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June 30, 2009

CA: Program for parolees ends

Parolee re-entry program to end
By Lanz Christian Bañes
Contra-Costa Times-Herald

Posted: 06/28/2009

Solano County's parolee re-entry program will cease operations Wednesday.

"It's completely over with," said Tony Pearsall, executive director of Fighting Back Partnership, which runs the program.

Founded three years ago on a $600,000 state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation grant, the parolee re-entry program provided skills training, case management and support for about 900 parolees released into Solano County.

The program has since depleted the funding and has been unable to obtain more -- despite Fighting Back Partnership's contention that the program saves the state money by keeping parolees from re-offending and returning to prison.

The program's closure will result in the loss of three staff members. About 200 parolees will still be in the program when it shutters Wednesday.

"It's sad, because with everything else that's working against us, this one thing gives us hope that somebody out there is willing to work with us," said Peter Duena, 36, one of the 200 parolees still in the program.

When Duena was released from a four-year stint in prison, he spent a year looking for a job with no luck. But after being introduced to the parolee

re-entry program's basic building trades program, Fighting Back Partnership was able to secure Duena temporary contract work with the city of Vallejo.

"They're showing us that there are people out there that care and help us go straight," Duena said, adding that the re-entry program was his last
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hope.

Pearsall and other Fighting Back leaders contend that the parolee program is successful because only 20 percent returned to prison since 2007. The corrections department reports 52 percent of parolees returned to prison within two years after being released in 2006.

It costs $44,000 a year to incarcerate one prisoner, which amounts to millions of dollars in savings for the state, Pearsall said.

"It just doesn't make any sense, but I guess (the state doesn't) look at the back-end savings. They have to look at the front-end costs in trying to balance the state budgets," said John Allen, Fighting Back Partnership member who works closely with the parolees.

Pearsall and Allen will try one last time to save the program by pleading their case in front of the county Board of Supervisors early this week.

Parolees often struggle with barriers when released from prison, including a negative reputation among the public. At one point Pearsall, a former Vallejo police captain, shared those views.

"I never even contemplated a program like this would exist, nor did I contemplate at all, from a police point of view, that these parolees would be ones that are successful in the program and not re-offend," Pearsall said, describing the parolee sweeps the police department and parolee officers would do to arrest offenders.

The re-entry program takes parolees away from the same environments that led them to prison, said Pearsall, who also noted that other factors besides environment played into the initial offense.

"It takes you away from the drugs. You have to give 100 percent to this program .... If you're not serious, don't bother," Duena said.

Both Pearsall and Allen described the 200 employees in the program as devastated.

"It's kind of a sense of abandonment, I guess .... They're resigned also to the fact that stuff like this happens, but it's kind of like getting the rug pulled out from under your feet .... In a way, we're casting them adrift," Allen said.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_12707340?nclick_check=1

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

June 29, 2009

Editorial: Two Meals and Not Always Square

Editorial: Two Meals and Not Always Square
Published: Sunday June 28, 2009
NY Times

With budgets tight, states and local governments have been looking at prisons — and prison food — as a place to save money. Three days a week, Georgia now serves inmates only two meals. And across the country, there have been increasing reports of substandard food. This is inhumane. Adequate meals should be a nonnegotiable part of a civilized penal system. It is also bad policy. Researchers have found a connection between poor food quality and discipline problems and violence.

Georgia has nevertheless decided to save on staff costs by serving just two meals on Friday, as it already did on Saturday and Sunday. The state says it gives prisoners the same number of calories on days when one meal is skipped. Even if it does — and some prisoners’ advocates are skeptical — it can be oppressive to go so long without eating.

In Alabama earlier this year, a federal judge ordered the Morgan County sheriff locked up in his own jail for contempt for failing to adequately feed his inmates. Alabama allows sheriffs to keep food money they do not spend, and the sheriff reportedly pocketed more than $200,000 over three years.

Prisoners’ rights advocates say they are receiving an increasing number of complaints from inmates nationwide who report being served spoiled or inedible food or inadequate portions. Earlier this year, a riot at Reeves County Detention Center in Texas caused heavy damage to a prison building. Inmates said it was prompted in part by poor food.

Cutbacks in food could violate inmates’ constitutional rights, notes Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, if they create a substantial risk of serious harm — a particular concern for inmates with diabetes and other illnesses.

If states and localities want to save money on corrections, they should reduce their prison and jail populations. The United States, which has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has almost one-quarter of its prisoners. Many are in for nonviolent crimes that could be punished in more constructive, and less costly, ways. If governments decide to put inmates behind bars, they have to give them adequate food — which means no less than three healthy meals a day.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 29, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29mon2.html?_r=1&hpw

Posted by lois at 09:21 PM | Comments (0)

MI-CA: Gov. Granholm offers to cage some of California's prisoners

State may take Calif. inmates
By Dawson Bell • Free Press Lansing Bureau • June 29, 2009
LANSING – Gov. Jennifer Granholm offered empty beds in Michigan prisons to house inmates from California today as the Golden State seeks solutions to prison overcrowding and a massive budget deficit.
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Granholm sent a letter to California Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger after speaking to him personally, in which she called the offer an “opportunity (that) has great potential and could be mutually beneficial.” Granholm said several empty facilities and soon-to-be-vacated prisons in Standish and Muskegon could be available.

California faces the prospect of being forced to release tens of thousands of inmates to ease overcrowding, even as it addresses a $24.3 billion deficit.

Granholm’s letter said terms of a prison space sharing plan could be worked out in negotiations.
http://www.freep.com/article/20090629/NEWS06/90629052/Granholm+offers+prison
+space+for+Calif.+inmates

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

Mass. prison system overcrowded; Patrick aims to fix it

"The presence of inmates in the system taxes an already stretched prison system at a higher cost to the taxpayer. It costs $2,500 to supervise a person through parole, while it costs about $43,000 annually to incarcerate someone. And unsupervised transitions from prison lead to more crime and more victims, as an ex-inmate without parole supervision is twice as likely to go back to prison than a released inmate who goes on parole.
With the state taking away the option of doing more time for no post-release supervisions, "consequently we free up beds," Burke said.
The Patrick administration wants to make the matter a non-issue by requiring mandatory supervision for all who serve a state prison sentence equal to 25 percent of their sentence, with a minimum of nine months parole and a maximum of five years parole."

Mass. prison system overcrowded; Patrick aims to fix it
By Dan McDonald/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Jun 28, 2009
FRAMINGHAM —

The prison system in the state is overtaxed, and MCI-Framingham is no different.

As of last week, the Southside prison held 593 inmates - its capacity is 452.

The state system is at 146 percent capacity, state Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke said. While the state considers creating "better space" inside the prison, "There isn't anyone you talk to who says we can build our way out of this."

Instead, state officials like Burke seek policy tweaks.

Gov. Deval Patrick's administration is pushing reform that allows for a loophole letting prisoners opt to spend more time in jail and avoid parole supervisions upon release.

Some prisoners chose that option, which Burke's office says bogs down the system and causes higher recidivism rates.

More than 500 prisoners annually who are up for parole choose to stay in prison for the length of their terms, so that when they get out there is no parole supervision.

"It sounds strange, but it does happen. Whatever the reason, we've got to get those folks under supervision," Burke said.

All told, 965 inmates left correctional institutions unsupervised in 2008 because of sentencing restrictions, institutional behavior that precludes parole, or inmates opting to stay in prison for more time to avoid supervision.

The lack of parole is problematic for several reasons, state officials say.

The presence of inmates in the system taxes an already stretched prison system at a higher cost to the taxpayer. It costs $2,500 to supervise a person through parole, while it costs about $43,000 annually to incarcerate someone. And unsupervised transitions from prison lead to more crime and more victims, as an ex-inmate without parole supervision is twice as likely to go back to prison than a released inmate who goes on parole.

With the state taking away the option of doing more time for no post-release supervisions, "consequently we free up beds," Burke said.

The Patrick administration wants to make the matter a non-issue by requiring mandatory supervision for all who serve a state prison sentence equal to 25 percent of their sentence, with a minimum of nine months parole and a maximum of five years parole.

The governor is also taking aim at another prison reform that could shorten sentences and free up room inside the prisons.

State law hinders those nonviolent inmates serving mandatory minimum time for drug offenses to participate in work release-like programs, according to Burke's office.

But Patrick's administration wants to have those imprisoned to mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes to be eligible for parole after serving two-thirds of their maximum sentence.

The mandatory minimum sentences, in some cases cause nonviolent criminals to serve a sentence that is "disproportionate to the risk that these individuals pose to the community," according Burke's office.

As of Jan. 1, 26 percent of prisoners in the state system were imprisoned for drug offenses. Of MCI-Framingham's nearly 600 inmate population, 24 percent are there because of drug-related crimes.

"Mandatory drug sentences don't allow us to be as smart as we can be," he said. "Public safety shouldn't come with a price tag, but we should be smart."
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x768070128/Mass-prison-system-overcrowded-Patrick-aims-to-fix-it?view=print

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

June 28, 2009

MS: Free labor and $29.74 per day from the state...communities clamor for regional jails

Sunday, Jun. 28, 2009
Miss. communities clamor for regional jails
By JACK ELLIOTT JR. - Associated Press Writer

JACKSON, Miss. -- There are 11 county/regional jails scattered around Mississippi. With them, the Mississippi Department of Corrections has created its own cottage industry.

Locally, the prisons provide lockups for offenders, jobs for local residents and a free labor force for public works projects. So popular are they that at least three more could open within the next year.

The question is, does the state need the beds? Yes, says Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps.

"If you need a jail, what better way to get it than sign a 20-year agreement with the state?" Epps said. "The reason you want as many state inmates as you can get is because we are going to pay you $29.74 per inmate per day plus we pay medical expenses."

What about the free labor?

"These guys do things that you can't pay people to do - putting asphalt into holes, unstopping sewer lines, painting the courthouse."

Epps said another thing is important.

"You'll see that they are not wealthy counties and mostly rural places. These places did not have an approved jail. They've got one now," he said.

Chickasaw County broke ground earlier this year on its regional facility, which is to have 300 inmates, about 240 from the state.

Sheriff Jimmy Simmons said at the groundbreaking that the facility was a welcome addition.

Simmons said that the state's contracted guarantee of inmate reimbursement will effectively pay for the facility.

"We're going to have to have it and rather than spending taxpayers' money, we're actually saving taxpayers money," the sheriff said.

Statewide, the 11 regionals average about 277 inmates each. Epps said there are more at Bolivar and Kemper facilities.

Washington, Alcorn and Yazoo counties are in the process of bidding on regional jails. Hinds County recently scrapped its regional jail plan. A 75-bed expansion at Kemper County for female inmates will open this summer.

Epps said he will spend $34 million for regional facilities during the new fiscal year, which begins Wednesday.

Even though the overall inmate numbers are down about 600 from a year ago and lawmakers have approved new laws to reduce the population, Epps said he needs the beds at the regional facilities.

Epps said a state prison in Greene County is about 1,000 inmates over capacity, and one in Rankin County is 400 over capacity. That, he said, puts a strain on the infrastructure.

"If Yazoo, Alcorn, Chickasaw and Washington were ready, I could fill them from just downsizing those two. Our facilities are tearing up real badly. When you are over capacity, you're killing your facilities. Your bathrooms, showers, washers and dryers ... weren't built for that. You can't keep running them like this," he said.

Epps has applications from 16 other counties for regional jails. While he knows they don't have money to build their own jail, he doubts any more regional prisons will be approved soon.

"I have to be a good steward of taxpayer money. I can't farm out inmates when I have spaces for them. That's why I am telling them they need to look at building a jail," Epps said.
http://www.sunherald.com/218/story/1441770.html

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

An invisible woman is laid to rest

An invisible woman is laid to rest
E.J. Montini
Arizona Republic

For most of her adult life, 48-year-old Marcia Powell was invisible. Then she died, and slowly came into view.

If you were required in school to read H.G. Wells' science fiction masterpiece "The Invisible Man" you'll recall that the troubled scientist called Griffin formulated a recipe for invisibility that, we learn tragically, wears off after death.

As it turns out, the same holds true in real life.

The diabolical concoction that lead to Marcia Powell's invisibility was a mixture of mental illness, drugs and ignorance. (Ours, not hers.)

Today, At Shadow Rock United Church of Christ in Phoenix, Powell will be laid to rest. She was a troubled adopted girl when she first ran away from home in California.

She showed early signs of mental illness. But as a young adult with no family – or at least none that wanted any part of her – “treatment” took the form of self medication by way of everything from alcohol to methamphetamine. To pay for it, she became a prostitute.

Mental illness is not a crime. Most of those who suffer from the disease are able to keep it under control and function perfectly well with the help of doctors and prescription drugs.

Powell and many others are not as fortunate.Left on their own they spiral into homelessness, petty crime or worse. After offering oral sex to an undercover police officer in exchange for a few dollars Marcia Powell found herself in what has become one of Arizona's largest de facto mental health facilities – state prison.

It wasn't the first time she was behind bars. Or the second. Or the tenth. Powell had been in and out of jail for decades, all of which went unnoticed by you and me. She and those like her roam our streets, alleys, parking lots and city parks in plain view but unseen, shrouded by their delusions and our indifference.

All of which changed for Powell when she was placed in a cage-like outdoor enclosure at the prison in Perryville and left to cook for four hours. Invisible. Forgotten.

It was only after she fell into a coma and died that any of us learned she had been alive. Even now, as the Department of Corrections investigates what went wrong, it is the manner of her death that concerns us. Not her life.

Ken Heintzelman, pastor at Shadow Rock, told me, “It's unfortunate that it sometimes take a spiritual kick in the pants to make us stop and see what is going on. Maybe through Marcia we can address some of the systematic things that caused this to happen to her. It's more than simply about this one person. It's about what kind of society we want to be.”

The Maricopa County Public Fiduciary's office spent weeks trying to find relatives of Powell. The only family members they found were even less interested in her after death than they had been while she was alive.

So burying Powell fell to some good-hearted local people, including folks at Shadow Rock, at EncantoCommunityChurch, at Hansen's Mortuary and at the fiduciary's office. Most, like Donna Hamm, executive director of Middle Ground Prison Reform, only heard of Powell after she was gone. While helping to plan Powell's funeral Hamm told me, “We believe that Marcia deserves a little dignity, something she didn't get while alive.”

If all goes according to plan, Powell's cremated remains will be placed in a niche at Shadow Rock sometime around dusk on Sunday.

The church is located south of Thunderbird Road on Eighth Avenue. The desert landscape rises up like a wave behind the building, cresting at the edge of an unending sky. It's an open, airy place. No prison cells. No barbed wire. No cages.

(Column for June 28, 2009, Arizona Republic)
Saturday, June 27, 2009 at 11:16 PM
http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/EJMontini/56354
This and other outrageous but true stories about women and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/
Additional news stories about Marcia Powell's death can be found on the blog.

Posted by lois at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2009

Jena 6' beating case wraps up with plea deal…

JENA, La. – Five members of the Jena Six pleaded no contest Friday to misdemeanor simple battery and won't serve jail time, ending a case that thrust a small Louisiana town into the national spotlight and sparked a massive civil rights demonstration.

State District Judge Tom Yeager then sentenced the five, standing quietly surrounded by their lawyers, to seven days unsupervised probation and fined $500. It was a far less severe end to their cases than seemed possible when the six students — all of whom are black — were initially charged with attempted murder in the 2006 attack on Justin Barker, a white classmate. They became known as the "Jena Six," after the central Louisiana town where the beating happened.

Jena 6' beating case wraps up with plea deal…
By MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer Mary Foster, Associated Press Writer – Fri Jun 26, 2009

"I just thank God that it's all over," said John Jenkins, father of Carwin Jones. "It's been a long, painful journey for everyone on both sides of this thing."

Barker and his family and friends sat without expression throughout the hearing. Barker's attorney said he graduated and is now an oil field worker. The family did not comment.

As part of the deal, one of the attorneys read a statement from the five defendants in which they said they knew of nothing Barker had done to provoke the attack.

"To be clear, not one of us heard Justin use any slur or say anything that justified Mychal Bell attacking Justin nor did any of us see Justin do anything that would cause Mychal to react," the statement said.

The statement also expressed sympathy for Barker and his family, and acknowledged the past 2 1/2 years had "caused Justin and his parents tremendous pain and suffering, much of which has gone unrecognized."

Barker spent several hours in the emergency room after the attack, but was discharged and attended a school event the next night.

By pleading no contest, the five do not admit guilt but acknowledge prosecutors had enough evidence for a conviction. LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters said in a statement that he could have won convictions but wanted to end the matter for Barker.

Charges against Jones, Jesse Ray Beard, Robert Bailey Jr., Bryant Purvis and Theo Shaw had previously been reduced from attempted murder to aggravated second-degree battery. All but Shaw were assessed $500 in court costs. The judge did not tack that punishment on to Shaw's case because he stayed in jail for almost seven months, unable to raise bail, following his initial arrest.

Each paid the fine and court costs immediately. The payment of restitution to Barker was also part of the deal, but the amount was not released. A lawsuit filed by Barker against the group was also settled Friday, though the terms were confidential.

The only member of the group to serve jail time was Bell, who pleaded guilty in December 2007 to second-degree battery and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Four of Friday's defendants have graduated from high school, and all are attending or getting ready to attend college. Purvis has completed his first year and Bell is planning to attend college this fall. Beard is a senior in high school in Connecticut.

"They can move along with their lives," said Bailey's attorney, James Boren. "And because there are no felonies they can look forward to full lives ahead."

The severity of the original charges brought widespread criticism and eventually led more than 20,000 people to converge in September 2007 on the tiny town of Jena for a major civil rights march. Some $275,000 was raised to hire a large defense team for the six, said Beard's attorney, David Utter.

Racial tensions at Jena High School reportedly grew in the months before the attack. Several months prior to the attack, nooses were hung in a tree on the campus, sparking outrage in the black community. Residents said there were fights, but nothing too serious until December 2006 when Barker was attacked.

"Everybody pointed a finger at Jena during this, but this happens to African-American males across the country," Utter said. "These young men were lucky that people cared and donated money so they could afford good attorneys. That made the difference."

Posted by lois at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

MI: Prson Backers Pray to Keep Prison Open

Prison backers turn to prayer to save closing facility
By Kathryn Lynch-Morin
Bay City Times
6-26-09
STANDISH — About 350 people attended a candlelight vigil Monday at Resurrection of the Lord Catholic Church in Standish to pray for a meeting between local leaders who are committed to saving the prison and Gov. Jennifer Granholm who announced earlier this month that the prison would close later this year.

Standish City Manager Michael J. Moran III attended the vigil and said he is still optimistic that Gov. Jennifer Granholm will meet with city and state officials to discuss the closing of the prison.

"Hopefully we can give her enough reason to reconsider her executive order," Moran said. "If not, we feel that we have other options we can discuss with her."

He said the mood at the vigil was different than that of the rally that took place at the same church June 12.

"It was more of a formalized religious experience in a way," Moran said.

The Rev. James Fitzpatrick organized the vigil as well as a petition that collected nearly 8,000 signatures and the rally to try and urge Granholm to change her mind about closing the prison, Standish's largest employer.

http://www.correctionsone.com/corrections/articles/1849627-Prison-backers-turn-to-prayer-to-save-closing-facility/

Posted by lois at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)

AZ: Right-wing vigilantes kills a woman's child and her husband in their house in a border town

New Border Fear: Violence by a Rogue Militia
By JESSE McKINLEY and MALIA WOLLAN
NY Times
Published: June 26, 2009

ARIVACA, Ariz. — “Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband!” the woman shouted to the 911 dispatcher. “They’re coming back in! They’re coming back in!”

Arivaca finds itself a town both terrified and angered.

Multiple gunshots are then heard on a tape of the call.

The woman, Gina Gonzalez, survived the attack after arming herself with her husband’s handgun, but both he and their 10-year-old daughter died.

The killings, last month, have terrified this small town near the Mexican border, in part because the authorities have now tied them to what they describe as a rogue group engaged in citizen border patrols.

The three people arrested in the crime include the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a Washington State-based offshoot of the Minutemen movement, in which citizens roam the border looking for people crossing into the country illegally. Former members describe the group’s leader, Shawna Forde, 41, as having anti-immigrant sentiments that are extreme, at times frightening, even to people accustomed to hard-line views on border policing.

The authorities say that the three suspects were after money and drugs that they intended to use to finance vigilantism, and that members of the group may have been involved in at least one other home invasion, in California.

“There was an anticipation that there would be a considerable amount of cash at this location,” said Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, since, he said, Ms. Gonzalez’s husband, Raul J. Flores, had previously been involved in narcotics trafficking, an assertion the family denies.

A Pima County public defender representing Ms. Forde had no comment on the case. Nor did lawyers for the other suspects, Jason E. Bush, 34, and Albert R. Gaxiola, 42. All three remain in custody, charged with first-degree murder, assault and burglary.

Merrill Metzger, who worked for the group for six months just as it was getting started in 2007, said Ms. Forde had often traveled from Washington to Arizona with weapons. In March, while stopping over at his home in Redding, Calif., she presented a plan for the group to undertake, Mr. Metzger, her half-brother, said in a telephone interview.

“She was sitting here talking about how she was going to start an underground militia and rob drug dealers,” he said.

Mr. Metzger quit the group, alarmed, he said, by a number of things, including Ms. Forde’s demand for extreme loyalty, right down to the choice of cuisine.

“I had to take an oath, and part of the oath was that I couldn’t eat Mexican food,” he said. “That’s when red flags went up all over for me. That seemed like prejudice.”

Another former member, Chuck Stonex, a retired independent contractor, said Ms. Forde had talked about buying a ranch near Arivaca and building a compound. He said that in October, he took an excursion with her into the desert north of here, where, wearing camouflage and carrying handguns and rifles, they searched for illegal immigrants.

“It’s just like hunting,” Mr. Stonex said, describing the tracking skills the group used. “If you’re going out hunting deer, you want to scout around and get an idea what their pattern is, what trails they use.”

Mr. Stonex said he treated one of the suspects, Mr. Bush, for a flesh wound the day of the attack on Ms. Gonzalez’s family. Ms. Gonzalez had presumably shot Mr. Bush in warding off the attackers, but, Mr. Stonex said, the wound did not raise his suspicions, because, he said, Ms. Forde offered what seemed a plausible explanation: “They’d been jumped by border bandits.”

“They were very relaxed, having casual, normal chitchat,” he recalled.

Small numbers of Americans have always viewed border patrolling as a patriotic duty, but the most recent incarnation — the Minutemen movement, which takes its name from citizen militias formed during the Revolutionary War — gained steam in 2005, when hundreds of volunteers flocked to border locations.

Their patrols initially drew praise from some political leaders, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, but also raised concerns that the activities were thin veils for racism and xenophobia. Over time, the movement has also suffered from infighting, with some groups, like Ms. Forde’s, advocating increasingly confrontational tactics while others have simply monitored the border and reported illegal crossings to the authorities.

Pima County Sheriff’s Office

Gilbert Mungaray, 80, says he “can’t imagine why” his grandson and great-granddaughter were killed.

Since the killings here, members of some better-known groups involved with the movement have scrambled to disassociate themselves from Minutemen American Defense. Others had begun doing so well beforehand. The 750-member San Diego Minutemen, for instance, started warning people on its Web site in January to avoid Ms. Forde.

According to Ms. Gonzalez’s 911 call, the killers arrived shortly after midnight on May 30, dressed in uniforms resembling those of law enforcement personnel. They told the family that they were looking for a fugitive. Actually, the authorities say, the three suspects believed that Ms. Gonzalez’s husband, Mr. Flores, 29, was holding both drugs and money at their remote home.

Sheriff Dupnik has said there is ample drug activity between here and the border. The suggestion has angered the residents of Arivaca, a town of retirees, artists and working people about 50 miles south of Tucson. “This is a good town,” said Fern Loveall, 76. “It’s a good place to live, and it’s a good place to raise kids. What they’re saying about it isn’t true.”

Members of Mr. Flores’s family also denied that he had had any connection to the drug trade.

“He was a good guy,” said Gilbert Mungaray, his 80-year-old grandfather. “I know what happened, but I can’t imagine why.”

The family’s house was silent this week. An American flag hung on the porch, and three pink roses adorned the front door. Down a dirt road, at the local community center, a picture of Brisenia, the slain daughter of Mr. Flores and Ms. Gonzalez, had been placed in a frame with a small black ribbon affixed to it.

For the regulars at La Gitana Cantina, a friendly establishment with a mixed clientele of Anglos and Mexican-Americans, emotions have ranged from abject sorrow to rage.

“I’ve had people come into the bar and just put their heads in their hands, and all the sudden they’ve got tears pouring down their face,” said Karen Lippert, a bartender. She added that while Mr. Gaxiola was a local, the two other suspects were not.

“This is not us guys,” she said. “It’s the not the way us guys operate.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/27arizona.html?ref=us
This and other outrageous but true news can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Posted by lois at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)

CT: HOUSE PASSES BUDGET : Rell Opposes Democrats' Budget Item That Would Close 2 Prisons

HOUSE PASSES BUDGET : Rell Opposes Democrats' Budget Item That Would Close 2 Prisons
By CHRISTOPHER KEATING
The Hartford Courant
June 27, 2009

The state has fewer prison inmates than it did on the day of the tragic Cheshire killings in July 2007.

The prison population had soared by 1,200 after Gov. M. Jodi Rell froze the parole system following the triple homicide. Now, that number has fallen back completely.

As a result, in their budget proposal, Democratic legislators called for closing two prisons in an attempt to save as much as $200 million annually. But Republicans and Rell sharply questioned the idea at a time when many believe that crime is still too high in citiesthroughout the state.

The prison debate will continue because Rell is expected to veto the overall budget, which includes the prison plan, that was passed by the House on Friday, 91-48.

Neither the House nor the Senate was able to pass the Democratic budget by margins able to override Rell's expected veto. As a result, lawmakers and Rell's budget director are expected to go back into bipartisan budget talks that had been suspended until after the Democratic votes this week.

"It was bad yesterday. It's bad today," Rell's spokesman, Christopher Cooper, said of the Democratic budget Friday. "It's unbalanced, unaffordable and unfinished."

While lawmakers have spun different numbers over the past week, the legislature's nonpartisan fiscal office said the Democratic budget included $2 billion in net spending cuts over the next two fiscal years. The same budget would raise $2.5 billion through tax increases.

The discussion of the prisons was one of many topics that arose during nearly five hours of debate Friday in the Hall of the House at the state Capitol.

Rep. Craig Miner, R-Litchfield, questioned the Democratic plan and then offered a Republican alternative budget with no prison closings and no tax increases. That plan was rejected, 104 to 35, largely on party lines.

When Democrats said Rell, too, wanted to close a prison, Cooper said the difference was that Rell had called simply for studying the feasibility of closing one prison if the inmate population dropped. That was different, he said, from a proposal that would force the state to close two prisons if the Democratic plan became law.

To counter the Democratic prison proposal, Rell's office released a letter by Rep. Michael P. Lawlor dated Oct. 17, 2007, after he had toured a prison in Enfield upon the request of prison guards who worked there. The letter was written about three months after the Cheshire killings, when the inmate population had increased by 791 since the day of the triple homicide on July 23, 2007. The population increased after that point.

Two longtime criminals who were out on parole could get the death penalty in the slayings of three members of the Petit family in a crime that shocked the state and caused the legislature to make changes in the law in a special session.

"We need more prison cells," Lawlor, D- East Haven, wrote to Rell in 2007. "We need more corrections officers. ... We need more halfway house beds for nonviolent offenders with mental illness and substance abuse issues, and we need secure inpatient beds for sex offenders."

"It was accurate at the time it was written," Lawlor responded in an interview Friday. "The prison population was going up very rapidly. It got to almost 20,000. ... As it turned out, the population did come down — way down. It's lower now than it was on the day of the Cheshire murders. It went up about 1,200 and came down about 1,200."

At about $45,000 to $50,000 per year, a reduction of 1,000 prisoners could save $50 million and 2,000 fewer inmates could save $100 million per year in prison costs, Lawlor said.

"The budget doesn't require them to pick two prisons and close them," Lawlor said. "It could be a wing in five different prisons. ... The Department of Corrections has a plan to do this. They won't tell us which ones. By the way, they've already closed down some wings of some prisons because the population has come down."

Cooper did not buy Lawlor's explanation.

"How is that going to save any money?" Cooper asked. "Five different wings? What's that going to change? You still have to heat the whole place. It's like many of their cuts: 'Governor, you figure it out.'"

During the lengthy debate Friday, lawmakers took a major detour in the middle of the day to battle over campaign finance reform. Rep. Corky Mazurek, D-Wolcott, offered an amendment to strip $61 million in public financing from the budget. Many lawmakers believed that issue had been settled years ago, and the measure was defeated after about 1 hour and 20 minutes of debate.

The budget bill also calls for these tax changes:

•Increasing the state's cigarette tax by 75 cents per pack on July 1.

•Imposing a 30 percent surcharge on the estate tax that is paid by family members if a person dies with more than $2 million to their name.

•Increasing the state income tax on couples earning more than $500,000 annually and individuals earning more than $265,000.

But all those tax increases would be moot under Rell's expected veto.

As the final speaker before the vote, House Majority Leader Denise Merrill of Mansfield offered the Democratic summary by saying that the party restored funding for prisoner re-entry programs, nursing homes, college scholarships, and the Life Star medical helicopter.

"We reversed the governor's decision to close courthouses" in Norwalk, Derby, Putnam, and other communities, Merrill said. "We couldn't figure out what would happen if we closed these courthouses. ... The judicial branch told us it would be very, very difficult to imagine" how cases would be handled with fewer courts.

" Connecticut will emerge from this economic crisis," Merrill said. "That's what we have to remember today. ... We can't cut everything."

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-house-budgetvote-0627.artjun27,0,4730350.story

Posted by lois at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

Ruling could aid Pennsylvania prison lifers seeking release

The big word in the headline is COULD.
Lois

Posted on Fri, Jun. 26, 2009
Ruling could aid Pa. prison lifers seeking release
PETER JACKSON
The Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A federal judge has reaffirmed a ruling that could make it easier for inmates serving life sentences in Pennsylvania prisons to get commutation requests considered by the governor.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo in Scranton could affect hundreds of lifers who committed their crimes before voters amended the state constitution in November 1997 to toughen the standards for clemency requests from lifers.

The amendment, part of an anti-crime package advocated by then-Gov. Tom Ridge, requires the unanimous approval of the state Pardons Board before a commutation is recommended to the governor , allowing a single board member to block a commutation. Before that, only a majority vote by the five-member board was needed.

In the latest ruling on a lawsuit filed by the Pennsylvania Prison Society, Caputo reiterated that applying the stricter rules to inmates convicted of crimes committed before the 1997 referendum amounted to unconstitutional, ex post facto punishment.

Caputo initially decided the case in 2006. The state appealed, and the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case to Caputo in 2007 to determine whether several inmates, citizens and groups that had joined the case as plaintiffs had sustained a legal injury that entitled them to participate.

In his June 11 ruling, Caputo dismissed all plaintiffs except for the prison society.

He also reaffirmed his conclusion about the disparate treatment of lifers seeking commutations, although lawyers in the case said the circuit court has not scrutinized that issue.

Only three life sentences have been commuted in the 12 years since the referendum, according to Bill DiMascio, executive director of the prison society, the nation's oldest prisoner advocacy group. In the three preceding decades, he said, such commutations were granted, on average, 10 times a year.

Members of the prison board "are hearing very few cases and very few of them are getting a majority vote," so complying with the ruling would not result in the "wholesale release" of murderers, he said.

Gov. Ed Rendell and state Attorney General Tom Corbett are among the state officials discussing whether to appeal Caputo's decision, their spokesmen said.

DiMascio said he was disappointed that Caputo did not order the pardons board to forward commutation requests from two lifers whose crimes were committed before 1997 , Jackie Lee Thompson and Keith O. Smith , and whose requests were denied even though they were approved by 4-1 votes of the board several years ago.

John Heaton, secretary of the pardons board, said any action on the requests would be premature because the 30-day appeal period is pending.

Members of the board are Corbett, Lt. Gov. Joe Scarnati, psychologist Russell A. Walsh, victim representative Louise B. Williams and corrections expert John E. Wetzel.
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/20090626_ap_rulingcouldaidpaprisonlifersseekingrelease.html

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

June 26, 2009

CA: Governor dumps plan to build prison hospitals

Governor dumps plan to build prison hospitals
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, June 26, 2009
(06-25) PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger disowned a tentative agreement Thursday to build prison hospitals to settle lawsuits over shoddy health care for inmates, saying the state won't borrow $1.9 billion for the effort while it's slashing other services.

"It's just not the right time," state Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said, four weeks after he announced the plan to build two hospitals for 3,400 inmates, refurbish existing medical centers and start returning control of prison health care from federal courts to the state. "At this time, we're going to have to live within our means."

Schwarzenegger issued a statement saying he "cannot agree to spend $2 billion on state-of-the-art medical facilities for prisoners while we are cutting billions of dollars from schools and health care programs for children and seniors."

As Cate acknowledged, however, the agreement would not have worsened California's $24.3 billion general fund deficit, the focus of a partisan deadlock in the Legislature that could force the state treasurer to start issuing IOUs to creditors next week.

The health care money would have come from other sources: bonds for the new hospitals, and already-appropriated prison construction funds for the renovations to existing medical centers.
'Not backing away'

Cate said the state needs more prison hospital beds but will have to find another way to pay for them. He insisted that the Schwarzenegger administration is "not backing away from our dedication to improve health care to meet constitutional standards."

But Thursday's development returns the initiative to federal judges, one of whom has already threatened to order the state to spend more on prison mental health care.

Another judge has begun contempt-of-court proceedings against Schwarzenegger for defying his order to turn over $250 million that the Legislature has approved for prison construction, but which the state has not allocated. The state says federal judges lack authority to order California to spend money on prison construction.

"This will make the courts have to intervene more, because the state has said it won't do even what the secretary (Cate) says is necessary," said Donald Specter, a lawyer for inmates who sued in 2001 over health care in California's 33 prisons. "It shows, once again ... a completely dysfunctional system."

There was no comment from Clark Kelso, the receiver appointed by a federal judge to manage the state prison health system. "This is now a matter for the courts," said Luis Patino, Kelso's spokesman.
One death a week

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco removed the $1.1 billion health system from state control in 2005, saying an average of one inmate a week was dying because of inadequate care and that the state was unable to meet constitutional standards.

In a separate case, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento has found prison mental health care grossly substandard and ordered improvements.

Kelso has submitted a 10-year plan to build between 5,000 and 10,000 hospital beds, at a cost of $4 billion to $8 billion. He reached a tentative agreement with Cate last month to limit the plan to four years, reduce the number of beds and start returning some management functions to the state.

Schwarzenegger's rejection of the deal was disclosed in a letter from Cate to Kelso, citing the state's "precarious financial condition" and saying it wasn't clear whether all the new construction was "necessary to achieve constitutionally adequate medical care."
Population could be cut

The letter noted the governor's proposal to remove 19,000 of California's 170,000 prisoners by transferring undocumented immigrants to federal custody and releasing some elderly or seriously ill inmates to hospitals, local programs or electronic monitoring.

The courts may have more to say about prison population, however. A three-judge panel, including Henderson and Karlton, has concluded after extensive hearings in San Francisco that overcrowding at the prisons, now filled to twice their designed capacity, is the chief cause of poor health care. The panel has tentatively ordered the release of between 37,000 and 58,000 inmates to local custody, treatment programs or parole.

The Schwarzenegger administration has said it will appeal any final release order to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Karlton, meanwhile, said at a hearing June 16 that unless the state approved Cate's tentative agreement, or came up with an alternative to improve prison mental health care in the next three months, "I'm going to start eating into their budget in a real dramatic way."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/26/MNE718E0D4.DTL

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

June 25, 2009

FL: Powerful business lobby calls for a halt to prison construction & change in sentencing policies

Change sought in Florida prison system
A movement among powerful Florida leaders to overhaul the state's prison system is gaining steam as lawmakers grapple with shrinking resources.

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
Miami Herald
06.24.09

A call by Florida's most powerful business lobby to halt prison construction and reform the criminal justice system is gaining surprising traction among policymakers in the wake of a deepening budget crisis and growing evidence that building new prison beds will not reduce crime.

Four months after the head of Associated Industries of Florida stunned lawmakers with his plea to slow prison growth, a who's-who of business, religious and political leaders are asking Gov. Charlie Crist to consider alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders, particularly drug addicts.

Crist and state lawmakers this week received an ''open letter'' from opinion-makers calling for a ``bold and serious conversation about justice reform.''

The statement was signed by three former Florida attorneys general -- Jim Smith, Bob Butterworth and Richard Doran -- along with retired Department of Corrections secretary James McDonough and the heads of the Florida Association of Counties and the Florida Catholic Conference.

''At a time when Florida is in serious recession and facing a deep state budget crisis, the $2 billion-plus budget of the Florida Department of Corrections has grown larger; and without reform, that budget will continue to grow at a pace that crowds out other mission-critical state services such as education, human service needs, and environmental protection,'' the group wrote.

Calling itself the Coalition for Smart Justice, the group is asking state leaders to bolster education, drug and alcohol treatment and faith-based and character-building programs both within the state prison system and in community settings as an alternative to prison.

Coalition members also want Crist to ''immediately implement'' a bill passed by the Legislature in 2008 that created ''the much needed'' Correctional Policy Advisory Council to offer new directions for criminal justice administration.

Staying the course, coalition members wrote, will lead to ``too many non-violent individuals being incarcerated, too many prisons needing to be built at astounding public cost [and] too many young people moving from the juvenile justice system into the adult justice system.''

BREAKING CYCLE

At the root of the state's failures, the group says, is the unwillingness of lawmakers to invest in programs -- such as job training, education and substance-abuse treatment -- that can break the cycle of crime and reduce recidivism.

McDonough, the state's former drug czar and prisons chief, said Florida can avoid the need to build a new $100 million prison each year by spending one-fifth that amount on drug treatment. ''The math is irrefutable,'' McDonough said. ``That's $100 million right there that you don't have to spend immediately.''

Gretl Plessinger, DOC's spokeswoman, said the equation is far more complicated. Since the prison system runs on a five-year cycle based on ''strategic projections,'' the corrections agency cannot simply ``stop construction on a dime.''

''Several projects are nearing completion,'' Plessinger said. ``We've already spent money, and to stop construction now would cost taxpayers quite a lot of money.''

DOC Secretary Walter McNeil does not favor the early release of inmates, Plessinger said, but does agree with the coalition's goal of increased spending on drug treatment and other programs designed to aid offenders' safe return to their communities. Close to 90 percent of state inmates eventually are released, she said.

''Secretary McNeil knows inmates who receive basic education, job skills training and substance abuse treatment are less likely to commit another crime and return to prison,'' Plessinger said. ``Through re-entry [programs], we can reduce our recidivism rate which will increase public safety and lower our inmate population.''

Sterling Ivey, a Crist spokesman, declined to discuss the letter in depth. ''We have received the letter and we are currently reviewing the information,'' he said.

A driving force in the coalition is J. Allison DeFoor II, an admittedly unlikely prison reform activist as a former Monroe County sheriff, prosecutor, judge and reelection running mate for former Gov. Bob Martinez. Now an ordained Episcopal priest, the colorful politician tends a ministry at Wakulla Correctional Institution near Tallahassee.

Among DeFoor's gripes: though faith-based programs at Wakulla have reduced recidivism among inmates from 33 percent to just 7 percent, Florida's waiting list for such programs has grown to 10,000-strong. ''I've seen everything that doesn't work,'' he says. ``And I've seen what does work.''

''I can flatly tell you that 75 percent of the people in the system -- probably more than that -- have substance abuse and psychological problems,'' and treatment, education and counseling can help many of those men and women stay out of prison, he said.

PREVENTION

Butterworth, a former Broward sheriff, prosecutor and 20-year attorney general, said his two-year stint as secretary of the Department of Children & Families reinforced his belief in the value of prevention dollars -- which are typically the first to be cut during lean years.

''Sometimes the worst dollar we spend,'' Butterworth said, ``pays for bricks and mortar.''

Florida still will need prisons for violent felons, Butterworth said. But spending $1 billion over the next decade to build new prisons for drug addicts and people with mental illness, he added, is ``nuts. There's just got to be a better way.''

Steve Seibert, a former Pinellas County commissioner and secretary of the Deparment of Community Affairs under Gov. Jeb Bush, said he discovered another reason for reform while touring an Overtown community center: Leaders told him 70 percent of the neighborhood's men were ex-felons.

'That was an `Aha' moment for me,'' said Seibert, who as director of policy for the Collins Center for Public Policy is a coalition leader.

``All the affordable housing, economic development, parks, water and infrastructure-type stuff doesn't mean squat when 70 percent of the men in a community are ex-felons.''

And most Americans appear to agree with him. A just-released poll by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency showed that nearly eight in 10 Americans favor probation, restitution and community service over prison for ''nonserious, nonviolent, nonsexual'' offenders.

McDonough, who calls himself a pragmatist, said that ultimately the most powerful winds steering reform are financial.

''I think the recession probably will bring the pendulum swing to its highest point and it will start to swing the other way,'' he said. ``Legislators don't want to spend that much money.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/v-fullstory/story/1111002.html

Posted by lois at 08:40 PM | Comments (0)

Editorial: Rape in Prison

Editorial
Rape in Prison
Published: June 23, 2009
NY Times
Rape accompanied by savage violence has long been part of prison life. Congress finally confronted this horrendous problem by passing the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. In addition to bringing attention to a long overlooked problem, the new law created a commission that has put forth a broad set of rape-prevention standards that deserve to become mandatory in correctional agencies throughout the country.

The commission report, released earlier this week, should come as alarming news. It suggests, for example, that rapes carried out by corrections officers and inmates are widespread, but the actual rates of rape vary widely from place to place.

Drawing on a federal survey of more than 63,000 state and federal inmates, the commission said that about 4.5 percent reported being sexually abused at least once during the previous 12 months. Extrapolating from this data, the commissioners estimate that there were at least 60,000 rapes of prisoners nationally during this period.

Young people in custody are particularly vulnerable. In pilot study of nine youth facilities, nearly 1 in 5 respondents reported one nonconsensual sexual contact during the previous year.

Rape is not inevitable, however. Strong leaders who are committed to fighting the problem can minimize these savage and traumatic assaults. For starters, the commission recommends that all correctional agencies develop explicit, written zero-tolerance policies on this issue.

These agencies, which need to do a better job of screening corrections workers, should adopt the policy that employees who participate in sexual assaults or look the other way while they occur will be fired. Zero-tolerance policies should eventually be integrated into collective-bargaining agreements with unions.

Beyond that, corrections agencies need to make it easier for people in custody to report rape without facing reprisal. The reports need to be promptly and thoroughly investigated. The agencies need to keep publicly accessible records on the reports and investigations. And they need to develop plans for preventing any rape scenarios that continue to recur.

The report represents a strong first step in confronting this problem. The next step lies with Attorney General Eric Holder, who can approve the report’s recommendations and thereby make the standards mandatory for federal prisons and state prisons that accept federal money.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 24, 2009, on page A28 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/opinion/24wed3.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Rape%20In%20Prison%20editorial&st=cse

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

June 23, 2009

Panel to Issue Standards To Reduce Prison Rapes

Panel to Issue Standards To Reduce Prison Rapes
By SOLOMON MOORE- NY Times
June 22, 2009

A Congressional commission plans to issue recommendations on Tuesday for standards to reduce sexual assaults in the nation’s jails and prisons.

The commission cited an estimate by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that 60,500 state and federal prisoners were sexually assaulted in 2007.

Congress authorized the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission to conduct the study and to issue binding standards for corrections agencies that will have the force of law. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. will have one year to codify anti-sexual assault procedures, and state governors will have an additional year to signal their compliance with those standards or risk losing up to 5 percent of federal financing for corrections.

The commission recommended that agencies improve training for prison and jail employees for better detection of assaults, do a better job of classifying vulnerable inmates, reduce jail and prison overcrowding, and improve medical and psychological services for victims of sexual abuse.

Although most sexual assaults in prison involve inmates attacking fellow inmates, the commission also recommended stiffer penalties for correctional officials who tolerate or engage in abuse.

The commission said it was particularly concerned about sexual assaults among the rising numbers of juveniles confined in adult institutions and among immigrant detainees, many of whom avoid reporting crimes for fear of deportation.

The commission’s chairman, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., said in an interview Monday that despite a 2003 law intended to provide safeguards against sexual assaults, prison rapes had become almost a cliché in public discourse.

“The sad reality is that there has been indifference by some people associated with the system,” Judge Walton said.

He said a lack of resources and a “get-tough attitude on crime” by some politicians had led to increased penalties without providing for expanding prison and jail populations.

“Seems to me that at the same time we’re increasing penalties we should study the impact those new penalties are going to have and how they’re going to potentially create unsafe environments for people,” Judge Walton said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/us/23prison.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

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

MI: A new low? A candlelight vigil and prayers to keep a max security prison open

Standish Prison Candlelight Vigil Planned
Residents Continue Fight To Keep Prison Open
June 22, 2009
Standish Prison Candlelight Vigil Planned
STANDISH, Mich. -- Resurrection of the Lord is organizing a vigil with Standish area leaders over Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s plans to close the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility.

The candlelight vigil, 423 W. Cedar St., will be led by Fr. James Fitzpatrick beginning at 7 p.m.

The maximum security prison employs about 300 people and is Arenac County’s largest employer.

It’s slated to close on July 28.

The Standish prison is one of three maximum security prisons, along with five prison camps, expected to close as a way to save the state money.

Organizers of the vigil said there will be updates regarding recent events and a presentation on options for future protests.

Members of the Arenac County community have already taken a stand against the closure of the 19-year-old prison with a petition drive and past protests.

Combined, the closure of the eight prisons and prison camps will result in the layoff of an estimated 1,000 employees.
http://www.wnem.com/news/19820631/detail.html

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

June 22, 2009

CO: Independent Ideas: Prison spending still shackles state budget Until sentencing laws change, not much can be done

Independent Ideas: Prison spending still shackles state budget
Until sentencing laws change, not much can be done

By By Mike Krause, For the Colorado Daily

Sunday, June 21, 2009

On June 3, Gov. Bill Ritter signed Senate Bill 228, repealing the statutory spending limitation (the Bird-Arveschoug Act) that held the annual increase in general fund spending in Colorado to 6 percent.

But before anyone gets all teary-eyed -- whether from joy or sorrow -- because the majority Democrats in the Legislature finally will have the budgetary flexibility to spend as they see fit, take a breath.

Recent history shows that prison spending in Colorado, and the sentencing polices that drive that spending, has been constraining state spending for decades, and will continue to do so into the near future.

In 1985, the Legislature doubled the maximum penalties in Colorado's presumptive sentencing range for all levels of felony crimes. The average sentence length quickly increased by two-thirds, and Colorado's inmate population more than doubled in the next five years.

It has more than doubled again since.

In an effort to keep pace with the capacity demands of such unprecedented growth in the prison population, successive legislatures and governors have taken Colorado taxpayers on an extreme prison spending spree that has pushed corrections spending from less than 3 percent to nearly 9 percent of general fund spending.

It is a simple formula, but a dramatic increase in spending for one item as a percentage of the state's general fund (prisons) necessarily means that other spending items (such as health care and higher education) have had to decrease as a percentage of general fund appropriation.

This year's Joint Budget Committee budget briefing notes that in the 16 years since Colorado lawmakers implemented the 6 percent spending limit, prison spending has grown "at a compound annual rate of 9.5 percent." If prison spending had actually been held to the 6 percent growth, then last year's Department of Corrections operating budget would have been around $430 million; instead it was nearly $677 million.

So the current opportunity cost of Colorado's extreme prison spending spree is a quarter billion dollars that could have been spent on health care and higher education.

This year's budget increased prison spending by around 3 percent, and while this is considerably less than the more than 9 percent increase originally requested by, it is likely not nearly enough to allow the Department of Corrections to keep pace with the ever growing prison population. Despite a recent slowing trend, projections still estimate thousands more inmates by 2012, which in turn demands many more millions in new prison spending.

Spending doesn't drive the prison population, rather the prison population drives state spending. So regardless of what lawmakers do with the prison budget next session, inmates will keep showing up at the door. The Legislature's ability to affect prison spending lies in its prerogative to write sentencing law and policy

The fact that the Democrat majority had to take the axe to general fund spending items such as higher education and health care this year had little to do with the 6-percent spending limitation and everything to do with fiscally irresponsible prison spending.

And until such time as Colorado lawmakers find the will to make meaningful sentencing law reforms, this will continue to be the case.

Mike Krause directs the Justice Policy Initiative at the Independence Institute.
http://www.coloradodaily.com/news/2009/jun/21/prison-spending-still-shackles-state-budget/

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

June 21, 2009

The War Against the 'War on Drugs'---by Sasha Abramky

"America isn't about to abandon all of its "tough on crime" tenets. Nor should it in all instances. The three-strikes law will likely remain in place for violent offenders, as will the growing body of laws limiting where sex offenders may live. Violent crimes will probably continue to trigger longer sentences than they did before the get-tough movement. And while some inmates will qualify for early release, many sentenced to long terms at the height of the tough-on-crime years will stay in prison. But out of economic necessity and because of shifting mores, the country will likely get more selective, and smarter, about how it uses incarceration and whom it targets for long spells behind bars."

"The state with the toughest three-strikes law in the land and a prison population of more than 150,000 is facing the real possibility of having to release tens of thousands of inmates early in order to pare its $10 billion annual correctional budget. At the same time, an increasing number of the state's political figures are challenging the basic tenets of the "war on drugs," the culprit most responsible for the spike in prison populations over the past thirty years; they argue that the country's harsh drug policies are not financially viable and no longer command majority support among the voting public.

Similar stories are unfolding around the country; in Washington, federal officials are talking about drug-policy reform and, more generally, sentencing reform in a way that has not been heard in the halls of power for more than a generation."

The War Against the 'War on Drugs'
6/17/09|The Nation| by Sasha Abramsky

As California goes, so goes the nation.

If that old adage still holds true, then the nation may soon see a gradual backpedaling from the criminal justice policies that have led to wholesale incarceration in recent decades. For the most populous state in the union is on the verge of insolvency--partly because it didn't set aside a rainy-day fund during the boom years; partly because its voters recently rejected a series of initiatives that would have allowed a combination of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing to help stabilize the state's finances during the downturn; partly because it has spent the past quarter-century funneling tens of billions of dollars into an out-of-control correctional system. Now, as California's politicians contemplate emergency cuts to deal with a $24 billion hole in the state budget, old certainties are crumbling.

The state with the toughest three-strikes law in the land and a prison population of more than 150,000 is facing the real possibility of having to release tens of thousands of inmates early in order to pare its $10 billion annual correctional budget. At the same time, an increasing number of the state's political figures are challenging the basic tenets of the "war on drugs," the culprit most responsible for the spike in prison populations over the past thirty years; they argue that the country's harsh drug policies are not financially viable and no longer command majority support among the voting public.

Similar stories are unfolding around the country; in Washington, federal officials are talking about drug-policy reform and, more generally, sentencing reform in a way that has not been heard in the halls of power for more than a generation.

For old-time politicians, who have spent the past three-plus decades navigating the country's roiling tough-on-crime waters, the changes are almost unfathomable. Onetime California governor and current gubernatorial hopeful Jerry Brown, for example, has spent decades trying to erase the public's memory of his liberal tenure in the 1970s, when California's prison population shrank to well below 30,000. As a part of that remodeling, he has assiduously courted the California Correctional Peace Officers' Association, the trade union representing the state's prison guards. Now, with his war chest flush with CCPOA funds, Brown won't do anything to challenge tough-on-crime orthodoxies.

Yet many newer political faces view the current moment as something of an opportunity. For Betty Yee, chair of California's Board of Equalization--the office responsible for collecting sales tax in the Golden State--the changes, especially around drug-law enforcement, can't come soon enough.

Sitting at her conference table high up in one of downtown Sacramento's few sky-rises, Yee has marijuana on her mind. Specifically, she has become an outspoken advocate for legalizing pot for residents older than 21. Her friend Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a former San Francisco city councilman, is pushing just such a bill in the State Legislature. Yee wants to levy fees on business owners applying for marijuana licenses, impose an excise tax on sellers and charge buyers a sales tax. Do it properly, and the state could reap about $1.3 billion a year, she has estimated. "Marijuana is so easily available. Why not regulate it like alcohol and tobacco?" she says, and gain additional tax revenue into the bargain?

Not so many years back, any public figure who dared to advocate such reforms would have been shunned by much of the establishment. It's a measure of how much things have changed that Yee and Ammiano's proposal is being taken seriously across the board. In fact, shortly after I met with Yee, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger--whose office declined my request for an interview for this article--announced that the state should at least consider the merits of pot legalization. He wasn't advocating it, he was careful to stress, but he did think the time was ripe to debate the issue.

"The budget is so bad now, the populism of the issue is beginning to work here in the Legislature," Ammiano says as he paces back and forth in his office, toward the bookshelves with the four martini glasses and Golden Gate Bridge bookends and then away again. On the wall near the receptionist's desk hangs a huge poster from the movie Milk. "Everyone thinks it's Cheech and Chong," he says with a laugh, describing the marijuana legalization bill. "But there's a lot of policy wonks" supporting it. "There's very conservative support from the oddest sources and locations." The GOP chair in the state, as well as Tom Campbell, a Republican gubernatorial hopeful, have indicated their support for his bill, Ammiano declares. "When it starts to cost more money than it's worth even in the eyes of the pooh-bahs, then you can accomplish something."

Over the past three decades, California has tripled the number of prisons it operates, has more than quintupled its prison population and has gone from spending $5 on higher education for every dollar it spent on corrections to a virtual dead-heat in spending. That puts it in the same boat as Michigan, Vermont, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware--all of which, according to estimates by the Pew Charitable Trust, spend as much or more on prisons than on colleges. California is also under federal court order to implement costly improvements in the delivery of medical and mental healthcare services in prisons and to release close to a third of the prison population--about 55,000 inmates--to improve conditions for those remaining behind bars.

Schwarzenegger adamantly opposed that ruling by a three-judge panel. Now, though, in the face of fiscal calamity, he is proposing cutting the prison population by tens of thousands. Of course, he is doing that not out of concern for inmates' well-being, or out of a sense that many sentences are disproportionate to the crime, but simply because the state can no longer pay its bills. Schwarzenegger believes he can save several hundred million dollars by releasing some categories of inmates, in particular nonviolent offenders who are in the country illegally and stand to be deported upon early release.

To save money, he's also talking about firing hard-working guards (a far better, but costlier, option would be to scale back the prison system and to retrain surplus guards to work in other venues), and he's asking for close to $1 billion in cuts to vital prison drug-treatment, education and job-training services. At the same time, since this is all about shaving dollars off budgets rather than intelligent criminal justice system reform, there's no talk of investing in crucial re-entry infrastructure.

In short, it looks like California will go about a necessary scaling back of the correctional system exactly the wrong way. But however grudgingly state officials are approaching the issue, at least they recognize that the magnitude of prison spending is a problem. Down the road, when Californians start thinking beyond the crisis moment, that new understanding will shape policy responses for years to come. It will both feed off and help create a new national sentiment that being "tough on crime" isn't necessarily being smart on crime.

Tough-on-crime rhetoric, and the policies and institutions that grow from it, emerged from Nixon's Silent Majority tactics, from his recasting of politics as a series of debates around "values" rather than bread-and-butter issues. And in the same way the 2008 presidential election ended that peculiar chapter in American history, so too did it end the monotone cry that we could incarcerate our way out of deep-rooted social and economic problems. Despite a few halfhearted GOP attempts to accuse Democrats of being weak on drugs and public safety--Obama had, after all, written about his drug use during his teenage and early adult years, which, according to the old calculus, should have made him an easy target for scaremongers--neither presidential candidate played the tough-on-crime card. It was a nonissue for most voters and thus for the candidates. In fact, recent Zogby polling commissioned by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency suggests that close to eight in ten Americans favor alternatives to incarceration for low-level nonviolent offenders. Another Zogby poll, from last fall, found that just more than three-quarters of Americans felt the "war on drugs" was a failure. The sea change in public opinion holds in California too. In late March the Los Angeles Times ran a column asking readers their opinion on marijuana legalization. So far 4,927 people have replied, and 94 percent of them favor legalization. A Field Poll in April found that 56 percent of Californians favor legalizing and taxing pot.

The new atmosphere is most apparent vis-à-vis the Obama administration's move away from "war on drugs" rhetoric and toward a harm-reduction strategy. Gil Kerlikowske, the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has made it clear that he prefers treatment over punishment for drug users, a preference he brings from his time as a reform-oriented police chief in Seattle. Putting money where its mouth is, the new team has increased funding for the Bush-era Second Chance Act, intended to connect released inmates with community services such as housing, family counseling and addiction treatment. Support is also growing for the creation of more drug and mental health courts across the country. Finally, there are the promises being made by drug policy leaders in Washington that state medical marijuana laws will be respected rather than trampled, as they have been for more than a decade.

A related issue involves the infamous discrepancy in sentences for crack- versus powder-cocaine crimes. Vice President Biden was one of the architects of these laws--which is why his repudiation of them in recent years has been so significant. The day after Obama's inauguration, the president's website mentioned the importance of eliminating these discrepancies--as well as of promoting needle-exchange programs and expanding the nation's embryonic network of drug courts. The House recently held hearings on the sentencing discrepancy issue.

For Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director of the Drug Policy Alliance in Southern California, sacrosanct legislative underpinnings of the "war on drugs" are starting to look like the Berlin Wall, "up one day and down the next"--seemingly impregnable; in reality, utterly fragile. Over the past few years, an increasing number of localities have dabbled in ways to simply walk away from the "war on drugs." Initiatives in several states and cities, including Denver; Missoula, Montana; Albany County, Oregon; and Seattle have mandated that law enforcement agencies deprioritize marijuana arrests. Several cities have begun needle-exchange programs. And states like California have passed citizens' initiatives mandating that first-time drug offenders be channeled into treatment programs in lieu of prisons.

Then there's Virginia Senator Jim Webb's legislation creating a blue-ribbon commission on criminal justice reform, with a mandate to put all questions on the table during its eighteen-month tenure--from drug law reform to the restoration of judicial discretion in sentencing, from parole reforms to different approaches to gangs, border patrol, prison architecture and the like. Webb has been pushing for systemic criminal justice reform for years; in 2009, he believes, it will acquire legs. During a telephone interview for this article, Webb said that President Obama "has personally called me on this, and he's very supportive of the idea of moving forward." Across the aisle many Republican senators, including senior figures like Lindsey Graham, have also expressed support for the idea.

The bipartisan backing for Webb's commission is partly a response to the escalating drug-and-gang crisis south of the border. There's a growing recognition in US policy and law enforcement circles that government dysfunction, phenomenal levels of street violence and the rising power of drug cartels are threatening to move from being a Latin American problem to one that destroys the integrity of the Mexican state and risks spilling over more heavily into the American Southwest. Nobody, no matter their political stripe, wants the Tijuana-ization or Juárez-ization of Phoenix or Los Angeles, of San Diego or El Paso.

"It really is a serious problem in this country," Webb argues. "The transnational gangs or syndicates are bringing a tremendous amount of drugs into this country."

To get a handle on that problem involves thinking of ways to neutralize these gangs, which inevitably leads to a discussion of partial drug decriminalization or legalization. Why? Because once the drug market is no longer confined to the shadows--once it is regulated and taxed, as alcohol was after Prohibition ended in 1933--the violence that accompanies struggles for control of that illicit market will disappear. After years of denying this truth and assuming that the country could incarcerate its way out of the drug-abuse epidemic, a number of American politicians, Webb included, are touting that seemingly paradoxical fact. Want to get really tough on crime? Well, do the smart thing: start working out ways to neutralize the drug cartels, start talking about at least limited forms of decriminalization or legalization.

For an administration like Obama's that prides itself on thinking outside the box, systemic drug policy reform is an intriguing prospect. An increasing number of law enforcement people and judges have also decided that this is an idea worth running with.

"I've never seen so much interest," says retired Orange County superior court judge James Gray, who has been advocating marijuana legalization since the early 1990s. "My phone is ringing much more than it ever has before."

"We need to ask, Is there a more sensible approach?" argues Norm Stamper, who, like Kerlikowske, is a former chief of police of Seattle who believes the criminal justice system is broken. "And the answer is prevention and education and treatment."

After decades of being on the defensive, progressive criminal justice reformers suddenly have a receptive audience. New York, which has closed some of its prisons in the past decade, has spent the last few years unraveling the tangled web created by the 1970s-era Rockefeller drug laws. Michigan, Louisiana and several other states have also scaled back their harshest mandatory drug sentences. The State of Washington is looking at how to redefine low-end drug and property crimes as misdemeanors rather than felonies. And in Michigan, which allows a $100 theft to trigger a four-year prison sentence, legislators are pushing to make the threshold $1,000 instead, so as to reduce the number of low-end offenders pushed into long-term incarceration and hobbled for life by felony convictions.

Meanwhile, correctional system administrators in Georgia, Illinois and Arkansas have started the long, hard task of reforming their systems from within even without a new consensus emerging on the issue.

Howard Wooldridge, a retired police detective from Bath, Michigan, who advocates in DC for criminal justice system reform, says the moment is ripe for change. "I've been doing this for twelve years, and this is by far the most perfect storm."

America isn't about to abandon all of its "tough on crime" tenets. Nor should it in all instances. The three-strikes law will likely remain in place for violent offenders, as will the growing body of laws limiting where sex offenders may live. Violent crimes will probably continue to trigger longer sentences than they did before the get-tough movement. And while some inmates will qualify for early release, many sentenced to long terms at the height of the tough-on-crime years will stay in prison. But out of economic necessity and because of shifting mores, the country will likely get more selective, and smarter, about how it uses incarceration and whom it targets for long spells behind bars.

This will be especially true for drug policy--the multi-tentacled beast that's sucking most people into jails and prisons. There, profound changes are likely to develop over the next few years. And when it comes to the mentally ill, momentum continues to build around mental health courts designed to get people medical and counseling help rather than simply to shunt them off to prison. States like Pennsylvania are starting to develop parallel institutions to deal with mentally ill people who run afoul of the law. Many other states will likely follow suit in the near future. Forty years after deinstitutionalization, a new consensus is emerging that prisons became an accidental, de facto alternative to mental hospitals, and that very little good has come from that development.

"I believe that we have a compelling national interest," explains Senator Webb, referring to systemic criminal justice reform. "That's a term that is carefully chosen. This is a national commission, but it should not be limited to looking at the federal prison system. You have to look at the whole picture and then boil it down into resolvable issues."

http://www.marijuana.com/drug-war-headline-news/124304-usa-war-against-war-drugs.html

Posted by lois at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2009

MA Bar Association Drug Policy Task Force report on The Failure of the War on Drugs"

Massachusetts Bar Association's Drug Policy Task Force issued a major report, "The Failure of the War on Drugs: Charting a New Course for the Commonwealth." The report urges the Legislature to reform the state's approach to drug prevention, treatment and punishment. "Changing policies from emphasis on incarceration to more encouragement for treatment would allow us to save money, reduce crime, and rebuild families and communities."
Recommendations for reform. The Task Force's recommendations to reform mandatory minimum sentences are the same ones that FAMM supports: allowing drug offenders to apply for parole, work release and earned "good time" deductions, reducing "school zones" to 100 feet, eliminating mandatory sentences for school zone offenders (who will still be punished for the underlying offense) and allowing school zone sentences to be served concurrently with another sentence.
http://www.massbar.org/media/520275/drug%20policy%20task%20force%20final%20report.pdf

Posted by lois at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)

ACLU sues over 'secretly created' fed prison unit for Muslim and other prisoners with "disciplinary cases"

ACLU sues over 'secretly created' fed prison unit
June 19, 2009

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union sued the government Thursday over the creation of a special unit at the federal prison in Terre Haute, claiming it was created in secrecy and keeps mostly Muslim prisoners in stark isolation.

The ACLU says about 40 other prisoners, mostly Muslims, are being held in a "secretly created" Communication Management Unit in which they have no contact with other prisoners, limited contact with the outside world and no physical contact with family members.

"Designed to house prisoners viewed by the government as terrorists, they were established in violation of federal laws requiring public scrutiny and today are disproportionately inhabited by Muslim prisoners — many of whom have never been convicted of terrorism-related crimes," the ACLU said in a news release.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd defended the legality of the unit and said it did not target Muslims. He said the department was reviewing the lawsuit.

Dean said the Bureau of Prisons followed federal rules in creating the special unit to closely monitor prisoners' outside contacts. He said "race, country of origin or religious beliefs" are not factors in who is placed in the unit.

In addition to those convicted of terror-related crimes, the unit also is designed to hold certain disciplinary cases and sex offenders who try to contact their victims.

The ACLU said unit prisoners cannot have any physical contact with visitors, who can visit only on weekdays and talk by telephone while separated by partitions. Most other federal prisoners can kiss and shake hands with their visitors.

Communication Management Unit prisoners also can have only one 15-minute telephone call per week, except on legal matters, and cannot participate in prison programs with non-unit inmates, the ACLU said.

The complaint alleged the Bureau of Prisons, in creating the Terre Haute unit in 2006, took steps to avoid public scrutiny that violated federal notice and comment requirements.

The ACLU highlighted the treatment of Sabri Benkahla, a 34-year-old Virginia man serving a 10-year sentence for his 2007 convictions for obstruction of justice and lying about training with militants in Pakistan.

He was acquitted in 2004 of charges of aiding the Taliban with a U.S. group that prosecutors said trained for jihad with paintball guns.

Benkahla cannot even hug his 6-year-old son, according to the lawsuit, filed three days before Father's Day in the Terre Haute federal court.

"He's in incredibly restrictive conditions in which anyone would miss his family and opportunities to have contact with the outside world," said David Shapiro of the ACLU's National Prison Project.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jGARhyEhMTnL2It3HF3YN56ZU-bwD98TB66O1

Posted by lois at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)

June 18, 2009

France: "Tour de France Penitentiaire" (thanfully everywhere isn't like it is here)

REHABILITATIVE RIDE
This Tour tries to break down criminal cycle
Scott Sayare, Associated Press
Sunday, June 14, 2009

From behind prison bars, the view never changes. From behind the handlebars of racing bikes, dozens of French inmates are seeing the vineyards of Provence, the sun-drenched Mediterranean coast and the majestic spires of the Alps in their own specia

The convicts are cycling in the inaugural "Tour de France Penitentiaire" - an event whose goal is not just to physically challenge the prisoners, organizers say, but also to instill self-respect and pride that will help prepare their return to normal life.

There are differences, of course, from the real Tour de France: The prisoners' two-week, 1,370-mile event, which began June 4, is not as grueling as the 2,100-mile, three-week Tour. Any "breakaways" or "escapes" from the pack are strictly forbidden. And the inmates' guards are riding along with the convicts in the peloton, or pack, with a police escort among the support vehicles.

It's not a competition, prison officials say, but rather an exercise in commitment, solidarity and grit.

"It's a beautiful gift they're giving me," said Olivier, an inmate at a prison in Montmedy, near Luxembourg, who is scheduled for release in two months. He gave only his first name in accordance with French judicial regulations.

"It brings a close to my situation perfectly, spot-on," he added. "It's the icing on the cake."

Officials chose the nearly 200 participating inmates from across France, prisoners with terms as short as two years and as long as 25. They are men and women, young and old, petty crooks and hardened criminals - including rapists and killers.

Most of the inmates have been training since January. The event's 15 stages average about 90 miles, with some stretching to more than 135 miles.

Starts and finishes were selected for their proximity to penitentiaries, where the tour picks up or drops off inmates and prison personnel as it circles France. A core group of six prisoners and a dozen guards is riding the entire course, which finishes in Paris, like the real Tour - minus the champagne and fanfare.

Wardens, guards, judges and prisoners ride shoulder-to-shoulder, indistinguishable from one another in their matching white jerseys, helmets and cycling shorts.

The prison peloton has rolled through villages and hamlets to applause. Cheering crowds have massed each stage's finish line. It helps, perhaps, that the riders are unidentifiable as members of the penal system, except for the word "Penitentiaire" across the backs of their jerseys.

As prisons have become more crowded in recent years, officials have increasingly turned their attention to the ways of returning inmates to society.

"It's an absolute innovation to take the risk - but which is a calculated risk - of sending out so many prisoners at the same time and for so long, and to expose them in such a willful and even deliberate way to the eyes of French society," said Francois Grosvalet, director of athletic programs for French prisons.

Andrew Coyle, a professor of prison studies at King's College, London, who spent 25 years as an overseer in British penitentiaries, acknowledges that some people won't understand a program that allows inmates on even a supervised outing such as this.

"Invariably, when any prison administration does these things, people will say, 'Hang on, why is this happening? Aren't they in there to be punished?' " Coyle said. "But if we're serious about helping prisoners to re-enter and to reintegrate, then we need to find opportunities to give them positive experiences."

French victims' groups agree.

"At a certain moment, you have to consider these people, these individuals, these prisoners as people who might one day once again take up the path of society, of community life," said Sabrina Bellucci, director of the French National Institute for Victims' Aid and Mediation.

Prison officials decided on cycling "because in the history of French sporting events, the Tour de France is something that finds itself very near the summit," Grosvalet said, speaking by phone from a support vehicle behind the riders.

British cyclist David Millar, who has won several stages of the Tour de France, said the sport was well suited to help the inmates.

"I can't think of a better way to strip down a person to their basic human nature," Millar said.

He knows something about rehabilitation. He returned to racing in 2006 after serving a two-year doping suspension.

"I have had my own personal struggles," he said, "and it was cycling that gave me the peace and tranquility I needed to rediscover myself, then the passion and drive to better myself."

Cycling's simple elegance has long enchanted the French, who lionize their champion riders.

"Actually, it looks a bit like the Tour de France that we know," said Thierry Huguenin, sponsorship director for Francaise des Jeux, a French lottery group that helped finance the event.

The company also sponsors a professional cycling team, a perennial competitor in the better-known Tour; in the past months, the pro racers and coaches visited prisoners to offer advice.

Huguenin himself has been pedaling in the pack.

"The guards and the prisoners, who are usually archrivals, are teammates here," he said, speaking by phone as he refilled his water bottles during a sunny, 116-mile stage from Valenciennes to Montmedy, in the north.

This article appeared on page C - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Posted by lois at 09:31 AM | Comments (0)

N.M. ACLU sues private prison company GEO Group for ‘cruel and unusual punishment’

N.M. ACLU sues private prison company GEO Group for ‘cruel and unusual punishment’
By Gwyneth Doland 6/17/09 3:31 PM

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico is suing a privately-run prison in Clayton for imposing cruel and unusual punishment, charging that in December, 2008, prison guards kept seven nude or semi-nude prisoners locked in a cold shower room for hours after a prison lockdown ended.

The suit, filed today in federal court, claims that prison guards at the Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility teased and taunted the prisoners and a female guard videotaped the naked men. After the two-hour lockdown ended, employees told the inmates that they couldn’t find the key to the shower room door, so the inmates were given the option of crawling through a filthy cinderblock hole in the shower room wall or waiting for guards to find the key.

Several prisoners developed skin conditions after the incident and were denied treatment, the lawsuit charges.

The director of corporate relations for the GEO Group, which manages the prison, declined to comment on the lawsuit, writing in an e-mail: ”As a matter of policy, our company does not comment on litigation related matters.”

“New Mexico has one of the largest percentage of inmates housed in privately-run prison facilities in the country,” Bryan J. Davis, a cooperating attorney for the ACLU of New Mexico, said in a press release.

“These prisons go up, the employees don’t receive adequate training, and the inmates suffer the consequences. It’s irresponsible on the part of the private prison companies and the state that contracts with them.”

The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages against the GEO Group and several employees.
http://newmexicoindependent.com/29767/nm-aclu-sues-private-prison-for-cruel-and-unusual-punishment

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Operator of private NM prison sued by 7 inmates

By DEBORAH BAKER – 6-17-09

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the operator of New Mexico's newest private prison on behalf of seven inmates who claim they were taunted by guards and videotaped while locked for hours in a shower room.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Albuquerque named The GEO Group Inc. and wardens and other employees of the Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility in Clayton.

The medium-security men's prison in far northeastern New Mexico opened last summer to house state inmates.

The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU of New Mexico, alleges the inmates' constitutional rights were violated in a Dec. 10, 2008, incident.

Warden Timothy Hatch declined to discuss the matter, referring inquiries to a GEO spokesman, Pablo Paez, at the company's Boca Raton, Fla., headquarters.

"As a matter of policy, our company does not comment on litigation related matters," Paez said in an e-mail.

According to the lawsuit, the seven inmates were locked in a cold shower room with little or no clothing for five hours, then coerced into crawling out through a small, dirty hole in the shower wall after guards said they couldn't find the key.

The inmates were in the shower room when a disturbance in a neighboring pod prompted a lockdown, and Hatch ordered the seven locked in the shower room, according to the complaint.

It said two of the men were naked, while the others wore boxer shorts or had small towels.

A female guard filmed the men with a video recorder and "giggled and danced" while doing so, the lawsuit alleges. Other guards passed by and laughed at them, the lawsuit claims.

Tear gas from the neighboring pod, where the disturbance occurred, wafted into the shower room and bothered an inmate who had breathing problems, but he was denied access to his inhaler, according to the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

The plaintiffs allege they were kept in the shower without additional clothing or access to a bathroom for three hours after the incident in the neighboring pod had been resolved, and then told they would have to crawl through the hole to get out.

Bryan J. Davis, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, said in a statement that employees of private prisons aren't adequately trained, and "the inmates suffer the consequences."

"It's irresponsible on the part of the private prison companies and the state that contracts with them," he said.

According to the New Mexico Department of Corrections, 46 percent of state inmates are housed in privately operated facilities with which the state contracts. The GEO Group has the bulk of those inmates, with prisons in Clayton, Hobbs and Santa Rosa.

The Clayton prison has 577 inmates, said department spokeswoman Tia Bland.

"The Corrections Department is aware of what happened during this incident. We believe the validity of this lawsuit is questionable," Bland said.

She also said the corrections officers at Clayton had received the same training as correctional officers who work at state-operated prisons.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5joGv_Qjs5_Qs-_txnTAEXZsg0cNgD98SN8I83

Posted by lois at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

June 17, 2009

FL: 3rd new juvenile prison to open in one county--privately run

3rd juvie prison to open
Old detention center to become facility for high-risk youth
By CHAD SMITH Thursday, June 11, 2009 ; Updated: 5:59 AM on Thursday, June 11, 2009

St. Augustine's juvenile detention center will close at the end of the month and will be replaced with a penitentiary for youthful offenders from around the state, meaning local youths will be held in Jacksonville while they await trial.

The state-run St. Johns Regional Juvenile Detention Center, on Avenue D near the county jail, is being shuttered to cut costs in the Department of Juvenile Justice and to make room for Florida's growing population of juvenile convicts, department spokeswoman Samadhi Jones said Wednesday.

It will become the county's third juvenile prison, ranking St. Johns among 14 other counties with three or more.

As of July 1, the 50-bed detention center will be divvied up between the St. Johns Youth Academy, designed for "moderate-risk" youth, and the St. Johns Juvenile Correctional Facility, a privately run prison for "high-risk" youth that is in the same complex as the current detention center.

The youth academy will get 34 beds, and the correctional facility, which currently can hold 32 inmates, will get the other 16.

Jones said the St. Augustine detention center was selected for conversion into a youth academy because it is relatively new and has "state-of-the-art" equipment.

"We're going to use it now for what we really need in the state of Florida, which is a high-risk residential facility," she said.

The St. Johns Youth Academy will serve as a replacement for the Santa Rosa Youth Academy, a 25-bed facility in the Panhandle that is being closed.

John A. Alexander, St. Johns County's chief administrative judge, said he was "irate" about the way the Department of Juvenile Justice has handled the transition.

Before the change goes into effect, Alexander and other judges, along with the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, will need to coordinate with the Duval County detention center to sort out how the suspects will be booked, transported and monitored.

But, he said, very little of that has been discussed.

"Certainly nobody from Tallahassee has contacted the judicial system," the judge said. "We run a good program here. And I'm not a Pollyanna. I understand that you're going to cut programs. But let's coordinate the cuts."

Jerry Cameron, the county's assistant administrator, said the Sheriff's Office is looking into the possibility of setting up its own detention facility on the site.

While there is an average of about 35 youth in the detention center on a given day, about a third of them live in St. Johns County, and the majority come from Jacksonville or Putnam County.

What the county is proposing to do, Cameron said, is establish and operate a 12-bed facility where it could house its own youth and easily transport them between court appearances and the jail.

But, he said, it still isn't clear whether the county can legally run its own facility or whether the state would want to give up the money the county pays DJJ to house its youth, which amounts to between $700,000 and $800,000 annually.

"That takes care of the legal problem, and that takes care of the money problem," Cameron said.

Counties with three or more juvenile prisons:

Brevard - 3 (1 low, 2 moderate)

DeSoto - 3 (1 low, 2 moderate)

Duval - 3 (2 moderate, 1 high)

Hillsborough - 6 (5 moderate, 1 high)

Jackson - 4 (2 moderate, 1 high, 1 high/maximum)

Madison - 4 (4 moderate)

Manatee - 3 (2 moderate, 1 high)

Miami-Dade - 5 (1 low, 4 moderate)

Okaloosa - 5 (3 moderate, 2 high)

Okeechobee - 5 (2 low/moderate, 1 moderate, 1 high, 1 high/maximum)

Pasco - 5 (moderate)

Polk - 3 (moderate)

Santa Rosa* - 3 (1 low/moderate, 2 moderate)

St. Johns* - 3 (2 moderate, 1 high)

Volusia - 3 (2 moderate, 1 moderate/high)

* The figures for Santa Rosa and St. Johns counties will be current after the St. Johns juvenile detention center is converted into a residential facility, replacing the one in Santa Rosa.

Source: Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.

Posted by lois at 09:07 PM | Comments (0)

June 16, 2009

OK: DOC keep food costs low: $2.42 a day for 3 meals

DOC able to keep feeding costs low
By The Associated Press
Saturday, June 13, 2009

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The cash-strapped Oklahoma Department of Corrections has been able to offset the cost of feeding nearly 18,500 inmates daily because of an agricultural program that gives prisoners valuable skills, agency officials said.

In the past fiscal year, the agency's Agriculture Services unit has earned more than $888,000 in profit from the sale of agriculture products such as beef, firewood and pecans, according to a report given to the Board of Corrections on Friday.

Ken Klinger, who oversees the unit, told board members the agency's agriculture services not only makes a profit but gives inmates useful skills and occupies their time during incarceration.

"Making money on this is a side thing," Klinger said. "The true value of this program is that we work with inmates and give them skills and help the agency save money on its food costs."
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Using vegetables or meat raised and processed within the prison system allows the agency to better control its daily cost of feeding inmates, said Justin Jones, Corrections Department director. It costs the department $2.42 a day to feed inmates three meals a day, the fourth lowest figure in the country, Jones said.

Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina have lower daily rates for feeding inmates.

"I'd say we're feeding our inmates a little better," Jones said. Menus in the state's prison must be approved by a registered dietitian.

The state prisons' agriculture services unit has a budget of $10.6 million and includes dairy and beef cattle operations, a meat processing plant, gardens where vegetables are grown and a facility where those vegetables are processed and frozen for use later in the year or by other facilities.

Jones said while the unit makes a profit, its value is helping to keep food costs low.
___
Information from: The Oklahoman, http://www.newsok.com
http://www.pddnet.com/news-ap-doc-able-to-keep-feeding-costs-low-061309/

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

Bail granted for imprisoned HIV-positive pregnant woman in Maine

Bail granted for imprisoned HIV-positive pregnant woman in Maine

This morning, National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Center for HIV Law and Policy, and Elizabeth Frankel and Valerie Wright of the Maine law firm Verrill Dana, LLP, filed an emergency amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief on behalf of 28 public health experts, advocates, and organizations challenging the imprisonment of an HIV positive pregnant woman in order to protect her “innocent” “unborn child.”

Ms. Quinta Tuleh, a 28 year-old woman from Cameroon, was arrested in January 2009 for allegedly having false immigration documents. Shortly after her arrest, she learned she was both pregnant and HIV positive. On May 14, 2009, instead of sentencing her to “time served,” which was consistent with the federal sentencing guidelines and the recommendations of her attorney and the United States Attorney’s Office, United States District Court Judge John Woodcock extended Ms. T’s sentence to 238 days, making clear that the sentence was calculated specifically to ensure that she remained incarcerated for the duration of her pregnancy. See Judge Jails Pregnant Woman Until Baby is Born and Behind Bars for Being Pregnant and HIV-Positive.

Judge Woodcock stated: “My obligation is to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant, and that public, it seems to me at this point, should include the child she’s carrying…I don’t think the transfer of HIV to an unborn child is a crime technically under the law, but it is as direct and as likely as an ongoing assault.” Judge Woodcock reasoned that the Federal Sentencing Guideline permits enhanced sentencing for pregnant women and that extended imprisonment would protect her “unborn child. ”

As is often the situation in cases involving pregnant women, Courts feel pressed to make decisions without benefit of full briefing, input from experts or amicus participation. Indeed, uncertain of Ms. T’s due date and how long he would need to extend the sentence to ensure she was imprisoned through her due date, the Judge looked out over the courtroom and said “So maybe we ought to consult with the women here. Any sense of what a safe range would be?”

The Amicus brief filed this morning provided the Court with the expert information unavailable at the sentencing hearings. The brief outlines legal problems with depriving pregnant women of their liberty in order to advance alleged state interests in fetal health and the public health problems with assuming that jails and prisons provide superior or even adequate health care. As an expert declaration filed by Dr. Robert L. Cohen stated: “Based upon my thirty years of experience in the delivery, administration, research, evaluation, and monitoring of medical care in jails and prisons throughout the United States, it is my opinion that it is very often the case that the medical care available to prisoners falls well below that available to non-prisoners.”

Ms. T is being represented by Zachary L. Heiden of the Maine ACLU.

NAPW and Center for HIV Law and Policy are grateful to Laura McTighe, Director of Project UNSHACKLE, Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP), for her extraordinary help in this effort and the numerous public health experts, advocates, and organizations appearing as amici on this brief, including:

National Women’s Health Network, National Association of People with AIDS, Frannie Peabody Center, Mardge H. Cohen, M.D., Howard Minkoff, M.D., ACT UP Philadelphia, African Services Committee, AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Alliance of AIDS Services – Carolina, American Medical Students Association, Black Women’s Health Imperative, Chicago Women’s AIDS Project, Circle of Care, Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project, HIV Law Project, Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, Liberty Research Group, National AIDS Fund, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Rebecca Project for Human Rights, Twin States Network, Women Organized to Respond to Life-Threatening Disease (WORLD), Women Rising Project, Women Together for Change Project, Jeff Berry, Wendy Chavkin, M.D., MPH, Leslie Gise, M.D., and Sean Strub.

We are pleased to report that the Court granted bail this morning, allowing Ms. T’s release pending appeal in the case.
Posted by Wyndi on June 15, 2009 01:54 PM

and

Dear Friends and Allies:

NAPW is pleased to announce that yesterday morning a federal District Court judge, responding to a motion for bail and our emergency amicus brief, released Quinta Tuleh, a 28 year-old pregnant woman, from federal custody.

Ms. Tuleh, a woman from Cameroon, had already served 114 days in jail for allegedly having false immigration documents. Shortly after her arrest, she learned she was both pregnant and HIV positive. On May 14, 2009, instead of releasing her, a US District Court Judge extended Ms. Tuleh's sentence to ensure that she remain incarcerated for the duration of her pregnancy. (Judge Jails Pregnant Woman Until Baby is Born and Behind Bars for Being Pregnant and HIV-Positive.)

At the sentencing hearing, Judge Woodcock stated: "My obligation is to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant, and that public, it seems to me at this point, should include the child she's carrying...I don't think the transfer of HIV to an unborn child is a crime technically under the law, but it is as direct and as likely as an ongoing assault."

As is often the situation in cases involving pregnant women, Courts make decisions without the benefit of full briefing or input from experts. Indeed, uncertain of Ms. Tuleh's due date and how long he would need to extend the sentence to ensure she was imprisoned through her due date, the Judge looked out over the courtroom and said "So maybe we ought to consult with the women here. Any sense of what a safe range would be?"

Yesterday morning, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Center for HIV Law and Policy and attorneys Elizabeth Frankel and Valerie Wright of the Maine firm Verrill Dana, LLP filed an emergency amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief on behalf of 28 public health experts, advocates, and organizations, as well as a declaration from prison health expert Dr. Robert L. Cohen. The brief and expert testimony provided legal and public health information challenging the incarceration of a pregnant woman in order to protect an "innocent" "unborn child."

The judge called the brief "articulate and helpful" during yesterday's hearing where he released Ms. Tuleh on bail pending an appeal of her sentence to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Ms. Tuleh will now be receiving medical, housing, and other support coordinated by the Frannie Peabody Center, a Portland, Maine community-based HIV resource center. Ms. Tuleh has expressed that she is deeply touched by all of the support she has received. The picture of her yesterday, smiling from ear to ear speaks volumes.

Ms. Tuleh is being represented on her appeal by Zachary L. Heiden of the Maine ACLU.

NAPW and Center for HIV Law and Policy are grateful to Laura McTighe, Director of Project UNSHACKLE, Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP), for her extraordinary help in this effort.

Your continued support of NAPW makes this kind of effective, cross issue collaboration possible. Please contribute what you can to NAPW so that we can continue our collaborative and successful advocacy on behalf of all pregnant women.
Yours Truly,
Lynn M. Paltrow
Executive Director
National Advocates for Pregnant Women
www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org

Posted by lois at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)

Luke Cole: Early Leader of Environmental Justice Movement

Luke Cole, Court Advocate for Minorities, Dies at 46
By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: June 10, 2009

Luke Cole, an early leader of the environmental justice movement, which holds that many minority neighborhoods have become toxic dumping grounds because their residents are poor and powerless, died Saturday in Uganda. He was 46 and lived in San Francisco.

Mr. Cole was killed in a head-on traffic accident when a truck veered across the road, his father, Herbert Cole, said. His wife, Nancy Shelby, was seriously injured. The couple was on vacation.

As executive director of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, an organization based in San Francisco that he founded in 1989 with Ralph Abascal, Mr. Cole played a key role in several significant environmental law cases.

In the mid-1990s, he represented residents of Kettleman City, Calif., most of them Hispanic, in their campaign to stop Chemical Waste Management Inc. from building a toxic-waste incinerator there. Kettleman City, in the San Joaquin Valley, was already the site of a vast toxic-waste landfill. A state court enjoined the company from constructing the incinerator.

Even more, the court invalidated the environmental-impact report issued by Kings County, Calif., citing its failure to translate even the summary of the study into Spanish.

“It really raised the issue of systemic exclusion of communities from understanding environmental decisions that affect their lives,” Bradley Angel, executive director of Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, said in an interview.

“Luke actually began this work before the term ‘environmental justice’ was in widespread use,” Mr. Angel said.

More recently, Mr. Cole represented a group of residents of the Waterfront South neighborhood in Camden, N.J. — most of them black or Hispanic — who took the unusual action of citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a lawsuit against the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

The plaintiffs claimed that the department had violated their rights by issuing a permit to build a concrete grinding plant without considering that it had already granted more than twice as many industrial permits for Waterfront South as were found in the typical New Jersey ZIP code.

They also argued that more than 20 percent of Camden’s contaminated sites — abandoned factories, a chemical plant, waste-treatment plants, automotive shops and a petroleum coke transfer station — were in their neighborhood. In 2001, the United States District Court in Camden ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.

“It marked the first recognition by any court that African-Americans and Latinos were experiencing discrimination with regard to the siting of noxious, polluting facilities,” said Olga Pomar, a lawyer with South Jersey Legal Services and a co-counsel in the case. “That sparked greater awareness among environmental justice activists.”

Later that year, however, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit declared in a related case that private citizens did not have a legal right to enforce the antidiscrimination regulations that were the basis of their claim. Only the federal Environmental Protection Agency had that right, the appeals court said. In effect, the ruling overturned the decision in the Camden case.

From 1996 through 2000, Mr. Cole served on the E.P.A.’s national environmental justice advisory council.

Luke Winthrop Cole was born in North Adams, Mass., on July 15, 1962, one of three children of Herbert Cole, a professor of art history, and Alexandra Chappell Cole, an architectural preservationist. Besides his parents and his wife, Mr. Cole is survived by a son, Zane; his stepmother, Shelley Reed Cole; two brothers, Peter and Thomas; his sister, Sarah Cole; and a stepbrother, Daryn Kenny.

Mr. Cole graduated from Stanford in 1984 and then worked for three years in Washington as one of Ralph Nader’s so-called Nader’s Raiders, editing a consumer advice newsletter. After receiving his law degree from Harvard in 1989, he moved to San Francisco and soon after started the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment.

The environmental rights of American Indians were of particular interest to Mr. Cole. In one California case, he represented the Timbisha Shoshone tribe, which is trying to halt open-pit gold mining using cyanide to leach out the gold on ancestral land in Death Valley. A ruling in pending.

In another case, he helped residents of Kivalina, an Inuit village in northwest Alaska, sue the Teck Corporation, claiming that the company’s zinc and lead mine had polluted the village water supply for years.

A settlement, reached last year, called for Teck to stop depositing mining tailings into the Kivalina River and to build a pipeline to the ocean, about 50 miles away.

But legal action is not the ultimate solution to environmental discrimination, Mr. Cole told The New York Times in 1993.

“The only way to ever decisively and permanently win these battles is through the political process,” he said. “When a community organizes itself at the grass roots, we can exercise our power, the power of people.”
A version of this article appeared in print on June 11, 2009, on page A29 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

Alan Berkman, 63, Activist Doctor, Dies

Alan Berkman, 63, Activist Doctor, Dies
By DENNIS HEVESI- Tne New York Times
Published: June 14, 2009

Physician, fugitive, federal prisoner, clinician to the homeless, advocate for AIDS patients. epidemiologist: That was the arc of Alan Berkman’s career.

Dr. Berkman in 1985, accused of armed robbery and possessing explosives.

Dr. Berkman, a Vietnam-era radical who spent eight years in prison for armed robbery and possession of explosives and who later founded Health GAP — a leader in the coalition that helped make AIDS medication available to millions in the world’s poorest countries — died in Manhattan on June 5. He was 63 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was cancer, with which he had struggled for nearly 20 years, said his wife, Dr. Barbara Zeller.

Eagle Scout; high school salutatorian; National Merit Scholar; honor student at Cornell, class of 1967; graduate of Columbia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, class of ’71; medical director of the Highbridge Woodycrest Center in the Bronx, one of the first residences designed for AIDS patients; vice chairman of the epidemiology department at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health since 2007: Those, too, are parts of Dr. Berkman’s record, along with his years working in clinics in the South Bronx, Lower Manhattan and rural Alabama.

His life was laced with an activism that went to extremes, both in the tumult of the 1960s and ’70s and into the Reagan years.

On May 23, 1985, Dr. Berkman and a friend were arrested outside Doylestown, Pa. In their car, federal agents found a pistol, a shotgun and keys to a garage that contained 100 pounds of dynamite. That day ended Dr. Berkman’s two decades of participation in radical groups, among them the Students for a Democratic Society.

Four years earlier, on Oct. 20, 1981, an offshoot of the Weather Underground had attempted to rob a Brink’s armored truck in Nyack, N.Y. In the shootout, two police officers and a guard died.

A year later, a federal grand jury investigating the case subpoenaed Dr. Berkman, who, a witness said, had treated one of the robbery defendants for a gunshot wound. When he was indicted and charged with being an accessory after the fact, Dr. Berkman jumped bail; he spent several years on the run.

While a fugitive, he entered a suburban Connecticut supermarket with a friend; they brandished revolvers, tied up the manager and stole $21,480. Prosecutors later said the money was used to buy the explosives found in Doylestown and to support other radical groups. Dr. Berkman was sentenced to 10 years in prison; he served 8.

In 1994, when a reporter for The New York Times interviewed Dr. Berkman at El Rio, a clinic in the South Bronx where he was treating drug-addicted parolees, the doctor, too, was on parole.

“There is plenty to learn from all the mistakes we made,” he said at the time, referring to his radical colleagues. “Power is corrupting. And the use of violence is a form of power. People motivated to stop the suffering of others have to be careful not be caught up in the same dynamics.”

He changed his dynamics, not his motivation. In 1995, he became a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia, working with mentally ill homeless men who had AIDS.

In 1998 and ’99, Dr. Berkman did research in South Africa, where AIDS was rampant. Upon returning to New York, he gathered a group of fellow AIDS activists and founded Health Global Access Project, known as Health GAP, which became one of the leading groups in the campaign to provide antiretroviral drugs to poor people around the world.

“He was one of the key figures in changing 20 years of U.S. trade policy on patents and medicine,” said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, one of the organizations that shared Dr. Berkman’s mission.

Health GAP, along with other advocacy groups, successfully lobbied the Clinton administration to change its opposition to compulsory licenses — orders by foreign governments requiring the owner of a drug patent to issue a license to a generic manufacturer, making the drug cheaper. Until that policy change, trade tariffs were often used against countries that issued compulsory licenses.

At the time, antiretroviral drugs cost about $15,000 a year for a patient. Now, with some American manufacturers sharply reducing their prices, and with generic marketers, particularly in India, offering them at very low prices, the drugs can cost as little as $150 a year.

In 1999, fewer than one million people, all in Western countries, had access to the H.I.V. medications they needed, said Jennifer Flynn, managing director of Health GAP. “Now,” she said, “there are close to four million, and more than half of them are in the poorest countries.”

Born in Brooklyn on Sept. 4, 1945, Alan Berkman was one of four sons of Samuel and Mona Osit Berkman. The family later moved to Middletown, N.Y., where his father owned a plumbing supply company. Besides Dr. Zeller, whom he married in 1975, Dr. Berkman is survived by his brothers, Jerry, Larry and Steven; his daughters, Sarah Zeller-Berkman and Harriet Clark; and a grandson.

Dr. Berkman learned he had a cancer of the lymph nodes while in prison and had recurring bouts with the disease.

In 1994, while treating parolees in the South Bronx, Dr. Berkman was asked how someone so committed to saving lives could have joined groups that were willing to plant bombs.

“I had seen pain in the communities I worked in,” he said, and “an increasing indifference” to that pain. “We became desperate and kept going further out on the limb.”

He added, “Between going to prison and having cancer two times and knowing that death sits on my shoulder, I try to make every day matter.”
Sign in to Recommend More Articles in New York Region » A version of this article appeared in print on June 15, 2009, on page A19 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)

AZ: Public vs. Private prisons in economy budget

Legislators want private firms to run prisons
By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PublishedMay 20, 2009 - 02:15:48 am MST

PHOENIX — Republican legislative leaders are crafting a plan to farm out operation of three state prisons to private companies as a method of balancing the budget.

Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said he believes companies would pay the state at least $100 million in up-front cash for the right to operate the prisons.

That would help lawmakers deal with an anticipated $3.3 billion deficit this coming year.

And Kavanagh, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said the annual savings to the state for operating these three facilities could be $40 million.

At this point, lawmakers are looking at the state prison in Yuma which now houses about 2,300 inmates, the Perryville facility which has more than 4,000 beds, and the Eyeman unit of the state prison complex in Florence which at last count had close to 5,000 inmates.

The proposal is likely to get a fight from Democrats — and not just on philosophical grounds.

Senate Minority Leader Jorge Garcia, D-Tucson, called the savings “funny money.” He cited studies done by an outside consultant for the state Department of Corrections which show that, when all elements are considered, it actually costs taxpayers less to have the state operate prisons than it would to have them run by private companies.

Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, said he put little stock in that report, saying it was prepared during the administration of Democrat Janet Napolitano who never was a supporter of private prisons.

The idea of privately run prisons is not new. The state already contracts with private companies to house some inmates.

But those deals involve facilities that private companies build on their own, with the state paying a specific daily charge for each inmate housed there.

This would involve turning over already built — and paid-for — state facilities to private companies to operate, with the price the state pays based on bids received.

At last count, about 4,300 of the state’s more than 40,000 inmates were housed in private prisons in Arizona. Another nearly 4,900 are housed in private prisons in other states

Gov. Jan Brewer said she believes it is appropriate to house inmates in private prisons “in certain circumstances.”

The plan, scheduled for a vote today in the Senate Appropriations Committee, essentially builds on existing efforts by Republicans to plug the gap between anticipated revenues this coming year and expenses.

State sales and income tax collections have taken a nosedive as the national and state economies have gone into a recession, people are being laid off and consumers are buying less. GOP budget crafters are relying heavily on cuts to spending.

One new wrinkle is a plan to reduce state aid to cities and counties by up to $190 million.

Burns acknowledged that transfers some of the state’s fiscal problems onto local governments which have their own revenue issues. But he said the state’s problem is so big that it cannot afford to share as much as it has in the past in what it collects in vehicle license taxes.

Republican legislators have generally frowned upon a proposal by Gov. Jan Brewer to bridge the gap with a temporary tax that would raise $1 billion a year for three or four years. But House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, said all options — including taxes — remain on the table.

Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said lawmakers are looking at one other way to get more dollars: Hire back some of the auditors and collectors the state let go earlier this year from the Department of Revenue. How much that could raise, however, is debatable.

House Democrats have said more staffers could bring in $150 million. Kavanagh puts the figure at $50 million; Pearce said $35 million would be more realistic.

Kavanagh acknowledged that the size of the deficit could force lawmakers to adopt some accounting maneuvers that really do not solve the problem. These include taking certain expenses due in the coming fiscal year and pushing off payment into the following budget year, a move that technically “balances” the books as constitutionally required but does not actually cut spending.
http://www.svherald.com/articles/2009/05/20/news/state/doc4a13a7e8908d5390322661.txt

----------------------------------------------
Saving the state's budget: The Governor's plan
Balanced, realistic budget will preserve our critical services

Jun. 7, 2009 12:00 AM- Special for the Republic

Arizona's state budget deficit is one of the worst per capita in the United States.

With the new budget due in three weeks, Arizona has a deficit of roughly $4 billion, or 40 percent of last year's general fund expenditures.

We have so little cash that the state has to borrow millions just to pay monthly bills. The threat to vital services is so acute that a bold budget plan is absolutely critical to avoiding an economic catastrophe.

I have a plan that leads our state to the path of recovery, a plan that will bridge Arizona's troubled economic waters without destroying our schools, public safety, or the final safety net that sustains our most vulnerable populations.

Your state government is spending dramatically less. With my new fiscal year 2010 budget plan, roughly $600 million in cuts will be implemented, in addition to the $400 million in reductions I signed into law shortly after taking office.

This budget slashing is unprecedented in Arizona history. Thousands of state employees have lost jobs or have been furloughed. Services and programs have been curtailed. Any further significant cuts, however, would begin to unravel our public education, safety, health and/or corrections systems.

The majority of legislators seem unwilling participants in such recklessness, and I can assure you that I won't preside over the destruction of essential services within our great state.

Along with $1 billion in spending cuts, I propose using the maximum available of federal stimulus funds in fiscal year 2010, approximately $1 billion. My application of these funds will particularly protect K-12 education funding, our state universities, and our community colleges. Each of these systems are doing more with less money, but federal stimulus funds will help us bridge the gap without devastating our state's future - our children.

In addition to spending cuts and federal stimulus funds, my plan includes $1 billion in a 1 percent sales-tax increase, and roughly $1 billion in state long-term financing moves. My plan creates a spending cap to limit government when future revenues return, and cuts onerous taxes in the future to promote economic activity and job growth.

Some representatives and senators unfortunately propose nearly $1 billion in revenues that are completely unrealistic, including a plan to create a 50-year private contract to "operate" all Arizona prisons, including Arizona's death row. It also includes a large tax increase, but hides it by forcing cities and counties to be the tax collectors. The legislators' proposal also threatens the closure of numerous rural Arizona hospitals.

Only an authentic, balanced budget can bridge our financial-crisis gap, and only with additional revenues will we properly operate the vast majority of our general-fund operations: our schools, our prisons, and our critical health systems.

Jan Brewer is governor of Arizona.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/viewpoints/articles/2009/06/06/20090606brewer07.html

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

June 14, 2009

Architecture: "Behind Bars ... Sort Of"

Behind Bars ... Sort Of
By JIM LEWIS
Published: June 10, 2009
NY Times
Pictures at this URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14prisons-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

Go ahead and say it; everyone does. Certainly I did. Here’s a striking building, perched on a slope outside the small Austrian town of Leoben — a sleek structure made of glass, wood and concrete, stately but agile, sure in its rhythms and proportions: each part bears an obvious relationship to the whole. In the daytime, the corridors and rooms are flooded with sunshine. At night, the whole structure glows from within. A markedly well-made building, and what is it? A prison.

Everybody says this, or something like it: I guess crime does pay, after all. Or, That’s bigger than my apartment. (New Yorkers, in particular, tend to take this route.) Or, Maybe I should move to Austria and rob a couple of banks. It’s a reflex, and perfectly understandable, though it’s also foolish and untrue — about as sensible as looking at a new hospital wing and saying, Gee, I wish I had cancer.

To be more accurate, free people say these things. Prisoners don’t. Nor, for the most part, do the guards, the wardens or the administrators; nor do legal scholars or experts on corrections; nor does Josef Hohensinn, who designed the Leoben prison. They all say something else: No one, however down-and-out or cynical, wants to go to prison, however comfortable it may be.

Still, the argument goes, the place must be a country club for white-collar criminals. (No, it holds everyone from prisoners awaiting trial to the standard run of felons.) Then it must cost a fortune. (A little more than other prisons, maybe, but not by much — as a rule, the more a corrections center bristles with overt security, with cameras, and squads of guards, and isolation cells, the more expensive it’s going to be.) And that’s glass? (Yes, though it’s shatterproof. And yes, those are the cells and that is a little balcony, albeit caged in with heavy bars, and below it is a courtyard.) The whole thing seems impossible, oxymoronic, like a luxury D.M.V., and yet there it is.

One gray day in February, Hohensinn drove me from his office in Graz down to Leoben, an hourlong trip through a region isolated by mountains and still transitioning out of an industrial economy. He is a compact man in his early 50s, with bushy eyebrows, a gappy smile and an air about him of cheerful confidence, mixed with a kind of Alpine soulfulness. Before the prison opened, late in 2004, he had a solid career building public housing. Now he is the Man Who Built That Prison, a distinction that dismays him slightly, if only because, as he says, “One always has mixed feelings about having one work singled out for attention.”

Leoben has received quite a lot of attention. In America, its public profile has been limited to a series of get-a-load-of-this e-mail messages and mocking blog posts (where the prison is often misidentified as a corrections center outside Chicago), but in Europe, Hohensinn’s design has become more of a model — not universally accepted, but not easily ignored either. It is the opening statement in a debate about what it means to construct a better prison. Already there are plans to build something like it outside of Berlin.

The day Hohensinn and I visited, Leoben was dreary, and there were traces of sleet in the air; as we approached, the building looked both idle and inviting, like a college library during winter break — or it would have, anyway, were it not for the razor wire coiled along the concrete wall of the yard and the sentence carved below it, a line from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the United States signed and ratified) that reads: “All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”

Inside the prison it felt like Sunday afternoon, though in fact it was a Tuesday. There was a glassy brightness over everything, and most surprising, an unbreakable silence. Prisons are usually clamorous places, filled with the sound of metal doors opening and closing, and the general racket that comes with holding large numbers of men in a confined space. Noise is part of the chaos of prison life; Leoben was serene. I mentioned as much to Hohensinn, and he smiled and pointed to the whitewashed ceilings. He had taken great care to install soundproofing.

An assistant warden accompanied us on our tour, one of three guards on duty tasked with watching more than 200 inmates. On one side of the prison there was a block of prisoners on remand; on the other side were the convicts, living in units called pods — groups of 15 one-person cells with floor-to-ceiling windows, private lavatories and a common space that includes a small kitchen. We came upon one prisoner cooking a late lunch for a few of his podmates; we stood there for a bit, chatting. They were wearing their own clothes. The utensils on the table were metal. “They are criminals,” Hohensinn said to me, “but they are also human beings. The more normal a life you give them here, the less necessary it is to resocialize them when they leave.” His principle, he said, was simple: “Maximum security outside; maximum freedom inside.” (The bars over the balconies are there to ensure the inmates’ safety, Hohensinn said; the surrounding wall outside is more than enough to make sure no one gets free.)

We walked around some more. There was a gymnasium, a prayer room, a room for conjugal visits. I asked Hohensinn what he would do if, contrary to fact, it were conclusively proved that prisons like his encouraged crime rather than diminished it. Would he renounce the design? He shook his head. “The prisoners’ dignity is all I really care about,” he told me.

Suppose we can’t bring ourselves to be quite so magnanimous. Suppose all we’re interested in is reducing crime. If you trust a criminal with a better environment, will he prove trustworthy? As far as Leoben is concerned, it’s too soon to tell. The place has been open for only four years. But I noticed something as we were leaving, and in the absence of any other data it seemed significant. In the three or four hours we spent roaming all through the place, I hadn’t seen a single example of vandalism.

It sounds odd to say, but it’s nonetheless true: we punish people with architecture. The building is the method. We put criminals in a locked room, inside a locked structure, and we leave them there for a specified period of time.

It wasn’t always so. Prison is an invention, and a fairly recent one at that: it wasn’t until the 18th century that incarceration became our primary form of punishment. True, there have been dungeons and the like for quite some time, but they were generally for traitors and political enemies and, later, debtors. More common criminals could expect other forms of penalty: execution, for example, and various kinds of corporal punishment; forced labor and conscription; public humiliation; the levying of fines; exile; loss of privileges and offices; and so on. We’ve come to consider most of these barbaric, unjust or wildly impractical, but their very existence should tend against the idea that settling with criminals by putting them in a building is a natural thing to do.

To be sure, there’s something about prisons that engages man’s imagination. Alberti discussed them, Piranesi drew them, Jeremy Bentham proposed them. But the imagination of incarceration rarely translates directly into design. Bentham’s Panopticon, a circular structure with an all-seeing guardhouse in the middle, was meant to show that surveillance was as powerful a method of control as shackles and door locks — an idea that has proved enticing to many an academic, though it was never built.

In fact, for a long time many prisons, including some of the most well known — the Tower of London, for example — were repurposed castles, fortresses and gates; and even in the U.S., where such legacy buildings didn’t exist, prison construction was an ad hoc affair. Among the first people to try to blend ideology, morality and design principles into a carefully planned building were the Quakers of Pennsylvania, whose late-18th-century model was characteristically spare, consisting primarily of cells where convicts were to be kept in strict isolation, that they might better explore their own souls and find a way to God. A competing system, known as the Auburn model, arose a few years later. It focused more on the potential rehabilitative powers of labor, so it included larger spaces where prisoners could work together; but it, too, called for them to spend the rest of their time alone.

And there, for the most part, the thinking simply stops. Surveillance techniques come and go, materials change, levels of security are introduced and refined. The language changes, from “penitence” to “incarceration” to “corrections,” but very little is fundamentally different than it was. You can get it in a rectangle or a circle, in a radiant or a telephone-pole style, in brick or concrete or shipping containers; you can get guardhouses conducting surveillance via closed-circuit TV, electronic doors, an isolation room. But it’s pretty much the same building: a large institution, holding many convicts in small cells for years at a time.

Does imprisonment work? It seems like a bottom-line question, but the answer depends on what you want prisons to do, and that’s not an easy thing to decide. Even if we assume that there are good and sensible reasons to incarcerate people, there remains some debate about what purpose is served. Deterrence is often proposed as a goal, but no one really knows whether the prospect of incarceration gives would-be criminals pause, and in any case we quickly reach the realm of diminishing returns. “It’s absurd to think that the worse you make these places, the less recidivism you’ll have,” said Michael Jacobson, who was commissioner of the New York City Department of Corrections under Mayor Rudy Giuliani and is now the director of the Vera Institute of Justice, a research group that focuses on criminal justice. “For one thing, it’s hard to make a lot of these places worse. Besides, people commit crimes after serving sentences in the third ring of hell. You’re not going to stop them by demoting them to the fourth ring.” Moreover, most crimes are committed either in the heat of the moment or by career criminals who consider themselves invincible. Few people in either group think about where they might wind up. When I asked one of the prisoners at Leoben if he was surprised by how nice it was, he said no; what surprised him was that he’d been caught in the first place.

In fact, though most of us are reluctant to admit it, we mainly use prisons as storage containers, putting people there with the hope that, if nothing else, five years behind bars means five years during which they can’t commit more crimes. It’s called warehousing, and we do a lot of it. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, by far — it is more than five times as high as in the U.K. About 1 in every 100 American adults is in federal or state prisons or local jails — 1 in 30 men between 20 and 34, 1 in 9 black men of the same age. All told, we keep about 2.3 million adults behind bars: if the entire prison population were treated as a single city, it would be the fourth-largest in the United States, just behind Chicago and just ahead of Houston. Moreover, our incarceration rate has climbed, or rather rocketed, for the past 30 years: adjusted for population growth, there are about four times as many people in prison this year as there were in 1980. In response, we’ve hastily thrown up hundreds of prisons. But not nearly enough: facilities are strained, units are grotesquely overcrowded and space for medical and psychological services has become profoundly inadequate. We pay lip-service to the idea of rehabilitation, but we do little to make it happen. About 67 percent of the prisoners who are released are arrested again within three years. The result, to borrow a phrase from a Conservative British home secretary, has been “an expensive way of making bad people worse.”

To be fair, prominent architects aren’t lining up to take on the task of making prisons better. Most of Hohensinn’s colleagues would be happy to design a courthouse, but few are quite as eager to build a penitentiary, though the two are merely opposite ends of a single system. New prison construction is generally parceled out to a handful of large and more-or-less anonymous firms — a process that discourages innovation. Whoever gets the commission is told how many beds are needed, what kinds of security, how much room for the clinic, the recreation area, the guardhouses. They’re big-box prisons, as anonymous and uninflected as so many Wal-Marts.

Jeff Goodale, the director of correctional design at HDR, a large architectural firm based in Omaha, was disarmingly frank about what he faced. “When I got into the business in the ’70s,” he told me, “there was a very progressive approach to prison design. There was an emphasis on creating an environment that would lend itself to rehabilitation — low-rise buildings, more human scale. In the ’80s and ’90s, the trend became very much about throwing people in jail, locking them up, taking amenities away from them. We spent a fortune on security, and it did little for recidivism.” He went on to describe what he’d like to see happen instead, and it was much like Leoben. “That works great,” he said. “It doesn’t cost significantly more to build, and you save on maintenance, vandalism, lawsuits, assaults, medical care.” But, he added sharply, “at the end of the day, my clients are my clients. We’ve been told we can’t make it look too good, because the public won’t accept it.”

Perhaps that’s because most people never see prisons. The facilities at Leoben are part of a complex designed by the same architect, which houses both courtrooms and a variety of more mundane offices — the local property registrar and the like. You commit a crime, you go to jail, you go to court and, if you’re convicted, you go to prison, and the fact that all three are contiguous is meant to remind you, and everyone around you, that the process relies on a set of institutions that flow from one to the next.

By contrast, new American prisons are usually built out in the countryside, where land and labor are cheaper, and security is easier to establish. And since site selection is the first step in design, everything stems from that. A rural prison needs no public face. It needn’t articulate any sense of civic pride or communal justice, because there’s no one around to see it, beyond the prisoners themselves, the guards and the occasional visitor.

There are other social costs. As Jonathan Simon, a law professor at Berkeley, pointed out to me, convicts tend to come from cities; guards do not. Culture clashes inevitably arise. Skilled labor — doctors, psychologists and the like — is harder to find in rural areas, and so are the volunteers who work in the many rehabilitation programs. The families of working-class and poor convicts often can’t afford to travel a few hundred miles to visit their relatives. As a result, prisoners have a harder time maintaining ties with the lives they left behind.

And it isn’t only inmates and their loved ones who suffer. Almost everyone I spoke to was quick to point out that guards and inmates are essentially imprisoned together. As Michael Jacobson, the head of the Vera Institute, put it, “Officers serve life sentences eight hours at a time.” To a surprising degree, then, both groups want the same thing: They want prisons to be safer and more humane, and they believe that can best be achieved by building in more face time between convicts and their keepers. They want smaller, less anonymous units. They want more natural light. The debate over prison design shouldn’t begin and end with our asking what it’s like to live in one. We should also be asking what it’s like to work in one.

Let’s admit at once that the Leoben facility isn’t the Jesus Prison: It’s not going to single-handedly heal us and carry us up to Paradise. Even if you endorse its goals, it may not be the best implementation of them. Its windows might create an unnerving lack of privacy in a dense city. Allowances would have to be made for the breadth of our landscapes and the nature of our crimes — a prison in California, with California’s gang presence, would most likely be built differently from a prison in Vermont. What’s more, no institutional architecture can be expected to consistently manifest the clarity and elegance of Hohensinn’s design.

More to the point, it’s unlikely that anything even remotely like it will be built in this country anytime soon. John Baldwin, the director of the Iowa Department of Corrections, looked at pictures of the Leoben design and, like many people, found it both intriguing and a bit much. “We’re more focused on putting our money into mental-health and re-entry treatment units,” he told me. “I didn’t see a great deal of treatment space, or the kind of classroom space where you can teach job skills. Nice views, great basketball court, but I didn’t think Iowans want to put their money into that sort of thing.

“Still,” he said with atypical enthusiasm, “architecture is huge.” Iowa is in the process of building new facilities for both men and women. To that end, the state held a design competition and received 17 entries. While the winning submissions are not as luxurious as the Leoben prison, they do share certain principles: a smaller number of cells in each unit, more sunlight, security made deliberately unobtrusive. Other states may soon be joining Iowa, if not because they want to then because they have to. Earlier this year, federal judges in California tentatively ruled that the state release almost a third of its prisoners because the conditions in which they’re kept amount to cruel and unusual punishment. If the ruling holds up on appeal, it’s quite likely that other states will face similar sanctions. And then what?

Jim Lewis is the author, most recently, of the novel “The King Is Dead.” His most recent article for the magazine was about the design of refugee camps.
A version of this article appeared in print on June 14, 2009, on page MM48 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)

Testimony at Senate Hearing on national prison reform Commission introduced by Jim Webb

Testimony at Senate Hearing on national prison reform
June 13,2009

The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs convened a hearing on proposed national prison reform legislation. Virginia Senator Jim Webb introduced bill S.714 in March to create a commission to thoroughly review the entire criminal justice system and make recommendations for reform in several areas of significant concern.

Since being introduced, the bill already has widespread support with 29 cosponsors in the Senate including Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Ranking Member Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Judiciary Committee member Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Numerous organizations, currently numbering 42, now endorse the legislative endeavor with interest continuing to expand as public awareness increases.

Other than Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC), Senator Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA), and Senator Mark R. Warner (D-VA), no other senators from the southeastern states, including Georgia and Florida, have as yet expressed their support for this bill as cosponsors.

Speaking at the June 11 hearing, entitled “Exploring the National Criminal Justice Act of 2009,” Senator Webb compared the condition of the criminal justice system to be no less critical than have been the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. and the economic crisis the country faces. The senator asserts, “…the disintegration of this system, day by day and year by year, and the movement toward mass incarceration, with very little attention being paid to clear standards of prison administration or meaningful avenues of re-entry for those who have served their time, is dramatically affecting millions of lives, draining billions of dollars from our economy, destroying notions of neighborhood and family in hundreds of communities across the country….” The proposed legislation is the first major effort to examine and reform the United States criminal justice system in more than forty years.

“We need to take a comprehensive look at our criminal justice system…. As a nation, we can spend our money more effectively, reduce crime and violence, reduce the prison population, and create a fairer system. It is time to take stock of what is broken and what works and modify our criminal justice policies accordingly.” (See related article: ‘Pew “1 in 31” report on corrections: Challenges and opportunities.’)

Collaboration between Senator Webb’s office and more than 100 organizations that represent prosecutors, judges, defense lawyers, former offenders, advocacy groups, think tanks, victims’ rights organizations, academics, prisoners, law enforcement, and numerous church organizations has generated significant interest and support for advancing this legislation.

Several experts in the legal, law enforcement, and volunteer services communities testified at the hearing, including Chief William Bratton of the Los Angeles Police Department, Professor Charles J. Ogletree of Harvard Law School, Pat Nolan, Vice President of the Prison Fellowship, and Brian W. Walsh, Senior Legal Research Fellow at the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies of The Heritage Foundation.

Serving as vice president of the volunteer service organization the Prison Fellowship, Pat Nolan testified, “My work has given me a close up view of our criminal justice system across the country; and I must tell you our prisons are in crisis. Corrections budgets are literally eating up state budgets, siphoning off money that could be going to schools, roads and hospitals. The crisis in our criminal justice system is national in scope; and only a national commission can conduct the type of review that will help guide us into better policies and safer communities.”

Brian W. Walsh with The Heritage Foundation encouraged support in saying, “Reform experts who are serious about criminal-justice reform should draw encouragement from Senator Webb’s efforts to date to reach out to elected officials on both sides of the aisle and to criminal-justice reform advocates across the conservative-to-liberal spectrum.”
http://www.examiner.com/x-7357-Atlanta-Criminal-Rehabilitation-Examiner~y2009m6d13-Testimony-at-Senate-Hearing-on-national-prison-reform

Posted by lois at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

June 12, 2009

FL: Legislature gives OK to send prisoners out of state

FLORIDA PRISONS
Florida Legislature gives OK to ship inmates out of state
Sending criminals to out-of-state prisons is a 'safety valve' for
BY STEVE BOUSQUET
06.08.09
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida, famous for shipping orange juice all over the country, may yet be known for a very different kind of export: criminals.

With the inmate population hovering around 100,000 and the state lacking money to build new prisons, the Legislature has given the corrections department the authority to ship inmates to other states for the first time.

''It's a safety valve,'' says the plan's sponsor, Sen. Victor Crist, a Tampa Republican who oversees prison spending. ``This is not a mandate. It's a passive safety net.''

Crist said shipping prisoners would be considered only as a last resort to avoid the early release of inmates because of overpopulation. The cost would be agreed upon in talks with the receiving states.

A prison bill (SB 1722) effective July 1 allows the state to ship inmates to state-run or private prisons in other states.

The nation's largest private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America, houses prisoners from eight states, including California, and has long promoted the transfer idea in Florida, without success. Sen. Crist insists he came to this idea himself and not at the behest of the prison industry.

CCA calls itself ''the leader in out-of-state housing'' on its website. It operates 62 prisons and has thousands of surplus beds in other states that it is eager to fill with convicted felons, and Florida has the nation's third-largest prison system.

A year ago, CCA urged the Legislature to follow 15 other states that export inmates, calling it ''cost-effective.'' The idea went nowhere, but that was before the bottom fell out of the economy and the state budget collapsed with a $6-billion shortfall.

''This is not a new issue,'' said CCA's Tallahassee lobbyist, Matt Bryan. ``This just gives the state another option to deal with a potential rapid influx of new inmates.''

Bryan noted that building a new 1,300-bed prison costs about $100 million. Next year's budget will be the first in recent memory with no money set aside for new prison construction.

Exporting inmates may never come to pass because Florida's inmate population has stabilized in recent months and has fallen below earlier projections. In fact, a new, 3,300-bed prison in rural Suwannee County is built but not yet fully open.

The prison population was at about 101,000 this week and the bed capacity is about 106,000. The population fluctuates daily and is constantly affected by the need to move prisoners who have special needs or for disciplinary reasons.

UNENTHUSIASTIC

Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil is not enthusiastic about exporting prisoners. He said it undermines the goal of reducing recidivism by encouraging inmates to build ties to the communities they will return to upon their release from prison.

The new law requires the Department of Corrections to take into account the proximity of an inmate's family before relocating the inmate.

One possible category of exported prisoners is illegal immigrants. As of June 2008, Florida prisons held 5,523 inmates who were undocumented immigrants in the U.S. About 60 percent were in prison for violent crimes.

PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE

The Florida Police Benevolent Association, a large and vocal union representing corrections officers, also opposes exporting inmates, partly because it would help the private prison industry the PBA has long opposed.

''Our preference would be to build public prisons and keep prisoners here in Florida,'' PBA's David Murrell said. ``When you start sending prisoners to other states, you're asking for trouble.''

According to news reports, Idaho officials last year removed about 300 prisoners from a GEO Group-run Texas prison because of understaffing and lax supervision. In Maine, civil rights groups and inmate lawyers said a plan to ship inmates to Oklahoma was a burden to families and would increase recidivism.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/1086743.html

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

LETTER TO EDITOR: Sonia Sotomayor v. Jim Crow concerning Hayden v. Pataki

LETTER TO EDITOR: Sonia Sotomayor v. Jim Crow
By | Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Washington Times
Your editorial, "The franchise for felons" (Opinion, Friday), fails to grasp the powerful point Judge Sonia Sotomayor made in her dissent in Hayden v. Pataki, which is this: A simple reading of the Voting Rights Act makes clear that states may not impose voting qualifications that deny the right to vote on account of race.

New York's felony disenfranchisement law, like similar laws throughout the country, does just that. Nationwide, 13 percent of black men are disenfranchised because of a criminal conviction. More than 80 percent of those currently denied the right to vote under New York's law are black and Latino.

No one can deny the long history in our country of states finding creative ways to deny blacks the right to vote. Criminal disenfranchisement laws are part of this ugly history. Many of them were put in place during the Jim Crow era, right alongside poll taxes and literacy tests, to keep blacks from voting.

A careful reading of New York's constitutional history reveals that at the very time the 14th and 15th Amendments forced New York to remove its nefarious property requirements for black voters, the state changed its law from allowing to requiring the disenfranchisement of those convicted of "infamous crimes."

Congress passed the Voting Rights Act to put an end to discriminatory voting requirements. Poll taxes and literacy tests have been challenged and eliminated under the law. Judge Sotomayor simply recognized that this remnant of Jim Crow also should have its day in court.

ERIKA L. WOOD
Deputy director
Democracy Program
Brennan Center for Justice
New York University School of Law
New York City
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/02/sonia-sotomayor-v-jim-crow/

Posted by lois at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)

CO: CO: Woman Prisoner Awarded $1.35 Million After Repeated Sexual Assaults by Guard

National Briefing | Rockies
Colorado: Inmate Awarded $1.35. Million

By DAN FROSCH
Published: June 11, 2009
NY Times

A female inmate who was raped by a sergeant at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility was awarded more than $1.35 million by a federal judge on Wednesday in a civil lawsuit she had brought. The judge, David M. Ebel of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, wrote that he set the damages high to try to discourage other guards from sexually assaulting inmates in Colorado prisons. The inmate in the case said she had been repeatedly sexually assaulted by the corrections sergeant, LeShawn Terrell, beginning in 2006, but had been too terrified to report the assaults. The ruling was sharply critical of the Denver District Attorney’s Office for allowing Mr. Terrell to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unlawful sexual contact, for which he received a 60-day jail sentence and five years’ probation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/us/12brfs-INMATEAWARDE_BRF.html?scp=2&sq=Colorado&st=cse

Posted by lois at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)

June 10, 2009

Please act in support of the Coalition for Prisoners' Rights Newsletter which is about to stop publication after 34 years due to $25,000 debt!

Friends,
Many of you know of the Coalition for Prisoners' Rights Newsletter. I found out about it when I started hearing from prisoners and many wrote how important it was for them to receive it. When the Real Cost of Prisons comic books were first published, I naively asked Mara Taub to place a notice about them in the Newsletter, about a month later, I finally stopped filling the first round of requests. Every month, the free Newsletter is read and re-read by tens of thousands of prisoners.

Now the Newsletter will stop publication due to a $25,000 debt accumulated over years. Their monthly mailing has grown to 9,142 prisoners! The Newsletter is a crucial lifeline. To think of it not being published for what is actually a small amount of money is extremely distressing. I hope you will agree with me that it deserves our support.

What can you do:
1) Send money. Checks can be sent to CPR, P.O. Box 1911, Santa Fe, NM 87504-1911. Contributions are tax deductible.
2) If you have contacts with funders, please forward this message to them. Mara Taub, the editor of the Newsletter, can be reached at the CPR address for specifics on their plans for the future and how they will be realized.
3) If you know of others who would want to support the Newsletter, please forward this to them.
4) Other funding ideas should go directly to Mara Taub.
Thank you.
Lois Ahrens

From the June 2009 Newsletter (Vol. 34, No.6)
A DIFFICULT BUT NECESSARY C.P.R. CHANGE

We need to let our readers know of the biggest, and hardest, change that the Coalition for Prisoners’ Rights has ever undergone. With this issue, we are suspending publication of our free, monthly, national eight page newsletter, begun in the fall of 1976. We do this with a great deal of regret, but acknowledgment of its necessity. Over the last 11 years, we have accumulated debt close to the size of our annual budget: $ 25,000. We need to begin to pay it off and not continue to owe more money.

We regret this necessity enormously. We believe in doing what we say we will do and therefore we take great care with what we say we will do. We will continue to send resources and information on request. We will include a one page, updated monthly, abbreviated C.P.R. Newsletter with each such response. And, above all, we will do our best to maintain the accuracy of our mailing list. PLEASE CONTINUE TO SEND US YOUR CHANGES OF ADDRESS. Regretfully we will be unable to add new names to our mailing list, but will keep all such requests on file for the future. You will hear from us as much as we can possibly manage.

Our chances of resuming publication of our full Newsletter will increase if our readers can financially support our debt reduction and fundraising efforts. Stamps, as well as financial contributions, continue to be most welcome.

We want to let you all know a little more about how the Coalition has been doing its work of publishing the Newsletter, responding to correspondence, answering additional requests, and education through a variety of public presentations.

We are an all volunteer group of approximately two dozen people at any one time. Some of us have been imprisoned, some are family members of those who are, all are deeply concerned about the sad state of human rights in our country. We pay no rent because we do our work around a large living room table. We have existed all this time (34+ years) by the thinnest of financial threads and a great deal of determination. We originally sent out Newsletters first class, less than 100 a month. Our May 2009 mailing was 9,142. From the over 500 letters a month we respond to (and will continue to answer), we believe we have a monthly readership of 50,000 or so. We have supported our work with individual donations (both in-kind and cash), contributions from faith communities, and a few grants from progressive foundations. As our work has grown, sources of money for the work have shrunk. This is a part of the changes in our country over the last 30 years in which, consistently, the poor have gotten poorer and the rich have gotten richer. The current world financial crisis has only made this situation worse..

We continue to believe that the U.S. prison system and its subsidiaries make our communities less, rather than more, safe. We will do all we can to continue to work to change this. Please join us!

In Solidarity, The Coalition for Prisoners’ Rights
PLEASE POST * PLEASE SHARE * PLEASE POST JUNE 2009

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

June 09, 2009

Why shouldn't prisoners receive their social security?

David Hinman, a prisoner in Iowa, wrote today and posed this question. He is 65 and when he was in the "free-world" contributed to social security. He is not eligible for parole for a number years. This is what he writes:
"Currently the government will not pay people in prison social security. I am speaking about paying social security to those who paid into the fund. Payment is based on what they paid in. Even though I am now 65 and paid into the fund, since I am in prison I am not allowed to collect unless I am released from prison. By not paying inmates the social security to which they are entitled, I believe this is in some manner, theft.
My question to readers is: should prison inmates who paid into social security and reached 65 be allowed to collected social security while incarcerated or not."
You can reach David Hinman (#25374), Anamosa State Penitentiary, 406 North High Street, P.O. Box 10, Anamosa, IA 52205-0010.
D

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

AZ: Imgine the fury if Marcia Powell had died in Arpaio's jail

Imagine fury if inmate had died while on Arpaio's watch

by E. J. Montini - Jun. 9, 2009
The Arizona Republic

The gruesome passing of inmate Marcia Powell a few weeks back has proved that in Arizona it doesn't matter how a convict dies, only where.

Powell would have been national and international news if she had died in one of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's much discussed jails.

But she didn't. She was in a state prison.

If the chain-link fence enclosure into which Powell was placed and left in the hot sun for four hours had been in Tent City instead of the Perryville prison complex, Amnesty International would have contacted the U.S. State Department about the worse-than-Guantanamo conditions. But there was no great protest.

If a mentally ill person like Powell had been subjected to the same treatment in Arpaio's jail as she had been in prison, I have no doubt that the American Civil Liberties Union, and who knows what other human-rights organizations, would have been up in arms, raising a stink among politicians on every level.

But Powell died in a state prison, and there was no political uproar.

Imagine the amount of media attention Powell's death would have received if the decision to unplug her from life support had been made by Sheriff Arpaio rather than by Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan.

Imagine the level of indignation that would have arisen if it was learned later that Arpaio had decided to pull the plug without notifying Powell's legal guardian at the Maricopa County Public Fiduciary's Office.

Instead, it was Ryan who said that his department had exhausted all the leads that it had concerning Powell's next of kin.

However, the fiduciary has been Powell's guardian since 2008. Not only that, but last week the fiduciary's attorney reported in court that several of Powell's estranged relatives had been located and others might yet be found.

Imagine if it had been Arpaio who had cut off life support on such an inmate only to discover that there might be family connections out there.

But it was not Arpaio who did these things. It was the DOC, and so news coverage has been limited mostly to a few articles and online reports in The Arizona Republic and the weekly Phoenix New Times.

Imagine, finally, the level of public outrage that would have been raised if Powell had died in one of Arpaio's jails and Arpaio announced that his department, rather than an outside agency, would conduct the criminal investigation into what happened.

I doubt that there would be enough paper available to print the onslaught of angry letters or enough computer space to contain the barrage of missives over the Internet.

But in this case it was the DOC announcing that it would investigate itself (with a recent promise to allow the Department of Public Safety to look over its findings) and there was no reaction.

Instead, from the moment Powell's death became public I've received comments from readers who say they aren't sympathetic to her plight because she made poor choices in life.

Yet here we are, choosing to make less of Powell's death, not just because of who she was but because of where she died.

More than anything, Powell's death demonstrates that celebrity trumps circumstance. Without a name like Arpaio's to serve as a lightning rod there is no public interest in her case.

Marcia Powell was 48 years old. Her mental disorders stretch back for decades. She was a prostitute and drug addict who wound up behind bars because prison has become the place we lock up some of the mentally ill.

That's her excuse. What's ours?
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/06/08/20090608Montini0609.html
More articles about Marcia Powell's death can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Posted by lois at 07:00 PM | Comments (0)

NC: Education and Prison/Jail Spending

Education budgets outweigh prisons
Catherine Pritchard
Fayetteville Observer

Q: With the state so strapped for cash for the schools, I would like to know how much do we actually pay for our prison systems as compared to what we pay for our schooling? J.S., Fayetteville

A: Well, it all depends on who you mean by “we” and what you mean by “how much,” among other things. After all, public schools get funding at the federal, state and local level. And there are federal prisons, state prisons and county jails (where, we should point out, many of the inmates are awaiting trial and have not been convicted of a crime).

And any numbers we provide will inevitably include funds that are not going directly to what might be considered “prisons” or “schools.”

That said, here are some basic numbers from budget proposals for the 2010 financial year.

At the federal level, President Obama is proposing $46 billion for education and $7.6 billion for the Bureau of Prisons, including oversight of the system and prisoner re-entry programs.

North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue’s proposed budget for 2010 includes $11.4 billion for education and $1.3 billion for the Department of Correction, which includes prisons, parole and probation.

Closer to home, Cumberland County Manager James Martin’s budget proposal includes $75.4 million for schools and $11.5 million to run the county jail.

Housing one inmate does cost more than educating students, according to the state’s per-person estimates. The Department of Public Instruction in Raleigh estimated statewide spending per pupil at $8,552 this year, while the state Department of Correction lists a yearly cost per inmate of $27,911 for 2008.

But then prisoners live in prisons under armed guard, whereas students get to go home after school.
http://www.fayobserver.com/article?id=328546

Posted by lois at 09:23 AM | Comments (0)

Prisons Saving Money By Serving Less Food

Prisons Saving Money By Serving Less Food
June 5, 2009 |

Prisons in some American states are taking advice to tighten their belts literally by slimming down the amount of food they serve to inmates.

Prisoners in Georgia are now going without lunch three days in a row — the Department of Corrections recently eliminated midday meals on Fridays in addition to weekends.

Ohio is also considering two-meal weekend menus by serving brunch instead of breakfast. And other states are cutting back on the amount of milk and fresh fruit prisoners get.

Prison officials in Georgia say inmates are still getting enough to eat because portions are bigger on two-meal days.

But Barbara Helie said if she didn't give her 25-year-old son $60 a week to buy extra food from Georgia's Valdosta State Prison commissary, he would go hungry.

"I don't know how the guys who don't have someone on the outside helping out handle it," Helie said. "Food has been an ongoing issue for him.... He's hungry a lot."

The decision to eliminate Friday lunches in Georgia is linked to another cost-cutting measure. To save on gas, the Department of Corrections changed the prisoners' workweek from five eight-hour days to four 10-hour days.

Inmates got less food on weekends because they weren't exerting themselves working, said Calvin Brown, the deputy director of facility operations at the Georgia Department of Corrections. Now that inmates don't work on Fridays either, it makes sense to cut lunch on that day, too, he said.

About five per cent of Georgia prisoners still get three meals a day because of special dietary needs from conditions like diabetes.

Critics say the cutbacks could lead to food hoarding and violence.

Gordon Crews, a professor at Marshall University in West Virginia, wrote a book on violence in correctional systems.

Link to violence

Food has been linked to prison violence in the past, he said. He cited the example of a riot at the Reeves County Detention Centre in Texas that was partly caused by poor quality food.

Data obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request show that inmate assaults in Georgia have increased substantially this fiscal year. Prison officials denied the rise in violence is linked to cuts in food.

Prison administrators have seen inmate populations go up while budgets go down. The state of Georgia cut 10 per cent from the Department of Correction's $1.1-billion budget this fiscal year. Food has been identified as an area where they can save money.

Ohio prisons director Terry Collins said replacing breakfast with brunch on weekends "could save us some real dollars when it comes to staffing and food costs." He said he doesn't expect prisoners will be upset because the meals will be of the same quality.

"I don't expect them to be as good as mom's home cooking," he said. "But the food should be cooked and presented properly."
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/06/05/us-prison-food005.html

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

NH: Prison Recuiting by BOP

Going to prison the hard way

By: By CORIN HIRSCH, Staff Writer
6/5/2009

BERLIN -- Stay off drugs. Take a few more classes. Gain technology experience. Pay your bills.

It isn't advice from parents, a guidance counselor or even a probation officer -- but from a recruitment specialist from the federal Bureau of Prisons.

About 125 people attended a Bureau of Prisons recruitment workshop in this former mill town Wednesday night, and were given the lowdown on what they need to do to ready themselves for a potential career in corrections.

A year from now, the agency will start hiring staff for the 1,280 bed medium-security prison that is under construction north of the Notches (Pinkham, Crawford and Franconia). The $230 million prison is the second largest public works project in New Hampshire's history, and is expected to open in the fall of 2010.

Armed with a PowerPoint presentation, a high-spirited delivery and 18 years of experience recruiting for the agency, regional activation coordinator Cathi Litcher outlined potential positions, salaries and background requirements, and advised potential recruits to take the long view -- spend the next 12 months getting fitter, healthier and more law-abiding.

When FCI-Berlin opens next fall, 341 employees will be hired, from corrections officers to teachers, accountants, plumbers, drug treatment specialists and a chaplain, doctor and dentist. Litcher said that approximately 40 percent of the personnel will come from transfers within the agency, where moving from one institution to another is seen as a way of moving up in rank.

The other 60 percent -- approximately 200 people -- will be hired from the local area, if they can meet the agency's requirements. "Honestly, sometimes I have a hard time getting 60 percent," said Litcher. In addition to a clean background, a federal correctional officer needs to be under 37 at the time they are hired so they can put in the requisite 20 years of service before mandatory retirement at age 57.

The average age of Berlin's unemployed mill workers is 55, and young people leave the city in droves because of a lack of available work.

Some of Litcher's most emphatic advice for potential recruits was to have their credit histories in order, and their bills paid. "Don't let the federal interview be the first time you hear about your credit history. Meet the financial piece of the puzzle."

She said that unpaid bills and financial pressures leave an employee open to exploitation in a prison where a smuggled carton of cigarettes can fetch $800 and a cell phone can garner up to $1,200. "If you aren't paying your bills, don't think an inmate won't try to manipulate you."

Litcher told them to be upfront about past transgressions, because each applicant could expect a full background check. "You'd be surprised what your friends will give up when someone with a badge comes to ask about your background."

She also outlined a stringent interview process that includes a panel interview during which a trained psychologist and others ask "uncomfortable" questions. Applicants will also be required to watch a video of a disturbance and asked to describe it in writing. "You think working in a prison is all fun and games? No, it isn't."

If an applicant is hired, he or she then enters into rigorous training that includes three weeks at a training facility in Glynco, Ga., for courses in self-defense and firearms, as well as physical tests.

The Bureau of Prisons will soon be recruiting for three federal prisons nationwide. In addition to Berlin, federal prisons are being built in Mendota, Calif., and McDowell County, W.Va., and will be activated within the coming year.

All three areas regions share at least one thing in common: unemployment above the national average. Mendota has been called the "unemployment capital of California," where the jobless rate is a staggering 41 percent. In McDowell county, it is 9.9 percent, and In Coös County, unemployment is running at 9.5 percent.

When Litcher asked the crowd how many came from Berlin, most of the hands went up. Since the federal prison was first proposed in 2001, the main reasoning behind its construction has been the economic shot-in-the-arm it might bring to New Hampshire's North Country, which has been devastated in recent years by the shuttering of its paper and pulp mills. Those who are from the local area who work in a prison, and do not want to transfer, said Litcher, are called "homesteaders, and they are a rock-solid piece of our corrections puzzle."

The North Country may be on track for a corrections-based economy. Berlin already has one state prison -- the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility, where the gym has been converted to accommodate prisoners from the Lakes Region Facility in Laconia, which is closing.

New Hampshire Department of Corrections Commissioner Bill Wrenn traveled to Berlin last fall to talk to the city council about the possibility of building a state women's prison here, and in a speech earlier this spring, Gov. John Lynch suggested that the North Country could become home to a 2,000-3,000-inmate regional prison that houses inmates from neighboring states. The idea has not taken flight.

A sprinkling of people in the audience were from the neighboring towns of Gorham and Milan, and at least two were from southern New Hampshire. One of those was Jim Colby, 27, who saw a blurb about the event in the Nashua Telegraph and drove up to Berlin from Hollis, N.H. For several years, Colby has been trying to become a police officer, moving throughout southern New Hampshire and as far south as Philadelphia. But a hiring freeze in that city sent him back to the Granite State to look for work.

Colby had never been to Berlin, but is tempted into corrections by the job stability and salary. "It sounds like a good career. Why not?" The starting annual pay for a correctional officer is $37,953, and rises each year.

The seminar for job seekers was part of a series of forums sponsored by the New Hampshire Department of Employment Security. It was designed to inform recruiters, Realtors, contractors, educators and others about the prison's potential impact on the region.

Litcher said she will return to New Hampshire next spring for more recruitment seminars, including some in the southern part of the state, possibly Concord.

http://www.eagletimes.com/ET/LocalNews/story/090604-ch-NHprisonrecruiting

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

MI: Closing 8 prisons by executive order of Gov.

"I'm just not that comfortable letting this many convicted felons out into a poor economy," said Senate Minority Leader Mike Prusi, an Ishpeming Democrat who is "furious" prison facilities in his Upper Peninsula district will be closed."

"Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections
Organization, a labor union for corrections officers, said too many inmates are being let out too quickly. The public better lock their doors," he said.

Michigan closing 8 prison facilities to save money
By DAVID EGGERT (AP)

LANSING, Mich. -- Three state prisons and five prison camps will be closed to save $120 million as budget-conscious Michigan moves toward incarcerating its lowest number of inmates in a decade, Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration said Friday.

The closings will result in layoffs, though it was unclear how many. The Department of Corrections will try to move as many of the 1,072 affected employees as possible into open jobs at other facilities.
said."

Theprisons and camps house about 4,600 inmates who will be transferred to other facilities if they still are incarcerated at the time of the closures. The Democratic governor wants to reduce the prison population of 47,550 to below 45,000 by Oct. 1, the lowest head count since 1999.

Critics warned the public is in danger and said the state's budget problems are driving corrections policies when it should be the other way around.

"I'm just not that comfortable letting this many convicted felons out into a poor economy," said Senate Minority Leader Mike Prusi, an Ishpeming Democrat who is "furious" prison facilities in his Upper Peninsula district will be closed.

Corrections Director Patricia Caruso, however, said public safety is the agency's top priority.

"But just as we are committed to the public's safety, we are also committed to spending their tax dollars wisely and in ways that make sense," she said. "The reorganization we are unveiling today makes sense from a public safety and budget perspective."

Prisons in Muskegon west of Grand Rapids, Standish north of Bay City and Kincheloe in the eastern U.P. will close between Aug. 1 and Nov. 30.

Prison camps to be closed in the same time period are in Shingleton, Painesdale and Iron River in the U.P.; Grayling in the northern Lower Peninsula; and White Lake in Oakland County north of Detroit.

The Standish prison is maximum-security, meaning every prisoner must have his own cell.

Corrections officials have decided some maximum-security inmates can share cells, drawing the ire of corrections officers who fear the change will endanger guards and inmates. The department will convert the Alger Maximum Correctional Facility in Munising to a level IV prison so it can bunk two prisoners per cell, nearly doubling the prison's bed capacity.

The prison closings come as tax revenues are continuing to slide in a state hit hard by the recession and the auto industry's woes. Michigan faces a budget shortfall of at least $1.7 billion in the fiscal year that starts in October, and there is not enough federal stimulus cash to offset all the lost revenue.

Because the governor's '09-10 budget proposal outlined in February promised unspecified prison closings, communities and corrections workers across the state had been anxiously awaiting Friday morning's announcement. The state also closed two prisons and a camp this fiscal year.

The prison population has fallen by 4,000 inmates since peaking at a record 51,454 in December 2006. Officials credit the decline to more paroles and commutations, fewer felony convictions and prison intakes, more GPS monitoring and an expanded program to keep parolees from committing new crimes. The number of criminals entering prisons dropped 9 percent in 2008, officials said, and was down 4 percent through April of this year.

Granholm's newly expanded parole board is releasing more inmates who have served beyond their minimum sentence.

Corrections spokesman John Cordell acknowledged the department is shrinking the prison population on a quicker timetable because of the budget crisis, but he said only offenders posing the "lowest possible risk" are being paroled sooner than they might otherwise have been.

The parole board is following recommendations from independent experts who found Michigan inmates stay in prison longer than is the case nationally despite receiving similar minimum sentences. Key Democratic and Republican lawmakers backed the parole changes in January but have not yet put those requirements into law.

Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections Organization, a labor union for corrections officers, said too many inmates are being let out too quickly.

"The public better lock their doors," he said.

While prison closures in recent years led to few layoffs because workers filled vacancies at other facilities, there will be fewer openings to apply for this time, Grieshaber said.

"There are undoubtedly going to layoffs - hundreds perhaps," he said.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/06/05/ap6511712.html

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

June 05, 2009

In Politics, Fact, Fancy Can Blur in Keystroke,Bogus Claim Linking Jail, School Raised Election After Election: "third grade talking point debunked."

In Politics, Fact, Fancy Can Blur in Keystroke
Bogus Claim Linking Jail, School Raised Election After Election

'Third-grade' Talking Point Debunked
By Maria Glod and Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 4, 2009

"Imagine if your entire future was determined by what you did in the third grade," says Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe in a television advertisement promoting his plan to expand preschool. "Did you know we use the failure rates of third-graders to help predict how many prison spots Virginia will need in 15 years?"

You didn't know? Could be because it's not true -- at least not in Virginia.

The startling claim has been cited by McAuliffe and one of his rivals, Brian Moran, as they seek the Democratic nomination for governor. It is an appealing bit of political rhetoric, providing a cinematic illustration of the benefits of expanding preschool: Society will reap long-term savings by spending money early on education.

In the world of politics, dubious claims can harden into conventional wisdom in a keystroke. Political campaigns now have access to an unlimited catalogue of reports, speeches and essays that swirl on the Internet. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Colin L. Powell and even the organizers of the Alexandria literacy festival have pointed to the link as a frightening example of how children can go astray. The Washington Post and the New York Times have published opinion columns that reference the connection.

"It's catchy," said Peter E. Leone, director of the National Center on Education, Disability and Juvenile Justice at the University of Maryland, often cited as the source of the link. "And it's totally bogus."

Campaign trail rhetoric has a tendency to value the emotional impact of a statement first and the facts second. During last year's presidential campaign, Democrat Barack Obama took heat for telling an NAACP forum that there are more young black males in prison than in college. Census data appear to dispute this. Republican Rudolph Giuliani said his chances of surviving prostate cancer were twice as high in the United States as in Britain "under socialized medicine," a claim later debunked. Democrat John Edwards insisted that the North American Free Trade Agreement has cost Americans "millions of jobs" but later was unable to cite a source.

But the effort to link third-grade reading scores and prison population has been particularly persistent -- hopscotching from one campaign season to another.

In Virginia, at least, it is definitely untrue. Barry R. Green, director of Virginia's Juvenile Justice Department, said that when officials draw up six-year plans for how much prison space the state will need, they rely on factors that include arrest and conviction trends, but not test scores or any other education data. A policy group convened at the end of the process discusses general social issues, Green added.

Everyone agrees that children who get a poor start in school are more likely to struggle academically and later fall prey to social ills. It's a point that McAuliffe has been joined in making by Moran, a former delegate, and state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (Bath), another Democratic rival. Each has called for boosting state spending on early childhood education.

Since the ad began airing in Richmond, Norfolk and Roanoke, McAuliffe's campaign has said third-grade scores aren't part of the official formula Virginia uses to plot prison construction. But the campaign says the ad was designed as a tangible and understandable way to bring home the idea that quality preschool is a smart investment.

"We feel comfortable using third-grade reading scores as a way of communicating, in shorthand, the importance of education in predictions of long-term social behavior, including predictions about crime rates, which are then used to determine the number of prison beds that we are constructing," said McAuliffe communications director Delacey Skinner.

'Third-grade' Talking Point Debunked
In these clips, two Democratic candidates for Virginia governor, as well as Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell, each discuss a link between third-grade reading scores and projected prison populations. This talking point has been discredited.

We've made some updates to washingtonpost.com's Groups, MyPost and comment pages. We need you to verify your MyPost ID by logging in before you can post to the new pages. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Moran made a statement similar to McAuliffe's in a radio interview last month: "If you don't have them by third grade, it's hard to get them back. We use our third-grade reading exams to determine potential for prison later on."

Leone has not ruled out the possibility that a state uses elementary test scores this way, but he has not found one.

"It's like an urban legend," Leone said, adding that he has been fielding calls for years from reporters and politicians researching similar assertions. Last year, he said, a member of D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's staff called to check it out.

Prison officials in California called the claim "absolutely untrue," saying they must perennially debunk assertions that the state uses elementary reading in prison forecasts. A New York-based education group co-founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein pulled the information from its Web page in April after an online journalism site labeled it "fiction."

Still, the contention persists, growing more credible with each repetition. Grover "Russ" Whitehurst, former head of the U.S. Education Department's research arm, is sometimes cited as a source of the claim. He said he heard it and repeated it about six years ago in comments that can be found on the Internet. Later, he tried to trace it to its source and came up blank.

"I don't know if it is true or not and regret contributing to the dissemination of what may be an urban legend," Whitehurst said this week.

In campaign literature distributed with the ad, McAuliffe pegged the line to comments made by Norfolk Judge Jerrauld Jones at a teen violence summit he attended last year with another politician. Through his secretary, Jones, former director of the state Juvenile Justice Department, declined to comment.

The campaign also noted a state Department of Criminal Justice Services report that lists failure on third-grade reading tests as a factor that increases the risk of committing a crime.

Where else might McAuliffe have gotten the idea? Robley Jones, lobbyist for the Virginia Education Association, said possibly from him. Jones said he can remember saying something very similar at a recent roundtable discussion on education attended by McAuliffe.
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"If it's an urban legend, I'm probably one of those guilty of keeping it alive, because I thought it was true," Jones said.

Jones said he plans to stop saying that the state uses the scores to plan prison construction -- but he said he believes there is a correlation. "I think it may be almost a meaningless distinction, whether or not Virginia is actually using the figure," he said. "The fact of the matter is that the figure could be used accurately."

Diana Owen, an associate professor of political science at Georgetown University, said that despite the input of experts, future candidates will now have one more source to use to make the same claim. "A factoid like that will have another life in another campaign," she said. "Now that that ad's out there, people will cite the ad. I'm sure of it."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/06/03/ST2009060303653.html

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

June 04, 2009

Foes of Rockefeller Drug Law Reform Attack Recent Changes By False Charges of Threats to Public Safety by Judges Sealing Records

From the Center for Community Alternatives (NY)
Those opposed to the recently enacted Rockefeller Drug Law Reform have seized upon a small, but important aspect of the legislation - conditional sealing - as a way to attack the recent reforms and create the misperception that drug law reform will diminish public safety. Their criticism overlooks the fact that the conditional sealing legislation is an important tool for fostering New York's commitment to promoting public safety by ensuring the successful and productive reentry of people with criminal history records into our communities - a commitment best demonstrated by the 2006 amendment to the Penal Law establishing reentry and reintegration as a sentencing goal. Ultimately, conditional sealing is a well-considered mechanism for ensuring that people who have demonstrated a commitment to their rehabilitation (by completing substance abuse treatment and a court-imposed sentence) will have a fair opportunity at employment, housing, education, and other aspects of full community membership. For a reasoned response to the misperceptions created by opponents to drug law reform and an explanation of how conditional sealing can enhance public safety, click here.
http://www.communityalternatives.org/pdf/conditionalSealingResponse.pdf

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

AZ: Maybe or Maybe NOT? Following death of Marcia Powell from exposure DOC will discontinue the use of outdoor cages until they figure out an alternative

Ariz. prisons discontinue use of outdoor cells
Associated Press - June 2, 2009 8:54 PM ET

PHOENIX (AP) - The Arizona Department of Corrections has discontinued the use of outdoor holding cells following the death of an inmate in triple-digit heat.

Corrections spokesman Barrett Marson said in an e-mail Tuesday that the decision came "in consultation with the governor." He didn't elaborate.

The corrections department had announced last week that it was halting use of the cells while they were retrofitted to provide shade and water.

Inmate Marcia Powell died from heat-related complications hours after she collapsed May 19. She had been in an outdoor holding cell for nearly four hours, almost twice as long as the maximum allowed under prison rules.

http://www.kswt.com/Global/story.asp?S=10467740&nav=menu613_2_6

------------------------------

Prison inmate policies revised following death

by Casey Newton - Jun. 5, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

State prison officials plan to check on inmates kept in outdoor enclosures every half-hour under policy changes expected to be approved today.

Charles Ryan, director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, is revising prison policies in an effort to prevent situations such as the one that led to the death last month of inmate Marcia Powell.

Powell, 48, died after being held in 107-degree temperatures in an outdoor cage for nearly four hours. She collapsed while awaiting transfer to another cell for psychiatric observation.

After consulting with the office of Gov. Jan Brewer, Ryan eliminated the use of outdoor cages for inmates being transferred for observation. But outdoor enclosures will remain in use for some cases, including recreation for prisoners separated from the general population.

Some prisons also have shaded outdoor enclosures that hold prisoners while they await medical treatment.

Under the planned revisions, a corrections officer and a supervisor will be required to check on inmates held in outdoor enclosures every 30 minutes, recording those checks in a log.

The mandated checks are designed to ensure officers do not lose track of any prisoner being held outside temporarily.

Prison officials are still working through where they will hold inmates awaiting transfer. They had been using 233 outdoor enclosures in 10 state prisons.

About 40,000 prisoners are in the state prison system.

"We're going to make do with the space that we have inside," Ryan said.

Powell's collapse occurred at Arizona State Prison Complex-Perryville in Goodyear. Ryan launched an internal-affairs inquiry and a criminal investigation into possible neglect.

A deputy warden, a captain and the lieutenant in charge of supervising Powell have been placed on administrative leave during the investigation.

Ryan said the investigation should be completed in two to three weeks. After critics argued that his department should not investigate itself, Ryan said he would refer the results to the state Department of Public Safety for an independent review.

"I absolutely want the investigation to be thorough, to be accurate and to be objective," Ryan said.

Posted by lois at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

Life on Permanent Lockdown By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella---(The Angola 3)

""The use of so-called extended lockdown has grown exponentially since the 1980s and is now an almost routine part of the American criminal justice system. The practice has been denounced by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, among others. Yet it has never aroused much public opposition, even among progressives who are outraged by reports of psychological abuse from Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib."

"For the past decade, the Angola 3 have also challenged the use of solitary confinement in a civil lawsuit in federal court, arguing that it violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment." For years, this case went nowhere. But on April 3, a federal magistrate judge at the US District Court in Baton Rouge allowed the lawsuit to proceed. It will likely be heard in the fall, and if the court makes a broad ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, it could potentially affect the more than 25,000 prisoners who live in complete isolation in supermax prisons or lockdown units around the country."

Mother Jones
Life on Permanent Lockdown
By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella | Thu June 4, 2009 4:00 AM PST

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox are believed to have been held in solitary confinement for longer than any inmate in America—37 years, to be precise, nearly all of them spent in 6-by-9 cells at Louisiana's notorious Angola prison. For 23 hours a day, they pass the time in their cells as best they can. For one hour, they are allowed out to take a shower or a stroll along the cell block. Three days a week, they can use that hour to exercise alone in a fenced yard, as long as the weather is good.

Wallace and Woodfox were originally sent to Angola for armed robbery offenses in the early 1970s. When a young guard named Brent Miller was stabbed to death in 1972, Wallace and Woodfox were convicted of his murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, although, as courts have since acknowledged, there were numerous flaws with their trials: faulty evidence, manufactured testimony, and bribed witnesses, as well as inadequate legal representation and discriminatory jury selection. Along with another prisoner, Robert King, the men became known as the Angola 3, and for three decades they protested their innocence in court, maintaining that they had been targeted because they had helped found a Black Panthers chapter at Angola and were organizing for better conditions at the prison.

In recent years a federal judge ordered Louisiana to release Woodfox and give him a new trial; another judge recommended a new trial for Wallace. (King was released in 2001 when a judge overturned his conviction, after he had spent 29 years in solitary.) Yet the state has mounted endless appeals and procedural roadblocks to keep the pair locked away. Wallace and Woodfox are now 68 and 62, respectively.

After my requests to interview both men were denied, I began a correspondence with them. Their letters reveal a sense of resolve amid the bleakness of their situation. "I use stacks of books for exercise and thereafter I am either writing or reading. I have no time for foolishness. It's really that serious. I am in a struggle against the state of Louisiana on two strategic fronts, and hear me when I tell you they are not fighting fair," Wallace wrote to me recently. "The sense of hopelessness is endless and if not fought can break a person! (I bend, but don't break!)" Woodfox wrote.

In a recent article in The New Yorker, Atul Gawande made a persuasive case that solitary confinement is a form of torture. He cited lab studies in which baby monkeys raised in isolation became "profoundly disturbed, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively, and mutilating themselves." Humans, it turns out, experience similarly acute anguish when deprived of social contact. When Gawande examined the cases of prisoners who had been kept alone for prolonged periods, he found that they disintegrated, mentally and physically. They became depressed, hallucinated, were unable to remember basic facts, and in some instances became catatonic. "Without sustained social interaction," Gawande concluded, "the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury."

The use of so-called extended lockdown has grown exponentially since the 1980s and is now an almost routine part of the American criminal justice system. The practice has been denounced by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, among others. Yet it has never aroused much public opposition, even among progressives who are outraged by reports of psychological abuse from Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.

For the past decade, the Angola 3 have also challenged the use of solitary confinement in a civil lawsuit in federal court, arguing that it violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment." For years, this case went nowhere. But on April 3, a federal magistrate judge at the US District Court in Baton Rouge allowed the lawsuit to proceed. It will likely be heard in the fall, and if the court makes a broad ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, it could potentially affect the more than 25,000 prisoners who live in complete isolation in supermax prisons or lockdown units around the country.

Most recent attempts to challenge the use of solitary confinement in court have failed, although none of the prisoners involved have been isolated for as long as Wallace and Woodfox. American courts have tended to define "cruel and unusual punishment" as conditions that deprive a prisoner of "basic human needs." In the case of the Angola 3, the state of Louisiana seeks to define these needs narrowly as "adequate food, sleep, clothing, shelter or medical attention," and has insisted that prisoners in solitary are provided with all of these things. In response, the Angola 3's lawyers argue that "the conditions of extended lockdown must be considered both cumulatively and durationally." Years in solitary have certainly deprived Woodfox and Wallace of adequate exercise and sleep, they say. More significantly, they also urge the court to acknowledge "social contact and environmental stimulation as basic human needs."

Wallace and Woodfox have, say their lawyers, endured both physical injury and "severe mental anguish and other psychological damage" from living most of their adult lives in lockdown. According to medical reports submitted to the court, the men suffer from arthritis, hypertension, and kidney failure, as well as memory impairment, insomnia, claustrophobia, anxiety, and depression. Even the psychologist brought in by the state confirmed these findings. When US Magistrate Judge Docia Dalby allowed the Eighth Amendment lawsuit to proceed, she said that the men had been isolated for "durations so far beyond the pale that this court has not found anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence."

Dalby also allowed the lawyers to expand their case—to challenge not only how the men are being confined, but why. Wallace and Woodfox are not being kept in solitary as a disciplinary or safety measure, their lawyers contend. Prison records show that the pair has had no serious disciplinary violations for more than 20 years. The only reason ever given for their continued isolation, in every one of the 90-day reviews they have had over the past three decades, is "nature of original reason for lockdown." When the federal judge ordered Woodfox released in 2008, he described him as a "frail, sickly" man with "an exemplary conduct record." The lawyers have assembled compelling evidence that the men have been isolated for more than 30 years for their beliefs, not their behavior, and that therefore their First Amendment rights have been violated, too. In other words, their lawyers plan to argue that Wallace and Woodfox are essentially political prisoners.

This is not an entirely new legal argument, but Wallace and Woodfox happen to have unusually strong evidence to support it, mostly in the form of public comments by Angola's warden, Burl Cain. For instance, when the judge decided to allow this claim to move forward, she cited an affidavit taken from a New Orleans schoolteacher who questioned Cain at a public event in 2000:

I started out the conversation by saying something like: "I was wondering if you could tell me anything about the 'Angola 3'?" "You mean Woodfox?" Cain responded. "I know all about them." He continued, "it's not obvious" that they should be let out of extended lockdown, they were "not good men," they "haven't reformed their political beliefs," and would be disruptive to the prison environment. Cain characterized the three inmates as violent and said they would incite other inmates to violence if let into the general prison population.

At one point, I asked, "So they're political prisoners?" Cain responded, "Well, yes. Well no, I don't like the word political."

And in a deposition last year, Cain states that Wallace and Woodfox are "still hooked up" to "Black Panther revolutionary actions." Even if Woodfox were not guilty of the murder of the prison guard, Cain says, he would still keep him in solitary. "I still know he is trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates…I would have me all kinds of problems, more than I could stand."

Now, the Angola 3's lawyers have been granted the right to file an amended claim and conduct further discovery, which will focus in part on gathering more evidence that Wallace and Woodfox are being kept in solitary confinement not because of what they have done or what they might do, but because of what they believe. Finding examples probably won’t be difficult. Louisiana attorney general James "Buddy" Caldwell, an ambitious Democrat elected in 2007, has characterized the Angola 3 to the press as political radicals and calls Albert Woodfox "the most dangerous man on the planet."

In March of 2008, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, paid a visit to Angola and met with Wallace and Woodfox. Four days later the two men, along with a handful of other prisoners, were moved out of lockdown cells and into a new "maximum security dormitory" that appeared to have been created expressly for them. Compared with others in the general prison population, they still faced serious restrictions. Yet it offered them a level of human contact that the two men had scarcely known since they were in their 20s. They were able to converse face to face, after decades of communicating through notes and third parties. "Every once in a while he'll put his arm around me or I'll put my arm around him," Albert wrote to a newsletter distributed to Angola 3 supporters. "It's those kind of things that make you human."

By the fall, Albert Woodfox's conviction had been overturned, and the court had ordered him released on bail while the state's appeal of this decision was pending. However, Caldwell said that he opposed the release "with every fiber of my being." Woodfox had been planning to stay with his niece while on bail. But his lawyers uncovered evidence that the state had emailed the neighborhood association of the gated community where she lived to inform them that a murderer was moving in next door. In December, Caldwell convinced the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals to stay Woodfox's release on bail.

By that time, both men had been thrown back into isolation, to an even harsher section known as the "dungeon"—tiny, windowless cells that they were allowed to leave for only 15 minutes a day, rather than an hour, to shower in an adjacent space. They had allegedly violated prison rules by conducting a three-way call and giving an interview to a prison radio broadcast. Negotiations in their Eighth Amendment case ground to a halt. They had experienced a mere eight months of what had passed as comparative freedom.

Then, in March this year, Wallace and Woodfox were subjected to a move by the state that added to the pain of their predicament: They were forcibly separated from one another, not by a wall or a few tiers of cells, but by 75 miles of Louisiana's alluvial plain. One morning in March, Albert Woodfox woke up to discover that Herman Wallace was gone from Angola. Wallace had managed to make a phone call to Jackie Sumell, an artist and pivotal member of the dedicated Angola 3 activist community. He explained that he'd been transferred to Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, a two-hour drive down the Mississippi, below Baton Rouge. Wallace reported that a warden had told him that Hunt marked a new beginning for him, and that he might even be introduced into the facility's general population, ending his years of solitary confinement for good.

Two months later, he is still in lockdown, with no sign of getting out. I was denied permission to visit either man, but Wallace explained in a letter that the separation has made their legal battle even more challenging. "My presence here is designed to completely separate me from Albert. Such separation is designed to disrupt our effectiveness winning court decisions after court decisions. The move also makes matters 10 times worse for our attorneys who have to travel from one facility to the next to gather meaningful information. Albert and I can no longer iron out our thinking to make rational decisions for our attornies [sic] to embrace." Woodfox, meanwhile, offered a more poignant analysis of their separation: "There is an emotional toll, one that I would equate to the breaking up of a family during slavery in America. The pain and loss is beyond explanation."

In my correspondence with the two men, what struck me most was how lucid and determined they remained, despite their long years of isolation. In my most recent letter to Woodfox, I asked whether he thought his struggle in the courts would ever result in justice. He replied:

Who knows? Justice for me is abstract! The due process of the court is abstract. The law is abstract. To apply objective thought to the courts can drive you insane. I have no desire to go insane…

Justice means freedom for me, raises more questions than it answers. While I am a self educated man I am 62 years old. No past for the last 40 years. So how will I live?

While there are a lot of potentials, its not guarantees. For the last 40 years I have no bills to pay. No social obligations or responsibilities. I have made no social contributions and that saddens me greatly. Add to that I am African American and an ex-con! In a nutshell, justice for me means more questions than answers. (I am up to the challenge!)

*Among the activists who took up the cause of the Angola 3 were the late Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop (and a former Mother Jones board member), and her husband, Gordon. The Roddick's family charity, the Roddick Foundation, contributed funding for this story.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/life-permanent-lockdown

Posted by lois at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)

June 02, 2009

AZ: Support for mentally ill is essential to help prevent more people from jail and the streets

Support for mentally ill is essential

by Ann Rider - Jun. 2, 2009 12:00 AM
Special for the Arizona Republic

The tragic death of Marcia Powell, a mentally ill woman who died in an outdoor holding pen at Arizona State Prison Complex-Perryville, may be only the beginning. The Arizona Senate, in cutting over $76 million of funding in Senate Bill 1145 and Senate Bill 1188, may sentence people with psychiatric disabilities to the streets or prisons for support.

In this newest round with the budget, the Republican Senate proposes to cut eligibility for services to only individuals below 100 percent of Federal Poverty Level.

One of the proposals is to change the law that supports community services for individuals with mental illness, so that the state "may" provide services.

This means all services statewide will be eliminated for about 67,500 individuals.

Tens of thousands of people won't be able to fill their prescriptions; the medications they need are not cheap. They're not available at Walmart for $4. These tens of thousands of people will quickly become very ill and where will they go?

Already, hospitals deny evaluations because there is no benefit for treatment, so what will happen when your loved one begins to feel despair and considers suicide? Unless you have very good health insurance, there will be no services.

In Maricopa County, approximately 19,000 individuals are class members in the Arnold vs. Sarn lawsuit, which forced the state to provide community services. Because of this lawsuit, thousands of people receive services that help them go back to work, find independent housing, and reclaim a full life in the community. These services allow people to actually recover and become productive citizens.

SB 1145 impacts the possibility of recovery in several ways. First, by changing "shall" to "may," the state "may" dismantle a public behavioral-health system built over decades. This cuts not only services, but thousands of jobs. Second, by denying services to tens of thousands of people, we ensure that instead of creating productive citizens, we create disability for life.

This picture is not just possible; this is what will happen unless this Senate action is stopped. People with mental illness are not lazy; they are not shirking their responsibility. For the most part, they do everything they can to overcome great difficulties and find a meaningful life, just like everyone else. But without services and supports, it's impossible.

The cost down the road is horrendous too, within a few months. Where will thousands of people go? To jail for crimes such as panhandling. Locked in a hospital, if we can find beds. Onto the streets.

We must do better. There will be many more Marcia Powells before this is all over, unless we consider other options for balancing the budget. There are reasonable alternatives to these drastic cuts.

We must support options that keep our state thriving - for everyone.

Ann Rider is director of Recovery Empowerment Network, a statewide coalition of people recovering from psychiatric disabilities.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2009/06/02/20090602rider02.html

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

Project UNSHACKLE is building a powerful community-based movement at the complex intersection of HIV and mass imprisonment.

Welcome to Project UNSHACKLE!
Confronting HIV and Mass Imprisonment
Project UNSHACKLE is building a powerful community-based movement at the complex intersection of HIV and mass imprisonment.

We are uniting people who are formerly imprisoned, HIV policy advocates, researchers, AIDS service providers, prison justice organizers, people with HIV and other community members, and organizers from allied movements.
Together we are working to address the ways that imprisonment makes our communities more vulnerable to HIV.
http://www.champnetwork.org/unshackle

--------------
Dear CHAMP NY and UNSHACKLE supporters nationwide,

This Friday, June 5th, there will be a public hearing to review two devastating proposals for cutting costs in New York City's jails...

LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!
Public Hearing on the Department of Corrections Request
to Reduce Days for Recreation and Visits in the City Jails
Friday, June 5th
9AM
Spector Hall
22 Reade Street, Manhattan

What are the proposed changes?

#1: Limit the Jail Visiting Schedule to four days per week, rather than the five days that is required under the current standards.

#2: Limit the Recreation Schedule to five days per week (Thursday - Tuesday), rather than meeting the current standard of seven days per week.

Why are these changes being proposed?

The Department of Corrections is trying to cut recreation and visiting days to save costs and balance its budget. We want the Department to explore other ways of balancing its budget that do not cut programming and services for people in prison and their loved ones.

Proposals like this are trickling down across the country, as prison budgets get tightened by cities and states in economic crisis. Our Project UNSHACKLE partners in Philadelphia recently fought a proposal to charge an admission fee for everyone entering the Philadelphia jails, and WON!

Community response is just as critical now in New York City! We need to speak out about the devastating impact these changes would have on people inside the jails, and on the family members and friends who support them.

What can you do about it?

The Board of Corrections has to approve any changes to the minimum standards in the New York City jails. That's why they're holding this public hearing on June 5th at Specter Hall, 22 Reade Street, Manhattan.

This hearing is your chance to tell the Board what you think of the proposals! When you arrive, there will be a sign-up sheet if you wish to provide testimony. Generally, people are called to testify in the order in which they signed up. Be prepared to explain (briefly, since usually people are given a very limited time to speak) how these proposed changes will compromise the well-being of people in prison and their families.
For more information about the hearing and the proposals to cut visiting and recreation days, please email Matthew Schwartz.

If you don't live in New York?

Look into what changes and cuts are being proposed for your local jails and prisons. Project UNSHACKLE can help you with messaging and communications to TAKE ACTION in your area!

------
Laura McTighe
Director of Project UNSHACKLE
Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP)

----

Posted by lois at 07:38 PM | Comments (0)

New Poll Shows the Public Largely in Favor of Alternatives to Prison and Jail as a Response to Nonserious Offenses

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- The National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD)
Oakland, CA, June 2, 2009
New Poll Shows the Public Largely in Favor of Alternatives to Prison and Jail as a Response to Nonserious Offenses

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) has just released the results of a public opinion poll on attitudes toward nonserious, nonviolent, nonsexual crime and the appropriate sanctions in such cases. Across most demographic groups, the public feels that alternatives to prison and jail benefit society rather than hurt it.

Some of the key poll results are as follows:

* Eight in ten (77%) adults believe the most appropriate sentence for nonviolent, nonserious offenders is supervised probation, restitution, community service, and/or rehabilitative services; if an offender fails in these alternatives, then prison or jail may be appropriate.
* Over three-quarters (77%) believe alternatives to incarceration do not decrease public safety.
* More than half (55%) believe alternatives to prison or jail decrease costs to state and local governments.
* US adults more often think alternatives to incarceration are more effective than prison or jail time at reducing recidivism (45% vs. 38%).
* Respondents cited a variety of reasons they believe justify sending fewer people to prison or jail, including expense, overcrowding (danger to guards, danger to inmates), the ability of proven alternatives to reduce crime, and the fairness of the punishment relative to the crime.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International in April, 2009. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percentage points.

This report is available on NCCD’s website at: http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/pubs/2009_focus_nonserious_offenders.pdf

Posted by lois at 07:16 PM | Comments (0)

Despite Bleak Economy, Crime Numbers Take Positive Turn

Despite Bleak Economy, Crime Numbers Take Positive Turn
By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: June 1, 2009- NY Times

Most types of crime declined nationally last year, despite the economic downturn, according to new data released by the Department of Justice on Monday.

The data assuaged fears that job losses, foreclosures and reduced social services would lead to increased crime, crime statistics experts said.

Preliminary statistics from the Uniform Crime Report, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual compilation of crime reports from local and state police agencies, showed that murders declined by 4.4 percent in 2008, rapes declined 2.2 percent, robberies declined 1.1 percent and assaults dropped 3.2 percent.

Property crimes were also down over all. Burglaries increased 1.3 percent, but motor vehicle theft dropped by 13 percent and arson declined 3.9 percent.

“Everybody knows that because of our economic problems, crime must be skyrocketing — except that it’s not,” said David M. Kennedy, a crime trend expert at the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Historically — and our current experience on the ground around the country proves this — increases in crime are not inevitable when the economy goes sour.”

Crime experts said there was no historical correlation between tough economic times and crime in the United States. Rather, the big shifts in crime trends have more to do with policing strategies and the ebb and flow of illegal substances: alcohol in the prohibition area, heroin in the 1960s and 1970s, and crack cocaine in the 1980s and 1990s.

A marginal concern for some crime researchers, however, was a rise in violent crime in towns with populations under 10,000. Those places had a 5.5 percent increase in homicides, a 1.4 percent increase in rapes and a 3.9 percent increase in robberies.

The F.B.I. report did not specify the overall number of crimes in these areas, which generally have far fewer incidents than larger cities. Crimes in these areas had a minimal impact on national percentages.

“It’s hard to make a lot of sense about the numbers,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston. “Generally, smaller areas have low homicide rates, so a small increase could create a large percentage increase.”

Professor Fox said the economy rarely affected the national crime rate because many of the people who typically commit serious crimes were only tangentially connected to the greater economy.

“Serious criminal behavior is so intensely concentrated in pockets of the nation that the kids who are committing crimes are usually not part of the factory layoff, they’re not affected by the credit freeze or failing mortgages,” said Frank Zimring, a criminologist at University of California, Berkeley.

New policing technologies allow law enforcement agencies to learn about local crime trends in real time and to deploy resources to hot spots. And community efforts to cut down on crime with after-school programs and other social services probably have a bigger impact on crime than the economy in general, Professor Kennedy said.

But he also emphasized that interpreting national crime statistics demanded humility.

“Anybody who tells you they know exactly what’s going on here is lying,” he said.
GRAPH at this URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/us/02fbi.html?scp=1&sq=crime%20rates&st=cse

Posted by lois at 07:03 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Representative Gloria L. Fox’s statement regarding visit to Old Colony Correctional Center

Representative Gloria L. Fox’s statement regarding visit to Old Colony Correctional Center
By Herald staff | Monday, June 1, 2009 |
Saturday , May 30, 2009
REPRESENTATIVE GLORIA L. FOX

"Those who know my work in the communities I serve know that a critical part of my platform for entering public service was reform of the Commonwealths Corrections system. More Black and Latino brothers and sisters are incarcerated than go to college this should be a concern to us all. For over 20 years, I have been a leader in CORI reform efforts because the ability of those released to get jobs and earn a livable wage for themselves and their families is essential in reducing recidivism. Since there has been no substantial CORI reform, we are left with a revolving door system and our communities have had to disproportionately bear the negative impacts of joblessness and the lack of services for the newly released who want to turn their lives around.

When a group of inmates decided to tackle the violence in our community by putting together a video titled Voices From Behind the Wall, which is a document style video against the senseless street violence too many of our teens are engaged in, I was very supportive of this effort. Through the community group producing this video, I learned that some of the inmates involved in the project had some serious issues internally with a few corrections officers. Because of my history of fighting prison injustices, I was asked by the group as an elected official to hear their grievances directly. My visit to the facility was to listen at length to the issues raised by the inmates. I was totally unaware that there was an alleged relationship between Ms. Marinova who was a member of the Voices From Behind the Wall production team, and my transportation to the facility that day. I refuse to have anyone cast me as a perpetrator of any kind for doing my duty as a public servant. With that said, there really isn’t anything else to this story and I will not comment any further.

Yours in community service,

Representative Gloria L. Fox
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1176139

Posted by lois at 06:56 PM | Comments (0)

Jerry Rosenberg, Jailhouse Lawyer, Dies at 72

Jerry Rosenberg, Jailhouse Lawyer, Dies at 72

By SEWELL CHAN
Published: June 1, 2009

Jerry Rosenberg, who was spared the death penalty for the 1962 murders of two New York City police detectives, and who became a pioneering jailhouse lawyer and a legal adviser for the leaders of the Attica prison uprising in 1971, died on Monday at the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, N.Y. He was 72, and the state’s longest-serving inmate at his death.

Mr. Rosenberg, who was admitted to the prison’s medical unit in 2000, died of natural causes, according to a spokesman for the State Department of Correctional Services, who said he could not provide further details because of privacy rules.

“Of all the jailhouse lawyers, he was the greatest and the best known,” said Ronald L. Kuby, the defense lawyer, whose former law partner, William M. Kunstler, worked closely with Mr. Rosenberg during the Attica uprising. “He came of age in prison before there was widespread access to counsel for post-conviction proceedings.”

Mr. Rosenberg had already served nearly four years in prison for a robbery conviction in Queens when he was arrested and charged with killing two off-duty police detectives, Luke J. Fallon and John P. Finnegan, in a botched robbery of the Boro Park Tobacco Company in Brooklyn on May 18, 1962. It was the first double homicide of New York City police officers in 35 years, and about 1,000 officers were assigned to the manhunt. Mr. Rosenberg turned himself in, on his 25th birthday, at the offices of The Daily News, then on East 42nd Street.

Mr. Rosenberg and an accomplice, Anthony Portelli, were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. In 1965, the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, upheld the convictions but condemned the Police Department for severely beating a witness who testified at the trial. Later that year, Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller commuted the death sentences, saying that they could not have been imposed under a new law that virtually abolished capital punishment in the state.

Mr. Rosenberg began his prison sentence on Feb. 19, 1963. Another man, James Moore, who began serving a sentence for murder on July 12 of that year, is now the state’s longest-serving inmate, officials said.

Mr. Rosenberg, who always maintained he was not guilty of the killings, studied law through correspondence courses; he received a bachelor’s degree in 1967 from the Blackstone School of Law in Chicago.

Nicknamed Jerry the Jew — “he developed that moniker at a time when it was not politically incorrect,” Mr. Kuby said — Mr. Rosenberg soon became a well-known advocate for fellow inmates. (There is no record that he was ever admitted to the bar.)

During the Attica uprising in September 1971, which resulted in 43 deaths, Mr. Rosenberg was the chief legal adviser for the uprising’s leaders. After the State Police retook the prison, Mr. Rosenberg was transferred to Sing Sing, in Ossining.

Over the years, in various prisons, Mr. Rosenberg worked as a porter and as a substance abuse counselor. From 1996 to 1999, he was a paralegal assistant in the law library at Wende, where he had been held since 1991.

Jerome Rosenberg was born on May 23, 1937. Prison officials said that Mr. Rosenberg had at least two brothers, a wife and a son, but that they were not permitted to identify them and did not know whether any of them was still living. At the time of his arrest in 1962, Mr. Rosenberg was reported to have had a young daughter by a former wife.

Mr. Rosenberg was the subject of a biography by Stephen Bello, “Doing Life: The Extraordinary Saga of America’s Greatest Jailhouse Lawyer,” published by St. Martin’s Press in 1982 and later made into a television movie, starring Tony Danza, in 1986.

In the biography, Mr. Rosenberg is quoted saying that anyone who was to become a lawyer ought to “do some time in jail.”
A version of this article appeared in print on June 2, 2009, on page B19

Posted by lois at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2009

AZ: Acting Director of AZ DOC attends Marcia Powell's Memorial Service---organizing continues

Charles Ryan Attends Marcia Powell's Memorial Service, Says He Didn't Know Powell Had Guardian
By Stephen Lemons in Feathered Bastard
Saturday, May. 30 2009 @ 3:05PM

About 200 people packed the pews at Encanto Community Church today at noon for a memorial service for Marcia Powell, the 48-year-old inmate at Goodyear's Perryville Prison who died early the morning of May 20. This was following her confinement the day before in an outdoor cage where she endured temperatures of more than 107 degrees for at least four hours before collapsing.

The service was presided over by Rev. Liana Rowe, and featured prayers, hymns, and speakers such as criminal defense advocate Jameson Johnson and Middle Ground Prison Reform's Donna Hamm. Powell's body is still being held by the Medical Examiner pending an investigation into next of kin by Powell's court-appointed guardian, the Maricopa County Public Fiduciary. Instead of a casket, there were two photos of Powell on the dais next to a tall lit candle.

The most notable attendee was Arizona Department of Corrections' Interim Director Charles Ryan, whom I questioned outside the church following the service. It's Ryan who made the decision to discontinue Powell's life support after she had been transported to West Valley Hospital.

Friday, the ADC announced that the use of outside enclosures like the one Powell was caged in would be suspended until they were retrofitted with shade and a water supply. Ryan went even further today when asked about the possibility of doing away with the cages altogether.

"After conferring [yesterday] with the Governor's office and the Governor," said Ryan. "We have decided we are going to discontinue using the holding enclosures, in spite of consideration for retrofitting with shade or water. We will no longer use them."

Ryan said Powell was being transferred to an observation cell when she was left in the outside cage. In the future, Ryan said such transfers will be taken to a holding area inside a building that's climate controlled, so that the weather is no longer an issue.

Regarding Ryan's decision to pull the plug on Powell while she was at West Valley Hospital on life support, Ryan said he did so on the advice of Powell's doctors, who told him it would be inhumane to do otherwise. He also indicated that at the time he made the decision, he was unaware that Powell had a guardian.

"The search of the records at the department, at the institution file, and the electronic record did not reveal any guardians," claimed Ryan. "There was no legal guardian known to the department at the time the decision was made.

"The only person who was listed was a friend, and the attempt to find the friend led to a disconnected telephone number and to an address that was not occupied."

But why pull the plug on Powell just hours after she had been admitted, when another day or so and a little more digging might have revealed the fiduciary's guardianship?

"The attending physician in the emergency room," explained Ryan, "in consultation with the department's doctors, clearly indicated that there was no possibility that life could be sustained, that she was terminal. And the doctor reiterated several times it was inhumane to continue to sustain her life on life support."

During the services for Powell, Donna Hamm restated her call for an independent investigation into Powell's death, and said she was calling on the U.S. Justice Department to look into it. However, Ryan said he retained confidence in ADC's criminal investigations unit to look into the matter, though that unit ultimately reports to him.

"There has been an autopsy completed," said Ryan. "The results of the toxicology report will not be known, I think, for about six weeks...The investigation itself...will be completed before then. It is my intention once that...portion of the investigation is completed, I intend to have it reviewed for completeness and objectivity by another agency, and very likely that would be or start with the Department of Public Safety."

I also asked Ryan why the department switched out photos of Powell on its Web site, to leave a more flattering image of Powell online. He said the reason was to show "another picture of her" while she was incarcerated. That's a no-brainer of course. Why the department felt the need to show another photo of Powell is a question Ryan successfully tiptoed around.

In addition, Ryan conceded that he was the "Interim Director" of ADC, not its confirmed "Director," as he's mentioned as being on the ADC Web site. He ascribed the mislabeling to an "oversight."

I have to give Ryan points for attending the service to begin with and for allowing me to interview him. However, I still find troubling his statement that there was no record of Powell's guardianship in the ADC's files. I was able to obtain a record of Powell's guardianship simply by consulting the clerk of superior court's records.

Also, I think that if Powell had been kept alive a little longer, it would not have taken much digging to find paperwork related to the guardian's appointment. Indeed, at one point in the court record, the court is officially advised by Powell's guardian that she has a new address; i.e., Perryville Prison. Isn't the ADC supposed to have access to all such court records related to an inmate?

Presumably, it is the guardian that had the legal authority to pull Powell's plug (assuming next of kin could not be located), not Ryan. And Ryan's department should have known there was a guardian. How ADC didn't know, when a review of the clerk of court's records reveals the existence of a guardianship for Powell, requires some explanation.

More on the service itself in next week's Bird column. I will say this, as sad as Powell's death was, I find it heartening that many in Phoenix do care about the demise of this woman, one of society's forgotten. And if that concern persists, perhaps a repeat of this incident will be less likely in the future.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2009/05/charles_ryan_attends_marcia_po.php.

From an anonymous blog post...
AddThis
Inmate killed in punishment cage in 103-107 F No Shade
Perryville Womens Unit; Goodyear, AZ
This inmate Marcia Powell ADC # 109416 who was a having problems with her paranoid schizophrenia on May 19, 2009 was being punished by the Deputy Warden; for not going to work. Was put in a cage with a cement slab, no shade; in 103-107 Degree heat. This prison has had many problems with women dying. They have had media out there and has told the media they do not use the cage that has been seen. But, the local media does not report their news correctly in Phoenix, AZ. And they apparently did not know about the 2nd CAGE. It is out of public view. The families of these women in this prison will not speak out. They are afraid for their family memebers in there. And if they speak out then they are stop for 90 days. And if they appeal the decision then they are punished for another 90 days. And if you keep trying then you can be stopped altogeather. Now our Government and President are hollering about GITMO PRISONERS being treated bad. Would they allow the GITMO PRISONERS to be treated like that. Sitting in the sun for 4 hours to end up DEAD. Because, that is what happened to this woman. And she was a mother of 2 children. But, you don't hear about this in the NATIONAL NEWS OR IN CONGRESS. And the former Governor of Arizona Janet Polatano; she knew how the inmates get treated in Arizona. She did not want to do anything to hurt her politico career. Ms. Polatano is only looking out for herself and her politico ambissions.
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/alert/?alertid=13409481&content_dir=ua_congressorg

Posted by lois at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)

NC: Small prison stubbornly survives through prison labor and poltical clout

Small prison stubbornly survives
The governor wants to close the 94-inmate facility to save money; it just won't go away.
May 31, 2009
BY ROB CHRISTENSEN AND BENJAMIN NIOLET, Staff Writers
RALEIGH - Union Correctional Center in Monroe is a relic from the 1930s prison road gangs that leaders in Raleigh keep trying to close.
Gov. Beverly Perdue wants to shut it down. So does the state Department of Correction. So do the efficiency experts, who say the prison is too small and antiquated to be cost-effective.

But the Union Correctional Center has survived the budget knife through a combination of insider political connections, local businesses and governments benefiting from cheap inmate labor, and preachers trying to save souls.

In the process, the Union Correctional Center serves another purpose. It is an example of how complicated and difficult it can be to cut government spending, even as the state faces a budget deficit of epic proportions.

North Carolina is facing a shortfall of as much as $4 billion, nearly 20 percent of the state's current $21.4 billion budget, in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

That deficit has grown since Perdue and the state Senate put together their budget proposals earlier this year, and the state House is now wrestling with where and how to cut spending.

But it won't be easy, as evidenced by the Union Correctional Center, a state lab that studies insects, a worker training program at the state Department of Labor and a program that monitors the Neuse River in Eastern North Carolina.

Perdue, a Democrat, proposed cutting all of those when she made her budget recommendations to the legislature, which must approve a balanced budget for North Carolina. They amounted to a small percentage of the budget deficit, but the Democrats who control the Senate declined to go along. They did not include Perdue's cuts when they approved a budget and sent it to the House.

Ran Coble, a veteran budget watcher, said it can be difficult to kill state programs, because they often have powerful political patrons, would lead to the loss of jobs or because they have well-connected policy advocates.

"Every legislator tends to protect programs in his or her own district," said Coble, executive director of the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research, a nonpartisan Raleigh think tank.

Union Correctional Center has had a bull's eye on its back since at least 1993, when an efficiency study recommended its closure. The report said North Carolina had too many small prisons -- four to six times the number of most states. Most of the prisons cited in that report have since been closed.

Perdue recommended that Union and two other small, antiquated prisons, in Haywood and Gates counties, be closed to save $3.4 million. Closing the Union County prison, which houses 94 inmates, would save $1.6 million, according to the Department of Correction.

Even though the state is facing a shortage of prison beds, state officials say inmates from the three prisons could be moved to larger, more efficient prisons where cells can house two inmates instead of one.

Efforts to close prisons, particularly in rural areas, provoke cries about jobs that will be lost. That's not the case in Union County, where only 36 people work at the prison, located in a fast-growing Charlotte suburb.

Prison labor

But the prison is popular in the business community and with local governments because it provides cheap labor. For the past decade, Union Correctional Center has hosted a work release program, where inmates are transferred in to spend the final two years of their sentences learning a trade.

Of the 94 inmates at Union Correctional Center, 65 are in the work release program with private companies, learning to become welders, electricians or other trades. Another eight inmates work for the towns of Monroe and Indian Trail, helping clean parks, mowing, picking up trash and cleaning up after storms.

More than 70 companies in Union County have used inmates during the past decade, said Ron Tarlton, the prison's superintendent. Currently, inmates are working for such companies as chicken processor Pilgrim's Pride, Showmars Restaurant, Hinson Electric, McCarter Electric, Weaver Automobile and United Process Mechanical Piping.

In some instances, companies can use the state prison system like a job placement agency. They order someone with specific skills -- such as a welder -- and a search will be made of the entire prison system. If found, the welder will be transferred to the Union Correctional Center, Tarlton said.

The inmates, who are paid slightly above minimum wage, typically work for a company for two years. The inmates are required to pay the prison $18 a day for their upkeep, pay for transportation costs to the job and, where appropriate, pay restitution. They can send any money that's left to help support their families or spend it in the prison canteen.

"The employers are highly impressed with the program," said Tarlton, who has worked at the prison for 28 years.

"The inmates are dependable and show up for work every day. These guys would rather be out on the job working than behind the fences."

The Union Correctional Center also has a powerful political patron in former state Sen. Aaron Plyler, a road contractor from Monroe. Plyler was one of the leading Democratic barons of the Senate until he retired in 2002.

Although out of office for the past seven years, Plyler, a popular, avuncular figure, mentored and did favors for many of the senators now in leadership positions. As a former appropriations chairman, Plyler knows how to work the process.

And Plyler, who has used inmates to work at his companies, thought it would be a mistake to close the prison.

"I think it would be an unusual move to close it when these people are out there making money for themselves and helping the area," Plyler said. "The city of Monroe has saved hundreds of thousands..."

So Plyler fired off letters to 20 legislative leaders, arguing that the work release program at Union Correctional Center was effective. He got the attention of the decision-makers in Raleigh.

"I don't have as much effect as I had at one time," Plyler, 82, said in a recent interview. "But I have a lot of friends."

Saving souls

For some state leaders, the motivation to keep the prison open had nothing to do with money. It was about an effort to save the souls inside the prison.

The Union County prison has been adopted by many area churches, which have an extensive prison ministry to help inmates redirect their lives.

The Rev. Al Lewis Jr., executive director of the Safer Communities Ministries, said he has sent "tons of information" to lawmakers. He said that of the 111 inmates who have gone through the program during the past three years, 90 are still out of prison.

"We are building a model that we think could go statewide," Lewis said.

As a result of the involvement of the churches, the prison has found champions among Republican lawmakers who normally might be in favor of cutting government.

State Sen. Eddie Goodall, an outspoken GOP conservative who represents Union County, is a fan of the outreach program. With the prison system over capacity, Goodall says there needs to be a good reason for closing the Union County unit.

"This ministry is a blessing to so many," Goodall wrote on the prison ministry's Web site. "God is using Al Lewis and his dedicated support team to bring new life to men who are willing to embrace the Word while learning the skills necessary to succeed outside the prison walls."

Stopped cold

Finally, Perdue's proposal to cut Union ran into a legislative iceberg in the form of Democratic Sen. John Snow, a retired district court judge from Murphy who is co-chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the prison budget.

Snow's mountain district includes Haywood County Correctional Center, one of the three prisons the governor wants to close. It is the only state prison west of Asheville. Local officials said closing the Haywood unit would deprive the western mountains of inmate work crews for roads, schools and local governments in several counties.

The Haywood County commissioners passed a resolution saying that it would cost the county $80,227, at minimum wage, to replace the 12,248 man-hours inmate work crews provide.

"Who's going to keep the highways clean if Haywood Correctional Center closes?" the commissioners asked in the resolution.

So Snow's committee put the money back in the budget for the three prisons that Perdue wanted to cut. The full Senate subsequently approved the committee's action.

It happened so fast that Democratic Sen. Ed Jones, the former mayor of Enfield, didn't know what was happening. Jones, whose district includes the Gates County Correctional Center, had been working with community leaders on plans to convert the prison into a community center and a disaster center.

He was whipsawed by the back-and-forth over the prisons.

"It's in, it's out, it's in, it's out," said Jones, a retired highway trooper.

The budget is now before the House, where Democratic Rep. Pryor Gibson, chairman of the House Finance Committee, represents the district where the Union County prison is located.

Gibson said the prison is some of the "lowest hanging fruit," making it a likely target for budget cutters. But he pledged to use all his power to save it.

"Aaron Plyler and I worked together for years to make sure it got back in [the budget]," Gibson said. "I'm tickled to death that the Senate put it back in."
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