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October 31, 2009

Standish MI: Prison Being Considered for Guantanamo or PA prisoners to be closed for now

Michigan to Close Prison Considered for Gitmo Detainees
By ALEX P. KELLOGG
Wall Street Journal- Oct 31, 2009
A state prison in Michigan that is being considered as a potential location for holding terror detainees from Guantanamo Bay is expected to close Saturday, a state Department of corrections spokesman said. The 600-bed maximum-security prison is a victim of the state's financial troubles.

The closure of the Standish prison will eliminate 340 jobs. Residents and politicians in Standish, a town of 1,600 near the coast along Saginaw Bay, first embraced the possibility of housing Guantanamo detainees before cooling to the idea. But a number of local and county officials continue to be in favor of the move.

President Barack Obama committed earlier this year to closing the prison at Guantanamo, but it isn't clear where all the detainees will go. An administration official said in an email Thursday that a decision on the matter would be made in the "coming weeks," one of the first clear indications the White House is close to a decision.

Federal officials toured Standish in April to assess its suitability to house Guantanamo detainees. A military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., was also among sites considered.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, had expressed concerns about taking the detainees, saying she would need assurances from the White House that moving terrorist suspects to Michigan wouldn't pose a risk to the state.

Ms. Granholm had hoped to keep the Standish prison open by offering space there to a state in need of additional capacity, and Michigan kept the prison open months longer than expected with this in mind.

Michigan is one of six states Pennsylvania is considering to help with overcrowding in its prisons. Pennsylvania is considering relocating as many as 1,500 inmates out of state.

"Quite frankly…we are still hopeful that we'll be able to find another use for that facility," said Liz Boyd, a spokeswoman for Ms. Granholm, this week. "The bottom line is we have a budget to handle."

The state has closed more than a half-dozen prisons this year alone. The move is part of an effort to slash roughly $100 million from its prison budget and help the state address a multibillion-dollar budget deficit. The last prisoners were moved out of the facility Wednesday, a state Department of Corrections spokesman said.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Republican and a candidate for governor in next year's election, is in favor of bringing prisoners from other states but is opposed to Guantanamo detainees being housed in the state.

"It'll be a danger," he said Thursday. Standish "will become a potential target."

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A10

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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

Navajo Reservation: LA Times Story Celebrating Building New Jails with Federal Stimulus Money

Navajo hope stimulus cash closes a revolving prison door

Criminals at Navajo holding facilities like this one in Kayenta, Ariz., are usually released within a day of being booked. Kayenta and two other towns will get new jails next year, thanks to a grant from the Justice Department.

October 31, 2009-- LA Times

Reporting from Tuba City, Ariz. - More than 50,000 people are arrested across the Navajo reservation each year -- yet there are only 59 jail beds here.

Officials say the lack of jail space has led to a revolving door for criminals, most of whom are released within a day of being booked, and few of whom serve out an entire sentence.

"It's been a horrendous situation," said Hope MacDonald-Lonetree, a Navajo council delegate. "You can't assure the safety of the police and judges and the prosecutors when you have the perpetrators running around. And it affects the courts because people aren't willing to be witnesses."

Tribal leaders are hoping that may change soon, thanks to a $224-million Justice Department stimulus grant that has been set aside to build and repair jails on Indian land. The Navajo Nation, the country's largest tribe, received the biggest share of the money -- more than $74 million for the construction of three new jails.

The jails will add 144 beds to the Navajo reservation and will house alcohol counseling programs to help curb the high rate of repeat alcohol-related arrests, which corrections officials say is the main cause of overcrowding.

The money comes after years of unsuccessful Navajo lobbying for more federal help with law and order.

The federal government is required to fund jails on reservations as part of its trust responsibility to the nation's tribes. The Bureau of Indian Affairs pays to run jails on Indian land, and the Justice Department pays to build them.

But the BIA has a bad track record with tribal jails -- a 2004 Interior Department Inspector General report of Indian detention facilities found that some "were egregiously unsafe, unsanitary, and a hazard to both inmates and staff alike."

The Justice Department has for the last several years had an annual budget of less than $10 million to construct facilities and fund repairs for the 80 or so existing jails on reservations across the country.

Indian advocates say overcrowded and underfunded tribal jails have contributed to disproportionately high rates of crime in Indian country. According to a Justice Department survey, Indians experience almost twice as much violence as the rest of America.

On the Navajo reservation, which straddles 27,000 square miles of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, tribal officials say gang activity is at an all-time high, and chronic alcoholism and substance abuse have helped make domestic violence and drunk driving common.

There have been no jail facilities constructed here since a juvenile facility was built in the 1980s.

Two years ago, two of the tribe's main jails were condemned and closed, leaving just three jails, in the towns of Shiprock, Window Rock and Crownpoint. Those facilities -- cinder-block structures built in the 1950s and 1960s -- are barely habitable, corrections officials say, and are so overcrowded that jail workers are frequently forced to release prisoners early to make room for new ones.

"We're always playing musical chairs -- or musical jail beds," said Delores Greyeyes, who heads the Navajo Nation Department of Corrections. "We just pump [prisoners] through."

Navajo courts are responsible for prosecuting only misdemeanor crimes -- such as burglary, battery and drunk driving -- and the maximum punishment for a conviction is one year in jail and a $5,000 fine. Inmates accused of committing felonies are transferred to prisons off the reservation and are prosecuted federally.

Peterson Wilson, the prosecutor for the Tuba City District, one of nine judicial districts on the Navajo Nation, said, "A lot of crimes go unreported because there's an impression that we won't hold the criminal." And prosecutors and judges are disinclined to push for harsh sentences when they know there's no place to house criminals, he said.

He hopes the new jails, which will be built next year in Tuba City; Kayenta, Ariz.; and Ramah, N.M., will help fix that.

Tuba City, the biggest town on the reservation, received the largest single Justice Department grant -- $38 million for a 62-bed jail. It will offer inmates mental health and alcohol rehabilitation counseling.

Although alcohol is illegal on the Navajo Nation, alcoholism is widespread, and the vast majority of inmates are booked for public intoxication. Jails have become a catch-all for people who need help, McDonald-Lonetree said. She hopes the rehab programs will help stop that.

"We don't want to have to build another 100-bed facility in the future. We don't want to go into the business of warehousing individuals like the rest of America does," she said. "We want to rehabilitate people."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-navajo-jails31-2009oct31,0,7038957.story

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Posted by lois at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

IA: Possible layoffs unsettle prison guards and workers

Possible layoffs unsettle prison officers, workers

Posted By William Petroski On October 30, 2009

Newton, Ia. — The mood was tense and somber at the Newton Correctional Facility during Thursday’s first shift change, as rank-and-file prison workers await the outcome of union negotiations that could determine their fates.

The Newton prison, which houses 1,100 inmates, is among nine state prisons and eight community corrections districts where 515 Department of Corrections workers face layoffs if budget-cut negotiations falter between union leaders and Gov. Chet Culver.

As correctional officers and other workers streamed into the Newton facility in the pre-dawn darkness Thursday, some employees were openly critical of Culver and other politicians and voiced opposition to reopening union contracts. Twenty-six jobs are in jeopardy here among 321 employees, and 28 vacant jobs won’t be filled.Employees also expressed worries about prison security if more employees lose their jobs. The budget cuts, which would hit the Department of Corrections harder than any other state agency, would include elimination of 262 jobs now vacant.

“People feel disappointed. They feel like the governor hasn’t supported us,” said correctional officer Edwin Dean, who has worked at Newton’s medium-security unit since it opened in May 1997. The prison also houses a minimum-security facility for inmates nearing release from prison.

“I think the state of Iowa should honor the contract that we have,” Dean said. “I don’t think they should have layoffs.”

Dale Higgins, who has been a correctional officer for four and a half years, doesn’t think prison employees will be willing to give up previously negotiated pay raises. Prison workers have made contract concessions in the past, he said, and he opposes doing it again.

“It’s time for the public to pay for the services that they want. Not on our backs this time,” Higgins said.

However, another worker, John Guthrie, said he is resigned to having union officials make some sacrifices at the bargaining table.

“Nobody is going to like it, but everybody is going to have to do their part,” Guthrie said. “You can’t have a recovery if you are laying people off.”

Guthrie described the mood inside the institution as “very tense.”

“Everybody is waiting for the ax to fall,” he said. “It affects everybody. Not only seeing your co-workers go through this, but also for the added risk that is there when you are short-staffed.”

Corrections spending relatively low in Iowa

Culver has set a deadline of Nov. 6 for unions to agree to concessions to avoid layoffs for the final $45 million in a package of $565 million in budget reductions throughout state government, a 10percent cut in general fund spending.

Danny Homan, president of the Iowa council of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents most Iowa prison employees, has agreed to meet privately with the governor to discuss reducing layoffs. “We are unsure of where these talks will lead, other than to say AFSCME will do its part to consider all options that are put on the table,” he said in a statement.

Culver is also asking the Iowa United Professionals and the State Police Officers Council to amend their contracts. The Iowa Department of Public Safety faces layoffs of 53 state workers, including 20 state troopers.

Those arguing against layoffs in the corrections system can point to data showing Iowa ranks low on prison spending, compared with other states. Iowa ranked second-lowest in the nation in per-capita spending on corrections, at $121, as of 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. The only state lower was North Dakota, at $116. The national average was $210.

Iowa has the 11th-lowest incarceration rate in the nation, putting 291 people behind bars for every 100,000 residents, a federal report shows. The report, based on June 2008 prison populations, shows the average state puts away 450.

The Department of Corrections had an annual budget of about $357 million from the state’s general fund before Culver ordered the 10 percent budget cut. The Department of Public Safety had a pre-cut budget of $89 million from the state’s general fund.

Workers rank security among top worries

Some of workers’ biggest concerns center on security, and some of the biggest security concerns in Iowa’s system center on the Iowa State Penitentiary at Fort Madison, where Iowa’s most dangerous inmates are housed.

Four towers used to monitor the prison yard would be left unstaffed by proposed cuts, although towers would still be staffed in critical areas, state officials say. Two inmates escaped from the Fort Madison prison in November 2005 by climbing over a wall where a tower was left unstaffed because of budget cuts. Both inmates were eventually recaptured.

Newton prison officials have said in budget documents that proposed spending cuts would reduce essential security duties, such as searches of cells, to below acceptable levels.

Assaults by inmates on prison staffers are routine in Iowa’s prisons; they happened 29 times statewide during the four months ending June 30, ranging from punching correctional officers to throwing food or spitting on them. Officers are worried that assaults could intensify or become more difficult to stop if fewer of them are in cellhouses.

Staff and inmates are also worried about the impact on rehabilitation efforts.

Budget documents say the layoffs will lead to reductions in substance abuse treatment, delaying the release of convicts or decreasing the number of inmates who obtain treatment before they are released from prison.

“We try to do a good job here,” said Michelle Gonzales, a correctional counselor the past 16 years. “We try to keep everybody safe and rehabilitate people. We don’t want to lose any of that.”

Frustration sets in for veteran officers

Correctional officer Roger Filson, who has spent nearly 30 years working in Iowa’s prison system, said he isn’t worried about losing his job. But he knows plenty about state government layoffs, having seen them four or five times during his career. In addition, his wife lost a job of more than 20 years when Maytag Corp. closed its appliance plant in Newton.

“It is sad to see programs eliminated and people’s livelihoods eliminated,” Filson said. “I don’t know why the state waited so long to cut its budget. With the private sector suffering, they had to know it was going to come.”

The prospect of reopening a previously approved labor contract doesn’t thrill Kim Richardson, a correctional officer for 16 years. But if the union takes that step, “I would like to see that from the top down, from all the wardens, all the directors, with everybody taking their pay cuts,” Richardson said. “It is not fair to balance it just on the backs of AFSCME members.”

Culver has said that he and his state agency heads have agreed to accept 10percent pay cuts. In addition, he has ordered 3,258 nonunion employees, including many managers, to take seven days off work without pay between now and the end of the budget year, on June 30.

Part of workers’ frustration stems from the sense that poor decision-making on many fronts — within state and federal government, on Wall Street and in corporate offices of big businesses — have combined to hurt workers.

“It started with the George Bush administration, and I don’t think it is getting any better under Obama right now,” said correctional officer John Hutchins. “Once again, the working man is taking it, and is going to pay for the mistakes of the privileged. When is it going to end?”

Article printed from Des Moines Register Staff Blogs: http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr

URL to article: http://blogs.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/index.php/2009/10/30/possible-layoffs-unsettle-prison-officers-workers/

Posted by lois at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2009

PA Supreme Court Overturns Thousands Convictions By Judge Who Received $2.6 million in Kickbacks Who Sent Teenagers to Private Youth Jails

Pennsylvania Overturns Many Youths’ Convictions
By IAN URBINA - NY Times
Published: October 29, 2009

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday overturned thousands of juvenile-offender convictions handed down by a judge now charged in a corruption scandal.

The judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas, and Michael T. Conahan, a fellow judge who for a time was the chief of that court, are charged with taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks from the owner of two privately run youth detention centers in exchange for their sending teenagers there.

The Supreme Court said the conviction of any juvenile who appeared before Judge Ciavarella after Jan. 1, 2003, was invalid. The justices barred the retrial of all but an estimated 100 of those cases.

The decision followed advice the court received from Arthur Grim, a Berks County judge whom it appointed in February to review juvenile cases involving Judges Ciavarella and Conahan.

Judge Ciavarella, who along with Judge Conahan awaits federal trial on charges of income-tax and wire fraud, routinely held juvenile hearings that lasted just minutes, failing to ask the youths before him whether they understood the consequences of waiving their right to a lawyer and pleading guilty.

“We concluded,” the justices wrote Thursday, “that the record supports Judge Grim’s determination that Ciavarella knew he was violating both the law and the procedural rules promulgated by this court applicable when adjudicating the merits of juvenile cases without the knowing, intelligent and voluntary waiver of counsel by the juveniles.”

Under the justices’ ruling, the only cases that will be eligible for retrial are those in which youths are still under court supervision. The district attorney’s office has been directed to notify Judge Grim of those cases it wishes to prosecute again. He will then make a determination on each case.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 30, 2009, on page A18 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/us/30judges.html?_r=1&ref=us

Posted by lois at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)

October 29, 2009

3 part NPR series on CA three-strikes including interview with Sue Reams, time-line and graphs, etc.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114277240

Posted by lois at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2009

CA: Three Private Run Prisons to Close

State plans to close two community correctional facilities in Kern
BY JAMES BURGER, Californian staff writer
Monday, Oct 26 2009

Two privately run prisons in Kern County were issued 60-day closure notices Monday by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
McFarland Community Correctional Facility in McFarland and Mesa Verde Correctional Facility in Bakersfield now face closure.
Wardens at both facilities declined to discuss the situation Monday afternoon.

The decision was made because downward trends in the minimum-security inmate population have reduced demand for the services the private prisons provide, said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
"We just don't have enough inmates to fill these kinds of beds," she said.

According to Monday's announcement, California's 13 community correctional facilities have more than 5,900 beds. But 1,200 of them are not currently used.

Much of the cause can be traced to recent parole reforms that have reduced the state's on-parole population and, as a result, reduced the number of people who violate parole and are sent back to prison, Thornton said.

The state has more than 13,000 fewer people on parole this October than it did in October 2008, she said.

Mesa Verde, located on Golden State Avenue, has a contract to keep 360 minimum-security adult male prisoners, she said. It employs 66 staff, according to an online facility profile and is operated by Cornell Companies, Inc.

McFarland Community is run by The GEO Group and is contracted to take 200 minimum-security male inmates from the state.
Inmates in both facilities will be moved to existing minimum-security state facilities, Thornton said.

Closing the two local facilities -- and a third community prison in Baker -- will save the state $12.7 million in closed contracts and an additional $2.5 million in salaries of the 22 state workers who will be transferred or laid off because of the move, according to the announcement from the Department of Corrections.
Thornton said all three of the closed prisons will have a shot to recreate themselves and serve a state inmate population that is currently underserved.

The department will issue a request for bids next month to open female correctional facilities.
"We only have one community correctional facility for women (in the state)," Thornton said.

Posted by lois at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2009

NJ: In Parish of Slain Pastor, Talk of Forgiveness

In Parish of Slain Pastor, Talk of Forgiveness

By MICHAEL WILSON and NATE SCHWEBER
Published: October 25, 2009
NY Times

A popular Roman Catholic priest who was stabbed to death in his rectory in Chatham, N.J., last week — as well as the man charged in the killing — were remembered fondly on Sunday.

The Rev. Edward Hinds, the pastor of St. Patrick Church, who was described as a pious man who immersed himself in helping the homeless and the needy, was stabbed 32 times on Thursday evening.

A church janitor, Jose Feliciano of Easton, Pa., confessed to the crime, the authorities said.

On Friday and Saturday, parishioners tried to absorb the news of the stabbing, and to grieve for the priest, who was known as Father Ed.

But on Sunday there was talk of forgiveness for Mr. Feliciano, 64.

He was described as a warm, friendly family man who often played with children in the parish, church members said after morning Masses on Sunday.

“We pray in a very special way for Jose, a prayer of hope and consolation,” said the Rev. Owen Moran, who celebrated the Masses. “The Father Ed we know would forgive Jose. Father Ed probably did forgive him before he died.”

Mr. Feliciano told the authorities that he killed Father Hinds, 61, during a quarrel on Thursday and left his body on the kitchen floor of the rectory, according to the Morris County prosecutor’s office. The next day, he pretended to discover the body with a church deacon and even went through the motions of performing CPR, said the prosecutor, Robert A. Bianchi.

Mr. Feliciano has been charged with first-degree murder. In a news release on Sunday, Mr. Bianchi said it was possible that the argument had been about Mr. Feliciano’s continued employment.

Mr. Feliciano was being treated at an area hospital, said Capt. Jeffrey S. Paul, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office. The authorities did not say why he had been hospitalized.

Mr. Feliciano began working at St. Patrick in 1992, after moving to the area from Puerto Rico, parishioners said. He moved to Pennsylvania some years later. In 1996, he was baptized a Catholic after completing classes in the parish. He has two children, a daughter in the eighth grade at St. Patrick School, and a son who graduated from the grammar school and is now in high school, Father Moran said. Both children were receiving grief counseling, he added.

“They have a very important place in the community of St. Patrick’s, and they always will,” he said during one Mass. “They are innocent victims of this. This is their parish.”

Parishioners left the church in tears and, outside, expressed a disbelief that seemed to be unanimous.

“This is a good man,” said Maureen Haggerty, a former trustee at the church, referring to Mr. Feliciano. “Whatever happened, maybe it will become clear someday.”

The janitor was particularly good with children, friends said.

Just last week, Mr. Feliciano was seen cheering up a teary-eyed preschool boy, playing with his hat. “He would sing, dance and fool around with the kids,” said Michele Fischer, 42. “He was a jovial soul.”

Mr. Feliciano confessed to the killing in a written affidavit, prosecutors said. He said that he and Father Hinds had been arguing in the rectory at 5 p.m. on Thursday and that he got a knife from the kitchen and stabbed the priest, according to the affidavit.

Father Hinds is believed to have called 911 at 5:27 p.m. on Thursday, asking for help, but the call was disconnected. The dispatcher called back, and Mr. Feliciano answered and said there was no emergency, the authorities said on Sunday.

Afterward, Mr. Feliciano cleaned up with rags and paper towels and took them, with Father Hinds’s cellphone, home to Easton, the police said. They later tracked the cellphone to Easton.

When Father Hinds did not show up for 8 a.m. Mass on Friday, a deacon and Mr. Feliciano went into the rectory and found him dead in the kitchen. After initiating cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Mr. Feliciano looked up and said, “There’s nothing we can do,” the police said.

Before moving to Pennsylvania, Mr. Feliciano lived close to the church; he was a regular at block parties and kept an eye on all the children as they went to and from school and church, neighbors said.

“He was a great neighbor, a great family man,” said Eileen Ruggiero, 35. “No one would have ever imagined this.”

Another parishioner, Dr. Neal T. Collins, an oncologist, said he wondered whether Mr. Feliciano had suffered some sort of head injury or brain tumor that might have triggered the attack. “He was much more than a janitor,” said Dr. Collins, 50. “He was like family.”

A version of this article appeared in print on October 26, 2009, on page A17 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)

A sentence too cruel for kids By Alan K. Simpson

opinion
A sentence too cruel for kids
By Alan K. Simpson
Special to The Washington Post
Posted: 10/24/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

Rather than serving in the U.S. Senate for almost 20 years, or having so many other wonderful life experiences, I could have served a longer sentence in prison for some of the stupid, reckless things I did as a teenager. I am grateful to have gotten a second chance — and I believe our society should make a sustained investment in offering second chances to our youth.

When I was a teen, we rode aimlessly around town, shot things up, started fires and generally raised hell. It was only dumb luck that we never really hurt anyone. At 17, I was caught destroying federal property and was put on probation. For two years, my probation officer visited me and my friends at home, in the pool hall, at school and on the basketball court. He was a wonderful guy who listened and really cared. I did pretty well on probation. At 21, though, I got into a fight in a tough part of town and ended up in jail for hitting a police officer.

I spent only one night in jail, but that was enough. I remember thinking, "I don't need too much more of this."

I had a chance to turn my life around, and I took it. This term, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether other young people get that same chance.

On Nov. 9, the court will hold oral argument in Sullivan vs. Florida and Graham vs. Florida, two cases that will determine whether it is constitutional to sentence a teenager to life in prison without parole for a crime that did not involve the taking of a life. There is a simple reason the criminal justice system should treat juveniles and adults differently: Kids are a helluva lot dumber than adults. They do stupid things — as I did — and some even commit serious crimes, but youths don't really ever think through the consequences. It's for this reason that every state restricts children from such consequential actions as voting, serving on juries, purchasing alcohol or marrying without parental consent.

The Supreme Court recognized the differences between teenagers and adults when it held a few years ago, in Roper vs. Simmons, that it was unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on defendants younger than 18. Locking up a youth for the rest of his life, with no hope for parole, is surely unconstitutional for the same reasons. The person you are at 13 or 17 is not the person you are at 30.

Everyone old enough to look back on his or her teenage years knows this.

Peer pressure is a huge part of youth behavior, whether one grows up in Washington, D.C., or Cody, Wyo. The guys will say, "Go get the gun. We'll pick up just enough money for tonight." And almost unthinkingly, you'll do it. There is simply no way to know at the time of sentencing whether a young person will turn out "good" or "bad." The only option is to bring him or her before a parole board — after some number of years — and give the person the chance to declare, "I'm a different person today" — and then prove it.

Parole boards can examine how youth offenders spent their time in prison. Did they read books or work in the library? Did they make furniture? Get a college degree? Those are critical questions for review.

We all know youths who have changed for the better. When I was a lawyer in Cody, the court sometimes appointed me to represent juvenile offenders, and parents who knew of my history often asked for help with their children. I once helped an 18-year-old who stole a car and drove it to Seattle. I later hired him as chief of staff for my Senate office.

I was lucky that the bullets I stole from a hardware store as a teenager and fired from my .22-caliber rifle never struck anyone. I was fortunate that the fires I set never hurt anyone. I heard my wake-up call and listened — and I went on to have many opportunities to serve my country and my community.

When a young person is sent "up the river," we need to remember that all rivers can change course.

Alan K. Simpson, a Republican, was a U.S. senator from Wyoming from 1977 to 1996.
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_13629190?source=email

Posted by lois at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2009

KS: Closed Girls "Reformatory" Closes After 120 Years

Shuttered girls reformatory recalls horror, haven
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH (AP) 10-25-09

BELOIT, Kan. — Many were broken, many were saved here.

Beloit's name became synonymous with its girls' reformatory, one of the longest-operating in the country, which for more than a century mirrored the most enlightened reforms but also the cruelest horrors of such places. Now, at its closing, residents and staff members are wrestling with the contradictions.

Beloit was where "bad girls" were sent: That's what Diane Roles had heard as a child. A friend's sister had gone there.

Growing up in the 1960s, Roles endured a seriously dysfunctional family — a chronically violent father and a fearful mother. People didn't talk much about child abuse then, and young Diane's solution was to run away from home to escape beatings.

Once, she said, her father kicked her with his steel-toed boot, leaving her jaw swollen. Another time, her bruised legs prompted a girlfriend's mother and a neighbor to call her family. But nothing changed.

"I got to the place where I didn't even cry anymore," she said. "The more they hit me, the more I laughed."

Her older sister complained to their mother that she had been molested. Roles said her mother slapped the sister, saying, "What am I supposed to do?"

The offense that landed Roles in the juvenile court system was taking her brother's car for a joy ride. After fleeing a foster home, she was offered placement in a "trade school," and she grabbed it.

It wasn't until the frightened 13-year-old was riding across the wind-swept prairie of rural north-central Kansas that it dawned on her the school was Beloit. "I mean to tell you my heart dropped clear down to my toes," she said.

But looking back now, she sees it differently. "Going to Beloit was a safe haven for me," she said. "Basically, I was an abused kid. Back in them days they didn't do anything. They shook their heads."

There is no barbed wire — no fence at all — surrounding the complex of limestone and brick buildings that came to be known as Beloit Juvenile Correctional Facility. Across the street is the high school for the shrinking, agricultural town of 3,600. Its two-block long downtown, filled with charming century-old buildings, is less than a mile away.

The institution, right down to its rural setting, is typical of the ones that began opening in the middle part of the 19th century as rehabilitation-focused reformers sought to end the practice of housing juveniles alongside adults in deplorable conditions.

The Women's Christian Temperance Union, a suffragist group that had fought for prohibition, lobbied for the girls' facility in Kansas, soliciting donations of land and money and operating it for its first couple of years before the state took it over in 1890. As was common at the time, girls as young as 8 spent long days toiling in the gardens and caring for the animals that supplied their food. For a time, girls were even indentured to farm families.

But with the high-minded ideals of the reformers, there was a dark side as well, explained Ned Loughran, executive director of the Council for Juvenile Correctional Administrators, in Braintree, Mass.

"These kids were an eyesore for the upper classes of society," he said. "The solution wasn't to change the conditions they were growing up in, the poverty and lack of parental supervision. The view was to get them out of sight. Then people forgot they were there, and abuses crept into the system."

Abuses? Under some administrations, girls were punished with huge doses of vomit- and diarrhea-inducing castor oil,humiliated with forced hair clipping. In the darkest period, dozens underwent involuntary sterilizations.

"It totally infuriates me," said Katrina Pollet, pausing at a box of yellowed photos from years gone by as staff sorted and packed up late this summer. The last superintendent, she's passionate about helping the girls who've left Beloit for good.

"It's so important to me because I could have easily been here," said Pollet, who was herself once a pregnant 16-year-old high-school dropout.

As school records, some in musty leather-bound books, were sorted and stored, the mundane details they contain sketched life at Beloit and the shifting attitudes it reflected.

From the 1930s, a file for one girl described her as "incorrigible" and noted she "associated with Mexican men" and "became intoxicated at dances."

The offense for another young charge was listed as being "immoral (with father)." Later in the record, it shows the girl was taken for removal of venereal warts. It was common practice for much of the facility's history to lock up young abuse victims rather than their abusers.

Both girls spent about four years at Beloit.

All the records detail whether the girls had attended Sunday school. "Yes" is the answer for most.

When the reformatory was founded, girls "were really viewed in our society much more as property," said J. Russell Jennings, commissioner of the Kansas Juvenile Justice Authority. "And the expectation for behavior of girls and what occurred with them when they didn't meet those expectations really provided an open door for young girls to be institutionalized for non-crime events. Not even running away but just kind of being a pain in the neck."

The treatment they received varied, as it was not uncommon in the early days for entire staffs to change after elections. Some administrations taught the girls to play musical instruments and barred corporal punishment, while others relied on draconian forms of discipline.

The most infamous superintendent was Lula Coyner, whose cruelty caused the girls to march to the sheriff's office and demand an investigation.

In 1935 and 1936, Coyner undertook a campaign of forced sterilization after becoming enamored with an international movement known as eugenics, a philosophy also popular among the Nazis that sought to prevent those deemed mentally disabled or otherwise genetically inferior from having children.

During her tenure, 62 girls — almost half of her charges — were transported about 175 miles away to the Women's Prison Hospital in Lansing to have their fallopian tubes removed.

The reason: Coyner wrote in a 1936 report that girls who "asked to be sterilized" had "serious physical or family handicaps," such as venereal diseases, insanity, epilepsy and illegitimacy. She later defended her action, writing that it was "the finest service to society the Girls' Industrial School has ever contributed."

A torrent of negative news stories presented it differently, and Coyner's replacement, Blanche Peterson, told a reporter girls lived in terror of the operations, which were performed for "absurd" reasons.

Twenty-two recommended sterilizations, pending when Coyner left, were never carried out.

The harsh treatment had been swept away by the time Diane Roles arrived. Beloit became a training ground for workers from the Topeka-based Menninger Clinic, which became known internationally for humanizing treatment of the mentally ill.

The therapy provided a means for the girls to finally talk openly about the abuse many of them had experienced. There was usually at least one young murderess at Beloit, generally sent there for killing an abuser. But runaways like Roles were much more common.

Roles met often with staff to discuss her situation, but she was insistent on one point: "I didn't even want to discuss going home."

Others felt the same. One young woman who arrived a decade later said she and her sister had suffered incessant sexual abuse at home, but no one believed them.

"I wasn't a criminal," said the 50-year-old now living in Fayetteville, Ark., who asked to be identified by her maiden name, Kathy Mounce. "I wasn't really running to something. I was running from something."

She remembers Beloit as a safe place, where she could sleep at night without being bothered.

"I will always believe that because of Beloit and the staff, I am where I am today," said the mother of three who has been married 32 years, worked as a radiology clerk at a hospital and even counseled sexual abuse victims. "They saved the lives of unwanted children."

Roles recalls softball games with the staff and cooking meals with her housemates. The school had a cosmetology program, and Roles chose to receive training as a nurse's aide. Well-behaved girls even were permitted to have jobs in town.

Later, girls even briefly participated in mixers with boys from a Topeka facility, a practice that ended when one girl became pregnant.

The environment began to change because of a federal law passed in the mid-1970s that sought to end the incarceration of status offenders — those whose offenses wouldn't be a crime if committed by an adult. The practice wasn't fully eliminated in Kansas until 1983. Over the past decade, more low-level offenders were placed in less-expensive and, research suggests, more appropriate community-based programs.

The Beloit facility averaged just 21 girls in the just-ended 2009 fiscal year, down from 103 in 1999; because of the low numbers, the state was spending an average of $200,000 a year on each girl. In the midst of a deep recession that has caused massive budget cuts in Kansas, like most other places, the expenses for Beloit became just too high. After more than 120 years, it closed in August.

"We don't raise orphans and we don't raise wayward youth and incorrigible youth at state institutions anymore," said Jennings, the juvenile justice commissioner. "We reserve those institutions only for the most serious offenders to ensure public safety. It really reflects a system that is maturing and it's becoming more aligned with current research on how we can be most effective with adolescent behaviors."

Although the reasons for the closure were clear, residents and staff became misty-eyed when they talked about the decision to transfer Beloit's remaining occupants to unused space at a Topeka facility that previously housed just young male offenders.

Bobbie Stillman, who called Beloit home until the end, said the announcement that the facility was closing caused her to hyperventilate and sent her to her room, feeling "overwhelmed and let down."

Knowing the girls were worried, staff members gave Stillman and the others teddy bears before their move, and the girls cuddle the bears as they watch television and sleep.

Over the years, staff members had raised money to buy the girls Christmas presents. Some corresponded with their former charges, following them as they pursued careers in nursing, social work and criminal justice. Few became adult offenders.

Roles, who married, had three children and worked as a mental health aide, stayed in touch with one of her housemothers and with former superintendent Dennis Shumate.

"They were great role models," she said. "They were like family."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hL1qlJoErTqJ1xPxBE27MBjEzg -gD9BHK4R00

Posted by lois at 04:57 PM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2009

MA: Franklin County jail strip search unconstitutional

Franklin County jail strip search unconstitutional
By George Claxton
Created 10/24/2009 - 04:00

GREENFIELD - A strip search procedure previously used by the Franklin County jail has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, just as an earlier one was in Northampton two years ago.

The ruling applies to strip searches of detainees awaiting arraignment at the jail by local police departments following an arrest.

Now, the case, which involves a Sunderland man, moves into the phase that determines damages awarded for the emotional distress of people who were strip-searched.

According to Franklin County Sheriff Frederick Macdonald, the policy was put in place at the old 19th-century jail where prisoners were able to pass items back and forth between the cells through cell door bars.

"We were strip searching (every new arrival) at the old jail because it was so congested over there ¿ We found all kinds of things on people: drugs, even a knife," he said.

Federal Magistrate Judge Kenneth Neiman, however, was not persuaded by the sheriff's arguments.

"The general rule in this circuit appears to now be that strip-searches of all misdemeanor arrestees require reasonable suspicion that the individual is armed or concealing contraband.

"The need for reasonable suspicion stems from the recognition by the First Circuit (Court of Appeals) that strip-searches impinge seriously upon Fourth Amendment values, are a severe, if not gross, interference with a person's privacy, and are an offense to the dignity of the individual," the judge wrote.

The judge noted that a blanket strip-search policy would be allowable if there were "compelling institutional concerns," such as a rampant problem of the introduction of contraband to a facility by people carrying materials under their clothing or in body cavities. He found no such problem at the Franklin County Jail.

According to the judge, there were only a handful of cases of people carrying contraband into the jail and in three of those instances the material was found without a strip search.

"An indiscriminate strip-search policy ... can not be justified simply on the basis of administrative ease in attending to security concerns," Neiman wrote.

2007 case

The case against the sheriff's office grew out of a matter involving a Sunderland man named Gregory Garvey who was taken into custody in January 2007 on a warrant that was issued because he did not appear in court on a traffic violation. Garvey said that he never received a notice to appear in court.

The original case against Garvey was based on a minor traffic crash that he had in Whately where it was discovered that his Massachusetts driver's license had been suspended while he was living in Mississippi because he had not paid excise tax in this state several years before.

According to Howard Friedman, Garvey's attorney, his client paid the outstanding tax right after the Whately citation was issued, and the case was dismissed as soon as it came to court.

The case against the sheriff began because, while he was held overnight pending a court hearing the next morning, Garvey was subjected to a strip search in which he was forced to disrobe and allow the correctional officers to inspect his buttocks and genitals.

"The officer had no reason to suspect that Mr. Garvey had any weapons or contraband hidden on his person.

"The officer did not find anything as a result of the strip search," Friedman said.

Garvey was subjected to another strip search the next morning before he was transported to the court for his hearing.

According to Garvey, the experience left him feeling "humiliated, degraded and violated."

Friedman said that Garvey feels vindicated by his victory in court. "He told me that this is America and what happened to him isn't right," the lawyer said.

Ultimately the suit was filed by Friedman as a class action, the class in question being made up of people who were strip searched at the jail between March 27, 2004, and February 25, 2007.

According to court records, the number of people eligible to take part in the suit could come to as many as 400.

"It was a large number of people, so it will require a large amount of money," he added.

Friedman says that he has won similar cases against jails in Hampshire, Plymouth and Suffolk counties in Massachusetts and York County in Maine. In Northampton, the sheriff settled the matter in 2007 for $205,000.
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2008 All rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2009/10/24/franklin-county-jail-strip-search-unconstitutional

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

MA: Two suicides by women at Dartmouth House of Correction. One clings to life and the other dies.

Pair of suicide attempts raise questions about inmate care
By Jay Pateakos
Herald News Staff Reporter

Last update Oct 22, 2009 @ 11:50 PM
DARTMOUTH —

One Dartmouth House of Correction inmate was pronounced dead just before 5 p.m. Thursday and another clings to life after attempted suicides Tuesday morning. The deaths have some questioning the quality of mental health and medical care prisoners are receiving since a conversion to a new medical care company in July.

Candy-Lee Boisclair, 37, of Fall River, in prison since Oct. 18 for unarmed burglary, was found hanging in her cell by officers at approximately 11:30 a.m. Less than an hour later, Katrina Dumont, 21, of Swansea, and in prison since Oct. 5 for impersonating a police officer, was also found. Boisclair was pronounced dead Thursday at St. Luke’s Hospital and Dumont remains in critical condition.

Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson said Boisclair was put on an “eyeball” watch on Monday after officers were informed that she was in possession of a crack pipe and drugs hidden in a body cavity.

After giving up the pipe, Boisclair reported to doctors that she had just overdosed on Klonopins, but after meeting with a doctor, she was determined to not be under the influence of any drug. An hour later, she attempted to hang herself.

On Monday, Dumont scratched superficial wounds on her arms and was reported by correctional officers to the mental health unit of the prison. After a mental health review was held on Tuesday, Dumont was returned to the EA Unit, and like Boisclair an hour before her, hanged herself in her cell.

Hodgson said suicides in the jail are rare. He said in 12 years as sheriff he’s never seen two suicides come so close together.

“I’m sure it happens at other prisons, but it doesn’t happen here,” said Hodgson.

Hodgson said an internal investigation of the actions of his staff and medical personnel have showed that protocol was followed in the matters related to both inmates.

“Our medical unit has been accredited for the last 11 years, with the highest standards in the industry, and we felt they met the criteria for their evaluations and this was just something they just didn’t catch,” said Hodgson, of Dumont’s mental health review. “This is a very unusual situation and these are things that can happen.”

Correctional Psychiatric Services took over for longtime prison medical care company CMC after it was revealed that the Bristol County House of Correction owed the company $3.6 million.

The Pennsylvania-based CMC walked out on the prisons in mid-July. Hodgson said Correctional Psychiatric Services, which provides all the medical and mental health care to the prisoners, is doing a “great job” at keeping up with the medical care of the prisons.

The company’s contract is set to expire on Dec. 5.

Hodgson said a request for proposal has gone out for future medical services with the winning bidder, who will be announced in November, to take over Dec. 6.

While Hodgson defended his medical personnel, attorney James Pingeon, Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services Inc. director of litigation, painted a different picture of what he said is a rising concern of inadequacies in medical and mental care at the Dartmouth House of Correction.

“We have received several calls about the catastrophic, abysmal medical services going on at the jail, especially in mental health care,” said Pingeon. “We’ve been told that Boisclair had informed people that she intended to commit suicide hours before she died and that she was medically cleared and then went on to hang herself. The person doing the evaluation clearly failed, but it’s not surprising, because ever since they stopped paying their other medical company and went with a new one, we are hearing that they are not complying with standard medical practices.”

Pingeon said other complaints include that the mental health unit is backlogged and understaffed and that prisoners are not getting necessary medical treatment, something Hodgson vehemently denied.

“We have a strict grievance policy in the prison, and there has been no indications that there has been any complaints by inmates on their care,” said Hodgson. “There is no backlog or overstaffing in mental health. It is actually one of the most important parts of our operation, and nobody is more aware of that than we are.”

Pingeon, who said the state’s Correctional Legal Services Inc. has launched its own investigation into the matter, said he also has concerns with Hodgsons’s comments that an internal investigation into the two incidents has already been completed.

“There ought to be a serious investigation behind this, and whenever anyone tries to say that they have completed an investigation just a few hours after the incident occurred, I feel there’s a problem with that. It needs a more dedicated system,” said Pingeon. “The sheriff is saying his staff did what they were supposed to do, but you can’t know that that fast. He needs to be willing to step up and face the problems the jail has.”

http://www.heraldnews.com/news/local_news/x637610259/Pair-of-suicide-attempts-raise-questions-about-inmate-care?view=print

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

Arizona May Put State Prisons in Private Hands

Arizona May Put State Prisons in Private Hands
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: October 23, 2009
The New York Times

FLORENCE, Ariz. — One of the newest residents on Arizona’s death row, a convicted serial killer named Dale Hausner, poked his head up from his television to look at several visitors strolling by, each of whom wore face masks and vests to protect against the sharp homemade objects that often are propelled from the cells of the condemned.

It is a dangerous place to patrol, and Arizona spends $4.7 million each year to house inmates like Mr. Hausner in a super-maximum-security prison. But in a first in the criminal justice world, the state’s death row inmates could become the responsibility of a private company.

State officials will soon seek bids from private companies for 9 of the state’s 10 prison complexes that house roughly 40,000 inmates, including the 127 here on death row. It is the first effort by a state to put its entire prison system under private control.

The privatization effort, both in its breadth and its financial goals, demonstrates what states around the country — broke, desperate and often overburdened with prisoners and their associated costs — are willing to do to balance the books. Arizona officials hope the effort will put a $100 million dent in the state’s roughly $2 billion budget shortfall.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” said State Representative Andy Biggs, a Republican who supports private prisons. “If we were not in this economic environment, I don’t think we’d be talking about this with the same sense of urgency.”

Private prison companies generally build facilities for a state, then charge them per prisoner to run them. But under the Arizona legislation, a vendor would pay $100 million up front to operate one or more prison complexes. Assuming the company could operate the prisons more cheaply or efficiently than the state, any savings would be equally divided between the state and the private firm.

The privatization move has raised questions — including among some people who work for private prison companies — about the private sector’s ability to handle the state’s most hardened criminals. While executions would still be performed by the state, officials said, the Department of Corrections would relinquish all other day-to-day operations to the private operator and pay a per-diem fee for each prisoner.

“I would not want to be the warden of death row,” said Todd Thomas, the warden of a prison in Eloy, Ariz., run by the Corrections Corporation of America. The company, the country’s largest private prison operator, has six prisons in Arizona with inmates from other states.

“That’s not to say we couldn’t,” Mr. Thomas said. “But the liability is too great. I don’t think any private entity would ever want to do that.”

James Austin, a co-author of a Department of Justice study in 2001 on prison privatization and president of the JFA Institute, a corrections consulting firm, said private companies tended to oversee minimum- and medium-security inmates and had little experience with the most dangerous prisoners.

“As for death row,” Mr. Austin said, “it is a very visible entity, and if something bad happens there, you will have a pretty big news story for the Legislature and governor to explain.”

Arizona is no stranger to private prisons or, for that matter, aggressive privatization efforts (recently, the state put up for sale several government buildings housing executive branch offices in Phoenix). Nearly 30 percent of the state’s prisoners are being held in prisons operated by private companies outside the state’s 10 complexes.

In addition, other states, including Alaska and Hawaii, have contracts with private companies like Corrections Corporation of America to house their prisoners in Arizona.

For advocates of prison privatization, the push here breathes a bit of life into a movement that has been on the decline across the country as cost savings from prison privatizations have often failed to materialize, corrections officers unions have resisted the efforts and high-profile problems in privately run facilities have drawn unwanted publicity

“We have private prisons in Arizona already, and we are very happy with the performance and the savings we get from them,” said Representative John Kavanagh, a Republican who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and an architect of the new legislation authorizing the privatization. “I think that they are the future of corrections in Arizona.”

Under the legislation, any bidder would have to take an entire complex — many of them mazes of multiple levels of security risks and complexity — and would not be permitted to pick off the cheapest or easiest buildings and inmates. The state also wants to privatize prisoners’ medical care.

Louise Grant, a spokeswoman for Corrections Corporation of America, said the high-security prisoners would be well within the company’s management capabilities. “We expect we will be there to make a proposal to the state” for at least some of its complexes up for bid, Ms. Grant said.

In pure financial terms, it is not clear how well the state would make out with the privatization. The 2001 study for the Department of Justice found that private prisons saved most states little money (there has been no equivalent study since). Indeed, many states, struggling to keep up with the cost of corrections, have closed prisons when possible, and sought changes in sentencing to reduce crowding in the last two years.

As tough sentencing laws and the ensuing increase in prisoners began to press on state resources in the 1980s, private prison companies attracted some states with promises of lower costs. The private prison boom lasted into the 1990s. Throughout the years, there have been high-profile riots, escapes and other violent incidents. The companies also do not generally provide the same wages and benefits as states, which has resulted in resistance from unions and concerns that the private prisons attract less-qualified workers.

Then the federal government stepped in, with a surge of new immigrant prisoners, and began to contract with the private companies. The number of federal prisoners in private prisons in the United States has more than doubled, to 32,712 in 2008 from 15,524 in 2000. The number of state prisoners in privately run prisons has increased to 93,500 from 75,000 in that time.

With bad economic times again driving many decisions about state resources, other states are sure to watch Arizona’s experiment closely.

“There simply isn’t the money to keep these people incarcerated, and the alternative is to free many of them or lower cost,” said Ron Utt, a senior research fellow for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group whose work for privatization was cited by one Arizona lawmaker.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 24, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/us/24prison.html?_r=1&hpw

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

October 23, 2009

Risks and Returns: Exploiting the Immigrant Detention Industry

Risks and Returns: Exploiting the Immigrant Detention Industry
In These Times
October 23, 2009
By Michelle Chen

Last winter, a remote Texas prison convulsed in a cry of outrage, voicing the desperation of the immigration system's silenced captives.

Two recent articles in the Boston Review and Texas Observer reflect on violent uprisings at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos last December and January. Tom Barry and Forrest Wilder describe a system of calculated lawlessness in the heart of Dixie.

The clash was driven by detainees' protests about inhumane conditions, particularly poor medical care and overcrowding. The catalyst was the death of Jesus Galindo, an epileptic who had been isolated in solitary confinement. Immigrant detention has become a political flashpoint for the Obama administration amid reports of abuse and miserably inadequate healthcare.

Although the White House recently pledged to improve detention conditions, there's been little real questioning of the economic underpinnings of the system. The Pecos rebellion illustrated the consequences of marrying America's prison-industrial complex with zero-tolerance immigration enforcement.

As he toured various “prison towns” along the U.S.-Mexico border, Barry observed that “all the prisons I saw had two common features: they were managed and operated by private-prison corporations—including two of the world’s largest, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO [which runs Reeves]—and they were located in remote, rural areas, invariably described by locals as being 'in the middle of nowhere.'”

The industry, he says, capitalizes on towns hungering for economic development.

The prison industry introduces the governments of desperate communities to what some call “backdoor financing”: project revenue bonds in the tens of millions of dollars that suddenly make them feel like economic players....

The full cost of the public-private immigrant prisons that now litter the Southwest and elsewhere is not yet known. Most counties and municipalities are still ten to fifteen years away from paying off the bonds.

The private detention sector works much like the crooked lenders who drove the country into financial crisis, building facilities as “speculative” ventures.

Though business slumped during the 1990s, CCA struck gold with the Bush administration's anti-immigrant crackdowns. Reporting on the Hutto family detention center, Margaret Talbot wrote in the New Yorker, “When immigration detention started its precipitate climb following 9/11, private prison companies eagerly offered their empty beds, and the industry was revitalized.”

Wilder describes how the detention boom-bust cycle works in a cash-strapped Texas town:

In the mid-1980s, with the regional economy devastated by the Texas oil bust, local business and government leaders decided to move into a recession-proof industry that was exploding in an increasingly criminalized America: prisons. In 1986, the county built a 300-bed prison. The prison filled rapidly with federal inmates, pumping revenue into the county’s budget and adding decent-paying jobs to the local work force. By 2002, Reeves had 2,000 beds. In 2003, the county completed ­construction on a $39 million, 960-bed unit only to find that the feds had no interest....

While the prison sat empty, payments on the bonds, reduced to junk status, were coming due. On the verge of default, county officials begged the Bush administration to send prisoners and hired Randy DeLay, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s brother, to lobby in Washington, D.C. That’s when Wackenhut Corrections Corp., now GEO Group, rode to the rescue. In November 2003, GEO agreed to take over management of the whole 3,000-bed prison complex and soon struck a deal with the Bureau of Prisons to fill the new unit.

Now cut to winter 2008. Jesus Galindo, a 32-year-old Mexican American who was caught crossing the border illegally, desperately needed careful treatment for his epilepsy, Wilder reports. Instead, he got locked up in solitary and spiraled toward his death. An autopsy traced the death to his epilepsy and noted signs of medical neglect.

According to a report by the National Immigration Forum, it's unclear exactly how many private entities are working under Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but prison corporations are well fed by federal largess.

The $1.7 billion budget for “Custody Operations” provides ICE with funding to maintain its current detention capacity of 33,400 people in over 500 facilities on any given night, including operational expenses....

The two largest private prison companies in the U.S. each receive over ten percent of their revenue directly from ICE, which pays an average per diem fee of $87.99 for every immigrant detainee.

All this despite the Obama administration's acknowledgement that most detainees pose no real public danger. Many could in fact be monitored safely outside prison at a far lower cost to taxpayers. Nonetheless, ICE pushed privatization as a revenue-boosting scheme in its initial budget proposal for fiscal year 2010.

Even in the midst of a recession, the detention market is looking bullish. Just as Homeland Security announced its detention reform initiatives earlier this month, Business of Detention project reported, CCA unveiled a brand new 500-bed facility in Gainesville, Georgia.

A company spokesperson boasted, “Our positive impact, for more than a decade, on the State of Georgia is considerable, in terms of bringing strong careers to hard-working Georgians and much needed taxes and local dollars.”

Profit-driven immigrant detention is just one facet of a much larger epidemic that is destroying poor communities of color across the country. Yet Pecos is an especially striking display of the cruel economics of mass incarceration.

The detainees, as well as those running their prisons, have more in common than they probably know. As economic desperation propels migrants to seek work across the border, impoverished American communities, which are conditioned to dehumanize immigrant workers, gravitate toward a prison business underwritten by draconian federal laws.

And so the machine whirs on, muffling the cries of immigrants like Galindo. Once they're inside, it seems, no one has to listen anymore.
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5079/risks_and_returns_exploiting_the_
immigrant_detention_industry/

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

New Crack-Cocaine Sentencing Reform Bill Leaves Thousands Behind Bars

New Crack-Cocaine Sentencing Reform Bill Leaves Thousands Behind Bars
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, New America Media
Posted on October 22, 2009, Printed on October 23, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143428/

New America Media Editor's Note: During the 1980s crack epidemic, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., then a House member, voted to impose harsh sentencing for crack cocaine. Now he says he “made a mistake 20 years ago,” and is introducing legislation to remove the disparity between crack and powdered cocaine possession. But the fact that his bill does not make the sentencing change retroactive -- Durbin has said he hopes to leave that debate to the Sentencing Commission – means that his Fairness in Sentencing Act 2009 is anything but fair, writes commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

WASHINGTON — Illinois Senator Dick Durbin’s Fairness in Sentencing Act 2009 is anything but fair to the thousands of inmates serving time for drug crimes in federal prisons. The Durbin bill, and the companion bill the House Judiciary Committee passed in July, will scrap the blatant racially biased sentencing for first time crack cocaine possession. The law currently requires that judges slap a minimum mandatory sentence of five years on anyone caught with crack cocaine. More than 80 percent of those sentenced for crack use are poor, ill-educated blacks. Those caught with the same amount of powdered cocaine, mostly whites, often middle-class and suburban, get probation and referrals to drug diversion programs.

The problem is that Durbin’s bill and the House bill are not retroactive. The legislation doesn’t require judges to take a second look at any of the sentences of those currently incarcerated for crack possession. This is not fair and it’s not justice. The reason Durbin and the House committee took action on ending the sentencing disparities in the first place was because of the legions of terrible, heart-wrenching stories of mostly young, poor blacks who have been warehoused in America’s jails in the past two decades for possessing crack.

Despite studies confirming that illicit drug use by African Americans is no greater than that of whites, black offenders are less likely to be offered a chance to plea bargain and more likely to fall under the federal or state mandatory minimum sentencing law. The escalation in black incarceration is the single major reason for the massive bulge in the number of inmates in federal prisons. The number has jumped four-fold since the late 1980s. More than half of them are there for drug crimes or other petty offenses.

When Congress enacted the dual drug sentencing law in 1986, the idea was to use tougher drug sentencing to rid the streets of violent drug kingpins. At the time, drug and gun violence tore up many poor black neighborhoods. Police and terrified residents demanded a crackdown. But the law, which hammered poor blacks, had almost no effect on the drug lords and gave white drug users a relatively free legal pass.

The law has wreaked havoc beyond the prison system. It has debilitated many black communities and families. Women convicted of felony drug offenses are barred for life from receiving welfare benefits. This puts thousands of women and their children at dire social risk and increases the likelihood that they will commit more crimes. The high black imprisonment rate also drastically increases health risks and costs in black communities, since many prisoners are released with chronic medical afflictions, particularly HIV and AIDS.




Every effort to modify the blatantly unfair mandatory minimum sentencing law for illicit drug abusers has failed. Former President Bill Clinton made a half-hearted effort in the mid-1990s to change the disparity in sentencing in Congress. Congress said no. President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress flatly ruled out any move to change the law.

However, lawmakers did take note of the loud protests in 2005 from many federal judges who said that it was time to change the sentencing law. The judges were moved to protest in part out of outrage over the patently unfair disparity in sentencing drug offenders for virtually the same crime, and in even greater part out of deep resentment that the law hamstrung their discretion to impose sentences. Mandatory minimums were clearly a slap at their judicial power. In several judicial districts, judges quietly rebelled, bent the rules, and lightened sentences for some first time offenders.

Supreme Court Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Anthony M. Kennedy, and the late William Rehnquist publicly called for repealing or at least modifying, the law. The judges’ outspoken advocacy in support of changing the laws drew a loud rebuke from then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. There were open threats to retaliate against the dissenting judges. The issue momentarily died down, and other than an occasional call from some members of the Congressional Black Caucus for hearings on the sentencing disparities, little more was said about changing the law in Congress during the remainder of Bush’s second term.

President Obama’s election re-opened the door on efforts to do away with the disparities. Obama has taken a guarded stance in support of changing the law. While he has not made it a priority of his administration, many in Congress have. But sadly, they have got it only partly right. In making no provision to offer relief to those who are already languishing in federal prisons under the racially skewed laws, Congress continues to mock the concept of equal protection under the law.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).
© 2009 New America Media All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143428/

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

October 22, 2009

CT: "DETENTION CENTER FOR GIRLS" Rell Announces Plan For $15 million Juvenile Detention For Girls In Bridgeport

DETENTION CENTER FOR GIRLS
Rell Announces Plan For Juvenile Detention For Girls In Bridgeport

By CHRISTOPHER KEATING and JON LENDER
Hartford Courant
October 21, 2009

The state will build a $15 million juvenile detention center for girls in Bridgeport so it can keep them out of adult prisons and other facilities scattered around the state, Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced Tuesday.

Finding space for juveniles has been a problem since the controversial closure of the Long Lane School in Middletown in 2003 under Gov. John G. Rowland. Since then, some teenage girls have been confined at the state's York Correctional Institution for adult women in Niantic, provoking sharp criticism from child-welfare officials.

In a related development Tuesday, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal issued a legal opinion that Rell's administration cannot shut down the High Meadows residential treatment center for troubled boys in Hamden because the legislature specifically allocated money for the program this year. Rell's budget office said Blumenthal's opinion "represents a fundamental misreading" of the state budget and subverts the governor's constitutional powers.

The new detention center for girls at 115 Virginia Ave. in Bridgeport is expected to be approved when the 10-member State Bond Commission meets Oct. 30. Rell chairs the commission and controls the agenda, virtually guaranteeing approval for any project that she proposes.

The state's child advocate, Jeanne Milstein, said the Bridgeport center is "long overdue." Long Lane closed in early 2003, and "it's now 2010, practically, and there hasn't been a facility for girls," she said.

However, Milstein said, "it does not solve the larger problem of DCF's poor planning, insufficient services, and a lack of understanding about the underlying needs of the girls and not just the behavior that led them" into DCF's supervision.

In the meantime, teenage girls who normally would have been sent to Long Lane, or to a new facility such as the one planned in Bridgeport, have had to go to the state's York prison for women in Niantic. There are now 12 girls at York under 18, some of whom would be eligible for the planned Bridgeport center, Milstein said. In addition, a small number of other girls in private treatment facilities, under contract with the state, could be moved to the new center.

State officials object to the use of the term "jail" or "prison" to describe the new treatment center, but a section of 16 beds that would be locked and secured will be reserved for girls who have been convicted of an offense. They will receive counseling and education at the center.

The center will hold 24 girls, including 16 in the locked setting and eight more in a non-locked area for "respite care" if they are having trouble in a community program, said Department of Children and Families spokesman Gary Kleeblatt. Construction is expected to be completed by June 2011, and the facility should open by September 2011.

The empty lot became available on Virginia Avenue in Bridgeport after crews knocked down an asbestos-contaminated, state-owned building that had been vacant for the past nine years. The building had been used as the southwestern regional office of the Department of Mental Retardation, and then was used as an office for addiction services. The building is easily accessible to Routes 8 and 15, making it easier for families to visit the girls, officials said.The annual cost of running the center was not available Tuesday.

High Meadows Opinion
Milstein welcomed the opinion by Blumenthal that Rell's administration cannot shut down the High Meadows facility because the legislature specifically allocated money for it this year. Blumenthal cited statements made on the House floor by state Rep. John Geragosian, a New Britain Democrat who co-chairs the budget-writing appropriations committee.

Milstein said the delay in closing High Meadows, or perhaps reconsideration of that decision, would give officials time to address the needs of the 12 children remaining in the center instead of discharging them to wherever there is space — whether it is in a state-run facility or in a community-based program.

"We need to stop, take a deep breath, focus — and be guided by the needs of these children and not by pressure to close the facility," Milstein said. "There's a larger, systemic issue here," Milstein said, and that is "poor planning by DCF."

She said poor planning is evident in the "hasty" manner in which the agency has gone about emptying High Meadows — from 36 boys in February to 12 now. Milstein noted that the state has spent about $2 million in recent years on improvements at High Meadows, including more than $200,000 on a pool and $1.1 million on dormitories.

But Kleeblatt said the Bridgeport detention center is the result of the sort of planning that Milstein is calling for.

"This program for girls was designed along with a lot of input from members of the advocacy community," he said. "And the whole idea was to design a facility, and more importantly a program, that was going to specifically meet the girls' needs."

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-prison-juvenile-girls-1021.artoct21,0,349716.story

Posted by lois at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)

Hedge fund manager sees big bucks in CCA

Ackman was also quick to brush off any concerns about falling occupancy rates at CCA, arguing that the company's aggressive building of new prisons in recent years boosted its total number of beds, and occupancy will rise as those beds are filled. Not to mention that the business is "like a hotel where you lock in the guests, and if they try to escape you shoot them."

Value Investing
Jailhouse Shock
Steve Schaefer, 10.21.09
Forbes
Looking to cash out? Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman sees big bucks in a private prison operator.

William Ackman has built a career on actively investing in companies like Target, pushing for changes to increase shareholder value. But in one of Ackman's latest investments, he's taking a a more passive role, and perhaps for good reason: this company is in the prison business.

At the fifth annual Value Investing Congress on Tuesday at New York's Marriott Marquis, Ackman laid out his case for investing in private prison owner and operator Corrections Corporation of America ( CXW - news - people ).

The U.S. prison system is severely overcrowded -- Ackman cited the statistic that California's prisons are running at 170% capacity -- and with a 12,000 bed inventory, CCA is poised to shoulder some of the load that is overcoming state and federal capacity. Couple that with the fact that it's cheaper and quicker for CCA to build a new facility than it is for the U.S. government, and Ackman says the company's shares are considerably undervalued at their current $25-$26 level, pegging its worth at $40-$54 based on a sum-of-the-parts valuation.

Ackman was also quick to brush off any concerns about falling occupancy rates at CCA, arguing that the company's aggressive building of new prisons in recent years boosted its total number of beds, and occupancy will rise as those beds are filled. Not to mention that the business is "like a hotel where you lock in the guests, and if they try to escape you shoot them."

The board of CCA is also an asset, according to Ackman, and aligned with shareholder interests through their ownership of about 5% of the company's outstanding shares. Coming from a manager whose fund, Pershing Square Capital, is well known for efforts to shake up boards at companies like Target ( TGT - news - people ), that's high praise. At a time when many real estate companies are still bearing heavy debt burdens, CCA has no debt maturing until 2012 and throws off enough free cash to cover those commitments.

The CCA ownership is also part of a pair trade where Pershing is short Realty Income ( OUI - news - people ), which leases retail space. Realty Income does not disclose who its tenants are, but the bulk are discretionary regional retailers and Ackman has some concerns about their credit quality, particularly a few he has identified as junk-rated borrowers with high leverage.

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

Endless Insanity: Judges reject California plan to cut prison crowding The panel threatens to impose its own plan if the state does not submit an acceptable one within three weeks.

Judges reject California plan to cut prison crowding
The panel threatens to impose its own plan if the state does not submit an acceptable one within three weeks.

By Michael Rothfeld
October 22, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento
LA Times

Three federal judges on Wednesday forcefully rejected a Schwarzenegger administration proposal to ease prison overcrowding, threatening to impose their own plan for reducing the inmate population if the state does not submit an acceptable one within three weeks.

The panel said California officials had failed to comply with their order to produce a plan to pare the number of state prisoners by 40,000 within two years. The judges agreed to postpone a decision on a request by inmates' lawyers to hold Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in contempt of court for defying the earlier order, issued Aug. 4.

The state's plan, submitted Sept. 18, also failed to specify how much lower the number of inmates would be after six, 12, 18 and 24 months, as the judges had demanded.

"We will view with the utmost seriousness any further failure to comply with our orders," said the seven-page decision by U.S. District Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton and 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt. That would leave the court "with no alternative but to develop a plan independently and order it implemented forthwith."

A Schwarzenegger spokeswoman, Rachel Arrezola, said the state would respond to the order by its Nov. 12 deadline. She said the administration is continuing to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court the judges' "arbitrary" reduction order. That appeal was filed last month.

Wednesday's developments raise the possibility that the federal courts will again seize power from state officials. In 2006, Henderson took over the system of inmate medical care from Schwarzenegger and handed it to a receiver, who reports directly to the judge.

"The court is basically saying, 'Do we have to take control of this away from you too? It's your responsibility,' " said Donald Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office in Berkeley, which represents some of the inmates whose lawsuits have led to the judges' orders.

Although courts have capped the population of local jails and prisons in other states, no federal panel has ordered a population reduction over a state's objections under a 1996 federal law that made it harder for such actions to take place, according to Michael Bien, another lawyer for inmates.

California's case could be the first to test that law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The push to reduce overcrowding stems from the judges' ruling in a pair of inmate lawsuits. The judges said the teeming conditions of the state prison system, which contains nearly 170,000 people, is the main cause of medical and mental health care so poor that it violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Inmates have long been stuffed into dormitories, hallways and other makeshift living spaces in institutions so strapped that Henderson once said nearly an inmate a week was dying needlessly.

Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that the prison system is in crisis and that overcrowding should be reduced. But he has fought the oversight of federal judges, telling reporters Wednesday that they have run amok on a host of issues besides prisons, including state budget cuts and the protection of endangered species.

"They are going absolutely crazy," Schwarzenegger said. "They've got to let us run the state."

The plan the governor gave the judges last month to reduce overcrowding would have cut the prison population by about 18,000 after two years, less than half of what had been ordered. It also relied heavily on the construction of new prisons, even though the judges had previously discounted that option because the state had proved unable to move ahead on such plans for the last two years. Matthew Cate, the governor's corrections chief, said the administration's plan reduced the prison population only as much as state officials felt they could manage safely.

But the judges, in their order Wednesday, pointed out that Schwarzenegger had previously advocated a more far-reaching plan to reduce the number of inmates -- by 37,000 over two years -- with a variety of measures including home detention and sentencing changes. The governor and Cate had said that plan, which was approved by the state Senate but stalled in the Assembly, would not endanger public safety.

"That such a plan was submitted by the governor was widely reported by the press, including in an article written by defendant Matthew Cate," the judges wrote.

They ordered the state to provide information on the legislative plan, suggesting that they could impose parts of it if the state does not come up with an alternative.

The judges also faulted the state for relying on inmate rehabilitation programs to reduce overcrowding even as it was preparing to announce a $250-million-a-year budget cut in those same programs. And they told state officials to inform them of any future budget cuts that could affect overcrowding.

If state leaders do not present an acceptable plan, the judges said, they will give inmates' lawyers two weeks to propose a solution as well before imposing one on their own.

Bien said he hoped the state would take the reins. By investing in community-based rehabilitation programs and other measures, he said, officials could in one stroke improve public safety, save money and "address the plight of my clients, who live in these horrific conditions of overcrowding."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisons22-2009oct22,0,1269315.story

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Posted by lois at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2009

NJ -consultant recommends closing Camden jail and building a new private jail

2 articles below.

______________

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20091020_Consultant_recommends_privatizing_Camden_jail.html
Philadelphia Inquirer
Posted on Tue, Oct. 20, 2009
Consultant recommends privatizing Camden jail

By James Osborne
Inquirer Staff Writer

A report commissioned by Camden County recommends closing the jail in downtown Camden and privatizing the job of housing criminals awaiting trial. "A private firm has the potential to reduce operating costs if the contractor can employ a variety of cost control and reduction measures available to the private sector but not possible in a public management arena," the report read.

Pulitzer/Bogard and Associates of Lido Beach, N.Y., was paid $100,000 for the assessment, which was released by the county yesterday.

"We know the current state of the jail is unsustainable," read a statement from Camden County Freeholder Director Louis Cappelli Jr. "In the coming months, we will carefully examine the pros and cons of all options, including privatization, as we move forward."

The facility, which was built in the 1980s, was designed to house 1,083 inmates but frequently maintains a prison population of between 1,700 and 1,800, according to the report. Those conditions have resulted in a number of lawsuits against the county, including a federal class-action suit filed by a former inmate.

The county spends $55.2 million a year on housing and transporting inmates, about one-sixth of its total budget, according to the report. That number is projected to grow in the years ahead as the prison population increases.

The jail is forecast to reach an average daily population of 2,000 by June.

-----

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/politics/nj/46700147.html
New Jersey Politics
Posted on Tue, Jun. 2, 2009
Camden County awaits corrections report

By Matt Katz

Inquirer Staff Writer

Camden County is awaiting a $100,000 consultant's report on its corrections system that could lead officials to try something unprecedented in New Jersey: Privatizing the county jail.

Privatization of a core government function is a controversial prospect, and county officials will only say they are exploring all avenues to remedy severe overcrowding at the facility in downtown Camden. But there are indications a private jail is being seriously considered.

In commissioning the consultant's report, officials specifically asked for an analysis of privatization options. And top Camden County officials have toured Pennsylvania's only privately run county jail, in Delaware County, and smaller drug-treatment-focused, privately run facilities in Philadelphia and in Essex County, N.J.

In its winning bid proposal for the consultant contract, the New York firm Pulitzer/Bogard & Associates even cited its knowledge of staffing private jails "with and without collective bargaining agreements."

The fate of those labor agreements is the heart of what could become a prolonged debate between the county, which hopes to control jail costs, and the union, representing about 350 corrections officers who fear being replaced by minimum-wage security guards.

The Pulitzer/Bogard & Associates report could be ready as early as this summer, and already the union is gearing up for a fight against the potential privatization recommendations.

The attorney for the Camden County corrections officers, Stuart Alterman, says private facilities are prone to increased violence, which increases liability costs.

In 2005, for example, seven inmates died at Delaware County's jail under the watch of its former operator, Geo Group. The company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in wrongful death settlements, and ended up terminating its contract with the county last New Year's Eve, citing the cost of litigation.

There have also been problems with medical care. Last year, a Howard Stern sidekick, Keith Kallenback, died in the jail after he wasn't given the proper treatment for his cystic fibrosis, family members have alleged.

"For the government to abdicate their responsibility to some company will be an absolute debacle," Alterman said. "The next thing the government is going to do is say, 'We're putting bids out for police departments.' "

Opponents say private guards are untrained and underpaid, and that private jails have a financial motive to, for example, delay medical treatment for sick inmates nearing release.

Angus Love, a prisoners' advocate with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, also said privatization leaves politicians susceptible to so-called pay-to-play - companies that make campaign contributions to score contracts.

"For-profit is an incorrect way to go on core government services," Love said. "It compromises the function of the entity by introducing the profit motive."

But governments have financial motives, too. Camden County Administrator Ross Angilella tries to avoid tax increases each year, but the county jail is an ongoing drain on resources, accounting for 20 percent of the county budget.

Long-term infrastructure improvements on the dilapidated building are difficult, he said, because temporary space is needed to hold prisoners while work is done, and the Camden County Jail is far too overcrowded to allow that.

As of yesterday, there were 1,790 inmates at the facility, which was built for 1,267. Inmates sometimes sleep on the floor.

These conditions have made the county a target of lawsuits, including a federal class-action suit, even though the county freeholders have little control over the number of inmates the jail receives.

That might make privatization attractive to the county. In Delaware County, the new company, Community Education Centers Inc. (CEC), assumed all liability.

A private company could also be commissioned to build a new facility, which is how Delaware County got the new George W. Hill Correctional Facility in 1998.

Not all private entities are the same. Some have unionized workers, as in Delaware County. And some low-level offenders who are addicted to drugs or alcohol are housed in smaller facilities where they get intensive drug treatment.

The City of Philadelphia contracts with CEC for such a facility. On a tour yesterday of the North Philadelphia building, called Hoffman Hall, company officials painted a positive picture of a "community" where the word residents replaces inmates.

Corridors at Hoffman Hall, where nearly everyone has a drug or alcohol addiction, are lined with posters featuring adages from 12-step treatment programs, and counselors run small group sessions teaching life skills to residents.

"That's the key: When folks are released, do you have an opportunity to integrate back into the community?" asked Robert Pollock, director of Hoffman Hall. "Most guys have never had a checking account. They don't know
how to interview. They don't know how to be a father and a husband."

Showing off a room for eight with a private bathroom, resident Kevin Block, 47, said: "They consider us residents, because this is our home."

Company officials have given similar tours to Camden County officials, and the company has scouted out possible locations for private jailing facilities in the county.

CEC says it abides by the highest standards in medical care and security. An incident last week at the company-owned Delaney Hall in Essex County, in which three men allegedly killed a fellow inmate, is "the only incident of its kind" since it opened in 2000, said William Palatucci, senior vice
president of CEC.

Public officials concurred. Joseph DiVincenzo, Essex County administrator, said 700 drug-addicted inmates are housed at Delaney Hall, easing the strain on the public jail and reducing the recidivism rate.

"They've done an outstanding job for us," he said. "I have nothing but good things to say about them."

Delaware County, where county officials are stationed on-site, might be more
analogous to Camden County because both facilities have about 1,800 inmates.

Yet it costs Delaware County $40 million annually for its jail, comparedwith $60 million annually in Camden County.

"The Delaware County experience has clearly been that privatization does not expose our taxpayers to the burgeoning cost of litigation and to the onerousimpact of settlements," said John Reilly, superintendent of the jail and a county employee.

So far, CEC is doing a good job, he said, and the company has an incentive to continue to do a good job - it wants a renewed contract at the end of theyear.

"If it's efficient and reduces costs, and therefore saves taxpayer dollars,then, fine," Reilly said. "The question then becomes: 'Why can't government do that?' "

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

UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Reports on Prisons Around the World

U.N. investigator tells of horrors of world prisons
By Louis Charbonneau
Reuters
Washington Post
Tuesday, October 20, 2009

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Inmates at a prison in Uruguay can spend years in "tin cans" -- small metal boxes where temperatures rise to 140 degrees F (60 degrees C), while women and children were among prisoners in Nigeria confined to a "torture room."

Those were among the abuses chronicled in a report released on Tuesday by Manfred Nowak, an Austrian human rights lawyer and U.N. special rapporteur on torture and other forms of cruel and inhuman treatment and punishment.

Speaking to reporters after submitting his report to the U.N. General Assembly, Nowak said he focused on "forgotten prisons" and the treatment of children in the dozens of countries he visited.

Nowak said women and children in Lagos, Nigeria, were among the more than 100 detainees confined to the "torture room" of the Criminal Investigation Department, where torture methods included the firing of gunshots into legs and leaving the severely injured prisoners without medical treatment.

There are some 10 million people behind bars worldwide, most of them in unacceptable circumstances, Nowak said.

"My guess is that the clear majority of them have to be in conditions that are violating human dignity," he said.

One widespread problem is overcrowding, which Nowak said he witnessed during visits to countries like Georgia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Togo.

In Indonesia and Paraguay, he said, detainees were not only deprived of food and medicine but were sometimes forced to pay a daily fee for their "accommodation" in prison cells.

Nowak's report said he found a woman on death row in a prison in the former Soviet republic of Georgia who had been confined to a bed for years because she was paralyzed.

CHILD PRISONERS

Some governments responded positively to Nowak's reports of torture and abusive conditions in their prisons.

He said Uruguay was taking steps to shut down the "tin cans," which he said were an unacceptable form of incarceration. Jordan closed a prison where Nowak found cases of torture, while Nigeria has promised to do the same with the "torture room" in Lagos.

Nowak said torture was commonplace across the Arab world, although he said most Arab countries refused to let him visit their prisons and detention centers. Jordan did allow Nowak access to its jails.

Although Nowak did find cases of torture in Jordan, he said it was not systematic.

He said roughly 1 million of the world's 10 million detainees were children, some as young as 9 or 10 years old. During prolonged periods of pretrial detention, many are not segregated from adult prisoners, leaving them open to abuse.

In countries like Indonesia, Togo and Uruguay, Nowak's report said he found that corporal punishment was being used to discipline child detainees. In Uruguay, he found boys locked up for 22 hours a day with no toilets.

Reporters asked Nowak about the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba, which he has criticized in the past for harsh treatment of terrorism suspects. He doubted U.S. President Barack Obama would be able to shut it by January as planned.

Nowak said it was up to European governments to help Obama by admitting Guantanamo Bay inmates into their countries.

Nowak was also asked about Iran, where the opposition and human rights groups say the government has tortured prisoners detained after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election sparked violent protests across the country.

Nowak said he had received many "very credible allegations" of serious torture after the Iranian election and asked the Islamic Republic if the charges were true. He said Tehran had yet to respond.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/20/AR2009102003041.html

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

AZ: Judge rules against Arpaio who demanded $300-$600 of prepayment for transportation for women seeking access to abortion care.

From the ACLU: "A victory for incarcerated women against Sheriff Joe Arpaio The judge ordered that it was unconstitutional for Maricopa Jail to require "prepayment" of transportation costs for those women seeking to access abortion care."

Judge: No prepayment for abortion transport
by Michael Kiefer - Oct. 21, 2009
The Arizona Republic

A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Tuesday ruled that the Sheriff's Office cannot force jail inmates to prepay the cost of being transported to a clinic to obtain an abortion.

Judge Robert Oberbillig said he felt "compelled" to add the ruling to an existing injunction against the Sheriff's Office forbidding it from demanding court orders before taking inmates to abortion clinics.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio appealed that 2005 injunction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case.

Then his office told another inmate that she would have to pay $300 to $600 in advance to cover the office's cost of transport and security before being taken to the clinic. If she wanted a waiver for the fee, she could get a court order. The woman was able to obtain funds for the transport. Still, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which brought the initial suit, argued that the prepayment created another obstacle to a woman's right to obtain a timely abortion under the U.S. Constitution.

Deputy Chief Sheriff Jack MacIntyre told The Republic that the court should have waited for a new case with a plaintiff who still needed an abortion, "someone whose actual constitutional rights have been affected. This really is judicial activism taken a few steps too far," he said.

But ACLU attorney Brigitte Amiri told the court, "That will effectively mean that some women will lose their constitutional right and be forced to carry a child to term."

Amiri told the court that the three women who have been plaintiffs over the history of the case had their abortions delayed seven weeks, four weeks and six weeks, respectively, which she claimed placed their health in danger and delayed their constitutional rights.

The ACLU did not dispute the sheriff's right to demand reimbursement for the transport costs.

But Daryl Manhart, an attorney for the Sheriff's Office, argued that extending credit in advance would be tantamount to giving away the money, as the inmates would likely not pay it back.

Oberbillig questioned Manhart rigorously over the hour-and-a-half long hearing, but ultimately ruled on the side of the side of the ACLU.

MacIntyre and Manhart both said that the Sheriff's Office would likely appeal the ruling.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/10/21/20091021acluabortion1021.html

Posted by lois at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Kelso and State Agree to Build Prison for 1,733 sick and mentally ill prisoners in Stockton

Deal reached for new state prison
October 20, 2009 | 7:23 pm
LA Times

State corrections officials and a court-appointed overseer of prison healthcare have agreed to build a new 1,733-bed facility for sick and mentally ill inmates at an estimated cost of $1.1 billion.

The deal, announced today, appears to end a long-running standoff between state officials and the receiver, J. Clark Kelso, who was appointed by U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson to improve medical care for inmates.

Kelso originally proposed seven new facilities with 10,000 beds, along with renovations at existing prisons, at a cost of $8 billion. State officials refused to allocate the money.

The new facility, in Stockton, would be partly on the site of a youth prison, the Karl Holton Youth Correctional Facility, which would be torn down.

Construction would be funded with bonds approved by the Legislature two years ago and would begin in 2010. The facility would cost $297 million a year to operate.

Kelso said he still plans renovations of healthcare clinics at other prisons.

--Michael Rothfeld in Sacramento
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/deal-reached-for-new-state-prison.html

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

October 20, 2009

NY: overbuilt rural county jail opened in 2007 is half empty now must count on federal prisoners for revenue

Essex Co. received $1M for boarding inmates
By NATHAN BROWN, Enterprise Staff Writer
POSTED: October 14, 2009

ELIZABETHTOWN - Essex County has taken in a little over $1 million for boarding inmates from elsewhere so far this year, the large majority from the federal system.

There are 66 inmates in the county jail now, Sheriff Henry Hommes said at a county Public Safety Committee meeting Tuesday; of these 66, 35 are boarders and the rest in jail on Essex County arrests.

The new county jail in Lewis opened in 2007 and was financed with a 30-year bond, with annual payments of $1.5 million. The 120-bed facility replaced the old one in Elizabethtown, which only had 20 beds and was built in 1868. The number of Essex County inmates has fluctuated between about 20 and 40 over the past few years, meaning the county often had to pay to board inmates elsewhere before the new jail opened.

Hommes, who has been sheriff for 12 years, is running for re-election as a Republican and Conservative against independent challengers Robert Kirby and Michael "Ike" Tyler. The jail has been an issue in the campaign. Tyler has said the staff isn't trained to deal with the federal inmates, and Kirby has said he thinks the jail is too big, leading to extra costs.

The federal government pays the county $98 per day to board an inmate; Hommes said it costs about $8 per day to provide food, clothing and a bed for a prisoner.

The county budgeted $4.2 million for the jail for 2009, including the bond payment, said county Manager Dan Palmer. This doesn't take the revenue from the prisoners into account.

Kirby said Tuesday afternoon that he doesn't think the $98 per boarded prisoner covers added expenses such as the guards and other staff needed to run a facility certified for 120 inmates.

"You must provide certain services regardless of whether the cells are full or not," Kirby said.

"There are still a lot of costs associated with operating that jail," said Moriah Supervisor Tom Scozzafava, who is on the Public Safety Committee.

Hommes said the county is also no longer spending money to board its inmates elsewhere, as it did before the new jail opened. The county spent more than $700,000 to board inmates in 2006 and more than $500,000 in 2007, Hommes said.

Tyler said Wednesday morning that, while boarding inmates makes sense now that the 120-bed jail has been built, he thinks his background as a corrections officer will help him train the jail's guards to deal with the federal inmates. Tyler also wondered if the new jail was a net gain or loss.

"Maybe (the jail) brought in $1 million, but we had to hire more officers," Tyler said. "It costs a lot more to house more inmates. I've never seen any studies done on the direct correlation on money being made and money being spent out."

Kirby also said the lack of a guarantee from the federal government that it will rent a fixed number of beds worried him, as the county could lose revenue if other jails start to accept more boarders and the federal government turns to them. Kirby said the number of correctional personnel, currently 58, could be reduced to 38 if the jail was only certified for 60 prisoners.

Hommes said the jail's cost could only be driven down significantly if there were fewer than 30 inmates, in which case they could all be held in one housing unit and the other two, both currently in operation, could be shut down.

---

Stimulus grant

The sheriff's department has also been awarded $188,080 in stimulus money, Hommes said, to be spent over a two-year period. The money will be used to pay the salary, benefits and retirement contributions of a sheriff's deputy for two years, for a vehicle, for portable radios and for overtime to do narcotics investigations, Hommes said.

"The position is a narcotics position," Hommes said. "We have to keep that in mind, but if there is a slack period, yes, they will be doing other duties."
http://adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/509142.html

Posted by lois at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)

TX: How a private prison pushed immigrant inmates to the brink.

How a private prison pushed immigrant inmates to the brink.
Forrest Wilder | October 2, 2009 | Features
Texas Observer
http://www.texasobserver.org/features/the-pecos-insurrection

Last Dec. 12, on the outskirts of Pecos, Texas, the immigrants doing time in the world’s largest privately run prison decided to turn the tables on their captors. It was the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe, an important religious holiday in Latin America. But the inmates were in no mood for celebration.

The motin, as the overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking inmates called their uprising, began in the Reeves County Detention Center’s Special Housing Unit (SHU), better known as solitary confinement, with two men—a Honduran and a Mexican—using the wires in an electrical outlet to set a mattress on fire.

They broke out the windows of their cell, and when prison guards tried to extinguish the fire by sticking a fire hose through a port in the door, the two broke the sink off the wall and held it up as a shield. One brandished, but didn’t use, a “shiv,” a crude jailhouse knife. Meanwhile, the two men yelled for other inmates to join in the uprising. Soon, at 12:45 p.m., a lockdown order went out across the prison. Staff tried to hustle prisoners on their way to lunch or the recreation center back to their cells. Inmates in one of the housing areas refused, and they forced the guards to release friends from their cells. “Open the doors or we will take your keys,” the prisoners demanded, according to an FBI account. “We’ll see who has control in a bit,” one inmate told a guard.

The prison’s emergency-response team deployed an arsenal including rubber bullets, pepper spray, expulsion grenades and bean-bag guns. To little avail. The insurrection quickly spread to the other housing areas. The rioters assembled in the outdoor recreation yard armed with rocks, concrete, and steel poles as well as horseshoes, hammers and box cutters they had pilfered from the recreation building. Many of them, aware of the prison’s extensive surveillance system, hid their faces with T-shirts, hats and bandanas. Some wore sunglasses.

Two prison employees were taken hostage. (Neither was harmed.) With more than 1,200 inmates milling around outside and hordes of law enforcement officials, the prison must have looked like a war zone.

It was not mere anarchy, though.

By midafternoon, members of the FBI, Texas Rangers, DPS and the Odessa Police Department arrived at the prison. As the crisis negotiators quickly found out, the riot had not been prompted by gang infighting, racial tensions or a spontaneous outburst of violence. The men incarcerated at the Pecos prison are considered “low-security”; most are serving relatively short sentences for immigration violations or drug offenses. All are set to be deported at the end of their sentences.

Leaders of the rebellion were demanding a meeting with the Mexican Consulate, the FBI and the warden to discuss a number of grievances that they said GEO Group, the prison company that manages the 3,700-bed facility, had refused to address.

The evening of the uprising, the inmates sent a delegation of seven men—a Venezuelan, a Cuban, a Nigerian, and four Mexicans—to meet with the authorities.

They explained that the uprising had erupted from widespread dissatisfaction with almost every aspect of the prison: inedible food, a dearth of legal resources, the use of solitary confinement to punish people who complained about their medical treatment, overcrowding and, above all, poor health care.

The delegates pointed to a string of deaths (according to public records, five men died in Reeves between August 2008 and March 2009, including two suicides) they attributed to the prison’s inattention to medical needs. The riot had been sparked by the death of Jesus Manuel Galindo, an epileptic, who had been carried out of the prison’s Special Housing Unit in a body bag that same day. “Suspect(s) are talking about the guy being out of the shoe [SHU],” the Odessa Police Department report said. “Someone should have been there with him. Special housing was not the place for [him].”

The authorities jotted down the concerns and promised to take them seriously.

Twenty-four hours after it began, the uprising was over. More than $1 million worth of damage had been done to the prison. Less than two months later, on Jan. 31, the prison would be under inmate control again—and this time the rioting would last for five days and end with one building destroyed and some $20 million in damage.

To critics of GEO and other for-profit prison companies, the two huge riots in as many months—rare, especially in low-security prisons—were the logical consequence of the largest experiment in prison privatization to date.

The story of the death of Jesus Manuel Galindo is the story of a death foretold.

For weeks, Galindo, a 32-year-old epileptic Mexican citizen who had lived in the United States since he was 13, had been complaining to anyone who would listen that something terrible was going to happen to him because of poor medical care.

In May 2007, Galindo was found illegally crossing the border in El Paso. Galindo, nicknamed “Negro” for his dark complexion, was sentenced later that year to 30 months for illegal re-entry (crossing into the U.S. after being deported). Ten years ago, he would likely have been quickly deported, not prosecuted. But the Bush administration piloted a “zero-tolerance” policy in Texas that eventually spread across the border: All illegal border crossers would be arrested, detained and, if possible, prosecuted in federal court. Prosecutions surged, as did the need for detention centers, jails and prisons to hold the tens of thousands of newly minted criminals. The Obama administration has more than embraced the policy. The number of prosecutions for immigration crimes—almost 68,000—during the first nine months of 2009 is on track for a 14 percent increase over 2008. More than half of those prosecutions took place in Texas.

The result has been a system swamped with low-level immigration cases and prisons bursting at the seams with illegal immigrants. Rather than build and run the facilities themselves, federal agencies have turned in large part to private prison companies, such as Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group. In 2008, GEO reported more than $1 billion in revenue, an 80 percent increase over 2005.

Privatization has been less profitable for others. GEO’s Texas facilities have been plagued with suicides, filthy conditions, sexual abuse scandals, hunger strikes, riots and lawsuits.

Jesus Galindo became another case in point. According to his family, Galindo had had seizures before his incarceration but they grew worse and more frequent under the care of the Physicians Network Association, a Lubbock-based medical services provider that serves 17,000 inmates in 24 facilities across the nation. In 2002, Reeves County hired PNA to run the prison’s health care, attracted by its promise to improve services and cut costs. (The county pays PNA $6.03 per inmate per day, about $8 million a year at full capacity.)

Four months into their contract, then-warden Rudy Franco lauded PNA at a county commissioners meeting for drastically reducing the number of surgeries, X-rays, outside visits and other medical services, the latter of which had dropped from 3,148 to 222.

On Nov. 12, Galindo was locked up in the Special Housing Unit. The mostly Spanish-speaking inmates call it la celda de castigo, the punishment cell. Prisoners and others say the SHU was frequently used to isolate and punish men with health problems who complained about their medical care.

According to Galindo’s family, the prison authorities said they put him in the SHU to keep an eye on him. “That’s not true,” says Jesus Galindo Sr., his father. “It was to punish him.”

Galindo pleaded with prison officials to return him to the ­general population where he had friends who woke him up to take his pills and took care of him during his frequent seizures.

“He would say he was really afraid because if he got sick who was going to help him?” says his mother, Graciela Galindo. She begged officials to look after her son. “They told me he was in a high security place; that was what the warden said, and that I should not worry about him. They told me they were taking good care of my son.”

Galindo did what he could to reassure his family, singing love songs to his mother over the phone. “He had hope,” his brother Jesus Galindo Jr. said. “He was real strong. The only thing that bothered him was his condition. I saw him on his birthday [Nov. 29]. I said, ‘Hey, hang in there. Think of us like we think of you.’”

Judy Madewell, the public defender in charge of Galindo’s criminal case was so worried that she sent an investigator to the prison on Dec. 4. The investigator, Octavio Vasquez, urged the authorities to put Galindo back into the general population.

On Dec. 9, Graciela talked to her son on the phone. “He told me to tell Belinda [his daughter] to do a dance to the Virgin because he’s getting out of the SHU on Friday [Dec. 12] ... and that if he wasn’t, to contact the jail.”

The following day, Dec. 10, Galindo wrote a letter to his family saying that he felt bad and had asked the doctor and warden to do something. The letters begins in the morning, with Galindo noting that a nurse had promised him that she would return later that day to take his blood.

Two days later, on Dec. 12, Graciela called to see if her son had been released from the SHU. “I called and to my surprise he was dead. They kept me on the phone for an hour. They said we have to wait for the doctors. I told them please do something. But my son was already dead.”

“Mama, the day already passed and nothing,” he writes later that same day. “All they did was walk up and down but here, where I am, no one even stopped. We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”

When Galindo was found in his cell, rigor mortis had already set in. His body was purple and stiff. The El Paso County medical examiner ruled the cause of death as epileptiform seizure disorder. A toxicology report found “below-therapeutic levels” of Dilantin, a cheap anti-epileptic drug, in Galindo’s blood and urine. The drug is only effective at certain dosages, and a patient’s blood must be checked regularly to make sure it’s not too high or low, says Robert Cain, an Austin neurologist who reviewed the autopsy.

“With multiple seizures, inadequate levels of medication and left in isolation without supervision, he was set up to die,” Cain says.

Galindo’s experience was strikingly similar to those of other inmates under PNA’s care. In 2003, the Justice Department investigated the Santa Fe County Jail in New Mexico, which was then run by Management & Training Corp. (MTC). Just as it does at Reeves, PNA had a subcontract to provide health care there. The Justice Department found nearly non-existent medical and mental health care, and specifically noted PNA’s inattention to properly calibrating dose-sensitive medications, especially anti-epileptics.

“We found several instances in which PNA failed to monitor inmates on these types of medications, even when inmates reported experiencing side effects,” the report states. In one case, blood testing showed that an inmate with a seizure disorder did not have enough of the anti-seizure drug to be effective. The PNA medical staff did nothing, and seven days later the inmate attempted suicide and then suffered a seizure. “Even with all the attention from medical staff due to his suicide attempt, his seizure medication blood level was not measured until four days” later, the report says.

No such authoritative report has been done for the Pecos prison. But in interviews and correspondence, prisoners, their relatives, attorneys and immigrant rights advocates describe a facility overrun with corruption and dangerous cost-cutting measures. Prisoners writing to the Observer have made allegations ranging from physical abuse to tacit arrangements between guards and prisoners to traffic drugs and other contraband inside the facility. (GEO Group declined to comment.)

A prisoner we’ll call Juan, who asked that his real name not be used for fear of retribution, describes an environment of fear where hardened criminals serving long sentences live side by side with men who are there solely for crossing the border illegally. Juan says that prisoners in the jail are divided into groups based on their home state in Mexico with the tacit approval of the guards and the warden. Prisoners who have money and can buy influence and authority run these groups. These bosses dole out punishments and determine with the guards who gets sent to the punishment cell, Juan says. “We are threatened and beaten if we complain. While [the prison bosses] can have cell phones and other benefits that are forbidden.”

Another prisoner, Jose—who also asked that his name be changed—writes that he has hepatitis. “I begged for medicine and they sent me a bottle that was unsealed and only half full,” Jose writes. “I haven’t received treatment for my hepatitis since December 2008.”

“The problem with Reeves is that there are no medical services,” says Graciela Arredondo, the mother of a man who served part of his sentence at Reeves. “They won’t bring a doctor if you are sick. They don’t want to spend the money, but these are human beings and they deserve medical services.”

After the riots in December and January, the ACLU of Texas called on the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General to investigate the prisoners’ charges. This wouldn’t be the first time the OIG was asked to look into reports of abuse at the Reeves facility. In 2006, an investigation resulted in the arrests of five employees at the jail for smuggling drugs into the facility and having sex with inmates. Because it hasn’t received an answer from the OIG, the ACLU is starting its own investigation.

“Riots are relatively rare, and are an indicator of serious problems at a facility,” says Lisa Graybill, legal director for the ACLU of Texas. ”We continue to receive complaints that the Bureau of Prisons and its contractors, GEO and Physicians Network Association, are systemically failing to address life-threatening and chronic medical conditions of detainees.”

None of this is surprising to longtime prison activist Bob Libal, co-coordinator of Grassroots Leadership, an Austin nonprofit that fights private prisons. “Conditions at GEO facilities have been horrendous, and it stretches across every type of facility,” says Libal. “It’s case after case after case. Whether Coke County, Val Verde, Dickens County, Reeves, Pearsall, it’s one horrendous thing after another.”

In 2007, the Texas Youth Commission removed 197 youths from GEO Group’s Coke County Juvenile Justice Center after inspectors found deplorable conditions including filthy cells that reeked of feces and urine, insects in the food, and inmates only being allowed to shower and brush their teeth every few days.

A year before, the family of 23-year-old LeTisha Tapia sued GEO Group after Tapia killed herself at the Val Verde County Jail, which the company runs. Tapia had told her family that she was raped, beaten, sexually humiliated and deprived of psychological and medical treatment in retaliation for telling the warden about guards allowing inmates to have sex with each other. The suit was settled out of court.

In the past two years, the state of Idaho has pulled out of contracts at two GEO-operated jails—the Dickens County Correctional Center, near Spur, and the Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littleton—citing chronic understaffing, a lack of required treatment programs, and suicides linked to squalid conditions.

In a lawsuit set to go to trial in March, two detainees at the GEO-run South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall claim that the company “intentionally and systematically violates the rights of mentally disabled detainees.” Echoing the Reeves County allegations, both of the plaintiffs, Miroslava Rodriguez-Grava and Isaias Vasques Cisneros de Jesus, allege that instead of treating them for their mental disabilities, GEO put them in segregation for extended periods of time.

“I think that any time you insert profit into the equation that care and also the rehabilitative elements of corrections goes out the window,” said Libal. “They try to do things as cheap as possible. You get what you’re paying for in a lot of ways.”

The Pecos prison, a remote, austere correctional campus flanked by farmland and a weirdly out-of-place cemetery, sprawls across several acres a few hundred yards from Interstate 30. To travelers zipping by at 80 mph, the facility is little more than a blur of barbed wire and guard towers. But to the people of Reeves County (population 13,137), it’s an engine of progress.

In the mid-1980s, with the regional economy devastated by the Texas oil bust, local business and government leaders decided to move into a recession-proof industry that was exploding in an increasingly criminalized America: prisons. In 1986, the county built a 300-bed prison. The prison filled rapidly with federal inmates, pumping revenue into the county’s budget and adding decent-paying jobs to the local work force. By 2002, Reeves had 2,000 beds. In 2003, the county completed ­construction on a $39 million, 960-bed unit only to find that the feds had no interest.

“They built a $39 million prison on speculation,” said Jon Fulbright, a reporter for the Pecos Enterprise. While the prison sat empty, payments on the bonds, reduced to junk status, were coming due. On the verge of default, county officials begged the Bush administration to send prisoners and hired Randy DeLay, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s brother, to lobby in Washington, D.C. That’s when Wackenhut Corrections Corp., now GEO Group, rode to the rescue. In November 2003, GEO agreed to take over management of the whole 3,000-bed prison complex and soon struck a deal with the Bureau of Prisons to fill the new unit.

Despite the troubles at the Pecos prison under GEO management, local officials are grateful.

“A lot of people criticize GEO but I don’t,” says Sheriff Arnulfo “Andy” Gomez. “We had a hard time and they pulled us out. They’ve got lobbyists and all that.” Besides, he says, “You’re going to have trouble in every prison.”

Some more than others. On Jan. 31, a month and a half after the first uprising, prisoners at the Reeves County Detention Center rose up again. Prison and law enforcement officials have released little information on the disturbance, but inmates, advocates and family members say it began when Ramon Garcia, 25, was forced into solitary confinement after complaining of dizziness and feeling sick.

“We spoke with the warden and we told him to take our countryman out of the punishment cell and take him to the hospital because he needs medical attention,” an inmate told Laura Rivas, an advocate with the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. “We told them that if they were not going to do it then we would do it, we would take him out, because we have more strength, and they laughed at us. And that’s when it all started.”

Lana Williams, a friend of Garcia’s family, told KFOX-TV in El Paso that Garcia had been put into solitary confinement whenever he complained of feeling sick. “He’s gotten to the point where he can’t walk down the hall without holding on to the wall, and this has been going on and getting progressively worse,” Williams said.

During the five-day takeover, the inmates drafted another list of demands: better medical treatment, adequate food (especially for those who are ill or have diabetes) and no guard retaliation against any person.

“To them, we don’t matter,” the inmate told Rivas. “If we die, it doesn’t matter to them. The only thing that interests them is money—nothing more.”

Melissa del Bosque contributed reporting for this story.

AND

http://borderlinesblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/talking-about-insurrection.html

via Border Lines by Tom Barry on 10/9/09

Getting into the federal building in Pecos, Texas takes political sophistication – something I was apparently lacking when attempting to enter the building for the trial of a couple of immigrant inmates indicted for their role in the Dec. 12-13 incident, let’s call it, at the immigrant prison in this far West Texas town.

It’s the same all over the country. After Sept. 11 the federal halls of justice have been on virtual lockdown status. To get into these buildings – which typically house the district courts and U.S. Marshals Service offices, you need to pass through metal detectors, present identification, and rid yourself of all electronic devices. As many as half dozen or more federal security guards – usually retired police officers and sheriff deputies – are usually in the courthouse foyer to block entry to criminals and terrorists.

In Pecos, which has a privately run, federally supplied, and locally owned immigrant prison on the outskirts of town, people are feeling jittery about the criminal alien business. It’s a business that has for the past two decades been a source of a steadily expanding number of local jobs and increasing county revenues, as the prison has gone through three expansions to accommodate the ever larger number of immigrant inmates under Bureau of Prisons custody.

I felt it as soon as I stepped pass the doorway: suspicion and outsider disdain. “What are you here for? Who are you,” one of the guards demanded.

“Well, I am here for the trial of the immigrant prisoners indicted for the disturbance at the prison last December,” I said, handing the questioning guard my business card (from Center for International Policy).

“Disturbance, there was no disturbance,” says he. (It wasn’t until later that I asked how HE was.) “There was a riot, and it’s costing us tens of millions of dollars.”

During several trips to Pecos since the second inmate news event of Jan. 31 –Feb. 5, I had been alternating between “riot,” “protest,” “mutiny,” and “disturbance.”

What happened at the Reeves County Detention Center in two separate occasions was that immigrant inmates – officially classified “criminal aliens” who will be processed for deportation upon completing their 1-5 year sentences – set fire to prison buildings to protest the deaths and untreated illnesses of fellow prisoners. In both cases, the main prisoner concern was that sick inmates were being placed in the Secure Housing Unit (SHU) assigned for “medical observation.”

The SHUs in modern prisons and detention centers are the modern equivalent of the old “solitary confinement” – intended as both punishment for disciplinary infraction and as deterrence to prevent unruly behavior. But, as the practice at the Reeves County Detention Center, SHUs are often used simply to better manage prison populations – to isolate and punish problem inmates whether they break the rules or not.

At the Reeves County Detention Center (RCDC) – which since 1985 has expanded from 300-bed prison to one that holds up to 3700 inmates – the SHU is systemically and routinely used to house severely ill inmates. That’s because there is no infirmary at what the prison giant GEO Group (which the county contracts to run the BOP prison) calls RCDC “the largest detention/
correctional facility under private management in the world.”

The first incident was precipitated by the death of Jesus Manuel Galindo, 32, who was serving a 30-month sentence for illegal reentry from Mexico. Galindo was picked up by the Border Patrol after an epileptic seizure at a convenience store near the borderland town of Anthony, NM, where he had lived with his family since he was in his mid-teens. The local police, who responded to the call for assistance from the clerk at the local 7-11, turned Galindo over to the Border Patrol after it was determined he was an “illegal alien.” Galindo, after being deported to Ciudad Juárez (about 20 miles from his home in the United States), attempted to return home to his extended and nuclear family (three children and second wife) – all of whom were legal residents or citizens -- two years ago after spending a month in the Mexican border town across from El Paso.

But increased border security and a new “criminal alien” policy that criminalizes and penalizes illegal border crossing combined to put Galindo into the federal slammer in Pecos, where an estimated 75% of his fellow inmates were also serving time for illegal border crossings and the balance for nonviolent crimes, mostly drug violations.

Another severe epileptic seizure in mid-November 2008 sent Galindo to an area hospital – and in the SHU. The greatest fear of inmates at the Reeves County Detention Center is getting sick and being consigned to the SHU – what they call “el hoyo” (the hole). It’s the hole not because it’s so dark or dirty, but rather because it’s where there is no relief from the walls, the loneliness, the emptiness.

Galindo corresponded frequently with his mother, Graciela Galindo. His letters from mid-November until the day before he died tell of his fear and despair at being kept in the hole without any company, without the friends he made in prison. He tells his mother of the inhumanity of most of the guards who didn’t seem to recognize the humanity of the immigrant inmates. He writes of the urgency to get the right medicine to prevent his seizures – medicine, his mother told me, for which he had a prescription before he was imprisoned but was replaced by the nurses at Reeves with sedatives that kept him sleepy and unable to stand up. On Dec. 5 he wrote of being “afraid” of what would happen to him if he stayed in the hold any longer, of how his was being ignored by the guards and nurses, of his bruises from thrashing around during unattended seizures.

The day before he died he wrote a letter to his mother that the family didn’t read until much later when they received his few personal belongings along with his body.

In his Dec. 11 letter he wrote: “I told them that I have been here (in SHU) for a month, and I’ve gotten sick twice, and let’s see if they move me or do something quickly. All they say is 'yes, yes.' and they don't do anything.”

What happened after two of his fellow inmates in the SHU saw his body being removed in a black body bag on the morning of Dec. 12 is a matter of interpretation and interests.

The Dec. 12-13 incident resulted in some damage – several hundred thousands of dollars -- to the SHU and in a badly burnt recreation building. Reeves County attributed the property loss at the RCDC III prison (the most 2005 expansion of the immigrant prison) to a “disturbance.” Calling it a “riot” would have precluded the insurance company from covering the losses, said County Judge Sam Contreras.

The inmates themselves referred to it as a “motín” or mutiny – a term that conveys the sense of an uprising against authority.

After the Dec. 12-13 incident in Pecos and after the second closely related incident of Jan. 31-Feb 5 (when inmates also rebelled and set fire to prison buildings in an incident also sparked by medical malpractice and mistreatment concerns involving the use of the SHU for “medical observation”), the criminal justice system, the insurance system, and the financial system are providing most of the follow-up.

Despite demands by the Texas ACLU and immigrant advocacy groups, the Office of Inspector General of the Justice Department has not initiated an investigation. But the criminal justice system did immediately kick in other respects. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Midland, Texas immediately began investigating the new crimes of the immigrant inmates who, in part out of solidarity with those sick fellow prisoners shut in the hole and in part out of fear that too would be released from prison in a body bag, took control of the two different sections of the prison to highlight their concerns.

Like the inmates, the U.S. attorney called the incidents “mutinies” and like the media and the security guards in the federal building lobby is also referring to the incidents as riots. Twenty six inmates from the first incident have been indicted. At first, they faced two counts – causing a riot or mutiny, or aiding and abetting in a mutiny or riot. The first count declared that the defendants “and other persons known or unknown to the grand jury, unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly, did combine, conspire, confederate and agree together and with each other and others to instigate, connive, attempt to cause, assist, and conspire to cause a riot at the Reeves County Detention Center, a federal penal, detention, or correctional facility.”

(Apparently, the U.S. attorneys are as confused as everyone else about what the Reeves County Detention Center really is, a prison or detention center. And while it does hold federal prisoners – all immigrants with orders for deportation – there is much confusion about whose prison is it. It is county owned – hence the Reeves County – but it is operated by GEO Group while the BOP contracts with the county to run it and the county subcontracts with GEO.)

The second count was the essentially the same but in this count the defendants purportedly “aided and abetted by each other and others did instigate, connive, attempt to cause, assist, or conspire to cause a riot.” In brief, the criminal indictment described the incident as a “mutiny or riot.” Those two counts were filed April 9 and May 12.

But they didn’t have the desired result. Not all the defendants were entering guilty pleas, thereby saving the U.S. attorney the trouble of presenting evidence and actually trying the case. Then, on July 14, the U.S. John Murphy came to the grand jury with a superceding indictment that includes a new charge: “the use of fire to commit a federal felony offense.”

Mary Stillinger, one of the court-appointed attorneys appointed to represent the immigrants, said the new indictment “really hammered” the immigrants, since it came with a mandatory ten-year sentence.

There was little hard evidence against the men, and even with the court-appointed defense attorneys, most of whom simply go through the motions of defending immigrants in the flood of criminal charges resulting from immigration violations that is overwhelming the judicial system along the border. As part of the prison reconstruction, GEO has insisted that the county install a comprehensive system of security cameras and video recording units so as to insure that the next time around, as was explained in a county commissioners meeting in Pecos by the architect directing the reconstruction: “Cameras and recording equipment are among the highest things on their list, because if say that if they had more security cameras, better recording equipment, when they had this disturbance, they would have been able to prosecute more, indict more people, if they had more proof of what everybody did.”

No one in a position of responsibility– not in county government, not in GEO, not in the correctional healthcare subcontractor Physicians Network Association (of Lubbock, Texas), not in the BOP , not in the U.S. Attorney’s Office – is apparently concerned of prosecuting, indicting, gathering evidence, or even investigating the conditions at RCDC that sparked the riots and the death of Jesus Manuel Galindo.

But the county has other concerns that involve high finance and keeping prison jobs in Reeves County.

Since 1985 the county has issued approximately $115 million in revenue bonds to finance the construction and maintenance of the RCDC immigrant prison complex. Going into the riots/mutinies/disturbances, the county had $92 million in outstanding prison debt. This debt is in the form of tax exempt municipal bonds called project revenue bonds that are issued by a specially established county public facility corporation to create a project that brings revenue to the county.

The county got off relatively easily from the first incident. The insurance companies paid by the county over the past couple of decades for the prison covered most of the rebuilding expenses. But then came the proverbial ‘fire next time.’

Less than two months after the first inmate protest, inmates renewed the Dec. 12-13 protest with a much larger incident – one that completely destroyed the oldest prison unit and resulted in reconstruction and upgrading expenses project to approach $40 million. This time the insurance companies are expected to come through with only $25 million, leaving the county $15 million short.

Here comes Barry Friedman of Carlyle Capital Markets, the bond underwriting firm that has been with Reeves County since the beginning of its prison enterprise. Friedman assures the county that he can sell another $15 million plus in bonds to cover the gap. “I have been on the side of Reeves County since 1986,” Friedman recently told the county commissioners, assuring them that he only wants what is good for the county.

Not only is Friedman underwriting the new bond issue but after the prison disturbances he was hired as a special financial consultant to the county for about $15,000 a month. In addition to his commission for bond underwriting, he is also advising the county on what is in their best financial interest, as he told the commissioners. “As financial adviser, my responsibility is to the county,” he explained, angrily and righteously dismissing a complaint raised by County Attorney Alva Alvarez. “Do you represent the bondholders,” he was asked. “No, I represent the county,” he replied.

Reeves County is angry, worried, and deep in debt – and going deeper. No wonder then the reaction of the elderly security guard at the federal building. After I asked who he was, he threatened to call the U.S. Marshals. Knowing about justice in Reeves County, I turned around and walked out. Just as well, the immigrants had all decided to plead guilty. The scheduled trial was cancelled.

Tempers are also flaring in the county building across the street with conflict-of-interest charges swirling around having Carlyle’s Friedman work two sides of the prison business and with fears that if the county doesn’t get the prison back together the BOP might, as one county official noted, “bring in the buses and bring the inmates out.”

That would leave Reeves County with massive prison bond debt, Pecos with any empty prison complex on the edge of town, and more than four hundred area residents without a job. It would be a near fatal blow to the county, where a quarter of the population lives in poverty and unemployment stands at 14.1%. Poor Reeves County.

And poor immigrants who still suffer the same medical conditions that sparked the incidents.

See related articles:

Tom Barry
February 24, 2009
“Medical Claims and Malpractice in Correctional Healthcare”
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5895

Forrest Wilder
October 2, 2009
“The Pecos Insurrection”
http://www.texasobserver.org/features/the-pecos-insurrection

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

“Criminalizing” Poverty, How Public Policies Result in the Over-Incarceration of Low-Income Communities in America"

“Criminalizing” Poverty, How Public Policies Result in the Over-Incarceration of Low-Income Communities in America"
By Tracy Velázquez, Executive Director, Justice Policy Institute
October 13, 2009:

One of the early lessons in school civics is that “justice is blind”—that is, all citizens get equal treatment in the eyes of the law. Unfortunately, this ideal has become an American myth. First, people living in poverty get swept into the criminal justice system more often than their better-off counterparts. Once there, they are at a real disadvantage in a court system where money can buy freedom through quality representation. And after they are incarcerated, they are relegated to poverty once again because of the punitive barriers society has set up to prevent their success.

This system is not only unfair, it’s counterproductive to our country’s overall well-being. Unless we as a nation take ownership of this flaw in our current system, we will continue to be the world’s biggest jailor, with the social and economic costs that accompany that shameful moniker.

Policing the poor

Recently, I was visiting my friend Rachel, who lives and teaches in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. Having started as a Teach for America participant who chose to stay on after her two-year stint, she is well connected with her predominantly Dominican neighborhood’s assets and challenges. In commenting on her experience taking classes at Columbia’s Teachers College on the Upper West Side, Rachel said, “You know, I finally get why people in this neighborhood end up in trouble more. Compared to down by Columbia, the cops are everywhere here in the Heights, all the time. And judging by the warnings I get from campus, it doesn’t look like there’s any more crime up where I live.”

Rachel had, on her own, come to see what those who advocate for low-income communities have known for a long time: America over-polices the poor. It makes sense that places with more crime would have a stronger police presence than communities with less. However, more policing in low-income areas results in more arrests and incarceration for offenses that would likely be handled informally or not at all in another neighborhood. For example, someone smoking a marijuana joint on a bench or their front porch in a more affluent neighborhood is unlikely to be observed by a police officer who would arrest them. More police can also mean more encounters with police – what some might consider “hassling” – which also can result in arrests that just wouldn’t occur otherwise.

Many have asserted that a significant component of over-policing is race. For instance, between January 2006 and September 2007, “random” frisks by New York City police included 453,042 blacks and only 94,530 whites. However, with race and income so closely intertwined, it is often difficult to separate the two. And the result is still that low-income individuals are more often the target of police attention, which means more are arrested and move deeper into the criminal justice system.

“When the lawyer you choose matters most”

The above phrase shocked me as I listened to public radio on my way to work recently. It was the tagline for a law firm that was underwriting the program, and it was impossible for me not to think about it in terms of what it means for people in poverty that have been arrested.

In this day and age of complex proceedings, a multitude of laws, and serious and lasting consequences of a criminal record, the idea of not having a lawyer represent you in court seems almost unfathomable. In fact, in 1963’s Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court stated that “reason and reflection require us to recognize that, in our adversary system of justice, any person hauled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him.” However, individuals of lower income generally don’t choose their lawyer; one is assigned by the court. Or one should be, anyway; unfortunately, over one in four people in jail charged with misdemeanor offenses reported not having been represented by counsel.

The vast majority of public defenders are qualified, dedicated attorneys, but many work in conditions they describe as “assembly line justice.” Small budgets – which are now shrinking during this economic downturn – mean many public defenders have barely met their client before they have to go into court and defend them. Of people in prison with court-appointed counsel, only 37 percent in state facilities and 54 percent in federal facilities spoke with their attorneys within the first week after arrest. In contrast, of people with hired counsel, three in five in state facilities and three-fourths in federal facilities had been in contact with their attorneys about their charges within a week of arrest. In an effort to manage their caseloads, public defenders are under pressure to resolve cases quickly, with little time to investigate leads that might have resulted in the case being dismissed or the charges lessened.

What is the result? State defendants with a public defender are sentenced to prison or jail more often than those with private attorneys. People who can afford a private attorney are less likely to go to state prison.

In addition, about half of individuals using a public defender or assigned counsel were released from jail prior to trial, compared to over three in four with a private attorney. Part of this may be a result of differences in representation; it is likely also because people who use public defenders are generally the same people who can’t afford to post bond. With courts demanding higher bail amounts, fewer and fewer people are able to post bond and be released from jail while awaiting trial. Currently, more than 60 percent of people in jails across the country have not been convicted of any offense. The inability to post bond not only makes it harder for people accused of crimes to meet with their lawyer and talk to people who might be able to aid in their defense, it also makes it harder to hold down their job and maintain custody of their children—even though they are still considered innocent.

Substituting corrections for treatment

Adult and juvenile correctional facilities are now among the country’s largest providers of mental health care: this is true both in large, urban areas (the Los Angeles County Jail is now the largest mental health facility in the country) and smaller, more rural ones (the largest provider of mental health care in Alabama is the prison). A key driver of this is lack of access to community mental health services. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, over a third of the poor and 30 percent of the near-poor (incomes ranging from the poverty line to twice the poverty line) lack health coverage. And according to the National Survey of Drug Use and Mental Health, 42 percent of those who needed mental health treatment but didn’t get it said the primary reason was that they couldn’t afford it. Underinsurance is also a problem: 34 percent of insured people who had unmet mental health needs indicated that cost was a barrier to seeking treatment.

The manifestations of untreated mental illness often lead to behaviors that draw the attention of police—public order offenses that often accompany homelessness, crises that cause law enforcement to intervene, and “self-medicating” with alcohol and illegal drugs. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, nearly a quarter of the people in state prisons experienced mental health issues in the year preceding incarceration, and nearly two-thirds of people in jails live with mental illness. Some parents of children with serious emotional disturbances who are uninsured or underinsured turn their own children over to the police, in an effort to get at least minimum treatment through the juvenile justice system.

People with no access to health care are also likely to return to prison after being released. In a visit I made to a state prison, an individual with a serious mental illness told me that earlier that year he had been released from prison with 10 days worth of medicine and $100 in cash. He was left on his own to figure out how to manage his illness. He relied on a local clinic for pharmaceutical “samples” for a time, but ended up homeless and self-medicating with alcohol and other drugs. This eventually led to his being re-incarcerated.

A large percentage of incarcerated people also have a substance abuse disorder. Over half of people in state prisons meet the criteria for drug dependence or abuse. Once again, low-income people with a substance abuse addiction are disproportionately incarcerated as they cannot access treatment. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health indicated that 37.4 percent of people who sought substance abuse treatment indicated they didn’t receive it because they had no health coverage and couldn’t afford the cost of treatment. This lack of access, combined with the criminalization of addiction, mean thousands of people end up in prison or jail for drug possession or distribution or other offenses that would support an addiction.

Continuing barriers to opportunity

Currently, one in 31 people in the United States is under correctional supervision—whether in prison or jail, or on parole or probation. And millions more have a felony record that will never be erased, creating hardships for those trying to regain their lives and be a productive member of their community.

Adding to these difficulties is the fact that the correctional population is already largely made up of lower-income people. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2002, eighty-three percent of people in jail reported income of less than $2,000 in the month prior to arrest, one-third lower than the average monthly wage of the general public.

Many people who have been incarcerated face obstacles when attempting to find a job and housing. In a report for the Brookings Institution, Richard Freedman found that jail time reduced the probability of employment by between 15 and 30 percentage points. In addition, people leaving prison, regardless of their pre-incarceration status, are especially vulnerable to homelessness, often banned from federal housing, face challenges reconnecting with family and friends, and lack the funds to afford available housing. Often, the obligations of parole fees and years of child support that went unpaid during their period of incarceration make it almost impossible to become economically successful.

Conclusion

The impact of the criminal justice system on low-income communities can’t be ignored. At every stage of the process – from who is arrested to who is convicted and who eventually loses out on their rights – the poor are disproportionately affected. Policymakers continue to incarcerate millions of people, most of whom would not be in the system if there were more adequate resources in their communities. How can this situation be addressed, so that poverty and prison aren’t inevitably intertwined?

The U.S. should provide meaningful access – regardless of ability to pay -- to community-based treatment that would ensure that people get the mental health and substance abuse treatment they need before they collide with the justice system; this would improve both public safety and individual life outcomes. A healthcare “safety net” that will cover formerly incarcerated individuals also will save states millions in reduced rates of recidivism and re-incarceration.

Instead of overfunding incarceration and policing, we should make investments in resources for low-income communities that are already at a disadvantage due to their socioeconomic status. This means better schools, more job development, and more programs that can help people – and particularly youth – succeed. These types of investments will create healthier, safer communities and reduce the use of prisons as an answer to poverty and other social problems.

Tracy Velázquez is Executive Director of the Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit working to promote effective solutions to social problems and dedicated to ending society’s reliance on incarceration

http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/ExclusiveCommentary.aspx?id=5f13e0fe-a47d-4ce4-a945-187fc331e81d

Posted by lois at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

SF: Gavin Newsom's policy of contacting ICE for juveniles arrested of crimes voted down by council

San Francisco to Vote on Immigration Reporting Policy

By JESSE McKINLEY
Published: NY Times October 20, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco board of supervisors voted Tuesday to overturn a city policy that has been at the center of a national debate over offering illegal immigrants sanctuary.

The policy, ordered by Mayor Gavin Newsom last summer, requires the police to contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement whenever they arrest a juvenile on felony charges who they suspect is in the United States illegally. Since the policy took effect last summer, more than 100 undocumented minors have been turned over to federal immigration authorities.

Mr. Newsom has said that the ordinance is necessary to prevent young criminals from using the city’s so-called sanctuary policy, which prevents the use of city money for immigration enforcement.

“Sanctuary city was never designed to protect people who commit crimes,” said Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom.

But under the changes approved Tuesday, referrals would be required only after juveniles were convicted of crimes, instead of after their arrest. Immigration advocates say that referrals upon arrest have resulted in the deportation of innocent youths, the breakup of families, and a fear among immigrants of contacting the police when they are the victims of crime.

“We recognize that there’s a need to do some reporting” of illegal juveniles, said David Campos, the supervisor who sponsored the new ordinance. “But we’re trying to strike a balance.”

Tuesday’s meeting was filled to capacity, with hundreds of supporters of Mr. Campos’s bill filling the board’s chambers and two overflow rooms. Simultaneous translation of supervisors’ comments were offered in Mandarin and Spanish, and when the bill was passed, by 8 to 2 with one absentee, cheers erupted in the chambers, with chants of “Yes We Can” in English and Spanish echoing through the ornate City Hall.

Supporters continued chanting as they filed out past a bust of Harvey Milk, the trailblazing San Francisco supervisor and gay rights advocate whose name was invoked by supporters of Mr. Campos’s bill.

The vote was a sharp rebuke to Mr. Newsom, a Democrat who is running for governor and who has promised to veto it, though supporters seem to have enough votes to overturn that.

San Francisco adopted its sanctuary policy in 1989, and has long refused to refer minors in police custody to the federal authorities, although adults accused of felonies have always been referred. Some of these minors were later flown to their home countries at taxpayer expense rather than being turned over to immigration authorities. Mr. Newsom learned of those flights last May and ordered them stopped.

Mr. Newsom’s policy was also a response to a series of embarrassing revelations in The San Francisco Chronicle, including that the city, rather than turning a group of young Honduran crack dealers over to ICE, sent them to a group home in Southern California, from which they walked away.

The city was also shocked by a June 2008 triple murder, which prosecutors say was committed by Edwin Ramos, a suspected gang member and an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who had been picked up as a juvenile by the San Francisco police but not referred to immigration authorities.

The fate of the sanctuary policy may well be decided in court.

An August memorandum from the office of the city attorney, Dennis Herrera, to Mr. Newsom said that while federal and state law concerning sanctuary cities was “not settled,” the ordinance that passed Tuesday could also “adversely affect” the city’s position in several pending cases concerning its sanctuary policy, including a criminal investigation by the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco.

Mr. Ballard, Mr. Newsom’s spokesman, echoed this, saying the supervisors’ vote, which will be formalized at a final reading of the bill next week, could invite a federal legal challenge to the entire sanctuary city policy.

“The supervisors did a foolish thing today by passing this bill that moves one step closer to imperiling the entire sanctuary city ordinance,” Mr. Ballard said.

But Mr. Campos, the supervisor and a naturalized citizen who emigrated — illegally — from his native Guatemala when he was 14, said the vote to change Mr. Newsom’s policy was necessary to maintain the city’s reputation as a safe haven for illegal residents.

“We went from being one of the most enlightened cities,” Mr. Campos said, “to be a place many steps backward to where the rest of the country is.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/us/21sanctuary.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1256086898-tNQerOlRfPHPXNfA/o0uZg

Posted by lois at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2009

Boston Globe: The Long Shadow of Willie Horton. More than two decades ago, a governor showed a prisoner leniency, with horrifying results. Our justice system hasn’t been the same since.

"That safety valve (of commutations), however, has all but vanished in Massachusetts, even while other states have been going in the opposite direction to trim costs. States like California, Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon, Michigan, and Texas are either considering proposals to free more inmates or have already taken steps to increase early releases."

On commutations: "The practice is common in many states, and Donovan, eligible to be considered for the first time, was planning to file his petition this month. In Massachusetts, however, there hasn’t been a single commutation approved by a governor since 1997 -- and there were only seven in the previous 10 years (four for murderers). Over the past 22 years, more than 650 petitions have been denied. In that same period, Delaware has approved hundreds, 12 for convicted murderers. Michigan’s Democratic governor has approved 23 in the past five years; in the prior 12 years, her Republican predecessor approved 34. And from 2003 to 2007, Maryland’s Republican governor granted 15 commutations, including five for life sentences for murder."

"Currently, 900 inmates in the state (17 percent of the total) are serving life without parole. That percentage is exceeded in only three states: Alabama, California, and New York."

Boston Globe Sunday Magazine

The Long Shadow of Willie Horton
More than two decades ago, a governor showed a prisoner leniency, with horrifying results. Our justice system hasn’t been the same since.

By Michael Blanding
October 18, 2009

Joe Donovan is not an innocent man. That much is clear from the events of September 18, 1992, the night he threw the punch that forever changed his life. It was three weeks past his 17th birthday, and Donovan was prowling the streets of East Cambridge with two guys he knew from the neighborhood: 18-year-old Alfredo Velez and a scrawny 15-year-old named Shon McHugh. They were looking to make their way to the Mass. Ave. bridge to cross into Boston and score some beer. Walking along Memorial Drive, Donovan bumped shoulders with a Norwegian MIT student named Yngve Raustein, who was with a fellow student. An argument ensued, and thinking Raustein was making fun of him, Donovan punched him in the face, so hard it dropped Raustein to the ground and broke Donovan’s hand.

As Donovan doubled over in pain, Velez confronted Raustein’s friend, demanding his wallet. But McHugh had other plans. As Raustein tried to get up, McHugh unfolded a 7-inch hunting knife and stabbed Raustein, repeatedly and fatally, in the chest. Mere seconds after Donovan’s punch, all three teens fled over the bridge into Boston. It was only then, says Donovan, that he saw the knife and realized that McHugh had stabbed the man. By then it was too late. The three were arrested and tried under the “joint venture theory,” a law holding all accomplices responsible for a murder committed during the course of a felony such as armed robbery. McHugh was tried as a juvenile and served almost 11 years in prison. Velez cut a deal to testify and was out in eight. Alone among the three, Donovan was convicted of first-degree murder and received the mandatory sentence of life without parole.

Seventeen years later, he is still in prison, long after the actual murderer has gone free. At a meeting in the visitors’ lounge of Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Donovan is tall and thickset, with an oval face and pale green eyes. He twists his big hands as he tries to explain why he threw that punch. “I don’t even know what the hell I was thinking,” he says, speaking so quietly it’s hard to hear him. “I was just a dumb kid.” On the other hand, he can’t wrap his head around the discrepancy between his sentence and McHugh’s. “He murdered a kid and they think he can be rehabilitated, and I am a year or two older and I didn’t kill anyone, but I can’t be? That makes no sense.”

The judge, at least one juror in the case, and even Raustein’s family now support Donovan’s release. But his chances of seeing daylight are near zero, because his only hope is commutation, a power held by the governor (and influenced by the state’s parole board) to reduce prison sentences. The practice is common in many states, and Donovan, eligible to be considered for the first time, was planning to file his petition this month. In Massachusetts, however, there hasn’t been a single commutation approved by a governor since 1997 -- and there were only seven in the previous 10 years (four for murderers). Over the past 22 years, more than 650 petitions have been denied. In that same period, Delaware has approved hundreds, 12 for convicted murderers. Michigan’s Democratic governor has approved 23 in the past five years; in the prior 12 years, her Republican predecessor approved 34. And from 2003 to 2007, Maryland’s Republican governor granted 15 commutations, including five for life sentences for murder.

It’s no secret why Massachusetts has lagged behind: the memory of Willie Horton, the convicted murderer who terrorized a couple, raping the woman, in 1987 after escaping while on a weekend furlough allowed by then governor Michael Dukakis. The act pretty much torpedoed Dukakis’s presidential campaign a year later when ads showing Horton’s picture and images of inmates going through a revolving door hit the airwaves. Even years later, it lays bare the thorny political calculus of letting a felon out of jail. There is almost nothing for a governor to gain and everything for him to lose should the criminal commit another crime. “Ever since what Willie Horton did to Mike Dukakis, governors are going to think not twice but 10 times before they ever commute anyone,” says retired judge Robert Barton, who presided over the Donovan case. Tufts University political science professor Jeffrey Berry agrees. “If I was a governor’s adviser,” he says, “I would recommend he be very cautious.”

So far, Governor Deval Patrick has been exactly that, turning down the one recommendation for commutation he has received, from a 40-year lifer who has received the support of some of Boston’s most prominent civic leaders. He’s watched his parole board deny hearings for dozens more, including a murderer who, it turns out, was abused as a child by notorious Catholic priest the Rev. John Geoghan. These cases, like Joe Donovan’s, are far from simple. But the overwhelming number of rejections continues, even as states across the country increasingly consider early releases and other measures to reduce prison populations. On this issue, there are two competing visions of justice: Is it a system that allows for redemption and reevaluation over time, or is it strictly a system for retribution, where the judge and jury forever have the last word? The numbers in Massachusetts have squarely pointed in only one direction.

Commutation, a power that on the federal level is vested in the president in the Constitution, has been used regularly by states for some 200 years to reward good behavior and right mistakes made in sentencing. (Unlike pardons, which forgive the underlying offense upon release, commutations shorten the sentence but allow the conviction to stand.) Massachusetts approved anywhere between one and 16 commutations every year between 1945 and 1983. An uptick in violence in the 1980s, however, led to a “get tough on crime” movement that resulted in mandatory minimum prison sentences and a national decline in both pardons and commutations.

Then came Willie Horton. Sentenced to life for fatally stabbing a gas station attendant in Lawrence, he was released on a weekend furlough in 1986 and never returned. A year later, he stabbed and bound a man and raped the man’s fiancee in Maryland, where he is now imprisoned. In the 1988 presidential campaign, George H.W. Bush’s team used the incident to relentlessly hammer Dukakis as soft on crime. A few years later, a similar case of a criminal whose sentence was commuted in Pennsylvania and who then committed rape and murder sunk the gubernatorial aspirations of then lieutenant governor Mark Singel.

After that, “more than a few states . . . basically shut down the pardon process, which also includes commutation,” says Margaret Love, a US pardon attorney under the first President Bush and under President Clinton. The risks simply outweighed the benefits. “We all talk about second chances, but we don’t want to give anyone a second chance in this country because it’s too damn risky.” Although there hasn’t been a state-by-state study of commutations, Love has researched the use of pardons, which have been severely curtailed in all but 13 states.

In others, a more flexible sentencing policy or parole system has made lack of commutation less of an issue. Massachusetts, however, has some of the nation’s strictest sentencing laws. Mandatory minimums for drug trafficking range from three to 15 years. Second-degree (unpremeditated) murder means a mandatory minimum of 15 years before parole eligibility; first-degree (premeditated) murder is automatically punished with life without parole. Currently, 900 inmates in the state (17 percent of the total) are serving life without parole. That percentage is exceeded in only three states: Alabama, California, and New York.

As a result, the discretion on what charges to bring and what deals to cut has shifted more power to the hands of prosecutors and away from the bench. “Judges have seen a lot of their ability to make distinctions in circumstances stripped away,” says Gavi Wolfe, staff attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts, who recently wrote a law-journal paper arguing for the revival of clemency. While commutation should never be routine, says Wolfe, it exists as an important “safety valve” to acknowledge changing circumstances. “In some ways, it is a more powerful concept than pardons,” he says. It’s not wiping away the crime, but “it allows for the possibility of change and growth on the part of either the individual or the criminal justice system.”
That safety valve, however, has all but vanished in Massachusetts, even while other states have been going in the opposite direction to trim costs. States like California, Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon, Michigan, and Texas are either considering proposals to free more inmates or have already taken steps to increase early releases.

When Dukakis first took office, his staff put together a three-tier process for commutations, whereby applicants go first before the Massachusetts Parole Board, a state agency, which issues a recommendation to the governor to be approved or denied. The governor then reviews the cases and decides. (It’s possible, but highly unlikely, for a governor to overrule a negative recommendation. Dukakis says he never did.) Finally, the Governor’s Council, an elected panel that also reviews the governor’s judicial nominees, must sign off. Despite the bureaucracy, Dukakis approved 48 commutations (and more than 500 pardons) during his first term, from 1975 to 1979. He admits to being more cautious during his second stint, 1983 to 1991, but still approved 10 commutations (and nearly 300 pardons).

The number fell, however, with Republican governor William Weld, who approved seven commutations and some 50 pardons during the next six and a half years. The last commutation in the state was under Weld in 1997, when Joseph Salvati was found to be framed for murder by rogue agents of the Boston FBI office; he was let out after nearly 30 years. Since then, Republican governors have proved even more sparing. Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift approved several pardons but no commutations; Mitt Romney boasted of not approving any in either category.

Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s former press secretary and current adviser, says Romney didn’t have a blanket policy against clemency. “It was [his] view that it would take an extraordinary set of circumstances for him to set aside a criminal sentence and substitute his judgment for the judgment of a judge or jury,” he says, calling the cases of Horton and freed inmates who go on to commit crimes “cautionary tales that suggest a more conservative approach, which is what we adopted.” He specifically points to the case of Joseph Yandle, whose life sentence for his role in a 1972 murder was commuted by Weld in 1995 but who was later found to have lied about his Vietnam War record and sent back to prison. “Clearly a mistake was made there, and I think it did have a chilling effect on subsequent governors.”

That approach has its share of advocates. Massachusetts-based victims rights group Community VOICES, for example, doesn’t support commutations, except possibly in cases where a victim’s family favors it. “To commute a sentence is just another slap in the face for them,” says the group’s president, Laurie Myers. The fact that a commutation doesn’t forgive the offense doesn’t matter to her. “You can say [prisoners] are not being forgiven, but if they are allowed to leave prison regardless of the sentence, that is a kind of forgiveness.”

When Deval Patrick took office in 2007, prisoner advocates hoped his experiences as a defense attorney and civil rights attorney in Bill Clinton’s Justice Department would lead him to visit the issue with fresh eyes. Indeed, the new guidelines he issued for commutation when he took office spelled out several instances where it would be warranted. Among them: a prisoner who had made “exceptional strides in self-development”; one who had previously suffered abuse at the hands of the victim; and one who was given a sentence deemed unfair in relation to “equally culpable and similarly situated defendants.” More than two years later, however, he’s yet to find anyone worthy of those strictures, including one very high-profile case that crossed his desk.

rnold King was flying high on booze and weed when he shot a young political worker named John Labanara at point-blank range during a botched robbery in downtown Boston in 1971. Despite the brutality of his crime, many say King, sentenced to life without parole, has clearly changed over his nearly 38 years in prison. He completed at least 25 furloughs (the state no longer grants those) and has earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, written numerous newspaper articles, and counseled youths.

Appearing before the pardon advisory board, which is also the parole board, for the fourth time in October 2007 (it was the sixth time he was applying overall), he made a passionate case for his rehabilitation. He was supported by two Boston city councilors and several state representatives, as well as Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree and Boston Foundation chairman the Rev. Ray Hammond.

Lynne Labanara, the sister-in-law of the victim, disagreed. “I don’t feel that Mr. King has changed but is working to change his image to the public,” she said. Nevertheless, the advisory board unanimously recommended that the governor commute his sentence. About a year later, Patrick denied the request, lauding King for helping young people but describing his disciplinary record as “far from exemplary.”

In the hearing, King was criticized for two minor violations of prison rules: sending a birthday card and a letter to the home address of a teacher in a prison program. King’s supporters were flummoxed. “If Arnie King can’t be released, it’s hard to imagine anyone would reasonably meet the guidelines,” Ogletree says. Though disappointed by the decision, Ogletree hopes Patrick will change over time. “At some point you have to take risks,” he says, “to show your independence to be unbought and unbossed.”

Kimberly Haberlin, Patrick’s deputy press secretary, says in a statement that the guidelines the governor has established “are comprehensive and rigorous and ensure that decisions are made based on the facts and merits -- not the politics -- surrounding each case.”

Despite the focus on the governor’s role in these cases, most petitions never even reach his office; they are denied without a hearing by the parole board, which has for years been dominated by law enforcement and corrections officials. During the 1970s and ’80s, the board was more diverse, containing social workers, psychologists, and ministers, says Patty Garin, a Boston attorney who deals frequently with the board. In her view, these were people who had the ability to accurately predict when offenders had gotten beyond their crimes. “This parole board looks at its job as finding reasons to keep people locked up,” she says. “They rely on behavior that happened 30 years ago, as opposed to what happened in the last 10 years.”

Patrick has done little to change the composition of the seven-seat board; his first appointment was Mark Conrad, a former police officer who served as his driver during his gubernatorial campaign. (Conrad, now chairman of the board, declined to be interviewed.) After outrage from social workers and several state legislators, Patrick’s next appointee was a psychologist, Leticia Munoz. However, Patrick has allowed two members, both former probation officers appointed by Romney, to continue to serve despite the expiration of their terms and has neglected to fill a vacancy on the board for nearly two years. (A second vacancy occurred late last month.) Another Romney appointee, a former deputy county sheriff and probation officer, fills out the current panel.

Meanwhile, in the last five years, the board has denied more than 200 petitions without a single hearing other than those for King. One of those turned down was that of James Costello, now 43, who is serving life without parole for a home-invasion robbery and murder of an elderly neighbor when he was 15. Costello was tried as an adult and found guilty of first-degree murder when his two older accomplices testified against him. Not known at the time, however, was that Costello had been molested for years by John Geoghan, the defrocked priest. Costello’s lawyer, Helen Holcomb, argues that had that information been known at the time, Costello would have been tried as a juvenile and likely be free now. But Costello has been denied even a hearing by the parole board, which noted his strides in self-development are “remarkable” but do not rise to the level of “exceptional.”

Costello is hardly the only inmate in Massachusetts serving life for crimes committed as a juvenile. The state has been more aggressive than its neighbors in sentencing juveniles to life without parole. According to Lia Monahon, a lawyer and a former fellow at the Children’s Law Center in Lynn, there are 57 now in prison in Massachusetts compared with nine in Connecticut, three in New Hampshire, two in Rhode Island, and zero in New York, New Jersey, Maine, and Vermont. In the early 1980s,

Massachusetts’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled that life imprisonment was not “cruel or unusual” punishment for juveniles, since commutation was always possible. “I doubt seriously that the court would assert that” at this point, says Monahon. Yet, she says, adolescent psychologists and neuroscientists alike have attested to the capacity that young people have for change -- the exact criterion for commutation. They are simply not done developing when these juvenile offenses occur, says Monahon. “You can’t decide when someone is 14 or 15 or 16 or, in Donovan’s case, 17, that they are irredeemable.”

In Donovan’s case, he has hardly been a model prisoner. His record lists 30 disciplinary tickets, including several for fights with inmates and one for possessing a crude weapon. In addition, he has done two stints in solitary for violent behavior. Donovan defends his record by saying it’s impossible to stay out of trouble at MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole -- the state’s maximum security prison, where he was assigned his first 10 years. His first stint in solitary, for two years, was for participating in a vicious, racially motivated brawl in which he says he was forced to defend himself from attack. His second -- for four years -- was for assaulting a guard, an act for which Donovan was later cleared by a Norfolk County jury, after arguing he acted in self-defense.

On the other hand, Donovan has earned a reputation for defusing tension. One family friend says that when she came to visit him, a corrections officer jokingly referred to him by his prison nickname, “Joe Jesus,” for his penchant for talking friends out of violence. In one incident, he tried to talk down a violent inmate drunk on contraband liquor, holding him against the bars while a guard escaped from the cell, according to reports from two guards.

Whatever his record in prison, it’s the disparity in sentencing for his crime that presents the most compelling case for commutation -- even to the victim’s family. In an e-mail to a Donovan supporter, Dan-Jarle Raustein, the victim’s brother, wrote, “I am and have believed from the beginning, that the ‘life without parole’ sentence was way too harsh. I am in favor of a release if [Joe] can show that he is ready to face the community.” After Donovan wrote the family, Yngve Raustein’s mother, Inghild, wrote to that same supporter, saying, “I fully agree . . . he now should be given a new chance.”

Retired judge Robert Barton also says the punishment was excessive. “I haven’t stayed up nights worrying about Joseph Donovan and that trial,” says Barton, a 22-year veteran of murder trials in Superior Court. But, he says, “seeing what has happened over the past 15 years, it seems unfair and inequitable that someone should have to spend his life in jail when you look at what happened to his colleagues.”

Carolyn Butterworth, a Newton resident who served as a juror in the trial, believes the wrong sentence was delivered. For her, the sticking point was the felony murder rule -- if the jury found Donovan guilty of armed robbery, they had to convict him of first-degree murder as well. There was some doubt at the trial, however, about how much Donovan actually participated in the robbery, and that doubt has only grown over time.

At the trial, codefendant Alfredo Velez testified that Shon McHugh (who’s currently on trial in Virginia on drug trafficking charges) showed Donovan the knife before the three teens met the MIT students and that afterward Donovan was waving around $30 in cash, the amount held in Raustein’s wallet. The two assertions were enough to establish that Donovan participated in and benefited from a premeditated armed robbery. Velez’s original statement to police, however, contained neither piece of information.

Now working as a residential remodeler in Texas, Velez clearly remembers specific details about the night, but he says he doesn’t recall whether Donovan saw the knife before the robbery or whether he had the cash afterward. “I don’t remember anyone waving money in the air,” he says. “I really don’t.” Despite the questions about the crime, Donovan’s lawyer, Ingrid Martin, is emphatic that the commutation request isn’t a retrial of the case but that the central issue is the severity of the sentence.

When Donovan talks about the crime itself, his soft voice gets even softer. “I was the guy who made the first bad decision,” he says. “Maybe Shon would have killed someone else, maybe he wouldn’t have.” Regardless, “I’ll always feel responsibility for the choice I made.” Realistically, he doesn’t think he has much chance of succeeding in his commutation appeal, but he says that if he ever does get out, he won’t return. “I’ll flip burgers, I’ll sweep streets.”

The decision to release Donovan, or any prisoner, especially one convicted of murder, is a risky one. But at the core of any deliberation is a question much bigger than any single case: Does a society that often celebrates second chances benefit overall from taking that risk?

Ultimately, the answers rest in the lap of the governor. “You are never going to get the politics out of it,” Dukakis says. “There are safeguards out there, but someone has to make the decision, whether you like it or not.

“Governors have this authority,” he says, “and they’ve got to decide . . . where and when it ought to be used.”

Michael Blanding is a frequent contributor to the Globe Magazine. Send comments to magazine@globe.com
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/10/18/the_long_shadow_of_willie_horton/

Posted by lois at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)

October 18, 2009

Months to Live- Fellow Inmates Ease the Pain of Dying in Jail

Months to Live- Fellow Inmates Ease the Pain of Dying in Jail
By JOHN LELAND
Published NY TimesOctober 17, 2009

COXSACKIE, N.Y. — Allen Jacobs lived hard for his 50 years, and when his liver finally shut down he faced the kind of death he did not want. On a recent afternoon Mr. Jacobs lay in a hospital bed staring blankly at the ceiling, his eyes sunk in his skull, his skin lusterless. A volunteer hospice worker, Wensley Roberts, ran a wet sponge over Mr. Jacobs’s dry lips, encouraging him to drink.

Mr. Jones said he liked having other inmates like John Henson sit with him because “I can talk with them better than staff members.”

“Come on, Mr. Jacobs,” he said.

Mr. Roberts is one of a dozen inmates at the Coxsackie Correctional Facility who volunteer to sit with fellow prisoners in the last six months of their lives. More than 3,000 prisoners a year die of natural causes in correctional facilities.

Mr. Roberts recalled a day when Mr. Jacobs, then more coherent, had started crying. Mr. Roberts held his patient and tried to console him. Then their experience took a turn unique to their setting, the medical ward of a maximum security prison. Mr. Roberts said he told Mr. Jacobs to “man up.”

Mr. Jacobs, serving two to four years for passing forged checks, cursed at him, telling him, “‘I don’t want to die in jail. Do you want to die in jail?’ ”

“I said no,” said Mr. Roberts, who is serving eight years for robbery. “He said, ‘Then stop telling me to man up,’ and he started crying. And then he said that I’m his family.”

American prisons are home to a growing geriatric population, with one-third of all inmates expected to be over 50 by next year. As courts have handed down longer sentences and tightened parole, about 75 prisons have started hospice programs, half of them using inmate volunteers, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. Susan Atkins, a follower of Charles Manson, died last month in hospice at the Central California Women’s Facility at Chowchilla after being denied compassionate release.

Joan Smith, deputy superintendent of health services at the Coxsackie prison, said the hospice program here initially met with resistance from prison guards. “They were very resentful about people in prison for horrendous crimes getting better medical care than their families,” including round-the-clock companionship in their final days, Ms. Smith said.

The guards have come to accept the program, she said. But still there are challenges unique to the prison setting. Some dying patients, for example, divert their pain medication to their volunteer aides or other patients, who use it or sell it, said Kathleen Allan, the director of nursing. She added that patients can be made victims easily, “and this is a predatory system.”

But she said the inmate volunteers bond with the patients in a way that staff members cannot, taking on “the touchy-feely thing” that may be inappropriate between inmates and prison workers.

At Coxsackie, 130 miles north of New York City, administrators started the hospice program in 1996 in response to the AIDS epidemic using an outside hospice agency, then changed to inmate volunteers in 2001. The change saved money and was well-received by the patients.

Perhaps more significant, said William Lape, the superintendent, was the effect the program had on the volunteers. “I think it’s turned their life around,” Mr. Lape said.

John Henson, 30, was one of the first volunteers. When he was 18, Mr. Henson broke into the home of a former employer and, in the course of a robbery, beat the man to death with a baseball bat. When he entered prison, with a sentence of 25 years to life, he said, “I thought my life was over.”

At Coxsackie he met the Rev. J. Edward Lewis, who persuaded him to volunteer in 2001. “You go in thinking that you’re going to help somebody,” Mr. Lewis said, “and every time they end up helping you.”

Before hospice, Mr. Henson said he had given little thought to the consequences of his crime. Then he found himself locked in a hospital room with another inmate, holding the man’s hand as his breathing slowed toward a stop.

Like many men in prison, the dying man had alienated his family members, who rejected his efforts to renew contact. In the end, he had only Mr. Henson for companionship. When the prison nurse declared the man dead, Mr. Henson broke down in tears.

“They just came out,” he said. “I don’t even know why I was crying. Partly because of him, partly because of things that died within me at the same time.”

Mr. Henson, dressed in prison greens and with his blond hair buzzed short, spoke directly and without hesitation.

“I was just thinking about why I’m in here and the person’s life that I took,” he said. “And sitting with this person for the first time and actually seeing death firsthand, being right there, my hand in his hand, watching him take his last breath, just caused me to say, ‘Wow, who the hell are you? Who were you to do this to somebody else?’ ”

Ms. Allan, the nursing director at Coxsackie, said that with a number of inmate volunteers, “You can identify in each of these guys something inside them driving them to do this. It’s a desire to redeem themselves, so even when it gets hard they’re able to plow through it. “

She added, “I think Mr. Henson made me a better mother.”

Benny Lee, 38, has spent half his life in prison for manslaughter, and for most of that time, he said, “the only thing I regretted was getting caught.” Four months ago he began as a hospice volunteer, feeling he needed a change. “I’m trying to offer some payback,” he said.

On a recent afternoon, Mr. Lee was scheduled to sit with Eddie Jones, 89, who was dying from multiple causes. Mr. Jones, who was convicted of murder at age 70, said, “I can talk with them better than staff members, because staff members have their minds made up about how things should be.”

Mr. Lee said he does not know how Mr. Jones’s death will affect him. “I’m hoping it will have an effect, period,” he said. “Growing up and in prison, I put up walls. But I have to be more emotionally receptive to these guys. This is going against everything I’ve tried to do. But I realize it’s a change I have to make.”

Mr. Lee said hospice was forcing him to learn to trust people.

“It’s helping me mature,” he said. “My views of life and death are changing. I was unsympathetic when it comes to death. I’ve had friends die, and I was callous about it. Now I can’t do that. I’ve come to identify with these guys, not because we’re inmates, but because we’re human beings. What they’re going through, I’ll go through.”

A version of this article appeared in print on October 18, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
Links to photos and more coverage
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/health/18hospice.html?_r=1&hp

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

October 17, 2009

The California Fix: As 40% of money for rehab programs are cut, prisons do less to keep prisoners from returning

THE CALIFORNIA FIX
As rehab programs are cut, prisons do less to keep inmates from returning
By Michael Rothfeld
October 17, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento - Gina Tatum spends her days in a compound surrounded by electrified fence in the sun-baked heart of the Central Valley, hoping to change her life.

She will soon turn 50, and after two decades in and out of prison, she says she is tired of victimizing others, tired of stealing, tired of doing drugs.

"I can't afford any more years up here -- I've lost too many," said Tatum, who is serving a four-year stint for forgery at the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla. "I'm trying to learn things to change my thinking, change everything about me, so I can go home. It's so easy to get caught up here and never leave. I don't want to die in prison."

But because of cuts in the state budget, Tatum and thousands of other inmates and parolees in California are about to lose access to many of the programs the prison system has offered to help them turn their lives around.

Officials plan to chop $250 million a year from rehabilitation services, more than 40% of what the state now devotes to them and a quarter of the $1 billion it is slicing from its prison system.

The cuts occur four years after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger persuaded lawmakers to change the name of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

"We don't want to just put the name on it," he said in 2007, proposing to expand rehabilitation services for prisoners. "We have to heal them. We have to get them ready to go out so they can get a job, connect with society and never commit a crime again."

Federal pressure

The rehabilitation services are being slashed at the moment when they may be most needed: The state is under pressure from federal courts to reduce overcrowding driven by the high rate at which inmates return to prison after they are released.

Substance-abuse treatment, vocational training and educational programs, all scheduled to be cut back, were designed to give offenders skills to help them hold jobs and make other changes. They are taught to handle anger, build self-esteem and search for the roots of their decisions to commit crimes, the better to avoid repeating them.

At eight prisons, substance-abuse programs will close; scaled-down versions will remain at only 12 of the state's 33 lockups and one of its privately run prisons. Up to 900 instructors and staff, many of whom provide academic and vocational education, could be laid off. Arts programs will no longer be available.

State officials say they will attempt to use their reduced resources more efficiently, by cycling inmates through programs for shorter periods.

"We're very much targeting the resources on those who most need it," said Elizabeth Siggins, who is in charge of rehabilitation for the state prison system.

But advocates for rehabilitation and program providers contend that the cuts mean a return to an old way of thinking, in which prisons were intended to punish but not improve those society sends there. And they say the changes could have an effect on safety in California streets and within its prisons.

Kathy Jett, formerly Schwarzenegger's top aide for prisoner rehabilitation, said gangs may attempt to fill the void created by the absence of programs.

"I think you'll start to see a shift back to lots of violence," she said. "These are pretty draconian, pretty severe cuts. . . . The wardens really are not going to have many tools to manage those inmates."

The changes could also subvert the state's recent moves to lower incarceration costs and ease crowding.

The governor and state lawmakers last month agreed to reduce supervision of parolees so fewer would be returned to prison for failing drug tests and other low-level violations. At the same time, the state is eliminating 45% of the seats in its substance-abuse programs for parolees, which experts say increases the likelihood that they will commit new crimes and go back to prison anyway.

And the state may undermine another recently enacted measure that gives inmates more time off their sentences for participating in such programs: Prisoners cannot earn the credit without access to the programs.

At Valley State, two nonprofit groups hired by the state provide rehabilitation to 756 women four hours a day, five days a week. The state has canceled a contract with one of the groups, Phoenix House, as of this month and will end a contract with Walden House as early as December. After that, officials plan to award a new contract for only 175 women to receive services.

At Walden House's program one recent day, about 125 women arrived at a building that resembles a small civic center. They sat quietly for "accountability time," arms folded, feet tapping, while attendance was checked. When the session began, women stepped to the center to perform a previously assigned task intended to teach responsibility.

One read a poem. Another recounted the day's news from television reports. A third offered inspirational proverbs. The women sang a boisterous "Happy Birthday to you -- Woooo" for one inmate.

The goal, counselors said, is to get inmates, some of whom are required to attend against their will, to connect with others and learn trust. The program is for women who have used drugs or committed drug-related crimes, but the curriculum extends beyond controlling addiction to maintaining relationships, parenting and anger management.

'The tears start'

"We ask them, 'Why are you here? What has happened in your life that brought you to prison?' " said Charmaine Hoggatt, a program director for Walden House.

"We get them to try to be honest about some of the choices they made. That's when the tears start to come, the confusion starts to come, and the guilt and the shame."

Mary Rubio, in the 23rd year of a life term for a crime she would not discuss, completed the program in 2005 and is a paid mentor to others.

"This program saved my life," said Rubio, 54. In "the jungle" of the prison dorms and yards, she said, she never could have reflected on her life, on how self-destructive she had been. In prison, "it's, you know, eat or be eaten," Rubio said. "So when I came into this program, it gave me a safe place . . . to look at my behaviors and the reason for them."

Not all inmates engage. Informed about the cutbacks, some applauded, Hoggatt said. As several women sat talking about the coming changes, they said that though they had initially resisted participating in the program, encouragement from fellow inmates and counselors helped them believe that they could make the future better than the past.

Tatum, shedding tears and brushing back hair streaked with gray, called the program "one of the best things I've ever done in my life." It could also be her last chance to save herself, she said, because with two strikes on her record, even a fight after her release could land her back in prison for the rest of her life.

'Let us stay'

"I know you help some people even though they don't want to be helped," Tatum told Hoggatt. "Those of us who want to be here, let us stay."

Tatum won't be eligible, because the state plans to put inmates in that rehabilitation program for only the three months immediately before their release dates, rather than the current three-year maximum. She is not scheduled to get out until the end of 2011.

Siggins said the inmates chosen for such services will be those deemed to be most in need or at the highest risk to offend again.

Similarly, the state will give preference in education programs to those who can most benefit, Siggins said.

With fewer teachers, the most classroom time will go to prisoners with lower reading levels, while those at higher levels or who are preparing for graduate equivalency tests will have more individual "self-study."

But David Beck-Brown, an artist and former instructor who left his job at a San Diego prison earlier this year, said that with little to do, prisoners grow restless.

"We have to have programs," he said. "We have to treat inmates with dignity. All that is going under now."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-merehab17-2009oct17,0,3388203.story
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

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

October 15, 2009

WA: Prison for the old and infirm may close

State may close Ahtanum View, prison for the old and infirm
Ahtanum View Corrections Center, the state's prison for the elderly, disabled or critically ill, is being studied for potential closure. The governor's Office of Financial Management is expected to release a report proposing corrections cuts in the coming days.

By Jennifer Sullivan

MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES

YAKIMA — Dennis Castano can rattle on about pinochle, his favorite Louis L'Amour paperbacks and his days working as a logger, but he can't seem to remember why he's in prison.

The 76-year-old child molester, his memory dimmed by a head injury, is among the 130 elderly, disabled or critically ill inmates who call Ahtanum View Corrections Center home. For 22 years, the tidy brick building surrounded by fruit orchards outside Yakima has housed inmates considered the most fragile and vulnerable in the state Department of Corrections (DOC) system.

Now Ahtanum View's place within that system has become equally fragile.

The prison is on a list of facilities being studied for potential closure as the state weighs slashing Corrections' costs. A report expected to be released in the coming days by the governor's Office of Financial Management is expected to recommend closing one adult and one juvenile prison, a move that would result in massive job cuts and the transfer of hundreds of inmates to other facilities.

But employees and supporters of Ahtanum View say closing the facility would be shortsighted and hardly cost-effective.

Staff say that if the facility is shuttered, its most vulnerable inmates, men who suffer from Alzheimer's disease, dementia and other long-term illnesses, will face serious problems if they're transferred to other state prisons. The inmates at Ahtanum View are locked up for nearly every crime on the books — murder, rape, child molestation, drug possession, fleeing police. What makes the prison different is the age and physical condition of the inmates.

"Our mission statement is that we provide medical assistance, safety and security in a corrections environment," said Ahtanum View Superintendent Jane Parnell. "It's a humane way to treat people."

Parnell said 100 of the 130 men at Ahtanum View are in need of intense medical care, including many who suffer from memory-impacting illnesses, paraplegia, heart conditions or blindness.

The average daily cost to house an inmate at other state prisons is $97.30, said agency spokeswoman Belinda Stewart. The daily cost to house an inmate at Ahtanum View is $163.88, making it the most expensive prison in the state, Parnell said.

But because of the medical care required by most Ahtanum View inmates, Parnell said, it would be more expensive to house the sickest of the inmates elsewhere because they would have to live in infirmaries, which have an even higher number of medical staff; or in an intensive-management unit; or in high-security solitary confinement.

"The higher the security level, the more expensive it is," Parnell said. "You have to have more officers per the number of inmates."

Parnell believes even those Ahtanum View inmates who aren't as infirm would still represent a major challenge if placed in other state prisons, because they would be a prime target for threats or even violence from younger inmates.

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"It takes some skill to survive in a prison," Parnell said. "If you don't have all of your faculties you could be a victim."

The DOC hasn't said what would happen to Ahtanum View inmates if the prison was shuttered. It's possible some terminally or chronically ill inmates could be released early, but under state law no sex offenders nor anyone convicted of a violent felony would be considered for early release.

In recent months, consultants working on the Office of Financial Management report have visited Ahtanum View, as well as the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, the Monroe Correctional Complex, McNeil Island Corrections Center and Pine Lodge Corrections Center for Women to see where cuts can be made. If lawmakers and the governor decide to close a facility, its inmates would be sent to another prison, said DOC Secretary Eldon Vail.

State Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, is concerned about the economic impact closure of Ahtanum View would have on the Yakima Valley. He said dollar figures on how the area would be affected would likely be announced after the report is released.

"It would have a large impact on the vitality of this valley. The other impact it would have is in regards to the hospitals and those medical facilities this institution uses," said King, who toured Ahtanum View on Thursday to gain a better understanding of the facility. "We have to make some cuts somewhere, but we need to make the cuts where we protect the elderly and most vulnerable people in our society."

The closure of Ahtanum View would mean the loss of 86 corrections officers and prison staff jobs, said Ton Johnson, a lobbyist for the Washington Federation of State Employees, the union that represents community corrections officers.

Parnell said officers with seniority could transfer to other facilities. The closest prisons to Ahtanum View are Coyote Ridge Corrections Center in Connell, Franklin County, about 120 miles to the east; and the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, about 130 miles to the southeast.

With prison populations increasing because of Three Strikes, You're Out sentencing laws and other tough-on-crime legislation, Johnson believes the state would eventually have to build another prison specifically for aged and infirm inmates.

"We pride ourselves in being a humane system for offenders," said Johnson, who is also a community corrections, or probation, officer. "I think we should be concerned about their quality of life and their right to die with dignity."

Lt. Steve Hansson, who has been at Ahtanum View since it opened, equates the minimum-custody facility to a nursing home. Inmates, most of whom are over 60, generally dress in the requisite corrections uniform — khaki trousers and white T-shirts — but have freedom and individualized care not found at other prisons.

At Ahtanum View there's no voice over the loudspeaker directing inmates to their daily activities. Inmates live in dorms. They can head into the fenced yard anytime during the day, or spend all day in the TV room, building jigsaw puzzles, gossiping with cronies or playing cards. The most healthy inmates are tasked with pushing other inmates' wheelchairs and making sure other aging inmates get to the cafeteria for meals, Parnell said.

Nurses are on site 24 hours a day, checking in hourly — or even more frequently — with inmates.

"It's designed for offenders who are labor-intensive and hard to manage in major facilities," Hansson said. "They can get better one-on-one medical care [at Ahtanum View] than they can in other facilities."

Castano, who has convictions for child molestation and communicating with a minor for immoral purposes, divides his time among the TV room, playing cards, reading western novels and checking in with nurses on staff. Castano and his "cellie," Fred Arnett, 51, live in a medium-needs unit, where a nurse checks in hourly.

In the special-needs area, certified nursing assistant Debbie Wood spends her days helping inmates bathe and eat. A staffed pill window is open just steps from the men's narrow beds.

Fred Aylward, 67, of Bremerton, said he came to the special-needs unit for long-term care from the infirmary at the Airway Heights Corrections Center, where he was recovering after having open-heart surgery. Aylward has been convicted of rape, kidnapping and child molestation.

"It's a relaxed environment," he said of Ahtanum View. "I can understand the lack of funds [at the state], but this facility is pretty well needed."

Seattle Times news researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010058496_prisonclosures14m.html

Posted by lois at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)

William Wayne Justice, Noted Judge, Dies at 89

William Wayne Justice, Noted Judge, Dies at 89
By DOUGLAS MARTIN - NY Times
Published: October 14, 2009

Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court, who ruled on ground-breaking class-action suits that compelled Texas to integrate schools, reform prisons, educate illegal immigrants and revamp many other policies, died Tuesday in Austin. He was 89.

Luz Probus, his judicial assistant, confirmed the death.

Until shortly before his death, Judge Justice had presided over cases in Austin, having taken senior status there in 1998.

Judge Justice was a small-town lawyer active in Democratic Party politics when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him to the federal bench of the Eastern District of Texas in 1968. Sitting in Tyler, Tex., he made rulings over three decades in a series of major cases that caused him to be called the most powerful man in Texas by those who agreed with his largely liberal decisions and the most hated by those who differed.

In a 1998 column in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Molly Ivins made what she called the “painfully obvious point” that Judge Justice lived up to his name, saying he “brought the United States Constitution to Texas.”

The same year, Lino Graglia, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas at Austin said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News, “He has wreaked more havoc and misery and injury to the people of Texas than any man in the last 25 years.”

If Judge Justice seemed high-handed, it was partly because he believed that the founding fathers wanted judges to seize and command the higher ground. Perhaps not surprisingly, people reacted with hate mail, death threats, ostracism and bumper stickers demanding his impeachment.

“The plain fact of the matter is that the majority is sometimes wrong,” Judge Justice declared in an interview with The New York Times in 1982.

Frank R. Kemerer, who wrote “William Wayne Justice: A Judicial Biography” (1991), said in an interview on Wednesday, “He had a transcendent value, which was to advance human dignity and provide a measure of basic fairness.”

In many cases Judge Justice challenged official intransigence by applying the known law of the land, as he did in 1971 when he told school districts in East Texas to obey the law by integrating. Even 17 years after the United States Supreme Court ordered schools to be integrated, it was not unusual for students in all-black schools to have outhouses rather than indoor restrooms.

Other cases lacked precedent. In 1978, Judge Justice struck down a Texas law that let public school districts charge tuition for the children of illegal immigrants. When the ruling was upheld 5 to 4 by the Supreme Court in 1982, millions of children had the right to a free education.

“There was absolutely no case law on it,” Judge Justice said in an interview with The Star-Telegram in 1998. “I found no case, no statute that covered the point of law that I had to decide. So I guess I made my own little contribution.”

To many, the judge defined the concept of activist judge. In the early 1970s, he had his law clerks — many of them from top law schools like Harvard and Stanford — sift through hundreds of inmate letters complaining of cruel and unusual punishment in Texas prisons. He pulled out eight and consolidated them into a single action, then appointed a lawyer from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, William Bennett Turner, to handle the case. He asked the federal Justice Department to join with the inmates as a friend of the court.

The state defended a prison system with two doctors for every 17,000 prisoners, where 2,000 inmates slept on the floor and where inmate trustees, known as building tenders, essentially ran the cell blocks through coercion. It contended that Texas in fact had the best penal system in the nation.

In 1980, after a trial that lasted nearly a year, Judge Justice ordered major changes in the state’s prison system. In 1987, he held the state in contempt because the promised progress had been so meager.

In 2002, after Texas had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build and improve prisons, Judge Justice released the Texas penal system from federal oversight.

Lawyers interested in assembling class-action suits sought out Judge Justice’s court. In 1973, he made a far-reaching decision to require Texas to repair “truly shocking conditions” in its juvenile detention system. Other important rulings included enforcing laws on integrating public housing and enforcing laws on bilingual education.

William Wayne Justice was born in Athens, Tex., on Feb. 25, 1920. When he was 7, his father, Will, a flamboyant lawyer, him a partner, even changing the nameplate above his office door to “W. D. Justice and Son.”

Judge Justice had a series of illnesses as a child, including chronic whooping cough. He later suggested that the experience might have made him more compassionate toward the unfortunate. He was also moved by the hungry, jobless men he saw hanging from boxcars during the Depression, he said in an interview with The Washington Post in 1987.

He graduated from the University of Texas and its law school, served in the Army for four years in Asia during World War II and then went into private law practice with his father.

His father was a good friend of Ralph Yarborough, who became a United States senator from Texas. Mr. Yarborough persuaded President John F. Kennedy to appoint Judge Justice a United States attorney in 1962, then did the same with President Johnson to help him become a federal judge.

“I had a pretty good idea what I was getting into,” Judge Justice said in an interview with Texas Monthly in 2006.

It is unclear whether his expectations included his wife’s being refused service by beauticians and carpenters refusing to work on his house in Tyler once they realized who owned it.

Judge Justice is survived by his wife, the former Sue Rowan; his daughter, Ellen Justice; and a granddaughter.

After threats arising from the epic school desegregation battle at the beginning of his career, Judge Justice did not ask for armed guards. Instead, he took up tae kwon do, the Korean martial art that resembles karate.

“It was a great way to take out my frustrations,” he told The Times. “You build up a lot of hostilities sitting on the bench all day.”

Posted by lois at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)

KS: Gov. moves for outside review of prison system following allegations of widespread illegal sex among staff and prisoners at the state's prison for women

Kan. gov. seeks outside review of state prisons
Eds: UPDATES with additional allegations about allegations; details about governor's request; governor's statement; quotes from governor's spokeswoman, corrections secretary, legislative leader.

By JOHN HANNA
10-14-09
Associated Press Writer

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Gov. Mark Parkinson moved Wednesday to have an outside review of Kansas' prison system following allegations of widespread illegal sex among staff and inmates at the state's prison for women.

Parkinson sent a letter to the deputy director of the National Institute of Corrections, asking for help in finding an independent management expert with a national reputation to conduct a review. The institute, in Washington, is an agency within the U.S. Justice Department.

The governor said he wants to examine the Kansas Department of Corrections' policies and staff training on sexual misconduct and supervision of inmates of one gender by staff of the opposite gender. Parkinson said he expects a review to be completed before Kansas legislators reconvene in January.

"No one in our corrections system -- whether it's an employee or inmate -- should ever be exploited or abused," Parkinson said in a statement. "We must ensure that the policies we have in place are working and that when people do not follow these policies, they are appropriately dealt with."

Earlier this month, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that inmates and staff at the Topeka Correctional Facility said as many as one-third of its 250 employees have been involved with an illegal black market that includes exchanging drugs for sex with female inmates. The prison has about 550 inmates.

The newspaper reported that its own investigation showed the prison had a workplace culture "that leaves the door open to misconduct," basing its conclusion on interviews and hundreds of pages of documents.

It focused on the case of a former vocational instructor at the prison who pleaded guilty last year to trafficking in contraband and having sex with a female inmate, which is illegal for a prison employee under Kansas law. He was sentenced to two years probation. The inmate became pregnant and had an abortion.

Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz has said only 2 percent of the department's 3,000 employees have engaged in such misconduct. But he welcomed Parkinson's move Wednesday.

"I think it's important at this point that there be an independent set of eyes that takes a look at the policies and procedures that we have in place and takes a look at our operations," Werholtz said in an interview.

Parkinson spokeswoman Beth Martino said the Democratic governor's desire for an outside review doesn't signal any loss of confidence in Werholtz. She said the two are working together to make sure the department's efforts to prevent misconduct are adequate.

House Speaker Mike O'Neal, a Hutchinson Republican, said an outside review is welcome but said it needs to examine the department's oversight of its staff, not just its policies and training.

"I can't imagine that there aren't policies that are in place, and it's just a matter of whether those policies are being enforced and followed," O'Neal said. "Certainly, the recent stories raise a lot of concerns in the public's eye about what's going on."

http://www.hdnews.net/apksstory/k1057-BC-KS-Kansas-PrisonSex-2ndLd-Writethru-10-14-0654

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

October 14, 2009

NY Times Editorial: One Protection for Women Prisoners In Labor. Now states and other courts must act.

NY Times Editorial: One Protection for Prisoners
Published: October 13, 2009

The practice of keeping female prisoners in shackles while they give birth is barbaric. But it remains legal in more than 40 states, and advocates of prisoners’ rights say it is all too common. A federal appeals court has now found that the shackling of an Arkansas inmate may have violated the Constitution — but the margin was uncomfortably close.

Shawanna Nelson, a nonviolent offender, was 29 years old and six months pregnant when she arrived in Arkansas’s McPherson Unit prison in 2003. When she went into labor, she was taken to a civilian hospital. Although there was no reason to consider her a flight risk, her legs were shackled to a wheelchair, and then, while she went through labor, to the sides of a hospital bed.

Ms. Nelson testified that the shackles prevented her from moving her legs, stretching or changing positions during the most painful part of her labor. She offered evidence that the shackling had caused a permanent hip injury, torn stomach muscles, an umbilical hernia that required an operation and extreme mental anguish.

In a suit against prison officials, Ms. Nelson charged that her Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment had been violated. She won an early ruling from the trial court, but a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit rejected her suit. Now the full appeals court has reversed that decision, ruling, with a 6-to-5 vote, that a jury could find that Ms. Nelson’s shackling was unconstitutional. The court relied in part on a 2002 Supreme Court holding that Alabama’s practice of tying prisoners to a hitching post violated the Eighth Amendment.

The ruling should help persuade other courts and state legislatures that the shackling of pregnant prisoners is unconstitutional. Several states have already made the practice illegal under certain circumstances — including New York, which did so this year.

Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s prison project, called the circuit court’s ruling “thrilling,” given how conservative the federal courts have been on prison issues. It is clearly an important victory. Sadly, it is also a sign of how low the bar has been set for the humane treatment of prisoners.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 14, 2009, on page A30 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/opinion/14wed3.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2009

Two former state employees accused of raping three women prisoners as they worked on OK governor's grounds

Prisoners Say They Were Raped on Job Detail

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 12, 2009
NY Times
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Prosecutors are investigating accusations that two former state employees at the Oklahoma governor’s mansion raped three female prison inmates assigned to work on the mansion’s grounds.

Neither man has been charged, but the Department of Central Services fired both of them on Sept. 29 for violating departmental policies after a three-month Department of Corrections investigation.

The accusations raise questions about security at the chief executive’s residence and about the oversight of a program meant in part to reward good behavior by allowing inmates to leave prison for the day and work off site.

Department of Corrections officials believe the state workers who supervised the inmates at the governor’s mansion committed sexual battery, forcible sodomy and rape against inmates from the Hillside Community Corrections Center, a department spokesman, Jerry Massie, said Monday. The department recently turned its findings over to the office of the Oklahoma County district attorney, David Prater.

Assistant District Attorney Scott Rowland said Monday that prosecutors met with Department of Corrections investigators for two hours Friday and that the investigation was continuing. Neither of the employees responded to phone messages seeking comment.

The inmates, two of whom have since been released from prison, say the assaults happened between March 2008 and January 2009. The Department of Corrections did not begin investigating until June 1, after one woman came forward after her release, Mr. Massie said.

The women said they were attacked in a storage building outside the security fence that surrounds the mansion’s 14-acre grounds, Mr. Massie said.

Janet Roloff, a lawyer for one of the women, said her client had endured a “violent, bloody rape” that left her with emotional and physical scars. It is illegal for a supervisor and an inmate to have sex, and Ms. Roloff scoffed at the notion that any sex between her client and the state workers was consensual.

“My client was dragged down, held down by one and raped by another,” she said. “That doesn’t sound very consensual, does it?”

Ms. Roloff said her client had been afraid to report the attack until after her release, for fear of retribution. She said the woman had come forward to try to persuade prison officials to stop sending female inmates to the governor’s mansion.

The Corrections Department is interviewing other women who took part in the program, Mr. Massie said. The program was suspended after the accusations surfaced but has since resumed.

The accusations came a month after three state troopers assigned to guard the mansion were disciplined for falsifying hours, saying they were working when they were not.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 13, 2009, on page A21 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/us/13okla.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Oklahoma&st=cse

Posted by lois at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2009

Hardin MT: Behind Montana Jail Fiasco: How Private Prison Developers Prey On Desperate Towns

TPMMuckraker
Behind Montana Jail Fiasco: How Private Prison Developers Prey On Desperate Towns
Justin Elliott | October 12, 2009

(For an unbelievably pathetic picture of the
Two Rivers Authority parade float, 6/27/09, go to the URL below.)

With the unraveling of the deal for the shadowy American Private Police Force to take over and populate an empty jail in Hardin, Montana, it's pretty clear that the small city got played by an ex-con and his (supposed) private security firm.

But an investigation by TPMmuckraker into how Hardin ended up with the 92,000 square foot facility in the first place suggests that, long before "low-level card shark" Michael Hilton ever came to town, Hardin officials had already been taken for a ride by a far more powerful set of players: a well-organized consortium of private companies headquartered around the country, which specializes in pitching speculative and risky prison projects to local governments desperate for jobs.

The projects have generated multi-million dollar profits for the companies involved, but often haven't created the anticipated payoff for the communities, and have left a string of failed or failing prisons in their wake.

"They look for an impoverished town that's desperate," says Frank Smith of the Private Corrections Institute, a Florida-based group that opposes prison privatization. "They come in looking very impressive, saying, 'We'll make money rain from the skies.' In fact, they don't care whether it works or not."

The Pitch

In June 2004, James Parkey, a Texas-based prison developer and architect, met at the Las Vegas airport with Judy Martz, who at the time was the Republican governor of Montana. Described by the Texas Observer as a "polished salesman" for the booming private prison industry, Parkey presents himself on his Web site as a beneficent savior for local communities hit hard by the decline of the manufacturing sector.

Parkey, who runs a company called Corplan Corrections, was seeking to sell Martz on a prison project for her state. His method is to promise a full-service team to handle the entire project from soup to nuts -- what one source described as a "turn-key system."

That team includes a construction firm to build the prison, a prison operator to work with local officials to find prisoners, then run the facility, underwriters to sell the bonds, and even a consultant to do an economic feasibility study. "They walk into a municipality and say, you don't have to do a thing, we'll take care of everything," Christopher "Kit" Taylor, a municipal bond expert who has followed Parkey's operation, told TPMmuckraker.

State officials eventually referred Parkey to the city of Billlings. From there, he was directed 50 miles east, to rural Hardin -- where he found a receptive audience. Parkey promised the town's brass that his team would take care of everything. The project would generate 150 solid jobs. The prison operator in Parkey's team pledged to pay the town a business license fee and at least $100,000 in annual per-prisoner fees.

To officials in a county whose poverty rate is double the national average, that seemed like too good an opportunity to turn down.

Big Pay Day
For Parkey and his crew, the deal soon paid off. The prison's designer and builder, Hale-Mills Construction of Houston, was guaranteed a maximum price of $19.88 million, according to the official bond statement obtained by TPMmuckraker. The exact amount the firm ultimately received isn't known.

And Hardin's $27 million municipal bond sale, conducted in 2006, netted the underwriters -- a pair of companies called Herbert J. Sims, of Connecticut, and Municipal Capital Markets Group (MCM), of Dallas -- a total of $1.62 million. Other players recruited by Parkey -- lawyers, surveyors, and the North Carolina-based consultant who conducted the feasibility study -- reaped $169,750. It's not known how big a cut Parkey took, and he didn't respond to calls for comment.

Hardin itself didn't make out nearly so well. Not a single inmate has ever slept in the jail, and the town hasn't seen a cent of revenue from the project.

The bonds, which were to be paid back through the anticipated -- but non-existent -- revenue, have gone into default. The prison "was built on spec," says Taylor, the muni bond expert, who has looked at the Hardin deal. "[The consortium's] whole premise was hell, we don't care what happens to the bonds."

That's left Hardin with an empty jail that it so desperately wanted to fill that it begged first for sex offenders from the state, then for Gitmo inmates from the Feds, and, finally, for some kind of salvation from the American Private Police Force.

A Compromised Consultant?
Central to Hardin official's expectations for the deal was the feasibility study that Parkey's team conducted, which concluded that the project was all but certain to pay off. But that study appears to have been not only deeply flawed, but essentially rigged from the start.

A Montana state auditor found in a 2007 memo that the study -- carried out by Howard Geisler, a North Carolina feasibility consultant specializing in prisons -- was racked with problems. It provides "little methodology" regarding its estimates of potential prisoners for the jail. It lacks "historical data to support anticipated prisoner counts." And it makes "a number of assumptions made related to financial viability that appear to be unfounded," including "potential improvements to local aviation facilities."

In addition, Geisler's study failed to mention that bringing in out-of-state prisoners is potentially illegal under Montana law -- even though that idea was held up as a key method for recruiting prisoners. The state's attorney general challenged Hardin over the provision, and though a judge ultimately sided with the town, it was only after a year of legal wrangling.

Perhaps those flaws aren't surprising. The study was paid for by one of the underwriters, MCM, which had worked frequently with Geisler in the past. A truly independent feasibility study, says Taylor, the muni bond expert, would involve multiple firms making bids to do the job for the city.

Geisler was clearly aware while writing the study of the conflict of interest inherent in the set-up. On one page, he notes in bolded text that, "to assure independence," his fee "is not contingent upon the sale of the Bonds." But Taylor calls that "a smokescreen." "[The passage] is trying to give a sense of legitimacy to the deal, when that's not the case at all," he told TPMmuckraker.

Indeed, the study was in fact the third such report produced on the subject -- and the second by Geisler -- over a two-year period, according to a Montana source close to the process. The first two studies -- the other of which was done internally by Hardin -- came to ambiguous conclusions as to whether the project would succeed. After the first two reports, says the source, "the MCM people had [Geisler] come back and do another. That's when they decided it made sense to go forward."

To this day, some local officials defend the study, arguing that it's easy to criticize with the benefit of hindsight. Dan Kern, Hardin's economic development director in late 2005 and early 2006, told TPMmuckraker he's not sure why support for the project evaporated after the jail was built. "Everybody told me that this was a great project and there was a need for it," he said.

But Taylor says if the official bond statement, which includes the feasibility study, was false or misleading, the bond players have legal liability.

Beyond Hardin
It looks like Hardin isn't the only place where the the lavish promises of Parkey's consortium failed to pan out.

The Montana state auditor's memo notes that, in three separate jail deals with Texas counties, pushed through by Parkey's team, "current revenues are insufficient to cover operating and debt expenses."

And in 2005, three Texas county commissioners were convicted on bribery charges in connection to one of those Parkey-led projects. As in Hardin, MCM acted as the underwriter, and Hale-Mills handled construction.

All of the companies in the consortium either declined to comment for this story or did not return calls and e-mails.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/behind_hardin_jail_fiasco_private_prison_salesmen_prey_on_desperate_towns.php?emailed=true

Posted by lois at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)

The High Cost of Empty Prisons by Robert Gangi

Op-Ed Contributor: The High Cost of Empty Prisons
By ROBERT GANGI
New York Times: October 11, 2009

LAST Wednesday, changes to New York’s notorious Rockefeller drug laws went into effect, allowing judges to shorten the prison terms of some nonviolent offenders. This measure will further reduce New York’s prison population, which has already declined, in the past 10 years, from about 71,600 in 1999 to about 59,300 today. (The state’s crime rate also dropped substantially during that time.)

Nevertheless, mainly because of opposition from the correction officers’ union and politicians from the upstate areas where most of our correctional facilities are, the state has been slow to close prisons. It was not until earlier this year that policymakers in Albany, confronted with fiscal crisis, mustered the will to shut three prison camps and seven prison annexes — a total of about 2,250 prison beds — in a move that is expected to save $52 million over the next two years.

But the state could go further. The prison system still has more than 5,000 empty beds in 69 prisons. What’s more, there are other ways to lower the prison population. For starters, state lawmakers could repeal the Rockefeller mandatory sentencing provisions that remain on the books. They could also increase the number of participants on work release. In 1994, more than 27,000 people were in this time-tested program that helps them manage the transition back to their communities. Today, about 2,500 are enrolled.

In addition, the state could reduce the number of people — last year, more than 9,000 — who are returned to prison for technical parole violations like missing a meeting with an officer or breaking curfew. Most experts agree that for about half of these people it would be safer and smarter to enroll them in re-entry programs or provide more supervision. Also, more prisoners with good institutional records could be given parole. And eligibility for so-called merit time, which reduces prison terms for inmates who complete educational and other programs, could be expanded to people convicted of violent offenses many years ago.

Taken together, these actions could cut the state’s prison rolls by 5,000 to 10,000 more, enabling the governor and the legislature to close at least four prisons the size of Attica, which holds 2,100 inmates, or a greater number of smaller facilities.

After New York passed the Rockefeller drug laws in 1973, a mandatory sentencing movement swept the country, raising the nationwide prison population to nearly 2.4 million, from 300,000. This experiment in mass incarceration was a failure. There is no conclusive evidence that it enhanced public safety, and some research suggests that time in prison makes people more prone to violence. It wasted billions of dollars a year. And it has devastated the low-income minority communities where most of our prisoners come from.

New York can now help point criminal justice in a more sensible and constructive direction — and show other states how to save money — by downsizing its prison system.

Robert Gangi is the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit organization that monitors prison conditions.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 12, 2009, on page A23 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/opinion/12gangi.html

Posted by lois at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2009

Stanidsh MI begs for prisoners from PA DOC Commissoner Beard

MDOC's letter to Pennsylvania regarding PA inmates in Standish Max
Following is the Michigan Department of Corrections' letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections in its entirety. Standish max is mentioned in paragraph three.

Secretary Jeffrey A. Beard
Department of Corrections
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
P.O. Box 598
Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598

Dear Secretary Beard:

Thank you for your recent letter asking for the Michigan Department of Corrections’ (MI DOC) proposal on housing Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ (PA DOC) prisoners in Michigan through an Inmate Transfer Agreement. Michigan would be very interested in pursuing such an opportunity and attached please find our proposal detailing the rates, capacities and services available.

We currently have two prisons that may be of particular interest and would be a good fit for the approximately 1,000-1,500 prisoners the PA DOC is looking to transfer.

10-6-09
We will soon be closing the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison which houses 604 prisoners. It is located just off Interstate 75 north of Saginaw in Standish, Michigan, in proximity to airports. The facility opened in 1990 and is in excellent condition. While this is mostly a single-cell facility (one housing unit was double bunked), it could easily be reconfigured to a lower security level and be double bunked.

We will also soon be closing the Muskegon Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison which houses 1,326 prisoners. It is located off U.S. 31 in Muskegon, Michigan, and in proximity to airports. The facility opened in 1974 and is also in excellent operating condition.

Currently both of these facilities are fully staffed with highly trained, professional, hard-working, knowledgeable and responsible correctional employees. Our correctional staff is second to none in the nation.

The reason we have facilities available for potential use by the PA DOC is due to the decline in our population. For the past several years, the MI DOC has been closing prisons as the prison population drops. We are experiencing a decline for several reasons including:

• Prison intake was down 9% in 2008 and is down 8% through August of 2009.

• Total felony court dispositions have declined for the second straight year, following eight straight years of growth. Felony court dispositions across the entire state of Michigan decreased by almost 4% in 2008 and have decreased by another 6.3% in 2009 through June.

• In 2008, the Michigan Prisoner ReEntry Initiative (MPRI) went statewide and expanded to 18 regional sites that now cover all 83 counties. The preliminary data for the first 13,000 former prisoners worked with shows that the return to prison rate has improved from 1 out of 2 returning within two years to 1 out of 3 returning in two years.

• Due to the success of MPRI, the rate of prisoners paroled is up and parole failures are down.

• With prison intake down, the parole rate up and parole failures reduced, Michigan’s prison population is at its lowest level in eight years.

I believe this opportunity has tremendous potential and could be mutually beneficial to both our states. It would allow Pennsylvania to address its immediate need for additional prison beds and let some of Michigan’s experienced and accomplished correctional staff continues working as they face the likelihood of layoff. In addition, the fact that we now share the same prisoner health care provider could help ease any potential concerns associated with this very important area of effective prisoner management.

I am confident we can provide a safe and secure environment for Pennsylvania prisoners and do so in a very competitive and cost-effective manner. In addition, we can assist you in creating safer communities in Pennsylvania by applying the principles of our successful prisoner reentry program and help your inmates return home and become productive citizens.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any additional questions or concerns. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Patricia L. Caruso, Director
Michigan Department of Corrections
http://www.arenacindependent.com/detail/83002.html

Posted by lois at 08:45 PM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2009

Angola 3: Herman Wallace's Appeal Denied After 37 Years in Solitary Confinement

Appeal Denied After 37 Years in Solitary Confinement
by James Ridgeway. The Unsilent Generation
Posted: 10 Oct 2009

The Louisiana State Supreme Court Friday denied an appeal from Herman Wallace, who has been held in solitary confinement for more than 37 years. Wallace and Albert Woodfox are members of what has become known as the Angola 3, whose story I have been covering for Mother Jones. Convicted of the 1972 murder of a prison guard at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, both men maintain their innocence; they believe they were targeted for the crime and relegated to permanent lockdown because of their organizing work with the prison chapter of the Black Panthers. Wallace, who is now 68 years old, was recently transferred from Angola to the Hunt Correctional Center near Baton Rouge, where he continues to be held in solitary. Two days ago, Wallace descended even deeper into the hole, placed in a disciplinary unit called Beaver 5 for unknown violations of prison policy.

Herman Wallace launched the appeal of his conviction nearly a decade ago. His lawyers have introduced substantial evidence showing that the state’s star witness, a fellow prisoner named Hezekiah Brown, was offered special treatment and an eventual pardon in exchange for his testimony against Wallace and Woodfox. In 2006, a judicial commissioner assigned to study the case found that there were grounds for overturning the conviction, but Wallace’s application was subsequently denied–by the state district court, court of appeals, and now by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

While every setback comes as a blow to a man nearing 70 who has spent nearly four decades in lockdown, one of Wallace’s attorneys said tonight that this denial by the state’s highest court came as no surprise, since it has a reputation for refusing to overturn the decisions of lower courts. Today’s ruling opens the doors to a federal habeas corpus challenge, beginning with the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana at Baton Rouge. Here, if Wallace is lucky, his case will be reviewed by a fact-finding federal magistrate, and his conviction overturned by a federal judge. This is what happened to Albert Woodfox last year. Yet Woodfox, too, remains in prison–and in solitary confinement–as the state appeals the judge’s decision.

Louisiana’s Attorney General, James “Buddy” Caldwell, has stated that he opposes releasing the two men “with every fiber of my being,” while the Warden of Angola and Hunt prisons, Burl Cain, has more than once suggested that the two men must be held in solitary because they ascribe to “Black Pantherism.”

In addition to their criminal appeals, Wallace and Woodfox (along with Robert King, who was released in 2001), have a case pending on constitutional grounds. They argue that the conditions and duration of their time in solitary confinement constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Their lawyers have submitted reports showing the effects of decades of solitary confinement on men in their sixties—including arthritis, hypertension, and kidney failure, as well as memory impairment, insomnia, claustrophobia, anxiety, and depression. The suit also argues that Wallace and Woodfox are being held in lockdown for their political beliefs, in violation of the First Amendment.
http://unsilentgeneration.com/

Posted by lois at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2009

Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among High School Dropouts: including jail or juvenile detention for 1 in 4 African American young men who drop out of school.

"The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime."

"The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts."

Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among Dropouts
By SAM DILLON
Published NY Times: October 8, 2009

On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging.

The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts.

Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high school dropouts.

“We’re trying to show what it means to be a dropout in the 21st century United States,” said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern, who headed a team of researchers that prepared the report. “It’s one of the country’s costliest problems. The unemployment, the incarceration rates — it’s scary.”

A coalition of civil rights and public education advocacy groups and a network of alternative schools in Chicago commissioned the report as part of a push for new educational opportunities for the nation’s 6.2 million high school dropouts.

“The dropout rate is driving the nation’s increasing prison population, and it’s a drag on America’s economic competitiveness,” said Marc H. Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League, one of the groups in the coalition that commissioned the report. “This report makes it clear that every American pays a cost when a young person leaves school without a diploma.”

The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime.

Daniel J. Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the study was consistent with other economic studies of the dropout crisis, though he said the methodology of its cost-benefit analysis “lacked transparency.”

“The report’s strength is that it reveals in clear terms that there’s a real crisis with the high numbers of young, especially minority males, who drop out of school and wind up incarcerated,” Mr. Losen said.

Previous studies have come up with estimates of the same order of magnitude on the social cost of low graduation rates. A 2007 study by Teachers College, Princeton and City University of New York researchers, for instance, estimated that society could save $209,000 in prison and other costs for every potential dropout who could be helped to complete high school.

The new report, in its analysis of 2008 unemployment rates, found that 54 percent of dropouts ages 16 to 24 were jobless, compared with 32 percent for high school graduates of the same age, and 13 percent for those with a college degree.

Again, the statistics were worse for young African-American dropouts, whose unemployment rate last year was 69 percent, compared with 54 percent for whites and 47 percent for Hispanics. The unemployment rate among young Hispanics was lower, the report said, because included in that category were many illegal immigrants, who compete successfully for jobs with native-born youths.

The unemployment rates cited for all groups have climbed several points in 2009 because of the recession, Mr. Sum said.

Young female dropouts were nine times more likely to have become single mothers than young women who went on to earn college degrees, the report said, citing census data for 2006 and 2007.

The number of unmarried young women having children has increased sharply in some communities in part, Mr. Sum said, because large numbers of young men have dropped out of school and are jobless year round. As a result, young women do not view them as having the wherewithal to support a family.

“None of these guys can afford to own a home, they just don’t have any money,” he said. “And as a result, any time they father a child it’s out of wedlock. It wasn’t like this 30 years ago.”

He cited his hometown, Gary, Ind., as an example. “Back in the 1970s, my friends in Gary would quit school in senior year and go to work at U.S. Steel and make a good living, and young guys in Michigan would go to work in an auto plant,” he said. “You just can’t do that anymore. Today, you have a lot of dropouts who are jobless year round.”

Link to the study: http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/The_Consequences_of_Dropping_Out_of_High_School.pdf

A version of this article appeared in print on October 9, 2009, on page A12 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/education/09dropout.html?_r=1&ref=us

Posted by lois at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

October 07, 2009

MT: Hardin officials nix deal with "American Police Force"

'Red flags' cause Mt. officials to nix 'American Police Force' deal
Montana city's jail deal delayed amid controversy
Montana jail plan on hold after revelations about lead figure's past

MATTHEW BROWN
AP News
Oct 05, 2009 20:22 EST

Plans for a California company to take over this city's empty jail were put on hold Monday, following last week's revelations that the company's lead figure has a criminal history.

The decision came as Hardin's leaders announced the resignation of both the attorney and the economic development official who helped craft the jail deal for the city. Also Monday, a security industry veteran whose name was linked to the project denied involvement.

Officials in Hardin, a small city of 4,500 just outside the Crow Indian Reservation, had tried in vain for two years to fill the 464-bed jail.

Last month, deliverance finally appeared at hand when the city struck an agreement with Mike Hilton and his newly minted Santa Ana, Calif.-company, American Police Force.

But following last week's news that Hilton has a history of fraud — including several years in jail and three civil judgments against him for more than $1.1 million — Hardin's economic development authority said it was stepping back from the deal.

"We won't move forward. I don't think any of us want to be on the chopping block," said Gary Arneson, president of Hardin's Two Rivers Authority, which owns the jail.

Arneson said no further action would be taken until the authority hires an attorney to replace Becky Convery, the lawyer who helped forge the agreement with American Police Force. Montana's Attorney General launched an investigation into the company last week, also demanding that the city turn over any documents it has related to the jail deal.

Authority board members appeared chagrined at their monthly meeting on Monday.

After residents peppered them with questions about what kind of due diligence had been done on Hilton and his company, Arneson said a background check had been carried out by the agency's executive director, Greg Smith. Smith was put on paid leave and resigned late Monday.

An agreement with Hilton was approved by the Two Rivers Authority in early September. But a more detailed contract with the company was never ratified by a bank serving as trustee on $27 million in bonds used to build the jail.

Hardin built its jail in 2007 as an economic development project. It was lured into the deal with Hilton over the summer, after several city officials flew to California and met with Hilton. He told them a major security corporation was backing the deal but wished to remain anonymous.

The name of that corporation has never been revealed.

Meanwhile, the man whose name was offered up as the jail's future operations director said Monday he was never offered the job — and would not have taken it regardless.

Hardin officials said they were told by Hilton that he was hiring Michael Cohen, an executive with International Security Associates in Dublin, Ohio, for the post.

"Excuse my French, but he's talking with forked tongue there," Cohen said Monday, adding that he had only cursory discussions with Hilton and was led to believe the post involved military and law enforcement training.

"He kept saying, come to Montana, come to California and meet me. He wouldn't give me any information" about the job, Cohen said.

Hilton's office referred questions Monday to Becky Shay, the company spokeswoman. Shay, the company's only Montana employee, said she continues to operate under the assumption that the jail project is moving forward.

Back in Hilton's home state of California, a judge has ordered the lead figure of American Police Force to appear in court Oct. 27 over an outstanding judgment in a fraud lawsuit.

In that case, Hilton lured investors to sink money into an assisted living complex in Southern California that was never built.

An attorney for the plaintiffs, Cris Armenta, said the $340,000 judgment awarded in 2000 has grown to about $700,000 with interest factored in. Armenta said she planned go after any and all of Hilton's assets, including his wages, property and three Mercedes SUVs that Hilton had once offered to donate to Hardin.
http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/10/apf-deal-appears-off-over-red-flags/
Source: AP News

Posted by lois at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

TX: Mineral Wells rejects buidling an immigrant "detention" center on spec

Mineral Wells rejects Emerald detention center financing deal
Wed, 10/07/2009

From the Mineral Wells Index ("Council declines Emerald finance proposal," October 7),

Mineral Wells City Council on Tuesday declined to second a motion to finance a proposed Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detention facility.

Emerald Correctional Management Company said it was unable to date to secure private financing for the 500- to 1,000-bed facility that would house detained or arrested illegal immigrants. The company asked the city to issue public revenue bonds to build the estimated $50 million project.

After a presentation during Tuesday's council meeting, council members asked several questions, and Councilman John Ritchie made a motion to approve the financing request. However, no member of council seconded the motion, and the motion died with no further action or discussion.

What that means for the project's future is not certain. The Index is working on the story and will post it later today.

ICE project deal dead: Emerald says it will offer facility to other cities after City Council fails to support public financing proposal.
http://www.mineralwellsindex.com/local/local_story_281100232.html

By Christin Coyne
ccoyne@mineralwellsindex.com
A two and-a-half year effort to bring an illegal immigrant detention center to Mineral Wells ended Tuesday night with several long seconds of silence from city council members.

A resolution to continue negotiations with Emerald Correctional Management to build a detention facility funded by non-recourse revenue bonds issued by the Mineral Wells Local Government Corporation failed when council members failed to second a motion in support.

“That’s a pretty clear message that the city council has no interest in doing this project,” Steve Afeman, chief operating officer of Emerald, said Wednesday morning. “We’re not about to go back.”

The failure to move ahead with negotiations seemed to come as a surprise to several.

Afeman said Emerald met with mayor Mike Allen, Industrial Foundation representative Steve Butcher and city manager Lance Howerton and was told they believed council would support the public finance proposal.

Allen told those attending the meeting there would be no public comments. “This is for the council to understand,” he said before a presentation from Hull Youngblood, Emerald’s attorney and representative.

“[While switching sites earlier this year], we lost that window to get private financing that you could use,” Youngblood said. Initially the city offered Emerald land near Mineral Wells Municipal Airport, but 11th-hour public opposition to the site forced its move to Wolters Industrial Park, with the Industrial Foundation buying land to accommodate the switch.

Youngblood told the council the city would not be obligated if they authorized the local government corporation to issue non-recourse revenue bonds.

“The LGC will not have to pay anything on the debt except what is generated by project revenue,” Youngblood said. “[If the bonds were defaulted on] think of it like lenders and they’ve got a lien on the building. They could sell it or refinance it.”

Because the local government corporation would own the title to the building, the facility would also be exempt from ad valorem taxes.

“We would now take that pool of money [that would go to the city and Parker County] and give it to the city [as the per diem fee per inmate],” Youngblood said.

Councilman Bill Terry wanted to know if the facility went defunct how much control the city would have.

“[Once the facility is foreclosed on] they could do whatever they want,” Youngblood said, but added they would have to abide by applicable law.

“What kind of black eye is it to the city or the LGC [if they are unable to pay off the bonds]?” council member Tommy Blissitte asked.

Howerton said they talked with the city’s financial advisor and were told a default on the bonds would not technically affect the credit rating and would not likely impair the city.

However, the city might have to explain the situation and that could raise a red flag with other possible underwriters, Howerton said.

“What risk, if any, does Emerald have?” council member Deartis Nickerson asked.

“[There is] not additional equity being paid to the lender beyond the significant development costs [already incurred],” Youngblood said.

“I’ve been dealing with this for about a month and I’ve come to a conclusion our liability (would be) no different than private financing,” Allen said.

Allen noted unemployment is over 8 percent in the county and said the project would generate jobs and bring in at least $6 million for the city over a 20-year period.

Afeman said they’ve received about 30 job applications for the proposed Mineral Wells facility, which was supposed to have created 140 jobs, though many of the applications were from people in other parts of the state looking to return to Mineral Wells.

Council member John Ritchie moved to approve the resolution authorizing the local government corporation to continue negotiations for the publicly financed proposal but did not receive a second.

After several seconds of silence from the council, Allen requested a second to the motion but did not receive it from the other four council members present. Chris Crawford was absent.

“It’s been a long, hard journey,” Allen said after the meeting. “I’ve put a lot of time into it.”

Richard Ball, president of the Industrial Foundation, said afterward it was time to replace some city council members.

“I don’t think it’s the right thing at the right time,” Terry said. “I want to see the Baker Hotel situation [succeed] and I don’t want anything to get in the way … I just think there are better deals out there and eventually they’ll come. I feel that Emerald is not being up front with us.”

Terry was the lone dissenting vote when the council agreed to accept a lower impact fee than Emerald announced they would pay the city before the site was moved, asking whether it would be a sign of things to come.

“I don’t like the idea of the city having to issue bonds,” councilman Tommy Blissitte told the Index Wednesday. “It would look bad on the city if they defaulted.”

Blissitte said he also had concerns that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement would still be interested in an detention facility for illegal immigrants when it came time to write an agreement after several months of issuing bonds and then the 16-month building phase.

“If they got their own financing, I don’t have a problem,” Blissitte said. “I voted my conscience.”

“It’s a business decision that the city made and we respect that,” Afeman said. “There are two other sites that we’ve been in contact with this week.”

Posted by lois at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)

MA: State floats idea of another prison in Framingham

State floats idea of another prison in Framingham
By Dan McDonald/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Oct 07, 2009
FRAMINGHAM —

Already home to MCI-Framingham, the town might be host to another 500-bed prison facility.

The state has broached the idea, which appears to be in a very preliminary planning stage, selectmen Chairwoman Ginger Esty told her board last night .

There are many unknowns, the foremost being whether the proposal has any traction.

Selectmen, meeting in the Memorial Building's Ablondi Room last night, have many questions for which they do not have answers.

Would the facility be for men or women? What level of security would it have? Would it be an expansion of MCI-Framingham or a different entity altogether?

What kind of payment would the town get for hosting such a facility?

In fiscal 2009, the Department of Correction paid the town $75,437 for the presence of the tax-exempt MCI-Framingham, a medium-security prison on Loring Drive on the town's Southside.

That prison, like the whole system, is overburdened.

As of Aug. 17, MCI-Framingham, the DOC's only "committing institution for female offenders" had 597 inmates. It has a capacity for 452.

The state slashed $13 million from the DOC's budget within the last year.

The DOC is closing the Massachusetts Alcohol and Substance Abuse Center on Nov. 6 because of budget cuts.

While the details remain murky, such a facility would present "significant unseen challenges" to the town in providing municipal services, said Town Manager Julian Suso last night.

Esty agreed, saying the town needs more information.

"It would have a lot of repercussions in our community," said Esty.

Suso, Esty, a representative of Framingham Police Department, and representatives of Framingham's State House delegation met with the state's Division of Capital Asset Management to talk about the idea recently.

State Rep. Pam Richardson, D-Framingham, alerted Esty. Richardson had heard about the idea from a sheriff, said Esty.

So far, state officials are reluctant to talk about the plan in detail, according to Suso and Esty.

Suso did suggest a "planning process is going to be unfolding."

In other business, fire officials told selectmen the probable cause of the Sept. 21 Conigliaro Industries fire was improperly disposed of smoking material, possibly a discarded cigarette.

The fire at 701 Waverley St. ripped through a pile of recyclables that was 250 feet long, according to fire officials.

The blaze shut down commuter and freight rail traffic for about 90 minutes, according to state officials. No one was injured. The fire cost Conigliaro about $250,000.

Framingham Fire Marshal Brian Mauro told selectmen arson was essentially ruled out because the fire smoldered from the bottom of the pile of refuse. If someone had lit the fire on purpose they would have lit the top of the pile and "we would have seen that," said Mauro.

Mauro said Conigliaro appeared to be in compliance with all of its permits and had no violations pertaining to the fire.

He said the business toughened smoking regulations on the site after the fire.

Selectmen also last night honored Police Officer John Moore and Police Detective Leonard Pini for their courage in dealing with a disgruntled shotgun-toting man on Coburn Street in September 2008.

Responding to a domestic assault call, police arrived at a 34 Coburn St. apartment on Sept. 24, 2008 and were greeted by a shotgun blast from Michael Boyd, then 24.

Moore returned fire, but missed. Pini fired and hit Boyd in the chest.

Both faced mortal danger and prevented others at the scene, including two children, from harm, according to proclamations read last night.
Dan McDonald can be reached at 508-626-4416 or at dmcdonal@cnc.com
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x458693970/State-floats-idea-of-another-prison-in-Framingham

Posted by lois at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2009

Peg Mullen, 92, Who Fanned Her Anger Over Son’s Death Into Antiwar Drive, Dies

"Mrs. Mullen’s militancy never abated. At 74, she rode a bus for 38 hours to protest the first Persian Gulf war. In 2005, at 88, she said she was furious that she could not join Cindy Sheehan, a mother who lost a son in the Iraq war, in Ms. Sheehan’s protest outside President George W. Bush’s ranch in Texas."

Peg Mullen, 92, Who Fanned Her Anger Over Son’s Death Into Antiwar Drive, Dies
By DOUGLAS MARTIN- NY Times
Published: October 5, 2009

Peg Mullen, an Iowa farm wife who made herself a living symbol of loss after her son was killed in Vietnam, as she sharply questioned the military’s explanations and became an outspoken antiwar crusader, died Friday in La Porte City, Iowa. She was 92.

Her family announced the death.

After her son Michael was killed by shrapnel from United States artillery on Feb. 18, 1970, Mrs. Mullen did not disguise her rage. She used his death benefit to buy two half-page advertisements in The Des Moines Register, each with more than 700 crosses, one for each Iowan killed in the war.

C. D. B. Bryan, an author and journalist, wrote about the suffering of Mrs. Mullen and her family in “Friendly Fire,” a book that was serialized in The New Yorker and received wide attention when published in 1976.

In 1979, the book was made into a television movie starring Carol Burnett as Mrs. Mullen. It won an Emmy for best drama special.

Mrs. Mullen from the start refused to believe the Pentagon’s account of Michael’s death, that he was killed in an accident. Mr. Bryan’s investigation eventually laid out considerable evidence that the official story was, indeed, true. Mrs. Mullen remained skeptical.

She wrote her own book in 1995, “Unfriendly Fire: A Mother’s Memoir,” expanding on her doubts. Around 40 of her son’s letters added poignancy to the story.

Mrs. Mullen’s obstinacy, distrust of officialdom and wicked humor characterized her decades of antiwar activity, including those following the Vietnam War. An e-mail message she wrote to a columnist for The Register in 2002 showed her raw emotional power.

“I have no idea of your age,” she wrote the columnist, “but I hope you never have to stand in a quiet corner of an airport and say goodbye to a son in uniform, knowing in your heart that you’ll never see him again.

“I hope you never suffer the horror of a military man sitting at your kitchen table trying to tell how your son died — then wait 10 days for his body to be returned and his casket unloaded in a darkened corner of the same airport.”

Mr. Bryan suggested in his book that the Mullen family’s pain might be seen as a larger lesson of the Vietnam War, ultimately more important than definitively assigning blame for Michael’s death. Writing of the atmosphere in which the Mullens and similarly stricken families lived, Mr. Bryan wrote of “those sounds which were not spoken at all: the slam of a hand hitting the table in rage, the breath caught because an onrushing memory was causing too much pain.”

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Michael’s commander in Vietnam, met with Mrs. Mullen and her husband and tried to answer her questions as clearly as he could. But he could not satisfy them.

“To me, the death of Michael Mullen was not just one tragedy, but two: the needless death of a young man, and the bitterness that was consuming his parents,” the general wrote in his autobiography.

Margaret Goodyear was born in Pocahontas, Iowa, in 1917, and after graduating from high school moved to Des Moines to work in various federal jobs. In 1941, she married Oscar Mullen, known as Gene. They settled on the 120-acre farm near La Porte City that had been in the family for four generations. In addition to farming, Mr. Mullen worked for Rath Packing and John Deere. Mrs. Mullen worked at J. C. Penney and Santa Claus Industries.

Mrs. Mullen’s mother had been county Democratic chairwoman in the 1920s, and she herself was an active Democrat, serving as a delegate at the party’s 1964, 1968 and 1972 national conventions. Her forebodings about Vietnam were solidifying into opposition before the death of Michael, who had been a graduate student in biochemistry when he was drafted in 1968.

In an interview in 2005 with The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., she remembered trying to comfort a friend whose son had died in the war by saying, “He died for our country.”

The friend snapped that Mrs. Mullen should never say that to anyone again. “You can’t justify what’s going on,” the friend said.

After Michael was killed, Mrs. Mullen refused a military funeral and spurned her son’s medals. She returned President Richard M. Nixon’s letter with the note, “Send it to the next damn fool.”

She declined a free grave marker with a military inscription. She bought a tombstone, and used the verb “killed” rather than “died.”

Mr. Mullen died in 1986.

Mrs. Mullen is survived by another son, John; her daughters, Patricia Hulting and Mary DeJana; and six grandchildren.

Mrs. Mullen’s militancy never abated. At 74, she rode a bus for 38 hours to protest the first Persian Gulf war. In 2005, at 88, she said she was furious that she could not join Cindy Sheehan, a mother who lost a son in the Iraq war, in Ms. Sheehan’s protest outside President George W. Bush’s ranch in Texas.

Posted by lois at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)

MA: The Prison Town Advantage. Prisoners who can't vote nevertheless add to the power of the politicians who don't represent them.

The Prison Town Advantage
Inmates who can't vote nevertheless add to the power of the politicians who don't represent them.

Thursday, October 08, 2009
By Maureen Turner
Valley Advocate

To say that Danny Young did not win his seat on the Anamosa, Iowa, City Council by a landslide is an understatement of extreme proportions. Young won that seat in 2006 with just two write-in votes, one of them cast by his wife. The definition of the reluctant politician, Young didn't even vote for himself. There were no other candidates for the seat.

Admittedly, no candidate in Anamosa is going to draw big numbers at the polls, given the city's tiny size. The community covers 2.2 square miles, and has about 5,700 residents. At the time of Young's election, voters elected representatives from four wards, each of which included approximately 1,400 residents, as well as two at-large councilors.

But in Young's Ward 2, fewer than 100 of those residents were eligible to run for the Council seat, or even to vote. That's because the ward is dominated by Anamosa State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison where about 1,300 men are incarcerated. And in Iowa, as in 47 other U.S. states (Maine and Vermont are the exceptions), incarcerated felons are not allowed to vote.

They are, however, counted by the U.S. Census Bureau for data used to draw congressional, state and municipal legislative districts. That practice can lead to dramatic power imbalances between communities that have prisons and those that do not—as seen in Anamosa, where the fewer than 100 non-prisoners in Young's ward have as much representational clout in city affairs as the 1,400 residents in each of the city's other wards.

While Anamosa presents a particularly dramatic example of the problem, this imbalance exists in communities around the country. The Prison Policy Initiative, an Easthampton-based nonprofit, has released numerous reports in recent years examining the problem in states around the country; this month, PPI is releasing a report, "Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in Massachusetts," that looks at the effects here. The report, co-authored by PPI Executive Director Peter Wagner and colleagues Elena Lavarreda and Rose Heyer, finds that five of the state's legislative districts would not even exist in their current configurations if their population counts did not include prison inmates.

This apparently unintended data-gathering quirk, Wagner said, has profoundly detrimental consequences for the distribution of political power—consequences that extend further than one might expect.

Counting disenfranchised prisoners to draw up legislative districts "makes no sense," Wagner said, "and is actually offensive to our notion of democracy."

It also bears, in the words of Boston-based voting rights attorney Brenda Wright, an "uncomfortable resemblance" to the "three-fifths" compromise between Southern and Northern states written into the U.S. Constitution in 1787. That provision declared that a slave would count as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportioning congressional districts.

"The slave states benefited in terms of political power, based on a population that couldn't vote," said Wright, who directs the Democracy Program for Demos, a public policy and advocacy organization. More than 220 years later, legislators with prisons in their districts are likewise benefiting from a population that's also denied the vote—while other districts lose.

*

Peter Wagner began studying prison-based gerrymandering while a law student at Western New England College. His first project looked at neighboring New York State, where the effects are especially dramatic. There, Wagner noted in a 2002 report, 91 percent of prison cells are located in the upstate region, whose economy depends heavily on the prison industry. But only 24 percent of prisoners actually come from upstate New York; the majority—66 percent—comes from New York City.

As a result, Wagner said in a recent interview, "the whole center of gravity shifts." For state legislators who have prisons in their districts, the facilities are a boon: the prison population swells local numbers enough to justify the creation of a legislative seat, while the prison creates jobs and spurs related economic activity in a part of the state that sorely needs both. According to PPI, seven legislative districts in upstate New York would not have the minimum population required for a district were it not for their prisoners.

But not everyone wins under this scenario. While upstate legislators may have prisoners in their districts, because those prisoners cannot vote, there's no incentive for the legislators to support policies that could positively affect the urban districts where the majority of prisoners come from. Meanwhile, because the prisoners are not counted in their hometowns, those communities' populations, for the purposes of creating legislative districts, drop.

"Prisoners and their families have negative political clout," Wagner said.

And it's not just prisoners (and the family and neighbors that remain in their hometowns) who feel the effects of this imbalance, Wagner noted. Residents who live in districts without prisons have, in essence, less political influence than those in districts that do have prisons.

"These ... districts get an enhanced say, which hurts every other district in general, and hurts the district where prisoners come from even more," Wagner said.

Meanwhile, prisoners—despite the fact that they contribute to a prison-district legislator's political power—have no political influence over "their" representative. "The way things should work is, if a legislator doesn't represent some of his or her constituents, there's a check in place—the overlooked residents can vote that person out," Wagner said. "But when some of those constituents can't vote, that natural check and balance doesn't work."

As Danny Young, the Anamosa councilman, put it in a 2008 New York Times article: "Do I consider [the prisoners within my ward] my constituents? They don't vote, so, I guess, not really."

*

The Census Bureau's policy of counting prisoners where they're incarcerated is not new, PPI notes.

But the effects of that policy have become more significant in recent years, as the U.S. prison population has swelled, thanks, in large part, to the trend toward mandatory-minimum sentencing and other "tough on crime" legal reforms. According to the federal Department of Justice, in 1998, there were slightly fewer than 1.3 million people in state and federal prisons in the U.S. A decade later, that number had risen to 1.5 million. (During the same time period, the number of people, nationally, in local jails rose from about 500,000 to 800,000. In Massachusetts and other states, people who are behind bars on misdemeanor convictions or while awaiting trial are eligible to vote.)

There are about 11,000 people in Massachusetts state prisons, according to a 2007 report by the Mass. Department of Corrections. The state's one federal prison, Fort Devens, has about 1,300 prisoners, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Until 2000, prisoners in Massachusetts had the right to vote (those who chose to did so by absentee ballot). That year, 60 percent of voters—following the lead of then-Acting Gov. Paul Cellucci—approved a ballot question to amend the state constitution to deny voting rights to prisoners locked up on felony convictions. (The Cellucci administration had previously shut down a political action committee formed by a group of state prisoners, successfully arguing in Superior Court that allowing political activity in prisons presented a security threat.)

The result—in Massachusetts and in the 47 other states where incarcerated felons can't vote—is that lawmakers derive political power from "constituents" who are legally denied a voice in the political process. By law, each legislative district in Massachusetts should include 39,682 people, "Importing Constituents" notes. The law does allow some deviation from that figure, to ensure that other goals can be met, such as keeping communities with shared interests together in one district. (For instance, the lines might be drawn to keep members of a racial minority in the same district.)

In Massachusetts, that built-in wiggle room allows a district to deviate from the 39,683, in either direction, by 1,984 people—meaning a district may actually have a maximum of 41,667 residents or a minimum of 37,699.

But five state legislative districts in Massachusetts meet that minimum number only because they contain prisons, the PPI report points out. They include the 37th Middlesex district of Democratic Rep. Jennifer Benson, which would not meet the minimum had the 2000 Census not counted the 3,013 prisoners at Fort Devens and three state prisons (one of which, MCI Lancaster, was closed after the district was drawn). Similarly, the 9th Norfolk district of Republican Rep. Richard Ross only meets that threshold because of the 2,596 people who were in its four state prisons at the time it was drawn.

In addition, the 3rd Suffolk district of Democrat Aaron Michlewitz (previously represented by former House Speaker Sal DiMasi, indicted earlier this year on federal corruption charges) counts more than 1,500 Suffolk County House of Corrections inmates in its population total. Without those inmates, the PPI report found, the district would in fact be more than 8 percent smaller than the state's average district. And the 14th Worcester district, represented by Democrat James O'Day, only meets the minimum because of prisoners at the Worcester County House of Correction.

Locally, the 7th Hampden district of Rep. Tom Petrolati, a Democrat and speaker pro tempore of the House, contains 38,144 people. But 1,660 of those people were counted at the Hampden County House of Corrections in Ludlow; without them, the population would fall to 36,484—again, below the legally required minimum. "The actual population of this district is more than 8 percent smaller than the average district in the state, giving every group of 92 residents in Ludlow and some of the surrounding areas as much political power as 100 residents elsewhere in the state," the PPI researchers wrote.

A number of inmates at the Ludlow jail—those awaiting trial, and those there for misdemeanors—do, in fact, have the right to vote. But for the most part, "they are credited to the wrong district," Wagner said, with the exception of those who also happen to be residents of the 7th Hampden district. The rest must vote by absentee ballot in the district where they previously lived.

"The folks in the Hampden County House of Correction [who have the right to vote] are being represented and are voting in other districts, but their presence in the data used to draw the districts enhances the weight of a vote cast by the actual residents of Rep. Petrolati's district," Wagner went on. "That ends up turning the concepts of 'One Person, One Vote,' and of basing districts on common communities of interest, on their heads."

Four of the five legislators whose districts benefit from the Census practice—Benson, Ross, Michlewitz and O'Day—were not in the Legislature when the districts were last redrawn, in 2001. (Petrolati was, and, in fact, served as chairman of the House's redistricting committee, under then-Speaker Tom Finneran. In 2005, Finneran was indicted on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, for allegedly lying about intervening in the redistricting plan to protect certain incumbents. In 2007, he pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice, and received 18 months probation and a $25,000 fine. Petrolati, a Finneran lieutenant, was questioned by investigators but not charged. He did not respond to an interview request from the Advocate.)

Benson, the Middlesex legislator, told the Advocate she didn't know about the Census' policy for counting prisoners when she ran for the office, "and was surprised to discover it. ...

"I agree that counting prisoners as residents of the towns in which they are incarcerated is counterproductive and that our democracy is based on one man, one vote. [T]herefore equal representation is essential to upholding this belief," Benson said.

While Massachusetts does not present the extreme cases seen next door in New York, "this small and seemingly benign thing actually affects how our democracy runs," said report co-author Elena Lavarreda. The imbalance of power created by the census policy hurts all Massachusetts districts without prisons, but it especially hurts the urban areas where prisoners disproportionately come from, Lavarreda added.

For instance, while Boston accounts for 9.1 percent of Massachusetts' total population, according to 2008 figures from the Mass. Department of Corrections, 15 percent of new court commitments to state prisons reported home addresses in that city. Springfield, meanwhile, accounts for 2.3 percent of the state's total population, but 9 percent of its state prison population. Holyoke accounts for just 0.6 percent of the state population, but 2 percent of its state prisoners.

"[H]eavily minority urban districts would be entitled to additional representation if prisoners were counted as residents of their home communities for purposes of redistricting," the PPI researchers wrote.

The U.S. Census Bureau will conduct its next decennial population count in 2010. And it will continue its practice of counting prisoners in their prisons, not their hometowns—this despite the advocacy work of PPI, as well as a 2006 report commissioned by the Census Bureau from the National Academies' National Research Council. That report—titled "Once, Only Once, and in the Right Place: Residence Rules in the Decennial Census"— described the bureau's guidelines for determining residency for prisoners and certain other populations as too complicated, and urged the agency to improve that methodology in advance of next year's count.

Those changes, however, have not happened. Rather, the Census Bureau has been entangled in other matters, including a stand-off with Congressional Republicans who stalled the confirmation of President Obama's pick to lead the agency, Robert Groves; problems with the effectiveness of new hand-held computers used by canvassers; and the public relations nightmare caused by the agency's (now-severed) relationship with the controversial community organizing group ACORN.

"The Census is a big bureaucracy, and big bureaucracies are hard to change," said Lavarreda, adding that she believes many individuals within the Bureau do see the problem created by the current policy. With the next census just around the corner, political leaders are increasingly talking about the importance of getting an accurate population count (including in western Mass., where, it's feared, population shifts could result in the loss of a Congressional seat). The Census Bureau's "miscount" of prisoners only adds to those concerns about the count's accuracy, Lavarreda said.

"The Census Bureau is averse to change," added Wright, the Demos attorney. "It's an institution that does very long-term planning for the work it does"; to make any changes to that system "takes a lot of momentum, a lot of impetus."

Last week, the Advocate contacted the Census Bureau's Public Information Office seeking a response to the PPI report. At deadline, the office had yet to respond to that interview request."

By failing to address the prison issue in time for the 2010 count, the Census squandered an important opportunity, PPI contends. But in the absence of reform on the federal level, state and local governments can still address the problem, the organization points out.

While the U.S. Constitution mandates the decennial census, that document only requires that the numbers be used to draw Congressional districts. Over time, states, for the sake of convenience, have come to use the federal census numbers for drawing their own legislative districts, but they are not required to; Massachusetts, for instance, conducted its own census every 10 years from 1855 to 1975. If states conducted their own censuses, PPI suggests, they could ensure that prisoners are counted at their pre-incarceration addresses, and then use those results to draw legislative districts.

"The irony is the legislators who benefit from this [existing policy] is a very small list," Wagner noted. "Everyone else loses in some way—some more than others." Still, he said, there appears to be little momentum in the Legislature for addressing the issue, perhaps because some legislators aren't even aware of its implications.

Fixes can also take place at the local level. In Anamosa, Iowa, citizens addressed the imbalance of power caused by the local state prison through a referendum that changed how city councilors are elected. Starting with next month's election, instead of electing councilors from each of four wards—including Danny Young's, where more than 90 percent of his "constituents" are disenfranchised prisoners—all members will be elected at-large.

Closer to home, the Worcester County city of Gardner opted not to count inmates at North Central Correctional Institution at Gardner when redrawing its City Council districts in 2001 to avoid granting too much political influence to the part of the city where the facility is located.

While PPI applauds efforts like those in Anamosa and Gardner, ultimately, Wagner said, "The ideal place to change this is at the Census Bureau."

The Bureau, he went on, applies a "usual residence rule" to determine where to count a particular individual. In the words of the Census Bureau: "Usual residence has been defined as the place where the person lives and sleeps most of the time"—meaning, for instance, that a person who is on vacation the day of the census would nonetheless be counted at his or her home.

A person's "usual residence," according to the Census Bureau, "is not necessarily the same as the person's voting residence or legal residence." College students who do not live at home, for instance, are counted at their college housing, even if their parents' home is their legal residence.

Like college students counted at their dorms, not their parents' houses, prisoners also "live and sleep most of the time" at their prison, not their previous home. But, PPI points out, there's a key difference. Unlike college students, people in prison are not there voluntarily. "Students are welcome and encouraged to purchase local goods and services and to rent apartments in town," the group noted in a related report. "They can register to vote in the community and may decide to stay after graduation. ... For the duration of their time at the college, the college is the place they willingly live: that's the very definition of residence."

The Census' decision to count prisoners within prison districts, Wright said, is "based on a fiction that prisoners who can't vote and are not a permanent part of the community should be treated as though they are"—at least for the purposes of drawing legislative districts. Interestingly, she noted, in other legal matters, such as marriage and divorce laws, prisoners are considered residents of the communities where they lived before they were locked up. Indeed, before incarcerated felons were denied the vote in 2000, courts had ruled against prisoners who wanted to vote in the towns where their prisons were located, saying instead that they must vote in their home communities, by absentee ballot.

The Prison Policy Initiative suggests some ways the Census Bureau could change how it counts prisoners: it could allow prisoners to respond with their pre-incarceration addresses, or use prison records to determine those addresses. The Bureau has made similar adaptations for other populations in the past, PPI notes.

The U.S. Census Bureau, Wagner noted, needs individual states to rely on its figures for their redistricting efforts; if states started conducting their own counts, it would, no doubt, hurt the federal bureau's funding. Like any business, the Census should view the states as clients, and the states should exercise the client's right to demand a good product—in this case, fair and accurate population figures. "Part of the incentive to fix this," Wagner said, "is the aggrieved party is every single person who does not live immediately adjacent to a prison."
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article_print.cfm?aid=10645

Posted by lois at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)

Mercedes Sosa, Who Sang of Argentina’s Turmoil & Resistance, Dies at 74

Mercedes Sosa, Who Sang of Argentina’s Turmoil, Dies at 74

By LARRY ROHTER
Published: October 5, 2009

Mercedes Sosa, the Argentine folk singer whose politically charged repertory, sung in a powerful, earthy and impassioned alto voice, led her to be known throughout Latin America as “the voice of the voiceless,” died early Sunday in Buenos Aires. She was 74.

Ms. Sosa had been admitted to a hospital in the Argentine capital two weeks ago, suffering from kidney disease and with liver and lung problems. Her death was announced on her Web site and by her son, Fabián Matus, who said: “Mercedes Sosa has lived her 74 years to the fullest. She did practically everything that she wanted to do.”

In a career that spanned 60 years, Ms. Sosa became revered as both a victim of and a commentator on the political and social turmoil that afflicted her country and the rest of the continent. She was one of the pioneers of the “Nueva Canción” or “New Song” movement, a style of socially conscious music drawing on folk elements that first flowered in the 1960s, and enjoyed her biggest commercial success and political influence interpreting songs from that genre, like Violeta Parra’s “Gracias a La Vida” and Horacio Guarany’s “If the Singer Is Silenced.”

“Mercedes Sosa is synonymous with struggle, resistance and freedom,” the newspaper Clarín, Argentina’s leading daily, stated in an online tribute to the singer that will also be part of a special section to be published on Monday. “Traditional and modern, rural and worldly, rough and sophisticated, she was nothing more and nothing less than the most important Argentine singer in history.”

Haydée Mercedes Sosa was born in Tucumán, in northwestern Argentina, on July 9, 1935, the daughter of a day laborer and a washerwoman, and grew up in poverty. One of her grandfathers was a French immigrant, while the other was a Quechua-speaking Indian, and that mestizo background extended to her music, which drew upon and mixed both the Andean and the European song traditions.

Ms. Sosa’s career began at the age of 15 when, singing a song called “I’m Sad” under a pseudonym, she won an amateur hour competition on a local radio station. It was not until 1962, however that she recorded her first full-length album. Over the next decade, Ms. Sosa, also known as La Negra because of her dark hair and Indian features, became more and more popular throughout South America, thanks both to her resonant, expressive voice and to her reliance on songs that commented on the problems and issues of the day.

But after the military seized power in Argentina in 1976 and installed a murderous dictatorship, Ms. Sosa, who was publicly identified with parties of the left, began having political problems and found many of her songs banned from the radio. She complained of being harassed, followed and threatened by police, military and paramilitary forces, and after she was arrested in 1979 and released following international protests, she went into exile, first in Spain and then in France.

She was able to go back to Argentina in 1982, as the hold of the Armed Forces was weakening. But Ms. Sosa’s musical tastes had broadened during her years in exile, and after her return she became an early advocate of and mother figure for a new generation of singer-songwriters whose roots were more in rock ’n’ roll and international pop than traditional or folk music. She quickly added songs by future stars like Charly García and Fito Páez to her repertory, giving their careers and music both credibility and an important commercial boost. She continued to champion emerging young talent until her death.

Ms. Sosa was married to a musician, Manuel Óscar Matus, for eight years, and later lived with Pocho Mazzitelli, who was also her manager, until his death in 1978. Fabián Matus is her only child.

As her international renown expanded, Ms. Sosa seized on opportunities to collaborate with performers outside of Latin America, like Luciano Pavarotti, Sting, Andrea Bocelli, Nana Mouskouri and Joan Baez. After touring with Ms. Sosa in Europe in the late 1980s, Ms Baez described her as “monumental in stature, a brilliant singer with tremendous charisma who is both a voice and a persona.”

“I have never seen anything like her,” Ms. Baez added. “As far as performers go, she is simply the best.”

This year, Ms. Sosa released a two-CD set called “Cantora,” or “Singer,” that featured her in duets with more than a dozen Latin American and Spanish singer-songwriters, some of them young enough to be her grandchildren. The roster of participants is a who’s who of contemporary Latin American pop, including Shakira, Julieta Venegas, Caetano Veloso, Joan Manuel Serrat, Joaquín Sabina, Gustavo Cerati, Jorge Drexler and Calle 13. An accompanying DVD has also been released, but hopes for a tour had to be abandoned because of Ms. Sosa’s declining health.

“Cantora” has been nominated for three 2009 Latin Grammy Awards, including best album and best folk recording. Ms. Sosa, who recorded more than 70 albums and CDs, won the Latin Grammy for best folk recording three times, in 2000, 2003 and 2006, and has from the start been considered a favorite to win again at this year’s ceremony, which is to be held in Las Vegas in November.

In recognition of her status as “the nation’s most beloved voice,” as Clarín put it, on Sunday afternoon Ms. Sosa’s body was lying in state at the Argentine Congress building in Buenos Aires. According to Argentine press reports, her body is to be cremated on Monday in a private ceremony.

Outside the Congress building on Sunday, long lines of fans, ranging from artists who admired and copied her to the ordinary people who flocked to her concerts, waited to pay their last respects. “Thank you Negra, for your singing and your struggle,” read the placard one man held aloft.
More Articles in Arts » A version of this article appeared in print on October 5, 2009, on page A21 of the New York edition.

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

Ideas Immigrant Detention Include Converting Hotels and Building Models

Ideas Immigrant Detention Include Converting Hotels and Building Models
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: October 5, 2009- NY Times

The Obama administration is looking to convert hotels and nursing homes into immigration detention centers and to build two model detention centers from scratch as it tries to transform the way the government holds people it is seeking to deport.

These and other initiatives, described in an interview on Monday by Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, are part of the administration’s effort to revamp the much-criticized detention system, even as it expands the enforcement programs that send most people accused of immigration violations to jails and private prisons. The cost, she said, would be covered by greater efficiencies in the detention and removal system, which costs $2.4 billion annually to operate and holds about 380,000 people a year.

“The paradigm was wrong,” Ms. Napolitano said of the nation’s patchwork of rented jail space, which has more than tripled in size since 1995, largely through Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts for cells more restrictive, and expensive, than required for a population that is largely not dangerous. Among those in detention on Sept. 1, 51 percent were considered felons, and of those, 11 percent had committed violent crimes.

“Serious felons deserve to be in the prison model,” Ms. Napolitano said, “but there are others. There are women. There are children.”

These and other nonviolent people should be sorted and detained or supervised in ways appropriate to their level of danger or flight risk, she said. Her goal, she said, is “to make immigration detention more cohesive, accountable and relevant to the entire spectrum of detainees we are dealing with.”

Several of the initiatives Ms. Napolitano described, to be formally announced on Tuesday afternoon, are steps on a road outlined in August, when John Morton, the assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, announced an ambitious plan to transform the penal network into a “truly civil detention system.”

But the corrections expert he had put in charge of the overhaul, Dora B. Schriro, quit last month to become the corrections commissioner in New York City, after delivering a report on her eight-month top-to-bottom review of the system. The report had remained under wraps until now.

Dr. Schriro’s departure, and the delay in making her report public, dismayed many of the dozens of immigrant advocacy groups she consulted. Her 35-page report, provided to The New York Times after the interview on the condition that it not be posted on its Web site until Tuesday afternoon, calls for prompt attention to individual complaints about a lack of medical care, and “a credible grievance process, sustained in an environment free from intimidation and retaliation.”

In her interview, Ms. Napolitano said little about medical care but promised that within six months the Department of Homeland Security would “devise and implement” a classification system to better place people with medical or mental health needs in the right detention centers.

That vow puzzled some immigrant advocacy groups that deal with seriously ill detainees, including some who have died in federal custody after not getting proper treatment. The groups said they were concerned about the gap between announced plans to improve medical care and the actions of immigration officials.

Cheryl Little, the director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, pointed to the case of a woman she called Rosemarie, who, while being detained at the Glades County Detention Center, has suffered severe daily bleeding as a result of a fibroid tumor in her uterus.

“This has gone on for more than the five months she has been in ICE custody,” Ms. Little said. “Since June, we have tried everything to get her proper treatment. We started the requests at the local level and escalated up to D.H.S. headquarters. Ultimately we’ve had to file a lawsuit, and Rosemarie still hasn’t had the surgery she needs.”

Ms. Napolitano noted repeatedly that some of the initiatives she was announcing were “easier said than done.” Plans to speed the implementation of an online system for families and lawyers to locate detainees, for example, have been complicated by privacy issues and by the fact that many detainees share names and some stay in the system for only a couple of days, she said.

Likewise, though alternatives to detention are much cheaper than the jails under contract — $14 a day at most per person, compared with more than $100 a day — the overall cost is more complicated to calculate, she said.

About 19,000 noncitizens are supervised daily using alternatives like electronic bracelets, but their immigration cases are moved to the back of the line for adjudication. Homeland Security is working with the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, to modify that practice, she said, and this fall will submit a proposal to Congress to expand detention alternatives.

A request for proposals to build two model detention centers, one in California, will be issued within a year, said Mr. Morton, the ICE official. On Oct. 30, he said, he will solicit proposals and market research about converted hotels, nursing homes and other residential facilities that could serve as less expensive and less restrictive detention centers.

Mr. Morton said that on Sept. 18 the agency began housing nonviolent detainees, including new asylum seekers, at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Fla., near free legal help. But Charu al-Sahli, the statewide director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the Broward center, run for profit by GEO, a large prison company formerly known as Wackenhut, had been housing asylum seekers since 2003.

A former work-release center now surrounded by barbed wire, it is being expanded to house 700, up from 530.

“Even though it’s a nicer environment than a jail,” Ms. al-Sahli said, “these are still the people we would hold up for release, not just nicer detention.”

Editorial
Salvaging Immigration Detention
NY Times
Published: October 5, 2009

The Obama administration is unveiling on Tuesday an ambitious plan to repair the immigration detention system, a scandal-plagued mix of federal, state and local lockups that grew vastly and rotted under the enforcement crusade led by former President George W. Bush.

The homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, and John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, deserve credit for proposing to clean up a system notorious for shabby and abusive conditions, poor or nonexistent medical treatment and a trail of preventable injuries and deaths. The reforms, if they work and are maintained, would be a necessary corrective to years of willful neglect.

Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Morton say that they want to make the system more efficient, more accountable and less costly. The whole point of detaining immigrants, after all, is to quickly figure out which ones should be deported and to deport them, not to let them languish and certainly not to inflict punishment or undue suffering.

But immigration detention has strayed far from that basic mission. Tuesday’s announcement includes statements of “core principles” so fundamental that you have to wonder what they are replacing. Consider these:

• “ICE will detain aliens in settings commensurate with the risk of flight and danger they present.” That means the government has finally come to understand that detainees are not all violent criminals. They include young mothers and their children, asylum seekers, upright members of communities who, but for a lapsed visa or bureaucratic snafu, would not be in trouble with the law. Those who can make no case for staying here should be deported. But it’s gratifying to hear Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Morton acknowledge that nonviolent noncriminals — particularly those seeking refuge — should not be warehoused behind bars. They have promised to increase alternatives to detention, and we expect them to do that — even if it means a vast effort nationwide.

• “ICE will provide sound medical care.” This fundamental government responsibility has been shamefully neglected in centers around the country. The reform plan refers vaguely to a new “medical classification system” for detainees that should improve treatment and reduce unnecessary and disruptive medical transfers. ICE should make clear what that means and how that will help those who become sick or injured only after they are admitted and classified.

Perhaps the most important principle behind these reforms is the reassertion of central control over the sprawling, subcontracted system. The new plan asserts that central control is not only smarter and more efficient but also cheaper. “Each of these reforms,” the agency says, “are expected to be budget-neutral or result in cost savings through reduced reliance on contractors to perform key federal duties.”

Immigration detention is a prime example of things going bad when the government subcontracts a vital mission to poorly supervised outsiders. The Obama administration, like its predecessor, is under ferocious political pressure to be seen as tough on people who have been unfairly depicted as a fundamentally criminal, dangerous crowd. It is pushing back with an effort to be sane and proportionate. If the reforms announced on Tuesday work half as well as promised, the country will be closer to a detention system it does not have to be ashamed of.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 6, 2009, on page A30 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/opinion/06tue1.html
This and other news about immigration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

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

Letter to the Editor (NY Times) on Abuse of Women Prisoners

Letter to the Editor: Abuse of Female Prisoners
Published: October 2, 2009
To the Editor:
Re “Prisoners’ Rights” (editorial, Sept. 24):

You are right to call for legislation amending the Prison Litigation Reform Act. We sued on behalf of female prisoners in the New York State prison system who reported that they had been sexually assaulted by staff members, and have been appalled to spend the last six years litigating whether these 17 women — each of whom bravely complained of her abuse to departmental officials — exhausted their administrative remedies sufficiently to satisfy the law.

As a result, New York State has been able to avoid addressing the prison system’s longstanding failure to protect female prisoners from sexual abuse, allowing more and more women to be victimized.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act was sold in Congress as a measure against frivolous litigation, but has served in reality to prevent the redress of the most serious violations of prisoners’ human rights. The time has come for reform, or better yet, repeal of the law.

Lisa Freeman
Dori Lewis
New York, Sept. 24, 2009

The writers are lawyers with the Prisoners’ Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society and lawyers for the plaintiffs in Amador v. Andrews.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/opinion/lweb02prisoner.html?_r=3&pagewanted=print_

Here is the editorial:
Editorial
Prisoners’ Rights

Published: September 23, 2009

In 1996, Congress passed a law that made it much harder for inmates to challenge abusive treatment. It has contributed significantly to the bad conditions — including the desperate overcrowding — that prevail today. The law must be fixed.
Skip to next paragraph
Related
Times Topics: Prisons and Prisoners

In the name of clamping down on frivolous lawsuits, the Prison Reform Litigation Act barred prisoners from suing prisons and jails unless they could show that they had suffered a physical injury. Prison officials have used this requirement to block lawsuits challenging all sorts of horrific conditions, including sexual abuse.

The law also requires inmates to present their claims to prison officials before filing a suit. The prisons set the rules for those grievance procedures, notes Stephen Bright, the president of the Southern Center for Human Rights, and they have an incentive to make the rules as complicated as possible, so prisoners will not be able to sue. “That has become the main purpose of many grievance systems,” Mr. Bright told Congress last year.

In the last Congress, Representative Robert Scott, Democrat of Virginia, sponsored the Prison Abuse Remedies Act. It would have eliminated the physical injury requirement and made it harder for prison officials to get suits dismissed for failure to exhaust grievance procedures. It would have exempted juveniles, who are especially vulnerable to abuse, from the law’s restrictions.

The bill’s supporters need to try again this year. Conditions in the nation’s overcrowded prisons are becoming increasingly dangerous; recently, there have been major riots in California and Kentucky. Prisoner lawsuits are a way of reining in the worst abuses, which contribute to prison riots and other violence.

The main reason to pass the new law, though, is human decency. The only way to ensure that inmates are not mistreated is to guarantee them a fair opportunity to bring their legitimate complaints to court.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/opinion/24thu4.html?scp=1&sq=prisoners%E2%80%99%20rights&st=cse

Posted by lois at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2009

From National Advocates for Pregnant Women: Shackling Pregnant Prisoners in Labor Found to be Cruel by the Eighth Circuit

Dear Friends and Allies:

On Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit (the federal level appellate court that reviews decisions from federal district courts in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Minnesota, and Arkansas) issued the long-awaited decision in Nelson v. Norris. In this case, Shawanna Nelson argued that being forced to go through the final stages of labor with both legs shackled to her hospital bed was cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution. She argued that she should be allowed to sue the director of the prison and the guard who repeatedly re-shackled her legs to the bed. Ms. Nelson, an African-American woman, was incarcerated for non-violent offenses of credit card fraud and "hot checks."

In this historic federal court decision, the Court held that the guard was not immune from (protected from) suit because it has been clearly established by the decisions of the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts that shackling pregnant women in labor violates that 8th Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The Court suggested that the corrections officers should have known that the medical risks of shackling were "obvious" and that "the shackles interfered with Nelson's medical care, could be an obstacle in the event of a medical emergency, and caused unnecessary suffering at a time when Nelson would have likely been physically unable to flee because of the pain she was undergoing and the powerful contractions she was experiencing as her body worked to give birth."

Ms. Nelson originally filed this case in 2004. As the case progressed through the courts, she seemed to be losing. In 2008, three judges on the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that she had no right to sue. Recognizing the harm this decision would do, her counsel reached out to national advocacy groups for help in an effort to petition the court for re-hearing. Even though NAPW does not specialize in prison issues, we are recognized for our commitment to pregnant women and our extraordinary ability to mobilize leading public health and advocacy groups. With allies at the Rebecca Project for Human Rights and the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI), we were able to identify more than 35 organizations (see full list below) that wanted to be represented as amicus in this case. In a brief filed with the Kesten Law Firm in Arkansas, amici articulated both constitutional and international human rights arguments in support of the re-hearing and against the degrading and cruel practice of keeping pregnant women in labor in shackles. We did all this in less than a week.

This effort succeeded, garnering a decision by the court to re-hear the case en banc (with full court review). In any year, fewer than 100 cases in the entire federal system are granted rehearing with en banc review. This was a strong initial indication that our brief had made a difference. Not only that, but at oral argument one of the judges specifically referred to our brief, asking: "Based on the amicus submission filed in support of the petition for rehearing, wasn't Arkansas an outlier in the world's community in terms of treatment of pregnant prisoners?" Our answer is yes, and the Court of Appeals decision this Friday agreed.

That this decision is "historic," and that five of the eleven circuit court judges dissented, makes clear both how far we have come and how far we still have to go to ensure the civil and human rights of all pregnant women (the dissent in Friday's opinion saw no "clearly established" constitutional violations in shackling Ms. Nelson during labor.)

Congratulations to Ms. Nelson, her counsel, and all of the groups who sought reproductive justice and won in this case!

This victory makes clear that with persistence we can win.

Sincerely,
Lynn M. Paltrow
Executive Director
National Advocates for Pregnant Women
www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org
info@adovacatesforpregnantwomen.org

Amici on behalf of Shawanna Nelson:
National Perinatal Association
American College of Nurse Midwives
American Medical Women's Association
Citizens for Midwifery
Birthnet Inc.
The Bronx Health Link Inc.
California National Organization for Women
Center for Reproductive Rights
Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers
The D.C. Prisoners' Project of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs
Florida Institutional Legal Services Inc.
Justice Now
Law Students for Reproductive Justice
Legal Momentum
Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
Lutheran Services of Illinois Connections Program
Maternal and Child Health Access
The Ms. Foundation for Women
National Juvenile Justice Network
National Women's Health Network
National Women's Law Center
National Women's Prison Project
The New Mexico Women's Justice Project
The Northwest Women's Law Center
The National Organization for Women Foundation
Penal Reform International
Prison Legal News
Prisoners' Legal Services of New York
The Rebecca Project for Human Rights
SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective
Southwest Women's Law Center
Texas Jail Project
The Uptown People's Law Center
WORTH(Women on the Rise Telling Her Story)

Posted by lois at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)

October 01, 2009

Parole holds key to California prison overcrowding

Parole holds key to California prison overcrowding
Between 60,000 and 70,000 California parolees return to custody annually for violations, many of them minor. Reforms passed this month could help cut prisoner tallies.
By Michael B. Farrell | Staff writer

Tracy, calif.

Standing in a dim prison gymnasium that's been converted into a vast cell to house 300 inmates, Phillip Nelson talks about how he's spent much of his adult life incarcerated. He's been in and out of the Deuel Vocational Institution, a 1950s-era penitentiary that is now California's most overcrowded prison, partly due to parole violations since being convicted of receiving stolen property in the 1980s.

"I wouldn't be in prison if it weren't for the parole system," says Mr. Nelson, who was most recently sent back to prison for violating the terms of his parole because, he claims, he missed a "class."

Many of his fellow inmates, who sleep in cots lined up in rows stretching the width of the gym, also say they returned to prison for parole violations.

That is set to change. California has made sweeping changes to its parole system that experts and government officials say are key to reducing dangerously high populations in the nation's largest correctional system.

"Until we get parole under control, we can't get prison crowding under control," says Joan Petersilia, a law professor at Stanford University who has written extensively on California's parole system.

Between 60,000 and 70,000 California parolees return to custody annually for violations. They may have failed a drug test, gone missing, or even committed a new crime for which they were not prosecuted. They're sent back to a system that is so overcrowded and underserved that a federal judicial panel, describing conditions as "woefully and constitutionally inadequate," in August ordered the state to reduce its 170,000 prison population – double its capacity – by 40,000 inmates.

It was partly in response to that order that California lawmakers passed a prison reform bill this month.

Efforts to change the state's parole system have met fierce resistance for years from tough-on-crime advocates, says Ms. Petersilia. This time, too, concerns about relaxing parole rules were raised after the arrest of Phillip Garrido, a convicted sex offender and parolee, for the abduction of Jaycee Lee Dugard.

But the state now faces a perfect storm of problems surrounding its system of incarceration: a federal lawsuit, a fiscal crisis crippling its economy, and public opinion that has slowly been shifting away from rigid sentencing laws.

And in August, just four days after the judicial order, 55 inmates were injured and a dormitory burned down in a prison riot in Chino that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger blamed on overcrowding.

No parole for low-risk criminals

Following the passage of the prison reform bill Sept. 11, state prison officials submitted a more ambitious plan to reduce overcrowding to the federal judicial panel. Even this doesn't go as far as the court wanted in cutting inmates – just 18,000 over two years versus 40,000.

But the prison bill does introduce parole reforms that have been long called for.

The crux of these reforms lies in reserving active parole supervision for only the most violent offenders. Instead of a system in which even the least violent offenders are put under some sort of supervision, low-risk criminals will now be placed on "banked parole," which means they can still be subject to warrantless searches by police but are not under regular supervision.

Also, parolees will be less likely to be sent back to prison if they commit a "technical" violation, such as failing a drug test. Instead, many will be sent to community-based programs.

This will mean many fewer people cycling through California's prisons. That will reduce prison populations and almost halve the caseload for each parole officer, with the intent that officers can spend more time supervising the most dangerous prisoners.

"The centerpiece of this legislation is the parole reform that protects public safety," says Rachel Cameron, a Schwarzenegger spokeswoman.

Busting state budgets

California's reforms mirror other states' moves to rethink a tough-on-crime attitude first adopted by politicians – and demanded by the public – in the 1970s, attitudes that extended through the drug war of the 1990s.

The recession has highlighted the burden of overcrowded prisons nationwide. As budgets shrink, prison spending continues to swell as inmate populations grow. California spent about $10 billion to house roughly 170,000 inmates in 2008 – a 32 percent increase in spending since 2005.

States such as South Carolina, Ken­tucky, and Illinois have set up senten­cing commissions in the past few years to rethink tough sentencing laws that many say are at the root of overcrowding. (In California, those laws indirectly led to the adoption of universal parole supervision.)

Life-term sentences, for instance, quadrupled over the past 24 years, according to the Sentencing Project, a Washington group that advocates for prison reforms. That's largely due to "three strikes" laws that mandate 25 years to life for third-time felony offenders.

The fact that California's reforms don't include a sentencing commission suggests to some that state politicians are still hesitant to seem soft on crime. The prison bill originally held proposals for such a commission, as well as provisions to allow some offenders to serve the last year of their sentence under house arrest, but they were removed in an effort to win over Republicans, who said it went too easy on criminals.

Parole reforms are still opposed by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, a powerful force in state politics. "If hardened criminals are released early – without supervision or support – crime will increase and lives will be lost," said the association's acting president, Chuck Alexander, in a statement.

Dingy, crowded cells

Whether parole reform alone can fix the problem of prison overcrowding is unclear; what's not is that it desperately needs fixing.

At the Deuel prison in Tracy, 3,900 inmates crowd into a facility designed for 1,700. It's a vocational institute in name only. Gilbert Valenzuela, the public information officer, says that when he arrived 20 years ago, Deuel had a vocational shop where inmates could learn a trade. "[That] would have really benefited the inmates a lot and also the community," he says.

Chief Deputy Warden Ron Rackley acknowledges crowding has taken a toll on infrastructure and on staff and prisoners. In his airy office, seemingly a world away from the dingy cells, he says, "When you are sleeping with your head at the foot of another man, you tend to be irritable."

Jenaro Torres, a tattooed inmate with thick braids, is blunter: "At least in a cell you only have to deal with the other person," he says. "This isn't even made for living."•
September 27, 2009 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0929/p20s01-usgn.html

Posted by lois at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)

MI: State Senate Votes to Cut Some Prison Spending including closing some prisons and cutting food, education for prisoners

State Senate votes to cut prison spending
Associated Press • September 30, 2009
LANSING — The Republican-led Michigan Senate has voted to cut prison spending hours before a deadline to address a $2.8 billion state budget deficit.

The 5% cut approved 23-14 tonight would be met partly by completing a previously announced plan to close prisons and prison camps. Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s administration has been paroling more inmates to save money.

It costs more than $32,000 a year to incarcerate a prisoner. Lawmakers want the $2 billion Corrections Department to reduce costs by more than $800 per inmate by saving on things like prisoners’ prescription drugs, educational classes, legal services and food.

The bill already has passed the Democratic-controlled House. The Senate so far has put off votes letting budget bills take effect Thursday.
http://www.thetimesherald.com/article/20090930/NEWS05/90930019/0/news05/State-Senate-votes-to-cut-prison-spending

Posted by lois at 06:33 PM | Comments (0)

$74 million in Stimulus funding for New Navajo Jails

Stimulus Funding Is Earmarked For Detention Centers On Reservation
September 30th, 2009
By Tammy Gray-Searles

Nearly $74 million in federal stimulus funds will be used to construct three sorely needed adult detention centers on the Navajo Nation.
President Joe Shirley Jr. announced Sept. 23 that the Navajo Nation Division of Public Safety and judicial branch staff had successfully sought $73.3 million in funding for the new centers.

Although the three new centers do not fulfill Shirley’s goal of building 12 all-in-one justice centers across the Navajo Nation, they will replace aging facilities that pose health and safety risks. According to Shirley, nearly $500 million would be necessary to build the justice centers he envisioned, which would have included detention, court and police facilities.
The new centers to be built with the federal funding will include not only jail cells, but also offices for pre-trial services as well as space for inmate programs designed to reduce the incarceration rate.
Funding for the project comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and is also intended to provide construction jobs, as well as long-term work for corrections officers and other support personnel.
Although proposals were also submitted for detention centers in Dilkon and Kayenta, the facilities approved for construction will be located in Tuba City, Chinle and Ramah, N.M.
According to Shirley, $38.5 million will be used to construct a 48-bed detention center in Tuba City, $31 million for a 38-bed facility in Kayenta and $3.8 million for a small facility in Ramah.
In his announcement Shirley noted, “The centers will provide space for a range of culturally-appropriate services to inmates from pre-trial services, alternatives to incarceration and services while individuals are serving time in jail.”
Navajo Nation Public Safety Director Samson Cowboy explained that the old facilities in Tuba City and Chinle have already been demolished to make way for the new centers. The Ramah facility, which has presented a number of problems for law enforcement officials, will also be completely replaced.
Cowboy noted, “Originally designed as a holding facility, the Ramah jail has been used to house long-term inmates and has created severe overcrowding conditions. Other problems in the current facility concern structural deterioration. This includes a faulty roof and cracks in walls and no accessibility standards.”
President Shirley praised the projects and receipt of the funding, noting that construction of new jails would help the Navajo Nation’s entire criminal justice system.
“It’s a major accomplishment to at last receive this jail funding so we have a place to put perpetrators,” Shirley said. “Our law enforcement officers will finally see offenders they catch stay in jail.”
In addition to the jail funding, the Navajo Nation’s judicial branch was also awarded $450,000 for a Navajo Peacemaker Youth Education and Apprentice Program. According to Shirley, the program will “establish and use a curriculum for traditional teaching that blends Navajo peacemaking and western best practices and therapies for dispute resolution, violence prevention and community building in schools.”
The goal of the program is to prevent juvenile delinquency, and eventually reduce the number of youth and adults in the criminal justice system. It will include education for youth and adults on gangs, truancy, school dropouts, parenting, after school programs and will also include intervention programs for “court-involved youth.”

http://www.azjournal.com/news/126/ARTICLE/4361/2009-09-30.html

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

Study Highlights HIV/AIDS Challenge In American Prison System

"A new study by Dr. Nitika Pant Pai – an Assistant professor of Medicine and a medical scientist at the Research Institute of the MUHC – suggests the majority (76%) of inmates take their antiretroviral treatment (ART) intermittently once they leave prison, representing a higher risk to the general population."

Study Highlights HIV/AIDS Challenge In American Prison System

ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2009) — HIV/AIDS is up to five times more prevalent in American prisons than in the general population. Adherence to treatment programs can be strictly monitored in prison. However, once prisoners are released, medical monitoring becomes problematic.

A new study by Dr. Nitika Pant Pai – an Assistant professor of Medicine and a medical scientist at the Research Institute of the MUHC – suggests the majority (76%) of inmates take their antiretroviral treatment (ART) intermittently once they leave prison, representing a higher risk to the general population.

"Over a period of 9 years, we studied 512 HIV positive repeat offender inmates from the San Francisco County jail system," says Dr. Pant Pai. "Our results show that only 15% continuously took their ART between incarcerations or after their release." According to the study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, these figures highlight a lack of effectiveness on the part of medical monitoring services for these people outside prison.

"Taking ART intermittently is a problem because it depletes the CD4 count - the immunizing cells that fight infection – and increases the probability of developing resistance to the virus," says Dr. Pant Pai. "The risk for rapid disease progression becomes higher and presents a risk for public health transmission of HIV to their partners." According to the study those on intermittent therapy were 1.5 times more likely to have higher virus load than those on continuous therapy; those who never received therapy were 3 times more likely to have a higher VL.

"The optimal solution for treating patients and controlling the HIV/Aids epidemic in the USA is to ensure continuous therapy," explains Dr. Milton Estes, medical director of Forensic AIDS Project, San Francisco. "To achieve this we must work on various aspects of the prisoner's lives, such as marginalization, psychiatric problems and drug use, both before and after their departure from prison." According to Dr. Jacqueline Tulsky, senior author of the study, "This research highlights the need to examine ART policies inside and outside correctional settings with a view to establishing effective life long management of HIV in prisoners."

"This research is the first observational study in American prisons to evaluate the impact of antiretroviral treatment (ART) over a nine year period. It demonstrates the need for effective community transition and prison release programs to optimize ART given in jails," explains Dr. Pant Pai.

The article was co-authored by Dr. Nitika Pant Pai, Infection and Immunity Axis at the RI-MUHC, Dr. Milton Estes, Forensic AIDS Project, Department of Public Health, San Francisco, Dr. Erica E.M. Moodie, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McGill University, Dr. Arthur L Reingold, Epidemiology Division, University of California, Berkeley, USA, Dr. Jacqueline P Tulsky, University of California, San Francisco, Positive Health Program, San Francisco General Hospital, USA.

Funding was provided by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090929133246.htm

Posted by lois at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)

NM: Task force: State finances limit prison reform efforts

Task force: State finances limit prison reform efforts
By Trip Jennings 9/30/09
New Mexico Independent
New Mexico should study the merits of an early controlled release pilot project for non-violent women prisoners and establish re-entry councils across New Mexico, a governor-appointed prison reform task force has recommended.

The task force’s recommendations came in a report issued last week, but while suggesting the consideration of an early-release program and other initiatives, the report does not include beefing up the corrections department’s education programs due to state financial troubles.

The state corrections department’s education bureau has 27 vacancies out of 111 jobs, meaning up to a quarter of inmates might not be in classes, Gail Oliver, the agency’s former deputy cabinet secretary for re-entry, told the Independent recently.

Prison education programs are often cited as a major key to reducing recidivism, with some studies concluding that participants in educational programs are 10 percent to 20 percent less prone to re-offend.

Gov. Bill Richardson appointed the prison reform group last year with one overriding goal: to recommend ways to reduce the rate of recidivism, the rate of offenders who return to lockup within 36 months after their release.

At 47 percent, New Mexico’s recidivism rate is lower than the national average of 52 percent. But it was enough for the Richardson administration to raise alarms.

The same prison task force in a report issued last year emphasized the importance of education in reducing recidivism and urged the state to do more for offenders—even to the point of starting charter schools in prisons.

Noting the state’s moribund finances — the state faces a $440 million budgetary shortfall, the task force’s chairman, John Bigelow, in the report issued last week acknowledged that the “major challenge to the full implementation of reentry and prison reform initiatives is the ongoing economic crisis.” Bigelow goes on to note that its recommendations shouldn’t cost the state more money.

As is the case in corrections departments around the country, this department has experienced large funding cuts, is in the midst of a hiring freeze, and budget expansion requests for reentry and prison reform staffing are unlikely to be forthcoming in the near future.

While last week’s report does not specifically recommend adding staff to the agency’s education bureau, it does recommend reassigning “existing staff as necessary and appropriate to maximize intellectual and experiential resources and to ensure the success of reentry initiatives.”

Bigelow called the local re-entry councils the task force’s most important recommendation. Such councils would operate in key communities across the state and would help prison officials by providing information and resources “in the areas of alcohol and substance abuse, education, employment, family services, gender-specific programming and others, said a press release announcing the task force’s recommendations.

The Corrections Department will work to create the first of these councils in a community yet to be determined by the end of this fiscal year, which ends June 30.

Richardson praised the task force’s work.

“These recommendations are important steps to slamming shut the revolving door in our prisons and plugging the financial drain of a bulging inmate population,” Richardson said in a press release issued Tuesday. “They will help us sharpen our focus on keeping incarcerated individuals from reoffending after their release by helping them become productive citizens.”

Other actions the task force recommended were:

1. Create and support local Reentry Councils in collaboration with community

stakeholders throughout the state – Implement reentry council pilot project in community to be determined by the end of fiscal year 10.

2. Commence reentry and prison reform public education campaigns.

3. Enhance the role of faith-based services for formerly incarcerated persons, including statewide Adopt-a-Citizen program (“One Church – One Citizen”).

4. Increase availability of transitional and supportive living programs for formerly incarcerated persons.

5. Expand the use of drug courts as a means of decreasing prison census and encourage administrators to allow participants to access medication assisted treatment while under the jurisdiction of the court.

6. Increase the number of community mentoring programs for formerly incarcerated persons.

7. Direct programs and services to prisoners identified as high risk and high need by the COMPAS risk and needs assessment.

8. Discuss with the judiciary, the use of COMPAS risk and needs assessment in presentencing decision-making.

9. Examine, within the parameters of public safety, re-establishing work release programs for low custody prisoners.

10. Examine, within the parameters of public safety, implementing an early controlled release pilot project for non-violent women prisoners, and examine the use of earned meritorious deductions for parolees as allowed by existing statute.

11. Develop the Family Justice Project’s Reentry is Relational project to increase the number of sites and ensure project sustainability.
http://newmexicoindependent.com/37937/task-force-state-finances-limit-prison-reform-efforts

Posted by lois at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)

Erie Co NY: Justice Department files suit against jail and holding center alleging violations of constitutional rights of prisoners

Federal Government Files Suit Over Holding Center
Steve Cichon Reporting
scichon@entercom.com

The Justice Department issued the following news release:

WASHINGTON – The United States has filed a lawsuit alleging that conditions at the Erie County Holding Center, a pre-trial detention center in Buffalo, N.Y., and the Erie County Correctional Facility, a correctional facility in Alden, N.Y, routinely and systematically deprive inmates of constitutional rights, the Justice Department announced. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

The lawsuit follows a nearly two year investigation, the findings of which were detailed in a letter sent to Erie County Executive Chris Collins on July 15, 2009. That letter documented evidence of numerous constitutional violations, including staff-on-inmate violence; inmate-on-inmate violence; sexual misconduct between staff and inmates; sexual misconduct among inmates; an inadequate system to prevent suicide and self-injurious behavior; inadequate medical and mental health care; and serious deficiencies in environmental health and safety.

The department’s investigation revealed evidence of a number of serious violations of constitutional rights at the jail. For example, Erie County fails to protect inmates against known suicide risks and to provide constitutionally required mental health care. Since 2003, nine inmates have committed suicide, and at least 15 inmates have attempted to commit suicide or have taken steps that demonstrated suicidal ideation. Between 2007 and 2008, there were three suicides and at least 10 attempted suicides.

“Jails must provide for the basic medical and mental health needs of inmates and must keep them safe from attacks by other inmates and excessive force by staff. We have repeatedly sought the county’s cooperation in working toward an amicable resolution in this matter, and we regret that the county’s failure to cooperate compels us to litigate,” said Loretta King, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “In light of the severity of the conditions, including multiple suicides and beatings, we must take action to ensure that the constitutional rights of those persons detained at the facilities, many of whom have not been convicted of any crime, are protected.”

Kathleen M. Mehltretter, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York, stated, “Our purpose in bringing this action is to ensure that the facilities consistently maintain policies, procedures and practices that protect the well being and health of the inmates. Due to the county's lack of cooperation, we must seek court intervention to resolve these issues.”

The Civil Rights Division is authorized to conduct such investigations under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act of 1980 (CRIPA). This statute allows the federal government to identify and root out systemic abuses such as those discovered in Erie County. Under CRIPA, the Justice Department has investigated the conditions at nursing homes, mental health facilities, residences for persons with developmental disabilities, and juvenile justice facilities, as well as similar institutions.
Links to the suit can be found here:
http://www.wben.com/Federal-Government-Files-Suit-Over-Holding-Center/5335390

Posted by lois at 09:22 AM | Comments (0)

MA: uvenile life-without-parole sentence too harsh, reports says Advocates seek Mass. law change

Juvenile life-without-parole sentence too harsh, reports says
Advocates seek Mass. law change
By Jonathan Saltzman
Globe Staff / September 30, 2009

Despite its liberal reputation, Massachusetts has one of the harshest laws in the country for sentencing murderers as young as 14 to life in prison without parole, and many of the 57 people serving such mandatory sentences are first-time offenders, according to an advocacy group that wants them to become eligible for parole.

The Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts, in what it said was the first comprehensive study of the 1996 law that resulted in such sentences for first-degree murder, found that a disproportionate percentage of the children locked up for the rest of their lives are black. Many of the offenders were convicted with adult codefendants, some of whom got milder sentences and have been freed.

The report, which is scheduled to be released today, followed a two-year review of most of the cases in which children ages 14, 15, and 16 were tried in adult court and sentenced to life. The study says that penalties for juvenile murderers were inadequate in the 1980s but that the Legislature went too far when it passed the current law in response to what the center describes as overblown fears of young super predators.

The group wants Governor Deval Patrick and the Legislature to change the law to at least make juveniles convicted of first-degree murder eligible for parole after 15 years, as is true for people convicted of second-degree murder.

“Life-without-parole sentences may be an appropriate response to some adult crimes, especially in a state like Massachusetts that does not impose the death penalty,’’ the 33-page report said. “But the current law treats youths as young as 14 exactly like adults, regardless of their age, past conduct, level of participation in the crime, personal background, and potential for rehabilitation.’’

Geline W. Williams, executive director of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said yesterday she could not comment on the report until she reads it. But, “There’s no question that there are some juveniles who commit absolutely horrific crimes and have absolutely horrific records before they commit the ultimate crime of murder,’’ she said.

The two state lawmakers who chair the joint Committee on the Judiciary, Representative Eugene L. O’Flaherty and Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, said they were willing to reexamine the 1996 law.

O’Flaherty said a few notorious crimes can often result in “legislative overreaction, and usually it takes a few years to see the unforeseen consequences of getting too tough, too quickly, and not being smart about getting tough.’’

Massachusetts is one of at least 39 states with youths serving sentences of life without parole; about 2,500 inmates around the country serve such sentences. But only Massachusetts and Connecticut give adult courts exclusive jurisdiction over murder cases against children as young as 14 and then impose a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for all first-degree murder convictions, regardless of the circumstances, the report said.

Several states are considering changing their laws to give youth offenders an opportunity to earn parole, in part because scientific research into the difference between the adolescent and adult brain shows that teenagers often cannot appreciate the consequences of their actions.

Last year, after citing similar neuroscientific evidence, Human Rights Watch called sentences of life without parole for juveniles “cruel, unfair, and unnecessary.’’

Massachusetts enacted the current law, partly in response to insufficient juvenile court sentences in the 1980s, when the harshest punishment for a juvenile who was not transferred to an adult court - even for murder - was incarceration until 21.

In the 1990s, a number of widely publicized juvenile murder cases prompted the Legislature to mandate that all juveniles charged with first- or second-degree murder be tried in adult court and that conviction for first-degree murder result in an automatic sentence of life without parole.

One of those cases involved Edward S. O’Brien, the 15-year-old who stabbed his best friend’s mother 98 times across the street from his Somerville home in 1995. After two years of hearings and intervention by the state’s highest court, O’Brien was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole.

The Children’s Law Center contends that crime rates do not justify such harsh sentences. Homicide rates for Massachusetts youth under 18 peaked in 1992.

Since 1998, the homicide rate among adolescents has been lower than it was 30 years ago.

The center, which reviewed in detail 46 of the 57 juvenile murderers serving life sentences without parole, said 41 percent had no prior record. Forty percent of the offenders had been convicted along with adult defendants, but many of the adults got lighter sentences.

“Frequently, the adults who are actually the primary actors [in the murders] and are in possession of the knowledge that matters are in a better position to offer information in exchange for better treatment from prosecutors,’’ said Lia Monahon, the lawyer for the center who wrote the report.

Blacks make up 47 percent of the juveniles sentenced to life without parole but account for less than 7 percent of children under 18 in Massachusetts, said the report. Monahon said the disparity could reflect bias in the criminal justice system.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/30/juvenile_life_without_parole_sentence_too_harsh_reports_says/?page=full
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

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