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August 31, 2009

Study shows that denying prisoners parole does little to reduce crime

August 26, 2009
Study: Late parole is no deterrent
Karen Bouffard / Detroit News Lansing Bureau

Lansing -- Keeping inmates in prison past their earliest parole dates does little to reduce crime, according to a study released today by a Michigan public policy group.

The findings come as Michigan plans to parole 3,000 more felons this year than in previous years to curb rising prison costs.

The study by the nonprofit Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending followed for four years 76,721 Michigan prisoners released for the first time between 1986 and 1999 to determine whether they came back to prison for a new crime or parole violation.

Researchers concluded that denying parole when prisoners first become eligible does very little to reduce crime rates.

The data showed those convicted of homicide and sex offenses rarely commit new crimes against people, and serving more time does not increase the likelihood of success upon release.

The study found:

• While 18 percent returned to prison with a new sentence within four years of their release, only 4.5 percent were returned for a new crime against a person. Returns for larceny, drugs and burglary were by far the most common.

• Re-offense rates vary widely by crime type. Criminals who commit financially motivated crimes are the most likely to return to prison; 3 percent of sex offenders returned for a new sex offense and less than 1 percent of homicide offenders returned for another homicide.

• Overall, 61 percent were released when first eligible but that also varied widely by offense. About 30 percent were kept one or two additional years, then released. Prisoners with the lowest re-offense rates were most likely to be denied parole.

• Length of time served was not associated with success upon release, although older age, lack of prior prison terms and good institutional conduct were.

The Lansing-based group, which advocates policies that prevent crime and rehabilitates offenders, estimates that if everyone denied parole for up to two years had been released when first eligible, on average, it would have saved more than 2,300 beds a year.

http://detnews.com/article/20090826/METRO/908260362/1409/METRO/Study--Late-parole-is-no-deterrent

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

NC: Closing prisons only temporary as prison population booms

Cuts mean fewer prisons and programs
Stricter guidelines result in more prisoners and longer sentences, but North Carolina's resources are strained.
By Michael Biesecker
Aug. 30, 2009

RALEIGH As a result of tough-on-crime sentencing laws approved by legislators 15 years ago, North Carolina's inmate population is booming and will soon outpace the number of prison beds.

Despite this, the state budget signed by Gov. Beverly Perdue this month orders seven small prisons closed, eliminates 972 corrections jobs and cuts programs aimed at keeping juvenile offenders from becoming hardened criminals.

Administrators say the state Department of Correction can safely absorb the cuts in the short-term by increasing the number of inmates at other facilities. But judges, legislators and others with a stake in the criminal justice system worry that the growth, if unchecked, will soon result in prisons so crowded as to be unsafe for inmates or staff.

Last year, the state budgeted more than $1.5 billion for prisons and probation. That's 3.5 times what was spent in 1985, when adjusted for inflation. The number of inmates has more than doubled over the same period, from 17,430 to about 39,000. The system has about 20,000 workers, making it the largest employer among state agencies.

“We can't just keep putting more and more people in prison,” said Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, a Democrat from Carrboro who co-chairs the legislative committee that oversees justice and public safety. “We can't afford it.”

At the heart of the issue is the conflict between strained state resources in the worst economic recession in a generation and the unwillingness of legislators to budge on laws that require criminals to serve more time.

The $74 million in budget cuts and prison closures requires the relocation of about 950 inmates and cuts programs that are popular with inmates and the public, such as family visitation, gyms and the community work crews that provide cheap labor for local governments. Money for the crews that collect litter along the state's highways was also reduced.

The budget also cut $33 million and 122 jobs from the state Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, eliminating the Governor's One-on-One program, which provides mentors for at-risk youth. Legislators cut two state-funded wilderness camps for children with behavioral problems. Support Our Students, an afterschool program aimed at keeping youngsters out of trouble, is also being discontinued.

Inmates going to other prisons

Many of the positions are vacant, but about 620 employees at the N.C. Department of Correction will lose their jobs if other positions for them can't be found in the system. Inmates at the prisons being closed will be transferred to other facilities. In some cases, cells now used to hold one inmate will be modified to bunk two, while custody classifications at some facilities will be lowered to increase dormitory-style housing.

Jennie Lancaster, chief deputy secretary at the state Department of Correction, said there are limits to how many facilities can be converted to hold more prisoners, especially at the higher security levels.

“We need to run a safe system,” said Lancaster, a former warden who has worked in the state's prisons for 32 years. “We have said to legislators, we consider this a temporary solution. … The state is going to have to either keep adding prison beds or find a way to slow down growth in the prison population.”

A review by the legislature's fiscal research office this year projected that by 2018 the state's prison population will outpace the planned beds by 7,488 inmates. That projected shortfall takes into account 2,268 prison beds scheduled to be added through new construction by 2012 at a budgeted cost of $101 million.

Each maximum-security bed the state adds costs as much as $136,500 in construction, not including the recurring annual expense of feeding and guarding those additional inmates. On average, it costs the state $27,310 a year to keep someone behind bars.

Sentencing guidelines tweaked

Much of the growth in North Carolina's prison system is driven by two legislative changes made in the mid-1990s as a response to rising crime rates. In 1994, legislators required offenders to spend more time in prison before becoming eligible for parole. Two years later, legislators ended statewide caps on the prison population.

Legislators passed two laws this year sponsored by Kinnaird that will decrease the inmate population in future years by tweaking sentencing guidelines. But a third bill that would have cut the prison terms of many felons by three months and added that time to the length of post-release supervision failed to even come up for a vote.

“The three bills together would have had a tremendous impact, essentially stopping the growth,” Kinnaird said. “But they (legislators) couldn't go along with that.”

Kinnaird said cuts to juvenile programs and funding for the state's mental health division could exacerbate the expected growth in inmate population.

“The Department of Correction is very nervous,” Kinnaird said. “Double-bunking sets up a very dangerous situation. You only have to look at California to see the disaster of having 6,000 inmates in facilities built for 3,000. The increased violence becomes harder and harder to control.”

Often cited as a worst-case scenario, the California prison system is one of the most crowded in the nation, with many of its facilities holding more than double the number of inmates they were designed for. A federal court concluded this month that overcrowding and poor health care is resulting in an avoidable inmate death each week. An Aug. 5 riot and fire at a prison outside Los Angeles left 250 inmates injured and 55 hospitalized.

District Court Judge Marcia Morey of Durham said eliminating programs in North Carolina aimed at helping juvenile offenders and at-risk children is short-sighted, and will potentially cost taxpayers far more down the road.

“I think we're going to pay,” said Morey, who advocates for stronger state services for juvenile offenders. “When you cut community-based services, curfew checks and counseling, you're going to see the results out the back door. It's a recipe for increased juvenile delinquency, which will escalate into adult crime.”

Another issue is that more than a third of those entering prison are ex-offenders who either violated the terms of their probation or were arrested on new charges.

Bill Rowe, a lawyer for the liberal N.C. Justice Center, advocates doing more to help those released from prison to find jobs, housing and vocational training.

“The current system of incarceration and re-incarceration is not working and is eroding the safety of our communities,” Rowe said.

Texas worth imitating?

A coalition of groups supporting reform heard a presentation last month by Jerry Madden, a GOP legislator from Texas who helped revamp that state's corrections system to blunt overpopulation.

Texas is one of nine states in a program run by the national Council of State Governments aimed at lowering prison spending and inmate numbers by investing in programs that improve law enforcement and living conditions in targeted neighborhoods where data show the most crime occurs. Since 2006, Texas has managed to halt growth in its prison population while lowering rates of violent crime.

“I think we came to the conclusion it was smarter and a wiser utilization of our money to invest in programs that can change people's lives, save taxpayers money and at the same time make the community safer,” Madden said Friday.

N.C. Department of Correction administrators and some legislators say they're interested in instituting similar initiatives. The new budget allocates $100,000 for studying programs within the state and across the nation that have reduced the numbers of people going to prison.

But reducing sentence lengths for criminals is likely to be a tough sell at the legislature.

‘You can't just let a lot of folks out'

Sen. Phil Berger, a Republican from Eden, said the state needs to spend whatever it takes to build enough prisons to keep up with the number of inmates entering the system.

“There is recognition, even amongst Democrats, that you can't just let a lot of folks out of prison,” said Berger, the state Senate's GOP leader. “Many of those people are in prison for a reason, and when they get out early or you reduce sentences, we see examples of folks creating havoc once they're released.”

Kinnaird said she is hopeful a bipartisan solution can be found before overpopulation becomes a crisis.

“If we can convince a conservative Republican from Texas there is a different way to go, I think we have a very good chance of explaining to people here that we're approaching this all wrong,” Kinnaird said. “We can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results.”

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

August 29, 2009

Coalition for Prisoners' Rights Newsletter now can be found on the Real Cost of Prisons website

As many of you know, the C.P.R. newsletter was published for 34 years. In June 2009, they mailed an announcement to their 9,100 subscribers ... almost all of whom are prisoners saying the could no longer afford to keep printing and sending the newsletter. The Real Cost of Prisons believes in the work of the C.P.R. To reach out to families, friends, allies of prisoners, we will post the C.P.R. Newsletters in PDF format beginning with July, 2009. Each month, we will post a new newsletter. The Newsletter is now 2 pages. We encourage you to download the newsletter and send it to prisoners so that they will continue to receive this important source of information and inspiration for organizing that the Newsletter provides.
http://www.realcostofprisons.org/coalition.html

Posted by lois at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2009

Homeless and Struggling In New Orleans On the Fourth Anniversary of Katrina, New Orleans is Still Far From Recovery

Homeless and Struggling In New Orleans
On the Fourth Anniversary of Katrina, New Orleans is Still Far From Recovery

by Jordan Flaherty
August 25th, 2009
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/08/homeless-and-struggling-in-new-orleans/

Crawling through a hole in a fence and walking through an open doorway, Shamus Rohn and Mike Miller lead the way into an abandoned Midcity hospital. They are outreach workers for the New Orleans organization UNITY for the Homeless, and they do this all day long; searching empty houses and buildings for homeless people, so they can offer services and support. "We joke about having turned criminal trespass into a fulltime job," says Rohn.

Up a darkened stairway and through the detritus of a building that looks like its been scavenged for anything of value to sell, Rohn and Miller enter a sundrenched room. Inside is Michael Palmer, a 57-year-old white former construction worker and merchant seaman who has made a home here. Palmer - his friends call him Mickey - is in some ways lucky. He found a room with a door that locks. He salvaged some furniture from other parts of the hospital, so he has a bed, a couch, and a rug. Best of all, he has a fourth-floor room with a balcony. "Of all the homeless," he says, "I probably have the best view."

Mickey has lived here for six months. He's been homeless since shortly after Katrina, and this is by far the best place he's stayed in that time. "I've lived on the street," he says. "I've slept in a cardboard box." He is a proud man, thin and muscled with a fresh shave, clean clothes and a trim mustache. He credits a nearby church, which lets him shave and shower.

But Palmer would like to be able to pay rent again. "My apartment was around $450. I could afford $450. I can't afford $700 or $800 and that's what the places have gone up to." Keeping himself together, well-dressed and fresh, Mickey is trying to go back to the life he had. "I have never lived on the dole of the state," he says proudly. "I've never been on welfare, never collected food stamps." Palmer rented an apartment before Katrina. He did repairs and construction. "I had my own business," he says. "I had a pickup truck with all my tools, and all that went under water."

Palmer is one of thousands of homeless people living in New Orleans' storm damaged and abandoned homes and buildings. Four years after Katrina, recovery and rebuilding has come slow to this city, and there are many boarded-up homes to choose from. The Greater New Orleans Community Data Center counts 65,888 abandoned residential addresses in New Orleans, and this number doesn't include any of the many non-residential buildings, like the hospital Mickey stays in. Overall, about a third of the addresses in the city are vacant or abandoned, the highest rate in the nation. UNITY for the Homeless is the only organization surveying these spaces, and Miller and Rohn are the only fulltime staff on the project. They have surveyed 1,330 buildings - a small fraction of the total number of empty structures. Of those, 564 were unsecured. Nearly 40% of them showed signs of use, including a total of 270 bedrolls or mattresses.

Using conservative estimates, UNITY estimates at least 6,000 squatters, and a total of about 11,000 homeless individuals in the city.

UNITY workers have also found that not all people living in New Orleans' abandoned homes are squatters. In the last three months alone, they have found nine homeowners living in their own toxic, flood-damaged, often completely unrepaired homes. These are people living in buildings - identified as abandoned and not fit for human habitation - that they (or extended family members) actually own.

The abandoned building dwellers they've found are generally older than the overall homeless population, with high rates of disability and illness. The average age of folks they have found is 45, and the oldest was 90. Over 70% report or show signs of psychiatric disorders, and 42% show signs of disabling medical illnesses and problems. Disabling means "people that are facing death if not treated properly," clarifies Rohn. "We're not talking about something like high blood pressure."

Life in Abandoned Homes
"This leg here bent backwards and the muscle came up," says Naomi Burkhalter, an elderly Black woman in a wheelchair, sitting outside of the abandoned house she lives in and gesturing to her badly twisted leg. She was injured during Katrina, and can't walk. She stays in a flood-damaged house in New Orleans' Gert Town neighborhood, with no electricity or running water. She says the owner - who cannot afford to repair the home - knows she lives there, along with two other women. When they need water, they fill bottles up from neighbors. When she needs to get in and out of her house, she crawls, very slowly dragging herself up and down the steps with her hands, leaving her wheelchair outside and hoping no one takes it. Miss Naomi worked at a shrimp company and rented an apartment before Katrina. Now, between her injury and higher rents, she can no longer afford her former home. "My rent was 350 dollars," she explains. "But when I came back, my rent was up to $1200." Burkhalter has been homeless since then.

UNITY has received funding from the federal government for 752 housing vouchers specifically to help house the city's homeless population. They have put people on a list, with those in the most danger of dying if they don't get help on the top of the list. However, the vouchers still have not arrived, and at least 16 people from the list have already died while waiting. "The stress and trauma that these people have endured cannot be overstated," says Martha Kegel, executive director of UNITY. "The neighborhood infrastructure that so many people depended on is gone."

This problem was exacerbated by the demolition of thousands of units of public housing, an act which not only took away the community that many people found brought them comfort and safety, but has also made affordable rentals for poor New Orleanians even harder to find. Section 8 subsidized housing has been offered as a solution for those displaced from public housing and other poor renters, but a new study from Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (GNOFHAC) shows that discrimination keeps many people from finding quality housing through the program. According to the report, 82% of landlords in the city either refused to accept Section 8 vouchers, or added insurmountable requirements.

The study found that both discrimination on the part of landlords (99% of Section 8 voucher holders in Orleans parish are Black) and mismanagement on the part of the housing agency were barriers. One prospective landlord told a tester for GNOFHAC that he wouldn't rent to Section 8 holders, "until Black ministers...start teaching morals and ethics to their own, so they don't have litters of pups like animals, and they're not milking the system."

The mismanagement from the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) was also a big problem for prospective landlords. "I faxed HANO the needed information 12 times for the rent I was never paid" said one landlord. Another housing provider said, "I called every day for a month and never got a call back."

Last month, more than a hundred members of STAND for Dignity, a grassroots membership project of the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice, protested outside of the offices of HANO, decrying their lack of action. A single mother named Ayesha told the crowd that she had been on the Section 8 waiting list for eight years, and still hasn't received any help. She is paying 80% of her income on rent, and has been forced to go months at a time without water, gas or lights. George Tucker, another member of STAND, and also (like Mickey Palmer) a former merchant mariner, told the assembled crowd his story of being evicted from his apartment because HANO lost his paperwork. Because of bureaucratic carelessness, he was homeless for thirteen months. "This governmental crookedness is not new," he said. "But it cannot continue without consequences."

Last week, at least partly in response to criticism from folks like the members of STAND, HANO announced that they would accept new applications for Section 8 vouchers, for the first time in six years. The period that they will accept applications in is only a week long - from September 6 through 12.

Fear and Harassment
"My best friend died three weeks ago in this chair," says Mickey Palmer gesturing next to him in his room in the abandoned hospital. "There was two other people staying here with me. One gentleman got in an accident about two months ago and he's paralyzed in the hospital. Another friend of mine OD'ed and died here three weeks ago. My best friend. So I'm here alone."

Palmer also fears police harassment. "The police hate homeless people," he declares. "They'll arrest me on drunk in public," he says. "I haven't had a drink in months." Gesturing around the room that he has made into a home, he adds, "Of course, this is illegal. If I get caught I can not only be evicted, but incarcerated. I could go to jail for trespassing."

This fear drives the homeless further underground, and makes it even harder for organizations like UNITY to find them and offer help. "Our city has a long history of police criminalization of homelessness, so people have reason to hide," explains Martha Kegel.

Despite the size and scope of this problem, help has been hard to come by, from either the city, state, or federal government. "I'm not a politician and I'm not politically savvy," says Palmer. "But I don't think they care."

In a rare step forward last month, both houses of Louisiana's legislature unanimously passed a bill creating a statewide agency - to be almost entirely funded by the federal government - to address the issue of homelessness. However, Governor Jindal vetoed the bill. Jindal also vetoed funding for the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital, further reducing medical and mental health services in the city - another factor that has made life hard for many homeless folks in the city. As rates of mental illness rise in the city, we now have less treatment available then ever before.

For people like Mickey, caught in a city with few good paying jobs, much more expensive housing, and ever-decreasing social services, there are not many options. "At one time we were part of the city and part of the workforce," Mickey says. "But people cannot afford the housing in New Orleans anymore. I find most of the people I know, my friends, they can't afford the rent."

Like most people in his position, Palmer has felt hopelessness at his plight. "I try not to get depressed, he says, nervously flicking his lighter. "But this can get you depressed. Coming back here last night got me a little depressed."

--------------------
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and his reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die Zeit (in Germany), Clarin (in Argentina), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now!.

Posted by lois at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)

CA to close largest youth prison at Chino and convert it into an prison for men

California to close its largest juvenile prison
The Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino will be converted into an adult prison. The move is part of a plan to 'right-size' staff at the Division of Juvenile Justice.
By Michael Rothfeld
August 28, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento - The state is closing California's largest youth prison as the population of juvenile offenders in state custody continues to decline, corrections officials announced Thursday.

The Heman G. Stark Youth Correctional Facility in Chino will be converted into an adult prison, state officials said. The move is part of a plan to "right-size" staff at the Division of Juvenile Justice, which is reducing its workforce by 400 employees by the end of this year to save the state up to $40 million, said Bernard Warner, the chief deputy secretary for the division.

The plan also is geared toward reducing the annual cost of incarcerating and caring for each ward from $252,000 to $175,000, state officials said.

California's youth prisons have been troubled for years. The state five years ago settled a lawsuit brought on behalf of the juveniles, who said they were locked up for long periods in dirty, dim cells without the education, rehabilitation, healthcare and other treatment the state was supposed to provide. Last year, lawyers for the juveniles mounted an unsuccessful effort to have the system put under court control.

Sue Burrell, a staff attorney at the Youth Law Center in San Francisco, said Stark had been "an especially horrible place" since the slaying of Ineasie Baker, a female officer there, in 1996. An inmate was convicted of her murder.

"That sort of ushered in this repressive era," Burrell said. "It really never got better. The past [13] years have been filled with lockdowns, beatings and various sorts of cages."

With the closure, the state will have five youth prisons, down from 11 in 2003. Three minimum-security fire camps for juveniles have also been closed.

The number of juvenile offenders in state custody has declined to 1,700 over the last decade from a peak of nearly 10,000, the result of legislation that now puts most of the youths in county facilities where they can be closer to their families.

The Chino facility opened in 1959 and now houses fewer than 400 juvenile inmates. They will be redirected to other youth prisons. An exact closure date has not yet been determined.

Currently, the state has been using the youth prison, which has a capacity of 1,200, to house about 600 adult inmates displaced after a prison riot this month at the nearby California Institution for Men. To convert it into a full-time prison, it would have to be retrofitted to make it more secure, subject to approval from state lawmakers, prison officials said. Warner said the retrofitting would be cheaper -- about a third as much -- than the $500-million price tag for a new prison.

An adult prison on the site could house sick or mentally ill inmates, said Scott Kernan, the state's undersecretary for operations. That could relieve some pressure from a panel of federal judges who have ordered the state to reduce the number of inmates in its overcrowded prisons by 40,000.

A statewide coalition of human rights groups Thursday urged state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown to devise a plan to comply with the court order rather than appeal it.

"California's correctional system is in a tailspin that threatens public safety and raises the risk of fiscal disaster," said activists from the group Californians United for a Responsible Budget.

Brown and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have said they plan to appeal.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisons28-2009aug28,0,3563078.story

Posted by lois at 09:20 AM | Comments (0)

Vt. Prison Health Care Questioned by Guards

Vt. Prison Health Care Questioned
Montpelier, Vermont - August 27, 2009

Vermont's state employees union claims the Corrections Department is providing inadequate training and care for mentally ill prisoners. Prison officials say the facts prove otherwise.

The state employees union told a legislative committee that its union member corrections officers had observed many instances of improper care for mentally ill inmates in prisons.

The union claims inadequately trained corrections officers too often are left alone to deal with mental health emergencies because the private-contracted mental health experts are unavailable.

"If this occurs off hours or on weekends an inmate can wait up to 24 hours or more before they receive services," said Taryn Moran of the Vt. State Employees Association.

"At this juncture I don't see any evidence to support those allegations," Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito said.

Pallito says the department is still waiting for the union to produce any specific evidence or facts to support their allegations. He points out that the department's medical services have passed independent investigations for decades with flying colors.

"So if there were specific cases, and by specific cases I mean names in some of those instances that she named I would be happy to respond. To them," Pallito said.

The union claims one specific example was the recent death of a female inmate with an eating disorder. And they question the accuracy of the passing grades for the medical services in Vermont prisons.

"We disagree," said Conor Casey of the VSEA. "Our members are on the frontline of corrections. And they're telling us that while they don't receive training as mental health professionals they're expected to act just like that. Our members aren't able to identify if somebody's having a panic attack or if there's some serious self-harming going on."

For now the department is starting new mental health training for corrections officers this week, while the lawmakers have ordered copies of the assessment investigations from federal investigators to determine if there is evidence to support the union claims.

Vermont paid about $16 million this year to a private contractor to provide health care services for the state's seven prisons. That's an average of $1,600 per inmate. Commissioner Andy Pallito says the department is now taking bids for a new contract and he is cautiously optimistic the per inmate cost will go down next year.

Brian Joyce - WCAX News
http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=11005056

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

August 27, 2009

Editorial NY Times: California Is Failing the Prison Test

Editorial
California Is Failing the Prison Test
Published: August 26, 2009- NY Times

The California Legislature has failed several times to change backward sentencing and parole policies that keep the state’s prisons dangerously overcrowded with too many minor offenders sent to jail for too long. These failures, which have driven up corrections costs by about 50 percent in less than a decade, came home to roost earlier this month, when a federal court ordered the state to cut the prison population significantly. Days later, an ominous riot broke out in the men’s prison in Chino.

The time for ducking this issue has clearly passed, but a reform plan approved by the State Senate after being championed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in danger of being gutted in the Assembly. Democratic lawmakers who should know better are running scared of the prison guards’ union and of being labeled “soft on crime.”

The heart of the problem is California’s poorly designed parole system. A vast majority of states use parole to supervise serious offenders who require close monitoring. California has historically put just about everyone on parole. According to a federally backed study released last year, more people are sent to prison in California by parole officers than by the courts, and nearly half of those people go back on technical violations like missed appointments and failed drug tests.

The reform package that passed in the Senate would allow the state to focus parole efforts on serious offenders and end the costly practice of cycling people back to jail for technical violations. Under another provision, low-risk offenders like the elderly and the infirm could be removed from costly medical care in prison and sent to alternative custody nursing homes, where they would be monitored with electronic ankle bracelets. Low-risk inmates who completed college degrees or vocational programs would earn credits shortening their sentences.

This bill should have easily passed in the Assembly, which has a Democratic majority supposedly in favor of reform. But the Democrats, many of whom are running for other offices, are clearly fearful of even taking a vote that would allow a sick, 80-year-old inmate to spend what remains of his life in a nursing home wearing an ankle bracelet.

This is a low moment for Democrats in California. Those who put their parochial career interests ahead of the public good deserve to be called to account for it.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 27, 2009, on page A30 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/opinion/27thu2.html?ref=opinion

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

NY largely bans use of shackles during childbirth

NY largely bans use of shackles during childbirth
By CRISTIAN SALAZAR Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated Press
Aug. 26, 2009
NEW YORK — Gov. David Paterson on Wednesday signed into law a bill that largely bans the use of restraints on inmates during childbirth, making New York the sixth state in the country to do so, a spokeswoman said.

Paterson signed the bill in spite of having reservations about language in it that allows a woman to be cuffed by one wrist while being taken from a prison to a hospital if she is considered to be a danger to herself, medical staff or correctional officers, spokeswoman Marissa Shorenstein said.

At a rally in support of the bill last week, Paterson said he was concerned that a woman cuffed in an ambulance, for instance, could be in danger if there were an accident and she couldn't get out of the vehicle because of the restraint.

Shorenstein said Paterson would look to address those concerns through an amendment, if necessary.

Incarcerated women at state prisons and county jails around the country are routinely shackled during childbirth, often by correctional staff without medical training, according to civil rights organizations and prisoner advocates.

The practice has been condemned by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for unnecessarily risking women's health, and court challenges are pending in several states.

Correction departments and unions have argued that such broad-stroke policy that bans shackling could put medical staff and correctional officers at risk. They also point to the risk of escape posed by potentially dangerous inmates if they are left unshackled.

Similar state laws banning shackling exist in Texas, Illinois, California, Vermont and New Mexico, the American Civil Liberties Union says. Legislatures in Massachusetts and Tennessee are considering bans.

Advocates say the bans haven't led to any escape attempts.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6588662.html

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

3,900 stimus checks went to prisoners...1,700 by mistake

3,900 stimulus checks went to prison inmates
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER (AP) –8-26-09

WASHINGTON — The federal government sent about 3,900 economic stimulus payments of $250 each this spring to people who were in no position to use the money to help stimulate the economy: prison inmates.

The checks were part of the massive economic recovery package approved by Congress and President Barack Obama in February. About 52 million Social Security recipients, railroad retirees and those receiving Supplemental Security Income were eligible for the one-time checks.

Prison inmates are generally ineligible for federal benefits. However, 2,200 of the inmates who received checks got to keep them because, under the law, they were eligible, said Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration. They were eligible because they weren't incarcerated in any of the three months before the recovery package was enacted.

"The law specified that any beneficiary eligible for a Social Security benefit during one of those months was eligible for the recovery payment," Lassiter said.

The other 1,700 checks? That was a mistake.

Checks were sent to those inmates because government records didn't accurately show they were in prison, Lassiter said. He said most of those checks were returned by the prisons.

The Boston Herald first reported that the checks were sent to inmates.

The inspector general for the Social Security Administration is performing an audit to make sure no checks went to ineligible recipients, spokesman George E. Penn said.

The audit, which had already been planned, will examine whether checks incorrectly went to inmates, dead people, fugitive felons or people living outside the U.S., Penn said.

The $787 billion economic recovery package included $2 million for the inspector general to oversee the provisions handled by the Social Security Administration. The audit is part of those efforts, Penn said. There is no timetable for its conclusion.

The federal government processed $13 billion in stimulus payments. About $425,000 was incorrectly sent to inmates.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hx0nB7bPZrq5BM6HJsf18_umH0HwD9AAONS00

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

August 26, 2009

Fed court says excluding people convicted of violent crimes from early release programs not valid

Exclusion policy on early prison release ruled invalid
An appeals panel says the Federal Bureau of Prisons has not adequately explained why inmates who have committed murder, rape and other violent crimes can't participate in the program.
By Carol J. Williams- LA Times
August 26, 2009
A Federal Bureau of Prisons policy excluding murderers, rapists and others with violent crimes on their record from an early-release program is invalid because authorities have failed to explain why those inmates are ineligible, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the prison administration to reconsider the application for sentence reduction from Jerry Crickon, a federal prisoner in a Long Beach halfway house due for release in six months.

Crickon, convicted of drug offenses in 2000, was offered a drug rehabilitation program two years ago but was told that, because of a 1970 voluntary manslaughter conviction, he wasn't eligible for the one-year sentence reduction other inmates could get.

Lawyers for prisoners and the federal government were still analyzing Tuesday's decision and couldn't immediately say how broadly it might affect early-release program eligibility for the federal incarceration network holding about 207,000 prisoners nationwide.

In addition to the federal inmates, California alone imprisons 170,000 people in facilities crammed with twice their designed capacity. Earlier this month a three-judge federal court panel ordered the state to cut its inmate population about 25% over the next two years.

"We think with prison overcrowding being what it is, the Bureau of Prisons should be allowing the maximum statutory ability for people to obtain small sentence reductions for successful completion of an excellent rehabilitative program," said Stephen R. Sady, the chief deputy federal public defender who represented Crickon in the case.

Sandra Hijar, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons' Western region, said legal authorities were still reviewing the ruling.

Bureau of Prison rules for sentence-reduction incentive programs categorically exclude inmates with prior convictions for homicide, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

The 9th Circuit panel didn't say the bureau couldn't make such exclusions, just that the bureau hadn't adequately explained its rationale for doing so. Under the federal Administrative Procedures Act, government agencies are required to justify their rules and procedures, then offer the public an opportunity to comment or make proposals.

The 9th Circuit panel included two appointees of President Clinton, Circuit Judges Richard A. Paez and Johnnie B. Rawlinson, and visiting U.S. District Judge Bruce S. Jenkins, named to the federal bench in Utah by President Carter.

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisoner26-2009aug26,0,6023579.story

Posted by lois at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)

August 25, 2009

PA: The number of prisoners increased by 40% in 9 years

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Number of inmates in Pa. prisons increases by 40 percent in nine years
By Debra Erdley
Sunday, August 23, 2009

Pennsylvania's prison population explosion is forcing officials to look hundreds of miles away for solutions.

While the general population stagnated over the past nine years, Pennsylvania's prison population swelled by nearly 40 percent, prompting state officials to take an old prison out of mothballs, haul modular units into prison yards across the state, farm inmates out to county jails and develop plans for four new prisons.

Corrections Commissioner Jeffrey Beard has talked informally with Michigan Corrections Director Patricia Caruso about sending Pennsylvania's wrongdoers to Michigan, which has closed facilities.

"It's an option," said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton.

For the time being, Beard is stuck trying to house nearly 51,000 inmates in a system designed to house 43,000.

Although the Legislature quietly allocated funds for the four prisons at a cost of $200 million each in last year's capital budget, there's been little discussion of the prison population explosion, what caused it, or the spike in the state's corrections budget, which increased by 50 percent — from $1.2 billion to an estimated $1.8 billion — since the beginning of the decade.

Carnegie Mellon University professor Alfred Blumstein, a nationally recognized expert on crime, attributes much of it to the politics of crime. Beginning in the 1970s, he said, politicians learned when they made a move to "get tough on crime," the public would cheer.

"The public is still relatively unsophisticated about incarceration. People tend to see it as the simplistic way to solve all the problems of things going on that you don't like. But in some cases it can be counterproductive," said Blumstein, former chairman of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing.

He said get-tough sentencing policies do little to affect arrest rates.

Recent spikes in prison spending caught the attention of lawmakers, such as Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery County, who wrote the state's mandatory drug sentencing laws in the 1990s.

"We're almost spending more on prisons than higher education. Pretty soon we will be," he said.

A check of last year's budget revealed that happened when Pennsylvania taxpayers anted up $1.66 billion for the state prisons, compared to $1.59 billion for higher education, or about $33,000 per prisoner per year, compared to $4,000 per college student per year.

Greenleaf has chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee for nearly two decades. He said the policies he and his colleagues championed — mandatory minimum sentences, limits on parole, more prison time for drug and nonviolent offenders — largely are responsible for a prison population spike with no accompanying decline in crime.

Indeed, nonviolent offenders and mentally ill inmates make up about half of the state's prison population, Greenleaf said.

Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Hollidaysburg, said the costs of such policies are draining public resources at an alarming rate.

"Mandatory sentences are not working. In New York, they've re-thought that, and they're losing 1,000 prisoners a year.

"The real key is getting nonviolent inmates out of cells. We can do a lot with people, keeping them under house arrest in very punitive, very restrictive conditions. And then we can have them pay us for supervision instead of us paying," Eichelberger said.

Officials in Michigan have relied on an aggressive, closely monitored, well-financed parole program with community input to reduce the prison population. The program, begun several years ago, has contributed to the excess of prison space, said Russ Marlan of the Michigan Department of Corrections.

"Our parole rate has gone up, our recidivism rate has gone down, and the state police aren't making as many arrests," Marlan said.

In Pennsylvania, Beard told lawmakers he expects the prison population will continue to increase for the foreseeable future.

Blumstein, who studies incarceration trends across the nation, said it won't be easy to reverse that trend.

He points to recent incidents, including Gov. Ed Rendell's 2008 moratorium on parole after a parolee killed a Philadelphia police officer and the public outcry when a study commission recommended paroling elderly and mentally ill inmates.

"The politics of it are major," Blumstein said.
> http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/regional/s_639625.html

Posted by lois at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2009

DOJ publishes a report condemning treatment of youth at four of the New York's Juvenile Prisons

Report Cites Abuse at State Juvenile Prison Centers
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: August 24, 2009- NY Times

ALBANY — Children at four juvenile detention centers in New York were so severely abused by workers that it constituted a violation of their constitutional rights, according to a report by the United States Department of Justice made public on Monday.

The findings raise the possibility of a federal takeover of the state’s entire youth detention system if the problems are not addressed.

The report caps a nearly two-year investigation by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division into claims of excessive physical force at some of the state’s 28 juvenile residential centers, which house children who were convicted of criminal acts but are too young to serve in adult jails and prisons.

Federal investigators found that workers at the four locations — the Lansing Residential Center and the Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center in Lansing, N.Y., and two facilities, one for boys and one for girls, at Tryon Residential Center in Johnstown, N.Y. — routinely used physical force to restrain residents, despite rules allowing force only as a last resort.

The report documented dozens of episodes at the four centers in a period of less than two years that resulted in serious injuries, including broken teeth and bones. It found that physical force was often the first response to any act of insubordination by residents, who are all under 16.

“Staff at the facilities routinely used uncontrolled, unsafe applications of force, departing from generally accepted standards,” says the report, which was given to Gov. David A. Paterson on Aug. 14. “Anything from sneaking an extra cookie to initiating a fistfight may result in a full prone restraint with handcuffs,” the report continued. “This one-size-fits-all approach has not surprisingly led to an alarming number of serious injuries to youth, including concussions, broken or knocked-out teeth, and spiral fractures” (bone fractures caused by twisting).

The investigation is the latest blow to New York’s troubled juvenile justice system, which currently detains about 1,000 youths.

In a report by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union issued in September 2006, New York’s juvenile residential centers were rated among the worst in the world.

Later that year, an emotionally disturbed teenager, Darryl Thompson, died after two employees at the Tryon center pinned him down on the ground. The death was ruled a homicide, but a grand jury declined to indict the workers. The boy’s mother is suing the state.

During the same period, a separate joint investigation by the state inspector general and the Tompkins County district attorney found that the independent ombudsman’s office charged with overseeing juvenile detention centers had virtually ceased to function.

In a statement on Monday, after the report became public, Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, said that the administration had inherited a juvenile justice system “rife with substantial systemic problems” but acknowledged that efforts so far to overhaul it had fallen short.

“We have made great strides," said Ms. Carrión, "but much more still needs to be done.”

The previous scandals had spurred a major effort within Ms. Carrión’s department, which oversees juvenile residential centers, to overhaul the system. It reconstituted the ombudsman’s office and issued clearer policies on the use of physical force, leading to a sharp drop in instances where restraints were applied. The department has also required new training for the staffs at juvenile detention centers.

Officials have also sought to close down centers that were underused and redirect resources to counseling and other services, as other states have done, though they have faced fierce resistance from public employees’ unions and their allies in the Legislature. Last year, Mr. Paterson appointed a commission to recommend further changes.

The report by federal investigators revealed that despite those changes, problems at some of the centers remain severe. Under federal law, New York has 49 days to respond with a plan of action to comply with the report’s recommendations. If the state does not meet the deadline, the Justice Department can initiate a lawsuit that could result in a federal takeover of the state’s juvenile residential centers.

In one case described in the report, a youth was forcibly restrained and handcuffed after refusing to stop laughing when ordered to; the youth sustained a cut lip and injuries to the wrists and elbows. One boy, after glaring at a staff member, was forced into a sitting position and his arms were secured behind his back with such force that his collarbone was broken.

Another youth was restrained eight times in three months despite signs that she might have been contemplating suicide. “In nearly every one of the eight incidents,” the report found, “the youth was engaged in behaviors such as head banging, putting paper clips in her mouth, tying a string around her neck, etc.”

Officials at the centers also routinely failed to follow state rules requiring that instances in which force is used be reviewed after the fact. In some cases, the same staff member involved in an episode conducted the review. And even when a review determined that excessive force had been used, the staff members responsible sometimes faced no punishment.

In one case, it was recommended that a youth counselor with a documented record of using excessive force should be fired after throwing a youth to the ground with such force that the youth’s chin required stitches. But after the counselor’s union intervened, the punishment was downgraded to a letter of reprimand, an $800 fine and a two-week suspension that was itself suspended.

The report also found that state officials failed to provide youths in detention with adequate counseling and mental health treatment, something the vast majority of residents require. Three-quarters of residents enter New York’s juvenile justice system with drug or alcohol problems, more than half have diagnosed psychological problems and a third have developmental disabilities, according to figures published by Office of Children and Family Services.

“The majority of psychiatric evaluations at the four facilities did not come close to meeting” professional standards, investigators determined, and “typically lacked basic, necessary information.”

In many instances, a single resident received several different or conflicting diagnoses — and correspondingly different regimens of psychotropic drugs — from different psychiatrists or counselors. The medications were dispensed without rigorous monitoring. Typically, parents were not offered an opportunity to give their informed consent for the treatment.

One 15-year-old, according to the report, was on six medications at once, with no record of an agreed-upon diagnosis or description of the symptoms the drugs were intended to target. Another resident, a boy who was mentally ill, told a doctor that he thought he might be pregnant.

“Despite this significant incident,” the report noted, “it appears that the youth’s belief that he was pregnant and the possibility that he was delusional was not communicated to the treating psychiatrist. It is unknown whether this was addressed in the youth’s individual therapy.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/nyregion/25juvenile.html?_r=1&hp

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

August 22, 2009

MA: MA: (8-17) Metro-West Article: Two More Women Prisoners Attempt Suicide at Framingham

Two more MCI-Framingham inmates attempt suicide
By Dan McDonald/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Aug 17, 2009
FRAMINGHAM —

Two more MCI-Framingham inmates tried to kill themselves this month, bringing the count for attempted suicides inside the Loring Drive prison to six for the year.

These episodes occur at a time when the state Department of Correction struggles with overcrowding and cutbacks in staff and services.

All told, 22 people have tried to kill themselves inside state prisons this year, according to an e-mail from Department of Correction spokeswoman Diane Wiffin.

Of the suicide attempts at Framingham, only one inmate died: Christina Morando, 22, of Swampscott, who was serving a two- to six-year term for accessory to robbery and armed assault with intent to rob or murder.

She hanged herself with a bedsheet on July 19. That same weekend, two other inmates, who were not identified, attempted suicide but lived.

Her death and the suicide attempts prompted a delegation of state lawmakers to visit the prison.

For Framingham, the first suicide attempt this year occurred less than two months before Morando's suicide, on May 30.

The suicide attempts this month occurred Aug. 1 and Aug. 12. Both were unsuccessful, according to the state.

The identities of those who attempted suicide were not revealed. The "primary method" for all of the suicide attempts was strangulation, according to the Department of Correction.

Morando's death marked the first suicide at the Southside prison since December 2006, and the third this year in the prison system.

In 2008, none of the suicide attempts in the Department of Correction were successful.

Within the last year, 84 clinical positions were cut across the state, as the department's budget was slashed by $13 million within the last year.

In Framingham, that meant two mental health positions were eliminated while 2.5 unfilled positions were also eliminated.

While the department's mental health services have been slashed, the demand for such services remains.

In July, state Rep. Kay Khan, D-Newton, estimated that 60 percent of MCI-Framingham's inmates had open mental health cases.

Compounding matters, the prison system is over its capacity.

MCI-Framingham had 597 inmates yesterday. It has a capacity for 452.

Such a statistic is not unusual. The state prison system as a whole was at 146 percent capacity earlier this summer.

The consequences of overcrowding are not lost on Susan Mortimer, a representative of the Statewide Harm Reduction Coalition.

"I see worsening conditions," she said.

She said an environment of total control and punishment often exacerbates people's mental health problems. "You need a culture change, meaning a change in the way the people at the top treat the people inside," she said.

Earlier this decade, a string of suicides - at least 15 from 2005 to 2007 - prompted a public outcry and a state review into suicide prevention practices.

The resulting report, commonly called the Hayes Report, included 29 recommendations that dealt with staff training and housing, among other topics.

The Department of Correction has complied with every recommendation that it could. It is awaiting funding for three of the Hayes proposals, including provisions calling for safer cells designated for suicidal inmates, more of such cells and the creation of a transitional housing unit to help in the "step-down process" following an inmate's discharge from a mental health watch.

(Dan McDonald can be reached at 508-626-4416 or dmcdonal@cnc.com.)
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/homepage/x1413645333/Two-more-MCI-Framingham-inmates-attempt-suicide
(One question is: How many of the 597 women at Framingham are there because they cannot make bail---that is "pre-trial"-- which creates so-called "over-crowding"?)

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

NY Times Editorial: "Protecting Mother and Child" and links to Rebecca Project Info on State by State Shackling Policies

Editorial NY Times
Protecting Mother and Child
Published: August 21, 2009

Obstetricians and other medical professionals have long called for an end to the barbaric and medically risky practice of shackling pregnant prisoners — by their legs, wrists and even around their abdomens — during labor. The Federal Bureau of Prisons ended routine shackling last year and limited the use of restraints to instances in which the women were at clear risk of harming themselves, their infants or others.

Five states and the New York City corrections system have adopted similar policies. Even so, a bill that would end shackling in New York’s state prisons and county jails that sailed through the Legislature seemed in danger of being vetoed because of strong opposition from corrections officials. Aides say that Gov. David Paterson has now decided to sign this important bill.

Critics argued that the legislation was unnecessary, because the state prison system had limited the use of shackling nearly a decade ago. But accounts by present and former inmates suggest that the guidelines have too often been ignored by the officers who transport women to and from the hospital.

The claim that women doubled over in pain and about to give birth pose a serious danger seems especially far-fetched. The Rebecca Project for Human Rights, the Washington-based group that is campaigning to end these policies nationally, says that states with anti-shackling laws report no documented cases of women in labor attempting escape or trying to hurt someone.

Governor Paterson’s staff has problems with a minor provision of the bill that deals with how pregnant women are transported to the hospital. But those issues can be addressed in regulations or in supplementary legislation. What’s important is that New York A version of this article appeared in print on August 22, 2009, on page A16 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/22/opinion/22sat4.html?ref=opinion

Rebecca Project Fact sheet, memo on state by state shackling procedures:
/www.rebeccaproject.org/images/stories/policypapers/state_shackling_policies_memo.pdf
http://www.rebeccaproject.org/images/stories/factsheets/ShacklingPregnantWomenInCustodyMemorandum.pdf
http://www.rebeccaproject.org/images/stories/factsheets/ACOG_Letter_Shackling.pdf
The BIG question is what the reality and how it plays out as opposed to official policy and does this apply to DOCs and jails or just DOCs?

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

Study Backs Heroin to Treat Some Addicted to Heroin

Study Backs Heroin to Treat Addiction
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: August 19, 2009
New York Times

The safest and most effective treatment for hard-core heroin addicts who fail to control their habit using methadone or other treatments may be their drug of choice, in prescription form, researchers are reporting after the first rigorous test of the approach performed in North America.

For years, European countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands have allowed doctors to provide some addicts with prescription heroin as an alternative to buying drugs on the street. The treatment is safe and keeps addicts out of trouble, studies have found, but it is controversial — not only because the drug is illegal but also because policy makers worry that treating with heroin may exacerbate the habit.

The study, appearing in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, may put some of those concerns to rest.

“It showed that heroin works better than methadone in this population of users, and patients will be more willing to take it,” said Dr. Joshua Boverman, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

Perhaps the biggest weakness of methadone treatment, Dr. Boverman said, is that “many patients don’t want to take it; they just don’t like it.”

In the study, researchers in Canada enrolled 226 addicts with longstanding habits who had failed to improve using other methods, including methadone maintenance therapy. Doctors consider methadone, a chemical cousin to heroin that prevents withdrawal but does not induce the same high, to be the best treatment for narcotic addiction. A newer drug, buprenorphine, is also effective.

The Canadian researchers randomly assigned about half of the addicts to receive methadone and the other half to receive daily injections of diacetylmorphine, the active ingredient in heroin. After a year, 88 percent of those receiving the heroin compound were still in the study, and two-thirds of them had significantly curtailed their illicit activities, including the use of street drugs. In the methadone group, 54 percent were still in the study and 48 percent had curbed illicit activities.

“The main finding is that, for this group that is generally written off, both methadone and prescription heroin can provide real benefits,” said the senior author, Martin T. Schechter, a professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia.

Those taking the heroin injections did suffer more side effects; there were 10 overdoses and six seizures. But Dr. Schechter said there was no evidence of abuse. The average dosage the subjects took was 450 milligrams, well below the 1,000-milligram maximum level.

About 663,000 Americans are regular users of heroin, according to government estimates. The researchers said 15 percent to 25 percent of them were heavy users and could benefit from prescription heroin. That is, if they ever were to get the chance. Heroin is an illegal, Schedule 1 substance, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and serves no legitimate medical purpose. That designation is unlikely to change soon, researchers suspect.

In an editorial with the article, Virginia Berridge of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine concluded, “The rise and fall of methods of treatment in this controversial area owe their rationale to evidence, but they also often owe more to the politics of the situation.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 20, 2009, on page A19 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/health/research/20heroin.html?scp=2&sq=heroin%20for%20addicts&st=cse

Posted by lois at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2009

"The Unforgiven"

The Unforgiven
By Curtis Cartier
Santa Cruz News
Aug 20, 2009

It’s a sweltering day in Tracy. July behind bars at Deuel Vocational Institution smells like sweat, bleach and old orange peels. Clifford Bair, a white-haired, goateed first-degree murderer—a lifer—perches under a barred window’s light and talks about the day 25 years ago in Bodega Bay when he tied up Theresa Aiken and Rose Fomasi with electrical wire and left them to die.

“I’d been up for three days drinking and doing speed,” says the 64-year-old convict. “After I tied her up, I couldn’t believe it but I found her keys in a bowl by the door. I took her car and I left. All I had wanted was to take her car. I remember the detective telling me Miss Aiken had died in the night. I wanted to die too. I still do.”

To hear him tell it, many decisions and circumstances led his younger self—strung-out, self-loathing and addicted to meth—to the front door of the 86-year-old Aiken, the “Mother of Bodega Bay,” that day in 1984. And since then, many more decisions have been made by Inmate Bair and by the state institutions charged with “correcting and rehabilitating” him.

Bair, according to DVI spokesman Lt. Gilbert Valenzuela, is like a majority of lifers over 40 years old: “one of the good ones.” Enrolled in classes, active in a prison-based job, he’s padded his résumé for 25 years in hopes of wresting freedom from California’s Board of Parole Hearings. Yet despite his efforts at rehabilitation, he has little chance of becoming a free man.

That’s because the Board grants parole to fewer than 1 percent of lifers who are eligible, and those that are paroled are usually denied later by the governor.

Denying parole to an eligible inmate without proving that they’ve shown continued signs of criminal behavior, however, is a direct violation of state law. And at a time when 2.3 million American adults are incarcerated and California is leading the way with 170,000 of them, the state’s prison system is at a breaking point and many, including some here on the Central Coast, are pushing for major reforms to the parole process that’s keeping lifers doing life.

The Rising Tide

In America, one in 10 prison inmates are serving a life sentence. In California, it’s one in five. They’ve come for a handful of different reasons: they’ve killed, kidnapped or raped. They’ve committed treason or sponsored terrorism. They’ve robbed or dealt drugs three times and copped a “three strikes” life sentence. They’ve even racked up additional charges while incarcerated. They are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American—though in California, blacks and Latinos make up 68 percent of lifers. They’re 90 years old or 14—adolescents tried as adults.

Though many are hardened criminals, for some the difference between a cell door and a white picket fence is nothing more than an angry moment and a weapon.

Santa Cruz County District Attorney Bob Lee has sought life sentences for dozens of criminals. He, like many law enforcement officials, believes “life is life,” and that murderers like Bair should not be judged on their decisions in prison but on the ones that got them there.

“Crimes like murder are the most antisocial acts a person can commit,” Lee says. “People shouldn’t be thinking about the criminals who kill and kidnap, but about the victims that will never come back, and their families who have to live without their loved ones forever.”

Lee is far from alone. Californians typically vote in favor of almost every proposed law that imposes tougher sentences for convicts. Just last year, voters passed Proposition 9, which allows the BPH to extend the time a lifer can go between hearings from one year to as many as 15 years. Many a politician has launched a career campaigning from a “tough on crime” platform. Many others have lost it when the public sensed softness.

Former California Gov. Gray Davis famously said that the only way a murderer would leave prison on his watch was “in a pine box.” He allowed parole for a mere eight convicts during his four years in office. Gov. Schwarzenegger tried to reverse this policy and in his first year released 72 lifers. After a vicious backlash from victims rights groups, however, he scaled back the releases to about 30 per year.

Today, with California’s prisons operating at 200 percent capacity and a broken health care system killing an inmate a week, the state is facing orders from a federal panel of judges to cut down its inmate population by 43,000 prisoners in the next two years. The panel went so far as to label the prisons “unconstitutional” due to negligent health care that made conditions “cruel and unusual.”

An excerpt from the Aug. 4 ruling reads: “The massive 750 percent increase in the California prison population since the mid-1970s is the result of political decisions made over three decades, including the shift to inflexible determinate sentencing and the passage of harsh mandatory minimum and three-strikes laws, as well as the state’s counterproductive parole system.”

It will be low-level violent, nonviolent and drug offenders who will likely benefit most from the orders to cut prison populations. Yet with California’s nation-topping 70 percent recidivism rate, most, before long, will end up right back in prison. In contrast, recidivism rate for lifers who are paroled drops to about 20 percent.

Government orders and statistics alone, however, won’t fix the state’s broken system. And there are few people, and very few important people, who are willing to go to bat for a convicted criminal—much less a lifer.

The Few in Their Corner

Some, however, do stand up for lifers. Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez is one of them. A short, soft-spoken Hispanic man, usually seen in his trademark dark beret and “locs” style sunglasses, he’s best known for founding the Santa Cruz–based Latino community outreach group Barrios Unidos. Born to a migrant farmworker family and drafted by the Army to fight in the Vietnam War, Alejandrez came back from combat in 1971 hooked on heroin and to a family deeply entrenched in gangs, drugs and violence. Yet even as he weaned himself from drugs, he began to speak out for peace—both on the streets and in the prisons. And since BU launched in 1977, he’s been on hand for some of the most important moments in California’s Latino story. Now, along with reaching out to troubled youth, he’s made the plight of the lifers of DVI, Solano, Vacaville, Soledad, Pleasant Valley and Jamestown one of his causes.

“I just want people to see [lifers] as people. People who made mistakes, but people who can change as well,” says Alejandrez. “So many of them have done everything they can to help themselves and rehabilitate. But none of that seems to matter, because the parole boards just say, ‘Great work, but your crime was too severe.’”

On this blistering day at DVI, he joins John Brown Childs, Eric Cummins, Angela Irvine and Jessica Roa, a team of professors, activists, authors and social workers, for a class on “transcommunal cooperation” and an organized debate among inmates on the parole priorities of nonviolent drug offenders versus parole-eligible lifers.

“When the governor was given the power to review decisions made by the parole board, you can see that parole approvals essentially stopped,” says inmate Michael DeVries, who, like many long-term inmates, has become a legal expert on issues surrounding his case. “This is a case of ex post facto, which means laws were passed after the fact that I, and a lot of other people I see in this room, committed their crimes. I liken it to a sports analogy of moving the goal post.”

The debate continues inside the DVI community room for another hour. The lifers, most sporting reading glasses, hold handwritten notes in their gnarled hands and speak in the slow, measured cadence of men in their 50s and 60s. The crude tattoos of Virgin Marys, tear drops and number 13’s that adorn some of their exposed forearms have faded over time into cloudy blotches of black and navy blue. The researchers jot endlessly in their notebooks, attention rapt on the real life social experiment playing out before them. The discourse is civil, and no one interrupts or speaks out of turn. Time, as one lifer explains, is something each has in abundance, and patience, he says, “is something you can’t help but learn on a life sentence.”

Elsewhere in prison, younger inmates with sharper and more colorful tattoos don’t typically share the same serenity. Curses ring out from scattered cells as the seemingly ever-shirtless offenders notice a camera-wielding visitor and either offer menacing stares to the lens or swear and retreat out of view. The bleach and orange peel smell extends to almost every corner of the prison, and where walls aren’t coated in layers of drab gray paint so thick they’re soft to the touch, they’re painted in screaming orange paint with messages like “no warning shots fired in this area.”

Back in the community room, the debating inmates, having been broken up into mixed groups of whites, Hispanics and blacks, are finishing their debate. The class, nearing the end of its second year, was not an idea hatched in social academia, but by the inmates themselves—a fact that astounds many of the researchers, given the hardened racial lines that exist in every prison in America. As the class ends, however, any thoughts of freedom are dashed as the inmates are herded off, strip-searched and sent back to their cells.

“Single file,” a guard says sternly. “You know the drill.”

Lest We Forget

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak knows a thing or two about the prospect of paroling lifers. Like DA Bob Lee, he believes a crime like murder warrants a lifetime behind bars, and he routinely sends letters to the BPH opposing parole for lifers originally charged in Santa Cruz County.

“I think that if we entertain the idea of paroling folks that have committed murder, then we are discounting any feeling or compassion for the victims of the crime and their families,” he says.

“I realize the prisons are overcrowded, I just don’t think that the solution to our incarceration issues and budget woes is to look at these lifers and release them from custody.”

A single murder creates a network of grieving relatives and friends, much like a stone’s ripple effect when it’s thrown into a lake. Gene Cervantes lost two close cousins in 2005 in what Fresno authorities called the “Tarpey Village murders.” For him, the thought that good behavior and efforts at rehabilitation could free his cousin’s killers is too much to bear.
“It was a cold-blooded murder, and I hope the men responsible never see the light of day,” says Cervantes, who’s still waiting to see the two men who’ve been arrested and charged with the murders have their day in court. “All these lefties looking to take pity on these prisoners need to face the facts.”

Cervantes spent 29 years working as a classification staff representative with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. There, he says, he saw firsthand the inability of the modern criminal to rehabilitate and live in society. Inmates, he says, will say anything to be released. They will apologize, take classes, write letters and kick drugs only when they think it will give them a shot at freedom.

“When I read about the federal judges telling the CDCR to come up with a plan to release inmates, I just thought, ‘What a joke,” he says. “They make these decisions from their stupid ivory towers and they have no idea what’s actually going on in the prisons. I’ve been there. Yes, there are problems; the health care is as useless as a three-dollar bill. But letting prisoners go is a terrible idea.”

Wowak agrees that early releases in any fashion are a bad policy. He warns that without extra transitional support structures for released inmates, communities all over the state could see a spike in crime.

“I know that releasing anyone without a good form of rehab program is very risky,” says the sheriff. “This will be a stop-gap response that may save some money for the state, but local counties like Santa Cruz County will likely see an influx of people in the jails when these inmates reoffend.”

Then and Now

Nixon was president, disco was the new rage and gas was 40 cents a gallon when Paul Hyde came to prison in 1973. Having killed a shoe store owner with a stray bullet during a gang-related gunfight in Los Angeles, he was handed a life sentence for first-degree murder. Hyde became eligible for parole in 1980. Since then, despite a relatively clean discipline record and an extensive rehabilitation resume, he’s been denied parole 22 times.

“I was 19 years old when they told me I was going to prison for life,” says Hyde, a 55-year-old, tall, clean-cut black man with a shaky voice and watery eyes. “I’ll never get over taking someone’s life, and the man I killed will never come back. That’s something I can’t change. Now I have 14 trades, I have my [high school] diploma, I have 83 college units. I’ve put myself in every possible program I can, but every time, they just tell me, ‘Sorry, but your crime was too bad.’”

Denying a parole applicant solely on the basis of the original crime, however, is illegal under California law. As mandated by the Dannenberg California Supreme Court Decision of 2005, aspects of rehabilitation must weigh into a parole board’s decision. Though not limited to them, the five major factors involved in a parole decision are listed by the BPH as: “counseling reports, behavior in prison, vocational and educational accomplishments, involvement in self help therapy, and parole plans.” The 2005 ruling also says that any lifer who is denied parole based on his or her original crime must be proven to have “aggravated facts” beyond the crime that makes him or her a continuing threat to society.

Evidence suggests that the stingy approval rates handed down by the BPH are no accident. During Hyde’s early days in the ’70s, parole boards were made up of not only prison and law enforcement officials but teachers, doctors and others representing the “community at large.” Then, almost every felon received an indeterminate sentence and was released when the parole board deemed they were ready. Now, California’s 12-person BPH boasts a membership made up entirely of current and former law enforcement officials. All are registered Republicans.

“It’s a fixed game,” says Hyde. “I get told I’m doing all the right things, so why am I not suitable for parole?”

Hyde, like nearly every lifer interviewed by Santa Cruz Weekly, says he gets by on one thing: hope. Hope that his classes and in-prison work efforts will catch the eye of BPH commissioners. Hope that, if he’s released, someone will give him a job. And hope that both he and the family of the man he killed will find resolution in the price he’s paid behind bars.

But the hope that their parole hearings will end in any other way than a flat denial seems far-fetched. For lifers like Hyde, no matter how many steps they take toward rehabilitation, the heinousness of their original crime is always the bottom line in their denial reports.

Life Row

Documents provided by inmates and by the CDCR show that lifers are often denied parole with none of the “aggravated facts” required under the Dannenberg legal precedent.

In Bair’s case, one parole decision transcript thanks him for “a number of self help programming ... substance abuse, alternatives to violence, AA, anger management (classes) ... and a plumbing (and welding) vocational work programs,” before it goes on to deny him because “the prisoner committed the offense in an especially cruel manner.”

Hyde’s case is similar. Documents show dozens of classes taken, certificates earned and jobs maintained. Getting caught with a dagger 20 years ago is a stain on his in-custody record, but he hopes the board will overlook it on account of his two decades of good behavior and make his upcoming hearing lucky number 23.

“When I came to prison I had a third-grade education. I couldn’t even run a carwash,” says Hyde. “Now I run millions of dollars’ worth of machinery every day in the electrostatic powder coating shop. I’m totally employable. I’m a changed man and I think I deserve a chance to show it.”

A month after the organized debate at DVI over who deserves parole, the lifer class is together once again on a slightly cooler day—this time for a graduation celebration. Chuckles fill the air, smiles abound and hugs are the preferred greeting as the aging inmates receive certificates of completion and feast on cake and shrimp cocktail brought in by Alejandrez and other volunteers. For class teachers like John Brown Childs, an author and lecturer of sociology at UC–Santa Cruz, the completion of the course is a “living example of positive human potential.”

“I liken what I see in these men to a Zen riddle,” says Childs. “It says, ‘I saw a slave, but then I realized it was actually a person held in slavery.’ It means you can look at someone and think you know exactly what they represent, but you have to look at them from a different point of view to really understand who they are and what’s in their hearts.”
Whether Californians consciously care about what’s in the hearts of their convicts or not, there is no question that they are heavily invested in just that. With $9.8 billion in state funds set aside for the CDCR in the next year, prison spending makes up 10 percent of California’s budget, even after $1.2 billion in emergency cuts mandated in this year’s slashed state budget.

The mood inside DVI suggests that the inmates feel the change coming as well. Most of them chatter about rumors that friends may be going home or that appeals may be accepted. Alejandrez feels it too. While agreeing with inmates that things may be looking up, he cautions them to stay vigilant.

“The state has got to do something,” he says. “They’ve finally dug themselves so far down that they have to start climbing back out. I just hope they take a look at guys like these lifers—people who have earned a right to a second chance.”

As the graduation ceremony ends and eager inmates dutifully collect the frosting dotted paper plates and soda cans into trash bags, prison spokesman Valenzuela takes the microphone to offer a test to the men.

“I have a challenge for you,” says the career guard. “I want to see you take the lessons you learned about working together and use them out in the yard.”

Most of the inmates agree that race relations in the prison yard will likely stay as segregated as they are now. Instead, each hopes they can use the skills in a more exotic location: outside the prison walls.

http://news.santacruz.com/2009/08/20/the_unforgiven

Posted by lois at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)

MI: 400 more women claim payouts fro $100 settlement for prison rapes and other assaults

400 more women claim payouts from $100 million in prison attacks
Aug. 20, 2009
By DAVID EGGERT
Detroit Free Press- Associated Press

Another 400 current or former female inmates filed claims for part of a $100 million settlement for those who were raped, groped and peeked at by male corrections staff.

All told, more than 900 women are seeking money from the state for alleged sexual misconduct that occurred inside prisons between March 1993 and July 2009.

The development was disclosed today as Washtenaw County Circuit Judge Timothy Connors gave final approval to the class-action settlement, despite complaints from some ex-inmates who won at trial and will get less under the settlement. Connors gave preliminary approval of the agreement July 15.

“I didn’t know about the settlement agreement until after it was accepted,” said Wendy Garagiola, 47, of Fowlerville, who said she was raped and sodomized by a guard at a Coldwater prison in the mid-1990s. “We’re being told to settle for half of what the jury awarded us. I don’t think it’s fair at all.”

Garagiola and at least two others out of 18 women who were awarded jury verdicts in 2008 came to the courthouse to raise concerns, but they could not speak to the judge because they missed an Aug. 14 deadline to file written objections.

They said the settlement was good for attorneys but not necessarily victims.

The deadline to file for a piece of the settlement was also Aug. 14.

One woman at the court, who did not want to be named due to the nature of what she said happened to her in prison, said she and 17 other women who put themselves through the “public humiliation” of trial should not have been included in negotiations affecting hundreds of other women.

But Deborah Labelle, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, called the settlement fair, explaining that the jury verdicts were never guaranteed because they were in the appeals system when settlement talks began.

“It’s a good thing to put hopefully this chapter behind,” she said of lawsuits that date as far back as 13 years ago. “A hundred million dollars recognizes the kind of human rights violations that went on by the state. We have equitable relief that will go toward preventing this ever happening again.”

Ten lawyers who worked on the case will get $28.7 million for more than 30,000 hours of work and future work administering the settlement, which will be paid between now and 2015. The remaining $71.3 million will be given to victims in three groups based on the severity and amount of abuse.

The 18 women who won verdicts at two trials will split $15.9 million — less than what they would have received under the verdicts. Including interest, the verdicts totaled more than $50 million, though it is unclear how much would have gone to attorneys.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers will decide who is eligible for the settlement and tell those who qualify their estimated payments. Letters must be mailed by Sept. 4.

Women who disagree with their damages have until Sept. 18 to appeal to a court-appointed claims master, Barbara Levine, executive director of the prisoner advocacy group Citizens Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending. Levine must issue a final decision on those appeals by Oct. 16. If a woman disagrees with Levine’s ruling, she can then appeal to the judge by Oct. 30.

Connors plans to wrap up the case by the end of the year.

He said former and current prisoners should appreciate the “remarkable” effort by their attorneys. He said the settlement is in everyone’s best interest, and he is glad juries “had a chance to speak out and give their view.”
http://www.freep.com/article/20090820/NEWS06/90820084/1318/400-more-women-claim-payouts-from--100-million-in-prison-attacks&template=fullarticle

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

August 20, 2009

KY: Supreme Court Announces Pilot Project Allowing for People Charged with 600 Different Offenses Not To Spend Time in Jail

Nonviolent offenders could avoid jail in Kentucky
High court reveals pilot plan to save $12 million each month
By Stephenie Steitzer
August 17, 2009

The Kentucky Supreme Court announced a pilot project Monday that could save counties an estimated $12 million a month by allowing thousands of people arrested for nonviolent, non-sexual crimes to post bail immediately after they are arrested.
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The project would set standard bail amounts for roughly 600 offenses, most of them misdemeanors, so defendants don't have to spend a night or weekend in jail waiting for judges to set the amounts for their release.

Individuals would then post bail and leave.

“It is designed to help Kentucky, not hurt Kentucky,” Justice Will T. Scott said.

In the next couple months, the court will pick the counties where it will test the new rules, which would apply mostly to first-time offenders and would include such crimes as marijuana possession, traffic offenses, hunting violations and shoplifting, Scott said.

It costs counties $30 to $50 a day to house individuals in jails. Scott said a nine-month period analyzed by the court found 13,000 defendants in jails who could have been released immediately under the proposed changes.

He said the other benefit of the project is to standardize bail amounts for certain offenses.

Currently, judges determine bail, which can vary greatly depending on the county.

Under the proposed change, judges could still decide to set bail higher than the standardized amount, but they would have to give reasons. Those decisions could be appealed.

Christopher Cohron, president of the Kentucky Association of Commonwealth's Attorneys, said the project “is a perfect example of instituting procedures that financially are going to make a huge impact on our jails but are going to pose only minimal risk to public safety.”

He said state and local governments are struggling financially in the midst of a recession, and officials need to consider all options to reduce costs.

Campbell County Jailer Greg Buckler, who said that he was told by one of the justices that his county could be a candidate for the pilot project, said he generally supports the concept, although he hasn't seen the details.

During the coming Labor Day weekend, Buckler estimates that about 30 people will have to spend the weekend in jail on minor offenses because a judge won't be on duty to set bail.

“If we can get somebody out, especially on weekends … that would save taxpayers some money on incarceration, plus leave more space for the ones that need to be in jail,” he said.

Marshall Long, executive director of the Kentucky Jailers' Association, told The Associated Press that his organization is reserving judgment until after the initiative has been tested.

“I don't oppose trying it,” Long said. “It if works, keep on doing it.

“If it doesn't, stop.”
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20090817/NEWS01/908170357/Nonviolent+offenders+could+avoid+jail+in+Kentucky

Posted by lois at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)

Hawaii/KY: 128 women from Hawaii now at CCA- Otter Creek will return to HI after guards accused of sexually assaulting 23 women including seven from Hawaii

Female inmates to return to isles
By Kaylee Noborikawa
Aug 19, 2009

The majority of 128 female inmates from Hawaii housed at a private Kentucky correctional facility will return to the islands within a month, Public Safety Director Clayton Frank said yesterday.

Forty Hawaii inmates returned Monday from Otter Creek Correctional Facility, where guards were accused of sexually assaulting 23 women, including seven from Hawaii.

A task force visited Otter Creek on July 5 and found that a 2007 sexual assault case was substantiated, with the guard being terminated and convicted. One case was dismissed, two female inmates denied assault allegations, and three cases are being investigated by Kentucky police, Public Safety Deputy Director Tommy Johnson said.

The Senate Committee on Public Safety and Military Affairs, headed by Sen. Will Espero, interviewed Frank and Johnson at the state Capitol yesterday for an update on the allegations and the possibility of returning the women to Hawaii.

"The biggest concern we have is the cost," Frank said. The cost to house an inmate at Hawaii's Women's Community Correctional Center is $86 per day, or $3.6 million a year, compared with $58.46 a day in Kentucky.

With the transferred inmates, state prisons will be at 97 to 98 percent capacity, while 91 to 92 percent would be ideal, Frank said.

"If there are any more additional intakes ... we would have to be very careful that there is no federal intervention," said Frank, who added that there is enough staff at the women's facility and the federal detention center.

Overcrowding at Hawaii prisons led to federal oversight from 1985 to 1999.

Espero asked whether $500,000 appropriated by the Legislature for GPS electronic monitoring could be used to offset costs, but Frank said the allocated money was part of Gov. Linda Lingle's budget cut.

"I was afraid you'd say that. But that is a cost-saving measure that, in my opinion, has the potential to save the state millions of dollars over years, so, although I understand the governor's decision, I think it's the wrong one," Espero said.

Frank said many of the female inmates want to remain at Otter Creek because of its minimal security and programs. However, Mary Dias, an aunt of the sexually assaulted inmate, said inmates should not be placed in that kind of environment.

"Being raped is not part of their sentence. They're women with children who made bad choices," said Dias, who added that guards have retaliated against her niece for the report.

"Why is she still there if she was substantiated?" Dias said. "She should've been the first to come home."

http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20090819_Female_inmates_to_return_to_isles.html

Link to article about Otter Creek which appeared on 8-17-09:
http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2009/08/at_the_state_wo.html

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

NY: Governor Paterson Promises Women Demonstrating in Front of His Office He Will Sign Anti-Shackling Bill

Governor to Save Jailed Mothers From Shackling During Labor
By Helena Zhu
Epoch Times Staff Aug 18, 2009

NEW YORK—Making a surprise appearance at a protest held outside his mansion, New York Governor David Paterson promised a group of activists on Monday that he would sign legislation banning the chaining of incarcerated women who are giving birth.

One of the legislation’s two sponsoring officials, Assemblyman Nick Perry (D-Brooklyn), started to push the bill in 2001 after reading a news article about a woman ready to give birth who had her legs shackled together. The key to open the cuffs was not found until minutes before birth, said Barbara Dominique, staff of the assemblyman.

“That’s such an unsafe condition to be in while you are giving birth. It’s horrible that New York, out of all of the states, [is allowing this to happen],” said Dominique.

Shackling imprisoned women during labor in hospitals has been going on ever since home birth was replaced by hospital birth in the 1900’s according to Serena Alfieri, associate director of policy of the Correctional Association of New York’s Women in Prison Project.

Up to now, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the American Correctional Association and four other states—California, Vermont, Illinois and New Mexico—have already adopted policies restricting the use of restraints on women giving birth.

The bill was passed in the New York State Assembly and State Senate in May, and now it is just waiting for the governor to sign.

The dozens of women at a rally outside of Governor Paterson’s office wore handcuffs to show the conditions jailed mothers-to-be go through. For some of them, it was a déjà vu of their own suffering.

Hazel Figueroa from Queens was jailed in Rikers Island for one year in 1998. At that time, she gave birth to her daughter.

“My experience is quite awful. Because living in jail and being pregnant is not … a nice experience,” she said.

She had to wait in the receiving room for hours before doctors arrived. While giving birth, she was chained.

“What woman is thinking to escape when she’s just in pain?”

State Senator Velmanette Montgomery (D-Brooklyn), another sponsor of this legislation, said that no woman—to her best knowledge—has tried to escape while giving birth in New York State.

Montgomery said that the passing of this legislation will eliminate the shackling of incarcerated women during labor altogether, bringing an end to this “tremendous risk.”

Another woman who went through such experience, Tina Reynolds, co-founder and executive director of Women on the Rise Telling Herstory (WORTH), was sentenced to 18 months in New York due to a drug crime 15 years ago.

While giving birth to her son in a hospital, she had one hand and one leg shackled to the stretcher although a female officer was present.

“I experienced the birth of my child. I just couldn’t believe the shackling was happening. And I was giving birth in front of a female officer who I didn’t know … I thought it was the worst, most oppressive, inhumane practice in the world,” said Reynolds.

After birth, the child accompanied her for nine months until she served her sentence. She had to breastfeed him while being chained as well. Before labor, she said that she was not informed what would happen to her baby after it was born.

Women like her could not complain, she said, since if they did, they would not be able to accompany their children in the nursery.

Her experience of giving birth during imprisonment was opposite of when she did it before jailing, which she described as “joyous” and “about the creation of life.”

Erica Knox from Brooklyn was also on Rikers Island, but in 1989. Unlike others, she was not shackled while giving birth, but immediately after. “They left me in a room alone. My water broke. I told them my water broke. They left me there for at least 30 minutes. I kept on telling them that the baby’s coming. So they put a sheet between my leg,” she said.

“As they were pushing me in, the baby was coming out right there. I was really going crazy. I was, I was scared, at first that I was by myself. I’ve never been by myself while having a baby.”

In the midst of recollecting the past, Governor Paterson showed up at the rally, bringing cheers to the crowd. He promised to sign the bill as soon as he receives the bill.

“What the bill is trying to stop was what we think is the inhumane treatment of people who are giving birth, even if they committed a crime, even if they are incarcerated. Because we also want to make sure of the safety of the child, who didn’t commit any crime,” he said.

His speech brought delights the all the advocates who have worked on this for a long time.

“Today is the day that all things change. And I’m just so happy,” said Reynolds.

Last Updated---Aug 19, 2009
photos at http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/21196/
This and other news about women organizing can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

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

Nicholas Kristoff: Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?

Op-Ed Columnist : Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/opinion/20kristof.html?_r=1
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: August 19, 2009- NY Times

At a time when we Americans may abandon health care reform because it supposedly is “too expensive,” how is it that we can afford to imprison people like Curtis Wilkerson?

Mr. Wilkerson is serving a life sentence in California — for stealing a $2.50 pair of socks. As The Economist noted recently, he already had two offenses on his record (both for abetting robbery at age 19), and so the “three strikes” law resulted in a life sentence.

This is unjust, of course. But considering that California spends almost $49,000 annually per prison inmate, it’s also an extraordinary waste of money.

Astonishingly, many politicians seem to think that we should lead the world in prisons, not in health care or education. The United States is anomalous among industrialized countries in the high proportion of people we incarcerate; likewise, we stand out in the high proportion of people who have no medical care — and partly as a result, our health care outcomes such as life expectancy and infant mortality are unusually poor.

It’s time for a fundamental re-evaluation of the criminal justice system, as legislation sponsored by Senator Jim Webb has called for, so that we’re no longer squandering money that would be far better spent on education or health. Consider a few facts:

¶The United States incarcerates people at nearly five times the world average. Of those sentenced to state prisons, 82 percent were convicted of nonviolent crimes, according to one study.

¶California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system. In contrast, it spends only $8,000 on each child attending the troubled Oakland public school system, according to the Urban Strategies Council.

¶For most of American history, we had incarceration rates similar to those in other countries. Then with the “war on drugs” and the focus on law and order in the 1970s, incarceration rates soared.

¶One in 10 black men ages 25 to 29 were imprisoned last year, partly because possession of crack cocaine (disproportionately used in black communities) draws sentences equivalent to having 100 times as much powder cocaine. Black men in the United States have a 32 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives, according to the Sentencing Project.

Look, there’s no doubt that many people in prison are cold-blooded monsters who deserve to be there. But over all, in a time of limited resources, we’re overinvesting in prisons and underinvesting in schools.

Indeed, education spending may reduce the need for incarceration. The evidence on this isn’t conclusive, but it’s noteworthy that graduates of the Perry Preschool program in Michigan, an intensive effort for disadvantaged children in the 1960s, were some 40 percent less likely to be arrested than those in a control group.

Above all, it’s time for a rethink of our drug policy. The point is not to surrender to narcotics, but to learn from our approach to both tobacco and alcohol. Over time, we have developed public health strategies that have been quite successful in reducing the harm from smoking and drinking.

If we want to try a public health approach to drugs, we could learn from Portugal. In 2001, it decriminalized the possession of all drugs for personal use. Ordinary drug users can still be required to participate in a treatment program, but they are no longer dispatched to jail.

“Decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal,” notes a report this year from the Cato Institute. It notes that drug use appears to be lower in Portugal than in most other European countries, and that Portuguese public opinion is strongly behind this approach.

A new United Nations study, World Drug Report 2009, commends the Portuguese experiment and urges countries to continue to pursue traffickers while largely avoiding imprisoning users. Instead, it suggests that users, particularly addicts, should get treatment.

Senator Webb has introduced legislation that would create a national commission to investigate criminal justice issues — for such a commission may be the best way to depoliticize the issue and give feckless politicians the cover they need to institute changes.

“There are only two possibilities here,” Mr. Webb said in introducing his bill, noting that America imprisons so many more people than other countries. “Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice.”

Opponents of universal health care and early childhood education say we can’t afford them. Granted, deficits are a real constraint and we can’t do everything, and prison reform won’t come near to fully financing health care reform. Still, would we rather use scarce resources to educate children and heal the sick, or to imprison people because they used drugs or stole a pair of socks?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/opinion/20kristof.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2009

Maine: New Law Allows Some Terminally Ill Inmates to Leave Prison Early

New Law Allows Some Terminally Ill Inmates to Leave Prison Early
August 14, 2009 Reported By: Anne Ravana

Today Gov. John Baldacci signed into law a bill that amends a few correctional programs. LD 1224, "An Act Regarding the Operation of County Jails and the State Board of Corrections," will allow terminally ill inmates to leave prison early if they do not pose a threat to public safety. And the law also expands domestic violence and sexual assault victim notification requirements.

Originally Aired: 8/14/2009 5:30 PM

Only about seven percent of Maine's jail and prison inmates are over the age of 55, but corrections officials say most of those older inmates are not in good health.

"We see every type of sickness coming through, I think known, to man and that's why our pharmaceutical bill runs about $15,000 a month," says Penobscot County Sheriff Glenn Ross. "Hepatitis C is very common, alcohol problems, AIDS due to needle use, we have lots of problems with pharmaceutical abuse where people are coming in on many different types of drugs, and that combined with alcoholism, we have to try to get that person stabilized and off medicines that they're not supposed to be on."

Ross says he supports a new law that amends the state's home release program provisions, and allows some inmates to be released early into nursing homes or hospice care.

"There are those times when we have older individuals that have severe diseases that may succumb to those diseases, and the cost of keeping them in the jail or in the hospitals being guarded is astronomical," Ross says. "So there's no real good answer to this. I do support the new law if it's applied in a way that protects public safety, and you have people that are monitoring to make sure that the decisions are not purely financial and the risk to the community is the number one priority."

Under the law, which was amended in the last session of the Legislature, the home release program would not apply to inmates sentenced to life in prison or those who might pose a risk of reoffending, Ross says.

Many of the bill's provisions were recommended by the Board of Corrections, and Denise Lord, Associate Commissioner for the state Department of Corrections, says the bill brings more flexibility to the home release program.

"The early release programs that currently exist require prisoners to have served a certain portion of their sentence and to have a minimal amount of time left on their sentence before they're eligible for early release," she says. "For those prisoners who are severely medically incapacitated, those requirements go away."

Medically incapacitated, Lord says, means physically ill, not mentally ill. She says standards for release will be the same at all county jails and state prisons, and the new law leaves that decision to the sheriffs.

Sheriff Ross says there's always the question of how and where terminally ill inmates will be cared for after release, but the Volunteers of America, he says, have been a help.

"Here in Penobscot County we have a contract with Volunteers of America for release of inmates back into the community," he says. "And so that's a supervised community confinement program, basically, where we have somebody checking in on them. But we can set up conditions on inmates that are released to hospitals, or to homes and have them checked on by our VOA staff."

The Maine Department of Corrections says the state expects the percentage of inmates over 55 to grow in the coming years, and it's already higher than most states. Also in the new law is an expansion of the state's victim notification requirements. Now victims of Class D, or misdemeanor crimes, of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking may request notification when the offender is released from jail or prison.
http://www.mpbn.net/News/MaineNews/tabid/181/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3475/ItemId/8669/Default.aspx

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

August 18, 2009

California might act to jail more drug offenders A move to increase funding to anti-drug units could result in increasing the state's prison population at a time when it's under order to reduce overcrowding.

California might act to jail more drug offenders
A move to increase funding to anti-drug units could result in increasing the state's prison population at a time when it's under order to reduce overcrowding.
By Eric Bailey
August 18, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento - Two weeks after federal judges ordered California to reduce its prison population, an arm of the Schwarzenegger administration is set to vote on increased funding to police anti-drug units, potentially putting even more offenders behind bars.

An advisory board for the California Emergency Management Agency is expected to decide today whether to channel $33 million in federal money to narcotics task forces around the state that have proved particularly adept at apprehending drug criminals.

Critics of government drug policies say that money should instead be directed to drug-treatment programs whose funding has been sliced amid California's budget woes.

"While one side of the government is addressing prison overcrowding, another side seems to be acting directly counter to that goal," said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director of the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance.

The bulk of the money is slated to help multi-jurisdictional task forces in all 58 California counties that investigate and apprehend narcotics offenders.

Money also would go to marijuana-suppression efforts around the state and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, which coordinates with federal agents on border drug trafficking.

John Lovell, a spokesman for the California Narcotics Officers' Assn., called the Drug Policy Alliance opposition "predictable" but wrong at a time when Mexican drug cartels are boosting methamphetamine production and operating marijuana plantations in state forests, including the one blamed for starting a wildfire Aug. 8 in Santa Barbara County.

He said the spending on anti-drug task force efforts is "not only appropriate, it's too bad the amount isn't larger."

Dooley-Sammuli believes the bulk of the money would go toward generating more arrests of street-level offenders, not on cracking down on high-level drug criminals.

"We're not getting the best bang for our buck," she said.

As now envisioned, the state's anti-drug-abuse enforcement program could have its funding boosted substantially over last year, in part because of nearly $20 million in federal stimulus money allocated in July.

The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that the increase could yield 13,000 arrests during the coming year, resulting in prison time for nearly a quarter of those apprehended, at a cost of $160 million.

Funding for drug treatment programs was slashed roughly in half from $120 million two years ago.

Meanwhile, the state is grappling with pressure to reduce prison crowding.

This month, a three-judge panel ordered the state to shrink its prison population by more than 40,000 in the next two years.

Last month, legislators approved a $1.2-billion reduction in prison spending.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-drug-police18-2009aug18,0,5428041.story

Posted by lois at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)

Second Chance Act- a total of $100 million proposed by House and Senate Bill half that amount

U.S. House of Representatives recommends mark of $100 million for the Second Chance Act in FY2010. An infinitesimal sum for the 700,000 men and women expected to be released from federal and state prisons this year and over 9 million people are expected to be released from jail.

The House Bill recommends:
that provides $100 million for Second Chance Act programs in FY10, including:

- $37 million for state and local reentry demonstration projects (Section 101)

- $10 million for state, tribal, and local reentry courts (Section 111)

- $7.5 million for family-based substance abuse treatment (Section 113)

- $2.5 million for grants to evaluate and improve education in prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities (Section 114)

- $5 million for technology careers training demonstration grants (Section 115)

- $13 million for substance abuse and criminal justice collaboration grants (Section 201)

- $15 million for mentoring grants to nonprofit organizations (Section 211)

- $10 million for reentry research (Section 245)

-----------------
Senate Appropriations Committee has approved an appropriations bill for the Department of Justice that provides $50 million for Second Chance Act programs. The Senate bill would provide funding to only three of the Second Chance Act grant programs listed above: it provides $25 million for state and local reentry demonstration projects, $5 million for family-based substance abuse treatment, and $15 million for mentoring grants to nonprofit organizations.

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

Colloquy for Prison Health Amendments

From Charlie Sullivan of CURE:
Dear friends, on July 31st, Cong. Robby Rush (D-IL) by unanimous consent placed a colloquy (a conversation with Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) in the record of H.R. 3200, the comprehensive universal health care bill. This was prior to the bill being passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The colloquy is the following:
Colloquy for Prison Health Amendments

Mr. Rush:

Mr. Chair, I would like to offer amendment number 8_001, for the purpose of securing quality care for over 2 million Americans in our nation’s prisons and jails, ensuring the same quality of medical care that others are entitled to under this bill. I think that it is important to do this for a number of reasons, but most importantly, because it is the humane and decent thing to do.

As it now stands, financial responsibility for the medical care of prisoners rests with the governmental institutions holding them—state departments of correction, local sheriff’s offices, and the federal Bureau of Prisons. With growing prison populations and the financial pressures on state and local governments, these institutions often have difficulty providing the medical care that is needed.

Prisoners’ needs are often greater than those of the general public with higher rates of abuse, neglect, and mental illness. Failure to adequately address these problems not only makes prisons unsafe for inmates and the correctional staff, but these disparities pose broader public health risks when prisoners are released.

The proposed amendment addresses these problems by directing federal subsidies under Medicare, Medicaid, and the public option to be extended to eligible prisoners. This will alleviate burdens from institutions, counties, states, and local governments, and enables them to provide better care.

The amendment instructs the Secretary of HHS to set up a mechanism to ensure that the quality of care provided under this program meets appropriate standards;
Ensures prisoners suffering chronic conditions do not fall through the cracks when they are released, but have access to continuing medical care; and requires prison authorities to facilitate the continued enrollment once prisoners are released back into society.

Presently, prisoners are often discharged with a 2 week supply of medicine and left to fend for themselves—with disastrous consequences.

Let me conclude by saying that most of us don’t pay much attention to what happens to prisoners, and we think they deserve whatever they get.

But as we try to ensure that ALL Americans have access to affordable, quality medical care, we should not neglect the 2 million Americans in our prisons and jails, 94 percent of whom will be released at some point.

Better medical care for prisoners and continuity of care is the right thing to do.

Mr. Waxman:

Mr. Rush:
Thank you for this consideration, and I look forward to working more with you on this issue. I withdraw the amendment, and yield back.
I understand your concerns on this issue, as it currently is not addressed in the bill. I would like to look at this more, and work more with you to see how we can better protect this population.
-----------
From Charlie:
The next step will be to express this colloquy in an amendment to HR 3200 that the entire House will consider. Cong.Rush and Chairman Waxman were right to pursue the colloquy approach rather than trying to pass the Rush Amendment in committee. Hopefully the Colloquy will be the first step in a difficult journey toward quality health care for people incarcerated. Charlie

Posted by lois at 09:15 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2009

KY: CCA Otter Creek Women's Prison Plagued by Allegations of Sexual Assaults by Guards--State Does Imposes No Fine and Extends Contract

At the state women's prison "starting pay there is $18.18 an hour for workers with no corrections experience, and $19.17 an hour for those with experience. Starting pay at Otter Creek is $8.25 an hour." 81% of co's are male.

Private prison plagued by problems, reports show
By Stephenie Steitzer • ssteitzer@courier-journal.com •
August 16, 2009
Louisville Courier Journal

FRANKFORT, Ky. — A private women's prison in Eastern Kentucky that has been plagued by allegations of sexual assaults by corrections officers is chronically understaffed, leading to poor employee morale and security concerns, according to a state monitor's reports.

The monthly reports provide a glimpse into life inside the Otter Creek Correctional Center, where at least five workers have been charged with having sex with inmates in the past three years. Kentucky State Police are expected to present another case to a Floyd County grand jury this month.

“The facility continues to experience staff shortage(s), and (officers) have struggled,” state monitor Darrell Neace said in July's report. “Overtime is substantial for the facility and very difficult for staff.”

Despite the recurring problems outlined in the reports, the state has not imposed staffing-level sanctions as allowed under its contract with Corrections Corporation of America, a for-profit, Nashville, Tenn.-based company.

The state can fine the company up to $5,000 a day for violating terms of the contract, which include maintaining certain staffing levels and filling vacant positions within 60 days.

In fact — despite the sexual assault investigation — the state has agreed to extend for 60 days its contract with CCA to house up to 476 inmates at the facility while it negotiates a new two-year agreement. Otter Creek housed 429 Kentucky inmates as of Friday.

In response to questions about staffing at the prison, state Corrections Commissioner LaDonna Thompson noted that staff turnover is an issue at all prisons.

“Corrections is a difficult and stressful profession,” she said an e-mailed statement.

CCA spokesman Steve Owen said it takes recruiting and retaining staff very seriously and noted that turnover costs money. “Anyone who contends that the facility operates with vacancies by design (for cost savings or profit) does not understand sound business practice,” he said in an e-mail.

Reports cite staffing

It is unclear how many workers the prison is required to have. The state has been unable to produce a written staffing-level document, despite a request by The Courier-Journal under the state open records law.

However, in 11 of the last 19 monthly monitoring reports obtained by the newspaper, staffing has been cited as a problem. Of particular concern is the number of people trained to handle emergencies at the prison.

Neace, in a report dated July 8, cited a major concern about inadequate security staffing in June, adding, “OCCC is on 12-hour shifts and (workers) are struggling.”

He wrote that the facility was operating with 168 workers and had 28 vacancies at the end of the month. Five of those positions had been open for more than 60 days, which is a violation of the state's contract with CCA.

Many previous monthly reports do not specify how many positions were vacant, or for how long. Thus, it is impossible for the department to know how severe the staffing problem is at a given time and whether the company is in violation of the contract.

Many reports, however, include vague references to understaffing and low staff morale because of forced double shifts.

“They (officers) are exhausted, and several have expressed their concern to me,” former state monitor Deborah Patrick said in the August 2008 report.

Other prisons pay more

The reports reflect a pattern in which a flurry of hiring is typically followed several months later by a drop in staffing, indicating retention problems. Owen, the CCA spokesman, said many people hired in prisons soon realize it isn't the type of work they want to do.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Lamb said recently that her agency has begun sending inspectors to the prison without giving CCA advance notice and has sent two corrections experts there to help the state's on-site monitor.

The state's only other women's prison — the state-run Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women in Shelby County — — is nearly full most of the time.

“Our assessment is that it is more effective to rectify the situation there at Otter Creek than find alternative forms of incarceration for our inmate population housed there,” Lamb said.

She partly blamed problems with attracting and retaining staff on the fact that a federal prison employing roughly 400 people in nearby Inez pays more.

Starting pay there is $18.18 an hour for workers with no corrections experience, and $19.17 an hour for those with experience

Starting pay at Otter Creek is $8.25 an hour.

In addition, the state pays corrections workers at two nearby state-run prisons $2.97 more an hour than Otter Creek employees receive.

The state's contract with CCA for Otter Creek does not specify minimum pay, because, Thompson said, such internal business decisions could affect the company's competitiveness.

Owen said CCA raised starting pay at Otter Creek by 5 percent last year and “we will continue to monitor their situation as we do with all our other facilities.”

Kentucky pays CCA $53.77 a day to house each inmate, a total of more than $8million last year.

Most employees are male

Tommy Johnson, a spokesman for the Hawaii Department of Public Safety, which contracts with Otter Creek to house 175 inmates from that state, said CCA might need to consider paying more to attract and retain workers at Otter Creek, particularly female officers.

He said a recent review found 81 percent of the workers were male, and 19 percent were female.

“The ratio really should be almost the opposite,” he said.

Johnson said his department has asked CCA to hire more women and consider making certain jobs at the prison female-only.

Owen said the company instituted a bonus referral and retention program in June in an effort to hire more female employees.

Neace also noted in his May report that the facility had only 24 staff members trained and certified to respond to incidents such as riots. The contract requires Otter Creek to have 30 workers with that training.

By June, Otter Creek was down to 22 so-called special responders, with no new applicants, according to that month's report. The facility also lacked proper special response equipment, it said. But by last month, Otter Creek had two more special responders than required, Neace said.

Owen said CCA has launched a companywide campaign to get workers at its prisons to undergo special response training.
(4 of 4)

Lamb said special response teams from the privately run Lee Adjustment Center in Beattyville and state-run Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex in West Liberty could get to Otter Creek quickly if there was an emergency.
Advertisement

“We do not believe this issue compromises the safety and security of the inmate population housed at Otter Creek,” Lamb said.

But both prisons are roughly two hours from Otter Creek.
Disturbances reported

Incident reports show corrections officers occasionally have to deal with disturbances at the women's facility, although no deaths or serious injuries have been reported as a result.

In 2006, six inmates surrounded a female corrections officer and refused to return to their dorm.

“These inmates were aggressive and made threatening remarks toward the officer,” the report said.

A special response team was dispatched to assist during that incident.

Also that year, special responders had to lock down the prison because inmates were planning to have a sit-down protest when it was time to clear the yard.

The treatment of inmates by corrections officers also has been an issue at the prison in recent months, according to the reports.

Neace said in his June report that “residents being placed in segregation which are not a threat to security, staff, visitors or themselves has been an issue that (the department) has been concerned with.”

He said proper documentation for segregation was missing and that the number of grievances filed by inmates was high, with up to 27 having been filed that month.

In his May report, Neace said inmates “continue to complain about staff cursing, threatening segregation.”

Lamb said “a change in the number of grievances and the inmate morale could be attributed to a change in administration.”

Thompson said in her statement that she couldn't comment on any leadership issues at Otter Creek until the sex abuse investigations are complete.

Warden Jeff Little referred questions to CCA. Owen said staff turnover at Otter Creek has decreased since Little took the helm in March 2008.

However, in 11 of the last 19 monthly monitoring reports obtained by the newspaper, staffing has been cited as a problem. Of particular concern is the number of people trained to handle emergencies at the prison.
Advertisement

Neace, in a report dated July 8, cited a major concern about inadequate security staffing in June, adding, “OCCC is on 12-hour shifts and (workers) are struggling.”

He wrote that the facility was operating with 168 workers and had 28 vacancies at the end of the month. Five of those positions had been open for more than 60 days, which is a violation of the state's contract with CCA.

Many previous monthly reports do not specify how many positions were vacant, or for how long. Thus, it is impossible for the department to know how severe the staffing problem is at a given time and whether the company is in violation of the contract.

Many reports, however, include vague references to understaffing and low staff morale because of forced double shifts.

“They (officers) are exhausted, and several have expressed their concern to me,” former state monitor Deborah Patrick said in the August 2008 report.
Other prisons pay more

The reports reflect a pattern in which a flurry of hiring is typically followed several months later by a drop in staffing, indicating retention problems. Owen, the CCA spokesman, said many people hired in prisons soon realize it isn't the type of work they want to do.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Lamb said recently that her agency has begun sending inspectors to the prison without giving CCA advance notice and has sent two corrections experts there to help the state's on-site monitor.

The state's only other women's prison — the state-run Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women in Shelby County — — is nearly full most of the time.

“Our assessment is that it is more effective to rectify the situation there at Otter Creek than find alternative forms of incarceration for our inmate population housed there,” Lamb said.

She partly blamed problems with attracting and retaining staff on the fact that a federal prison employing roughly 400 people in nearby Inez pays more.
(3 of 4)

Starting pay there is $18.18 an hour for workers with no corrections experience, and $19.17 an hour for those with experience.
Advertisement

Starting pay at Otter Creek is $8.25 an hour.

In addition, the state pays corrections workers at two nearby state-run prisons $2.97 more an hour than Otter Creek employees receive.

The state's contract with CCA for Otter Creek does not specify minimum pay, because, Thompson said, such internal business decisions could affect the company's competitiveness.

Owen said CCA raised starting pay at Otter Creek by 5 percent last year and “we will continue to monitor their situation as we do with all our other facilities.”

Kentucky pays CCA $53.77 a day to house each inmate, a total of more than $8million last year.
Most employees are male

Tommy Johnson, a spokesman for the Hawaii Department of Public Safety, which contracts with Otter Creek to house 175 inmates from that state, said CCA might need to consider paying more to attract and retain workers at Otter Creek, particularly female officers.

He said a recent review found 81 percent of the workers were male, and 19 percent were female.

“The ratio really should be almost the opposite,” he said.

Johnson said his department has asked CCA to hire more women and consider making certain jobs at the prison female-only.

Owen said the company instituted a bonus referral and retention program in June in an effort to hire more female employees.

Neace also noted in his May report that the facility had only 24 staff members trained and certified to respond to incidents such as riots. The contract requires Otter Creek to have 30 workers with that training.

By June, Otter Creek was down to 22 so-called special responders, with no new applicants, according to that month's report. The facility also lacked proper special response equipment, it said. But by last month, Otter Creek had two more special responders than required, Neace said.

Owen said CCA has launched a companywide campaign to get workers at its prisons to undergo special response training.
(4 of 4)

Lamb said special response teams from the privately run Lee Adjustment Center in Beattyville and state-run Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex in West Liberty could get to Otter Creek quickly if there was an emergency.
Advertisement

“We do not believe this issue compromises the safety and security of the inmate population housed at Otter Creek,” Lamb said.

But both prisons are roughly two hours from Otter Creek.
Disturbances reported

Incident reports show corrections officers occasionally have to deal with disturbances at the women's facility, although no deaths or serious injuries have been reported as a result.

In 2006, six inmates surrounded a female corrections officer and refused to return to their dorm.

“These inmates were aggressive and made threatening remarks toward the officer,” the report said.

A special response team was dispatched to assist during that incident.

Also that year, special responders had to lock down the prison because inmates were planning to have a sit-down protest when it was time to clear the yard.

The treatment of inmates by corrections officers also has been an issue at the prison in recent months, according to the reports.

Neace said in his June report that “residents being placed in segregation which are not a threat to security, staff, visitors or themselves has been an issue that (the department) has been concerned with.”

He said proper documentation for segregation was missing and that the number of grievances filed by inmates was high, with up to 27 having been filed that month.

In his May report, Neace said inmates “continue to complain about staff cursing, threatening segregation.”

Lamb said “a change in the number of grievances and the inmate morale could be attributed to a change in administration.”

Thompson said in her statement that she couldn't comment on any leadership issues at Otter Creek until the sex abuse investigations are complete.

Warden Jeff Little referred questions to CCA. Owen said staff turnover at Otter Creek has decreased since Little took the helm in March 2008.

Starting pay there is $18.18 an hour for workers with no corrections experience, and $19.17 an hour for those with experience.
Advertisement

Starting pay at Otter Creek is $8.25 an hour.

In addition, the state pays corrections workers at two nearby state-run prisons $2.97 more an hour than Otter Creek employees receive.

The state's contract with CCA for Otter Creek does not specify minimum pay, because, Thompson said, such internal business decisions could affect the company's competitiveness.

Owen said CCA raised starting pay at Otter Creek by 5 percent last year and “we will continue to monitor their situation as we do with all our other facilities.”

Kentucky pays CCA $53.77 a day to house each inmate, a total of more than $8million last year.
Most employees are male

Tommy Johnson, a spokesman for the Hawaii Department of Public Safety, which contracts with Otter Creek to house 175 inmates from that state, said CCA might need to consider paying more to attract and retain workers at Otter Creek, particularly female officers.

He said a recent review found 81 percent of the workers were male, and 19 percent were female.

“The ratio really should be almost the opposite,” he said.

Johnson said his department has asked CCA to hire more women and consider making certain jobs at the prison female-only.

Owen said the company instituted a bonus referral and retention program in June in an effort to hire more female employees.

Neace also noted in his May report that the facility had only 24 staff members trained and certified to respond to incidents such as riots. The contract requires Otter Creek to have 30 workers with that training.

By June, Otter Creek was down to 22 so-called special responders, with no new applicants, according to that month's report. The facility also lacked proper special response equipment, it said. But by last month, Otter Creek had two more special responders than required, Neace said.

Owen said CCA has launched a companywide campaign to get workers.

Lamb said special response teams from the privately run Lee Adjustment Center in Beattyville and state-run Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex in West Liberty could get to Otter Creek quickly if there was an emergency.
Advertisement

“We do not believe this issue compromises the safety and security of the inmate population housed at Otter Creek,” Lamb said.

But both prisons are roughly two hours from Otter Creek.
Disturbances reported

Incident reports show corrections officers occasionally have to deal with disturbances at the women's facility, although no deaths or serious injuries have been reported as a result.

In 2006, six inmates surrounded a female corrections officer and refused to return to their dorm.

“These inmates were aggressive and made threatening remarks toward the officer,” the report said.

A special response team was dispatched to assist during that incident.

Also that year, special responders had to lock down the prison because inmates were planning to have a sit-down protest when it was time to clear the yard.

The treatment of inmates by corrections officers also has been an issue at the prison in recent months, according to the reports.

Neace said in his June report that “residents being placed in segregation which are not a threat to security, staff, visitors or themselves has been an issue that (the department) has been concerned with.”

He said proper documentation for segregation was missing and that the number of grievances filed by inmates was high, with up to 27 having been filed that month.

In his May report, Neace said inmates “continue to complain about staff cursing, threatening segregation.”

Lamb said “a change in the number of grievances and the inmate morale could be attributed to a change in administration.”

Thompson said in her statement that she couldn't comment on any leadership issues at Otter Creek until the sex abuse investigations are complete.

Warden Jeff Little referred questions to CCA. Owen said staff turnover at Otter Creek has decreased since Little took the helm in March 2008.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20090816/NEWS01/908160338/1008/NEWS01/Private+prison+plagued+by+problems++reports+show

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

August 16, 2009

Detroit Free Press Editorial: "For Jobs' Sake Bring in Out-of-State Prisoners"

"A bigger concern is whether the federal government would retain local correctional officers. For that reason, inmates from other state correctional systems are probably preferable, as Michigan could determine who works at the prison."

Posted: Aug. 15, 2009
EDITORIAL- Detroit Free Press
For jobs' sake, bring in out-of-state prisoners

Michigan is taking overdue steps to reduce its prison population and close prisons. Given its woeful economy, the state ought to entertain any offers to house out-of-state prisoners -- including 229 Guantanamo Bay terrorism suspects -- to ease the economic impact on local communities. Housing those prisoners poses no greater risk than incarcerating people convicted in Michigan for murder or other violent offenses.

Federal officials visited the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility Thursday to determine its suitability for detainees now held in a military installation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- one of three possibilities to raise revenues by using Michigan prisons to house inmates currently incarcerated elsewhere. Local leaders generally support the move, if it keeps the 604-bed, maximum-security prison, otherwise slated to close Oct. 1, up and running. The prison provides 340 jobs in the city of 1,500, as well as nearly half of the city's water and sewer revenues.

California and Pennsylvania have also expressed interest in sending prisoners to Michigan, at a price of roughly $32,000 a year per prisoner, the cost to incarcerate in Michigan.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm is least enthusiastic about the Gitmo detainees, citing the security issues of moving terrorism suspects to Michigan. Such concerns are generally unfounded. Escapes from maximum-security prisons are extremely rare and, when they do occur, the prisoner generally flees the area. Standish, in fact, has had no escapes.

A bigger concern is whether the federal government would retain local correctional officers. For that reason, inmates from other state correctional systems are probably preferable, as Michigan could determine who works at the prison.

The state seeks to reduce its prison population by 3,500 this year by releasing more parole-eligible prisoners and closing several of its 41 prisons. That's good, but more than 1,000 jobs could be lost.

Viewing prisons as employment agencies is immoral and usually impractical. In a state with the nation's highest unemployment rate, it's inevitable, though, that the debate on closing prisons would include jobs and economic impact.

Housing out-of-state prisoners would enable Michigan to continue its overdue effort to reduce inmates and lower its $2-billion-a-year corrections budget, while easing some of the political pressures, and personal pain, of job losses from prison closings.

http://www.freep.com/article/20090815/OPINION01/908150325/1322/For-jobs--sake--bring-in-out-of-state-prisoners

Posted by lois at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

LA Times Op-Ed: The disaster before the disater at Chino

Opinion: The disaster before the disaster at Chino
The prison was once a model for a new era of enlightened criminal justice, but Californians' refusal to meet their fiscal and social responsibilities ruined that vision.

By Volker Janssen

August 15, 2009

For corrections experts, the riot at the California Institution for Men in Chino last weekend, which injured 175 prisoners and damaged or destroyed six dormitories, was a disaster that could have been predicted. In a state prison system bursting at the seams and teeming with racial tensions, such violence would seem to be inevitable.

But in the case of Chino, this riot marks not just one more point in a seemingly endless history of prison violence; it is a sad contrast to the high expectations this prison invited at its opening in 1941.

As the first minimum-security prison for men in the state, Chino was supposed to launch California into a new era of enlightened criminal justice. San Quentin and Folsom had been built in the previous century and were notorious for their violence and overcrowding. San Quentin, with more than 4,000 prisoners stuffed into its old cells, had the largest convict population in the nation at the time. A Times reporter, writing in 1930, described the place as a "seething caldron of rebellion, a volcano ready to burst into eruption at any moment."

After dramatic food riots at San Quentin, Gov. Culbert Olson replaced the corrupt board of prison directors in 1940 and brought in reform-minded administrators who halted the construction of gun towers and a wall at the new prison in Chino. The only fence at the "prison without walls" was a barbed-wire one.

In Chino, things were going to be different.

To manage the facility, the state hired a penologist of national reputation, Kenyon J. Scudder, who had as much experience in vocational training as in psychology and public administration. When the first prisoners arrived from Northern California in a chartered Greyhound bus without handcuffs, leg irons or a lock on the bus door, the superintendent -- he did not want to be called "warden" -- took his new prisoners to the barbed-wire fence and showed them how to scale it without cutting themselves. Escape from Chino was easy, he told them. But if they did, "many more years will be added to your sentence, and you can never come back to Chino."

This strategy worked, for the most part. And at the time, Chino was considered one of the best prisons in the nation. Starting with a population of only a few hundred, prisoners were soon busy in the fields and workshops, and in forest camps where they worked in reforestation and fire prevention. During World War II, prisoners actually stood in Chino's only guard tower and served as aircraft warning sentries. Racism existed, of course, but the administration explicitly rejected segregation as a policy.

The California criminal justice system was completely overhauled in 1944 with the creation of the Department of Corrections. Flush with wartime tax revenue, Gov. Earl Warren launched the expansion of the prison system. The model for the new facilities was Chino.

A whole generation of prison reformers who had started their careers under Scudder now came to occupy positions in the new prisons all over the state. Hailed as an example of an enlightened commitment to rehabilitation and proper administration, the state served as national and even international model.

But just as Chino came to serve as an example of a successful postwar welfare state committed to growth and more equal access to prosperity, so have state prisons taken the lead in the state's malfunction and ungovernability. California's prison crisis is, in fact, a few decades old, with its beginnings in the 1970s. That was when Californians launched a tax revolt and fell in love with governance through propositions.

But turning away from our fiscal responsibilities and social obligations has worked about as well as our attempt to solve the crime problem through mass incarceration. Neither the prisons nor the state can run on autopilot. We need political leaders who can offer both a vision and the art of political compromise, not just administrators who can occasionally put out a fire. Or contain a riot.

The recent violence is just one more example of how much of the California dream we have lost.

Volker Janssen, an assistant professor of California history at Cal State Fullerton, is working on a history of prisons in postwar California.

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-janssen15-2009aug15,0,2614583.story

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

States going to great lengths to squeeze money from pirsoners

Some states are charging inmates fees for prison stay
Daily charges help ease prison costs amid budget cuts
By Deborah Hastings
Associated Press / August 16, 2009

A one-night stay? Ninety dollars. Need to see a doctor? Ten bucks. Want toilet paper? Pay for it yourself.
In the ever-widening search for extra income during desperate economic times, states across the nation are embracing a new idea: making inmates pay their debt to society not only in hard time, but also in cold, hard cash.

In New York, Assemblyman James Tedisco introduced a bill that would charge wealthy criminals $90 a day for room and board at state prisons. Dubbed the Madoff Bill, after Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, the legislation is designed to ease the $1 billion annual cost of incarcerating prisoners.

Several other states and some cities have gone to great lengths to squeeze money from inmates.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, Sheriff Joe Arpaio calls himself America’s toughest sheriff. Earlier this year, he said inmates would be charged $1.25 per day for meals. His decision followed months of food strikes staged by convicts who complained of being fed green bologna and moldy bread.

In Iowa’s Des Moines County, where officials faced a $1.7 million budget hole this year, politicians considered charging prisoners for toilet paper, at a savings of $2,300 per year. The idea was ultimately dropped.

A New Jersey legislator introduced a bill similar to New York’s, this one based on fees charged by the Camden County Correctional Facility, which bills prisoners $5 a day for room and board and $10 per day for infirmary stays, totaling an estimated $300,000 per year.

In Virginia, Richmond’s overcrowded city jail has begun charging $1 per day, hoping to earn as much as $200,000 a year. In Missouri’s Taney County, home to Branson, the sheriff says charging inmates $45 a day will help pay for a new jail.

Prisons and jails took some of the biggest cuts this summer when legislators took machetes to their state budgets, trying to slash their way out of an economic morass exacerbated by dwindling tax revenues. But to civil rights advocates and some law enforcement officials, trying to raise money by charging inmates makes no sense.

“The overwhelming number of people who end up in prison are poor,’’ said Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. Alexander also says such efforts only amount to political window dressing.

Collecting the fees covers a wide spectrum. In Richmond, they are deducted from a prisoner’s personal account, which contains whatever money relatives send and any cash the suspect had when arrested. In Arizona, Arpaio, who makes inmates wear pink underwear to increase the humiliation factor, also taps prisoner accounts. Inmates who have no money still receive food, the sheriff says.

Other authorities slap the prisoner with a bill upon release from prison. But it is often hard to collect. In Kansas, Overland Park officials acknowledged collecting only 39 percent of fees. In Jackson County, Mo., officials discovered they spent more money trying to collect fees than they received from inmates.

In some cases, it is prisoners’ families who shoulder the financial burden.

“It’s the spouses, children, and parents who pay the fees; they are the people who contribute to prisoners’ canteen accounts,’’ said Sarah Geraghty of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which successfully opposed an effort earlier this year in Georgia to bill prisoners.

The money was to be collected by seizing cash in their jail accounts or by filing lawsuits. The proposal also would have denied parole to those who could not make payments after being freed.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/08/16/some_states_charging_inmates_for_stay/

Posted by lois at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

August 15, 2009

MA: 6 women at Framingham attempt suicide in 4 months. DOC blames cuts in budget.

Female inmate suicide bids top 6
By O’Ryan Johnson
Friday, August 14, 2009
Boston Herald

Two suicide attempts by female prisoners this month at MCI-Framingham brings the total to six attempts at the prison since May, one of which was successful.

Department of Correction officials said one woman tried to kill herself Wednesday, and another on Aug. 1. Both were unsuccessful. Correction officials said there were five attempted suicides: on May 30, July 18, July 19, and the two most recent.

The one successful suicide was July 19.

The apparent surge in suicide attempts comes as prison mental health services were rolled back under Gov. Deval Patrick’s $13 million in cuts from the DOC budget.
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1190935
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Clearly six women haven't attempted suicide at Framingham because of $13 million was cut from the entire half a billion DOC budget, a fraction of which went to "mental health programs at Framingham. ---Lois

Posted by lois at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

August 14, 2009

Folsom Embodies California's Prison Blues

Folsom Embodies California's Prison Blues
by Laura Sullivan
August 13, 2009

In January 1968, Johnny Cash set up his band on a makeshift stage in the cafeteria at Folsom State Prison in California.

"Hello, I'm Johnny Cash," he said in his deep baritone to thunderous applause. Song after song, the inmates thumped their fists and cheered from the same steel benches now bolted to the floor.

The morning that Cash played may have been the high-water mark for Folsom — and for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The men in the cafeteria lived alone in their own prison cells. Almost every one of them was in school or learning a professional trade. The cost of housing them barely registered on the state budget. And when these men walked out of Folsom free, the majority of them never returned to prison.

It was a record no other state could match.

Things have changed. California's prisons are all in a state of crisis. And nowhere is this more visible than at Folsom today.

Folsom was built to hold 1,800 inmates. It now houses 4,427.

It's once-vaunted education and work programs have been cut to just a few classes, with waiting lists more than 1,000 inmates long.

Officers are on furlough. Its medical facility is under federal receivership. And like every other prison in the state, 75 percent of the inmates who are released from Folsom today will be back behind bars within three years.

California's prison system costs $10 billion a year. Its crumbling, overcrowded facilities are home to the highest recidivism rate in the country. And the state that was once was the national model in corrections has become the model every state is now trying to avoid.

'Kind Of Like A Pressure Cooker'

Lt. Anthony Gentile, spokesman for Folsom, stands in the prison's empty cafeteria, beneath chipping paint, rusting pipes and razor wire.

"There's drug activity, gang activity," Gentile says. "It's kind of like a pressure cooker."

Where a photographer stood 40 years ago and captured Cash's famous concert, an officer now stands in a metal cage. He's armed with three guns and pepper spray.

When they're confined in this environment, the problems tend to simmer and stay there. It creates somewhat of the mob mentality.

- Lt. Anthony Gentile, spokesman for Folsom

There are now 15 to 20 assaults a week here at Folsom. And while inmates used to mix with one another, Folsom today is entirely segregated by race — in the cafeteria, on the yard and in the cell blocks.

"When they're confined in this environment," Gentile says, "the problems tend to simmer and stay there. It creates somewhat of the mob mentality."

To figure out how California could have gotten to such a place, you have to start in Sacramento.

Jeanne Woodford is one of four secretaries that the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has had in the past five years. She spent 30 years in the department. As secretary, she lasted two months.

"Honestly, I was very hopeful when I went up there," Woodford said about Sacramento. "I thought it was all about the right policy and the right principle. It's really about the money."

And lots of it. California can't afford its prisons. Taxpayers spend as much money locking people up as they do on the state's entire education system.

How Did Things Get So Bad?

Experts agree that the problem started when Californians voted for a series of get-tough-on-crime laws in the 1980s. The state's prison population exploded immediately. It jumped from 20,000 inmates, where it had held steady throughout the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Today there are 167,000 inmates in the system.

Jeanne Woodford was warden of San Quentin during the prison population boom.

"The violence just went out of control," she remembers. "And then the programs started going away. I was there during an 18-month lockdown. It was just unbelievably horrific."

California wasn't the only state to toughen laws in the throes of the 1980s crack wars. But Californians took it to a new level.

Voters increased parole sanctions and gave prison time to nonviolent drug offenders. They eliminated indeterminate sentencing, removing any leeway to let inmates out early for good behavior. Then came the "Three Strikes You're Out" law in 1994. Offenders who had committed even a minor third felony — like shoplifting — got life sentences.
Derrick Poole is enrolled in Folsom's mill and cabinetry program.
Enlarge Amy Walters/NPR

Derrick Poole is enrolled in Folsom's mill and cabinetry program. Due to the high prison population and budget problems, Poole is one of only 10 percent of Folsom inmates who can participate in the prison's vocational programs.

Derrick Poole is enrolled in Folsom's mill and cabinetry program. Due to the high prison population and budget problems, Poole is one of only 10 percent of Folsom inmates who can participate in the prison's vocational programs.

Voters at the time were inundated with television ads, pamphlets and press conferences from Gov. Pete Wilson. "Three strikes is the most important victory yet in the fight to take back our streets," Wilson told crowds.

But behind these efforts to get voters to approve these laws was one major player: the correctional officers union.

A Prison Guard Union With Political Muscle

In three decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support "three strikes" and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions. It donated $1 million to Wilson after he backed the three strikes law.

And the result for the union has been dramatic. Since the laws went into effect and the inmate population boomed, the union grew from 2,600 officers to 45,000 officers. Salaries jumped: In 1980, the average officer earned $15,000 a year; today, one in every 10 officers makes more than $100,000 a year.

Lance Corcoran, spokesman for the union, says it does what is best for its members.

"We have advocated successfully for our members," he said.

But he disputes that the union has purposefully tried to increase the prison population.

"The notion that we are some prison industrial complex, or that we are recruiting felons or trying to change laws, is a misnomer," he said.

Money And Influence

I think that prisons should be a place where an individual has the opportunity to change if they choose to and we move forward from there.

- Fulsom Warden Michael Evans

Campaign records, however, show much of the funding to promote and push for the passage of the laws came from a political action committee the union created. It is run out of a group called Crime Victims United of California.

Its director, Harriet Salarno, says the committee is independent from the union. But a review of the PAC's financial records shows the PAC has not received a donation from another group besides the union since 2004.

Corcoran does not deny that the two are closely connected.

"We support a number of victims' rights groups," he said.

When asked why the correctional officers union is involved in victims' rights at all, Corcoran said: "There are people that think that there's some sort of ulterior motive, but the reality is we simply want to make sure [the victims'] voices are heard."

But Corcoran acknowledges that the union has benefited from the increase in the prison population after these laws passed.

"We've had the opportunity to grow," Corcoran says, "and that has brought with it both success and criticism."

Secret Dealings With The Governor

Woodford says she stepped down as secretary of the corrections department when she found out that the union had been going on behind her back to negotiate directly with the governor's office.

"The union is incredibly powerful," Woodford says.

Former Secretary Roderick Hickman resigned for the same reason in February 2006.

"The biggest problem that I had was the relationship that I had with the union," Hickman says.

Hickman says the union was able to control the department's policy decisions, including undermining efforts to divert offenders from prison and reduce the prison population.

"Maybe I was just impatient," he says, "or it wasn't going to go fast enough, but [the department] is still in the same place I left it, with an over $8 billion budget. Now it's over $10 billion."

Today, 70 percent of that budget goes to pay salaries and benefits to the union and staff. Just 5 percent of the budget goes to education and vocational programs — the kind of programs that study after study in the past 10 years has found will keep inmates from returning to prison.

Shop Talk: A Chance To Cross Race Lines

From the instant you walk through the metal doors of the mill and cabinetry workshop at Folsom, you get a different feeling from other parts of the prison. In the shop on a recent day, a group of black, white and Latino inmates are bent over a table, talking to each other, discussing measurements for a conference table.

"When we're down here, we put all the politics to the side," says inmate Derrick Poole as he works on the table's legs. "It gives us a place to go where we can we can get out of the prison politics gang, where we don't get along, where we don't socialize outside our race. We socialize outside our race here."

Poole is spending nine years at Folsom for drug possession with intent to sell. In his life, he has been released from prison at least six times that he can remember. It hasn't worked out well.

"When I got out, you kind of lose your social skills," Poole said. "You get used to segregating yourself. You already weren't learned on the street. Then you come in here and you're not learning, and now your mind is more hollow, more empty."

Poole got very lucky this time, beating out hundreds of others to land a spot among just 27 inmates in the cabinetry program. When he's done, Poole will be an accredited woodworker with his GED.

Most of the men in Folsom won't be so fortunate. Just across from the cabinetry shop, program administrator and school Principal Jean Bracy sits in her makeshift office next to the welding class. She knows the statistics by heart.

"I have 1,797 inmates who read below the 9th grade level; 394 of those read below the 4th grade level," Bracy says. "When we put them back out on the streets, they're not employable."

And back on the streets is where 85 percent of all California's inmates are going one day when their sentences run out, regardless of whether they spent their time in prison dealing drugs and running a gang or learning how to weld.

Bracy only has a handful of vocational programs left, enough to reach less than 10 percent of Folsom's inmates — and the state plans to cut even that in half in the next few weeks.

"I think this is the worst I've ever seen it," Bracy says.

'A Merry-Go-Round'

It only costs her about $100,000 to run these programs — not even a blip in a $10 billion-a-year prison budget. But, says Bracy, the programs are always the first to go. Sometimes she almost feels like giving up.

"It's just not cost-effective to throw men and women in prison and then do nothing with them," she said. "And shame on us for thinking that's safety. It's not public safety. You lock them up and do nothing with them. They go out not even equal to what they came in but worse."

The numbers bear that out, with 90,000 inmates returning to California's prisons every year.

But compare that to the Braille program here at Folsom. Inmates are learning to translate books for the blind. In 20 years, not a single inmate who has been part of the program has ever returned to prison. This year, the program has been cut back to 19 inmates.

Out on the prison yard, one of the oldtimers, an inmate named Ed Steward — or "Lefty" — sits in old chair in the only bit of shade on the dusty dirt field. He watches the inmates stand in groups by their race and shakes his head.

"Nowadays, you know, the kids are just coming through this like it's a merry-go-round," he said. "Like there's nothing to it."

Most of these inmates here on this yard aren't here for serious or violent crimes. The number of inmates incarcerated in California's prisons for murder, assault or rape has been relatively unchanged in two decades. The difference is this yard is now packed with drug dealers and drug users, car thieves and shoplifters who stole something worth more than $500.

What Used To Be

But all across this prison are signs of what this place once was — when administrators came from New York and Texas to find out how Folsom kept its violence so low and its inmates from coming back.

There's the deserted shop where inmates used to train to be butchers; it was closed when the prison couldn't afford to remove the asbestos.

Its thriving medical facility was shuttered when it couldn't keep up with thousands of new inmates.

And hovering above the prison is China Hill, a now-barren field where inmates once trained to become landscapers. The prison can't afford to pay the teacher.

Warden Michael Evans can see China Hill just outside his office. Its meaning is not lost on him.

"If I have a dog and I put him in a cage and I beat [him] regularly, ultimately [it] will bite me when I open that door," he said.

After three decades working in corrections, Evans says he has come to one conclusion.

"I think that prisons should be a place where an individual has the opportunity to change if they choose to," he said, "and we move forward from there."

For now, California is at a standstill, unable to find the money to move forward with a different strategy, unable to move backward to a time when it didn't need one.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111843426

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

CCA loses open-records case brought by Alex Friendman of Prison Legal News

Private prison company loses open-records case

By The Associated Press
08.14.09

NASHVILLE — The Tennessee Court of Appeals has ruled that private prison company Corrections Corporation of America is subject to the state's open-records law.

The Nashville-based company falls under the act because it performs the equivalent functions of a government agency by running state prisons, the unanimous three-judge panel said in its Aug. 5 opinion, Friedmann v. CCA.

The appeals panel’s opinion affirmed a July 2008 ruling by Davidson County Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman, which also found that CCA must provide documents to Alex Friedmann, an editor of a national prison magazine who sued seeking records on the company.

Friedmann, a former prisoner who is now an editor at Prison Legal News, sent a letter to CCA in April 2007 asking for information on settlements, judgments and complaints against the company.

He sued CCA when the company refused to turn over the information, claiming it wasn't subject to the open-records law.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=21950

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

August 13, 2009

PA considers sending prisoners to MI

State Department of Corrections officials confirmed Tuesday that Pennsylvania has approached Michigan about off-loading(!!!!) some of its prison population, which has grown from 48,000 to 51,000 since December.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Pa. considers sending inmates to Mich.
Karen Bouffard / Detroit News Lansing Bureau

Lansing -- A third party has expressed interest in exporting prisoners to Michigan -- but they'll have to stand in line behind California and the federal government, which is thinking about shipping in terror suspects from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

State Department of Corrections officials confirmed Tuesday that Pennsylvania has approached Michigan about off-loading some of its prison population, which has grown from 48,000 to 51,000 since December.

The House Judiciary subcommittee on corrections reform will hear testimony today about the impact of shipping in prisoners at a hearing at 10:30 a.m. in Room 308 of the House Office Building, 124 N. Capitol Ave., in Lansing.

Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton confirmed sending prisoners to Michigan "is something we are considering." She added that Pennsylvania Secretary of Corrections Jeffrey Beard has spoken with Michigan Corrections Director Patricia Caruso on three occasions.

Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said Michigan e-mailed queries to each of the 50 states in March asking if they would be interested in housing prisoners here.

Florida and Wisconsin expressed minimal interest, Marlan said. Michigan submitted a request for proposals from Alaska and learned last week Michigan lost the bid, Marlan said.

Vermont offered to send Michigan some prisoners but not enough to significantly increase revenue for Michigan, Marlan said.

"They were looking for 100 beds, so it's nothing that would benefit us," Marlan said.
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090812/METRO/908120345/1409/METRO/Pa.-considers-sending-inmates-to-Mich.

Posted by lois at 06:01 PM | Comments (0)

August 12, 2009

Vera Institute: At least 23 states spend less on prisons

Tuesday, August 11, 2009
At least 23 states spend less on prisons
By John Gramlich, Stateline.org Staff Writer
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=418338
A survey of 33 states by the Vera Institute of Justice found that 23 have slashed funding for corrections this year:

* Alabama
* Alaska
* Arizona
* Delaware
* Georgia
* Idaho
* Iowa
* Kansas
* Louisiana
* Maryland
* Massachusetts
* Minnesota
* Missouri
* Montana
* Nebraska
* Nevada
* New Mexico
* New York
* Oregon
* Rhode Island
* South Carolina
* Virginia
* Washington
A $1 billion cost-cutting plan announced last week by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) will translate into layoffs for more than a thousand state prison workers.

In Oregon, a voter-approved plan to hand longer prison sentences to those who commit property crimes was delayed by state lawmakers who said they could not pay for it.

Tennessee’s department of corrections has sought to save money by offering inmates less milk and meat in their daily meals.

And in Kansas — which has received national attention in recent years for shifting resources from locking up prisoners to rehabilitating them — the state eliminated 85 percent of the slots in its substance-abuse treatment program for inmates, citing budget constraints.

The national recession is taking its toll on what had been one of the fastest-growing areas of state government spending: prisons. Even though state corrections budgets have ballooned in the past two decades amid a surging U.S. prison population, at least 23 states slashed funding for prisons this year, according to a new survey by the nonpartisan Vera Institute of Justice, a research organization based in New York. Thirty-three states responded to the survey, paid for by The Pew Charitable Trusts, which also funds Stateline.org.

Six states — Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and Washington — cut funding for corrections by more than 10 percent from last year’s levels, according to the study. Kansas saw the biggest recorded decrease, spending 22 percent less than it did last year.

Corrections is the fifth-largest area of state spending after Medicaid, secondary education, higher education and transportation. State spending on prisons has swelled as the nation’s jail and prison population has climbed to 2.3 million people, or about one in every 100 adults. But grim budget realities are forcing state lawmakers’ hand.

According to the Vera survey, many states are wringing savings from their correctional systems by trying to reduce the huge operational costs of running prisons — including by laying off workers, freezing their wages or cutting services to inmates. They also are exploring new ways to reduce recidivism and achieve long-term savings, in some cases easing sanctions on “technical violators” who break conditions of their parole and frequently are sent back to prison. Some states, including Colorado and Oregon, are allowing more prisoners to reduce their prison sentences through “earned-time credits” for good behavior and other forms of early release.

Some of the cost-cutting moves — using videoconferencing to avoid physically transporting inmates for court appearances, for example, and cutting back on inmates’ meal offerings — have targeted the basics of daily prison life and reaped relatively modest savings. But other changes will save tens of millions of dollars and have not come without political fights.

According to Stateline.org’s annual review of states’ legislative sessions, at least seven states — Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Washington — this year decided to close prisons. In some states, those plans touched off resistance among prison unions and in hard-hit communities anxious about losing even more jobs.

New York’s prison workers’ union earlier this year accused the administration of Gov. David Paterson (D) of creating “the most dangerous conditions ever” for correctional officers by closing 10 prisons and packing inmates into other facilities. In Michigan, which has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) is trying to avoid closing some prisons — and laying off prison guards — by accepting inmates from California’s teeming system. Some state officials have backed the idea of housing detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Early releases also have caused alarm, particularly in California, where a federal panel of three judges last week ordered the state to free more than 40,000 inmates — or about 27 percent of its prison population — within the next two years to ease dangerous overcrowding. Attorney General Jerry Brown (D), who is widely expected to run for governor next year, attacked the decision and could appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The early release of thousands of inmates also is being considered in Illinois.

While some criminal justice advocates contend that early releases and other cost-cutting moves could endanger public safety, others say states have not gone far enough in cutting inmate numbers.

Some advocates say state lawmakers have avoided what they see as the “elephant in the room” — tough sentencing policies that have put many low-level offenders behind bars for longer and been a major factor behind the explosive growth in the nation’s prison population since the 1970s, when many of the laws were passed. The federal panel that ruled on California’s prison overcrowding cited sentencing laws as a factor behind the Golden State’s huge prison population.

While New York this year revised its drug sentencing laws to give judges more discretion to keep offenders out of jail, other high-profile sentencing changes in the states have been far more limited in their scope. Texas, for instance, eliminated life without parole for juveniles, a penalty that currently affects only seven inmates. New Mexico abolished capital punishment, but had only two men on death row when the bill was signed into law in March.

Washington state’s legislative session this year was “completely upside down in terms of criminal justice policy,” said state Rep. Roger Goodman (D), vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Goodman said lawmakers cut funding for the wrong programs — such as housing and other transitional services that can help ex-inmates stay out of trouble — and refused to make substantial changes to the sentencing policies that he said have put too many nonviolent and drug-addicted people in prison in the first place.

Goodman explained lawmakers’ distaste for making sentencing changes this way: “There aren’t enough political points to be gained by taking this issue on. There are political points to be gained by attacking it.”

While broad changes to criminal sentencing laws remain a tough sell issue in many state capitols, corrections officials are pushing other, less controversial changes to reduce prison populations. Many states have made sick or dying inmates eligible for early parole. Other states, including Florida and Tennessee, have invested more heavily in drug treatment courts and community supervision programs in the hopes of keeping offenders from returning to prison.

“Changing sentences is a very difficult thing to do. And so we’ve gone around it,” Pennsylvania Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said during an annual summit of state legislators in Philadelphia last month.

http://www.vera.org/download?file=2877/2009-07-27_Pew-report_State-bud gets-v2.pdf

Posted by lois at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)

MA: County Sheriffs Reform Law

From Senator Stan Rosenberg's email report: August 12, 2009

County Sheriffs Reform Law

On Aug. 6th, the governor signed a bill that completes a set of reforms that I initiated when I chaired the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

The new law, "An Act Transferring County Sheriffs to the Commonwealth," willgo into effect January 1, 2010, and could save taxpayers up to $8 million a year bytransferring the remaining seven county sheriffs' offices to the state payroll and state health insurance plan. The bill is designed to promote a more efficient delivery of services between state and county governments and is the latest in a string of reforms recently passed by the Legislature.

The law moves the Bristol, Norfolk, Suffolk, Plymouth, Barnstable, Nantucket and Dukes county sheriffs' offices to the state payroll and the state Group Insurance Commission (GIC), which will provide sheriffs' employees with more affordable health care.

The law also addresses concerns about the original proposal that left counties with a sizeable unfunded liability by leaving retired sheriffs' employees in the county retirement systems. The new version allows counties to apply their annual corrections Maintenance of Effort (MOE) assessment to offset these unfunded liabilities.

Once these liabilities are paid off, the MOE assessment will be abolished, saving the counties millions of dollars and ultimately providing tax relief to local county taxpayers. Sheriffs' office retirees and current employees will be moved into the GIC to provide savings on health insurance costs.

Furthermore, the law adopts language to protect member communities from increased pension funding costs as a result of the transfer. This would be accomplished by giving the county retirement board the ability to address any shortfalls in available funding, for example by extending its pension funding schedule and in certain circumstances retaining a greater percentage of deeds excise revenue to pay down liabilities.

The law also removes the $30,000 in pay raises for the Dukes and Nantucket sheriffs that were included in the original proposal. Instead, the Dukes County Sheriff's annual salary remains $97,000 and the Nantucket County Sheriff, who does not oversee a house of correction, will see his pay reduced by approximately one third of his current salary.

The law also does the following:

· Sheriffs' salaries will no longer be tied to that of an associate superior court judge. In the future, sheriffs will earn their pay raises based on merit;

· It eliminates the current practice of supplementing the Nantucket County Sheriff's salary by allowing him to keep an estimated $15,000 to $20,000 per year in civil process fees. Those fees will now go toward funding the operations of the sheriff's office, saving state taxpayers money;

· It also eliminates the existing County Finance Review Board.

Finally, the bill creates a commission to investigate the possible consolidation, elimination or realignment of certain sheriffs' offices and the potential cost savings. It will be organized with the intention of taking a broader look at the operations within the sheriffs' offices and report on the efficiencies that can be gained.

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

Review: "When a Heart Turns Rock Solid" probes Lives of 3 Springfield MA brothers

Review: 'Rock' probes the lives of three Springfield brothers
By THE DAILY HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE
Wednesday, August 12, 2009

"When a Heart Turns Rock Solid" (Pantheon Books), a window into the lives of three Puerto Rican brothers in Springfield slides open during their teenage years, affording readers a raw glimpse of their struggles with love, drugs and violence in a sociological study that spans nearly two decades.

We learn how Sammy Rivera does lines of coke in his sixth-grade classroom; how his older brother Fausto watches as an inmate eviscerates another with his bare hands; how the eldest brother, Julio, is the glue that holds the family together.

"When a Heart Turns Rock Solid" succeeds because author Timothy Black makes readers care about his subjects - or at least their stories - which are presented in a somewhat sympathetic light. Although Black relies heavily on dry data to explain how impoverished communities are affected by economic and political forces, the story of the three brothers remains captivating.

Despite enduring racist attitudes toward Puerto Ricans and a meager high school education, the brothers achieve varying degrees of sobriety, discipline and self-love as they grow up in Springfield, in the 1990s.

They occasionally abandon street life when they discover a sense of purpose through family, women or work.

"I know how you must feel about your teaching," Sammy tells the author as he attends culinary school, "because now I'm feeling passionate about something like you."

Julio is the most accomplished, earning accolades as a high school wrestler and football player. He becomes the first of the family to graduate from high school, and manages to build a solid street credibility. Few mess with the trained boxer and ruthless gang member.

Fausto seeks to emulate his older brother's successes, but flunking grades encouraged by a system that pushes him to the next grade level despite his near-illiteracy prevents him from joining any sports team.

However, his charisma and intellectual capacity override his shortcomings.

He is tapped at the last minute to give a speech at school, prompting his teacher to praise his poise and confidence. He also thrives at his job with the Boys Club, where his supervisor describes him as a "godsend."

But he later struggles to fill out an application to work there again, embarrassed to let anyone know he can barely read or write.

Sammy also struggles in school, and is the first to join the drug-dealing trade. He relishes how naive, pot-smoking white teens from a nearby town are impressed with him and the supposed ghetto he comes from. He takes them on a "field trip" to Springfield at their request, but upon arriving there, doesn't know what to do with them, so he takes them to his mom's house for a meal.

Humor helps them navigate from one disappointment to another, but they remain aware of their failures.

Julio manages to avoid drugs, but Fausto and Sammy fall prey to heroin. They also serve time in prison for various crimes and struggle to find normalcy after their release.

"The effects of prison you don't see 'em right away," Fausto says. "A lot of those things really break you, right, they disturb you - they disturb a part of your brain that's not meant to be disturbed."

The book has the same effect, if only by challenging your assumptions about the extent that external forces and a lack of individual responsibility and determination are to blame for the plight of marginalized communities.

Posted by lois at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)

States Can't Afford Prison System Boom

NEAL PEIRCE
States Can't Afford Prison System Boom
August 12, 2009

In a season of deep deficits and alarming program cuts, why aren't states more seriously focused on reducing their swelling prison populations? The Vera Institute of Justice reports unusual progress — 22 states, pressed by the recession, are reluctantly starting cutbacks. But with a world-leading 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States has a long, long way to go. California's case is extreme, but illustrative.

In the mid-1970s, it had about 20,000 offenders behind bars. Today the total is 168,000 inmates — an increase of 740 percent. In 1999, its prison system cost an already massive $4 billion to operate. Now, with more prisoners, more penitentiaries, more guards and more health costs, the budget figure has topped $10 billion — a big contributor to the $26 billion state budget shortfall. And the money is producing more horrors than cures.

After 14 years of lawsuits by inmates alleging cruel and unusual punishment, a three-judge federal court panel on Aug. 4 ordered California to reduce its prisoner rolls by 43,000 inmates over the next two years. The state, the judges wrote shortly before a major riot at a prison in Chino, has created a "criminogenic" system that pushes prisoners and parolees to more crimes through "appalling," "horrific" prison conditions:

"Some institutions have populations approaching 300 percent of their intended capacity. In these overcrowded conditions, inmate-on-inmate violence is almost impossible to prevent, infectious diseases spread more easily, and lockdowns are sometimes the only means by which to maintain control. In short, California's prisons are bursting at the seams and are impossible to manage."

Mentally ill inmates are left without access to health care, said the judges, noting that in the past four years "a California inmate was dying needlessly every six or seven days." California's fiscal crisis has already led Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders to agree to cut $1.2 billion from the prison budget.

They haven't agreed how, though discussion includes reducing prison rolls by up to 37,000 through early releases and revised parole practices. Already, California's increasingly ideological Republicans are opposed. Assembly Leader Sam Blakeslee talks darkly of "letting out some very dangerous criminals onto our streets and into our neighborhoods."

And it isn't just Republicans who resist significant reform — it's California's powerful "prison-industrial complex." Last autumn, the reformist Drug Policy Alliance Network and its allies put a Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act on the ballot.

Supported by a wide range of treatment officials and former high-ranking corrections officials, it focused on non-prison treatment for nonviolent drug offenders plus "good time" credits for inmates and fewer arrests of parolees for technical violations. California's high recidivism rates would be curbed and billions in new prison construction forestalled

But California's prison guards union (with 2,000-plus members earning more than $100,000 a year) didn't like the idea of fewer inmates (and jobs). So with other pro-prison forces, it mounted a $3.5 million television campaign in opposition. California's political establishment fell into line, including Schwarzenegger and former governors such as present Attorney General Jerry Brown (a likely 2010 gubernatorial candidate). The measure lost resoundingly.

In contrast to California's folly, New York state has actually reduced its prison rolls by 10,000 in the past decade. How? By relying heavily on the types of alternative treatment for nonviolent offenders that California spurns. And just this year, New York finally repealed the infamous "Rockefeller drug laws" that helped swell its prisons with minor offenders serving long terms.

Now California reformers are pushing a "People's Budget Fix" formula they say would save at least $12 billion over the next five years. It includes a claimed $5.5 billion savings through community-based addiction treatment for minor drug offenses. Another $1 billion a year could be saved by limiting three-strikes penalties to violent crimes (not just shoplifting or simple drug possession).

Such rational reforms — increasingly echoed in states nationally as the fiscal grinder minces budgets — were needed long before the current recession. They'll be important long afterward. When, as a society, we take these rational steps, we'll not just save dollars. We'll also start to spare the horrendous human waste and harm to families of knee-jerk law-and-orderism that can't discern between deep and serious criminal behavior and the missteps, usually in youthful years, that most societies deal with far more calmly — and effectively.

• Neal Peirce is a syndicated writer in Washington.
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/hc-peirce-prison-cuts.artaug12,0,5593952.story

Posted by lois at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2009

NY Times Editorial: The Chino Prison Riot

Editorial: The Chino Prison Riot
The New York Times
Published: August 10, 2009

Around 200 inmates were injured, 55 seriously, over the weekend in an 11-hour prison riot in California that appears to have had strong racial overtones. Officials are still investigating, but a major cause is already clear: 5,900 men were being held in a facility designed for 3,000. The violence should serve as a warning to officials across the country not to try to balance state budgets by holding inmates in inhumane conditions.

California has already ignored too many warnings. In 2007, a state oversight agency declared that “California’s correctional system is in a tailspin.” That same year, a prison expert warned that the California Institution for Men in Chino, the site of the recent riot, was “a serious disturbance waiting to happen.”

Last week, just days before the riot, a three-judge federal panel ordered the state to reduce its prison population of more than 150,000 by about 40,000 within the next two years. That was the only way, the panel ruled, to bring the prison health care system up to constitutional standards.

The 184-page order painted a grim and alarming picture — with some state prison facilities at nearly 300 percent of intended capacity and some prisoners forced to sleep in triple-bunk beds in gymnasiums. “In these overcrowded conditions,” the court said, “inmate-on-inmate violence is almost impossible to prevent.”

California’s problem — like much of the nation’s — is a mismatch between its harsh sentencing policies and its willingness to pay to keep so many people locked up for so long. A few years ago, it went to the Supreme Court to defend its right, under the state’s three-strikes law, to sentence a shoplifter to 25 years to life.

Given the serious budget problems that California is facing, there is not a lot of extra money available. The state could, however, divert offenders into drug-treatment programs and other nonprison environments, which are less expensive than incarceration and better at rehabilitation. It could also do more to give prisoners job skills and help them re-enter society — so they don’t end up back behind bars.

The riot in Chino and the federal court ruling contain the same message for state officials everywhere: they must come up with smart ways of reducing prison populations and they must do it quickly.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 11, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/opinion/11tue2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 07:21 PM | Comments (0)

PA: Unions Favored On Prison Projects

Unions Favored On Prison Projects

By BRADLEY VASOLI, The Bulletin
Monday, August 10, 2009
The state expects to build two new prisons in place of Graterford in Skippack Township, Montgomery County, and is prepared to allow only union labor in the construction process.

An association of mostly nonunion contractors said the Pennsylvania Department of General Services (DGS) had asserted earlier that the state wouldn’t approve a project labor agreement (PLA) that kept nonunion shops from working on Graterford.

“There were assurances that there wasn’t going to be a PLA,” said Geoffrey Zeh, president of Associated Builders and Contractors’ (ABC) southeastern Pennsylvania chapter. “Then at the 11th hour, they come in.”

In the spring of 2008, DGS issued a “letter of commitment” saying it would proceed to issue PLAs for several prison rebuilding projects if feasibility studies support the idea. A project in Centre County, for which a PLA has already been issued, and another in Forest County have also come under scrutiny because of the department’s letter. The letter only came to ABC’s attention the week before last.

ABC, along with many of its affiliated companies and workers, has filed a lawsuit in Commonwealth Court alleging that DGS and the Department of Corrections violated the law in signing a PLA. The petition describes such agreements as inequitable.

“Respondents’ actions, under color of state law, lacked any legitimate reason and were arbitrary, capricious, discriminatory and not rationally related to any legitimate government interest…,” the document states.

DGS is expected to submit a response to ABC’s petition in short order.

The two new prisons in Skippack are expected to cost over $400 million and take three years to complete. The Forest and Centre prisons will cost roughly the same, bringing the total expense to about $800 million. Pennsylvania’s General Assembly passed a capital budget last year that covered the estimated costs of these projects.

Mr. Zeh said he expects the PLA to have the effect of increasing these costs to taxpayers, an especially poignant concern during a tight budgetary squeeze. He also decried their cutting off work opportunities for over 75 percent of southeastern Pennsylvania’s construction workforce.

DGS spokesman Ed Myslewicz said nonunion outfits are entirely free to bid on the prison projects, even with PLAs in place. He said such agreements merely “streamline the construction process” by facilitating subcontracting arrangements before a project starts and guaranteeing an ample supply of skilled labor.

“The use of a PLA does not exclude anyone from bidding on this project,” he said.

Mr. Zeh however countered that only union firms would bid on a project that requires the use of union-represented labor.

“Why would I bid as an open-shop contractor on this job when what makes me competitive is my skillfully trained workforce?” he said. “Financially, it makes absolutely no sense, and that’s why nobody does it.”

Economists with the Keystone Research Center (KRC), the Harrisburg-based think tank that conducted the feasibility studies for the PLAs, said they view these agreements as particularly helpful on larger projects, many of which are state-funded. Nonunion contractors, they said, do a great deal of residential building, while unionized outfits often handle more complex developments that require a greater variety of skills.

“The work requires a broader range of training,” said KRC labor economist Mark Price. “The union sector succeeds in tracking people into the industry and training them.”

Unions provide at least five percent of KRC’s funding, and most of the organization’s board work for organized labor. Mr. Zeh said the organization’s pro-union orientation boded ill from the start for those who did not want to see the state get a recommendation in favor of a PLA.

He also took issue with Mr. Price’s assertion that union contractors possess broader skill sets. If that were the case, he said, nonunionized companies would never have the ability to outbid their unionized competitors, which they often do in the absence of PLAs.

Mr. Zeh said this is the case despite the fact that both union and nonunion shops are subject to prevailing wage rules governing how much their workers must get paid for publicly funded projects. The nonunion outfits, he said, simply operate with greater facility.

“The reason [unionized companies] can’t compete is because of their work rules,” he said.

As ABC and its affiliated companies head into court, the association is organizing a marketing campaign opposing the DGS decision and alerting Montgomery County residents to implications for nonunion workers and taxpayers.

The state will hold a pre-bid meeting on the prison construction Wednesday, Aug. 12, at Perkiomen Valley Middle School at 100 Kagey Road in Collegeville.
http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/08/10/news/local_state/doc4a806997354847
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Posted by lois at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

Iowa Spends Second Least Per Capita On Prisons

Iowa Spends Second Least Per Capita On Prisons
Posted: 10 Aug 2009 02:47 PM PDT

Iowa taxpayers are getting a bargain on spending for state prisons and community corrections programs, a state official said Friday, as reported by the Des Moines Register.

A federal study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows Iowa ranked second-lowest nationally in per-capita spending on corrections, at $121. The only state lower was North Dakota, at $116 per person. The national average was $210. The statistics were for 2006, the most recent year available.

Iowa Corrections Director John Baldwin noted the federal report in remarks to the Iowa Board of Corrections, which was discussing statewide budget issues in a meeting Friday at the Anamosa State Penitentiary. Baldwin attributed the state’s low costs to a concerted effort by the Department of Corrections to operate in a fiscally responsible manner. He said officials from Iowa’s prison system, community corrections districts and the agency’s central office in Des Moines are operating closely together. “We are all working toward a common goal,” Baldwin said.

Prison wardens and community corrections directors said Friday they are squeezing their budgets amid a national recession, which has reduced state tax revenue. They said they are leaving many posts open, slashing spending on state contracts, and taking steps to avoid duplication of effort.

Iowa had 8,395 inmates in its prison system Friday, a decline of about 400 inmates compared with two years ago. One factor behind the decrease: reduced prison admissions for drug offenders. However, researchers have cautioned that the prison populations could rise again as more inmates receive mandatory sentences and are convicted of sex offenses. The state also has about 28,900 offenders under community corrections supervision in programs such as parole, work release and probation. About 4,300 workers are employed by the Iowa Department of Corrections.

Deputy Iowa Corrections Director Brad Hier said the department plans to submit a status-quo budget to Gov. Chet Culver and Iowa lawmakers, keeping state corrections spending at $356 million annually for the budget year starting July 1, 2010. But the state agency will proceed with plans for a $131 million maximum-security prison at Fort Madison, plus a $68 million renovation and expansion of the Mitchellville women’s prison, Hier said. Both projects are being financed with bonds that will be repaid over a period of years. Construction on the Mitchellville prison project is scheduled to start in April or May and be completed around March 2013, officials said. Ground is expected to be broken next July or August on the 800-bed Fort Madison prison, which is expected to be ready by December 2013.

Fort Madison Deputy Warden Bill Sperfslage told the corrections board that some citizens have asked him why a new maximum-security prison is being built when Iowa is experiencing a declining inmate population. He said he wanted to clarify the matter. “This is not an expansion. We have a 170-year-old facility that needs to be replaced,” Sperfslage said. Parts of the existing Fort Madison prison were built in the mid-1800s, while Iowa was still a territory.

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

Prisoners and Workers Poisoned by Prison Reycling at UNICOR are suing

Prisoners Exposed to Toxic Dust at UNICOR Recycling Factories
by Brandon Sample
Prison Legal News
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/20750_displayArticle.aspx
Federal Prison Industries (FPI), the largest legal sweatshop in America, has jeopardized the lives and safety of untold numbers of prisoners and staff working in its recycling factories, according to a preliminary report in an investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and an evaluation issued by the Federal Occupational Health Service in October 2008.

FPI, a wholly-owned government corporation commonly known as UNICOR, was founded in 1934 with the aim of rehabilitating federal prisoners through job training that could be used to increase their employability upon release from prison. Over the years, however, UNICOR has moved away from its original mission; it now focuses more on taking advantage of its lucrative monopoly on providing goods and services to government agencies while using cut-rate prison labor.

Existing federal law requires federal agencies to look to UNICOR first for goods and services they may need. This lack of competition with the private sector, combined with low wages for prisoner workers, has been a boon for UNICOR. In fiscal year 2007, the prison industry netted $853 million in sales and $45.8 million in profit.

On Sept. 14, 2006, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Federal Prison Industries Competition in Contracting Act, which would have eliminated UNICOR’s monopoly on offering goods and services to federal government agencies. The bill also would have increased UNICOR wages for prisoners to minimum wage by September 30, 2009. The bill failed to pass the Senate.

Over the past decade, electronics recycling (e-waste) has become an increasingly important component of UNICOR’s operations, though it is still the smallest part of UNICOR’s business in terms of sales. First started in 1994 at the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) in Marianna, Florida, female prisoners would unload truckloads of computers each day and break them down for parts that could be reused or sold, such as processors or cathode ray tubes (CRTs). Often the computers or monitors would have to be broken apart with hammers to retrieve salvageable parts, which released a thick cloud of dust.

“It looked just like pollen,” said Freda Cobb, a former prison employee at FPC Marianna. “At the end of the day, we would go back to our cars and sort of laugh because we could write letters on our hood and on our back.”

None of the prisoners or staff were supplied with masks, gloves, coveralls or other personal protective equipment. Some prisoner workers and employees raised questions about possible health hazards, but “they told us not to worry about it,” Cobb said. “Nobody wanted to hear us.”

UNICOR’s recycling business expanded over the next decade to seven other facilities, with each new e-waste factory using the same unsafe work practices. From fiscal year 2003 to 2005, UNICOR processed over 120 million pounds of e-waste. Prisoners would break CRTs inside televisions and computer monitors without masks, gloves or other protective gear, exposing them to high levels of lead and cadmium from the release of heavy metal dust. In another operation, processors were removed from circuit boards using a de-soldering process that released lead fumes.

Lead can cause severe damage to nervous and reproductive systems, including miscarriages, stated John McKernan, an industrial hygienist at the Centers for Disease Control. Cadmium can cause lung damage and bone disease, and has been linked to cancer.

In March 2004, LeRoy Smith, the Safety Manager at United States Penitentiary (USP) Atwater, went public about the dangers that prisoners and staff were experiencing at UNICOR’s recycling facilities. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP), however, ignored Smith’s warnings. He was transferred to Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Tucson after going public. Smith has since filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint; he has also experienced symptoms of hazardous material exposure that include anxiety, headaches, fatigue, memory lapses, skin lesions, and circulatory and respiratory problems.

“Instead of behaving responsibly, the Bureau of Prisons has looked the other way, while the federal prison industry authority, UNICOR, opened additional ‘computer-recycling’ facilities without proper health safeguards in place,” said Mary Dryovage, an attorney who formerly represented Smith.

In April 2006, the Director of the BOP, Harley Lappin, asked the OIG to conduct a review of UNICOR’s recycling activities. In conjunction with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Federal Occupational Health Service (FOH) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) – a division of the Public Health Service within the Department of Health and Human Services – the investigation has focused on recycling activities at three BOP institutions: FCI Elkton in Ohio, FCI Texarkana in Texas, and USP Atwater in California. [See: PLN, March 2007, p.1].

A preliminary NIOSH report related to FCI Elkton, released on July 16, 2008, confirmed many of the dangers first reported by Smith. From 1997 until 2001, glass breaking of CRTs at Elkton was evidently done without “respiratory protection used or any type of engineering control in place to minimize exposures,” the report found.

In 2001, a “sawdust collection system” was installed at the UNICOR factory and some prisoners began using respiratory protection. It was not until April 2003 that a glass breaking room was constructed to contain the harmful heavy metal dust.

Fitted with vinyl curtains hanging from the ceiling, a ventilation discharge area, local exhaust ventilation system and a “clean area” where prisoners can suit and unsuit into coveralls and other protective equipment, the glass breaking room was supposed to eliminate the exposure problems caused by prior unsafe work practices.

Yet despite those improvements, problems continued to persist. During a filter change-out process, filters were removed and cleaned by vacuuming, shaking or banging them on the floor, causing a “thick cloud of dust” within the glass breaking room. Prisoners were exposed to “450 times the concentration adopted by OSHA as the Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) for cadmium and over 50 times the PEL for lead” during this process, according to the preliminary report.

While most of the heavy metal contamination was confined to the glass breaking room, lead and cadmium residues were found on work surfaces outside that area, where workers were not wearing protective equipment. In one section of the factory, one dust sample was as high as “16% lead.”

This, among other noted deficiencies, led investigators to conclude that “the current [glass-breaking operation] is a significant improvement, but can be further enhanced to limit exposure to those performing glass breaking as well as limiting the migration of lead and cadmium from the room into other areas.”

The NIOSH report concluded that “electronic recycling at FCI Elkton appears to have been performed from 1997 until May 2003 without adequate engineering controls, respiratory protections, medical surveillance, or industrial hygiene monitoring.” The extent of worker and staff exposure to toxic dust could not be determined because “medical surveillance that has been carried out among inmates and staff has not complied with OSHA standards.”

The report called for “prompt but well-coordinated” remediation to address “legacy contamination at the factory,” and made several specific recommendations that included: 1) Ensuring full compliance with all applicable OSHA standards; 2) contracting with an occupational medicine physician familiar with OSHA regulations to oversee a medial surveillance program; 3) Performing a detailed job hazard analysis prior to beginning any new operations or making changes to existing operations; and 4) appointing a union safety and health representative, plus ensuring that prisoner workers “have a way to voice their concerns about and ideas for improving workplace safety and health.”

On June 27, 2008, all of FCI Elkton’s recycling factories were shut down for a thorough clean-up. It was unclear when the facilities will re-open, according to Traci Billingsley, a spokesperson for the BOP.

Subsequently, an 87-page assessment by the Federal Occupational Health Service regarding environmental, safety and health issues related to UNICOR e-waste recycling operations at FCI Elkton was released on Oct. 10, 2008. That report, which was prepared for the OIG, dealt with practices and working conditions at the facility from 2003 to the present.

The FOH report found that UNICOR had implemented measures to control exposure to toxic heavy metals, and “since 2003 ... has made major improvements in engineering controls and its policies regarding the usage of personal protective equipment.” Current measured lead and cadmium exposure levels were described as “minimal.”

Further improvements to limit exposure in the glass breaking room were suggested, as well as hearing protection for workers due to a noise hazard. UNICOR had complied with previous recommendations by improving the filter change-out protocol and retaining an occupational physician to improve medical evaluations of recycling workers and staff.

Still, the past health and safety violations at Elkton remained a concern, and the report noted that according to an EPA inspection the UNICOR recycling program “had not adequately evaluated its wastewater, air emissions, and hazardous waste streams for compliance with applicable environmental standards ....” The report concluded with a number of recommendations for improvements.

Federal investigators next turned their attention to recycling operations at FCI Texarkana. While investigators have yet to issue a report regarding the UNICOR recycling factory at that facility, preliminary indicators seem to suggest the existence of prior unsafe work practices similar to those found at Elkton.

According to one prisoner, glass breaking operations at FCI Texarkana from 2001 to 2003 were conducted without masks or other protective equipment. All glass breaking is now done at the satellite prison camp.

The UNICOR factory at the camp, as at Elkton, is now fitted with a glass breaking room. Prisoners who work in the glass breaking room receive an extra $1.00 per shift on top of their regular pay, which ranges from $.23 to $1.25 an hour.

The extra dollar was not enough for one prisoner employed in the glass breaking area after investigators visited the camp. “I didn’t feel like what we were doing was safe,” the unidentified prisoner said, “so I quit.”

Although all glass breaking operations are supposed to be done in the glass breaking room, some prisoners reported that glass breaking is occurring in the general work area, too.

Before televisions and monitors are sent to the glass breaking room, certain parts must be removed. Rather than unscrewing these parts without damaging the CRTs, some prisoners break the parts off, which causes the glass CRT to break and release lead and cadmium dust into the air. According to one prisoner, this occurs at least ten times a day. To make matters worse, prisoners in the general work area are not required to wear masks or other protective gear.

When asked why the UNICOR staff don’t prevent this from happening, one prisoner put it bluntly: “The guards don’t give a fuck. They don’t care as long as the work gets done. They sit in their office laughing, talking on the phone.”

U.S. Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich) has low expectations for the OIG’s investigation into UNICOR operations. “It will result in nothing,” he said. “We rail against Chinese prison labor, and what you’ve got here is a situation where our prisons have exposed our workers to low wages and dangerous working environments, with the full support of the Justice Department and with the full support of the White House.”

While the OIG’s investigation remains ongoing, twenty-six current and former prisoners, UNICOR staff, their family members and visitors to the FPC Marianna recycling factory have sued the U.S. Department of Justice, BOP and UNICOR, claiming they did not do enough to protect them from harmful metals and chemicals. See: Smith v. United States, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Fla.), Case No. 5:08-cv-00084-RS/AK.

“I never realized,” said Freda Cobb, a former BOP guard at Marianna who is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “We never put it together.” Cobb has suffered from digestive problems, acute respiratory symptoms, short-term memory loss, muscle pain, kidney and liver problems, heart problems, internal bleeding and skin lesions. She was forced to retire from FPC Marianna in September 2004 for medical reasons.

Traci Hendrix, a 39-year-old former prisoner who worked in the recycling factory at Marianna, is considering joining the suit. “We didn’t have nothing to put on our faces, and we just breathed and coughed all day,” she said.

Hendrix first learned of the hazards caused by the toxic dust after another former prisoner told her that she, like Hendrix, had suffered a miscarriage after leaving prison. “It seemed like everyone that was working with me had a miscarriage,” said Hendrix.

On August 1, 2008, Tanya Smith, a former prison employee at Marianna and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, died. The exact cause of her death has not yet been determined, but it’s believed to be linked to her work at the facility. She had severe health problems that had forced her retirement from the BOP, including systemic lupus, blood clots, kidney failure, digestive problems, and heart and respiratory disease.

“We surely believe federal prisons started all of this,” said Smith’s mother, Doris Baker, who lived with her daughter. “We all believe that. Won’t nobody admit it.” Smith’s death is among 12 others that attorneys point to as stemming from recycling operations at Marianna.

Interestingly, two of the defendants in the lawsuit, Joe McNeal and James Bailey, who were employed by UNICOR, agreed to sign releases and become plaintiffs in the case, “because they and their family members suffer from some of the symptoms associated with exposure to the toxic substances alleged to have been produced by [the Marianna] recycling program.” The lawsuit is still pending; the government defendants have raised a defense of sovereign immunity.

Even family members of BOP and UNICOR staff are potentially at risk. Staff “may have inadvertently exposed their families to heavy metals by wearing their dust-laden work clothes home,” wrote S. Randall Humm, investigative counsel for the OIG.

That, according to Professor Tee L. Guidotti, an environmental and occupational health expert at George Washington University’s School of Public Health and Health Services, never should have happened.

“They wore their work clothes home? Yikes. That has been known for years to be a set-up for exposing children,” he said.

Several BOP employees had also purchased equipment from UNICOR for their personal use, including computers and monitors, that may have been contaminated with toxic heavy metal dust.

Despite these problems, and ongoing investigations into workplace conditions at other UNICOR recycling factories, UNICOR continues to operate eight recycling centers that employ approximately 1,200 prisoners. This represents only a small part of the prison industry’s workforce. Systemwide, as of Sept. 30, 2007, UNICOR maintained operations at 110 factories located at 79 BOP facilities involving 23,152 prisoner workers.

One has to wonder whether the documented safety, health and environmental workplace violations at UNICOR’s e-waste recycling programs routinely occurred at the prison industry’s other operations.

Sources: ABC News; The Dothan Eagle; www.unicor.gov; Fort Worth Weekly; www.computerworld.com; www.reviewonline.com; NIOSH preliminary report on work conditions at FCI Elkton (July 16, 2008); FOH report: “Evaluation of Environmental, Safety and Health Information Related to Current UNICOR e-Waste Recycling Operations at FCI Elkton” (Oct. 10, 2008)

Lawsuit claims prison recycling ‘poisoned' participants
August 08, 2009
By BRITTANY SMITH / Panama City FL-The News Herald

MARIANNA — Freda Cobb worked late at her job in food services at the Federal Correction Institute in Marianna. Often she would get home after her daughters already were asleep. She remembers waking up to find “love letters” from them written in dust on the back of her car.

“I love you” and “We miss you mom,” they would write.

“If I didn’t get to see them the night before, they would write them for me when they left for school,” Cobb said.

She thought it was sweet.

Years later, the memory is bitter. She claims the dust her children’s fingers arranged into kind messages is the same dust that is taking her life.

“We were poisoned,” Cobb said. “They put these prisons in these small country towns, thinking these small-town people don’t know anything. They think we’re stupid.”

‘We thought nothing of it’

Cobb, who started working at the prison in 1991, is one of 26 plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit against the prison, claiming its computer recycling program is toxic and hazardous to workers’ health.

In 1994, Federal Prison Industries, trade-named UNICOR, started a computer and electronics recycling program in Marianna, the first of its kind. There are now seven certified facilities in total. Created by executive order in 1934, UNICOR, a government-owned, for-profit company, uses prison labor to produce various goods and services nationwide.

At Marianna, inmates break down and retrieve salvageable computer parts. According to UNICOR’s Web site, the products are sold to public and private industries to “save precious resources.”

During Cobb’s time in food service, inmates from the recycling facility would come in for food, covered in dust, and shake their clothes by the utensils, food trays and food, she said.

“We thought nothing of it,” Cobb said. “We were never told anything, so you just assume everything is safe.”

Forced to retire

If recycled without proper safety measurements, electronic equipment can release a toxic dust containing dangerous substances such as lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic, according to government reports and surveys by Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC), a California-based research organization that studies the environmental impacts of the technology industry.

“When dismantling electronics, prisoners handling toxic components need ventilation, proper tools, and adequate protective gear, as do prison staff working in the area,” says a 2006 SVTC report. “UNICOR facilities repeatedly failed to provide proper recycling procedures to captive laborers and staff supervisors.”

Years into the operation at Marianna, an air filtration system was installed, but after that, according to Cobb, the system sucked the dust out of the factory and blew it outside. Cobb said she was told by the air filtration contractor this was because UNICOR purchased only half of the parts needed for a successful system.

“It was like a vacuum cleaner without a bag,” Cobb said. “That’s how it got all over the cars in the parking lot.”

For a long time, everyone thought it was pollen.

Cobb did too, until 1997 when she started getting sick.

For more than 10 years, she has experienced a wide range of health problems, including skin lesions, thyroid disease, weight gain, internal bleeding and short-term memory loss, she said. Cobb was in denial about her ailing health and said she attempted to hide her sickness from her employer.

“You don’t want to believe your body is failing you,” Cobb said.

Deteriorating health eventually forced her into retirement in 2004. She has struggled with doctor appointments, medical bills and prescription payments.

“I am on 20 medications now, just to keep my organs going,” said Cobb, who, although insured, spends about $250 a month on her medications.

Her experiences with doctors have been difficult.

“They will treat your symptoms and medicate you, but it is hard to get a medical statement with a diagnosis,” she said.
United in sickness

In 2008, Cobb and 25 others filed a lawsuit against the government and UNICOR.

Filed by Tallahassee-based attorneys Richard Bisbee, Bill Reeves and Patrick Frank, the lawsuit is seeking information and not damages, according to the firm.

At the time the lawsuit was filed, plaintiff Tanya Smith, also a former staff member at Marianna FCI and a resident of Jackson County, was described as “gravely ill.” Smith has since died of her illnesses, which included heart disease, kidney failure, internal bleeding and systemic lupus. Smith, 36, had two open heart surgeries before her death.

The lawsuit lists the plaintiffs one by one, their medical conditions described in black and white; heart disease, depression, respiratory problems, undiagnosed skin lesions, internal bleeding, bone deterioration and memory loss are a few of their conditions.

The suit also seeks the results of various testing for the presence of heavy metals done at Marianna’s computer recycling plant. The results would not only determine the firm’s next course of action but also could potentially inform doctors who are trying to treat many of the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit currently awaits action from U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak. It has bounced back and forth between the filing law firm and the government’s requests for dismissal, according to Patrick Frank, an attorney representing the case.

Additional motions have been filed by third parties, seeking to either join or intervene in the suit. These motions postponed the lawsuit until Tuesday Aug. 4. Both parties are waiting for a response from Smoak.

Computer recycling continues

Felicia Ponce, spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), said the bureau does not comment on pending litigation and could not give information about allegations regarding UNICOR’s computer recycling program at Marianna.

“The continued safety of both staff and inmates alike is a top priority of the BOP and FPI. As such, FPI is committed to ensuring compliance with all applicable health, safety and environmental requirements in all of its factories nationwide,” said a statement issued by the BOP.

As of the end of July, the computer recycling program at Marianna was fully operational and employed seven UNICOR staff and 236 inmates, according to Traci Billingsley, another BOP spokeswoman.

‘Wheels of justice turn slow’

In 2004, claims by whistleblower Leroy Smith, a former safety manager at a UNICOR operation Atwater Prison in California, initiated an inquiry by the Office of the Inspector General into UNICOR’s computer recycling programs and their safety. The inquiry has been “ongoing” for more than three years.

“We’ve seen nothing definitive from the inquiry so far,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a whistleblower-support group that assisted Smith. “It really makes you think the wheels of justice turn slow.”

In 2008, as part of the system wide review, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) submitted a report to the Office of the Inspector General declaring that staff and inmates had no protection against exposure to high levels of lead and cadmium at a computer recycling plant in eastern Ohio. The plant has since been shut down.

However, the reports from the testing for the presence of heavy metals at various other prisons, including FCI Marianna, have not been released.

An uncertain future

Once a vibrant, 135-pound woman, Cobb, now heavier from her thyroid disease, said she feels like her life has been stolen from her. “I get one or two good days a week,” she said. The rest are spent in bed.

Her short blonde hair, she said, falls out when she showers, while bone deterioration causes severe joint pain when she walks.

“I want to play ball with my grandkids, but I can’t.” Her husband brings her a chair so she can watch them instead.

Cobb refers to herself as an advocate. She keeps files of information regarding the computer recycling programs, those who have spoken out and various reports and studies on the effects of heavy metal poisoning and electronic recycling. Cobb stays in touch with people across the country who, she believes, are fighting a battle similar to her own, a painful fight to stay alive and a relentless pursuit of the truth about UNICOR’s computer recycling program.

Cobb is praying for justice and answers.

“I’m praying this will finally make it to court,” Cobb said. “People are dying more and more and we need some answers.”
http://www.newsherald.com/news/participants-76485-claims-poisoned.html

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

IL: Cook county Commissioners pass ordinance to decriminalize 10 grams of marijuana

Posted in the Unshackle List serve by:
Catherine Christeller
Executive Director
Chicago Women's AIDS Project

Here is some good news about changes in the marijuana policy in Cook County, Illinois. Evidently this was inspired by a drug policy conference...so let's keep talking.

---------------------------------------------
August 7, 2009

Dear Friends:

Two weeks ago, the Cook County Board of Commissioners, with little fanfare, passed an ordinance decriminalizing low levels (10 grams or less) of marijuana possession in the non-incorporated areas of the County.

Offenders will receive a $200 fine rather than a criminal charge that could haunt them for the rest of their lives.

This action was a direct result of the PCG conference "New Directions in Drug Policy for Illinois" that PCG organized at Roosevelt University on June 12. Commissioner Earlean Collins (D-1st) sponsored the ordinance. A member of her staff had attended the conference, heard that Chicago Heights had taken a similar step, returned to her office and said "We've got to do
this."

At first glance, the new ordinance might not seem very important. The number of arrests for marijuana possession in the area affected by the ordinance is small. But this change is already being noticed by other municipalities around the state. From as far south as Decatur, one of the attendees of our conference called to say that he is leading a group of ministers to push for a similar ordinance there.

And the ordinance is important for deeper reasons. By drawing attention, it is prompting the public to think about whether existing drug laws and their enforcement make moral and economic sense.

Our country has become a prison nation. One in every 100 adults is
incarcerated in the United States, with the rapid increase since the early 1970's due to tougher, more punitive drug laws.

The racial disparity underlying these figures is shameful. About 9% of Whites use drugs in our society, and the figure is about the same for Non-whites. Why is it, then, that 86% of those in prison for drug offenses are Non-white?

Equal protection under law is a fundamental tenet of our faith. In Illinois, we are failing miserably by this standard. A Human Rights Watch Report in 2000 stated that Illinois leads the nation in the racial disparity of those in prison for drug offenses.

Much of this disparity, of course, has to do with unequal enforcement. Street drug trafficking is much more visible to police in poor urban than in wealthier, mostly white suburbs. In Chicago, spaces around schools, parks, and other special areas are designated as mandatory "enforcement zones." This now covers 80% of the entire City.

Commissioner Collins' ordinance decriminalizes an offense that has burdened offenders with a life-long criminal record. Indirectly, it prompts us to consider the possibility that regarding drug offenses as primarily a public health problem is a better response than prohibition - a more effective use of public resources and more likely to produce productive citizens.

Surely even those who argue that drug use should be met with severe
punishment would agree on the following: it is wrong to stigmatize for the rest of their lives those who have committed only minor offenses, and that those who need treatment to overcome the disease of addiction should have a chance to receive it.

At our conference, Rep. Lou Lang (D-16th) described his efforts to get a medical marijuana bill passed in Illinois. (We are close; this may happen next year). He was asked why a conference focusing on drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration should include a discussion of marijuana decriminalization and medical marijuana. His answer was compelling: "It is because we have to learn to think differently about drugs, and drug policy in our society. Starting with marijuana helps us to do this."

In the year ahead, PCG will be seeking to build a statewide network that focuses on local drug laws, including marijuana. We will use these opportunities to bring forward the questions of drug policy more broadly. It is wrong that we have become a prison nation; it is backward thinking to view prohibition and punishment as the central answers to drug problems in this country.

Sincerely,

Rev. Alexander Sharp,
Executive Director
Protestants for the Common Good

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

August 10, 2009

Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? By BARBARA EHRENREICH

August 9, 2009
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
By BARBARA EHRENREICH

IT'S too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it's almost illegal to be poor. You won't be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you're well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life - like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the '80s and '90s. "If you're lying on a sidewalk, whether you're homeless or a millionaire, you're in violation of the ordinance," a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France's immortal observation that "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."

In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with ticketing and arrests for more "neutral" infractions like jaywalking, littering or carrying an open container of alcohol.

The report lists America's 10 "meanest" cities - the largest of which are Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco - but new contestants are springing up every day. The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz., carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, "An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive" public assistance.

That could be me before the blow-drying and eyeliner, and it's definitely Al Szekely at any time of day. A grizzled 62-year-old, he inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington - the city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine in Fu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972. He had been enjoying the luxury of an indoor bed until last December, when the police swept through the shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding warrants.

It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not drink, do drugs or curse in front of ladies, did indeed have a warrant - for not appearing in court to face a charge of "criminal trespassing" (for sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged out of the shelter and put in jail. "Can you imagine?" asked Eric Sheptock, the homeless advocate (himself a shelter resident) who introduced me to Mr. Szekely. "They arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless."
The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, and several members of the group were arrested. A federal judge just overturned the anti-sharing law in Orlando, Fla., but the city is appealing. And now Middletown, Conn., is cracking down on food sharing.

If poverty tends to criminalize people, it is also true that criminalization inexorably impoverishes them. Scott Lovell, another homeless man I interviewed in Washington, earned his record by committing a significant crime - by participating in the armed robbery of a steakhouse when he was 15. Although Mr. Lovell dresses and speaks more like a summer tourist from Ohio than a felon, his criminal record has made it extremely difficult for him to find a job.

For Al Szekely, the arrest for trespassing meant a further descent down the circles of hell. While in jail, he lost his slot in the shelter and now sleeps outside the Verizon Center sports arena, where the big problem, in addition to the security guards, is mosquitoes. His stick-thin arms are covered with pink crusty sores, which he treats with a regimen of frantic scratching.

For the not-yet-homeless, there are two main paths to criminalization - one involving debt, and the other skin color. Anyone of any color or pre-recession financial status can fall into debt, and although we pride ourselves on the abolition of debtors' prison, in at least one state, Texas, people who can't afford to pay their traffic fines may be made to "sit out their tickets" in jail.

Often the path to legal trouble begins when one of your creditors has a court issue a summons for you, which you fail to honor for one reason or another. (Maybe your address has changed or you never received it.) Now you're in contempt of court. Or suppose you miss a payment and, before you realize it, your car insurance lapses; then you're stopped for something like a broken headlight. Depending on the state, you may have your car impounded or face a steep fine - again, exposing you to a possible summons. "There's just no end to it once the cycle starts," said Robert Solomon of Yale Law School. "It just keeps accelerating."
By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong-color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor encounters racial profiling, but for decades whole communities have been effectively "profiled" for the suspicious combination of being both dark-skinned and poor, thanks to the "broken windows" or "zero tolerance" theory of policing popularized by Rudy Giuliani, when he was mayor of New York City, and his police chief William Bratton.

Flick a cigarette in a heavily patrolled community of color and you're littering; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you're displaying gang allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you as a potential suspect, according to "Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice," an eye-opening new book by Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor in Washington. If you seem at all evasive, which I suppose is like looking "overly anxious" in an airport, Mr. Butler writes, the police "can force you to stop just to investigate why you don't want to talk to them." And don't get grumpy about it or you could be "resisting arrest."

There's no minimum age for being sucked into what the Children's Defense Fund calls "the cradle-to-prison pipeline." In New York City, a teenager caught in public housing without an ID - say, while visiting a friend or relative - can be charged with criminal trespassing and wind up in juvenile detention, Mishi Faruqee, the director of youth justice programs for the Children's Defense Fund of New York, told me. In just the past few months, a growing number of cities have taken to ticketing and sometimes handcuffing teenagers found on the streets during school hours.

In Los Angeles, the fine for truancy is $250; in Dallas, it can be as much as $500 - crushing amounts for people living near the poverty level. According to the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, an advocacy group, 12,000 students were ticketed for truancy in 2008.

Why does the Bus Riders Union care? Because it estimates that 80 percent of the "truants," especially those who are black or Latino, are merely late for school, thanks to the way that over-filled buses whiz by them without stopping. I met people in Los Angeles who told me they keep their children home if there's the slightest chance of their being late. It's an ingenious anti-truancy policy that discourages parents from sending their youngsters to school.

The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks.

And if you should make the mistake of trying to escape via a brief marijuana-induced high, it's "gotcha" all over again, because that of course is illegal too. One result is our staggering level of incarceration, the highest in the world. Today the same number of Americans - 2.3 million - reside in prison as in public housing.

Meanwhile, the public housing that remains has become ever more prisonlike, with residents subjected to drug testing and random police sweeps. The safety net, or what's left of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.

Some of the community organizers I've talked to around the country think they know why "zero tolerance" policing has ratcheted up since the recession began. Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, a community organization in Los Angeles, suspects that "poor people have become a source of revenue" for recession-starved cities, and that the police can always find a violation leading to a fine. If so, this is a singularly demented fund-raising strategy. At a Congressional hearing in June, the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers testified about the pervasive "overcriminalization of crimes that are not a risk to public safety," like sleeping in a cardboard box or jumping turnstiles, which leads to expensively clogged courts and prisons.
A Pew Center study released in March found states spending a record $51.7 billion on corrections, an amount that the center judged, with an excess of moderation, to be "too much."

But will it be enough - the collision of rising prison populations that we can't afford and the criminalization of poverty - to force us to break the mad cycle of poverty and punishment? With the number of people in poverty increasing (some estimates suggest it's up to 45 million to 50 million, from 37 million in 2007) several states are beginning to ease up on the criminalization of poverty - for example, by sending drug offenders to treatment rather than jail, shortening probation and reducing the number of people locked up for technical violations like missed court appointments. But others are tightening the screws: not only increasing the number of "crimes" but also charging prisoners for their room and board - assuring that they'll be released with potentially criminalizing levels of debt.

Maybe we can't afford the measures that would begin to alleviate America's growing poverty - affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation and so forth. I would argue otherwise, but for now I'd be content with a consensus that, if we can't afford to truly help the poor, neither can we afford to go on tormenting them.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author, most recently, of "This Land Is Their Land: Reports From a Divided Nation."
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 03:58 PM | Comments (0)

Hundreds Hurt at Riot in Chino (CA)

Hundreds Hurt in California Prison Riot

By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: August 9, 2009
NY Times
LOS ANGELES — Rioting inmates smashed and burned a large California prison on Saturday night and Sunday morning, injuring 250 prisoners and hospitalizing 55.

The 11-hour riot, at the Reception Center West at the California Institution for Men in Chino, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles, broke down along racial lines, with black prison gangs fighting Latino gangs in hand-to-hand combat, the authorities said.

No prison employees were injured, no deaths were reported, and no inmates escaped, state officials said. But 10 of the 33 prisons in the state system were put on lockdown to prevent unrest from spreading. Those 10 were in the southern part of the state.

Damage to the 1,300-inmate medium-security prison was “significant and extensive,” said a spokesman, Lt. Mark Hargrove. One housing unit was virtually destroyed by fire, Lieutenant Hargrove said. The other housing areas were so badly damaged that they were uninhabitable, he said, so some inmates were being temporarily housed in tents while others were sent to alternate prisons.

With more than 150,000 inmates, the California prison system is one of the most crowded in the nation, with many of its facilities holding more than double the number of inmates they were designed for. A federal three-judge panel ruled last week that crowding and poor health care caused one avoidable inmate death each week and that the system was “impossible to manage.”

Lieutenant Hargrove said prisoners had smashed windows, torn down gates and used whatever they could to battle one another in the riot.

“Inmates broke out glass and used shards as knives,” he said. “They used pieces of metal, wood, whatever they could break off the walls, pipes.”

The Chino prison is trying to put into effect a 2005 Supreme Court decision that prohibits automatic and systematic racial segregation of prison inmates after more than three decades of racial separation in the corrections system.

Lieutenant Hargrove said that inmates could now opt out of segregation and that a growing number of black, Latino and white prisoners shared cells, increasing racial tensions in the prison.

“All races had injuries,” Lieutenant Hargrove said of the weekend riot. “But there are a greater number of injuries among Hispanic and black inmates. And we did have another incident that occurred in May, a riot between blacks and Hispanics, and this may be associated with that incident.”

Prison officials said they were still questioning inmates to understand what set off the uprising. They said no demands or complaints had been directed at the guards.

Inmates in one of seven 200-man housing units began brawling around 8:20 p.m. Saturday, officials said. Overwhelmed guards set off an alarm and retreated as unrest spread.

Thirty minutes later, a crisis response team of about 80 guards arrived, but the chaos inside prevented them from entering. Guards watched as prisoners constructed barricades of broken bunk beds, desks and other furniture and clashed in the prison yards and on rooftops.

As inmates tired on Sunday and fighting died down, guards re-entered the prison and reasserted control, officials said, staving off sporadic attacks from prisoners throwing scrap metal and glass.

Lieutenant Hargrove said that the entire prison was being treated as a crime scene and that new charges would probably be filed against prisoners who participated in the violence, which was mainly between inmates.

In its order last week, the federal panel directed the state to come up with a plan to reduce its prison population by 40,000 inmates within two years. Attorney General Jerry Brown, a possible candidate for governor next year, said he would probably appeal the ruling.

Barry Krisberg, the president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Oakland, said the riot illustrated the many problems plaguing the state prison system, including growing cost overruns and pending cuts.

“There are proposals to eliminate all programs including reducing visiting days for inmates participating in programs,” Mr. Krisberg said. “But if you isolate these men from their families and cut down even the most basic educational and counseling programs, you’re going to create more idleness, and this is what happens.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/us/10prison.html?hp

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

Mentally Ill Youth Strain Juvenile System

Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System
By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: August 9, 2009
NY Times

FRANKLIN FURNACE, Ohio — The teenager in the padded smock sat in his solitary confinement cell here in this state’s most secure juvenile prison and screamed obscenities.

The youth, Donald, a 16-year-old, his eyes glassy from lack of sleep and a daily regimen of mood stabilizers, was serving a minimum of six months for breaking and entering. Although he had received diagnoses for psychiatric illnesses, including bipolar disorder, a judge decided that Donald would get better care in the state correctional system than he could get anywhere in his county.

That was two years ago.

Donald’s confinement has been repeatedly extended because of his violent outbursts. This year he assaulted a guard here at the prison, the Ohio River Valley Juvenile Correctional Facility, and was charged anew, with assault. His fists and forearms are striped with scars where he gouged himself with pencils and the bones of a bird he caught and dismembered.

As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”

At least 32 states cut their community mental health programs by an average of 5 percent this year and plan to double those budget reductions by 2010, according to a recent survey of state mental health offices.

Juvenile prisons have been the caretaker of last resort for troubled children since the 1980s, but mental health experts say the system is in crisis, facing a soaring number of inmates reliant on multiple — and powerful — psychotropic drugs and a shortage of therapists.

In California’s state system, one of the most violent and poorly managed juvenile systems in the country, according to federal investigators, three dozen youth offenders seriously injured themselves or attempted suicide in the last year — a sign, state juvenile justice experts say, of neglect and poor safety protocols.

In Ohio, where Gov. Ted Strickland, a former prison psychologist, approved a 34 percent reduction in community-based mental health services to reduce a budget deficit, Thomas J. Stickrath, the director of the Department of Youth Services, said continuing cuts would swell his youth offender population.

“I’m hearing from a lot of judges saying, ‘I’m sorry I’m sending so-and-so to you, but at least I know that he’ll get the treatment he can’t get in his community,’ ” Mr. Stickrath said.

But youths are often subjected to neglect and violence in juvenile prisons, and studies show that mental illnesses can become worse there.

George, 17, an inmate at Ohio River Valley, detailed his daily cocktail of psychiatric medications, including Abilify and Seroquel. In addition to having bipolar disorder, he is a sex offender and is H.I.V. positive — severe stigmas in prison.

“I be getting punked,” he said, using prison slang to describe how gang youths routinely humiliate him. He blinked, and his leg shook uncontrollably. “They take my food, they hit me, they make me do things.”

Demetrius, 16, another inmate there, said he had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Officials said he has psychotic episodes and attacks other inmates. In an interview in June, he said he was receiving no mental health counseling or medications. Andrea Kruse, a spokeswoman for Mr. Stickrath, said that since July 1, he has had more than 20 counseling sessions.

According to a Government Accountability Office report, in 2001, families relinquished custody of 9,000 children to juvenile justice systems so they could receive mental health services.

Donald has been in and out of mental health programs since he attacked a schoolteacher at age 5. As he grew older, he became more violent until he was eventually committed to the Department of Youth Services.

“I’ve begged D.Y.S. to get him into a mental facility where they’re trained to deal with people like him,” said his grandmother, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma of having a grandson who is mentally ill. “I don’t think a lockup situation is where he should be, although I don’t think he should be on the street either.”

Lawsuits and federal civil rights investigations in Indiana, Maryland, Ohio and Texas have criticized juvenile corrections systems for failing to meet their obligation to prohibit cruel and unusual punishment of prisoners.

Despite downsizing to about 1,650 juvenile inmates from about 10,000 youth offenders in 1996, California’s state system remains under a 2004 federal mandate to improve conditions, including mental health services — the result of a class-action lawsuit that documented the systematic physical and sexual abuse of wards.

Under a plan to reduce the state juvenile inmate population, many youths who once would have been held by the state are now detained by the Los Angeles County juvenile detention system. Los Angeles County is also under a federal mandate to improve psychiatric services for juvenile inmates, especially at the six camps at its Challenger Memorial Youth Center, which holds most of the county’s medium- and high-risk offenders and most of its mentally ill ones.

“We were told that the Challenger camps are, paradoxically, the only camps at which staff are authorized to carry O.C. spray,” wrote federal civil rights investigators in a 2008 report to county authorities, referring to oleoresin capsicum, known as pepper spray. “One supervisor told us that he believed that allowing staff to carry and use O.C. spray made sense given the ‘mental health population.’ ”

The investigators also recounted how staff members body slammed unruly juveniles, often breaking their bones.

In May, a reporter toured the Los Angeles County Central Juvenile Hall with Eric Trupin, a consultant hired by the Department of Justice to monitor mental health services in California’s juvenile justice system. Dr. Trupin, a psychologist, said some detainees appeared to be held there for no reason other than that they were mentally ill and the county had no other institution capable of treating them.

One inmate at the county’s juvenile hall, Eric, 18, was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescribed Risperdal, a powerful antipsychotic, to help him avoid violent flashes of temper.

A public defender who specializes in juvenile mental health issues, said Eric had been arrested more than 20 times near his South Los Angeles home. Dr. Trupin worried that if Eric is released and arrested again, he will be charged as an adult and enter the Los Angeles County jail, the nation’s largest residential mental institution, with 1,400 mentally ill inmates.

In the 1960s and ’70s, the increasing availability of antipsychotic medications coincided with a national movement to close public mental hospitals. Many private hospitals barred psychotic patients, including juveniles. By the 1980s, juvenile justice systems had become the primary providers of residential psychiatric care for mentally ill youths.

But as cutbacks have worsened, the debate has intensified over what constitutes adequate mental health care. Often juvenile justice systems have very little to go on when attempting a diagnosis.

“Often Daddy is nowhere to be found, Mommy might be in jail,” said Daniel Connor, a psychiatrist for the Connecticut juvenile corrections system. “The home phone is cut off. The parent speaks another language, so it’s often hard to figure out exactly what’s going on with each kid.”

School records often do not arrive with arrested youths, nor do files often come from other corrections institutions. The lack of information is particularly problematic when psychiatrists try to prescribe medications. Joseph Parks, medical director for the Missouri Department of Mental Health and a national expert on pharmaceutical drug use in corrections facilities, said many juvenile offenders are prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs as they move from mental health clinics to detention halls to juvenile prisons.

A decade ago, it was rare to find juvenile offenders on two psychotropic drugs at once, Dr. Parks said. Now, many take three or four at a time, often for nonprescribed uses like helping the youths sleep.

“If you just give a kid a pill, the prison administration doesn’t have to do anything differently,” he said. “The staff doesn’t have to do anything differently. The guards don’t have to get more training.”

Census studies of child mental health professionals show chronic shortages. A 2006 study estimated that for every 100,000 youths, there were fewer than nine child psychiatrists. Dr. Penn of Texas said the state youth prison system there recently instituted a system of telepsychiatry sessions, conducting videoconferences between mental health professionals and youths being detained hundreds of miles away.

Inadequate mental health services increases recidivism. In a February report on psychiatric services at the Ohio River Valley center, Dr. Cheryl Wills, an independent mental health expert, found that officials were unnecessarily extending incarceration for youths who acted out because of their mental illnesses.

Mr. Stickrath, the director of the Ohio Department of Youth Services, said that one challenge in dealing with large numbers of psychologically ill youths is determining who is “mad versus bad.” He mentioned Donald, whose file he knew by heart.

“He’s been in 130 fights since he’s been with us, and there were no resources in the small county he’s from to deal with him,” Mr. Stickrath said. “Our staff worked to get him in a sophisticated psychiatric residential program, but they said he had to leave because he was attacking staff.”

Mr. Stickrath shook his head. “He just wears you out.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/us/10juvenile.html?_r=1&hpw

Posted by lois at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)

August 08, 2009

Opinion--Prisons bursting at the seams, destroying our future By Rev. Al Sharpton

"In order for us to truly amend our incarceration culture where one in four prisoners in the entire world are in the United States, we have to take a look at the root causes of the dilemma. Why is it that more than half of all black men in America don't finish high school? Why is the unemployment rate in powerful cities like New York at 50% for black men? Why did Congress abolish Pell grants for prisoners in 1994 that virtually eliminated all 350-incarceration college programs across the country? Is it any coincidence then that six out of 10 black men who drop out of high school have spent time in jail by their mid-30s? With unemployment rates on the rise (and many would argue well in to the double digits among people of color), arrests for nonviolent infractions and petty crimes are leaving families motherless, fatherless and hopeless."

Opinion--Prisons bursting at the seams, destroying our future
By Rev. Al Sharpton
The Giro
08/07/2009

As the battle lines for health care reform are being drawn - and redrawn - a silent segment of the population is strategically left out of the conversation. It's a group of individuals who have been deemed enemies of society, and cast away behind iron bars to fend for themselves. In California's 33 prisons, healthcare is so inadequate that one unnecessary death takes place per week, as inmates are often stacked in triple bunk beds in hallways and gymnasiums. With nearly twice the number of prisoners than they were designed to hold, California prisons will have to reduce at least 40,000 prisoners in the next two years - and it's about time.

Federal judges just released a 184-page order demanding that California's inmate population be reduced by 27%, and gave the state 45 days to come up with a plan. In what they termed an "unconstitutional prison healthcare system", the three-judge panel concluded that disease was spreading rampantly and prisoner-on-prisoner violence was all but unavoidable. Forced to close a $26 billion dollar budget gap, California will now have to look at mechanisms to reducing its extensive prison spending, which in 2007 topped out at nearly $10 billion (approximately $49,000 for each inmate).

Whether it's for pure economic reasons or for an actual concern over the well being of prisoners, California will hopefully serve as an example for a reversal of the ever-growing prison industrial complex. A system that unfairly profiles and detains minorities, American jails produce a vicious cycle of recidivism and community breakdown. Last year, the Pew Center on the States released a scathing report stating that one in every 100 American adults was in jail, and that an astonishing one in 15 black adults was behind bars. According to government reports in 2007, there were three times as many blacks in jail than in college dorms, with Latinos not far behind at 2.7 times more behind bars than in secondary schooling.

In order for us to truly amend our incarceration culture where one in four prisoners in the entire world are in the United States, we have to take a look at the root causes of the dilemma. Why is it that more than half of all black men in America don't finish high school? Why is the unemployment rate in powerful cities like New York at 50% for black men? Why did Congress abolish Pell grants for prisoners in 1994 that virtually eliminated all 350-incarceration college programs across the country? Is it any coincidence then that six out of 10 black men who drop out of high school have spent time in jail by their mid-30s? With unemployment rates on the rise (and many would argue well in to the double digits among people of color), arrests for nonviolent infractions and petty crimes are leaving families motherless, fatherless and hopeless.

We live in a world that promotes law, order and justice, yet our actions often times prove otherwise. As if the implementation of ridiculous drug laws and the 'three strike rule' weren't enough to catapult our prison population, now our children are increasingly finding themselves in handcuffs at an early age. In 2006, a 14-year-old black student in Texas was sentenced to seven years for shoving a teacher's aide, while in 2007, an eighth grader in New York found herself handcuffed to a pole above her head for three hours while being questioned by police for writing on her desk at school. In Chicago it's no better, as 77% of all student arrests were black, although blacks make up just half of the city's student body.

And let's not forget women, who are in fact the largest growing segment of the prison population. According to Prisoners for Children, 85% of women are now serving time for non-violent crimes, with black women six times as likely to go to jail than their white counterparts. These women, often the heads of their households, are forced to withstand dire circumstances including giving birth while in shackles.

In 2006, the state of California spent about $500 million in overtime for its incarceration system, and in 2007, states spent $44 billion in American tax dollars on prisons. Whether it's because of our diminishing economy, or if it's out of genuine concern, California is leading the way - or rather being forced to lead the way - in amending our unjust prison industrial complex. If we truly care about the future our nation and all its inhabitants, each and every state needs to follow suit immediately.
http://www.thegrio.com/2009/08/unconstitutional-prison-healthcare-system-a-part-of-a-bigger-problem.php

Posted by lois at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Free 40,000 California prisoners? Not so fast. A federal judicial panel orders the state to come up with a plan to cut prison populations. But any such plan would be carried out over two years – and any actual release order challenged.

Free 40,000 California inmates? Not so fast.
A federal judicial panel orders the state to come up with a plan to cut prison populations. But any such plan would be carried out over two years – and any actual release order challenged.

By Michael B. Farrell | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
August 8, 2009 edition

San Francisco - Is California about to open its prison gates, freeing more than 40,000 inmates?

Earlier this week, a federal judicial panel gave the state 45 days to come up with a plan to cut its prison population in order to adequately care for its inmates.

But don't expect inmates to be freed from any of California's 33 adult prisons next month. Even if prison officials come up with a plan that both lawmakers and the federal court justices accept, the state would have two years to carry out any reduction.

If the court does actually mandate a release, the state would appeal that ruling to the US Supreme Court. Right now, state lawyers are still reviewing the justices' 184-page decision that was issued Tuesday.

"All the court has asked for in this ruling is for the state to develop a plan in 45 days … so the legal question is whether or not the state can appeal a ruling that directs us to come up with a plan," says Seth Unger, press secretary for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Unconstitutional overcrowding?

At issue in the court case is whether overcrowding in California's prisons has resulted in an unconstitutional level of care for the state's 155,000 inmates (12,000 of the state's inmates are housed in other facilities or in out-of-state prisons).

"The medical and mental healthcare available to inmates in the California prison system is woefully and constitutionally inadequate, and has been for more than a decade," said the judicial panel in their ruling this week. "California's prisons are busting at the seams and are impossible to manage."

The judges want to see a reduction in population to "137.5 percent of the adult institutions' total design capacity."

Prison population is now at 195 percent of capacity, according to Mr. Unger. "But design capacity can be somewhat misleading. Capacity is based on one inmate per cell…. You can put two inmates in a cell and have them safely housed," he says.

The Prison Law Office, based in Berkeley, Calif., brought the original lawsuit that resulted in Tuesday's decision. It claimed that the overcrowded conditions were so bad as to be a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which outlaws cruel and unusual punishment.

"The Constitutional standard," says Donald Specter, director of the law center, "is that the prison can't be deliberately indifferent to the prisoner's medical needs."

Prisons have improved over the past several years, he says, but "you have to understand that we are talking about a system where you couldn't even see a doctor. And there are still not enough doctors. Is it Constitutional? No."

State proposes

The state government doesn't dispute that prisons are overcrowded – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared an emergency over the issue in October 2006. But California Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate says the justices overstepped their authority in forcing the state to come up with a plan.

Mr. Specter counters that the court's decision is not unprecedented. "There is a long tradition of the federal courts … intervening in prisoner affairs because the state judicial system is insufficient in protecting prisons' human rights," he says.

Independent of this week's court order, the state has already proposed several ideas for lawmakers to ponder. These proposed measures could result in a reduction of some 27,000 inmates and save the state $1.2 billion in one year:

•Allow low-risk offenders to serve the remaining year of their sentence under house arrest.

•Limit parole supervision only to offenders who committed serious or violent crimes to reduce recidivism caused by parole violations.

•Reform sentencing guidelines for crimes associated with property theft and raise the threshold from $400 to $2,500.

•Give inmates the chance to receive credits toward their sentence if they participate in certain behavioral, educational, or rehabilitation programs.

Specter says he approves of many of these measures, but it remains to be seen whether lawmakers will also approve. It can be politically risky for politicians to vote for programs that shorten sentences or result in inmates being released from prison.

That leaves the "federal courts as the only one to solve the problem" in California, he argues.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0808/p02s07-usgn.html

Posted by lois at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

August 07, 2009

Overhaul of detention centers could include new "centers" built and run by the government

"Asked if his vision could include building new civil detention centers, he said yes. The current 32,000-bed network costs $2.4 billion a year, but the agency is not ready to calculate the cost of a revamped system."

U.S. to Reform Policy on Detention for Immigrants
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: August 5, 2009
NY Times

The Obama administration intends to announce an ambitious plan on Thursday to overhaul the much-criticized way the nation detains immigration violators, trying to transform it from a patchwork of jail and prison cells to what its new chief called a “truly civil detention system.”

Details are sketchy, and even the first steps will take months or years to complete. They include reviewing the federal government’s contracts with more than 350 local jails and private prisons, with an eye toward consolidating many detainees in places more suitable for noncriminals facing deportation — some possibly in centers built and run by the government.

The plan aims to establish more centralized authority over the system, which holds about 400,000 immigration detainees over the course of a year, and more direct oversight of detention centers that have come under fire for mistreatment of detainees and substandard — sometimes fatal — medical care.

One move starts immediately: the government will stop sending families to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former state prison near Austin, Tex., that drew an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit and scathing news coverage for putting young children behind razor wire.

“We’re trying to move away from ‘one size fits all,’ ” John Morton, who heads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as assistant secretary of homeland security, said in an interview on Wednesday. Detention on a large scale must continue, he said, “but it needs to be done thoughtfully and humanely.”

Hutto, a 512-bed center run for profit by the Corrections Corporation of America under a $2.8 million-a-month federal contract, was presented as a centerpiece of the Bush administration’s tough approach to immigration enforcement when it opened in 2006. The decision to stop sending families there — and to set aside plans for three new family detention centers — is the Obama administration’s clearest departure from its predecessor’s immigration enforcement policies.

So far, the new administration has embraced many of those policies, expanding a program to verify worker immigration status that has been widely criticized, bolstering partnerships between federal immigration agents and local police departments, and rejecting a petition for legally binding rules on conditions in immigration detention.

But Mr. Morton, a career prosecutor, said he was taking a new philosophical approach to detention — that the system’s purpose was to remove immigration violators from the country, not imprison them, and that under the government’s civil authority, detention is aimed at those who pose a serious risk of flight or danger to the community.

Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, said last week that she expected the number of detainees to stay the same or grow slightly. But Mr. Morton added that the immigration agency would consider alternative ways to assure that those who face deportation — and are not dangerous — do not flee.

Reviewing and redesigning all facilities, programs and standards will be the task of a new Office of Detention Policy and Planning, he said. Dora Schriro, special adviser to Ms. Napolitano, will become the director, assisted by two experts on detention management and medical care. The agency will also form two advisory boards of community groups and immigrant advocates, one focusing on detention policies and practices, the other on detainee health care.

Mr. Morton said he would appoint 23 detention managers to work in the 23 largest detention centers, including several run by private companies, to ensure that problems are promptly fixed. He is reorganizing the agency’s inspection unit into three regional operations, renaming it the Office of Detention Oversight, and making its agents responsible for investigating detainee grievances as well as conducting routine and random checks.

“A lot of this exists already,” he said. “A lot of it is making it work better” while Dr. Schriro’s office redesigns the detention system, which he called “disjointed” and “very much dependent on excess capacity in the criminal justice system.”

Asked if his vision could include building new civil detention centers, he said yes. The current 32,000-bed network costs $2.4 billion a year, but the agency is not ready to calculate the cost of a revamped system.

Vanita Gupta, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who led the lawsuit against the Hutto center, was jubilant over the decision to stop sending families there, but cautious about the other measures.
“The ending of family detention at Hutto is welcome news and long overdue,” she said in an e-mail message. “However, without independently enforceable standards, a reduction in beds, or basic due process before people are locked up, it is hard to see how the government’s proposed overhaul of the immigration detention system is anything other than a reorganization or renaming of what was in place before.”

Ms. Gupta said the changes at Hutto since 2006 illustrated the importance of enforceable rules. Before the A.C.L.U. lawsuit was settled in 2007, some children under 10 stayed as long as a year, mainly confined to family cells with open toilets, with only one hour of schooling a day. Children told of being threatened by guards with separation from their parents, many of them asylum-seekers from around the world.

Only through judicial enforcement of the settlement, she said, have children been granted such liberties as wearing pajamas at night and taking crayons into family cells. The settlement also required the agency to honor agency standards that had been ignored, like timely reviews of the decision to detain a family at all. Some families have been deported, but others were released or are now awaiting asylum decisions in housing run by nonprofit social service agencies.

That kind of stepped-up triage could be part of the more civil detention system envisioned by Mr. Morton and Dr. Schriro, who has been reviewing the detention system for months and is expected to report her recommendations soon.

But the Hutto case also points to the limits of their approach, advocates say. Under the settlement, parents and children accused of immigration violations were detained when possible at the country’s only other family detention center, an 84-bed former nursing home in Leesport, Pa., called the Berks Family Shelter Care Facility. The number detained at Hutto has dropped sharply, to 127 individuals from as many as 450.

Advocates noted that Berks, though eclipsed by the criticism of Hutto — the subject of protest vigils, a New Yorker article and a documentary — also has a history of problems, like guards who disciplined children by sending them across the parking lot to a juvenile detention center, and families’ being held for two years.

The Hutto legal settlement expires Aug. 29. In the most recent monitoring report last month, Magistrate Judge Andrew W. Austin wrote: “Although the use of this facility to hold families is not a violation of the settlement agreement, it seems fundamentally wrong to house children and their noncriminal parents this way. We can do better.”

Mr. Morton, a career prosecutor, seemed to agree. Hutto will be converted into an immigration jail for women, he said, adding: “I’m not ruling out the possibility of detaining families. But Berks is the better facility for that. Hutto is not the long-term answer.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/us/politics/06detain.html?scp=1&sq=Detention%20Policy&st=cse

Posted by lois at 07:32 PM | Comments (0)

Video: Children Given One Strike: A Lifetime Without Redemption

Link to a documentary about Juvenile Life Without Parole produced by a group of University of Pennsylvania Law Students which featured interviews with Anita Colon and Bradley Bridges from the Defender's Association.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZ1gpPZEIU

Posted by lois at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

Time Magazine: Reforming Crack-Cocaine Laws, but Leaving Injustice Intact?

Reforming Crack-Cocaine Laws, but Leaving Injustice Intact?
By Theo Emery / Washington Friday, Aug. 07, 2009

In early 2006, a young man named DeJarion Echols stood in a federal courtroom in Waco, Texas, and pleaded for leniency. After police found about 40 grams of crack cocaine, cash and an assault rifle in his bedroom, the promising athlete and father pleaded guilty to crack distribution and gun charges. "I made a bad choice" by dealing crack to pay for college, Echols, then 23, told U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. According to a court transcript, the judge declared in apparent frustration, "This is one of those situations where I'd like to see a congressman sitting before me." Then he did what federal law required: Smith sentenced Echols to two back-to-back 10-year prison sentences, one for each charge. Unless he gets a commutation, Echols will not go free till around 2026.

As Echols serves his 20 years, reformers of drug sentencing laws are closing in on a goal that was unthinkable even a few years ago: scrapping the federal sentencing structure established in 1986 that gives far harsher penalties for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, resulting in prisons packed with low-level, predominantly African American offenders. The mechanism is known as the "100-to-1 drug ratio," which gives crack cocaine 100 times the weight of powder cocaine. Under the ratio, a person convicted of selling five grams of crack — about the weight of a teaspoon of salt — triggers the same five-year mandatory minimum sentence as a person convicted of selling 500 grams of powder cocaine, roughly the weight of a loaf of bread.

Even if that ratio is abolished, as appears increasingly likely, it's not clear that it will benefit offenders like Echols, who are already behind bars. The fates of tens of thousands of prisoners serving long sentences could hang in the balance as policymakers and politicians grapple with whether changes to the nation's crack laws should be applied retroactively.

The issue of crack sentencing goes to the heart of the credibility and fairness of the federal judicial system. The Department of Justice has launched a top-to-bottom review of sentencing and corrections policy, and crack-cocaine policy is a "vitally important" part of that, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer told TIME, so much so that the Administration fast-tracked its position on cocaine parity. "The criminal-justice system must be fair, and it must be perceived as being fair," Breuer says. "The 100-to-1 ratio between crack and powder is perhaps the single worst symbol of unfairness in the system. There really is no longer any basis for it."

But the Department of Justice has not taken a position on retroactivity, and Breuer says the issue is "being looked at hard." The working group expects to make recommendations to Attorney General Eric Holder within several months.

Reform advocates who have fought for an end to the 1980s crack sentencing laws are delighted that the stars have aligned for crack sentencing reform. At the same time, though, they say it would be a bitter disappointment if changes weren't retroactive. "It would be cruelly ironic not to make that change available to the very people whose cases led our lawmakers to make this decision," says Mary Price, vice president and general counsel of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which has advocated on Echols' behalf.

The 100-to-1 rule is enshrined in the get-tough Anti–Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which was intended to bring down drug kingpins and choke off the flow of crack. Research since has shown that many assumptions underlying the laws were flawed, such as the belief that crack is more dangerous than powder cocaine, making its users more violent. And they have had unintended consequences: putting away low-level street dealers rather than the big-time traffickers, with startling racial disparities. (Read "Can Amphetamines Help Cure Cocaine Addiction?")

About 77,000 people have been sentenced for crack-related federal crimes since 1992, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets federal sentencing guidelines. In 2008, over 80% of offenders sentenced that year were black and 10% were white. Among powder-cocaine offenders, over 52% were Hispanic, about 30% were black and about 16% were white. Crack-cocaine offenders receive longer sentences: 115 months on average in 2008, compared to 91 months for powder-cocaine offenders.

President Obama pledged in his campaign to abolish the disparity between penalties for powder and crack cocaine. Attorney General Holder called it "simply wrong" in a speech in Memphis last month. In April, Ricardo H. Hinojosa, the Sentencing Commission's acting chair, said there is "no justification for the current statutory penalty scheme" for cocaine, a position the commission first took in 1995. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress now agree that crack sentencing rules need to be fixed; and this may be the year that Congress finally heeds the commission. A bill creating parity between crack and powder cleared a House subcommittee last week, and the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to release a bipartisan parity bill after the August recess.

The issue of retroactivity, though, is anyone's guess. It would require an act of Congress to apply the crack-powder parity to mandatory minimums retroactively. The House bill is silent on that issue, and the Senate bill is expected to be as well. That would mean another fight from advocates for a retroactivity amendment. Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based reform group, asks: "If we've been doing something that's unfair for 23 years now, don't we have an obligation to address that unfairness?"
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1915131,00.html

Posted by lois at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

44 years after landmark act, voting rights still needed. 5.3 Americans still disenfranchised due to felony convictions

44 years after landmark act, voting rights still needed
By Erika Wood
08/06/2009

Today marks the 44th anniversary of the landmark Voting Rights Act. It was passed to reverse Jim Crow laws, which effectively denied African Americans the right to vote for decades.

The Act has accomplished great things. It eliminated poll taxes, literacy tests and other ballot box barriers. Within a few years of its passage, voter registration rates among African Americans doubled, tripled and in some states quadrupled.

Fast forward to the 2008 presidential election and its surge of African-American voter participation. Although the protections of the Act remain vital, according to one recent report, African-American women voters turned out at higher rates in November than any other racial, ethnic or gender group.

44 years after landmark act, voting rights still needed
By Erika Wood
08/06/2009

Today marks the 44th anniversary of the landmark Voting Rights Act. It was passed to reverse Jim Crow laws, which effectively denied African Americans the right to vote for decades.

The Act has accomplished great things. It eliminated poll taxes, literacy tests and other ballot box barriers. Within a few years of its passage, voter registration rates among African Americans doubled, tripled and in some states quadrupled.

Fast forward to the 2008 presidential election and its surge of African-American voter participation. Although the protections of the Act remain vital, according to one recent report, African-American women voters turned out at higher rates in November than any other racial, ethnic or gender group.

But one Jim Crow relic continues to elude the strong arms of the Voting Rights Act. Nationwide, 5.3 million American citizens are denied the right to vote because of a criminal conviction in their past. Four million are people who are out of prison, living in the community. Criminal disenfranchisement laws differ state-to-state. All told, 35 states continue to disenfranchise people released from prison.

Let's be clear, these laws were put in place right alongside poll taxes and literacy tests. In the late 1800s, as part of larger backlash against the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, criminal disenfranchisement laws spread throughout the country. At the same time, states expanded their criminal codes to punish offenses that they believed freed slaves were most likely to commit, including vagrancy, petty larceny and bigamy. This targeted criminalization and criminal disenfranchisement combined to produce the legal loss of voting rights, which effectively suppressed the power of African Americans for decades.

The laws' intended effects continue to this day. Nationwide, 13 percent of African-American men have lost the right to vote because of a criminal conviction. In eight states, more than 15 percent of African Americans cannot vote, and three of those states disenfranchise more than 20 percent of the African-American voting-age population. Given current rates of incarceration, 3 in 10 of the next generation of African-American men will lose the right to vote at some point in their lifetime.

Despite the clear evidence of discriminatory intent and impact, courts continue to uphold these laws, finding that Congress did not intend to prohibit criminal disenfranchisement when it passed the Voting Rights Act. Last week, the First Circuit Court of Appeals was the latest to issue such a ruling.

Luckily, we have three branches of government, and Congress now has the opportunity to declare loud and clear that it is time to consign these laws to the Jim Crow past. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Representative John Conyers (D-MI) have introduced the Democracy Restoration Act, a bill that seeks to restore voting rights in federal elections to all Americans who are out of prison, living in the community. The Democracy Restoration Act is the Voting Rights Act of the 21st Century. Congress should move quickly to end voting discrimination once and for all.
http://www.thegrio.com/2009/08/voting-rights-in-the-21st-century.php

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

ICE will revamp prisons for holding immigrant families

"Barbara Hines, an attorney who oversees the University of Texas immigration law clinic and was one of the first nonprofit attorneys to visit the Hutto facility, praised ICE's addition of monitors to oversee daily operations at larger immigration facilities.
“Having ICE monitors in prisons is a good step forward because I think in the last couple years, the expansion of detention has gotten out of control, leading to deaths and a lack of medical care,” Hines said. “But I don't think ICE is capable of policing itself.”"

ICE will revamp detainee system
Policy of using converted prisons to hold families of illegal immigrants is on its way out
By SUSAN CARROLL and STEWART POWELL
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Aug. 7, 2009,
Three years ago, immigrant families sent to a Central Texas immigration detention center found themselves at a converted prison rimmed in razor wire. Child inmates slept with their parents in cells monitored by lasers, stood still for daily head counts and donned navy detention uniforms available in sizes as small as infant onesies. They reported getting only one hour of school a day and going weeks without playing in the sun.

As word spread about conditions for families at the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility, critics pointed to the former medium-security prison as being emblematic of problems associated with the Bush administration's immigration detention practices.

On Thursday, top Department of Homeland Security officials announced plans to end the controversial policy of housing families at the center as part of a major overhaul of the nation's immigration detention system.

John Morton, chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, announced plans to increase direct federal oversight of the immigration detention system, which houses an estimated 400,000 people annually in more than 350 facilities — with the largest share of beds in Texas.
Not the usual inmates

The detention centers have been sharply criticized in recent years amid reports of substandard medical care, detainee deaths and poor access to attorneys. Morton said the system will be revamped to get away from a penal detention model that relies heavily on contracts with correctional facilities and private industry. Within the next three to five years, he said, the agency aims to use facilities designed, located and operated specifically for immigration purposes.

“What we're trying to do is design a system that reflects the unique civil detention authorities that we're exercising,” Morton said. “The population that we detain is different than the population that is detained in a traditional prison or jail setting.”

Morton said ICE will hire detention managers to work at each of the 23 largest immigration detention facilities in the country, which collectively house more than 40 percent of ICE detainees. The managers will provide direct oversight of daily operations at those centers, he said. His list of planned reforms also includes improved medical care, detention conditions and system oversight.
Praise for oversight

ICE has dozens of agreements to house detainees in Texas jails and prisons, and reported an average daily population of about 3,700 through those partnerships in Texas during the 2008 fiscal year, according to ICE data. Nationally, the agency also administers eight of its own facilities and has seven contract detention facilities owned and operated by private companies, including the Houston Contract Detention Facility, which in May housed an average of 877 detainees.

Immigrant advocates and some members of Congress applauded ICE's announcement of the reforms, though some called for additional changes to strengthen oversight and due process protections for detainees.

“We hope it signals an approach that is more fair, more humane and more in keeping with our American value system than putting innocent children behind bars and detaining nonviolent, noncriminal immigrants,” said ACLU of Texas executive director Terri Burke.

Barbara Hines, an attorney who oversees the University of Texas immigration law clinic and was one of the first nonprofit attorneys to visit the Hutto facility, praised ICE's addition of monitors to oversee daily operations at larger immigration facilities.

“Having ICE monitors in prisons is a good step forward because I think in the last couple years, the expansion of detention has gotten out of control, leading to deaths and a lack of medical care,” Hines said. “But I don't think ICE is capable of policing itself.”

In March 2007, attorneys for immigrant children detained with their parents at Hutto sued the U.S. government. As part of a settlement agreement later that year, ICE agreed to enforceable standards at Hutto, including external oversight and improved education, nutrition and medical care.

Morton said that instead of housing families, the Hutto facility, which is owned by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America, will house female detainees. He said ICE will continue to house families at a former nursing home in Pennsylvania, and review family detention on a “case-by-case basis,” including exploring alternatives such as electronic monitoring.

But critics were concerned that ending family detention could resurrect the old “catch-and-release” policy. For years, illegal immigrants with children routinely were detained at the border and then released into the U.S., but many failed to appear for court dates.

“One way of circumventing detention was to come across the border with a child,” said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “That's why it was important that these detention facilities for families be provided.”

Morton stressed that ICE is not shying away from immigration detention in general. “We are going to continue to detain people, and we are going to continue to detain people on a large scale,” he said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/immigration/6563802.html
This and other news about immigration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Posted by lois at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)

August 05, 2009

Marilyn Clement: June 30, 1935 to August 3, 2009

Marilyn Clement: June 30, 1935 to August 3, 2009
From Healthcare-NOW!

"...working for the common good is a wonderful way to live a wonderful way to spend a lifetime." - Marilyn Clement, June 7, 2003
Marilyn Clement

Marilyn Clement, founder and National Coordinator of Healthcare-NOW!, passed away on Monday, August 3 surrounded by her children, Scott and Pam, her daughter-in-law Liz, and the caring thoughts of all of us who knew her, worked with her, and had come to love her.

Marilyn's life and work was dedicated to social justice. She worked tirelessly to build, speak, and spread the word about meaningful civil rights and healthcare reform. Her leadership, vision, and passion helped to strengthen the recognition of healthcare as a human right throughout the nation.

Marilyn led a rich, decades-long career in social justice activism, including civil rights, women's rights, human rights, and peace. She worked with and through a variety of organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the United Methodist Church, and the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, among other organizations.

Marilyn served as the National Coordinator for Healthcare-NOW until her death. Doctors diagnosed her with multiple myeloma in June of 2008, and Marilyn had to step back from her leadership role at Healthcare-NOW to undergo extensive and painful treatments. A tribute to her organizing skills, a group of nine committed activists responded to her call, and stepped up to form a Steering Committee to assume leadership during her illness.

At the June 7, 2009 event at Judson Memorial Church, Marilyn's consistent optimism rang loud and clear as she remarked to the crowd, "We are on the verge of winning something that is so desperately needed for all of our people... Love to all of you. Keep up the fight... And we are going to win single-payer healthcare."

Healthcare-NOW! recognizes the great loss to everyone in the single-payer healthcare and human rights communities that Marilyn's passing represents. Our resolve to continue and strengthen the movement she started is stronger than ever. As we mourn her loss, we also celebrate the amazing gifts she has given to us all.

Marilyn is survived by her brother, Les Boydstun; her children Pam and Scott; her daughter-in-law Liz Arwine, widow of her deceased son Mark; and three grandchildren Kendall, Chelsea and Alex. Following Marilyns wishes, the family is planning a memorial service to be held at Judson Church on Washington Square later this fall.

The family suggests that those who wish to donate in Marilyn's memory should do so to the Center for Constitutional Rights or to Healthcare-NOW!

Posted by lois at 06:44 PM | Comments (0)

TX: After 15 years, waiting list ends for prison drug treatment programs

After 15 years, waiting list ends for prison drug treatment programs
New facilities helped curtail backlog.
By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, August 05, 2009

For the first time since the Texas prison system's substance-abuse treatment programs began nearly 15 years ago, amid controversy over their cost and effectiveness, programs have no waiting list, prison officials said Tuesday.

In years past, thousands of drug- and alcohol-addicted convicts had to wait for months — in some cases years — for space to open up in the treatment programs, filling prisons with felons who could have been paroled, and confounding a smooth transition of convicts from prisons to programs to parole.

But officials said that because the Legislature voted two years to ago greatly expand the treatment programs, the chronic backlog that had plagued them since their inception, at the behest of then-Gov. Ann Richards, is now gone. At the same time, the prison population has decreased slightly in recent months, part of a national trend.

"It shows all the parts of our criminal justice system are working together right now ... and that's the first time in 16 years that I've been able to say that," said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, a Democrat from Houston who helped Richards push the treatment programs through the Legislature in the early 1990s.

"This will go down as a very important day in the history of our system," he said. "What it will mean for most Texans is it will enhance public safety. If inmates can get the treatment they need, when they need it, they will come out a better person than when they came in."

It was not clear how long the absence of a waiting list would last.

Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the waiting lists had dwindled until Friday, when all major prison substance-abuse treatment programs caught up with demand — thanks in part to the recent opening of a 400-bed contract treatment center in Burnet.

Another treatment center with 550 bunks is slated to open soon in the East Texas city of Henderson, she said.

"There are a few inmates with special needs that may be waiting for a day or so, but the backlog is gone for now," said Stuart Jenkins, the state's parole director whose division of the prison system oversees 78,000 ex-convicts on parole. "It's good news, definitely."

Rissie Owens, chairwoman of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, said the agency in past years had approved thousands of convicts for parole on the condition that they complete a treatment program, only to see them sit in prison for months — even years — because no space was available.

"We can actually vote them into a program now and have them get in," she said. "That's great."

Billed as the biggest shift for Texas corrections policy in years, the 2007 expansion of treatment programs by lawmakers greatly expanded the capacity of in-prison drug- and alcohol-treatment programs, opened transition treatment centers to help convicts succeed once they got out, expanded counseling and specialized drug-treatment programs, and opened lockups designed especially for habitual drunken drivers. The cost was more than $227 million.

In 2007, Gov. Rick Perry proposed building two medium-security prisons, but legislative leaders opted for expanding the treatment programs instead, despite some concern about whether the initiative would work.

More controversial was the expansion of prison treatment programs in the early 1990s by Richards, who touted her experience as a recovering alcoholic. But owing to wary legislators and a tight budget, many of the proposed 12,000 beds were never built — and many of those that were built were used to house regular convicts, not those in treatment.

Budget red ink in 2003 cut those programs further.

State Rep. Jerry Madden, a Republican from Richardson who co-authored the 2007 legislation with Whitmire, said that having treatment beds available for convicts will mean that they can complete therapy programs before they are released from prison, giving them a better chance of success upon release. "This is exactly what we had in mind, where we wanted to be someday — even though I'm somewhat surprised we got here so quickly," Madden said. "We know the history of the programs shows they work if they're done right."

"I always thought I'd be a really old man before I saw this day come, and I'm surprised it didn't take that long," said Whitmire, who turns 60 on Aug. 13.
http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/2009/08/05/0805drugrehab.html

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

Non-union contractors organize against Project Labor Agreements for the building of the new Graterford in PA

http://www.thetruthaboutplas.com/2009/08/04/graterford-prison-pla-confirmed/
from the website....
August 4, 2009 – 5:19 pm

The Bulletin is reporting and www.thetruthaboutPLAs.com sources confirmed that the Pennsylvania Department of General Services (DGS) will require a wasteful and discriminatory union-only PLA on the Graterford prison reconstruction project in Montgomery County, PA. This $400 million project is one of at least six upcoming prison reconstruction/renovation projects in Pennsylvania. The price tag for all six projects is expected to be approximately $830 million.

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

Report is critical of immigration detention centers

Report is critical of immigration detention centers
Gainesville FL Times
August 5, 2009
BY STEPHEN GURR
Link to report below.

Attorney David Kennedy says clients of his who have been held in immigration detention centers in South Georgia and eastern Alabama routinely are denied fundamental rights.

"I have had clients who have had no access to phones for extended periods of time. I have had clients being questioned and induced into signing things they did not understand," said Kennedy, a Gainesville immigration lawyer.

"I have had clients complain they were stuck in their cells for 23 hours a day. There’s definitely a problem with immigration detention in this country."

On the eve of a new immigration detention center opening in Gainesville, a report issued this week by National Immigration Law Center appears to validate Kennedy’s complaints.

The report, based on confidential Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents obtained in litigation, alleges there are pervasive problems throughout the country’s immigration detention facilities, many of which are operated by private contractors.

Detainees are routinely denied visitation with family members, access to legal materials and regular recreation, according to the report. Many never get an explanation of their rights while being detained, the report claims.

"The conditions are much more harsh than they ought to be," said the report’s co-author, Ranjana Natarajan. "This is a civil detention, and these folks are being treated like hardened criminals."

The Corrections Corporation of America could begin boarding immigration detainees at its new North Georgia Detention Center on Main Street as soon as next week. The site of the old county jail adjoining the Hall County Sheriff’s office underwent $4 million in renovations and is being leased from Hall County for $2 million a year. CCA operates the detention center through an agreement with ICE and the county.

This week, ICE officials did not deny the allegations contained in the report, vowing to continue to improve conditions. But Department of Homeland Security officials recently decided against creating uniform detention center standards that the National Immigration Law Center wants. ICE is supposed to conduct yearly evaluations of every detention center, but has no enforceable, binding legal rules on how inmates are treated, according to the report.

"It creates a lot of gray area," Natarajan said. "Because (detention centers) are not expected to follow the rules, they’re all over the map."

ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said agency officials "feel the NILC put together a very thoughtful report, and we will carefully review and take seriously this report, as we would any report. We are committed to continuously improving our immigration detention system."

Gonzalez noted that within 10 days of taking office, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano ordered all immigration enforcement policies to undergo a review, "including detention." In February, Napolitano appointed former Arizona Department of Corrections director Dora Schriro as a special advisor for detention and removal.

"Her position was created to focus exclusively on the significant growth in detention and detainment in the last few years," Gonzalez said.

On any given day, ICE holds about 33,000 immigration detainees in facilities across the country, and supervises another 17,000 people facing deportation through electronic monitoring and other means. The National Immigration Law Center estimates that in 2008 about 220,000 people were held in detention centers prior to deportation. The typical stay is 30 to 90 days.

The Gainesville facility operated by CCA is expected to hold about 500 low- and medium-security immigration detainees, many of them from North Carolina.

CCA spokeswoman Louise Grant referred questions on this week’s report to ICE officials, but noted that "CCA does adhere in every one of our ICE detention facilities to the detention standards set by our customer."

The company also has ICE officials on site for detainee access, Grant said.

This week’s report prompted two U.S. senators to call for a change to the system.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., on Thursday introduced the "Strong Standards Act," a proposed bill that would set minimum detention standards and require the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that laws concerning the treatment of detainees are enforced.

"These legislative initiatives will help reinforce what our great country has always stood for: liberty, the rule of law and basic human rights," Menendez said in a statement.

To Kennedy, anything would be an improvement.

"If we’re comparing these (detention centers) to their Turkish counterparts, they’re pretty good," Kennedy said. "But by U.S. standards, they’re pretty poor."

"A Broken System: Confidential Reports Reveal Failures in U.S. Immigration Detention Centers" by the National Immigration Law Center and the ACLU of Southern CA. August 2009. http://www.nilc.org/immlawpolicy/arrestdet/A-Broken-System-2009-07.pdf

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

CA: Federal judges call conditions in the prisons 'appalling' and unconstitutional. A reduction plan is due by mid-September.

Federal judges call conditions in the prisons 'appalling' and unconstitutional. A reduction plan is due by mid-September.
By Carol J. Williams- LA Times
August 5, 2009

California must shrink the population of its teeming prisons by nearly 43,000 inmates over the next two years to meet constitutional standards, a panel of three federal judges ruled Tuesday, ordering the state to come up with a reduction plan by mid-September.

The order cited Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's own words when he proclaimed a state of emergency in the corrections system in 2006 and warned of substantial risk to prison staff, inmates and the general public, saying "immediate action is necessary to prevent death and harm."

Tuesday's ruling heightens the stakes for a legislative debate over prisons that will take place later this month. As part of the agreement to close the state's $26-billion budget gap, the governor and lawmakers agreed to cut $1.2 billion from the prisons budget, but postponed decisions on how to hit that goal.

The governor and most legislative leaders back a plan that would reduce prison populations by as many as 37,000 over the next two years using a combination of early releases, changes in parole policies and shifting of some prisoners to county jails.

Debate on that plan will be contentious, with many Republicans opposed. But the judges' ruling means that defeating the plan would not only unravel a major piece of the budget agreement but also potentially cede decision-making over prison policies to the federal courts.

Lengthy process

The 185-page opinion follows a trial last year and nearly 14 years of deliberations over lawsuits brought by inmates alleging cruel and unusual punishment, which moved the state case into federal jurisdiction. The opinion accuses the state of fostering "criminogenic" conditions that lead prisoners and parolees to commit more crimes, feeding a cycle of recidivism.

"The constitutional deficiencies in the California prison system's medical and mental health system cannot be resolved in the absence of a prisoner release order," the judges concluded.

They stopped short of issuing a release edict, though, giving state officials 45 days to come up with their own plan for reducing overcrowding while observing that alternatives to release, such as building new prisons, were "too distant" and unlikely to be funded.

Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said the state would comply with the order to produce a plan, but repeated criticism that the judges had ignored significant improvements made in recent years.

He said he doubts the U.S. Supreme Court, to which state officials could appeal any release order, would find that current prison conditions violate the Constitution.

"The courts are ordering the state to come up with a plan to release all these prisoners, but the question is: Which prisoners? Release to what -- halfway houses, GPS monitoring? And what happens when they commit another crime -- do they come back? There's a lot that is not clear," Brown said.

Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Matthew Cate said he hoped the judges would back down if state officials and lawmakers make progress in reducing the state's prison population this month, as planned.

The administration's proposal to cut the inmate population by 37,000 over two years could be approved by the Legislature with a majority vote -- meaning no support would be needed by conservative Republicans who threatened to scuttle last month's budget deal if prisoner releases were included.

The governor's plan would allow the state to place on home detention prisoners with less than a year left on their sentences and those who are elderly or infirm. It would also change sentencing and parole rules to reward those who show evidence of rehabilitation.

But Schwarzenegger may be reluctant to use the courts as a hammer to push his plan through. Administration officials have repeatedly said that the court has overstepped its boundaries. The overcrowding problem, Cate said, is a state problem that needs to be fixed by the governor and lawmakers.

"It is not the job of the federal court to do this," he said.

Noting the legislative session that begins in two weeks, Prison Law Office Director Donald Specter, who brought the prisoners' suits, said lawmakers now face the choice of being "part of the solution or continuing to be part of the problem."

Potential win-win

Specter emphasized, as did the judges, that the ruling "doesn't mean that 40,000 prisoners are going to walk out of prison tomorrow."

"If done right, this could be a win-win situation for the entire state, as the prisons will be safer for my clients and the staff who work there, taxpayers will save hundreds of millions of dollars a year and communities will be safer as a result," Specter said, pointing to the judges' opinion that prison conditions contribute to repeat offenses.

The judges capped the prison population at no more than 137% of the designed capacity of 84,000. That would mean release of 42,920 inmates to meet the population ceiling of 115,080.

Some lawmakers welcomed the ruling while others vowed to fight it.

"It's frankly a day of reckoning for those who have pushed for constant sentence enhancements, who would decimate rehabilitation programs and who oppose revenues to support state services," said Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), alluding to Republican lawmakers' conflicting efforts to be tough on crime while cutting spending.

"Today's decision by the three-judge panel is a nightmare come true for California families," countered Assembly Minority Leader Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo. "Any fair-minded court will see there is no way to reduce our prison population by nearly 43,000 without letting out some very dangerous criminals onto our streets and into our neighborhoods."

The judges pointedly rejected any notion that conditions have improved. Citing testimony during last year's trial by some of the nation's foremost prison administrators, the judges said the experts reported "they have never previously witnessed such appalling prison conditions."

Until overcrowding is reduced, the state will be unable to provide "constitutionally compliant care," concluded the panel comprised of U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton, and U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

The judges said overcrowding at prison reception centers approaches three times designed capacity, frustrating prison intake officials' ability to identify incoming prisoners with medical or mental health problems.

Overcrowding has led to conditions that contribute to the spread of disease, require increased use of lockdowns to control inmates, and impede authorities' ability to provide essential healthcare, the judges said. It also "worsens many of the risk factors for suicide among inmates and increases the prevalence and acuity of mental illness," they added.

Conditions are "often dangerous, and on many occasions fatal," the judges said, alluding to reports that California inmates die of treatable or avoidable illnesses at the rate of one per week.

Henderson, a judge of the U.S. District Court for Northern California, seized oversight of the prison healthcare network in 2006 and appointed a receiver to fix the deficiencies.

J. Clark Kelso, the receiver, said in a recent interview that his staff was making progress on a daunting array of projects but that significant improvements remain at least a year away. He plans to computerize inmate medical records, replace a deficient pharmacy operation, build at least $2 billion worth of hospitals and upgrade existing ones.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-meprisons5-2009aug05,0,4339337,full.story

Posted by lois at 01:38 PM | Comments (0)

August 04, 2009

NY: Justice Department Finds That Erie County Jails Abuse of Prisoners Violates Their Constitutional Rights

U.S. probe finds abuses at Erie County jails
By Matthew Spina
Buffalo NEWS STAFF REPORTER
July 29, 2009

A pregnant inmate thrown to the floor while being booked. Guards looking the other way when inmates fight. Jail deputies beating inmates in a remote elevator where no security camera is watching.

Those were among the abuses the U.S. Justice Department found in an almost two-year investigation of Erie County's two jails.

The federal investigators concluded that the jails violate the constitutional rights of their inmates and subject them to brutality as well as poor care on several levels.

In its 50-page report, the Justice Department says the Erie County Holding Center in Buffalo and the Correctional Facility in Alden have failed to correct their serious problems even after being warned for years by other agencies.

The Justice Department called the administrative effort by Sheriff Timothy B. Howard's Jail Management Division "woefully inadequate" and said it has led to a "pattern of serious harm to inmates, including death."

"We conclude that the conditions of confinement violate the constitutional rights of inmates," the Justice Department said in a letter to County Executive Chris Collins, who months ago shut off all county cooperation with the probe begun in November 2007, before he took office.

Not only did Erie County refuse to cooperate -- on the county attorney's advice -- the county attorney sought out some inmates whom the federal authorities had interviewed in other facilities and asked them to reveal their testimony, the Justice Department revealed.

"Much of what is in the report is based on fiction and not reality," said County Attorney Cheryl A. Green, who said she conducted those follow-up interviews to assess whether the inmates had been coached and to determine whether their testimony would be accurately presented.

But in an interview Wednesday, Green withheld judgment on the stories of excessive force.

The Justice Department listed almost 14 pages of corrections it wants to see and discussed the possibility of a lawsuit to force Erie County to comply with the federal Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act.

Many improvements are under way in the county's two jails, Green said, adding that she did not believe the report will lend more credence to lawsuits filed against Erie County over jail conditions.

Others, however, predict the Civil Rights Division's report will bolster legal claims by people who say they were mistreated, neglected, abused or denied crucial medical care in the jails. Erie County has paid out millions to settle such claims over the years. More cases are pending.

"Regrettably, as has happened so often in the past, more inmates, prisoners and their families will likely sue the county due to the conditions in the jails," County Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz said. "That was avoidable, and further deaths and injuries could have been prevented had the sheriff addressed these deficiencies."

Erie County's two jails receive some 23,000 people a year, the Justice Department said, and the Holding Center is New York's second-largest pretrial detention facility. Issues of crowding, poor medical care and filth, especially at the Holding Center, have been public issues for years.

Allegations of brutality have been less common. But the Justice Department said it learned of several cases involving "excessive use of force." For example:

-- Holding Center deputies take inmates on "elevator rides" in an isolated elevator without a security camera. Inside they are beaten, the report said.

-- A pregnant inmate being booked into the Holding Center in August 2007 was struck in the face, thrown to the ground and kneed in the side, losing two teeth, the Justice Department said. When the inmate said she was pregnant, the deputies said they thought she was just fat.

--An inmate being cavity-searched in August 2008 asked that a deputy change the rubber gloves obviously stained from the cavity searches of other inmates. The deputy responded by hitting the inmate in the head and telling him he "did not have to do a damn thing," the Justice Department said.

-- A correctional facility inmate died of a stroke in March 2007 after officers forced his head against a wall and personnel ignored his request for medical help, the Justice Department said. The inmate has been previously identified as Joseph Balbuzoski, who was awaiting trial on charges of burglary and grand larceny.

-- An inmate shouting and yelling at the arrival of the new year in January 2008 was punched, kicked and had a sheet tied around his neck with the threat to hang him. He was then shackled and punched again while in an isolation cell, the report said.

The Justice Department heard of deputies and officers looking the other way when inmates were attacking inmates or not intervening when they clearly witnessed violence. For example:

-- In February 2007, an inmate stabbed another inmate with a broken broom handle. The deputy on duty said he did not see the assault because he was moving a box onto an elevator at the time. The report did not indicate whether this occurred in the correctional facility or the Holding Center.

-- On Nov. 26, 2007, the report said, a deputy watched but did not intervene when an inmate threw a chair across the law library at another inmate because he considered him a snitch.

The Justice Department investigators said they were told of inmates pitted against one another by guards; inmates egged on to beat up sex offenders or suspected sex offenders; and inmates being enlisted to discipline other inmates in exchange for favors.

Warnings about jail conditions go back years. Lawsuits were filed in the 1990s against crowding at the Holding Center. More recently, staff from the State Commission of Correction, which polices local jails, have said the Holding Center is in "the most protracted period of noncompliance" by any facility in the state. The commission has called its medical care "negligent and incompetent."

"The Department of Justice report confirms many of the same problems we have identified and brought to the attention of Erie County over the past several years," said Thomas A. Beilein, the former Niagara County sheriff who heads the commission. "I am hopeful that this report, and our previous reports, will motivate Erie County to address the many deficiencies at the Erie County Holding Center and bring the facility into compliance."

The Justice Department provided a few examples of warnings that have gone unheeded, including this one: Since 2003, at least 23 Holding Center inmates either committed suicide, attempted suicide or took steps that demonstrated suicidal thoughts, the report said.

In 2008, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care said Erie County should stop housing suicidal inmates in cells that gave them the chance to hang themselves cells with steel beds, missing wall plates, bars on windows. But the Justice Department said the county will still put suicidal inmates in unsafe cells.

The Justice Department accused county officials of being "deliberately indifferent" and not taking incidents of suicide andthe warnings of outside agencies seriously.
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/buffaloerie/story/748556.html

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

Prisons not the answer to crime problems: Attorney General

Prisons not the answer to crime problems: Attorney General
August 3, 2009
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter- Chicago Sun Times

More prisons are not the answer to America’s crime problems, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told the nation’s lawyers Monday.

“We will not focus exclusively on incarceration as the most effective means of protecting public safety,” Holder told the American Bar Association delegates meeting here for their annual convention. “Since 2003, spending on incarceration has continued to rise, but crime rates have flattened.”

Holder conceded that the massive build-up of prisons — a seven-fold increase over the past 40 years — probably has something to do with the crime rate dropping 40 percent since 1991.

“Today, one out of every 100 adults in America is incarcerated — the highest incarceration rate in the world,” he said. But the country has reached a point of diminishing returns at which putting even greater percentages of America’s citizens behind bars won’t cut the crime rate.

That’s in part because once people spend time in prison, they’re likely to keep engaging in the kind of behavior that sends them back to prison, he said.

“Most crimes in America are committed by people who have committed crimes before,” Holder said. “About 67 percent of former state prisoners and 40 percent of former federal prisoners are re-arrested within three years of release. If we can reduce the rate of recidivism, we will directly reduce the crime rate.”

Prisoners who undergo drug treatment and/or work training in prison are 16 percent less likely to re-offend after their release, he said.

Diverting non-violent drug offenders away from prison and into treatment programs, as New York State does, saves taxpayers money, better rehabilitates offenders and helps reduce the crime rate, Holder said.

“Every state in the union is trying to trim budgets,” Holder said. “States and localities are laying off teachers, cutting back on public health, and canceling after-school programs for our children. But in almost all cases, spending on prisons continues to rise. This is unsustainable economically.”

Holder provoked applause from the delegates when he complained that across the country, state and local governments are under-funding public defenders, whose growing caseloads make it difficult for them to adequately represent their clients.

Holder did not speak on the delegates overwhelming voice vote to ask Congress to repeal part of the Defense Of Marriage Act that prevents same-sex partners receiving federal benefits even in states that have legalized gay marriage.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/1698536,eric-holder-attorney-general-prisons-080309.article

http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/2009/ag-speech-090803.html

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Attorney General Eric Holder at the 2009 ABA Convention
CHICAGO, ILL
Monday, August 3, 2009

[EXCERPT]

"...We will not focus exclusively on incarceration as the most effective means of protecting public safety. For although spending on prison construction continues to increase, public safety is not continuing to improve. Crime rates appear to have reached a plateau beyond which they no longer decline in response to increases in incarceration. Indeed, since 2003, spending on incarceration has continued to rise, but crime rates have flattened.

But there is another reason to consider new law enforcement strategies:
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, cutting back on public health, and canceling after-school programs for our children. But in almost all cases, spending on prisons continues to rise. This is unsustainable economically. Many jurisdictions simply cannot afford the monetary costs of focusing exclusively on incarceration, to say nothing of the social costs associated
with high rates of imprisonment..."

Posted by lois at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)

August 03, 2009

Part 2 of series on Tamms: Trapped in Tamms: Inmates in Illinois' only supermax prison face battle proving mistreatment

Monday, Aug. 03, 2009
Trapped in Tamms: Inmates in Illinois' only supermax prison face battle proving mistreatment
BY BETH HUNDSDORFER AND GEORGE PAWLACZYK - News-Democrat

Anthony Gay always fought back. Even in first grade he was quick with his fists, especially when kids mocked his temper or taunted him because he lived with foster parents.

When he came home bloody and bruised, a big mutt he called Diamond comforted him. His aunt, Shirley Gay, who raised her nephew in a tough Rock Island neighborhood, said she always feared that someday Gay's anger would get him into serious trouble.

However, there was nothing in his juvenile record to suggest that Gay would end up where he is today -- serving 99 years in solitary confinement at Illinois' supermax prison, the Tamms Correctional Center -- after an initial conviction for punching another youth and stealing his hat and a dollar bill. He received probation for that crime, but violated it and landed in prison at age 20 to serve seven years, with parole possible after 3 1/2.

Gay was sent to the maximum security Pontiac Correctional Center, where convictions in the nearby Livingston County Court for assaulting guards added decades to the quick-tempered inmate's sentence, even though these crimes did not involve serious injury and such crimes often are not prosecuted at other prisons, a News-Democrat investigation found.

Gay spends 23 hours a day in a cell at Tamms, in the southern tip of Illinois, where he has been held for the last five years. He first was transferred to Tamms in 1998 and held for about a year before being returned to Pontiac.

To cope with the isolation at Tamms, he has regularly mutilated himself to the point that it required extensive suturing to close his wounds, sometimes without anesthetic, court records state.

The Tamms policy regarding "cutters" often means time on a strap-down bed, a metal framework where an inmate lies spread-eagle, bound by his arms and legs with leather straps.

Gay has been strapped down for periods of up to 32 hours, according to court documents. A prison doctor has testified that mutilators are restrained this way for their own protection so they can't cut themselves until the desire to mutilate passes.

For civil rights lawyers and prisoner advocates, cases like Gay's raise the question: Does a lengthy sentence for a series of minor crimes served in solitary confinement under conditions that drive a person to self-torture amount to cruel and unusual punishment banned by the Constitution's Eighth Amendment?

Civil rights attorneys say a lawsuit raising that question probably would not succeed. They say federal law and U.S. Supreme Court decisions have produced legal hurdles that make it all but impossible to bring many Eighth Amendment arguments. In particular, they cite the 1996 Prisoner Litigation Reform Act passed by Congress in response to a flood of inmate litigation, including frivolous lawsuits that made national headlines.

"The combined effect of the federal legislation and the Supreme Court's pronouncements in the area of prisoner rights has been that courts have essentially left the field of regulating the treatment of prisoners in this country," said attorney Locke Bowman, director of the McArthur Justice Center in Chicago.

"The consequence of this, intended or not, is that prison officials are essentially left to do as they please with respect to solitary confinement, strap-downs and the like," he said. "If it became known that animals were treated in this fashion, there would be widespread public outrage."

Citing the 1996 federal legislation, David Fahti, an attorney at the Washington, D. C., office of Humans Rights Watch, said, "There is one set of rules for everybody else in the country and a different and less favorable set of rules for prisoners."

Fahti's organization criticized the special rules for prisoner lawsuits in a 46-page report released in May. It cited a wide range of unfavorable rules for prisoners, including the difficulty of meeting much shorter deadlines for filing motions and a requirement that inmates first exhaust administrative remedies within the prison, even if they are unfair, complicated or vague.

Michael Randle, newly appointed director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, said the Tamms staff handles inmates in a firm but fair manner.

"The staff at Tamms do a very professional job with a particular population that is the most difficult to deal with in corrections," he said.

U.S. District Chief Judge David R. Herndon in East St. Louis said that the legal rights of inmates who bring lawsuits alleging civil rights violations are well-protected. But Herndon said that without a specific legal complaint,a federal judge does not have the duty to question issues such as whether the effects of long-term solitary confinement are cruel and unusual.

"If there is some specific issue in the complaint, of course, we're going to get into it," he said.

Bowman said attorneys who represent inmates like those at Tamms should address cruel and unusual conditions through indirect or "peripheral" issues, such as alleging that prison officials fail to provide treatment for the seriously mentally ill or arguing that criteria used to transfer inmates to Tamms deny them due process.

Gay's lawyers have filed such a lawsuit. It contends that placing their client on a strap-down bed amounted to a failure by prison officials to provide proper medical treatment, even if Gay caused his own injuries.

The Department of Corrections, in its legal response, said the strap-down bed was proper because it prevented Gay from injuring himself further.

Inmates who file what judges consider frivolous lawsuits can lose their right to a free, court-appointed lawyer and must pay hundreds of dollars in filing fees in small monthly increments, even though they are in solitary confinement with no means of making money.

It can take up to 10 years to resolve a case due to court delays, even when plaintiffs raise immediate issues, such as guards beating prisoners.

Chicago attorney Alan S. Mills filed suit on behalf of 36 Tamms inmates nearly 10 years ago. That lawsuit is scheduled for trial in November before U.S. District Court Judge G. Patrick Murphy in East St. Louis.

In the complaint, Mills contends that his clients' right to due process was violated by a secret and arbitrary system that transferred them from other prisons to Tamms and placed them in solitary confinement, where ordinary privileges like phone calls, access to basic education programs and religious services are banned. The initial complaint also stated that inmates were sent to Tamms in retaliation for filing lawsuits about prison conditions.

The Department of Corrections said in its response that the criteria for transferring an inmate to Tamms is based solely on disciplinary records and alleged gang involvement, according to court records.

'Alice in Wonderland'

Many inmates at Tamms were transferred there from the maximum security Pontiac Correctional Center after they were prosecuted for what officials at other prisons, such as the maximum security Menard Correctional Center near Chester, often consider non-criminal harassment of guards. At other prisons, such incidents as throwing urine, feces and food at guards usually would mean a loss of privileges or other punishment, not usually a criminal conviction.

At Pontiac, prison officials don't tolerate such actions. They prosecute offending inmates, who get extra years added to their sentences if they are convicted. The convictions mark these inmates as troublemakers, and many of them become prime candidates for the label "worst of the worst" and a transfer to Tamms.

That's what happened to Gay.

A relatively small man at 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds, Gay claimed corrections officers at Pontiac repeatedly taunted him, knowing he has a hair-trigger temper. Before he was transferred for the second time to Tamms in 2004, he was convicted numerous times for aggravated assault against a guard, which added 92 years to his sentence under a state law that requires this time to be served at the end of the inmate's original sentence.

A review of Gay's record inside prison showed that 18 incidents involved throwing body wastes, pulling back on handcuffs or struggling with guards -- none of which led to serious injury. These sentences combined pushed Gay's parole date to 2093.

Livingston County State's Attorney Tom Brown said that after several years of permanent lockdown at Pontiac in the late 1990s, violent crime against prison staff decreased.

"Most of everything has trickled off to stuff that's relatively non-violent, usually throwing some sort of liquid on a guard," he said.

Brown said that the non-violent harassment of guards is still prosecuted because prison staff "have the same right to be safe at work and free of crime as you or I when we go to work."

But a former judge in Livingston County, where the Pontiac prison is located, criticized prosecutors for pressing charges every time Gay essentially resisted authority.

Referring to 10 incidents in a two-month span in which Gay eventually was convicted of "throwing liquids" on guards and received 35 additional years, Circuit Judge Charles H. Frank wrote to a fellow judge: "I would think a $2 piece of plastic draping would have prevented all of these. Apparently, no one out there understands that. ... Mr. Gay committed a minor theft. As a practical matter, he is now a lifer."

In a recent telephone interview, Frank said Gay, who always acted as his own attorney, was articulate and once won an acquittal in Frank's court during a trial on an aggravated assault charge.

Frank said he tried to work a deal with prosecutors to wrap up all pending charges in one reduced sentence, but Gay wouldn't cooperate.

"He'd say, 'Nope, I want to try them all,'" the former judge said.

Frank said prison guards who accompanied Gay didn't like the idea that an inmate would so enjoy being in court, even though it was for prosecution of crimes against their own kind.

"It was kind of like Alice in Wonderland around there," Frank said.

Metro-east inmates Michael E. Williams of Hartford and Wade Thomas of East St. Louis faced situations similar to Gay's.

Williams originally was sentenced in 1994 in Madison County Court to two years for theft and was eligible for release after a year, but because of subsequent convictions for crimes committed in prison, including weapons violations at prisons other than Pontiac, he isn't scheduled for parole until 2028. If released then, he will have served 34 years.

Thomas was sentenced in 1997 in St. Clair County Court to 12 years for vehicular hijacking where he was a passenger. He was 18 at the time. He could have been released after six years but because of several convictions for non-injury crimes while in prison, he isn't scheduled for parole until at least 2014, when he will have served 17 years.

Not a judge's place

Thomas, the filed suit in 2004 in federal court claiming that after mutilating himself, he was strapped down for 12 hours while naked and then left without clothes in a cold cell for days. He acted as his own attorney.

Thomas pressed his case for three years, using the same basic argument that is the basis for Gay's lawsuit -- prison indifference to medical needs after self-mutilation and retaliation for filing grievances. He eventually asked the court to drop the case, stating he felt he wouldn't get a fair trial.

The prison's physician, Dr. Marvin Powers, "Cleaned his wounds and gave him stitches, but without any anesthetic, causing unnecessary pain," a federal judge's summary stated.

An attorney for the Department of Corrections gave the same response as in similar lawsuits: The prison provided medical care and Thomas was strapped down to prevent him from further harming himself.

Herndon, the federal judge in East St. Louis, said inmates' concerns, even in what might appear to be baseless complaints, are not ignored.

"We get all kinds of complaints from Tamms. ... Do I sit around and concern myself with the issues at Tamms? No. Not unless there is an issue before me in a case. It's just not our place to go around and start driving to Tamms and say, 'I'm here to make an inspection to see if you're running your prison right.'"

Herndon said he and other federal judges are seeking ways to shorten the time it takes for a prisoner lawsuit to reach resolution.

In another case, Damir Green was sentenced for a drug charge in 1992 in Cook County to six years with parole possible after three. Like other Tamms inmates, he was convicted of crimes within the prison system that added considerable time to his sentence: 19 extra years in his case. He has been held in continuous solitary confinement since 1999.

In 2000, Green filed suit in federal court in East St. Louis alleging that his rights were violated after he struggled with another guard and was singled out for a digital search of his mouth and then his anal cavity by a guard using the same "dirty glove." Green alleged that the purpose of the search was "humiliation."

A lawyer for the Department of Corrections contended the guard's digital search was proper because Green was suspected of having hidden a weapon in his body.

Green faced a difficult legal hurdle established years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was not enough to prove that the guard searched him with a filthy glove. He must prove that he was seriously injured, and that the guard intended to violate his rights.

After a jury in federal court could not reach a decision, a judge ruled that the case should not go further because Green's physical injuries were minimal.

Green also complained that he was left for 40 minutes in a locked holding cell with his legs shackled and his hands tightly bound behind him. To relieve his discomfort, Green "stepped through" his handcuffs so that they were in front and more comfortable, and this enraged a guard, which led to his harassment, according to Green's lawsuit.

"This message, that they can do anything they want to you because you're not sitting the right way, is just the tip of the iceberg with Tamms," said Nadya Pittendrigh, a member of the Tamms Year 10 Committee, which has long pushed for reform at the supermax.

"It's just a snowflake on the iceberg compared to indefinite isolation with absolutely no legal recourse or due process."

His appeal to the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago was denied two days after it arrived in the mail.

Even when a Tamms inmate wins in the federal court system, collecting real damages is virtually impossible unless a serious, direct physical injury can be shown.

Alex Pearson, a murderer doing 45 years, was told he would be transferred out of Tamms in 2005 after doing eight years in the supermax. Pearson had successfully convinced officials he was no longer involved with the Gangster Disciples, a feared prison gang. This cleared him to get out of Tamms.

However, in the weeks before his transfer, Pearson said a prison guard supervisor told him he would have to become an informant against the gang at other prisons. Pearson said he objected that this would amount to a death sentence and refused. Two days before he was scheduled to ship out of Tamms, he was given a disciplinary ticket for "sexual misconduct," which set his transfer back a year. Pearson said he was urinating and did not notice a female social worker who approached his cell.

Pearson, who acted as his own lawyer, sued on the basis that he was improperly held at Tamms for an extra year.

The Department of Corrections filed court documents stating that no inmate is disciplined except for violations of rules.

A jury in federal court in East St. Louis found in favor of Pearson, who argued that the real reason for the ticket was that the social worker had several times tried to persuade him to "rat out" his former gang colleagues right up until a few days before she made the complaint about him urinating in her presence.

The jury approved a "monetary award" of $1, plus $1.50 attorney's fees. Pearson appealed to the Chicago federal appeals court seeking a larger award. His request was denied.

Tamms is virtually closed to outsiders except for the strictly controlled visiting room. The Department of Corrections rejected the News-Democrat's attempts to get a tour of the prison.

But complaints about life inside Tamms abound in a mountain of federal lawsuits.

One complaint described "an atmosphere of terror and brutality." Another detailed how staff punishes inmates, including the mentally ill, by shutting off water for toilets and drinking, taking away personal possessions including clothing and restricting the diet to tasteless nutraloaf.

In each of these cases, the Department of Corrections responded that any measures taken were proper and part of the prison's strict discipline policy.

One of the most vivid descriptions came from former Tamms inmate Jon Giles, who sometimes uses the name Mustafa Afrika.

Giles, who spent four years in Tamms before he was paroled last year, said heard what he believes were guards choking Anthony Gay after he had been strapped down. Giles took the unusual step of filing official grievances on behalf of Gay and another inmate he said was ignored for hours after cutting himself, even though he wrote messages for help in blood on his cell wall.

Giles produced copies of the signed and dated grievances, which were rejected by prison officials. He said that from a temporary cell next to the one that contained the strap-down bed that held Gay, he saw guards put on gloves and helmets and then order a nurse to leave the area. He said the guards entered Gay's cell.

"I heard this muffled sound," Giles said, "He got a gasp out and screamed my name, 'Mustafa, they're trying to kill me.'"
http://www.bnd.com/homepage/story/865378.html

Link to yesterday's article on Tamms: http://www.bnd.com/news/local/story/865377.html

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

CT: Prison Life 'After Cheshire' Suspicions increase, parole opportunities decrease and understanding is stalled

Prison Life 'After Cheshire'
Suspicions increase, parole opportunities decrease and understanding is stalled
Published on 8/2/2009 in The Day
By Chandra A. Bozelko

Cheshire changed us. The July 23, 2007, murders of Jennifer, Hayley and Michaela Petit in Cheshire, allegedly by parolees Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky, recently reached its second anniversary, our yearly reminder to check the locks and set the alarm.

As a prison inmate in Connecticut, I often hear about Cheshire. Almost all discussion of our sentences include the phrase “after Cheshire.” After Cheshire a national media spotlight intensified on a small Connecticut town and the state's Department of Corrections, provoking questions surrounding three p-words we use when we talk about letting someone out of jail: punishment, parole and propensity to re-offend.

Parole is largely misunderstood by many who think paroled offenders are just cut loose, released early from their punishments for good behavior. In truth, parolees are still considered to be in custody, but they live outside the facility, in the community, subject to rules. Think of parolees as inmates tethered to the prison, whose leashes extend beyond the prison walls.

At any time the facility can yank that leach and re-incarcerate the person. This is what happened two summers ago. Connecticut pulled back on all violent offenders on parole, regardless of how long they had been out or how much success they had created.

All inmates waiting for parole were stalled for months as the state reviewed parole standards. After Cheshire, suspicion about every offender's propensity to re-offend shot up because of a hideous crime.

Pundits lambasted parole. Citizens in every state complained about cream-puff correctional models that released animals instead of punishing them. All of the voices merged into one deafening chorus: “Why did you let them out?”

The irony is that Connecticut's prosecutors and judges work together to make the state one of the toughest criminal justice systems in the country. Criminal defense attorneys call Connecticut “Little Texas” for its severe sentences. As an inmate sentenced to five years in prison I would advise you not to fool around with Connecticut, especially after Cheshire.

After Cheshire no state leader can afford to have another Cheshire.

Human behavior unpredictable

Yet, ultimately, Cheshire was not about parole, punishment or propensity to re-offend, but about prediction. The three gruesome murders confronted everyone with a reality we collectively deny every day - our inability to predict human behavior.

People surprise us daily, from quirks to savage violence. How often have you started a sentence with, “Geez, you think you know someone and then ...”

In addition to the horror of Cheshire itself, is the horrible reality that we are powerless to predict the next one.

After the murders, Connecticut's Board of Pardons and Paroles released statements, correct statements, that there was no way to forecast the violence Hayes and Komisarjevsky allegedly wreaked on the Petit home. The two men were thieves and addicts, not killers. Even without paroles, each would have been released eventually. Does this mean Cheshire would have happened later?

In their fear and grief, people conclude that the inability to predict is tantamount to an inability to prevent, which is not necessarily true.

If we want to truly try to prevent such atrocities we must concentrate on another p-word: post-traumatic stress. I have not met one inmate here at York Correctional Institution who lacks a trauma history. Trauma is the demon that drives busloads of prisoners to Niantic. Trauma makes stops at drug addiction and abusive relationships along the way, but trauma's final destination, when left untreated, is prison.

Traditionally trauma has been treated by lengthy one-on-one psychotherapy or rapid-eye-movement desensitization, costly cures that no state can afford for each inmate. However, education about the mechanics of traumatic stress, taught in laymen's terms in a group setting, might work.

Current research indicates that certain experiences, when they resemble a past trauma, trigger “inner alarms” that cause emotional dysregulation, the cradle of all bad decisions.

By implementing the right psychoeducational programs in prisons, - courses about how trauma colors actions - correctional facilities can improve outcomes and reduce repeat offenders.

After Cheshire, understanding post-traumatic stress can change us even more, for the better.

Chandra A. Bozelko is an inmate at the York Correctional Institution serving time for crimes including credit card fraud, larceny and identification theft.
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=b48fc9a3-9b46-4ac2-a583-efb2d920a558

Posted by lois at 04:19 PM | Comments (0)

August 02, 2009

Story and Editorial: Trapped in Tamms: In Illinois' only supermax facility, inmates are in cells 23 hours a day

Opinion: Why Tamms Matters to All
Sunday, Aug. 02, 2009

Many people who read today's front-page story about the Tamms supermax prison probably won't have much empathy for Faygie Fields, Chris Marcum and the other inmates discussed. So what if murderers and violent criminals are kept in solitary confinement for years on end?

But Illinois residents should care -- if not for the inmates, then for themselves.

We're a nation that disavows cruel and unusual punishment of criminals, and most reasonable people would agree that keeping someone in solitary confinement 23 hours a day for 10 years or more -- the fate of 54 of the Tamms inmates -- is cruel and unusual. They don't get any phone calls, or education or religious services; just walls.

The people who created Tamms never envisioned such extended stays; they thought inmates would be sent there for a year at most. Their idea was to deter violence in prisons, but a union spokesman for state prison guards said violence actually has increased in the past decade.

Not only is Tamms not accomplishing its objective, but it seems to be creating new problems. Keeping inmates in solitary confinement for years causes many of them to either develop mental problems, or to worsen existing conditions. Many of these men eventually will be released back into society.

Gov. Pat Quinn has ordered Michael Randle, his new director of the state Department of Corrections, to investigate Tamms. Good. People who commit crimes deserve to be punished, but the state needs to be smart and humane on how it goes about it.
http://www.bnd.com/editorial/story/866411.html
Story follows.....
www.yearten.org (Tamms Year Ten Organizing Committee)

Trapped in Tamms: In Illinois' only supermax facility, inmates are in cells 23 hours a day
Sunday, Aug. 02, 2009
BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK AND BETH HUNDSDORFER - News-Democrat
Belleville News Democrat
PART I
Faygie Fields' escape from years of solitary confinement on the toughest wing of Illinois' only state-run supermax prison began with food.

He claimed there were rat droppings in his rice, bugs in his beans and poison in his Tylenol.

Guards at the supermax Tamms Correctional Center in the southern tip of Illinois told Fields to cut it out. He wasn't going to fake his way to the easier prison mental health unit. It was all an act, they said. He had tried it before.

Reports from other lockups, where Fields was often held in solitary, laid out his dismal disciplinary history. He threw Kaopectate, milk cartons, urine, tomatoes, Kool-Aid, a food tray. He grabbed at keys. He pulled away from handcuffs. Fields was just plain bad, the reports concluded.

What the supermax staff didn't know because records were not initially forwarded was that while in his teens, Fields had been committed four times to Chicago-area mental hospitals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and collected disability payments because of mental illness. Untreated schizophrenics can result in violent actions. Fields was sentenced to state prison in 1984 at age 25 for shooting a man to death during a drug deal.

According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, Fields is among the "worst of the worst," an extremely violent inmate who cannot be safely held anywhere but at Tamms, a maximum discipline and security prison.

But critics of the prison say Fields is a victim of a deeply flawed policy that punishes mentally ill inmates for behavior they cannot control by placing them in solitary confinement for long periods, in many cases 10 years or more.

Such punishment, some critics say, amounts to torture worse than that experienced by suspected terrorists at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

After his transfer 11 years ago to Tamms, Fields coped in ways bizarre and self-destructive common to many inmates held in continuous solitary confinement. He sliced his arms and throat with bits of glass, metal and paint chips. A prison doctor who stitched him up once testified he didn't always inject anesthetic because the skin of many Tamms inmates became numb from massive scarring from repeated self-mutilation.

Fields smeared excrement in his cell so often that maintenance men painted it with an easier to clean coating. He swallowed glass. Prison officials charged him $5.30 for tearing up a state-owned sheet to make a noose to kill himself.

And then in 2004, after he had been held alone and often naked in a segregation cell for nearly six years, two psychiatrists called to testify in an ongoing lawsuit about conditions at the prison examined him and his medical records and said Fields was a schizophrenic who needed immediate treatment. They also reviewed a long-ignored 1999 report by psychiatrist Dr. Bernard Rubin, a former director of the Illinois Department of Mental Health, diagnosing Fields a year after his arrival at Tamms as a paranoid schizophrenic whose condition was deteriorating. The MacArthur Justice Center of Chicago filed the lawsuit on behalf of Fields and three other Tamms inmates.

Two Illinois Department of Corrections psychiatrists did not find Fields to be a schizophrenic. The prison's supervising psychologist, Kelly Rhodes, countered that Fields was trying to fake his way to easier time. Under oath, Rhodes described self-mutilation as a game.

"They'll compete with each other to see who can cut because it's fun," she said, according to a deposition.

The lawsuit resulted in a court order moving Fields in 2005 to the Tamms mental health unit where, like all inmates at the supermax, he is held in solitary but receives treatment.

The psychiatrists who testified on his behalf said Fields' multiple convictions for aggravated assault against guards resulted from behavior symptomatic of his mental illness.

If he hadn't been charged with crimes in prison, Fields could have been paroled in 2004 after serving 20 years of a 40-year sentence. But Fields must serve all the extra time for throwing food, urine and committing other offenses against guards. That amounts to 34 years, or 54 years total that he must serve before becoming eligible for parole in 2038, at age 79.

Ten years of solitary

Illinois has about 45,000 state prisoners. The state built Tamms to reduce violence among prisoners statewide by taking the "worst of the worst" and holding them in solitary confinement at one location for about a year, or until their behavior improved.

But 54 inmates at Tamms have been held in continuous solitary confinement for more than 10 years, according to an investigation by the Belleville News-Democrat. They include 39 like Fields who have been held continuously since they were transferred there in 1998, the year the prison opened.

Many others have been held for seven, eight or nine years. All Tamms inmates are held in solitary. They spend 23 hours a day in their cells. In March, the torture watchdog group Amnesty International issued a statement citing Tamms:

"The harsh conditions of isolation endured by many prisoners for years on end appear to be unnecessarily punitive and may breach international standards for humane treatment," it said.

George Welborn, Tamms' first warden, defended the prison's treatment of prisoners.

"It's very, very hard time. ... Is it constitutional incarceration? Yes it is. The court cases to this point have shown that. We're not beating them. We're not starving them," he said.

Shortly after Gov. Pat Quinn appointed Michael Randle as the new director of the Illinois Department of Corrections in June, Quinn directed him to investigate Tamms. Randle said after spending a day at Tamms, he believed it held highly dangerous prisoners who could not be imprisoned elsewhere. Records show that the majority of Tamms inmates are convicted murderers and that a small number have murdered staff and inmates at other prisons.

"I am not comfortable at this point having those offenders out of Tamms," he said during a telephone interview.

Randle would not say whether he considers 10 years and more in solitary confinement to be cruel. He conceded that harsh conditions such as not allowing telephone calls, religious services or education programs might be eased.

"There are things we are going to continue to look at in terms of giving offenders an avenue to demonstrate the appropriate conduct to earn their way out of Tamms," he said.

The News-Democrat's investigation found that Tamms may not only house the "worst of the worst.'' Prison and court records also raised questions about the prison medical staff's ability to identify inmates with serious mental problems who need treatment.

The investigation showed:

* Of 247 Tamms inmates listed June 30 on the prison's roster, 138 had not been convicted of a crime after entering the prison system.

* Of the remaining 109 inmates convicted of a crime after entering prison, 55 committed assaults such as throwing body wastes and spitting on or struggling with guards, and possessing contraband or homemade weapons -- acts that did not lead to serious injury and can be attributed in some cases to mental illness and a need for self-protection.

* Of the more than 250 inmates transferred to Tamms since 1999, records provided by the Department of Corrections show that only six who passed through the mental health screening process were placed in the prison's Special Treatment Unit for seriously mentally ill prisoners, despite a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice study that shows that 15-23 percent of state prison inmates are seriously mentally ill. Department of Corrections chief counsel Ed Huntley would not provide information about the total of inmates Tamms staff rejected for mental health reasons who were returned to other lockups.

* Sixteen inmates at the supermax entered the prison system for relatively minor crimes, such as car theft, forgery, burglary and drug offenses, but incurred huge amounts of additional time -- 92 years in one case -- for in-prison crimes including guard assaults and possessing a shank, or homemade knife. State law requires this time be served consecutively, or after the original sentence.

Tamms, a 500-bed, $70-million cluster of concrete buildings in Alexander County, is smaller than some county jails. The state keeps it half full so that there is room to transfer inmates if a riot occurs elsewhere.

Many of its inmates live in segregation or the disciplinary part of the prison.

Information from the Department of Corrections shows that from Jan. 1 to June 30, Tamms transferred 15 inmates to other prisons. But of this number, three inmates were within a few months to a year from parole and had to be transferred under a regulation that prohibits Tamms prisoners from being released into the public directly from the supermax.

A 2001 study by Southern Illinois University Carbondale graduate student Chad Briggs questioned the value of Tamms as a deterrent to violence. He concluded that despite sending inmates to the supermax, the rate of assaults on guards throughout the prison system either stayed the same or increased.

Prison violence has increased in recent years, said the guards' union spokesman Anders Lindall of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Too few guards and prisoner overcrowding are to blame, he said.

"The state tells us they can't track the data, even on a facility-by-facility basis, but based on the anecdotal evidence that we've seen from our members, violence has increased," Lindall said.

The Tamms Year Ten Committee, a confederation of activists supported by at least two Chicago area state representatives, is also monitoring conditions at the prison. One of the state representatives is Julie Hamos, D-Evanston, who has introduced a bill to improve conditions at Tamms.

"It is a form of insanity to put people in a place that provokes mental illness and then waste taxpayers' money to treat the symptoms," said committee member Laurie Jo Reynolds. "Or worse yet, releasing them without treatment. ... Either they went in crazy, or they go crazy once they are there."

Extended isolation

Solitary confinement beyond 30-90 days invariably leads to mental breakdown and behavior that becomes worse, not better, according to Dr. Terry A. Kupers of the Wright Institute, a clinical psychology graduate school in Berkeley, Calif. Kupers is one of three psychiatrists who diagnosed Fields as a schizophrenic.

"Anything in solitary longer than three months, what it does is the individual feels hopeless. One of the universal fears that people in supermaxes tell me is, 'I'm going to die in here,'" said Kupers, who has conducted hundreds of court-ordered interviews of men in long-term isolation, including Tamms inmates.

"They know they can't control their behavior enough, or please their wardens enough to ever get out," he said. "Twenty-three hours a day alone in a cell causes many inmates to brutally attack themselves.

"In the adult male population of the United States, self-mutilation occurs only in solitary confinement," he said. "It's an epidemic across the country. They're not faking."

In a prison population such as Tamms, where most inmates are murderers, Chris Marcum of Granite City might seem out of place. At age 20, he was sentenced in Madison County Circuit Court to six years for burglary with parole after three years.

But Marcum, now 32, got nine years added to his sentence because he possessed a shank and committed other in-prison crimes. In Tamms he was known as a "cutter." His left arm is covered front and back from forearm to biceps with long, whitish scars.

"I just wanted to feel something. It was the only way I coped with, at the time, with being incarcerated. You lose all sense of everything. It helped me with what I was going through, but it hurt a lot," he said.

Unlike some cutters, he said he did not handle his body wastes.

"I've seen in other prisons inmates cut on themselves, but there wasn't that many people doing it. But at Tamms, every wing I went on there was at least one inmate that had a glass shield on his door, played with his feces and cut on himself."

The shields prevent inmates from throwing body wastes through any of about 400 dime-sized holes in their cell doors.

His mother, Nancy Marcum, would visit him in the Tamms visiting room, where the inmate is behind Plexiglas and chained to a concrete block. She said her son, "kept his arms under the table so I couldn't see. When I found out this was happening, all I could do was cry."

In several lawsuits challenging conditions at Tamms, prison officials have testified that self-mutilation is not a symptom of serious mental illness because the inmate can stop at will.

Chicago attorney Jean Snyder, the lead attorney in the lawsuit involving Faygie Fields, said, "What kind of a guy is slicing up his penis and his arms to get out of prison? Is it an answer to say he could stop it if he wanted to?"

Explosive situation

When he was 7 years old, Tamms inmate Jerome Moore used drugs. At age 10, he was confined to a state mental ward. At 11, he was selling drugs and living on the street. He was shot that same year and spent weeks in a hospital. Sent to juvenile detention at 13, Moore was suspected of but never charged with a double homicide. At age 17, Moore was sentenced to state prison for attempted murder. In 2000, at age 19, he was sent to Tamms.

Forensic psychologist Michael E. Althoff, of Carbondale, outlined this history of Moore in a 2005 mental evaluation. Yet, despite documented mental illness, prison officials regarded Moore as a "malingerer" who faked symptoms.

What was different in Moore's case was that besides the finding of "malingering," Althoff confirmed a diagnosis of "intermittent explosive disorder," uncontrollable rage totally out of proportion to a perceived insult or threat.

Moore faced a maximum of 23 years for attempted murder but now must serve at least 38 years. The extra time came from assaults on guards -- incidents that, except for one, did not include a weapon or result in serious injury but instead consisted of throwing food and body wastes or twisting away from handcuffs.

Psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Grassian of Chestnut Hill, Mass., who was on the staff of Harvard Medical School for nearly 30 years and has written widely about the effects of solitary confinement, said inmates like Moore are likely to continue to commit impulsive violence as long as they are kept in solitary confinement. He said prison mental health staff often have distorted views of supermax inmates.

"There's a tremendous pull toward seeing everything that you're looking at as bad behavior that needs to be punished, rather than recognizing that it's actually a response to mental illness," Grassian said. "People tend to think of them (supermax inmates) as the James Cagneys of the prison system. They're not. They are actually the wretched of the earth. ... The paradigm (model) in the prison system is if you punish bad behavior enough it'll get better. That's obviously a paradigm that doesn't work."

Marcum, the former Tamms inmate from Granite City, said he remembers a lot of behavior that caused guards to react, but none more bizarre than when inmate Anthony Gay of Rock Island ate his own flesh. The incident is corroborated in federal court documents.

"I was in the infirmary for 11 days because I was on a hunger strike and he was there on suicidal watch," Marcum said. "And every four hours they came around and took my vitals. And he did it right in front of the window when I was standing there at my cell getting my vitals checked. He just cut a little piece of his skin off and ate it. Right in front of them and they didn't do nothing except go in his cell and search for the object he used to cut on himself."

Tamms' first warden

Welborn, Tamms' first warden, hadn't expected the reporters who showed up at his door in Anna, 20 miles north of the prison in Tamms. He regarded them warily. But when Welborn, who helped design Tamms, heard one of them say, "Darrell Cannon says hello," he smiled and said, "How is DC?"

Welborn and Cannon, a murderer convicted in Cook County, formed an unlikely alliance at the maximum security Menard Correctional Center in Chester. Welborn was the warden; Cannon was an inmate who, he said, helped Welborn ease tension between gang members and guards.

Cannon said he was astounded in 1998 to be rousted out of his Menard cell and shipped to the newly opened supermax at Tamms. When he got to Tamms, Cannon said Welborn came to his cell and told him, "Hey look. You do one year down here and if you don't have any tickets, no disciplinary problems, after that you'll be shifted outside again."

But Cannon did nine years at Tamms and got out only after a federal judge ordered his parole following testimony that crooked Chicago detectives set him up on the murder charge.

Welborn, who retired in 2002, said he never expected inmates to be held at Tamms for 10 years or more.

"I don't lose a lot of sleep over those guys who have been there 10 years ... (but) I think they should have been given the opportunity to go back to a reduced security facility and then, if they screw up again, it's right back to Tamms. It was not intended to be a place where guys would be there for eight to 10 years."

In a lawsuit deposition, Welborn disputed allegations that the policy of holding prisoners alone amounted to solitary confinement.

"This isn't like throwing a guy in a closet," he testified.

Cannon disagreed.

"It was total solitary confinement. There were times I would wake up shaking. It would be my system trying to, I don't know, go haywire. I would have to get up off that concrete bed and go to the sink and run some cold water and wait until the sink fills up and then throw the water all over me," he said. "And I would have to talk to myself and say, 'Hey, look. Do not break. You can't let this happen.'"

Cannon said he never engaged in self-mutilation but knew of many inmates who did.

"I would walk the floor in circles. And I may do that for two hours straight," he said.

He set aside a special night for the music of his youth.

"Saturday night was dedicated to all the old songs. Blue Moon. Stand By Me ... all those old songs I could think of. I would try to remember the words. I would sing just loud enough where I could hear myself."

Back to Tamms

Richard Conner, a murderer doing life, attempted to hang himself in his cell at Tamms in December, but wound up instead in a coma at Heartland Community Hospital in Marion.

Although the Department of Corrections won't talk about it, members of the Tamms Year Ten Committee believe Conner tried to kill himself a few weeks earlier by slitting his wrists.

After recovering, the prison system sent Conner, 38, to its Dixon Psychiatric Unit and then on to the maximum security Stateville Correctional Center at Joliet. And there, on April 2, guards opened the cell that Conner shared with Jameson S. Leezer and found Leezer dead. Leezer, a car thief, was 18 days from parole.

An autopsy showed that Leezer had been strangled, and Conner, the only other person in the locked cell, was the obvious suspect. Instead of returning him to the prison system psychiatric hospital at Dixon, authorities sent Conner back to Tamms.

No decision has been made on whether to prosecute Conner for Leezer's murder. A Department of Corrections directive issued on May 11 stated that any Tamms inmate transferred out must be held in a single cell.

In another incident, guards found Robert Foor, 33, dead on June 23 in his cell in the Tamms Special Treatment Unit, or mental ward. He was convicted of robbery and burglary in 1994 and given nine years but accrued eight years of extra time because of in-prison convictions.

Debbie Elsoff of Malta, Ill., Foor's mother, said that an autopsy did not determine how her son died. She said that when she informed prison officials that she could not afford to pay for her son's cremation or to have his body shipped home, they said they would cremate him there but could not turn over his remains because of state law.

"I cried all night when I heard that," said Elsoff.

Later, a non-profit group agreed to pay for Foor's cremation, and his remains were sent to his mother.

Malcolm Young, who until recently was the director of the prison reform organization The John Howard Association, said the policy at Tamms to use extreme discipline to respond to problems that many consider are caused by mental illness causes psychological deterioration, even worse behavior and sometimes suicide.

"It is not a dirty place. It's not a hole in the ground with mice and rats and everything else," he said, "But it is just total isolation and it operates to purposely deprive the men that are there from contact with other people."

Young, a lawyer at Northwestern University's Bluhm Legal Clinic, said even the way inmates are moved to the yard reinforces the debilitating effect of solitary confinement. The yard represents the one hour a day when inmates are not in their cells, yet they are still alone in a concrete box with a roof of steel mesh that half covers the sky.

Inmates head to the yard handcuffed and shackled inside a special caged chute with two guards outside the wire keeping pace.

"It's just the mechanical way they do it. It's like a ballet that emphasizes the separation between the prisoner and any other human being," he said. "The design of the place. The way the windows are situated too high to see out of. All of it just drives home that you are in a totally sterile environment as is possible to put you in and keep it legal."

For more than eight years, Nancy Meyer of Elgin has corresponded with Tamms prisoners. She often drives the 700-mile round trip to visit about a dozen men there she has come to know well.

Meyer said she sends money to inmates and contacts family members who often haven't heard about their loved ones for years. Some tell her not to call again.

Of the inmates on her list, Faygie Fields is her favorite. She says that even though Fields is a grown man and a convicted murderer, something about his optimism, even cheerfulness, makes her heart go out to him. In his Tamms mugshot, Fields is smiling.

"I see that face and he smiles and I say, 'Faygie, how are you doing? You're not hurting yourself anymore because if you are I won't come to see you.' He always says he isn't, but I know he will."

In a handwritten letter dated April 6, Fields used a plus sign for the word "and," capital letters for emphasis and dropped question marks in odd places.

While the sentences were fragmented and the grammar vague, the message was clear: "Please know that Tamms is driving ME CRAZY all of them keep saying none of us can leave here. But keeps all here? + in a Eternal Twilight Zone that has no ending?"
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/story/865377.html

Posted by lois at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)

"The Real Murder Mystery? It’s the Low Crime Rate"

The Real Murder Mystery? It’s the Low Crime Rate
By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: August 1, 2009
NY Times Week in Review

MAYBE it is time to call in one of those clairvoyants who help detectives solve the case. Because no one else can explain what criminals have been doing in the first half of 2009.

Not that the news is bad — from New York to Los Angeles to Madison, Wis., major crimes, violent or not, are down between 7 percent and 22 percent over the same period last year. In Chicago, the number of homicides dropped 12 percent. In Charlotte, N.C., hard hit by the banking crisis, that total fell an astounding 38 percent. It is too soon to conclude that crime will decline throughout the recession, and the new numbers, which come from standardized reports that police departments send to the F.B.I., have yet to be made into a national measure. But crime was supposed to go up, not sharply down.

The surprise is yet more proof that tea leaves and sun spots may be a better predictor of crime rates than criminologists and the police. Despite the large sums the country spends on law enforcement — just last week, the Justice Department awarded the first of $1 billion in stimulus-package grants to police departments — experts are largely at a loss to explain what makes the crime rate go up or down. Even the exceptions to the latest trend are baffling. Why, for example, did crime go up in Denver, of all places? Denver isn’t sure.

Many experienced criminologists admit to being confounded, but point out that economists have no better track record. “If I could predict the crime rate,” said Barry Krisberg, the president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, “I’d start working as a stock broker.”

No single lens — sociological, econometrical, liberal or conservative — seems an adequate one through which to view crime. The economy, which seems as if it should be fundamental, has never been a good predictor; the Prohibition era was far more violent than the Great Depression. Adding prison beds has not helped; the incarceration rate has marched grimly upward for decades, while the crime rate has zigzagged up and down, seemingly oblivious. Years ago, criminologists thought demographics explained a lot — remember the warnings about thousands of cold-blooded, teenage “superpredators” in the mid-1990s? — but demographics cannot shed light on what is happening now. Improved policing deserves credit for bigger declines in certain cities, but not the overall national trend.

Scholars have attributed lower crime rates to everything from an influx of immigrants, who tend to keep a low profile; to changes in public housing policy that have dispersed the poor; to better medicine (more lives saved in the operating room equals fewer homicides); to a marked shift in the attitudes of the young and poor (the hip-hop generation, which was supposed to be desensitized by explicit lyrics and large swaths of visible underwear, has turned out fine).

The search for a silver bullet — a single factor that could explain the steady drop in crime since the mid-1990s — has taken theorists far afield. There is the abortion theory, which proposes that legalized abortion reduced the number of unwanted children who turned to a life of crime. It’s a seductive explanation for United States data, but it does not bear out in other countries that legalized abortion in the 1970s, said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. There is the gun theory, which posits that expanded gun ownership rights have deterred criminals who now must consider whether their victims are armed. But that does not explain the most significant decline in the country, in New York City, where gun ownership is low, said Mr. Zimring, who dedicated part of his book, “The Great American Crime Decline,” to debunking such theories. (Despite writing that exhaustive volume, Professor Zimring admits that for criminologists, “the score is Know: 2; Don’t Know: 8.”)

Even mainstream theories can falter under scrutiny. The idea that illegal drug use drives up crime is not bolstered by statistics that show that the percentage of those arrested in New York City with illegal drugs in their system has remained more or less flat, Mr. Zimring said.

One reason for the lack of answers is lack of money, said Alfred Blumstein, a prominent criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “The National Institutes of Health spends $400 million a year on dental research,” he said. “The National Institute of Justice spends $50 million a year on criminal justice research.”

Perhaps as a result, police departments and prosecutors can be swayed by fads, spending millions on programs like Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E., which came under fire from critics who said it lacked a proven success record (it later changed its strategy). “Police research is to research like military music is to music,” Mr. Krisberg said. “It has never matured to be a very sophisticated science.”

For the police, of course, crime policy is a political matter, with new theories attracting new money. In 2006, when violent crime inched up by less than 2 percentage points, the Police Executive Research Forum issued a report called “A Gathering Storm.”

But the police were not the only ones who thought crime could not stay at post-1960 lows. The thugs and marauders were supposed to be back with a vengeance after the horrors of crack cocaine receded from memory; the safety net was dismantled; and education reform proved slow.

Last year, The Third Way, a progressive think tank, gathered governors like Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, now President Obama’s secretary of Health and Human Services, and Janet Napolitano of Arizona, now secretary of Homeland Security, to warn of “the impending crime wave,” identifying such factors as “the lengthening shadow of illegal immigration” and “the sprawling parentless neighborhood of the Internet.”

Such appeals to Americans’ fears, several criminologists said, is often linked to a political agenda fueled less by crime than by another variable that is famously unfazed by real-world predictors: public perception. Along with its report, The Third Way released a poll showing that by a 5-to-1 ratio, Americans believed crime was worse than it had been the year before. By year’s end, though, the national crime data showed a decrease. In Atlanta, where crime is down 10 percent, a recent series of high-profile incidents has spurred critics to hammer the mayor over what they call a crisis.

While the decline may not have taken hold in the minds of the public, it has undermined a cherished belief, particularly among liberals, in root causes — that criminals are born of misery and the limited options of poverty. “There are people that are putting up with an awful lot of suffering, and they’re not complaining all that much,” said Andrew Karmen, a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

But the fact that so few forces have a demonstrable effect on crime can be viewed, in a twisted kind of way, as good news. The decline, Mr. Zimring said, has shown that it isn’t necessary to accomplish major feats, like improving education or raising wages, or punitive ones, like increasing prison sentences, to bring crime down. Smart policing can have an effect. “Crime isn’t an essential part of cities as we know them,” Mr. Zimring said. Instead, it is a mystery with a direction all its own, one that may be beyond the reach of public policy. Which is easier to tolerate when that direction is down.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 2, 2009, on page WK4 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/weekinreview/02dewan.html?scp=2&sq=crime&st=cse

Posted by lois at 10:42 AM | Comments (0)

CA: Editorial- No more options in state prisons' future

Editorial- No more options in state prisons' future
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, August 2, 2009

When it comes to California's broken prison system, the budget crisis may have finally left us with no option other than to do the right thing.

Sacramento has known what the right thing is for years. We must avoid sending so many people to prison, through a combination of rehabilitation, parole reform and changes in our draconian sentencing laws.

For decades, the corrections budget has swallowed more and more of the state's general fund, starving priorities like higher education. But the political ramifications of looking "soft on crime" cowed legislators and governors alike. So we built prison after prison and stuffed them all to overcapacity.

Now, in a desperate gambit to close the state's $26.3 billion budget gap, legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed to cut $1.2 billion from the prison budget. Furious Republicans in the Legislature immediately threatened to torpedo the whole thing, claiming that "early releases" could put public safety at risk.

In fact, the governor's plan would simply push forward important reforms to keep people from going into prison in the first place. These are simple reforms that prison experts have been asking the state to make for years.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation used the 2007 recommendations of the Expert Panel on Adult Offender Reentry Recidivism Reduction, along with recommendations from the 2004 Deukmejian Commission, to craft a package of smart, sensible reforms. Some of them are technical. The dollar-value threshold for grand theft, a felony, will be raised from $400 to $2,500. The dollar-value threshold has not been raised since 1982, and the corrections department estimates that raising these thresholds can keep 5,600 low-level property criminals out of state prison. This is an easy fix that.

But the bulk of the reductions center on our overburdened, ineffective parole system. This is the ideal place for reform - with around 70,000 prisoners returning to prison every year, California has one of the highest recidivism rates in the nation. The corrections department would lower that rate using "alternative custody" for "low-risk" offenders (nonviolent, non-sex offenders) and certain elderly or infirm prisoners. Rather than having these prisoners take up space in prison, where they can cost the state more than $100,000 every year, they'd be placed on house arrest or in a medical facility - with a Global Positioning System device.

The same would apply for parolees who commit certain low-level parole violations (like missing a meeting with a parole officer). Rather than sending them back to prison, to cool their heels at taxpayer cost of $48,000 a year, they'd get a GPS device. Local police would also be allowed to perform search-and-seizure operations on these parolees without a warrant.

This is one of the reforms that has Republicans crying foul, claiming that it's "easy" on crime. Thanks for the input, but the California Police Chiefs Association disagrees, and we're going to stick with their assessment.

"There's a recognition that the population of the state prison systems does need to be reduced, for a variety of reasons," said association President Bernard Melekian. "This is a dramatic step in the right direction. I think there's a number of things in this plan that will allow them to do this without jeopardizing public safety."

It's sad that it took a financial crisis for California to make these crucial changes to its crumbling prison system. Judges have called our system unconstitutional and ordered us to change it, public education officials have decried the diversion of funds for years - and yet it took an unprecedented financial crisis to get Sacramento to even consider it.

This article appeared on page E - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/01/EDH7190F20.DTL#ixzz0N2JExG9E

Posted by lois at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

August 01, 2009

Bob Herbert Op-Ed " Anger Has Its Place"

Op-Ed Columnist
Anger Has Its Place
By BOB HERBERT
Published: July 31, 2009- New York Times
No more than five or six minutes elapsed from the time the police were alerted to the possibility of a break-in at a home in a quiet residential neighborhood and the awful clamping of handcuffs on the wrists of the distinguished Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

If Professor Gates ranted and raved at the cop who entered his home uninvited with a badge, a gun and an attitude, he didn’t rant and rave for long. The 911 call came in at about 12:45 on the afternoon of July 16 and, as The Times has reported, Mr. Gates was arrested, cuffed and about to be led off to jail by 12:51.

The charge: angry while black.

The president of the United States has suggested that we use this flare-up as a “teachable moment,” but so far exactly the wrong lessons are being drawn from it — especially for black people. The message that has gone out to the public is that powerful African-American leaders like Mr. Gates and President Obama will be very publicly slapped down for speaking up and speaking out about police misbehavior, and that the proper response if you think you are being unfairly targeted by the police because of your race is to chill.

I have nothing but contempt for that message.

Mr. Gates is a friend, and I was selected some months ago to receive an award from an institute that he runs at Harvard. I made no attempt to speak to him while researching this column.

The very first lesson that should be drawn from the encounter between Mr. Gates and the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, is that Professor Gates did absolutely nothing wrong. He did not swear at the officer or threaten him. He was never a danger to anyone. At worst, if you believe the police report, he yelled at Sergeant Crowley. He demanded to know if he was being treated the way he was being treated because he was black.

You can yell at a cop in America. This is not Iran. And if some people don’t like what you’re saying, too bad. You can even be wrong in what you are saying. There is no law against that. It is not an offense for which you are supposed to be arrested.

That’s a lesson that should have emerged clearly from this contretemps.

It was the police officer, Sergeant Crowley, who did something wrong in this instance. He arrested a man who had already demonstrated to the officer’s satisfaction that he was in his own home and had been minding his own business, bothering no one. Sergeant Crowley arrested Professor Gates and had him paraded off to jail for no good reason, and that brings us to the most important lesson to be drawn from this case. Black people are constantly being stopped, searched, harassed, publicly humiliated, assaulted, arrested and sometimes killed by police officers in this country for no good reason.

New York City cops make upwards of a half-million stops of private citizens each year, questioning and frequently frisking these men, women and children. The overwhelming majority of those stopped are black or Latino, and the overwhelming majority are innocent of any wrongdoing. A true “teachable moment” would focus a spotlight on such outrages and the urgent need to stop them.

But this country is not interested in that.

I wrote a number of columns about the arrests of more than 30 black and Hispanic youngsters — male and female — who were doing nothing more than walking peacefully down a quiet street in Brooklyn in broad daylight in the spring of 2007. The kids had to hire lawyers and fight the case for nearly two frustrating years before the charges were dropped and a settlement for their outlandish arrests worked out.

Black people need to roar out their anger at such treatment, lift up their voices and demand change. Anyone counseling a less militant approach is counseling self-defeat. As of mid-2008, there were 4,777 black men imprisoned in America for every 100,000 black men in the population. By comparison, there were only 727 white male inmates per 100,000 white men.

While whites use illegal drugs at substantially higher percentages than blacks, black men are sent to prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men.

Most whites do not want to hear about racial problems, and President Obama would rather walk through fire than spend his time dealing with them. We’re never going to have a serious national conversation about race. So that leaves it up to ordinary black Americans to rant and to rave, to demonstrate and to lobby, to march and confront and to sue and generally do whatever is necessary to stop a continuing and deeply racist criminal justice outrage.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 1, 2009, on page A17 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/opinion/01herbert.html
This and other news relating to mass incarceration can be f

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

Washington state may release more seriously ill prisoners to save money.

Washington state may release more seriously ill prisoners to save money
RACHEL LA CORTE
Associated Press Writer
July 30, 2009

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — About two dozen seriously ill prisoners in Washington state could soon be released from prison — as long as their freedom is expected to save the cash-strapped state money.

A new state law, which takes effect Saturday, expands a current program to release chronically or terminally ill prisoners. Death row inmates, or those serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, are not eligible for early release.

Washington is among more than 30 states that have some form of early release program for seriously ill prisoners, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
RACHEL LA CORTE
Associated Press Writer
July 30, 2009

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — About two dozen seriously ill prisoners in Washington state could soon be released from prison — as long as their freedom is expected to save the cash-strapped state money.

A new state law, which takes effect Saturday, expands a current program to release chronically or terminally ill prisoners. Death row inmates, or those serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, are not eligible for early release.

Washington is among more than 30 states that have some form of early release program for seriously ill prisoners, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The move will save the Washington state Department of Corrections an estimated $800,000 over the next two years, mainly on things like prescription costs and transporting prisoners to off-prison medical treatment.

But the state Department of Social and Health Services estimates it could see significant increases in its budget if it has to place all of those released in state-paid nursing homes or provide additional mental health services — offsetting any savings and possibly adding more costs to the already hampered state budget.

That frustrates some lawmakers like Rep. Bruce Dammeier, R-Puyallup. He voted in favor of the bill twice while it was moving through legislative committees, but ultimately voted against it on the House floor because of concerns over costs. The state had to make major cuts this year to patch a $9 billion budget deficit.

"I was prepared to speak out in support of this bill in our caucus room, and then as I reviewed the fiscal note again, it had changed," Dammeier said. "It's not clear-cut, it's not easy to define, and it's not going to clearly result in savings."

The number of prisoners who would actually be released is unknown. Also unclear is how many of those released would end up relying on social safety net programs.

Even the state corrections chief admits the program expansion is a work in progress.

"We continue to think this will save the state money, but we won't know that for sure until we're down the road," said Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail. "Will it in every case? That's the goal. You can't know until they leave the system."

Under the law signed by Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire in May, the head of corrections can authorize early medical release only if certain conditions are met. The offender must have a serious medical condition that is expected "to require costly care or treatment." They must pose a low risk to the community because they are physically incapacitated or expected to be at the time of release. And the release must be expected to save the state money.

The department works to see if prisoners qualify for private or veteran's health coverage. Barring other options, they arrange for Medicaid, which is paid for partially by the state and partly with federal money.

Vail said there have been cases of some prisoners with such serious health problems that they were sent to state nursing homes or intensive care, with an armed guard paid to be with them. So under the program, not much changes except the lack of a guard, he said.

"The state is still paying for the hospital bed, but the state is no longer paying for the correctional officer to stand watch," Vail said.

The main change to the current early release program, which has been in place since 1999, is that it no longer requires the prisoner be incapacitated before being approved for release. Fifty-five offenders have been released since 1999 under the earlier program, and two more have been approved and are currently awaiting placement in the community.

Sherry Lynn Bradford, a 40-year-old prisoner at the Washington Corrections Center for Women near Gig Harbor, hopes that she will be one of the prisoners released under the new expanded law. Bradford, who has hepatitis C and has had two surgeries to address liver failure, was denied parole last year under the old program because she wasn't yet incapacitated.

She said that during her last surgery earlier this month, "my doctor didn't sugarcoat it."

"He said my liver is very sick and the only way I'm going to live is to get a new one," she said.

Bradford has been in and out of prison since 1997 on drug charges, with her most recent conviction in 2006 for possession of a controlled substance, with intent to manufacture or deliver cocaine. She is set to be released on probation in December. She said she hopes she can be out before then under medical parole in hopes that she can get on a transplant list sooner.

"I really can't do anything from behind bars," she said.

Her application hasn't yet been decided, and Vail said every request will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

"It's a balancing act between trying to make sure a person receives proper care in a way that is cost effective," he said. "It's not a black-and-white decision. It all depends on the individual."

___

The early medical parole bill is House Bill 2194.

___

On the Web:

Washington Legislature: http://www.leg.wa.gov

Gov. Chris Gregoire: http://www.governor.wa.gov

Washington State Department of Corrections: http://www.doc.wa.gov
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-medical-parole,1,6030870.story

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

IL: County to charge inmates for jail time Sheriff also plans to put prisoners to work on area roads

County to charge inmates for jail time
Sheriff also plans to put prisoners to work on area roads
By ERIC TIMMONS
The Register-Mail
Posted Jul 30, 2009

GALESBURG,IL

Prisoners at the Knox County jail soon will have to pay for their stay in the county lockup.

Sheriff David Clague told the Knox County Board Wednesday he hopes to raise over $100,000 a year by charging inmates $5 for each night they spend in jail. He also plans to put prisoners to work picking up trash and fixing area roads.

The Knox County Board voted in favor of Clague’s proposal Wednesday. Clague said all county department heads had been asked to try and find new revenue streams to offset reductions in state funding and the pressures of a weak economy.

The sole County Board member to vote against the plan to charge inmates for their stay in jail was Lyle Johnson, D-District 1.

He said the burden of paying the $5 charge could fall on relatives of inmates who have not committed a crime. “Somebody’s going to have to pay and it’s going to have be the family,” Johnson said.

Clague acknowledged that families would likely end up footing the bill, but said that might make criminals think twice before breaking the law. “If that’s a concern then they should consider that before going out and committing a crime,” he said. “I’m not making them pay the money, that family member is.”

Clague said inmates enjoy good living conditions at the public’s expense and he didn’t think it was unreasonable to expect them to pay for their time in jail. He said the practice is common in southern states and has been instituted in Peoria County.

“They are sitting in a cell paid for by the taxpayers with heating, air conditioning and three meals a day,” Clague said. “In return, why can’t we benefit somewhat?”

Most inmates will be able to afford the $5 nightly fee, Clague said. He explained that prisoners have special accounts where they lodge money to buy small items such as phone cards and painkillers while in jail. Money from those “commissary accounts” will now be used for the nightly fee. “About 92 percent of our current inmates have money on the books,” Clague said.

Prisoners who can’t pay, however, could be offered a chance to work on area roads to cover their bill. Clague said he had already hatched a plan to put prisoners to work in “menial” jobs that could save the county money.

Any prisoners selected to work outside will be carefully screened to make sure they don’t pose a safety risk. “Were not going to give them a chain saw or a knife or anything like that,” Clague said. He added that he had discussed his plan to put prisoners to work with the county’s highway department.

Clague estimated the county could net $110,000 a year by charging prisoners for their time behind bars and he expects to launch the scheme within the next week. He said the $5 fee was reasonable considering that some southern states charge up to $60 for a night in a cell.

County Board member Wayne Saline, R-District 4, said he supported the plan. “It’s not like it’s free for the taxpayers while they are in there,” he said. “They did something to get in there and we should be able to recoup something from them.”

Some inmates are held in the county jail ahead of trial or court hearing, meaning they have yet to be found guilty. Clague said those inmates will still have to pay the $5 fee.
http://www.galesburg.com/news/x1543608270/County-to-charge-inmates-for-jail-time?popular=true

Posted by lois at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)