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July 31, 2009

Rhode Island: Rhode Island Study Shows Probation/Parolee Electoral Participation

Rhode Island: Rhode Island Study Shows Probation/Parolee Electoral Participation

A new analysis released by the Family Life Center of Rhode Island demonstrates a high level of interest in the electoral process by persons on probation or parole. Following a 2006 ballot change in the state law, 6,330 probationers and parolees - representing more than a third of the 17,600 state total - registered to vote during the 2008 election cycle. Of these, 3,001 voted during that time.

The Family Life Center has since initiated a broad outreach campaign to inform the community of the reform and to register people with felony convictions. In addition, the Department of Corrections now acts as a voter registration agency and offers all inmates the opportunity to register following their discharge. The results of the outreach campaign in Rhode Island demonstrate that substantial numbers of people who have come through the criminal justice system have an interest in becoming involved in the electoral process.
More info here....http://www.ri-familylifecenter.org/

Posted by lois at 05:21 PM | Comments (0)

The Democracy Restoration Act of 2009

The Democracy Restoration Act of 2009 was introduced last week, a measure that would restore voting rights to millions of Americans with felony convictions. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution Chairman Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced the bills in both chambers of Congress. An estimated 5.3 million citizens cannot vote as a result of felony convictions, and nearly 4 million of those individuals are living and working in their communities. The Democracy Restoration Act of 2009 would establish a uniform standard restoring voting rights in federal elections to anyone who is not incarcerated.

Posted by lois at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)

New law allows Oklahoma private prisons to import maximum-security inmates from other states

New law allows Oklahoma private prisons to import maximum-security inmates from other states
By Associated Press
July 29, 2009
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Private prisons in Oklahoma soon could be housing maximum security inmates from other states under a new law that was approved in the waning days of the 2009 legislative session.

The language inserted in an omnibus corrections bill changes state policy that previously allowed only minimum and medium security from other states to be housed in state prisons.

House author Randy Terrill says several safeguards were put in place, including a policy that allows the Oklahoma Department of Corrections to review and approve inmates and the facilities where they will be housed.

But Judith Greene, director of the criminal justice research institute Justice Strategies, says such a policy change is a "recipe for disaster."

http://www.kfsm.com/news/sns-ap-ok--importinginmates,0,6212297.story

Posted by lois at 04:37 PM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2009

CA: Cuts for schools and health care but money for a new death row

Governor approves new San Quentin Death Row
Bob Egelko, SF Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, July 30, 2009

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has given the go-ahead for construction of a new Death Row at San Quentin State Prison by vetoing legislative restrictions, an action that a Marin County lawmaker called both unwise and illegal.

While announcing $489 million in cuts Tuesday from the state's 2009-10 budget, Schwarzenegger said he was saving additional, unspecified amounts by rejecting language added to the budget that would have delayed the Death Row project.

Legislators approved $356 million last year for a 768-cell housing unit for condemned prisoners, tentatively scheduled to open in late 2011. It would replace a section of the 150-year-old prison that now holds nearly 670 inmates, the nation's largest Death Row.

In a critical June 2008 report, the state auditor's office predicted a $39 million cost overrun and questioned the state's plans to place two inmates in each cell.

California double-cells inmates in some lower-security prisons but hasn't done so on Death Row. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation plans to double-cell as many as two-thirds of the prisoners in the new San Quentin section.

Without double-celling, the auditor's report said, the new Death Row will be filled to capacity in 2014. But the report said double-celling raises concerns of safety and privacy, and that a survey found that only one other state, Oklahoma, double-cells condemned prisoners.

The budget that legislators sent to Schwarzenegger would have prohibited construction of the new Death Row until the state determined, in a court ruling or a formal opinion from the attorney general, that it would be allowed to double-cell Death Row inmates.
Another budget provision would have blocked the project until the state resolved a lawsuit over prison overcrowding. The suit is pending before a panel of three federal judges in San Francisco, who have ruled that overcrowding is the chief cause of poor health care in state prisons.

The judges have tentatively ordered the release of as many as 58,000 inmates to local custody, treatment programs or parole.
Schwarzenegger has said he would appeal any such ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In Tuesday's veto message, the Republican governor said removing restrictions on building the new Death Row is within his constitutional authority to cut state spending.
"Having to delay the construction start to comply with these conditions will cause unnecessary increased costs," Schwarzenegger said.
Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, an opponent of the Death Row project, said the veto guarantees a lawsuit that the state is likely to lose.

Huffman co-sponsored the budget restrictions with state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. He said the governor's line-item veto power, which allows him to reduce appropriations in spending bills, doesn't authorize removing legislative restrictions on state projects.
Huffman also predicted courts would reject any plan to double-cell Death Row prisoners.

"The Department of Corrections and the governor apparently want to roll the dice," Huffman said. "I think they've set themselves up for another round of losing litigation."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/30/BAD2190L4J.DTL
This article appeared on page D - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Posted by lois at 09:53 AM | Comments (0)

Prisons ban prisoners from having pen pal ads

Prisons ban inmates from having pen pal ads

By JESSICA GRESKO (AP) July 29, 2009

MIAMI — In her online profile, Paula Jones says she is 42, "nonjudgmental" and likes fishing, gardening and cuddling. There's a catch, though. Jones' picture shows her in her blue Florida prison uniform. She won't be out until at least 2010.

Her listing is posted on a Web site called WriteAPrisoner.com. She's looking for a pen pal.

"If you're looking for someone genuine and true, I'm looking for you," her profile says. "I'm just a stamp away."

By posting her profile, however, Jones is breaking a rule. Florida officials have banned inmates from having the Match.com-style listings, saying prisoners just create problems for their outside-the-pen pals.

Other states — Missouri, Montana, Indiana and Pennsylvania — have similar restrictions. Now lawsuits in Florida and elsewhere say the bans are unfair and violate First Amendment rights.

"The public knows when they're writing to these people that they're prisoners," said Randall Berg Jr., a lawyer representing two pen pal groups — including Florida-based WriteAPrisoner.com — that have sued in the state. "Nobody is being duped here."

WriteAPrisoner.com president and owner Adam Lovell says the bulk of the people who use his site to write to inmates are from religious groups, military people stationed overseas and others affected by the prison. Fraud isn't as widespread as Florida corrections officials suggest, he said.

Jones, who is serving time in a women's prison north of Orlando, wrote in a letter to The Associated Press that she's not a danger to potential pen pals. She says she wants someone to write to for emotional support and to be less lonely.

"Not everyone has (ulterior) motives, lies or solicits," wrote Jones, who pleaded guilty to cocaine possession with the intent to sell. "Some of us ... even if it's very few are truly genuine and hope to meet someone good in our life."

But the Florida Department of Corrections doesn't want to take any chances. In 2003, the department changed its policy to prohibit inmates from advertising for pen pals or getting mail from pen pal groups. Inmates who continue to advertise can have privileges such as visitation or phone calls revoked.

The department made the change after receiving complaints from people who had been taken advantage of and from victims and their families who saw prisoners' ads, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger.

"We're doing it to protect the public," Plessinger said. "Inmates can have pen pals — they just can't solicit for pen pals."

Other states make similar arguments and have now drawn similar lawsuits.

In Indiana, the American Civil Liberties Union is representing prisoners protesting the state's policy, which also prevents inmates from advertising on Web sites or receiving mail from pen pal organizations.

The ACLU also says it is working on a lawsuit over Missouri's policy and investigating the policy in Montana, where inmates may not receive mail from people who identify themselves as a pen pal.

For now, some Florida inmates are ignoring the ban and listing themselves anyway. The inmates communicate with the sites by sending letters in the mail, and sometimes family members pay the fees for the sites, about $40 a year for WriteAprisoner.com and other sites.

On WriteAprisoner.com, Florida members range from a 41-year-old who tells potential pals she's a 36DD to a 28-year-old who says he has had a "bumpy lifestyle" and is on death row for a crime he didn't commit.

Then there's a man spending life in prison for first-degree murder who has found another way around the ban.

"Please note that the Florida prison system is now locking us up in confinement for placing ads for pen pals," he writes on his WriteAPrisoner.com page. "So if you respond to this ad please don't mention the profile."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5icLlTU8W7B9-ukRvnzaJ9UomtgqgD99O2HH01

Posted by lois at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2009

NY Times Editorial: 12 and in Prison

Editorial
12 and in Prison
Published: July 27, 2009- NY Times

The Supreme Court sent an important message when it ruled in Roper v. Simmons in 2005 that children under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed were not eligible for the death penalty. Justice Anthony Kennedy drew on compassion, common sense and the science of the youthful brain when he wrote that it was morally wrong to equate the offenses of emotionally undeveloped adolescents with the offenses of fully formed adults.

The states have followed this logic in death penalty cases. But they have continued to mete out barbaric treatment — including life sentences — to children whose cases should rightly be handled through the juvenile courts.

Congress can help to correct these practices by amending the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, which is up for Congressional reauthorization this year. To get a share of delinquency prevention money, the law requires the states and localities to meet minimum federal protections for youths in the justice system. These protections are intended to keep as many youths as possible out of adult jails and prisons, and to segregate those that are sent to those places from the adult criminal population.

The case for tougher legislative action is laid out in an alarming new study of children 13 and under in the adult criminal justice system, the lead author of which is the juvenile justice scholar, Michele Deitch, of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. According to the study, every state allows juveniles to be tried as adults, and more than 20 states permit preadolescent children as young as 7 to be tried in adult courts.

This is terrible public policy. Children who are convicted and sentenced as adults are much more likely to become violent offenders — and to return to an adult jail later on — than children tried in the juvenile justice system.

Despite these well-known risks, policy makers across the country do not have reliable data on just how many children are being shunted into the adult system by state statutes or prosecutors, who have the discretion to file cases in the adult courts.

But there is reasonably reliable data showing juvenile court judges send about 80 children ages 13 and under into the adult courts each year. These statistics explode the myth that those children have committed especially heinous acts.

The data suggest, for example, that children 13 and under who commit crimes like burglary and theft are just as likely to be sent to adult courts as children who commit serious acts of violence against people. As has been shown in previous studies, minority defendants are more likely to get adult treatment than their white counterparts who commit comparable offenses.

The study’s authors rightly call on lawmakers to enact laws that discourage harsh sentencing for preadolescent children and that enable them to be transferred back into the juvenile system. Beyond that, Congress should amend the juvenile justice act to require the states to simply end these inhumane practices to be eligible for federal juvenile justice funds.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 28, 2009, on page A24 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/opinion/28tue1.html?_r=1&hpw

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

MA: Lawmakers say it's unlikely mental health cuts a factor in prison suicide of one woman and the attempted suicide of two others

Lawmakers say it's unlikely mental health cuts a factor in prison suicide
By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Jul 28, 2009
FRAMINGHAM —

Area lawmakers who visited MCI-Framingham after an inmate's suicide said yesterday that mental health cuts did not appear to have played a role but that more prison programs are needed to develop useful skills and give hope.

"There is very little opportunity and very little for them to look forward to after get ting out of there," said state Rep. Carolyn Dykema.

Staff and administrators, she said, are doing the best they can with limited resources.

Dykema, D-Holliston, and other legislators commended staff who cut down and saved two other women who attempted to hang themselves on July 19. A third inmate, Christina Morando, 22, of Swampscott could not be revived.

"Clearly the corrections officers there are committed to their jobs and they really did an exceptional job responding to these emergencies," said state Rep. Pam Richardson, D-Framingham.

Following Morando's death, prison reform advocates said budget cuts had left the state's overcrowded prisons with too few mental health clinicians.

In Framingham, two mental health staff and two vacant spots were cut. That left 2 full-time psychiatrists, a part-time psychiatrist and roughly 30 mental health professionals for 593 inmates, at least 60 percent of whom have open mental health cases.

But the legislators said the cuts left core services intact and had not seemed to contribute to the suicide attempts of the three inmates, all of whom had open mental health cases but were deemed fit to live in the general population and not in a special unit.

"There hadn't been any indication from what they could tell that this was in process, so they were surprised," said Newton Rep. Kay Khan, a Democrat who said earlier that suicides sometimes happen despite quality prison care. "From what they told us, they seem to be providing quite a bit of service."

Khan, the head of the Task Force on Women in Prison for the Legislature's female caucus, had been scheduled to join Dykema, Richardson, Rep. Danielle Gregoire, D-Marlborough, and Ellen Story, D-Amherst, for a visit to MCI-Framingham the day after Morando's death.

While Khan agreed to postpone the trip, she invoked the group's legislative right to visit the prison the following Thursday, meeting with a top official from the Executive Office of Public Safety, the Department of Corrections head, the facility superintendent and prison health staff.

While the "more mental health professionals you have, the better," Khan said, the staff seemed to be keeping up with its caseload.

Khan acknowledged, however, that the closing of state hospitals for the mentally ill had led to incarcerations and called for programs to treat substance abuse and mental health problems in other settings, such as Framingham's jail diversion program.

Dykema and Richardson said MCI-Framingham also needs more programs to help inmates develop useful skills, preparing them to return to society and giving them hope for a better life. Like Khan, though, they also noted the state's strained finances.

"As with everything else these days, it boils down to resources," Dykema said.

While money is tight, the legislators commended prison officials for their interest in creating new programs.

After Morando's death, a Department of Correction spokeswoman said the agency had implemented most of the recommendations from a report following an earlier spate of suicides but still needed money to create safer cells for suicidal inmates and transitional spaces for those coming off mental health watches.

Khan said she and her fellow legislators plan to return to the prison this fall for a follow-up.

"We will certainly continue to keep on this," she said. "I think it's something that has to be watched carefully."
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x1202627432/Lawmakers-say-its-unlikely-mental-health-cuts-a-factor-in-prison-suicide

Posted by lois at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2009

VA: Restoring the Rights of Persons with Felony Conviction. History and Restoration Procedures from RIHD

Restoring the Rights of Persons with Felony Conviction
In 2008, we Americans headed to the polls in record numbers to vote for our president. Nationally, this included many first-time voters with prior felony convictions.

On Nov. 3, 2009, Virginians will head to the polls to vote for governor and many statewide legislators. How far has Virginia come in restoring the rights of persons with felony convictions to enable them to vote this year?

Will you be able to vote and make a difference come November? Will a a record number of Virginians with a prior felony participate in the process, or will they continue to be denied and disenfranchised?

Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, proclaims that, prior to the Civil War, African-Americans were almost totally disenfranchised. Even after enactment of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees the right to vote, many states continued to use various methods to prevent African-Americans from voting, including literacy tests, poll taxes, the disenfranchisement of former inmates, intimidation, threats and even violence!

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a new beginning for African-American citizens. For the first time, the federal government required states to comply with the 15th Amendment. However, lifetime disenfranchisement of former felons continues today in two states: Virginia and Kentucky!

According to the Drug Policy Alliance, “The United States is the only democracy in which some people who have served their sentences can still lose their right to vote. Approximately 4.7 million people in the U.S. cannot vote because of a felony conviction.”

Of these 4.7 million people, the Commonwealth of Virginia accounts for 350,000. These convicted felons, most of whom were convicted of nonviolent offenses, are productive citizens, assets to society, are in our communities, have paid their debts to society, earned a second chance in almost all aspects of their life, yet remain disenfranchised for life. Virginians you should be outraged!

Currently in Virginia, all persons convicted of a felony, regardless if the felony was a nonviolent or violent offense and received five, 10, 20 or even 40 years ago, must apply through a lengthy process directly to the governor, who has the sole discretion whether to restore their rights. If the application is denied, the applicant must wait two years to reapply.

Many civil rights organizations and faith-based advocacy groups continue to work, both legislatively and through the governor, to remove barriers to voting in Virginia faced by people with felony convictions. During the 2009 General Assembly session, several bills were proposed for the automatic restoration of voting rights. Unfortunately, all “FAILED.”

Action Call by Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged (RIHD) and Prisoners and Families for Equal Rights and Justice (PAFERJ)

Contact your state legislators today in support of automatic restoration of civil rights for persons with a felony. Article One, Section Six of the Constitution of Virginia provides that “all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community, have the right to suffrage ….” Therefore, we ask that you contact the governor in support of doing away with the expensive bureaucracy of past administrations and increase the likelihood of successful reintegration for our returning neighbors by simply restoring the voting rights of felons upon their release from prison.

RIHD & PAFERJ provide filing assistance with the Restoration Voting and Civil Rights application every Tuesday and Thursday from 4-7 p.m (by appointment and walk-in) at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church; 1720 Mechanicsville Turnpike; Richmond, Virginia 23223 with pro-bono public notary on premise. Other organizations such as the Virginia Organizing Project, Re-entry Initiative of Lynchburg and others provide similar services, both in Richmond and throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Virginia Eligibility Requirements:

Non-violent/**Non-drug Felonies - Short From: Has it been 3 years since conviction, release, paid all fines and restitutions? If your felony convictions did not involve charges for violence or for drug manufacturing or distribution, you may fill out the short application for the restoration of your rights. **Simply "drug possession" is included in short form. To expedite application bring original or copy with government seal criminal record, receipt/proof of paid restitution & fines, parole release (applicable).

Violent / Drug Distribution Felonies - Long Form: Has it been 5 years since conviction, release, paid all fines and restitutions? If you have been convicted of a violent offense, a drug manufacturing or distribution offense, or an election law offense (voter fraud), you must use the longer form below to apply for restoration of rights. "Intent" drug manufacturing/distribution is considered a violent offense. Bring original or copies with government seal of criminal record, receipt/proof of paid restitution & fines, parole release. To expedite application process, no less than three(3) reference letters (e.g. employer, church, friends, community, volunteer work, etc. except family related by blood or marriage)

If you or anyone you know continues to be disenfranchised of their civil rights, need assistance in obtaining any of the required documents, and/or for service location in your area,
please contact us for assistance.

For additional information, schedule appointment, and how you can help, call or e-mail Lillie (Ms. K) Branch-Kennedy (RIHD) at (804) 562-2123; rihd23075@aol.com

www.rihd.org

Posted by lois at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)

Watch Ryan King on CSPAN discuss “No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America.”

Ryan King, The Sentencing Project, Policy Analyst-Saturday, July
25n on CSPAN. Mr. King talked about the Sentencing Project's new
study “No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America.”
According to the Sentencing Project, the study shows the
disproportionate amount of non-white inmates serving life sentences.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/07/25/HP/A/21354/Ryan+King+The+Sentencing+Project+Policy+Analyst.aspx

Posted by lois at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

Prisons Becoming Warehouses for the Old

Prisons Becoming Warehouses for the Old
By James Ridgeway
July 25, 2009
Prisons Becoming Warehouses for the Old
July 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment

AGING BEHIND BARS SERIES

I have written hefore about the aging population in American prisons and jails, due in large part to the draconian sentencing policies of the courts, federal, state, and local. As a result these places seem destined to become nursing homes surrounded by razor wire.

Angola prison in Louisiana, for instance, boasts that some 90 percent of its population will die there. The prison has managed to equip itself with a hospice, and trained inmates to attend to a convict’s last days. Burl Cain, the warden, is backed up by a phalanx of Christian fundamentalist preachers who freely roam the 18,000 acre former slave plantation recruiting inmates to be preachers. The clergy instruct prisoners their only way out is through redemption made possible by the acceptance of Jesus Christ. When an elderly inmate, knowing his end was near, sought to be win release so as to die in the so-called “free world,” the parole board refused. The procedure is to go to your death in the Christian way–from cell to hospice to a prison cemetery where your grave will be dug by the inmates who will mark your bruial with gospel hymns

The travesty at Angola is held up as a model for the nation and Cain celebrated by the media as a new corrections messiah. Elsewhere,old,sick people,piled into these living tombs by the courts, stand in line for hours to get an aspirin; arthritic old women are made to climb into upper bunk beds.Parapalegic men are denied canes, which are ruled to be weapons, and instead must crawl to the toilets.People are locked in solitary for years. Mentally ill convicts who act out in the general population are put into solitary because they howl and scream in public. Locked down, they go truly mad. Old sex offenders can be released into the hands of friends or family. but often noone wants them, so they are released to the county jail, reindicted, and sent back to prison.

The American public is up in arms about CIA jails in far away places. But it could care less about American prisons. Now a new report by the Sentencing Project in Washington adds to the growing body of information about prisons here at home. No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America contains, among other things, the first nationwide collection of life sentence data documenting race, ethnicity and gender, and reveals “overwhelming racial and ethnic disparities in the allocation of life sentences”: 66% of all persons sentenced to life are non-white, and 77% of juveniles serving life sentences are non-white.

The the report’s key findings:

140,610 individuals are serving life sentences, representing one of every 11 people (9.5%) in prison. Twenty-nine percent (41,095) of the individuals serving life sentences have no possibility of parole.

The number of individuals serving life without parole sentences increased by22% from 33,633 to 41,095 between 2003 and 2008. This is nearly four times the rate of growth of the parole-eligible life sentenced population.

In five states—Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York—at least 1 in 6 people in prison are serving a life sentence.

The highest proportion of life sentences relative to the prison population is in California, where 20% of the prison population is serving a life sentence, up from 18.1% in 2003. Among these 34,164 life sentences, 10.8% are life without parole.

Racial and ethnic minorities serve a disproportionate share of life sentences. Two-thirds of people with life sentences (66.4%) are nonwhite, reaching as high as 83.7% of the life sentenced population in the state of New York.

There are 6,807 juveniles serving life sentences; 1,755, or 25.8%, of whom are serving sentences of life without parole.

Seventy-seven percent of juveniles sentenced to life are youth of color.

There are 4,694 women and girls serving life sentences, 28.4% of females sentenced to life do not have the possibility of parole.

http://unsilentgeneration.com/2009/07/25/prisons-to-become-warehouses-for-the-old/

Posted by lois at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2009

House of Representatives on Ending the Syringe Exchange Federal Funding Ban

Good news and not such good news:
“One concern that we have is today’s vote left intact a provision in the bill that seeks to restrict federal funding to syringe exchange programs (SEPs) that operate at least 1,000 ft. away from day care centers, schools, universities, public pools, parks, playgrounds, video arcades or youth centers or an event sponsored by these organizations,” said Deputy Executive Director Ronald Johnson. “These restrictions cover everywhere; they will make it all but impossible for SEPs to receive federal funding in urban areas where they are perhaps most needed,” he said. He added, “We call on the Senate and House to remove these restrictions. "

WASHINGTON, July 24, 2009
From AIDS Action
AIDS Action Applauds the House of Representatives on Ending the Syringe Exchange Federal Funding Ban.
Historic Moment in HIV Prevention: AIDS Action Council applauds Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, the members of the Labor Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee and the House of Representatives on removing the ban on the use of federal funds for syringe exchange programs (SEPs) from the Fiscal Year 2010 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations bill.

“This is an important and long overdue change in the prevention of HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis,” said Executive Director, Rebecca Haag. “This historic vote is the first time in 20 years that the federal government is on the verge of recognizing syringe exchange as an important, evidence-based tool in HIV prevention and the House is to be commended.” Each year, more than 8,000 people directly or indirectly are infected by HIV and another 12,000 people are directly or indirectly infected by hepatitis through injection drug use.

Syringe exchange programs are one of our most effective means of preventing HIV and viral hepatitis infections. SEPs are cost-effective, serve as a bridge to health care services for hard-to-reach populations, protect communities and law enforcement officials, and provide access to substance abuse treatment for injection drug users. Removal of the ban provides communities the freedom to use their federal HIV and hepatitis prevention funds on strategies that best fit their local needs, including syringe exchange programs.

AIDS Action Council applauds the House of Representatives for empowering communities and allowing them to arm themselves with all the tools necessary to fight their local epidemics. Today’s decision in the House to remove the ban opens the way for the Administration to ensure that this targeted prevention technique is available here in the U.S. and U.S. funded programs abroad.

“One concern that we have is today’s vote left intact a provision in the bill that seeks to restrict federal funding to syringe exchange programs (SEPs) that operate at least 1,000 ft. away from day care centers, schools, universities, public pools, parks, playgrounds, video arcades or youth centers or an event sponsored by these organizations,” said Deputy Executive Director Ronald Johnson. “These restrictions cover everywhere; they will make it all but impossible for SEPs to receive federal funding in urban areas where they are perhaps most needed,” he said. He added, “We call on the Senate and House to remove these restrictions. "
http://www.aidsaction.org/news-room-mainmenu-182/press-releases-mainmenu-342/45-press-releases-2009-/545-washington-july-24-2009

Posted by lois at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2009

Better Late than Never--Henry Louis Gates Says Scholar Says Arrest Will Lead Him To Explore Race in Criminal Justice

Scholar Says Arrest Will Lead Him To Explore Race in Criminal Justice
By Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has spent much of his life studying the complex history of race and culture in America, but until last week he had never had the experience that has left so many black men questioning the criminal justice system.

Gates was arrested outside his house in Cambridge, Mass., after a neighbor reported seeing two black men in the middle-class, predominantly white area pushing against the front door.

"I studied the history of racism. I know every incident in the history of racism from slavery to Jim Crow segregation," Gates told The Washington Post on Tuesday in his first interview about the episode. "I haven't even come close to being arrested. I would have said it was impossible."

Instead, in a country where one in nine young black men are in prison, where racial profiling is still practiced, the arrest of a renowned scholar on a charge of disorderly conduct in front of his house last Thursday has fueled an ongoing debate about race in America in the age of its first black president.

The charge against him was dropped Tuesday, but Gates said he plans to use the attention and turn his intellectual heft and stature to the issue of racial profiling. He now wants to create a documentary on the criminal justice system, informed by the experience of being arrested not as a famous academic but as an unrecognized black man.

Gates has come to see the incident as a modern lesson in racism and the criminal justice system. The police department views it as an "regrettable and unfortunate" incident that "should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of Prof. Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department."

Here is Gates's account of what happened:

After returning from a week in China researching the genealogy of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Gates found himself locked out of his house, and he and his driver began pushing against the front door. The sight of two black men forcing open a door prompted an emergency call to police.

The white officer who arrived found Gates in the house (the driver was gone) and asked him to step outside. Gates refused, and the officer followed him in. Gates showed him his ID, which included his address, then demanded that the officer identify himself. The officer did not comply, Gates said. He then followed the officer outside, saying repeatedly, "Is this how you treat a black man in America?"

The police report said that Gates was "exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior" and that the officer, Sgt. James Crowley, identified himself. "We stand by whatever the officer said in his report," said Sgt. James DeFrancesco, a spokesman for the Cambridge Police Department. He would not comment on Gates's version of his arrest.

The department said that Crowley tried to calm Gates, but that the professor would not cooperate and said, "You don't know who you're messing with."

"These actions on behalf of Gates served no legitimate purpose and caused citizens passing by this location to stop and take notice while appearing surprised and alarmed," the report said.

Barack Obama's election as the nation's first black president was "huge and important," Gates said, but "did not translate to structural change. Given the demographics of Cambridge, [the officer] probably voted for Barack. That wasn't much help to me."

He added: "I want to be a figure for prison reform. I think that the criminal justice system is rotten."

It was also a teachable moment on race and class for Gates, 58, who directs the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard and is a founder of the Root (http://www.theroot.com), a Web site owned by The Washington Post Co.

Billionaire media and sports entrepreneur Bob Johnson has described in interviews with The Post his experience of parking his car next to a ritzy hotel and a white woman opening the back door because she thought he was a chauffer. Coming out of another hotel, he was stopped by security -- locked in a revolving door -- because a black man had committed a mugging in the building and they were stopping all black men coming out of the building.

Charles Ogletree, Gates's friend and lawyer, who also teaches at Harvard and wrote about the relationship between minority communities and law enforcement after the Rodney King verdict, said his own experience with profiling has been similar. On a trip to his home town of Merced, Calif., a police officer stopped him in his rented Cadillac to ask what he was doing in the neighborhood.

Gates's prominence played a dual role, Ogletree said, bringing unflattering attention to Gates in the first reporting of the incident. Then, it allowed him access to well-connected friends and resources that got his case dismissed quickly.

Sitting handcuffed in the police cruiser, Gates was able to ask his secretary to "call Tree," referring to Ogletree.

"He knew: At least somebody will know where I am and what needs to be done. That is the advantage he had to know a lawyer and to call a lawyer."
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The harsher side of the experience was "deeply painful and traumatic," Gates said. "I'm outraged that this could happen to me in my own home, but I'm outraged that it could happen to any individual."

He said his documentary will ask: "How are people treated when they are arrested? How does the criminal justice system work? How many black and brown men and poor white men are the victims of police officers who are carrying racist thoughts?"

He has always said his neighborhood is the safest place in the world for him. He is often recognized on the streets, asked for autographs or to debate his latest documentary.

He has no qualms about the neighbor who called the police.

"I'm glad that someone would care enough about my property to report what they thought was some untoward invasion," Gates said. "If she saw someone tomorrow that looked like they were breaking in, I would want her to call 911. I would want the police to come. What I would not want is to be presumed to be guilty. That's what the deal was. It didn't matter how I was dressed. It didn't matter how I talked. It didn't matter how I comported myself. That man was convinced that I was guilty."

Gates has asked for a personal apology. Ogletree said it is not clear whether he will receive one.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR2009072101771.html?sid=ST2009072103463

Posted by lois at 04:49 PM | Comments (0)

When an ID is not ID

When an ID is not ID
by Mecke Nagel
Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his own home in Cambridge, MA, after producing an ID to the police that asked him to show that he was lawfully at his own residence (what to do if one is subletting or house sitting and the owner is somewhere overseas and can’t be reached? Spend an indefinite time in county jail till the rightful resident can be reached?).
After producing TWO identification cards with photo and proper address, the police proceeded to arrest him, anyway.
What where they looking at? Why even bother to ask for an ID when confronting a person who happens to be of darker skin complexion in the USA? Does the ID warp into something else—an alien tool that strangers in this brave new world produce to trick the person who is sent to a location “to keep the peace”, or keep a lid on disturbances?
They were foremost looking at an “uppity black man” who dared to ask for his rights, for the officer to identify themselves. Oh, the subject dares to talk back and turn the gaze on the inspector who is asked to produce an ID!
“Look, a Negro”—the haunting (child’s) exclamation opening Fanon’s Black Skin White Mask is at the core of this gaze. And didn’t President Obama say that we are still haunted by race? It’s time to unmask the specters of whiteness, masquerading “objective” justice & the rights bearing subject and getting carte blanche (!) in judicial review. Such was the decision of the 9th Circuit court regarding an unjustified arrest of a Filipino American lawyer who produced an authentic 100 dollar bill and was arrested for doing so: "Although the arrest was unfortunate, we cannot say that the officers' belief that (the bill) was fake was plainly incompetent... The arrest, therefore, was not clearly established as unlawful." (Rodel Rodis, July 23, 2009 blog on his case “Rodis vs. City and County of San Francisco et al”). Rodis notes: “Instead of viewing the case objectively as they did earlier - whether under the ‘totality of circumstances’ the arrest was reasonable, the judges now applied the subjective test of whether the officers ’ belief that the bill was fake was ‘plainly incompetent’” (emphasis, MN). How ironic then that Sonia Sotomayor has been quizzed by senators whether she could set aside her subjective experiences as a Latina if confirmed to the Supreme Court. Such stringent standards do not apply to officers, who are vested with upholding the (white) supremacy of the law. As far as people of color in the US are concerned, Dred Scott (1857; annulled by 14th Amendment) still has a footing as “legal” precedence in the USA (being treated as chattel or private property and thus having no rights that a white man ought to respect).
In the words of a French philosopher one must say politely to Prof. Gates: “this is not an ID.”
Dr. Nagel teaches multicultural philosophy at SUNY Cortland and occasionally at area prisons and secure centers. She is studying penal abolition and African peacemaking approaches.

Posted by lois at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2009

Number of Life Terms Hits Record

Number of Life Terms Hits Record
California has the largest prison system in the United States, with 170,000 inmates and the most serving life terms, 34,164.
By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: July 22, 2009
NY Times

CORONA, Calif. — Mary Thompson, an inmate at the California Institution for Women here, was convicted of two felonies for a robbery spree in which she threatened victims with a knife. Her third felony under California’s three-strikes law was the theft of three tracksuits to pay for her crack cocaine habit in 1982.

Mary Thompson at the California Institution for Women: life term after three felony convictions.

Like one out of five prisoners in California, and nearly 10 percent of all prisoners nationally in 2008, Ms. Thompson is serving a life sentence. She will be eligible for parole by 2020.

More prisoners today are serving life terms than ever before — 140,610 out of 2.3 million inmates being held in jails and prisons across the country — under tough mandatory minimum-sentencing laws and the declining use of parole for eligible convicts, according to a report released Wednesday by the Sentencing Project, a group that calls for the elimination of life sentences without parole. The report tracks the increase in life sentences from 1984, when the number of inmates serving life terms was 34,000.

Two-thirds of prisoners serving life sentences are Latino or black, the report found. In New York State, for example, 16.3 percent of prisoners serving life terms are white.

Although most people serving life terms were convicted of violent crimes, sentencing experts say there are many exceptions, like Norman Williams, 46, who served 13 years of a life sentence for stealing a floor jack out of a tow truck, a crime that was his third strike. He was released from Folsom State Prison in California in April after appealing his conviction on the grounds of insufficient counsel.

The rising number of inmates serving life terms is straining corrections budgets at a time when financially strapped states are struggling to cut costs. California’s prison system, the nation’s largest, with 170,000 inmates, also had the highest number of prisoners with life sentences, 34,164, or triple the number in 1992, the report found.

In four other states — Alabama, Massachusetts, Nevada and New York — at least one in six prisoners is serving a life term, according to the report.

The California prison system is in federal receivership for overcrowding and failing to provide adequate medical care to prisoners, many of whom are elderly and serving life terms.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week repeated his proposal to reduce the inmate population through a combination of early releases for nonviolent offenders, home monitoring for some parole violators and more lenient sentencing for some felonies. But there are no credible plans to increase the rate at which prisoners serving life sentences are granted parole.

“When California courts sentence somebody to life with parole, it turns out that’s not possible after all,” said Joan Petersilia, a Stanford law professor and an expert on parole policy. “Board of parole hearings almost never grant releases, and that’s the reason that California’s lifer population has grown out of proportion to other states.”

Margo Johnson, 48, also an inmate at the women’s prison here, has served 24 years of a life sentence for a 1984 murder. She has been recommended for release four times by the state parole board, but she said that Mr. Schwarzenegger had rejected the board’s recommendation each time.

“Sometimes I wonder, is it just a game they’re playing with me?” Ms. Johnson said.

Seven prison systems — Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and the federal penitentiary system — do not offer the possibility of parole to prisoners serving life terms.

That policy also extends to juveniles in Illinois, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. A total of 6,807 juveniles were serving life terms in 2008, 1,755 without the possibility of parole. California again led the nation in the number of juveniles serving life terms, with 2,623.

“The expansion of life sentences suggests that we’re rapidly losing faith in the rehabilitation model,” said Ashley Nellis, the report’s main author.

De Angelo McVay, 42, is serving a life term with no possibility of parole at the maximum security state prison in Lancaster, Calif., for his role in the kidnapping and torture of a man.

He said in an interview Wednesday that he had used his 10 years in prison to reform himself, taking ministry classes, participating in the prison chapel program, becoming vice chairman of his prison yard and avoiding behavioral demerits.

“I’m remorseful for what I did,” he said. “But I got no chance at parole, and I know guys who have committed killings and they have parole.”

Supporters of longer sentences for criminals, including victims rights organizations, prosecutors and police associations, often cite public safety, the deterrent effect of punishment and the need to remove criminals from society.

But the number of aging inmates serving life sentences has risen sharply as the sluggish economy has shrunk state budgets. By 2004, the number of inmates over 50 had nearly doubled from a decade earlier, to more than 20 percent, according to the report. Older inmates cost more because they have more health needs. California, for example, spends $98,000 to $138,000 a year on each prisoner over 50, compared with the national average of about $35,000 a year.

But Professor Petersilia said she was skeptical that economic arguments alone would persuade voters to treat inmates serving life terms — most of whom have committed violent felonies like murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery — with more leniency.

“All the public opinion polls say that everybody will reconsider sentencing for nonviolent offenders or drug offenders, but they’re not willing to do anything different for violent offenders,” Professor Petersilia. In fact, she added, polls show support for even harsher sentences for sex offenses and other violent crimes.

Burk Foster, a criminal justice professor at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan and an expert on the Louisiana penitentiary system, said the expansion of life sentences started at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the nation’s largest maximum penitentiary, in the early 1970s, when most people sentenced to life terms were paroled after they had been deemed fit to re-enter society.

“Angola was a prototype of a lifer’s prison,” said Professor Foster. “In 1973, Louisiana changed its life sentencing law so that lifers would no longer be parole eligible, and they applied that law more broadly over time to include murder, rape, kidnapping, distribution of narcotics and habitual offenders.”

Professor Foster said sentencing more prisoners to life sentences was an abandonment of the “corrective” function of prisons.

“Rehabilitation is not an issue at Angola,” he said. “They’re just practicing lifetime isolation and incapacitation.”
Graphs and other information at this URL- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/us/23sentence.html?_r=1&hp

Posted by lois at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2009

New Report: --"No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America "

A new report released by The Sentencing Project finds a record 140,610 individuals are now serving life sentences in state and federal prisons, 6,807 of whom were juveniles at the time of the crime. In addition, 29% of persons serving a life sentence (41,095) have no possibility of parole, and 1,755 were juveniles at the time of the crime.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_noexit.pdf

No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America represents the first nationwide collection of life sentence data documenting race, ethnicity and gender. The report's findings reveal overwhelming racial and ethnic disparities in the allocation of life sentences: 66% of all persons sentenced to life are non-white, and 77% of juveniles serving life sentences are non-white.

Other findings in the report include:

* In five states - Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York -at least 1 in 6 prisoners is serving a life sentence.
* Five states - California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - each have more than 3,000 people serving life without parole. Pennsylvania leads the nation with 345 juveniles serving sentences of life without parole.
* In six states - Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota - and the federal government, all life sentences are imposed without the possibility of parole.
* The dramatic growth in life sentences is not primarily a result of higher crime rates, but of policy changes that have imposed harsher punishments and restricted parole consideration.

The authors of the report, Ashley Nellis, Ph.D., research analyst and Ryan S. King, policy analyst of The Sentencing Project, state that persons serving life sentences "include those who present a serious threat to public safety, but also include those for whom the length of sentence is questionable." One such case documented is that of Ali Foroutan, currently serving a sentence of 25 years to life for possession of 0.03 grams of methamphetamine under California's "three strikes" law.

The Sentencing Project calls for the elimination of sentences of life without parole, and restoring discretion to parole boards to determine suitability for release. The report also recommends that individuals serving parole-eligible life sentences be properly prepared for reentry back into the community.

-The Sentencing Project

Posted by lois at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2009

MA: 22 year old woman commits suicide in Framingham 2 others attempt suicide with her

MetroWest Daily News (MA)
July 21, 2009

Christina Morando, 22, was pronounced dead on July 19, 2009 at 11:32pm at Metrowest Hospital. She had been an inmate at MCI Framingham. Ms. Morando was found with a ligature around her neck in her cell at 10:41pm. An emergency medical response was initiated which resulted in her being transported to Metrowest Hospital in Framingham, where she was pronounced dead. Allegedly the incident resulted with one dead, one effectively brain dead, and one transferred to a mental health facility.

Emergency response procedures were complied with pursuant to department policy, but as in all cases like this, the incident is under investigation. The Middlesex County District Attorney’s office has been notified.

Ms. Morando was sentenced on January 7, 2009 with a sentence effective date of May 28, 2008 to two to six years for accessory before the fact, armed assault with intent to rob/murder. Her parole eligibility date was May 9, 2010.

There were two other suicide attempts this weekend at MCI Framingham,
which resulted in their hospitalizations. Due to medical
confidentiality, we cannot discuss their medical conditions. These
incidents are under investigation.

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

Book Review: Beyond Attica: The Untold Story of Women's Resistance Behind Bars

Beyond Attica: The Untold Story of Women's Resistance Behind Bars
By Hans Bennett, AlterNet. Posted July 21, 2009.

As the incarceration rate of U.S. women skyrockets, an important book shines new light on the struggles of women prisoners.

"When I was 15, my friends started going to jail," says Victoria Law, a native New Yorker. "Chinatown's gangs were recruiting in the high schools in Queens and, faced with the choice of stultifying days learning nothing in overcrowded classrooms or easy money, many of my friends had dropped out to join a gang."

"One by one," Law recalls, "they landed in Rikers Island, an entire island in New York City devoted to pretrial detainment for those who can not afford bail."

Law shares this and other recollections in her new book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press). At 16, she herself decided to join a gang, but was arrested for the armed robbery that she committed for her initiation into the gang. "Because it was my first arrest -- and probably because 16-year-old Chinese girls who get straight As in school did not seem particularly menacing -- I was eventually let off with probation," she writes.

Before her release from jail, Law was held in the "Tombs" awaiting arraignment. While the adult women she met there had all been arrested for prostitution, she also met three teenagers arrested for unarmed assault. "Two of the girls were black lesbian lovers. In a scenario that would be repeated 13 years later in the case of the New Jersey Four, they had been out with friends when they encountered a cab driver who had tried to grab one of them. Her friends intervened, the cab driver called the police and the girls were arrested for assault." Law notes that "both of my cellmates were subsequently sent to Rikers Island."

These early experiences, coupled with her later discovery of radical politics, pushed Law "to think about who goes to prison and why." She got involved in several projects to support prisoners, which included helping to start Books Through Bars in New York City, sending free books to prisoners. In college, she "began researching current prisoner organizing and resistance," and upon discovering almost zero documentation of resistance from women prisoners, she began her own documentation and directly contacted women prisoners who were resisting. A college paper became a widely distributed pamphlet, and at the request of several women prisoners she'd corresponded with, Law helped to publish their writings in a zine called Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison. Law writes that the zine and pamphlet "heightened awareness not only about incarcerated women's issues, but also women's actions to challenge and change the injustices they faced on a daily basis."

"This book is the result of seven and a half years of reading, writing, listening, and supporting women in prison," Law says about Resistance Behind Bars, noting that each chapter in her book "focuses on an issue that women themselves have identified as important." The chapters include topics as diverse as health care, the relationship between mothers and daughters, sexual abuse, education, and resistance among women in immigration detention. Resistance Behind Bars paints a picture of women prisoners resisting a deeply flawed prison system, which Law hopes will help to empower both the women held in cages and those on the outside working to support them.

Who Goes To Prison?

Since 1970, the U.S. prison population has skyrocketed, from 300,000 to over 2.3 million. According to the U.S. Justice Department, this staggering increase has not resulted from a rise in crime. In fact, since 1993, the prison population has increased by over one million, but during this same period, both property offenses and serious violent crime have been steadily declining. The New York Times recently cited a 2008 report by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London documenting that the U.S. has more prisoners than any other country. Furthermore, with 751 out of 100,000 people, and one out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, the U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate in the world. With only five percent of the world's population, the U.S. has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

While women comprise only nine percent of the U.S. prison population, their numbers have been increasing at a faster rate than men. As Law documents, "between 1990 and 2000, the number of women in prison rose 108 percent, from 44,065 to 93,234. (The male prison population grew 77 percent during that same time period.) By the end of 2006, 112,498 women were behind bars."

Like with male incarceration rates, women behind bars are disproportionately low-income and people of color. Law writes that "only 40 percent of all incarcerated women had been employed full-time before incarceration. Of those, most had held low-paying jobs: a study of women under supervision (prison, jail, parole or probation) found that two-thirds had never held a job that paid more than $6.50 per hour. Approximately 37 percent earned less than $600 per month."

A 2007 Bureau of Justice study documented that 358 of every 100,000 Black women, 152 of every 100,000 Latinas, and 94 of every 100,000 white women are incarcerated. Explaining this racial discrepancy, Law argues that inner-city Black and Latino neighborhoods are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement. She cites a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice study which concluded that Blacks and Latinos are "three times as likely as whites to be searched, arrested, threatened or subdued with force when stopped by the police."

The so-called "War on Drugs" has played a key role in the growth of the U.S. prison population. Law writes about the impact of New York State's Rockefeller Drug Laws passed in 1973, "which required a sentence of 15 years to life for anyone convicted of selling two ounces or possessing four ounces of a narcotic, regardless of circumstances or prior history. That year, only 400 women were imprisoned in New York State. As of January 1, 2001, there were 3,133. Over 50 percent had been convicted of a drug offense and 20 percent were convicted solely of possession. Other states passed similar laws, causing the number of women imprisoned nationwide for drug offenses to rise 888 percent from 1986 to 1996."

Distinguishing women prisoners from their male counterparts, Law cites a Bureau of Justice study which "found that women were three times more likely than men to have been physically or sexually abused prior to incarceration."

Women Prisoners Don't Resist?

The central thesis of Resistance Behind Bars is truly profound. In clear, non-academic language, Law argues that recent scholarship documenting and radically criticizing the increased incarceration rates and mistreatment of women prisoners "largely ignores what the women themselves do to change or protest these circumstances, thus reinforcing the belief that incarcerated women do not organize." Alongside academia, Law also harshly criticizes radical prison activists, arguing that "just as the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s downplayed the role of women in favor of highlighting male spokesmen and leaders, the prisoners' rights movement has focused and continues to focus on men to speak for the masses."

Law gives honorable mention to two books that documented women's resistance at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York State: Juanita Diaz-Cotto's Gender, Ethnicity, and the State (1996) and the collectively written Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum Security Prison (1998). Since these two books "no other book-length work has focused on incarcerated women's activism and resistance," writes Law. As a result, Law argues that women prisoners "lack a commonly known history of resistance. While male prisoners can draw on the examples of George Jackson, the Attica uprising and other well-publicized cases of prisoner activism, incarcerated women remain unaware of precedents relevant to them."

Epitomizing the scholarship that Law criticizes, author Virginia High Brislin wrote that "women inmates themselves have called very little attention to their situations," and "are hardly ever involved in violent encounters with officials (i.e. riots), nor do they initiate litigation as often as do males in prison."

To challenge Brislin's assertion, Law gives numerous examples of women rioting and initiating litigation, including the "August Rebellion" in 1974 at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York State. On July 2, 1974, prisoner Carol Crooks won a lawsuit against prison authorities, with the court "issuing a preliminary injunction, prohibiting the prison from placing women in segregation without 24-hour notice and a hearing of these charges," writes Law. In response, "five male guards beat Crooks and placed her in segregation. Her fellow prisoners protested by holding seven staff members hostage for two and a half hours. However, 'the August Rebellion' is virtually unknown today despite that fact that male state troopers and (male) guards from men's prisons were called to suppress the uprising, resulting in 25 women being injured and 24 women being transferred to Matteawan Complex for the Criminally Insane without the required commitment hearings."

Law also criticizes author Karlene Faith, who acknowledges that women resist, but who wrote that in the 1970s, women prisoners "were not as politicized as the men [prisoners], and they did not engage in the kinds of protest actions that aroused media attention." To challenge Faith's argument, Law cites several rebellions that received significant media attention, including one that the New York Times wrote two stories about. As Law recounts, "in 1975, women at the North Carolina Correctional Center for Women held a sit-down demonstration to demand better medical care, improved counseling services, and the closing of the prison laundry. When prison guards attempted to end the protest by herding the women into the gymnasium and beating them, the women fought back, using volleyball net poles, chunks of concrete and hoe handles to drive the guards out of the prison. Over 100 guards from other prisons were summoned to quell the rebellion."

In light of the many such stories documented in Resistance Behind Bars, Law argues that "instead of claiming that women in prison did not engage in riots and protest actions that captured media attention, scholars and researchers should examine why these acts of organizing fail to attract the same critical and scholarly attention as that given to similar male actions."

Resisting With Media-Activism

In the chapter "Grievances, Lawsuits, and the Power of the Media," Law observes that "gaining media attention often gains quicker results than filing lawsuits." Among the many organizing victories that were significantly aided by media attention, in 1999, Nightline focused on conditions at California's Valley State Prison for Women. Law explains that "after prisoner after prisoner told Nightline anchor Ted Koppel about being given a pelvic exam as 'part of the treatment' for any ailment, including stomach problems or diabetes, Koppel asked the prison's chief medical officer Dr. Anthony DiDomenico, for an explanation."

DiDomenico was apparently so confident that he would not be held accountable for his misconduct, that he answered Koppel by saying "I've heard inmates tell me they would deliberately like to be examined. It's the only male contact they get." After this interview was aired, DiDomenico was reassigned to a desk job, and as of 2001 he had been criminally indicted, along with a second doctor.

Demonstrating the power of this media coverage, Law notes that the "prisoner advocacy organization Legal Services for Prisoners with Children had been reporting the prisoners' complaints about medical staff's sexual misconduct to the CDC for four years with no result."

Along with agitating for coverage in the mainstream media, women prisoners have also created their own media projects. The chapter titled "Breaking The Silence: Incarcerated Women's Media" documents many important projects. Law explains that these projects are necessary because women prisoners' "voices and stories still remain unheard by both mainstream and activist-oriented media. Articles about both prison conditions and prisoners often portray the male prisoner experience, ignoring the different issues facing women in prison." Therefore, "women's acts of writing -- and publishing -- often serve a dual purpose: they challenge existing stereotypes and distortions of prisoners and prison life, framing and correcting prevailing (mis) perceptions. They also boost women's sense of self-worth and agency in a system designed to not only isolate and alienate its prisoners but also erase all traces of individuality."

Some activist-oriented publications have been receptive and have published prisoners' writings. From 1999 until its final issue in 2002, the radical feminist magazine Sojourner: A Women's Forum featured a section on women prisoner issues which included writings from the prisoners themselves. Law writes that this section, entitled "Inside/Outside" covered many topics, including "working conditions in women's facilities, the dehumanizing treatment of children visiting their mothers, and prisoner suicides.

Law spotlights many different projects. From 2002 to 2006, Perceptions was a monthly newspaper published by and for the women at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey. Because of censorship from prison warden Charlotte Blackwell, Perceptions was forced to limit its criticism of the prison, but the women published what they could. For example, in one issue, women wrote about how they would run the prison differently if they were in charge. Law notes that "their fantasies revealed the absence of programming for older women and those in the maximum custody unit, emergency counseling and therapeutic interventions and opportunities for mother-child interactions. It also drew attention to the facility's overcrowding and increased potentials for violence and conflict among prisoners."

Tenacious, the zine published by Law, was initiated by women prisoners who sought the help of friends outside the prison to actually publish and distribute it. "Free from the need to seek administrative approval, incarcerated women wrote about the difficulties of parenting from prison, dangerously inadequate health care, sexual assault by prison staff and the scarcity of educational and vocational opportunities, especially in comparison to their male counterparts. Although circulation remained small, the women's stories provoked public response," writes Law.

"Prison officials do whatever they can to strip prisoners of their dignity and self-worth," stated Barrilee Bannister, one of the founders of Tenacious. "Writing is my way to escape the confines of prison and the debilitating ailments of prison life. It's me putting on boxing gloves and stepping into the rink of freedom of speech and opinion."

Arguing For Prison Abolition

When Victoria Law was first introduced to radical politics, shortly after her own stint behind bars, she "discovered groups and literature espousing prison abolition."

"These analyses -- coupled with what I had seen firsthand -- made sense, steering me to work towards the dismantling, rather than the reform, of the prison system." Law's subsequent research has only served to affirm her belief in the need for abolition. She states clearly that "this book should not be mistaken for a call for more humane or 'gender responsive' prisons."

Some readers may view Law's prison abolitionist politics as being abstract or overly theoretical. However, to support her abolitionist viewpoint, she makes the practical argument that prisons simply don't work to reduce crime or increase public safety. She writes that "incarceration has not decreased crime; instead, 'tough on crime' policies have led to the criminalization … of more activities, leading to higher rates of arrest, prosecution and incarceration while shifting money and resources away from other public entities, such as education, housing, health care, drug treatment, and other societal supports. The growing popularity of abolitionist thought can be seen in the expansion of organizations such as Critical Resistance, an organization fighting to end the need for a prison-industrial complex, and the formation of groups working to address issues of crime and victimization without relying on the police or prisons."

Towards the end of Resistance Behind Bars, Law quotes Angela Y. Davis, who is a leading activist intellectual of the prison abolitionist movement. In her recent book Are Prisons Obsolete?, Davis writes that "a major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more human, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system. How, then, do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately attending to the needs of prisoners -- calling for less violent conditions, an end to sexual assault, improved physical and mental health care, greater access to drug programs, better educational work opportunities, unionization of prison labor, more connections with families and communities, shorter or alternative sentencing -- and at the same time call for alternatives to sentencing altogether, no more prison construction, and abolitionist strategies that question the place of the prison in our future?"

As if answering Davis' question, Law concludes that while striving for prison abolition "we need to also reach in, make contact with those who have been isolated by prison walls and societal indifference and listen to those who are speaking out, like many of the women who have shared their stories within this book. Because abolishing prisons will not happen tomorrow, next week or even next year, we need to break through these barriers, communicate, work with and support women who are in resistance today."

http://www.alternet.org/rights/141474/beyond_attica:_the_untold_story_of_women%27s_resistance_behind_bars/?page=4

Posted by lois at 06:52 PM | Comments (0)

CA: State budget deal reduces prison inmates by 27,000

State budget deal reduces prison inmates by 27,000
The plan accomplishes this with a combination of measures, including having some prisoners complete sentences at home and shortening terms for those who finish rehabilitation programs.
By Michael Rothfeld
LA Times
July 21, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento - The state budget deal negotiated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders would reduce the population of California prisons by nearly 27,000 inmates in the current fiscal year.

That would be done with a combination of new measures, including allowing some inmates to finish their sentences on home detention, creating new incentives for completion of rehabilitation programs and scaling back parole supervision for the least serious offenders.

The proposal, details of which were obtained by The Times, would save a total of $1.2 billion in the coming year.

It is unclear whether Republicans will vote for a budget plan that includes reduction of the state prison system, which now houses 170,000 inmates. Some GOP votes are needed to pass a budget in California.

If Republicans demur, the Democrats who dominate the Legislature could approve the prison proposal as separate legislation with a simple majority vote, which would not require GOP support.

The plan would grant authority to state corrections officials to allow any inmate with 12 months or less left to serve to complete his or her sentence on home detention, although state officials would not be required to do so. Prison officials could also put any inmate who is over 60 or medically incapacitated on home detention instead of in a prison cell.

The state would use electronic monitoring for inmates serving time at home, and officials estimate that about 6,300 could do time this way.

In addition, inmates who achieve milestones in rehabilitative programs, substance abuse treatment, vocational training or education could receive up to six weeks off their prison terms, although the credit could be forfeited in cases of subsequent bad behavior.

The plan includes a scaled-down version of Schwarzenegger's proposal to change some felonies to misdemeanors so inmates could go to county jails instead of prisons. Five crimes would be reclassified, such as petty theft with a previous conviction.

Inmates would receive less severe sentences for committing property crimes, because the amounts that guide sentencing in state law would be increased to account for inflation.

The state would change its parole system to create a "Parole Re-Entry Accountability Program" that would return fewer people to state prison, depending on their behavior. The plan is estimated to reduce the state parole population by 46,000 -- more than a third of those currently under supervision.

Those former prisoners convicted of the least serious crimes would not be subject to parole revocations that could return them to prison, as currently happens with about 70,000 a year. Those who committed more serious crimes would earn the right to early parole discharge for completing drug treatment.

In addition, counties would receive a total of $45 million in the coming year, from federal stimulus funds, to keep inmates on probation instead of sending them to prison. The money could be used by counties to hire more staff.

The budget plan also would create a sentencing commission to reexamine the state penal code, which would not save money immediately but would advance plans under discussion by lawmakers for years. The commission would be charged with establishing new sentencing guidelines by July 1, 2012.
michael.rothfeld@latimes.com
Copyright 2009

Posted by lois at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)

Editorial NY Times: Childbirth in Chains

If you haven't called Governor Paterson's office, please do. He still hasn't signed the Bill! You do not need to live in NY. The number is 518-474-8390. Please forward widely.

Editorial- New York Times
Childbirth in Chains
Published: July 20, 2009

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called several years ago for an end to the barbaric and medically hazardous practice of shackling female prisoners during labor. In addition to further frightening these vulnerable women, the practice of chaining their legs, wrists and even their abdomens makes treatment and delivery more difficult and places mother and child at greater risk of harm.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons must have had these facts in mind last fall when the bureau ended the routine use of restraints for women in labor and limited shackling to cases in which a woman presents a danger to herself, the baby or the staff. Five states have similar policies. New York would become the sixth — if Gov. David Paterson signs an antishackling bill that sailed through the Legislature this spring.

The bill has caused a debate about how many pregnant women are actually shackled in New York. But recent interviews of female inmates by the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit group that monitors prison conditions, suggests that the practice may be more common than corrections officials know. In any case, the bill would put an end to it, by establishing clear guidelines that carry the authority of law.

Modeled on federal prison policy and laws in other states, the New York bill would prohibit women from being shackled while being taken to the hospital for a delivery. A woman could be cuffed by one wrist in cases in which she presented a danger to herself, hospital staff or corrections workers. But it seems highly unlikely that a woman doubled over in labor pains would be able to attempt an escape or overcome corrections officers.

Governor Paterson, whose staff members have recently been quibbling with technicalities in the bill, should make it clear whether he thinks the measure needs minor changes or clarifications. Otherwise, he should sign the bill into law and bring New York into line with the federal government and the other states that have wisely acted to protect pregnant inmates and their children during labor.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 21, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 02:39 PM | Comments (0)

Old Prisoners Denied Their Social Security by James Ridgeway

Old Prisoners Denied Their Social Security
by James Ridgeway from his blog Unsilent Generation
July 21, 2009

Not long ago I described in the briefest of terms, the plight of the growing numbers of older prisoners now filling up the country’s prisons and jails.They receive bad health care and are subject to cruel and inhuman punishment in any number of ways,i.e. requiring people with bad arthritis to climb to the upper bunk to sleep, or making it next to impossible for inmates in wheelchairs to access parts of prisons available to younger people, such as getting into and taking a bath from a wheelchair..Among the worst sites described to me by a medical consultant were ill women forced to get out of bed at 3 am,then stand in lines,to obtain medicine in one Alabama women’s prison.

There are other difficulties faced by older prisoners.Among them is what to do about Social Security earned for years before conviction of a crime.

David Hinman, a prisoner in Iowa is 65 and when he was in the “free-world” contributed to social security. He is not eligible for parole for a number years.”Currently the government will not pay people in prison social security,’’he writes.“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.) (Additional essays by David can be found at http://www.realcostofprisons.org/writing/)

Asked about this situation Paul Wright,editor of Prison Legal News, the excellent magazine which tracks prison issues,wrote me,
“Part of the problem I have with this is that someone can work their whole life, pay into Social Security, commit a crime at a later age, and go to prison for the rest of their life and never see a penny of the money they paid into SS. The lie used to justify this is prisoners have no need for money but that is not true. I think it is a backdoor way to trim the SS.rolls.I think this is the exception. To put it into context, retirees can get their pensions in prison, veterans can get their VA benefits in prison. It follows that if you earn something you are entitled to it. It is not a freebie the government can take away because it doesn’t like you and that is exactly what they do here.
Wright attached an article from a 1998 isssue of Prison Legal News that sets the situation into the bleakest of terms.

Denial of Social Security Benefits to Prisoners Upheld

The court of appeals for the Ninth circuit held that a statute denying Social Security benefits to prisoners is constitutional. Robert Butler is a 77 year old Nevada state prisoner. Butler was granted social security retirement benefits in 1983. He was later incarcerated and the Social Security Administration (SSA) determined he was not entitled to benefits while he was incarcerated pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 402(X). An administrative law judge affirmed the SSA’s decision. Butler filed suit in federal court and it was dismissed for failing to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The court of appeals affirmed.The appeals court noted that every court to consider the constitutionality of 42 U.S.C. § 402(X), this includes the Second, Fourth, Eighth, Tenth and Eleventh circuits, had upheld the law. Congress has wide discretion in administering welfare resources. The court held that § 402(X)’s ban on social security benefits to prisoners does not violate constitutional guarantees to due process, equal protection and protection against ex post facto laws and bills of attainder. The court also held that Butler was provided with ample due process before his benefits were terminated because he participated in the SSA hearing by telephone. Since the statute leaves no room for agency discretion and the only fact issue was whether or not Butler was a felon doing time in prison, the telephone hearing was sufficient to safeguard Butler’s due process interest in his social security benefits. See: Butler v. Apfel , 144 F.3d 622 (9th Cir. 1998)

http://unsilentgeneration.com/

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

July 20, 2009

Pentagon Seeks to Overhaul Prisons in Afghanistan

Pentagon Seeks to Overhaul Prisons in Afghanistan
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: July 19, 2009
NY Times

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — A sweeping United States military review calls for overhauling the troubled American-run prison here as well as the entire Afghan jail and judicial systems, a reaction to worries that abuses and militant recruiting within the prisons are helping to strengthen the Taliban.

In a further sign of high-level concern over detention practices, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent a confidential message last week to all of the military service chiefs and senior field commanders asking them to redouble their efforts to alert troops to the importance of treating detainees properly.

The prison at this air base north of Kabul has become an ominous symbol for Afghans — a place where harsh interrogation methods and sleep deprivation were used routinely in its early years, and where two Afghan detainees died in 2002 after being beaten by American soldiers and hung by their arms from the ceiling of isolation cells.

Bagram also became a holding site for terrorism suspects captured outside Afghanistan and Iraq.

But even as treatment at Bagram improved in recent years, conditions worsened in the larger Afghan-run prison network, which houses more than 15,000 detainees at three dozen overcrowded and often violent sites. The country’s deeply flawed judicial system affords prisoners virtually no legal protections, human rights advocates say.

“Throughout Afghanistan, Afghans are arbitrarily detained by police, prosecutors, judges and detention center officials with alarming regularity,” the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said in a report in January.

To help address these problems, Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone of the Marines, credited with successfully revamping American detention practices in Iraq, was assigned to review all detention issues in Afghanistan.

General Stone’s report, which has not been made public but is circulating among senior American officials, recommends separating extremist militants from more moderate detainees instead of having them mixed together as they are now, according to two American officials who have read or been briefed on his report.

Under the new approach, the United States would help build and finance a new Afghan-run prison for the hard-core extremists who are now using the poorly run Afghan corrections system as a camp to train petty thieves and other common criminals to be deadly militants, the American officials said.

The remaining inmates would be taught vocational skills and offered other classes, and they would be taught about moderate Islam with the aim of reintegrating them into society, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the review’s findings had not been publicly disclosed. The review also presses for training new Afghan prison guards, prosecutors and judges.

The recommendations come as American officials express fears that the notoriously overcrowded Afghan-run prisons will be overwhelmed by waves of new prisoners captured in the American-led offensive in southern Afghanistan, where thousands of Marines are battling Taliban fighters.

President Obama signed an executive order in January to review policy options for detention, interrogation and rendition.

The Defense and Justice Departments are leading two government task forces studying those issues and are scheduled to deliver reports to the president on Tuesday.

But administration officials said Sunday that the task forces — which are grappling with questions like whether terrorism suspects should be turned over to other countries and how to deal with detainees who are thought to be dangerous but who cannot be brought to trial — were likely to seek extensions on some contentious issues.

Last month The Wall Street Journal reported elements of General Stone’s review, but in recent days American military officials provided a more detailed description of the report’s scope, findings and recommendations.

A spokesman for the Afghan Embassy in Washington, Martin Austermuhle, said he was unaware of the review, and did not know if the government in Kabul had been apprised of it.

Admiral Mullen felt compelled to issue his message last week after viewing photographs documenting abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by American military personnel in the early years of the wars there, a senior military official said.

Mr. Obama decided in May not to make the photographs public, warning that the images could ignite a deadly backlash against American troops.

The admiral urged top American field commanders to step up their efforts to ensure that prisoners were treated properly both at the point of capture and in military prisons.

He told the service chiefs to emphasize detainee treatment when preparing and training troops who deploy to the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

“It is essential to who we are as a fighting force that we get this right,” Admiral Mullen said in the message. “We are better than what I saw in those pictures.”

American officials say many of the changes that General Stone’s review recommends for Bagram are already in the works as part of the scheduled opening this fall of a 40-acre replacement complex that officials say will accommodate about 600 detainees in a more modern and humane setting.

The problems at the existing American-run prison, the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, have been well documented.

The prison is a converted aircraft hangar that still holds some of the decrepit aircraft-repair machinery left by the Soviet troops who occupied the country in the 1980s.

Military personnel who know Bagram and the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, describe the Afghan site as tougher and more spartan.

The prisoners have fewer privileges and virtually no access to lawyers or the judicial process. Many are still held communally in big cages.

In the past two weeks, prisoners have refused to leave their cells to protest their indefinite imprisonment.

In 2005, the Bush administration began trying to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan, mainly by transferring Bagram prisoners to an American-financed high-security prison outside of Kabul guarded by American-trained Afghan soldiers.

But United States officials conceded that the new Afghan block, at Pul-i-Charkhi prison, could not absorb all the Bagram prisoners. It now holds about 4,300 detainees, including some 360 from Bagram or Guantánamo Bay, Afghan prison officials said.

Officials from the general directorate for prisons complained about the lack of detention space based on international standards in provinces of Afghanistan. They said most of those prisons were rented houses and not suitable for detention.

Gen. Safiullah Safi, commander of the Afghan National Army brigade responsible for the section of Pul-i-Charkhi that holds the transferred inmates from Bagram and Guantánamo Bay, said his part of the prison had maintained good order and followed Islamic cultural customs.

But last December, detainees in the other blocks of the prison staged a revolt in an attempt to resist a security sweep for hidden weapons and cellphones. Eight inmates died.

“There’s a general concern that the Afghan national prisons need to be rehabilitated,” said Sahr MuhammedAlly, a senior associate for law and security at Human Rights First, an advocacy group that is to issue its own report on Bagram on Wednesday.

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/world/asia/20detain.html?_r=1&hp

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

July 19, 2009

OK: The Board of Juvenile Affairs began initial discussions Friday about a possible private prison for juveniles in the state.

By BARBARA HOBEROCK World Capitol Bureau
Published: 7/18/2009
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Board of Juvenile Affairs began initial discussions Friday about a possible private prison for juveniles in the state.

The board is expected to vote in September on whether to solicit proposals to build and/or manage a private lockup.

Such a move would require closing at least one of the agency's three prisons, the L.E. Rader Center in Sand Springs and two others in Manitou and Tecumseh.

Office of Juvenile Affairs Director Gene Christian told the board at its monthly meeting that two pieces of 2008 legislation authorized the board to consider such moves.

The agency initially sought designs for a 64-bed prison to house youthful offenders, Christian said.

The projected cost in 2007 was $24 million, a figure that rose to $27 million in 2009.

The OJA asked the Legislature for a bond issue to provide funding, but that request was not granted, Christian said.

A decline in state revenue expected in the current fiscal year likely means that no additional funding will be provided to OJA for a private prison.

Christian said the decision about whether to move forward once the information about costs is obtained needs to come during the legislative session, which begins in February.

The state's three juvenile prisons are poorly designed, are aging and have capital needs, he said. In addition, the poor designs contribute to staffing problems, he said.

Christian said it is his recommendation to consider a request for proposals to build and/or manage a private juvenile prison.

Discussions about privatization create employee morale issues, said Sterling Zearley, executive director of the Oklahoma Public Employees Association.

He said private entities are in the business to make money and often cut programs, nutrition and other areas to do so.

Some employees from the Rader Center attended the OJA meeting wearing shirts that read, "Keep it professional. Keep it public."

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20090718_16_A16_OKLAHO463816

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

July 18, 2009

IL: Gov. Pat Quinn says 'no final decisions' yet on prisoner releases Plan to lay off 1,000 prison workers is 'reckless,' union spokesman says

Gov. Pat Quinn says 'no final decisions' yet on prisoner releases
Plan to lay off 1,000 prison workers is 'reckless,' union spokesman says

By Monique Garcia and Ray Long | Tribune reporters
July 10, 2009

Gov. Pat Quinn tried Thursday to temper growing concerns over his plans to release low-level inmates so he can lay off 1,000 prison workers, saying he wants to "carefully examine" the idea but has made "no final decisions."

Prison union leaders say as many as 11,000 of Illinois' 45,500 or so inmates could be eligible for release. Quinn administration officials said they are still compiling a list but are focusing on inmates charged primarily with drug crimes who are in the last year of their sentences.

G

State law, however, allows for a much broader range of prisoners to be released, including those who were convicted of various property crimes. Prisoners 55 or older who have served at least a quarter of their sentence are eligible to be placed on electric home monitoring for the last year of their sentence as long as they were not convicted of a sex crime.

Those convicted of first-degree murder, sexual assault, drug conspiracy or bringing guns or explosives into a prison would not qualify for early release.

Quinn's plan is a sign the state budget battle has engulfed the penal system. Prison officials said they have already identified more than 500 positions for elimination at six Downstate prisons by the end of September.

"We're not only downsizing employees, we're downsizing inmates," said Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman Derek Schnapp.

The moves are aimed at saving the state $125 million as Quinn works to close a budget gap his office estimates at $9.2 billion. It costs the state an average of $23,000 a year to house each prisoner.

Anders Lindall, a spokesman for the union representing prison guards and parole agents, said Quinn's plan is "reckless" and undermines public safety because prisons would be understaffed. It's also unclear how the state's 400 parole officers would deal with the large influx of cases.

"There is clearly a more appropriate approach to look at sentencing guidelines and prison rehabilitation programs if that's what the governor wants to do," Lindall said. "But don't do it under the budgetary gun as a cost-savings measure. It's not thoughtful and may increase risks both within state prisons and Illinois communities."

Quinn noted that other large states have instituted similar programs, and he emphasized that strict conditions would be rigorously applied "if we go forward."

Some lawmakers say it's just the latest in a series of Quinn's empty threats as he tries to persuade lawmakers to go along with an income-tax increase.

"We have some counties where the largest employer is the prison, and that's going to weigh heavily on legislators when they consider whether to support an income-tax increase," said Rep. Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs), a former Cook County prosecutor. "I don't think these convicted felons, a good portion of them street gang members, should be receiving the benefits of a budget meltdown. We should not be rewarding bad behavior as a way to convince legislators to vote for a tax increase. I find it a little bit disturbing."

A Quinn spokesman said the layoffs will happen even if Quinn wins a tax increase, though Quinn has backed off of other threats in recent weeks. He has previously said he would cut grants to social service agencies by 50 percent and would move ahead with $1 billion in state spending cuts, only to back off and instead veto portions of the budget.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-illinois-prisoner-release-09jul10,0,7479502.story

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

Many states considering early release of prisoners

Many states considering early release of prisoners
By BRUCE RUSHTON
THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Jul 12, 2009

Experts agree: Freeing inmates early doesn’t necessarily increase crime rates, nor does it affect recidivism. It does save money.

As a result, as many as half the states in the union, including Illinois, are considering early release in some form, says James Austin, a prison consultant who started his corrections career nearly 40 years ago as a sociologist for the Illinois Department of Corrections.

“The research is completely clear: You can do this without increasing the recidivism rate or the crime rate,” Austin says. “It’s easy, it really is—it’s unbelievably easy. The politics get in the way of it. People just don’t understand the basic math here.”

Instead of razor wire and watchtowers, think of the prison system as a river, Austin says, with sentences acting as a dam. The longer the sentences, the higher the dam and the bigger the reservoir of inmates. Early release amounts to removing a chunk of the dam, which spells more work for downstream parole officers. But not for very long.

“Within three or four months, the flow is back to normal,” Austin says.

No new parole officers

In Illinois, where the state plans to lay off more than 1,000 prison employees, there are no plans to hire extra parole officers to deal with inmates who would be freed early. However, Derek Schnapp, corrections spokesman, said the state is considering terminating parole for some current parolees to make room for inmates released early.

It might sound like a recipe for a crime wave. But Austin and other experts agree that long sentences don’t add up to less crime.

“I don’t think there’s necessarily going to be more crime as a result of this,” says David Olson, a criminologist at Loyola University in Chicago. “It might be that there is an increase in crime in the short run, but in the long run, it’s not any different than what would have happened.”

In essence, it’s a question of timing, with the crime rate evening itself out. If 1,000 inmates are released early and half commit new crimes, which corresponds roughly to the recidivism rate in Illinois, there won’t be more crime in the long term because criminals who didn’t go straight after early release will be back in prison.

“He’s either going to make it or not,” says Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project in Washington D.C., a prison reform group that has long argued that prison sentences in the United States are too long. “That 90 days (sentence reduction) is not going to have any effect on his prospects in the community.”

Gov. Pat Quinn can release inmates early who have less than a year to serve, and the state is compiling lists of low-level offenders for consideration. Those are the types who tend to be frequent fliers in the corrections system, Olson says.

Penny-ante criminals didn’t go to prison the first time they were caught breaking into cars or selling small amounts of drugs, Olson said. They’re in prison because they didn’t change their ways and the system ran out of options.

“Early release is the quick-and-dirty approach to remedy a problem that was caused by legislators, to give punishment they couldn’t afford,” Austin said. “The state legislature and policy people need to figure out how much punishment they can afford and then build their laws around that.”

Long-term fixes

Studies by the U.S. Department of Justice have found that sentence length has no bearing on recidivism rates. And a blue-ribbon commission appointed by Gov. Quinn last month recommended that the general assembly revamp the state’s sentence structure so that criminals convicted of drug and property crimes spend less time in prison.

Quinn’s Taxpayer Action Board reported that swelling prison populations between 1970, when the state’s crime rate was 468 incidents per 100,000 residents, and 2000, when the rate was 657 incidents per 100,000 people, have not reduced crime. During those three decades, the state’s population increased by 11 percent, but the number of inmates went up by more than 600 percent, the panel reported.

The state has an average of 4.37 employees for every inmate, the board found, and personnel expenses are what drives costs in penal systems. If the state, which now incarcerates 45,000 people and supervises 30,000 parolees, put 15,000 criminals on parole instead of behind bars, it could save as much as $26,000 per criminal each year, the board concluded.

The state also needs to change its parole system, the panel recommended. Beyond hiring more parole officers to keep track of more parolees, the state should expand electronic monitoring programs and work with private organizations to establish education and job programs, the board said.

“By enacting these changes, the state could potentially save hundreds of millions of dollars,” the board concluded.

Such proposals are nothing new for prison reformers.

“If you’re not hurting people, we can treat you in the community,” says Charles Fasano, director of the prisons and jails program at the John Howard Association of Illinois, which recommends reducing inmate population to the point that the state can start closing prisons.

Fasano said sentencing laws should be changed so that minor drug possession can be handled via probation.

“They’re still feeding huge numbers into the system,” Fasano said. “Most of them just go in and do their little time. And because we haven’t treated them, they come out just as goofy as when they went in.”
___

http://www.galesburg.com/news/news_state/x631624649/Many-states-considering-
early-release-of-prisoners

Posted by lois at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)

IL: Joliet takes first steps to rehabilitate prison as a park

Tourist trap? Joliet takes first steps to rehabilitate prison as a park

By Steve Schmadeke | Tribune reporter
July 18, 2009

For more than a century, the Joliet Correctional Center was known as one of the nation's toughest prisons, a place where two inmates were squeezed into 4-foot-wide cells, where tuberculosis deaths were not uncommon and where prisoners made do with slop buckets until indoor plumbing arrived in the late 1940s.

Locals recall locking their doors as they drove down Collins Street past the 25-foot-tall limestone walls surrounded by barbed wire. The prison closed in 2002, but lifelong Joliet resident Martha Miller, 41, vividly remembers her parents keeping her in line with the phrase, "There's plenty of space left at Collins Street."

"It was that scary place your parents always frightened you with," she said.

Now city officials want the prison to star in an entirely different role. Instead of stockades and back-breaking labor, think iPod-carrying tourists listening to audio tours, former guards leading school outings and "interactive" exhibits. They're promoting the effort with signs such as "Visit Joliet. Stay for Ten to Twenty" and encouraging people to come have their picture taken outside the prison where part of the movie "Natural Born Killers" was shot.

"This could be Joliet's Disney World," said Rebecca Barker, a city marketing manager, outside the prison Friday. "We want to embrace the fact that it's in Joliet. It's something to be proud of; it put a lot of people here through college."

The first step begins Saturday when the city officially opens Joliet Prison Park -- an asphalt parking lot just south of the prison filled with four large signs explaining its history and four detailing Joliet's amenities.

Barker said the city has drawn a line: None of the displays includes information on infamous inmates or their crimes. "We're not promoting crime," she said. "And we don't know if children will be reading these."

Miller was an early visitor Friday, repeatedly explaining to her 9-year-old daughter that they couldn't go inside the prison. But they will return Saturday so her daughter can get her "mug shot" taken and hear a Blues Brothers cover band (part of the movie was filmed there).

Barker said a task force is working with a consultant to figure out if it's possible to open part of the prison, still owned by the state, to tourists and create a museum. A key factor will be cost -- the park alone cost nearly $100,000, funded by the city and a tourism grant -- and officials stressed that it may prove impossible to reopen the prison as a tourist attraction.

Either way, residents and officials said the move may help outsiders realize that Joliet is no longer a prison town -- though it does house the Will County Jail.

"I put a lot of people in that prison," said Mayor Art Schultz, a former Joliet police detective sergeant. "This city has improved so much since. We just had a big NASCAR race last week, we have a minor-league ball club -- we have everything you could want."

Joliet won't be the first city to try to turn an old prison into an educational theme park. Alcatraz is the best-known example, but Dubuque, Iowa -- like Joliet a river town located off Interstate Highway 80 that offers casino gambling -- may provide the best comparison.

The Dubuque historical society's Old Jail Museum charges adults $5 to view the original cells, examine historical exhibits about the town and view a "sound and light show" about the hanging of a man accused of killing his mining partner, said curator Tacie Campbell.

Joliet's old prison has its share of stories, from the murder of a warden's wife to the 1932 hysteria that began when people reported hearing a singing ghost in the prison cemetery. Some 3,000 people gathered there after reports ran in a local paper, but heard nothing, according to a book by Robert Sterling. Officials later determined the singing had been done by a musical night watchman.

In its heyday the prison itself charged visitors 25 cents to tour, but the new Joliet Prison Park is free.

At Friday's farmers market in downtown Joliet, soapmaker and longtime resident Janet Erio thought the new park could help change the town's image.

"The reputation is that this is an economically depressed area with big-city crime, like a little Chicago, but it's not," she said. "It might help show we've moved past that."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-joliet-prison-park-18jul18,0,1444403.story

Posted by lois at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2009

MA: An Act to Reform CORI, Restore Economic Opportunity and Improve Public Safety H. #3523, S. #1608

From Boston Workers Alliance
An Act to Reform CORI, Restore Economic Opportunity and Improve Public Safety
H. #3523, S. #1608
Background

Growing access to criminal background information prevents hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents from obtaining work, housing and educational loans every year. Unregulated CORI practices lead employers to overlook qualified and motivated applicants from work. Meanwhile, ex-offenders who are unable to secure legal employment and housing are more likely to re-offend, and enter a costly cycle of re-incarceration. CORI reform in 2009 presents an immediate, cost-free strategy to reduce state expenses while improving public safety.

Summary of CORI Reform

Ban the Criminal History Question from Initial Job Applications

- An employer should only ask about a criminal record after reviewing an applicant and deciding that they are otherwise qualified for the position. Employers should consider an applicants’ resume, references and an interview before using criminal histories to screen out employees.

- Removing the criminal record question from initial job applications alters the timing of a criminal record inquiry, but does not limit an employer’s access to such information

- This law is modeled off of a CORI Reform Ordinance unanimously passed by the Boston City Council in 2005, and subsequently replicated in cities such as Cambridge, Worcester, Chicago, San Francisco and Austin. More recently, Massachusetts removed the CORI question through Executive Order for state jobs and health and human service vendors, and Minnesota became the first state to pass a “ban the box” statute for all public jobs.

Allows those who have not re-offended to seal old misdemeanor cases after 3 years and old felony records after 7 years

- Currently, a person’s felony record is accessible for 15 years and a misdemeanor is open for 10 years, which prevents people who want to be productive members of society to move on and work

- Countless longitudinal studies have shown that if an ex-offender stays crime free for 5-6 years, the likelihood of his/her re-offending drops to statistically non-significant levels

- The court system sets a precedent by requiring jury duty for those with felony convictions over 7 years in the past

Automatically remove not guilty and dismissed cases from the CORI

- Job applicants should not be punished for cases in which there was no finding of guilt

- Our judicial system maintains innocence until proof of guilt. Those who are exonerated by the courts should not forced to endure discrimination by employers and other gatekeepers
www.BostonWorkersAlliance.org

Posted by lois at 06:27 PM | Comments (0)

Jacqueline Berrien, of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Chosen to Head E.E.O.C.

Obama Chooses an E.E.O.C. Leader
Published: July 16, 2009
NY Times
President Obama picked Jacqueline A. Berrien, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The White House made the announcement just hours before Mr. Obama addressed the annual meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New York. Ms. Berrien, a Harvard Law School graduate, has been the fund’s associate director-counsel since 2004. For three years, she was program officer in the Ford Foundation’s peace and social justice program, administering more than $13 million in grants to promote political participation by under-represented groups. She also has worked for the American Civil Liberties Union.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/us/politics/17brfs-OBAMACHOOSES_BRF.html?scp=1&sq=Jacqueline%20Berrian&st=cse

Posted by lois at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)

NAACP CALLS FOR END TO PRISON-BASED GERRYMANDERING AT NATIONAL CONVENTION

NAACP CALLS FOR END TO PRISON-BASED GERRYMANDERING AT NATIONAL CONVENTION
by Peter Wagner, July 17, 2009
[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/2009/07/17/naacp/ ]

On Tuesday, the delegates to the NAACP's 100th annual convention
approved a resolution calling for an end to prison-based
gerrymandering:

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the NAACP, on principle, decries
the enumeration of prisoners as local residents as violation of
our nation's fundamental one person one vote ethos of
representational democracy, harkening back to the disgraceful
three fifths era of constitutionally sanctioned slavery; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the NAACP calls on the U.S.
Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census to enumerate
prisoners within census blocks where domiciled at their time of
arrest; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that NAACP units call upon their
Congressional representatives to effect such a permanent change
to the Census Bureau enumeration procedures.

Posted by lois at 04:09 PM | Comments (0)

LA: Tallulah: closed male prison re-opens as women's prison run by parish sheriff

DOC moves 75 females to facility in Tallulah
By Matthew Hamilton • July 16, 2009

Tallulah's prison has a new name to go along with its new purpose.

Formerly known as the Steve Hoyle Rehabilitation Center, the prison is now called the Louisiana Transition Center for Women, according to Pam LaBorde, communications director for the Louisiana Department of Corrections.

Last month, DOC announced the facility will house the state's first re-entry program for female offenders.

The prison will offer General Educational Development degrees, skills training and job application resources for female prisoners within one year of their release.

For the next several weeks, LaBorde said the Transition Center itself will be transitioning.

She said all male prisoners have been transferred out, and female prisoners began moving in July 6.

LaBorde estimated the DOC has moved 75 female prisoners into the facility and will continue until the population reaches 550 females, 225 of whom will be involved with the re-entry program.

On July 26, the responsibility for running the prison will fall to the Madison Parish Sheriff's Office.

Previously, the facility housed youth offenders as the privately run Swanson Correctional Center for Youth-Madison Parish Unit. The state later took over the prison, renamed it Steve Hoyle and offered drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs.

In light of the state's budget constraints, DOC originally put the facility up for private bid twice, asking more than $21 million for the property before deciding to use the prison for the female re-entry program.

LaBorde said Steve Hoyle's drug rehabilitation program and many of its participants were transferred to Forcht-Wade Correctional Center in Keithville. To make room for the new prisoners, DOC moved Forcht-Wade's IMPACT program, a boot camp for prisoners, to the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel.

LaBorde said future personnel moves will be up to Madison Parish Sheriff Larry Cox. Cox was unavailable for comment Wednesday.

http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20090716/NEWS01/907150352/-1/NEWSFRONT2/DOC-moves-75-females-to-facility--in-Tallulah

Posted by lois at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

July 16, 2009

Sotomayor for the Prosecution

Sotomayor for the Prosecution
— By James Ridgeway | Wed July 15, 2009
Mother Jones
Sonia Sotomayor's all-but-certain confirmation will be a notable victory for the Democrats, and a long-overdue victory for diversity on the nation's highest court. Whether it will be a victory for criminal justice is another question altogether--and one that seems to matter little to most of her liberal supporters.

Long before her Senate confirmation hearings began, progressive politician, lawyers, scholars, activists, and bloggers had joined together, as if in one voice, to sing Sotomayor’s praises. Beyond predictable paeans to her qualifications and her inspiring personal story, the focus of this chorus of accolades is not Judge Sotomayor’s passion for justice, her moral rectitude, or even her much-discussed “empathy.” Instead, Congressional Democrats and their allies have banded together to celebrate how thoroughly indistinguishable Sonia Sotomayor is from a Republican judge.

In their zeal to show that she is a “moderate,” Sotomayor’s liberal supporters are downplaying all her most compelling qualities, while lauding her most conservative decisions. She has rejected the majority of racial discrimination claims, they crow, and sent most immigrants packing. On criminal justice matters, she is somewhere to the right of the man she will replace, Daddy Bush appointee David Souter. The very facts that ought to make progressives cringe are instead being extolled as Sotomayor's greatest virtues, since they are the things that render her eminently "confirmable."

The most barefaced example of this rhetoric came on the eve of the hearings from New York Senator Charles Schumer, considered one of the Judiciary Committee’s most liberal members. Declaring Sotomayor a “slam dunk,” Schumer bragged:

She has agreed with Republican colleagues 95 percent of the time. She has ruled for the government in 83 percent of immigration cases, against the immigration plaintiff. She has ruled for the government in 92 percent of criminal cases. She has denied race claims in 83 percent of the cases and has split evenly on employment cases between employer and employee.

It was Schumer’s office that last month released its own study of Sotomayor’s 848 decisions in federal asylum cases, including those based on alleged violations of the Convention on Torture. Sotomayor ruled in favor of plaintiffs in these cases just 17 percent o the time. “These findings should put to rest any doubts about Judge Sotomayor’s fidelity to the rule of law,” Schumer said in a statement. “Even in immigration cases, which would most test the so-called ‘empathy factor,’ Judge Sotomayor’s record is well within the judicial mainstream.” In other words, being a Latina won’t make Sotomayor any more compassionate toward immigrants who face torture and death when we ship them back home.

On questions of criminal justice and criminal procedure, Sotomayor has a particularly substantial record—more than anyone else on the current Supreme Court, as her supporters have rightly pointed out, due to her career as a prosecutor, criminal court judge, and appellate judge. On this front, Sotomayor’s backers are promoting her as a tough-on-crime pragmatist with no soft spot for criminal defendants—even if they happen to be innocent.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal looked approvingly at Sotomayor’s record on criminal cases, in an article titled “Nominees Criminal Rulings Tilt to the Right of Souter.” The retiring Republican-appointee Souter has sometimes joined Court liberals in defending the rights of the accused and convicted—most recently in a January case concerning police searches and seizures. In a similar appellate case, Sotomayor had ruled in favor of the police. The Journal reported:

New York criminal-defense lawyers say she is surprisingly tough on crime for a Democratic-backed appointee -- a byproduct, they believe, of her tenure as a prosecutor….Following recent Supreme Court precedent, Judge Sotomayor tends to see relatively few grounds to overturn criminal convictions, says John Siffert, a New York attorney who taught an appellate advocacy class with the judge at New York University School of Law from 1996 to 2006. On the trial bench, he says, "she was not viewed as a pro-defense judge."

Sotomayor had the opportunity to review many petitions for writs of habeas corpus--the basic Constitutional right to seek judicial relief from unlawful detention, which offers recourse to those who believe they have been unfairly or improperly tried or wrongly convicted. Progressives have for years attacked the Bush administration for denying habeas corpus rights to prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere. The Alliance for Justice, a 30-year-old coalition of progressive groups, has a special project called “Defend Habeas,” which states on its web site:

Without access to due process guarantees enshrined in the Constitution, people can be imprisoned indefinitely, without any hope of a fair trial or hearing, or even an opportunity to respond to the charges against them. …

Eliminating habeas turns our back on what it means to be an American, and advances a policy that makes us less secure rather than more secure. If the United States cannot guarantee rights to the citizens of other countries, what guarantee do Americans have that their rights will be respected by the rest of the world? We live in a country of laws, not of men, and in order to stand up for that tradition, due process must be restored.

Yet for those incarcerated in U.S. prisons, the main obstacle to accessing these rights is not anything concocted during the Bush years. It is the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), introduced in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, and signed into law by Bill Clinton in an election year. The AEDPA severely restricts the ability of federal judges to grant writs of habeas corpus and offer judicial relief to the convicted, even when there is substantial new evidence of their innocence.

Sonia Sotomayor rendered her appellate decisions under the restrictions imposed by AEDPA, and was subject to its tenets. But as a handful of defense lawyers have pointed out, mostly on personal blogs, she seemed more than content to abide by those restrictions. One blogger calls her a “dead bang loser for the defense.” The blog of the conservative, law-and-order Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, agreed, and praised Sotomayor on these very grounds:

[AEDPA] is bitterly resented by many federal judges....Many, many federal judges have attempted to evade it, and a few have gone so far as to declare it unconstitutional. All of the latter have been reversed [by the Supreme Court]….Throughout [Sotomayor’s] opinions, I do not see the hostility to AEDPA that I have seen in so many opinions in the lower federal courts. The statute is largely applied as written and as intended.

A more surprising affirmation of Sotomayor’s record in this area came from the Alliance for Justice, sponsors of the Defend Habeas project. In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy and ranking member Jeff Sessions, the AFJ wrote:

Judge Sotomayor’s criminal justice opinions reveal the temperament of a former prosecutor who understands the real-world demands of prosecuting crime and fundamentally respects the rule of law. When reviewing the constitutional rights of criminal defendants, Judge Sotomayor closely follows Second Circuit precedent and dispenses narrow rulings tailored to the particular facts of the case. Exhibiting a moderate and restrained approach to judicial review of trial process, she focuses on procedural issues, and she has resolved the overwhelming majority of her cases without reaching the merits of a defendant’s claim. Significantly, she frequently concludes that trial defects resulted in harmless rather than structural error. Her restrained anner is most evident in her habeas corpus decisions, in which she strictly adheres to the procedural requirements of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (“AEDPA”), often dismissing habeas petitions as nexhausted or time-barred under AEDPA, even when faced with potentially credible—and, in one instance, ultimately proven—claims of actual innocence. While the Alliance for Justice believes that, where possible, judges should reach the merits of a defendant’s constitutional claims and recognize the damage that a trial court error inflicts on the integrity of a criminal proceeding, we nonetheless respect Judge Sotomayor’s moderate approach and commitment to preserving the delicate balance between the government’s ability to prosecute crime and an individual’s constitutional rights.

The AFJ’s report, and its upbeat press conference on Sotomayor’s criminal rulings, were widely reported, under headlines like “Liberal Group Praises Sotomayor’s Criminal Justice Record,” and “Sotomayor ‘Tough’ on Crime, Report Says.” It all begs the question of whether habeas corpus rights warrant the most fervent and absolute defense only when they are violated by Republicans, and not when they are dismissed by Democratic court nominees under laws signed by Democratic presidents.

The most powerful statement on this issue has come from Jeffrey Deskovic, who was wrongfully convicted of rape and murder at age 17, and spent 16 years in prison before being exonerated by DNA evidence. His earlier appeals had, in 1997, reached New York State’s highest appeals court, where his petition for a writ of habeas corpus was denied because his lawyer had filed it four days late (on the erroneous advice of a court clerk). The time restriction had been imposed by the then-new AEDPA.

Deskovic then appealed his case to the Federal Second Circuit, where he encountered Judge Sonia Sotomayor. As he described it in a piece on Alternet last week, his lawyer "gave three reasons why Judge Sotomayor and her colleague should overturn the procedural ruling: 1) Upholding such a ruling would cause a miscarriage of justice to continue; 2) Reversing the procedural ruling could open the door to more sophisticated DNA Testing; 3) The late petition was not my fault or my attorney's." But the judges refused to reverse the ruling. "The alleged reliance of Deskovic's attorney on verbal misinformation from the court clerk constitutes excusable neglect that does not rise to the level of an extraordinary circumstance," they wrote. "Similarly, we are not persuaded that … his situation is unique and his petition has substantive merit." A second appeal to Sotomayor's court resulted in the same decision, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case, so Deskovic stayed in prison for six more years before DNA proved him innocent (and convicted another man). Deskovic writes:

Judge Sotomayor will appear before the Senate next week. Given that she has been nominated to a lifetime appointment that affects all of our rights, what she did in my case -- condemning me to a life sentence based on procedure in the face of an airtight innocence claim -- should be part of the discussion. I want my case to be a part of the national discussion. I want Senators to ask Judge Sotomayor if she stands by her ruling, and whether she would rule that way in the future. If I could I would testify at the Senate confirmation hearing, about the human impact of Judge Sotomayor's putting procedure over innocence. Thus far, however, I have gotten no response from either side on Capitol Hill.

In fact, as Paul Wright, the editor of Prison Legal News, wrote to me in an email last week, Judge Sotomayor’s ruling against Deskovic would likely be seen as “a strong reason for her to be confirmed to the court since it shows she is outcome-oriented.” Wright continued:

No one cares about innocent people dying in prison, the Republicans and Democrats alike are fine with it….The courts do everything they can to avoid reaching the merits of prisoners claims and instead love to dismiss on procedural technicalities. It is the purposeful triumph of form over substance.

Indeed, it is decisions much like this one that are offered up as proof that Sotomayor is a moderate, and not an “activist” judge--which is the current term for jurists who render decisions based upon whether they actually serve the cause of justice. The fact that progressives feel they must celebrate rulings like these in order to prove their nominee is in the "mainstream" is far more a condemnation of Sotomayor's supporters than of the judge herself. It all goes to show how far to the right that mainstream now runs--and how willingly liberals have been borne along by the current.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/07/sotomayor-prosecution

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

Unicor memo: Closing of Existing Factories

U.S. Department of Justice
Federal Bureau of Prisons
Washington, DC 20534
July 15, 2009

MEMORANDUM FOR ALL UNICOR STAFF

FROM : Paul Laird, Assistant Director Education, and Vocational Training
SUBJECT : Factory Restructuring

Throughout this fiscal year, we have implemented a number of cost
containment initiatives to offset the ongoing losses we have been
experiencing. Year to date, the corporation has a net loss of
over $20 million, and we have had negative earnings for the last
seven months . While the cost reduction initiatives have been
helpful, they have not been sufficient to reverse the negative
earnings trend. Therefore, it is necessary to further reduce
operating expenses by downsizing and closing some existing
factories .

Yesterday, we initiated the closing of factories at USP Coleman I
& II, FCI Victorville II, USP Florence, FCI Talladega, FCI Big
Spring, FCI Williamsburg, and FCI Estill . We are also closing
operations in specialized units at FCI Sandstone, FCI Fairton,
FCI Otisville, FCI Marianna, FCI Phoenix, and FCC Allenwood. In
addition to these closings, we are also downsizing operations at
FCC Lompoc (Cable) ; FPC Alderson (Distribution) ; FCC Butner

(Filter) ; and USP Leavenworth (Distribution) .

These actions were necessary to reduce our excess production
capacity and staffing to a level consistent with the current and
forecasted business activity .

Some of the affected staff positions at the above locations are
or will soon be vacant . However, many are encumbered, and we
will need to vacate those positions as we did during previous
factory reorganizations. 

This was an extremely difficult decision because it affected a
number of dedicated FPI staff. However, it is critical that FPI
not incur costs that we have insufficient business to support .
These factory initiatives will reduce operating costs by nearly$16 million per year, although they will not take full effect
until late 2010 . These savings and other cost containment
initiatives will be critical for us in returning the corporation
to a profitable position in the future.

I understand this will be a very difficult and unsettling time .
We will do our best to keep you informed of any further
developments and progress . During this time, it is imperative
that we all do everything we can to reduce our costs and increase
our efficiency . We will also continue to aggressively pursue new
business opportunities and new product lines . Working together,
we can overcome the challenges ahead and ultimately establish new
lines of business in our impacted factories .

cc : Chief Executive Officers
FPI Board of Directors

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

MS: Officials say prison is just the beginning for area

Officials say prison is just the beginning for area
By Adam Koob | The Natchez Democrat
July 15, 2009

NATCHEZ — The cells are still empty and there’s still hiring left to do, but Tuesday Corrections Corporation of America hosted the official grand opening of the multi-million dollar Adams County Correctional Facility.

Community leaders, politicians and representatives from state agencies packed the facility’s gymnasium to hear from several guest speakers.

Adams County Correctional Center Warden Vance Laughlin talks with Lieutenant Governor Phil Bryant during the Dedication Ceremony Tuesday.

“It was a very dark place,” Bryant said.

In contrast, Bryant said the new CCA facility, which cost $126 million to construct and will bring 400 new jobs to the area, is an enormous asset to Adams County and those who will reside in the facility.

“I’m glad to see the world has changed,” Bryant said.

And while CCA’s newest facility, the fourth in the state, represents the latest in inmate care, the new jobs the prison will bring to the area were the stars of Tuesday’s ceremony.

“This is important,” Mississippi Development Authority Executive Director Gray Swoope said. “This represents significant employment opportunities that can be built on.”

Swoope said while the jobs are important to the local economy, the economic momentum those jobs possess is even greater.

“We want to build on this,” he said. “This can be a center for commerce. We can have a ripple effect on Southwest Mississippi.”

But like Swoope and others noted, that potential cannot be utilized unless teamwork between county, city and state representatives is firmly in place.

“It took a tremendous amount of teamwork to get to here today,” Swoope said. “And it takes community support. This type of project does not come together on its own.”

But no matter how the facility got there, CCA representatives are just glad to see the project completed.

“This is a great day for CCA and a great day for Adams County,” Warden Vance Laughlin said.

CCA Chairman and CEO John Ferguson said the new facility is self-validating for the company.

“This shows we’re doing a pretty good job,” Ferguson said. “This company is great at what it does.”

And it won’t be long before the company begins housing some of its first inmates.

Laughlin said the first inmates will begin arriving in August and will continue filling the facility for the next six months.

Additionally, the facility will continue to hire the approximately 200 needed employees into December, Laughlin said.

The facility is also expected to pay $3 million in taxes and utilities.
http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2009/jul/15/officials-say-prison-just-beginning-area/

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

July 14, 2009

America's Jail Crisis: Budget-strapped counties are being crushed by the costs of incarceration. But there are solutions.

America's Jail Crisis
Jesse Bogan, 07.13.09
Budget-strapped counties are being crushed by the costs of incarceration. But there are solutions.
Forbes.com
HOUSTON -- Out the 20th floor window of the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, the sprawl and elevation of buildings look like the campus of a law enforcement university, filling up the northeast corner of downtown. A juvenile justice center as big as a hospital. Two high-rise courthouses. An overrun booking tank. Beneath it all, tunnels run like veins through the complex, filled with inmates shuffling to hearings from the third biggest jail in America.

An average of 10,000 inmates were held per day in the Harris County Jail in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, not including an additional 1,100 bused six hours to and from northern Louisiana. With an average stay of 45 days in three drab detention facilities, the jail is consistently overcrowded.

"This really wasn't built for this," says John Dyess, chief administrative officer of the sheriff's office, which oversees the jail. "I don't know if we can build our way out of where we are today."

Money may decide the issue. A stunning 25% of Harris County's annual $1.5 billion budget goes to law enforcement, with more than $750,000 a day spent on detainees. A shortage of guards means the jail shells out $35 million a year on overtime; some guards are topping out at $100,000 a year in total pay.

Houston is far from alone. Amid budget crises, falling tax revenue and national unemployment approaching 10%, jails--usually city- or county-run holding facilities for those serving short sentences or awaiting trial--saw their populations grow nearly twice as fast as state and federal prison populations during the first half of the decade, according to a 2008 report by the Justice Policy Institute. The report says that local governments spent $97 billion on criminal justice in 2004, up 347% since 1982, while detention expenses climbed 519% to $19 billion.

Between 2006 and 2008, Harris County's jail population grew 21%, adding 1,900 more mouths to feed three times a day. In 2000, there were 621,149 people in America's local hoosegows; by midyear 2008 there were 26% more, or 785,556 inmates housed at an average 95% of rated capacity.

Los Angles County has the largest daily jail population, 19,836, twice as much as in Harris County, followed by New York City. Rounding out the rest of the 10 biggest jail jurisdictions are Cook County, Ill.; Maricopa County, Ariz.; Philadelphia; Miami-Dade County, Fla.; Dallas County, Texas; Orange County, Calif., and Shelby County, Tenn.

From behind the brick walls in Houston, doctors write $1 million in prescriptions a month; dentists pull 330 teeth. Women are lined up shoulder-to-shoulder to fold bright orange clothes that come out of a battery of dryers that can handle 170 pounds of laundry a load. Men prepare 35,000 meals a day and 13 million meals a year at an average of 88 cents a plastic tray. A recent day's potatoes were wheeled into the kitchen on a crate stacked seven rows high, past a guard and an inmate shouting at each other--apparently the golden rule of not getting within "sight and sound" of female inmates was broken. Tensions are high since a brawl a few days before.

The $200 million spent on detention a year "puts a strain on resources" for other programs, says Dyess. But counties are legally obligated to provide a safe place for inmates and guards. Harris County has failed several jail standard tests and was recently cited for excessive use of force, inmate deaths, and poor medical and mental care (the jail says it serves as the biggest mental health facility in Texas).

The National Association of Counties is calling on communities to invest more into pretrial services so that people charged with non-violent offenses who don't need to be confined can be quickly vetted for community programs and the mentally ill can be put under health care services or, if needed, placed in a secure health facility. In Harris County, for instance, some people are detained for speeding tickets, yet potentially could be among those who cost about $485 a day for a bed in a local hospital.

"Many people are in jail because they are too poor to post bail," says Donald Murray, senior legislative director for justice and public safety for the association. "If you have a first-class pretrial program, a county is often in a better position because they can carefully analyze the individual, can figure out better what needs to be done."

The Justice Policy Institute says eight out of 10 people in jail earned less than $2,000 a month before they were locked up. Nearly two-thirds of the people behind bars are waiting for trial, while the length of pretrial detention has increased. Meanwhile, between 1986 and 2005, violent crime arrests climbed 25%, while drug arrests jumped 150%, 82% of them in 2005 for possession (about half for marijuana). And an estimated six out of every 10 jail inmates have a mental disorder, compared to 1-in-10 in the general population.

A guard in the 225-bed psych ward here sits near a sign that illustrates how to cut away a noose. Beneath it, a safety knife is held in a container for emergencies. Deputy Simon Ramirez Jr., 54, talks about how he's evolved from relying on the use of force in his youth to a more cerebral approach, as he and other guards in the ward "compete with the voices" in inmate heads. Many of his clientèle are homeless and arrive on repeated criminal trespassing arrests.

"A lot of these people just have to be by themselves," Ramirez says. "Nobody wants to build a mental health hospital. They use jails to warehouse people who have mental health issues."

State prisons aren't faring much better, with corrections nationwide costing more than $50 billion a year, according to a March report by the Pew Center on the States, called "One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections." The title comes from the ratio of people under some form of correctional control in the U.S.

As states operate in a drastic budget climate, jails and prisons stand to face cutbacks, despite harsher sentencing guidelines passed in the 1980s and '90s that have glutted cellblocks. In 2008, the total jail and prison population reached 2.3 million, topping for the first time the ratio of one in every 100 adults. Meanwhile, in the past 25 years, the number of people on probation and parole has increased from 1.6 million to 5 million. Many are caught in a revolving door: 40% of probationers don't complete their obligation successfully and more than half the number of parolees land back in jail after three years of being released. Yet the cost differences in 2008 are clear: $78.95 a day for a prisoner compared to $3.42 for supervising a probationer.

After an "extraordinary" 25 years of prison growth, the Pew report says "we are well past the point of diminishing returns."

"Serious, chronic and violent offenders belong behind bars, for a long time, and the expense of locking them up is justified many times over. But for hundreds of thousands of lower-level inmates, incarceration costs taxpayers far more than it saves in prevented crime."

Some states are changing. Georgia, for instance, bolstered the authority of probation officers to impose administrative sanctions on violators in certain circumstances. The theory is that quicker punishment for those who break the rules of their release will cut down on the chances of more serious crimes that lead back to prison.

A pilot program of four Georgia courts has freed up probation officers to supervise more and spend less time waiting for a judge in court. It's also cut jail time for inmates waiting for a court appearance by more than 70%. Total savings? $1.1 million between 2006 and 2008. Harris County burns through that in two days, but it's a start. The program became available statewide July 1.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/10/jails-houston-recession-business-beltway-jails.html

Posted by lois at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)

Brief Review in Rethinking Schools: *The Real Cost of Prisons Comix

*The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
Edited by Lois Ahrens
Comix by Kevin Pyle, Sabrina Jones and Susan Willmarth
(PM Press, 2008)
$12.95, unpaginated

Between the 1920s and 1960s, about one out of every one thousand people in the United States were incarcerated. By 2000, about five out of every thousand people were incarcerated. With compassion, insight, plain language, and compelling images, The Real Cost of Prisons peels back this startling statistic to explore the human stories it hides. Student-friendly comic chapters examine prison towns; the so-called "war on drugs" and prisoners; and women prisoners and children. The U.S. prison-industrial complex deserves a bigger place in the curriculum. This slim volume is an excellent start.
Rethinking Schools. Volume 23 No. 2 - Winter 2008/2009 > Resources

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

WA: DOC receives $185 in Federal Stimulus Funds

STATE OF WASHINGTON
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 13, 2009

DOC to Receive Nearly $185 Million in Federal Stimulus Funds
OLYMPIA – The Department of Corrections will receive nearly $185 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to support public safety programs in Washington and protect thousands of jobs.

“We are in the process of reconciling our program operations with the projected state budget deficit that was brought about by the current economic recession,” said DOC Secretary Eldon Vail. “These funds will help to lessen the severity of the service delivery and workforce reductions we have to make to manage the agency within our appropriated budget.”

DOC will receive more than $182 million from the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund which Congress designed to prevent reductions in critical government services. The State Fiscal Stabilization Fund money will help pay for custody staff positions in prisons.

“As promised, the Obama Administration has delivered for Washington State,” Governor Chris Gregoire said. “This federal funding is doing exactly what the Obama Administration requires it to do – it’s protecting our communities, supports critical rehabilitation programs and saves jobs.”

An additional award of nearly $2 million is a Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) from the U.S. Department of Justice. The JAG will pay for prison positions responsible for investigating and monitoring gang activity, collaborating with law enforcement on gang-threat mitigation, and advising the agency on how to deal with gang issues. A portion of the money will pay for custody officer positions in prisons that have gang activity.

The JAG will also fund community-based and prison-based inpatient and outpatient chemical dependency treatment programs, including the Therapeutic Community program at Airway Heights Corrections Center located near Spokane.

DOC will receive the funds between July 1, 2009 and June 30, 2010.

-30-

Posted by lois at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2009

OK: Republicans Push for More Prisoners to Go to Private Prisons. 3,000 "beds' in private prisons empty.

Private prisons in Oklahoma
The state has six private prisons that hold about 19 percent of the prison population or 4,343 offenders.

The average cost for a medium-security bed in a private prison is $17,611 a year and $23,725 for maximum security.

Nearly 3,000 private-prison beds in Oklahoma are vacant, a figure that includes prisons with and without Department of Corrections contracts.

Source: Oklahoma Department of Corrections

Republicans dissatisfied with prison study

By BARBARA HOBEROCK World Capitol Bureau
Published: 7/12/2009

OKLAHOMA CITY — Republican legislative leaders are dissatisfied with a report on the state's correctional system done by The Durrant Group Inc.

In a June 25 letter to the Iowa-based group, Senate President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee, R-Oklahoma City, and House Speaker Chris Benge, R-Tulsa, ask for a cost-benefit analysis that considers the use of private prisons and evaluates additional factors, such as staffing.

The Durrant Group's report suggested expanding the public system.

"It was not apparent from the report that the possibility of acquiring existing facilities from private prison companies, public private partnerships, or contracts with private prison operators to meet anticipated capacity requirements was ever considered," Coffee and Benge wrote in a letter seeking a "revised comprehensive master plan."

"The Durrant Group Inc. was informed of the excess capacity at several facilities and told that access to private facilities would be provided; but the availability of private beds was not taken into consideration before making recommendations."

The state has not paid the firm a final installment of $16,600 for the $415,000 study, according to Senate staff.

Coffee was withholding comment until the final report is finished, said his spokesman Randy Swanson.

The Durrant Group fully complied with its responsibilities, said managing principal Michael A. Lewis.

He said he was "surprised" and "disappointed" with the letter from legislative leaders,
adding that the additional requests were not part of the original agreement and would cost thousands more.

He said the company had very little support from or discussions with legislative leaders. At one meeting, leaders showed up 10 minutes late and then told the company to meet with legislative staff. Company officials made four trips to Oklahoma over three months and submitted the final report in late April.

The company believes it should be compensated in full, Lewis said.

The company has been in business for 75 years. Some 65 percent of its business is in the area of corrections and juvenile justice, Lewis said.

Benge said officials have no preconceived plans to address the correctional system. He said the state's options include an expansion of public beds, building a new public facility, leasing a facility with plans to purchase it, or relying on private prisons.

Benge said no more studies of the system are planned.

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

Barbara Margolis, Prisoners’ Advocate, Dies at 79

Barbara Margolis, Prisoners’ Advocate, Dies at 79
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: July 12, 2009
NY Times

Barbara Margolis, a longtime volunteer in New York City jails who 20 years ago founded Fresh Start, a widely praised training program that brings the city’s finest chefs to Rikers Island to train inmates in culinary arts, and then helps those inmates find restaurant jobs upon release, died on July 3 in Manhattan.

She was 79 and had homes on the Upper East Side; in Quogue, N.Y.; and in Tourrettes-sur-Loup, in the south of France.

Mrs. Margolis’s death, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, was from complications of cancer, her daughter, Nancy Margolis King, said.

Long active in civic affairs, Mrs. Margolis was the New York City commissioner of protocol under Mayor Edward I. Koch. In that capacity, she was the city’s official greeter, welcoming visiting dignitaries like Pope John Paul II and Diana, Princess of Wales, for an annual salary of $1. (On New Year’s Eve 1977, Mayor Koch was sworn in for his first term at the home of Mrs. Margolis and her husband, David I. Margolis, who became one of the mayor’s close advisers.)

All the while, Mrs. Margolis was deeply involved in prison reform. Besides founding Fresh Start, she directed or helped create programs at Rikers in horticulture, journalism and athletics. Several are still going, including three educational, therapeutic and vocational programs run by the Horticultural Society of New York, of which Mrs. Margolis was chairwoman of the board at her death.

A fourth program, developed under Mrs. Margolis’s supervision and also run by the Horticultural Society, is scheduled to start today. It will teach Rikers’s adolescent inmates — 16- and 17-year-old boys — how to turn a large field on the island into a community garden.

None of Mrs. Margolis’s associates interviewed last week could recall what first prompted her to volunteer in the city’s jails in the early 1960s. Even her daughter was not completely certain. To those who knew her, Mrs. Margolis was so utterly at home at Rikers that it seemed simply as if she had always been on the island, which is home to one of the largest penal complexes in the world.

Mrs. Margolis worked mostly in the Eric M. Taylor Center, which houses male prisoners. In 1980, she helped revive The Rikers Review, a magazine of literature, journalism and advice written and produced by inmates.

In 1989, she founded Fresh Start, which she ran until 1997. (Since then, Fresh Start has been administered by the Osborne Association, a nonprofit organization that assists prisoners and their families.)

Mrs. Margolis conceived Fresh Start as a means of placing newly released inmates in entry-level jobs, which restaurants had in abundance.

Each year the program trains about 60 carefully screened men in all aspects of restaurant work, from food and pastry preparation to table service and dishwasher repair. The inmates attend classes eight hours a day for 10 weeks and are sometimes taught by volunteer guest instructors from restaurants in Manhattan.

Because alcohol is not allowed in the jail, inmates are trained in wine tasting using different varieties of grape juice. They are also taught knife skills, a highly unusual course in a penal institution. This has never caused a problem, Elizabeth Gaynes, the executive director of the Osborne Association, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

When Mrs. Margolis began Fresh Start, few training programs paid attention to inmates once they were released, Jennifer Wynn, the author of “Inside Rikers” (St. Martin’s, 2001), said in an interview on Friday.

Under Mrs. Margolis’s stewardship, efforts to prevent recidivism came not only in official form (Fresh Start offered participants therapy and drug counseling in prison and lifetime support on their release) but also in her own unofficial brand of attention to alumni.

“She would call them, three weeks out, six weeks out, six months out,” said Ms. Wynn, who was the director of Fresh Start from 2004 to 2007. “She would take phone calls from graduates at 10 o’clock at night. She would go to their weddings. If they needed a tie for an interview, she would get them a tie.”

About 25 percent of Fresh Start graduates return to jail within a year of their release, according to the Osborne Association. The recidivism figure for other city jail inmates within a year of release is about 46 percent, according to the New York City Department of Correction.

Barbara Ann Schneider, familiarly known as Bobbie, was born on Oct. 4, 1929, in Malden, Mass. Her father, Eli, owned a drugstore and soda fountain; her mother, the former Shirley Selsky, was a homemaker.

Mrs. Margolis earned a bachelor’s degree in retailing from Simmons College in Boston. After an earlier marriage ended in divorce, she married Mr. Margolis in 1958.

Mr. Margolis, the retired president and chairman of Colt Industries (later Coltec), a maker of firearms, aerospace equipment and other machinery, died in December.

Besides her daughter, Nancy, Mrs. Margolis is survived by three sons, Brian, Robert and Peter; a sister, Arline Guefen; and five grandchildren.

A past member of the New York City Board of Correction, Mrs. Margolis served on the boards of many organizations, among them the Vera Institute of Justice and the New York City Criminal Justice Agency.

Perhaps the greatest sign of the esteem in which Mrs. Margolis was held came from the prisoners themselves. Frank Guzman, a Fresh Start alumnus who now earns his living as a trucker, recalled on Friday that inmates once stole her car from the Rikers parking lot. When they found out whose it was, they returned it at once.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 13, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

Opinion: To get more, they need Gitmo Don't be surprised if distressed Small Town U.S.A. rolls out the welcome mat for Guantanamo prisoners.

Opinion: To get more, they need Gitmo
Don't be surprised if distressed Small Town U.S.A. rolls out the welcome mat for Guantanamo prisoners.
By Eric J. Williams
June 29, 2009
LA Times

When Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other Republicans proposed the Keep Terrorists Out of America Act, I just rolled my eyes. The brief firestorm set off by the GOP over whether to move Guantanamo Bay detainees to U.S. prisons seemed to be just inside-the-Beltway silliness. Outside Washington, town after town, from Colorado to Montana to Tennessee, proposed bringing the enemy combatants to their communities.

I was not in the least surprised. I have been studying the issue of prisons in rural towns across the U.S. since 2003 and have found that small towns have no problem with housing inmates, no matter how dangerous society considers the inmates to be.

The public's surprise that small towns are vying for Guantanamo inmates just demonstrates how little urban and suburban Americans understand about rural America. For the rural communities, prisons and prisoners are about the promise of more jobs and more money.

For more than 25 years, rural towns have been lobbying, cajoling and nearly bribing governmental institutions to give them prisons. I lived in and studied two such towns for more than a year. One was Florence, Colo., where some of the current controversy is focused. It is the home to ADX Florence, the so-called Alcatraz of the Rockies, where the federal government houses its most disruptive inmates under supermax conditions. It is home to "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski, would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid and 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, among others. And the town of Florence actually raised money to pay the federal government for the privilege of housing these inmates.

Stories like this have become commonplace in rural America. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation used to refer to the process of selecting a community to house a new prison as DAD (decide, announce and defend). Today's process would better be described as LLC: lobby, lobby and celebrate.

In the past, the government bore the burden of convincing towns of the benefits of having a prison. Today, communities must show the government why they are the best location for a prison.

Communities have offered property, money and upgraded utilities to land a facility. Residents of a town in Missouri wrote a song that they sang to the state Assembly committee in charge of the decision. After the end of the oil boom left the economy of Hinton, Okla., in shambles, the town borrowed millions from American Express to build a prison and then hired a private prison firm to run it. Places as disparate as Youngstown, Ohio, a former steel town, and Warren, Maine, a former fishing and timber stronghold, have turned to prisons as the solution to their economic woes.

Studies have shown mixed economic results, but this hasn't stopped the communities from going forward. As the mayor of one of the towns told me: "We don't have enough water for a brewery, and IBM ain't exactly knocking at the door. What else were we gonna do?"

What else indeed. Those of us in urban and suburban areas may look down our noses at such blatant opportunism and rail against the "prison/industrial complex," but for a town with little else to save it from economic ruin, it makes sense. So while the politicians rail against imprisoning the inmates from Gitmo in the U.S., don't be surprised when small towns step up to welcome them.

Eric J. Williams is a professor of criminal justice at Sonoma State University. His book "The Big House in a Small Town: Prisons, Communities, and Economics in Rural America" will be published next year.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-\ williams29-2009jun29,0,4331225.story

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

July 12, 2009

NV: Mental Illness Keeps Many Clycling Through Jail

Illness keeps many on cycle through jail
Committing crimes gets them treatment which ends with their release

By Timothy Pratt

Sunday, July 12, 2009 | 2 a.m.
CASE STUDIES: HIGH COSTS, POOR OUTCOMES

If Nevada was willing to invest in providing more psychiatric care outside of jail, not only would it do more to help the mentally ill, it would also cost taxpayers less than arresting and incarcerating the mentally ill, experts say.

Consider the jail and medication costs for the following three mentally ill inmates — and this does not take into account the additional court costs and other bills.

Dr. Keith Courtney, chief psychiatrist at Clark County Detention Center, withheld the inmates’ names to comply with patient privacy laws.

Inmate No. 1 suffers from autism and occasional psychotic episodes. When he’s out on the street, he gets in fights, takes drugs, attempts robbery, winds up at the detention center. He has been in jail 539 days since 2006. That means taxpayers have spent about $123,000 on keeping him jailed and medicated.

Inmate No. 2 is a 20-year-old man who has spent at least 520 days behind bars, mainly for armed robberies, since coming of age two years ago. The system has spent more than $120,000 in incarceration and psychotropic medication costs, Courtney says. The young man also winds up in the hospital after suicide attempts, which costs taxpayers even more. He was raped at 15 and now hurts himself repeatedly in the same part of his body.

Inmate No. 3 is a 32-year-old woman whose 441 days behind bars cost an estimated $100,000-plus. She is a victim of severe abuse and suffers from borderline personality disorder, often attempting suicide, Courtney says. She only takes her prescribed medication when she is jailed, preferring methamphetamine when she is not. She is often arrested for prostitution, sometimes burglary.

“She’s never here long enough to get adequate care,” Courtney says. She needs a safe house, treatment for drug abuse, ongoing intensive therapy. There is no one place where she can get all that. “I fully expect her to die soon,” the doctor says with resignation.

------------------------
Here he comes again, his hands covered in heavy black mittens, his head stuffed into a net that makes him look like a beekeeper, his legs and wrists closed in shackles.

Clark County Detention Center officers dress him this way because he has been known to spit, throw punches and kick.

The inmate shuffles through a sliding door, a large officer follows and, nearby, other members of the jail staff step back, as if sensing danger. The inmate, seemingly unaware, tells the officer, “I don’t want a plane crashing into me, you know.” The detention officer nods and nudges him toward an isolation cell, where the inmate will have to remove his clothes. He will be left with what’s known as a suicide blanket, which can’t be torn apart and used as a noose.

He is not yet 20, but he has been in jail three times, for 71 days, since coming of age last year.

The detention center’s chief psychiatrist, Keith Courtney, says the young man has what’s known as reactive attachment disorder. Those who suffer from the condition have trouble relating to others. It’s often a sign of early abuse.

The inmate who was moved into the isolation room doesn’t take medication for his condition when he is on the streets, but he does take illegal drugs. Then he gets in trouble and is locked up, mostly for crimes such as burglary, attempted robbery with a deadly weapon. In jail, he throws feces, attacks the staff. So he goes to one of the isolation rooms, for inmates who are a danger to themselves or others.

On a recent morning, the 19-year-old was one of 621 inmates at the detention center — of 3,066 total — diagnosed as mentally ill and prescribed psychotropic medications. That’s one in five. On some days, the ratio is closer to one in four.

By way of comparison, the state’s Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas has space for 204 patients.

So the jail, Courtney notes, is “the largest mental health facility in Southern Nevada.”

It is also the most expensive and least effective. Providing mental health care is not the purpose of a jail, after all.

The last hope for help

Nevada has always lagged other states in numbers of public psychiatric hospitals and clinics. But private hospitals in the Las Vegas Valley began closing their psychiatric wings in the 1980s. Jails have become the last hope for help, leading to a cycle of futility.

Psychologically troubled people who commit crimes are brought to the jail, where they are held, evaluated and medicated — and eventually returned to the streets, where they either stop taking the drugs that eased their troubles in jail or lose access to those drugs. Ongoing, intensive therapy is even more scarce. Their minds unravel again, they commit new crimes, go back to jail and the cycle continues.

The word for a system like this is “crazy.”

To be sure, Nevada is not alone in experiencing this problem. Most states closed public mental hospitals in recent decades, leaving many mentally ill patients to fend for themselves. The valley had none to close when this was happening, but the same thing occurred with private hospitals. Many states, however, have taken steps to break the cycle of crime, jail, treatment and release. Nevada has not.

The county spends $4 million a year on psychiatric treatment at the jail. It costs taxpayers $142 a day to keep an inmate at the jail and $85 on average to medicate each one diagnosed as mentally ill.

The inmate in the isolation room, for example, has cost the system at least $32,000 in the past year alone, which easily could have paid for his psychiatric care outside of prison.

Other costs, such as the cost society pays for their crimes, are harder to figure.

For many of the mentally ill behind bars, the doctor says, “there is a significant connection between their mental illness and their crimes.”

Courtney says most of the inmates with mental illnesses aren’t locked up long enough to get adequate care. And there is almost nowhere to send them outside the detention center’s walls. So their conditions will likely lead them to commit more crimes and be arrested again and again.

The result: Nevada taxpayers spend untold millions on incarcerating and temporarily caring for the mentally ill, the public suffers their crimes, and the mentally ill suffer their conditions, their lives becoming one long sentence in a prison of the mind.

Courtney points out that only four members of his staff of 13 can prescribe medications, a difficult situation when they are faced with hundreds of inmates. He notes that the most severely mentally ill among the prison’s population are “some of the sickest people in the city.” They are bipolar, schizophrenic, paranoid, delusional. In the absence of adequate care, many medicate themselves on the streets with drugs such as methamphetamine, or cocaine.

A rare case of success

Down a series of halls, in an auditorium-sized open room, some inmates shuffle around the 74 cots lined in rows. Others sit at a table playing cards or pop in and out of an adjacent room with a basketball hoop. About 20 of the 74 men who sleep in this unit are on psychotropic medications.

Down more halls, around more corners, another unit has separate cells with doors, a sign that the inmates housed there have more severe mental illnesses. A young, bearded inmate stands outside his cell, hand outstretched. He is in jail because, in a psychotic rage, he attacked a member of his family with a knife. “I thought people were trying to kill me,” he explains, slumping into a chair, his hands held together.

The soft-spoken inmate’s case appears to be the rare example of a mentally ill person’s life taking a turn for the better inside the system. Courtney has landed him one of the few spots in the Eighth District’s Mental Health Court, a program to substitute treatment for incarceration. The road that led to the mental health court, however, is typical of the path many have taken, slipping in and out of treatment, in and out of drugs, increasingly violent. Now barely out of his teens, the inmate took LSD when he was 17 and began hearing voices shortly afterward. He wound up at Monte Vista, a private psychiatric hospital, where he was an inpatient for a week and an outpatient for a month. But the medication that doctors prescribed knocked him out. He stopped taking it. He took cocaine instead. The voices got worse. He went back to a psychiatrist. But after one visit, he was at home and the voices started up again.

“I thought that what I was thinking was real,” he says calmly. Now, after a year behind bars, he says, “I didn’t get help until I got here.” The doctors at the jail worked through two prescriptions until they found a third medication that finally helped stabilize his mind.

And just as important, Courtney worked to develop a relationship with the young man. Recently, the inmate spoke to his mother for the first time since he was arrested.

Courtney hopes that when the young man gets out of jail, he gets into a Salvation Army-run program that includes group therapy. He has plans to attend college.

The inmate says he is certain of one thing. “I’m going to have to take medication for the rest of my life. If I don’t, it all comes slowly back.”

He says he wishes it was easier for people like him to get help, to know when something is really wrong.

Courtney says his case is an example of “when the system works right, when someone who’s mentally ill can be diverted to care in the community. But in my mind, he’s the minority.” Especially, he notes, because the Mental Health Court only has 75 slots.

A need for prevention

Metro Police Lt. Frank Reagan works at the detention center and serves as chairman of a coalition of mental health professionals that recently regrouped after several years of not meeting. At the beginning of its first meeting last month, Reagan urged the coalition to seek solutions to the large number of mentally ill inmates.

Reagan adds that public mental health care — the only choice for most inmates when they’re released because they lack health insurance — is often placed on the chopping block when states suffer budget crises — and based on what he sees at the jail, that’s a major mistake.

“We need to have preventive care, to maintain the mentally ill population as stable when they’re out of custody,” he says.

Stuart J. Ghertner, outpatient services agency director at Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services, says the state agency’s budget has been cut 15 percent this year. He points out that there tends to be two broad categories of people who wind up in jail instead of in treatment, and neither can find adequate care in the state system or the community at large.

One group usually has less severe conditions, such as depression, is often homeless and winds up arrested for such misdemeanors as trespassing or urinating in public.

Courtney had just seen a 70-year-old homeless man on the morning the Sun was allowed into the jail. The elderly man repeatedly gets arrested for such petty crimes and has nowhere to get treatment once he is released.

Ghertner’s other group winds up in the same unit as the inmate who attacked a member of his family, or in one of the isolation rooms. They suffer more severe mental illnesses and commit more severe crimes. Of course, the notion is a moving target, and the same person can belong to each group at different times.

But the point is the same, Ghertner says: The Las Vegas Valley doesn’t have enough hospital beds for the mentally ill, and the outpatient system is imperfect at best. Of the 8,000 outpatient clients the state sees at its four clinics, about 15 percent are homeless, he says.

“They lose contact with what care and services are available. These folks don’t always make appointments.” Then they “get in trouble on the streets” and wind up back in jail.

The more severely mentally ill with histories of violence also lack options. Many of them are also addicted to drugs or alcohol, “co-occurring disorders.” The state recently contracted with a private firm to open the first facility for treating the two problems together, but it has only 10 slots.

Rosanna Esposito, interim executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit organization, said one key way Nevada lags most of the nation is that it has yet to pass a law that would allow family or doctors to petition a special court to mandate outpatient treatment for mentally ill people with a history of avoiding treatment. The idea is to have a way to force people into treatment before they commit crimes or hurt themselves or others. Variations on this have become law in 43 states, and those laws have helped get people off the justice system treadmill and into clinics.

Many states passed their laws at least a decade ago, so Nevada “is far behind the curve,” Esposito says.

Lesley R. Dickson, past president and current treasurer of the Nevada Psychiatric Association, points to another ignominy: Nevada has 6.2 psychiatrists per 100,000 people, a rate that places the state 46th in the nation, the governor’s task force on health noted earlier this year.

So the state starts at a disadvantage because “we have nowhere near enough care,” Dickson says.

Whether it is through funding more hospitals, clinics or psychiatrists, making better use of existing services, or passing laws that mandate care, a consensus is building that communities must seek alternatives to incarcerating the mentally ill. The June issue of Psychiatric Services magazine focused on the issue and concluded, “jailing is failing people with mental illness.”

Ghertner belongs to the same local coalition as Reagan, but he is skeptical about the group having enough clout to effect the necessary budgetary or legislative change in Nevada.

“The movers and shakers need to get organized ... and sit down and do some long-range planning,” he says.

Esposito is sharper-edged. “We know that treatment works,” she says. “It’s only because of a lack of will and due to bad policy that the treatment isn’t available.”

http://lasvegassun.com/news/2009/jul/12/illness-keeps-many-cycle-through-jail/

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

NY Times: About New York: Giving Life, Wearing Shackles and Chains,SEEKING CHANGE A protest in Manhattan over shackling of women in labor.

Congratulations to Tina Reynolds and Stacey Thompson and all of the other women on their excellent organizing work.
Remember to call Gov. Paterson's office to say you want him to sign the bill!
Lois

About New York: Giving Life, Wearing Shackles and Chains
SEEKING CHANGE A protest in Manhattan over shackling of inmates in labor.
excellent picture at the URL at the bottom of this article.
By JIM DWYER-NY Times
Published: Sunday, July 10, 2009

One day last November, the first shudders of childbirth woke Venita Pinckney before dawn. She was well into her ninth month of pregnancy. She was also incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a state prison.

Before she left for the hospital, Ms. Pinckney said, a corrections officer wrapped a chain twice around her waist and handcuffed her to it. Then he covered the handcuffs with a locked black box to further limit her range of motion. Finally, her ankles were shackled.

“You can’t walk like a normal human being,” said Ms. Pinckney, 37. “When you’re pregnant, you have a hard time keeping your balance to begin with.”

At least once a week, somewhere in one of New York’s prisons or jails, a pregnant women goes into labor. Nearly all of them, including Ms. Pinckney, are behind bars for drug offenses. Even so, they are often as severely restrained in the final hours of pregnancy as the most nimble and dangerous of criminals. While their bodies heave toward childbirth, they become walking, clanking jail cells.

“I told the officer he’s not supposed to shackle me,” Ms. Pinckney said last week. “He said he was just following procedure.”

From just about every wing of state government, there is agreement that such restraints are needless and risky. The state department of corrections formally limited their use nine years ago.

Yet the practice has persisted, a triumph of prison procedure and custom over the safety, comfort and dignity of the pregnant woman and of the child who is about to be born. “You’ve just got to put your legs up to push,” said Erica Knox, 42, who was brought to Elmhurst Hospital Center from Rikers Island when she went into labor. Her legs were not restrained as she delivered her son.

“But right after I pushed him out, the guard shackled me to the bed rail,” Ms. Knox said. “I had to push the placenta out with the shackles on. That was the worst.”

On May 20, both houses of the Legislature — with broad support from Democrats and Republicans — passed a bill that would bar the shackling of women during labor. It would permit the use of handcuffs in “extraordinary circumstances” to protect the woman or others around her. The bill was sponsored in the Senate by Velmanette Montgomery and in the Assembly by N. Nick Perry, both Brooklyn Democrats. It is now being reviewed by the governor’s office, a spokesman for Gov. David A. Paterson said on Friday.

Last week, Ms. Pinckney and other former prisoners stood outside the governor’s office on Third Avenue in Manhattan, chanting for him to sign the bill.

The new legislation would cover not only state prisons, but jails that serve all 62 counties of New York. Those county jails are not subject to the state’s existing policy that discourages the use of shackles and waist chains on women in labor.

Melissa DeFort, 23, who was in Bedford Hills earlier this year for violating parole in a drug case, said it was absurd to think that heavily pregnant women, dressed in prison scrubs, would try to escape. “What am I going to do, open the door of the car and run out?” Ms. DeFort said. “You have on the greens and heavy boots.”

On one hospital visit, she said, she remained shackled in an examining room while a doctor and nurse pleaded with the guards to unlock her. “They were saying, she’s on the fifth floor of a hospital, she’s seven months pregnant, and you guys are standing out there with guns,” Ms. DeFort said. “Finally, the officers radioed Bedford and asked what they should do, and they were told to do what the doctors asked.”

In 2002, Jeanna M. Graves, early in a three-year term on a drug conviction and pregnant with twins while in Bedford Hills , needed an emergency Caesarean section. Ms. Graves said that in the hospital, she was cuffed to the gurney by the corrections officers. The doctors gave her an epidural anesthetic, which blocks sensation in the abdomen and around the pelvis.

“I was cuffed through the entire C-section,” Ms. Graves said.

Tina Reynolds, 50, gave birth 15 years ago while she was serving time at Bedford Hills, shackled, she said, at an arm and a leg. Now the director of Women on the Rise Telling Herstory, an organization of formerly incarcerated women, Ms. Reynolds helped organized the rally last week with the Women in Prison Project of the Correctional Association of New York.

“All children want to find about the day they were born,” Ms. Reynolds said. “You want it to be an expression of love, not of prohibition and trauma and restraint. The child didn’t do anything.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/nyregion/12about.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2009

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Attorney General Eric Holder at the Vera Institute of Justice’s Third Annual Justice Address

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Attorney General Eric Holder at the Vera Institute of Justice’s Third Annual Justice Address
Thursday, July 9, 2009

Laurie, thank you for that wonderful introduction. When I asked Laurie to come back to the Justice Department to lead our Office of Justice Programs, I was keenly aware of how much she would have to give up to join us. Not only did she take leave from the University of Pennsylvania, but she also had to give up her Chair of Vera’s Board of Trustees. I know that the polite thing to do would be to apologize for taking her from you – but the truth is, your loss is our gain. We hope that Laurie stays at the Department for a long time.

It is a privilege to join you this evening as your keynote speaker. Your past speakers have been Nicholas Katzenbach and James Comey, who reflected on the law after their government service. Perhaps one day I might have that kind of conversation with you as a former Attorney General. For now, I stand before you in a different posture, to share some ideas about how I think the American people can best be served by the Department of Justice going forward.

The Vera Institute of Justice has been an extraordinary partner to government in the administration of justice. I thank you in particular for your work with the federal government across a range of issues – from your contributions to the national commission to eliminate prison rape to the administration of Legal Orientation Programs for non-citizens in immigration proceedings. Your practical, rational, data-driven, results-oriented approach can best be described as post-partisan. In the five months that I have served as Attorney General, I have tried to take that same approach, and that is what I would like to talk about this evening: how we can move past politics and ideology in order to get smart on crime.

Getting smart on crime requires talking honestly about which policies have worked and which have not, without fear of being labeled as too hard or, more likely, as too soft on crime. Getting smart on crime means moving beyond useless labels and instead embracing science and data, and relying on them to shape policy. And it means thinking about crime in context – not just reacting to the criminal act, but developing the government’s ability to enhance public safety before the crime is committed and after the former offender is returned to society.

It is imperative that we get smart on crime now, for much has changed since some of our basic, governing assumptions about criminal law enforcement were developed. In the middle years of the twentieth century, America went through an historic increase in crime and illegal drug use. In the 1960s and 70s, the overall crime rate increased more than five-fold. Violent crime nearly quadrupled. The murder rate doubled. And heroin, cocaine and other illegal drug use surged.

Many lawmakers in the 1980s responded by declaring, in rhetoric and in legislation, that we needed to get tough on crime. States passed truth-in-sentencing and three strikes and you’re out laws. Some state parole boards became more cautious, while other states eliminated discretionary parole altogether. The federal government adopted severe mandatory minimum sentencing laws, eliminated parole, and developed the federal sentencing guidelines.

The federal government and states spent billions of dollars in new prison construction. The result was dramatic: the number of inmates in American prisons has increased seven-fold since 1970. Today, one out of every 100 adults in America is incarcerated – the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Few would dispute that public safety requires incarceration, and that imprisonment is at least partially responsible for the dramatic drop in crime rates nationwide in recent decades. By 2007, the nation’s violent crime rate had dropped by almost 40% from its peak in 1991. But just as everyone should concede that incarceration is part of the answer, everyone should also concede that it is not the whole answer. Simply stated, imprisonment is not a complete strategy for criminal law enforcement.

To begin with, high rates of incarceration have tremendous social costs. And, of course, there also is the matter of simple dollars and cents, and the principle of diminishing marginal returns. Every state in the union is trying to trim budgets. States and localities are laying off teachers and canceling sanitation department shifts, but in almost all cases, spending on prisons continues to increase. Not only is this unsustainable economically, but it is also not proving to be effective at fighting crime. For while prison building and prison spending continue to increase, public safety is not improving. Since 2003, spending on incarceration has continued to rise, but crime rates have flattened. Indeed, crime rates appear to have reached a plateau, and no longer respond to increases in incarceration.

So what can we do to lower the crime rate further, to make American communities safer, to get smarter on crime? We need new tools – and one way to develop new tools is to look several steps past getting people into prison, and to consider what happens to people after they leave prison and reenter society.

We know that offenders who have participated in the federal Bureau of Prisons’ residential drug abuse treatment program are 16% less likely to be re-arrested, have their supervision revoked, and be returned to prison, than similar inmates who did not receive such treatment before their reentry into society. They are also less likely to use drugs once released. We also know that inmates who work in prison industries are 24% less likely to commit crimes again, compared to inmates who have not participated in such programs – which, incidentally, operate at no cost to the taxpayer. The Bureau of Prisons’ educational programs designed to address educational deficiencies – ranging from Adult Basic Education to high school level classes – are also effective in reducing recidivism: inmates who participate in these programs are 16% less likely to commit crime again as compared to their non-participating peers. And inmates who are released through halfway houses are more likely to be gainfully employed, and therefore less likely to commit crime again, as compared to inmates who are released from prison directly to the community.

That recitation of statistics might not sound exciting, but what we do with it is. We rely upon evidence-based methods to innovate in agriculture, transportation, environmental safety, and public health – and it is my belief, that the Department of Justice likewise should embrace modern, evidence-based methods for developing policy.

In particular, it is critical that we work to develop policies – rooted in data – to address what happens after incarceration. For the statistics I cited are even more compelling when coupled with another fact: most crimes in America are committed by persons who have committed crime before. About 67% of former state prisoners and 40% of former federal prisoners are rearrested within three years. Logically, if we reduce the recidivism rate, we will directly lower the crime rate. Even a modest reduction in recidivism rates would prevent thousands of crimes and save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. In other words, being smart on crime means understanding that our work does not end when prison time begins.

Smart risk assessments can identify which offenders can safely remain in their communities and which require continued detention and more intensive supervision. Data analysis can determine which offenders pose a higher recidivism risk based on the type of crime the offender was charged with and the offender’s prior record. For example, risk assessments might determine that removing a 16-year-old, non-violent, first-time offender from his family and school and placing him in a juvenile detention facility is a bad idea because it would actually increase the risk of recidivism, and waste taxpayer dollars besides.

One specific area where I think we can do a much better job by looking beyond incarceration is in the way we deal with non-violent drug offenses. We know that people convicted of drug possession or the sales of small amounts of drugs comprise a significant portion of the prison population. Indeed, in my thirty years in law enforcement, I have seen far too many young people lose their claim to a future by committing non-violent drug crimes.

One promising, viable solution to the devastating effect of drugs on the criminal justice system and on American communities is the implementation of more drug treatment courts. Drug court programs provide an alternative to incarceration for non-violent offenders by focusing on treatment of their underlying addiction. Program participants are placed in treatment and routinely tested for drug use – with the imposition of immediate sanctions for positive tests balanced with suitable incentives to encourage abstinence from drug use. These programs give no one a free pass. They are strict and can be extraordinarily difficult to get through. But for those who succeed, there is the real prospect of a productive future.

New York has been a leader in this area, diverting some non-violent offenders into drug court programs and away from prison, and extending early release to other non-violent offenders who participate in treatment programs. And while national prison populations have consistently increased, in New York the state prison population has dropped steadily and has 12,000 fewer inmates now than it did in 1999. And since 1999, the overall crime rate in New York has dropped 27%. Other states have followed New York’s example. And most importantly, studies show significant reductions in re-arrests, from about 15 to 30 percentage points, for drug-court participants as compared to criminals simply incarcerated.

Furthermore, smart criminal justice policies are not, of course, exclusively reactive – we can also use data and evidence-based methods to prevent crime before it occurs. We have models, for example, in New York’s CompStat program: it uses data to map where crime is most likely to occur, deploy police to those areas to disrupt criminal activity, and evaluate the effectiveness of the enforcement strategies. We can also extrapolate from available data to identify youth that are highly at-risk to commit crimes in the future. For example, it seems that children who are exposed to domestic violence at home are more at-risk. Once we have identified at-risk youth, we can intervene with targeted programs, and I have asked the Department to make a priority of focusing on the issue of children exposed to violence. There is much work to be done in this area, but the underlying premise is already clear: we need to understand crime in context in order to prevent it – and with better understanding and more information, we can develop new approaches to old and seemingly intractable problems.

Although this Administration is still young, we have already started to put into practice what I believe is a data-driven, non-ideological, post-partisan approach to crime. For example, I have asked attorneys throughout the Department to conduct a comprehensive, evidence-based review of federal sentencing and corrections policy. Specifically, the group is examining the federal sentencing guidelines, the Department’s charging and sentencing advocacy practices, mandatory minimums, crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparities, and other racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing. The group is also studying alternatives to incarceration and strategies that help reduce recidivism when former offenders reenter society. We intend to use the group’s findings as a springboard for recommending new legislation that will reform the structure of federal sentencing.

I have also called upon the Department to focus on another part of the criminal justice system: the very difficult issue of indigent defense. Putting politics aside, we must address the fact that, simply put, there is a crisis in indigent defense in this country. Resources for public defender programs lag far behind other justice system programs, constituting only about 3 percent of all criminal justice expenditures in our nation’s largest counties. In many cases, contract attorneys and assigned lawyers receive compensation that does not even cover their overhead. We know that defenders in many jurisdictions carry huge caseloads that make it difficult for them to fulfill their legal and ethical responsibilities to their clients. We hear of lawyers who cannot interview their clients properly, file appropriate motions, conduct fact investigations, or do many of the other things an attorney should be able to do as a matter of course.

This growing crisis is troubling not just because of the government’s constitutional duty to ensure the right to counsel. When defendants fail to receive competent legal representation, their cases are vulnerable to costly mistakes that can take a long time to correct. Lawyers on both sides can spend years dealing with appeals arising from technical infractions and procedural errors. When that happens, no one wins. Addressing the American Council of Chief Defenders last month, I committed to several steps to help improve the indigent defense system, including hosting a national conference with the goal of developing a set of best practices and practical solutions.

I have also made it clear that this Department of Justice will use the available data to improve our handling of the forensics sciences – such as fingerprints, trace evidence, firearms matching. We are studying a recent report from the National Academies of Science that diagnosed problems in the use of forensics sciences and suggested ways forward, and we are working with our partners in the Executive Branch and Congress to act on the report’s insights and recommendations. Our goal is to ensure that forensic science is practiced at the highest level possible, and always in the pursuit of truth. Because we put a premium on truth-seeking – because, indeed, this Administration is committed to using the best science possible whenever possible, including in criminal justice – I also believe that defendants should have access to DNA evidence in a range of circumstances. DNA testing has an unparalleled ability to exonerate the wrongfully convicted as well as to identify the guilty. Federal law already guarantees access to DNA evidence held by the federal government under specific conditions, and I hope that all states will follow the federal government’s lead on this issue.

Many of the things I have mentioned in these remarks are still in early stages or under review. There are numerous areas I have not even mentioned – for example, the prevention and detection of economic crimes and on-line crimes – where we can similarly get smarter with a research-driven approach. I am already certain, however, that change is both necessary and it is possible – if we are willing to make it. Challenges have changed with time: Prison populations are at an all-time high and still climbing, yet the crime rate is no longer declining. States are in serious financial distress. But opportunities have changed too. We are able to compare the cost and suitability of different criminal justice strategies. We no longer must choose between more crime and more prisons: we can reduce crime rates and reduce our dependence on incarceration, and at the same time increase the integrity of our criminal justice system. We can harness science and data to tackle emerging problems and also to preserve our foundational principles. The more we know, the better we can do, the more sophisticated we can be. With the help of the scholars and experts in this room, state and local law enforcement, corrections officials across the country, judges, victims of crime, and always with the fine work of attorneys at the Department of Justice, there is no question that a smarter and better criminal justice system is within our grasp.

Thank you very much.

Posted by lois at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2009

Once Again, Guilty of Having HIV

Once Again, Guilty of Having HIV
posted 2009-07-09
by Cynthia Fernandez
CHLP Intern

Last week, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported a case of a young woman arrested for prostitution in Knoxville, Tennessee, who faces a three-to-fifteen-year prison term for “aggravated prostitution” solely because she is HIV-positive. While individuals convicted of prostitution in Tennessee who do not have HIV face misdemeanor charges that usually amount to a fine and probation, those living with HIV face a felony charge and an additional three to fifteen years due to their health status. Because the woman is a repeat offender, she will also have to register as a sex offender and will face the same restrictions as child molesters and rapists.

State officials cite public health and safety as the rationale for the aggravated prostitution law, but their efforts are severely misguided. Not only is the law discriminatory, it also has shown no deterrent effect. The woman has been arrested at least eight times for prostitution, and this recent arrest was her third arrest for aggravated prostitution. Furthermore, the law further stigmatizes HIV infection and women who rely on consensual sex in exchange for money to make a living. A more effective way to treat this woman, who dropped out of high school in the ninth grade due to drug addiction and has been a sex worker since age 19, would be to offer her drug rehabilitation and access to medical care and educational services to at least increase the odds that she has alternatives to sex work in order to survive. Instead, in their infinite wisdom, Tennessee legislators and prosecutors, by making her a registered sex offender, have effectively ensured that she will not have access to many residential drug treatment programs available to other addicts because she will not be allowed to live anywhere that houses juveniles. She faces these severe restrictions even though she has no history of committing any kind of sexual assault. Incarcerating and then branding someone like this woman a sex offender will only serve to further marginalize her and prevent her from receiving the care she needs.

Adding insult to injury, Knoxville Police Department Sgt. Chris Baldwin defended the law in the article and expressed concern for the male customers’ “moral and physical well-being.” Why should society place more value on the well-being of the man who solicits sex for money than on the woman who provides it? Baldwin’s statements and selective concern show the ignorance, the sexist double standard, and the misguided policy choices that serve as rationales for criminalizing HIV status. He is quoted as saying, “when a customer is exposed, then everybody he comes into contact with are at risk as well.” Yes, HIV can be transmitted through condomless sex, but this would place at further risk only those who in turn have condomless sex with that person who has become infected. Casual transmission to household members is a scientific impossibility and it is dangerous, if depressingly predictable, that someone in a position of power could be so ill-informed about basic modes of HIV transmission.

The Knoxville News Sentinel article reporting on the case also uses incredibly derogatory language, referring to the woman as a “hooker” and discussing her “turning tricks” for a living. The article also published several mug shots of the woman; for effect, I suppose? Her eyes are glazed over in every shot and if anything, they elicit a feeling of deep sympathy, which I am assuming was not the effect the article’s author intended.

While this law is intended to prevent those with HIV from acting as sex workers, in reality it does nothing to remedy the public health problem. Its enforcement prevents those most in need from receiving services and only exacerbates their marginalization by incarcerating and then branding them sexual predators. The continued prosecution of consensual sex, particularly while looking the other way at the man soliciting the service, is hateful and wrongheaded, and the sensational reporting that accompanies the criminalization of HIV further fuels HIV-related stigma and contributes to the perception that society needs to be protected from those living with HIV.
http://hivlawandpolicy.org/posts/view/43
This and other outrageous but true news about women and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Posted by lois at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)

PA Report: Census Prisoner Count Dilutes Urban Political Clout

PA Report: Census Prisoner Count Dilutes Urban Political Clout
The Legal Intelligencer
By Amaris Elliott-Engel
June 26, 2009

The voting power of Philadelphians is diluted on the state level because state and federal prisoners are counted by the U.S. Census Bureau where they are incarcerated, instead of the prisoners' home communities in which they lived before they were incarcerated, an advocacy group has concluded.

Eight state House of Representatives districts would not meet federal "one-person, one-vote" standards if nonvoting state prisoners did not count as district residents for purposes of drawing up legislative districts, according to an analysis conducted by Prison Policy Initiative, an advocacy group based in Northampton, Mass.

PPI is pushing for the U.S. Census to change where it counts prisoners. The group has analyzed the effect of counting prisoners on state legislative districting from New York to Nevada. The PPI planned to release its first Pennsylvania-based report, "Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Pennsylvania," today.

Because of the nation's burgeoning prison population, counting prisoners where they are incarcerated is having a greater impact on the equitable division of legislative districts than ever before, the report said.

Because prisoners can't vote, residents who have a right to vote in districts that have a state or federal prison within their borders benefit from greater legislative clout than voting residents in districts without a state prison, the report argued.

The issue may be of great relevance to Philadelphians because more Philadelphians are incarcerated than residents of any other part of the state. The residents of Philadelphia are three times more likely to be incarcerated than other residents of the state, the report said. And 40 percent of the state prisoners are from Philadelphia, while nearly all of the state's prison beds are outside of the city, the report said.

House Districts 147 in Montgomery County, 5 in Crawford and Erie counties, 69 in Somerset and Bedford counties, 73 in Cambria County, 74 in Clearfield County, 81 in Blair, Huntingdon and Mifflin counties, 85 in Union and Snyder counties and 123 in Schuylkill County would not meet federal minimum requirements without the inclusion of prisoners, according to PPI's analysis.House Districts must have 60,498 people, plus or minus 3,025 people, the report said.

Prisoners make up 5.5 percent to 7.5 percent of the eight districts that wouldn't otherwise meet federal population requirements, according to the PPI.

"Eight legislative districts lack sufficient population to meet accepted one-person, one-vote standards without counting disenfranchised prisoners as part of their population base," the report said. "At the same time, heavily minority urban districts would in all likelihood be entitled to additional representation if prisoners were counted as residents of their home communities for purposes of redistricting."

The federal decennial census data is used to reapportion Pennsylvania's legislative districts every 10 years by the Legislative Reapportionment Commission made up of the majority and minority leaders of both the Senate and the House of Representatives and a chairman or chairwoman selected by the four members.

State Statute Violation?

PPI argues that Pennsylvania should adjust where prisoners are counted prior to redistricting to prevent unfair political clout being given to some districts over others.

Peter Wagner, executive director of PPI, said where prisoners are counted is an issue of fair representation for constituents in urban areas from which more prisoners hail.

But Wagner said the issue also should be a matter of democratic concern for constituents in any Pennsylvania legislative district that doesn't have prisoners counting toward the district's population base to meet the minimum population requirements.

Wagner also argues that Pennsylvania's use of Census Bureau data that counts prisoners where they are incarcerated violates the state's voter registration statute.

The statute states: "No individual who is confined in a penal institution shall be deemed a resident of the election district where the institution is located. The individual shall be deemed to reside where the individual was last registered before being confined in the penal institution, or if there was no registration prior to confinement, the individual shall be deemed to reside at the last known address before confinement."

The issue has drawn the interest of at least one state legislator.

State Sen. Anthony H. Williams, D-Phila., said he has been "activated" to look into legislative remedies to the issue because it might have implications for drawing up district lines and the distribution of government monies that are based on population.

Williams, who is the minority chairman of the State Government Committee , said he would consider legislative options and he would converse about the issue with legislative leaders.

"Sometimes problems are solved with conversations," Williams said.

State Rep. Mark B. Cohen, D-Phila., majority caucus chairman, said it's in the city's interest to include prisoners who come from Philadelphia as legal residents in Philadelphia's legislative districts. But Cohen said he thought it was a federal issue that can't be changed on the state level.

Wagner said changing where inmates are counted in the census would affect legislative districting, but he said it shouldn't affect the distribution of government grants because most government grants involve complex formulas that tailor programs to the needs of a specific population.

Counting Heads

Legislators whose districts were cited in the PPI report said the issue of where prisoners are counted for purposes of drawing legislative district lines wasn't one that had been brought to their attention before.

Two of the legislators reached for interviews were of the opinion that inmates should be counted where they are currently living, and two were of the opinion that it didn't really matter to them.

"If you're counting heads you're counting the heads that are there," said state Rep. Gary Haluska, D-Cambria, of District 73. Haluska said inmates may not be able to vote, but there are plenty of other people counted in the U.S. Census who can't vote like children or don't vote like adults who don't register to vote.

When asked if they provided constituent service to inmates incarcerated in their district, the legislators said they typically didn't receive such queries from inmates incarcerated in their districts.

State Rep. Bob Mensch, R-Montgomery, of District 147 said he has never gotten a call from a prisoner at the State Correctional Institution at Graterford in the three years he has been a legislator.

But Mensch said that he has had to spend time on issues related to the prison.

And the legislator wondered if prisoners were not counted in the U.S. Census for purposes of drawing up legislative districts if it would be fair for him to spend as much time as he does on issues related to SCI Graterford.

"If they are not counted in my base, who would do that work?" Mensch asked. "Am I still supposed to do that work?"

Mensch also said inmates deserve legislative representation.

"They just don't have the same issues other property owners and other residents in the district have," he said.

State Rep. Russell H. Fairchild, R-Union, of District 85 said it doesn't matter to him one way or the other where prisoners are counted. But he wondered how practical it would be to ascertain a prisoner's home district in order to count him or her in that home district when some inmates moved around a lot before being incarcerated.

Fairchild also said he got more correspondence from constituents who are imprisoned in other parts of the state than from prisoners imprisoned within his district.

State Rep. Camille "Bud" George, D-Clearfield, of District 74 said having a prison population within a district wasn't necessarily helpful. George, who has been a legislator for 35 years, said that having a prison within his district could mean losing a part of the district that was favorable to voting for him.

State Rep. John R. Evans, R-Crawford, of the 5th District, state Rep. Carl Walker Metzgar, R-Somerset, of the 69th District, state Rep. Mike Fleck, R-Blair, of the 81st District, and state Rep. Neal P. Goodman, D-Schuylkill, of the 123rd District, could not be reached for comment.

Policy Fix?

Wagner said it would be fairer for the U.S. Census to count prisoners as residents in the place they lived before they entered custody.

Pennsylvania also could adjust the census data on its own and remove prison populations prior to conducting redistricting, Wagner said. He said the Census Bureau could publish a special version of its redistricting data file with block-level counts of prison populations that would assist the state in identifying and removing prison populations.

Nathaniel Persily, a national election law expert and Columbia Law School professor, Gregory Harvey, an election law expert with Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads and G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College, said it might not be fair to count prisoners where they are incarcerated. But they said it would be difficult to track where all of the state and federal prisoners lived before they were incarcerated, especially because many didn't have stable addresses prior to incarceration.

Harvey called it a "virtually impractical, bordering on impossible task to redo the census to that degree to establish which census tracks in Philadelphia should be adjusted to take into account prisoners."

Persily and Wagner said the U.S. Census Bureau won't change where it counts prisoners for the next census.

Monica Davis, a U.S. Census Bureau spokeswoman, said the bureau must count prisoners in their place of "usual residence," not their legal or voting residence, because the "usual residence" is where inmates "live and sleep most of the time." Davis said the U.S. Census has used the guiding principle of "usual residence" to conduct censuses since 1790.

Davis said the Census Bureau has studied the feasibility of counting prisoners at their permanent homes of record, but the study found that counting inmates at their permanent home addresses would increase costs to correctional facilities because of the demands of data collection efforts and that collecting such addresses might violate Title 13 protections for personal identification information.

States, however, could easily subtract the inmate population out of the data used to draw legislative districts, Persily said. That is Persily's preferred policy fix because it wouldn't cost the Census Bureau anything and because prisoners would still be captured in census data like health statistics.

PPI couldn't determine from available Department of Corrections data which legislative districts Pennsylvania's prisoners come from. But PPI does say that much of the state's prison population should be credited to urban and black communities instead of white, rural communities in Pennsylvania that are typical home to state prisons.

"The nature of the problem is primarily a moral one," Persily said.

Angus Love, executive director of the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, said legislative districts should be defined by eligible voters, and that inmates shouldn't be counted in the configuration of legislative districts, either in the districts that inmates are imprisoned in or in their home communities.

Madonna said the issue of where prisoners are counted has built up steam over the last five years on the federal level and might become a political debate. •

http://www.politicspa.com/Legal%20Intelligencer.htm

Posted by lois at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)

Review of The Real Cost of Prisons Comix in Feminist Review

Thursday, July 9, 2009
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
Edited by Lois Ahrens
PM Press

As activists know all too well, crafting a political message and effectively mobilizing an audience is an elusive task. In The Real Cost Of Prisons, Lois Ahrens and her contributors beautifully stage a difficult dialogue—about mass incarceration, mandatory sentencing, and the “war on drugs”—with comics. Comics are an accessible, popular form of education, and most importantly, addictive, and hence become a subversive way to raise awareness. The Real Cost of Prisons Project has distributed 115,000 comics to the incarcerated, affected families, and social justice organizations free of charge. Comics are just one part of the organization’s mission to end mass incarceration; since Lois Ahrens founded organization in 2000 a coalition of artists, activists, and researchers has produced and distributed educational materials about the costs—material and affective—of the prison industrial complex and it’s devastating impact on family preservation, women’s reproductive rights, rural economies, and much more.

“What does it cost to lock up 2.3 million people each day in the world’s biggest prison system?” ask Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore in the introduction to The Real Cost Of Prisons. In addition to the staggering economic costs (the U.S. spends $60 billion per year on prisons) that could otherwise be directed at health care, public education, and other social services, the human costs are immeasurable. In the comic “Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children,” illustrated by Susan Willmarth, we learn about the cost of incarceration for women and their children:

*One out of every 109 women in American is incarcerated, on parole, or on probation.
*Half of all women in prison are incarcerated more than 100 miles from their families.
*Seven million children have a parent in prison, on probation, or on parole.
*Seventy-nine percent of all women in New York State’s prisons are Black or Hispanic.

The Real Cost Of Prisons documents the vital efforts of the movement to end mass incarceration, and is an exceptional resource for all activists seeking creative ways to build and sustain a political movement.

Review by Jeanne Vaccaro

Posted by lois at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

July 09, 2009

MI/CA: Guards hope for prisoners from CA

He's blunter about Michigan's plan to release thousands of inmates earlier than would once have been the case. "Lock your door and load your guns -- you're going to need it," Tylutki said.

Corrections officers conducted "informational picketing" Tuesday outside the soon-to-close Muskegon Correctional Facility.
by John S. Hausman|Muskegon Chronicle
Wednesday July 08, 2009, 8:23 AM

MUSKEGON -- For Phil Olson, it's a foregone conclusion: His prison job is doomed.

With one year on the job, the corrections officer has nowhere near enough seniority to keep it when Muskegon Correctional Facility closes Oct. 1.

"I left a good job to come here a year ago. I came here for the security, and now they're closing the doors," the 34-year-old Olson said. "And the state didn't see this coming a year ago when they hired 500 of us (statewide)?"

Olson was one of a group of "informational picketers" Tuesday outside the prison at 2400 Sheridan.

The goal of the picketing, organized by the Michigan Corrections Organization, was to "educate the public" about what that union calls a danger to public safety: the state's decision to parole up to 4,000 inmates after their minimum sentence is served -- sooner than would previously have been the case -- thus allowing it to close MCF and other prisons.

The state has said up to two-thirds of the 250 jobs at the Muskegon prison could be lost. More than 150 of the prison's employees are corrections officers. The exact number of layoffs won't be known until close to the closing date.

Corrections officers at MCF with more seniority will be allowed to "bump" into the jobs of less-senior officers now working at Muskegon's two other state prisons, Earnest C. Brooks and West Shoreline correctional facilities.

The picketing seemed mostly a chance to vent and solicit supportive honks from passing cars. None of the picketers interviewed held any real hope that public pressure would change state officials' minds about the early releases and consequent prison closings.

But many were more optimistic about a new state initiative to try to persuade California officials to begin housing overflow inmates at vacant Michigan prisons, possibly including MCF. California corrections officials are planning to tour the Muskegon facility next week.

If a California deal were to happen, it could save a substantial number of the jobs otherwise to be lost, though probably not all of them.

"I think it's a good plan to keep the officers working," said state union President Tom Tylutki, who was with the Muskegon picketers.

He's blunter about Michigan's plan to release thousands of inmates earlier than would once have been the case. "Lock your door and load your guns --Â you're going to need it," Tylutki said.

State corrections spokesman Russ Marlan, contacted by phone, disputes the union's position that the earlier releases and prison closings endanger public safety, and denies that saving money is the motive.

The prison plan is based on a study released earlier this year by the Council of State Governments on Michigan's prison system, Marlan said. That study advocated using fewer public-safety resources for long-term maintenance of prisoners, and more for police, prosecutors and crime prevention, as a better way to protect public safety.

"The side effect is that prisons are going to close, and people are going to lose their jobs," Marlan said. "So I can understand them saying this is not the way to go. It's very emotional."
http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2009/07/corrections_officers_co
nducted.html

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

WI: Both Dems and GOP irked as govenor vetoes key prison release terms. Some changes made.

All but people convicted of the most violent offenses will be eligible for "earned release."
"While the final decision over who gets out early will be up to a newly created Earned Release Review Commission appointed by the governor, which will replace the Parole Board, the vetoes ensure that the Department of Corrections will have control over much of the process that will allow offenders to get out of prison early."

Both Dems, GOP irked as gov strips budget of key prison release terms
Steven Elbow — 7/09/2009

No one expected critics of Gov. Jim Doyle's plan to allow criminal offenders a way to get out of prison early to be happy with its inclusion in the state budget.

"Citizens of Wisconsin beware: Thousands of dangerous criminals will be out of jail early and they may soon be coming to a neighborhood near you," Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford, fumed in a press release after Gov. Jim Doyle signed his "earned release" plan into law as part of the budget last week. The plan has also been criticized by Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen.

But the final version of sentencing reform that Doyle signed into law disappointed some within Doyle's own party as well.

"What the governor did was a start, but we could have accomplished so much more," says state Rep. Joe Parisi, D-Madison, chairman of the Assembly Corrections Committee.

Doyle's plan represents a sea change in the tough-on-crime philosophy that dominated debate on corrections for the past two decades. It would make all but the most violent offenders and sex offenders potentially eligible for early release, just as they were under the old system of parole, before truth-in-sentencing legislation took effect in 1999 to make offenders serve the entire duration of their sentence. Parole was renamed "extended supervision," and was also part of the mandatory sentence, to be served in full.

Doyle's earned release plan was presented last spring as a way to chip away at a burgeoning prison population, which grew by 14 percent between 2000 and 2007 and is projected to balloon by another 25 percent by 2019, costing the state $2.5 billion in prison construction and operating costs.

But Democrats wanted more. They inserted several additional sentencing reform measures into the budget, only to see most of their efforts fall victim to the Democratic governor's veto pen.

Those proposals were recommended by the Justice Center of the Council on State Governments, a nonpartisan association based in Washington, D.C. The center has had success dealing with prison overcrowding problems in other states using an approach it calls the Justice Reinvestment Initiative.

Parisi says "those recommendations are tested, they're evidence-based, they've been used in a number of other states. And definitely not soft-on-crime states. We're talking Texas. We're talking Kansas."

While the Justice Center is currently working with 10 states on sentencing reform, Texas and Kansas are often cited as success stories, both because the group was able to gain the support of both Democrats and Republicans to overcome a stringent law-and-order mind-set, and because those states saw significant drops in the numbers of offenders who landed back in prison after their release into the community.

In Texas, where the prison population was projected to grow by more than 5,000 in 2007 and 2008, new inmates instead numbered only 529, and parole revocations that landed offenders in prison dropped by 25 percent. In Kansas, the parole revocation rate decreased by 48 percent and the prison population declined by 7.5 percent since 2004, when the state enacted strategies endorsed by the Justice Center to stem its prison population. At the same time, reconviction rates by parolees under supervision dropped by 35 percent.

Last year in Wisconsin, the governor, the state Supreme Court chief justice, the Republican Assembly speaker and the Democratic Senate president commissioned an analysis from the Justice Center on the factors driving the state's prison population growth. The center made its recommendations to a legislative committee, which endorsed them.

The center found that Wisconsin prisons are increasingly populated by offenders who violate the terms of their extended supervision but commit no new crimes. The 2007 average stay for such violations was 18 months, costing the state $99 million that year, according to the analysis. The center recommended capping prison time for such rule violations at six months.

Other recommendations included limiting the time offenders spend on extended supervision to 75 percent of the time they spend behind bars, setting a goal to reduce recidivism by 25 percent by 2011, expanding community-based mental health and job placement services for offenders and giving judges the authority to hand out shorter sentences if offenders complete court-ordered treatment programs.

In the budget he signed last week, however, Doyle vetoed the 25-percent goal in recidivism reduction, the cap on extended supervision and the six-month limit on prison time for revocations. While the Legislature didn't propose allowing judges to hand out shorter sentences contingent upon successful treatment programs, it would have allowed judges to review sentences that have been reduced. Doyle vetoed that, too.

"We were surprised by the vetoes," says Tony Fabelo, director of research for the Justice Center. "But we have no comment. That's the prerogative of the governor."

One of the Justice Center's proposals that survived, points out Doyle's budget director, Dave Schmiedicke, is money for community-based treatment programs. While it falls short of the Justice Center recommendation of $30 million, the Legislature set aside $10 million, and Schmiedicke says that money should help clear up some of the bottlenecks to programs.

What the governor's vetoes did, Schmiedicke says, "were really to strengthen the provisions and improve on what the Legislature had put in."

But the governor's vetoes make it clear that he wants the Department of Corrections to have a free hand in implementing the new program.

While the final decision over who gets out early will be up to a newly created Earned Release Review Commission appointed by the governor, which will replace the Parole Board, the vetoes ensure that the Department of Corrections will have control over much of the process that will allow offenders to get out of prison early.

Schmiedicke says provisions such as judicial oversight over caps on prison stays would have tied the hands of Department of Corrections officials charged with getting eligible offenders out of prison while still keeping the streets safe.

"The department really needs to have flexibility in those issues because you really can't create a one-size-fits-all policy for every single offender," he says.
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/457516

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

MA: Letters to the Editor of the Boston Globe on jail "riot"

OVERCROWDED INMATES
Middlesex Jail prisoners reached a breaking point
July 9, 2009

RE “PRISONERS force evacuation of jail: Vandalism was cause of flooding, sheriff reports’’ (Metro, July 6): The conditions under which we hold prisoners awaiting trial at Cambridge’s Middlesex Jail - prisoners who supposedly are presumed innocent until proven guilty - are scandalous. Instead of the legally guaranteed speedy trial, those awaiting trial can be held for months under confinement more severe than even the miserable conditions in our state prisons. Now we find out in the Globe that the jail held two and a half times more prisoners than the facility was intended to.

We blame the prisoners for the destruction of property that took place after nine detainees damaged a fire-suppression system. And in America we tend to hate anyone arrested for crimes, whether they are guilty or not. But at some point any of us would snap under such conditions and insist that we must be treated as human beings.
Paul Shannon
Somerville

OVERCROWDED INMATES
Facilities shrouded in secrecy
July 9, 2009

IF MASSACHUSETTS jails and prisons were not so shrouded in secrecy, perhaps the detainees at the Middlesex Jail would have found an alternative to vandalism to expose their conditions of confinement (“Prisoners force evacuation of jail’’). Massachusetts legislators need to bring back uncensored and unchaperoned media access to prisons and jails, and reestablish an independent oversight commission that would create transparency and accountability in the prison system. The public could then understand the real reasons for prison overcrowding and support solutions other than endless expansion.
Nancy W. Ahmadifar
Boston

7-9-09
FAMM's response to jail "riot" in Middlesex County MA
To the Editor:

Leslie Walker, director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, and others are right on target when they connect prison overcrowding – and resulting disturbances such as occurred at the Middlesex County jail – to mandatory drug sentences ("Prisoner crowding is cited after riot," July 7). Indeed, in recent weeks the sheriffs in Norfolk, Worcester and Suffolk counties have spoken out about the need for sentencing reform. At the state level, Correction Commission Harold Clarke has made the same argument about overcrowded state prisons.

Unfortunately, Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless oversimplifies the issue when he claims that mandatory drug sentences aren’t a problem because they represent a relatively low percentage of those incarcerated each year. It’s not just a question how many people go into prison in a given year; it’s also a matter of how long they stay. The 949 defendants who were sentenced to mandatory drug sentences in 2008 join the 943 sentenced in 2007, the 929 sentenced in 2006 and so on. Given that drug offenders routinely receive state prison sentences of 10, 15 or more years – often longer than for crimes of violence – the cumulative affect is great. The harm to devastated families and the taxpayers who foot the bill is even greater.

At least 10 bills have been filed to reform some aspect of current drug sentencing laws, including the Governor’s proposal for parole eligibility. These bills give the Legislature many options for rewriting our ineffective, costly and outdated drug policies.
Barbara J. Dougan
Massachusetts Project Director
Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM)

Posted by lois at 06:27 PM | Comments (0)

California grants early release of some parole violators

From the Los Angeles Times
California grants early release of parole violators
Dealing with overcrowding and fiscal constraints, officials have set free some inmates and approved early release for others.
By Michael Rothfeld

July 9, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento — California prison officials, facing severe overcrowding and a financial crisis, have been granting early releases to inmates serving time for parole violations.

State officials said the dozens of prisoners set free from the California Institution for Men in Chino and from lockups in San Diego and Shasta counties had 60 days or less left on their terms, or had been accused of violations and were awaiting hearings. The releases were approved by the state parole board.

At least 89 inmates have been freed or approved for early release during the last two months. Others have been sent to home detention, drug rehabilitation programs or similar alternative punishments.

They were screened to ensure that they had never been convicted of the most serious crimes, such as murder, manslaughter, kidnapping or sexual offenses, the officials said. The inmates may have been convicted of grand theft, weapons possession, driving under the influence of alcohol or other crimes. Their parole may have been revoked for missing an appointment with a parole agent, failing a drug test, committing robbery or any number of other offenses.

The move came as county authorities in Los Angeles and elsewhere said they could no longer house -- and in some cases, threatened to release -- inmates awaiting transfer to state prisons from their own teeming jails. Counties routinely hold newly convicted prisoners or those picked up on parole violations until the state can take them.

But California's $26.3-billion deficit has left the state without enough money to pay for all of those its laws designate for punishment. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers are considering numerous ways, including the early release of inmates, to save money by reducing a prison population of nearly 170,000.

No budget decisions have been made, and Schwarzenegger spokesman Matt David said the governor had been unaware of the recent releases, most of which were in response to complaints by Los Angeles County that the state had left nearly 2,000 prisoners in its jails. That number represents about 10% of the prisoners in the county's jail system, which has a court-ordered population cap.

"This was an emergent crisis," said Terri McDonald, the state's chief deputy secretary for adult operations at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "We don't want a system failure in the county jail."

The inmates released from Chino opened up beds for some of those being held in Los Angeles County. McDonald said the state, to be "good partners" with the county, put other inmates in prison gymnasiums that officials had planned to stop using as dormitories, and took additional measures to free up space.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, however, said that the burden had not been alleviated and that the inmates, who cost the county $70 million a year to house, were the state's responsibility.

"If they're releasing them . . . that's their call," Baca said. "For them to blame me for their decision is absurd. All I'm saying is, 'I don't want them in my jail any longer. You're not paying me, and we're not offering a free ride.' "

In a June 30 e-mail, a state parole administrator told agents that the Chino prison would be the "first target" for releasing parole violators. Because of the fiscal crisis, the e-mail said, "we are starting to experience some resistance and refusals of the counties to hold our prisoners" and the state was "incapable" of taking them.

Shasta County, for instance, had recently been forced to close a jail wing because sheriff's deputies were laid off, wrote the administrator, whose e-mail was provided to The Times without a name attached.

The county had notified the state the week before that unless "30 or so" inmates were transferred, it would "release them to the streets over the weekend," the e-mail said.

Five were evaluated and released early, with approval from the parole board; the rest were transferred to state prisons, corrections officials said.

In San Diego, 200 inmates are transferred from local jails to state prisons each week. After the state abruptly stopped accepting them in May, then-Sheriff William Kolender warned prison officials that he would release 138 parole violators to avoid exceeding his jails' court-ordered population cap.

"We regret to take this drastic action, but we have no other alternative given our responsibility to adhere to a court order," Kolender wrote in a letter dated May 5. He added that the county had been "burdened with holding state prisoners for an inordinate amount of time and cost."

The county did not carry out its threat because the state approved two inmates for early release, sent some home on alternative sanctions and transferred others to state prisons.

California has one of the nation's most stringent policies of supervising ex-convicts once they are released; parole violations account for 70,000 prison admissions each year.

Joan Petersilia, a prisons expert who has advised Schwarzenegger's administration, said it makes "good public-policy sense" to reduce that number and reserve prison beds for those who are most dangerous.

"We simply can't afford the punishment that we've had in California," Petersilia said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisons-release9-2009jul09,0,4952196.story

Posted by lois at 05:21 PM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2009

Middlesex Jail in Cambridge MA: Prisoner crowding is cited after riot. Population is up fivefold since 1980

Prisoner crowding is cited after riot
Population is up fivefold since 1980

By Jonathan Saltzman
The Boston Globe / July 7, 2009

The weekend riot at the Middlesex Jail in Cambridge has put a spotlight on overcrowding at Massachusetts jails, where the total population has soared more than 500 percent since 1980 and has pushed many institutions well beyond their capacity.

The Middlesex Jail, which occupies the 17th through 20th floors of the otherwise vacant 22-story former courthouse on Thorndike Street, was built for 161 people but has long exceeded that population. Last September it held 415 detainees, nearly 2 1/2 times its capacity, according to the state Department of Correction’s most recent quarterly report on overcrowding at prisons and jails.

“The fact of the matter is the jails are brutally overcrowded in Middlesex County,’’ said David W. White Jr., a Boston lawyer who chaired a Massachusetts Bar Association task force that released a study in April on overcrowding.

While the cause of Sunday’s riot appeared to stem from detainees’ concerns about a possible swine flu outbreak, prisoner advocates and jail officials said severe overcrowding is also creating tremendous stress in detention centers across the state, making violence more likely.

“We have a facility that was built for 160, and yesterday we had 403,’’ Scott Brazis, superintendent of the jail, said yesterday. “When you have a place that is just so overpopulated . . . [disturbances] can happen at any facility at any time across the country, and this facility is no different.’’

Other county facilities whose populations last September were well beyond capacity included the Bristol County jail in Dartmouth, the Essex County jail in Middleton, and the Nashua Street jail in Suffolk County, according to the state’s quarterly report.

Bristol was at nearly four times its capacity, with 1,173 inmates; Essex was more than 2 1/2 times its capacity, with 1,355 inmates; and Nashua Street was more than 1 1/2 times its capacity, with 756 detainees, according to the report.

“It’s obviously reached crisis proportions,’’ said Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, which provides legal services to people in jail and prisons. She is among several critics of the situation who contend that overcrowding stems from state laws that impose mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug-related crimes.

The number of pretrial detainees at county facilities and convicted inmates at county houses of correction rose 522 percent from 1980 to 2008, according to the April study. The state prisons are also grappling with overcrowding, with their population rising by 368 percent in the same period.

All told, more than 25,000 people are incarcerated in Massachusetts jails and prisons.

State Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, a Newton Democrat, has filed a bill for the third time that would seek to relieve overcrowding in houses of correction and prisons by relaxing mandatory minimum sentences of five to 10 years for people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.

Under her bill, such inmates would be eligible to apply for supervised parole once they completed two-thirds of their sentences. The Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association has endorsed the bill in the past, she said.

But the bill has garnered a mixed reaction from district attorneys. Berkshire District Attorney David F. Capeless, president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said it would do little to relieve overcrowding.

He said statistics he recently saw from the state prison system showed that only 3 percent of the convicted criminals sent to prisons and houses of correction in 2007 had received mandatory minimum drug sentences. Instead, he said, overcrowding stems from rising crime in general. A more effective remedy, he said, would be to provide more treatment for people with substance abuse problems who are responsible for many crimes.

“I don’t think the reaction to overcrowding is to let out people who have been properly sentenced to incarceration,’’ Capeless said. “They’re there for a reason.’’

The riot at the Middlesex Jail on Sunday, say top officials there, appeared to stem from concerns about swine flu.

On June 30, a detainee was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital complaining of flulike symptoms. The detainee was treated and told in discharge papers that he most probably had H1N1 influenza, or swine flu. On his return to the jail, he was quarantined and given Tamiflu and over-the-counter medicine.

Ten more detainees showed flulike symptoms Saturday and were moved to a quarantine unit and treated with Tamiflu. Two correction officers have also been diagnosed with flu. But none of the 13 cases was confirmed as swine flu, said jail officials.

On Sunday, nine detainees apparently upset about the flu outbreak “started acting out, throwing paper and trash,’’ and then tore down sprinkler heads and pipes on the 18th floor, Middlesex Sheriff James V. DiPaola said. Water flooded several floors of the jail and cascaded through elevator shafts to the basement.

Last spring, during a tour of the jail - which at the time housed 427 people - DiPaola called overcrowding a “consistent issue’’ that has plagued his 12-year tenure as sheriff. Prisoners are not only packed tightly into cells but also sleep in corridors, a recreation center, and a chapel. He has lobbied the state unsuccessfully to build a new jail.

As a result of the flooding on Sunday, 193 of the most dangerous detainees were evacuated and bused to the Middlesex House of Correction in Billerica and to jails in Essex, Norfolk, Plymouth and Suffolk counties, said Michael Hartigan, a spokesman for the sheriff. About 200 detainees remained at the jail yesterday.

Authorities turned off the electricity at the jail Sunday because of the flood. They restored power yesterday but were still repairing water damage. The flood knocked down ceiling tiles and disabled elevators.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/07/detainee_overcrowding_is_cited_after_cambridge_jail_riot/?page=full

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

PA: No parole for people convicted of violent offences...not so fast critics warn.

No parole for repeat violent offenders? Not so fast, critics warn

By DANA DiFILIPPO
Philadelphia Daily News

WITH EVERY violent crime committed by a repeat offender, get-tough politicians and police bemoan crime's incalculable cost to society - the lost victims, the rising public-safety fears, the ruined reputation of a thug-choked city.

Now there's a preliminary price tag on a plan that would stiffen sentences and end parole for repeat violent offenders in Pennsylvania: $55.8 million.

The Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing estimates that State Rep. Brendan Boyle's bill - introduced this spring - could dump an additional 1,685 inmates into the state's 50,653-inmate system, at a projected 30-year cost of $55.8 million.

In this violence-weary city and state, Boyle's bill quickly got a high-five from the governor and other bigwigs, and is getting fast-tracked through the state House.

"These are the people we have to use our resources for," Seth Williams, the Democratic nominee for Philadelphia district attorney, said at a recent news conference to rally support for the bill.

But as policymakers ponder how to shrink ballooning correctional costs in a state that spends $1.6 billion on prisons yearly, the staggering sum has some folks questioning whether the plan is worth it.

Critics complain that the bill is a knee-jerk reaction to the recent police slayings and will only make things worse.

Eliminating parole removes the incentive for inmates to behave behind bars, said Bill DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society.

The projected cost also virtually ensures that the state will have to build another prison to lock up the baddies who'll be affected, DiMascio added. Plans to build four new prisons already are under way in a state that now has 27, state Department of Corrections Spokeswoman Susan McNaughton said.

Pennsylvania already has a three-strikes law that allows prosecutors to request mandatory 10-to-20- year sentences for second-strike felons and 30-to-50-year sentences for third-strikers.

But convicts often are able to dodge that law, in large part due to the prevalence of plea bargains, lawmakers and experts agree. The average minimum sentence now served by the sort of second-strike felon that Boyle's bill targets is about eight years, data show.

Under Boyle's bill, persistent perpetrators automatically would be charged under the three-strikes law, eluding mandatory sentencing only if prosecutors ask for an exemption. And the bill will boost the mandatory minimum penalty for second-strikers to 15 to 30 years, essentially doubling the punishment they typically now face.

Advocates for juvenile offenders already vow to challenge the bill, which would allow courts to count juvenile convictions when tallying a person's strikes.

"Kids at juvenile court don't get jury trials, unlike their peers who did not get decertified, as well as adults," said Marsha Levick, deputy director and chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center. "So, there's a due-process violation."

But Boyle, in insisting that juvenile convictions should be included, cited studies showing that the younger that offenders are when they first commit crimes, the likelier they are to commit more.

He also defended his bill's cost as a long-term savings, saying that removing problem predators from communities should drive down crime rates. The $55.8 million cost averages less than $2 million a year, a tiny fraction of the prisons system's annual budget, he added.

The cost projection is a guideline, said Mark H. Bergstrom, executive director of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing. The bill's actual cost will depend on everything from its final wording to unforeseen trends, Bergstrom added.

"Keeping repeat violent offenders in prison longer obviously will add to the cost to run our prisons," said Boyle, a Democrat whose district in Northeast Philadelphia and Montgomery County is where many of the slain Philadelphia officers either worked or lived.

"But it is an incomplete analysis to only look at prison costs," Boyle said. "Violent crime in America has a cost one way or another: We either pay it in prisons or we let them out on the streets and pay the cost in loss of life, medical costs, lost jobs. If lives are saved through this legislation, then it is worth any cost to pay."
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/50004072.html?cmpid=15585797

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

July 06, 2009

Editorial: Justice Ignored. The detention of immigrants under Obama continues to be neglectful and abusive

Editorial: Justice Ignored

NY Times
Published: July 5, 2009

In January 2007, two immigrant advocacy groups and two former immigration detainees petitioned the Department of Homeland Security to take a simple but important step. They asked it to establish legally enforceable standards for the detention system, a fast-growing network of federal centers, county jails and private prisons that has been plagued by medical neglect and abuse.

The petition was ignored, even after reports of several preventable deaths. This was typical for the Bush administration, whose war on illegal immigration was notable for its slipshod cruelty. After waiting more than a year, the advocates sued.

More time passed. So did the Bush administration. On Jan. 21, the day after President Obama was inaugurated, Homeland Security told the court it couldn’t meet a deadline set for that month to respond to the petition, or commit to a date by which it would reply. Neither Mr. Obama nor his new secretary of homeland security has since responded or announced any change of policy.

On June 25, a federal district judge in Manhattan declared that the now two-and-a-half-year delay in answering the petition was “unreasonable as a matter of law,” and ordered the department to respond within 30 days. The judge, Denny Chin, took note of the plaintiffs’ assertion that “detainees in D.H.S. custody are dying as a result of the substandard conditions.” He called the department’s continued silence “egregious.”

The Homeland Security secretary, Janet Napolitano, had earlier announced plans for a comprehensive review of the detention system and other messes left by President Bush. But little has changed, and it has been left to federal judges to correct abuses as they can.

Last month, a judge in New Haven halted the deportations of four immigrant men who had been seized in a blatantly unconstitutional raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who stormed a house without permission, warrant or evidence. I.C.E. had refused to let its agents be cross-examined in the court.

Immigrant advocates greeted the election of President Obama as a chance to finally bring moderation and accountability to a rogue, unresponsive immigration system. In late June, advocates celebrated Mr. Obama’s pledge to solve the immigration mess once and for all, maybe with a bill this year.

But a lot of suffering needs to be undone right now. The administration’s promises would be more convincing if it finally fixed the corrupted detention system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/opinion/06mon2.html?hpw

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

Jim Webb’s attack on American Gulag

Jim Webb’s attack on American Gulag
By Alexander Cockburn
Published: Monday, July 6, 2009

Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia introduced his bill to set up a bipartisan National Criminal Justice Commission. "We find ourselves as a nation," Webb declared, "in the midst of a profound, deeply corrosive crisis," vis., "the national disgrace of our present criminal justice system" and "the disintegration of this system, day by day and year by year." This "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, and — most importantly — it is not making our country a safer or a fairer place."

True words.

The goal of Webb's legislation? To establish a national commission to examine and reshape America's entire criminal justice system, the first such effort in more than 40 years. Its aims as outlined by Webb are to refocus incarceration policies on criminal activities that threaten public safety; to lower the incarceration rate; to decrease prison violence; to improve prison administration; to establish meaningful re-entry programs for former offenders; to reform drug laws; to improve treatment of the mentally ill; and to improve responses to international and domestic criminal activity by gangs and cartels.

Webb compared the implications of his bleak data to the financial meltdown that has already eaten a trillion dollars of public funds and the "War on Terror" that has eaten another trillion, plus tens of thousands of lives.

America has 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's known prison population; 7.3 million incarcerated, on probation or on parole; 2.38 million are in prison — five times the world's average rate. Imprisoned drug offenders are up from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 by 2008, a significant percentage of them with no history of violence or high-level drug activity. There is extreme disproportion in the drug sentencing — blacks have roughly the same drug-use rate as whites but are seven times more likely to go to prison where there's hopeless overcrowding with all hope abandoned and extremely high recidivism rates. Four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals, roughly 350,000 compared to 80,000.

One very important omission from Webb's profile of crisis was the crisis in prison medical (non)care, now so dreadful in California as to be taken out of California hands and managed by a court-appointed federal judge. This is clearly a contentious issue since Jerry Brown plans to run for governor on a platform that denounces medical care for prisoners as a frivolous expense.

Gov. "Moonbeam" Brown has learned his lesson and become No-Nonsense Jerry, who rejects prison medicine as "holistic" silliness. Considering the ever-growing number of three-strike lifers vegetating in their own organic manure who have Alzheimer's and can't remember their names let alone their crimes, the cynicism of Jerry Brown — whose family has lived off the people in every possible "job" they could "run" for (after) for over 50 years — is unfathomable.

What hope of reform? For 30 years, the political economy of the American gulag has had irresistible allurements: the "tough on crime" Seal of Approval for political candidates from police chiefs, prison guard unions and the victims' lobby. What governor, given the fate of Dukakis of Massachusetts or Ryan of Illinois, dares to pardon or even parole? In my recollection, only Mike Huckabee, governor of Arkansas, released substantial numbers from prison.

"Reform of the justice system" is now on lips that would otherwise disdain those words because of economic crisis, which has enabled reform of New York's terrible Rockefeller drug laws: The prisons housing the swelling flood of convicts become the darling of upstate New York. What legislator would vote to kill all those rural jobs, however counterproductive? Before the fiscal meltdown, hardly any; since the fiscal meltdown, a solid majority. New York State cannot now afford the huge workfare program that developed in the upstate counties around Rockefeller's prison-packing program. The money just isn't there. So, soon thousands of those convicts who shouldn't have been there in the first place won't be there either.

Aside from the spur of fiscal crisis in every state, the only apparent opening political wedge discernible in Webb's opening statement is the issue of organized Mexican gangs that supposedly exist in "hundreds" of American cities. "There are an estimated 1 million gang members in the United States, many of them foreign-based," Webb declared. "Every American neighborhood is vulnerable. Gangs commit 80 percent of the crime in some locations. Mexican cartels, which are military-capable, have operations in 230-plus U.S. cities. U.S. gangs are involved in cross-border criminal activity, working in partnership with these cartels."

Yet the organized gangs of prison guards and cement contractors who control all the state legislatures are far more powerful.

Webb's stark recitation of the grim facts was all the more dramatic since it was devoid of editorial comment. It reminds one of Machiavelli's little theorem: the more difficult the diagnosis, the easier the cure; the easier the diagnosis, the harder the cure. When it is obvious to all, there is no cure.

Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through www.counterpunch.com.

http://www.atmoreadvance.com/articles/2009/07/06/opinion/columns/column2.txt

Posted by lois at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)

Prison Visits Go “Pay-Per-View”

July 6, 2009
Prison Visits Go “Pay-Per-View”

MIAMI (CBS/AP) There’s still no place like home, but for the prison population, "being there" on the Web is becoming the next best thing. And prison officials say "video-conference visitation" offers benefits for inmates, family, and friends.

Almost every Saturday at 9:30 a.m. Candace McCann, inmate No. 188342, sits down for a scheduled video conference with her daughter.

Seven-year-old Kashmir appears from McCann's aunt's home, three hours away. Sometimes Kashmir draws a picture. Other times she stands on a chair to model an outfit: jeans and a Hannah Montana T-shirt or new shoes. Lately she's been pressing her face close to the camera and opening her mouth, showing off lost teeth.

"I feel like I'm at home, kind of," said McCann, 24, in a video conference interview. "It's good to see that kind of stuff."

Home for McCann right now is a medium-security Indiana prison, where she is serving almost three years for theft and forgery. She has only seen her daughter in person three times in the last year.

But in February, the 1,200 inmates at the prison got the ability to video conference using ATM-like kiosks. Families and friends can talk from the comfort of a home office or an armchair. All they need is a webcam.

Other prisons around the country offer video visits, but families generally have to go to a site like a church to use it. At Indiana's Rockville Correctional Facility, however, once visitors are on an approved list, they can go online from home or elsewhere and schedule and pay for their own visits. Visits cost $12.50 for 30 minutes, less than the approximately $15 the prison charges for a 30-minute local call.

Only the Rockville facility is currently using the system, developed by a Florida company called JPay. But all 28,000 Indiana inmates are expected to have access to the system within the next four years. And all Kansas inmates — just under 9,000 of them — will be able to use it by next year. JPay covers the cost of the kiosks and their installation. The states pay nothing.

Prison officials say the virtual visits can be less expensive and less time-consuming for families than driving to a faraway prison.

McCann's mother, for example, underwent treatment for cancer and her aunt breathes with the assistance of oxygen.

McCann's aunt, Margaret Earlywine, 69, said visiting her niece in person requires packing four canisters of oxygen and can be stressful.

The prison benefits from increased contact, too.

"When they (prisoners) have that contact with the outside family they actually behave better here at the facility," said Richard Brown, Rockville's assistant superintendent.

And there's no chance inmates can get drugs or other contraband slipped to them.

Not everyone has behaved during the visits, however. In the past few months, a handful of inmates and family members have been banned from using the system for exposing themselves during a visit. The prison watches all the visits either live — like a security video — or later, when the system archives them. If there's a problem, JPay can ban a family member or an inmate from the visits, though after the first offense inmates can get the privilege back in six months.

The prison can block visits at times when inmates have to be at meals or in bed. Inmates get notified they have a visit when they log in to the JPay kiosk. The kiosk has a screen where they can see video, a video camera to record them, and a phone they pick up to listen to the other person. It also has a keypad and built-in mouse.

The same kiosk lets inmates send and receive e-mails, something a third of federal prisons also now offer, and doubles as an ATM machine to tell them how much money they have in their accounts for spending at the prison commissary. Many inmates log in daily, even if just for a minute or two. And at Rockville, which has about one kiosk for every 75 inmates, the wait to use one is rarely long.

Inmate Deborah Reagin, 48, said her video visits have given her a chance to feel like she's still nearby. Her daughters, Amber and Michelle, have taken her on video tours of their new homes, both purchased after she went to prison on a methamphetamine charge. Her 3-year-old grandson Khelin likes to dance for her to the song “I Like to Move It” from the movie “Madagascar.” And on Christmas, she watched him play with new toy trucks and bounce on a new trampoline.

"It makes my day a whole lot better to be able to see my family, to talk to them," Reagin said.

She even gets to see her rat terrier, Peaches, who is living with her daughter Michelle.

"Of course they don't allow dogs in this facility," Reagin said, "I would never get to see her if it weren't for these visits."

Even so, prison video conferencing has its limitations. Conjugal visits seem beyond the reach of the new technology.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/05/14/crimesider/entry5013295.shtml

Posted by lois at 09:00 PM | Comments (0)

Giving Birth in Chains: The Shackling of Incarcerated Women During Labor and Delivery

Giving Birth in Chains: The Shackling of Incarcerated Women During Labor and Delivery
By Anna Clark
Created Jul 6 2009 - 7:00am

As birthing choices are increasingly prominent in the public conversation, pregnant women are more and more empowered to decide what sort of care is right for their bodies and their child.

Not so for pregnant women who are incarcerated. Not only are their decisions about care restricted, but many incarcerated pregnant women are physically restricted while giving birth: during labor and delivery, they are shackled.

Consider the case of Shawanna Nelson.

When Nelson was six months pregnant, she was incarcerated in Arkansas for passing bad checks. She went into labor during her short sentence. A correctional officer shackled her legs to opposite sides of the bed that transported her to a delivery room, removing them briefly during a nurse's examination. Nelson was re-shackled immediately after giving birth to her nine-pound son.

"She suffered both mental anguish and injury to her back, intense pain because she couldn't move or adjust her position through her birth process," said Dana Sussman, legal fellow at the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Nelson later had surgery to treat symptoms resulting from the delivery of her son, according to The Arkansas Times. She sued the Arkansas Department of Correction, charging that her treatment violated the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

After winning her case at district court, Nelson's charges were dismissed on appeal by a judicial panel that said prison officials "couldn't have known the shackling was unconstitutional," said Sussman. Nelson was granted a rehearing before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project. Her case was argued in September 2008. A decision is pending.

Perhaps most surprising about Nelson's case is that it's not uncommon. Last month, a former Washington inmate sued the state for shackling during her birthing process and high-risk pregnancy, treatment that included a leg iron and a metal chain across her stomach.
for more go to: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/07/06/giving-birth-chains-the-shackling-incarcerated-women-during-labor-and-delivery

Posted by lois at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)

Bus with NY prison visitors tips over, killing 1.

Bus with NY prison visitors tips over, killing 1.
7-4-09

LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. (AP) — A bus transporting visitors to upstate prisons rolled onto its side and plowed into a rock ledge on a highway in the Adirondack mountains early Sunday, killing a woman pinned underneath and hurting nine other people, authorities said.

Police were investigating what caused the 3:15 a.m. wreck on the Adirondack Northway in the town of Lake George, about 60 miles north of Albany.

The bus tipped onto its side, slid and veered into the rock a quarter-mile south of the highway's Exit 21, Queensbury fire Chief Joseph DuPrey told the Glens Falls Post-Star newspaper. The impact tore down at least 50 yards of guide rails and left the highway strewn with food wrappers and fliers about services for prisoners' families, the newspaper said.

Police identified the dead woman as Curtrice E. Gravitt, of New York City. Gravitt, 33, had head, neck and chest injuries, police said.

Three of the injured people were in fair condition at a hospital, while the rest were treated and released, hospital officials said.

The bus, operated by Angelic Tours and Shuttles Inc., of Fayetteville, N.C., was taking passengers to visit prisons in Ray Brook and Malone, state police said. Telephone message left at the company's New York City and Fayetteville offices requesting comment were not immediately returned Sunday.

The highway, part of Interstate 87 running from north of Albany to the Canadian-U.S. border, was closed for hours around where the crash happened.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ijlohAkWsKCtNov87LqLsah_qPKgD998JU8G0

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

July 05, 2009

NY Times: article on the effects of mass incarceration on the families of people who have been incarcerated

This is an extremely narrow view...still I thought you might want to read it and check out the graph. And, of course, comments can be made on the NY Times website and letters to the editor.
Lois

In Prisoners’ Wake, a Tide of Troubled Kids
By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: July 4, 2009
NY Times
graph and other information at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/us/05prison.html?_r=1&ref=us

WASHINGTON — Herbert Rashad Scott, whose parents were in and out of prison throughout his childhood, vowed to break his family’s cycle of self-destruction.

The circumstances were not promising. Mr. Scott, 20, was awaiting sentencing for drug possession and robbery, but he was allowed supervised release from jail in May to attend a job preparation class — a chance to turn his life around. As he spoke, he wriggled his neck, trying to get used to the necktie required, and he tried to ignore the tracking device on his ankle.

“I had low self-esteem and depression,” Mr. Scott said of his teenage years. Now, his ex-girlfriend was pregnant, and he pondered his child’s prospects.

“I want to be there for this child, and I want the child to know that jail ain’t no place to be,” he said.

The chances of seeing a parent go to prison have never been greater, especially for poor black Americans, and new research is documenting the long-term harm to the children they leave behind. Recent studies indicate that having an incarcerated parent doubles the chance that a child will be at least temporarily homeless and measurably increases the likelihood of physically aggressive behavior, social isolation, depression and problems in school — all portending dimmer prospects in adulthood.

“Parental imprisonment has emerged as a novel, and distinctly American, childhood risk that is concentrated among black children and children of low-education parents,” said Christopher Wildeman, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who is studying what some now call the “incarceration generation.”

Incarceration rates in the United States have multiplied over the last three decades, in part because of stiffer sentencing rules. At any given moment, more than 1.5 million children have a parent, usually their father, in prison, according to federal data. But many more are affected over the course of childhood, especially if they are black, new studies show.

Among those born in 1990, one in four black children, compared with one in 25 white children, had a father in prison by age 14. Risk is concentrated among black children whose parents are high-school dropouts; half of those children had a father in prison, compared with one in 14 white children with dropout parents, according to a report by Dr. Wildeman recently published in the journal Demography.

For both blacks and whites, the chances of parental incarceration were far higher than they were for children born just 12 years earlier, in 1978.

Scholars agree that in some cases children may benefit from a parent’s forced removal, especially when a father is a sexual predator or violent at home. But more often, the harm outweighs any benefits, studies have found.

If a parent’s imprisonment deprives a struggling family of earnings or child support, the practical consequences can be fairly clear-cut. While poor urban children had a 3 percent chance of experiencing a period of homelessness over the previous year, those with an incarcerated parent had a 6 percent chance, one study found.

Quantifying other effects of parental incarceration, like aggressive behavior and depression, is more complex because many children of prisoners are already living in deprived and turbulent environments. But researchers using newly available surveys that follow families over time are starting to home in on the impact.

Among 5-year-old urban boys, 49 percent of those who had a father incarcerated within the previous 30 months exhibited physically aggressive behaviors like hitting others or destroying objects, compared with 38 percent of those in otherwise similar circumstances who did not have a father imprisoned, Dr. Wildeman found.

While most attention has been placed on physical aggression, a study by Sara Wakefield, a sociologist following children in Chicago, found that having a parent imprisoned was a mental-health tipping point for some. Thus, while 28 percent of the children in her study over all experienced feelings of social isolation, depression or anxiety at levels that would warrant clinical evaluation or treatment, about 35 percent of those who had an incarcerated parent did.

Such hidden issues can have lifelong consequences.

Terrisa Bryant, 20, who was in the same jobs class as Mr. Scott, with a group called Strive, said she grew up resenting her father’s absences, including his time spent in prison. With her mother working day and night to put food on the table, Ms. Bryant was the baby sitter for her younger siblings.

“I couldn’t go out,” Ms. Bryant said. “I felt isolated.”

Ms. Bryant said she thought her anger and isolation helped explain why she got pregnant at 14 and had to drop out of school to raise her child. Now, she hopes to get certified for a career in child care.

With financial woes now forcing many states to rethink the relentless expansion of prisons, “this intergenerational transfer of problems should be included as an additional cost of incarceration to society,” said Sarah S. McLanahan, a sociologist at Princeton University and director of a national survey of families that is providing data for many of the new studies.

Heather Mac Donald, a legal expert at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, agreed that everything possible should be done to help the children of people who were incarcerated. But Ms. Mac Donald said that it was hard to distinguish the effects of having a parent in prison from those of having a parent who is a criminal, and that any evaluation of tough sentencing policies, which she supports, had to weigh the benefits for the larger community. “A large portion of fathers were imprisoned on violence or drug-trafficking charges,” she said. “What would be the effects on other children in the neighborhood if those men are out there?”

Adam Gaines, 40, of Owings Mills, Md., has firsthand experience of watching his children flounder. He was freed last year after 13 and a half years in prison for robbery. Now, he is trying to be the father he never was to a son who dropped out of school in the 10th grade, another son who is just starting high school and a teenage daughter who had a baby and dropped out of school.

Mr. Gaines shook his heroin addiction after years in prison, has moved back in with his wife, Tasuha, and is studying to be a fitness teacher.

When his father was behind bars, said Mr. Gaines’s oldest child, Adam Jr., 19, “I didn’t have a role model, and I had to learn on the streets how to carry myself, what it meant to be a man.”

Mr. Scott, too, may not be around for his child. Despite his vow to break the cycle of failure and his job preparation class, he disappeared shortly after talking to a reporter in May, apparently to avoid a mandatory drug test, and did not report to his probation officer.

Mr. Scott was arrested on charges of absconding in the last week of May and is now in a Washington jail awaiting a sentence that could be three years or more — and making it more likely that his child, too, will join the incarceration generation.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 5, 2009, on page A13 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2009

Study Finds Gaps in Aid for Non-English Speakers in State Civil Courts

Study Finds Gaps in Aid for Non-English Speakers in State Civil Courts
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: July 3, 2009
NY Times
When Maythe Ramirez went to Superior Court in Contra Costa, Calif., for a child custody hearing in 2006, she wanted to tell the judge that her husband beat her and should not be allowed broad visitation rights. The court did not provide an interpreter for her, however, and Ms. Ramirez, who speaks almost no English, could not follow the arcane proceeding, much less participate.

“It is really as if you are doing nothing in court,” she said in Spanish through an interpreter, “standing still and not being able to explain what’s really happening.”

Ms. Ramirez, who came to the United States from Mexico, later divorced her husband and had the visitation rules modified with the help of a lawyer from Bay Area Legal Aid, who got her interpreters for other hearings.

The court system can be a bewildering place for anyone, but it can be terrifying for those who do not understand English. Federal law requires civil and criminal courts that receive federal financing to provide free interpreters for those with limited proficiency in English. But while interpreters are commonly offered in criminal cases, many states do not require the services in all civil cases. The state of California, where Ms. Ramirez’s case was heard, provides interpreters in some civil cases and not others.

A new study of civil courts, from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University law school, examined the 35 states with the highest immigrant populations and found that interpreter services are not always provided, or not provided well, and are not keeping up with growing demand. Of those states, 46 percent do not require that interpreters be provided in all cases, and 80 percent fail to guarantee that the courts will pay for the interpreter, as the Department of Justice’s view of the law requires.

Thirty-seven percent of those states do not require that the interpreters have proper credentials. The result is a national patchwork of varying rights from state to state.

“This must change,” the report concluded. “Federal law, principles of fundamental fairness, and our need for equal access to the justice system all demand it.”

The disparity in services for non-English speakers between civil and criminal cases makes little sense in light of the high stakes also in civil court, said Richard S. Brown, a state appellate judge in Wisconsin.

“Civil cases can involve denial of constitutional property rights, termination of parental rights, statutory rights to be free from harassment and stalking, consumer transactions, foreclosures and a host of other matters,” Judge Brown said. “If a person cannot understand what is happening in the courtroom proceeding, an unfair result might occur. And that is contradictory to what we want our courts to do: administer justice, fairly and impartially.”

In family law cases, which deal with issues like divorce, child custody and abuse, the lack of language help “can mean the difference between justice and injustice,” said Purvi Shah, executive director of Sakhi for South Asian Women, an organization concerned with domestic violence among South Asians in the United States.

“Your testimony on the experience of abuse is what needs to be articulated to be able to access remedies,” Ms. Shah said.

States that do not provide interpreters in civil court are violating federal law, said Laura Abel, deputy director of the Justice Program at the Brennan Center and the author of the new report. “The law is very clear,” Ms. Abel said, adding that while some states have made progress in the last decade, “the state courts are just slow to comply.”

Wanda Romberger, manager of court interpreting services at the National Center for State Courts, said states were trying to rise to the challenge, but were struggling to find enough qualified interpreters. Forty states have joined a consortium that promotes language access to the courts and sets standards for training and testing interpreters. But progress is uneven, Ms. Romberger said, and many states have barely begun.

Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin, introduced a bill last week to provide $15 million a year in seed money for states to develop or improve their court interpreter programs.

The federal requirement to provide interpreters in federally financed programs goes back to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and was underscored by the Clinton administration in an executive order in 2000 requiring agencies to take “reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access” to services. It was followed up with guidelines issued two years later by the Department of Justice.

Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general for civil rights, restated the policy in April at a federal meeting devoted to language skills issues. “Even in tough economic times,” Ms. King said, “assertions of lack of resources will not provide carte blanche for failure to provide language access. Language access is essential and is not to be treated as a ‘frill’ when determining what to cut in a budget.”

The states, however, face daunting costs and challenges to bring language aid to their courts. In New York, where state law requires interpreters to be offered in all civil and criminal cases, costs have been rising, from nearly $18 million in the 2004-5 fiscal year to more than $24 million in the 2008-9 fiscal year, with 282,000 hours of interpretation in nearly 90 languages, including Kurdish, Wolof and Cajun French. According to a recent article by Ms. Romberger from the National Center for State Courts, California civil courts provided more than 160,000 days of court interpreter services in 2004-5 in Spanish alone, and provided thousands of days in more than 20 other languages, including Samoan, Romanian and Jhindu.

California’s costs for interpreter services have risen 12 percent a year since 2004. Arkansas’s costs have risen by 74 percent a year since 2003, according to the state courts group.

Federal court costs are rising as well, with $23 million spent on interpreters in the 2007 fiscal year, up from $18 million in 2004, according to the administrative office of the federal courts.

Such figures gall those who oppose permissive immigration policies. “We accommodate for language too much, and that sends a very clear message that it’s O.K. not to learn English,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, a nonprofit group that seeks to limit immigration. “This is an inevitable cost of massive immigration that is never taken into account when making policy.”

The idea that immigrants should simply learn English, however, does not sit well with Judge Brown.

“I wonder aloud how many immigrants from the 1840s through the 1920s lost their liberty, lost their property, lost their homes, their livelihood, all because they could not yet understand the English language to the fullest,” he said in an e-mail interview.

Judge Brown, who is deaf, said, “I think we are a better country because we are now acknowledging what we did not acknowledge in the 19th and early 20th centuries.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 4, 2009, on page A13 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/04/us/04interpret.html?scp=1&sq=Brennan%20Center&st=cse

Posted by lois at 09:34 PM | Comments (0)

OR: Tepid Reception for Racial Impacts Proposal. Sponsor finds unease when 'race' enters fray.

Tepid Reception for Racial Impacts Proposal
By Jake Thomas /The Portland Observer
Sponsor finds unease when 'race' enters fray

When Oregon voters jumped on the "get tough on crime" bandwagon in the 1990s by approving Measure 11, they might not have fully understood where it was headed.

Measure 11, which removes the sentencing leeway a judge can give a defendant and imposes mandatory minimum prison terms for certain crimes, has caused Oregon's prison population to swell.

The Department of Corrections estimated that inmates in Oregon prisons will grow by 41 percent because of the measure. This has been particularly hard for Oregon's minority population. African Americans make up nearly 10 percent of the state's prison population, even though they are about 2 percent of the population. Hispanics make up over 12 percent of inmates, while making up only about 10 percent of the general population.

Rep. Chip Shields, D-Portland, hoped to shine light on the issue this year by introducing House Bill 2352, which requires the state to issue a racial and ethnic impact statement any time voters or legislators consider a change to sentencing policy, like Measure 11.

Such a statement would be similar to an environmental or fiscal impact statement, which use existing data to predict how pending legislation will affect the natural world or the state's coffers.

Shields hopes that the bill will make lawmakers and the public aware of the potential for unintended consequences from a change in sentencing policy.

The bill has received a tepid reception so far, which is surprising for a state that prides itself for its tolerance and progressiveness, and recently gave the Democratic Party super majorities in both houses last election,

It passed the House Rules Committee without a recommendation as to passage, with an amendment from the Oregon District Attorneys Association, which would require an additional statement detailing how minorities might be disproportionately affected by a certain type of crime.

"I've got to do some more educating of the body on the bill," said Shields.

One of the issues he says he has encountered has been his fellow legislators' unease with the phrase "racial impact statement."

"You throw the word 'race' around and it freaks people out," he said.

With the legislature set to adjourn later this month it's dubious that Oregon will join four other states that require racial impact statements.

Iowa, a state even more lilywhite than Oregon, passed similar legislation last year, which was championed by the state's only black legislator, Rep. Wayne Ford (D-Des Moines.).

Ford said that Oregon is in a similar situation with Iowa having most of its minority populations in its urban centers. This arrangement might make rural legislators less sensitive to the issue.

But Ford overcame this by calling enough attention to the fact that people of color make up 37 percent of the prison population, although they are less than 8 percent of the general population.

"I think many politicians on both sides of the aisle got sick of this," he said.
http://www.portlandobserver.com/story.asp?record=10139&section=Law%20/%20Politics

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

Especially awful editorial on proposal by Michigan's govenror to cage CA prisoners

Editorial: Win-win: Sending felons to Michigan
Wednesday, Jul. 1, 2009
Sacramento Bee

In the depths of the worst recession since World War II, California may be giving birth to a new export industry. It's an export in which California appears to have important competitive advantages. And it may be recession-proof.

The export is prison inmates.

California has something of a head start in this market. The state already has sent 7,600 inmates to private prisons in Arizona, Tennessee, Mississippi and Oklahoma. But it hasn't yet sent inmates to public prisons in other states.

Like other economic innovations, this one required a visionary leader
willing to think outside the box. For prisons, it appears to be Gov.
Jennifer Granholm of Michigan. Her state is closing several prisons ­ not, it says, because of the recession but because an innovative re-entry program has sharply cut recidivism.

California's predicament is different. It has 168,000 inmates in a system built for half that number. A judicial panel's tentative ruling has called for the release of as many as 55,000 of those inmates.

Granholm and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had already informally discussed the fact that the two states' predicaments offered the chance for a mutually beneficial relationship. On Monday, Granholm formalized the offer in a letter.

An agreement wouldn't just ease some of California's prison overcrowding. It would also likely save the state money. Our per-inmate cost, $45,000, is the highest in the nation. Michigan's is $32,500 per year. Some of that difference would presumably flow back to the general fund. Sending inmates to the Midwest would also save the jobs of some Michigan prison workers slated to be laid off.

We don't think inmates should be the basis of a long-term export industry for California. Eventually, the state will have to align the number of inmates in its prisons with its capacity to provide them with housing and health care. But in the short run, sending inmates to Michigan could help both states.

In a time of crisis, it's help that neither state is in a position to
refuse.

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1990757.html

Posted by lois at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)

Methland The Death and Life of an American Small Town

Wasted Land
Methland
The Death and Life of an American Small Town
By Nick Reding
255 pp. Bloomsbury. $25
Reviewed By WALTER KIRN
Published: NY Times Book Review July 1, 2009

Think globally, suffer locally. This could be the moral of “Methland,” Nick Reding’s unnerving investigative account of two gruesome years in the life of Oelwein, Iowa, a railroad and meatpacking town of several thousand whipped by a methamphetamine-laced panic whose origins lie outside the place itself, in forces almost too great to comprehend and too pitiless to bear. The ravages of meth, or “crank,” on Oelwein and countless forsaken locales much like it are shown to be merely superficial symptoms of a vaster social dementia caused by, among other things, the iron dominion of corporate agriculture and the slow melting of villages and families into the worldwide financial stew.

The book, wrought from old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting of a type that’s disappearing faster than nonfranchised lunch counters on Main Street, isn’t chiefly a tale of drugs and crime, of dysfunction and despair, but a recession-era tragedy scaled for an “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder stage and seemingly based on a script by William S. Burroughs. The madness stalking tiny, defenseless Oelwein may eventually come for all of us, we learn, and once again, as happens in America whenever our collective attention wanders from the gray struggles of the little guy to the purple capers of the big wheels, attention must be paid. Right now. Or else.

“Methland” begins quietly and solemnly, with a ballad of cultural invisibility. Reding, a loyal native of the Midwest who’s frankly sentimental about its past and starkly lucid about its likely future, invites his rushing readers to gaze down at the “flyover country” of America and see not a grid of farms and county roads but a patchwork of failed institutions and aspirations. There’s the hospital, groaning under a load of uninsured patients with ­minimum-wage jobs and maxed-out household budgets. There’s the school, imperiled by dwindling tax receipts and students with ever more grown-up problems. And there, on a street in a district of drab houses not far from the faltering central business district, is a passel of latter-day Tom Sawyers on bikes, riding along not for the summertime heck of it but to shake up batches of low-grade speed contained in plastic soda jugs lashed to their back fenders.

It’s magnificently potent stuff, this meth, whose crudest versions are concocted from a mash of over-the-counter cold pills and flesh-eating bulk industrial chemicals. Just a few grains of it, snorted through scarred nostrils and allowed to saturate stressed synapses, can keep a person awake and going for days. And that’s not an entirely bad thing here, where survival means working harder for less each year, from late shift to day shift, until perception blurs.

Soon, Reding brings us even farther in, introducing a cast of local characters whose trust it must have been a feat to gain, so wobbly and troubled are their lives. Nathan Lein, the crusading county prosecutor, is the 28-year-old son of pious farmers who’s come back to Oelwein to help clean up the meth mess after obtaining degrees in philosophy, law and environmental science. Lein, a big guy, but not quite big enough given the monstrous foes confronting him, is afflicted by a nervous “habit of slowly raising his hand to his face and then rubbing the tip of his nose in one quick motion, as if to remove a stain that only he can perceive.”

Manning another fortress against the siege is Dr. Clay Hallberg, Oelwein’s leading physician and a chain-smoking, trembling alcoholic who likes to swill cheap canned beer in his garage. Oddly, like Lein, he’s an amateur philosopher, given to quoting Kant and reading Chomsky and trying to fit his hometown’s woes — ghoulish orgies of domestic violence, toxic explosions of backyard crank labs, psychotic episodes at Do Drop Inn — into overarching historical patterns. He and Lein share a longing, perhaps even a mania, to achieve an enlightened perspective on decline, if only because it lifts them temporarily out of their harsh grass-roots struggle with its effects.

The effects themselves are hardly abstract. In the tradition of James ­Agee’s writings on Depression-era share-­croppers, Reding displays the faces of the damned in broken-capillary close-ups. In the grisliest passage of “Methland,” which deserves to be quoted at some length so as to convey its hellish momentum, he invites us to share in the torments of Roland Jarvis, a paranoid small-time meth cook, in the Dante-like interlude after the combustion of his improvised home lab (just one of hundreds in the area). “Jarvis looked down and saw what he thought was egg white on his bare arms. It was not egg white; it was the viscous state of his skin now that the water had boiled out of it. Jarvis flung it off himself, and then he saw that where the egg white had been he could now see roasting muscle. His skin was dripping off his body in sheets. . . . He’d have pulled the melting skeins of skin from himself in bigger, more efficient sections but for the fact that his fingers had burned off of his hands. His nose was all but gone now, too, and he ran back and forth among the gathered neighbors, unable to scream, for his esophagus and his voice box had cooked inside his throat.”

Too many scenes of sulfurous agony might chase away the most calloused, ambitious reader, so Reding recounts these nightmares sparingly, surrounding them with stretches of patient journalism tracing the convergence of social vectors that made the meth plague nearly inevitable and its eradication well-nigh impossible. He details, with blunt statistics and apt anecdotes, the vanishing of educated young males from rural Iowa, as well as the butchering of middle-class jobs at the local packing plant.

The agricultural conglomerates that have gobbled up Oelwein and similar farm towns may feed the world, but they starve the folks who work for them, breeding a craving for synthetic stimulants that conveniently sap the appetite while enlarging the body’s capacity for toil. These offal-streaked Dickensian mills are also magnets for desperate immigrant laborers who, in some cases, blaze the smuggling trails that run up into the Corn Belt from Mexico, home to the gang lords who own the superlabs that, increasingly, dominate the meth trade.

“Vicious cycle” is not an adequate term. As Reding painstakingly presents it, the production, distribution and consumption of methamphetamine is a self-catalyzing catastrophe of Chernobylish dimensions. The rich, with their far-off, insulated lives, get richer and more detached, while the poor get high and, finally, wasted. In the meanwhile, the traffickers fatten in their dens, expanding their arsenals and their private armies, some of whose troops are recruited from the ranks of the pale zombies their business spawns.

A photon of cheer at the end of this grim tunnel emerges toward the end of “Methland” when, thanks to tireless efforts by a new mayor, a shaky economic revitalization succeeds in sprucing up the town and brightening its prospects. At the same time, the embattled Lein and Hallberg manage to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps just as they’re about to plunge over sheer emotional cliffs.

How all are faring in the current downturn isn’t revealed, and perhaps that’s for the good, because readers who’ve followed Reding into the underworld deserve a measure of hope for their devotion. What’s clear is that the golden rolling heartland that Americans used to think symbolized stability beats fitfully and irregularly still and almost certainly remains inclined to seek out sources of chemical optimism. And no one, least of all Reding, who knows what’s what on an intimate, human level as well as on the astral plane of globalism, can tell us where it will all end — only that, all things being equal in an increasingly unequal land, it doesn’t have far or very long to go.

Walter Kirn, a frequent contributor to the Book Review, is the author of “Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 5, 2009, on page BR1 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/books/review/Kirn-t.html?_r=1&ref=books

Posted by lois at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

July 02, 2009

"Racism's Hidden Toll"

Racism's Hidden Toll
by: Ryan Blitstein
Does the stress of living in a white-dominated society make African Americans get sick and die younger than their white counterparts? Apparently, yes.
more at....
http://www.miller-mccune.com/health/racisms-hidden-toll-1268

Posted by lois at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

July 01, 2009

MA: Organizations and Officials Call for Reform of CORI

Changes urged to state criminal records law
June 30, 2009
By Vivian Nereim, Globe Correspondent

Legislators, government officials, and community organizers called today for changes to the state's criminal records law that they said would help ex-offenders reenter society, including shortening the waiting period to seal records and a simplification of the sealing process.

Supporters of the changes to the Criminal Offender Record Information law, speaking at a State House rally, argued that revisions to the law would help people released from prison to find jobs and housing, reducing recidivism.

"The CORI law is broken, and on a daily basis opportunity is lost," said Kevin Burke, secretary of the state Executive Office of Security and Public Safety.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino urged immediate action. "Let's do CORI reform this session. Let's get it done now," he said, adding, "I just put a young man to work who spent 15 years in jail."

Under current state law, a criminal record may be sealed after a waiting period of 10 years for a misdemeanor and 15 years for a felony.

Victoria Binney, who attended the rally, said she was arrested for for driving to endanger and possession of marijuana when she was 18. Now, at age 25, she has been unable to find the healthcare job she said she has always wanted because of her record, so she is working as a barber in Worcester. "I've had problems getting mediocre jobs at Blockbuster," she said. "It's been a real big struggle." Under current law, she will have to wait another seven years before her record can be sealed.

The rally included supporters of three CORI reform bills, each with differing details. Governor Deval Patrick filed a bill in May that would reduce the waiting period to seal a record to five years for a misdemeanor and 10 years for a felony. A bill filed in January by Representative Elizabeth Malia, a Democrat from Boston, and Senator Harriette Chandler, a Democrat from Worcester, would reduce the waiting period to three years for a misdemeanor and seven years for a felony. Another bill filed in January by Representative Gloria L. Fox, a Democrat from Roxbury, and supported by Menino, would prevent many employers from inquiring about criminal record information.

Malia and many other speakers argued that CORI reform would provide economic benefits. "Every person without a job requires some kind of state or city resource," she said.

Tommie White, of Worcestor, who attended the rally as a member of EPOCA, Ex-Prisoners and Prisoners Organizing Community Advancement, said members of her family who have criminal records have been unable to find jobs. "I can't understand how you can train a man in jail and then you don't open up jobs when they get out," she said. "They're just going to go right back out and do more crime."

Hakim Cunningham, a community organizer for the Boston Workers' Alliance, echoed White. "You get the violence, the crime and the drugs because you have people who can't work who have the time to do the devil's work," he said.

Chandler said she hopes legislators will be able to work together to take the best from each of the three bills. "I think this is the year," she said.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/06/changes_urged_t.html

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

Alex Sanchez's Arrest by Tom Hayden

THE NATION LAW & JUSTICE
Alex Sanchez's Arrest
by TOM HAYDEN
June 29, 2009

As a state legislator Hayden was a leading proponent of gang peace efforts, including Homies Unidos, and testified for asylum in the Alex Sanchez case.

The indictment of Alex Sanchez, a revered gangbanger-turned-peacemaker, raises new doubts about whether the Los Angeles police department has reformed sufficiently to be released from a federal court order.

It also brings back strong memories in Los Angeles barrios of the Sleepy Lagoon case during war hysteria in 1942, when the LAPD and media helped railroad three young Mexican men into long murder sentences. The verdicts were later overturned and twelve defendants freed from prison. At the time, the lawyer and future Nation editor Carey McWilliams wrote that the case was a "ceremonial lynching."

In more immediate terms, the Sanchez case repeats the history of a decade ago, when the same charges were hurled by the LAPD and a federal anti-gang task force, that Sanchez's community-based violence prevention work was only a "front" for ties to Mara Salvatrucha, the feared immigrant street gang that arose after the 1970s Central American wars.
The Rampart scandal, named after a police precinct in the immigrant Pico-Union neighborhood, erupted in the late 1990s when a corrupt police officer, Rafael Pérez, began testifying to widespread police criminality after being caught selling cocaine out of his locker room. The US Justice Department charged a pattern and practice of constitutional violations, including shootings, brutality and planting of evidence. Sanchez was targeted for deportation by the LAPD and INS in January 2000, months after testifying publicly about police harassment of community peace workers. As the scandal mounted, federal prosecutors chose not to prosecute him for illegal entry to the US, where his 2-year old son and family lived, but turned the case over to an INS court. On July 10, 2002, the INS judge granted him political asylum, the first such verdict in history.
Since those days, Sanchez has built Homies Unidos, a transnational gang peace organization from the US to El Salvador. Its hazardous work centers on trying to prevent gang violence and open alternative paths for young people, including art therapy, spiritual exercises, education, rehabilitation, training and job development. Alex became a beloved figure in the community, making endless presentations before wider audiences around the country. His activity spawned enemies in the gang world, and never satisfied the LAPD and federal war-on-gangs units' desire to retaliate against one who caused them unprecedented embarrassment.
The escalating war against Mara Salvatrucha provided prosecutors the opportunity. The use of federal racketeering and conspiracy laws is the favored prosecution tool in this war, charging large numbers of alleged MS members with operating a large top-down enterprise with a board of directors and finding them guilty of conspiracy instead of trying them on individual counts of drug-dealing or violence. Alex Sanchez is named in the indictment as one of four "shot-callers" in the Normandie neighborhood in Pico-Union. He therefore is held accountable for the crimes of anyone who can be connected with the organization. The indictment includes 153 overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy to violate the racketeering laws.
Fifty-six of the overt acts consist of street-corner drug sales to undercover FBI informants. The serious counts include eight murders and one murder plot, five of them occurring between 2001 and 2003. Instead of bringing murder charges in individual cases, where evidence might be difficult to accumulate, the defendants need only to be "associated" with the conspiracy to be found guilt.
Alex Sanchez is accused of being heard on wiretapped phone calls on May 6 and 7, 2006, in which several members of MS "conspired" to kill Walter Lacinos, whose street name was Cameron. On May 15, an alleged MS member killed Cameron in La Libertad, El Salvador.
To illustrate the nature of the charge, imagine that the following conversation took place: First party: That dude should be shot. Second party: No question.
In an ordinary criminal trial, it would be difficult to connect these words to an actual deed one week later. There would be evidence, for example, that all kinds of people wanted Cameron dead. He was deported to El Salvador after serving at least fifteen years in California state prisons as a high-ranking gang member. He had enemies as well as friends. But in the conspiracy model, it is easier for the prosecution to "prove" that the wiretapped voices are people who "conspired" in his death.
This example is purely hypothetical. The government has not released the actual content of the tapes, nor a list of its witnesses, nor any of the documents it will be compelled to hand over to the defense at trial.
Alex Sanchez denies the charges.
Most gang researchers and defense attorneys are critical of RICO and state laws like California's Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act. Malcolm Klein, considered the dean of gang research at the University of Southern California, thinks the notion of vertically organized cartels with an Al Capone at the top makes no sense.
"These [federal] agencies know and understand organized crime. They do not know street gangs. They often assume the two are similar, when in fact they are not.... Calling each kind of group a gang leads to the application of cartel thinking to street gangs" (Klein,The American Street Gang, Oxford, 1995, p. 167).
Even more dismissive is Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit who works directly with street gang members in Homeboy Industries, the most well-known organization of its kind in the country, from whose June 28 e-mail I quote here:

This is all heartbreaking, I've sent a letter for the granting of bail.... A New York Times reporter called me and what they think they have is a "gang interventionist gone bad" story. I've told two reporters here's your story: law enforcement is unable to interpret what they have.

There is a gulf between what they have [wiretap evidence, witnesses] and what they think they have. The FBI could multiply their tools and resources and this still would not issue in actual knowledge of how gangs think or operate.

I spoke to two MS members who I trust and who would tell me the unvarnished truth about Alex. They actually hadn't heard the news. I said, "They claim that Alex is the shot caller for the Normandie clique of MS." They laughed and deemed the whole thing ridiculous. They would have told me otherwise if it was true. I didn't need affirmation in this but it just underscores my point. Law enforcement will never have access or knowledge of this issue. But they see through a glass darkly and so Alex gets caught up in their ignorance.

Just yesterday, a homie who works for me, gets stopped by Hollenbeck cops, who tell him, "I know for a fact that Fr. Greg is affiliated with the Mexican Mafia." A month ago, a cop tells another homie that the Mexican Mafia holds meetings at Homegirl Cafe (Chief Bratton has his Tues. morning meeting at the Homegirl Cafe every week--but I don't know when the EME has their meetings at my place.)

They aren't just trying to discredit me--I think they believe this stuff--because they know very little about gangs, and so have to interpret what they see from a place of real ignorance. Yet every jury and judge in the land think law enforcement (and of course, the FBI,) know what they're talking about. But no one who lives in any of the 12 hot-zones in LA think cops know very much about this. Anyway--it's complex. The cops must force the square peg into the round hole. It's not a conspiracy to get Alex, it's what happens when you only possess half the pieces to the jigsaw puzzle and feel forced to assert that they have all the pieces.

Later I received a follow up e-mail from the priest:

You know me--I'm not much of a conspiracy buff--it requires so much sophistication. Cops don't possess this. All of this is cultural--a bias and predisposition, a by-product of wholesale demonizing. Which is to say, it's worse than a conspiracy.

Had mass at the Chino YTS last night--again, illuminating to speak to MS guys. They were very clear about Alex's role in the community and how he was, in fact, the opposite of "shot caller" for MS. If he is the shot caller, why do all his troops not know it?
All this raises severe questions about whether--and how--the LAPD has been reformed, almost a decade after agreeing to terminate its patterns and practices about rampant constitutional violations at Ramparts.

Posted by lois at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)