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December 31, 2009

Treatment of Youths in New York Prisons Spurs Suit

Treatment of Youths in New York Prisons Spurs Suit
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: December 30, 2009
NY Times

ALBANY — Youths detained in some of New York’s juvenile prisons have suffered bruises, cuts and a host of other injuries from aggressive physical restraining practices that violate their legal and constitutional rights, according to a federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

The class-action suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan on behalf of roughly 500 youths in 10 of the prisons, also accuses the Office of Children and Family Services, the state agency that runs the facilities, of failing to provide adequate mental health services

The legal claim follows two withering reports from the United States Department of Justice and a state task force that portrayed the state’s juvenile justice system as so riddled with problems that it needed a complete overhaul.

The suit seeks an injunction that would sharply limit the use of force by youth counselors and require the state to provide the youths with more treatment for mental health problems, which affect a vast majority of those in custody.

The lawyers are also seeking unspecified monetary damages from employees who, the suit alleges, abused or mistreated eight youths currently in the custody of the Office of Children and Family Services.

The employees are identified only as John Does Nos. 1 through 47 and the eight youngsters by their initials. The suit charges that at least some of the children were threatened with retaliation if they made any complaints to the workers’ superiors.

The lawsuit was filed by the Legal Aid Society of New York City, which provides legal representation to a vast majority of juveniles who end up in the state’s youth prisons. Besides the employees, the suit names Gladys Carrión, the agency’s commissioner.

“Once sent to an O.C.F.S. facility, these children find themselves far from their families, behind barbed wire,” said Tamara A. Steckler, a Legal Aid lawyer working on the lawsuit. “They need a helping hand to meet their mental health and other service needs, but instead they get the back of the hand when they are subjected to the excessive use of force or are denied mental health services.”

The state youth prisons are already operating under the threat of a federal takeover as state officials negotiate with the Department of Justice over a plan to fix the system’s worst problems: the overuse of physical force, inadequate psychological and drug abuse counseling, and substandard education.

Ms. Carrión issued new rules limiting the use of force against youths soon after she took office in 2007, and has since pushed to shut many of the prisons where violence had been a significant problem. But she has faced resistance — and sometimes sharp criticism — from public employees’ unions, which say that she has understated the risks those policies pose to workers.

A spokesman for Ms. Carrión said the agency had not yet received a copy of the lawsuit and could not comment.

A report issued by federal investigators in August found that youths in four facilities were routinely subjected to inappropriate force in violation of state rules, resulting in dozens of serious injuries. This month, a state task force appointed by Gov. David A. Paterson reported that similar problems were rife throughout the system, which houses roughly 1,000 youths in 28 prisons, and recommended a far-reaching overhaul.

The new lawsuit focuses on two intake centers for all youths placed in O.C.F.S. custody, one residential center for girls and seven “limited secure” facilities, the youth equivalent of a medium-security prison.

Legal Aid lawyers said they had filed the suit in part because the state had not moved quickly enough to change the system and because they were concerned that any settlement with the Department of Justice would remedy conditions only at the four worst prisons. “The lawsuit is always our last resort,” Ms. Steckler said. “But children are being imminently harmed, and the relief is needed now.”
A version of this article appeared in print on December 31, 2009, on page A23 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/nyregion/31juvenile.html?_r=1

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

December 30, 2009

CT: Rell Pushing Ahead With Plan For Detention Center

Rell Pushing Ahead With Plan For Detention Center
By ARIELLE LEVIN BECKER
December 30, 2009

Plans to build a girls' juvenile detention center in Bridgeport are back on, Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced Tuesday, two months after her administration temporarily withdrew the proposal amid criticism from the city's legislative delegation.

The State Bond Commission is expected to approve $15 million for the facility's design and construction when it meets Jan. 8, Rell said in a statement Tuesday.

The proposed 36,000-square-foot, 24-bed facility is meant for girls 18 and under who have been convicted of delinquent offenses. The state has not had a secure facility for girls since Long Lane School in Middletown closed in 2003. Since then, some girls have been confined at York Correctional Institution for adult women, a situation that child welfare officials have decried.

Plans to locate the detention center on state-owned land in Bridgeport have angered area residents and lawmakers, who say they were kept in the dark about the proposal and who feel that the facility should not be built in a residential area.

Opponents say they will fight the decision. They plan to form a "De-Rail The Jail" committee, demand a meeting with Rell, and lobby the bond commission. It is unclear how much recourse they have, however. Rell is chairwoman of the bond commission and controls its agenda.

Rell initially announced plans for the facility in October in advance of a scheduled bond commission vote. After lawmakers raised objections and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said postponing action would help, Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele withdrew all items related to the project from the bond commission's agenda. At the time, Rell's budget director, Robert Genuario, said the delay would allow commissioners to review environmental and other concerns.

On Tuesday, Department of Children and Families spokesman Gary Kleeblatt said the decision to move ahead with the proposal followed meetings last month with Bridgeport residents and service providers, which he said allowed the department to describe the program and point out reasons for picking Bridgeport: The site is close to highways and public transportation and is within a half hour of New Haven and Waterbury.

Kleeblatt said the department would create an advisory committee of residents and city officials to get input on construction, how to minimize impact on neighbors, and operations of the facility.

"We're convinced that this is a much needed program located in the most suitable spot," he said.

But state Rep. Christopher Caruso, D-Bridgeport, questioned the suitability of putting the detention center in a dense residential area. He blasted the plan as "arrogance and a total disregard for the people who live in Bridgeport."

"It's disturbing to me because I wonder if [Rell] would use the same determination, the same energy, the same zeal if this was being located to a suburban community," he said. "It just underscores once again how cities are treated by this state. We already have a juvenile facility in Bridgeport. We already have a major jail in the city of Bridgeport. And here the state wants to put another jail and doesn't really care what the people have to say."

Bridgeport resident Joel Bing, who said he lives within 400 feet of the proposed site, is organizing neighbors against the plan. He said the meeting with state officials seemed to make little difference, even though about 250 people showed up, residents voiced opposition and some, including the mayor, have offered alternatives.

"Why Bridgeport?" he asked. "Why in a residential area? There's so many other places it could go."

A statement released by Rell's office said other state-owned sites were considered, but the Bridgeport parcel met "important criteria":

•It is at the junction of Routes 8 and 15 and is on a bus line, making it accessible to families.

•The site requires little prep work.

•The parcel is big enough to accommodate the facility.

In October, at Caruso's request, Blumenthal wrote to Genuario, asking that he review the conclusion by state public works officials that the proposed facility would not require an environmental impact statement. Blumenthal also wrote that it would be advisable to provide community forums and outreach before picking a site and starting a project, even if not legally required.

On Tuesday, Blumenthal said he would wait to take a position on the proposal.

"I have long favored the concept of a facility serving girls who need this assistance, but I will consult with local leaders, community representatives, citizens and other state officials before making a decision on this proposal," Blumenthal said in a written statement.

State Child Advocate Jeanne Milstein said the state needs a secure facility for girls, no matter where it is built. But this situation could have been avoided if DCF had a facility ready when Long Lane closed and other treatment alternatives, she said.

"The losers here are the girls," she said.

Milstein said that she is concerned about how families would get to Bridgeport, since it is not in a central part of the state, and said that DCF should have communicated better with the neighbors.

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-girls-detention-bridgeport-1.artdec30,0,5897383.story

Posted by lois at 04:39 PM | Comments (0)

VA & PA: Fairfax sheriff opposes Kaine's proposal to accept 1,000 PA prisoners which will cause more over crowding in county jails

Fairfax sheriff opposes Kaine's prison budget proposal
Anita Kumar
Washington Post
Here's another person that isn't all that fond of at least one aspect of Gov. Tim Kaine's recently introduced budget proposal.

Fairfax County Sheriff Stan G. Barry said the outgoing Democratic governor's plan to rent 1,000 prison beds to other states to raise money is unfair to local sheriffs who are left stuck housing hundreds of state inmates in already crowded local jails waiting to be moved. "I'm very concerned,'' he said. "We already have an additional burden."

The Department of Corrections, the largest agency in the state, with more than 10,000 employees, expects to make up for $20 million in budget cuts by taking in 1,000 inmates from Pennsylvania sometime before February.

Barry said he understands that the state needs the money, but he called Kaine's plan a "shell game'' because the state is simply shifting the burden to local governments. As of last week, he said, the Fairfax jail was housing 135 inmate for the state (out of a total of 1,300).

Last summer, Kaine (D) also proposed accepting out-of-state prisoners, but abruptly halted the plan when sheriffs from the state's most populous areas of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads objected. Virginia Beach Sheriff Paul J. Lanteigne sued the state.

Virginia pays sheriffs $14 a day to house each state inmate (though the actual cost can be as high as $125) while collecting much more from other states to house their prisoners. The agreement with Pennsylvania will bring in about $62 a day, according to Larry Traylor, a spokesman at the Department of Corrections.

Traylor said his department would probably have to lay off employees or close facilities if not for the out-of-state prisoners. "The current economic downturn has affected all of us and we continue to look for solutions that will benefit the Commonwealth,'' he said.

As of last week, the state was housing 309 inmates from Wyoming, the Virgin Islands and from Hawaii, Traylor said. Virginia houses a total of 31,000 inmates at 44 facilities.

Traylor said he's unaware of any specific concerns by local or regional jails, and that the overall number of state inmates at local jails have been reduced by almost 500 since May 2008. He said about 230 state inmates have actually been transferred back to local jails to rent out otherwise empty beds.

Virginia began housing inmates from other states in 1998 after the state built and expanded a dozen prisons after abolishing parole and enacting longer sentences for certain crimes.

Many human rights groups oppose the practice, arguing that the inmates suffer from a loss of training, rehabilitation and contact with family and friends. They also caution that moving offenders to a prison with new rules and with different types of inmates can lead to violence, as shown by riots in other prisons across the nation after out-of-state prisoners moved in.

Virginia largely abandoned the practice in 2004, saying the space was needed for a growing inmate population, several years after two Connecticut inmates died and human rights groups lodged complaints of excessive force.

Sheriffs have complained for at least three decades about the large number of state inmates in local jails, which are supposed to house defendants awaiting trial and those sentenced for minor crimes. They argue that the more dangerous inmates further crowd their jails and that the jails provide less access to rehabilitative and educational services.

Many sheriffs, including in Fairfax and Arlington counties, have sued the state to force officials to act. State law requires that felons sentenced to at least one year behind bars get transferred from local jails to state prisons within 60 days.

Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell (R) outright opposes Kaine's proposed tax increase, but he declined to take a position on most of the governor's proposed budget cuts and other revenues sources except to criticize trims to local law enforcement.

Under Kaine's budget, sheriffs and local constitutional officiers will lose $270.5 million over the two years and local police will lose $73 million over two years.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2009/12/post_508.html

Posted by lois at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2009

Southern Injustice. Convicted of murder in a deeply flawed trial, Herman Wallace has spent nearly 37 years in solitary confinement. Will new evidence finally lead to his release?

Mother Jones
Southern Injustice
Convicted of murder in a deeply flawed trial, Herman Wallace has spent nearly 37 years in solitary confinement. Will new evidence finally lead to his release?

By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella | Tue Dec. 29, 2009 4:00 AM PST

For the better part of four decades, Victory Wallace, 70, has made a monthly trip from New Orleans to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola to visit her brother Herman, who just turned 68. The 140-mile journey has shades of Heart of Darkness, following the course of the Mississippi River to a remote prison colony from which most inmates never return. At the dark heart of this former slave plantation, Herman Wallace has lived most of the past 37 years in solitary confinement, imprisoned alone for 23 hours a day in a 6-by-9-foot cell.

When Herman was moved in the spring of 2009 from Angola to Hunt Correctional Center near Baton Rouge, Vickie's trip got a bit shorter. But what she found when she arrived on her most recent visit was even worse than usual. Because of a disciplinary infraction, Herman had been placed in "extended administrative lockdown." That meant Vickie was denied a contact visit, and was permitted to see her brother only through a glass partition as they spoke over a telephone. His hands were shackled to the table. (Other recent visitors reported that the shackles made it hard for him to hold the phone to his ear, while his hearing loss made communication over the telephone difficult.) Herman complained to Vickie that he was cold, and she thought that he had lost weight. His spirits, she said, were not the best.

For years, Herman Wallace's hopes have ridden on two cases that are inching their way through the courts—one challenging his conviction, the other challenging his long-term solitary confinement. Now, after a decade of starts and stops, obstacles and delays, both cases are advancing toward conclusions that will determine how he spends what's left of his life.

With the exception of a few brief intervals, Wallace has been living in lockdown since 1972, when he was accused of murdering a young Angola prison guard. Along with another inmate named Albert Woodfox, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life without parole. Wallace, Woodfox, and a third longtime prisoner called Robert King—who are known as the Angola 3—are also plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit alleging that their unparalleled time in solitary violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The case [1]—which could potentially affect the estimated 25,000 American prisoners living in long-term lockdown—is expected to come to trial in the US District Court in Baton Rouge in early 2010.

Since 1990, Wallace has also been appealing his criminal conviction in the Louisiana state courts. He believes that he was targeted for the guard's murder because of his involvement in Angola's chapter of the Black Panther Party, which had been organizing against conditions in what was then known as "the bloodiest prison in the South." Wallace contends that the prosecution's witnesses—all of them fellow Angola prisoners—were coached, bribed, coerced, or threatened into giving false testimony against him by prison employees bent on revenge. "If they could have hung and burned the guys involved they would have," one inmate witness later told Wallace's lawyers. "But there was too much light on the situation." Documents and testimony that have surfaced since the trial show that prosecutors knew a good part of their case was unreliable or manufactured. The state's own judicial commissioner, assigned to study the case in 2006, recommended that Wallace's conviction be overturned. Even the prison guard's widow has publicly stated that she now doubts [2] the guilt of the two men convicted of her husband's murder, and still wants to see his killers brought to justice. But the Louisiana courts, one after another, have rejected his appeal, providing no reasons for their decisions.

Now, Wallace has turned to the federal courts. On December 4, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus—basically, a plea for a reversal of his wrongful conviction. It is his last chance to win a new trial, and possibly his freedom. On his side are a team of skilled pro-bono attorneys who have assembled a brief full of evidence that was hidden or suppressed 35 years ago during his original trial. Against him is an increasingly conservative federal court system, along with two of the most powerful figures in Louisiana criminal justice: Angola's famous warden, Burl Cain, and the state's ambitious attorney general, James "Buddy" Caldwell, both of whom appear determined to fight to the bitter end to ensure that Herman Wallace never again sees the light of day.

The incident that condemned Herman Wallace to a life in lockdown took place at a particularly explosive time in Angola's notoriously violent history. In the early 1970s, Louisiana's 5,000-man penitentiary was the nation's largest prison; it was also notorious for its high rates of murder, rape, and assault. The former slave plantation's 18,000 acres were farmed by prisoners working up to 96 hours a week, overseen by armed inmate guards, known as "trusties." The trusties also oversaw gambling, drug-dealing, and a monstrous system of sexual slavery—sanctioned by some of the all-white corrections officers, who were referred to by staff and inmates alike as "freemen."

"Angola in those days was life and death, buying and selling people, and the officers knew it was happening," Howard Baker, a prisoner who testified at Wallace's trial, stated in a subsequent affidavit. "There was a goon squad of guards. If they came after you, you could get anything from a beating to being killed, and they'd call it being killed by trying to escape." In addition, Baker said, "Physical conditions were about as bad as you can get: hot, dirty, overcrowded. Weapons were everywhere. You could shake down for weapons one night and have just as many the next. I saw as many as four stabbings a week, week after week."

It was also a time of simmering tensions between longtime employees—many of whom had grown up in the staff community on the prison's grounds—and Angola's new "reformist" leadership. A few years earlier, Warden C. Murray Henderson and Deputy Warden Lloyd Hoyle had been brought in from out of state to "clean up Angola." As Wallace's habeas petition states:

Their arrival at Angola disrupted [the Louisiana State Penitentiary's] existing leadership, most of whom had worked their way up the ranks at Angola. Associate Warden Hayden Dees and the old-guard leadership notably resisted their reform efforts, particularly those aimed at ending racial segregation and those directed at according inmates in extended lockdown, known as CCR (closed cell restriction), with due process. Associate Warden Dees in particular believed that "a certain type of militant or revolutionary inmate, maybe even a communist type," should remain under lockdown conditions at all times; he wanted nothing to do with documenting decisions about who went into lockdown and for how long in compliance with federal court requirements.

Among the "militant" inmates were Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, both serving time for armed robbery. After they arrived at Angola they became active members of the prison's chapter of the Black Panther Party. This cadre of inmates organized petitions and hunger strikes to protest the horrendous conditions at the prison, and helped new inmates, known as "fresh fish," protect themselves from sexual assault and enslavement. For their efforts, some of the Panthers were placed in solitary confinement to suppress what was viewed as a threat to prison authority.

On April 17, 1972, 23-year-old guard Brent Miller was found in front of an inmate dormitory, stabbed 32 times. Investigators initially had no suspects, but they soon zeroed in on the activists. In a written description [3] [PDF] of his case, Wallace stated that Hayden Dees, the associate warden, "went well out of his way to tie us in with the death for his own political gain. He claimed that Henderson and Hoyle were responsible for Miller's death by releasing the 'militants' (he linked me and Woodfox to those released)."

Statements from Henderson and Hoyle confirm that some of the guards considered them complicit in the killing. Three days later, Lloyd Hoyle, the deputy warden, was called from home to a meeting of staff members, who accused him of turning loose Miller's murderers. Hoyle was assaulted and pushed through a plate glass door, and nearly bled to death before one of the guards decided to drive him to the hospital.

Wallace was thrown into lockdown the day of Brent Miller's murder. Within a few days, officials had obtained the evidence they needed to charge Wallace and three other so-called "militants"—Woodfox, Chester Jackson, and Gilbert Montegut—with the crime. They were indicted by an all-white, all-male grand jury in nearby St. Francisville, Louisiana, which was home to many prison staff, their families, and friends.

A river town near the Mississippi border, St. Francisville proudly advertises itself as plantation country. It was also Klan country, and until the civil rights movement and the FBI arrived in the early 1960s, no African American had registered to vote in the parish in more than 60 years. The defendants in the Miller case contested the indictment on the grounds that women and blacks had been systematically excluded from the jury pool. They were subsequently re-indicted by another grand jury, chosen through "the same or substantially the same grand jury selection procedures," according to Wallace's current brief.

Albert Woodfox was convicted of Miller's murder in a separate trial in 1973. After being granted a change of venue, the three remaining defendants—Wallace, Jackson, and Montegut—stood trial in East Baton Rouge in January 1974—before yet another all-white, all-male jury.
The prosecutors in the case presented no physical evidence to tie the three men to the crime. Although bloody fingerprints had been found near the guard's body, they matched none of the defendants'. According to evidence presented in Wallace's petition, no effort was made to match them to any of the 5,000 other inmate prints on file. A bloody knife, likewise, could not be connected to any of the men on trial. The evidence against them consisted entirely of testimony by other Angola prisoners obtained under highly dubious circumstances.

The prosecution's star witness was Hezekiah Brown, whose eyewitness testimony was indispensible to its case. An aging prisoner serving a life sentence for aggravated rape, Brown said that he had been in the dormitory on the morning of Brent Miller's death, and had seen the defendants stab the guard repeatedly. Former Angola prisoners have said in interviews that Brown was a notorious snitch. But it would be nearly 25 years before proof emerged [4] showing just what happened behind the scenes to secure his testimony.

In 1998, lawyers for Wallace's co-defendant, Albert Woodfox, succeeded in obtaining previously suppressed witness statements, taped interviews, and other documents from the murder investigation carried out by prison officials, the county sheriff's office, and local prosecutors. These materials, supplemented by testimony by Warden Henderson and others, show that Hezekiah Brown was encouraged, if not coerced, to identify the prisoners already chosen as suspects. Henderson admitted he promised to seek a pardon for the lifer if Brown helped them "crack the case." A series of letters to judges, pardon board members, and the secretary of corrections shows that Warden Henderson kept his word, though it would be more than 10 years before Brown's pardon came through. In the meantime, Brown benefitted from an array of special favors, including reassignment to a private room at the low-security "dog pen" where the prison's bloodhounds were trained and a carton of cigarettes, the crucial prison currency, every week.

Another inmate witness, Joseph Richey, placed Wallace and the others at the scene of the crime; he was later found to be a schizophrenic who was heavily medicated with Thorazine. After the trial, Richey was transferred to a plum job at the governor's mansion and given weekend furloughs (during which he robbed several banks). Previously suppressed documents, obtained through the discovery process by Albert Woodfox's lawyers in 1998, show that Angola officials didn't believe Richey had seen anything. The state possessed these documents at the time of Wallace's trial, and presented his possibly perjured testimony nonetheless.

Howard Baker, yet another prisoner who testified at Wallace's trial, has since sworn an affidavit completely recanting his testimony. Baker had initially been a suspect in Miller's murder, and may have been seeking to protect himself. In the affidavit, Baker states:

So I looked at the situation like this, I got 60 something years, and I got a chance to help myself – so I was going to do something to help me get out of this cesspool….So, I gave a statement on 10/16/72, to Warden Dees, which was a lie. And my testimony based on that statement was a lie. I really thought this would help me because Dees told me my statement would get my sentence commuted….It was all over the penitentiary that they [Wallace and Woodfox] were the ones that administration thought was involved. So I gave a statement.

The state played its ace-in-the-hole in the middle of the trial, when one of the four co-defendants walked in after a recess and sat down at the prosecution's table. Chester Jackson had turned state's witness, and would now testify against the others. The defense attorney, Charles Garretson, later testified that he "was in a complete state of shock…it took everything I could glean together to maintain professionalism and sanity and intelligence to go forward after this lunch break." The court gave him less than 30 minutes to prepare to cross-examine his own former client. Although he denied it on the stand, Jackson had clearly cut a deal; shortly after the trial, he would plead guilty to manslaughter. Garretson later said that he felt he was "the only one in the courthouse that didn't know this. I felt that—I know all the deputies knew it. I felt the judge knew it."

These allegations of widespread and deliberate suppression of evidence form the core of Herman Wallace's current appeal. His habeas petition states, "Mr. Wallace's defense strategy was to show that the State's inmate witnesses must be either mistaken or lying. Although the State possessed precisely the information Mr. Wallace's defense counsel sought—material which would show that the State's witnesses lacked credibility and the State's prosecution lacked integrity—the State disclosed none of it." This withholding of evidence, Wallace says, violated his constitutional right to due process.

Wallace's remaining co-defendant, Gilbert Montegut, had a prison guard to confirm his alibi, and was acquitted. Herman Wallace was convicted of the murder. His conviction happened to fall during a brief period when the Supreme Court had effectively struck down capital punishment—had it come at any other time, Wallace would likely have received a death sentence. Instead, he got life without parole and was placed in lockdown, along with Woodfox. The reason given for their confinement in solitary was the nature of the crime—the murder of a guard, which rendered them a threat to others in the prison community. Both Wallace and Woodfox remain there, ostensibly on the same grounds, 35 years later.

If the story of Herman Wallace's trial reads like a study in Southern justice, its sequel shows what has changed in Louisiana in the intervening decades—and what has remained the same. Wallace and Woodfox now have a small legion of active supporters and an impressive team of lawyers renowned for their death penalty appeals, including Nick Trenticosta, director of the Center for Equal Justice, in New Orleans, and George Kendall at the pro bono unit of Squire Sanders & Dempsey in New York. But even good lawyers can't vitiate the Louisiana justice system's apparent determination to keep Wallace and Woodfox locked up and locked down, for reasons that appear to go far beyond the facts of the 1972 murder of Brent Miller.

The two men believe that they were originally targeted for the murder because their political beliefs and activism represented a threat to the absolute power of prison authorities. Statements from Angola's current warden, Burl Cain, suggest they are being kept permanently in solitary for much the same reason. Cain has been widely celebrated [5] for "transforming" Angola, largely through the institution of Christian "moral rehabilitation," which he sees as the only path to redemption for the sinners in his charge. There is no room, either in Cain's worldview or on his prison plantation, for people who question authority like Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have.

In a 2008 deposition, Cain declared, "The prison operates with one authentic authoritarian figure, the warden and the rule book." He also said that Woodfox's lack of deference made him a dangerous man: "The thing about him is that he wants to demonstrate. He wants to organize. He wants to be defiant. He wants to show to others that he is powerful and strong."

Woodfox's lawyers have pointed out that he had no record of violence and few disciplinary infractions in the past 20 years. They documented a similar record for Wallace in a 2006 deposition [6] [PDF]: "Mr. Wallace's most recent disciplinary report for institutional violence occurred some 22 years ago," it said, and in recent years, Wallace's handful of infractions included "possessing handmade earrings and a poem, 'A Defying Voice'"; "wearing a handmade necklace with a black fist"; and "possessing the publication, It's About Time, a Black Panther publication 16 containing articles/photos on the Angola three, characterized as, quote, 'racist literature' by security personnel." His most recent disciplinary report "was December 2005, when he was found in the possession of excess number of postage stamps, for which he received thirty days cell confinement."

But Cain believes "It's not a matter of write-ups. It's a matter of attitude and what you are." And to Cain, what Woodfox and Wallace are and will always be is Black Panthers. Associate Warden Hayden Dees previously said that "a certain type of militant or revolutionary inmate, maybe even a communist type" was dangerous enough to be kept in permanent lockdown. In 2008, Cain said that Woodfox belongs in solitary because "I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all kind of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the blacks chasing after them."

Wallace says [7] that Cain at least once offered to release the two men into the general population if they renounced their political views and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. He refused. Cain declared that "Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace is locked in time with that Black Panther revolutionary actions they were doing way back when…And that's still their motive and that's still their goal. And from that, there's been no rehabilitation."

Louisiana's attorney general, Buddy Caldwell, also appears determined to keep the two men in prison at all costs—a vow that he will likely try to uphold even if Wallace's case succeeds in federal court. Caldwell's resolve has already been tested in the case of Woodfox: When a federal judge overturned Woodfox's conviction in 2008 and ordered him released on bail, the attorney general sprang into action—filing an emergency motion to keep him behind bars, sending fearmongering emails to the community where Woodfox was planning to stay with his niece, and telling the press that he was "the most dangerous person on the planet." Persuaded by Caldwell's plea and Cain's testimony about his dangerous nature, the federal appeals court granted the motion and denied Woodfox bail; he remains in lockdown, awaiting his appeal. In a recent letter, Wallace wrote of Caldwell, "Like most prosecutors, he will never admit he made a mistake, he's fighting to keep us imprisoned. The reputation of the Louisiana justice system is at stake here. If we gain our freedom it would expose the corruption that is rampant throughout the system."

The fate of both Wallace and Woodfox ultimately lies in the hands of the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans—and here, they are worse off than they might have been 40 years ago. In the 1950s and 1960s, a small group of Fifth Circuit judges—mostly Southern-bred moderate Republicans—won a reputation [8] for advancing civil rights and especially school desegregation. But today the Fifth Circuit, which covers Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, is among the most ideologically conservative of the federal appeals courts. It is notable for its overburdened docket and for its hostility to appeals from defendants in capital cases, including claims based on faulty prosecution and suppressed evidence. In particular, the Fifth Circuit has kept the gurneys rolling in Texas' busy execution chamber. The court has even been reprimanded by the US Supreme Court, itself no friend to death row inmates: In June 2004, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote [9] that in handing down death penalty rulings, the Fifth Circuit was doing no more than "paying lip service to principles" of appellate law.

It will almost certainly be years before Herman Wallace's criminal appeal is finally resolved. While their case is exceptional, Wallace, now 68, and Woodfox, 62, are in certain respects emblematic of an entire generation of prisoners who came of age in a time of lengthening sentences and tightening parole restrictions—spared execution to live out their lives in prison, sometimes in complete isolation. "I'm in this cell or in the hall 24/7, 23 hours in the cell, one hour on the hall,'' he wrote in a letter earlier this year. "Either way you look at it I am locked up with no contact with any others. I use stacks of books for exercise and thereafter I am either writing or reading.'' Wallace keeps himself together by concentrating on his case. "I have no time for foolishness," his letter continues. "I am in a struggle against the state of Louisiana on two strategic fronts, and hear me when I tell you they are not fighting fair."

Perhaps the ultimate irony of Woodfox and Wallace's predicament is that while their political beliefs may have doomed them to a life in lockdown, these same beliefs have also given them the strength to endure it. In his New Yorker piece on solitary confinement as torture, Atul Gawande describes how frequently prisoners have mentally and physically disintegrated in such conditions. What is remarkable about Wallace and Woodfox is how lucid and resolute they remain. They stay in close touch with their supporters. They know every detail of their cases, and when they find the opportunity, they provide counsel to other prisoners. They take pride in refusing to submit to the dictates of the state or of the warden, to accept anyone else's rules or anyone else's god. It's what keeps them sane, and perhaps what keeps them alive.

Herman Wallace writes dozens of letters each week. He composes poems and makes drawings and elaborate paper flowers. For the past five years, he has also been collaborating on a project with Jackie Sumell, a young artist who first contacted him in 2002 with the question "What kind of a house does a man who has lived in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?" Together they designed a home [10], which Sumell has translated into architectural plans, models, a traveling exhibit, and a book of drawings and letters called The House That Herman Built. Wallace describes a house with "a swimming pool with a light green bottom and a large Panther in the center. I want flower gardens surrounding the house enclosed. A garage for two cars. A large tree in the backyard under which will be my patio.''

"To build this house is to build my soul," Wallace wrote in a 2006 letter to Sumell. He continued, "I'm often asked what did I come to prison for; and now that I think about it Jackie, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what I came here for, what matters now is what I leave with. And I can assure you, however I leave, I won't leave nothing behind."

Among the activists who took up the cause of the Angola 3 were the late Anita Roddick [11], founder of the Body Shop (and a former Mother Jones board member), and her husband, Gordon. The Roddick's family charity, the Roddick Foundation [12], contributed funding for this story.
Source URL: http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/herman-wallace-angola-3-solitary-confinement

Links:
[1] http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/life-permanent-lockdown?page=1
[2] http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/03/nation/na-angola3
[3] http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/Angola3/pdf/Herman_Wallace.pdf
[4] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96199165
[5] http://www.amazon.com/Cains-Redemption-Dennis-Shere/dp/1881273245
[6] http://www.a3grassroots.org/casehistoryimages/08AlbertReleaseReqPt3.pdf
[7] http://www.alternet.org/rights/50663
[8] http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040503/bass
[9] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/national/05texas.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1
[10] http://www.hermanshouse.org/
[11] http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/convicts-and-dame
[12] http://www.theroddickfoundation.org/

Posted by lois at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

VA: Warden retiring after allegations she discriminated against lesbian prisoners and denied other access to religious services.

Warden at Troubled Va. Women's Prison to Step Down
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 28, 2009

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The warden at Virginia's largest women's prison is retiring amid allegations the prison discriminated against gay inmates and denied others access to religious services.

Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said Monday that Barbara Wheeler will retire as warden of Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women. He would not say when or provide other details.

State Sen. Frank Ruff, R-Mecklenburg, asked the department in June to look into allegations that the prison curtailed inmates' access to religious services and separated masculine-looking prisoners from the rest of the population at the 1,200-inmate facility in Troy.

His request followed an Associated Press report in June that inmates -- mostly lesbians -- who wore short hair and baggy clothes and had more masculine features had been segregated in a wing commonly referred to as the ''butch wing'' or ''little boys wing'' for more than a year. Inmates and guards said the practice stopped after the AP questioned Wheeler about it.

Ruff said he was particularly concerned about restrictions on inmate access to religious services.

Inmates must designate a religion and be placed on a list to attend services. The list is updated only once every three months, and if an inmate goes to segregation or changes housing units, she is removed from it.

Inmates also are turned away from church services for punitive reasons, such as their hair being too long. All lay chaplain visits have been stopped, and several programs run through the chaplain's office have been discontinued.

''I certainly don't want to be in the business of micromanaging prisons, but I think as a society we need to do those types of things of not barring them from service if there's any way possible,'' Ruff said Monday.

Telephone and e-mail messages left for Wheeler were not immediately returned.

Ruff said the department informed him that investigators responding to his request found things that should have been done differently but ''they did not feel like it rose to the level of much more than that at this point.'' He did not elaborate.

Traylor did not immediately provide a copy of investigators' findings. He said no other management changes are in being considered.

Wheeler first started working for the department in 1986 and became warden at Fluvanna in March 2004. She will be replaced by Wendy Hobbs, the warden at Virginia Correctional Center for Women since 1991.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/12/28/us/AP-US-Lesbian-Cell-Block.html?_r=1

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

December 28, 2009

AZ: Budget cuts will not affect prisons

AZ: Budget cuts will not affect prisons

By Diane Saunders
Staff Writer

The across-the-board budget cuts ordered by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer will not impact Arizona’s state prisons.

“The 7.5 percent (budget cut) will not apply to the Arizona Department of Corrections,” ADOC spokesman Barrett Marson said.

Brewer called for the budget cuts Dec. 21 to help the state overcome a $1.5 billion budget shortfall. In October, state agencies submitted reports on how they could achieve a 15-percent budget reduction.

ADOC Director Charles L. Ryan wrote that deep cuts at the department could be achieved by releasing more than 13,000 prison inmates and taking other measures — including the closure of the Fort Grant Unit of the Arizona State Prison-Safford. He cautioned that releasing thousands of inmates is a complex matter that would first require rewriting the state’s criminal codes.

Rewriting the criminal codes requires action by the Arizona Legislature, Ryan said in his report.

In the Dec. 21 meeting with her cabinet, Brewer also ordered that all nonviolent criminal aliens be turned over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.

Marson said 300 to 400 of the state’s approximately 41,000 prison inmates fall into this category.

These inmates are scattered throughout the state prison system and could include a few inmates at the Safford prison.

DOC officials are still determining where the illegal aliens are housed, Marson said.
http://www.eacourier.com/articles/2009/12/27/news/doc4b32a084d0739224901458.prt

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

In survey, Neb. lawmakers oppose new prison

In survey, Neb. lawmakers oppose new prison
By NATE JENKINS-Columbus Telegram
The Associated Press
Monday, Dec 28, 2009

Prison crowding that often has Nebraska teetering on the edge of an emergency situation as defined by state law hasn't convinced many lawmakers that another prison is needed.

The majority of lawmakers who responded to an annual legislative survey from The Associated Press said they didn't think preparations to build another state prison were necessary, with some saying that alternatives to incarceration should be pursued.

"I don't think we have to build a new prison and we couldn't afford it in any event," said Sen. Pete Pirsch of Omaha, chairman of a legislative task force addressing the issue. A new prison could cost hundreds of millions of dollars for construction and staffing, Pirsch said.

Instead, he said, the state needs to have adequate community-corrections programs for some nonviolent, low-risk offenders and ensure there is prison space for violent criminals.

Community-corrections programs that hinge on intensive, probationary supervision were put in place after Nebraska built a $73 million prison in Tecumseh in 2001 to relieve overcrowding at its other facilities.

But after a big push to implement the programs, critics say, the state hasn't spent enough money to develop them or created sentencing guidelines so the programs can be used more.

Some experts say lawmakers may have guaranteed the prison population will continue to rise when, earlier this year, they increased penalties for more than a dozen crimes to help curb gun and gang violence, mainly in Omaha.

The prison population has been hovering near a threshold _ 140 percent of prison capacity _ that allows the governor to declare an emergency and release inmates to decrease overcrowding. Last week, it was at nearly 138 percent.

University of Nebraska at Omaha professor T. Hank Robinson has said the tough-on-crime bill passed by lawmakers could cost the state $7.5 million to $10 million by increasing the prison population and keeping inmates incarcerated for longer periods.

State Sen. Kent Rogert of Tekamah was one of the 22 lawmakers in The Associated Press survey who said the state should not begin preparing to build another prison but said more must be done to boost community programs.

Thirty-four of the Legislature's 49 senators responded to the survey. Nine said they were unsure whether the state should prepare to build another prison; three said the state should start preparing.

"Nebraska has stiffened penalties on many crimes over the past decade ... in contrast to many other states," Rogert said. "I believe we need more ways to reduce our prison costs by recidivism programs and more community corrections. Juvenile-justice overhaul must happen and must happen soon. Our young people are left out in the cold too often."

Sen. Ken Schilz of Ogallala, one of the three senators who said the state should begin preparing to build another prison, suggested the state stop short of a full-blown prison and instead look to a facility that can hold nonviolent offenders, such as the Work Ethic Camp in McCook.

The camp should be "a model to start more facilities placed in rural Nebraska to alleviate overcrowding" in prisons, Schilz said.

The camp isn't a lockdown facility. About two-thirds of the offenders committed nonviolent felonies and were ordered to spend time at the camp as conditions of their probation.

They attend classes that apply to their offenses and provide labor to government and nonprofit groups.
http://www.columbustelegram.com/articles/2009/12/28/ap-state-ne/ne_xgr_survey_prison_crowding.txt

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

December 26, 2009

AZ: Prescott Valley 'not even close' to agreeing to CCA prison

Prescott Valley 'not even close' to locking up prison deal
By Sue Tone, Reporter

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

A little more than two years ago, many Prescott Valley residents expressed their views about a possible 2,000-bed minimum-security private prison built in their backyard. Based on the negative public response, four of five town council members felt Prescott Valley was not a good "fit" for a prison.

Two years ago, it was Management & Training Corporation's proposal that the town turned down during a work-study session of the council.

Town Mayor Harvey Skoog said yesterday the approach of Corrections Corporation of America is totally different from MTC. MTC was under a deadline and gave the town about two weeks to accept or reject their project.

"CCA said, 'We will help you educate the public,'" Skoog said. "This company is taking its time, they want the community to know and be comfortable with it. They are not demanding we give them an answer right away. We didn't have a chance to learn about the other one."

Talks about another possible prison site at the northeast outskirts of Prescott Valley began in February, said Gary Marks, executive director of the PV Economic Development Foundation. Companies must perform their due diligence by investigating different communities and sites prior to submitting a proposal to the state when and if the state issues a Request for Proposals for a new prison, Marks said.

"The discussion and dialogue is hinging around the fact that there is an RFP, but it hasn't been released. Without an RFP we are discussing a potential - maybe. Anticipating the RFP brings discussion and dialogue," he said.

In fact, Marks said that three different private firms have contacted PVEDF to do preliminary site investigations.

"Whenever an RFP comes out, there will be a number of private firms that will respond," he said.

A common practice in the business world is for a company considering a project to evaluate possible sites and communities. Marks said he receives requests for information that consist of anywhere from 17-69 pages asking for incredibly detailed data and facts.

Site evaluations do not usually begin with public forums, he said, although he anticipates CCA offering public hearings on the prison proposal as early as January.

As far as comparing MTC's inquiry, and the view of some of the community two years ago, to today, Marks said, "It's a matter of perspective. Times change. Information changes. Projects change."

Councilwoman Patty Lasker said initially she was opposed to the idea of a prison in Prescott Valley.

"But when I'm curious about something, I go to a lot of meetings where I can ask, 'Explain this. Tell me more about this,'" Lasker said.

In small groups of two or three, council members attended meetings with Marks and CCA, and visited the Eloy prison that CCA operates. They did not make up a quorum and the meetings were not deemed open public hearings.

Lasker said this initial gathering of information allowed her and other council members to consider if a prison project was something that might interest them.

"If not, we will stop the process. If we are not going to support the process, we could stop it right then, potentially," she said.

Lasker added that the progression of emotions she went through is similar to how she sees some community members are reacting. She said she would like the public to get more information as soon as possible.

Marks said a third-party company has competed an economic impact study that soon will be available to the public.

"Looking at numbers within that study, the economic impact of the project is amazing," he said. "If someone says that doesn't mean anything - I'm going to go, 'Hello. What world do you live in?' I think the pros and cons, when studied and analyzed and looked at, the pros certainly outweigh some of the emotional cons.

"At the close of day, you have to have critical thinkers to be able to evaluate and separate from what's real and what's not real. It's a tough job, and it's one that requires clear minds."

Economically, CCA states the prison will offer a $200 million capital investment, 300-400 construction jobs, and 400 full-time operating jobs. Marks said the economic impact study indicates that over the 15-month construction time frame, the total jobs will be more than 2,700.

Skoog said one good thing about prison jobs is that they are pretty much recession proof.

"Once they are there, they remain there. It's a fact of life, just like the landfill. They may be unpleasant, but we have to have them," he said.
http://www.pvtrib.com/Main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=51204

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

December 25, 2009

Editorial: Smart Answers to Recidivism

Editorial: Smart Answers to Recidivism
Published: December 24, 2009
NY Times
Faced with soaring prison costs, states are finally focusing on policies that would help former prisoners stay out of jail after they are released. Some legislatures are reshaping laws that land parolees back inside for technical violations that should be dealt with on the outside. More than a dozen cities and counties have taken steps that make it easier for qualified ex-offenders to land government jobs, except in education and law enforcement and other sensitive areas from which people with convictions are normally barred by law.

Still, the nation as a whole needs to do much more about laws that marginalize former offenders — and often drive them back to jail — by denying them voting rights, parental rights, drivers licenses and access to public housing, welfare and food stamps, even in cases where they have led blameless lives after prison.

New Jersey — a state with a terrible record of marginalizing former prisoners — could lead the way. Before the State Legislature in Trenton is a comprehensive package of reforms that would help ex-offenders rejoin society’s mainstream and lower the chances, and costs, of recidivism.

New Jersey lawmakers heard some depressing testimony in hearings leading up to the legislation. Deterred by barriers to jobs, housing and education, about two-thirds of the people released from prison in New Jersey end up back inside within three years. Since taxpayers spend about $48,000 per prison inmate per year, by some estimates, the state could reap significant savings from even a small decline in the return-to-prison rate.

The proposed reforms in New Jersey seek to end practices under which former prisoners are denied employment because of minor convictions, even in the distant past, and crimes that have nothing at all to do with the work being sought.

No reasonable person would suggest that a sex offender be given a job in an elementary school or day-care center. An ex-offender could not be disqualified for employment unless the offense was directly related to the job. Job seekers would no longer be required to disclose convictions on applications for state, county or municipal jobs. The offenses could still be uncovered in background checks, but they would no longer automatically rule out an applicant from the start.

The bill would lift the state ban on food stamps and welfare benefits for people with felony drug convictions and would expand education and training opportunities for inmates. And it would end an odious practice under which the prison system earns a profit by overcharging poor families for the collect calls they receive from relatives inside a system. The added cost sometimes forces families to choose between putting food on the table or letting a child speak to an incarcerated parent.

The New Jersey Legislature has a chance to provide a new lease on life to thousands of families while offering a model for the rest of the nation.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 25, 2009, on page A30

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

December 24, 2009

Nursing homes with razor wire. Are elderly prisoners really a threat to public safety?

Opinion
Nursing homes with razor wire
Are elderly prisoners really a threat to public safety?

By David Fathi

December 23, 2009

Sometime in the 1970s, the United States began a love affair with incarceration that continues to this day. After holding nearly steady for decades, our prison population began to climb as criminal justice policy took a sharply punitive turn, with the massive criminalization of drug use, "three strikes" laws and other harsh sentencing practices. More people were going to prison, and staying there longer. By 2005, the prison population was six times what it had been in 1975.

One little-known side effect of this population explosion has been a sharp increase in the number of elderly people behind bars. According to the Justice Department, in 1980 the United States had about 9,500 prisoners age 55 and older; by 2008, the number had increased tenfold, to 94,800. That same year, the number of prisoners 50 and older was just shy of 200,000 -- about the size of the entire U.S. prison population in the early 1970s.

People age 50 or 55 may seem a bit young to be classified as elderly. But because their lives have often been characterized by poverty, trauma and limited access to medical care and rehabilitative services, most prisoners are physiologically older than their chronological age would suggest, and more likely to have disabling medical conditions than the general population. One study cited by Ronald H. Aday in his 1994 article in Federal Probation concluded that the average prisoner over 50 has a physiological age 11.5 years older than his chronological age.

With 1 in 11 U.S. prisoners serving a life sentence -- in some states, the figure is 1 in 6 -- it's no surprise that the number of elderly prisoners is skyrocketing. In 2007, the New York Times profiled then-89-year-old Charles Friedgood, a New York state prisoner who had served more than 30 years of a life sentence for second-degree murder. Although he had terminal cancer and had undergone several operations, including a colostomy, he had been denied parole five times before being released in 2007. Friedgood at least had the opportunity to apply for parole; in some states, parole has been abolished, and a life sentence means exactly that.

Being in prison is hard on anyone, but the elderly face special dangers, particularly if they are ill or disabled. Some have complex medical and mental health needs that prisons are ill-equipped to handle. Many prisons are not accessible to persons with mobility impairments; for them, bathing, using the toilet or even getting in and out of their cells can be a difficult, dangerous challenge. And older prisoners are more likely to be robbed, assaulted or otherwise victimized.

Some states have so many elderly prisoners that they have built special facilities to house them. Several years ago I visited the Ahtanum View Corrections Center, Washington state's prison for the elderly. Everywhere I looked were aged, frail, disabled people, some of whom could barely move without assistance. The prison's webpage helpfully points out that a volunteer clergy team is available to assist prisoners with "end-of-life issues."

The main justification for incarceration is to protect public safety. But it's hard to see the public safety rationale for keeping so many elderly people in prison.

It's even harder to understand the economic justification. Incarceration is expensive -- about $24,000 per year for the average prisoner, according to a 2008 Pew Center on the States report. Keeping someone over 55 locked up costs about three times as much. Given that criminal behavior drops off dramatically with advancing age, this is a major investment for very little return.

As the United States faces its worst fiscal crisis in decades, many states are taking a hard look at their prisons, which consume a large and increasing portion of state budgets. As part of this long overdue re-examination, lawmakers should ask whether so many elderly people really need to be in prison and whether the state should be in the business of operating nursing homes with razor wire.

David Fathi is director of the U.S. division at Human Rights Watch.

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-fathi24-2009dec24,0,1216548.story
latimes.com

Posted by lois at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)

December 23, 2009

America's Secret ICE Castles. Immigration agents are holding US residents in unlisted and unmarked

America's Secret ICE Castles
Immigration agents are holding US residents in unlisted and unmarked subfield offices
By Jacqueline Stevens
This article will appear in the January 4, 2010 edition of The Nation.
December 16, 2009

"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present was Amnesty International's Sarnata Reynolds, who wrote about the incident in the 2009 report "Jailed Without Justice" and said in an interview, "It was almost surreal being there, particularly being someone from an organization that has worked on disappearances for decades in other countries. I couldn't believe he would say it so boldly, as though it weren't anything wrong."

Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he knew that in addition to the publicly listed field offices and detention sites, ICE is also confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants--nary a sign, a marked car or even a US flag. (Presumably there is a flag at the Veterans Affairs Complex in Castle Point, New York, but no one would associate it with the Criminal Alien Program ICE is running out of Building 7.) Designed for confining individuals in transit, with no beds or showers, subfield offices are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. The subfield office network was mentioned in an October report by Dora Schriro, then special adviser to Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, but no locations were provided.

I obtained a partial list of the subfield offices from an ICE officer and shared it with immigrant advocates in major human and civil rights organizations, whose reactions ranged from perplexity to outrage. Andrea Black, director of Detention Watch Network (DWN), said she was aware of some of the subfield offices but not that people were held there. ICE never provided DWN a list of their locations. "This points to an overall lack of transparency and even organization on the part of ICE," said Black. ICE says temporary facilities in field or subfield offices are used for 84 percent of all book-ins. There are twenty-four listed field offices. The 186 unlisted subfield offices tend to be where local police and sheriffs have formally or informally reached out to ICE. For instance, in 2007 North Carolina had 629,947 immigrants and at least six subfield offices, compared with Massachusetts, with 913,957 immigrants and one listed field office. Not surprisingly, before joining ICE Pendergraph, a sheriff, was the Joe Arpaio of North Carolina, his official bio stating that he "spearheaded the use of the 287(g) program," legislation that empowers local police to perform immigration law enforcement functions.

A senior attorney at a civil rights organization, speaking on background, saw the list and exclaimed, "You cannot have secret detention! The public has the right to know where detention is happening."

Alison Parker, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, wrote a December comprehensive report on ICE transit policies, "Locked Up Far Away." Even she had never heard of the subfield offices and was concerned that the failure to disclose their locations violates the UN's Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which the United States is a signatory. She explained that the government must provide "an impartial authority to review the lawfulness of custody. Part and parcel is the ability of somebody to find the person and to make their presence known to a court."

The challenge of being unable to find people in detention centers, documented in the Human Rights Watch report, is worsened when one does not even know where to look. The absence of a real-time database tracking people in ICE custody means ICE has created a network of secret jails. Subfield offices enter the time and date of custody after the fact, a situation ripe for errors, hinted at in the Schriro report, as well as cover-ups.

ICE refused a request for an interview, selectively responded to questions sent by e-mail and refused to identify the person authorizing the reply--another symptom of ICE thwarting transparency and hence accountability. The anonymous official provided no explanation for ICE not posting a list of subfield office locations and phone numbers or for its lack of a real-time locator database.

It is not surprising to find that, with no detention rules and being off the map spatially and otherwise, ICE agents at these locations are acting in ways that are unconscionable and unlawful. According to Ahilan Arulanantham, director of Immigrant Rights for the ACLU of Southern California, the Los Angeles subfield office called B-18 is a barely converted storage space tucked away in a large downtown federal building. "You actually walk down the sidewalk and into an underground parking lot. Then you turn right, open a big door and voilà, you're in a detention center," Arulanantham explained. Without knowing where you were going, he said, "it's not clear to me how anyone would find it. What this breeds, not surprisingly, is a whole host of problems concerning access to phones, relatives and counsel."

It's also not surprising that if you're putting people in a warehouse, the occupants become inventory. Inventory does not need showers, beds, drinking water, soap, toothbrushes, sanitary napkins, mail, attorneys or legal information, and can withstand the constant blast of cold air. The US residents held in B-18, as many as 100 on any given day, were treated likewise. B-18, it turned out, was not a transfer area from point A to point B but rather an irrationally revolving stockroom that would shuttle the same people briefly to the local jails, sometimes from 1 to 5 am, and then bring them back, shackled to one another, stooped and crouching in overpacked vans. These transfers made it impossible for anyone to know their location, as there would be no notice to attorneys or relatives when people moved. At times the B-18 occupants were left overnight, the frigid onslaught of forced air and lack of mattresses or bedding defeating sleep. The hours of sitting in packed cells on benches or the concrete floor meant further physical and mental duress.

Alla Suvorova, 26, a Mission Hills, California, resident for almost six years, ended up in B-18 after she was snared in an ICE raid targeting others at a Sherman Oaks apartment building. For her, the worst part was not the dirt, the bugs flying everywhere or the clogged, stinking toilet in their common cell but the panic when ICE agents laughed at her requests to understand how long she would be held. "No one could visit; they couldn't find me. I was thinking these people are going to put me and the other people in a grinder and make sausages and sell them in the local market."

Sleep deprivation and extreme cold were among the "enhanced interrogation" techniques promoted by the Bush White House and later set aside by the Justice Department because of concerns that they amounted to torture. Although without the intent to elicit information, ICE under the Obama administration was holding people charged with a civil infraction in conditions approaching those no longer authorized for accused terrorists.

According to Aaron Tarin, an immigration attorney in Salt Lake City, "Whenever I have a client in a subfield office, it makes me nervous. Their procedures are lax. You've got these senior agents who have all the authority in the world because they're out in the middle of nowhere. You've got rogue agents doing whatever they want. Most of the buildings are unmarked; the vehicles they drive are unmarked." Like other attorneys, Tarin was extremely frustrated by ICE not releasing its phone numbers. He gave as an example a US citizen in Salt Lake City who hired him because her husband, in the process of applying for a green card, was being held at a subfield office in Colorado. By the time Tarin tracked down the location of the facility that was holding the husband when he had called his wife, the man had been moved to another subfield office. "I had to become a little sleuth," Tarin said, describing the hours he and a paralegal spent on the phone, the numerous false leads, unanswered phones and unreturned messages until the husband, who had been picked up for driving without a license or insurance, was found in Grand Junction, Colorado, held on a $20,000 bond, $10,000 for each infraction. "I argued with the guy, 'This is absurd! Whose policy is this?'" Tarin said the agent's response was, "That's just our policy here."

Rafael Galvez, an attorney in Maine, explained why he would like ICE to release its entire list of subfield office addresses and phone numbers. "If they're detaining someone, I will need to contact the people on the list. If I can advocate on a person's behalf and provide documents, a lot of complications could be avoided."

Cary, a suburb of Raleigh, North Carolina, has a typical subfield office at the rear of CentreWest Commons, an office park adjacent to gated communities, large artificial ponds and an Oxford University Press production plant. ICE's low-lying brick building with a bright blue awning has darkened windows, no sign and no US flag. People in shackles and handcuffs are shuffled in from the rear. The office complex has perhaps twenty other businesses, all of which do have signs. The agents, who are armed, might not wear uniforms and drive their passengers in unmarked, often windowless white vans. Even Dani Martinez-Moore, who lives nearby and coordinates the North Carolina Network of Immigrant Advocates, did not know people were being held there until she read about it on my blog.

In late October 2008, Mark Lyttle, then 31, was held in the Cary office for several hours. Lyttle was born in North Carolina, and the FBI file ICE had obtained on him indicated he was a US citizen. Lyttle used his time in the holding tank attempting to persuade the agents who had plucked him out of the medical misdemeanor section of a nearby prison, where he had been held for seventy-three days, not to follow through on the Cary office's earlier decision to ship him to Mexico. Lyttle is cognitively disabled, has bipolar disorder, speaks no Spanish and has no Mexican relatives. In response to his entreaties, a Cary agent "told me to tell it to the judge," Lyttle said. But Lyttle's charging document from the Cary office includes a box checked next to the boilerplate prohibition: "You may not request a review of this determination by an immigration judge."

Lyttle made enough of a fuss at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, that the agents there arranged for him to appear before a judge. But the checked box in the Cary paperwork meant he never heard from the nonprofit Legal Orientation Program attorneys who might have picked up on his situation. William Cassidy, a former ICE prosecutor working for the Executive Office of Immigration Review, ignored Lyttle's pleas and in his capacity as immigration judge signed Lyttle's removal order. According to Lyttle, Cassidy said he had to go by the sworn statements of the ICE officers.

Meanwhile, Lyttle's mother, Jeanne, and his brothers, including two in the Army, were frantically searching for him, even checking the obituaries. They were trying to find Lyttle in the North Carolina prison system, but the trail went cold after he was transferred to ICE custody. Jeanne said, "David showed me the Manila envelope [he sent to the prison]--'Refused'--and we thought Mark had refused it." Jeanne was crying. "We kept trying to find out where he was." It never crossed their minds that Mark might be spending Christmas in a shelter for los deportados on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.

ICE spokesman Temple Black first told me the list was "not releasable" and that it was "law enforcement sensitive," but coordinator for community outreach Andrew Lorenzen-Strait e-mailed me a partial list of addresses and no phone numbers. I then obtained a more complete list, including telephone numbers, in response to a FOIA request. That list, received in November and dated September 2009, is about forty locations shy of the 186 subfield offices mentioned in the Schriro report and omits thirty-nine locations listed in an August ICE job announcement seeking applicants for immigration enforcement agents. These include ICE postings in Champlain, New York; Alamosa, Colorado; Pembroke Pines, Florida; and Livermore, California. The anonymous ICE official neither answered questions about why I was sent an incomplete list nor accounted for the disparity in official explanations of the list's confidentiality.

ICE obscures its presence in other ways as well. Everyone knows that detention centers are in sparsely populated areas, but according to Amnesty International's Reynolds, policy director of migrant and refugee rights, "Quite a lot of communities don't know they're detaining thousands of people, because the signs say Service Processing Center," not Detention Center, although the latter designation is used for privately contracted facilities. The ICE e-mail stated that the "service processing" term was first used when the centers were run by the predecessor agency Immigration and Naturalization Service, "because these facilities were used to process aliens for deportation," ignoring the fact that these structures were and are distinctive for confining people and not the Orwellian "processing."

Even the largest complexes, which are usually off side roads from small highways, are visible only if you drive right up to the entrance. Unlike federal prisons, detention centers post no road signs to guide travelers. The anonymous ICE official would not provide a reason for this disparity.

ICE agents are also working in hidden offices in one of the grooviest buildings in one of the hottest neighborhoods in Manhattan. Tommy Kilbride, an ICE detention and removal officer and a star of A&E's reality show Manhunters: Fugitive Task Force, is part of the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force, housed on the third floor of the Chelsea Market, above Fat Witch Bakery and alongside Rachael Ray and the Food Network. Across the street are Craftsteak and Del Posto, both fancy venues for two other Food Network stars, Tom Colicchio and Mario Batali. Above their restaurants are agents working for the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Someone who had been working in that building for about a year said he had heard rumors of FBI agents, though he didn't see one until nine months later when a guy was openly carrying a gun through the lobby. In November, at midday, he saw two men in plain clothes walk a third man in handcuffs through a side-street door behind Craftsteak. "It was weird, creepy," he said, adding that the whole arrangement made him uncomfortable. "I don't like it. It makes you wonder, what are they hiding? Is it for good reasons or bad reasons?"

Natalie Jeremijenko, who lives nearby and is a professor of visual arts at New York University, pointed out the "twisted genius" of hiding federal agents in the "worldwide center of visuality and public space," referring to the galleries and High Line park among these buildings. Jeremijenko was incensed. "For a participatory democracy to work, you need to have real-time visual evidence of what is going on" and not just knowledge by professors who file a FOIA request or even readers of a Nation article.

In response to a question about the absence of signs at subfield offices, the ICE e-mail stated, "ICE attempts to place signs wherever possible, however there are many variables to consider such as shared buildings, law enforcement activities, zoning laws, etc." Except for "law enforcement activities," the reasons did not apply to the facilities listed here, as evidenced by signs on adjacent businesses.

The Obama administration continued to ignore complaints about the LA subfield office known as B-18 until April 1, when Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder, as well as ICE officials, were named as defendants in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the National Immigration Law Center. In September, the parties reached a settlement. The ACLU's Arulanantham said, "I never understood what [ICE] had to gain. The fact that after we filed the suit they completely fixed it makes it more mysterious" as to why their months of earlier negotiation brought few results. At the time of the lawsuit, he said, the nearby Mira Loma Detention Center had space. When I asked if ICE was trying to punish people by bringing them to B-18, Arulanantham said, "No, no one was targeted," adding, "If it were punitive, it would be less disturbing."

Arulanantham's response is, alas, more than fodder for a law school hypothetical about whether intentional or unintentional rights violations are more egregious. In 2006 ICE punished several Iraqi hunger strikers in Virginia--they were protesting being unlawfully held for more than six months after agreeing to deportation--by shuffling them between a variety of different facilities, ensuring that they would not encounter lawyers or be found by loved ones. This went on from weeks to months, according to Brittney Nystrom, senior legal adviser for the National Immigration Forum. "The message was, We're going to make you disappear."

As an alternative to the system of unmarked subfield offices and unaccountable agents, consider the approach of neighborhood police precincts, where dangerous criminals are held every day and police carry out their work in full view of their neighbors. Not only can citizens watch out for strange police actions, and know where to look if a family member is missing; local accountability helps discourage misconduct. ICE agents' persistent flouting of rules and laws is abetted by their ability to scurry back to secret dens, avoiding the scrutiny and resulting inhibitions that arise when law enforcement officers develop relationships with the communities they serve.

Indeed, the jacket Kilbride wears during arrests says POLICE in large letters. Working out of a heretofore secret location--Manhunters has no exterior shots--one that his supervisor had requested I not reveal, gives their operation the trappings of a secret police. An attorney who had a client held in a subfield office said on background, "The president released in January a memorandum about transparency, but that's not happening. He says one thing, but we have these clandestine operations, akin to extraordinary renditions within the United States. They're misguided as to what their true mission is, and they are doing things contrary to the best interests of the country."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100104/stevens/single
Partial list of subfield offices: http://www.jacquelinestevens.org/ICEFieldSubfield0909.PDF

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

First Time Ever Holiday Appeal for the RCPP

Dear Friends,

It is difficult to to this, but I feel like I have no alternative. As may know it has been many years since the Real Cost of Prisons Project received any funding. The cost of mailing comic books to prisoners (usually around fifteen per week at $1.52 per set for postage), larger quantities to organizers, literacy projects, community groups organizing against new prisons, books through bars projects, etc., paying for the hosting of the website (www.realcostofprisons.org) and this blog are all borne by me and my spouse. All of the work I do is unpaid. At this point I am collecting social security having turned 62 but social security is not enough and the RCPP has become a major drain on our finances.

If you use the comic books (more than 120,000 have been sent, the website, this news blog, or have asked for and received information and requests for connections to others doing similar work, I ask you to consider making a tax deductible donation to keep the RCPP going.

Any amount would be helpful and greatly appreciated.

Donations can be made through https://www.networkforgood.org/donation/ExpressDonation.aspx?ORGID2=912114465

If you prefer, a check can be sent to:
Community Futures Collective
221 Idora Ave
Vallejo, CA 94591
Please write RCPP in the memo line.

If you know of others who might want to support the RCPP, please forward this to them.

Many thanks!

Posted by lois at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)

1000 PA prisoners being sent to MI keep prison open for up to four years

Dec. 22, 2009
Deal saves jobs at Muskegon prison
1,000 Pa. inmates to transfer to facility

BY DAWSON BELL
DETROIT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

A state prison in Muskegon that was slated to close in January got a reprieve Monday when corrections officials announced an agreement to house 1,000 Pennsylvania prisoners there for up to four years.

The prisoners are to begin to arrive in February, a move expected to save almost all of the 264 state jobs at the Muskegon Correctional Facility, said Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman John Cordell.

Michigan is to receive about $62 a day per inmate from Pennsylvania, which is seeking to ease overcrowding while new facilities are constructed.

The news was welcomed by prison officials and community leaders in Muskegon.

It was another disappointment in Standish, which lost its state prison in October and has been rejected for use by California and federal authorities.

Cordell said the Muskegon prison, a medium-security facility, better fit the needs of Pennsylvania than Standish, which housed mostly maximum-security prisoners.

The Pennsylvania prisoners are to include violent felons, said Pennsylvania prison spokeswoman Susan Bensinger, but only those with relatively good records of behavior in prison. The inmates also are to be selected from among those who receive few visitors, have no special medical or mental health care needs and have at least three years remaining on their sentences, she said.

Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections Organization employee union, said it was disappointing that Pennsylvania isn't sending more prisoners and saving more jobs.

But though the reprieve may be temporary, it buys the employees and the community time, Grieshaber said, and may help demonstrate that Michigan is an attractive alternative for other states looking for extra prison bed space.

Michigan's prison population has declined in an effort to contain costs, leading to the closing of about a half dozen prisons and prison camps.
http://www.freep.com/article/20091222/NEWS06/912220359/1320/Deal-saves-jobs-at-Muskegon-prison-

Posted by lois at 08:34 AM | Comments (0)

December 21, 2009

PA plans to send 1000 prisoners to VA and 1000 prisoners to MI

Pennsylvania to send 2,000 inmates to other states
Monday, December 21, 2009

By Tom Barnes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

HARRISBURG -- Faced with an ever-growing problem of prison overcrowding, state prison officials have decided to move 2,000 inmates to prisons in two other states -- 1,000 going to Michigan and another 1,000 to Virginia.

Prisoners will begin moving out no later than February, Susan McNaughton, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections said today.

Some will go to a vacant prison in Muskegon, Mich., and the rest will go to a prison in Chatham, Va. Those sent to the two other states will be inmates who get no or few visitors and those with no serious, ongoing medical or mental health problems.

The cost will be $62 per day per inmate, or a total cost of $124,000 per day for all 2,000 inmates. Pennsylvania officials hope to begin bringing the inmates back by 2013, when four new prisons have been completed here, each holding 2,000 inmates. If the 2,000 inmates stay in Michigan and Virginia for three years, it will cost Pennsylvania $135 million.

Currently the prison population, for the 27 state prisons, is 51,400, up from 45,000 just a few years ago. The state plans to build one new prison in Centre County, one in Fayette County and two in Montgomery County. Ground is to be broken for the Centre County facility in six months.

In addition to the 2,000 inmates going to the other states, there are 512 state prisoners in county jails in Pennsylvania.

More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09355/1022624-100.stm

Posted by lois at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)

CT: Prison guards fight closure plan, claim risk

Prison guards fight closure plan, claim risk
Sunday, December 20, 2009
By Luther Turmelle, North Bureau Chief

CHESHIRE — Corrections officers are vowing to take no prisoners in their fight to keep the Webster Correctional Institution open.

But elected officials and the Department of Correction said prison consolidation is going to happen — the state’s prison population is shrinking and the budget crisis isn’t going away.

It would take a huge groundswell of public opposition to the closing to convince Gov. M. Jodi Rell to change her position that the Department of Correction should investigate closing one of the state’s correctional facilities because of dwindling inmate populations. And while Rell never came out and formally ordered the Webster Correctional Institution closed, Correction officials have been moving steadily ahead with the closing, which will save the state an estimated $3.4 million annually. Webster is scheduled to be closed next month.

Larry Dorman, a spokesman for Local 387 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, acknowledged that keeping Webster open is a long shot, but said the union “is committed to fighting this publicly.”

“We are going to make some noise about this in the new year,” said Dorman.

Union officials said their biggest concern with the closing is the safety of corrections officers, inmates and the public. No corrections officers are scheduled to lose their jobs.

“We are certain ... that this will be a temporary measure because it’s only a matter of time before this blows up in the governor’s face,” said Moises Padilla, vice president of Local 387 of AFSCME.

Padilla said shifting over 100 inmates from Webster, which is a minimum security or Level 2 prison, to another minimum security facility or possibly to other higher-security facilities will have a ripple effect. He said seven of the 17 other correctional facilities that will remain once Webster closes are overcrowded, and moving any new inmates into those prisons could create conditions that are a threat to the safety of corrections officers and inmates.

Padilla said the prisons that are overcrowded use space that is not designed to house inmates, like offices and closets. Inmates in those facilities sleep on flimsy plastic cots, he said.

DOC spokesman Brian Garnett said overcrowding claims are not accurate.

“The reality across the agency is that there is not an overflow situation at any of our facilities,” Garnett said Friday. “We are not housing people in any nontraditional spaces as has been claimed and we have fixed, permanent beds for every inmate.”

Garnett said the DOC bases its definition of whether a prison is overcrowded not on the number of inmates an individual facility is designed for, but whether there are enough permanent beds in areas that are designed to house inmates.

“This transfer is being done is a manner that is not going to overcrowd any of the other facilities,” he said.

Claims of safety threats associated with the closing of the Webster Correctional Institution also ring hollow with State Rep. Mike Lawlor, D-East Haven, co-chairman of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee.

“I understand the corrections officers concerns, but there really is no risk involved here,” Lawlor said. “This is not about releasing people early. This about using our resources in a smarter way; it’s more important to be smart than it is tough.”

Lawlor said state lawmakers “made some changes in the way our judicial system uses its resources” during a 2008 special session.

One of the biggest changes that came out of special session, he said, was “finding a different way to punish nonviolent offenders.”

“We’ve beefed up programs for substance abuse and other programs that are alternatives to sending someone to prison,” Lawlor said. “And we’ve made judges more aware that if you don’t absolutely have to lock someone up while they’re awaiting trial, then don’t.”

Lawlor said a look at some of the data from the judicial system and the DOC shows that the closing of the Webster Correctional Institution was not only warranted, but that it may not be last prison in the state to be mothballed.

“Our inmate population is declining at the rate of about 100 every couple of weeks,” he said. The number of inmates statewide reached 18,301 on Thursday, the lowest level it has been since June 2007, and down about 200 inmates from where it was on Nov. 19, Lawlor said.

The state’s prison population reached an all-time high of about 19,684 in 2003. Gov. John Rowland reacted to the situation by sending 500 Connecticut inmates to correctional facilities in Virginia.

As the number of inmates in the state’s correctional system has declined, Lawlor said prison consolidation efforts have gained speed.

“This is not the first time we’ve talked about this,” he said. “This (the DOC) is by far the largest state agency in terms of the number of employees. And the average cost per year per inmate system wide is about $45,000.”

For the state’s maximum security facilities, the average cost is about $100,000 per inmate per year, he said, while at minimum security facilities the average is about $15,000 per inmate per year.

URL: http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/12/20/news/metro/doc4b2e121045593017299088.prt

© 2009 nhregister.com, a Journal Register Property

Posted by lois at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

Combating Prisoner Abuse- Editorial in the NY Times in support of reforming PLRA

Editorial- NY Times
Combating Prisoner Abuse
December 20, 2009

When Mississippi inmates sued their prison, charging that they had been sodomized by a staff member, the claim was thrown out. Under a harsh federal law, inmates must show that they suffered a “physical injury” to prevail in a suit challenging cruel prison conditions. A federal district court ruled in 2006 that the alleged sexual assault did not constitute physical injury.

Congress included the physical injury requirement in the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which it passed in 1996 to deter inmates from bringing frivolous lawsuits. What the law has done instead is insulate prisons from a large number of very worthy lawsuits, and allow abusive and cruel mistreatment of inmates to go unpunished.

Legislation introduced by Representative Robert Scott, Democrat of Virginia, would undo the worst parts of that law. Most important, his legislation, the Prison Abuse Remedies Act, would remove the physical injury requirement. Prisons across the country have used this requirement to dismiss suits challenging all kinds of outrageous treatment: strip-searching of female prisoners by male guards; revealing to other inmates that a prisoner was H.I.V.-positive; forcing an inmate to stand naked for 10 hours.

Mr. Scott’s bill would allow prisoners to prevail under the same conditions as plaintiffs in other kinds of civil rights cases. It would also make important changes in the 1996 law’s “exhaustion” requirement, which forces inmates to bring their complaints to the prison’s own grievance system before they can sue. A carefully drawn exhaustion requirement could help resolve problems locally, and avoid unnecessary litigation. But the one in the current law lets prisons put up procedural hurdles that make it difficult or impossible for prisoners to navigate the bureaucracy and get their complaints heard in court.

Juvenile inmates are not a significant source of frivolous lawsuits, but they are at increased risk of abuse in prison, especially sexual abuse. The current House bill would remove all of the 1996 law’s restrictions for suits brought by inmates under the age of 18.

There are many problems with American prisons, including crowding, inadequate medical treatment and little opportunity for rehabilitation. Mr. Scott’s bill addresses one that is less well-known, but no less real. The House should pass it, and the Senate should get to work on its own version.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 21, 2009, on page A30 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21mon3.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 09:46 AM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2009

De-Criminalizing Children & Legislative Update

Update: The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2009, S. 678, has been introduced and was approved by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 12-7 on December 17th, 2009. Now all Senators need to be contacted.

Editorial- De-Criminalizing Children
NY Times
Published: December 16, 2009

As many as 150,000 children are sent to adult jails in this country every year — often in connection with nonviolent offenses or arrests that do not lead to conviction. That places them at risk of being raped or battered and increases the chance they will end up as career criminals.

To fix this problem, Congress needs to properly reauthorize the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act of 1974, under which states agreed to humanize juvenile justice policies in exchange for more federal aid. This act was largely bypassed in the 1990s when unfounded fears of an adolescent crime wave reached hysterical levels.

When it reauthorizes the law — it is already three years late — Congress should make it illegal for states to place children in adult prisons, perhaps with the exception of truly heinous criminals.

The House has yet to introduce a new bill; in the Senate, an updated version has yet to be voted out of the Judiciary Committee. The Senate bill is less than ideal, but it does encourage the states to de-emphasize the practice of detaining children in adult jails before trial and requires them to better protect young people who end up there. Several states have begun to reform their systems: housing young people in juvenile facilities — where they are better protected and can get mental health treatment — even if they have been convicted in adult courts. The current version of the law threatens states with loss of federal aid if they make that decision. The Senate bill would do away with that language.

The bill also would require states to phase out policies under which children are detained in either juvenile or adult facilities for offenses like violating curfew or smoking. These children should be dealt with through community-based counseling or family intervention programs, which are better for the child and for taxpayers.

In addition, the bill increases financing for mentoring, drug treatment, mental health care and other programs that have been shown to keep children out of custody in the first place. And it would require states to closely monitor — and address — racial inequities in their system. Studies show that black and Hispanic children get harsher treatment at all levels of the juvenile justice system than white children.

The Senate bill is not perfect. But it represents a welcome step away from the cruel and self-defeating policies that subject children to irreparable harm at the hands of the state and puts them on a path that too often leads to a lifetime spent behind bars.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 17, 2009, on page A46 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/opinion/17thu3.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
-----------------------

Tell the Senate: Pass Juvenile Justice Reform Now!
Targeting: The U.S. Senate

Sponsored by: Campaign for Youth Justice

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2009, S. 678, has been introduced and is awaiting action in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), which provides federal funding to states that comply with a set of best practices aimed at avoiding the detention and incarceration of young people in juvenile and adult facilities.

It's a good law, and is needed now more than ever to end the over-incarceration of young people of color in the justice system and stop the inappropriate use of adult jails for warehousing children charged as adults.

Unfortunately, the Senate may adjourn for the holidays before the Judiciary Committee or the full Senate updates and passes this critical legislation. While the Senate goes "home for the holidays", thousands of youth will be miles away from their families and communities in adult jails, prisons and juvenile detention and correctional facilities.

If you believe that it is urgent to stop putting youth in adult jails and prisons, to end the over-incarceration of youth of color in the justice system, and instead to devote more resources to effective juvenile justice programs such as alternatives to detention and incarceration, contact the Senate now and urge them to move the bill in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate now!
Link to website to contact your senator.
http://www.change.org/actions/view/tell_the_senate_pass_juvenile_justice_reform_now

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

NJ: Demolition begins at Riverfront prison--including video

Demolition begins at Riverfront prison--including video
see URL at bottom of this post.
By GEORGE MAST • Courier-Post Staff • December 17, 2009
CAMDEN — In a slow, arching sweep,the open jaws of an excavator ripped through the door of a loading dock at Riverfront State Prison on Wednesday.

In a matter of minutes,the ceremonial start to the demolition of the prison along North Camden's waterfront was complete. The blue door and a section of interior fence lay twisted on the ground.

The demolition of the 24-year-old facility, state and local officials vowed on Wednesday, marks a brighter future for the city.

"What we are doing here today will set in place a pathway for what is right for the people of the city of Camden," Gov. Jon S. Corzine said at a press conference before the demolition, which was attended by dozens of community activists, as well as city, county and state officials.

Community groups had lobbied against the $31 million prison even before it was built in 1985. However, city officials agreed to the 16.7-acre complex in exchange for state funding and jobs.

On Wednesday, officials called the prison a mistake, saying it has blocked development from spreading along the 80 acres of waterfront.

With a razor-wire-topped fence and an empty guard tower looming behind him, Corzine said the demolition is "emblematic of what can happen in this great city in the years ahead."

"We need to correct the mistakes of the past but we also have to build for the future," he said.

Corzine had pledged to remove the prison from the waterfront during his first run for office. Riverfront workers were notified in January the prison would be closing. Despite protests from corrections officers unions, the last of the inmates was transferred from the prison over the summer.

Jeffrey Nash, a Camden County freeholder and vice chairman of the Delaware River Port Authority, said the prison razing represents a great victory for the community. The DRPA volunteered toll money to pay for the demolition.

"Camden will no longer be the dumping ground for everyone else's problems," said Nash, who described the waterfront property as one of the most valuable in the area.

On Wednesday, workers were to start tearing down fences, stairwells and exterior walls. Asbestos will need to be abated from the prisons interior walls. The bulk of the structural demolition is to begin toward the end of next week and is expected to be completed by early spring.

Last year, North Camden community members laid out a neighborhood plan that calls for roughly $2 billion worth of investments over the next 20 years and includes park space all along the riverfront and up to 3,000 new homes. However, city officials still need to create a formal plan that, once adopted, will become a blueprint for builders.
Video news coverage.....check it out!
http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20091217/NEWS01/912170352/1006/Demolition-begins-at-Riverfront-prison

Posted by lois at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2009

NY prison system opens unit for mentally ill (update)

NY prison system opens unit for mentally ill (update)
By MARY ESCH, Associated Press Writer
December 15, 2009

ALBANY - The first inmates moved Tuesday into a new state prison unit for disruptive mentally ill prisoners that was created in response to a lawsuit filed by an advocacy group in 2002.

The 100-bed Residential Mental Health Unit at Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County was designed by the state corrections and mental health agencies under the terms of a 2007 settlement with Disability Advocates.

The nonprofit group sued to improve treatment of mentally ill prisoners and to stop putting inmates with serious mental illness and disciplinary issues in solitary confinement.

Inmates in the new unit will receive more mental health care, therapeutic programming and exercise.

Of the 58,690 inmates in New York state prisons, 7,844 are diagnosed with mental illness, including 2,359 with serious mental illness, said Erik Kriss, spokesman for the Department of Correctional Services.

Inmates designated as seriously mentally ill are those with schizophrenia, delusional disorder, psychotic disorder, major depression and bipolar disorder. The designation also includes suicidal inmates and those driven by psychosis or depression to harm themselves.

About 200 of those with serious mental illness have confinement sanctions for disciplinary violations, Kriss said. Traditionally, such inmates are moved to an S-block, a special housing unit with lockdown cells that reduce the need for security personnel.

The Disability Advocates lawsuit claimed that prisoners with mental illness throughout New York did not get adequate mental health treatment, and as a result, many of them were being punished with long sentences of solitary confinement, severe restrictions on property and visits, and no access to out-of-cell programming.

The lawsuit said isolation and idleness led to severe psychiatric deterioration in these isolation units, including acts of self-mutilation and even suicide.

The new mental health unit at Marcy has about 100 corrections employees and 26 Office of Mental Health employees, compared with 38 employees when it was an S-block, Kriss said.

Kriss said inmates in the new unit have constant access to both prison and mental health staff. Each inmate has at least four hours daily of programming and therapy.

''No other prison system to our knowledge affords the inmate patients the amount of time of out-of-cell programming and therapy, including group therapy and group interaction, as the RMHU,'' Kriss said.
http://adirondackdailyenterprise.com/page/content.detail/id/510244.html?nav=5008

Posted by lois at 09:02 PM | Comments (0)

Politicians Are Portraying 'Gitmo North' as a Terrific Local Jobs Program--Don't Count On It.

Politicians Are Portraying 'Gitmo North' as a Terrific Local Jobs Program -- Don't Count On It
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Posted on December 17, 2009, Printed on December 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144619/

The decision announced by the Obama administration this week to transfer some Guantánamo detainees to an empty supermax prison in northwestern Illinois has been portrayed as another step toward finally shutting down Guantánamo. But the more we learn about the government's plans for Thomson Correctional Center, the more it resembles a Bush-era blueprint to turn a rural Illinois community into a microcosm of the "War on Terror."

Located just 15 miles from the Illinois compound operated by the notorious mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater, the prison will be refashioned to replicate some of Guantánamo's worst excesses -- namely, the military commissions process and indefinite "preventive" detention -- and largely staffed by U.S. military forces and well-paid private contractors, who will swallow up a large number of the jobs the project will create. Political rhetoric lauding the economic windfall in store for the residents of Thomson and its surrounding counties ("3,000 jobs" and "more than $1 billion into the local economy," according to Sen. Dick Durbin), may help sell the idea to Americans, but these claims are dubious at best and a distraction from an ugly reality at worst. Guantánamo is not so much being closed, it is being moved -- onto U.S. soil.

Speaking to Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night, Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky praised the economic promise offered by the Thomson project, while also providing an important, if little noticed, caveat. Out of those estimated 3,000 jobs, "Fifteen hundred are going to be military personnel that will move to the area to actually guard the prisoners," she said, adding "but lots of local jobs have been promised."

According to an analysis of the Thomson project by the President's Council of Economic Advisers, once the prison has been fully renovated and upgraded (to what has been described as a "beyond supermax" facility), "in essence, DoD (Department of Defense) and BoP (Bureau of Prisons) will operate two entirely separate facilities side by side." One facility will be run by the Pentagon and will hold an untold number of former Guantánamo prisoners. The other will be run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and will hold 1,500 to 1,600 federal prisoners, to be transferred from overcrowded prisons elsewhere.

On the Pentagon side, the Department of Defense estimates that it will need "between 1,000 and 1,500 employees" to staff its wing of the prison. "One-third of these employees will be government civilian employees or private contractors with annual salaries between $80,000 and $90,000. The other two-thirds of the employees will be military personnel, with salaries of $65,000, which includes a housing allowance."

Not surprisingly, the analysis states: "DoD expects few of its direct hires to come from the local communities."

So what's left for the locals? Lower salaries, for one (with the exception of some prison guard jobs). And once the construction jobs are done, not much; while the economic analysis reports that "local residents will be excellent candidates for 1,240 to 1,410" of the jobs relating to "the modification, opening, and running of the facility," it also states that "in total, BoP expects to hire 448 workers locally." That's a far cry from the 3,000-job figure being thrown around. Although much stock is being placed in "indirect jobs due to increased spending and economic activity," as well as potential teaching jobs for theoretical schools that will accommodate military families who move to the region, these estimates are hardly definite.

In truth, the Obama economic advisers provide a pretty confusing picture, based on estimates and "assumptions" that are likely to change, of what sorts of jobs await Illinois residents thanks to the transfer of prisoners from Guantánamo. But that's not stopping local politicians from running with the narrative that this will be an economic boon. In a region where unemployment hovers around 11 percent, "people are desperate for good jobs," Sen. Durbin told reporters on Tuesday, "… and these jobs are some of the best."

Prisons: The Gift That Keeps On Giving?

As political rhetoric goes, this is hardly a new way to sell a prison project. From New York to Colorado, politicians have been at it for decades.

But do new prisons really provide such an economic gift to the communities that host them? The evidence is mixed.

Paul Wright, editor of Prison Legal News, scoffs at the claim that Thomson will bring an economic surge to the region. "Three thousand jobs is ridiculous," he told AlterNet. "A two-thousand bed prison typically will employ around five hundred to seven hundred people." There are "the spin-off jobs -- people employed by
diners, Walmarts, etc.," but in both cases, "often the locals don't get the jobs because they are not qualified." This will certainly apply to Thomson -- unless we are meant to believe that "the most secure maximum security prison in our country of all time" (in the words of Illinois Governor Pat Quinn) will hire a large swath of the local unemployed. "Prisons do require employees and these will be federal employees with decent salaries and benefits," Wright says. But "building prisons as an economic development tool has been mixed."

Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, who has researched the economic effects of prisons on small towns, says that economic promises made by local politicians often sound better than they actually are. "In recent years many small-town local leaders have pushed for new prison construction as a form of economic development and job creation," he told AlterNet. "In practice, such projects are not very successful in stimulating local economies, for several reasons.

"First, jobs at the prison do not necessarily go to locals, who in many cases may not have the proper qualifications. Instead, prison staff often commute from large distances. In turn, this means they are not buying houses near the prison, nor spending much food or recreation money in the local town since they are just commuting back and forth to work. Likewise, provision of food services and other supplies often is contracted from providers at a great distance from the town. Finally, establishing a locality as a 'prison town' may detract from efforts to attract other forms of economic development or tourism, thus minimizing any long-term economic benefits."

On that last point, it's hard to imagine that Thomson, whose slim Wikipedia profile boasts the claim to fame "Melon Capital of the World," won't be swallowed whole by the facility many have already dubbed "Gitmo North." It is already defined by the empty supermax prison -- and it sits a short distance away from another notorious facility, "Blackwater USA North," the local training ground for the infamous mercenary force.

'Prison Boosters In Rural America Should Be Careful What They Wish For'

A number of reports released in the past few years years have cast serious doubts on the claims that prisons will automatically breathe new economic life into depressed regions. Nevertheless, the perception that prisons equal jobs remains firmly intact.

Part of this might be wishful thinking. For people outside these mostly rural areas, it's hard to conceive of just how deep-seated these beliefs can be. In an article titled "Don't Build it Here -- The Hype Versus the Reality of Prisons and Local Employment," sociologists Clayton Mosher, Gregory Hooks and Peter Wood wrote: "Belief in the positive economic impact of prisons is so strong that a town in Illinois composed a rap song and purchased television advertising as part of a public relations blitz for legislators deciding where to locate a prison. In Texas, students in a Sunday school class reportedly got on their knees and prayed that a new prison would open in their area."

In Tamms, Illinois, home to the brutal Tamms supermax prison, which holds its prisoners in solitary confinement nearly 24 hours a day, "a billboard for the local bank promised 'super-max-imum savings,' while a local restaurant offered the 'supermax burger' on its menu. A billboard outside Tamms displays the message 'Welcome to Tamms, the Home of the Supermax -- Thank You Governor Edgar.'"

Yet years after such prisons were constructed, there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that they resulted in overwhelming economic benefits. (In the case of Thomson, the prison generated plenty of economic-stimulus buzz when it was first being constructed, only to sit, empty, when the state realized it could not afford to run it.)

"Despite the prevailing wisdom regarding prisons as economic panaceas, evidence suggests that prison boosters in rural America should be careful what they wish for," wrote public policy analyst and prison expert Tracy Huling in her essay, "Building a Prison Economy In Rural America."

The majority of public prison jobs ... do not go to people already living in the community. Higher-paying management and correctional officer jobs in public prisons come with educational and experience requirements which many rural residents do not have ... [According to Ruth Gilmore, a professor at UC-Berkeley] ... less than 20% of jobs on average go to current residents of a town with a new state prison. While over time that percentage increases, it is below 40% for all of California's new rural prison towns.

The findings of Gilmore's study in California are echoed in reports from disappointed local officials in prison towns across the country. The 750 jobs that a state prison opened in 1999 brought to the tiny rural town of Malone, New York went mostly to people from outside the town because of prison system seniority rules. According to the village's director of the Office of Community Development, "Did we get seven-hundred-fifty jobs? We didn't get a hundred."

Looking at the impact of prisons on employment growth in thousands of U.S. counties between 1969 and 1994, Mosher, Hooks and Wood found that, "for both income per capita and total earnings," employment grew most slowly in rural counties where a new prison was built.

"For non-metropolitan counties -- the counties in which the majority of prisons have been built in recent years and the counties that have typically been the ones competing to attract prisons in order to boost local economic growth -- there is no evidence that prisons have had a positive impact. Neither established or newly built prisons made a significant contribution to employment growth in rural counties."

'Worse Than Guantánamo'?

While bringing prisoners from Guantánamo onto U.S. soil may indeed help the Obama administration close down that monument to lawlessness in Cuba -- a measure now several years overdue -- the reality is that the benefits will be almost purely symbolic. Instead of abolishing Guantánamo's notoriously rigged (if somewhat improved) military commissions process, the Obama administration is importing it onto U.S. soil. Even worse, perhaps, in addition to the prisoners who will be brought to stand trial via military commission -- a process that will take place within the perimeter of the prison -- another group of prisoners will reportedly be brought to Thomson only to remain there indefinitely -- subjects of "preventive detention," a policy Obama first stated his intention of pursuing earlier this year. As Constitutional expert Glenn Greenwald wrote on Tuesday, "What is the point of closing Guantánamo only to replicate its essential framework -- imprisonment without trials -- a few thousand miles to the north?"

Thomson Correctional has already been dubbed "Gitmo North" -- an obvious pejorative among human rights lawyers, but one that has unmistakable political value for the Obama folks. With some Republicans screaming bloody murder about the fact that "terrorists" are being brought onto U.S. soil (an RNC release called it "a risky experiment with America's national security"), those in charge of the measure have repeatedly stressed that this will not be just any supermax prison. As a facility, it will be unprecedented. "This will be the safest prison in America," Sen. Durbin told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday, reminding them that Illinois was the first state in the country to open a federal supermax prison (a dubious distinction to be sure). It is not too cynical to suggest that the term "Gitmo North" will help blunt criticism from the fear-mongering right.

The ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and numerous progressive writers have all expressed their alarm at Obama's announcement this week. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said that it "contradicts everything the president has said about the need for America to return to leading with its values," and warned Congress "to legislate responsibly and not set any policies or precedents for indefinite detention on U.S. soil, or create any violation of the Geneva Conventions." Center for Constitutional Rights Executive Director Vincent Warren pointed out that the Obama administration "has already cleared for release at least 116 of the 210 men who remain at Guantánamo," many of whom "have nowhere to go because they are from countries that routinely engage in torture and other human rights abuses."

"Will they now be subject to inhuman conditions of solitary confinement in a maximum security facility despite the fact that they will never be charged with anything and have been approved for release?" asked Warren. "For them Thomson, Illinois may be worse than Guantánamo."

Activists who for years have been protesting Guantánamo in Washington are already gearing up to take their activities to the Midwest."If moving prisoners to Illinois is a step toward charging, trying, or releasing them, then it is potentially a step in the right direction," says Matt Deloisio of the grassroots group Witness Against Torture. "But if it is a cynical jobs program, and intended … to be the new home for those we have held for years without charge or trial whom we anticipate keeping in 'prolonged detention,' then it is a waste of time."

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer and editor of Rights & Liberties and World Special Coverage. http://twitter.com/LilianaSegura
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/144619/

Posted by lois at 03:24 PM | Comments (0)

Black leaders urge census to change how it counts inmates

Congratulations to Peter Wagner of Prisoners of the Census, who is not mentioned here but who has created and championed this issue!

Black leaders urge census to change how it counts inmates
By Carol Morello
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 17, 2009

A coalition of African American leaders concerned about minorities being undercounted in the 2010 Census called Wednesday for inmates at federal and state prisons to be tallied in their home communities instead of the towns where they are incarcerated.

Marc H. Morial, president of the National Urban League and chairman of a census advisory committee, said the practice now shortchanges communities in money and democratic representation. Census statistics are used to calculate the allocation of more than $478 billion in federal funds and to draw political boundaries.

Noting that about 1.2 million of the nation's 40 million African Americans are in prison, Morial said, "What we have in the prison population issue is a built-in undercount."

Morial and about a dozen other black leaders brought up the prison count during a meeting with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to discuss how to make the census more accurate, a perennial problem. In 2000, about 1.3 million people were overcounted, mostly because of duplicate counts of whites with multiple homes. In contrast, about 4.5 million people, mostly black and Hispanic, were not counted.

"Every census undercounts African Americans and overcounts whites," said the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson of the Rainbow/Push Coalition, who attended the meeting. "While it's getting better, it's not a one-to-one ratio."

The issue has particular resonance in the District. Almost all felons in the District serve their time in federal prisons around the country, not in a city lockup. At any given time, about 6,000 D.C. residents are in prison.
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Courts have upheld the decennial census method of counting residents where they live on April 1. College students, for instance, are counted in their dorms rather than in their parents' homes. Changing that practice would require a law in Congress or a court ruling, and both venues will be pursued, said the Rev. Al Sharpton, head of the National Action Network and a participant in the meeting.

In 2006, the Census Bureau gave Congress a report outlining problems that would arise if prisoners were to be counted in their home communities. For example, would a prisoner be counted as a resident of the census tract he lived in years before even though someone else lives in that house now? Or would he be counted in the community where he plans to live upon release?

Locke, whose department houses the Census Bureau, did not directly address the prison issue after the meeting. Instead, he referred to other issues that were discussed, including outreach efforts encouraging people to fill out their census forms and paid ads to run in minority-owned publications.

"African Americans and other minority communities have been consistently undercounted in past censuses, so we're grateful to the respected leaders we met with for their commitment in achieving an accurate count," Locke said in a written statement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/16/AR2009121603771.html

Posted by lois at 03:11 PM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2009

Campaign for Youth Justice: Reauthorization of S.678...Juvenile Justice Act. Contact your sentator now.

Tell the Senate: Pass Juvenile Justice Reform Now!
Targeting: The U.S. Senate

Sponsored by: Campaign for Youth Justice

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Reauthorization Act of 2009, S. 678, has been introduced and is awaiting action in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), which provides federal funding to states that comply with a set of best practices aimed at avoiding the detention and incarceration of young people in juvenile and adult facilities.

It's a good law, and is needed now more than ever to end the over-incarceration of young people of color in the justice system and stop the inappropriate use of adult jails for warehousing children charged as adults.

Unfortunately, the Senate may adjourn for the holidays before the Judiciary Committee or the full Senate updates and passes this critical legislation. While the Senate goes "home for the holidays", thousands of youth will be miles away from their families and communities in adult jails, prisons and juvenile detention and correctional facilities.

If you believe that it is urgent to stop putting youth in adult jails and prisons, to end the over-incarceration of youth of color in the justice system, and instead to devote more resources to effective juvenile justice programs such as alternatives to detention and incarceration, contact the Senate now and urge them to move the bill in the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate now!
Link to website to contact your senator.
http://www.change.org/actions/view/tell_the_senate_pass_juvenile_justice_reform_now

Posted by lois at 08:29 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Boston Bar Issues Report Saying MA should join almost every other state in allowing DNA tests to uncover wrongful convictions

Perhaps the committee’s most notable recommendation is for Massachusetts to join 46 other states that have passed laws allowing convicts to have DNA tests performed on evidence that may prove their innocence. The other states without DNA-testing statutes are Alabama, Alaska, and Oklahoma.

Study says widen access to DNA tests
Change may uncover wrongful convictions
By Jonathan Saltzman
Globe Staff / December 16, 2009

Massachusetts should join almost every other state in the country by passing a law to give convicted prisoners access to DNA evidence that could prove their innocence, according to a new study of ways to prevent and uncover wrongful convictions.

The Bay State is one of only four states without a law allowing prisoners to have DNA tests performed on evidence that remains in police files. In June, the US Supreme Court said such individuals have no constitutional right to biological evidence for testing, but the court pointed out that most states already allow the testing.

Because Massachusetts is not among those states, it is often up to each district attorney whether convicts get to test evidence. In Plymouth County, a convicted murderer has been fighting prosecutors for nearly a decade to get access to DNA evidence and has filed a suit in federal court.

The study - which was made by a Boston Bar Association committee of current and former prosecutors, high-ranking police officials, defense lawyers, and a former judge - proposes a bill that the panel says would ensure that inmates “who claim they are factually innocent could file a motion to identify the evidence in their case and obtain its postconviction testing.’’ The bill would also require the evidence to be preserved.

The 116-page report, which was obtained by the Globe and will be made public today, makes numerous other recommendations to prevent wrongful convictions.

Those recommendations include requiring police investigators to videotape interviews with suspects in custody in serious crimes and to audiotape interviews with witnesses, with the individuals’ consent. Some police departments have routinely conducted taping, although investigators were initially skeptical suspects would agree to it.

The report also urges police departments to follow the lead of Boston in updating procedures for eyewitness identification of suspects. Misidentification is widely believed to be the main cause of wrongful convictions.

“Adopting the report’s recommendations would substantially reduce the risk of convicting the innocent while the guilty go free,’’ Kathy B. Weinmen, the former president of the bar association who appointed the committee, said in the report.

The two cochairmen of the committee are well-known former prosecutors, David E. Meier and Martin F. Murphy.

Meier knows all too well about wrongful convictions. As head of the homicide unit of the Suffolk district attorney’s office from 1996 to 2008, he had to inform judges that prosecutors had wrongfully persuaded juries to convict eight murder defendants who were ultimately freed.

“The wrongful conviction of an innocent defendant strikes at the foundation of the criminal justice system,’’ he said in an interview. “It impacts everyone: the defendant, the victim and the victim’s family, the integrity of the system, and, perhaps most importantly, the public’s confidence in our system of justice.’’

Since 1982, at least 23 defendants wrongfully convicted in Massachusetts have been freed from prison, according to the New England Innocence Project, which specializes in using DNA testing to reopen cases.

Perhaps the committee’s most notable recommendation is for Massachusetts to join 46 other states that have passed laws allowing convicts to have DNA tests performed on evidence that may prove their innocence. The other states without DNA-testing statutes are Alabama, Alaska, and Oklahoma.

A number of prison inmates in Massachusetts, particularly in Suffolk County, have obtained access to DNA evidence that resulted in exonerations.

But Meier and Murphy, a former high-ranking prosecutor in the US attorney’s office in Massachusetts and in Middlesex County, said the practice varies widely, depending on the district attorney’s office. In Plymouth County, for example, Robert Wade was convicted in 1997 of aggravated rape and felony murder in an attack on an elderly woman who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease at a Lakeville farm where he worked.

Wade contends that semen found on the woman’s clothes did not belong to him, although a relative of the victim found both Wade and the woman nude in his cabin. Rudimentary biological testing done before the trial said the genetic material could have come from Wade but also from someone else, said his appellate lawyer, Janet H. Pumphrey of Lenox. But Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz has opposed requests for DNA testing.

“The district attorney’s office has in its possession evidence that could exonerate him and won’t let him have access to it,’’ said Pumphrey, who has filed suit in US District Court in Boston accusing prosecutors of violating Wade’s due process rights.

In an interview Monday, Cruz said proponents of a DNA-testing law are “trying to create some constitutional right to examine any piece of evidence at any time.’’

He said he does not oppose reexamining bona fide evidence that could prove someone’s innocence. But, he said, he objects to requests to reexamine evidence “ad nauseum,’’ adding that “at some point, there must be some finality for victims.’’

State Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, cochairwoman of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary, said that she has filed DNA-testing legislation three times since 2005 but that it has encountered resistance at least partly from lawmakers concerned about being seen as soft on crime. She said she hoped the report by the bar association committee will boost chances of passing the legislation.

Among the other members of the bar association committee are Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis; William J. Leahy, chief counsel of the public defender agency; Joseph F. Savage Jr., a defense lawyer and chairman of the New England Innocence Project; and Christopher J. Armstrong, retired chief justice of the state Appeals Court.

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

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

December 15, 2009

Extreme overtime puts California's prison health overhaul at risk...including salaries of $187,000

"California's prisons in 2008 spent $60 million on health care overtime. That doesn't count an additional $111 million in overtime for guards who protect on- and off-site health workers during medical appointments ­ more than double the amount being spent when the receiver took over."
"Three physician assistants and 52 nurses earned more than the $187,535 salary of Matthew Cate, corrections secretary and overseer of the prison system."

Sacramento Bee
Extreme overtime puts California's prison health overhaul at risk
By Charles Piller
Published: Sunday, Dec. 13, 2009
First of two parts.

California's prison health care employees work hard ­ or so it would seem bytheir schedules. Many average 12 hours a day; others routinely log 16- to 18-hour shifts for months on end, creating a costly overtime free-for-all in this budget-strapped state.

An abundance of forced and voluntary overtime has driven some nurses beyond human endurance. In the process, the long hours have opened the door for deadly lapses in a health care system just beginning to recover from decades of neglect.eiver took over.

"People who are pushing it to that level, working a ridiculous number of hours, usually crash," said Yolanda Esparza, a certified nursing assistant who works evenings and some nights at the California Institution for Women in Corona.

"I myself have witnessed people sleeping at their posts ­ heavily, snoring, full sleep. They don't even notice people walking by. It's pretty common," Esparza said.

Asked what happens when nurses are found sleeping on the job ­ a gross
violation of prison rules ­ one prison nursing director said simply, "We would wake them up." Often, she said, the nurse is then sent back to work.

A Bee investigation found that lax recruitment, worsened by the state budget crisis, and programs such as one for the suicidal that's exploited by savvy inmates, have contributed to extreme staff work schedules. Correctional officials have tolerated the practice despite criticism about the price of prison health care, which cost more than $2.1 billion in the year ending in June 2008.

In 2006, a federal judge appointed a receiver to combat substandard medical care in California prisons. Clinics were upgraded, services added and wages boosted ­ usually well above rates paid in regular hospitals. Incompetent doctors and nurses were ousted, and many new clinicians were hired. Care improved.

Yet, three years into the expensive overhaul, California's prisons in 2008 spent $60 million on health care overtime. That doesn't count an additional $111 million in overtime for guards who protect on- and off-site health workers during medical appointments ­ more than double the amount being spent when the receiver took over.

Rampant overtime, mostly for nurses, is the norm in this state, accounting for nearly 20 percent of all wages for prison nursing care. Nursing assistants logged the most overtime, equivalent to 1 1/2 extra work weeks a month, followed by licensed vocational nurses and registered nurses.

In New York prisons, by contrast, nursing overtime accounted for just 10 percent of wages. As a result, New York prison nurses earned about $100 per inmate in overtime for the full year, compared with about $300 per inmate in California.

Hundreds of California's prison nurses pulled down salaries more commonly associated with bankers. Three physician assistants and 52 nurses earned more than the $187,535 salary of Matthew Cate, corrections secretary and overseer of the prison system. (Most prison doctors also made more than Cate, without overtime.)

Compared to other state departments, the prisons stood out.

About 95 percent of prison nurses worked overtime last year ­ a higher
proportion than for employees of any other state department, including those known for extreme schedules, such as the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the California Highway Patrol and nurses in state mental institutions.

Even temporary employees, supplied by employment agencies called registries, have managed to cash in ­ earning millions of dollars in overtime paid at up to twice the normal wage.

Vanessa Avila, a registry medical assistant at Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, worked a schedule that, even by prison standards, was superhuman: 26.5 hours a day on average. At least that's what the state paid for her. Avila could not be reached for comment; her registry said its books indicate that she worked fewer hours than the state's payment log indicates.

Deuel topped $4.3 million in health care overtime last year ­ among the most for any prison and more than double the average for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Officials suggested that Deuel's demands may be greater because it processes new inmates before they are sent to other prisons, and those newcomers often arrive sick. But San Quentin, another intake center, spent just $1.3 million on overtime, far below the state average.

Officials in the receiver's office discounted the prospect that huge
overtime claims might be fraudulent, because supervisors closely monitor and confirm time sheets.

Last year, however, six physicians ­ five from registries, and their
supervisor, a state employee at Salinas Valley State Prison ­ were indicted for allegedly filing false work-hour claims. That case is still in court.

J. Clark Kelso, appointed in January 2008 as receiver to manage prison care, said he recently hired an internal auditor to check for possible fraud and find out "where do we have vulnerabilities?"

Kelso told The Bee he was most concerned about small but frequent fraud that can be hard to detect. "We don't have good systems in place," he said.

Suicide watch

Inmates use rampant fakery to manipulate the suicide watch program ­ one of the systems enhanced by the receiver to reduce inmate deaths ­ in ways that vastly increase unnecessary overtime.
Rayshawn Taylor, 30, an African American gang member from the Meadowview neighborhood in south Sacramento, said a recent cellmate at Deuel was a white man festooned with swastikas and racist tattoos.

"You want me to go to sleep (in that cell)? Hell no," said Taylor, who said he's in prison for kidnapping.

To prevent someone from being hurt ­ himself or his cellmate ­ Taylor said he told a doctor that he was ready to kill himself. He was switched to aprivate cell and watched 24 hours a day by a medical worker.

Since the receivership began, Deuel has seen an epidemic of such "suicidal"inmates, said James Simmons, a supervising nurse there. A daily average ofthree or four inmates in the suicide ward has jumped to eight or nine.

Simmons has seen it as high as 26, he said in an interview at the prison.Inmates "know that game," he said. "Less than 1 percent are actuallysuicidal."

Suicides are rare at Deuel. None was recorded in 2005 or 2006, before the receiver's program took hold, according to the California Department of Justice. Two inmates killed themselves in 2007, one in 2008, and none
through June of this year.

Michelle Gorman, director of nursing at Deuel, said the prison recently brought in temporary nursing assistants for suicide watch to cut back on using nurses for the job. But union rules allow staff nurses to bump any temp.

Karen Rea, statewide nursing director, said she is considering hiring moreassistants as state employees, who can't be bumped.

That's because, for a nurse, the seemingly mind-numbing work has a special allure: It pays up to $84 an hour.

According to internal tracking documents obtained by The Bee, Deuel spent more than $250,000 on suicide-watch salaries in December 2008 alone.

Effects on patient care

The impact of extreme work schedules is more than financial.
When clinicians are exhausted, "you don't see sharpness, the excellence in the workplace," said Dr. Jack St. Clair, chief medical officer at the Sierra Conservation Center, a prison in the foothills east of Stockton. "It's not safe."

Yet prison nurses said they routinely grab extra shifts to recoup wages lost on furlough days. Those with stamina treat overtime as a fast track to a higher standard of living, sometimes working 16-hour shifts five days a week.

"It doesn't leave a lot of room for rest," acknowledged Orlene Sargenti, licensed vocational nurse and union shop steward at Deuel, who averaged about 56 hours a week in 2008.

"Last year we had a couple of nurses who collapsed due to exhaustion," Sargenti said. Ironically, overwork generates more overtime, she said, when nurses working extreme hours call in sick from fatigue.

Gorman said nurses who sleep on the job jeopardize their licenses. "Nursesdo tell us that 'I'm tired and I can't work,' " she said.

The request is granted, she added, only if another nurse is available to take over. Staffing gaps often require forced overtime.

Union contracts allow unlimited voluntary overtime. Last year Marie Punla, 37, a registered nurse at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran, Kings County, took advantage of that provision to log 93 hours a week ­ more than all but seven prison clinicians in the state. That's equivalent to six 16-hour shifts every week.

Posted by lois at 08:29 PM | Comments (0)

Congress Approves Appropriations for Second Chance Act ($108 million), Byrne ($560 million)

Congress Approves Appropriations for Key Criminal Justice Programs

New York—The House and Senate have passed an omnibus appropriations bill (H.R. 3288) for the remainder of fiscal year 2010 that includes funding for the Department of Justice, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Health and Human Services. The bill provides $114 million to the Department of Justice for prisoner reentry, including $14 million for reentry initiatives in the Federal Bureau of Prisons and $100 million for Second Chance Act programs, including

* $37 million for reentry demonstration projects under Sec. 101 of the Second Chance Act
* $15 million for mentoring grants to nonprofit organizations under Sec. 211
* $10 million for reentry courts under Sec. 111
* $7.5 million for family-based substance abuse treatment under Sec. 113
* $2.5 million for grants to evaluate and improve education in prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities under Sec. 114
* $5 million for technology careers training demonstration grants under Sec. 115
* $13 million for reentry substance abuse and criminal justice collaboration under Sec. 201
* $10 million for reentry research under Sec. 245

The omnibus bill also provides $108,493,000 to the Department of Labor for ex-offender activities under the Second Chance Act and the Workforce Investment Act, including $15 million for a transitional jobs grant program. The bill also includes funding for the following programs:

* $12 million for the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act
* $10 million for a justice reinvestment grant program, which will provide technical assistance, incentive grants, and other activities in support of comprehensive, evidence-based criminal justice reform and recidivism-reduction efforts by states
* $519 million for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program
* $40 million for the Byrne Competitive Grant Program
* $45 million for drug courts
* $330 million for the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP)
* $30 million for Residential Substance Abuse Treatment (RSAT)
* $1.7986 billion for the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment (SAPT) Block Grant
* $202.2 million for the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention
* $454.63 million for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, including $67.6 million for programs in CSAT's Criminal Justice portfolio
* $1.0598 billion for the National Institute on Drug Abuse
* $1.4894 billion for the National Institute of Mental Health
* $462.35 million for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Posted by lois at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

H.R. 2450: Help Create Transparency and Fiscal Accountability in Privately-Owned Federal Prisons Co-Sponsor the Private Prison Information

Shelia Jackson Lee had introduced this Bill. They are seeking congressional co-sponsors.
Help Create Transparency and Fiscal Accountability in Privately-Owned Federal Prisons
Co-Sponsor the Private Prison Information Act, H.R. 2450

Current Co-Sponsors (11): Berry, Brady, D. Davis, Carney, Holden, Kilpatrick, LoBiondo, Meeks, D. Moore, Murtha, and Payne

Dear Colleague:

I invite you to join me in supporting legislation that seeks to provide transparency and public accountability for privately-operated prisons that house federal prisoners. The Private Prison Information Act, H.R. 2450, requires non Federal prisons and correctional facilities holding Federal prisoners under a contract with the Federal government to make the same information available to the public that Federal prisons and correctional facilities are required to make available.

As federal agencies increase their use of for-profit prisons, it is imperative that we permit the public to obtain information about the operation of those facilities and their impact on local communities. Over 32,000 federal prisoners are held at privately-run detention facilities at any given time. Since taxpayer money is spent to operate these prisons, the public has a right to know whether they are getting value and quality for their dollars.

For many years, private prison firms have hid behind a corporate veil of secrecy to keep damaging information from becoming public. H.R. 2450 would put an end to this practice, and would place private prisons that house federal prisoners on the same footing as federal detention facilities. If federal agencies must comply with FOIA requests, then private prisons that house federal prisoners, through contracts paid with public funds, should do likewise.

Last year, TIME magazine exposed the practice of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) of keeping two sets of internal quality assurance audit reports: one for release to government contracting agencies and another, more detailed audit report for internal use only. CCA’s general counsel admitted in a written statement to Senator Feinstein that the company “did not make our customers aware of these documents.” This blatant concealment of information from the public – and from government agencies – must be rectified.

Studies have shown that private prison guards receive less pay and fewer benefits, and have higher rates of turnover than those in the public sector. As a result, employees and inmates at private prisons, as well as surrounding communities, are exposed to greater risks. Earlier this year, there were two riots at the Reeves detention center in Pecos, Texas, which houses federal prisoners and is operated by the GEO Group, a private prison contractor. The Obama Administration recently announced plans to overhaul the nation's immigration detention system and transform it from one reliant on scattered local jails and private prisons to a centralized one with greater federal oversight and accountability.

As GEO is not presently subject to FOIA requests, local residents cannot obtain basic information about such violent incidents and whether their families are being put in danger. While members of the public can obtain limited records from contracting federal agencies through FOIA requests, such requests should properly be filed with the private prison contractors, which are often the sole source of such information.

Because I am deeply concerned with this lack of public accountability by private prison companies, I hope you will lend support to this effort to protect the public’s right to know about the operations of privately-operated prisons and detention facilities. The federal government cannot contract away the public’s right to oversee the operation of their government by hiring private contractors to provide correctional services.

Very Truly Yours,
/s/
Sheila Jackson Lee
Member of Congress

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

Arizona’s Prison Privatization Scheme Is a Comedy Gold Mine. The Joke's on Us

Arizona’s Prison Privatization Scheme Is a Comedy Gold Mine. The Joke's on Us
Thursday 10 December 2009
by: Caroline Isaacs, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

You know you’re in trouble when "The Daily Show" sends a “fake correspondent” to your state capitol. Perhaps it was inevitable - who could resist the irony of a state literally selling its capitol to the highest bidder?

The comedy in the footage of the aforementioned correspondent standing on Rep. Kyrsten Sinema’s desk to test the quality of the drop ceiling in her office was eclipsed only by the tragedy of Rep. Linda Lopez's complete inability to answer the question that should have been first on the mind of every elected official in Arizona: "After you sell these buildings and have to pay rent on them, how will you balance the budget next year?"

But the "Daily Show" segment was only the beginning. What’s got the cable “fake news” programs and incredulous audiences worldwide rolling in the aisles now is even more far-fetched: Arizona’s gonna privatize death row. State leaders want to give out lucrative, long-term contracts to private, for-profit corporations to run entire state prison complexes, essentially putting rent-a-cops in charge of women inmates, sex offenders and supermax lockdown units. Brilliant! How come nobody ever thought of this before?

Because it’s a terrible idea. In 30-plus years of America’s experiment with prison privatization, never has a private company run entire state prison complexes with multiple security levels. Only one, Corrections Corporation of America, manages high-security prisoners, and only in very small numbers. Even Tennessee, home of CCA, wisely passed on the company’s offer to run the whole state system.

Private prison companies prefer to cherry-pick the prisoners that are already cheapest to house - low-security with no medical, disciplinary or mental health problems. That way, they can skimp on paying or training their staff and make a nice tidy profit.

So why would any of these corporations even think of putting up $100 million to get some crumbling old prison buildings and contracts to manage prisoners from minimum to death row? Because their campaign contributions and armies of lobbyists have convinced Arizona lawmakers to sweeten the deal. The bill actually requires the state to split the savings generated through privatization 50/50 with the private operator. That’s right - we have to give them half the money back.

But wait! There’s more! The deal allows the prison companies to raise their per-diem rate (the amount the state pays them per prisoner, per day) every year for the length of the contract. With no upper limit. And what’s a measly $100 million compared to the combined guaranteed income of 20-year lease payments and those sweet per diems over the length of the contracts?

Now, a story like that is a comedy gold mine! The New York Times, first nationally to report on the story, attempted to hide its smirk behind reassuring quotes from Rep. John Kavanagh, a backer of the proposal who just happens to be chair of Arizona's Joint Legislative Budget Committee, which happens to oversee the Department of Administration, which will be managing the contracts.

But there was no restraining Stephen Colbert, who took the Twainian opportunity to take this ridiculous idea to its most extreme conclusion: Let’s just privatize the entire criminal justice system and pay cops a commission for every arrest. Surely the profit motive will result in more efficient "justice." How could there be anything wrong with the idea of profiting from depriving other human beings of their freedom? Ha! Ha!

And now the joke is going global. On November 23, the Guardian UK featured a story whose incredulous author referred to the Arizona proposals as "bizarre" and "kooky." Resisting the urge to outright mock us, Mr. Abramsky did, however, soberly note that the joke is really on the people of Arizona. Citing the dismal track records of abuse, escapes and riots that have plagued the private prison industry for its entire existence, he warned that this "wacky" scheme could have dire consequences.

So, laugh it up, everybody. Arizona taxpayers appear only too happy to foot the bill for your amusement. And be sure to tune in for the next installment, chronicling a state in even deeper debt, on the hook for 20-year contract obligations it can’t afford, fending off lawsuits over shoddy prison medical care and prisoner abuse scandals and frantically searching for the next brilliant short-term scheme to get us out of this mess.

http://www.truthout.org/topstories/121009vh04

Posted by lois at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)

Colorado's prison spending tops all other states

DATA GEEK: Colorado's prison spending tops all other states
December 11, 2009
Prisons and other programs for criminal offenders consumed a bigger chunk of Colorado’s 2008 government budget than for any other state, according to data the U.S. Census Bureau released Wednesday.

The bureau’s annual survey of state government finances found Colorado spent $996 million on corrections programs in 2008, which accounts for 5.1 percent of the state’s general revenue that year. No other state spent more. The second-ranking state for corrections spending was Maryland, which spent $1.4 billion or 4.7 percent of its revenue. On average, states spent 3.3 percent of their revenues on corrections.

Colorado was home to 23,274 state and federal prison inmates last year, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The prison population in Colorado rose 4.5 percent each year on average from 2000 to 2007, which is more than double the national average increase.

The compilation of government finances reveals other facts about Colorado’s spending priorities:

* A top priority was education, which consumed $7.9 billion or 41 percent of state revenue. Colorado ranks 14th for state government spending on education. Remember this doesn’t include the largest source of money for kindergarten through 12th-grade education, which is local property taxes.
* Public welfare programs such as aid to poor families cost the state $4.5 billion or 23 percent of revenues. Colorado ranks 39th for the portion of its budget spent on public welfare. This also doesn’t include local government spending, which varies a lot from county to county.
* State spending on highway projects was $1.3 billion or 7 percent of revenues. The national average state spending on highways is also 7 percent. This doesn’t include money spent at the local level such as road projects run by the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation District.
http://www.gazette.com/articles/colorado-90664-programs-data.html

Posted by lois at 03:07 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Juvenile Jails: Official Hopes Prison Crisis May Spur Change

“I have people on staff that have two, three, four, five cases of abuse or inappropriate restraint, and I can’t get rid of them because of civil service rules", Ms. Carrion said."

Official Hopes Prison Crisis May Spur Change

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: December 15, 2009
NY Times
ALBANY— After a state task force delivered a withering indictment of New York’s juvenile prisons, the head of the agency responsible for the prisons reacted by going on a publicity blitz — not to challenge the findings but to promote them.

“It is a lever, and I think that is important,” Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the state Office of Children and Family Services, said on Monday in between an interview with a radio station and a meeting with the chairman of the task force. “Usually the lever is the death of a child, and I don’t want to see that. If it takes this report to push through change, then good.”ivil-service rules, Ms. Carrión said.

When Ms. Carrión, a lawyer and a former executive at the United Way, took over the department in 2007, her track record as a no-nonsense leader raised hopes that she could overhaul what was widely considered a broken system.

But after almost three years, progress has been halting and the task force, which was appointed by Gov. David A. Paterson last year, described a system rife with problems. Many of the youths at the state’s 28 facilities have mental illnesses or drug addictions for which they get inadequate treatment, the report found. Many of those released from state custody are arrested and incarcerated again within a few years. And despite stringent rules imposed by Ms. Carrión dictating when staff can use physical force, abuse complaints are still common.

The United States Department of Justice, which highlighted serious physical abuse at four prisons in a separate report last summer, has threatened to take over the entire system if the problems are not fixed.

Ms. Carrión and her supporters — including juvenile justice experts and child welfare advocates — blame a combination of bureaucratic inertia, scarce state dollars, and resistance from unions and elected officials to closing or reducing the size of the prisons, many of which are in struggling upstate communities that need the jobs.

Ms. Carrión, 58, a blunt yet cheerful Bronx native who previously was a city community development official and worked as an executive at the United Way of New York City, said she embraced the task force report’s findings in part because they revealed the magnitude of the work that remains.

“I have people on staff that have two, three, four, five cases of abuse or inappropriate restraint, and I can’t get rid of them” because of civil-service rules, Ms. Carrión said. “I’m also the commissioner of child welfare. If you as a parent abuse your child, I take them away from you. Why is there a different standard for children that are in juvenile justice?”

But her critics, including the unions that represent agency workers, seized on the task force’s findings on Monday to argue that Ms. Carrión is the problem.

“If things haven’t improved in the three years she’s been in this position, the governor should decide what’s in the best interests of these kids,” said Ken Brynien, the president of New York State Public Employees Federation.

Some advocates believe there needs to be a greater sense of urgency because the future of many young people in the agency’s care is at stake. “The system is turning in a new direction,” the task force’s report said, “but there is still much more to be done.”

Ms. Carrión acknowledged that she needed to do better.

Still, she has aggressively downsized the system of state-run youth prisons and diverted resources to community-based care: smaller group facilities located closer to a youth’s family that emphasize psychological counseling and rehabilitation, with longer-term residential prisons reserved for the truly dangerous.

“She believes, and I am a proponent as well, that in New York State we have historically overvalued institutional care for the juvenile delinquent population,” said Bill Baccaglini, executive director of the New York Foundling, a private child welfare agency, and a former senior official at the Office of Children and Family Services.

Ms. Carrión has closed 11 facilities and has cut the population in the detention facilities by about 50 percent. Cameras have been installed to protect the workers and the youths in custody, Ms. Carrión said.

Workers are required to report every instance in which they are forced to use physical restraint, and Ms. Carrión receives a weekly summary. “I read them, and I think everybody holds their breath,” she said. “Because if it goes up, they hear from me.”

But many workers have resisted the changes, arguing that limits on physical force have put them at risk, pointing to a rise in workplace injuries among agency employees. They also argue that Ms. Carrión underestimates the danger that many youths in custody pose to themselves and others, and that community-based programs are not equipped to handle them.

“The youth are there because they have committed crimes,” Mr. Brynien said. “Many of them pled down from violent crimes. Some of them are larger than the staff, some are involved in gangs. To portray them as children who are locked away and shouldn’t be is a very oversimplified view.”

Despite the harsh spotlight on her agency, Ms. Carrión still seems to have the support of her boss, Mr. Paterson, who praised the task force’s report as well as Ms. Carrión, saying she “has done everything possible to provide better care for the mentally disabled."

Ms. Carrión’s efforts may get a boost when the state finishes negotiating a plan to address the problems in its juvenile justice system with the Department of Justice, which could compel the agency to institute a more aggressive overhaul.

“This is like a huge ship,” Ms. Carrión said. “Trying to turn it around is very difficult.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/nyregion/16carrion.html

Posted by lois at 02:58 PM | Comments (0)

Protest on 12-18 at AZ DOC by SWOP and others. Open Letter from the Sex Workers Outreach Project and allies to Charles L. Ryan, Director of the Arizona DOC

When: Friday December 18th, 2009 NOON

Where: AZ Department of Corrections
1601 West Jefferson St.
Phoenix, AZ 85007

Sex Workers and allies are coming together in front of the AZ Department of Corrections on December 18th, as part of International Day To End Violence Against Sex Workers, an annual event to call attention to violence committed against sex workers all over the globe. Marcia Powell was a prisoner of the State of Arizona who collapsed and died from heatstroke last May after being locked in an outdoor cage and ignored for four hours in 107 degree heat.

What: Protest Rally: Marcia Powell's death, AZ Department of Corrections.

You are invited to join us in Tucson, Arizona on December 17, 2009 (performance art/public installation and a candelight vigil) and in Phoenix, Arizona on December 18, 2009 (protest rally on the steps of the Arizona Department of Corrections).

Bring red umbrellas, to stand in solidarity! Signs are welcome.

Sex Worker Rights are Human Rights!

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

Open Letter from the Sex Workers Outreach Project and allies to Charles L. Ryan, Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections. Posted and delivered December 11, 2009.
­
December 17th is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. This event was created by Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP-USA), a national social justice network dedicated to the fundamental human rights of sex workers, focusing on ending violence and stigma through education and advocacy.
In 2009, sex workers from around the globe met gruesome deaths and endured unspeakable violence. Some died at the hands of a solitary perpetrator; others were victims of serial “prostitute killers.” While some of these horrific stories received international media attention (Boston, Grand Rapids, Albuquerque, Tijuana, Hong Kong, Moscow, Great Britain, Cape Town, New Zealand), other cases received little more than a perfunctory investigation. Many cases remain unsolved, sometimes forever.

Today we are here for Marcia Powell, who was incarcerated for solicitation of oral sex and sentenced to over two years in prison - despite being found so mentally impaired at the time of sentencing that she had just been appointed a legal guardian. On May 19, 2009, after informing prison staff that she was suicidal, Marcia was placed in an uncovered outdoor cage at Arizona's Perryville prison for women, where she would presumably be "observed" until she was transferred to a more appropriate location. Reportedly, that's what they did with women who caused problems there: they put them in a cage and "waited them out". The same cages were used for "recreation" and as waiting rooms for those needing medical attention: the prisons filled up so cages were erected in the yards to add more space. Putting someone in there was routine; women were left in there all the time beyond policy, so no one thought much about Marcia complaining - except the other prisoners. Four hours later - after her pleas for water were ignored or mocked by guard after guard - she was found, collapsed, in 107-degree heat, and died on May 20th in the custody of the Arizona Department of Corrections.

Marcia was the victim of dual forms of injustice, as a sex worker and as a prisoner. Sex Workers Outreach Project and other organizations are fundamentally opposed to criminalization of sex work. The prohibition of this work results in selective prosecution that puts some of the most vulnerable in our society at the mercy of a system that robs them of their basic respect and dignity. For decades efforts to curb sex work have not only failed to reduce incidences of prostitution, but they have corrupted our justice system resulting in selective enforcement, racial profiling and inhumane treatment of those who don't have the financial resources to fight back. Violence against sex workers is epidemic and rarely taken seriously. The criminalization of prostitution legitimizes this abuse so that sex workers are the targets of violent crime with little recourse. Marcia was referred to - after her death - as a "biological serial killer" in an employee blog (The Lumley Vampire). That suggests that her degraded social status as a "criminalized" sex worker had a considerable effect on the way she was treated at the hands of ADC staff the day she was left to die. It also raises the question of her abuse being the result of bias against her for a disability she may have also had.

Women prisoners are also the victims of an unjust system, facing extreme medical neglect, sexual harassment and abuse. The women's prison population in the United States has grown 800% in the past three decades, twice the rate of the male prison population. 2/3 of women in prison were incarcerated for non-violent offenses. (Institute on Women and Criminal Justice). As the death of Marcia Powell in the care of the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC) shows, prison sentences can include the most extreme form of neglect and abuse.

We are here for Marcia and other prisoners, and sex workers, as we call for respect for human rights. As a result of an internal investigation, 16 people were disciplined. An investigation is currently underway to determine whether or not criminal charges should be filed in her death.

"It's not enough to change a few people and policies. There is a culture embedded in the ADC that is pervasive throughout the prison system that reflects a disregard for the fundamental human rights of prisoners. There are exceptions to that, and the prisoners know who they are," says Peggy Plews of Arizona Prison Watch.

No critical analysis of the institutional culture that contributed to this abuse has been made public, but that analysis is essential to ending state violence.

In response to the death of Marcia Powell while in the custody of the Arizona Department of Corrections, we expect the following:

1. The Arizona Department of Corrections has an influential role in shaping policy. We ask that leadership be provided by the ADC in exploring models of restorative justice and addressing strategies such as criminal code and sentencing reform, early release programs for low-risk prisoners, community support through harm reduction, and re-entry programs to stop the revolving door syndrome that traps so many people.

2. An analysis of violence against sex workers (both inside and outside the Arizona prison system) should be conducted and a plan should be developed for reducing violence against sex workers in Arizona.

- An analysis of violence against sex workers (including male and transgendered workers) should include victimization while in state custody, police brutality, and domestic and occupational violence.

- Efforts to reform the prisons must go deeper than investigations into individual responsibility for Marcia's Powell's death. An analysis of how the culture of the correctional system employees/officers contributes to violence against prisoners is crucial.

3. A community-organized process for oversight in the prisons should be recognized which includes the voices of prisoners and their families.

4. Grievance policies should be reviewed and strengthened.

5. Cages should never be used to hold prisoners or to address overcrowding, which is the current practice. Overcrowding must be addressed through reducing incarceration and recidivism rates.

6. Allocate sufficient resources to address the special needs of prisoners with psychiatric and physical disabilities, including education about complications of medications.

7. May 20th should be observed each year in memory of Marcia Powell and other prisoners who died in state custody. On that day ADC should prepare a report addressed to prisoners, families and community-based oversight groups on human rights violations that have occurred over the past year and actions ADC has taken in response. The report should also include the Department's plan for the upcoming year to improve respect for human rights.

Sex workers around the United States are shocked to see this criminalization result in a death sentence for a prostitution crime. This is one of many cases in which we observe conditions that are abusive, degrading and dangerous ranging from rape and other violence, to extreme medical neglect. These conditions violate the human rights of all persons deprived of their liberty to be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and to be free from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The UN Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) should be applied to all individuals.

In the wealthiest country in the world, where taxpayers spend billions on the prison system, it is horrific that this justice system has led to a death sentence for someone arrested for prostitution. It's been over 60 years since the UN Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has been adopted. The Arizona Department of Corrections has been woefully negligent, in following the human rights protocol, which Eleanor Roosevelt, along with so many others, have developed. In less than a decade we've almost doubled the amount spent on our prisons in Arizona, and the Arizona Department of Corrections fails even the most basic requirement, to keep prisoners safe.

We ask that the Arizona Department of Corrections look at the 30 articles in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and review the treatment of individuals in the prison system in the light of these principles. Every ADC employee/correctional officer should have training in human and prisoners' rights principles and practices. ADC should provide leadership that demonstrates a respect for human rights.

We look forward to the day when prisons are no longer used to address our most pressing social problems. As social justice activists we challenge the discrimination that leads to criminalization and incarcerations. We promote human rights for all, as well as specific law reform. Recently enacted by the Arizona legislature, felony charges should be rescinded for prostitutioni charges. Although the ADC does not have jurisdiction over many aspects of these injustices, ADC does have great deal of influence in many of these matters and ADC is also directly responsible for how prisoners are treated within this system. Sex Worker Outreach Project, in tandem with Arizona Prison Watch and Friends of Marcia Powell expects that the ADC establish real justice in the death of Marcia Powell.

Sincerely,

Tara Sawyer
Board Chair
Sex Workers Outreach Project

Peggy Plews
Arizona Prison Watch
Friends of Marcia Powell

Penelope Saunders
Best Practices Policy Project

Carol Leigh
BAYSWAN

Posted by lois at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)

U.S. Said to Pick Illinois Prison to House "Detainees" from Guantanamo

U.S. Said to Pick Illinois Prison to House Detainees
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: December 14, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is expected to announce on Tuesday that it has selected a prison in northwestern Illinois to house terrorism suspects now being held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in a major step toward shutting down that military detention facility.

An administration official said President Obama had directed the federal government to proceed with acquiring the Thomson Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison in a rural village about 150 miles west of Chicago.

Gov. Patrick J. Quinn of Illinois and the state’s senior senator, Richard J. Durbin, will be briefed about the plan at the White House on Tuesday afternoon. The officials, both Democrats, have been enthusiastic supporters of bringing Guantánamo prisoners to Thomson, arguing that it would bring jobs to an impoverished part of the state.

When talk of bringing Guantánamo detainees to Thomson first surfaced in late November, both Mr. Quinn and Mr. Durbin held a series of news conferences to promote the idea of turning over the empty state prison, which was built in 2001 at a cost to Illinois taxpayers of about $120 million, to the federal penal system.

Top Illinois Republicans — including Representatives Donald Manzullo, whose district includes the prison, and Mark Steven Kirk, a candidate for the United States Senate seat once held by Mr. Obama — have denounced previous talk of such a move, saying it could make Illinois a target for terrorist attacks.

But Obama administration officials argue that the prison would be secure and that it would enhance national security to close Guantánamo because it has become a global symbol and a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda.

Mr. Obama declared shortly after his inauguration that he would close the Guantánamo prison — a signature component of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policy — within a year. But dealing with the roughly 200 detainees at the prison has proved difficult, and he is widely expected to miss that deadline.

In May, Mr. Obama proposed bringing some detainees to a facility inside the United States, including some who officials have decided are too difficult to prosecute and too dangerous to release. They would continue to be held without trial as “combatants” under the laws of war.

Under the proposal for Thomson, the Bureau of Prisons would buy the facility and improve its security. Most of the prison would house ordinary high-security inmates, but a part would be leased to the Defense Department to hold terror suspects.

It was not immediately clear how the government would pay for the prison and upgrades, but White House officials have floated the idea of including financing for it in the 2010 military appropriations bill.

Earlier this year, Congress enacted a law forbidding Guantánamo detainees to be brought onto United States soil except for the purpose of prosecution. But leading Democrats said they were open to lifting that restriction after the administration came up with a plan for how to handle the prisoners.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 15, 2009, on page A26 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/us/15gitmo.html?_r=1&hp

Posted by lois at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2009

New York Finds Extreme Crisis in Youth Prisons: problems are so acute that the state agency overseeing the prisons has asked New York’s Family Court judges not to send youths to any of them unless they are a significant risk to public safety

New York Finds Extreme Crisis in Youth Prisons

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: December 13, 2009
NY Times

ALBANY — New York’s system of juvenile prisons is broken, with young people battling mental illness or addiction held alongside violent offenders in abysmal facilities where they receive little counseling, can be physically abused and rarely get even a basic education, according to a report by a state panel.

The problems are so acute that the state agency overseeing the prisons has asked New York’s Family Court judges not to send youths to any of them unless they are a significant risk to public safety, recommending alternatives, like therapeutic foster care.

“New York State’s current approach fails the young people who are drawn into the system, the public whose safety it is intended to protect, and the principles of good governance that demand effective use of scarce state resources,” said the confidential draft report, which was obtained by The New York Times.

The report, prepared by a task force appointed by Gov. David A. Paterson and led by Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, comes three months after a federal investigation found that excessive force was routinely used at four prisons, resulting in injuries as severe as broken bones and shattered teeth.

The situation was so serious the Department of Justice, which made the investigation, threatened to take over the system.

But according to the task force, the problems uncovered at the four prisons are endemic to the entire system, which houses about 900 young people at 28 facilities around the state.

While some prisons for violent and dangerous offenders should be preserved, the report calls for most to be replaced with a system of smaller centers closer to the communities where most of the families of the youths in custody live.

The task force was convened in 2008 after years of complaints about the prisons, punctuated by the death in 2006 of an emotionally disturbed 15-year-old boy at one center after two workers pinned him to the ground. The task force’s recommendations are likely to help shape the state’s response to the federal findings.

“I was not proud of my state when I saw some of these facilities,” Mr. Travis said in an interview on Friday. “New York is no longer the leader it once was in the juvenile justice field.”

New York’s juvenile prisons are both extremely expensive and extraordinarily ineffective, according to the report, which will be given to Mr. Paterson on Monday. The state spends roughly $210,000 per youth annually, but three-quarters of those released from detention are arrested again within three years. And though the median age of those admitted to juvenile facilities is almost 16, one-third of those held read at a third-grade level.

The prisons are meant to house youths considered dangerous to themselves or others, but there is no standardized statewide system for assessing such risks, the report found.

In 2007, more than half of the youths who entered detention centers were sent there for the equivalent of misdemeanor offenses, in many cases theft, drug possession or even truancy. More than 80 percent were black or Latino, even though blacks and Latinos make up less than half the state’s total youth population — a racial disparity that has never been explained, the report said.

Many of those detained have addictions or psychological illnesses for which less restrictive treatment programs were not available. Three-quarters of children entering the juvenile justice system have drug or alcohol problems, more than half have had a diagnosis of mental health problems and one-third have developmental disabilities.

Yet there are only 55 psychologists and clinical social workers assigned to the prisons, according to the task force. And none of the facilities employ psychiatrists, who have the authority to prescribe the drugs many mentally ill teenagers require.

While 76 percent of youths in custody are from the New York City area, nearly all the prisons are upstate, and the youths’ relatives, many of them poor, cannot afford frequent visits, cutting them off from support networks.

“These institutions are often sorely underresourced, and some fail to keep their young people safe and secure, let alone meet their myriad service and treatment needs,” according to the report, which was based on interviews with workers and youths in custody, visits to prisons and advice from experts. “In some facilities, youth are subjected to shocking violence and abuse.”

Even before the task force’s report is released, the Paterson administration is moving to reduce the number of youths held in juvenile prisons.

Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, the agency that oversees the juvenile justice system, has recommended that judges find alternative placements for most young offenders, according to an internal memorandum issued Oct. 28 by the state’s deputy chief administrative judge.

Ms. Carrión also advised court officials that New York would not contest the Justice Department findings, according to the memo, and that officials were negotiating a settlement agreement to remedy the system.

Peter E. Kauffmann, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson, said the governor “looks forward to receiving the recommendations of the task force as we continue our efforts to transform the state’s juvenile justice system from a correctional-punitive model to a therapeutic model.”

The report contends that smaller facilities would place less strain on workers, helping reduce the use of physical force, and would be better able to tailor rehabilitation programs.

New York is not unique in using its juvenile prisons to house mentally ill teenagers, particularly as many states confront huge budget shortfalls that have resulted in significant cuts to mental health programs. Still, some states are trying to shift to smaller, community-based programs.

The report by New York’s task force does not say how much money would be needed to overhaul the system, but as Mr. Paterson and state lawmakers try to close a $3.2 billion deficit, cost could become a major hurdle.

Ms. Carrión has faced resistance from some prison workers, who accuse her of making them scapegoats for the system’s problems and minimizing the dangerous conditions they face. State records show a significant spike in on-the-job injuries, for which some workers blame Ms. Carrión’s efforts to limit the use of force.

“We embrace the idea of moving towards a more therapeutic model of care, but you can’t do that without more training and more staff,” said Stephen A. Madarasz, a spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, the union that represents prison workers. “You’re not dealing with wayward youth. In the more secure facilities, you’re dealing with individuals who have been involved in pretty serious crimes.”

Advocates have credited Ms. Carrión, who was appointed in 2007 by former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, with instituting significant reforms, including installing cameras in some of the more troubled prisons and providing more counseling.

But the state has a long way to go, many advocates say.

“Even the kids that are not considered dangerous are shackled when they are being transferred from their homes to the centers upstate — hands and feet, sometimes even belly chains,” said Clara Hemphill, a researcher and author of a report on the state’s youth prisons published in October by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School.

“It really is barbaric,” she added, “the way they treat these kids.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/nyregion/14juvenile.html?_r=1&hp
A version of this article appeared in print on December 14, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
Draft Report: Here: http://documents.nytimes.com/14juvenile#p=1

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

December 13, 2009

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics

By DUFF WILSON
Published: December 11, 2009: NY Times

New federally financed drug research reveals a stark disparity: children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts, the data shows.

Those findings, by a team from Rutgers and Columbia, are almost certain to add fuel to a long-running debate. Do too many children from poor families receive powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them — but because it is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be handled much differently for middle-class children?

The questions go beyond the psychological impact on Medicaid children, serious as that may be. Antipsychotic drugs can also have severe physical side effects, causing drastic weight gain and metabolic changes resulting in lifelong physical problems.

On Tuesday, a pediatric advisory committee to the Food and Drug Administration met to discuss the health risks for all children who take antipsychotics. The panel will consider recommending new label warnings for the drugs, which are now used by an estimated 300,000 people under age 18 in this country, counting both Medicaid patients and those with private insurance.

Meanwhile, a group of Medicaid medical directors from 16 states, under a project they call Too Many, Too Much, Too Young, has been experimenting with ways to reduce prescriptions of antipsychotic drugs among Medicaid children.

They plan to publish a report early next year.

The Rutgers-Columbia study will also be published early next year, in the peer-reviewed journal Health Affairs. But the findings have already been posted on the Web, setting off discussion among experts who treat and study troubled young people.

Some experts say they are stunned by the disparity in prescribing patterns. But others say it reinforces previous indications, and their own experience, that children with diagnoses of mental or emotional problems in low-income families are more likely to be given drugs than receive family counseling or psychotherapy.

Part of the reason is insurance reimbursements, as Medicaid often pays much less for counseling and therapy than private insurers do. Part of it may have to do with the challenges that families in poverty may have in consistently attending counseling or therapy sessions, even when such help is available.

“It’s easier for patients, and it’s easier for docs,” said Dr. Derek H. Suite, a psychiatrist in the Bronx whose pediatric cases include children and adolescents covered by Medicaid and who sometimes prescribes antipsychotics. “But the question is, ‘What are you prescribing it for?’ That’s where it gets a little fuzzy.”

Too often, Dr. Suite said, he sees young Medicaid patients to whom other doctors have given antipsychotics that the patients do not seem to need. Recently, for example, he met with a 15-year-old girl. She had stopped taking the antipsychotic medication that had been prescribed for her after a single examination, paid for by Medicaid, at a clinic where she received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.

Why did she stop? Dr. Suite asked. “I can control my moods,” the girl said softly.

After evaluating her, Dr. Suite decided she was right. The girl had arguments with her mother and stepfather and some insomnia. But she was a good student and certainly not bipolar, in Dr. Suite’s opinion.

“Normal teenager,” Dr. Suite said, nodding. “No scrips for you.”

Because there can be long waits to see the psychiatrists accepting Medicaid, it is often a pediatrician or family doctor who prescribes an antipsychotic to a Medicaid patient — whether because the parent wants it or the doctor believes there are few other options.

Some experts even say Medicaid may provide better care for children than many covered by private insurance because the drugs — which can cost $400 a month — are provided free to patients, and families do not have to worry about the co-payments and other insurance restrictions.

“Maybe Medicaid kids are getting better treatment,” said Dr. Gabrielle Carlson, a child psychiatrist and professor at the Stony Brook School of Medicine. “If it helps keep them in school, maybe it’s not so bad.”

In any case, as Congress works on health care legislation that could expand the nation’s Medicaid rolls by 15 million people — a 43 percent increase — the scope of the antipsychotics problem, and the expense, could grow in coming years.

Even though the drugs are typically cheaper than long-term therapy, they are the single biggest drug expenditure for Medicaid, costing the program $7.9 billion in 2006, the most recent year for which the data is available.

The Rutgers-Columbia research, based on millions of Medicaid and private insurance claims, is the most extensive analysis of its type yet on children’s antipsychotic drug use. It examined records for children in seven big states — including New York, Texas and California — selected to be representative of the nation’s Medicaid population, for the years 2001 and 2004.

The data indicated that more than 4 percent of patients ages 6 to 17 in Medicaid fee-for-service programs received antipsychotic drugs, compared with less than 1 percent of privately insured children and adolescents. More recent data through 2007 indicates that the disparity has remained, said Stephen Crystal, a Rutgers professor who led the study. Experts generally agree that some characteristics of the Medicaid population may contribute to psychological problems or psychiatric disorders. They include the stresses of poverty, single-parent homes, poorer schools, lack of access to preventive care and the fact that the Medicaid rolls include many adults who are themselves mentally ill.

As a result, studies have found that children in low-income families may have a higher rate of mental health problems — perhaps two to one — compared with children in better-off families. But that still does not explain the four-to-one disparity in prescribing antipsychotics.

Professor Crystal, who is the director of the Center for Pharmacotherapy at Rutgers, says his team’s data also indicates that poorer children are more likely to receive antipsychotics for less serious conditions than would typically prompt a prescription for a middle-class child.

But Professor Crystal said he did not have clear evidence to form an opinion on whether or not children on Medicaid were being overtreated.

“Medicaid kids are subject to a lot of stresses that lead to behavior issues which can be hard to distinguish from more serious psychiatric conditions,” he said. “It’s very hard to pin down.”

And yet Dr. Mark Olfson, a psychiatry professor at Columbia and a co-author of the study, said at least one thing was clear: “A lot of these kids are not getting other mental health services.”

The F.D.A. has approved antipsychotic drugs for children specifically to treat schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder. But they are more frequently prescribed to children for other, less extreme conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, aggression, persistent defiance or other so-called conduct disorders — especially when the children are covered by Medicaid, the new study shows.

Although doctors may legally prescribe the drugs for these “off label” uses, there have been no long-term studies of their effects when used for such conditions.

The Rutgers-Columbia study found that Medicaid children were more likely than those with private insurance to be given the drugs for off-label uses like A.D.H.D. and conduct disorders. The privately insured children, in turn, were more likely than their Medicaid counterparts to receive the drugs for F.D.A.-approved uses like bipolar disorder.

Even if parents enrolled in Medicaid may be reluctant to put their children on drugs, some come to rely on them as the only thing that helps.

“They say it’s impossible to stop now,” Evelyn Torres, 48, of the Bronx, said of her son’s use of antipsychotics since he received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder at age 3. Seven years later, the boy is now also afflicted with weight and heart problems. But Ms. Torres credits Medicaid for making the boy’s mental and physical conditions manageable. “They’re helping with everything,” she said.
A version of this article appeared in print on December 12, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/health/12medicaid.html?_r=1&em

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

December 11, 2009

The Graying of America’s Prisons: Part Two (with a focus on Angola LA, Tiyo Attallah Salah-El in Dallas PA and Norfolk MA Prison)

The Graying of America’s Prisons: Part Two

By James Ridgeway
Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Part two of our special report explores the movements in several states to relieve the burdens and tragedy America’s increasingly geriatric prison population

Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, members of the Angola 3, have spent most of the past 37 years in lockdown in Louisiana.

A civil action currently in federal court claims that both men, now in their 60s, have suffered serious harm to their physical and mental health from their years in isolation, spending 23 hours a day alone in 6 x 9 foot cells.

What distinguishes this case in particular is that it not only challenges the constitutionality of long-term, continuous solitary confinement, but draws on its particular effect on aging prisoners.

According to medical reports submitted to the court, the men suffer from arthritis, hypertension, and kidney failure, as well as memory impairment, insomnia, claustrophobia, anxiety, and depression. Wallace, who just celebrated his 67th birthday, has also become hard of hearing, and has had increasing difficulty communicating with attorneys or friends, on the phone and during visits.

Under the Americans for Disabilities Act, he and other hearing impaired inmates should receive whatever special care they require. In Wallace’s case, according to one of his attorneys, the prison [he has been transferred out of lockdown at Angola to lockdown at Hunt near Baton Rouge.] gave him one—not two—hearing aids, which made matters worse by adversely effecting his balance. (The prison has promised to provide a second hearing aid.)

Many older offenders suffer from serious mental illness–some of it produced or exacerbated by lengthy incarcerations. One study revealed depression among male prisoners was 50 percent higher than for those living outside. All in all, 54 percent of older prisoners met standards for psychiatric disorders. Williams and Abraldes write: “In one report from a maximum-security hospital, 75 percent of elderly prisoners were admitted between age 20 and 30 and the majority were schizophrenic.”

At Louisiana’s Angola Prison, the warden reported that 2,000 of over 5,000 inmates were on psychotropic drugs. Many mentally ill prisoners are simply warehoused and fed drugs to keep them under control. Even worse, some are labeled “discipline” problems, and end up in solitary confinement. A 2006 report from the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons found that mentally ill prisoners are increasingly being relegated to isolation cells where they live in “torturous conditions that are proven to cause mental deterioration.”

For the most part, however, old prisoners have far fewer disciplinary problems than younger inmates. A study to be released in January by Kristie Blevins and Anita Blowers, criminologists at the University of North Carolina, suggests that the older people present less of a disciplinary problem than younger inmates, and their offenses are relatively minor. The 2004 study looked at 428 men between the ages of 55-84 in state correctional facilities around the U.S.. Past studies have found that many perceived behavior problems among the elderly can be attributed to “victimization,” that is, getting harassed and beaten by other inmates.

Low Recidivism

In addition to causing less trouble inside, older offenders released from prison have a low recidivism rate. They are also likely to cost taxpayers far less than the $70,000 a year which, according to Williams and Albraldes, is the average expense of keeping a geriatric inmate imprisoned. The continued incarceration of these aging and dying inmates, then, clearly does not serve to protect society. Its only purpose is punishment.

In 2008, the federal government launched the Elderly Offender Home Detention Pilot Program, under which prisoners aged 65 and over can be released into a kind of supervised house arrest. As outlined by Families Against Mandatory Mimimums, eligibility guidelines are strict: offenders must have served at least 10 years and 75 percent of their sentences; no lifers and no perpetrators of “crimes of violence,” including sex crimes and firearms violations. Total number expected to participate: 80 to 100 nationwide, out of a total federal prison population of over 200,000.

Pennsylvania’s onerous law on compassionate release, dating from 1919, was revised last year so that old dying prisoners might be released into custody of family or friends—provided the corrections department did not find them to be a security risk and they were equipped with electronic monitoring devices.

According to an analysis by the Pennsylvania Prison Society, which tracks the reform, “It provides for: release to a hospital, hospice, or other licensed provider for terminally ill prisoners or those dying within one year. A home with licensed care may also be approved but then the prisoner will have electronic monitoring.” But the effect of this purported reform is unclear because the courts haven’t decided how to interpret it. Susan McNaughton of the Pennsylvania Department of corrections said statistics concerning compassionate release are scant, but in the past, “on average about six inmates are released from PA state prisons annually this way. I am not aware of any such releases since this new law was enacted.”

Before such releases can take place, attorneys for an old and ill prisoner will have to take the case through the Pennsylvania court system. It must go before the state superior court which, according to an attorney with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, another group that has been involved in the reform, could take two years

This may well be too long for Tiyo Attallah Salah, 76, an inmate at Dallas prison near Wilkes-Barre currently serving life without parole. A former jazz musician, Salah has developed long-distance relationships with a large network of friends, including Lois Ahrens of the organization Real Cost of Prisons, Marina Drummer of the Angola 3, and historian Howard Zinn, whose support helped him earn a college degree and study law. He now tutors other inmates and has assisted 250 prisoners in earning their GED high school equivalency diplomas. Salah currently is sponsoring a prison abolition group from inside Dallas.

Salah suffers also from high blood pressure, arthritis and prostate problems, and nearly died from diabetes last year. The prison pumped the old man full of steroids to keep him going. Like all prisoners, he has to walk up and down flights of stairs, to the shower and to meals. Salah’s job was cleaning showers on his hands and knees, and even though increasingly ill, he didn’t want to give up the job because it earned him 20 –40 cents an hour, money he used to purchase goods at the prison commissary, such things as socks, sweat pants, tea, maybe a hat.

In early November, he told Ahrens there was no heat in the cell block and he was trying to get more clothes. Ahrens, who is in close contact with Salah, says at one point he could scarcely walk. He has been saved by a broad network of friends inside as well as outside the prison, with younger inmates stepping in to take over his job, bringing him something special to eat from time to time, like a piece of fruit.

At Norfolk prison in Massachusetts, a state which has no compassionate care law–and where one in six prisoners is serving a life sentence—offenders have banded together in an organization called Lifers’ Group. They have drawn up a model bill they hope can be introduced into the state legislature. Fred Smith of St Francis House, which currently helps newly released prisoners in adjusting to society, recently was invited by the group to give a talk inside the prison. He found more than 100 prisoners turned out to hear his offer of support.

The long-termers’ model bill would permit the corrections department to grant a medical release to prisoners who are not judged to be a danger to society, when they face terminal or when “confinement will substantially shorten the prisoner’s life.’’

Frank Soffen, whose case was described in Part One of this Special Report, is cited by Lifers’ Group as an example of an offender the new law could help. But Soffen, too, may die long before any reforms take place.

The final consequence of the aging prison population, and especially of life sentences, is that more and more offenders are dying in prison. Angola, home to 5,000 offenders, is well known for its hospice, where trained inmates ease the last days of fellow prisoners; the program is cited as a model for other prisons to emulate,. You can get an idea of what it’s like by looking at a documentary film on the hospice by Edgar Barens, called Angola Prison Hospice: Opening the Door.

The hospice sees plenty of use, since an estimated 85 percent to 90 percent of the prisoners who enter the gates will never leave. Angola’s warden, Burl Cain, is also proud of the fact that the prison has its own mortuary, coffin-making shop, and a cemetery called Point Lookout, and gives each prisoner a funeral service. “Two funerals a month,” Cain told one Christian publication, “that’s just about the only way out of here.”

Colonel Bolt, the former Angola prisoner who got out after 20 years in solitary, knows he is an exception to the rule. But he says that some men have spent so long at Angola that they can’t even envision living out their old age on the outside. “They’ve been down so long,” Bolt said, that “they don’t have no friends…don’t have no lawyers. There’s nothing out there for them.…They concentrate on things keeping you going… [They want to] occupy time…writing, drawing.” When these men think of what’s going on outside, he said, “they get so frustrated…don’t see no way out”—so some of them simply stop thinking about it.

Some prisoners can’t even imagine going home to die, because they’ve had no home but Angola for most of their lives. When they die, Bolt said, “If the family got the money—they can bury them outside. Send the body to the front gate and [someone] will come get it out.” But many prisoners who “get to certain age,” he said, no longer have family, and no one who is “going to spend that money” for a coffin or a funeral.

When this happens, he continues, they “bury you down on the plantation….Old partners, old friends can take care of you…Go down to Point Lookout. A lot of cats want to be buried by their friends….[They say] ‘I’m going to live here and die here…if I got out what can I do?’ If you got three life sentences, four life sentences, what are you going to do?’’

James Ridgeway is the senior Washington correspondent for Mother Jones.
http://thecrimereport.org/2009/12/10/the-graying-of-america%E2%80%99s-prisons-part-two/

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

December 10, 2009

Pennsylvania's prison population grew much faster than any other state's from 2007 to 2008

Pa. prison population shows big growth
By Peter Mucha
December 9, 2009
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Pennsylvania's prison population grew much faster than any other state's from 2007 to 2008, according to figures released by the Justice Department this week.

While the state and federal inmate count increased less than 1 percent nationwide - the lowest rate in eight years - Pennsylvania's was up 9.1 percent, well ahead of the 4.9 percent of second-place Arizona.

It was no one-year anomaly, said Susan McNaughton, press secretary for the state Department of Corrections.

"We've been experiencing this population growth for quite a while, and we're at a point where we're running low on bed space," she said.

Because of overcrowding, about 500 prisoners have been transferred to county prisons, and the state is seeking accommodations for 2,000 others in at least one other state, she said.

In 20 states, including New Jersey and New York, prison populations fell, in many cases because of efforts by cost-conscious lawmakers.

"It's not ideological. It's pragmatic," said Ram Cnaan, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice. "This is the first time that we have alliances on the right and left on this issue, and it's the money that has forced the issue."

For fiscal 2010, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has requested $1.8 billion, an increase of about $200 million, according to the agency's budget presentation.

The department contends that changes are needed to find other ways to treat or punish those who commit lesser crimes, such as drug and property offenses, McNaughton said.

"We believe we really should be saving our expensive prison space for those who are truly violent and who truly need to be separated from society," she said.

Pennsylvania also added more prisoners - 4,178 - than any other state, according to "Prisoners in 2008," by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

One factor was the two-month moratorium on paroles last fall after a parolee gunned down Philadelphia Police Sgt. Patrick McDonald.

During the moratorium, the state prison system grew by about 1,100 inmates, but that total wasn't needed to make the state first for percentage growth.

In absolute numbers, Pennsylvania ranks behind six states.

On Dec. 31, 2008, California had 173,670 prisoners, edging out Texas' 172,506. Each of those states had more than No. 3 Florida's 102,388 and No. 4 New York's 60,347 combined.

Georgia and Ohio also had more than Pennsylvania's 50,147 - 47,193 of them men, 2,954 women.

New Jersey's state and federal prison population - which declined 3.3 percent, tying Kentucky and trailing only New York's 3.6 percent drop - was 25,953.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/78912432.html

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

December 09, 2009

American Youth in the 21st Century: Pathologized, Criminalized and Disposable

American Youth in the 21st Century: Pathologized, Criminalized and Disposable
By Henry A. Giroux, AlterNet. Posted November 16, 2009.

Young people today face imprisonment, the prescription of psychotropic drugs, psychiatric confinement, and zero tolerance policies that model schools after prisons.

Editor's note: the following is an excerpt from Henry Giroux' new book, Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability? (Palgrave MacMillan).

Punishment and fear have replaced compassion and social responsibility as the most important modalities mediating the relationship of youth to the larger social order. Youth within the last two decades have come to be seen as a source of trouble rather than as a resource for investing in the future, and in the case of poor black and Hispanic youth are increasingly treated as either a disposable population, cannon fodder for barbaric wars abroad, or the source of most of society’s problems. Hence, young people now constitute a crisis that has less to do with improving the future than with denying it. As Larry Grossberg points out, “It has become common to think of kids as a threat to the existing social order and for kids to be blamed for the problems they experience. We slide from kids in trouble, kids have problems, and kids are threatened, to kids as trouble, kids as problems, and kids as threatening.” This was exemplified when the columnist Bob Herbert reported in the New York Times that “parts of New York City are like a police state for young men, women, and children who happen to be black or Hispanic. They are routinely stopped, searched, harassed, intimidated, humiliated and, in many cases, arrested for no good reason.” No longer “viewed as a privileged sign and embodiment of the future,” youth are now increasingly demonized by the popular media and derided by politicians looking for quick-fix solutions to crime and other social ills. While youth have always had to bear the misplaced fear and distrust of adults, how youth are represented, talked about, and treated has changed dramatically in the last two decades.

Under the reign of neoliberal politics with its hyped-up social Darwinism and theater of cruelty, the popular demonization and “dangerousation” of the young now justifies responses to youth that were unthinkable 20 years ago, including criminalization and imprisonment, the prescription of psychotropic drugs, psychiatric confinement, and zero tolerance policies that model schools after prisons. School has become a model for a punishing society in which children who commit a rule violation as minor as a dress code infraction or slightly act out in class can be handcuffed, booked, and put in a jail cell. Racism, inequality, and poverty are on full display in the growing resegregation of public schools in the United States. Now more than ever, many schools either simply warehouse young black males or put them on the fast track to prison incarceration or a future of control under the criminal justice system. All across America, black and brown youth are being suspended or expelled at rates much higher than their white counterparts who commit similar behavioral infractions. For example, as Howard Witt writes in the Chicago Tribune, “In the average New Jersey public school, African-American students are almost 60 times as likely as white students to be expelled for serious disciplinary infractions. In Minnesota, black students are suspended 6 times as often as whites [and ] in Iowa, blacks make up just 5 percent of the statewide public school enrollment but account for 22 percent of the students who get suspended. . . . And on average across the nation, black students are suspended and expelled at nearly three times the rate of white students.” As schools become increasingly militarized, drug-sniffing dogs, metal detectors, and cameras have become common features in schools, and administrators appear more willing if not eager “to criminalize many school infractions, saddling tens of thousands of students with misdemeanor criminal records for offenses such as swearing[,] disrupting class,” or pushing another student. Trust and respect now give way to fear, disdain, and suspicion, creating an environment in which critical pedagogical practices wither, while pedagogies of surveillance and testing flourish. If young people were once defined as part of the vocabulary of innocence and compassion, they are now largely understood through the discourse of fear, guilt, and punishment.

Clearly, there is more at stake under the current regime of neoliberal politics than an attack on children largely characterized by “negative labels and characterizations of youth [that] are falsely totalizing” and punitive laws and public policies. Youth have also become collateral damage for conservatives and neoliberal advocates who want to dismantle the social state and in doing so justify themselves by pointing to an alleged rise of a generation of disorderly and dangerous youth dependent upon government entitlements. Within this discourse, government support for young people is both undermined and inappropriately blamed for creating a generation of kids labeled as psychologically damaged, narcissistic, violent, and out of control. Scapegoating youth as both a generation of suspects and a threat to the social order allows conservatives and neoliberals to further privatize those public spheres that youth need, such as education and health care, while developing policies that move away from social investment to matters of punishment and containment. In this instance, the punishing state combines with the logic of the market to produce priorities and policies that disinvest in the future of children and assert a ruthlessness that largely treats them as reified commodities or disposable populations. Both childhood and the state are now being reimagined in ways that reveal the priorities of a society that has fully embraced the reckless abandon of casino capitalism, where the only rules that matter are made to order by powerful corporations and rich investors. How else to interpret neoliberal-inspired government programs that in the midst of deepening inequality, rising levels of poverty, catastrophic increases in failed mortgages, and growing unemployment invest more in prisons than in public and higher education?

It is more necessary than ever to register youth as a theoretical, moral, and political center of concern, even as it is increasingly evident that youth are one of our lowest national priorities. It is crucial to connect the current crisis in democracy to the war against young people. Doing so will remind adults of their ethical and political responsibility to invest in youth as a symbol for not only securing a democratic future but also keeping alive those elements of civic imagination, culture, and education that subordinate economic principles to democratic values. The category of youth may be one of the most important referents for beginning a critical examination about the pernicious consequences of a society driven by market values, one that not only abstracts young people from the future but shapes the present in a theater of war in which youth become the most innocent victims. Youth provide a powerful touchstone for a critical discussion about the long-term consequences of neoliberal policies, which undermine any viable notion of justice, equality, and freedom, while also gesturing toward those conditions that make a democratic future possible. Many young people are part of social movements that not only address these crucial issues but also provide a politics, modes of resistance, and connective relations that adults should take seriously as part of their own civic and political formation at the beginning of the new millennium.

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. His most recent books include "The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex" (2007) and "Against the Terror of Neoliberalism" (2008).
http://www.alternet.org/story/143875/?page=entire

Posted by lois at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)

VA: Rastafarian prisoners in segregation for nearly 10 years

Rastafarian inmates in segregation for nearly 10 years
Tue Dec 8, 2009

RICHMOND, Va. -- Bill Clinton was president when a handful of Virginia prisoners entered segregation cells rather than cut their hair. The inmates, Rastafarians, complain the Department of Corrections' grooming policy of Dec. 15, 1999, violates their religion. Followers of the Rastafari movement let their hair grow in dreadlocks and let their beards grow. Among other things, the policy requires that male inmates' hair be cut above the shirt collar and around the ears for security and health reasons. Next week marks a decade that at least eight of them have been confined alone in small cells for refusing to comply -- allowed out for three showers and five hour long recreation periods a week.

Eric Balaban, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, has never heard of anything like it in any other state. "That really is remarkable -- based solely upon the continued violation of grooming policy -- to put somebody in the hole for 10 years," he said. "Why would you use up your valuable space in segregation for these guys?" Balaban asked.

Because they are in segregation, the inmates cannot be interviewed. Six, however, recently wrote to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. They said many were originally in segregation at the same prison but were later scattered to other prisons across the state. "I can't speak for all the others' experience, but for me, being in seg. for as long as I have been . . . has created a deep rooted bitterness, frustration, and depression," wrote inmate Allen McRae, also known as Ras-Solomon Tafari.

McRae, 32, serving a 20-year sentence for cocaine possession, said, "my normal day . . . is a repetitive cycle of stress and frustration. " Elton L. Williams, 30, a Greensville Correctional Center inmate, forwarded a list of nine current inmates, including McRae and himself, who he says have been in segregation for 10 years. Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, confirmed that eight of the nine have been in segregation for nearly 10 years. The total number of inmates in segregation for refusing to comply was not available.

Among other things, the policy is intended to help identify prisoners who could otherwise change their appearances from the mug shots taken when they first entered the system. Female inmates' hair must be no longer than shoulder length. One or two
braids or ponytails are allowed, but hair must be kept out of the face and eyes. As of four years ago, no female inmates were in segregation for failing to comply.

The ACLU of Virginia challenged the grooming policy, alleging it violates the religious rights of Rastafarian and Muslim inmates under a federal law, but lost. The court ruled the state had a compelling interest in imposing the grooming policy. Those in segregation say they are allowed one non-contact visit per week and two phone calls a month. The department says they cannot participate in recreational, educational or treatment programs and are not earning any so-called "good-time" parole
credits. But they are able to speak with inmates in adjacent cells and with staff.

A 10th inmate on Williams' list is Ivan Sparks, once the "elder" of the Rastafarian community at the Buckingham Correctional Center. Unknown to Williams when he wrote the new list was that Sparks, 59 -- after spending nearly the last 10 years of his life in segregation -- died Oct. 21 at VCU Medical Center from renal failure because of prostate cancer. Sparks wrote to The Times-Dispatch in 2005 and identified 11 Rastafarians, including himself, who had been in segregation at that time for nearly six years.

"He was a great person," said inmate Devon Sutherland, 50, who has also been in segregation for 10 years. "I knew he had two daughter he love, he had love his religious conviction." Evans Hopkins, a former prison inmate, award-winning writer and author of
"Life After Life," knew Sparks well when the two served a total of 16 years together in two different prisons. Hopkins mentioned him in his book and says Sparks was a sincere Rastafarian. "I'm not a Rastafarian and don't necessarily ascribe to all their beliefs but I know Ivan Sparks believed with all his heart," Hopkins said. Sparks, from New York, was convicted of murder in Danville in 1981 and sentenced to 51 years.

Hopkins plans to ask Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to provide some sort of help for the inmates. He said 10 years of segregation "should rule out anyone who only wants to wear dreadlocks simply to make a fashion statement." Hopkins and Sutherland question the adequacy of medical attention given those in segregation.

Another inmate in segregation, Kendall Gibson, 37, also known as Ras-Talawa Tafari, wrote that, "today I came out of the cell twice -- I went for my twelfth parole hearing and took a shower. I don't go out to the [recreation] cages when the weather is cold."
Convicted of robbery, abduction and firearms charges and sentenced to 47 years, Gibson was first eligible for discretionary parole in 1998. He said that if not for the grooming policy, he might have already been released on parole.
Because he has been in segregation and cannot earn the good-time reductions, Gibson said, he is unlikely to be released until 2023.

But, he said, "I'm not going to bow." "I personally do not dwell upon all the down depression -- I just try to
make the best of my situation by keeping focus on the 'good' things I need to know and learn," he said, adding, "I haven't seen a TV since 1999." Williams, serving 14 years for robbery, says the Rastafarians are being punished more severely than serial killers or prisoners who attack officers or other inmates. Those inmates can re-enter the general population, "not us,
though," he said. "Solitary confinement has become our doom," he complained. "The best way to describe it would be in comparison to a faucet drip .. . . after 10 years I would think it's now time for a plumber," Williams wrote.

http://www2. timesdispatch. com/rtd/news/ local/crime/ article/HAIR07_20091206- 223208/310004/

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

MA: Death of Dominican immigrant in jail in Boston- Prison Health Services Defends "Care"

Jail defends care after inmate death
By Maria Sacchetti
The Boston Globe Staff / December 6, 2009

The new $20 million building was built for women, but the floor plan was a safety risk because it lacked privacy and protection for female inmates. Officials found a solution in 2003: Use the building to house male immigrant detainees facing deportation, often for short stays. Now the once-vacant building is filled with 270 immigrants on an average day, bringing in $10 million a year in federal funding.

The system has operated for many years, but now Building 8 is facing scrutiny following the Oct. 19 death of Dominican immigrant Pedro Tavarez, of a heart attack at age 49. The tragedy has prompted questions about his medical care inside the house of correction. Local authorities declined to comment on his case because a federal investigation is pending, but they maintain that they provide extensive medical care and recently opened their doors to a Globe reporter and photographer for a tour of the Boston jail.

“We’re proud of what goes on here,’’ Superintendent Gerard Horgan said as he led a tour of Building 8 and the 44-bed infirmary at the jail hard by the Southeast Expressway. “Everybody who comes in here is somebody’s brother, sister, mother, father, son, or daughter, and we try to treat them with respect. We try to make sure that they thrive when they are here.’’

The Globe was prohibited from interviewing detainees because of privacy rules at the jail, and Suffolk officials would not answer direct questions about Tavarez’s care. As a result, the portrait of medical care at Suffolk conflicts sharply: Jail officials say they have highly rated medical facilities that provide care as quickly as possible, while detainees said in federal court that Tavarez asked for help three times and was not treated until detainees found him soaked in sweat and shivering in his bunk.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts says it has received several reports about delays in care at the facility, including in Tavarez’s case and after the 2006 death of another detainee. That death did not come to light until this year. New rules require the government to announce detainee deaths to the news media.

Tavarez’s daughter has hired a lawyer to look into his death, and federal officials are also investigating.

As they await the outcome of the federal investigation, jail officials said they want to make clear that Suffolk provides round-the-clock medical care through a private contractor, Tennessee-based Prison Health Services Inc. A federal monitor assigned daily oversees the entire operation. An official for the company declined to comment.

Building 8, a clean, four-story building with sparkling floors, TVs, and long, beige-colored cells that sleep six men each, has a nurse during the day. Each residential floor has a box where inmates can request medical attention daily.Continued...

The infirmary, a short walk from Building 8, resembles a small emergency room. It is staffed by three physicians during the week and seven to eight nurses each day. The staff provides general medical care, along with mental health, dental, and nutrition services, physical therapy, optometry, and care for infectious disease. The infirmary serves all 1,620 inmates in the jail and receives 50 to 70 medical requests a day, authorities say.

On the recent visit, nurses bustled about in scrubs with stethoscopes, a dentist attended to an inmate’s teeth, and a patient received kidney dialysis. Down a long, quiet corridor, some inmates went through detox and a handful of others were on suicide watch, requiring frequent checks.

If inmates need to go to the hospital, the jail has a contract with Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain because they are trained to work with prisoners.

Emergency cases are taken directly next door, to Boston Medical Center.

The circumstances of Tavarez’s care are unclear. But on Oct. 16, Tavarez was taken to Shattuck Hospital, according to the federal government. Federal officials said they took him to the hospital with possible pneumonia, and he was treated for heart and respiratory conditions.

At 6 p.m., Shattuck called 911, according to Boston EMS. That same night, according to federal officials, the consul of the Dominican Republic, and ICE, an ambulance took him to Faulkner Hospital in Jamaica Plain, and then to Brigham and Women’s, where he died three days later.

The cause of death was cardiac arrest, according to the state medical examiner.

Jail officials say they are committed to giving all inmates good care.

“It’s in our best interest that they get attended to, from a humanistic and from a legal standpoint,’’ said Gerry Walsh, a deputy superintendent.

Tavarez’s relatives in New York, Providence, and Florida are awaiting answers. The cause of death released last week left them wondering about the care he received inside the jail and whether his death might have been prevented.

“They’re going to have to check more details than this,’’ said his niece, Jennifer Lopez, who lives in the Bronx, where Tavarez was buried. “We’re not satisfied with what they’re telling us.’’
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/06/new_20m_building_8_saw_inmate_deaths_despite_precautions/
------------------------------
This is a response from one of the members of the MA End the Odds Coalition:
This story is more than sad. I remember reading about the facility just before it was to have opened several years ago as a women's jail. Its flawed design was led and defended by correctional folk. All the 'stakeholders' (sic) knew at the time it was being built and upon its completion that the design presented serious safety concerns. No one was has been held accountable. The construction of the facility was pushed by Rep Kay Khan who wanted a "gender- responsive" jail for women- all in the name of equity. Khan and other 'progressive' female legislators like Liz Malia and Ruth Balser, file bills each session for more jails to house women.
Please 'google' the earlier coverage of the construction/design- led by Sheriff Andrea Cabral's predecessors. Cabral wants still more cells to house, in her own words, "the Hand That Rocks the Cradle: The Rise of the Female Offender."

I believe that Francie Latour of the Boston Globe covered the issue of the building that is once again in the news. She also covered (then Nebraska Correction Commissioner) Harold Clarke's audit of Suffolk County HoC and jail for the American Correctional Association. He gave Suffolk County a glowing review back then. Perhaps that is why he was selected as DOC Commissioner three years ago. He was known to be a 'team player.' Now Clarke is president of the ACA and has implemented a policy change that places county correctional healthcare audits under the ACA. ACA standards are the weakest of most every inspectional entity.

Posted by lois at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)

Tilda Sosaya

Tilda Sosaya Born December 30, 1946 in Queens, New York, passed away November 20, 2009, from complications of liver cancer. She was a long-time resident of New Mexico. Tilda was a strong woman who centered her life on her children and on justice. She was a long-time advocate for the rights of prisoners and their family members. Her heart and orientation to righting wrongs carry forward in her children and in her many friendships. She was quick witted, with a steel trap mind for fact.
Judy Greene in an email wrote:
"Tilda, whose son was serving time in one of Johnson's prisons, organized a dynamic statewide network of families and kept both legislators and the media focused day to day on prison problems. Her op-eds and her testimony were brilliant, and her organizing was tireless. The administration struck back by punishing her son -- harassing him with long lockdowns for minor infractions, and even sending him to the notorious "Wallens Ridge" dungeon in Virginia."
Tilda was a champion for justice.

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

U.S. Prison, Jail Population Continues Upward At Slower Pace

U.S. Prison, Jail Population Continues Upward At Slower Pace
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 2:01 pm

The nation’s correctional population–prisons, jails, probation, and parole–increased .5 percent last year, about one third of the average annual growth rate since 2000, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics said today. At the end of last year, there were 7.3 million people under correctional supervision, including 5.1 million supervised in the community on probation or parole and 2.3 million in prison or jail.

State and federal correctional authorities had more than 1.6 million prisoners at the end of 2008, the equivalent of about one in every 198 persons in the U.S. Growth in the prison population slowed to 0.8 percent during 2008, the smallest annual rate of growth since 2000. Adam Gelb of the Pew Center on the States Public Safety Performance Project noted that, “The significant differences between the states, even within the same geographic region, show that it’s policy choices that are responsible
for the size and cost of state prison systems, not crime trends or broadsocial and economic forces beyond the influence of state and local leaders.”

Link: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/p08.htm
http://thecrimereport.org/2009/12/08/u-s-prison-jail-population-continues-upward-at-slower-pace/
----------------------------------------
Many states sending fewer people to prison, federal report shows
Governments are reevaluating sentencing practices
By Krissah Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 9, 2009

The number of people in U.S. prisons has grown at the slowest pace in nearly a decade, according to figures released Tuesday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The study also found that incarceration rates in 30 states declined last year.

Across the country, states are sending fewer people to prison as they grapple with a severe economic recession. Last year, the number of people sent to prison was down 0.5 percent from the previous year, while the number of people released from prison increased by 2 percent.

The steepest drop was in Georgia, where the prison population between 2007 and 2008 was down by 2,509 inmates, or 2.8 percent. In Maryland, there were 109 fewer people in jail, a decrease of 0.5 percent. The population in Virginia was up slightly at 207 more inmates, an increase of 0.5 percent. Data were not available for D.C. jails, which were transferred to federal authority after 2001.

The numbers may reflect the decision by some state governments to cut the high cost of corrections systems. Many are reevaluating their sentencing, parole and drug policies to try to scale back the expense of housing criminals. This fall, lawmakers in Rhode Island passed a law eliminating mandatory minimum drug sentences, and legislators in Massachusetts and Ohio are considering sentencing reforms.

Will Marling, executive director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance, said he is concerned about the change in policy. "The issue for us is that it seems to be an issue of financial expediency rather than a justice issue," he said. "Ultimately, these decisions were made in a court of law. Hopefully, in view of the law and the crime, these sentences will not simply be nullified out of concerns for space."

The Bureau of Justice Statistics data also found that the incarceration rate for African Americans -- who are imprisoned at rates higher than other racial groups -- fell sharply, with 9 percent fewer black people behind bars. Studies this year by the Sentencing Project, a research group that advocates for lower rates of imprisonment, have attributed the decline to the lower number of blacks imprisoned for drug offenses.

A report released earlier this year by the project found a 21.6 percent decline in the number of African Americans incarcerated in state prisons for a drug offense from 1999 to 2005, along with a rise of 42.6 percent in the number of white drug offenders. Still, black males are incarcerated at more than six times the rate of white males, and black females at three times the rate of white females, Marc Mauer, the project's executive director, said in a statement.

"While the declining number of African Americans in prison is encouraging, the scale of racial disparity in imprisonment is still dramatic," Mauer said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/08/AR2009120803234.html

Posted by lois at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2009

The Graying of America’s Prisons By James Ridgeway

The Graying of America’s Prisons
By James Ridgeway
Monday, December 7th, 2009 4:00 am

Part One of our Special Report, we look at one of the hidden legacies of the tough-on-crime policies of previous decades: a growing population of aging and ill offenders behind bars.

Frank Soffen, now 70 years old, has lived more than half his life in prison, and will likely die there.

Sentenced to life for second-degree murder, Soffen has suffered four heart attacks and is confined to a wheelchair. He has lately been held in the assisted living wing of Massachusetts’ Norfolk prison. Because of his failing health and his exemplary record over his 37 years behind bars—which includes rescuing a guard being threatened by other inmates—Soffen has been held up as a candidate for release on medical and compassionate grounds.

He is physically incapable of committing a violent crime, has already participated in pre-release and furlough programs, and has a supportive family and a place to live with his son. One of the members of the Massachusetts state parole board spoke in favor of his release. But in 2006 the board voted to deny Soffen parole. He will not be eligible for review for another five years.

The “tough on crime” posturing and policymaking that have dominated American politics for more than three decades have left behind a grim legacy. Longer sentences and harsher parole standards have led to overcrowded prisons, overtaxed state budgets, and devastated families and communities. Now, yet another consequence is becoming visible in the nation’s prisons and jails: a huge and ever-growing numbers of geriatric inmates.

Increasingly, the cells and dormitories of the United States are filled with old, often sick men and women. They hobble around the tiers with walkers or roll in wheelchairs fill prison infirmaries. They fill prison infirmaries, assisted living wings, and hospices faster than the state and federal governments can build them—and since many are dying behind bars, they are filling the mortuaries and graveyards as well.

The care these aging prisoners receive, while often grossly inadequate, is nonetheless cripplingly expensive—so much so that some recession-strapped states are for the first time seriously considering releasing older terminally ill and mentally ill prisoners rather than pay the heavy price for their warehousing. It remains to be seen what will happen when such fiscalconcerns run head on into America’s taste for punitive justice. A recent report by the Vera Institute made this clear.

Politicians no doubt did not imagine this Dickensian landscape of the elderly incarcerated when they voted to lengthen sentences and impose mandatory minimums three or four decades ago. But their actions are yielding an inevitable outcome. While the graying of the prison population to some extent reflects the changing demographics of the populace at large, it owes considerably more to changes in law and policy. And this is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

Growing Old Behind Bars

According to the Sentencing Project, the United States imprisons five times as many people as it did 30 years ago and more than seven times as many as it did 40 years ago. Our criminal justice system now keeps 2.3 million people behind bars—about half of them for drug offenses and other nonviolent crimes. Twenty-five years ago, there were 34,000 prisoners serving life sentences; today the number is more than 140,000. The fact that each person is spending a longer stretch behind bars means that the falling crime rates of the 1990s do not translate into fewer inmates. It also means that more and more people who committed offenses in their 20s or even their teens are growing old and dying in prison.

The situation is particularly stark in California, Texas and Florida, which have large prison populations with cells crammed to overflowing because of harsh sentencing laws. In California, the population of prisoners over 55 doubled in the ten years from 1997 to 2006. About 20 percent of California prisoners are serving life sentences, and over 10 percent are serving life without the possibility of parole. Louisiana’s prison system now holds more than 5,000 people over the age of 50—a three-fold increase in the last 12 years.

While 50 or 55 may not be old by conventional standards, people age faster behind bars than they do on the outside: Studies have shown that prisoners in their 50s are on average physiologically 10 to 15 years older than their chronological age. Older prisoners require substantial medical care, because of harsh life conditions as well as age. Inmates begin to have trouble climbing to upper bunks, walking, standing on line, and handling other parts of the prison routine. They suffer from early losses of hearing and eyesight, have high rates of high blood pressure and diabetes, and are susceptible to falls.

A recent study by Brie Williams and Rita Albraldes, published as a chapter in the book Growing Older: Challenges of Prison and Reentry for the Aging Population, found that in addition to the chronic diseases that increase with age, older offenders have problems such as paraplegia because of the legacy of gunshot wounds. Many have advanced liver disease, renal disease, or hepatitis. Still others suffer from HIV-AIDS, and many more from drug and alcohol abuse. Living under prison conditions, they are more likely to get pneumonia and flu.

Many prisons are notorious for not taking their inmates’ health complaints seriously, and there is anecdotal evidence this problem may be compounded when prisoners are elderly. A doctor under contract in one southern prison told me in a recent interview how a diabetic man’s illness was misdiagnosed, resulting in months of excruciating pain and the amputation of toes and part of one foot. Back in prison, the man asked for prosthetic shoes so he could get around by walking; his request was denied.

Another elderly prisoner complained of an earache which went untreated for months. When it became unbearably painful, the prisoner was shipped to a local hospital emergency room, under contract to the prison. There the doctors found the earache was brain cancer—and by then, too advanced to treat.

The exploding prison population has further undermined the already questionable quality of inmate medical care. In California, which has the nation’s largest number of state prisoners, a panel of federal judges earlier this year found that the state of medical care was so poor that it violated the constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and in danger of routinely costing prisoners their lives. The only solution, the judges said, was to reduce prison overcrowding caused by the states draconian mandatory sentences; it recommended shortening sentences and reforming parole, which they believed would have no impact on public safety; it has given California three years to comply.

NEXT: Challenging the status quo for geriatric prisoners

James Ridgeway is the senior Washington correspondent for Mother Jones.
http://thecrimereport.org/2009/12/07/the-graying-of-americas-prisons/

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

December 06, 2009

MA: Woman serving shoplifting sentence dies at Framingham

Woman serving shoplifting sentence dies at Framingham prison
By Jonathan Saltzman
Globe Staff / December 5, 2009
The Boston Globe

A 38-year-old former Dedham woman serving a one-year prison sentence for shoplifting died Thursday at the minimum-security South Middlesex Correctional Center in Framingham, and authorities are investigating to determine the cause.

A roommate of Kelly A. Donovan told employees at the center at 3:43 a.m. that Donovan was having difficulty breathing, according to Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the prison system. Emergency medical personnel from the Framingham Fire Department responded within minutes, but Donovan was pronounced dead at 3:58 a.m.

There was no evidence of foul play, Wiffin said, and the death did not appear to be a suicide.

She said prison employees followed emergency response procedures, but Department of Correction officials are investigating and contacted state prosecutors, as they do with all unattended deaths of inmates. State Police investigators assigned to the office of Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. and the Framingham police are investigating, according to a spokeswoman for Leone.

Donovan’s aunt, Susanne Hogan of Westwood, said yesterday that the state medical examiner’s office performed an autopsy but had not determined a cause of death.

The office hoped the results of toxicology tests might prove helpful. Such tests can detect drugs, among other things.

“We really don’t know,’’ she said of the cause. “It’s a shock for our whole family.’’

Located near MCI-Framingham, which is the medium-security prison for women in Massachusetts, South Middlesex is a 200-bed, three-story facility that holds women who pose a minimum risk and are to be released soon.

Many of the women leave the center during the day to work at fast-food restaurants and return at night.

Hogan said her niece worked at a Burger King in Framingham.

Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said that she visited the prison about a year ago and that visitors have great freedom to come and go and do not have to walk through metal detectors.

Donovan was sentenced to a year in prison last December after pleading guilty to charges of larceny and shoplifting, according to Wiffin.

She had been arrested six months earlier in the theft of four pairs of shorts from Filene’s Basement at South Shore Plaza in Braintree and several body sprays from a Victoria’s Secret store. She had been arrested on charges of shoplifting previously, according to records at Quincy District Court.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/05/woman_serving_shoplifting_sentence_dies_at_framingham_prison/

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

December 05, 2009

Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed? By David Cole

Volume 56, Number 18 · November 19, 2009
NY Review of Books
Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed?
By David Cole

Race, Incarceration, and American Values
by Glenn C. Loury, with Pamela S. Karlan, Tommie Shelby, and Loïc Wacquant
Boston Review/MIT Press, 86 pp., $14.95

Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice
by Paul Butler
New Press, 214 pp., $25.95

Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities: Reentry, Race, and Politics
by Anthony C. Thompson
New York University Press, 262 pp., $39.00; $21.00 (paper)

1.

With approximately 2.3 million people in prison or jail, the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world—by far. Our per capita rate is six times greater than Canada's, eight times greater than France's, and twelve times greater than Japan's. Here, at least, we are an undisputed world leader; we have a 40 percent lead on our closest competitors—Russia and Belarus.

Even so, the imprisoned make up only two thirds of one percent of the nation's general population. And most of those imprisoned are poor and uneducated, disproportionately drawn from the margins of society. For the vast majority of us, in other words, the idea that we might find ourselves in jail or prison is simply not a genuine concern.

For one group in particular, however, these figures have concrete and deep-rooted implications—African-Americans, especially young black men, and especially poor young black men. African-Americans are 13 percent of the general population, but over 50 percent of the prison population. Blacks are incarcerated at a rate eight times higher than that of whites—a disparity that dwarfs other racial disparities. (Black–white disparities in unemployment, for example, are 2–1; in nonmarital childbirth, 3–1; in infant mortality, 2–1; and in net worth, 1–5[1]).

In the 1950s, when segregation was still legal, African-Americans comprised 30 percent of the prison population. Sixty years later, African-Americans and Latinos make up 70 percent of the incarcerated population, and that population has skyrocketed. The disparities are greatest where race and class intersect—nearly 60 percent of all young black men born between 1965 and 1969 who dropped out of high school went to prison at least once on a felony conviction before they turned thirty-five. And the incarceration rate for this group—black male high school dropouts—is nearly fifty times the national average.[2]

These disparities in turn have extraordinary ripple effects. For an entire cohort of young black men in America's inner cities, incarceration has become the more-likely-than-not norm, not the unthinkable exception. And in part because prisons today offer inmates little or nothing in the way of job training, education, or counseling regarding their return to society, ex-offenders' prospects for employment, housing, and marriage upon release drop precipitously from their already low levels before incarceration.

That in turn makes it far more likely that these ex-offenders will return to criminal behavior—and then to prison. Meanwhile, the incarceration of so many young men means more single-parent households, and more children whose fathers are in prison. Children with parents in prison are in turn seven times more likely to be imprisoned at some point in their lives than other children. As Brown professor Glenn Loury puts it in Race, Incarceration, and American Values, we are "creating a racially defined pariah class in the middle of our great cities."

The most dramatic effects of this incarceration are concentrated on the most disadvantaged—those who are not only African-American or Latino, but also poor, uneducated, and living in highly segregated ghettos. While roughly 60 percent of black high school dropouts have spent time in prison, only 5 percent of college-educated African-Americans have done so. The indirect consequences of such disparities, however, extend much further. Many people cannot tell whether an African-American is a dropout or college-educated—or, more relevant, a burglar or a college professor, as Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates found in July 2009, when he was arrested after trying to get into his own house. The correlation of race and crime in the public's mind reinforces prejudice that affects every African-American.

Three recent books by scholars who happen to be black men eloquently attest to these broader effects of the racial disparities in our criminal justice system. For Loury, "mass incarceration has now become a principal vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchy in our society." For George Washington University law professor Paul Butler, author of Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, "the two million Americans in prison represent the most urgent challenge to democratic values since the civil rights era." And for New York University law professor Anthony Thompson, author of Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities: Reentry, Race, and Politics, it is critical that we examine "the pervasive interplay of race, power, and politics that infuse and confuse our attitudes about crime."

Butler expresses the personal character of this issue most urgently. Raised by a single mother in a poor black neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Butler graduated cum laude from Yale College and Harvard Law School, clerked for a federal judge, worked for a prestigious Washington law firm, and then became a federal prosecutor in the Justice Department's elite unit fighting public corruption—an American success story. Yet he dresses, as he puts it, "in the current fashion, like a thug"; has a "nice-sized chip on [his] shoulder, afflicted with the black man's thing for respect by any means necessary"; and "[doesn't] like the police much, even though I work with them every day."

More to the point, at the same time that Butler was a successful federal prosecutor, he found himself a criminal defendant in the District of Columbia's Superior Court. Butler was arrested in connection with a petty dispute over a parking space that Butler owned but that a neighbor was "renting" out to others. The neighbor called the police and charged Butler with assault, and Butler was arrested, handcuffed, booked, and prosecuted. At his trial, a police officer lied on the stand, Butler's landlord refused to testify on his behalf, and Butler himself let his anger get the better of him when he testified. The jury nonetheless acquitted him after ten minutes of deliberation. As Butler puts it:

The system worked for me—to the extent that you can describe a system as "working" when a man is arrested and made to stand trial for a crime he did not commit. At least I was not convicted, which makes me as grateful for my money, my defense attorney, my social standing, my connections, and my legal skills as for my actual innocence.

A few months after this experience, Butler chose to leave his job as a prosecutor. He explains, "My sense of justice has always been big and bulging. What my own personal prosecution expanded is my sense of injustice." Butler now calls himself a "recovering prosecutor," and argues that to be a prosecutor is to be "an active participant in a system that defines too many activities as crimes, enforces its laws selectively, and incarcerates far too many of its citizens." As a law professor, Butler has devoted his life to advocating resistance to the criminal justice system as it stands today.
2.

Until 1975, the United States' criminal justice system was roughly in line with much of Europe's. For fifty years preceding 1975, the US incarceration rate consistently hovered around 100 inmates per 100,000; criminologists made careers out of theorizing that the incarceration rate would never change. Around 1975, however, they were proved wrong, as the United States became radically more punitive. In thirty-five years, the incarceration rate ballooned to over 700 per 100,000, far outstripping all other countries.

This growth is not attributable to increased offending rates, but to increased punitiveness. Being "tough on crime" became a political mandate. State and federal legislatures imposed mandatory minimum sentences; abolished or radically restricted parole; and adopted "three strikes" laws that exact life imprisonment for a third offense, even when the offense is as minor as stealing a slice of pizza. Comparing the ratio of convictions to "index crimes" such as murder, rape, and burglary[3] between 1975 and 1999 reveals that, holding crime constant, the United States became five times more punitive. Harvard sociologist Bruce Western estimates that the increase in incarceration rates since 1975 can take credit for only about 10 percent of the drop in crime over the same period.[4]

Much of the extraordinary growth in the prison and jail population is attributable to a dramatic increase in prosecution and imprisonment for drug offenses.[5] President Reagan declared a "war on drugs" in 1982, and the states eagerly followed suit. From 1980 to 1997, Loury tells us, the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses increased by 1,100 percent. Drug convictions alone account for more than 80 percent of the total increase in the federal prison population from 1985 to 1995. In 2008, four of five drug arrests were for possession, and only one in five was for distribution; fully half of all drug arrests were for marijuana offenses.[6]

African-Americans have borne the brunt of this war. From 1985 to 1991, the number of white drug offenders in state prisons increased by 110 percent; the number of black drug offenders grew by 465 percent.[7] The average time served by African-Americans for drug crimes grew by 62 percent between 1994 and 2003, while white drug offenders served 17 percent more time.[8] Though 14 percent of monthly drug users are black, roughly equal to their proportion of the general population, they are arrested and imprisoned at vastly disproportionate rates: 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses are black as well as 56 percent of those in state prisons for drug offenses.[9] Blacks serve almost as much time in prison for drug offenses (average of 58.7 months) as whites do for violent crimes (average of 61.7 months).[10]

What should be done about this? Loury rightly demands that we first confront what those facts tell us about our political culture. Were we in John Rawls's "original position," with no idea whether we would be born a black male in an impoverished urban home, he asks, would we accept a system in which one out of every three black males born today can expect to spend time in jail during his life?[11]

If white male babies faced anything like such prospects, the politics of crime would look very different. We would almost certainly see this as an urgent national calamity, and demand a collective investment of public resources to forestall so many going to prison. Politicians would insist that we reduce criminal penalties, decriminalize nonviolent drug offenses, and promote alternatives to incarceration. The fact that there aren't such calls today—or that if there are, they go largely unheeded—suggests that our criminal justice system is sustainable only because its disparate effects leave the majority off the hook.

But is the majority really off the hook? In fact, the prison boom has high costs for all of us. A new prison opens somewhere in the United States every week. Imprisoning a human being in this country costs a minimum of $20,000 a year, far more than tuition at any of our state universities. National spending on prisons and jails was $7 billion in 1980; it is $60 billion today. Several states now spend more on state prisons than state colleges. We literally cannot afford our political addiction to incarceration.

Moreover, the incarceration boom means that there is also now a boom in prisoners being released. In 2008, approximately 700,000 prisoners were released. At current rates of recidivism, 469,000 of them will be rearrested within three years. We all have an interest in helping this at-risk population avoid a return to a life of crime.

The war on drugs has by most accounts been a failure, and we are all paying the bill. In 2008, 1.7 million people were arrested for drug crimes.[12] Since 1989, more people have been incarcerated for drug offenses than for all violent crimes combined. Yet much like Prohibition, the war on drugs has not ended or even significantly diminished drug use. It has made drugs more expensive, and fostered a multibillion-dollar criminal industry in drug delivery and sales. Drugs have become more concentrated and deadly; twice as many people die from drugs today than before the war on drugs was declared. If anything, the war on drugs has probably increased the incidence of crime; about half of property crime, robberies, and burglaries are attributable to the inflated cost of drugs caused by criminalizing them.

More fundamentally, as citizens we all have a stake in the fairness and legitimacy of our criminal justice system for both moral and pragmatic reasons. The character of our nation is determined in significant part by how we treat the criminally accused. It is no accident that the Bill of Rights concentrates primarily on protecting the rights of those suspected of crime. These amendments were deemed necessary precisely because political majorities are likely to seek shortcuts on fairness when crime is alleged, even though fairness is fundamental to the integrity of the criminal justice system.

As a pragmatic matter, the legitimacy of the criminal justice system is essential because it encourages law-abiding behavior. If people believe in the basic legitimacy of a leader or regime or procedure, they are far more likely to abide by the rules. If, on the other hand, a system is seen as corrupt, unfair, or unjust, those subjected to it will be less inclined to respect it. A legal system that relegates the majority of our most disadvantaged populations to incarceration, and does next to nothing to help them avoid prison or to reintegrate into society upon release, invites disrespect—and crime.
3.

How do we escape the self-defeating cycle of crime and punishment? Anthony Thompson suggests that we focus on the neediest—the 700,000 or so prisoners who are released each year. Before the incarceration boom, the avowed purpose of criminal sentencing in America was rehabilitation. Prison sentences were often open-ended, with the idea being that a successful course of rehabilitation would warrant an earlier release. In the 1970s, however, the nation began to sour on rehabilitation, and over the next two decades state and federal authorities eliminated most efforts to educate, train, and counsel prisoners with a view toward preparing them for their return to society.

Thompson argues that when 700,000 prisoners are being released each year, we ignore at our peril their reintegration into our society. A stable home, job, and health are strong predictors of law-abiding behavior. But incarceration makes stability much more difficult to obtain in all these respects. Public housing laws often bar offenders, and private landlords routinely discriminate against them. Federal and state laws broadly prohibit ex-offenders from hundreds of jobs, often without any rational justification, and even where no bar exists, private employers are less than eager to hire them. Prisoners who enter prison without physical and mental illnesses often develop them while inside. Yet as Thompson demonstrates, society does virtually nothing to help ex-offenders find homes, jobs, or health care—thereby virtually guaranteeing a cycle of recidivism.

Thompson proposes a variety of sensible reforms—eliminating laws that irrationally bar ex-offenders from jobs and housing, providing health care and counseling to help smooth the transition back to life outside of prison. But the question he leaves unanswered is the most difficult one: Where is the political impetus for such reform? If Americans are skeptical about the government providing health insurance for the law-abiding, what is going to make them support it for ex-offenders? And if we do not invest in sufficient job training or public housing for those who have never been imprisoned, why would we do so for those who have violated criminal laws?

Butler offers a broader set of proposals. Some are, like Thompson's, eminently sensible. He calls for decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use, for example. Several other nations, including the Netherlands, Spain, France, and Mexico, have done just that, without any evident rise in drug use. And he recommends that we treat drugs as a public health issue, adopting "harm reduction" strategies such as needle exchange.

Butler also suggests that we offer economic incentives to encourage young people to stay in school. In view of the number of high school dropouts who land in prison, if we can keep young people in school, we may be able to keep them out of prison. From a purely economic perspective, it takes a lot less money to induce an at-risk young man to remain in school than it does to lock him up for a year. Similarly, Butler's proposal that we invest in eliminating sources of lead poisoning makes economic sense, since exposure to lead in children turns out to be highly correlated with criminal behavior subsequently. Butler also calls for a general reduction in criminal sentences, and for the early release of nonviolent offenders, many of whom should never have been locked up in the first place.

Other recommendations are more questionable. Butler calls on juries, for example, to engage in "nullification" of the criminal law to protest mass imprisonment. Because juries need not give reasons for their decisions, they have the discretion to acquit even where the state has proved criminal behavior beyond a reasonable doubt. Butler proposes that jurors consciously adopt the tactic, as a kind of civil disobedience, to resist mass incarceration—but only in cases involving victimless crimes.

This proposal has many problems. First, jurors act episodically and in secret. Thus, unlike civil disobedience, acts of nullification are unlikely to have a galvanizing effect. Second, to engage in a conscious strategy of nullification will often require dissembling, itself criminal behavior. If a potential juror admits that she will not vote to convict no matter how strong the evidence is, a judge will not let her sit on the jury. Thus, to engage in this practice may require citizens to lie. It is not wise to build a movement for social change on deceit. Third, it is often difficult to know whether a crime is in fact "victimless." Prosecutors often pursue relatively low-level offenders in the hope that they can "encourage" them to identify wrongdoers further up the chain of command. Even if the foot soldier is not engaged in activity that harms victims, an organized crime ring may have many victims. How is a juror to assess whether a given prosecution is a legitimate part of such a broader investigation?

Butler's advocacy of jury nullification is probably best understood as a symbolic act of resistance rather than a concrete solution to the problems of race and class inequality. But even as a symbol, it seems flawed, and unlikely to attract the kind of broad support that would be necessary to build a meaningful consensus for real reform.
4.

It is, after all, real reform that we need. On that front, the biggest challenge is that the very demographics that make the pattern of crime and punishment in America so skewed against blacks and Latinos also make it all too easy for politicians, and the majorities they represent, to adhere to an unthinking "tough on crime" attitude. Senator Jim Webb has dared to buck that trend, proposing a national commission to study inequality in the criminal justice system. Such an effort would bring welcome, and long overdue, attention to the issue, and might impel us to do something about the problems we have all too complacently ignored.

Recent years have shown some softening in the politics of crime. Between 2004 and 2006, twenty-two states adopted reforms that shortened criminal sentences. In 2004, New York amended its notoriously draconian Rockefeller-era drug laws, and revised them again this year to make low-level offenders eligible for shortened sentences, or in some cases for treatment programs instead of prisons. In 2005, Connecticut eliminated the disparity in sentences for crack and powder cocaine under its state law, and in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that federal judges could depart from strict "sentencing guidelines" and impose more lenient sentences based on concerns about the racial disparities caused by the different treatment of crack and powder cocaine under federal law. In April 2009, the Obama administration came out in favor of eliminating the crack–powder disparity altogether in federal law.

Several states have expanded drug treatment options as alternatives to prison for drug offenses. A RAND Corporation study estimates that treatment is fifteen times more effective at reducing drug-related crime than incarceration.[13] An increasingly popular way of diverting drug offenders to treatment is through the use of "drug courts," in which judges oversee treatment programs and dismiss criminal charges upon a defendant's successful completion of treatment. The first drug court was introduced in 1989; as of 2007, there were 1,662 such courts across the country.[14]

Thompson's argument that reformers should give special attention to those being released from prison because they otherwise pose a significant risk of recidivism has also gained adherents. Rehabilitation has hardly been revived, but under the rubric of "re- entry" into society, states and the federal government are increasingly promoting programs that address the serious problems that ex-offenders face. As Helen Epstein has shown, "restorative justice" efforts, which seek to facilitate reintegration through counseling that encourages offenders to take personal responsibility for their wrongdoing, have demonstrated positive results.[15] Still, while acknowledging personal responsibility is undoubtedly important, it won't do the trick without a place to live, a job, and strong family ties.

States have also increasingly sought to ameliorate the effects of laws that deny ex-felons the right to vote. "Felony disenfranchisement" laws render large numbers of African-American men ineligible to vote, and extend the racial disparities in the criminal justice system into electoral politics. As a result of these laws, one in eight black men of voting age is ineligible to vote. The laws also frustrate reintegration, for they imply is that an ex-offender can never be a full citizen. Since 1997, nineteen states have amended their laws to mitigate these restrictions and give ex-offenders more opportunity to regain their eligibility to vote.[16] With five million potential voters still affected, there is much more work to be done, but the trend line is positive.

Finally, several states, including California and Texas, have sought to reduce the drain on their budgets caused by their prisons by identifying nonviolent offenders who can be released early without posing a threat to the community. Under a program called "Justice Reinvestment," spearheaded by the Council of State and Local Governments and supported by the US Justice Department, some states, including Connecticut, Kansas, Vermont, and Texas, have also redirected some of the money saved by early release to the high-risk neighborhoods from which so much of the imprisoned population comes. The idea is that if states invest in these communities, they may save money in the long run by reducing the numbers of community members who commit crimes.

The impetus for these reforms has more often than not been economic. States simply cannot afford to continue devoting huge and growing portions of their dwindling budgets to prisons and jails, and are increasingly interested in determining whether there are people in prison who need not be there. Since two thirds of prisoners are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, and many of those for nonviolent drug offenses in particular, these reforms make clear budgetary sense.

The demographic character of the prison population (and of the communities most at risk of future incarceration) means that reform need not be motivated by concern about race and class disparities in order to have a disproportionate benefit for African-Americans and Latinos. Virtually any measure that reduces reliance on prisons will disproportionately benefit African-Americans and Latinos, even if it is motivated by the bottom line, not justice.

At the same time, our addiction to punishment should be troubling not only because it is costly and often counterproductive, but because its race and class disparities are morally unacceptable. The most promising arguments for reform, therefore, must appeal simultaneously to considerations of pragmatism and principle. The very fact that the US record is so much worse than that of the rest of the world should tell us that we are doing something wrong, and the sheer waste of public dollars and human lives should impel us toward reform. But as the authors of these three books make clear, we will not understand the problem fully until we candidly confront the fact that our criminal justice system would not be tolerable to the majority if its impact were felt more broadly by the general population, and not concentrated on the most deprived among us.
Notes

[1]Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), p. 26.

[2]Western, Punishment and Inequality in America, p. 18.

[3]Index crimes are the eight crimes the FBI tracks to produce its annual crime index. They are willful homicide, forcible rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, larceny over $50, motor vehicle theft, and arson.

[4]Western, Punishment and Inequality in America, p. 187.

[5]Western, Punishment and Inequality in America, p. 50.

[6]FBI, Crime in the United States, 2008, Arrest Table, available at www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/arrests/index.html.

[7]Marc Mauer, Intended and Unintended Consequences: State Racial Disparities in Imprisonment (Sentencing Project, 1997), p. 10.

[8]Marc Mauer and Ryan S. King, A 25-Year Quagmire: The War on Drugs and Its Impact on American Society (Sentencing Project, 2007), pp. 22–23.

[9]Mauer and King, A 25-Year Quagmire, pp. 2, 19–20.

[10]Mauer and King, A 25-Year Quagmire, p. 2.

[11]The Sentencing Project, "Facts About Prison and Prisoners" (April 2009) (citing the Bureau of Justice Statistics), available at www.sentencingproject.org/PublicationDetails.aspx?PublicationID=425.

[12]FBI, Crime in the United States, 2008.

[13]Jonathan P. Caulkins, C. Peter Rydell, William Schwabe, and James Chiesa, Mandatory Minimum Drug Sentences: Throwing Away the Key or the Taxpayers' Money?, (RAND, 1997), pp. xvii–xviii.

[14]BJA Drug Court Clearinghouse, American University, Drug Court Activity Update: Composite Summary Information (January 2007); available at www1.spa.american.edu/justice/docu ments/1956.pdf.

[15]Helen Epstein, "America's Prisons: Is There Hope?," The New York Review, June 11, 2009.

[16]Ryan S. King, Expanding the Vote: State Felony Disenfranchisement Reform, 1997–2008 (Sentencing Project, 2008), p. 1.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23382

Posted by lois at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2009

NY Times Editorial: Protection for the Vulnerable---stepping up the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act--including report on atrocities by guards at the Westchester Co Jail in N

NY Times Editorial
Protection for the Vulnerable
Published: December 3, 2009

The federal government is stepping up enforcement of an important law — the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act — which authorizes the Justice Department to sue prisons, jails, mental institutions, nursing homes and other facilities that violate the constitutional rights of the confined. In New York State, the department has already intervened three times this year to try to improve protections for vulnerable people.

Earlier this fall, the department threatened to sue New York’s juvenile justice system unless it agreed to correct barbaric conditions and abusive practices at some facilities. It has involved itself in a lawsuit brought against the state on behalf of thousands of mentally ill adults who are being isolated from the community, in clear violation of sound medical practice and federal law.

In a “letter,” actually a 40-page report, to Westchester County made public this week, the Justice Department detailed abusive conduct by guards at the Westchester County Jail in Valhalla.

The jail came under federal scrutiny in 2000 after a guard kicked a mentally ill man into a coma. The injured man later died, and the guard was convicted and sent to prison. The Justice Department inspected the jail last year, and the new report found that some conditions violate the inmates’ constitutional rights.

The investigation relied in part on videotapes that corrections officers made of their encounters with inmates in order to protect themselves from charges of abuse. In this case, federal officials say, the tapes showed them repeatedly injuring or needlessly inflicting pain on inmates. According to investigators, the officers obscured what actually happened by filing inaccurate incident reports. Supervisors who could have uncovered the abuse by viewing the videos seem not to have done so.

In what investigators described as a typical case, officers justified placing a woman in restraints and spraying her with mace by describing her in the incident report as out of control and “very combative.” The report says the tape shows an officer driving the woman’s head into a wall, while other officers wrestled her to the floor, applying handcuffs and leg restraints. An officer then sprayed her face with mace. The report also cites pronounced deficiencies in medical care at the jail. And, as is often the case in jails and prisons, the Westchester facility’s care for mentally ill inmates is said to fall far short of constitutional standards.

Westchester will need to make sweeping reforms to bring its jail into compliance with federal law and basic standards of decency. If it fails to do so, the Justice Department should sue the county to force those changes.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 4, 2009, on page A34 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2009

CT: State Proposes Closing Minimum-Security Prison In Cheshire

State Proposes Closing Minimum-Security Prison In Cheshire
By CHRISTOPHER KEATING
December 2, 2009
Hartford Courant
The state is recommending that a minimum-security prison in Cheshire be closed, a move that would have been unheard of during the tough-on-crime days of the mid-1990s.

The state Department of Correction wants to close the Webster Correctional Institution, which holds about 220 criminals near the end of their sentences.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell sought the department's recommendation as a way to cut expenses while the government tries to recover from the worst economic downturn in decades. Closing the Cheshire prison would save an estimated $3.4 million a year when the state's budget deficit projection for the current fiscal year is approaching $550 million.

The recommendation marks a sharp departure from the days when Connecticut was building prisons in the 1980s and rapidly expanding the space to house convicted criminals. No prisons have been closed in recent state history, and the Cheshire recommendation stirred up some controversy Tuesday.

The prison guards' union calls it a bad idea, even though it would not cause layoffs.

"Closing Webster will put greater strain on other overburdened facilities and services," said Dwayne Bickford, president of AFSCME Local 387. "Our correctional employees walk Connecticut's toughest beat, and we will continue to do everything in our power to keep Connecticut safe. Shutting down a prison like Webster is ill-advised. It will not improve public safety."

Rell can enforce a prison closure under her own authority and cannot be blocked by the legislature, which, in passing a state budget in September, directed her to find millions of dollars in savings in the Department of Correction.

Rell had ordered the department to recommend a prison for closing — a controversial step because it involves moving both criminals as well as staff members who range from first-year union members to experienced supervisors. About 120 state employees work at the prison — including maintenance staff, teachers, addiction counselors and others.

"We face an extraordinarily difficult budget situation — a challenge unlike any we have known in modern memory," Rell said in a statement Tuesday. "The state prison population is currently about 18,300, down from nearly 19,900 in February 2008. While other states — including states facing even more severe budget problems than our own — are being forced to build new prisons, we can make the most of our successes by building on these achievements."

"Any decision such as this must always be made with public safety foremost in our minds," Rell said. "The recommendation from DOC notes that closing a minimum security facility is easier to accomplish because any inmates that need to be moved can be shifted to higher-security locations if necessary. The closure can also be accomplished without laying off any of the dedicated DOC staff, who perform one of the most dangerous — yet most necessary — tasks in state government."

Parts of Webster, which opened in October 1990, are already closed. The state shut down two of its four units in the past year.

The remaining 220 or so inmates will need to be transferred within the system that includes 17 other prisons.

Webster is classified as a Level 2 facility. Level 1 is reserved for released criminals who are placed in the community. Level 5 is maximum security.

The recommendation would keep open the 110-inmate Webster Annex, which handles inmates who clean highways during the day and return to the annex at night.

Although the recommendation calls for the prison to be closed, Rell has said that it would be reopened if necessary — due to a jump in crime or a higher level of convictions. The prison shutdown would be accomplished over eight to 10 weeks, according to acting Correction Commissioner Brian K. Murphy.

State Rep. Michael P. Lawlor, D-East Haven, one of the legislature's leading authorities on criminal justice, said that the shutdown should not be difficult.

"It's like four big, open rooms with bunk beds," Lawlor said. "There are no cells in there. People find that hard to picture. No prison cells at all. No bars. No nothing. Minimum security."

If the state's super-max prison in Somers is filled with the worst of the worst, Lawlor said, then "Webster is filled with the least of the least."

The closure is possible because the number of inmates has plummeted since a peak that followed the slayings of three members of the Petit family in Cheshire on July 23, 2007.

The state's prison population exploded by about 1,200 after Rell froze the parole system following the Petit case.

It reached an all-time high of 19,894 inmates on Feb. 1, 2008, according to the Department of Correction.

Two longtime criminals who were out on parole at the time now face the death penalty if convicted in the slayings, which prompted the legislature to make changes in the state criminal justice system in a special session.

Rell said that the state's full-time parole board is operating efficiently now and that some re-entry programs have permitted criminals to get out of prison.
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-webster-prison-close-1202.artdec02,0,148481.story
Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant

Posted by lois at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Prison & Jail Budgets Soar Exeeding Higher Ed, Health, Social Services. People in prisons surged by 300% and jails about 320%.

"....It also found that staffing expenditures soared 56 percent from 1995 to 2003, to $312 million, and that much of the increase stemmed from overtime costs and a contract with the union that represents correction officers."

Correction agencies’ budgets soaring
Exceeds most other Mass. offices, study says
By Jonathan Saltzman
Globe Staff / December 3, 2009

Spending on correction agencies in Massachusetts has exploded in the past decade despite only a modest increase in the number of people incarcerated and now accounts for a bigger chunk of the state budget than each of the departments that oversee higher education, social services, and public health, according to a new study.

The study by the Boston Foundation says the more than $1.2 billion spent this year on correction stems largely from a decades-old, lock-’em-up approach that has put about 11,000 people in state prisons and about 14,000 people in county jails, resulting in mammoth labor and facility costs.

Spending on prisons, jails, probation, and parole exceeds every form of state spending this year except money funneled to public elementary and secondary schools and to communities as local aid, according to the 33-page study, which will be made public today. Spending on probation alone has soared 163 percent in the past 10 years.

Even during the recession this year - when the state has slashed what it spends on local aid, higher education, and public health - correction funding has largely been spared.

“Rising corrections costs might be acceptable if public safety is improved, if the corrections system is run efficiently and transparently, and if recidivism is reduced,’’ the report says. “Growing corrections budgets would probably be acceptable if the prison population grew substantially in response to higher crime rates. Yet none of these are what drove the growth of the corrections budget over the past 10 years.’’

Indeed, the number of people incarcerated has largely leveled off after skyrocketing in the 1980s and early 1990s, the researchers found, and the rate of freed prisoners committing new crimes has barely changed.

Massachusetts, the study says, has hewed to a philosophy of “safety at any price,’’ even though the financially strapped state can no longer afford it and the spending has made little difference.

The study could be influential in shaping next year’s budget debate. Recent studies by the Boston Foundation put a spotlight on other criminal justice issues, including proposals to loosen the criminal offender record information system, or CORI, to make it easier for former prison convicts to get jobs.

“Our whole approach to corrections in Massachusetts needs a searching reexamination,’’ Paul S. Grogan, president and CEO of the Boston Foundation, said yesterday. “We hope the report is a prod to do that.’’

Massachusetts, the report says, should follow the lead of other cash-starved states that have recently cut unsustainable correction spending and reduced recidivism rates through various reforms. Those changes include making more nonviolent prisoners eligible for supervised parole, shortening sentences for offenders who complete education and substance abuse programs, and eliminating certain mandatory minimum drug sentences.

“This is happening across the country, and we just seem stuck,’’ Leonard W. Engel, senior policy analyst for the Crime and Justice Institute and author of the report commissioned by the Boston Foundation, said in an interview.

The Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, which oversees the prisons and parole board, declined to comment on the study until it is made public, spokesman Terrel Harris said. Mary Beth Heffernan, Governor Deval Patrick’s undersecretary for criminal justice in the office, is expected to be on a panel that will discuss the report this morning at the Boston Foundation.

Coria Holland, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Commissioner of Probation, declined to comment on the study. That office is part of the state court system.

Legislative leaders said they wanted to see the report before commenting.

Michael J. Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said the report shows that a trend his foundation observed six years ago has continued despite deep cuts to other state programs. In a 2003 study, Widmer’s foundation said spending on prisons and jails would surpass spending on higher education the following year, the first time that had happened in decades.

“We keep investing more and more in corrections, which at the same time is crowding out spending on other important priorities, like a whole range of human services,’’ Widmer said yesterday.

Massachusetts is one of many states that adopted a tough-on-crime approach beginning in the 1980s, partly in response to emotional reactions to high-profile crimes and because of a “lack of political will to challenge soft-on-crime demagoguery,’’ the study says. That tack caused prison populations across the country to skyrocket and state budgets to balloon.

In Massachusetts, the number of people held in state prisons surged by 300 percent, and the number in county jails by about 320 percent, from 1980 to the mid-1990s, the researchers say.

In the past decade, though, the number of people incarcerated in the state has risen by about 5 percent. Budgets, however, have continued to mushroom. The growth, the researchers say, reflects a fact of life about most correction agencies nationwide: They get generous funding in good times and avoid deep cuts in bad times.

From fiscal year 1998 to fiscal year 2008, the Massachusetts Department of Correction budget increased by more than 12 percent, the Sheriff’s Department budgets for all counties more than 20 percent, and the Probation Department by a staggering 163 percent, the report said. (The Parole Department has risen by less than 3 percent.)

Engel said he contacted probation officials to find out why their budget soared but got few explanations, aside from the fact that the department’s caseload grew in 2004 when it began supervising low-risk offenders transferred from district court.

“We kept running up against a lack of information,’’ Engel said.

The study says much of the spending in prisons stems from high facility and labor costs, and cites a controversial 2004 report commissioned by the Mitt Romney administration. That report found that Massachusetts prisons had the second-highest ratio of staff to inmates in the country, and that the correction officers were the third-highest paid.

It also found that staffing expenditures soared 56 percent from 1995 to 2003, to $312 million, and that much of the increase stemmed from overtime costs and a contract with the union that represents correction officers.

Steve Kenneway, president of the union that represents about 5,000 prison correction officers, said yesterday that spending on the prisons has risen dramatically, particularly in the past two years, but that it has nothing to do with pay to his members.

Governor Patrick has signed two contracts that will give his members a 21 percent wage increase over nine years, Kenneway said. “That’s less than 3 percent’’ a year, he said.

Kenneway said costs have spiraled because prisons are spending more to treat mentally ill inmates and are trying to address a recent surge in suicides. He also said that the past two governors have coddled inmates.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/12/03/state_correction_budget_is_soaring_new_study_says/?page=full

Posted by lois at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)

December 02, 2009

MA: Letter from Gordon Haas of the Norfolk Lifers Group to Comm. Harold Clarke on the proposed firing of the chaplains

November 25, 2009

Mr. Harold Clarke
Commissioner—Department of Correction
50 Maple Street – Suite 3
Milford MA 01757

Dear Commissioner Clarke,

I am much dismayed and shocked by the news that you are laying off/firing prison chaplains. The decision to lay off/fire prison chaplains is, simply, mind-boggling. While I serve as Chairman of the Lifer’s Group Inc. and Majority Camp Chairman of the Inmate Council, both organizations which represent the prisoner population at MCI-Norfolk, I am writing to you on a personal level so that what I state will not serve as a reason for retaliation against either entity.

It has long been my belief that the Department of Correction has no clue as to the value prison chaplains have to the orderly running of our institutions. The Department of Correction seems either to turn a blind eye or simply does not care that prison chaplains are in the forefront of those whose work actually transforms prisoners in deeply positive ways. Prison chaplains, because of the care and genuine interest they display, are trusted to such a degree that prisoners allow their lives to be changed for the betterment of not only themselves, but for society as a whole. Prison chaplains touch the lives, here at MCI-Norfolk at least, of well over 40% of the prison population. How can you not see what a void their absence will bring? And, nothing – not volunteers, not administrators – will either fill that emptiness or effect the changes in lives that prison chaplains accomplish.

When one studies an organizational chart of the Department of Correction, one impression jumps out immediately. The DOC is grossly bloated at the top. It takes approximately three hours to drive the length and breadth of Massachusetts. No prison is outside of a one hour drive from Milford. Yet, the DOC has assistant commissioners in charge of “sectors.” Texas, Washington or Alaska may need to be divided into sectors; Massachusetts does not. You have legions of deputy commissioners, associate commissioners, assistant commissioners – in addition to your “sector” heads – assistants to associates, and so on. Then, at the institutional level, there are employed superintendents, deputy superintendents, directors of this and that, as well as more captains and lieutenants than one can seemingly count. It strains the bounds of credulity that you could not find excesses in your management structure in order to save the prison chaplains. To remove prison chaplains is, as the saying goes: “penny-wise but pound foolish.” More money will be spent dealing with troublesome situations which prison chaplains have been able to defuse in the past than will be saved by firing those valued, at least to prisoners employees.

To date, your staffing cuts have been remarkably consistent. Those who have been cut have come from those who directly impact prisoner services. First came Spectrum employees who conducted programs for fathers and other familial needs, the medical staff including mental health, followed by the recreational officers, and now the prison chaplains. What is left – teachers? Those whom you have cut do exponentially more for enhancing public safety, than those who remain while ensuring that beds are made, window sills remain clear, pictures are within a prescribed box outlined on one wall, that a prisoner has no more than ten underwear or cosmetics and so on, may auger well for an orderly run institution, such priorities do nothing for preparing a prisoner to re-enter society.

If the goal of the Department of Correction is to send prisoners back to society better able to cope and to function, why are you laying off/firing the very people who have the most direct impact on achieving that goal? As stated earlier, prison chaplains serve to help defuse negative reactions to the plethora of rules and regulations coupled with the mass punishments levied because of the actions of one or two prisoners. The anger and resentment which arises due to those factors needs an outlet. Prison chaplains and others who provide similar services to prisoners have created opportunities for such anger and resentment to be addressed calmly and positively.

In the past, I, among others, have urged you to conduct and publish research to determine which programs are successful, based upon the sole criterion of recidivism. To date, there has been no response. In the over thirty years I have been incarcerated, more than twenty-five of which at MCI-Norfolk, I can say with confidence that prison chaplains, through the programs they have fostered and nurtured, have a far better record of preparing prisoners to rejoin successfully and productively, than, for instance, the CRA or the Transition Program. That and that alone, i.e., impact on reducing recidivism should be the test for who goes and who stays. Public safety is enhanced, and the reason for the DOC’s existence is justified, when, and only when, the product you send out the door is a productive citizen. One major part in whatever success the DOC may have had has been played by prison chaplains. Dismissing them, and others who have and do provide prisoner services, will only insure that even a greater percentage than now of the product you are sending back to society will return to prison. Perhaps, a cynic might opine, that is the whole point, i.e., to ensure that the jobs remain of those with the greater leverage – your management staff and the line officers. The taxpayers of Massachusetts, as well as the prisoners whom you are charged with correcting, desire far more.
Sincerely.

Gordon Haas
W38878
MCI-Norfolk
P.O. Box 43
Norfolk, MA 02056

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

Immigration Detention System Lapses Detailed By Bipartisan Study Group and Human Rights Watch

Immigration Detention System Lapses Detailed
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: December 2, 2009
NY Times

A growing number of noncitizens are being held unnecessarily and transferred heedlessly in an expensive immigration detention system that lacks basic fairness, a bipartisan study group and a human rights organization concluded in reports released jointly on Wednesday.

Confirmation of some of their conclusions came separately from the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, in an investigation that found detainee transfers by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were so haphazard that some arrived at a new center without having been served a notice of why they were being held, or despite a high probability of being granted bond, or with pending criminal prosecutions or arrest warrants in the previous jurisdiction.

The bipartisan group, the Constitution Project, whose members include Asa Hutchinson, a former undersecretary of Homeland Security, called for sweeping changes in agency policies and amendments to immigration law, including new access to government-appointed counsel for many of those facing deportation.

In its report, the human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, revealed government data showing 1.4 million detainee transfers from 1999 to 2008. The transfers are accelerating, the report found, sending tens of thousands of longtime residents of cities like Philadelphia and Los Angeles to remote immigration jails in Texas and Louisiana, far from legal counsel and the evidence that might help them win release.

“I.C.E. is increasingly subjecting detainees to a chaotic game of musical chairs, and it’s a game with dire consequences,” said Alison Parker, deputy director in the United States for the human rights group, and author of its report. The data underlying the report was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Syracuse University, which issued its own report.

The inspector general’s report found that the consequences of haphazard transfers included a loss of access to legal counsel and relevant evidence, additional time in detention, and “errors, delays and confusion for detainees, their families, legal representatives” and the immigration courts.

Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is part of Homeland Security, said the agency would issue advisories reminding the field office staff of 10-year-old national detention standards that require them to review a detainee’s “Alien file” before any transfer, and reinforcing the need to coordinate with immigration court administrators.

Earlier this year, the Obama administration announced ambitious plans to overhaul immigration detention, a disjointed penal network that relies heavily on private prisons and county jails. But taken together, the three reports underscored the gap between the plans for an overhaul and the problems on the ground in a system that is expected to detain more than 442,000 people this fiscal year — more than double the number in 2003, the immigration enforcement agency’s first year of operation, according to the inspector general’s report.

In contrast to what John T. Morton, who heads the immigration enforcement agency, described as a long-term vision of a “truly civil detention system” shaped by more centralized agency control, the recommendations by a bipartisan committee of the Constitution Project would shrink the use of detention, in part by restraining government power to detain by adding more of the constitutional safeguards required in the criminal justice system.

“None of the recommendations being made should in any way compromise national security,” Mr. Hutchinson said in a telephone interview before he presented the Constitution Project report at the National Press Club in Washington. “It simply allows for a more humane and more efficient system.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/us/03immig.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

UC Berkeley’s Teach in Prison program is creating the San Quentin All Access Computer Center, the prison’s first instructional computer lab.

Due Processing: Incarceration and the Digital Divide http://www.citris-uc.org/events/RE-Dec-02
Themes Intelligent Infrastructure
Emphases Services Science and Technology
Campuses UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Merced, UC Santa Cruz

* December 2, 2009: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
* Location: Banatao Auditorium, 3rd floor, Sutardja Dai Hall, UC Berkeley

West Hays and Alayna Johnson [B.A. students, UC Berkeley]

The complete series can be found at http://www.citris-uc.org/events/RE-fall2009.As always, these talks are free, open to the public and broadcast live on-line at mms://media.citris.berkeley.edu/webcast the day and time of the event.

Abstract:
Prison reality television and radio sound bites of slamming cell doors are just two examples illustrating the fascination with incarcerated life in the United States. Additionally, the country’s exponential prison growth and “tough on crime” posture speaks to a general sense of fear toward this population. But while our society may fear its prisoners, prisoners often fear technology. The moment of incarceration interrupts not only these individuals’ access to the outside world, but also their access to the developing technologies most of us take for granted in daily life. Accordingly, their ability to succeed in increasingly hi-tech work environments is similarly interrupted upon release. The inefficiencies of current vocational curricula, combined with the inability of the prison system to monitor the efficacy of its own programs, has doubtlessly contributed to the state’s alarming rate of recidivism: nearly two-thirds of California’s parolees will return to prison within three years of their release.

Working toward a solution to this problem, UC Berkeley’s Teach in Prison program is creating the San Quentin All Access Computer Center, the prison’s first instructional computer lab. Starting in February of 2010, courses will be offered in both basic computer literacy and computer-aided design (CAD). With the cooperation of San Quentin staff and Cal volunteers, evaluations will measure the feasibility of the lab’s construction, efficacy of it’s curriculum, and the impact on parolee employability and recidivism.

Recognizing the problem is only the first step. How is a computer lab created in an environment where even a typewriter is considered contraband if it has internal memory storage? How does a group conduct research on a sensitive population under the supervision of recalcitrant overseers? How does a normally motivated and supportive staff receive a new program while facing its own 75% reduction in force due to state budget cuts?

Creation of the San Quentin All Access Computer Center has been a lesson in adaptability for UC Berkeley, prison staff, and the inmates who will soon take their first steps across the digital divide.

Biography
West Hays and Alayna Johnson coordinate UC Berkeley’s Teach in Prison program, which sends over 70 Cal students to teach and tutor various subjects inside San Quentin State Prison four days per week. West spent his teens and early-twenties employed in the IT field, and will be graduating with a BA in English this December. West teaches a class in poetry and drama at San Quentin. Alayna (’10) has a background in art practice and education, and teaches in the prison’s art department and adult basic education program.

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

December 01, 2009

Vinny Schiraldi Juvenile Justice Chief in DC & founder of the Justice Policy Institute to Head NYC Probation Department

Juvenile justice chief in D.C. is leaving post
Schiraldi will lead New York City's probation department
By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Vincent N. Schiraldi, whose advocacy of less restrictive detention for juvenile offenders was both commended and condemned, is leaving his post as director of the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services to head New York City's probation department.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the appointment Monday. The news drew mixed reaction in the District, where Schiraldi led the juvenile justice agency for almost five years and most recently oversaw the closing of the Oak Hill Youth Center.

Youth advocates praised Schiraldi's nurturing tendencies and the outlets the agency provided, such as acting in a Shakespeare troupe and providing free lawn service for elderly residents. Leaders in the Fraternal Order of Police questioned whether Schiraldi was too lenient.

"D.C. is now safer, and New York is a little less safe," said Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the union. "He was absolutely open about his belief that juvenile offenders and violent juvenile offenders needed to be coddled."

Liz Ryan, president and chief executive of the Campaign for Youth Justice in Washington, said that lower recidivism rates prove critics wrong. Schiraldi "has brought credibility" to the city's juvenile detention system. "He really turned it around. . . . He brought strong accountability."

Before Schiraldi took over the department in 2005, he was well known as founder and executive director of the Justice Policy Institute in Washington.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) has not announced his choice for interim director. Schiraldi, who is from New York City, is expected to begin his new job in February.

D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), chairman of the Committee on Human Services, credited Schiraldi with transforming the troubled agency, calling him a "reformer."

Wells said Schiraldi's work in Washington may be done. "Reformers tend not to focus on management," he said. "The challenge now is bringing in someone to focus on quality management of the reform . . . that Schiraldi brought."

In the spring, Schiraldi managed the closing of Oak Hill, the city's juvenile detention center in Laurel. It had long carried a reputation from a 1989 investigation that found that inmates had been severely beaten.

A half-mile away, the city opened the $46 million New Beginnings Youth Center, which Schiraldi called the "anti-prison."

On May 30, the day after Schiraldi, Fenty and others opened the new facility, an inmate scaled a fence and escaped.

In July, six inmates fled by breaking a window and making their way to an area of the campus not enclosed by a fence.

Last year, a 17-year-old participating in the Shakespeare troupe escaped from custody while at a cookout at Schiraldi's Columbia Heights home, where the efforts of the aspiring thespians were being celebrated.

Schiraldi's supporters, including the mayor, acknowledged the missteps but said they believed in the approach.

Schiraldi was appointed to his post in 2005 by Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), Fenty's predecessor. Schiraldi was one of the few high-level holdovers from Williams's administration.

"He's created and implemented innovative programs that will serve as national best practice models for years to come," Fenty said in a statement. "Some of the District's most troubled youth have greatly benefited from his work and commitment during my Administration as well as the previous Williams Administration."

Schiraldi said in a statement that he was thankful for "the chance to come home to New York and make a difference in the lives of New Yorkers who have gotten in trouble with the law."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR2009113003966.html

Posted by lois at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)

Killings in WA state may set-back any "progress" on clemency, parole and JLWOP

Old Clemency May Be Issue for Huckabee

By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: November 30, 2009
NY Times

When Mike Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist minister then serving as governor of Arkansas, granted clemency to Maurice Clemmons nine years ago, he cited his age: Mr. Clemmons was 16 when he began the crime spree for which he was sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.

Now, Mr. Clemmons is being sought as the suspect in the killing of four uniformed police officers, execution-style, on Sunday as they sat in a coffee shop near Tacoma, Wash., writing reports.

Mr. Huckabee, now a Fox News talk-show host, has been leading the pack of possible Republican contenders for president in 2012. But the killings of the police officers are focusing renewed attention on his long-contentious record of pardoning convicts or commuting their sentences.

In a decade as governor beginning in 1996, Mr. Huckabee did so twice as many times as his three predecessors combined. He typically gave little explanation for individual pardons. But he spoke often of his belief in redemption, based on a strong religious belief that even criminals are capable of changing their lives and often deserve a second chance. He also raised concerns about the fairness of the Arkansas justice system.

The commutation of Mr. Clemmons’s sentence was routine enough that it failed to make a list of Mr. Huckabee’s 10 “most publicized” prison commutations compiled by an Arkansas newspaper in August 2004. And if it turns out to be a case in which a parole had gone bad, it will be difficult to pin responsibility solely on Mr. Huckabee, because many others made decisions that kept Mr. Clemmons out of prison.

Mr. Clemmons had been convicted for a series of burglaries and robberies that began in 1989, and would not have been eligible for parole until 2021. He applied for clemency in 2000, writing in a petition to Mr. Huckabee that he had simply fallen in with a bad crowd in a bad neighborhood as a teenager, and that he “had learned through the ‘school of hard knocks’ to appreciate and respect the rights of others.”

Mr. Huckabee commuted his sentence, making him eligible for immediate parole. Within six months, Mr. Clemmons violated the conditions of his parole, returning to prison in July 2001 for aggravated robbery. When he was paroled again by the state in 2004, the police in Little Rock served a warrant on him related to a 2001 robbery. But a lawyer for Mr. Clemmons argued that too much time had elapsed since the warrant was issued, and prosecutors dropped the charges.

Mr. Huckabee, who rode a brand of prairie populism to finish second in the Republican presidential primaries in 2008, granted more than 1,000 pardons or clemency requests as governor. As his reputation for granting clemency spread, more convicts applied. Aides said he read each file personally.

In most cases, he followed the recommendation of the parole board, but in several cases he overrode the objections of prosecutors, judges and victims’ families. And in several, he followed recommendations for clemency from Baptist preachers who had been longtime supporters.

Prosecutors told him he was ignoring his responsibility to explain to citizens why he was setting free convicted murderers and rapists. His response, some of them say, was to blame others and strike out against his critics — an off-note from a man they consider a gifted politician.

“Victims groups were pretty well ignored, along with boots-on-the-streets law enforcement and good citizens who sit on these juries,” said Larry Jegley, who objected to Mr. Clemmons’s clemency request as the prosecuting attorney for Pulaski County, where he was convicted.

Robert Herzfeld, then the prosecuting attorney of Saline County, wrote a letter to Governor Huckabee in January 2004, saying his policy on clemency was “fatally flawed” and suggesting that he should announce specific reasons for granting clemency. Mr. Huckabee’s chief aide on clemency wrote back: “The governor read your letter and laughed out loud. He wanted me to respond to you. I wish you success as you cut down on your caffeine consumption.”

“It was all a very personal issue for him,” said Mr. Herzfeld, who later sued successfully to overturn one of Mr. Huckabee’s clemency decisions, which would have set free a man convicted in a bludgeoning death. “It was always about how I was trying to get him or another prosecutor was trying to get him, not about how to do it right. He’s brilliant politically and very likable, but it seems like there’s a blind spot on this issue.”

With Mr. Clemmons, political consultants say Mr. Huckabee may have hit his Willie Horton moment

“As a front-runner, obviously with circumstances like this, it’s out there as a big issue,” said Ed Rollins, the manager of Mr. Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Mr. Huckabee survived a similar moment before, during the Iowa caucuses, when former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts criticized his judgment in the case of Wayne DuMond, a convicted rapist who raped and killed a woman 11 months after being paroled in Arkansas.

Mr. Huckabee said that he had opposed clemency, and that it had been his predecessor, Jim Guy Tucker, who had made Mr. DuMond eligible for parole by reducing his sentence. “If anyone needs to get a Willie Horton out of it, it’s Jim Guy Tucker and the Democrat Party and it ain’t me,” he said to reporters at the time.

But Mr. Huckabee had come into office saying he intended to commute Mr. DuMond’s sentence. He later denied the request only as the state’s board granted Mr. DuMond parole. Members of the board later said they had been pressured by the governor.

Mr. Clemmons’s case packs more potency: the facts of Mr. Huckabee’s involvement in the clemency decision are less in dispute, and the crime has played over and over on national television.

“It’s the same issue yet again,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “The difference this time is that Governor Huckabee would start with greater visibility and higher in the polls, which always enhances and exacerbates any possible criticisms.”

Should he run, there are many prosecutors and victims’ advocates in Arkansas who say they are ready to argue to the national news media that this is just one of the cases where Mr. Huckabee used poor judgment and ignored an inmate’s history of criminal behavior in deciding for clemency. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Huckabee declined requests for an interview, but a statement from the “press team” on the Web site of his political action committee said that should Mr. Clemmons be found responsible for the shootings, “it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State.”

“He was recommended for and received commutation of his original sentence from 1990,” the statement said. “This commutation made him parole-eligible and he was then paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time.”

On Sunday, before the shooting, Mr. Huckabee sounded ambivalent on Fox News about running for president, saying he liked his role at the network and wanted to be sure that, unlike in 2008, he would receive support from the Republican establishment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/us/politics/01huckabee.html?_r=1&hpw

A version of this article appeared in print on December 1, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)