years up for change.

The retroactive nature is the most troubling part of what is being proposed, said Karen Rengert, president of the Wisconsin Victim/Witness Professionals Association. Although violent offenders would not be eligible for release, non-violent offenders, such as burglars, thieves or embezzlers, can make a victim feel as violated as does a person who suffers a physical attack, she said.

"Since 1999, we've been able to say to victims, if somebody is sentenced for five years, five years means five years," Rengert said. "We feel we are breaking our promises to all the victims we told this to over the years."

She said she is also concerned that victims will learn of an assailant's early release by running into them in public.

"I can appreciate the fact that we have too many people in prisons," Rengert said. "But this isn't the answer."

The governor's recommendations follow several bipartisan moves designed to address the state's escalating prison population and associated costs.

Last year, Doyle, along with Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, and then-Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, sought assistance from the Council of State Governments Justice Center to help develop a policy that would reduce spending on corrections and increase public safety.

In January, the Wisconsin Legislative Council established the Special Committee on Justice Reinvestment Oversight, a bipartisan advisory group, to assist the national organization in its data analyses and development of policy options.

The organization will present state officials with its policy recommendations at 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 22, in Room 412 East at the Capitol.

Criminally inclined?

In his final days as chancellor of UW-Madison, John Wiley let loose on a number of issues facing Wisconsin in a sharply worded piece in the September 2008 issue of Madison Magazine.

Wiley not only blasted some legislators for their hostile stance toward the University of Wisconsin System, he also asked why Minnesota, a state with a population similar to Wisconsin's, had roughly 14,000 fewer people behind bars, 8,757 compared to Wisconsin's 22,966 inmates.

"Are Wisconsin citizens that much more criminally inclined?" he asked.

Or is Minnesota more selective about who it sends to prison?

"Minnesota reserves its prison beds for the most violent offenders," said Shari Burt, communications director for the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

In 2007, the most recent year data was available, 16,168 Minnesota residents were convicted of felonies, according to Suzanne Alliegro, executive director of the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission. Of those, 3,760 went to prison. The remaining 12,408 offenders were punished through a three-tier system that includes time in a county jail, probation or a combination of jail and probation time.

Burt said the state pays a subsidy to counties for jail space and reimburses a percentage of the salaries of county-level probation officers.

This process, in contrast to Wisconsin's system, adds up to big savings. For the 2009 fiscal year, Minnesota's Department of Corrections' budget is $472 million. Wisconsin's is $1.2 billion.

Because sentencing guidelines were not changed in 1999 to accompany the new truth in sentencing policy, prison costs rose as the state's sentencing system skewed toward longer confinements.

Prior to truth in sentencing, someone convicted of a burglary, for example, could have been sentenced to 10 years in prison. After serving 25 percent of their time, they were eligible for parole. If denied parole, they had to be released for good behavior after serving 66 percent of their sentence, or just over six years in prison. Upon release, the burglar was put on parole. In other words, 10 years never meant 10 years behind bars. Ten years meant anywhere from two to six years behind bars.

Under truth in sentencing, if that same burglar was sentenced to 10 years in prison, there is no chance to get out early. The same crime now holds the offender in prison for four to eight years longer. At a price of $30,000 a year, the costs to incarcerate offenders for longer sentences compound quickly.

"The major failing of the truth-in-sentencing model is that by getting rid of parole you are asking judges to predict too far into the future on how suited someone will be for release," said Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard. "No matter how smart any given judge is, I don't think that's logical. If prison is about correction, then we should care how they are doing in prison. The parole system was able to capture that."

Lew, who now teaches online criminal justice classes for the University of Phoenix, said communities will be safer if inmates are no longer incarcerated without any incentives for self-improvement. Truth in sentencing, he says, has run its course.

"The policy failed," said Lew, "Besides costing a lot of money, I don't know what else it accomplished."
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/447944

Posted by lois at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)

TX: Expand program to divert mentally ill from prisons

Commentary
Expand program to divert mentally ill from prisons
By MARC A. LEVIN
April 22, 2009

Mental illness is a key factor in driving up correctional costs in Texas. There are 42,556 offenders with a mental health diagnosis in prison, 55,276 on probation and 21,345 on parole. Additionally, some 170,000 mentally ill inmates are admitted into Texas county jails every year.

Mentally ill inmates cost more to house and they stay longer. They are also more likely to recidivate.

Fortunately, there are policies that can reduce both the recidivism and cost associated with the mentally ill in the criminal justice system.

First, counties can divert mentally ill offenders from jail through programs that protect public safety while saving taxpayer dollars.

Bexar County has established a successful three-pronged jail diversion program that can serve as a model for other Texas counties.

First, it employs specially trained law enforcement personnel called Crisis Intervention Teams (CIT). These teams are often able to defuse incidents involving the mentally ill without an arrest. Participants in CIT programs spent on average two more months out of jail than non-diverted individuals, resulting in significant jail cost savings.

While the largest Texas metropolitan police departments have CIT personnel, smaller police departments can create a CIT program through cooperatives with other nearby departments.

With Bexar County’s second prong, arrested offenders are screened for mental illness and, if not a threat to public safety, released on a mental health bond or to a treatment center. Screenings are conducted at the Crisis Care Center, a 24-hour facility that provides significantly quicker service at a lower cost than the emergency room.

Once stabilized, offenders are released on a mental health bond. Because the wait for a trial date can be as long as six months, outpatient monitoring significantly reduces the utilization of county jail space.

Finally, Bexar County diverts such misdemeanants from jail through an initiative called MANOS, which includes intensive case management that consists of outpatient medication management and counseling.

Of the 371 offenders admitted to the MANOS Program, only 6.2 percent were re-incarcerated. This compares to a re-incarceration rate of 67 percent for mentally ill offenders without the intensive case management services offered by the jail diversion program.

Savings from Bexar County’s jail diversion program are estimated at between $3.8 million and $5 million per year.

The state can also take steps to address the impact of mental illness on the criminal justice system. About 2,500 probationers and 800 parolees participate in a state-funded initiative involving intensive case management and a smaller case load with a specially trained officer.

The three-year re-incarceration rate is 15.1 percent for participating probationers and 16 percent for parolees. In contrast, there is a 52 percent re-incarceration rate for mentally ill probationers and parolees who do not receive treatment. Increasing the number of probationers and parolees in this program could more than pay for itself through lower recidivism.

Another way to address mental illness in the criminal justice system is through mental health courts. Several Texas counties — including Bexar, El Paso, Tarrant and Dallas — have established mental health courts in which a judge orders the defendant to obtain treatment and supervises his progress. Harris County’s criminal district judges voted in January to designate a full-time felony mental health court. The court is not yet in operation.

A RAND Institute study found significant cost savings from mental health courts due to lower jail utilization.

Finally, defendants who are mentally incompetent to stand trial can be diverted from a state hospital. In 2008, the state launched outpatient competency restoration pilot programs.

Taking Travis, Tarrant, Bexar and Dallas counties together, some 427 offenders are projected to be served in 2009. The total cost of these four programs is $2.16 million compared with the state hospital cost of $14.95 million based on an average cost of $35,000 per offender.

Accordingly, it makes sense to expand these pilot programs to additional sites.

Mentally ill offenders will always pose a substantial challenge in the criminal justice system.

But through initiatives like these, we can achieve our goals of enhanced public safety and reduced costs to taxpayers.

Levin is director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a nonprofit, free-market research institute based in Austin.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6387282.html

Posted by lois at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)

After Losing Freedom, Some Immigrants Face Loss of Custody of Their Children

After Losing Freedom, Some Immigrants Face Loss of Custody of Their Children
By GINGER THOMPSON- NY Times
Published: April 22, 2009

CARTHAGE, Mo. — When immigration agents raided a poultry processing plant near here two years ago, they had no idea a little American boy named Carlos would be swept up in the operation.

One of the 136 illegal immigrants detained in the raid was Carlos’s mother, Encarnación Bail Romero, a Guatemalan. A year and a half after she went to jail, a county court terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to her child on grounds of abandonment. Carlos, now 2, was adopted by a local couple.

In his decree, Judge David C. Dally of Circuit Court in Jasper County said the couple made a comfortable living, had rearranged their lives and work schedules to provide Carlos a stable home, and had support from their extended family. By contrast, Judge Dally said, Ms. Bail had little to offer.

“The only certainties in the biological mother’s future,” he wrote, “is that she will remain incarcerated until next year, and that she will be deported thereafter.”

It is unclear how many children share Carlos’s predicament. But lawyers and advocates for immigrants say that cases like his are popping up across the country as crackdowns against illegal immigrants thrust local courts into transnational custody battles and leave thousands of children in limbo.

“The struggle in these cases is there’s no winner,” said Christopher Huck, an immigration lawyer in Washington State.

He said that in many cases, what state courts want to do “conflicts with what federal immigration agencies are supposed to do.”

“Then things spiral out of control,” Mr. Huck added, “and it ends up in these real unfortunate situations.”

Next month, the Nebraska Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal by Maria Luis, a Guatemalan whose rights to her American-born son and daughter were terminated after she was detained in April 2005 on charges of falsely identifying herself to a police officer. She was later deported.

And in South Carolina, a Circuit Court judge has been working with officials in Guatemala to find a way to send the baby girl of a Guatemalan couple, Martin de Leon Perez and his wife, Lucia, detained on charges of drinking in public, to relatives in their country so the couple does not lose custody before their expected deportation.

Patricia Ravenhorst, a South Carolina lawyer who handles immigration cases, said she had tried “to get our judges not to be intimidated by the notion of crossing an international border.”

“I’ve asked them, ‘What would we do if the child had relatives in New Jersey?’ ” Ms. Ravenhorst said. “We’d coordinate with the State of New Jersey. So why can’t we do the same for a child with relatives in the highlands of Guatemala?”

Dora Schriro, an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said the agency was looking for ways to deal with family separations as it prepared new immigration enforcement guidelines. In visits to detention centers across the country, Ms. Schriro said, she had heard accounts of parents losing contact or custody of their children.

Child welfare laws differ from state to state. In the Missouri case, Carlos’s adoptive parents were awarded custody last year by Judge Dally after they privately petitioned the court and he terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to Carlos.

In February, immigration authorities suspended Ms. Bail’s deportation order so she could file suit to recover custody. Ms. Bail’s lawyer, John de Leon, of Miami, said his client had not been informed about the adoption proceedings in her native Spanish, and had no real legal representation until it was too late.

The lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, Joseph L. Hensley, said his clients had waited more than a year for Ms. Bail to demonstrate her commitment to Carlos, but the judge found that she had made no attempt to contact the baby or send financial support for him while she was incarcerated. The couple asked not to be named to protect Carlos’s privacy.

Ms. Bail came to the United States in 2005, and Carlos was born a year later. In May 2007, she was detained in a raid on George’s Processing plant in Butterfield, near Carthage in southwestern Missouri.

Immigration authorities quickly released several workers who had small children. But authorities said Ms. Bail was ineligible to be freed because she was charged with using false identification. Such charges were part of a crackdown by the Bush administration, which punished illegal immigrants by forcing them to serve out sentences before being deported.

When Ms. Bail went to jail, Carlos, then 6 months old, was sent to stay with two aunts who remembered him as having a voracious appetite and crying constantly. But they also said he had a severe rash and had not received all of his vaccinations.

The women — each with three children of their own, no legal status, tiny apartments and little money — said the baby was too much to handle. So when a local teachers’ aide offered to find someone to take care of Carlos, the women agreed.

Then in September 2007, Ms. Bail said, the aide visited her in jail to say that an American couple was interested in adopting her son. The couple had land and a beautiful house, Ms. Bail recalled being told, and had become very fond of Carlos.

“My parents were poor, and they never gave me to anyone,” Ms. Bail recalled. “I was not going to give my son to anyone either.”

An adoption petition arrived at the jail a few weeks later. Ms. Bail, who cannot read Spanish, much less English, said she had a cellmate from Mexico translate. With the help of a guard and an English-speaking Guatemalan visitor, Ms. Bail wrote a response to the court.

“I do not want my son to be adopted by anyone,” she scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper on Oct. 28, 2007. “I would prefer that he be placed in foster care until I am not in jail any longer. I would like to have visitation with my son.”

For the next 10 months, she said, she had no communication with the court. During that time, Judge Dally appointed a lawyer for Ms. Bail, but later removed him from the case after he pleaded guilty to charges of domestic violence.

Mr. Hensley, the lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, said he had sent a letter to Ms. Bail to tell her that his clients were caring for her son, as did the court, but both letters were returned unopened. “We afforded her more due process than most people get who speak English,” Mr. Hensley said.

Ms. Bail said she had asked the public defender who was representing her in the identity theft case to help her determine Carlos’s whereabouts, but the lawyer told her she handled only criminal matters. “I went to court six times, and six times I asked for help to find my son,” she said. “But no one helped me.”

Ms. Bail got a Spanish-speaking lawyer, Aldo Dominguez, to represent her in the custody case only last June. By the time he reached her two months later — she had been transferred to a prison in West Virginia — it was too late to make her case to Judge Dally, Mr. Dominguez said.

“Her lifestyle, that of smuggling herself into the country illegally and committing crimes in this country, is not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child,” the judge wrote in his decision. “A child cannot be educated in this way, always in hiding or on the run.”

Next Article in US (1 of 32) » A version of this article appeared in print on April 23, 2009, on page A15 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/23children.html?pagewanted=all

Posted by lois at 02:05 PM | Comments (0)

Supreme Court Cuts Back Officers’ Searches of Vehicles

Supreme Court Cuts Back Officers’ Searches of Vehicles
By ADAM LIPTAK- NY Times
Published: April 21, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday significantly cut back the ability of the police to search the cars of people they arrest.

Police officers have for a generation understood themselves to be free to search vehicles based on nothing more than the fact that they had just arrested an occupant. That principle, Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged in his majority opinion, “has been widely taught in police academies” and “law enforcement officers have relied on the rule in conducting vehicle searches during the past 28 years.”

The majority replaced that bright-line rule with a more nuanced one, and law enforcement officials greeted it with dismay. “It’s just terrible,” William J. Johnson, the executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said of the decision. “It’s certainly going to result in less drug and weapons cases being made.”

In a dissent, four justices said the majority had effectively overruled an important and straightforward Fourth Amendment precedent established by the court in a 1981 decision, New York v. Belton.

Justice Stevens denied that. The precedent of Belton had often been applied too broadly, he said. Vehicle searches should be allowed only in two situations, he wrote: when the person being arrested is close enough to the car to reach in, possibly to grab a weapon or tamper with evidence; or when the arresting officer reasonably believes that the car contains evidence pertinent to the very crime that prompted the arrest.

In the case decided Tuesday, Rodney J. Gant, an Arizona man, was arrested on an outstanding warrant for driving with a suspended license. He was handcuffed in the back of a patrol car while his car was searched.

The police found cocaine and a gun, and Mr. Gant was convicted on drug charges and sentenced to three years. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the search of Mr. Gant’s car had violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and suppressed the evidence against him. The United States Supreme Court affirmed that decision on Tuesday.

Justice Stevens, joined by the unusual alliance of Justices Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said the court had agreed to hear the case because the conventional view of the Belton decision had been widely criticized. “The chorus that has called for us to revisit Belton,” Justice Stevens wrote, “includes courts, scholars and members of this court who have questioned that decision’s clarity and fidelity to Fourth Amendment principles.”

Police officers and lower courts, Justice Stevens wrote, had failed to take adequate account of the two rationales that animated Belton: protecting the safety of arresting officers and safeguarding evidence of crimes. Those rationales only make sense, he said, “when the arrestee is unsecured and within reaching distance” of the car.

At the same time, the majority announced a new justification for a search in connection with an arrest, one drawing on a 2004 concurrence questioning Belton from Justice Scalia. Searches of vehicles are permissible, Justice Stevens said, “when it is reasonable to believe evidence relevant to the crime of arrest might be found in the vehicle.”

As a practical matter, that means many arrests for traffic offenses will not by themselves allow police officers to search vehicles. Arrests for other kinds of crimes, though, may well supply a basis for a search.

The decision, Arizona v. Gant, No. 07-542, was the last to be issued from among the cases the court heard in its October sitting, and it was marked by an uneasy compromise that probably explains the delay.

Justice Scalia said he would have overruled Belton outright and substituted a rule that allowed searches of vehicles in connection with arrests only where the search seeks evidence of the crime for which the arrest was made or another one for which there is probable cause. He added that he joined the majority opinion to avoid a 4-1-4 decision “that leaves the governing rule uncertain.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined in full by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and for the most part by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, said the broad Belton rule was sensible and easy to apply.

On the other hand, the new rule allowing searches for evidence of the crime that prompted the arrest, Justice Alito said, “is virtually certain to confuse law enforcement officers and judges for some time to come.”

And the part of the majority opinion allowing searches only when the person arrested can reach the car “may endanger arresting officers,” Justice Alito wrote.

Mr. Johnson of the police association explained the problem. “The case creates a temptation,” he said, “for police to leave the occupant of a vehicle unsecured in the belief that they are now operating within the Fourth Amendment in terms of being able to search the vehicle.”

Though Justice Stevens did not concede that Tuesday’s decision overruled Belton, he did say that fidelity to precedent was no reason to allow constitutional violations to continue.

“Countless individuals guilty of nothing more serious that a traffic violation,” he wrote, “have had their constitutional right to the security of their private effects violated” by the broad rule struck down on Tuesday.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 22, 2009, on page A12 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/22scotus.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=U.S.%20Supreme%20Court&st=cse

Posted by lois at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)

Lauderdale County Mississippi can now use a portion of the money collected from inmate telephone service for the local jail ministry program.

Lauderdale County Mississippi can now use a portion of the money collected from inmate telephone service for the local jail ministry program.
April 22, 2009

Gov. Haley Barbour signed a bill earlier this month that authorized use of the money. The bill took effect when Barbour signed it.
Lauderdale County’s Good News Jail and Prison Ministry provides volunteers and a full time chaplain to participate in non-denominational worship with inmates. It has been funded by local donations. The bill allows the county to use up to $25,000 from the inmate phone service for the jail ministry.
From the Corrections Reporter

Posted by lois at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

April 22, 2009

Western MA: Rep. Neal's Opposition to Needle Exchange Continues including no support for lifting HR 179 lifting bad on suport for federal needle exchange funds

New Hope for Needle Exchange
A new bill may lift a 1988 ban on using federal funds to support needle exchange programs.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
By Maureen Turner
Valley Advocate

Tim Purington got some bad news last week: the needle exchange program he runs for Tapestry Health in Northampton saw its state funding cut by $12,500 for the remainder of the fiscal year. And given the sorry state of the commonwealth's finances, he wouldn't be surprised to see more cuts come next year.

The program—which allows IV-drug users to trade used syringes for clean ones, with the goal of stemming the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other blood-borne diseases by users sharing needles—gets all of its $200,000 annual budget from state funds, said Purington, the program director. Given the dramatic fluctuations that can take place in the state budget from one year to the next, that means the needle exchange program—and countless other state-funded projects—live with a degree of uncertainty, never sure what their budgets will look like in the future.

That could change, though, if a bill now sitting in Congress becomes law. The bill—HR 179, the Community AIDS and Hepatitis Prevention Act—would lift a 1988 ban on using federal funds to support needle exchange programs like Northampton's. "One of the nice things about federal funding is it's much more stable," said Purington, noting that federal funds tend to come in multi-year grants. "You don't have all the peaks and valleys you do in state funding."

The bill, which was introduced by U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), is currently before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (whose members include Democrats Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Peter Welch of Vermont). The bill already has 62 co-sponsors, all Democrats, including Massachusetts Reps. John Olver, James McGovern, Barney Frank, William Delahunt and Michael Capuano.

Conspicuous by his absence from that list is Rep. Richard Neal, whose district includes Northampton. (While state law allows up to 10 programs in Massachusetts, only four communities—Boston, Cambridge, Provincetown, in addition to Northampton—have them. According to the Harm Reduction Coalition, a national advocacy group with offices in New York and California, there are now almost 200 exchange programs in 38 states, Puerto Rico and Washington. D.C.)

The Harm Reduction Coalition is urging constituents to contact Neal's district office, at 413-785-0325, to ask him to sign on as a co-sponsor. "His office could use some calls and educating—why has he not taken a stand to remove the barrier to [these] programs being allowed to receive funding from the largest source of HIV prevention money in the U.S.?" the group wrote in an email to supporters. According to the HRC, one-third of Americans with HIV got it through contaminated needles. Each year, HRC says, 8,000 more people contract HIV that way, and 15,000 people contact hepatitis C through shared needles.

Neal wasn't available for comment at deadline.

There's hope in the field that the bill will pass, Purington said. "I know people are pretty optimistic this year, based on the fact that the president has signaled he supports needle exchange programs," he said.

While federal funding would provide a significant boost to needle exchange programs, it wouldn't do anything to create new programs, Purington noted. Tapestry could apply for federal funds for its Northampton program, "but it wouldn't magically allow us to implement [exchanges] in Springfield and Holyoke," he said. "We would love to do that."

By state law, a needle exchange program can only be established with local approval. That local approval hasn't come in Springfield, Holyoke and other cities with high rates of both drug use and HIV. Purington, who serves as a city councilor in Holyoke, said "there's no political will" in his city to allow a program. In Springfield, meanwhile, the City Council has consistently opposed needle exchange—although, Purington noted, when the Council adds ward representatives this fall, that could change.
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=9580

Posted by lois at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2009

Philadelphia: Cost of prisons: it's criminal

Cost of prisons: it's criminal
Philadelphia Daily News
April 20, 2009

OUR APPROACH TO CRIMINAL justice has become so criminally dysfunctional that it may no longer shock to learn that in Philadelphia, we spend twice as much housing each prisoner as we do educating each child.

The city spends roughly $100 a day on each prisoner (see how we get to that figure on Page 21) and the total budget is a whopping $289 million. The city puts more people in prison than any other major muncipality in the nation.

And here's the real killer: Despite the fact that every year we spend more money and lock up more people - and for longer periods of time - we are no less beleaguered by crime than ever.

It's time to acknowledge that putting people away has less and less connection with controlling crime.

While the comparison to school spending may not be a shock, there are plenty of shocks for those bothering to give even a cursory look to our criminal-justice problem, both nationally and locally. For example, a Pew Center on the States released a report last month which piggy-backed on its earlier finding that one in every 100 adults was behind bars.

The new report says that in the United States, one adult out of 31 is in the correctional system - that means either in prison, or on parole, or probation. That is a shocking 7.3 million adults - more than the populations of Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego and Dallas combined.

It's obvious that the sentencing, release and other criminal-justice policies have been a boon to the prison industry, but have done nothing to reduce the crime rate. (We can't imagine any other government program that has failed so absymally would be allowed, year after year, to expand its budget.)

And prisons and corrections have been devastating to budgets. Costs are rising faster for prisons than for any other government service except Medicaid. And health care is a huge factor in these costs, both physical and mental. In fact, four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in hospitals.

The national average for spending per inmate is $79; Philadelphia's higher rate is driven in part by overcrowding. Former Prison Commissioner Leon King says the city's prison population is 67 percent past capacity; that requires us to ship inmates to other facilities and pay for the privilege. In the past five years, spending for that has tripled. Meanwhile, spending on probation and parole, like managing offenders in the community, remains a fraction of prison costs; the national average is $4 a day. We should think of that next time we are outraged that a parolee kills a police officer. The solution is not just keeping everyone behind bars forever; also at issue is how little we spend to make sure parole or probation works.

Today, City Council is holding budget hearings on public safety. These are likely to be routine airing of budgets, and requests for more money. But we urge Council and the mayor to stop spending and start reforming.

It's worth taking a deeper look at reforms that the city could insitute to drive down populations and costs. Such an effort would dovetail with a national effort recently announced by Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. A congressional task force will study the problem of why we have one-fifth of the world's population and 25 percent of its prisoners, and recommended needed reforms. The bad news: it will take two years. Meanwhile, since we're in the middle of a race for the city's next district attorney, maybe it's also time for at least one candidate to tackle this issue head-on.
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/20090420_Cost_of_prisons__it_s_criminal.html

Posted by lois at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)

N.J. prisons confiscate collection of prisoner poems and stories

Published in the Millburn NJ Item weekly paper
Inmates' creative voices silenced
(by Jessica Maxwell - April 29, 2009)

When township resident and author Kal Wagenheim published a book of creative works written by prisoners at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, his goal of having the inmates see their writing published was put on hold when he learned the book was banned from the prison. "Inside/Out: Voices From New Jersey State Prison," self-published by Wagenheim earlier this year, is a collection of poems, short stories and essays written by 43 inmates at the prison. The book came as a result of the monthly creative writing course Wagenheim had been teaching to the inmates for about six years through the Hispanic Americans for Progress or HAP program.

Wagenheim received an e-mail from the Department of Corrections ombudsman Dan DiBenedetti which stated that the book references illegal activities such as gang activity, drug use, assaultive behavior and murder.

"I was told that it contained descriptions of criminal offenses and that it wouldn’t be allowed in the prison," said Wagenheim. "I don’t believe there is anything harmful in there. Ninety percent of their expressions are of sadness and regret for what they have done."

The final decision regarding the banning will be made by Corrections Commissioner George Hayman. Wagenheim spoke to Hayman last week and was told the issue is under review but there is no time frame for when a decision will be made.

Wagenheim recently learned that several transferred inmates were allowed to receive copies of the book.

"There were several prisoners that I taught at the New Jersey State Prison that were transferred to other prisons, including the one in Rahway. I just got word that those prisoners in Rahway received copies of the book," said Wagenheim. "I am puzzled and I am trying to figure it all out."

The book was published as a tribute to the writers and Wagenheim is saddened that the inmates might never get a chance to see the finished product.

"Some of the Rahway prisoners who were able to read the book sent me glowing letters. They are ecstatic over seeing their work in print," said Wagenheim.

Wagenheim has said the most telling endorsement he received about the book came from Theo Bensen, a research program specialist at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in Sacramento, Ca. Wagenheim published Bensen’s comments in the "Praise from readers" section in his book.

"It is hard to believe that people in such dire circumstances can create such lovely work," Bensen wrote. "I must also believe that this was an excellent form of anger management for the authors; having the chance to pour their hearts out in a positive way. This program might well be transplanted to other institutions."

Still upset over the canceling of his creative writing class in 2006, Wagenheim hopes prison officials will consider reinstating his class and others that were disbanded. According to Wagenheim, the HAP program and subsequently his creative writing course were canceled after prison officials found cell phones and several weapons in the prison.

"Just because one or two people may have taken part in something illegal, does that mean you shut down the entire educational program?" said Wagenheim. "I think it’s really unwise and I feel sad for the inmates. There have been studies done that show the more education we have in the prisons the less chance there will be repeat offenses. If you train people in a positive way the hope is that they will go out into the world, get jobs, support their families and pay their taxes. So it’s good for the inmates and it’s good for you and me, the taxpayers."
***
Kal W. comment: This article was published before we learned that the books in Rahway prison were
confiscated also. I have since contacted The Item, and other newspapers, to see if they will follow up
on the current negative development.

----------------------------------------------------
N.J. prisons confiscate collection of prisoner poems and stories
April 20, 2009 21:02PM
by Chris Megerian/Statehouse Bureau

In one New Jersey prison, a published collection of poems and prose penned by prisoners is in a lockup of its own while corrections authorities decide whether it is inflammatory.

Author Kal Wagenheim, who taught creative writing to some of the state's most dangerous inmates for six years, collected his students' poems, short stories and essays into a soft-covered book that he published earlier this year. But when he tried to send copies of the book into the prison, a mailroom supervisor confiscated them because parts were considered inflammatory, Department of Corrections spokesman Matt Schuman said.
"When you're dealing with prisons, safety and security are paramount," Schuman said.

A final decision on the collection, "Inside/Out: Voices From New Jersey State Prison," will be made by Corrections Commissioner George W. Hayman. The commissioner today said he has no timetable and would meet with Wagenheim after he makes his decision.

Wagenheim said he was angry inmates would not be able to see the writing they composed behind bars.

"I think it's ridiculous," said Wagenheim, 74, of Millburn. "What harm could there be in a book like that?"

In an e-mail sent to Wagenheim last Monday, Department of Corrections ombudsman Dan DiBenedetti said some of the topics were inappropriate.

"The book contains references to illegal activities such as gang activity, drug use, assaultive behavior and murder," he wrote.

The 187-page book features the work of 43 inmates, at least three-quarters convicted of murder or manslaughter and all housed at the maximum-security prison. The collection contains a mix of fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

Several of the writers express regret for their criminal actions in essays with titles like "School of Hard Knocks" and "Change is Possible."

"I was 16 when I was arrested, and in prison by the age of 17," wrote Luis Beltran, who was sentenced to at least 60 years for murder. "It's like I also died that day and I am being kept alive to regret it every hour of every day."

Other writers reflected on the dangers of growing up on the street.

"Bullets poppin' out of guns/Caskets droppin' filled with sons/who look like each other./Brothers from another mother/who cried tears ... living in fear," wrote Dudley Rue, also in prison for murder.

Wagenheim, who wrote biographies of baseball legends Babe Ruth and Roberto Clemente and also taught several courses at Columbia University, was brought in to teach creative writing by Hispanic Americans for Progress, a nonprofit organization founded by inmates at New Jersey State Prison, which houses about 1,800 inmates.

Prison officials disbanded Hispanic Americans for Progress and canceled Wagenheim's once-a-month class in 2006 after a loaded handgun and three knives were found in the prison. Hector Sanabria, a Wagenheim student who is serving a 90-year sentence for three murders, was accused of helping smuggle the weapons.

A March 2008 appellate court decision upholding the disciplinary charges against Sanabria, 48, said he used Hispanic Americans as cover to avoid being caught smuggling.

Two of Sanabria's pieces are included in Wagenheim's book. In one essay, "The Consequences of Not Caring," he reflects on the decisions that landed him in prison and the pain of not being able to see his family.

"I am a man doing 90 years to life and I understand the meaning of life more now than ever," he wrote. "I miss talking to my mother and being around my brothers and sisters. I feel their love and at the same time feel pain, because I am unable to share my love with them."

Wagenheim said the canceling of the class spurred his decision to publish the book.

"I felt a sort of a duty to these men that their work would be preserved," he said.

Schuman, who declined to comment on the smuggling case, said the prison still has a variety of educational and vocational programs.

Jim Gondles, executive director of the American Correctional Association, said prison administrators generally try to keep out books that are considered harmful.

"It's not unusual for them to prevent stories and books that have to do with crime and violence from the prison," he said. "(Inmates) don't have the constitutional right to get anything and everything they want."

Corrections spokeswoman Danielle Hunter said inmates could use "inappropriate" writing to plan crimes or encourage violent activity.

"Anything is possible," she said. "Our inmates are very creative."

Wagenheim said he hopes the collection, published with the help of a do-it-yourself service based in California, presents a more nuanced look at New Jersey's inmate population.

"The human condition is a very complex one," he said. "There's a lot of people who have done some very bad things in life, but they're also capable of doing some good things."
From an entry on the Writing from Inside pages of the Real Cost of Prisons Project:

Inside Out: Voices from New Jersey State Prison
Poems, stories, memoirs, and commentaries by forty-three inmates. This is a 20-page sampler assembled by Kal Wagenheim, who for 5 years directed a creative writing workshop at the NJ State Prison in Trenton NJ. It is a small part of a 70,000 word book with inmates' poems, stories, essays. Some of the poems are also available online at http://www.jerseyworks.com/trentonstate.html. The 20 page sampler can be found at:
http://realcostofprisons.org/materials/voices-trenton.doc

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/nj_prisons_confiscate_collecti.html

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

April 20, 2009

MN: Senate bill aims to cut prison sentences to save state funds

Senate bill aims to cut prison sentences to save state funds
by Tom Scheck, Minnesota Public Radio
April 16, 2009

A bill introduced in the Minnesota Senate this week would cut prison sentences across the board and lower penalties for specific crimes. The bill's author said she's proposing the changes to help balance the state's budget. But some public safety advocates say the changes go too far and the savings could be found elsewhere.

St. Paul, Minn. — The bill proposed by DFL Senator Linda Higgins would cut $78 million from the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Corrections. The bulk of the cuts, $66 million, would come from the Corrections Department.

Because most of the department's expenses come from housing inmates, Higgins said the only way to save money is by reducing the number of inmates walking into prisons and the amount of time they stay there. Her plan accomplishes that by eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for some offenses.

"In the last 10 or 15 years, legislators have imposed all of these mandatory minimums and taken away any discretion that judges have on certain things," Higgins said. "And all of the research that's been going around the country on prison systems have found that it has really been a driver in an explosion of costs in a prison system."

Higgins wants to repeal required minimum sentences for felony drunk drivers, for some drug offenses and for predatory offenders who fail to register with authorities. She said judges should decide the length of sentences.

"They're the ones who know the circumstances. They know the person," Higgins said. "They're more intimately involved in a case rather than the those of us who sit this building and decide that we should be deciding a certain person's sentences. It's really not an appropriate thing for us to be doing. I think it should be people in that other branch of government."

The bill also reduces the length of time all inmates would serve in prison. Currently, offenders have to serve at least two-thirds of their sentence in prison or jail. The bill would shorten it to 60 percent. In other words, a person with a thirty year sentence would see their length of time in prison reduced from twenty years to eighteen years. Higgins said lawmakers have to make changes in light of a tough budget deficit.

That doesn't appease county attorneys who say the bill takes a step backward.

"In my experience going back to the '80s, I've never seen a rush at the last moment to attempt to save lots of money by making radical changes to the criminal justice system," said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.

Freeman said eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and prison time is a mistake. Even though the bill would apply only to inmates who are sentenced after July 1, Freeman said nearly every inmate already in prison would apply for the reduction. He said courts would force the state to make the change retroactive, meaning further reductions for inmates.

"It doesn't save any money," he said. "By the time we're done in the next two or three years litigating everyone's sentence again, it's going to be very expensive and there's no money in this bill for it."

Freeman said there are other ways for the state to save money. Among his suggestions is a study commission to determine which sentences should be reduced or extended. An official with the Minnesota County Attorneys Association said his organization has long supported a hike in the liquor tax to pay for public safety and corrections programs.

The Senate bill has other critics. Officials with Mothers Against Drunk Driving said repealing the mandatory minimum for felony DWIs will make the roads less safe. Lynn Goughler, with MADD Minnesota, said the felony DWI laws are working.

"I think that the laws in Minnesota for DWI have to be looked at very carefully and we can't just be changing DWI laws for the convenience of a state budget," Goughler said.

Goughler said she believes the state could save money by passing a law that requires drunk drivers to install a system that checks their blood alcohol level before they can start their cars. The engine won't start if the driver has been drinking.

The Public Safety Finance Committee debated and approved the bill on a divided voice vote. A full Senate vote is expected early next week. A companion bill in the Minnesota House cuts less to Corrections and Public Safety. It would rely on a cut in the daily amount spent on prisoners, freeze nonessential hiring and reduce sentences for low level drug offenses.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/04/15/prisonsentences_bill/

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

Florida lawmakers weigh overhauling system for mentally ill prionsers

THE LEGISLATURE
Florida lawmakers weigh overhauling system for mentally ill criminals
Florida lawmakers, pushed by a Miami judge, are considering an overhaul of the system for handling mentally ill criminals.
BY SHANNON COLAVECCHIO
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE -- The current system for dealing with mentally ill people who commit crimes is, by all accounts, broken. And expensive: It costs Florida taxpayers tens of millions of dollars every year.

People with schizophrenia or other mental illnesses who get arrested are sent to expensive mental health facilities, where they're stabilized for the sole purpose of appearing in court. Most get released on time served, only to get sick again for lack of medication and treatment. They commit more crimes and the process starts all over.

Florida spends $140,000 apiece for 1,700 of these mental health beds, for a total of $250 million every year. That represents a third of all mental health funding in Florida.

''It's the worst money we spend,'' Department of Children & Families Secretary George Sheldon said.

Miami-Dade Judge Steven Leifman, tapped by the Florida Supreme Court to help reduce the number of mentally ill in Florida's corrections system, calls it ``the insanity of all insanities.''

SAVING MONEY

Now, nearly three years after Pinellas-Pasco Public Defender Bob Dillinger sued DCF over its lack of mental health beds for criminals, the Legislature is close to overhauling Florida's treatment of the mentally ill. If the proposed legislation becomes law, Florida would become the first state to take such an innovative approach, Leifman said.

And in a recession year when saving money is at the top of lawmakers' priority list, the changes could save the state tens of millions in taxpayer dollars.

''This will save us money, and it will help these people,'' bill sponsor Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said. ``Because they're not going to get the services they need sitting in the county jail.''

The Department of Corrections, DCF and the Agency for Health Care Administration all support the proposal (HB7103, SB2018), which would treat and rehabilitate some of Florida's mentally ill in more comprehensive but affordable community facilities.

AHCA and DCF would develop a plan for long-term services for the mentally ill who are at risk of ending up in the corrections system. A mentally ill inmate would first go to a locked facility for stabilization, then to a step-down facility that provides job skill training, drug and psychological treatment, and a case manager.

Leifman said the treatment would cost just $25,000 per patient. But it would cost Florida less than that because the bill allows the state to apply for Medicaid money to pay for about two-thirds of the costs, which now have to be covered by general revenue.

NEEDED TREATMENT

The changes also would help some 4,000 or so people with mental illnesses who are sentenced to Florida's prisons each year. About half of those prisoners reoffend after they're released, so the new system would provide the treatment they need to be healthy, functioning citizens.

The Pinellas-Pasco Circuit has already changed the way it deals with the mentally ill, and Sheldon considers the success there a model for what the proposed statewide overhaul can achieve.

Dillinger a couple of years ago used $80,000 from the DCF to expand its jail diversion program for the mentally ill. Now in its fifth year, the program has diverted over 2,000 people from county jails into community facilities that provide housing, transportation, job transportation and therapy. The sites cost $800 a month per person, compared to $3,000 a month to house them in the jail, Dillinger said.

The proposed legislation would create three pilot sites, including one in South Florida and one in Central Florida, to serve up to 1,000 people in ways similar to what Dillinger's program does.

''If you divert 1,000 people this year, you're talking about saving tens of millions of dollars,'' Leifman said. ``This is serious bucks. And you're going to improve public safety because these people are much less likely to reoffend.''

The legislation, sponsored by Fasano and Rep. William Snyder, is based on recommendations issued by the Florida Supreme Court in a 2007 report commissioned after Dillinger sued then-DCF Secretary Lucy Hadi for not moving mentally ill jail inmates to hospitals.

''This is the most important mental health bill since the Baker Act in the 1970s,'' assistant DCF secretary Col. Bill James said. ``We are talking about changing the system.''

The proposal is making its way through the House and Senate, but even supportive lawmakers have expressed concern over costs of the pilot sites. Sheldon said the savings are worth any investment. And he said he can gradually get the pilots going by using money that would have been budgeted for new mental health beds.

''Some say, don't do something innovative in a tight budget year,'' Sheldon said. ``I think this is the perfect time. Otherwise, this population is going to bust the bank.''
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/1007813.html

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

CO: Governor Runs From Issue He Ran On

Greene: Ritter runs from issue he ran on
By Susan Greene
Denver Post Columnist
04/19/2009

You should be scared, very scared.

That's what DAs hope as the legislature contemplates a bill to reform sentencing laws.

Notably silent, at least publicly, is Gov. Bill Ritter, who served 12 years as Denver's chief prosecutor yet ran on a promise to fix what's broken in a state that has built nearly a prison a year.

Behind the scenes, he's pushing lawmakers to abandon reform to one of his many commissions and urging his appointees to stall even further.

Ritter no doubt is trying, at least in his first term, to avoid a Willie Horton scenario or appearing soft on crime. But some say the man once credited as less of a demagogue than most DAs has hoodwinked voters into expecting reforms.

"For those of us who voted for Bill Ritter, it's disheartening that years into his term we've not begun to take a hard look at sentencing and the changes we need," says Maureen Cain of the Criminal Defense Bar.

"He's a problem identifier, not a problem solver," adds state Public Defender Doug Wilson.

If there was ever a time to reform our Reagan-era sentencing laws, this is it.

Facing the biggest shortfall in a generation, Colorado spends $755 million — 8.8 percent — of our budget on corrections, more than we fund for higher ed. Penal programs will get a $22 million increase while state workers face furloughs.

That money pays for the one in 29 adults here under correctional control, says the Pew Center. And for every dollar we spend on prisons, we pay only 15 cents helping parolees and probationers disentangle from the system.

Our policies aren't working. Reformers argue for investing in the community corrections system to reduce recidivism among lower-risk inmates and ultimately lower the budget.

"We cannot build our way to public safety," Pew reports.

Reform isn't partisan.

Faced with his own budget woes, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is cutting prison terms in California. Red states like Texas are following suit. Even the Independence Institute, the free-market think tank led by Jon Caldara, embraces changes.

Ritter seemed on board as a candidate. And shortly after taking office, he created the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice to tackle the issue.

But doubts set in when he failed to fund the board or hire a director. They grew when he nixed bills to give a modicum of mercy to kids behind bars.

This year, his public-safety chief told commissioners to hold off on sentencing reform. Frustrated, Sen. John Morse and Rep. Claire Levy nevertheless proposed a bill.

The DA's Council is fighting rabidly, warning that wife beaters and sex offenders would be let loose. They and Ritter want to deflect the issue to the commission despite Ritter's lack of funding, direction or urgency.

"The task is daunting and cannot be done quickly. . .," he wrote two commissioners. "Like any policymaker, I cannot responsibly promise uncritical endorsement of an entire set of recommendations without my own careful consideration."

That's political-speak for "You guys deal with this, s-l-o-w-l-y. And, by the way, don't count on my support."

Ritter has a rep for deferring tough policy calls to committees, then taking little action.

It's one thing for a DA with no background in natural resources to count on 19 months of work by oil and gas commissioners to rewrite drilling rules. But it's another for a man who spent his career in criminal justice to punt on his own issues.

Ritter understands sentencing and well knows the need for reform. In these lean times, we hardly need more fear-mongering and stall tactics to embrace its complexities.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_12174697

Posted by lois at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

Three book reviews: Abolishing The Prison Industrial Complex and Freeing All Political Prisoners

Abolishing The Prison Industrial Complex and Freeing All Political Prisoners
Sunday, April 19 2009
By Hans Bennett
Prisons Above all, these three highly-recommended books (available online at www.akpress.org) argue that prison-related issues are inseparable from racism, classism, sexism, and all oppression, so the more we know about prisons, the better informed multi-issue activist strategies will be. They conclude that in working to abolish all oppression, we must also work to abolish the PIC and free all political prisoners.
Abolishing The Prison Industrial Complex and Freeing All Political Prisoners
A Book review of:

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, edited by Lois Ahrens, PM Press, 2008.

Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners, edited by Matt Meyer, PM Press, 2008.

Abolition Now! Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against The Prison Industrial Complex, edited by the CR10 Publications Collective, AK Press, 2008.

2008 marked the ten-year anniversaries of both the prison abolitionist Critical Resistance (CR) conference in Oakland, CA that coined the phrase "prison industrial complex" (PIC) and the National Jericho Movement’s march in Washington DC that demanded the release of all US political prisoners and prisoners of war. To commemorate the 1998 events, the CR10 conference was held in Oakland in September, and Jericho organized a march to the United Nations in October.

These two important events in 1998 successfully re-energized the prison-activist and political prisoner support movements rooted in the 1960s and 1970s. However, while recognizing this accomplishment, three new books document how the prison industrial complex has actually grown bigger and stronger since 1998, while the post-911 climate has further escalated political repression. While recognizing this frustrating reality, these new books look honestly at both the accomplishments and shortcomings of the last ten years.

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix

The new book The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, reprints three comic books published as part of the Real Costs of Prisons Project (RCPP), which began in 2000. So far, 125,000 comic books have been printed, with over 100,000 distributed for free to community groups and college classes alike. Featuring artwork by Kevin Pyle, Sabrina Jones and Susan Willmarth, all three comic books can be freely downloaded at www.realcostofprisons.org.

Prison abolitionists Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore write in the book’s introduction that the RCPP’s value "has been to show us how the system of mass incarceration permeates our lives, who is paying the costs of that system and the many ways the system is vulnerable to people who put their thought and effort into organizing to shrink it." Significantly, the RCPP’s comics "demonstrate that the ideas we need to change the world can be explained simply enough and packaged attractively enough to be used by all kinds of readers." Prisoners and their families can "understand material usually circulated only among academics and those who focus on policy."

Editor Lois Ahrens writes that "a central goal of the comic books is to politicize, not pathologize." She argues that the "deregulation and globalization" of the last 30 years has "resulted in impoverishing urban economies, limiting opportunities for meaningful work and slashing funding for quality education, marginalizing the poor, and creating more inequality. The comic books place individual experience in this context and challenge a central message of neo-liberal ideology: the myth that people can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. In this paradigm, racism, sexism, classism, and economic inequality are not part of the picture. Most people now believe that change happens through personal transformation rather than political struggle and change."

The recent growth of the PIC and mass incarceration is staggering. Ahrens writes that "every year from 1947 through the beginning of the 1970s, approximately 200,000 people were incarcerated in the US. Today, there are more than 2.3 million men and women incarcerated, with more than 5 million more on parole and probation."

The 'Prison Town' comic book debunks the myth that building a new prison actually helps to revitalize a town with an ailing economy, and instead illustrates the many negative costs that a new prison can impose. Importantly, Prison Town also documents how many towns learned by example and cited the prisons’ negative impact in successful campaigns to stop prison construction in their community.

'Prisoners of the War on Drugs' is a heart-wrenching look at the victims of the so-called "war on drugs." At least according to its official purpose, the "war on drugs" has been a total failure, resulting in the mass incarceration of non-violent drug offenders at a huge, inefficient expense to tax-payers. Prisoners emphasizes "harm reduction" and treatment as a better solution, stating that the "war on drugs locks up more users than dealers. Most want to quit, but can’t. A year of treatment costs much less than a year of incarceration, plus: the person can work, pay taxes & take part in family life." While drug laws may seem insane, they appear to have unofficial motives that are highly rational. For example, they have served to accelerate mass imprisonment, the criminalization of poverty, and the erosion of civil-liberties.

'Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women & Their Children' concludes the three-comic book series. The stories presented here are mostly fictional, but are based on the writers’ research and personal experience working with women prisoners. Therefore, Ahrens explains that the stories "represent the lives of hundreds of thousands of people suffering as a result of the war on drugs." Perhaps most outrageous is the true story of Regina McKnight, the first woman in the US to be convicted of murder because of behavior while pregnant. When McKnight’s baby was delivered stillborn and an autopsy found traces of cocaine in the fetus she was arrested and convicted of murder with a 20-year sentence. In 2008, following several appeals and eight years in prison, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously reversed her conviction, after concluding that there is no medical evidence of cocaine causing stillbirths.

Let Freedom Ring

Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners, is an epic 877-page compilation of both pre-existing documents and original articles. Explaining the context of its release, editor Matt Meyer cites the recent persecution of the San Francisco Eight, who are former Black Panther Party (BPP) members being charged with a 30-year old crime. Beginning with the 2006 grand jury, "the state threw down a gauntlet. When it became clear that the investigations were reopening cases based on evidence obtained primarily through torture, the message was unmistakable: Be afraid, be very afraid, and don’t even think of fighting back. When these same men stood strong, firm on the principle that they would not take part in a new, government sponsored witch-hunt, they sent a counter-message on behalf of us all: we will not allow our communities, our struggles, our communities, our very lives to be criminalized by a corrupt and racist criminal justice system." This spirit of resistance to state repression flows throughout Let Freedom Ring.

The book’s many sections focus on a wide range of US political prisoners, featuring both facts about their case, and actual writing from the prisoners themselves. One particularly interesting section is titled Resisting Repression: Out and Proud, which includes the classic 1991 interview "Dykes and Fags Want to Know: Interview with Lesbian Political Prisoners," featuring Laura Whitehorn (released in 1999), a well as Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg, who were both pardoned by President Clinton in 2001. Also notable is a 1991 speech given by former BPP political prisoner Dhoruba Bin-Wahad, who was released after 19 years. Considered a groundbreaking speech from a Black Muslim revolutionary, Bin-Wahad declared that "we can not build a new society if we premise that society on the oppression of other people." Continuing the legacy of BPP co-founder Huey P. Newton, he argued that fighting the oppression of women and GLBTs is inseparable from the fight against capitalism, racism, and all oppression. Also featured is a tribute to the late Kuwasi Balagoon, who died in prison of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1986. In the words of poet Walidah Imarisha, Balagoon "was an anarchist in a Black nationalist movement, he was queer in a straight dominated movement, he was a guerrilla fighter after it was ‘chic,’ and he...demanded to be seen not as a revolutionary icon, but as a person, beautiful and flawed."

Abolition Now!

Abolition Now! was published to coincide with the CR10 conference. The introduction explains that Critical Resistance (CR) is not only "struggling to tear down the cages" of the prison industrial complex (PIC), but "also to abolish the actions of policing, surveillance, and imprisonment that give the PIC its power. We are also reminded that abolition is the creation of possibilities for our dreams and demands for health and happiness—for what we want, not what we think we can get."

The book features reflections and constructive criticism from a variety of CR organizers and activists. For example, Mills College professor Julia Sudbury emphasizes the "need for healing as an abolitionist practice. Many of us come to this work with our own wounds," and while "many of us draw energy and inspiration from these wounds," we are "also drained by these traumas...As a result our movement can be very ‘head’ oriented—talking, planning, thinking, writing—and not body and emotion oriented." Sudbury concludes that a "movement against a violent and violating phenomenon like the PIC cannot hope to be successful if we don’t directly address and heal the effects of that violence."

Former political prisoner Bo Brown argues that the movement should have more "street awareness" and not be limited to "legislative" goals and actions. "You have to do both. I think you can get lost in that and you can stay there and consider yourself a good person and never really get your hands dirty in a human kind of way...I’d like to see us come up with some kind of support group for families with prisoners that’s real. We need to figure out how to support the prisoners when they’re coming home. We need to understand post-traumatic shock on an ongoing, day-to-day basis."

Andrea Smith, co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence argues that "the criminalization approach proffered in the mainstream anti-violence movement doesn’t work. And, also, this criminalization approach obfuscates the role of the state in perpetrating gender violence. At the same time, we have to deal with the practical concerns for safety for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Thus, we are working on developing community accountability strategies that do not rely on the state, and also do not depend on a romanticized version of ‘community’...This intersects with work in indigenous rights movements, which have concepts of indigenous nationhood that are not based on nation-state forms of governance that rule through violence, domination, and control."

Abolition Now! also spotlights examples of organizations putting abolitionist strategy into practice, like with the LEAD Project’s group of transition homes for women returning from imprisonment in the Watts District of Los Angeles, called "A New Way of Life." Also, the UBUNTU Coalition in Durham, NC, works at responding to violence without reinforcing the PIC.

Prisons Are Everywhere

Above all, these three highly-recommended books (available online at www.akpress.org) argue that prison-related issues are inseparable from racism, classism, sexism, and all oppression, so the more we know about prisons, the better informed multi-issue activist strategies will be. They conclude that in working to abolish all oppression, we must also work to abolish the PIC and free all political prisoners.

--Based out of the SF Bay Area, Hans Bennett is an independent multi-media journalist (www.insubordination.blogspot.com) and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia (www.abu-jamal-news.com).

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

TX: UNICOR continues to use prisoners to recycle electornics

Prison inmates dismantle Ark. recycled electronics
© 2009 The Associated Press
April 19, 2009, 7:41PM

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Some federal prison inmates spend their days tearing apart cellular phones and dismantling computers recycled in Arkansas.

The prisoners, working as part of the Federal Prison Industries, salvage copper and other materials later sold to metal dealers. Last year alone, the prison industry had $10.5 million in net sales.

Unicor, a part of the Federal Prison Industries, uses 876 inmates in seven federal prisons to do the electronic recycling work, according to a company financial statement. Most of northwest Arkansas' recycled electronics go to the federal prison in Texarkana, Texas.

The work is part of a voluntary program and pays well above the standard wage for an inmate, said Steve Wentzel, an executive assistant at the Texarkana prison. Wentzel said the work is so popular, there's a waiting list to take on a spot.

However, using prison labor has drawn the ire of private companies in the recycling business. Barbara Kyle of Electronics TakeBack Coalition in San Francisco said the practice undercuts companies that are more environmentally responsible.

Within the last two years, states such as Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington have banned the practice of using prisoner labor to recycle in most cases, she said.

"You may want to consider why Arkansas has such a good deal," Kyle told the Morning News newspaper of Springdale.

The Justice Department has investigated some Unicor operations, finding that lead exposure at an Elkton, Ohio, prison was as much as 15 times higher than the federally accepted level for a job site. The recycling center at the prison was shut down last year as a result.

Lead poisoning can lead to severe nerve damage.

Several people sued Unicor in Marianna, Fla., last year because they claim they were exposed to dangerous chemicals while working near the computer recycling program in the federal prison. The pending lawsuit includes both inmates and workers in the prison.

Unicor has consistently defended its practices as safe. The newspaper said it was unable to reach company officials for comment.

Despite those concerns, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality encourages local governments to work with Unicor because it usually costs them nothing. Nearly 3,000 tons of electronic waste were recycled in Arkansas last year, and estimates indicate that number will grow each year.

"They take everything and don't charge anything," ADEQ spokesman Aaron Sadler said. "We operate basically as a coordinating entity. We get them in touch with Unicor to get the waste moved."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6381623.html

Posted by lois at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2009

F.B.I. and States Vastly Expand DNA Databases

"As in Britain, expanding genetic sampling in the United States could exacerbate racial disparities in the criminal justice system, according to Hank Greely, a Stanford University Law School professor who studies the intersection of genetics, policing and race. Mr. Greely estimated that African-Americans, who are about 12 percent of the national population, make up 40 percent of the DNA profiles in the federal database, reflective of their prison population. He also expects Latinos, who are about 13 percent of the population and committed 40 percent of last year’s federal offenses — nearly half of them immigration crimes — to dominate DNA databases."

F.B.I. and States Vastly Expand DNA Databases
By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: April 18, 2009
NY Times

Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants.

The F.B.I., with a DNA database of 6.7 million profiles, expects to accelerate its growth rate from 80,000 new entries a year to 1.2 million by 2012 — a 17-fold increase. F.B.I. officials say they expect DNA processing backlogs — which now stand at more than 500,000 cases — to increase.

Law enforcement officials say that expanding the DNA databanks to include legally innocent people will help solve more violent crimes. They point out that DNA has helped convict thousands of criminals and has exonerated more than 200 wrongfully convicted people.

But criminal justice experts cite Fourth Amendment privacy concerns and worry that the nation is becoming a genetic surveillance society.

“DNA databases were built initially to deal with violent sexual crimes and homicides — a very limited number of crimes,” said Harry Levine, a professor of sociology at City University of New York who studies policing trends. “Over time more and more crimes of decreasing severity have been added to the database. Cops and prosecutors like it because it gives everybody more information and creates a new suspect pool.”

Courts have generally upheld laws authorizing compulsory collection of DNA from convicts and ex-convicts under supervised release, on the grounds that criminal acts diminish privacy rights.

DNA extraction upon arrest potentially erodes that argument, a recent Congressional study found. “Courts have not fully considered legal implications of recent extensions of DNA-collection to people whom the government has arrested but not tried or convicted,” the report said.

Minors are required to provide DNA samples in 35 states upon conviction, and in some states upon arrest. Three juvenile suspects in November filed the only current constitutional challenge against taking DNA at the time of arrest. The judge temporarily stopped DNA collection from the three youths, and the case is continuing.

Sixteen states now take DNA from some who have been found guilty of misdemeanors. As more police agencies take DNA for a greater variety of lesser and suspected crimes, civil rights advocates say the government’s power is becoming too broadly applied. “What we object to — and what the Constitution prohibits — is the indiscriminate taking of DNA for things like writing an insufficient funds check, shoplifting, drug convictions,” said Michael Risher, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

This year, California began taking DNA upon arrest and expects to nearly double the growth rate of its database, to 390,000 profiles a year from 200,000.

One of those was Brian Roberts, 29, who was awaiting trial for methamphetamine possession. Inside the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles last month, Mr. Roberts let a sheriff’s deputy swab the inside of his cheek.

Mr. Roberts’s DNA will be translated into a numerical sequence at the F.B.I.’s DNA database, the largest in the world.

The system will search for matches between Mr. Roberts’s DNA and other profiles every Monday, from now into the indeterminate future — until one day, perhaps decades hence, Mr. Roberts might leave a drop of blood or semen at some crime scene.

Law enforcement officials say that DNA extraction upon arrest is no different than fingerprinting at routine bookings and that states purge profiles after people are cleared of suspicion. In practice, defense lawyers say this is a laborious process that often involves a court order. (The F.B.I. says it has never received a request to purge a profile from its database.)

When DNA is taken in error, expunging a profile can be just as difficult. In Pennsylvania, Ellyn Sapper, a Philadelphia public defender, has spent weeks trying to expunge the profile taken erroneously of a 14-year-old boy guilty of assault and bicycle theft. “I’m going to have to get a judge’s order to make sure that all references to his DNA are gone,” she said.

The police say that the potential hazards of genetic surveillance are worth it because it solves crimes and because DNA is more accurate than other physical evidence. “I’ve watched women go from mug-book to mug-book looking for the man who raped her,” said Mitch Morrissey, the Denver district attorney and an advocate for more expansive DNA sampling. “It saves women’s lives.”

Mr. Morrissey pointed to Britain, which has fewer privacy protections than the United States and has been taking DNA upon arrest for years. It has a population of 61 million — and 4.5 million DNA profiles. “About 8 percent of the people commit about 70 percent of your crimes, so if you can get the majority of that community, you don’t have to do more than that,” he said.

In the United States, 8 percent of the population would be roughly 24 million people.

Britain may provide a window into America’s genetic surveillance future: As of March 2008, 857,000 people in the British database, or about one-fifth, have no current criminal record. In December, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britain violated international law by collecting DNA profiles from innocent people, including children as young as 10.

Critics are also disturbed by the demographics of DNA databases. Again Britain is instructive. According to a House of Commons report, 27 percent of black people and 42 percent of black males are genetically registered, compared with 6 percent of white people.

As in Britain, expanding genetic sampling in the United States could exacerbate racial disparities in the criminal justice system, according to Hank Greely, a Stanford University Law School professor who studies the intersection of genetics, policing and race. Mr. Greely estimated that African-Americans, who are about 12 percent of the national population, make up 40 percent of the DNA profiles in the federal database, reflective of their prison population. He also expects Latinos, who are about 13 percent of the population and committed 40 percent of last year’s federal offenses — nearly half of them immigration crimes — to dominate DNA databases.

Enforcement officials contend that DNA is blind to race. Federal profiles include little more information than the DNA sequence and the referring police agency. Subjects’ names are usually kept by investigators.

Rock Harmon, a former prosecutor for Alameda County, Calif., and an adviser to crime laboratories, said DNA demographics reflected the criminal population. Even if an innocent man’s DNA was included in a genetic database, he said, it would come to nothing without a crime scene sample to match it. “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear,” he said.
This and other news relating to mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/
A version of this article appeared in print on April 19, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/us/19DNA.html?hp

Posted by lois at 10:06 PM | Comments (0)

Bryne Grants and another conscequence featured in new film: "American Violet"

Taking Drug Task Forces to Task
By: Lewis Beale
April 17, 2009

In November 2000, a drug task force arrested 28 residents of Hearne, Texas, almost all of them African-American, and charged them with distributing crack cocaine. Pressed to plead guilty to the charges by their public defenders, several of the accused did, but Regina Kelly, a single mother of four, refused. The American Civil Liberty Union's Drug Law Reform Project eventually took up the case and filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 15 of the arrestees, accusing the local district attorney and the

South Central Texas Narcotics Task Force with conducting racially motivated drug sweeps for more than 15 years.
That case, which wound up with the charges against all the ACLU's clients being dropped due to insufficient evidence and the tainted testimony of an unreliable police informant, is now the basis of a movie, "American Violet", opening nationwide on April 17th. Starring newcomer Nicole Beharie as Kelly, as well as Alfre Woodard, Tim Blake Nelson and Charles S. Dutton, the film is practically a primer on drug-task-force abuses under what is known as the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Program.

Enacted in 1988, and recently refunded under President Obama's stimulus package, the Byrne grant program is designed to help states and local jurisdictions fight drugs and the violent crime associated with drug trafficking. The program provides federal money in 29 specific "purpose areas," including crime-victim assistance and alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders, but most of the grants are intended for police activity. And a good deal of the money disbursed is predicated on the number, not the quality, of drug arrests.

"Throughout America, Byrne grants are consistently used to target very low-level drug dealers for arrest and long-term incarceration," said Graham Boyd, lawyer for the Hearne plaintiffs and director of the ACLU's Drug Law Reform Project. "You have a drug task force whose goal is to arrest as many people as they can, their funding stream is based on that, so they rely on confidential informants, and their racial profiling is staggering."

"The block grant is based on population and crime rate," added Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance Network. "Because it's based on arrests, the incentive is to focus on arrests, and the more the better. They have an incentive to go after low-level drug dealers, and it leads to civil rights offenses because they have quotas to fill, and that might entail cutting corners."

Hearne was not the first case, nor the most notorious, involving drug-task-force abuses. That honor belongs to Tulia, another small Texas town where, on July 23, 1999, and based on the word of a single informant, 46 people, 39 of them African-American, were accused of selling drugs. As recounted in Tulia, Texas, a documentary recently shown as part of PBS' Independent Lens series [available on DVD at www.newsreel.org], the informant, Tom Coleman — at one point named "Texas Lawman of the Year" - had a checkered law enforcement career, did not wear a recording device during any of his alleged drug buys, made numerous evidentiary errors and was accused of being a racist.

In 2003, a Texas court voided 38 of the Tulia arrests (several of the cases had already been dismissed), and in 2005, Coleman was convicted of perjury when a jury found he had lied about his own arrest for theft during a hearing on the drug cases.
As egregious as these cases were, Boyd says incidents like this are "still happening all over America." And they serve to point out several gaping holes in the well-intentioned, but flawed, Byrne grant program:

• The use of confidential informants, many of them criminals themselves, whose uncorroborated testimony is used to obtain drug convictions. The Hearne informant, for example, had a history of drug addiction and mental illness. "The way informants get used reflects a reality that there are few checks and balances on how law enforcement uses them," said Boyd. "It's easier for them to do this than send in an undercover officer."

• The lack of jurisdictional control. "There's a problem that goes with regional drug task forces," said Piper. "Because they are made up of people from different areas, there is a lack of oversight. There is no one entity you can blame, because they're multi-jurisdictional." Case in point: In both Hearn and Tulia, the cases were solved on the county, not town, level.

• The task forces are self-sustaining. "They use asset forfeiture, which only exists for drug crimes," said Piper, "so police tend to focus on that. Because they can keep what they seize [cash, cars, weapons, etc.] and they get the federal money, they are independent from state and local concerns, and they don't have to go to the city council and justify what they're doing."

• The impact on the black community. African-Americans, who make up about 13 percent of the total population, now account for more than 50 percent of all drug arrests. Piper refers to mass drug arrests in Hearne, Tulia and other places as being akin to "Vietnam War-like body count statistics," which are "used to measure success."

At least Texas got the message. The Lone Star State became the first in the country to require corroboration of informant information to make a drug arrest. Texas also stopped taking Byrne money for drug cases and made them the responsibility of the state police, the Texas Rangers.

And the state changed its drug-war measurement criteria. Officers used to be graded on how many arrests they made; now it's how many drug trafficking organizations they have identified, infiltrated and dismantled. "You actually lose points the more end users — drug offenders, people selling to feed their habits — you arrest," said Piper. "What they're trying to do is get people to stay undercover, work their way up, so they can take down a big trafficker, and that's revolutionary." Because of this, says Piper, drug arrests in Texas dropped by 40 percent last year, but drug seizures doubled.

Still, there are more than 600 drug task forces in the country, and at least a dozen Hearne-like scandals reported in the last 10 years. That might not seem like a lot, but it's more than enough for the people sent to jail on tainted evidence, perjured testimony or pressured into plea bargains in order to avoid jury trials and potential sentences of 30 years or more.
Even worse, says Boyd, is that in small, under-financed communities, the desperation for Byrne grant money is so great, "there's evidence of police being taken off Main Street and being put into these drug task forces."

The bottom line is what this all says about how the war on drugs is being waged, and according to Boyd, Hearne and Tulia "are Exhibit A on why the war is a failure. It's ineffective, expensive and generates a level of racial targeting that has no place in America today."

At least, added Piper, there's a little ray of hope emerging from the Obama administration. Naming Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske — known for progressive and community-based approach to drug issues — to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy could mean that law enforcement will not be the drug czar's only emphasis.

"Both Obama and Kerlikowske have talked about dealing with this as a treatment issue, dealing with the demand side," says Piper. "Short of repealing drug prohibition, it's the most effective way of hurting the drug cartels — you're reducing their profits."
http://www.miller-mccune.com/legal_affairs/taking-drug-task-forces-to-task-1074

Posted by lois at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

Senators Support Access To Mental Health Treatment For Children And Adolescents In Juvenile Justice System

Senators Support Access To Mental Health Treatment For Children And Adolescents In Juvenile Justice System
14 Apr 2009

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) commends Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) for reintroducing the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act (JJDPA). The prevalence of mental illnesses is higher in children and adolescents in the juvenile justice system than in the general population1 with more than 70 percent of children and adolescents in the juvenile justice system having a diagnosable mental illness2.

"The reintroduction of JJDPA legislation will allow us to continue to focus treatment and intervention for the most vulnerable and underserved. These kids have higher rates of mental health diagnoses including learning disabilities and substance abuse compared to their peers," said Louis Kraus, M.D., chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at Rush University and co-chair of the AACAP's Juvenile Justice Committee. "Early education and intervention programs that target at-risk children and adolescents and work with them before, during, and after the adjudication process will reduce recidivism."

The Act includes funding for increasing training for juvenile justice personnel and focuses attention on prevention programs to keep children from entering the criminal justice system altogether. Additionally, the Act states the need to support a continuum of programs that include delinquency prevention, intervention, substance abuse treatments, and aftercare. The JJDPA states that children should be treated in facilities dedicated to children and adolescents.

"A prevention component that targets children and youth at risk is long overdue," said William Arroyo, M.D., co-chair of the Juvenile Justice committee. "It not only aborts a trajectory of suffering and antisocial behavior, but it avoids enormous costs incurred by public systems when youth enter the juvenile justice system. Research supports this strategy."

The AACAP is a non-profit medical association representing more than 7,400 child and adolescent psychiatrists. The AACAP educates community leaders, policymakers, government agencies, legislators, service providers, professional organizations, and child advocates on the critical need of making mental health services more accessible to the thousands of children involved in the juvenile justice system.

References:

1. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. 2004. Thousands of Children with Mental Illness Warehoused in Juvenile Detention Centers Awaiting Mental Health Services. Washington, D.C.

2. National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice. 2006. Youth With Mental Health Disorders in the Juvenile Justice System: Results from a Multi-State Prevalence Study. Delmar, New York.

Source
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Article URL: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/145910.php

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

CT: Raise the Age supporters cheer Democrats' alternative budget

Raise the Age supporters cheer Democrats' alternative budget
Hour Staff Writer

Supporters of the Raise the Age campaign and other youth-focused legislation announced their support of the Democrats alternative proposed budget Monday, saying it preserves Connecticut's "commitments to children and families while being fiscally responsible."

The "Raise the Age" legislation, signed into law in 2007 by Gov. M. Jodi Rell, changes the default mechanism in Connecticut that automatically sends youthful offenders to adult court at the age of 16 and, instead, allow 16- and 17-year-olds to go through the juvenile court system.

Earlier this year as part of Gov. M. Jodi Rell's response to the budget crisis the governor said the state would delay the implementation of Raise the Age to 2012 -- the original implementation was supposed to be 2010.

Connecticut is only one of three states that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to be processed in adult court.

As part of their proposal, the Democrats are proposing allowing the 16-year-olds to system as intended in 2010, delaying only the 17-year-olds.

Abby Anderson, executive director of the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance, said the Democrats' proposal showed that including 16-year-olds in the juvenile justice system can be done with minimal impact on the state's budget.

"We're thrilled the Democrats understand the importance of continuing these efforts instead of not doing anything and then having to do a more costly intervention down the line," Anderson said. "We'd love to have both the 16- and 17-year- olds out of the adult system because the longer we wait, the more kids we lose to the system, but at least we might get part of what we were promised, so we're thrilled for that."

In addition to Raise the Age, the Dems budget also supports Family Support Centers which deliver preventive services to struggling families. Anderson said the centers are very successful at helping youth before they need more costly interventions or become involved in the juvenile justice system.

Anderson said she thinks the Democrats' proposed legislation has a fair amount of support behind it.

"It does have a good amount of support because I feel that legislators feel it's important to do something to move forward in a positive way and do what was promised," she said.

State Sen. Bob Duff, D-25, a big supporter of the Raise the Age campaign, and said he continues to support its implementation.

"While I didn't vote for the spending plan, I do support Raise the Age as a long-term investment for our state to cut down on the rate of recidivism among our youth," Duff said.
http://www.thehour.com/story/467880

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

Orleans prison in bad shape, feds say. Fiscal, staff, security problems 'daunting'

Orleans prison in bad shape, feds say
Fiscal, staff, security problems 'daunting'
Saturday, April 18, 2009
By Bruce Nolan
Staff writer

Orleans Parish Prison faces a huge burden of financial, staffing, security and other problems -- the worst of them that the city, state and federal governments are not paying the full cost of housing their prisoners, according to federal consultants who visited the prison last year.

"Nearly three years (after Hurricane Katrina) it is difficult to adequately describe the scope and depth of the problems still confronting the sheriff's office as they attempt to rebuild the Orleans Parish jail system," reported two consultants from the National Institute of Corrections. The agency is an arm of the Federal Bureau of Prisons that provides technical assistance to wardens across the country.

" 'Daunting' does not begin to convey the enormity of the situation," they wrote.

Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman released a version of the report Friday, with some redactions of information he said dealt "specifically with security issues."

He said he invited the federal consultants in June to visit the prison for a week and offer recommendations for improvement. He said he was releasing their report in the interests of transparency, while acknowledging that he received it in October.

Once a vast complex of permanent and temporary buildings holding about 5,500 persons, the prison complex was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Several major buildings have been demolished or sit vacant and ruined.

The prison population now is about 2,840, Gusman said.

Consultants Rod Miller of Gettysburg, Pa., and Jeffrey Schwartz of Campbell, Calif., said they found a prison that performed well by some measures: only one recent suicide; no homicides; few escapes; few assaults on prisoners or staff; no gang control.

They also described a deeply troubled system full of systemic flaws.

Gusman released the report without an accompanying response from his office. He said he agreed with some of its findings and disagreed with others. He addressed some of the report briefly in an interview later.

Despite its record, patterns of inefficient staffing produce critical security lapses, the consultants said.

Financially, they noted that the prison has no tax income to cover operations, nor is it part of the city's general fund. Most of its income comes from "grossly inadequate" prisoner per diem payments from city, state and federal governments.

The consultants noted that the city and state pay $22.39 and $23.39 per day per prisoner, respectively. By comparison, the federal government pays $43 per head for its prisoners awaiting trial.

Gusman said all those payments should be in the range of $50; the consultants quoted figures of $65 to $85 per day.

Gusman described a successful economic model under former Sheriff Charles Foti in which the prison historically sustained itself on per diems collected on nearly twice as many prisoners. The system worked because they were sheltered more efficiently, in less labor-intensive buildings, he said.

But with some of those buildings gone, and much older buildings in use, prisoner numbers are down and the efficiency is gone, Gusman said.

The consultants painted a picture of the prison going broke, perhaps at the end of the year. But Gusman said the situation is not that dire.

"We've been doing everything in our power to cut costs," he said.

While the prison likely can remain in operation, it is at the limit, financially.

"We can't manage any major financial change in our position," he said.

Among other systemic problems, the consulted noted, were:

-- Police, prosecutors, public defenders and jailers' lack of regular communication in ways that might make their jobs easier. Gusman's relationship with much of the rest of Orleans Parish government "may be charitably described as 'strained,' " they said.

-- High staff turnover -- sometimes 50 percent per year -- and pay so low among Gusman's deputies that some leave for better-paying security jobs with the Recovery School District.

Gusman's scheduling also requires a regular work week of nearly 60 hours. The consultants also noted a "personality-driven," "good old boy" culture among the ranks. Gusman said he recently introduced promotional exams for the department, as well as two salary raises, although wages remain very low.

Arriving by invitation, the consultants are advisers and have no oversight authority over the prison. They cannot compel improvements nor require responses from Gusman.

Separately, however, the civil rights division of the Department of Justice has been conducting an investigation of the jail since at least last summer.

Gusman said Friday that he had no results from that inquiry.
http://www.nola.com/news/?/base/news-1/1240032894264560.xml&coll=1

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Posted by lois at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2009

Seattle: Need for new jail questioned as the number of prisoners decreases

Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Need for new jail questioned as inmate numbers drop

By SCOTT GUTIERREZ
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

A shrinking number of inmates in the King County Jail is bucking prior forecasts and raising new questions about whether Seattle and its suburbs will need to build their own jail by 2013.

Seattle and its neighbors to the north and east have been studying where to build a 640-bed, $110 million jail based on King County's warnings last year that it would no longer have room for misdemeanor offenders in three years. Cities in South King County also are collaborating on a new jail to be built in Des Moines.

But instead of growing, the county jail's daily population is decreasing, by almost 6 percent during the last eight months, according to jail staff. The average daily population also declined 4 percent between 2007 and 2008, according to figures from a King County councilmember.

Both jail staff and a city-appointed panel are studying the trend, examining whether it is likely to continue. They're also revisiting prior estimates on jail populations by 2012, when King County is slated to terminate its jail contracts with Seattle and its suburbs.

"We would love not to build a new jail. I think at this point, we're really waiting for King County and whether they think the change is enough that they would have space for the cities to stay," said Catherine Cornwall, a Seattle senior policy analyst involved with the cities' plans.

"Until we have something in writing, in order to be responsible, we have to keep continuing forward with our planning effort," she said.

Prior studies have shown the downtown jail, with an average inmate census of 2,324 in 2008, running out of room.

Seattle has issued $5.6 million in debt for jail planning. Analysts are studying which of six potential sites are best suited for a new jail to be shared by Seattle and cities such as Bellevue and Shoreline. The King County Council offered to extend the cities contracts for jail space by a year of two, which would at least buy them more time to finish construction.

The proposal to build a new jail has plenty of opponents, from residents who don't want it in their backyard to officials who question whether it's necessary.

Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata, a skeptic of the city's need for a new jail, said he's optimistic that the current trend could be maintained through further use of alternatives to incarceration.

Seattle and King County have invested in jail alternatives that steer inmates into treatment and reduce their chances of re-offending. Seattle's share of misdemeanor population has declined 40 percent since 2001 through programs such as community courts, electronic home monitoring and special day-reporting options for low-level transient offenders who repeatedly wind up in jail because they miss court dates.

"I keep running into people in the community who feel the jail is not needed. These are not people from the liberal crowd. They're business owners, they're Republicans, and they're saying, why are we building this new jail?'" said Licata, who recently wrote about the issue in his Urban Politics blog.

Jail populations can ebb and flow, depending on factors such as crimes rates, budgets and changes in state law. Other factors, such as the economy and massive cuts this year at the state level to prisons and probation could also affect the numbers.

The recent decline is mostly due to fewer bookings from Seattle police, who are bringing in less felony and misdemeanor offenders during latenight shifts, said Kathy Van Olst, director of the county's Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. Whether it's due to a change in crime rates or enforcement policy is unclear, she said.

"Without knowing what exactly is the cause of that dip in population, it's difficult to predict the future or future declines in population," Van Olst said. "We're still trying to figure out why the population has decreased and we're working with the Seattle police to do that."

In Seattle, crime rates dropped between 2007 and 2008, with the biggest dip in narcotics arrests, from 4,200 to 2,650, said Mike Quinn, a strategy advisor to the Police Department.

There also were 400 less domestic violence arrests, in which officers have little discretion. In the downtown Pike-Pine corridor, which is plagued with drug activity, officers took a pro-active strategy with an emphasis on face-to-face contacts and moving people along rather than booking suspects, he said.

"You put all those pieces together and I think it explains some of this," he said, noting a recent uptick in crime rates this year.

A study in 2006 estimated the city would need 440 beds for misdemeanants, which include drunken driving, domestic violence, and minor assaults, by 2026. The recent changes also could result in plans to build a smaller jail.

The City Council appointed a Jail Capacity Advisory Group, a panel of police, prosecutors, county corrections staff, politicians, defense attorneys and citizens, to study the issue.

That group has cited other possible factors, such as fewer felony charges filed by the county Prosecutor's Office caused by changes in filing standards due the budget crisis. Some of those cases, however, would funnel into municipal courts, which likely would boost the cities' demand for jail space.

In addition, the county's jail at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent is slated for expansion in 2015 to better accommodate police departments on the south end and save having to take inmates to the downtown site.

County Councilwoman Kathy Lambert, who chairs the committee on Law, Justice and Health and Human Services, said the jail's average daily population is below predictions made 10 years ago. She doesn't support ending the cities' jail contracts yet because she thinks more more inmates with mental illness or substance abuse could be moved into programs.

Still, she thinks the cities will need their own jail, but that it could be downsized if they partner with the county in sharing alternative programs and bed space.

"If we're able to work together, hopefully it's the last jail we will need for many, many , many years," Lambert said.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/405115_jail15.html

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

African American Prison Disparity Grows in Iowa

Blacks' prison disparity grows in Iowa
Des Moines Register
By LEE ROOD • April 15, 2009
African-Americans currently account for quarter of admissions, data show

The proportion of blacks being admitted to Iowa prisons has reached its highest point in at least 14 years, in spite of efforts by Gov. Chet Culver to bring more balance to one of the most pronounced disparities in the country.

A state analyst confirmed Tuesday that the proportion of blacks being sent to prison is worsening again. Blacks account for 24.3 percent of all new Iowa prison admissions in fiscal year 2009.

The percentage of prisoners incarcerated for drug crimes who are black is 28.4 percent in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30. That's the highest level since 1996.

"It's distressing," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C.

"We know drug enforcement, to a certain extent, is discretionary," Mauer said. "Depending on what decisions you make, you're going to see very different outcomes in the prison system."

Tuesday's news was discouraging for drug policy officials and black leaders in Iowa, where disproportionate minority confinement has been a problem for at least the last 25 years.

The new findings come as Iowa's long-growing prison population is leveling off, in part because new prison admissions for drug-related crimes are declining for the fifth straight year.

"If drug offenses are on the decline in general, you have to wonder why that is" that the percentage of blacks being admitted to Iowa's prisons is rising, said state Rep. Deborah Berry, D-Waterloo. "I certainly want to find out more."

A decade ago, a Des Moines Register investigation found at least 1 in 12 black Iowans was in prison, on parole or probation - a ratio higher than anywhere else in the country except the District of Columbia. The ratio for whites was 1 in 110, the analysis found.

In 2007, a Sentencing Project study found the state’s black incarceration rate was 13.6 times that of whites — again the greatest among all states.

That year, Culver got a standing ovation from attendees at a Des Moines conference when he pledged to address the disparity and appointed a task force. Mauer praised efforts by Iowa legislative leaders and Culver on the issue but said more major work needs to be done.

One policy change, among several proposals for state leaders, was to do a minority impact statement on all proposed laws that could affect Iowa's prison population. Culver also proposed spending more state money last year for prison re-entry programs, although the Legislature did not approve all that funding, according to Carlos Jayne, a lobbyist for the Justice Reform Consortium.

A state law that passed in 2005 greatly altered Iowa's prison admissions. From 2000 to 2004, the numbers of whites behind bars had shot up substantially. But the new law restricted sales of the cold medicine used to make methamphetamine, and subsequently led to a sharp decline in arrests of meth makers, who were primarily white.

"Now that the meth manufacturing has dropped, the African-American percentage is rising again," said Phyllis Blood, an analyst who tracks the prison population for Iowa's Division of Criminal and Juvenile Justice Planning. "Not necessarily as much in raw numbers, but as a percentage of the total prison population."

In fiscal year 2009, 2,212 people have been admitted to Iowa prisons. Of those, 1,603 were white and 537 were black, state figures show.

Blacks made up 2.6 percent of Iowa's population in 2007, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Blood did not break out numbers for Hispanics.

Abraham Funchess, administrator of Iowa's Commission on the Status of African-Americans, said he hopes changes will be made next year in Iowa's criminal code to address issues that affect blacks at sentencing. He said his agency is trying to highlight cases where blacks have been given excessive mandatory sentences that don't match the crimes.

"Some of those mandatory minimums are just killing our kids," he said.

State studies have shown that many factors influence the number of minorities involved in Iowa's justice system. But the strongest factors are legal variables, such as the type of offense committed or a person's prior record.

State research also has found that even with legal and other variables being held constant, there are sometimes different court outcomes for persons of different races, according to Iowa's Department of Human Rights.

Legislative leaders plan to hold a meeting next month as part of a more than yearlong effort to rewrite parts of the criminal code.

Funchess said he is more optimistic that state leaders are willing to implement changes than in years past. "People are just a little more politically engaged now," he said. "I'm hoping that translates into more concrete, practical changes."

Gary Kendall, who heads Iowa's Office on Drug Control Policy, said that while those convicted deserve punishment, blacks lack community support and social equality.

"You also have to deal with poverty, education and social justice issues," he said. "There's no quick fix."
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090415/NEWS10/904150364/-1/ENT05

Posted by lois at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2009

PA: State begins construction on 1st of 3 new prisons

State begins construction on 1st of 3 new prisons
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
By Tom Barnes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

HARRISBURG -- A lot of businesses and industries have been hard hit by the ailing economy, but in Pennsylvania there's still one industry doing well -- prison construction.

The state Department of Corrections announced today that construction of the first of three new state prisons will begin this summer in Centre County, on the grounds of an existing state prison, State Correctional Institution Rockview.

The new medium-security prison, which will hold 2,000 inmates, is expected to open within three years. It will cost about $200 million, officials said. It will be called SCI Benner Township and will employ 650 people. It will share warehouses and administrative functions with SCI Rockview.

In the next several years, two more new prisons will be built -- a 2,000-inmate facility in Fayette County and a prison to hold 4,000 inmates in Montgomery County. The latter will add 2,000 new beds and provide 2,000 replacement beds for prisoners now housed at the existing SCI Graterford. The old prison will then be mothballed, meaning closed unless there is a need to reopen it in the future due to ever-increasing inmate population.

In all, officials plan to add nearly 9,000 beds to the prison system. Beside the 6,000 beds at the three new prisons, new housing units will be built in Crawford, Forest, Indiana and Northumberland counties.

The expansion projects will cost $862 million, paid for by through state capital budget.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09104/962730-100.stm

Posted by lois at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)

A Racial Shift in Drug-Crime Prisoners Fewer Blacks and More Whites, Says Sentencing Project

A Racial Shift in Drug-Crime Prisoners
Fewer Blacks and More Whites, Says Sentencing Project
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 15, 2009; Page A04

For the first time since crack cocaine sparked a war on drugs 20 years ago, the number of black Americans in state prisons for drug offenses has fallen sharply, while the number of white prisoners convicted for drug crimes has increased, according to a report released yesterday.

The D.C.-based Sentencing Project reported that the number of black inmates in state prisons for drug offenses had fallen from 145,000 in 1999 to 113,500 in 2005, a 22 percent decline. In that period, the number of white drug offenders rose steadily, from about 50,000 to more than 72,000, a 43 percent increase. The number of Latino drug offenders was virtually unchanged at about 51,000.

The findings represent a significant shift in the racial makeup of those incarcerated for drug crimes and could signal a gradual change in the demographics of the nation's prison population of 2 million, which has been disproportionately black for decades. Drug offenders make up about a quarter of the prison population.

The Sentencing Project report and other experts said the numbers could reflect several factors, including an increased reliance by prosecutors and judges on prison alternatives such as drug courts and a shift in police focus to methamphetamines, which are used and distributed mostly by white Americans. In addition, the report said, crack use and arrests have declined steadily since the 1990s.

The report relied heavily on data compiled by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and covered six years, ending in 2005, the last year the bureau broke down the state prison population by race and drug offense.

Maryland and Virginia authorities said the racial breakdown of prisoners incarcerated in their states for drug offenses was not available. But the racial makeup of their overall prison populations had not changed significantly over that period, they said.

African American drug offenders, who have been convicted most often for dealing and possessing crack cocaine, still made up a disproportionate share of drug offenders in state prisons, 45 percent in 2005. That was down from nearly 58 percent in 1999. Black Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population.
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The number of white drug offenders in state prisons rose from 20 percent to 29 percent, and Latino prisoners made up 20 percent of such inmates.

"I have no doubt that crystal meth explains some of the white increase, but I'm not ready to say it's the reason for all of the white increase," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which opposes stiff penalties for nonviolent drug crimes. "It's also hard to imagine that [drug courts] are not having some effect. Most drug courts are in urban areas where African Americans live."

Twenty percent of white inmates used methamphetamines in the month before they were arrested, compared with 1 percent of black inmates, according to interviews conducted in the nation's 14,500 state prisons and 3,700 federal prisons.

Drug courts offer nonviolent offenders the option of undergoing rigorous substance-abuse treatment and criminal rehabilitation or going to jail. There are more than 2,000 such courts in operation, mostly in cities with large black communities ravaged by violence associated with crack cocaine. White offenders also are increasingly winding up in drug courts for abusing methamphetamines.

Mauer also hypothesized that drug dealers might have shifted from open-air crack cocaine markets to dealing indoors, making them harder for police to catch. And he speculated that because so many African American men have been incarcerated, there are fewer on the street to be arrested.

But James E. Felman, co-chairman of the Sentencing Committee for the American Bar Association, said that in Tampa, where he practices law, black suspects are still being regularly arrested on crack cocaine charges and being handed out long sentences.

"I can't second-guess their study, but I haven't seen a change," Felman said. "Maybe we're getting smarter on crime in some states. That could be part of it."

David B. Muhlhausen, a senior policy analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said stronger police enforcement of methamphetamine trafficking and use, coupled with treatment options mostly for urban crack cocaine offenders, probably caused the shift. "There is some data out there that suggests that drug courts and drug treatments reduce recidivism," he said. "If you take the less serious offenders and put them into programs other than prison it would be a benefit to society."

The war on drugs began in 1986, when Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act to combat violence associated with the crack cocaine trade. Lawmakers were prompted by the death of University of Maryland basketball player Len Bias, who they mistakenly thought had died from ingesting crack. Bias overdosed on powder cocaine.

Last year, then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) joined several of his colleagues in saying that his support for the legislation was a mistake. The law contributed to the incarceration of more than a half-million people in state and federal prisons for drug offenses, compared with the 40,000 jailed for the same offenses in 1980.

According to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics last year, 7.2 million people are under prison supervision, as inmates, parolees and probationers, at a cost of about $45 billion per year.

California, which has one of the nation's largest prison populations, farmed out 170,000 inmates to private prisons in as far away as Tennessee in 2006 to relieve costs and has relaxed its penal code to relieve prison overcrowding.

Jeffrey L. Sedgwick, a former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said the record incarceration might be worth the cost. "As the number of people under correctional supervision goes up, crime goes down," he said. Conservative estimates put the annual cost of violent crime at about $17 billion, Sedgwick said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/14/AR2009041401775.html
Report on-line: http://sentencingproject.org/Admin%5CDocuments%5Cpublications%5Cdp_raceanddrugs.pdf

Posted by lois at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2009

NV: "Centers" proposed for parole violaters and people with drug & alcohol convictions

Centers proposed for low-risk offenders
By RACHELLE GINES Associated Press Writer
04/13/2009

CARSON CITY, Nev.—The Nevada Senate's top Democrat told lawmakers Monday that a new program for low-risk parole violators and drug and alcohol offenders would reduce the state's prison population and save millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, told Finance Committee members that SB398 would create a two-year pilot program of "intermediate sanction" centers for low-risk probation violators as well as people whose crimes are linked to alcohol or drug addictions.

Life skill and rehabilitative programs would be offered to about 400 participants a year, who would stay an average of six months.

Centers proposed for low-risk offenders
By RACHELLE GINES Associated Press Writer
04/13/2009

CARSON CITY, Nev.—The Nevada Senate's top Democrat told lawmakers Monday that a new program for low-risk parole violators and drug and alcohol offenders would reduce the state's prison population and save millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, told Finance Committee members that SB398 would create a two-year pilot program of "intermediate sanction" centers for low-risk probation violators as well as people whose crimes are linked to alcohol or drug addictions.

Life skill and rehabilitative programs would be offered to about 400 participants a year, who would stay an average of six months.

Horsford said the program could save the state more than $34 million over the next five years. He noted that it costs the state about $22,000 a year to incarcerate a prisoner, and a quarter of the new arrivals at Nevada prisons every year are parole violators returning to custody.

"Clearly there is a new and more innovative approach we can take that would ensure public safety and require the offender to go through their sentence, but also do it in a way that doesn't cost the state what we're spending now," Horsford said.

The program would use existing facilities and wouldn't require new beds. Horsford added that program participants wouldn't mix with other inmates and that a little more than half of the beds would be concentrated in southern Nevada.

Drug and alcohol treatment programs for
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the centers would be provided through the Department of Health and Human Services, who would work with community service providers, DHH director Mike Willden said.

Willden told lawmakers an additional $2.2 million per year would be required to provide such programs, at a ratio of one staff person for every 27 inmates.

Bernie Curtis, chief of the Division of Parole and Probation, spoke in support of the bill, saying, "It's not going to cost us anything in parole and probation, frankly, to use these intermediate sanctions. We think it's a good start for a program that is needed in this state."

Maurice Lee, senior vice president of the WestCare Foundation, also favored the bill and said he has enjoyed success as an ex-offender who participated in a similar program. WestCare is a nonprofit organization that currently provides programs similar to those touted in SB398 both in Nevada and other states.

"I offer myself as an example personally. I have been incarcerated and went through a similar system of care that has helped me turn my life around," Lee said. "I now have 20 years outside of the system and I live in a state where I pay taxes, tithes in church and take care of six kids."

Lee told lawmakers, "Your investment goes a lot further than what is being stated here on paper." He said later that the prison population is expected to keep growing.

"Other states have learned quickly that they cannot build their way out of their criminal justice situation. There is no way to build enough prisons to continue housing people," Lee said.

Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno, praised the program, but said it's important to know all program costs before starting it.

"I question the cost. We don't want to find out in the haste to get it approved we haven't funded it properly," Raggio said.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12133087

Posted by lois at 08:37 AM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2009

ID: Getting smart on crime does not mean more prisons beds

Monica Hopkins: Getting smart on crime does not mean more prisons beds
BY MONICA HOPKINS - Idaho Statesman
04/12/09

Idaho's current budget deficit poses a crisis for decision makers. While prison spending increases, vital public services like Medicaid and education face cuts. Like all crises, this is also an opportunity. What better time to question the diminishing returns on the millions of dollars Idaho invests annually on corrections, probation and parole?

Unfortunately, our country leads the world in incarceration. Nearly one person in every 99 is behind bars. Between 1987 and 2007, the U.S. prison population tripled. A recent Pew Center on the States report ranked Idaho second in the nation for adults under correctional control, at one in every 18 Idahoans. This growth has serious implications for our state budget. Last year, the Idaho Legislature set aside $207 million, or 7.3 percent of total general fund expenditures, for corrections.

The Pew Center study also found states were not increasing their spending for community supervision in proportion to their growing caseloads. About $8.70 out of $10 spent on corrections in Idaho goes to incarceration and prison financing. This was evidenced by the Canyon County Jail requesting $48 million of economic stimulus monies to build a new facility.

Instead, Canyon County could address fixing the conditions at the current facility, which are inhumane for inmates, jail employees and the general public. Issues such as inadequate jail staffing could be better resolved by decreasing the current inmate population and increasing funding for probation, parole and alternatives to incarceration. Building a new facility does not tackle the bigger issue of our society's over-reliance on incarceration.

Incarceration is a shortsighted solution that is hard on families, social services and taxpayers. We must fund better solutions, such as community-based sentencing alternatives that preserve Idaho families, strengthen communities and rehabilitate individuals while reducing prison and jail costs.

We need reforms that will not only reduce the costs of incarceration, but also help ensure our communities are safe. If we're smart on crime, we can do both.

How? For starters, Idaho should carefully review the wisdom of mandatory minimum sentences and the enhancement of sentences for repeat substance-abuse offenses. Community-based programs, such as the successful Idaho Drug and Mental Health Courts, and those that offer substance abuse treatment and skill-training, are more effective and should be available to qualified individuals. Published reports indicate offender participation in Idaho felony drug courts achieved a 20 percent reduction in recidivism.

Minor violations of parole or probation should not automatically return the offenders to prison; instead, authorities should be permitted to impose alternate, rehabilitative sanctions.

We also need to ensure that our young people are given opportunities to succeed. Currently 15.9 percent of Idaho children live in poverty, and Idaho ranks 49th in the nation on education spending. The $62 million cut in education funding proposed by Superintendent Tom Luna will deprive our children of the education and support they need, and increase corrections costs later. The cost of housing a prisoner for one year is 3.6 times that of educating one pupil.

These are not soft-on-crime arguments; they are hard facts.

Idaho communities need our support. We can address our budget problems without sacrificing public safety. It is possible to be both tough and smart on crime, and the state has a responsibility to take action now to become both.

Monica Hopkins is the executive director of American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho.
http://www.idahostatesman.com/readersopinion/story/729393.html

Posted by lois at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)

NY Times Editorial: Addiction Behind Bars

NY Times Editorial
Addiction Behind Bars

Published: April 12, 2009

The United States must do more to curb the spread of diseases like AIDS and hepatitis C in prison, where infection rates are high and inmates can easily spread disease through unprotected sex or by sharing needles.

Drug treatment in prison is clearly part of the solution. But by some estimates, fewer than one in five inmates who need formal treatment are actually getting it. That’s alarming, given that about half the prison population suffers from drug abuse or dependency problems.

Addicted prisoners cause problems outside the walls. After they’re freed, addicts with H.I.V. or AIDS can infect spouses and lovers. They feed their addictions by returning to crime, which lands them back in prison and starts the terrible cycle over again.

The most effective programs provide inmates with high-quality treatment in prison and continue that treatment when prisoners return to their communities. Such programs have been shown to reduce both drug use and recidivism.

But good programs are rare, according to a report earlier this year in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Prisons typically rely on the abstinence-only model, which fails miserably with heroin addicts. Moreover, prison officials are notoriously hostile to methadone maintenance and other chemically based therapies that have long been a standard for people addicted to opiates.

Prison treatment is particularly disastrous in New York, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch. Imprisoned addicts, the authors say, are typically shut out of treatment until their sentences are nearly over because of ill-conceived policies that give priority to those who are about to be released.

New rules created earlier this month should help address these problems. The rules give oversight responsibility for prison treatment programs to the State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, an agency that develops treatment programs and licenses treatment providers.

The agency will be required to make sure that prison drug treatments are tailored to inmates’ needs. It will also monitor the programs, filing annual reports to the governor and Legislature. Drug-policy advocates hope that the new arrangement will improve treatment and provide timely help for addicted inmates. That would be good for public health. It could reduce crime, too.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 13, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/opinion/13mon3.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 06:37 PM | Comments (0)

WA: Plan to close McNeil Island prison has many critics Closing McNeil Island prison might save the state millions.

Plan to close McNeil Island prison has many critics
Closing McNeil Island prison might save the state millions. It definitely would cost jobs in Pierce County and hurt businesses in Steilacoom.

IAN DEMSKY
Published: 04/11/09

Fourteen years before Washington became a state, McNeil Island began housing its first inmates. Now, 134 years later, the expensive and isolated prison – the last of its kind in the country – faces potential closure as the state Legislature grapples with how to fill a sinkhole projected at $9 billion.

By cutting many inmate sentences short by one or two months to free up beds, the Senate Ways & Means Committee calculated that McNeil Island Corrections Center could be closed, saving almost $16 million by the end of this biennium. And the real savings, an estimated $31 million per year, would follow.

But when trying to understand what that would mean for Pierce County, there is more to consider than raw dollar figures, some critics say. Although it’s ultimately not for them to decide, the plan lacks the support of Department of Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail; the Teamsters union, which represents many of the 587 staff that work at McNeil; and the Department of Social and Health Services, which runs a civil commitment center for sex offenders on the island.

Ferrying people and supplies to and from the facility makes housing offenders at McNeil pricey. The prison has the highest per-inmate cost of the state’s medium security facilities, running $37,000 per inmate per year, $6,000 above the state average. McNeil costs nearly $50 million per year to operate.

The state House and the state Senate have made different pitches for trimming corrections costs.

The Senate would get most of its savings by reducing spending inside the prisons – including letting many inmates out a month or two early and closing McNeil – while the House proposes cutting back on supervision of ex-convicts after they get out of prison and go back into the community.

John Lane, the governor’s policy adviser on criminal justice, said the administration hasn’t seen a bill yet that would bring the average daily population of the system down far enough to close McNeil.

“We need to wait and see what happens at the end of session,” he said, noting that the administration generally agreed with Vail, who thinks the logistics of making cuts while maintaining the integrity of the system are best left to the agency itself.

“We’re going to have to make some hard decisions,” Vail said. “But I’d prefer they leave it to us to make those decisions.”

From Vail’s perspective, the state would likely be better served shutting down units in multiple prisons rather than closing an entire facility. That would give the department more flexibility as the state’s financial situation changes and as the inmate population fluctuates.

“Prison population tends to rise faster during an economic downturn,” Vail said.

There’s also the $165 million the state has spent since 1990 to improve the facilities on the island.

“I’d like to see us get the full life cycle out of the investment we put in,” he said.

And for its financial disadvantages, the prison has a number of advantages, Vail said. The facility has the added security of being on an island accessible only by boat, and it’s on the Interstate 5 corridor, making it convenient for visitors and staff.

Vail’s sentiments were echoed by Tracey Thompson, secretary of Teamsters Local 117, which represents about 500 of the prison’s corrections officers and other employees.

“It’s in a central location,” she said. “And it’s a significant number of jobs for Pierce County. There might be some opportunities for our folks to move into other prisons, but we have a lot of prisons in remote areas.”

It’s not clear how many jobs would be lost outright and how many would be moved elsewhere.

On Wednesday, the union ratified a new two-year contract that would ensure that employees at McNeil had seniority and transfer rights if the facility closed, said union spokesman Paul Zilly. It did not include a wage increase.

Thompson said she thought transferring the work of running the island’s ferry service, its fire department and its wastewater treatment plant to the DSHS also might pose a problem.

“They are under an obligation to bargain about changes in working conditions,” Thompson said. “They can’t unilaterally transfer work outside of our bargaining unit.”

The DSHS operates the Special Commitment Center, which opened in 1990 to house civilly committed sex offenders who are deemed a continuing threat even after their prison sentences. It’s currently home to about 300 residents.

Steve Williams, a spokesman for the DSHS, said having both the prison and the sex offender center on the island created an economy of scale.

“We consider what they do to be kind of our lifeline to the island,” he said. “They even have a SWAT-type team that we can call if we need it.”

The Senate estimated that transfer of those services would stick the DSHS with a yearly bill of $4.2 million (if they aren’t contracted out). Williams said DSHS calculations put the figure at $12 million.

Ron Lucas, the mayor of Steilacoom, which sits just across the water from McNeil, said closing the facility would hurt local shops and gas stations.

“It’s an issue that will have a bigger impact on small business in our community,” he said. “Small business is where you hire people.”

The town might also have to adjust its $100,000-a-year contract with the owners of Steilacoom Marine and Spirits, who pay for the privilege of running the local parking operation utilized by those going to the island.

If there is a nonfinancial silver lining to closing McNeil, it would be one fewer facility located in a county where officials have been fighting for years for a more equitable distribution of criminal justice facilities, especially offender treatment and work-release programs.

Hard-won requirements now make the state ship directly released inmates back to their county of origin. But Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney Gerry Horne has blamed the state work-release program for funneling into the county more than its fair share of ex-convicts; that, in turn, makes the crime rate worse because so many offenders return to crime after their release from prison.

Some offenders’ families also relocate to the areas around prisons.

Closing the prison wouldn’t have a huge impact, but it’s another small step toward parity, said deputy prosecutor Mark Lindquist.

“Here in Pierce County we’ve got Purdy (women’s prison), McNeil, the Special Commitment Center, Western State Hospital and the federal detention center,” he said. “Add all that together and it puts a burden on our criminal justice system and social services.”

Posted by lois at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2009

National support sought for Sign-on to support NY's Anti-Shackling Bill

Sign-on to support NY's Anti-Shackling Bill
Letter of Support for A.3373-A
National support is sought for this Bill. You can sign-on individually or as an organization by contacting Tina Reynolds. Contact info at the bottom of this email.

National support is being sought to sign-on please contact Tina Reynolds

Please join the Correctional Association of New York, the New York Civil Liberties Union, Legal Aid Society's Prisoners' Rights Project and Women on the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH) in calling on New York State lawmakers to end to the degrading, unnecessary and dangerous practice of shackling incarcerated pregnant women.

http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5765/images/Shackling_Bill_A3373A.pdf (copy of the bill)
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5765/images/Shackling_Bill_FINAL.pdf (sign on letter)

Here is an Anti-Shackling Bill sign-on letter in support of A.3373-A, which forbids the use of restraints on incarcerated women during labor and post-delivery recovery, and restricts the use of restraints during transport to and from the hospital before and after child birth.

Sponsored by Assemblymember N. Nick Perry, Assembly Majority Whip, A.3373-A has been voted out of all necessary Committees and is likely to come to the Assembly floor for a full vote very soon. Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Chair of the Social Services, Children and Families Committee, plans to introduce the same bill in the Senate during this legislative session.

If you would like to add your name or your organization's name, please email Tina Reynolds, Executive Director of WORTH and Co-Chair of the Coalition's Incarcerated Mothers Committee, by FRIDAY, MAY 1: treynolds@womenontherise-worth.org.

Thank you,

Tamar Kraft-Stolar
Women in Prison Project Director
Correctional Association of New York
2090 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd, Ste 200
New York, NY 10027
www.correctionalassociation.org

Posted by lois at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

Twenty Years of Drug Courts -- Results and Misgivings from Drug War Chronicle

Feature: Twenty Years of Drug Courts -- Results and Misgivings
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #580, 4/10/09

The drug court phenomenon celebrates its 20th birthday this year. The first drug court, designed to find a more effective way for the criminal justice system to deal with drug offenders, was born in Miami in 1989 under the guidance of then local prosecutor Janet Reno. Since then, drug courts have expanded dramatically, with their number exceeding 2000 today, including at least one in every state.

According to Urban Institute estimates, some 55,000 people are currently in drug court programs. The group found that another 1.5 million arrestees would probably meet the criteria for drug dependence and would thus be good candidates for drug courts.

The notion behind drug courts is that providing drug treatment to some defendants would lead to better outcomes for them and their communities. Unlike typical criminal proceedings, drug courts are intended to be collaborative, with judges, prosecutors, social workers, and defense attorneys working together to decide what would be best for the defendant and the community.

Drug courts can operate either by diverting offenders into treatment before sentencing or by sentencing offenders to prison terms and suspending the sentences providing they comply with treatment demands. They also vary in their criteria for eligibility: Some may accept only nonviolent, first-time offenders considered to be addicted, while others may have broader criteria.

Such courts rely on sanctions and rewards for their clients, with continuing adherence to treatment demands met with a loosening of restrictions and relapsing into drug use subjected to ever harsher punishments, typically beginning with a weekend in jail and graduating from there. People who fail drug court completely are then either diverted back into the criminal justice system for prosecution or, if they have already been convicted, sent to prison.

Drug courts operate in a strange and contradictory realm that embraces the model of addiction as a disease needing treatment, yet punishes failure to respond as if it were a moral failing. No other disease is confronted in such a manner. There are no diabetes courts, for example, where one is placed under the control of the criminal justice system for being sick and subject to "flash incarceration" for eating forbidden foods.

Conceptual dilemmas notwithstanding, drug courts have been extensively studied, and the general conclusion is that, within the parameters of the therapeutic/criminal justice model, they are successful. A recently released report from the Sentencing Project is the latest addition to the literature, or, more accurately, review of the literature.

In the report, Drug Courts: A Review of the Evidence, the group concluded that:

* Drug courts have generally been demonstrated to have positive benefits in reducing recidivism.
* Evaluations of the cost-effectiveness of drug courts have generally found benefits through reduced costs of crime or incarceration.
* Concern remains regarding potential "net-widening" effects of drug courts by drawing in defendants who might not otherwise have been subject to arrest and prosecution.

"What you have with drug courts is a program that the research has shown time and time again works," said Chris Deutsch, associate director of communications for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals in suburban Washington, DC. "We all know the problems facing the criminal justice system with drug offenders and imprisonment. We have established incentives and sanctions as an important part of the drug court model because they work," he said. "One of the reasons drug courts are expanding so rapidly," said Deutsch, "is that we don't move away from what the research shows works. This is a scientifically validated model."

"There is evidence that in certain models there is success in reducing recidivism, but there is not a single model that works," said Ryan King, coauthor of the Sentencing Project report. "We wanted to highlight common factors in success, such as having judges with multiple turns in drug court and who understand addiction, and building on graduated sanctions, but also to get people to understand the weaknesses."

"Drug courts are definitely better than going to prison," said Theshia Naidoo, a staff attorney for the Drug Policy Alliance, which has championed a less coercive treatment-not-jail program in California's Proposition 36, "but they are not the be-all and end-all of addressing drug abuse. They may be a step forward in our current prohibitionist system, but when you look at their everyday operations, it's pretty much criminal justice as usual."

That was one of the nicest things said about drug courts by harm reductionists and drug policy reformers contacted this week by the Chronicle. While drug courts can claim success as measured by the metrics embraced by the therapeutic-criminal justice complex, they appear deeply perverse and wrongheaded to people who do not embrace that model.

Remarks by Kevin Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy hit many of the common themes. "If drug courts result in more people being caught up in the criminal justice system, I do not see them as a good thing," he said. "The US has one out of 31 people in prison on probation or on parole, and that's a national embarrassment more appropriate for a police state than the land of the free. If drug courts are adding to that problem, they are part of the national embarrassment, not the solution."

But Zeese was equally disturbed by the therapeutic-criminal justice model itself. "Forcing drug treatment on people who happen to get caught is a very strange way to offer health care," he observed. "We would see a greater impact if treatment on request were the national policy and sufficient funds were provided to treatment services so that people who wanted treatment could get it quickly. And, the treatment industry would be a stronger industry if they were not dependent on police and courts to be sending them 'clients' -- by force -- and if instead they had to offer services that people wanted."

For Zeese, the bottom line was: "The disease model has no place in the courts. Courts don't treat disease, doctors and health professionals do."

In addition to such conceptual and public policy concerns, others cited more specific problems with drug court operations. "In Connecticut, the success of drug courts depends on educated judges," said Robert Heimer of the Yale University School of Public Health. "For example, in some parts of the state, judges refused to send defendants with opioid addiction to methadone programs. This dramatically reduced the success of the drug courts in these parts of the state compared to parts of the state where judges referred people to the one proven medically effective form of treatment for their addiction."

Heimer's complaint about the rejection of methadone maintenance therapy was echoed on the other side of the Hudson River by upstate New York drug reformer Nicolas Eyle of Reconsider: Forum on Drug Policy. "Most, if not all, drug courts in New York abhor methadone and maintenance treatment in general," he noted. "This is troubling because the state's recent Rockefeller law reforms have a major focus on treatment in lieu of prison, suggesting that more and more hapless people will be forced to enter treatment they may not need or want. Then the judge decides what type of treatment they must have, and when they don't achieve the therapeutic goals set for them they'll be hauled off to serve their time."

Still, said Heimer, "Such courts can work if appropriate treatment options are available, but if the treatment programs are bad, then it is unlikely that courts will work. In such cases, if the only alternative is then incarceration, there is little reason for drug courts. If drug court personnel think their program is valuable, they should be consistently lobbying for better drug treatment in their community. If they are not doing this, then they are contributing to the circumstances of their own failure, and again, the drug user becomes the victim if the drug court personnel are not doing this."

Even within the coerced treatment model, there are more effective approaches than drug courts, said Naidoo. "Drug courts basically have a zero tolerance policy, and many judges just don't understand addiction as a chronic relapsing condition, so if there is a failed drug test, the court comes in with a hammer imposing a whole series of sanctions. A more effective model would be to look at the overall context," she argued. "If the guy has a dirty urine, but has found a job, has gotten housing, and is reunited with his family, maybe he shouldn't be punished for the relapse. The drug court would punish him."

Other harm reductionists were just plain cynical about drug courts. "I guess they work in reducing the drug-related harm of going to prison by keeping people out of prison -- except when they're sending people to prison," said Delaney Ellison, a veteran Michigan harm reductionist and activist. "And that's exactly what drug courts do if you're resistant to treatment or broke. Poor, minority people can't afford to complete a time-consuming drug court regime. If a participant finds he can't pay the fines, go to four hours a day of outpatient treatment, and pay rent and buy food while trapped in the system, he finds a way to prioritize and abandons the drug court."

An adequate health care system that provided treatment on demand is what is needed, Ellison said. "And most importantly, when are we going to stop letting cops and lawyers -- and this includes judges -- regulate drugs?" he asked. "These people don't know anything about pharmacology. When do we lobby to let doctors and pharmacists regulate drugs?"

Drug courts are also under attack on the grounds they deny due process rights to defendants. In Maryland, the state's public defender last week argued that drug courts were unconstitutional, complaining that judges should not be allowed to send someone to jail repeatedly without a full judicial hearing.

"There is no due process in drug treatment court," Public Defender Nancy Foster told the Maryland Court of Appeals in a case that is yet to be decided.

Foster's argument aroused some interest from the appeals court judges. One of them, Judge Joseph Murphy, noted that a judge talking to one party in a case without the other party being present, which sometimes happens in drug courts, has raised due process concerns in other criminal proceedings. "Can you do that without violating the defendant's rights?" he asked.

A leading advocate of the position that drug courts interfere with due process rights is Williams College sociologist James Nolan. In an interview last year, Nolan summarized his problem with drug courts. "My concern is that if we make the law so concerned with being therapeutic, you forget about notions of justice such as proportionality of punishment, due process and the protection of individual rights," Nolan said. "Even though problem-solving advocates wouldn't want to do away with these things, they tend to fade into the background in terms of importance."

In that interview, Nolan cited a Miami-Dade County drug court participant forced to remain in the program for seven years. "So here, the goal is not about justice," he said. "The goal is to make someone well, and the consequences can be unjust because they are getting more of a punishment than they deserve."

Deutsch said he was "hesitant" to comment on criticisms of the drug court model, "but the fact of the matter is that when it comes to keeping drug addicted offenders out of the criminal justice system and in treatment, drug courts are the best option available."

For the Sentencing Project's King, drug courts are a step up from the depths of the punitive prohibitionist approach, but not much of one. "With the drug courts, we're in a better place now than we were 20 years ago, but it's not the place we want to be 20 years from now," he said. "The idea that somebody needs to enter the criminal justice system to access public drug treatment is a real tragedy."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/580/drug_courts_at_20_years

Posted by lois at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2009

NV: CCA Proposal for Building 6,000 cages

Board of Prison Commissioners hearing April 14th: Question of for-profit prison plans to build 6,000 beds in Nevada
4-10-09

*I'm with the non-profit Private Corrections Institute and have been a researcher in the field of for-profit prisons for a dozen years. I've read scores of reports, most of the books on the subject and over 10,000 newspaper stories about them. I have obtained thousands of pages of documents under the Freedom of Information Act and through Open Records Act requests in at least ten states and dozens of municipalities. I've testified before numerous state legislative committees and municipalities around the country.

The Corrections Corporation of America has gotten approval for the building of a 1,500-bed prison in Pahrump, in Nye County, from the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee. They have proposed building another 1,500 beds there, plus 3,000 more beds in Storey County, east of Sparks, south of Highway 80 in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park.

The corporation has claimed that it wants to hold only federal prisoners, that they will be short-term detainees, that those prisoners will be entirely from within the state of Nevada.
There is no reason to believe that those claims are true. The population of federal prisoners from Nevada is likely less than half the capacity of the proposed Pahrump prison. They have a contract for providing 750 beds only and have made it clear in other venues that it cannot remain in operation without filling their prisons to over 90% capacity. If they don't hold federal prisoners, there will be no requirement to pay prevailing wages, another promise they've made to Nye County. The state of Nevada could conceivably find itself hosting these prisons with no oversight at all.
Citizens in Pahrump were assured that the prison would have federal oversight, but it won't if it doesn't hold them, of course. CCA has simultaneously been marketing itself to take in thousands of California prisoners in various venues. They are holding perhaps a thousand in Eloy, Arizona at their Las Palmas prison. Reports that I'm receiving is that Las Palmas is out of control, with daily fights and green, low-paid staff overwhelmed with the staggering task of controlling this many imported gang bangers.

In a hearing addressing a possible repeal of the long standing Kansas ban on for-profit prisons, the state Secretary of Corrections nailed the problem. He said that he feared if these spec prison builders came back into Kansas "they would begin directing state correctional policy." That is exactly right. The Oklahoma Director was at that meeting. His state has been burdened with riot and escape-plagued prisons for over 15 years. Asked if he could venture in retrospect, whether he would have allowed them in to begin with, his answer was an unequivocal "No!"

CCA has made a mess of contracts with the state of Nevada in the past. Rooftop riots, sexual abuse of female prisoners and the dumping of contracts are but the tip of the iceberg.

The state of Nebraska crafted legislation that restricted the operation of any for-profit operator that proposed to site there. It was very common sense and reflected concerns for the safety of the people of that state. Because of the careful delineation of the conditions under which such a prison could be constructed and operated, no company has ever ventured there. They are simply unwilling to comply with the oversight and regulation legislators required.

Let me suggest that the state of Nevada needs to similarly protect itself before CCA begins construction in two months. I would hope that these issues can be addressed at the Board of Commissioners hearing on April 14th.

Frank Smith
www.privateci.org

Posted by lois at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2009

WA: Closing prisons, slashing sentences eyed to balance budget

Closing prisons, slashing sentences eyed to balance budget
By Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporter
April 9, 2009

OLYMPIA — Tough-on-crime legislation that has long filled courtrooms, prisons and parole offices across the country has apparently met its match — the economy.

In Washington and other states, lawmakers are considering budget cuts that would close prisons, loosen sentencing guidelines and slash probation terms.

With lawmakers in Olympia looking for nearly $4 billion in spending cuts, several high-ranking Democrats say the recession gives them an opportunity to add compassion to a criminal-justice system they believe has grown too large, too expensive and too harsh for some of the crimes.

"We need a massive re-look at what we're doing and what the focus is," said Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Margarita Prentice, D-Renton.

Prentice is backing a plan in the Senate's proposed state budget to close the McNeil Island Correctional Complex, a 1,300-inmate, medium-security island prison in Pierce County.

The state has never closed a major prison before. The move would save about $16 million over the next two years, legislative budget staff said.

The Senate budget also would close Green Hill School, the state lockup for violent and gang-entrenched juveniles; downsize the state prison population by 1,900 inmates; and drop people convicted of low-level felonies and misdemeanors from probation.

The House, in its proposed budget, would cut probation time for violent felons and sex offenders; allow for home detention instead of incarceration in some cases; close the medium-security Naselle Youth Camp; and eliminate parole for nearly a third of all juvenile offenders.

6% of states' budgets

One in every 31 adults is incarcerated or on parole in the U.S. — a total of 7.3 million people, the Pew Center on the States reported last month.

Nationally, the prison inmate population has grown each year since 1972, said Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

But due to the recession, nearly every state is scrambling to find ways to cut criminal-justice costs, which eat up nearly 6 percent of state budgets, said Alison Lawrence, a policy specialist with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

States are releasing inmates early and are letting offenders trade incarceration for treatment programs, she said. Some, like Washington, Michigan and New York, are considering prison closures.

In Olympia, the Senate would cut $152 million from corrections and criminal justice in the 2009-11 state budget, while the House would cut more than $160 million.

Last year, Washington spent nearly $1.1 billion on criminal justice, which includes the Department of Corrections, the State Patrol, the Criminal Justice Training Commission, the courts system and the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, according to the state Office of Financial Management.

Nearly 18,000 people are housed in the state's 15 prisons. Still, Washington is far from a leader in incarceration rates nationally. According to the Pew study, Washington ranks 44th for the number of people per capita in prison or jail.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg attributes Washington's lower prison population to a 2002 law that allows prosecutors to steer many drug offenders to state-funded treatment instead of incarceration.

Last year, drug offenders totaled about 13 percent of the prison population, down from 22 percent in 2005, Satterberg said.

Some urge caution

Crime-victim advocate Jenny Wieland Ward says the state should study how to reduce the cost of corrections before closing prisons.

"There's smarter ways of dealing with budget cuts than closing McNeil," said Ward, executive director of Everett-based Families & Friends of Missing Persons & Violent Crime Victims. "There has got to be a more thoughtful process."

State Corrections Chief Eldon Vail agrees the state shouldn't rush into closing institutions. He suggests cutting costs by placing fewer offenders on probation — a strategy both the House and Senate propose, along with closing institutions.

Currently, the state supervises about 27,000 offenders on probation, Vail said. The House proposal would remove about 11,000 people from supervision while the Senate would cut 7,100, Vail said.

Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, worries the budget shortfall could cut into programs that provide drug, alcohol and mental-health treatment to adult and juvenile offenders. Hargrove, who chairs the Senate Human Services and Corrections Committee, said he would rather close expensive facilities like McNeil Island than put treatment programs on the chopping block.

Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, said the state should look for new ways to pay for criminal justice.

"This state needs to have a serious conversation about public safety, how we're paying for it and how the public is suffering from inadequate law-enforcement resources," McKenna said.

When the economy is flush, lawmakers want to devote more money to public safety, he said. But when times are bad, criminal justice gets whacked.

"This is not the first time the state has balanced the budget by letting people out of prison early," McKenna added.

Sen. Mike Carrell, R-Lakewood, vehemently opposes any move to close prisons. He believes criminal-justice funding should be a higher priority this legislative session.

"Public safety has to be the first call," Carrell said. "What good does it do to have great schools if our children are raped, murdered and assaulted to and from school?"

"It's desperate times"

At Green Hill, news of the potential closure of the state's oldest and toughest juvenile-detention center was circulating though the population last week.

The facility in Chehalis holds about 200 medium- and maximum-security offenders ranging in age from 17 to 20.

Dan Robertson, deputy assistant secretary of the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, says closing Green Hill would be a mistake. Senate budget writers say the move would save nearly $14 million a year in operating costs.

But Robertson says it would cost more than $35 million to construct new facilities at Maple Lane School, a juvenile lockup near Centralia where Green Hill's offenders would be moved. Maple Lane primarily houses youth who have substance-abuse problems or mental illness or are incarcerated for sex offenses.

Instead of closing Green Hill, Robertson said his agency suggested closing Naselle Youth Camp, a medium-security facility that serves both boys and girls. That would save $10 million over the next two years.

Marybeth Queral, superintendent at Green Hill, doubts the state could re-create Green Hill's vocational programs for fiber-optic networking, welding, auto repair, embroidery and sign printing.

She's also concerned about the two offender populations mixing — many of Green Hill's offenders are known gang members serving time for violent felonies. Queral fears that Maple Lane's population could be preyed upon and manipulated by the older and more sophisticated offenders.

"I think it's desperate times. I think decisions are being made looking at the bottom-line dollar, not the potential impact," she said. "It could be very dangerous.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2009010460_criminaljusticecut
s09m.html

Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company

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

Delinquency and Prevention

Delinquency and Prevention
Editorial- New York Times
Published: April 9, 2009

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency and Prevention Act of 1974, now up for Congressional reauthorization, provided states and localities with money, training and technical assistance for badly needed delinquency prevention programs and greatly expanded protections for children who ended up in custody.

Unfortunately, those protections have been seriously eroded since the early 1990s, when states began sentencing more and more children to adult jails. Those young people are at high risk of being raped, battered or pushed to suicide. The numbers show that once they are jailed with adults, they are much more likely to commit violent crimes as adults and become career criminals.

The Senate version of the reauthorized act (the House has yet to move) marks a welcome departure from policies that have increasingly criminalized the nation’s children. It strengthens protections for young people who end up in adult lockups, and it would stop penalizing states that wisely house in juvenile facilities some children convicted in adult courts.

The new bill also fixes some problems that were supposed to be eliminated in 1974, when states were to have ended the all-too-common practice of locking up children who committed noncriminal “status offenses” — like truancy, running away or smoking cigarettes.

For such children, the bill encourages states to use community-based counseling and family intervention programs, which are cheaper and more effective than detention. It also calls for better screening and treatment of children with mental health needs. Those children are over-represented among those in custody.

The bill deserves the full support of Congress, which needs to back up the new policies with money enough to make them work.

Posted by lois at 06:03 PM | Comments (0)

NC: 3 of 7 prisons saved by Senate for closure. Schools cut.

Senate budget targets schools
Haywood prison spared in plan

Jordan Schrader April 7, 2009
Citizen Times

RALEIGH – State Senate budget writers released a spending plan Monday that would save money by boosting class sizes, giving fewer tests and prodding city school systems to fold.

More than 700 state employees would lose their jobs under the plan that the Senate will consider this week. Others could face furloughs, or unpaid time off.

Numerous programs would close, and the state's pair of signature preschool programs would merge.

But after local protests, budget writers avoided three cuts that Gov. Bev Perdue proposed affecting how criminals are rehabilitated in the mountains.
Prison spared

Haywood Correctional Center, an aging minimum-security prison in Hazelwood, comes off the chopping block — for now.

The prison is the only one west of Asheville. Corrections officials have been optimistic that its workers could be reassigned if it closes as proposed by Perdue, but Sen. John Snow said the distance would be too great.

“There wasn't anywhere for those folks to go,” said Snow, a Murphy Democrat who co-chairs the budget subcommittee on public safety. “The 44 employees that would be lost, would be lost, period.”

The plan also spares Camp Woodson, a Buncombe County wilderness camp aimed at turning around the most serious offenders in the juvenile justice system; and the Young Offenders Forest Conservation Program, also known as the BRIDGE program, which sends young inmates in the adult corrections system to fight forest fires in the mountains.

Four prisons in eastern and central North Carolina would close under the plan, down from seven in Perdue's proposal to the General Assembly.

Also tapped for closing: two aging youth lockups that are close to new units and a number of programs that target at-risk youths, like the Center for the Prevention of School Violence. Juvenile Justice Secretary Linda Hayes called those “very shocking” cuts that could cripple public safety efforts.

No new building projects are proposed in the budget, but senators added $2.6 million to continue planning for expansion of state medical schools — including a program that would bring third- and fourth-year medical students to Asheville — and for the Center for Health and Aging, a project of the Mountain Area Health Education Center.
Larger classes

Budget chairwoman Sen. Linda Garrou said boosting average class size by two students would save $320 million.

It's one of the largest cost-savings measures in the plan, which also assumes some tax increases without outlining what they are.

Senators “knew that we couldn't just cut our way out of the budget,” Garrou said.

The state faces a budget shortfall predicted to top $3 billion in the fiscal year that starts in July.

The Senate plan would leave some of the savings up to state agencies. Garrou said the extra authority would allow agencies to furlough state employees if necessary.

Some employees may volunteer for furloughs, Senate leaders said: for example, to take an unpaid long weekend.

Raising class size would allow school systems to build fewer new schools and the state to pay for 6,000 fewer teacher jobs, which Senate leaders said can be accomplished by not replacing teachers who leave.

Garrou, a Winston-Salem Democrat and former teacher, said she once taught a 40-student classroom.

Classes won't reach that size. They would go up by two students, growing to an average of 20 in kindergarten through third grade and more in upper grades, including to 29 in grades 10-12.

Perdue has said she would resist efforts to increase class size.

“The Senate made some good investments in what we know of its budget so far, but at this point in time Gov. Perdue is troubled by the proposed increase in class size,” said Perdue spokesman David Kochman. “An increase of two students per class means eliminating 6,200 teaching positions and reducing the amount of individual attention our kids receive in the classroom.”

But Garrou said the increases, which Republican leaders have also sought, are less harmful than alternatives.

“The most important thing is that we have a good teacher,” Garrou said.
Cutting programs, tests, school systems

The remaining educators would have fewer requirements for testing.

Senators proposed cutting funding, more than $3 million a year, for all tests not required by federal law or to obtain federal funding.

Among the subjects of tests to be dropped: reading competency, math competency, computer skills and end-of-course tests in geometry, algebra II, physical science, chemistry and physics.

Another $11 million per year in school savings would come from cutting the extra funding that goes to counties with more than one school system, starting in the 2010 school year.

That would require Asheville City Schools to merge into Buncombe County Schools unless taxes go up or the systems find other revenue.

The idea has been pushed by Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand, but it has strong opposition in the Senate. A committee debated Rand's proposal last month without taking a vote, airing criticism from some of the senators who represent the 15 city school systems.

Senators today will begin proposing changes to the plan. Garrou said they would have the chance to offer amendments.

The bill then gets a Senate vote before moving to the House. Sen. Martin Nesbitt, an Asheville Democrat, said he's doubtful the House would agree to school consolidation even if he and allies fail to remove the provision.

If it does become law, Nesbitt said he's glad it doesn't take effect immediately, giving schools time to prepare.

The budget would also find savings by merging the preschool subsidy program for at-risk 4-year-olds, More at Four, with the broader program aimed at readying young children for school, Smart Start.

Cutting More at Four funding from the education department would allow creation of a similar program in the health department, where Smart Start resides.

Garrou said the plan would save $40 million.

“It's probably smart to think of it as a whole,” said Sen. Joe Sam Queen, a Waynesville Democrat.

The tax portion of the budget remains undisclosed, including whether the Senate will follow Perdue's lead and propose increases in the cigarette and alcohol tax. But a number of court fees would go up under the plan.
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009904070332

Posted by lois at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

WV: Sen. Rockefeller tours site of new federal prison says it is a perfect fit for moutaintwop location

Senator tours site of federal prison in McDowell County
Mary Catherine Brooks
Register-Herald Reporter
April 09, 2009

Bringing attention to the nearly 350 jobs to be created by the federal prison now under construction in the McDowell County industrial park, Sen. Jay Rockefeller toured the facility Thursday.

The federal prison is a perfect fit for the isolated mountaintop location, Rockefeller explained.

“This will be a huge job producer,” he said. “I’ve been coming to McDowell County now for 35 or 40 years, and I’ve been watching it go downhill in terms of jobs ... This will be huge for the area.”

Rockefeller, D-W.Va., explained it is difficult to bring manufacturing jobs into the mountains, but the isolated area is “an advantage for the federal project,” he said.

“Then comes water and sewer,” he added.

The senator also promised the Coalfields Expressway would be completed; the problem is the cost, he said. It will cost about $100 million to construct the four-lane road near the prison.

“But make no mistake, these roads are all going to be completed,” he emphasized, though offering no timeline.

The Coalfields Expressway was not awarded any federal stimulus money, despite the impoverished economy of McDowell and Wyoming counties.

Rockefeller said the stimulus money was divided equally among the three congressional districts in West Virginia.

Construction of the Coalfields Expressway has begun in both Raleigh and McDowell counties, and will eventually traverse Wyoming County. The new road will be the first four-lane for both Wyoming and McDowell counties.

Nearly 350 jobs are expected to be created when the new prison opens next year in the Indian Ridge Industrial Park, just across the Wyoming County line. Sixty percent of those are expected to go to local people.

More than 600 additional jobs in service industries could be generated by the prison once it is up and running, officials said.

The prison’s annual budget is expected to put $35 million into the area economy, according to officials.

Local residents who are interested in working in the prison system — including secretaries and accountants, among other positions — are considered corrections officers first, officials noted. In the event of emergencies within the prison, those employees are expected to perform their trained assignments as corrections officers.

The jobs will include opportunities in food services, health services, management, education, recreation and computers, among other areas.

Job applications are available online at www.bop.gov.
http://www.register-herald.com/local/local_story_099221724.html

Posted by lois at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Coalinga state prison still falls short, grand jury reports

Coalinga state prison still falls short, jury reports
Thursday, Apr. 09, 2009
By Eddie Jimenez / The Fresno Bee

Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga is still plagued with crowding, inadequate medical care and concerns that inmates could be exposed to Valley fever, according to a Fresno County grand jury report issued Thursday.

A grand jury report last year addressed the same problems and also issued the same recommendations.

The most recent report said a visit by grand jurors in late September revealed that the prison, designed to hold 2,200 inmates, housed 5,191 inmates -- including some in a gymnasium.
In addition, the Coalinga Regional Medical Center still does not have a secure medical wing for prisoners. Therefore, when inmates require hospitalization, they are driven a hour away to the Bakersfield Community Medical Center, where the prison contracts for 20 beds.

Taking inmates to Bakersfield for hospital care stretches the Coalinga prison's staff and budget, the report said.
Lack of state funding is stalling efforts to create a secure wing for prisoners at the Coalinga medical center, the grand jury said.
Valley fever -- widespread in the Coalinga area, according to the report -- remains an ongoing threat for inmates and staff. Prison officials have taken steps to address the problem, such as transferring inmates who have asthma and emphysema to other prisons.
Doctors also do not have adequate office space, the grand jury said.

State prison officials have alleviated some crowding by transferring inmates to out-of-state prisons, said Seth Unger, spokesman for California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Health care in the state prison system was taken over by a court-appointed federal receiver after a class-action lawsuit was filed.
The receiver is well aware of the health care issues raised in the grand jury report, said Luis Patiño, receiver spokesman.
"We are working diligently to remedy those problems," he said.
Pleasant Valley State Prison houses minimum-, medium- and maximum-security inmates.

Note from someone familiar with the distances mentioned: "I'm not sure how fast prison ambulances drive, but to get from Coalinga to Bakersfield in an hour requires averaging something over 100 mph."

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

April 07, 2009

AL: First Federal Prison for Women Touted as Boost for Economy

Groundbreaking set for Alabama's first federal women's prison
Posted by Tom Gordon --
Birmingham News April 06, 2009

Groundbreaking is scheduled Wednesday at the west Alabama site of what will be the state's first all-female federal prison.
The facility will be on 120 acres of a 650-acre site in southwest Pickens County, about 2.5 miles north of Aliceville on Alabama 14.

State Rep. Alan Harper, Aliceville's director of economic development, said the new prison will be part of the Federal Correctional Complex Aliceville. It will house 1,300 medium-security inmates, have 350 employees, and should open in 2011.

Harper said construction should cost about $185 million and should involve 500 to 600 workers on site. The project will be a joint venture between two construction companies: Caddell of Montgomery and W.G. Yates & Sons of Philadelphia, Ms. Local officials are hoping other prisons will added on the property over the next 10 years.

"A complex consists of usually three or more facilities," Harper said. "We expect that hopefully over the next 10-year period, we will see two more correctional facilities built on the site."

Harper said the project should be an economic boost for Pickens County, bringing in new residents and spurring the building of homes, hotels, restaurants and service stations. After the prison is completed, Aliceville plans to annex the site, he added.
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/04/groundbreaking_set_for_alabama.html

Posted by lois at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)

SF: Poverty Court Opens

NEWSOM IGNORES VOTERS: $2.7 MILLION POVERTY COURT OPENS IN SAN FRANCISCO BRINGING THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX TO A NEIGHBORHOOD NEAR YOU!

Notwithstanding a blistering defeat at the polls and strong opposition by the SF Board of Supervisors Newsom's Community Justice Center (CJC) defers several million dollars to incarcerate poor people for the sole act of being poor.

The Poverty Court (CJC) with a price tag of 2.7 million dollars serving the Tenderloin, South of Market, Civic Center, and Union Square neighborhoods was soundly defeated by voters ( Proposition L), with strong opposition from the Board of Supervisors as well. Mayor Newsom vetoed the loss, and the Center opened for business on March 4th, 2009.

"The Poverty Court (CJC) model formerly merges the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) with the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) to become "the Complex"- a new form of criminalized service provision brought to a neighborhood near you," said Lisa Gray-Garcia, executive director of POOR Magazine and author of Criminal of Poverty; Growing Up Homeless in America.

The CJC, borrowed from a model delivered originally by former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani and his push to rid Manhattan of its "peddlers, panhandlers, and prostitutes," creates a courtroom - equipped with holding cells and a space allocated for administrative, health, social, and community services for the defendant - designated specifically for misdemeanors, or as Mayor Newsom puts it - as did Guiliani - "quality of life" crimes. Many, if not most, of these infractions - loitering, shoplifting, panhandling, urban camping, etc - are crimes of poverty, crimes committed out of circumstance. Rather than addressing the circumstance, the Community Court addresses the action, sentencing the defendant to community service hours and providing vague links to social services, such as drug or alcohol counseling.

After a lengthy and heated debate in the Board of Supervisors Newsom managed to garner full funding for the court in July, allocating approximately $1,980,000 for start-up costs, lease costs, and personnel costs. Newsom requested a further $771,885 to keep operations going for a full year, all this during a $350 million deficit with a proposed city budget that devastatingly slashes funds from life-saving social and health services city-wide. It's a good thing the Board of Supervisors and voters saw right through the gimmick. Too bad their opinions did not matter.

Newsom, with the support of the District Attorney Kamala Harris, went ahead with the court, siphoning a grand total of $2.7 million for the project, some in federal grants and some from the city budget. It's now open for the public on 575 Polk St. None of the first five offenders summoned showed on opening day.

Contrary to the misleading messages used to fund the CJC San Francisco's poverty crisis is not being perpetuated by the houseless people that will be sentenced in the CJC . It is perpetuated by a lack of affordable housing, budget cuts in life-saving services, and the social stigma surrounding the poor. Spending vital funds on the CJC, a system that does nothing to address the systemic roots of poverty and homelessness, that does not offer any new solution other than to temporarily busy worn-out hands with free labor and anger management classes, precious time spent away from earning enough money for food, is a criminal act in and of itself, ESPECIALLY since it is against the will of the voters.

Posted by lois at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)

OH: Prison employees escape layoffs due to $59 million to prisons from stimulus bill

Prison employees escape layoffs
Monday, April 6, 2009 11:00 PM
By Alan Johnson
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
In today's eroding economy, this is news: The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction will not lay off 500 employees.

The agency that runs 30 state prisons said as recently as late February that it would be forced to make deep personnel cuts affecting 500 union and non-union employees. Many are in central office operations in Columbus, while others are in prisons around the state and include parole officers, chaplains and prison case managers.

However, prisons chief Terry Collins sent a letter to all employees on Friday informing them that there would be no "massive job abolishments or reductions" at this time.

Collins said the budget appears to be "tight but manageable." He did not rule out the potential need for future layoffs.

That is a major turnaround from Feb. 2, when Gov. Ted Strickland released his executive budget proposal. That day, Collins put out a memo saying that 500 positions would be eliminated "that will affect all areas of this agency."

He reaffirmed the 500 layoffs in a Feb. 20 memo to his staff when the state filed a required "intent to lay off" notice with the Department of Administrative Services.

But then two things happened: The state got a big chunk of money from the federal stimulus package (including $59 million for the prisons), and the Ohio Civil Services Employees Association ratified a contract that includes no pay raises and 10-day, unpaid furloughs for all employees.

A second labor union, Service Employees International Union District 1199, has not yet approved a contract with the state prison agency. But Becky Williams, president of SEIU District 1199, called the decision to forgo layoffs "not just a victory for our union members, but also a victory for the citizens of Ohio."

"The layoff of these vital positions would have placed the community at greater risk with less supervision of the parolee population and limited the amount of support services available," Williams said, noting that some parole officers are already handling caseloads up to 40 percent over manageable levels.

"This agreement will sustain services provided by the ODRC and prevent any further strain within a corrections system already in crisis," Williams said.
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/04/06/nolayoffs.html?sid=101

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

April 06, 2009

TX: Phone system for prisoners begins - last state to bar routine phone access for prisoners

Texas inmate phone system begins
By MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated Press
April 3, 2009, 12:10PM

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas prison inmates are making routine phone calls for the first time.

The Texas prison board was told Friday the first of a planned systemwide program of telephone service to be available to most inmates began working this week at the Henley State Jail in Dayton, east of Houston. The system is being phased in this year throughout the 112 units of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the nation's second-largest corrections agency.

Under terms of a contract with a Kansas telecommunications firm, the country's most restrictive telephone policy for state prisoners is ending for an estimated 120,000 inmates who will be allowed up 120 minutes of prepaid and collect calls each month.

Three more prisons — Vance, in Fort Bend County; Luther, in Grimes County; and Hobby, in Falls County — are to have phone service next week and should be among 13 brought up in April.

Another 31 become active in May and the entire system should be up by the end of September, said Paul Cooper, director and general manager of corrections markets for Embarq Corp., the Overland Park, Kan.-based company that last year was awarded a seven-year contract with the Texas prison agency.

Texas is the last state to bar routine phone access for inmates. Most Texas prisoners now are allowed one five-minute collect call every 90 days, and only with a warden's permission and only with a prison officer present to monitor the call.

The new system will allow inmates up to 15 minutes per call to friends and family on an approved list of visitors. Calls to crime victims or the victims' families will be barred.

Inmates and their families can prepay for telephone calls at rates of about 23 cents a minute for in-state calls and 39 cents for out-of-state calls. Collect calls within Texas will be about 26 cents a minute and 43 cents for outside the state. International calls and calls to cell phone aren't allowed.

Phone privileges won't extend to about 36,000 inmates with disciplinary problems, gang affiliations or those on death row.

A few weeks before the system becomes active at a unit, Embarq makes voice prints of each eligible inmate as a security check for phone access. Cooper said so far 65,000 inmates have enrolled.

"We educate offenders on how the system is going to work so they know and write letters to friends and families," he said.

Friends and relatives of inmates can register on a Web site — http://www.texasprisonphone.com — and the company is working on an automated system for people who don't have Internet access, Cooper said.

People on an inmate's visitors list submit a copy of their telephone bill and a copy of their driver's license and their names are verified against the visitors list names.

"There are multiple layers of checks that occur," Cooper said, saying the phone system had security features and "a ton" of investigative capabilities.

"In terms of getting into the system, there are some checks," he said. "They are not perfect."

People who register and are approved are notified by a phone call from the firm.

The new phone privileges come in the wake of a crackdown by the agency on illegal cell phone use. Hundreds of contraband phones, chargers and phone components have been seized in recent months and security has been tightened for those entering and leaving the prisons after a death row inmate last year, using a smuggled phone, made threatening calls to a state senator.

State prison officials long had opposed expanded phone access, fearing inmates could maintain their criminal connections to the outside world. But officials say technology has improved so the calls can be monitored, recorded and limited to those on the list of approved contacts.

State lawmakers in 2007 overwhelmingly approved the measure allowing the project.

Embarq handles state prison telephone contracts in a half dozen states and will keep the first 60 percent of revenues. The remaining money, up to $10 million, will go to the Crime Victims Compensation Fund. Proceeds beyond that will be split evenly between the state's general revenue and the victim's fund.

The Legislative Budget Board has estimated annual revenue at about $5.8 million.

Embarq spokesman Tom Matthews said the installation has been a "massive project" made even more challenging at the state's prisons.

"There was no infrastructure anywhere," he said, saying the work involved basic things like stringing wire. "None of the facilities ever had that."

Some corrections experts believe the availability of phone communication allows inmates to keep in regular touch with relatives and that continued phone access can be used as an incentive for a convict to behave. Phones also are seen as a way to ease the financial strain on relatives who want to visit an inmate in a prison far from them.

Approximately one phone is being installed for each 30 inmates, meaning about 4,000 phones will be put in common areas of prisons like day rooms.

Calls to an inmate's lawyer of record, protected under attorney-client privilege, would not be monitored or recorded.

Posted by lois at 09:42 PM | Comments (0)

WA: Debt shouldn’t prevent restoration of voting rights

Debt shouldn’t prevent restoration of voting rights
THE NEWS TRIBUNE Editorial
Published: 03/24/09

Buying the right to vote is so contrary to the idea of democracy that many Washingtonians would be surprised to find out that it’s happening in their state.

Current state law enforces a double standard in restoring the voting rights of felons who’ve been released from state supervision. The ones with means to pay their court fines in full can vote; the ones who can only afford to pay down their debts bit by bit may have to wait years before they are deemed worthy of helping elect a mayor or approve a school bond.

Such disparate treatment effectively makes the right to vote depend on the contents of a released felons’ wallet. The state Supreme Court has upheld the policy as constitutional, but constitutional doesn’t mean fair. There is a good reason why most other states have less onerous restrictions, and it’s because a person’s bankroll should not determine their access to such a fundamental right as voting.

Fortunately, the Legislature may be inclined to finally remove debt as a barrier to the ballot box.

The effort is getting a boost from Secretary of State Sam Reed. He’s publicly supporting a House bill – and offering another compelling argument for disconnecting felons’ voting rights from their ability to pay.

For Reed, the issue is primarily a practical one. His office has been working since 2006 to clean up voter registration rolls. It has removed scores of dead, duplicate and incarcerated voters. But when it comes to ex-cons, Reed has no ready way to determine whether they belong on the voter rolls or not – short of checking each court file. No single court or Department of Corrections database tracks released felons’ outstanding financial obligations.

Back in 2002, the DOC estimated that more than 46,000 felons are barred from voting solely because they haven’t paid their fines – a number that is nearly impossible to confirm or track since the state has no central repository of that information.

State elections officials are concerned that the lack of reliable information, paired with a patchwork of laws that govern how voting rights are restored, make it more likely that eligible voters will be denied their right to vote and that ineligible voters will remain on the registration rolls.

They say they see no way to preserve the current two-pronged approach and ensure the accuracy of voter records. “If other solutions that more closely resemble current law were available, the secretary of state would be introducing such legislation,” a statement from the office says.

Lawmakers not persuaded that tying felons’ ballots to their bank accounts amounts to a modern-day poll tax should hear Reed out. The plight of felons barred from voting may not resonate universally, but ensuring clean elections certainly matters to most Washingtonians.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/editorials/story/686191.html

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

OH: Mental health care burdens prisons

Mental health care burdens prisons
By Lou Grieco
Staff Writer
Monday, April 06, 2009

DAYTON — Ohio prisons projected spending $64 million on inmates' mental health care in 2006 — or $8.7 million more than prison officials planned to spend on meals.

Instead, mental health costs reached $68.4 million. Last year, they climbed to $70.2 million.

"Prison has become a de facto mental health hospital," Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton said Thursday, April 2, at the University of Dayton.

Stratton was at UD to talk to a senior seminar of criminal justice students about mental health courts, which deal with treating and rehabilitating mentally ill offenders.

Ohio leads the nation in the number of courts that have mental health dockets, and should have more than 40 by the end of this year, Stratton said.

Dayton Municipal Court started one in 2003, and county officials are trying to expand that program countywide. Fairborn Municipal Court also has one, and Miami County Municipal Court started one last month.

The mentally ill often are arrested repeatedly for misdemeanors, such as public intoxication or trespassing, but don't get treatment they need to stay out of the system. Some stop taking their medications and become violent. Many complicate their problems by self-medicating with drugs or alcohol.

Mental health docketers are designed to get these people intense, supervised probation, which includes psychiatric help, medication, drug testing if needed, as well as regular court appearances. Proponents say it's tougher than regular probation.

Stratton, who was introduced by former Gov. Bob Taft, said the escalating prison populations and costs, coupled with the state's budget problems, are forcing officials to look at different ways to handle crime issues. She noted that she was nicknamed the "Velvet Hammer" when she was a prosecutor.

"I have never been accused of being soft on crime," she said.

Stratton also talked about the need for crisis intervention training for police officers. She said a Broward County, Fla., study showed that on 25 percent of all calls, the police arrested the mentally ill person on charges of resisting arrest or assaulting a police officer, instead of charges dealing with the original incident.

Those types of arrests can be avoided with proper training, and mental health dockets can turn troubled people into productive taxpayers who work and are reunited with their families, she said.

"It makes pure economic sense," Stratton said.
ttp://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2009/04/06/ddn040609stratton.html

Posted by lois at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)

The New Debtors’ Prisons and "A New Push to Squeeze Defendants"

Editorial
The New Debtors’ Prisons
NY Times
Published: April 5, 2009

Here is a tale that sounds like it comes right from the pages of “Little Dorrit,” Charles Dickens’s scathing indictment of Victorian England’s debtors’ prisons. Unfortunately, it is happening in 21st-century America.

Edwina Nowlin, a poor Michigan resident, was ordered to reimburse a juvenile detention center $104 a month for holding her 16-year-old son. When she explained to the court that she could not afford to pay, Ms. Nowlin was sent to prison. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which helped get her out last week after she spent 28 days behind bars, says it is seeing more people being sent to jail because they cannot make various court-ordered payments. That is both barbaric and unconstitutional.

In 1970, the Supreme Court ruled that it violates equal protection to keep inmates in prison extra time because they are too poor to pay a fine or court costs. More recently, the court ruled that a state generally cannot revoke a defendant’s probation and imprison him for failing to pay a fine if he is unable to do so.

That has not stopped the practice. In Georgia, poor people who cannot pay off fines — plus a monthly fee to the private company that collects the payments — are often sent to jail for nonpayment, according to Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. In 2006, the center sued on behalf of a woman who was locked up in Atlanta for eight months past her original sentence because she could not pay a $705 fine.

Until a few years ago, the police in Gulfport, Miss., regularly did sweeps of the city’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods, identified people with unpaid fines, and put them in jail. Defendants who could not pay were forced to remain there until they “sat off” their fines. The city ended the practice after it was sued.

Prisoners’ rights advocates worry that in these hard times, when government budgets are under pressure, courts and prisons will get even tougher about forcing indigent defendants to pay costs and fees, and will imprison more of them if they cannot come up with the money. The government should be helping people on society’s margins build productive lives. Throwing them in jail for being poor makes that much more difficult.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/opinion/06mon4.html?_r=1
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A New Push to Squeeze Defendants
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
April 6, 2009
NY Times

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Valerie Gainous paid her debt to society, but almost went to jail because of a debt to Florida’s courts.

In 1996, she was convicted of writing bad checks; she paid restitution, performed community service and thought she was finished with the criminal justice system. Earlier this year, however, she received a letter from Collections Court telling her that she was once again facing jail time — this time, for failing to pay $240 in leftover court fees and fines, which she says she cannot afford.

Ms. Gainous has been caught up in her state’s exceptionally aggressive system to collect the court fines and fees that keep its judiciary system working. Judges themselves dun citizens who have fallen behind in their payments, but unlike other creditors, they can throw debtors in jail — and they do, by the thousands.

As Florida’s budget has tightened with the economic crisis, efforts to step up the collections process have intensified, and court clerks say the pressure is on them to bring in every dollar. “I would say there is an even more dramatic focus on those funds now,” said Beth Allman, the spokeswoman for the Florida Association of Court Clerks.

Other states are intrigued by Florida’s success, and several, including Michigan and Georgia, have also cracked down on people who owe fines. John Dew, the executive director of the Florida Clerks of Court Operations Corporation, said that when he attends national conferences about fees collection these days, states “are really looking to what we’re doing in Florida.”

With 44 states looking at budget deficits totaling $90 billion this year, 25 state court systems already have budget shortfalls, said Dan Hall, the vice president of the National Center for State Courts. Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court told the American Bar Association in a recent speech that the state courts were in crisis because of budgetary and other issues.

States facing lower revenue from income and property taxes are taking action that includes court cutbacks and fee increases. Oregon will try to save $3.1 million by closing its courthouses every Friday for four months and cutting the pay of 1,800 court workers by 20 percent. New Hampshire began suspending civil and criminal jury trials in eight counties for a month, starting last December, and postponed filling seven of the state’s 59 vacant judgeships.

Massachusetts is looking to cut its court system budget by 7.5 percent, which will almost certainly mean staff cuts. Maine is no longer staffing the metal detector checkpoints at its local courthouses. Utah is looking at imposing an $8 “conviction fee” to pay for its security and metal detectors; civil filing fees in the state will be raised as well. Florida has cut its court payroll by 10 percent, with more cuts expected.

Mr. Hall, of the courts organization, said that when states cut their judicial budgets, they “really cut deep into the fabric of our society” by causing delays of weeks or even months in resolving cases. In Iowa, for example, where the courts are trying to make up for a $3.8 million budget cut, courthouses in every county will close for eight days until June 30, and the travel budgets have been cut for judges who go from county to county to hear cases. This means delays for rural residents who have matters that have to be heard by a district judge, including divorce.

Access to efficient courts is essential to helping people resolve life’s crises — foreclosures, debt collection, divorce, child support — said Rebecca Love Kourlis, the executive director of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver. “You can’t put them on the back burner and say, ‘we’ll get back to you when we have more money and more staffing.’ ”

Advocates for the poor have urged other states not to follow Florida’s example of squeezing defendants harder to make up for budget cuts. Rebekah Diller, deputy director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said the state’s system wasted resources “to get blood from a stone.” Judges, she said, should not become “debt collectors in robes,” which she called both demeaning to the judges and humiliating for the people who must stand before them.

Rhode Island seems to agree. Faced with statistics showing that arrests for nonpayment cost far more than they bring in, the state passed a law in August granting judges latitude to waive court debts for poor defendants.

Florida, however, has continued to tighten its grip. Since 2004, the Legislature has required courts to substantially support their operating expenses through fees collected by county clerks. Some of the clerks use collection agents, while about a third use the collections courts, state officials said. Here in Leon County alone, 839 people were arrested and jailed in the year ending last September over court debts or failure to appear at collections court, according to a study by the Brennan Center. Other Florida counties have less stringent policies.

Around Leon County, there are some 5,400 outstanding “blue writs” — the civil equivalent of an arrest warrant for failing to appear and pay fees. Some people come in and pay when they receive their summons; others spend a night or more in jail, often having been arrested when the writ pops up during incidents like routine traffic stops.

In part, the numbers are high because it can be expensive to be arrested. Fines and fees for a first offense on third-degree felonies like credit card fraud or possession of cocaine are around $500, said Nancy Daniels, a Florida public defender who works in Tallahassee: $340 in court costs, a $100 prosecution fee and $50 for the public defender application fee. If the defendant cannot pay up front, starting a payment plan costs $25.

Constitutional law forbids jailing people solely over fees and fines that they cannot pay, but Florida officials argue that, technically, they are jailing people because they violated court orders, not because they failed to pay fines. Charles A. Francis, the chief judge of the state’s Second Judicial Circuit, said most judges found collections court “the most unpleasant part of the job.” The judges try not to jail people over fees, he insisted, but added, “Do you allow the orders of your court to go ignored?”

Few people are truly unable to afford monthly payments, he argued.

Shannon Russell, the supervisor of the Leon County collections department, said: “People come in and say, ‘I can’t pay this.’ My answer is, ‘you shouldn’t have gotten arrested.’ ”

Estimates for the amount collected by the county vary; the Brennan study said the program took in $18,365 from those arrested for the 12 months studied, after costs, while the county court system said the overall program brought in $768,000 last year, an amount boosted by the threat of a court process.

When Ms. Gainous appeared at a recent collections court hearing, Judge Nina Ashenafi Richardson spoke compassionately, but nonetheless pressed each of the dozens of people in the courtroom to pay what they could or face arrest.

Ms. Gainous, 39, a single mother of four, said she had been sick and could not even make a $40 down payment on her $240 in fees.

Suddenly, there was a startling moment of grace: Another woman waiting in the courtroom, Latasha Penny, volunteered to pay the $40 for her. Ms. Gainous hugged her and sobbed.

When Ms. Penny’s case came up, Judge Richardson reduced her monthly payment on $345 in fines to $30, from $45. “You did a very nice thing earlier,” Judge Richardson said with a smile.

Days later, Ms. Gainous was still incredulous, and said that she would pay the $10 a month. “It’s still hard,” she said. “But I’m going to try to get that in, to keep from going to jail for being poor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/us/07collection.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

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

April 05, 2009

NY: Rockefeller Drug Laws: A Welcome Change But Not Far Enough Say NY Activists and Organizers

"The new law eliminates the mandatory minimum of a year in prison for first offenders charged with Class B felonies (sale of up to 1/2 ounce of cocaine or heroin, or possession with intent to sell) and first or second offenders charged with lesser felonies (such as possession of 1/2 gram of cocaine). It also expands drug treatment and other alternatives to incarceration. Second offenders charged with B felonies, who now face an automatic 4 1/2 to 9 years, might be able to get treatment instead of prison if they can prove they're drug-dependent.On the other hand, the bill retains the mandatory-minimum sentences for all other accused dealers, and only about one-eighth of the state's 13,400 drug prisoners will be able to apply for reduced sentences."

New York Lightens Up on Some of the Harshest Drug Laws in the Country
Steven Wishnia
AlterNet
Fri, 03 Apr 2009

New York State is about to enact major changes in its Rockefeller drug laws, which contain some of the harshest mandatory-minimum sentences in the nation. The activists who've been trying to repeal those laws for years say it's a very welcome move but doesn't go far enough.

"I think it's a really positive step forward. It is not the end of the Rockefeller drug laws, but hopefully, it's the beginning of the end," says Caitlin Dunklee of the Drop the Rock campaign, an umbrella group campaigning to repeal the laws.

The bill "breaches the mandatory-sentencing wall," adds Robert Gangi of the Correctional Association of New York, the prison-reform group behind Drop the Rock. It might divert half the state's convicted drug felons from prison, the group estimates.

The bill came about as part of a deal among the "three men in a room" who control New York's government: Gov. David Paterson, state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, all Democrats. They agreed to include it in the state's budget, so it would not be voted on separately. After several days of delay, the state Senate approved the bill on a 32-30 party-line vote on Thursday, April 2. Paterson has promised to sign it.

The new law eliminates the mandatory minimum of a year in prison for first offenders charged with Class B felonies (sale of up to 1/2 ounce of cocaine or heroin, or possession with intent to sell) and first or second offenders charged with lesser felonies (such as possession of 1/2 gram of cocaine). It also expands drug treatment and other alternatives to incarceration. Second offenders charged with B felonies, who now face an automatic 4 1/2 to 9 years, might be able to get treatment instead of prison if they can prove they're drug-dependent.

On the other hand, the bill retains the mandatory-minimum sentences for all other accused dealers, and only about one-eighth of the state's 13,400 drug prisoners will be able to apply for reduced sentences.

The old law, Silver said in a statement, "has not impacted crime or reduced addiction, but, rather, has led to a massive increase in New York's prison population."

Drug offenders make up one-fifth of the state's male inmates and one-third of the female inmates. More than 90 percent of them are black or Latino, and about 40 percent are incarcerated for possession charges.

Paterson was arrested at a civil-disobedience protest against the Rockefeller laws in 2002, when he was a state senator representing Harlem, but he has taken a more cautious stance since he succeeded Eliot Spitzer as governor last year. He objected to several provisions in a drug-law bill passed by the Assembly in March.

Gangi credits activist pressure for getting him to compromise. The deal was reached on the night of March 25, a few hours after about 250 people demonstrated outside the governor's Manhattan offices.

"We heard that Paterson's staffers were asking, 'Can we make a deal before the rally?' " Gangi says.

According to Paterson spokeswoman Marissa Shorenstein, the governor agreed to end mandatory minimums for second offenders charged with felonies below Class B, and to allow drug prisoners to apply for resentencing.

But he insisted that accused drug offenders who wanted treatment instead of prison would have to plead guilty first, on the grounds that the threat of prison would make drug users more likely to stick with treatment. The governor's philosophy is "treat, don't punish, but treat to be effective," Shorenstein explains.

The bill also revives the Rockefeller law's original 15-years-to-life sentences, this time for "kingpins" convicted of selling more than $75,000 worth of drugs.

The state's prosecutors largely oppose easing the law. And the New York Daily News editorial page, long a loud voice for the "fry 'em" approach to crime, called the proposed changes the "Drug Dealer Protection Act" and said they would unleash a crime wave.

New York's current drug laws date from 1973, when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller was facing two problems. First, heroin-related crime was exploding, with dope fiends funding their habits with muggings and burglaries and dealers killing each other in business disputes.

Second, Rockefeller, the erstwhile standard-bearer of the Republicans' shrinking liberal wing, was contemplating another run for the party's presidential nomination, and he needed to prove that he was adequately "tough on crime."

The result was a law that mandated 15 years to life for sale of 2 ounces or more of heroin or cocaine or for possession of 4 ounces.

(Crime in New York continued to rise until the early 1990s, and New York City neighborhoods like Washington Heights and the Lower East Side -- low-income areas easily accessible to white buyers -- became open-air drug markets.)

Critics of the Rockefeller laws' harshness charge that they are "unjust and racially targeted," Linda Dechabert, head of Exponents, a harm-reduction group working with drug addicts, ex-prisoners and people with AIDS, said at the March 25 rally.

The racial disparities most likely stem from the ecology of the drug trade -- ghetto street dealers are more visible and violent than discreet white-collar dealers -- and the cumulative effects of racism in who gets stopped, who gets prosecuted and who gets imprisoned.

"It's easy to arrest blacks and Latinos, because they're in a confined area," notes Carl Dukes, 64, an ex-prisoner who attended the rally.

Another criticism is that penalties are determined by the weight of the drugs seized rather than by the defendant's role in the deal.

The most notorious case of that was Elaine Bartlett, a Harlem single mother who in 1983 was set up by an Albany cocaine dealer, who paid her $2,500 to deliver 4 ounces to him. Bartlett got 20 years to life, serving 16 years before she won clemency. Police allowed the dealer who hired her to continue operating in exchange for the information.

The state enacted mild reforms in 2004 and 2005. They reduced the 15-to-life sentences to 8 to 20 years, but did not affect the 90 percent of the state's drug prisoners convicted of lesser charges.

Activists developed four "pillars" for further-reaching reforms: restoring judicial discretion, expanding treatment and alternatives to prison, reducing sentences and retroactivity -- letting prisoners apply for the sentences they would have gotten under the revised laws.

By those standards, the proposed new law would do well on treatment. It's expected to provide an extra $50 million to $80 million for drug-treatment and alternatives-to-incarceration programs, such as the one run by the Brooklyn district attorney's office.

New York has a harm-reduction system well positioned to take advantage of this, notes Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance, as there are well-established programs for drug rehab, needle exchange, methadone maintenance and overdose prevention.

Most activists agree, however, that the bill falls short on judicial discretion and retroactivity. For example, someone found guilty of selling drugs would still get an automatic 4 1/2-year minimum if they had been convicted of a violent felony in the past 10 years, says Gangi. Such a person might be dangerous -- or might have calmed down considerably since their previous crime.

"We're not saying people should not go to prison," he explains. "We're saying the judge should decide."

"It's unfair. You're caught with a little amount of drugs, and you serve a long, long term in prison," says Ashley O'Donoghue, a tall, thin man with "God's Son" tattooed on his neck. "It should be retroactive so the people who are still there can get a sentence that's more suitable for what they did."

O'Donoghue, 26, was arrested in 2003 when two white college students he'd been dealing cocaine to were nabbed and set him up for a 2 1/2-ounce sale, well above his usual range. Facing 15 to life, he pleaded guilty to a B felony and served five years of a 7-to-21-year sentence.

Comedian Randy Credico, a longtime drug-law activist who attended the March 25 rally dressed as Diogenes, "looking for an honest politician," says any changes in the law would be inadequate unless retroactive resentencing is "automatic." Less than half the 1,000 prisoners eligible to apply for shorter sentences under the 2004 law actually got them.

Nicholas Eyle of Reconsider, a Syracuse anti-prohibition group, is also not enthusiastic. "I don't want to sound like I don't support the change, but I'm not that excited," he says. "I'm not a fan of mandatory treatment."

Although rehab is preferable to prison, he says, most people arrested on drug charges are not addicts, and if they tell counselors that, they'll be told they're "in denial."

What the state really needs, he believes, is a "paradigm shift. If you want to save money and reduce crime, end prohibition. If you question the fundamentals, you have to conclude that prohibition doesn't work."

Many New Yorkers find it surprising that the state government could accomplish anything on such a controversial issue. The New York legislature is often called the most dysfunctional in the nation. Virtually all major legislation is crafted by secret negotiations among the "three men in a room": the governor, the state Senate majority leader and the Assembly speaker.

Democrats have long held a majority approaching 2-1 in the Assembly, the legislature's lower house. However, state Senate districts have been gerrymandered to aid the Republicans, who controlled it from 1965 to 2008.

Over the last 15 years of that era, the Senate's GOP leader, Joseph Bruno, was able to block all but token Rockefeller-law reform. He also gutted the state's rent-control laws and refused to let the Senate consider legalizing same-sex marriage.

Bruno resigned last summer, several months before he was indicted on federal corruption charges, and in November, the Democrats won a 32-30 majority in the Senate. That immediately revved up hopes among the state's progressive activists.

However, the ballots had scarcely been counted when three Senate Democrats threatened to ally with the Republicans unless they were given power and concessions.

Nicknamed the Gang of Three, they are Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx, a rent-control foe with a long history of campaign-finance violations; Carl Kruger, a Brooklyn death-penalty advocate; and the fiercely anti-gay Ruben Diaz Sr. of the Bronx.

The Democrats' majority was further threatened when Hiram Monserrate, a Queens liberal, was indicted for slashing his girlfriend. This has jeopardized Senate passage of several bills to strengthen rent control and is widely believed to have scotched any hope of it considering same-sex marriage.

Many activists also believe that upstate Republicans oppose reducing drug sentences because prisons are one of the few sources of steady jobs in the region, whose economy has been slumping since the 1970s. In 1973, when the Rockefeller laws passed, New York had 18 prisons. From 1973 to 1999, it built 51 new ones.

Nicholas Eyle disputes that notion, saying he doesn't believe that the dozen or so legislators from rural districts where prisons are prominent are a strong enough lobby to preserve the drug laws. Sayegh advocates replacing the 30,000 prison jobs with green jobs.

Still, economic issues may well have played a role. The state has been slammed with a $15 billion budget deficit. At $45,000 per inmate, the Silver statement emphasized, it costs New York more than $500 million a year to imprison drug offenders. The minimal changes enacted in 2004 have saved the state $100 million, it added.

"My Assembly colleagues and I continue in our pledge not to give up our fight for greater reform of New York state's ineffective and imprudent drug laws," Assembly Corrections Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, a longtime advocate of repealing the Rockefeller laws, said in a statement after the deal was announced. "While today's agreement brings us closer to our goal, we recognize the need to do more."
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/180895-New-York-Lightens-Up-on-Some-of-the-Harshest-Drug-Laws-in-the-Country

Posted by lois at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

IL: Guards and Police Want Prison Open: "Enough is Enough" "We already have the melons, now bring us the felons."

Organizer Kathy Newstrand even came up with a motto for their efforts: "We Thomson prison workers are saying 'enough is enough'
Barb Ickes | Posted: Saturday, April 4, 2009

THOMSON, Ill. - Squad cars lined the shoulder of the highway as more than 100 people filled a diner parking lot Saturday to rally for the opening of a prison and for the jobs that were promised long ago.

"Enough is enough," rally organizer Randy Newstrand said of the back-and-forth status of opening the Thomson Correctional Center, about 50 miles northeast of the Quad-Cities. "We're getting together to move Thomson forward. All those (police) officers you see are here to support us. There's someone from every village in the county. We're coming together."

Though the prison was built nearly eight years ago at a cost of $140 million, only a fraction of the state-of-the-art complex is being used. Politics and funding shortfalls have prevented the prison from becoming the economic and job center that many people in Carroll and Whiteside counties were counting on.lready have the melons, now bring us the felons."

When former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was removed from office, he was in the process of moving prisoners from the state prison at Pontiac to Thomson. But those plans went away with Blagojevich. And now Gov. Pat Quinn is proposing a budget that contains no money for the opening of Thomson.

"We feel if we sit back on our hands the governor's going to think we accept our fate, and we don't," Newstrand said. "They built this place for a reason. Now open it."

With the mostly vacant prison as a distant backdrop, state and local lawmakers took turns at the microphone, one of them promising to get Quinn's attention and another pointing out the state is spending enough on overtime at the Department of Corrections to get Thomson fully open and operational.

"The state spent $61 million in overtime last year for the Department of Corrections," said State Rep. Jim Sacia, R-Pecatonica. "And we can't get $40 million to open Thomson Prison? Folks, this is a no-brainer."

He said there still is time to try to talk to Quinn, adding the legislature has 57 days until voting on the governor's proposed budget, "and that means we have 57 days to change the governor's mind."

State Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-Ill., brought apologies to the rally for what he thought was a done deal on Thomson funding and urged rally-goers to keep up hope.

"I'd hoped to be coming up here to cut a ribbon today," he said. "I feel like I have failed in some way."

Jacobs also promised to get a group of lawmakers together to urge Quinn to reconsider ways of finding the money to open Thomson, which currently houses only about 130 prisoners in the minimum-security wing and never has held a prisoner in the large maximum-security wing.

"We're going to ask for a private meeting with the governor," he said. "We deserve a clear timeline. We're gonna get this thing done."

State Rep. Pat Verschoore, D-Milan, said that one way of getting Thomson open is to take into consideration that all the state's prisons are overcrowded. Because of the overcrowding, he said, it would not be necessary to close Pontiac.

He also agreed that overtime money could be diverted to Thomson.

Among those with the most riding on the prison are the 200-plus guards that were trained to work there but have since been scattered throughout the state to work at other centers.

Tom Barkley, of Milledgeville, said he quit his job of 15 years to work as a guard at Thomson. After he was trained, however, he was sent on the road.

The father of four, including a 1-and-4-year-old, has spent the last four months traveling each week to work at the state prison in Lincoln. The arrangement has created a hardship for his family, he said, and the state must pay for this lodging and travel.

"We don't know what's going to happen or when," he said, as one of his children sat atop his shoulders at the rally. "We hear different stories all the time. It's not easy."

Despite the frustrations that are felt by hundreds in the communities surrounding Thomson, rally organizers were trying to keep a positive focus on progress, and they also were keeping a sense of humor.

Organizer Kathy Newstrand even came up with a motto for their efforts: "We already have the melons, now bring us the felons."

EARLIER STORY: The message at a rally today that centered on the mostly unused prison at Thomson, Ill., was “Move Thomson Forward.”

But a secondary message was, “Enough is enough.”

More than 100 people gathered in the parking lot of a Thomson diner that was built to accommodate workers and visitors of the $140 million prison, listening to politicians from many levels of government. Their message was that the people of Carroll and Whiteside counties should not give up.

Illinois Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline, promised the rally goers that he would set up a private meeting with Gov. Pat Quinn, aimed at getting the governor “to change his mind” about funding for the correctional center.

The governor’s proposed budget does not contain the necessary funding to open the prison and use it to its full capacity of 1,600 inmates.

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was working on a plan to close the state prison at Pontiac and move those prisoners to Thomson. Even though about 200 people were trained to work as guards at Thomson, there is no funding to put them to work.

The trainees now are being transported to other state prisons during the week, which costs the state money in fuel and lodging.

Many of those workers said they have tired of living “in limbo.”

Posted by lois at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2009

California prepares to expand 3 prisons! They won't stop!

California prepares to expand 3 prisons
By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer
Published: Wednesday, Apr. 1, 2009

SACRAMENTO -- The head of California's prison system said Wednesday that he will soon ask state legislators to approve expanding three prisons to hold an additional 2,800 inmates, adding to what already is the nation's largest state prison system.

The construction projects would be the first to draw money from a nearly $8 billion bond measure approved by lawmakers two years ago. The money has been stalled ever since by drafting problems that were corrected in the budget legislation that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law in February.

Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said he plans to seek approval within weeks to build cellblocks for about 900 inmates each at high-security Kern Valley and medium-security North Kern state prisons, both near Delano.

He also wants to convert a juvenile lockup near Paso Robles into a prison for 1,000 older men.

Adding cells is part of the state's response to a federal court finding that it must reduce prison overcrowding.

The $810 million Cate will seek from legislative budget committees would pay for those three expansions, plus building a re-entry center in Stockton for 500 inmates who are nearing the end of their prison terms. It would be the first of several planned regional re-entry centers to help inmates adjust in the months before they are paroled.

Actual construction of the four facilities will still depend on when the bond markets thaw, Cate said, because bonds to pay for construction can't be sold until then. Building the facilities would take about two years, he said.

Legislators approved $7.8 billion in revenue bonds in April 2007 to build more state prisons and county jails.

Cate also plans to soon ask legislators to approve expanding medium-security Wasco State Prison, though details are still being worked out, he said in an interview after his confirmation hearing.

The Senate Rules Committee plans to vote April 22 on whether to let Cate keep the job he has held for nearly a year. He needs approval by the full Senate by mid-May to continue to hold the post.

The proposed construction comes as a special panel of three federal judges is preparing a final order that could force the state to free about a third of its nearly 170,000 inmates. About 153,000 are in the state's 33 adult prisons, with the remainder in conservation camps, community correctional centers and private prisons in other states.

The judges tentatively ruled in February that severe crowding is causing unconstitutional conditions for physically and mentally ill inmates.

To that end, Cate said he is working with J. Clark Kelso, the federal court-appointed receiver who controls prison medical care, to see if some of the new cells Cate plans to build could be used for sick inmates.

Cate also is considering if some of the cells could be used for mentally ill inmates as part of a treatment plan due to be filed with another federal judge within 60 days.

"Let's maybe kill two birds with one stone," Cate said. "There are a number of options we are exploring."

Schwarzenegger's administration has argued it can use the $7.8 billion approved by legislators two years ago instead of approving up to $8 billion in additional borrowing sought by Kelso to improve inmate care.

But Cate told senators Wednesday that the $7.8 billion will likely not be enough to bring prisons up to constitutional standards. He said he is negotiating with Kelso to determine "the minimum we can live with in these tough times."
http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/1748098.html

Posted by lois at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

Immigrant Detainee Dies in a NJ jail, and a Life Is Buried, Too

Immigrant Detainee Dies, and a Life Is Buried, Too
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: April 2, 2009 NY Times

The hand-scrawled letter from a New Jersey jail was urgent. An immigration detainee had died that day, Sept. 9, 2005, a fellow inmate wrote in broken English, describing chest pains and pleas for medical attention that went unheeded until too late.

“Death ... need to be investigated,” he urged a local group that corresponded with foreigners held for deportation at the jail, the Monmouth County Correctional Institute in Freehold. “We care very much because that can happen to anyone of us.”

Yet like a message in a bottle tossed from a distant shore, even the fact of the detainee’s death was soon swept away.

Inquiries by the local group were rebuffed by jail officials. Complaints forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security were logged, then forgotten. And when pressure from Congress and the news media compelled Immigration and Customs Enforcement to produce the first list of people who had died in their custody, the Freehold case was not on it.

The difficulty of confirming the very existence of the dead man, Ahmad Tanveer, 43, a Pakistani New Yorker, shows how death can fall between the cracks in immigration detention, the rapidly growing patchwork of more than 500 county jails, profit-making prisons and federal detention centers where half a million noncitizens were held during the last year while the government tried to deport them.

The case underscores the secrecy and lack of legal accountability that continue to shield the system from independent oversight, despite years of escalating Congressional inquiries and new efforts by Obama administration appointees to promote transparency.

“We still do not know, and we cannot know, if there are other deaths that have never been disclosed by ICE, or that ICE itself knows nothing about,” said Tom Jawetz, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been battling in court for months to obtain government records on all detention deaths, including the Freehold case and those named on the first government list, obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act and published last year.

Even now, most questions about Mr. Tanveer are unanswered, including just who he was and why he had been detained. The rescue of his death from oblivion took a rare mix of chance, vigilance by a few citizen activists, litigation by the civil liberties union and several months of inquiry by The Times. Even as the newspaper confirmed Mr. Tanveer’s death with jail officials, and tracked his body’s path from a Freehold morgue to the cargo hold of an airplane at Kennedy Airport, immigration authorities maintained that they could find no documents showing such a person was ever detained, or died in their custody.

Not until March 20, in response to a new request by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, did the agency release an internal e-mail message acknowledging that the death had been overlooked. It issued a corrected list that now includes him — his first and last names transposed — among 90 people who died in immigration custody between Oct. 7, 2003, and Feb. 7, 2009.

“We believe we have accounted for every single detainee death,” Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said last week, adding that a death in March was promptly reported to Congress under a policy directive from Dora Schriro, the new administration’s special adviser on detention.

Yet even the latest list, which Ms. Nantel called “comprehensive, thorough,” is missing a known death from 2008: that of Ana Romero Rivera, a 44-year-old Salvadoran cleaning woman who was found hanged last August in an isolation cell in a county jail in Frankfort, Ky., where she was awaiting deportation. Federal officials now disagree whether she was legally in their custody when she died.

There are unverified reports that other detainees may have died unnamed and uncounted. At the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami, for example, directors cite a letter in late July 2007 from a detainee who described an 18-year-old Haitian woman, “Mari Rosa,” coughing up blood for hours without medical attention at the Glades County Jail in Moore Haven, Fla. The letter said she fell to the ground, had no pulse when she was finally taken to the medical unit and was never brought back, adding, “The detainees think she is dead.”

The center has been unable to confirm what happened to that woman, said Susana Barciela, its policy director.

No central body is required to publicly keep track of deaths in custody in the fragmented detention system. No independent inquiry is mandated. The House recently passed a bill that would require states that receive certain federal funds to report all deaths in custody to their attorneys general. But the measure has yet to be taken up in the Senate, where similar legislation stalled last fall.

“How can you overlook a guy who died in your custody?” asked Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who has presided over two subcommittee hearings dealing with care and deaths in detention, battling unsuccessfully for full disclosure from immigration officials. “Did they forget other people? Was it an isolated, single error, or was it something more sinister?”

As Congress and the news media brought new scrutiny to the issue, several detention deaths have highlighted problems with medical care and accountability. In one, a Chinese computer engineer’s extensive cancer and fractured spine went undiagnosed at a Rhode Island jail until shortly before he died, despite his pleas for help. In another, records show a Guinean tailor who suffered a skull fracture in a New Jersey jail was left in isolation without treatment for more than 13 hours.

In Mr. Tanveer’s case, efforts to draw public scrutiny were exceptional, yet went nowhere. The scrawled note by his fellow detainee, a Nigerian who garbled the dead man’s name as “Ahmed Tender,” reached citizen activists at the New Jersey Civil Rights Defense Committee, who were unable to confirm it. Other complaints that Mr. Tanveer did not receive proper care separately reached a former member of the group, Jean Blum, a disabled Holocaust survivor who had continued corresponding with dozens of detainees from her home in Paterson, N.J., even though she could barely afford the postage.

“I am very, very aware of the issues that involve displaced people,” said Ms. Blum, 73, who was a child when she and her parents, Polish Jews, fled the Nazis. “I could not turn my back, because that is my history.”

Ms. Blum forwarded a packet of correspondence about the death to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general by Sept. 20, 2005, seeking an investigation. But within weeks, documents show, the matter was simply passed for internal inquiry to the immigration agency, which is part of Homeland Security, with the notation that it need not bother to report back its findings.

Years after Mr. Tanveer’s death, the scrawled note about his heart attack came to the attention of the A.C.L.U., and its lawyers noticed that no such name appeared on the first government list of 66 people published by The Times in 2008. The union added the name to its lawsuit, and eventually obtained the paper trail on what Ms. Blum had sent the government.

The union learned that the inspector general’s office had written up a synopsis of the allegations for investigation by the immigration agency, saying that “Ahmad Tander,” a Pakistani detainee housed at the Monmouth jail, had died “from a heart attack whose symptoms were obvious, severe and ignored until it was too late,” amid “conditions of neglect and indifference to medical needs.”

But when the A.C.L.U. pressed for more, government lawyers said no further records could be found.

Early this year, The Times called a spokeswoman for the Monmouth County Sheriff, who confirmed the death and gave the name as Tanver — later correcting the spelling to Tanveer.

In names transcribed from a foreign alphabet, such variations often pose a problem of identification. But the facts matched: Mr. Tanveer had arrived at the jail in immigration custody on Aug. 12, 2005, and on Sept. 9 was taken by ambulance to CentraState Medical Center in Freehold, where he died, the spokeswoman, Cynthia Scott, said. Under the jail’s federal contract, she said, nothing more could be disclosed.

A CentraState spokesman initially denied that such a patient had died at the hospital. Later the medical record was found misfiled, and the spokesman, James M. Goss, confirmed the man’s death at age 43. But, citing privacy laws and policy, he declined to answer other questions about the case, including what had happened to the body.

In New Jersey, as in many states, autopsy reports are private. But the county morgue confirmed that an autopsy had been performed. Eventually, two details were shared: the name of the Queens funeral home that picked up the body for burial on Sept. 12, and the fact that the autopsy report was sent two months later to Mark Stokes, an official in the New York office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Yet for more than three years since, the tallies and testimony that the agency submitted to Congress about detainee deaths have not included the Tanveer case.

In January 2009, equipped with confirmation, The Times again requested documents in Mr. Tanveer’s death. President Obama had just directed federal agencies to err on the side of transparency in releasing records to the public. But a Freedom of Information officer soon said she was stymied: Immigration record-keepers told her no documents could be located without the dead man’s date of birth or eight-digit alien registration number.

And the body? The director of the funeral home, Coppola-Migliore in Corona, Queens, said Mr. Tanveer’s New York relatives had it flown to Pakistan for burial, using Pakistan International Airlines. But the funeral director declined to identify the relatives without their permission and said they had not returned phone calls. And the Pakistani Consulate had no record of the case.

Also futile was a search for witnesses among fellow detainees, many since deported. The Nigerian detainee who wrote the urgent letter, an ailing diabetic, was later released pending a deportation hearing. According to social workers at the Queens-based charity that was his last known contact, he is now a homeless fugitive, lost in the streets of New York.

Victoria L. Allred, chief of staff in the financial office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in an internal e-mail message March 4 that the death had not been discovered until after the chart omitting it had been submitted to Congress for the latest subcommittee hearing, March 3. “I apologize for the discrepancy,” she wrote.

Yet as of Thursday, immigration authorities still have not released records on Mr. Tanveer’s detention or death, which they attribute to “occlusive coronary atherosclerosis,” nor have they addressed the complaint that his heart attack went untreated in the jail for more than two hours.

On the expanded list, he is the only detainee with no birth date. And in the e-mail message acknowledging the death, his alien registration number has been redacted — to protect his privacy, the government said.

Margot Williams contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 4, 2009
An article on Friday about the death of Ahmad Tanveer, a Pakistani New Yorker, in a New Jersey jail in 2005, a case that underscores the secrecy and lack of accountability in the nation’s immigrant detention system, misstated, in some editions, the time period covered by the latest list of deaths in immigrant custody released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The list, which concludes with a death on Feb. 7, 2009, names 90 such deaths beginning on Oct. 7, 2003 — not Jan. 1, 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/nyregion/03detain.html?_r=1&sq=Immigration%20at%20NJ%20detention%20center&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all

Posted by lois at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2009

WA: Guards protest possible closing of prison.

Prison cuts would free hundreds of felons, critics contend
March 31, 2009
By LEVI PULKKINEN
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Proposed cuts to the Department of Corrections budget could see hundreds of felons released into the community early, corrections officers and victim advocates argued Tuesday in response to legislative proposals.

In separate plans, both legislative houses and Gov. Chris Gregoire have suggested significant cuts to the department budget in an effort to close a nearly $9 billion shortfall in state revenue. Included in House and Senate budgets are substantial reductions in funding to prisoner reentry programs, including drug and alcohol abuse treatment and work placement.

Contending that a Senate proposal to close the McNeil Island Corrections Center and other cuts could cause 1,400 to 1,900 convicts to be released early, prison employees union leader Tracey Thompson said too little has been done to research the impact such a move would have on public safety.

"Allowing early release when you're also reducing supervision just doesn't make sense," said Thompson, secretary treasurer with Teamsters Local 117, the union representing corrections officers. Prison workers, she added, "believe in what they do, and they believe in public safety and this is freaking them out."

The Senate proposal would see about 107 Department of Corrections positions cut during the coming two years, leaving the department roughly 662 workers short of the staffing level needed to support current service levels, according to state projections.

Suggested cuts would still see spending at the department increase by $31 million from 2009 to 2011, a time period when the department is expected to spend $1.8 billion to incarcerate and monitor convicted felons. While overall spending would increase under the proposal, the Senate plan would eliminate $124 million in expected expenses, either through spending cuts or by obtaining other funding sources.

A House budget proposal released Tuesday contained similar cuts in state spending but preserved current staffing levels by in part by directing $182 million in federal grant money to the department.

Reviewing the proposed changes, longtime crime victim advocate Jenny Wieland said she was concerned that both proposals would effectively force the Department of Corrections to release offenders earlier.

In reviewing the legislation, Wieland said she believes it's likely that about 950 offenders would be freed. Doing so, she said, would come as a shock to many crime victims.

"They are told (their assailant) is going to serve this amount of time, and if there's any good-time deduction, they're advised of that," Wieland said. "Now, all of a sudden, you're getting a letter that this offender is getting out early, and you have no input into that."

Under the Senate proposal, the department would close the McNeil Island Corrections Center by July 2010, moving the 1,300 inmates currently housed there to other facilities. The Department of Health and Social Services-run secure center for violent sexual predators on the island would remain in operation.

Both proposals take into account savings from a change in law allowing the department to issue 90-day housing vouchers to inmates who are scheduled for release but cannot find a place to live. Under existing law, offenders who are due to be released on so-called "good time" -- a 10 to 50 percent sentence reduction granted to inmates who behave in prison -- can't be freed until they establish a residence.

Also included the proposals are cuts to post-prison services and constraints, including one-year reductions in the amount of time offenders will be monitored by community corrections officers after they're released. Violent felons would be monitored by the department for three years instead of four after they're released from prison.

The Senate proposal would see a 50-percent cut to offender re-entry programs such as vocational training and mental health services, cutting spending on the program by $15.6 million. The competing proposal from the House would reduce funding for such programs by $10.6 million.

While the House proposal would preserve all proven programs, Thompson said both would eliminate several new initiatives that have shown merit but are still being reviewed.

She said she's concerned that the proposed cuts haven't been vetted in any systematic way.

"If the state were to undergo a thorough evaluation of the system, that would be fine, but that kind of processes has not happened," Thompson said. "I'm worried for public safety, and I'm worried that this is a kneejerk approach."

Reached for comment Tuesday, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman said department managers are reviewing both proposals but were not yet prepared to offer an opinion on them or the allegations made by critics. Department Secretary Eldon Vail is expected to offer a response Wednesday afternoon.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/404472_PRISON01ww.html

Posted by lois at 12:28 AM | Comments (0)

NJ: Guards protest closing of prison. Community wants it gone.

"The residents of this community believe in their hearts...they do not want the prison to be on that location," he said. "They view it as the way that their community can turn things around and they can't get it done with a prison on its most valuable property."
Star Ledger

Plan to close Riverfront State Prison in Camden draws controversy
by MaryAnn Spoto/The Star-Ledger
Sunday March 08, 2009

In their dreams for a city besieged by crime and unemployment, they envision concrete walls and barbed wire replaced by green parks and tidy homes.

"Riverfront State Prison has held Camden down since the day it opened on the waterfront," said Rodney Sadler, president of Save Our Waterfront, a citizens group.

But union leaders and some lawmakers say the decision to close the prison was driven purely by economics, could overburden county jails that house state inmates, and leaves little room if more crime produces more inmates.

"This was a rash decision without thinking it through, without any public input on it," said Assemblyman Scott Rudder (R-Burlington). "Why is this being expedited? What is really going on here?"

State officials say the move gives the state a rare opportunity to consolidate services and get an influx of cash from a property sale amid a $7 billion budget shortfall.

"Certainly because of the dire financial times we're in, we're looking at the efficiencies, looking at everything," said DOC spokeswoman Deirdre Fedkenheuer. "If you can close a prison, you have to do it."

The state plans to empty Riverfront before June by scattering the more than 800 inmates among other state prisons. The 17-acre site is scheduled to be auctioned April 20-24.

Treasury spokesman Tom Vincz said the auction date is not definite and depends on when the inmates are transferred. He said the state has not received an appraisal of the property. The Office of Legislative Services has said its assessed value is nearly $41 million.

However, in justifying the move, state corrections officials publicly overstated how much the prison population has dropped.

When confirming the decision to close Riverfront, officials said the number of inmates in New Jersey's prison system had decreased by 5,000 inmates -- from about 27,500 to about 22,000 --over the past six years. In reviewing the records, The Star-Ledger found the population actually fell by just 387 inmates during that time.

Fedkenheuer acknowledged the incorrect figures, but said the state was not trying to be misleading.

"It was wrong and it was not deliberate," she said.

A medium-security facility, Riverfront opened in 1985 and was designed to hold 408 inmates. In recent years it consistently housed more than 1,000 inmates, despite its new capacity of 631.

For the past decade, the state's prisons have held more prisoners than for which they were designed, prompting officials to double-bunk cells and convert program space into dormitories. A budget report from the Office of Legislative Services noted state prisons are operating at 36 percent above their design capacity.

Corrections officials, however, say prison populations are declining and there is space in the state's 10 other adult correctional facilities to absorb Riverfront inmates.

James Austin, a criminologist who advises state prisons on re-entry and parole, said moves to close prisons are not unusual.

"Many states are trying to cut corrections budgets, and the only way you can cut them is to close facilities," he said. "Very few systems are at their design capacity."

Citing the high number of state inmates still housed at county jails, Rudder and Assemblywoman Dawn Marie Addiego (R-Burlington) called on Gov. Jon Corzine to keep the prison open.

"I am shocked the governor wants to close one of the state's newest facilities when there isn't enough room for the prisoners we have already," Addiego said.

The plan is also getting static from the corrections officers union, whose members would also be scattered to other prisons.

"Public safety should not be compromised because somebody wants that property to look over at Philadelphia and build a condo on it or whatever else they want built," said Gregory Kelley, president of local 105 of the state corrections officers union.

Corrections officers argued poor conditions at Southern State, a Delmont-based medium-security facility in Cumberland County comprised of modular buildings, warrant closing that prison before Riverfront.

Camden County officials, however, say they'll be glad to see the prison go.

At a recent meeting in Lawnside, Camden County Freeholder Jeffrey Nash told an audience filled with angry corrections officers that the prison's closure is key to transforming the city. He said the prison was forced on residents and prevents the expansion of the city's downtown and of Rutgers University's Camden campus.

"The residents of this community believe in their hearts...they do not want the prison to be on that location," he said. "They view it as the way that their community can turn things around and they can't get it done with a prison on its most valuable property."

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/plans_to_close_riverfront_stat.html

Posted by lois at 12:11 AM | Comments (0)

MS: CCA Opening New Federal Prison: 2,500 cages---400 jobs

Thursday, April 2, 2009, 8:43am CDT
Corrections Corp. opens Mississippi prison
Nashville Business Journal

Corrections Corporation of America is opening a new prison in Natchez, Miss., that will house more than 2,500 federal prisoners and create some 400 jobs.

CCA won a federal contract to house a maximum of 2,567 inmates at its new Adams County Correctional Center in southwest Misssissippi. A group of prisoners — mostly illegal aliens in the process of being deported — will start arriving this fall, the company says.

The $128 million federal facility is the corrections company's fourth prison in Mississippi. Franklin-based CCA (NYSE:CXW) is the nation’s largest private prison operator.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour hailed the federal contract, saying in a statement that it “fills a public need and provides good-paying jobs to Mississippians.”

Tony Grande, CCA’s chief development officer, calls the prison industry “recession-resistant.” But in February, CCA suspended construction of a 2,040-bed correctional facility in Trousdale County, Tenn., citing uncertainty over when the facility’s beds could be filled. Company officials said they would hold off on building the prison until they had a better idea of when they could fill the beds. A 1,000-bed federal detention center in Nevada was also placed on hold.

Nevertheless, a 4.1 percent increase in inmates and a 5.2 percent increase in per diem rates helped CCA to a 16 percent jump in 2008 fourth quarter earnings, which were $40.5 million compared to $34.9 million in the same quarter a year earlier.

For the full year 2008, CCA reported a 9.8 percent increase in revenue and a 13.2 percent increase in net income per diluted share. The company added 8,275 additional beds last year, and CCA officials said they plan to invest about $132.1 million in capital expenditures in 2009, including $78.5 million in already announced prison construction and expansions.
http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2009/03/30/daily25.html

Posted by lois at 12:08 AM | Comments (0)

Prisons, Drugs in America: A Turning Point?

Prisons, Drugs in America: A Turning Point?
Neal Peirce / Apr 02 2009
For Release Sunday, April 5, 2009
© 2009 Washington Post Writers Group

An historic turning point in criminal justice and drug policy in America?

The fourth week of March was arguably just that:

On the way to Mexico City, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the first senior U.S. official to accept co-responsibility for the cartel-driven drug violence now ravaging Mexico. Clinton acknowledged that “our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” and that our three-decade long war on drugs has simply “not worked.”

In Albany, New York Gov. David Paterson and the Democratic legislative majority announced they’d reached agreement to roll back the punitive “Rockefeller drug laws” of the 1970s, starting with then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s insistence on mandatory minimum prison sentences for first-time, non-violent drug offenders.

But the biggest breakthrough of all may have come in the U.S. Senate, where Virginia’s Jim Webb (D), joined by two Republican and 13 Democratic colleagues, sponsored legislation for a high-level “National Criminal Justice Commission.”

This could be the official eye-opener, the crucial reexamination of America’s penal and drug policies that the nation has so sorely needed for years.

Why?

First, its chair would be appointed by the president–and President Obama has called Webb twice to commend his effort. A commission-endorsed reform agenda would provide Obama cover for major changes in this politically charged area.

Second, the Senate Democratic leadership is enthusiastically in favor and there’s smaller but significant Republican cosponsorship–Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, ranking GOP member of the Judiciary Committee, and South Carolina’s Lindsay Graham, ranking member on the Crime and Drugs subcommittee.

A third positive: Jim Webb–highly decorated Marine combat veteran, Navy Secretary under President Reagan–can hardly be labeled a “softie” on crime. He and his staff have spent two years researching the prison and drug issues, hearing from prosecutors, judges, crime victims, former offenders, inmates and police. “It was like tapping a nerve,” Webb declares– “all are saying we have a real mess on our hands.”

Webb defines the base problem: with just 5 percent of world population, the U.S. has 2.3 million people behind bars–25 percent of all prisoners worldwide. “Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong.”

Webb contends that our prisons, many seriously overcrowded, have become “places of violence, physical abuse and hate,” costing federal, state and local governments a tough-to-justify $68 billion a year.

We’re “warehousing” the mentally ill in our prisons where, the senator notes, they get scant professional treatment. Then he focuses on “the elephant in the bedroom” –the rise in drug incarcerations. In 1980, the U.S. incarcerated 41,000 drug offenders; today the figure tops 500,000–a 1,200 percent increase.

The commission, says Webb, would have to wrestle with the fact that more than half of Americans age 12 and over have at some time used an illegal drug. “In talking of legality and illegality, what does that do to the fiber of our society? I saw more drug use at Georgetown Law School than anywhere else I’ve been. A lot of those people went on to be judges.”

Yet what’s the answer? Should we be arresting people for recreational drug use–or, Webb asks, for addiction?

Then there’s race: African-Americans, he observes, comprise 12 percent of our population, use drugs at close to the national average, but represent 37 percent of drug arrests and 74 percent of drug offenders sentenced to prison. How’s that to be explained?

Conversely, Webb underscores how seriously gangs are impacting American society. Some, though not all, ride on the back of the drug trade. Mexican drug cartels, the most violent and visible, are operating in 230 American cities, not simply along the border. MS-13 gangs, notorious for drug smuggling, gun running and hits for hire, have spread across the U.S., even recruiting 2,000, Webb notes, in Northern Virginia across the Potomac from Washington.

Then there’s the problem of rural towns, hard hit by globalization, actively seeking prisons as a source for jobs.

Many American guards receive only brief on-the-job training. Webb contrasts this with Japan, where guards have a year’s preparation and inmates legitimately regard them but “mentors, disciplinarians, and friends.”

Bottom line: Webb’s commission, if Congress approves it, will have a massive, complex agenda. Yet its findings could prove a vital turning point, not only for the federal government (which holds just 10 percent of prisoners) but state and local governments nationwide. Many might be inspired to create their own commissions.

Some say Webb, representing historically conservative Virginia, is threatening his own political future. But if Webb can get us off the dime, thinking and acting afresh on critical prison and drug issues, he’ll be serving America as vitally as the bravest of his erstwhile Marine colleagues.
http://citiwire.net/post/831/

Posted by lois at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)

April 02, 2009

FL: Bill would assess $3,300 fee for people using GPS monitors

Mar. 31, 2009
Fla. bill would make monitors pricey for offenders
By JESSICA GRESKO
Miami Herald
Offenders sentenced to wear ankle bracelets would have to pay for their own monitoring, up to about $3,300 a year, under a bill Florida lawmakers advanced Tuesday.

The provision could save the state up to $5 million a year and is supported by the Department of Corrections. At least eight other states, including neighboring Georgia, require offenders to pay for some or all monitoring costs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"The idea is that all of our punishment is geared toward making sure the person pays back his debt to society, and I think that's what this seeks to do," said Department of Corrections head Walter McNeil.

The state currently monitors about 2,300 people statewide, approximately three-quarters of them sex offenders. Last year, monitoring them cost the Department of Corrections approximately $5.5 million. Right now, only people under house arrest have to pay for the devices, and the department was only able to get ten percent of its money back, about $500,000.

The bill lawmakers considered Tuesday broadens the payment requirement to all people wearing the devices. However, people who are handicapped, unable to find work or only making a small amount could have the requirement waived by a judge or only be required to pay a portion of the monitoring cost. Florida Public Defender Association president Skipp Babb said that provision made him more comfortable with the legislation, though he said he worried about the cost to poorer offenders.

McNeil acknowledged that the money the state would be able to recover would be only a fraction of the department's $2.2 billion budget, but he said it was important Florida citizens not pay for the monitoring. The department already requires probationers to pay for required drug tests and sometimes polygraphs.

The state uses two types of ankle bracelets. One is a GPS bracelet that tracks offenders using satellites and records their location once a minute. The bracelet notifies a probation officer when an offender has gone outside set boundaries or when the bracelet has been removed. The device has two pieces, one worn in a fanny pack while outside and an ankle bracelet that weighs about as much as an iPod. GPS monitoring costs $8.94 per day or $3,263.10 over the course of a year.

About 100 low-risk offenders wear a simpler and less expensive bracelet. It lets probation officers know whether an offender is at home during curfew but does not track them during the day. That kind of monitoring costs $1.97 a day and would cost an offender a little more than $700 a year.

The bill containing the provision (HB 7085) passed a House committee unanimously Tuesday. Its Senate companion (SB 2298) is still in committee.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/977203.html

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

April 01, 2009

Lock 'Em Up Jailing kids is a proud American tradition.

Lock 'Em Up
Jailing kids is a proud American tradition.
By THOMAS FRANK
Wall Street Journal On-line
April 1, 2009

At first glance, the news from Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, is not good. In what is known locally as the "kids for cash" scandal, two judges have pleaded guilty to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks from a for-profit juvenile correctional facility -- a privately owned jail for kids, essentially.

And here is what the judges delivered, according to the charges of the U.S. Attorney overseeing the case: In 2003 one of them, Judge Michael Conahan, who had authority over such expenses, defunded the county-owned detention center, channeling kids sentenced to detention to the private jail -- along with the public's money.

For good measure, the feds charge, Mr. Conahan also agreed to send the private facility $1.3 million per year in public funds. Over the succeeding years, the private jail, along with a second lockup-for-profit that had opened in another part of the state, won tens of millions of dollars in Luzerne County contracts, allegedly with the two judges' help.

What has drawn the media's attention, though, is the remarkable strictness of the judges' judging. Mr. Conahan's alleged partner in the scheme, Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr., reportedly sent kids to the private detention centers when probation officers didn't think it was a good idea; he sent kids there when their crimes were nonviolent; he sent kids there when their crimes were insignificant. It was as though he was determined to keep those private prisons filled with children at all times. According to news stories, offenses as small as swiping a jar of nutmeg or throwing a piece of steak at an adult were enough to merit a trip to the hoosegow.

Over the years Mr. Ciavarella racked up a truly awesome score: He sent kids to detention instead of other options at twice the state average, according to the New York Times. He tried a prodigious number of cases in which the accused child had no lawyer -- here, says the Times, the judge's numbers were fully 10 times the state average. And he did it fast, sometimes rendering a verdict "in the neighborhood of a minute-and-a-half to three minutes," according to the judge tasked with reconsidering Mr. Ciavarella's work.

My question is, what have the Luzerne County judges done that deviates in the least from our American political traditions? These jurists have merely taken to heart the unvarying message of 40 years' worth of election results -- that more people, many more, need to go to jail -- and have come up with an entrepreneurial solution to the problem.

We the people say it loud and clear every Election Day, in high-crime periods as well as peaceful stretches: More of our population needs to be behind bars. We love retribution so much we make hits of TV shows in which society's ne'er-do-wells come in for lectures not only by stern, righteous judges, but by tattooed, mulletted bounty hunters as well.

And over the years we have embraced all sorts of instruments ensuring that more people got locked up for longer and longer stretches: Three strikes laws, mandatory sentencing laws, zero-tolerance policies. Maybe they aren't "fair," but they've helped to make the U.S. number one in percentage of population in the clink -- in fact, as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb pointed out in Parade magazine on Sunday, America has an amazing 25% of the world's prisoners.

Taking this path has not always been easy. In the 1990s, when we started to realize that child crooks were "superpredators" who needed to go to prison along with everyone else, some were unwilling to act. Others stepped up. "We've got to quit coddling these violent kids like nothing is going on," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) in 1996. "Getting some of these do-gooder liberals to do what is right is real tough. We'd all like to rehabilitate these kids, but by gosh we are in a different age."

But taking law and order to the next level in this different age required money, by gosh. Privatizing bits of the prison industry was a step in the right direction, but what we didn't have -- until recently -- were proper instruments for incentivizing the judiciary. That's what the "kids for cash" judges were apparently experimenting with.

Today the do-gooders revile those efforts as "kickbacks," but before long we will see them as legitimate tools of justice. Our laws governing lobbying and campaign contributions have struck the right balance between the wishes of the people and those of private industry, so why are we so quick to doubt that the same great results can be achieved by putting the government's justice-dealing branch on the same market-based course?

The public will get to see their neighbors' kids go to jail, the judge who sends them there will be able to afford a nice condo in Florida, and the company that satisfies the public's desire for punishment will make a handsome profit. It will be a win-win result for everyone.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123854010220075533.html#

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Reversing Rockefeller: New York is set to repeal some of its harsh drug-offense-sentencing laws. But do the reforms go far enough?

"Prior to the just-passed modification, the Rockefeller Drug laws removed all judicial discretion from matters of sentencing. Possession of a certain amount of drugs automatically triggered a harsh sentence. Now, only those convicted of the sale of 2 ounces or more of a hard drug or possession of 4 ounces or more of a hard drug will be subject to mandatory sentencing. The changes mean that around 6,000 people currently imprisoned under the Rockefeller laws -- around 50 percent of those convicted of drug offenses overall -- will be able to petition a court for a sentence reduction. " "However, the reforms don't restore full judicial discretion in sentencing. Mandatory sentences remain for those convicted of selling more than half an ounce or possessing more than 4 ounces of a hard drug, with harsher penalties for larger amounts. The same is true of anyone convicted of a nonviolent drug offense who was previously convicted of a violent crime, and anyone who sells drugs to a minor. The primary criteria for triggering mandatory minimum sentencing remains the amount of drugs present, not the individual's role in the transaction. This means that had Terrance Stevens' companion been in possession of more than 4 ounces of cocaine, he would receive the same sentence even under the new laws. Despite the changes, more than 10,000 people will not be eligible to petition the court for a reduction in their sentence."

Reversing Rockefeller: New York is set to repeal some of its harsh drug-offense-sentencing laws. But do the reforms go far enough?
Adam Serwer | April 1, 2009 | web only
American Prospect

In 1992, Terrance Stevens was sentenced for 15 years to life under New York state's Rockefeller Drug Laws. Stevens was traveling on a Greyhound Bus to Buffalo New York City to visit relatives. He claims he was unaware that the friend he was traveling with was carrying 5 ounces of cocaine. Prosecutors offered him a plea bargain that would have given Stevens probation, but Stevens didn't have any information to offer.

"The judge knew I didn't deserve a 15-year sentence, but he was handcuffed," Stevens says. "According to the statute, he had to sentence me to 15 years to life."

Stevens' bid in prison was particularly difficult because he has muscular dystrophy, leaving him mostly paralyzed from the neck down. New York's prison facilities weren't prepared to address all of his medical needs.

"When someone who can't even wipe their own behind is sentenced for 15 years for a nonviolent drug offense," Stevens says, "that's an indication something is wrong with our criminal-justice system." Stevens served 10 years of his sentence, which was commuted in 2001 after then-Gov. George Pataki granted clemency to several individuals imprisoned under the Rockefeller laws.

Stevens has since dedicated his life to helping those most affected by New York's harsh drug laws. He formed an organization called In Arms Reach, which tutors children who have incarcerated parents and pays for them to visit their parents, who are often locked up in upstate prisons. Last Friday, however, New York state legislators struck a deal to reform the Rockefeller laws that might make stories like Stevens' a thing of the past. New York lawmakers are scheduled to adopt the budget, which contains the changes, later today.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and for reformers, New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws became a potent symbol of everything that's wrong with the criminal-justice system. The laws, which were instituted in 1973 by then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in response to a rise in drug use, remove judicial discretion in sentencing, mandating harsh penalties for nonviolent drug offenses. According to a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union, nine out of 10 convicted of drug offenses in New York are black and Latino, and 71 percent of New York City residents who are convicted come from the same seven poor neighborhoods.

The Rockefeller laws were overturned partially through the decades-long efforts of grass-roots activists, who recently formed an unusual coalition with criminal-justice experts, civil servants, and politicians. Nevertheless, the reforms stop far short of the full repeal trumpeted in headlines across the country: Mandatory minimum sentences are maintained under certain circumstances, and thousands of inmates will not be able to petition the courts for a reduced sentence. At the same time, the fall of the Rockefeller laws represents a nationwide trend in corrections away from the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" approach. Several states are refocusing their efforts on rehabilitation and re-entry instead of just incarceration, and last week Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia announced the creation of a commission that would look to reform the criminal-justice system in his state.

The change in New York's political leadership helped as well. Gov. David Paterson, who succeeded Eliot Spitzer in April 2008, was arrested as a state senator for protesting the Rockefeller laws. In November, the Democratic Party in New York regained control of the state Senate, marking the first time since the 1930s that Democrats have controlled both legislative houses and the governor's mansion. These factors, combined with a growing nationwide recognition that our current approach to corrections is unsustainable, formed a kind of perfect storm that made changing the Rockefeller laws politically possible. While Republican legislators often represent upstate constituencies, some of which are economically dependent on prisons, state Sen. Eric T. Schneiderman says that opposition to reforming the Rockefeller laws was primarily ideological.

"For years people were just terrified of being accused of being soft on crime," says Schneiderman, who has been leading efforts at reform. "And now the public wants us to be smart on crime, not just tough."

Brian Fischer, commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections, agrees. "People have come to realize that you can't build yourself out of the drug problem. You can't build enough jails to house everybody, and it doesn't solve anything," Fischer says. "Everybody who is in prison doesn't need to be in prison for as long as they are." Fischer emphasizes that the Rockefeller reforms come on the heels of a large policy shift in New York State toward reducing recidivism through re-entry programs and alternatives to incarceration and says that the changes have made things better. "You did not see an increase in recidivism or an increase in crime [as a result of reforms]," Fischer says. Not everyone is happy with the changes. New York City's Police Commissioner Ray Kelly blasted the changes, saying at a City Council hearing yesterday that the reforms were "a big mistake" and would "put criminals back on the streets."

Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, has been fighting the Rockefeller laws for 30 years. The Correctional Association runs the influential Drop The Rock Campaign, which has organized protests and information drives to educate the public about the effect of the Rockefeller laws. While calling the reforms a "significant advance," Gangi said there was still more work to be done. "The change does not represent the end of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. There are provisions left on the books which will require prison terms, sometimes long and hard prison terms for low-level drug offenses. So there is still work for us to do to promote full repeal."

Prior to the just-passed modification, the Rockefeller Drug laws removed all judicial discretion from matters of sentencing. Possession of a certain amount of drugs automatically triggered a harsh sentence. Now, only those convicted of the sale of 2 ounces or more of a hard drug or possession of 4 ounces or more of a hard drug will be subject to mandatory sentencing. The changes mean that around 6,000 people currently imprisoned under the Rockefeller laws -- around 50 percent of those convicted of drug offenses overall -- will be able to petition a court for a sentence reduction. The deal includes money for rehabilitation and re-entry services and calls for a greater role for New York's Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services in monitoring and administering drug-treatment services before and after release.

However, the reforms don't restore full judicial discretion in sentencing. Mandatory sentences remain for those convicted of selling more than half an ounce or possessing more than 4 ounces of a hard drug, with harsher penalties for larger amounts. The same is true of anyone convicted of a nonviolent drug offense who was previously convicted of a violent crime, and anyone who sells drugs to a minor. The primary criteria for triggering mandatory minimum sentencing remains the amount of drugs present, not the individual's role in the transaction. This means that had Terrance Stevens' companion been in possession of more than 4 ounces of cocaine, he would receive the same sentence even under the new laws. Despite the changes, more than 10,000 people will not be eligible to petition the court for a reduction in their sentence.

Gangi says the fight for a full repeal of the laws will continue. Despite the likelihood of a deal, and Gov. Paterson's public support for reforming the Rockefeller laws, as recently as last week hundreds of protesters gathered outside the governor's house to urge passage of the reforms.

On Friday, however, when the deal was first announced, Terrance Stevens had nothing but kind words for Gov. Paterson. "We thank him," Stevens said. "It's a great day for the state."

Correction: An earlier version of this story failed to attribute statistics on drug offenders to a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=reversing_rockefeller

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16 States Report Declines in the Number Of Prisoners. 34 states report increases. Federal prisons and jails grow . Incarceration of women increases.

Growth in Prison and Jail Populations Slowing: 16 States Report Declines in the Number Of Prisoners

WASHINGTON, March 31 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As of June 30, 2008, state and federal correctional authorities had jurisdiction or legal authority over 1,610,584 prisoners. Additionally, 785,556 inmates were held in custody in local jails, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, announced today.

During the six months ending June 30, 2008, the prison population increased by 0.8 percent, compared to 1.6 percent during the same period in 2007. The local jail population increased by 0.7 percent during the 12-month period ending June 30, 2008, accounting for the slowest growth in 27 years.

Sixteen states reported decreases in their prison populations. California (down 962 prisoners) and Kentucky (down 847) reported the largest decreases since yearend 2007.

While the prison populations in the remaining 34 states increased, growth slowed in 18 of these states. For these 18 states, prison populations increased by 1.6 percent in the first half of 2008 as compared to the increase of 3.1 percent in the first half of 2007. Minnesota experienced the largest growth rate (up 5.2 percent) in the first six months of 2008, followed by Maine (up 4.6 percent) and Rhode Island and South Carolina (both up 4.3 percent).

The federal prison system added 1,524 prisoners in the first six months of 2008, reaching a total of 201,142 prisoners. The 0.8 percent growth represented the smallest increase in the first six months since 1993 (when BJS began collecting data at midyear).

State and federal prisoners in private facilities increased 6.8 percent during the 12-month period, reaching 126,249 at midyear 2008. The federal system (32,712), Texas (19,851), and Florida (9,026) reported the largest number of prisoners in private facilities.

As of June 30, 2008, over 2.3 million inmates, or one in every 131 U.S. residents, were held in custody in state or federal prisons or in local jails, regardless of sentence length or conviction status. Since yearend 2000, the nation's prison and jail custody populations have increased by 373,502 inmates (or 19 percent).

Over one-third of inmates held in custody at midyear 2008 were in local jails. More than half (52 percent) were housed in the 180 largest jail facilities, with average daily populations of 1,000 inmates or more. Overall, an estimated 13.6 million inmates were admitted to local jails during the 12-month period ending June 30, 2008.

Local jails operated at about 95 percent of their rated capacity as of June 30, 2008. During the preceding 12 months, the nation's jail capacity increased by 14,911 beds, while the number of inmates increased by 5,382 persons.

Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of all jail inmates were awaiting court action or had not been convicted of their current charge, up from 56 percent in 2000. Based on jail jurisdictions that reported data, non-U.S. citizens made up 9.0 percent of their total jail population in 2008, up from 7.7 percent in 2007 and 6.1 percent in 2000.

Among inmates held in custody in prisons or jails, black males were incarcerated at 6.6 times the rate of white males. One in 21 black males was incarcerated at midyear 2008, compared to one in 138 white males. At midyear 2008, black males (846,000) outnumbered white males (712,500) and Hispanic males (427,000) among inmates in prisons and jails. About 37 percent of all male inmates at midyear 2008 were black, down 41 percent from midyear 2000.

Female incarceration rates were substantially lower than male incarceration rates at every age. Black females (with an incarceration rate of 349 per 100,000) were more than twice as likely as Hispanic females (147 per 100,000) and over 3.5 times more likely than white females (93 per 100,000) to have been in prison or jail on June 30, 2008. An estimated 207,700 women were held in prison or jails at midyear 2008, up 33 percent since midyear 2000.

The accompanying standardized tables, Prison Inmates at Midyear 2008 - Statistical Tables (NCJ 225619) and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2008 - Statistical Tables (NCJ 225709), were prepared by BJS statisticians Heather C. West, Todd D. Minton, and William J. Sabol. Following publication, the tables can be found at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/pim08st.htm and http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/jim08st.htm.

For additional information about the Bureau of Justice Statistics' statistical reports and programs, please visit the BJS Web site at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs.

The Office of Justice Programs (OJP), headed by Acting Assistant Attorney General Laurie O. Robinson, provides federal leadership in developing the nation's capacity to prevent and control crime, administer justice, and assist victims. OJP has five component bureaus: the Bureau of Justice Assistance; the Bureau of Justice Statistics; the National Institute of Justice; the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; and the Office for Victims of Crime. In addition, OJP has two program offices: the Community Capacity Development Office, which incorporates the Weed and Seed strategy, and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART). More information can be found at http://www.ojp.gov.

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-31-2009/0004998232&EDATE=

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