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February 26, 2010

KY: Former woman prisoner files rape suit against CCA guard & CCA

Former inmate alleges rape at private prison

By Stephenie Steitzer February 25, 2010
Louisville Courier Journal

A former inmate at the beleaguered private women’s prison in Eastern Kentucky has filed a lawsuit alleging that she was repeatedly raped by a prison employee in 2007.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Pikeville, alleges that the employee at the Otter Creek Correctional Center forced her to engage in non-consensual sexual acts between March and October 2007 and threatened to block her parole if she reported him to authorities.

The alleged victim also names Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, which operates the prison under contract with the state, and the Department of Corrections as defendants. It alleges that they failed to properly screen, train and supervise the employee.

CCA spokesman Steve Owen said in an e-mail Thursday that the employee was terminated last March.

Owen said CCA has not yet received a copy of the lawsuit, which was filed Wednesday, and could not comment further at this time.

Department of Corrections Commission LaDonna Thompson said Thursday that she had not yet seen the suit and could not comment.

It could not be determined whether the employee is facing criminal charges relating to the allegations.

A Kentucky State Police spokesman familiar with cases against former Otter Creek workers could not be reached for comment Thursday.

At least six workers at Otter Creek have been charged with sex-related crimes involving inmates at the facility.

Gov. Steve Beshear announced last month that the state will move more than 400 women prisoners out of Otter Creek given the allegations of sexual misconduct by male workers there.

The women prisoners will be transferred to the state-run Western Kentucky Correctional Complex in Fredonia this summer, and the nearly 700 male inmates now there will be moved to Otter Creek, which has more than 650 beds, and other prisons in the state.

CCA has been under fire since last summer after multiple inmates at Otter Creek made allegations that they were sexually assaulted by corrections officers and other workers there.

A Department of Corrections investigation found that prison authorities failed to investigate seven alleged incidents of sexual contact between workers and inmates since 2007. In four of those cases, the workers involved were fired.

But investigations required under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act were not conducted.

The suit filed this week states that the alleged victim originally denied that she had been raped because “she was so afraid of (the employee’s) threats regarding her parole.”

It says she told investigators last July that the incidents had occurred.

The suit says that the alleged victim was released on parole in September 2008 under the condition that she remain free of any parole violations for six years.

She seeks damages, including punitive damages, in an amount to be determined by a jury, according to the lawsuit.

Her attorney, William Butler Jr. of Louisville, did not return a call seeking comment Thursday.
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20100225/NEWS01/2250359/1008/Former+inmate+alleges+rape+at+private+prison

Posted by lois at 05:24 PM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2010

Susan Burton, Founder of A New Way of Life nominated as a CNN hero

Dear Friends of A New Way of Life,

I am honored to share with you my nomination as a CNN Hero—hopefully we’ll make it to the top 10!

This week I am featured as “hero of the week”—please follow the link to a short video clip and post a comment. Thanks to all of you for your support. It feels wonderful to have A New Way of Life recognized for its efforts.

Yours,

Susan

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/cnnheroes.burton/index.html

Posted by lois at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)

CO: Prison or counseling? Lawmakers introduce bill to reform sentences for drug users

Prison or counseling?
Lawmakers introduce bill to reform sentences for drug users
Peter Marcus, Denver Daily News Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Lawmakers are again questioning whether to either treat drug users with community-based counseling, or send them to prison for long sentences.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers yesterday unveiled House Bill 1352, which would reduce the charge for simple possession for most drugs from a class 6 felony to a class 1 misdemeanor. Simple possession would be defined as four grams, instead of one gram in all cases except for with methamphetamine. In the case of meth, simple possession would be defined as two grams or less.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs, could potentially lower simple possession sentences for those who are sent to prison from as many as six years in prison to 18 months, Waller said at an afternoon news conference yesterday attended by Republican Attorney General John Suthers, as well as members of the law enforcement and drug treatment communities.

Some supporters believe the bill would save the state money on prison costs citing the statistic that it costs the state $30,000 per year per prisoner Ń and that the saved money could be used for community-based drug treatment programs. Lawmakers, however, did not have a cost-saving figure yesterday, stating that they are waiting for the fiscal note on the bill.

“It’s time to switch our focus from framing the debate as being ‘tough on crime’ to being ‘smart on crime,’ said Waller. “Sending non-violent drug offenders to prison is not the best use of our public safety dollars. That money could be used more effectively by providing treatment and stopping the revolving door we have on our prisons.”

The bill would also stiffen mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers who sell drugs to children.

The legislation stems from recommendations made by the Colorado Commission on Criminal & Juvenile Justice. A more comprehensive sentencing reform bill sponsored by Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, was passed last year. Levy said yesterday that while last year’s bill was not as focused, it did help the CCJJ to make its recommendations for crafting HB 1352.

“We’re seeing the beginning of a whole new approach in Colorado to try to use our resources more effectively to save those $30,000-a-year prison beds for the offenders who we need to lock up and keep away from society, and use the less expensive community-based alternatives for those who can be handled in the community,” said Levy.

Unlike sentencing reform bills of years past, HB 1352 has a broad spectrum of support, including the attorney general, prosecutors, defense attorneys, Republicans and Democrats. Lawmakers are optimistic that the wide support will lead to the bill’s passage.

Suthers expressed doubt that the bill would actually save the state much money, but said he supports the intention of the legislation.

“I’m not so sure how much money this bill is going to save there aren’t a whole lot of first-time drug users or possessors in the Colorado Department of Corrections,” he said. “I’m here in support because the message is correct that our emphasis with drug users and possessors should be treatment.”

http://www.thedenverdailynews.com/article.php?aID=7408

Posted by lois at 03:40 PM | Comments (0)

Cornell Companies Reports Fourth-Quarter Earnings Above Guidance Provides Earnings Guidance for First Quarter and Full Year 2010

Cornell Companies Reports Fourth-Quarter Earnings Above Guidance
Provides Earnings Guidance for First Quarter and Full Year 2010
Feb. 24, 2010

HOUSTON, Feb 24, 2010 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- Cornell Companies, Inc. /quotes/comstock/13*!crn/quotes/nls/crn (CRN 18.71, -1.95, -9.44%) today reported results for the three and twelve months ended December 31, 2009, and provided guidance for the first quarter and full year for 2010.

James E. Hyman, Cornell's chairman, president and chief executive officer, said, "In the fourth quarter, Cornell executed both operationally and financially to cap another strong year in sustaining the growth in value to shareholders. In particular, we successfully completed the construction of our new Hudson Correctional Facility (Hudson) in Colorado and rapidly ramped the initial population under our contract with the Alaska Department of Corrections. As important, at the start of this year, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) awarded us a contract of up to 10 years to house up to 2,507 federal inmates at our D. Ray James Prison (DRJ) facility in Georgia. We believe this sets a trajectory for Cornell of solid long-term growth despite the challenging budget environment that we face with our customers in 2010."

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

CCA Loses Contracts for 7,594 Prison Beds in Past 16 Months; More Losses Looming

P R E S S R E L E A S E

CCA Loses Contracts for 7,594 Prison Beds in Past 16 Months; More Losses Looming
February 24, 2010 – Private Corrections Working Group

For Immediate Release

Nashville, TN – Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company, has lost or terminated contracts totaling 7,594 prison beds within the past 16 months, and is expected to lose at least 3,696 more beds by the end of this calendar year.

CCA announced on January 21, 2010 that based on the State of Arizona’s proposed budget, the company likely would lose its contracts to house Arizona prisoners at the company’s 752-bed Huerfano County Correctional Center in Colorado and its 2,160-bed Diamondback Corr. Facility in Oklahoma. Last year, CCA generated about $56.5 million in revenue from those contracts. It has since been confirmed that the Huerfano contract, which expires in March 2010, will not be renewed. Arizona officials have said they intend to return all of their inmates from out-of-state facilities; thus, CCA is expected to lose the Diamondback contract after it expires in May.

On January 13, 2010, CCA announced that the Bureau of Prisons had not renewed its contract to house prisoners at the company’s 2,304-bed California City Correctional Center. The contract, estimated at $553 million over ten years, instead went to competitor Cornell Corrections.

Previously, Alaska removed approximately 770 of its inmates from CCA’s Red Rock facility in Arizona in December 2009, and that same month CCA announced the closure of its 1,600-bed Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minnesota after losing contracts to house Minnesota and Washington inmates at the prison. The Prairie facility shut its doors on February 2, 2010, with CCA laying off 400 employees.

In January 2009, CCA’s contracts to manage the B.M. Moore Correctional Center and the Diboll Correctional Center, both in Texas and totaling 1,018 beds, went to competitor Management and Training Corporation. And on October 9, 2008, after CCA terminated its contract to operate the 1,150-bed Bay County Jail in Panama City, Florida, the county’s Sheriff’s Department took over management of that facility.

Thus, over the past 16 months from October 2008 to the present, CCA has lost contracts totaling 7,594 prison beds, and is expected to lose several thousand more beds when Arizona returns its out-of-state inmates from the company’s Diamondback Correctional Facility.

During CCA’s fourth quarter 2009 earnings conference call held on February 10, 2010, CCA CEO Damon Hininger acknowledged in response to a question from an analyst with Avondale Partners that the company was facing around 12,000 empty beds. As CCA has approximately 87,000 prison beds available nationwide, this represents a vacancy rate of almost 14%.

Further, two other stock analysts who participated in the conference call inquired about CCA’s contract with the State of Tennessee to house inmates at the 1,536-bed Whiteville Correctional Facility. Mr. Hininger was equivocal, saying the “legislature will take this up and think about potentially funding these beds through this fiscal year and potentially long-term.” However, he failed to mention that the Governor’s recommended budget states the Whiteville prison “will be closed at the end of calendar year 2010, and all inmates will be transferred to other ... facilities.” The proposed budget only includes funding for CCA’s Whiteville prison to the end of the year.

Additionally, Texas’ budget reduction plan, unveiled on February 16, 2010, indicates that $10.7 million in funding for 817 private prison beds will be eliminated. CCA, which operates seven facilities that hold Texas state inmates, likely would be affected by this reduction. Previously, Texas state Senator John Whitmire, Chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, had suggested terminating CCA’s contract to house prisoners at the company’s Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility.

Although CCA has several new prisons and facility expansions in the construction phase, they do not make up for the company’s loss of 7,594 contract beds over the past 16 months and the additional 3,696 beds that CCA is expected to lose at its Whiteville prison in Tennessee and Diamondback facility in Oklahoma by the end of this year.

“It’s hard to understand how CCA can continue to maintain its market share and its projected earnings with the loss of so many contracted prison beds,” stated Ken Kopczynski, executive director of the Private Corrections Working Group.

Apparently, CCA’s repeated contract losses and less-than favorable outlook have caused some investors to back off. On February 16, 2010, it was reported that billionaire investor George Soros had divested all of his share holdings in CCA. CCA’s Chairman, John D. Ferguson, sold 20,000 shares on February 22. The company’s stock is off about 15% since the beginning of the year.

According to recent news reports, lost contracts, empty prison beds and declining investor confidence aren’t CCA’s only problems. On February 23, Courthouse News Service reported that two former inmates had claimed they were sexually victimized by CCA employees at the company’s Correctional Treatment Facility in the District of Columbia. The former prisoners, who are represented by counsel, have filed separate $20 million lawsuits against CCA.
__________________________
www.privateci.org.

Posted by lois at 03:31 PM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2010

Locking Down the Mentally Ill

GUGGENHEIM SPECIAL REPORT
Locking Down the Mentally Ill

By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 10:06 pm

Solitary Confinement Cells Have Become America’s New Asylums

“If you want to know where they are all being kept,” said Todd Winstrom, “they’re down in the hole.”

Winstrom, a staff attorney for Disability Rights Wisconsin, was talking about what happens to mentally ill offenders when they enter his state’s prison system. Without treatment options—and without anyplace else to put them—these prisoners quickly end up in solitary confinement, where they may remain for months or years.

Since solitary confinement has been shown to cause severe psychological trauma in prisoners without underlying psychiatric conditions, it would be difficult to imagine a more damaging place to incarcerate the mentally ill.

Winstrom was quoted by Jessica VanEgeren of Madison’s Capital Times as part of her June 10, 2009 investigative report on mentally ill inmates in Wisconsin correctional institutions. VanEgeren, who led a breakout session on “Treatment of Mentally Ill Offenders” at this month’s 5th annual H.F. Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, described a destructive cycle in which these prisoners—untreated, unmedicated, and sometimes undiagnosed—were placed in “segregation” and left isolated in their cells for 23 hours a day.

At three prisons involved in a recent state audit, she reported, between 55 percent and 76 percent of the inmates in segregation were mentally ill.

Wisconsin is far from alone in these practices. While there are no national statistics to indicate how many mentally ill prisoners end up in lockdown, a 2003 report from Human Rights Watch, based on available data from states around the country, found one-third to one-half of prisoners held in what are usually called “secure housing units” (SHUs) and “special management units” (SMUs) were mentally ill.

The report concluded that “persons with mental illness often have difficulty complying with strict prison rules, particularly when there is scant assistance to help them manage their disorders….eventually accumulating substantial histories of disciplinary infractions, they land for prolonged periods in disciplinary or administrative segregation.”

The “Worst of the Worst”

Investigative reporting has been key in exposing the treatment of mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement in several state prison systems. Last year, a series of articles by George Pawlaczyk and Beth Hundsdorfer in the Belleville (Illinois) News-Democrat documented the treatment of mentally ill inmates at Illinois’s Tamms supermax prison. At Tamms, prisoners deemed “the worst of the worst” are kept in virtually permanent lockdown, in conditions that “some critics say amounts to torture worse than that experienced by suspected terrorists at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.”

The News-Democrat chronicles the story of Faygie Fields, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who was in and out of Chicago mental hospitals before he, like so many others, made the short leap from asylum to prison. In prison for murder since 1984, Fields exhibited behavior typical of many inmates with untreated or undertreated mental illness: He was unruly and sometimes violent with guards, and he threw food, urine, and anything else he could get his hands on. When Tamms opened in 1998, Fields became one of its original residents.

After he had been “held alone and often naked in a segregation cell for nearly six years,” the paper reported, two psychiatrists brought into the prison examined Fields and his medical records and diagnosed him as a schizophrenic in urgent need of treatment. Fields’ schizophrenia diagnosis had been dismissed by two Department of Corrections psychiatrists and Tamms’ supervising psychologist, who thought he was faking his behavior. The latter testified, in a court case on prison conditions, that his self-mutilation was part of something prisoners did to “compete with each other to see who can cut because it’s fun.”

Faygie Fields was eventually moved to a mental health unit at Tamms, where he receives treatment but still lives in solitary. The 30 years added to his original sentence for offenses committed in prison mean that he will likely die there.

Pawalczyk and Hundsdorfer’s reporting helped fuel hearings on Tamms by the Senate Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, as well as a “ten-point plan” for reforms at the prison, released by the Illinois Department of Corrections in September 2009. (Critics say that while the plan does call for certain improvements, it does not address many of the abuses at Tamms, particularly those concerning treatment of the mentally ill.)

Media coverage of the issue has been influential in other instances, as well. In a 2007 series for the Portland Phoenix, Lance Tapley described scenes that “might have taken place in Abu Ghraib” and practices that “fit some classic definitions of torture” in the Maine State Prison’s SMU, including spraying mace on unruly mentally ill prisoners and binding them, naked, in “restraint chairs.” Tapley’s reporting helped fuel a campaign that led to the introduction of a bill in the state legislature to limit the use of solitary confinement in the state’s prisons—and virtually ban it for the mentally ill.

In 2001 in New York, Mary Beth Pfeiffer, a reporter for the Poughkeepsie Journal, began investigating prison suicides, leading to a series of articles exposing the treatment of mentally ill inmates in the state’s SHUs. In subsequent years, a full-fledged movement grew around the issue of mentally ill prisoners in solitary, beginning with a 2002 lawsuit to restrict the practice filed by the advocacy group Disability Advocates.

Lockdowns

The movement’s ammunition came largely from a 2003 report by the non-profit Correctional Association of New York. The group had visited nearly all of New York’s 26 SHUs, where some 5,000 prisoners were held in lockdown for periods that in some cases lasted 23-hours-a-day or more. Its report found that a quarter—and in some units as many as half—of the prisoners were “identified as seriously mentally ill.” The SHUs held about 10 percent of the system’s prisoners, but accounted for nearly half of its suicides.

A third of the SHU prisoners engaged in cutting or other forms of self-mutilation. “Unthinkable to outside observers,” the Correctional Association said, “the Department [of Corrections] issues misbehavior reports to inmates who attempt to kill or harm themselves”—and the punishment was often more time in lockdown. While the state’s prison population had tripled in the previous 20 years, it still had the same number of places—just 200—in its sole psychiatric center. The Correctional Association’s Executive Director Robert Gangi would later describe placing mentally ill inmates in solitary as “state-inflicted brutality.”

After the release of the Correctional Association report, the chair of the New York Assembly’s Corrections Committee, Jeffrion Aubry, held hearings and introduced legislation to improve treatment for mentally ill inmates and forbid their placement in SHUs. By the following year, a coalition of advocates for prisoners’ rights and the mentally ill were organizing a “Boot the SHU” campaign, with the slogan “Think Outside the Box.”

In time, the legislation passed in both houses of the state legislature with broad bipartisan support and was endorsed by newspaper editorial boards across the state and by the New York State Correctional Officers union. But it faced opposition from Department of Corrections leadership. In 2006, then-Governor George Pataki vetoed the bill, saying prisons needed to be able to use solitary confinement to protect inmates and staff “from those who are unwilling to adhere to even the most minimum levels of civilized behavior.”

Then-Governor Eliot Spitzer finally signed a version of the bill—with some compromises brokered to reduce costs—at the start of 2008. Its sponsor, Assemblyman Aubry, spoke of the legislation as a victory for public safety as well as for mentally ill inmates themselves, who “would complete their entire sentence in SHU and then go back into the commu­nity without being adequately treated. It might have kept the prison system safe, but it wasn’t safe for the public having these people confined and made worse and then sent back into the community without.”

The legislation came atop a 2007 settlement in the lawsuit by Disability Advocates, which will sunset when the law goes into full effect in 2011. In theory, New York State has made a commitment—within limits—to move existing mentally ill prisoners out of solitary confinement, and keep new ones from being placed in lockdown.

In practice, this is a complicated task.

Under the terms of the settlement, the state is now required to provide the mental health screening of all incoming prisoners. This screening is conducted in one of the state prison processing units by a state Office of Mental Health team, usually consisting of clinicians–psychologist, social worker, and/or therapist–and overseen by a psychiatrist. The team has every inmate fill out a questionnaire asking whether they have attempted suicide, thought about doing so, and so on. If the person is judged to be seriously mentally ill, the psychiatrist will make the final diagnosis and prescribe medication—no simple matter, since prescribing psychotropic medications is a highly inexact science, and requires frequent follow-ups to make sure the drugs are working.

“Most mentally ill people also have individual counseling sessions, on a weekly to monthly basis, plus at least one psychiatric session every three months,” Dianna Goodwin, the staff attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York in Albany who monitors the settlement, said in a telephone interview with the authors. The monitoring includes two visits of the prisons a year, and continual oversight of prison hearings on discipline problems that involve mental health.

If an inmate is judged to suffer from serious mental illness–conditions that include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, serious depression, and psychotic or delusional disorders–he or she can still be placed in a solitary cell. But according to the settlement, these prisoners must be allowed out every day for one hour of exercise and two hours of treatment. The new law, which is considered by advocates to be stronger than the settlement terms, demands four hours of treatment—two back-to-back, two hour sessions of therapy–plus one hour of exercise each day.

In some instances inmates will be sent to live in a facility prepared for the mentally ill. In other instances they may stay in other prisons, but in sections especially organized for them–where, for example, some parts of a steel cell door may be replaced with mesh screening. In either setting, the prisoners are supposed to be overseen by mental health clinicians as well as guards who receive training in how to handle mentally ill patients. In December, the state opened the 100-man Residential Mental Health Unit at the upstate Marcy Correctional Center, Goodwin said that the state hopes to increase the unit’s capacity to 200.

Confining the Mentally Ill

There are other places for the mentally ill scattered throughout the system. When the Marcy unit opened, the New York State Department of Corrections said that only about 200 prisoners with serious mental illness were in SHUs for disciplinary violations. (The state says it does not use “solitary confinement.”) Of its 58,690 inmates, 7,844 were diagnosed with mental illness, including 2,359 with serious mental illness, a DOC spokesperson told the Associated Press in December. These numbers are different from the 2003 findings of the Corrections Association, which estimated a quarter of the 5,000 inmates in SHUs were seriously mentally ill.

What comes into play here, of course, are the methods for classifying prisoners. Critics say that the Office of Mental Health tends to be overly conservative in assessing an inmate as seriously mentally ill, with things like personality disorders, PTSD, or the effect of head trauma often not considered “serious.”

And the view still lingers—among the public as well as the DOC—that inmates are likely to con them, claiming mental illness to excuse bad behavior or get an easier berth in the prison system. According to Nina Loewenstein, the staff attorney at Disability Advocates in charge of the lawsuit and settlement, mental health professionals do the initial screening and monitor inmate care.

But decisions about who to put where and for how long are still made by the prison administration. If there is a review—and in many cases there need be no review, Loewenstein says—an inmate’s future is determined by prison officials, which includes doctors, but no outside representatives. In other words, if a prisoner wants to contest a decision, he can’t have his own attorney or psychiatrist present to advocate on his behalf. Still, Loewenstein believes there already are improvements in the overall process, with the prisons sometimes suspending sentences or cutting them back in duration due to recognition of mental illness.

Even the legislation, which most advocates see as stronger than the court settlement, does not ban the use of solitary confinement for all mentally ill inmates. Prison officials can still segregate such prisoners when they deem it necessary for the safety of staff, other prisoners, or the mentally ill inmates themselves, or when those inmates refuse to participate in treatment. Finally, the law does not apply to prisoners held in local jails.

Dianna Goodwin of Prisoners’ Legal Services acknowledges these problems, and would like to see the program opened up to more people. One major issue, she said, “is that they don’t do a whole lot with PTSD. Almost everyone in prison has it. It is not part of the lawsuit or the statute, but it is a huge problem.”

Prison life brings “ongoing trauma,” Goodwin added, “so people with bad PTSD have all kinds of triggers that aren’t being addressed as a mental health issue. I don’t know what kind, if any, of training they have for correctional officers on this issue.”

Nevertheless, she declared that, overall, “there is a very sincere effort by both Corrections and the Mental Health Office to put everyone who they classify as seriously mentally ill into an appropriate program.” While top officials at the DOC had resisted the legal sanctions and earlier denounced the Correctional Association report, corrections staff who deal with mentally ill inmates on a daily basis tend to welcome the changes. “The correctional staff has told us over and over again that even long time officers are coming on board, since everyone knew they had a problem dealing with these prisoners,” Goodwin said. “Mentally ill people have been incarcerated in unprecedented numbers since the closure of most community mental facilities over the last decades; DOC has had to handle the change but until the settlement did not have the resources or institutional commitment to deal with large numbers of mentally ill inmates.”

A Step Towards Decency

While most advocates see the settlement and especially the legislation as what a 2007 New York Times editorial called “a step toward basic human decency,” Few believe that it goes far enough. “Maltreatment of mentally ill prisoners is a national shame,” the Times editorial continued. “The basic problem is that severely ill inmates should not be held in lockdown at all.” In the eyes of some critics, what New York and a handful of other states have done is simply reduce the frequency and severity of a practice they equate with torture.

The UN Human Rights Committee, European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch have all, in various terms, deemed long-term solitary confinement cruel and unusual punishment for all prisoners. A 2003 Human Rights Watch report stated: “Even if they have no prior history of mental illness, prisoners subjected to prolonged isolation may experience depression, despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations, problems with impulse control, and/or an impaired ability to think, concentrate, or remember.”

When it comes to mentally ill prisoners, several U.S. Courts have joined in denouncing the use of any segregated confinement. In the most famous of the relevant cases, Madrid v. Gomez, a federal judge in California declared that solitary confinement “may press the outer bounds of what most human beings can psychologically tolerate,” while for mentally ill prisoners it is “the mental equivalent of putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe.”

No widespread ban on the lockdown of mentally ill prisoners is likely to take place without changes in the trend toward criminalizing the mentally ill, which has been underway for more than 20 years. In 2003, Human Rights Watch concluded that America’s prisons and jails held three times as many mentally ill people as its psychiatric hospitals. The Los Angeles County Jail and New York’s Rikers Island effectively functioned as the nation’s two largest inpatient mental health facilities, and incarceration had become its default treatment for mental illness.

According to Bureau of Justice Statistics data more than half of all prison and jail inmates self-report that they suffer from mental health problems—five times the rate in the general population. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness approximately 24 percent of inmates in U.S. prisons and 17 percent of those in local jails have what would be diagnosed as serious mental illness.

Non-Violent Offenders in Majority

In the session on mentally ill inmates at last week’s H.F. Guggenheim Symposium, Dr. Fred Osher, Director of Health Services for the Council of State Governments Justice Center (CSG) , said the majority of mentally ill people in prisons and especially in jails are serving time for non-violent offenses, including minor drug offenses and so-called “quality of life” crimes associated with homelessness and substance abuse, As a report from the CSG’s Criminal Justice/Mental Health Consensus Project in 2002 puts it, many “have been incarcerated because they displayed in public the symptoms of untreated mental illness.” Osher said that the prison environment—noisy, overcrowded, predatory—inevitably causes these symptoms to get worse.

While corrections systems need to improve the ways they assess and treat mentally ill people, the fact of their incarceration in large part represents a failure of the mental health system.

Many end up in jail only because they are overlooked, turned away, or intimidated by an overburdened, underfunded, and inadequate network of mental health services. “People with mental illness,” the project’s report says, “are falling through the cracks of this country’s social safety net and are landing in the criminal justice system at an alarming rate.”

Also present at the H.F. Guggenheim Symposium was Robert Carolla, Director of Media Relations for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Carolla agreed that the problem of the incarcerated mentally ill has its roots in the American mental health care system. Following widespread de-institutionalization, he said, budget restrictions kept the mentally ill from getting the community-based services that were supposed to replace inpatient psychiatric care.

“Without state and local mental health services,” said a NAMI fact sheet issued last month, “too many people living with mental illness end up in encounters with police or warehoused unnecessarily in jails and prisons.”

In other words, the prison became the new asylum. And the money withheld from mental health services, Carolla said, was simply pumped into law enforcement and corrections—along with much more, since the transition from asylum to prison is anything but cost-effective. State corrections spending has more than tripled in the last 20 years, when “what is needed instead,” the NAMI publication argues “is investment in mental health treatment and recovery services to minimize costly criminal justice involvement of persons living with serious mental illness.”

Such funding for mental health services, as NAMI puts it, “also is an investment in recovery and saving lives of persons who struggle with medical illnesses.” Even more than the modest corrections reforms won in New York and elsewhere, this shift in priorities might serve to reduce the number of tortured, anguished hours lived by people with mental illness, alone in their solitary cells.

James Ridgeway, a veteran investigative journalist, is senior Washington correspondent for Mother Jones. Ridgeway and Jean Casella, a freelance writer and editor, recently launched the web site Solitary Watch News, aimed at providing the first centralized source of information on solitary confinement in the United States.
http://thecrimereport.org/2010/02/17/locking-down-the-mentally-ill/
http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/

Posted by lois at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2010

Alaska: State Senate Leader Recognizes Dee Hubbard, Private Prison and Corruption Fighter

*Senator speaks to recognize state corruption fighter who died in '09*
Feb 15, 2010

JUNEAU -- State Sen. Johnny Ellis took to the Senate floor Monday morning to recognize the behind-the-scenes work of a former state legislative aide who died last year.

Dee Hubbard became a confidential source to the FBI back in 2003 as it began to investigate influence peddling in the state Legislature. Most people think of the federal corruption investigation in Alaska as a probe of bribery associated with oil taxes, but it began as "Operation Polar Pen" -- a private prison investigation. And Hubbard was a crusader against private prisons.

"She is the person who very quietly with no fanfare remained anonymous throughout the FBI investigation, the Veco scandal, the private prison scandal," said Ellis, an Anchorage Democrat. She explained how the legislative process worked to FBI agents and told them "who's who," Ellis said.

"She was just a person there who was interested in, as she always said, 'cleaning up Alaska politics,'" Ellis said. "She was motivated by the right kinds of factors."

If prosecutors later made mistakes in pursuing cases, "it wasn't because of Dee," Ellis said. She gave impeccable advice, he said.

Hubbard was diagnosed with liver and kidney failure in March and died in August. Her husband, Charlie, and two grown sons are still struggling to cope with her death, Ellis said.

Her contributions may not be fully revealed for years, the senator said.
http://www.adn.com/2010/02/15/1140414/lawmaker-aims-to-cut-governors.html

Posted by lois at 08:45 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Don't block people with criminal records in finding employment

Op-Ed
Don’t block reformed criminals’ job efforts
By Sonia Chang-Díaz and Jeffrey Brown
February 20, 2010
The Boston Globe

THE UNEMPLOYMENT rate in Massachusetts hovers at 9 percent. In urban neighborhoods across the Commonwealth, that rate is sometimes more than double, with some estimates as high as 24 percent. These numbers have an obvious and painful impact on the economic stability of a neighborhood, and they also impact our safety. With more residents pushed into joblessness, and in some cases homelessness, crime rates go up in our communities. This has always been the case, but is even more so during a recession.

That’s why the Commonwealth must act now to take down unnecessary barriers to employment. That’s why we can’t wait any longer for reform of our broken CORI system. The CORI system (“Criminal Offender Record Information’’) was created in the first place to keep our communities safe. The problem is the current system is failing to meet that end.

In addition to blocking dangerous individuals from working with populations we want to protect, it’s also blocking greater numbers of safe, reformed, and hard-working individuals from supporting themselves and their families. Employers who see the “CORI box’’ checked off on a paper job application look no further; the application goes in the waste basket - no matter if, for example, the offense was a minor drug possession 10 years ago when the applicant was 19 years old.

Blocked at every turn from employment, housing, and education, many residents are pushed back to crime as the only pathway available to them. And that means greater risk for all the families, local business owners, and neighbors surrounding that person. It also means greater risk to taxpayers, who will pay the $40,000-per-year cost of incarcerating him or her.

A solution is completely within our reach. Last fall the state Senate passed legislation to fix our broken CORI system and ensure that we’re spending taxpayer dollars more effectively. Governor Patrick has expressed his strong support. But the bill has to pass the House of Representatives in order to be put before the governor for his signature. In particular, the reform package:

■“Bans the box,’’ preventing employers from placing a question about criminal records on initial job applications, but allowing inquiries later in the process. It also streamlines the process for businesses, housing providers, and other users who make CORI inquiries for a fee, putting the whole system on the Web and making it accessible more rapidly, with a few keystrokes.

■Improves the accuracy of the system by requiring employers to provide a copy of any CORI report to an applicant before questioning him or her on it, or before rejecting them.

■Reduces the look-back period from 15 years to 10 for felonies, and from 10 years to five for misdemeanors. (Homicides remain visible on a person’s CORI permanently, and sexual offenses remain as long as an offender has a duty to register with the Commonwealth, or for 15 years - whichever is longer.)

■Maintains full access to anyone’s CORI for law-enforcement agencies, even sealed records.

These reforms will make our neighborhoods safer by giving people a realistic pathway to positive employment and thus reducing recidivist crime. They will also strengthen our economy by helping people get back to work. And they’ll help all taxpayers by shifting public safety dollars away from ineffective revolving-door models in our criminal justice system - making more resources available for public safety measures that we know work, like youth programming, substance abuse treatment, and community policing.

Shifting political winds should not stop us from completing this important work for the Commonwealth. It is too valuable. Safe neighborhoods, job growth, and efficient use of taxpayer dollars. This year of all years, what time is there to waste in achieving these goals?

Sonia Chang-Díaz is the state senator for the Second Suffolk District and the Reverend Jeffrey Brown is the executive director of the Boston Ten Point Coalition.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/02/20/dont_block_reformed_criminals_job_efforts/

Posted by lois at 04:15 PM | Comments (0)

Summary of 2011 Budget request BOP

Summary of 2011 Budget request BOP
http://www.justice.gov/jmd/2011summary/pdf/fy11-bop-bud-summary.pdf

Posted by lois at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)

IA: Disobedient Priest banned from prison visits. He took notes which stirred up controversy.

Priest banned from prison visits
He took notes which stirred up controversy
Monday, 22 Feb 2010, 11:41 AM EST

OMAHA, Nebraska (CNN) - Father Val Peter said he has had just about enough.

The 75-year-old, and one-time director of Boys Town, visits inmates regularly. Tracey Dyess more frequently than most.

"The only reason I do this is she reminds me of a Boys Town kid," said Father Peter. "She has no family except a grandma in Texas."

Dyess was convicted of setting fire to a Griswold, Iowa home in March 2005, which killed two people. She has been in Iowa prisons for the last four years. Father Peter said he got in trouble at the Mitchellville Prison near Des Moines on a visit with Dyess.

"The corrections officer says 'I'm sorry, you can't take those notes out,'" said Father Peter. "'Aren't you Father Peter from Boys Town?' [he asks]. I said 'Yes.' I said 'what do you mean I can't take...I've been doing this...' 'Well, I'm just sorry you're not gonna be able to and we need to take those notes and we need to read those notes."

Father Peter said he routinely took notes using prison paper and prison pencils on visits with Dyess the last two years. He said in this case, a corrections officer did not like the fact Father Peter jotted down the name of another officer.

"So, I took that name, I put it in my mouth, and I did a prophetic act," said Father Peter. He said he swallowed the notes, which ultimately started this on-going battle with the prison.

"Keep in mind that visiting is a privilege, and it can be terminated for good cause at any time," said Fred Scaletta, with the Iowa Department of Corrections.

Scaletta said Father Peter could be allowed back in so long as he sticks to the rules. Still, Father Peter has his concerns.

"Now, remember, I've been going to prisons for 25 years," said Father Peter. "I could write a Michelin guide to America's prisons. Mitchellville is not going to get a good rating. I can tell you that now."

Father Peter still talks to Dyess on the phone, about two or three times per week. Ultimately, he wants Governor Chet Culver to commute her sentence. He said she is a good person who simply had a terrible childhood.
http://www.wishtv.com/dpps/news/strange/priest-banned-from-prison-visits_3247640

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

February 22, 2010

MA: Parole Board Recieves Public Scrutiny After Paroled Killer Kills Again. 78% of parolees complete parole without another offense.

In Parole Board’s work, few sure things
Freed killer’s rearrest prompts case review

By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | February 22, 2010

NATICK - The sweet-voiced grandmother sat at a table before the Massachusetts Parole Board and said she was not the same woman who killed her sleeping 16-year-old daughter with a shotgun blast on Valentine’s Day in 1990.

“I have no expectation to be forgiven by anyone, nor by myself,’’ said Susan Biancardi, 61, who now takes medication to control bipolar disorder. “If I could cut off both my arms and have that night never happen, believe me, I would do it in a heartbeat.’’

Five board members heard Biancardi’s plea for freedom recently following another horrific area slaying, one that has cast a pall over the panel and underscored just how high the stakes can be when weighing whether to give a convicted murderer, no matter how seemingly reformed and remorseful, a second chance.

The arrest of Edward Corliss, paroled in 2006 and now charged in the shooting death of convenience store clerk Surendra Dangol, has prompted the panel to conduct an internal review of how it handled the case, with results due in a few weeks. The slaying, which is believed to be the first in at least a decade in which a paroled murderer is accused, has also drawn attention to how the board functions.

Immediately after Corliss’s arrest last month, Daniel M. Dewey, one of the former board members who had participat ed in the 5-1 vote to parole him, said the case was tragic but that he could not remember the vote because the board held so many hearings each year.

On average, board members hold more than 1,300 hearings a year - sometimes as many as 20 a day, according to Donald V. Giancioppo, executive director of the Parole Board.

Every day, individual board members convene hearings at county jails across Massachusetts for people serving relatively short sentences. For more serious crimes, two or three board members participate. The full board votes on the roughly 100 requests for parole made each year by “lifers,’’ prisoners serving sentences for second-degree murder. (People convicted of first-degree murder are ineligible for parole.)

Board members, who are paid $80,000 to $100,000 a year, drive an average of 23,000 miles a year in cars issued to them by the agency, according to Giancioppo.

Overall, the board has paroled about two-thirds of the inmates who appeared before it each year, although less than one-third of all lifers were released annually since 2005, the statistics show. About 6,000 convicted criminals are freed each year.

Giancioppo said the Dangol slaying marked the first time in his seven years as the agency’s top administrator, and in his 13 years as an employee, that a paroled murderer was charged with another killing, although some have committed serious crimes.

The clerk’s killing in December captured the region’s attention. The day after Christmas, a gunman wearing a scarf over most of his face robbed Dangol, a Nepalese immigrant working at a Tedeschi Food Shop in Jamaica Plain, of $746 and then shot him. The crime was captured on a store surveillance videotape.

A state parole officer who saw the video said he recognized the gunman as his parolee, Corliss, a 63-year-old convicted murderer freed in 2006.

After Corliss was arrested, Parole Board records reviewed by the Globe showed that he had a criminal record that dated back more than 40 years, including a conviction for a remarkably similar slaying, the 1971 shooting of an unarmed store clerk in Salisbury. He had also escaped from prison twice, and in 1991 had violated parole three months after the board released him.

But Corliss was 60 when he appeared before the full board in 2006. Most inmates that age, criminologists say, have long passed the time when they are most likely to commit crime. And the records provided to the Globe mentioned no disciplinary problems in prison since 1991.

Five board members voted in July 2006 to parole Corliss over the objections of one member who wrote that Corliss posed an “ongoing public safety risk.’’ As is customary, board members who participated are named, but not how each voted, out of concerns about retaliation.

Only two of the current board members - Candace Kochin and Thomas Merigan - participated in the decision to release Corliss. Both declined to comment.

So far, the panel’s review of the Corliss case indicates that parole officers gave the board all the criminal and prison records it needed to judge whether Corliss was suitable for release, said Giancioppo. Likewise, he said, parole officers in the community had made sure Corliss followed the conditions of his release.

“I think it’s important to recognize that we’re in a risk-management business,’’ Giancioppo said in a recent interview. “Ninety-five percent of all inmates are ultimately going to be released to the community. That’s just a fact.’’ Each board member receives a case file two to three inches thick on every convicted murderer who comes before the panel, “but ultimately there’s no guarantees with human behavior,’’ Giancioppo said.

Parole Board chairman Mark A. Conrad, appointed to the board by Governor Deval Patrick the year after Corliss was freed, said he cannot discuss the case in detail because Corliss, who is being held without bail, will ultimately have to appear before the panel for likely revocation of parole.

Speaking generally, though, Conrad said the case is to the agency what a spaceship explosion is to NASA, an example of how things can sometimes go spectacularly wrong despite the best efforts of people to carefully weigh risks against benefits.

“Any time you make a decision [to grant parole] and you’re signing your name, all board members are under the thought, ‘I’ve taken the best risk-assessment tools available, and I have to believe this person is going to try to do the right thing,’ ’’ he said.

Jack McDevitt, an associate dean at Northeastern University’s College of Criminal Justice, which was recently invited by Conrad to study the agency’s performance, said Massachusetts parolees appear to behave well compared to those in other states.

Some 78 percent of parolees in Massachusetts completed parole supervision without reoffending or violating conditions in 2008, according to the Parole Board. That is far higher than the 49 percent completion rate nationally that year, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

“Whatever they’re doing seems to be more effective in terms of fewer parolees committing new crimes while under supervision,’’ said McDevitt, who characterized the Corliss case as an “outlier.’’

Nonetheless, he said, it is always wise for the state to consider ways to improve the parole agency, perhaps by adding members to reduce workload, or by providing them with more information on inmates.

Giancioppo said that months before Corliss’s arrest, the agency had taken steps to do the latter, by providing board members with a “risk assessment’’ scale for each inmate as an additional tool.

Laurie Myers, president of Community Voices, a Chelmsford-based nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of crime victims, said the agency needs to do more. Conceding that no parole system is perfect, she said many crime victims in Massachusetts feel the board is too lenient.

“If you’re holding somebody who’s already committed a violent crime, and they’re released and they go on to do it again, the system has to be looked at,’’ she said.

Some defense lawyers, however, fear the Corliss case could make it harder for deserving inmates to win parole.

“The Parole Board is already very, very cautious,’’ said Patricia Garin, a prominent Boston lawyer who oversees a program at Northeastern University’s School of Law that trains law students to represent convicted murderers seeking parole. “I think there are a lot of people in the system who could be paroled.’’

Up for consideration is whether Susan Biancardi, the grandmother convicted of murdering her daughter in what supporters called a psychotic episode, is one of them.

Biancardi told the board that her other daughter, 34-year-old Audrey Biancardi, has forgiven her, even though she was also an intended target.

Susan Biancardi promised that, if paroled, she would stay on her medication for bipolar disorder, and offered to take weekly blood tests. “I want you to know that from the bottom of my heart, I am sincerely sorry for my actions,’’ she said.

Board chairman Conrad told Biancardi he was impressed by her apparent transformation, but the panel must proceed cautiously. “Our biggest fear,’’ he said, “is of you doing harm to yourself or someone else.’’

Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.
© Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

Justice Policy Institute: Fact Sheet on The Obama Administration’s 2011 Budget: More Policing, Prisons, and Punitive Policies

Fact Sheet on The Obama Administration’s 2011 Budget: More Policing, Prisons, and Punitive Policies

02-17-10
Author(s): Justice Policy Institute
Topic(s): Public Safety, Juvenile Justice, Adult Corrections, Books vs. Bars, Drug Policy

The President’s proposed FY2011 Department of Justice (DOJ) budget asks for $29.2 billion. This is on top of $4 billion provided to DOJ through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), much of which will continue to fund activities through 2011 and beyond. Although the budget has some specific allocations for juvenile justice that it had removed last year, it still reduces spending on juvenile justice programs, while allocating hundreds of millions to hire or retain police officers through the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants or Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and increasing federal prison spending.

This continued funding pattern will likely result in increased costs to states for incarceration that will outweigh the increased revenue for law enforcement, with marginal public safety benefits. While “re-entry” programs such as the Second Chance Act will help reduce recidivism, too little funding is targeted towards “no-entry” programs that keep people from ending up in the criminal justice system in the first place. As states struggle with tough economic times and burgeoning prison populations, research shows that the most cost-effective ways to increase public safety, reduce prison populations, and save money are to invest in community-based programs and policies that positively impact youth and more substance use and mental health treatment services in the community.
The 8 page report breaks down where the money requested will go and its consequences.
http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/10-02_FAC_FY2011Budget_PS-JJ-AC-BB-DP.pdf

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

February 21, 2010

MA: "Death of clerk should not mean the end of paroles, pardons"

February 5, 2010
Jamaica Plain Gazette

The senseless murder of Surendra Dangol, a 39-year-old Nepalese store clerk, in Monument Square in Jamaica Plain (JP Gazette, Jan. 8 and 22) was a tragedy of immeasurable proportions for his family and for the community.

If the suspect in the case, parolee Edward Corliss, is indeed the perpetrator, that, too, is a tragedy. A person who has a second chance and cruelly squanders it shakes to the core our belief in mercy and compassion.

Unfortunately, paroles and pardons do not come with “100-percent-no-repeat-offense” guarantees. Yet, to deny second chances would be a tragedy of immeasurable proportions, too. Many people who have violated the social fabric have learned from their mistakes and have become law-abiding, productive citizens. As a society we have a responsibility to provide people with the tools and opportunities to change and maximize everyone’s potential for doing good. Evidence and compassion, not fear and retribution, must guide our policies and judgments. The death of compassion would be the worst tragedy of all.

Nancy W. Ahmadifar
Mission Hill

Posted by lois at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)

IA: Ombudsman: Delays in work release programs and new parole board rules mean prisoners remain in prison longer and cost the state millions

"We can't continue to keep people in prison when they would be better placed in a less restrictive environment at a significantly reduced cost," Iowa Ombudsman William Angrick said.

Ombudsman: Rehab delays for prisoners cost millions
By JASON CLAYWORTH • • February 18, 2010
Des Moines Register

Iowa's prisons have serious problems that are delaying release of inmates into rehabilitation programs and potentially costing taxpayers millions of extra dollars, the state's ombudsman told lawmakers Wednesday.

Among the problems:

- A work-release program that costs taxpayers less than daily prison fees has a waiting list of 800 inmates. In one inmate's case alone, the additional cost to taxpayers was $25,000.

• Some prison officials have improperly held inmates' earnings instead of applying them to victim restitution or court reimbursements.

• A gradual release program has been revamped so dramatically that some offenders are unable to do what is required to qualify for early release.

"We can't continue to keep people in prison when they would be better placed in a less restrictive environment at a significantly reduced cost," Iowa Ombudsman William Angrick said.

Lawmakers agreed the issues and likely extra costs are vital at a time when the state is discussing cuts to key services, such as education and health programs for low-income families.

Rep. Wayne Ford, a member of the Legislature's Government Oversight Committee, expressed anger at the findings and told committee members they would be violating their duties as lawmakers if they fail to immediately look more closely at the issue, despite a shortened legislative session.

Ford, D-Des Moines, has worked with prisoners through his social agency, Urban Dreams. Failures in rehabilitation programs not only cost taxpayers money but also increase the likelihood of recidivism, he said.

"Our No. 1 job as a Legislature is the public safety of this state," Ford said, noting Angrick's report. "Somebody is going to kill somebody, saying they're mad as hell because these things are against me.

"This blood is on our hands."

Fred Scaletta, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Corrections, said the administrators who could speak about the programs were unavailable for comment Wednesday.

However, Scaletta pointed to November board notes in which Director John Baldwin thanked Angrick for his comments about prisoner payments and said that a final resolution would be handled when the attorney general issues a ruling.

The attorney general has not issued any opinions or advice on the matter, Bob Brammer, a spokesman for the office, said Wednesday.

About 800 inmates are on a waiting list for placement in a residential facility as required for work-release programs, according to Angrick's report. The programs save taxpayers $19.08 a day compared with prison costs.

He said one unidentified inmate was held in prison 351 days longer than anticipated. If the work-release program had been immediately available, the prisoner would have been eligible for lesser levels of imprisonment, such as day reporting and eventually parole, which costs about $3.75 a day. Angrick estimated the extra costs to taxpayers at about $25,000.

A September state audit of the corrections department verified Angrick's findings about prisoner payments. Inmates at the North Central Correctional Facility in Webster County, by labor law, should have been paid about $7.80 an hour to pull tarps over harvested grain at two local elevators.

Instead, they were paid about $6.15, the audit showed.

The disparities are important because much of the earnings from prisoners are turned over for court or victim reimbursements. However, according to Angrick's findings, some of that money was not being properly distributed.

In another finding, Angrick noted that some prisoners through no fault of their own have lost the ability to meet the Iowa Board of Parole's requirements to receive early release.

The problems stem from a policy change made a year ago that no longer allows inmates to live and work outside the secured perimeter of the prisons, the report said.

"If the Board of Parole requires an offender to work outside the fence as a prerequisite for release, but the Department of Corrections' policy prevents the offender from doing so, one can safely draw the conclusion that the releases of many offenders will be delayed," Angrick said.

"That will undoubtedly increase incarceration costs for the state of Iowa."

The Oversight Committee will attempt to organize a public meeting with the corrections department, said Rep. Vicki Lensing, D-Iowa City, co-chairwoman of the committee.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=20102180352

Posted by lois at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)

IL: Census rule change sparks debate about counting prisoners

Census rule change sparks debate about counting inmates
Fight brewing over whether convict should be factored into hometown or prison town population
By Oscar Avila
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
February 21, 2010

Normally, few communities would want to take credit for prison inmates.

But, with this year's census about to bring adjustments in political power based on population numbers, a fight is brewing in Springfield over which communities get to claim convicts. With federal money at stake, some argue inmates should be counted in their hometowns instead of the prison towns where they currently are counted.

This month, the Census Bureau gave Illinois and other states the ability to decide the matter, and a Chicago-area lawmaker responded with a bill proposing to make the change to hometowns. Proponents argue it is a matter not only of money but democratic equality, but downstate lawmakers retort that the money is needed for infrastructure around the prisons.

"It isn't fair for certain communities to reap a benefit that they don't deserve just because these people are in jail on one given day," said state Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Chicago Democrat who sponsored the legislation.

The majority of Illinois' 45,000 inmates are actually from Cook County, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections, but they have swelled the population of Dixon, Vandalia and other rural prison towns.

About 30 percent of the residents of Brown County along the Missouri border, for example, are inmates at the Western Illinois Correctional Center in Mount Sterling.

The fight over population foreshadows next year's larger clash over redrawing boundaries for congressional and legislative districts, based on population shifts uncovered by the census. Those once-a-decade clashes are typically filled with partisan maneuvering.

The debate over prisoners also has a racial component. The Illinois Department of Corrections reports that about 60 percent of inmates are African-American, while most prisons are in rural, predominantly white areas.

Dale Ho, assistant counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said African-American communities are especially sensitive because their political strength is diluted if their populations are dispersed. The Rev. Al Sharpton helped kick off a similar push to change the inmate-counting formula in New York.

"It is an issue of racial justice," Ho said.

Because of the traditional way of inmate counting, Cook County suffered a net loss of about 26,000 people in the 2000 Census, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

To facilitate a change, census officials also agreed to accelerate its breakout of prison populations to May 2011 so states would have the data in time for redistricting. In the past, the inmate count would come too late to be considered.

Ford said the change would be only fair for his district because some prisoners serving short sentences will return before the end of the decade. The Austin community on Chicago's West Side, part of Ford's district, was the largest destination for ex-offenders in 2001, according to the Urban Institute.

Ford worries that social-service agencies that help rehabilitate those ex-prisoners will not be able to raise necessary funds if there is not an accurate count that reflects their ties to the neighborhood.

To ease concerns that the new approach would give an unfair advantage to the prisoners' hometowns, Ford said he would introduce an amendment to allow prison towns to count inmates serving sentences longer than 10 years.

Ho said the NAACP would support a compromise in which inmates would be counted but not factored into the redistricting equation.

State Rep. Ron Stephens, a Republican from Highland whose district near St. Louis has the sixth-highest proportion of state prisoners, said the bill is merely a grab for money and clout. Stephens said downstate Democrats are already joining Republicans in organizing opposition to the bill.

"Rep. Ford would get the money but the folks I represent would be taking care of the prisoners," Stephens said. "It's a horrible public policy change. The system is fair now."

oavila@tribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-census-prisons,0,5322711,print.story
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

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

February 19, 2010

Maine: 50 Gather to learn about LD 1611 which would limit the use of solitary confinement

The bill would limit stays in the state’s special management units to 45 days and would prohibit “seriously” mentally ill prisoners from being placed there, Levasseur said. “This bill doesn’t go far enough, in my opinion,” he said. “I think it’s like putting a bandage on a sucking chest wound. But it does something.”

50 gather to learn about solitary confinement
By Abigail Curtis
Bangor Daily News Staff

BELFAST, Maine — More than 50 people gathered Wednesday night at the Belfast Free Library to learn more about the practice of solitary confinement for prison inmates.

Many wanted to find out what they could do to sway Maine lawmakers against the practice.

The bill would limit stays in the state’s special management units to 45 days and would prohibit “seriously” mentally ill prisoners from being placed there, Levasseur said. “This bill doesn’t go far enough, in my opinion,” he said. “I think it’s like putting a bandage on a sucking chest wound. But it does something.”

50 gather to learn about solitary confinement
By Abigail Curtis
Bangor Daily News Staff

BELFAST, Maine — More than 50 people gathered Wednesday night at the Belfast Free Library to learn more about the practice of solitary confinement for prison inmates.

Many wanted to find out what they could do to sway Maine lawmakers against the practice.

A bill that would limit the use of solitary confinement units in the state is working its way through the Legislature.

Although the bill’s opponents say that limiting the use of special management units would be dangerous for both inmates and correctional officers, the crowd that turned out for the film and discussion sponsored by the Peace and Justice Group of Waldo County seemed to be overwhelmingly for LD 1611.

“I think we gave people a little bit of hope in terms of talking about problems with prisons in the state,” said Larry Dansinger of the Peace and Justice Group. “There’s hope for at least starting the process of getting people to be treated more humanely.”

Bill opponents, including state Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson, say that it would force the release of dangerous inmates into the general prison population or into mental health facilities.

Magnusson testified Wednesday at a hearing on the bill, saying that he has not seen legislation that would be more harmful to the department’s employees and inmates.

But the evening’s featured speaker, Raymond Luc Levasseur, emphasized a different kind of safety. Most prisoners ultimately get released and some have gone straight from isolation units to the streets, he said.

“These policies make our communities less safe and secure,” Levasseur said.

The former federal prisoner and current Waldo resident spent more than a decade in solitary confinement while serving a sentence for his role in a series of protest bombings in the 1970s.

He encouraged attendees to contact their local representatives to let them know that they support the bill, and seemed heartened that Rep. Andrew O’Brien, D-Lincolnville, was in the audience. O’Brien said that he has been lobbied by a prison guard who is against the bill and hadn’t yet heard from the other side.

“Folks in corrections are really pushing back against this,” O’Brien said, adding that he is scheduled to visit the Maine State Prison in Warren next week. “I’m just basically out to get more informed.”

The bill would limit stays in the state’s special management units to 45 days and would prohibit “seriously” mentally ill prisoners from being placed there, Levasseur said.

“This bill doesn’t go far enough, in my opinion,” he said. “I think it’s like putting a bandage on a sucking chest wound. But it does something.”

Harold Vine of Belfast said after the presentation that he thought that community education on the matter is “absolutely crucial.”

“I sense that enormous numbers of people are unaware of this,” he said. “Unfortunately as a society, we are too much about money and power. Where is our compassion?”

BDN writer Kevin Miller contributed to this report.
http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/137237.html

Posted by lois at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2010

Federal program to deport criminal immigrants expands in California

http://www.californiawatch.org/watchblog/federal-program-deport-criminal-immigrants-expands-california
NOTE: The online version has a few links for those who want more information.

Federal program to deport criminal immigrants expands in California
February 17, 2010 | Andrew Becker

Police in two more California counties have joined an expanding federal program to identify and deport criminals who are in the country illegally or have committed crimes that makes them subject to deportation, immigration officials announced yesterday.

With the addition of San Joaquin and Stanislaus, 10 of the state's 58 counties have access to the database-driven program, dubbed Secure Communities, and run by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. The program gives police agencies that use electronic booking machines to scan fingerprints of arrestees and inmates to access federal crime and immigration databases.

The other participating state counties are mostly in Southern and Central California, including Los Angeles, Ventura, San Diego, Imperial, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. The other Northern California counties are Solano and Sacramento counties. Meanwhile, some counties, like San Francisco, which has a local "sanctuary" ordinance on its books, just aren't interested in joining up.

State and local law enforcement agencies can simultaneously check linked FBI and federal immigration databases to screen a person's criminal history and immigration record. If there is a fingerprint match, the system immediately notifies immigration officials. Local law enforcement must give ICE officials 48-hour notice before releasing an immigrant who has a match in both systems. ICE determines the appropriate action. In the worst cases ICE officials will move to deport dangerous offenders while for some nonviolent offenders they may try to get them to depart the U.S. voluntarily.

The idea behind Secure Communities, which Congress appropriated $1.4 billion for in fiscal year 2009, is that the program will revolutionize how the government finds and identifies criminals who may be subject to deportation. ICE says the agency's priority is to remove the most dangerous criminals - those who have committed crimes such as murder, rape or kidnapping - from the United States.

Los Angeles County, for instance, joined the program in late Aug. 2009. In the first two months Secure Communities was used there, law enforcement agencies made 78,895 submissions, resulting in 8,717 matches. Of those individuals found to have an immigration record, more than 1,100 were level 1 offenders, according to ICE officials.

California Watch

ICE, which expects to go nationwide with the program by 2013, launched the initiative selectively around the country in Oct. 2008. From Oct. 27, 2008 through December 31, 2009, Secure Communities nationwide received more than 1.3 million submissions, according to an ICE official. Those submissions resulted in 155,521 matches, including 14,796 aliens who had been charged with or convicted of serious criminal offenses. Statewide figures were not immediately available.

But Secure Communities has also raised some controversy and concern, including errors in databases. For instance, of the 155,521 matches, 9,053, or about 6 percent, were U.S. citizens mistakenly matched, according to an ICE official. (The Dallas Morning News reported in November that there were about 119,000 matches, and 5,900, or just about 5 percent, people were U.S. citizens.)

Another potential issue is the housing of illegal immigrants in state prisons and jails. Although the Obama Administration allocated about $330,000 in its 2011 budget request to reimburse states for incarcerating illegal immigrants, that amount is no where near what's spent to house illegal immigrant inmates in state prisons and jails.

The state expects to pay about a $1 billion this year to jail about 19,000 illegal immigrants, according to the Los Angeles Times. Of the $330 million, administered by the federal Justice Department's State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP), about $90 million will go to California.

In response, Gov. Schwarzenegger floated the idea of exporting illegal immigrant inmates to Mexico, as California's prisons are already overcrowded.The state Prison Industry Board also recently decided that it would no longer allow convicted illegal immigrants to receive job training.

The White House's Office of Management and Budget has determined that because SCAAP reimbursements don't deter crime by illegal immigrants and the program has not shown results, among other reasons, the program should be terminated.

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said that the Secure Communities program would not financially burden state and local jails with holding more illegal immigrants. It is ICE's responsibility to house the illegal immigrant after the individual is released by local law enforcement, she said.

"As long as a criminal alien remains in local custody on criminal charges...we do not pre-empt that process," Kice wrote in an email. "If a potentially deportable criminal alien is slated for release by local authorities even though the criminal case has not been concluded, we will typically execute the detainer and initiate the removal process."

But Jim Denney, executive director of the California State Sheriff's Association, questions where ICE is going to hold such criminal aliens. He points to the state's overcrowded county jails. More than 30 counties in the state are already under court or self-imposed population caps, which require jails to release inmates to make room for new ones coming through the door, Denney said.

ICE has discussed building new detention facilities, and even begun the bidding process for a new facility in the Los Angeles area, but has faced delays.

Posted by lois at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)

The Justice Department's proposed $1.5 billion budget increase would help pay for 2,880 new attorneys, agents, marshals, intelligence analysts and prison guards in 2011.

Justice seeks funds to add 2,800 employees in 2011
By STEPHEN LOSEY | Last Updated: February 2, 2010

The Justice Department's proposed $1.5 billion budget increase would help pay for 2,880 new attorneys, agents, marshals, intelligence analysts and prison guards in 2011.

The budget also provides $237 million for a controversial plan to buy an Illinois prison to house suspected terrorist detainees.

The White House's budget proposal would provide Justice nearly $29.2 billion in total discretionary spending, giving it a 5 percent increase over 2010. About $300 million in new funding would pay for national security and counterterrorism programs. Justice said almost $4.4 billion would go to its national security programs.

State, local and tribal law enforcement assistance would increase by $722 million to $3.4 billion, the largest increase in the department.

Prisons, detention programs and judicial security programs would receive a $527 million spending increase to $9 billion, the second-largest increase. That includes funding for the Bureau of Prisons, the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee, the U.S. Parole Commission and the U.S. Marshals Service. Justice has budgeted $59 million to fill 1,200 vacant prison guard jobs, and another $95 million to hire an additional 652 guards. Those new guards would go to a new prison in Berlin, N.H., and the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois, which the administration wants to use to house Guantanamo Bay detainees. Assistant Attorney General Lee Lofthus said Justice would spend $170 million to buy and renovate Thomson.

"It's very expensive to newly construct prisons nowadays," Lofthus said. "If there's an opportunity available on the market to acquire an existing facility, that's smart for the department, it's good for the Bureau of Prisons, and we think it's smart for the taxpayer."

The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents Bureau of Prisons employees, applauded the administration's plans to hire more guards. "Proper staffing will help alleviate the dire situation in our federal prisons," AFGE President John Gage said.

The budget also calls for more than $1.1 billion — representing a $223 million increase — for cybersecurity and other information technology projects.

Lofthus said the department has cut its travel budget, though he did not say by how much. The department also wants to cut nearly $500 million in unwanted earmarks from its 2010 budget.

Other proposed increases:

• For the FBI, an increase from $7.7 billion to $8.1 billion.

• For the Drug Enforcement Administration, an increase from $2.0 billion to $2.1 billion.

http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20100202/AGENCY01/2020310/1055/AGENCY

Posted by lois at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Clergy ask change in criminal record law

Clergy ask change in criminal record law
Say ex-offenders hurt in job search

By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff | February 18, 2010

A group of prominent black ministers accused House leaders yesterday of failing to allow a vote on legislation that would make it easier for people with criminal records to find jobs.

The issue is a top priority for the ministers because they believe criminal offender record laws are unfairly preventing some members of their community from entering the workforce, even years after convictions on minor crimes.

Governor Deval Patrick has pushed the issue, saying that allowing former offenders the opportunity to find work is the best tool to prevent them from reoffending. A version of the bill has passed the Senate.

But the ministers said that momentum for the bill was lost in the House after the vivid display of voter anger in the election of Republican Scott P. Brown to the US Senate last month.

Some business groups have criticized the measure, saying employers should not be restricted in the criminal records they can review when deciding whom to hire.

The bill would reduce the amount of time a job applicant’s criminal record remains accessible to employers.

During a press conference at Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain, four ministers from some of the area’s largest black congregations said they would urge their members to fast in support of the legislation for Lent.

“We won’t sit by idly and allow for yet another year to pass until it’s politically safe to deal with the issue,’’ said the Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown, executive director of the Boston TenPoint Coalition.

“Because of the economic climate, it has become an economic issue, and it has taken on a moral significance because people cannot be redeemed in their lives when you have a system that is designed to keep them where they are,’’ Brown said.

The ministers have pushed the issue in public rallies and in private meetings with Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and Representative Eugene L. O’Flaherty, House chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

But since the measure has not surfaced for a vote in the House, the members of the Black Ministerial Alliance and the Boston TenPoint Coalition are “deeply concerned that CORI reform is being put on the back burner,’’ said the Rev. Ray Hammond, pastor of Bethel AME Church, referring to the Criminal Offender Record Information system.

“It is far too important and far too critical an issue to be subjected to these kind of political games,’’ Hammond said. “People’s lives are at stake.’’

O’Flaherty did not return calls for comment yesterday.

DeLeo’s spokesman, Seth Gitell, released a statement saying, “Speaker DeLeo is working with Chairman O’Flaherty on a criminal justice package and is looking forward to bringing it up some time this session.’’

The session ends in July.

Patrick said yesterday that he has talked about the issue with DeLeo, who has assured him the bill will be released from committee.

“We’re looking for action soon,’’ Patrick said in an interview.

“We are closer to CORI reform than we have ever been.’’
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/02/18/clergy_ask_change_in_criminal_record_law/

Posted by lois at 03:49 PM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2010

Illinois set to close Thomson prison. $237 million allocated to buy prison for Guantanamo prisoners

Illinois set to close Thomson prison

Posted: Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Obama administration announced December 15, 2009 it wants to buy the Thomson Correctional Center, which is 50 miles northeast of the Davenport. The Obama administration’s budget for fiscal year 2011 includes $237 million for the purchase, renovation and staffing of the Thomson Correctional Center.

The state of Illinois intends to close the nearly vacant Thomson Correctional Center effective April 30, according to a letter sent to the union representing prison employees.

“This notice is part of the process the state must go through in order to close the prison, declare the property surplus and then to sell it to the federal government,” Januari Smith, a spokesperson for the state Department of Corrections, said in a statement Tuesday.

The Obama administration wants to buy the nearly vacant prison to house 1,600 federal inmates, as well as a limited number of suspected terrorists who are now being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The administration announced its intent in December to buy the prison. And last month, a state legislative panel recommended closing the facility.

There currently are 77 employees and 136 inmates at the prison, according to the state. It’s not clear where the prisoners will go, but the employees will be given the opportunity to claim other corrections jobs in the region.

Anders Lindall, a spokesman for the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, Council 31, said the union has been notified.

“That doesn’t mean we’re backing off in any way from our belief the facility is needed, especially to relieve overcrowding in the state prison system,” Lindall said.

He said the notification is required by the union’s contract with the state.

The letter, sent last week and signed by Department of Corrections Director Michael Randle, says negotiations will now commence with the union over the shutdown.

The potential transfer of the prison, which is about 50 miles from the Quad-Cities, is a major economic development issue in the region.

The White House has said up to 3,800 jobs could be created over a four-year period, and economic development and most political leaders in the region are eagerly anticipating it.

However, the pace of the developments has slowed since the disclosure last year that Thomson was being considered for the prisoners.

Congressional Republicans and even some Democrats have opposed the idea of closing Guantanamo Bay and sending some of the detainees to Thomson.

The Obama administration has asked for $237 million in fiscal year 2011 to buy, renovate and operate Thomson. A decision on funding, however, may not come until fall.

Previously, backers of the plan had said a funding debate could occur this spring.

Smith’s statement Tuesday said the corrections department has received initial preferences from Thomson employees about filling existing job vacancies.

It said it is trying to accommodate those requests.

Employees will soon be notified of specific dates and times for meetings about the matter, the statement said.
http://www.qctimes.com/news/local/article_e141e048-1b71-11df-bbda-001cc4c032
86.html

Posted by lois at 09:39 PM | Comments (0)

TX: Proposed cuts include programs, meds, private prisons

Prison cuts: 3,000 jobs, meds, programs to get axe

By Mike Ward | Tuesday, February 16, 2010, 09:27 AM

Nearly 3,100 jobs of prison guards, parole officers and other officials would be eliminated, privately run prisons would be closed, highly touted treatment and rehabilitation programs would be cut and medical care would be significantly reduced under a proposed 5-percent budget reduction plan unveiled today.

Brad Livingston, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, warned that the $294.3 million in cuts requested by state leaders “will likely increase recidivism, cause significant growth in the prison population … negatively impact both supervision in the community and security within our institutions.”

In addition, Livingston predicted that the reductions would “remove all flexibility to manage potential fiscal shortfalls and operational challenges” by the agency.

Because of those concerns, Livingston requested the prison system be exempted from all but $50.4 million of the cuts.

Highlights, from the budget-reduction plan that was just made public:

Some 2,037 jobs for correctional officers would be eliminated to save $84.4 million, even though the report warns that the change would result in “reduced staff levels that would place public safety and and security of our institutions at risk.”

To save $41.9 million, prison medical clinics would stop providing over-the-counter medications to convicts, dietary services would be eliminated, an infirmary at UT-Tyler would be closed, convicts leaving prison would be given a prescription form rather than a 10-day supply of medications, most prison clinics would see their already-reduced hours of operation cut even more, dental and mental health services would be reduced, and voluntary and routine HIV and Hepatitis C testing would be suspended. In addition, the planned opening of a new prison hospital in Marlin would be delayed for a year to save another $10.3 million.

Jobs of approximately 195 parole officers would be eliminated, increasing the number of parolees that each officer will have to supervise and likely increasing revocation rates — which will put more people back in prison.

Funding to the state’s 122 county probation departments would be cut by $22 million, forcing the reduction of 162 probation officers. That would mean that the remaining officers will have to supervise more felons on probation, that revocation rates will increase so more people will go to prison and that successful programs that divert people from prison will be thwarted, officials said.

Academic and vocational training programs would be cut by $200,000, leaving 370 offenders without those programs and hindering rehabilitation, officials said.

Some 400 beds in halfway houses would be cut to save $1.6 million, leaving more people in prisons, which cost more to operate.

To save $42 million, 465 prison jobs would be eliminated in food service, farming operations and maintenance divisions. An additional 75 administrative support positions would be cut to save $3.9 million, reducing correctional training and investigative initiatives. Another 198 support positions would be eliminated in state prisons that “will negatively impact our ability to manage” day-to-day functions, officials said.

Some $7.8 million would be cut from substance-abuse treatment programs, meaning that 1,346 fewer prisoners would have access to the programs. That would keep more people in prison longer and would likely increase recidivism.

Some $10.7 million in funding for 817 beds in privately run prisons would be eliminated, reducing the state’s prison capacity. The savings would be $10.7 million.
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/politics/entr
ies/2010/02/16/prison_cuts_3000_jobs_meds_pro.html

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

About New York- When Cell Doors Won’t Close

"It’s not that the prisons are overstaffed, it’s just that they’re under-prisonered."

About New York
When Cell Doors Won’t Close
By JIM DWYER
Published: February 16, 2010

As of Tuesday afternoon, New York State had about 5,000 empty beds in its 67 prisons. Even if the state weren’t flat broke, this would be an expensive proposition. Just turning on the lights in the morning costs money. Correction officers must be on duty 24 hours a day, year round, even when there are only a handful of inmates to watch.

Take, for example, three prisons in the northern reaches of the state, near the Canadian border. In a count taken Dec. 31, a prison in Lyon Mountain had 91 employees and 135 inmates. The Ogdensburg Correctional Facility had 287 employees and 474 inmates. The minimum security portion of a complex in Red Creek had a staff of 67 for a grand total of 71 inmates.

It’s not that the prisons are overstaffed, it’s just that they’re under-prisonered.

New York has 13,000 fewer inmates today than it did in 1999, when the prison population was at its peak. The state projects that a year from now, the number will go down by an additional 1,000. Crime has been dropping, and nonviolent offenders are spending less time behind bars.

But closing prisons is even harder than closing hospitals. (About a quarter of the state’s hospital beds were chronically empty when a special commission on health care issued a report in 2006.)

The prison industry is the foundation of local economies in many parts of the state. And for years, the correctional facilities spread throughout the vast rural stretches of the state helped protect Republican legislative districts from dwindling populations — the inmates are counted as permanent residents when maps are drawn for the Senate and the Assembly.

Yet the prisons survive changes in the political weather.

A little more than two years ago, the governor announced that he would close four unnecessary prisons. But that governor’s name was Eliot Spitzer.

At the time, Republicans controlled the State Senate, and their majority leader was hailed in a rally outside the Capitol by correction officers who chanted, “Joe Bruno! Joe Bruno!”

Mr. Bruno has since moved on, resigning suddenly one day, and then slowly being turned on a prosecutor’s spit for using his Senate powers to stoke his private business interests. Mr. Spitzer left even more quickly in a prostitution scandal.

With his departure, the state effectively suspended its efforts to shutter prisons. Right after David A. Paterson became governor, he agreed with the Legislature to spend $34 million to keep open the four prisons that Mr. Spitzer had wanted to close. The Paterson administration did close three prison camps, but spared one in a district represented by a Democrat.

Now the Democrats control the Senate by a single vote, giving every Democratic senator tremendous negotiating power. As a way to save $46 million, the governor has proposed closing four prisons, including the one in Ogdensburg, which is represented by a Democratic senator, Darrel J. Aubertine.

On his Web site, Mr. Aubertine made it clear that he did not think any of the four should be closed, especially the one in Ogdensburg.

“The devastating negative economic impact to these communities will outweigh any proposed savings,” Mr. Aubertine said.

BOTH Mr. Aubertine and the president of the union representing the state correction officers dispute the counts taken by the Department of Correctional Services, saying that there are not enough beds in the system now to accommodate all the inmates without “double bunking.” The union has made television and radio ads that warn of dire consequences to public safety if prisons are closed and claim that the department’s administration is bloated. But Brian Fischer, the correction commissioner, said that most inmates are in single cells or dormitories, and that there is plenty of room.

Even though the state expects that no one will lose a job if some prisons are closed — there’s enough attrition so that it would be possible for any employee to find a job through a transfer — there will be major upheavals in the prison towns. The families of prison employees go to the schools, pay taxes and keep their communities humming.

But for a state facing billions in deficits for years to come, even the considerable power of the prison industry might not outweigh these stark numbers. In the four prisons that the governor has proposed closing, there are 547 employees and 851 inmates. That’s one state employee for every 1.5 prisoners.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/nyregion/17about.html
A version of this article appeared in print on February 17, 2010, on page A16 of the New York edition.

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

February 15, 2010

PA: "The corrections Rendell's budget needs" 2,000 more cages proposed in Rendell's budget

The corrections Rendell's budget needs

BY PROPOSING spending increases on education, medical assistance, unemployment and health insurance for children, and including almost no new programs, Gov. Rendell's final budget reflects the sobering realities of a lingering recession.

Still, his budget does include a spending increase that must have been embedded as a trick or joke, maybe as payback for having to deal all these years with a recalcitrant Legislature. It's the only logical explanation for his announcement that in these dire times, we're making it a priority to spend more money on . . . prisons.

In his budget address, Rendell called for an increase of $137 million for the Department of Corrections, about 7 percent. Of that, $13 million will be spent on providing 2,000 more beds in new housing units to deal with overcrowding. This increase will put the state's corrections budget at $2 billion - 7 percent of the total state budget.

Pennsylvania is not alone in being hit with explosive growth in prison costs. Those costs are rising due to a number of factors, starting with the simple fact that more people are in prison than ever before. According to a 2008 study by Pew Center of the States, the state has grown from one in 99 adults under correctional control to one in 28 adults. Each offender costs us close to $100 a day.

But we disagree with Rendell on one fundamental: Prison costs are not "fixed" costs as he claims, offering little or no discretion. Pennsylvania's prison crisis is rooted in laws and policies that can be changed.

For example, according to another Pew study, Pennsylvania has the second-longest prison sentences in the nation. Like many of Pennsylvania's problems, the roots of our prison crisis can be traced to actions by state lawmakers.

Back in 1984, the Legislature passed the first laws imposing mandatory minimum sentencing. Initially, it applied only to violent crimes, DUI's, and repeat offenders. However, lawmakers expanded the criminal code to include many drug crimes in 1988 and again in 1995. As a result, Pennsylvania's prison population exploded, growing by 280 percent in less than three decades.

Mandatory minimums were popular with politicians trying to look tough on drugs. However, a study by the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing found that these policies were essentially useless in deterring crime. The report - requested and funded by the state Legislature - found that mandatory minimums had no impact on recidivism and recommended eliminating many of the statutes. (That's why we're no fan of Brendan Boyle's attempt to actually lengthen sentences for repeat violent offenders, as well as eliminate parole for second-and third-time offenders.)

The commonwealth does implement an "earn time" program that helps offenders trim their sentences by participating in certain programs. More is clearly needed. A policy brief recently released by the Commonwealth Foundation offered several good ideas - including drug courts for first-time offenders, releasing non-violent offenders charged with only possession, and using more electronic monitoring. The report is also significant because the policy group is known for being very conservative, providing cover for Republicans to work on this issue.

Current policies have led not only to a human tragedy, but a fiscal nightmare.

We hope Rendell takes another look at his assumptions about prison spending. He might also take a look at recent actions by the city that cut the prison population by a 1,000 in one year.

This is one budget decision that needs serious correction. *
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/20100215_The_corrections_Rendell_s_budget_needs.html

Posted by lois at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)

Imaginary fiends. Crime in America keeps going down. Why does the public refuse to believe it?

Imaginary fiends
Crime in America keeps going down. Why does the public refuse to believe it?

By Joe Keohane | February 14, 2010
Boston Globe

The year 2009 was a grim one for many Americans, but there was one pleasant surprise amid all the drear: Citizens, though ground down and nerve-racked by the recession, still somehow resisted the urge to rob and kill one another, and they resisted in impressive numbers. Across the country, FBI data show that crime last year fell to lows unseen since the 1960s - part of a long trend that has seen crime fall steeply in the United States since the mid-1990s.

At the same time, however, another change has taken place: a steady rise in the percentage of Americans who believe crime is getting worse. The vast majority of Americans - nearly three-quarters of the population - thought crime got worse in the United States in 2009, according to Gallup’s annual crime attitudes poll. That, too, is part of a running trend. As crime rates have dropped for the past decade, the public belief in worsening crime has steadily grown. The more lawful the country gets, the more lawless we imagine it to be.

The implications for the country at large are stark. Democracy is based on an informed public calling upon its representatives to address problems facing their society. If we believe crime is on the march in the streets all over the country, it influences our beliefs on critical issuesfrom gun control to sentencing laws, from how we run our prisons to how much money we spend on law enforcement. Misinformation on the part of the public makes for bad lawmaking on the part of the government.

How did we get this idea in our heads? Why do we persist in believing the United States is inexorably sliding into lawlessness when we should be rejoicing that exactly the opposite is happening? The short answer is that we’ve been taking our cues on crime from a host of things that are both abstract and wholly unrelated to crime. And perhaps, by understanding why we’ve come to believe what we believe, we can take some steps toward mending our relationship with reality.

Take murder. The murder rate rose and fell over the 20th century, climbing to an early peak in 1933, then dropping sharply and staying low through the Depression, World War II, and into the 1960s. It rose to a record level in 1974, broke that record in 1980, and stayed prodigiously bloody through the early ’90s. This is when Bill Clinton boosted funding for local police forces, and police began experimenting with radical new approaches to policing, such as those employed in the so-called Boston Miracle. In 1994, the murder rate started to fall, and it’s been falling ever since. Rape, robbery, and aggravated assault have dropped along with it. Last year was no exception. According to preliminary FBI data, the murder rate dropped 10 percent from 2008 to 2009, robbery fell 6.5 percent, aggravated assault fell 3.2 percent, auto theft was down a whopping 18.7 percent.

But as the crime rate has dropped, Americans have missed the news. The number of people who told Gallup that crime is getting worse climbed to 74 percent last year, a figure higher than any year since the carnage of the early ’90s.

Part of the reason for this divergence is what sociologists call pessimistic bias: the unshakable conviction that things are not just worse than they are, but also worse than they used to be. Humans appear to have a hard-wired tendency to compare contemporary life with largely fictitious good old days, in which all schools were top-notch, politicians had integrity, children behaved, and crime was nil. This happens in good times and in bad. For instance, over a 20-year period concluding in 1994, the administrators of the General Social Survey, a major effort run out of the University of Chicago, asked respondents if the lot of the common man was getting worse. On average, through booms and busts, a glum 61 percent said yes. This is neither a contemporary phenomenon, nor one specific to America. In 1848, writer Thomas Macaulay wrote in his “The History of England” that “In spite of evidence, many will still imagine to themselves the England of the Stuarts as a more pleasant country than the England in which we live. It may at first sight seem strange that society, while constantly moving forward with eager speed, should be constantly looking backward with tender regret.”

Researchers also argue that this pessimistic bias can be exacerbated by certain modern factors. The news media come in for a share of the blame, eagerly meeting a consumer demand for gore and tragedy, while spending nowhere near as much energy explaining the reassuring but dry facts in the background. In a normal person’s memory, the emotional impact of watching a single crime story can outweigh even the most persuasive statistics in the newspaper. Arthur Lurigio, a professor of psychology and criminal justice at Loyola University Chicago, says one of the things that will keep people from recognizing that crime is in fact down is their “inability to understand and respond to crime statistics with their viscera.”

But while these quintessentially human inclinations would explain the ever-present gap between reality and perception when it comes to crime, they don’t account for how drastically reality and perception have parted ways since 2001. It was one thing to believe crime was worsening in the early ’90s, because rates were near an all-time high, but now that we have what we want - a comparatively low crime rate - we refuse to believe it. The divergence has left even a lot of researchers mystified. “It’s definitely a puzzle,” said Lydia Saad, a Gallup senior editor who works on the poll. Stanford Law School professor Lawrence M. Friedman responded to an e-mail asking for possible explanations by writing, “The bottom line is, we just don’t know.” Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University who has written about the phenomenon, said, “It’s one thing to be more pessimistic than is justified. It’s another thing if your pessimism isn’t even responsive to objective reality.”

While they and numerous other experts were quick to point out that there’s no data-driven explanation for the phenomenon, one key may lie in the results from a poll that Gallup took early in the decade. There was one real outlier in the 20-year history of this poll, a month in which only 43 percent of Americans thought crime was getting worse, an all-time low: October 2001.

“That was right after Sept. 11,” said Saad, “and people were so positive about America that I think the enemy was perceived to be much more outside the country than inside the country.” Suddenly Americans, even amid the fresh trauma, felt optimistic about the prospects of our nation and the character of our countrymen. We decided to put aside bickering and divisiveness and face the uncertainties of this new world together, as one.

Then that ended. The scary “Other” that had been banished from the country after Sept. 11 soon reestablished residence, and in 2002, American worries about crime resumed their upward march. The Gallup poll that year found that 62 percent of Americans believed crime had increased over the previous year - while in reality, according to FBI statistics, crime had fallen by 1.1 percent.

If our perception of crime doesn’t track actual crime rates, what does it track? One answer is satisfaction with the country. According to Gallup, from 1992 to 2001, respondents’ perception of crime fell as their satisfaction with the country rose. After 2001, however, satisfaction with the country has dropped precipitously, from 67 percent in 2001 to 9 percent in 2008, while perception of crime has risen.

The increasingly divisive partisanship of the past two decades may also play a role. Political scientists have found again and again that when the other party has the White House, hard-core partisans will invariably think the country is doing worse than it is. According to Gallup data, in 2004, for example, with a Republican in the White House, 67 percent of Democrats believed crime was up, to the Republicans’ 39 percent. Once Barack Obama was elected, however, the percentage of Republicans who believed crime was rising jumped from 63 to 79, while Democrats stubbornly held at 72. “People are extraordinarily partisan in the way they answer questions about the national scene,” says Gallup’s Saad. And the more partisan the country becomes, the stronger this effect is likely to be.

Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson sees a different kind of social cause for perceptions of crime: the rapidly changing composition of the population. Sampson has found that people interpret increasing levels of diversity in their neighborhoods in much the same way they interpret physical disorder - that is to say, as an indicator of rising crime. (History suggests this is exactly backward: Murder, for instance, tends to fall during immigration booms.) Sampson believes the same thing may well be happening on a national scale, as the United States becomes a majority-minority nation and the established groups begin to look upon newcomers as yet more evidence that the nation is moving further away from their own beloved good old days.

So what, if anything, will bring the high-crime America that exists in our heads in line with the increasingly safe nation we live in? One encouraging finding of the Gallup poll is that people have a far more accurate sense of crime in their own neighborhoods than they do about the rest of the country: When asked about their immediate surroundings, a smaller percentage believe crime to be going up. In other words, we are capable of processing this type of information, as long as it’s gained through firsthand experience. When it’s based on something else - when we’re asked to guess what the rest of the country is like - there’s a lot more room for our moods and our fears to shape the answer. The turning point may come, then, when we begin to realize that the country is nothing more than a collection of such neighborhoods. And that all those other neighborhoods out there - the ones we seem to believe are sliding toward total anarchy - are a lot more like ours then we’ve been willing to admit.

Joe Keohane is a writer in New York.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/02/14/imaginary_fiends/

Posted by lois at 11:41 AM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2010

Pres. Obama’s 2011 Budget Proposal: How It’s Spent

Obama’s 2011 Budget Proposal: How It’s Spent
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html
Drag your cursor over the blocks to see how the money will be spent.
(Direct prison related is in Administration.)

Posted by lois at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2010

AZ: CCA Tries Another Town for It's 5000 cage prison

February 12, 2010
Private prison interested in Camp Verde
By Steve Ayers
Staff Reporter

CAMP VERDE - Mayor Bob Burnside has confirmed that the Corrections Corporation of America has made a preliminary inquiry regarding the construction of a private prison in Camp Verde.

Burnside said he and Town Manger Mike Scannell met on Monday with CCA representative Bill Feldmeier to discuss issues related to zoning and permitting.

"It's an interesting concept that I have begun researching," Burnside said. "At face value it has a massive economic potential, but we will have to see how the public feels about the idea."

CCA had previously proposed a private prison in Prescott Valley. However, those talks did not get past the early discussion stage, according to Feldmeier.

"Right now we are simply asking questions and seeing if the Town is interested in having a discussion," he said.

CCA is one of several companies that operated private prisons making inquiries statewide in response to a request from the State of Arizona to build a 5,000-bed prison.

"The State is doing an RFP [request for proposals] to bring back Arizona prisoners being held in other states and house them in a facility in Arizona, which they believe will be a lot less expensive than transporting them out of state," Feldmeier said.

He said the company has a particular interest in Yavapai County, for several reasons.

"They like Yavapai County. They just like it. They feel it meets their needs of an employment base, employee satisfaction and what I would call 'livability,'" he said.

Burnside said CCA has expressed an interest in property near the county jail facility off Cherry Road and State Route 260.

http://campverdebugleonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=991&Articl
eID=25683

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

Prescott AZ: CCA Cancels Public Forum--appears CCA proposal is dead

From reading this "news" story, you would never know that the reason CCA canceled the public forum is that they have lost in their fight to site 5000 cage prison in Prescott Valley. Good work Frank Smith!

Public Forum on Private Prison Benefits Canceled
Written by Lauren Millette
Tuesday, 09 February 2010 13:14
Prescott Valley.com

Valley Council's decision to halt their investigation into the pros and cons of building a 5,000-bed private prison on the north side of town has led Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) officials to call off a public education forum tonight at CASA Senior Center in Prescott Valley.

CASA Executive Director Betty Robinson told Prescott eNews she was notified Thursday by a CCA representative that for now, they are backing off the concept in Prescott Valley. She read the following announcement on the company's stance. "'Following council members' statements last Thursday evening, the public information forum scheduled for Feb. 9 at CASA has been cancelled," according to Corrections Corporation of America officials. "No further plans for public information forums have been made at this time.'"

Oddly enough, the announcement came the same week the Joint Legislative Budget Committee approved a legislative bill calling for Request for Information proposals from private corrections businesses.

This action paves the way for certain Arizona communities to launch the process necessary before their respective councils may agendize work-study meeting discussions and voting sessions calling for action to build private prisons. It also opens the door for private companies to lease state prison facilities losing taxpayer money and demanding more be invested for structural improvements.

Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) members voted last Tuesday in favor of issuing a request for proposals from the private sector to run state prisons housing 5,000 inmates. CCA and other companies may vie for contracts after the Arizona Department of Corrections issues the RFP. One question the RFP asked is how much the companies will charge the state for housing each inmate, according to Corrections spokesman Barrett Marson. State law requires the department to award 20-year contracts by June 30.

A “request for information” from private prison companies was issued Monday in response to House Bill 2010, approved last year as part of the state budget.

A press release issued by CCA officials on line Jan. 21 (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/CCA-Reports-Arizona-Budget-iw-2298452466) states CCA officials have been planning to expand their relationship with the State of Arizona now that JLBC has given the green light for them to proceed.

"The nation's largest partnership corrections provider to government agencies announced today that the proposed budgets by the Arizona Governor and Legislature, released on January 15, 2010, would phase out the utilization of private out-of-state beds. CCA currently has management contracts with Arizona at its 752-bed Huerfano County Correctional Center in Walsenburg, Colorado and at its 2,160-bed Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, Oklahoma.

"The proposed phase-out of utilizing out-of-state beds is based on Arizona's budget crisis and its desire to utilize additional in-state capacity that will come on-line in 2010.

"As a result of the budget proposals, there is a significant risk that CCA will lose the opportunity to house offenders from Arizona at its Huerfano and Diamondback facilities during 2010. Our contract with Arizona at Huerfano expires on March 8, 2010, and our contract at Diamondback expires on May 1, 2010. In the event that Arizona should not renew one or both of these contracts, CCA will work with Arizona officials related to the timing of any phase-out of Arizona inmate populations. We would anticipate that such populations would be transferred out within 30 to 60 days following expiration of each management contract. If Arizona removes its offender populations housed at these facilities, CCA will likely close both facilities. During 2009, CCA generated approximately $56.5 million in revenues from both of these contracts.

"Although we are disappointed with the proposed budgets' initiative to eliminate utilization of out-of-state prison capacity, we understand our partner's fiscal concerns in a very difficult budgetary environment," said Damon Hininger, president and CEO. "We are hopeful that Arizona will move forward with a Request for Proposal for the construction and management of 5,000 partnership prison beds in the state of Arizona and remain committed to continuing our partnership with the state of Arizona. Although we do not currently manage any inmate populations from the state of Arizona at any of the six facilities we own in the state of Arizona, we are one of the state's top 50 employers and pay millions of dollars in taxes every year, making us a compelling partner for Arizona as it considers the addition of in-state partnership capacity."

Findings from a study conducted by Elliott D. Pollack & Company of Scottsdale, a real estate and economic forecasting and analysis firm, indicate “CCA Communities” in Arizona are thriving.

The group’s report details the economic and fiscal advantages brought through new jobs, tax revenues, business growth and overall local sustainability that make public-private partnerships in corrections so beneficial.

“We’ve seen for more than 25 years that CCA’s presence can energize communities,” said Tony Grande, CCA executive vice president and chief development officer. “Fiscally, through new and expanded resources for the public coffers of states, cities and counties, CCA helps government make the most of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars. Economically, through new jobs that increase local spending, CCA is providing direct financial lifelines to local residents.”

The study evaluated the combined financial benefits of six CCA correctional facilities in Pinal County, Ariz. in the communities of Eloy – home to Eloy Detention Center, La Palma Correctional Center, Red Rock Correctional Center and Saguaro Correctional Center – and Florence, where Central Arizona Detention Center and Florence Correctional Center are located.

According to the CCA website, the firm established a presence in Arizona more than 15 years ago and is now the largest non-governmental employer in Pinal County, where nearly five percent of employment is linked to the company. “Today, according to the research, the company has created 2,733 direct jobs and helped spur 1,700 indirect or spin-off jobs, paying more than $205 million in wages annually. This led to more than $435 million in economic activity in 2009 and a total of more than $26 million in tax revenue collected.”

The Pollack report also provides a forecast of how continued expansion of CCA in Arizona would be economically meaningful to residents and would yield significant fiscal growth for state, county and local governments. At an estimated cost of $200 million – which would be financed by CCA – the construction of a single 3,000-bed correctional facility would generate over 2,500 new jobs paying more than $116 million in salaries and wages that would result in more than $300 million in economic activity.

“Once completed, a new CCA correctional facility would result in an estimated 450 direct jobs and 187 indirect, or spin-off, jobs, leading to more than $26 million in wages and approximately $55 million in spending each year. An additional correctional facility would also generate nearly $17 million in revenues for state, county and local governments for construction-related activities and more than $4.8 million annually from operations.”

While preparing the state financial impact status, Elliot Pollack staff also collected data and produced a report for the Prescott Valley Economic Development Foundation on anticipated impacts to the Quad-City area if a private prison was built here.

Findings paint a positive economic picture for the area. However, the following facts should also be taken under consideration for balance:

* “This analysis does not consider the costs associated with providing services to the proposed facility. Such analysis is beyond the scope of this study.
* The analysis is based on the current tax structure and rates imposed by the affected governing jurisdictions. Changes in those rates would alter the findings of this study.
* All dollar amounts are stated in constant 2009 dollars and, unless indicated, do not take into account the effects of inflation.
* The analysis outlined in this study is based on currently available information and estimates and assumptions about long-term future trends. Such estimates and assumptions are subject to uncertainty and variation. Accordingly, we do not represent them as results that will be achieved. Some assumptions inevitable will not materialize and unanticipated events and circumstances may occur; therefore, the actual results achieved may vary materially from the forecasted results. The assumptions disclosed in this analysis are those that are believed to be significant to the projections of future results.”

Yet, the following findings in the Pollack report bear optimistic economic hope for this region worthy of consideration by municipal leaders in the area despite the fact Prescott Valley Council nixed the idea of building a private prison off Fain Road.

keyfindings

But is the debate over? At last night’s Regional Association of Local Governments meeting at the Manzanita Grille Prescott City Councilman Jim Lamerson brought up the fact that a private prison built in this area could provide needed jobs and revenue during a time of economic hardship.

Lamerson pointed out that Prescott Valley has turned down such an opportunity but Yavapai County Supervisors invested in expanding jail facilities in Camp Verde without too much concern about negative response from the community.

"The fact of the matter is, this region not so long ago had an opportunity to get a prison in the area," Lamerson said. "Prisons don't sound very nice, but they have good jobs, good benefits, retail sales, you name it. But, I didn't see Dewey-Humboldt stand up and say, "Hey, look, Prescott Valley, if you don't want the prison, we'll take it." I didn't see Chino Valley stand up and say, "Hey, look, Prescott Valley, if you don't want the prison, we'll take it." In the same sense, I saw Prescott, years ago, send over to the Verde Valley the opportunity to have a jail. And I'm going to tell you something, you've got to get off the dime if you want to have the economic growth that everybody seems to want. You've got to look at the reality of the situation. And we're not looking at the reality of the situation, we want to pick and choose what the market gives us. The market's given us twice, in the last 12 years, the opportunity to have jail facilties here. Facilities that draw different levels. You know what? As communities we've said, no, our culture won't fit, we don't need this stuff here. So we've watched this opportunity go by over and over and over."

Which brings up the question, is it possible that another local community might reconsider a similar opportunity if it were to rise once again in this region?

http://www.prescottenews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3065

Posted by lois at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)

One more tribute to Howard Zinn

He taught us to use our voice
Marlene Martin of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty talks about what Howard Zinn meant to those fighting for a better and more just world.

February 5, 2010

LAST JULY, I sent an invitation to Howard Zinn, asking if he would be the keynote speaker at the Campaign to End the Death Penalty's convention in Chicago in November.

It was a long shot, his close friend and collaborator Anthony Arnove told me--not because he wouldn't want to do it, but because he had so much to do on The People Speak film project, and because his health was not the best. "But you should go ahead and ask" was Anthony's advice.

So ask I did. I told Howard that the people attending the Campaign would be moms, sisters, fathers, brothers and grandfathers, struggling to stick by their family members on death row; former prisoners brutalized by the criminal justice system; and the kind of activists who hold grassroots struggles together. I told him that we took the name of our newsletter from his book SNCC: The New Abolitionists, and that we would be honored if he would join us.

I scanned my e-mail every day for a response. My daughter remembers me screaming like I won the lottery when I got his message accepting the invitation.

Over the next several months, Howard and I exchanged e-mails about the upcoming event, set for one of the biggest auditoriums at the University of Chicago. He was patient, kind and agreeable to any suggestions. I worried that he was doing too much--he also agreed to speak earlier in the day to a group of high school students in Naperville. But you couldn't stop Howard from doing too much--it was just in his make-up.

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

I'LL ADMIT that I was nervous to meet him after all of our funny, sweet e-mail exchanges. But his first words to me were "Ah, so this is Marlene, you really do exist!" All my nerves dissipated on the spot.

At dinner before the event, I introduced him to Marvin Reeves, who had just been released from prison, and would speak for a few minutes before him. Howard took Marvin's hand in both of his, looked him in the eye, and told him how wonderful it was that he was free.

During dinner, Howard couldn't stop asking questions of the rest of us. One favorite target was Dave Zirin, who would share the stage with him that night. I think Howard saw a lot of himself in Dave--a great sense of humor, sharp as a tack, radical, generous and kind to a fault, and one of the best and funniest speakers around.

When we headed to Mandel Hall on the UC campus, I had a pang of worry about what the room would look like, but that quickly subsided when we walked in and saw the entire hall packed with people.

Howard and Dave were brilliant that night. Dave took Howard through a whole range of questions, from criminal justice issues, to war, to socialism, to why you should be active. He said so many powerful things that night--and the audience was right there with him, interrupting with applause and laugher, again and again. We were fortunate enough to capture the whole event on DVD.

Before Howard spoke, we heard from four people from the Campaign--Marvin, a former police torture victim who served 21 years of a life sentence before he was exonerated and released last summer; Martina Correia, the sister of Troy Davis, who is on death row in Georgia; Sandra Reed, the mother of Texas death row prisoner Rodney Reed; and former New York death row prisoner Lawrence Hayes, who shared the podium with Howard 13 years before when they spoke at a Boston event that helped launch the Campaign.

After the event, Dave and I walked Howard to his room on campus. I tried to shove a small stipend check into his hands, and he pushed it back, "I won't take money from a group like yours." We said goodbye, and he talked about how the work we were doing was so important.

The next day, at our convention, people stood a little taller, and felt a little more committed about our struggle, and that if we keep on, we will win justice--Howard Zinn said so!

I spoke with Marvin this week to let him know about Howard's death. "Howard Zinn showed me that people know about the justice system, and they care about this issue," he told me. "For me, to be on the stage with him that night was the highlight of my life. Because I've never been nowhere--never done anything. But that particular night, sharing the stage with him, I felt like a celebrity. I felt like that because I was with a wonderful man."

I called Martina Correia, she expressed the same feelings. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience," she said. "He embraced me without any judgment. You know, when you're a family member of someone on death row, you can be treated differently. But when he looked at me and talked with me, it was like everything I had to say was of importance. He was like an angel, and full of grace.

"He wanted people to understand that we all had a place in this world--that we all had a voice, we just needed to learn how to use it."

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

AFTER THE convention, I had written to Howard to let him know what an inspiration he was:

You made a group of people who feel so tiny, so unnoticed, so passed-over, feel like heroes for a few precious minutes. And for that, I can never thank you enough. Sandra Reed, Rodney's mother, said to me that she felt so honored to have met you. She works as a janitor at a high school. Meeting you and sharing the stage with you for a few short moments made her feel like a somebody...

You brought a small group of folks a whole lot of pride, a whole lot of inspiration, and a whole lot of feeling like "Yeah, we are somebodies, and we can do a whole lot of somethings."

I know that Howard meant the same thing to many more people than just us in the Campaign. To have someone like him speaking out and fighting alongside us made us prouder and more determined.

Howard wrote back a message that the Campaign will carry with us from now on. Whenever we are doubtful, or feeling discouraged or beaten down, we'll be able to turn to it as a source of encouragement--to dust ourselves off, get back up and keep at it. He wrote:

It was an enormously moving experience, full of emotion and comradely love. It was not an ordinary political meeting, because it was suffused with passion, undoubtedly because we were in the presence of people who had suffered so much but now were here free, triumphant and part of the movement that helped them to freedom. You are all nurturing a profoundly important movement for human freedom.

Thank you Howard!
http://socialistworker.org/print/2010/02/05/taught-us-to-use-our-voice
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Posted by lois at 07:01 PM | Comments (0)

No More Shame in Having Prison Connections

Posted on the controlunittalk list serve.
Sat Feb 6, 2010 7:28 pm (PST)
No More Shame in Having Prison Connections
by Jean Butler

For those of you who forget that the incarcerated humans in this country are indeed just that - human - I'd like you to think on this the next time you talk about "inmates, criminals, convicts, etc." These humans have families and those who love them, despite whatever they did. Look around you and wonder, because this is who we are:
We take care of your children and grandchildren in nursery school.
We give them shots in the doctor's office.
We're dental assistants, school teachers and Sunday school teachers.
We stand behind you in the grocery line.
We prepare your medicine in the drugstore.
We work in banks, approve your loans and service your insurance claims.
We work for newspapers and television and radio stations.
We read your electric meters and water meters.
We are your landlords and your neighbors.

We take care of your elderly parents in nursing homes.
We're nurses, lab technicians and Wry technicians.
We own beauty shops, flower shops and printing shops.
We're welders, plumbers and tree trimmers.
We work for the Internal Revenue Service, the State Department, the
courthouse, schools, churches, drugstores and toy stores.
We're lawyers, legal secretaries, school board members and school-bus
drivers.
We prepare meals for your children in school.
We're city council members and bank tellers.
We process your checking account and savings account.
We work at your Social Security office and your insurance company.
We take care of your IRA, stocks and bonds.
We sell your children bikes, school supplies, clothes, shoes, and
eyeglasses.
We repair your cars.
We're real-estate agents, car dealers, college professors, safety
engineers and ranchers.
We work at Wal-Mart and Kmart and sell Avon products.
We're not all "on welfare," no matter what the government would like you to think.
There are 2 million people in prison in America, and twice that many are on parole and probation. Add in mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents and friends, and you're touching about 16 million people affected by the prison system in the United States.
We're tired of letting ourselves feel humiliated or embarrassed because our loved one is in prison. We did nothing wrong. We're tired of fearing the loss of our jobs or evictions from our housing should anyone find out
we have a loved one in prison. We're tired of being made to feel inferioror unwelcome in churches, clubs, organizations or society in general simply because we refuse to abandon our loved ones.
We're ready to unite, to come out of hiding and openly support each other and our loved ones. We're ready to speak out against the "they deserve what they get" attitude we hear you talk about in stores, lines and restaurants.
We number in the millions. We're everywhere, in every state, county, city and town. We may even live next door to you. Sixteen million (or more)

Posted by lois at 06:50 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2010

Mentally ill inmates sue Ohio prisons

Mentally ill inmates sue Ohio prisons
By Dan Horn
February 10, 2010

Mentally ill prisoners in Ohio are more likely to get into trouble and end up back in prison after they are released because state officials turn them loose without the follow-up care they need, a federal lawsuit claimed Wednesday.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, asked a judge to order the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and the Ohio Department of Mental Health to provide the care necessary to help keep mentally ill offenders from returning to prison.

Advocates for prisoners and the mentally ill said they are suing to help not only the released prisoners, but also the taxpayers who must pay tens of thousands of dollars a year to keep them locked up when they commit new crimes and are sent back to prison.

They say the cost of providing treatment to a mentally ill person in the community is about $7,400 a year, compared to the $25,000 a year it costs to incarcerate them.

But instead of treatment, the lawsuit claims, ex-convicts with mental problems get $65 to $75, a bus ticket and two weeks of medication upon their release. The suit said many of those former inmates soon move into homeless shelters or drug-infested neighborhoods, where their mental health quickly deteriorates.

“Dumping prisoners with mental illness at homeless shelters creates a revolving door phenomenon,” said Bess Okum, staff attorney with the Cincinnati-based Ohio Justice and Policy Center, which filed the suit on behalf of nine current and former prisoners. “Many of these former prisoners commit new crimes because of their untreated mental illness.”

State prison and mental health officials said Wednesday they would not comment on pending litigation.

According to prison policies, mentally ill inmates are supposed to get a referral to a local mental health agency prior to their release, along with a 14-day supply of medications, a list of follow-up care services in the community and, if they qualify, help in completing a Medicaid application.

A statement on the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction web site states that “it is the policy of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to ensure the prompt and continuous delivery of mental health care.”

Okum said the state has not lived up to those promises. She said former inmates rarely are directed to follow-up care programs and most get no help at all.

“The failure of those agencies to provide pre-release guidance is making all of Ohio’s communities less safe and is needlessly squandering taxpayer dollars,” Okum said.

The prisoners listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit are not named, but Okum said they suffer from illnesses that include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. All have lengthy criminal records and some committed new crimes soon after their release, including one who was arrested just three weeks after leaving prison.

The civil rights lawsuit, which seeks payment of attorney fees but does not ask for money damages, accuses the state of violating the inmates’ constitutional rights and their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/AB/20100210/NEWS0107/302090007/Mentally+ill+inmates+sue+Ohio+prisons+

Posted by lois at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Guards launch advertising campaign against the closure of four prisons

Corrections officers fighting proposed closure of four prisons over two years
By Cara Matthews •Albany Bureau • February 10, 2010
Ithaca Journal

ALBANY - The state Correctional Officers Union on Wednesday announced an advertising campaign against Gov. David Paterson's budget proposals to close four prisons, including Butler Correctional Facility in Wayne County and three in the North Country.

Paterson is calling for the closures as the inmate population continues to decline. The reduction is 1,100 prisoners in the current fiscal year, which ends March 31, and there is a projected decrease of another 1,000 in the next fiscal year. That would bring the total to 57,600 inmates.

Correction officers said it would be unwise to close the prisons because they are understaffed and overcrowded. The prison system as a whole is operating at 102 percent capacity, and 122 percent capacity at maximum-security facilities, union officials said. Double-bunking inmates in cells designed for one is not uncommon and poses potential safety problems, they said.

"Tough times call for tough choices, but choosing to close prisons at the risk of public safety and jobs is a choice New York cannot afford," Donn Rowe, president of the state Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, said at a news conference.

Rowe said the state Department of Correctional Services wants to lay off officers but has not made cuts to its "bloated bureaucracy." He said the agency administration has more than doubled in the past 10 years, while the inmate population has decreased and 2,500 correction officers have lost their jobs.

But the Department of Correctional Services disputes the union's claims and doesn't believe closing the facilities would create dangerous conditions. The union's statistics use an outdated methodology that doesn't take into account the thousands of additional beds created for medical and mental-health needs or new segregation cells, agency spokesman Erik Kriss said.
Since April 2007, Corrections Commissioner Brian Fischer has reduced central-office staff by 9 percent, while the number of correction officers dropped 3 percent, Kriss said.

"We are doing our part to reduce administration here and we continue to try to do that. Everybody's taking a hit because of the budget crunch and inmate population decline," he said.

The closures would reduce the state prison workforce by 637 employees, and the state would save a total of $59 million over two years, according to the governor's budget office.

Butler Correctional Facility in Wayne County would close its minimum-security unit in January 2011, but the medium-security facility would remain open. The annual savings to the state would be $5.2 million. The governor proposed shuttering the Lyon Mountain minimum-security prison in Clinton County at the same time.

The Moriah shock-incarceration facility in Essex County and Ogdensburg medium-security prison in St. Lawrence County would be closed in April 2011.

"I believe I can speak for all of our members when I saw we're fed up with the department's decision to close prisons while putting public safety and jobs in jeopardy," said Al Mothershed, the union's regional vice president for western New York.

Butler minimum-security prison was supposed to close last year, but it was kept open with 75 inmates and 52 officers, said Tim Casper, correction officer and chief sector steward for the union at Butler. With current staff, it could house up to 194 inmates, he said.

"People are upset that we're on the chopping block again," Casper said.

The minimum-security unit sends out prisoner work crews on a daily basis, and they put in a total of 179,453 man hours in 2008-09, Casper said. Examples of what they do include working inside and on the grounds of Auburn Correctional Facility, constructing outbuildings at state facilities and removing asbestos.

The total number of employees at the minimum-security unit was 67 as of Dec. 31, 2009, the Department of Correctional Services said.

The union's radio and television ads started this week in areas that would be hit by the closures and in major media markets, said Rowe, who estimated that the entire campaign would cost a few hundred thousand dollars. The union is planning mailings to voters.

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

NY Times Editorial: Prisons, Redistricting and the Census

Editorial: Prisons, Redistricting and the Census
NY Times
Published: February 10, 2010

The Census Bureau struck a blow for electoral fairness recently when it decided to speed up publication of its data on prison populations to ensure it is available for the next round of redistricting. We hope this new data, which will be released in the spring of 2011, will bolster the efforts of reformers who are trying to end prison-based gerrymandering — the cynical practice of drawing legislative districts with populations inflated by inmates who do not have the right to vote and whose actual residences are often far away.

Far too often, redistricting committees pad underpopulated districts by redrawing boundaries to include large prisons. This practice typically increases the political power of rural areas where prisons are built and diminishes the influence of the urban areas to which inmates eventually return. According to a study by the Prison Policy Initiative, a research group, in some counties the phantom prison constituents make up as much 20 percent of the population.

The decision to release the data early was taken at the behest of Representative William Lacy Clay, a Democrat of Missouri, who has long been concerned about the inequities brought by prison-based gerrymandering. The data will be especially helpful to the 100 or so counties that — at great effort — already remove prison inmates from the count at redistricting time. And it should give fresh impetus to legislation pending in several states — including New York — that would require them to determine the home addresses of inmates and draw legislative districts based on that information.

The Census Bureau still has to fix another problem: the failure to count prison inmates in their home districts. The questions for the 2010 census have been written already. The bureau should get to work on this problem with the aim of having it fixed long before the next count in 2020.
» A version of this article appeared in print on February 11, 2010, on page A32 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/opinion/11thu4.html

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

February 10, 2010

NY: For Detained Youths, No Mental Health Overseer

For Detained Youths, No Mental Health Overseer
By JULIE BOSMAN
New York Times: February 10, 2010

Edwina G. Richardson-Mendelson has been the administrative judge of the New York City Family Courts for nine months, in charge of the judges responsible for the detention of dozens of young people charged with crimes, the vast majority of whom suffer from some form of mental illness.

But it was not until last September that she was informed of what struck her as a startling fact: The State of New York does not have a single full-time staff psychiatrist charged with overseeing the treatment of the 800 or so young people who are detained in state facilities at any given time.

“There wasn’t one human being on-site overseeing all the mental health needs of the population,” Judge Richardson-Mendelson said in an interview. “When we place these children in these facilities, we expect their needs to be met, especially their mental health needs.”

Yet all 17 psychiatrists at the detention facilities in the state’s deeply troubled juvenile justice system work on contract and part time. Weeks often pass between their visits with each troubled youth, and state officials say their turnover rate is very high.

“Those people turn over so quickly that there are often huge chunks of time when there is not even a contracted psychiatrist available to evaluate the youngster or provide needed follow-up services,” said Judge Monica Drinane, the supervising judge in Family Court in the Bronx.

Gladys Carrión, the commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, the state agency that administers the juvenile prisons, declined to be interviewed.

Edward Borges, an agency spokesman, said, “The commissioner has said that we need more mental health professionals, that we need psychiatric help, and it’s something that she’s recognized.” Ms. Carrión is in the process of hiring a “chief psychiatrist,” who will work on salary or on contract, Mr. Borges said.

For now, then, the oversight of the mental health treatment of the young people in state facilities falls to several dozen psychologists who visit them for consultations, and staff members at the jails who run group therapy sessions despite often having no qualifications beyond a high school degree.

Aspects of the lack of mental health services throughout New York’s juvenile prison system were described last August in a withering report from the federal Department of Justice that examined conditions at four notorious state juvenile prisons.

The report criticized the state for failing to properly diagnose juveniles’ mental health problems, administering medication inappropriately and making inadequate treatment plans. Young people are frequently assigned several different diagnoses at the same institution, resulting in confused and ineffective treatment.

“One psychiatrist described his role as ‘an outsider’ and expressed frustration because, ‘I have to beg, borrow and steal information,’ ” the report said.

The proposed state budget released by Gov. David A. Paterson in January included an additional $18.2 million to improve services in the juvenile prisons, particularly mental health care. And officials from the Office of Children and Family Services said they had begun more consistent screening of children for mental health issues, reducing the use of physical restraints in the facilities and hiring an additional 37 mental health professionals to work in state-run juvenile residential centers.

But Commissioner Carrión recently told a number of Family Court judges, who decide which children should be sent to prisons, that the conditions at many isolated facilities upstate made it hard to recruit psychiatrists to work there.

Lawyers for the Legal Aid Society said they had many examples of mentally ill children who had been mistreated while in prisons.

One 16-year-old boy received a diagnosis of moderate mental retardation, took powerful psychotropic medication and functioned on a first-grade educational level. Last July he was placed in a state residential facility by a Family Court judge who had ordered that he receive mental health services.

However, he was not placed in a mental health unit until five months later, after being harassed, taunted and restrained at least five times by the prison staff, according to the Legal Aid lawyers.

A 15-year-old girl with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder and adjustment disorder was sent to a juvenile prison last February. Since then, she has not received proper mental health treatment, and has been restrained by the staff more than 15 times, her lawyers said.

Surveys of youth prisons indicate that about two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — about 92,800 in 2006 — have at least one mental illness.

“The system just isn’t equipped to deal with children with serious mental health issues,” said Tamara A. Steckler, the lawyer in charge of the Juvenile Rights Practice of Legal Aid. “We need to find another mechanism to treat those children.”

A task force led by Jeremy Travis, the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, recently examined conditions at state juvenile prisons.

“I think it’s clear that for these young people to succeed while they’re in these facilities and for them to succeed when they’re coming home, many of them need extensive mental health services,” Mr. Travis said. “And it’s clear that the current services fall far short of professional standards.”

The problem of ineffective psychiatric care in juvenile prisons stretches back decades. Michael A. Corriero, a recently retired judge who spent 16 years as an acting State Supreme Court justice presiding over Manhattan’s courts that dealt with youth offenders, recalled sentencing a 15-year-old who had sodomized an 11-year-old boy.

He placed the teenager in a juvenile prison, sentenced him to a term of two to six years, and recommended that he receive intensive counseling.

“I said, ‘You’re going to have to get this kid appropriate psychiatric care, and it has to be one-on-one,” Mr. Corriero said. “And the answer was, ‘We don’t have a psychiatrist.’ ”
A version of this article appeared in print on February 11, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/11/nyregion/11youth.html?hp

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

Muskegon Correctional Facility ready to begin accepting Pennsylvania prisoners

"The deal is expected to net Michigan an average daily “profit” of $2.15 for each inmate...."

Muskegon Correctional Facility ready to begin accepting Pennsylvania inmates
By John S. Hausman | Muskegon Chronicle
February 06, 2010
MUSKEGON — As recently as eight months ago, Muskegon Correctional Facility held more than 1,300 inmates.

Today, the count is zero.

The last Michigan inmates were bused out last week to other prisons in the state, making room for the arrival of 1,000 inmates from Pennsylvania.

Without the Pennsylvania deal, the 36-year-old facility would have closed in January, with the loss of up to 175 jobs.

As it is, all employees remain at work — even during the vacant interim, according to state Corrections Department spokesman John Cordell. Workers are making the prison “site ready” to meet Pennsylvania specifications, he said.

Cordell said the first Pennsylvania prisoners would arrive “in the next couple weeks” but declined to be more specific, citing security concerns. He said they would likely arrive at a rate of one busload or about 50 inmates per day, taking a month or so to reach the full complement.

“Pennsylvania and Michigan have worked very well together in this transition, and we look forward to supporting them as they transition into something new to their department, which is housing prisoners off site,” Cordell said.

For several years about a decade ago, Michigan exported some of its state prisoners to Virginia facilities to deal with overcrowding.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections announced Dec. 21 it would send 1,000 inmates to the Muskegon prison by February.

The inmates being selected for transfers are those who have less than three years to serve on their sentences, have no medical or mental health issues and have few or no visitors, according to Pennsylvania’s corrections department.

That’s enough to keep the prison open and save the 175 jobs that would have been eliminated by now. The 1,328-bed, medium-security prison was set to close in January as Michigan reduces its statewide prison population through earlier paroles and fewer prison returns for parole violators.

The deal isn’t for a set duration, but it’s expected to keep MCF operating at least through the end of 2013 and possibly longer.

Under the deal, Pennsylvania pays Michigan $62 per inmate per day to house its inmates, with the Michigan Department of Corrections running and staffing the prison. The deal is expected to net Michigan an average daily “profit” of $2.15 for each inmate at current operating costs because it costs the state only $59.85 per inmate per day to house an inmate.

The Michigan corrections department had said the prison’s closing would eliminate up to two-thirds of the 264 jobs at MCF, both corrections officers and other staff. Some of the expected layoffs would have been at Muskegon’s other two prisons — Earnest C. Brooks and West Shoreline — because MCF corrections officers have seniority-based “bumping” rights into those prisons.

http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2010/02/muskegon_correctional_facility.html

Posted by lois at 02:55 PM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2010

MA: R.I.P. Ray Gauthier August 31, 1948 - January 22, 2010

R.I.P. Ray Gauthier August 31, 1948 - January 22, 2010

(On January 22 our friend Ray died on 8 North, the Department of Correction's hospital unit at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain. The Shattuck is a Department of Public Health facility. Hundreds of us have stories about conditions there.)
***********************************************************

An Open Letter to Governor Deval Patrick

(I have chosen this forum for a letter to the Governor as his own website states any mail to him is screened by his assistants and referred to the appropriate department for response. Which in Honest English means the Governor would NEVER see my letter)

Dear Governor Patrick,

Let me introduce myself to you. I am Carmen Gauthier, a “Highest Honors” graduate with a bachelor’s degree in social services. I am a ten year veteran of the Texas Department of Children’s Protective Services. I have never been arrested nor incarcerated in my life. Though I am a practicing pagan, I believe in and strive daily to practice the Christians’ “Golden Rule.” I am also the wife of the late, Raymond Gauthier, con number W45176.

As the family member of an MA DOC inmate, I am confused as to why I was not issued a con number. Obviously this was an oversight by Commissioner Harold Clarke, for certainly, during my entire relationship with MDOC, I was treated by MA DOC personnel from Assistant Deputy Commissioner Paul DiPaolo through Superintendent James Saba all the way down to the Correctional Officer guarding my husband’s dead body (so as to protect the public from him) as if I were in fact a convicted criminal.

Ah! I am corrected! I see from the press releases that you and MA DOC are indeed industriously working toward that very goal with your Proposed Visitor Procedures and Attorney Access proposals.

Governor Patrick, in all seriousness, what happened? I remember the day you were elected as Governor of the Commonwealth. There was so much happiness and so much hope for a better future for the lowliest of your citizens; the inmates of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You sir, a person of color, who had to have experienced a least some of the ignorant bigotry of prejudice; you sir, who not only was the first in your family to attend college, but attended Harvard. Harvard! You sir, who served as a law clerk with the NAACP and became the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. You were my hope and my husband’s hope, as well as all the family and friends and inmates who suffered unjustly the cruelties and whims of MA DOC employees.

We weren’t asking for a Sunday picnic or tennis courts or gourmet meals. What we were asking for our loved ones was common, human decency. For adequate medical care. For fair treatment. For clean facilities. For nutritious meals. And what you gave us was Harold Clarke.

Harold Clarke, infamous Secretary of Nebraska Dept of Corrections, during the Nebraska state Ombudsman’s Office’s 1999 report which found the prison health delivery system wanting in “every aspect”. Since Mr. Clarke has been Commissioner, I personally know of two cases of MA DOC medical malpractice resulting in deaths: Edward Tavares and my husband, both incarcerated at NCCI-Gardner. Neither of these men was sentenced to death but both received the death penalty.

My husband had been feeling ill for, not days, not weeks, but for MONTHS. Time and time again he was turned away from receiving medical care by the nurse at Gardner. His chronic care appointment was unduly delayed. And by the time he was in so much pain that he couldn’t stand or walk, it was too late. He had Stage Four Lung Cancer which had spread to his spine and liver. His back bone was so riddled with cancer that one of his vertebrae had crushed.

Governor Patrick, you may not like the idea, but as head leader of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, you are responsible for every person in prison or jail in Massachusetts as well as the free people of the Commonwealth. When you accepted the job of Governor, you accepted responsibility for every citizen of the state. And you have not delegated authority wisely by appointing Harold Clarke as Commissioner.

Whether or not you were aware of his history while working for Nebraska DOC, you should be aware of the violation of human rights being perpetrated within MA DOC now. It has been brought to your attention and therefore it is incumbent upon you to rectify the situation.

You can not restore Big Ed to his family. You can not restore my husband to me. But you can correct a mistake by having Commissioner Clarke resign immediately. If you do not do this, then truly our hopes were misplaced and your ancestors’ honor has been tarnished.

----Carmen Gauthier February 6th 2010

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

Washington Post Editorial "Va. legislators should embrace bills to protect juveniles in prison"

Editorial: Va. legislators should embrace bills to protect juveniles in prison
Washington Post
Friday, February 5, 2010

THERE IS NO safer political bet than supporting legislation to protect children from harm. That bet is tougher when the children in question are juvenile offenders, but it is no less worthy. Virginia lawmakers should muster the courage to endorse two bills that would enhance protections for juvenile offenders.

Housing minors in adult prisons is a bad idea. It raises the risk of physical and sexual abuse of the younger inmates while denying them educational, vocational and psychological services available in juvenile-only programs. Senate Bill 259, sponsored by Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth), requires that even underage offenders charged as adults must be detained in juvenile facilities; judges may order a transfer to an adult facility if they conclude that an offender poses a danger to other juveniles in detention. This proposal, unanimously passed in the Senate, should be endorsed by lawmakers in the House.

Senate Bill 585 calls for the state to make lawyers available for periodic consultations with incarcerated juveniles. Minors who are charged with a crime are entitled to state-funded lawyers at trial. But they lose access to these lawyers once they are convicted. The bill proposed by Sen. David W. Marsden (D-Fairfax) would require juvenile court judges "to appoint one or more 'diligent and competent' attorneys" to assist juveniles. These would not be full-time assignments; lawyers in private practice would be tapped by the court and would be paid by the hour to visit designated facilities roughly once a week. These lawyers would also serve as confidential sounding boards about conditions of confinement.

Two Virginia juvenile facilities were recently slammed by the Justice Department for their high rates of sexual abuse; the periodic presence of outside lawyers could encourage youths to report and ultimately deter abuses. The cost of these roving lawyers for the entire state is roughly $50,000 a year -- a remarkably modest sum for a potentially important program.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020404418.html

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

February 05, 2010

Warning: tranquilizers necessary before reading. Penn State receives 1.27 million grant to study end of life care for prisoners.

Posted on February 3, 2010 4:56 AM
Penn State researchers receive money for new prison study

By Laura Nichols Email
Penn State Collegian Staff Writer

Penn State researchers making end-of-life care for prison inmates are the focus of a $1.27 million grant.

Researchers are using the National Institute of Nursing Research grant to develop a comprehensive toolkit of tailored resources for end-of-life care in prisons, assistant professor of nursing Susan Loeb wrote in an e-mail.

Leaders of the program plan to apply study findings at six different prisons state-wide in an attempt to improve care for inmates reaching the end of their lives, wrote Loeb, the principal investigator for the study.

"Since prisons are among the most restrictive, most complex organizations -- prisons are the best context for this study," Loeb wrote. "Our hope is that findings will benefit not only dying inmates but also others who spend their final days in a complex organization."

Though the study is still in the early stages, researchers are quickly learning, said Christopher Hollenbeak, associate professor of surgery and health evaluation sciences and an investigator on the study.

"The real goal of it is to come up with a tool in prisons to improve the quality-of-life care," Hollenbeak said. "We want to provide a toolkit that would be cost-effective as well."

Current end-of-life prison programs only offer limited low-cost medications. One proposed change is the "buddy system," where healthy inmates are paired with a terminally ill inmate to help look out for them, Hollenbeak said.

So far, researchers have visited the Philadelphia prison system for a chance to experience what it is like to be in a prison as an inmate, Hollenbeak said. Researchers are also spending time with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections in order to understand the prison landscape at all levels, Hollenbeak said.

Posted by lois at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)

Speaking to L.A. lawyers, Justice Kennedy blasts the prison guard union calling its influence in passing three strikes "sick"

Justice Kennedy laments the state of prisons in California, U.S.
Speaking to L.A. lawyers, the Supreme Court jurist blasts the prison guard union's influence, calling it 'sick' but sidesteps questions about the ruling he wrote last month on campaign spending.

By Carol J. Williams

February 4, 2010

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy criticized California sentencing policies and crowded prisons Wednesday night, calling the influence that unionized prison guards had in passing the three-strikes law "sick."

In an otherwise courtly and humorous address to the Los Angeles legal community, Kennedy expressed obvious dismay over the state of corrections and rehabilitation in the country. He said U.S. sentences are eight times longer than those issued by European courts.

"California now has 185,000 people in prison at $32,500 a year" each, he said. He then urged voters and officials to compare that expense to what taxpayers spend per pupil in elementary schools.

"The three-strikes law sponsor is the correctional officers' union and that is sick!" Kennedy said of the measure mandating life sentences for third-time criminal offenders.

Kennedy wrote the high court's controversial Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling last month and was bombarded with written questions on the 5-4 vote that fundamentally changed campaign spending laws.

But he sidestepped the audience's efforts to draw him out on that decision, which frees corporations -- and presumably unions -- to spend as they wish on campaigns and candidates that were once limited to accepting individual voter contributions.

Kennedy would say only that it was "important to have robust, principled debate after opinions," and suggested that was best left to the legal community.

One questioner asked: "Does Justice Kennedy feel scolded?" It was an apparent reference to President Obama's warning that the ruling opens the door to Big Business drowning out the voices of the electorate with lavish and targeted campaign spending.

"He doesn't," Kennedy said cryptically, spurring laughter throughout the packed auditorium at Pepperdine University's School of Law.
latimes.com/news/local/la-me-kennedy4-2010feb04,0,1430237.story
This and other news about sentencing and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Posted by lois at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)

February 04, 2010

Obama budget includes $527.5M for Justice Dept. Justice Dept. projects increase of 7000 more prisoners by 2011

President Obama unveiled a multitrillion-dollar spending plan that would boost the deficit to a record-breaking $1.56 trillion.
2011 budget gives federal prisons $528M
Proposed increases in the 2011 budget for Justice Department programs:
Feb 4-2010

By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — As states cut their budgets by closing prisons and diverting some offenders to probation and treatment programs, the federal government is proposing to dramatically ramp up its detention operations.

The Obama administration's $3.8 trillion 2011 budget proposal calls for a $527.5 million infusion for the federal Bureau of Prisons and judicial security — $227 million more than the proposed increase to Justice's national security program. The boost would bring the total Bureau of Prisons budget to $6.8 billion.

Nearly half of the new funding is proposed to accommodate the administration's plan to close the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and move some of the terror suspects to an Illinois prison. The Justice Department also projects that federal prisons, which now hold 213,000 offenders, will hold 7,000 more by 2011.

Also included in the Justice budget is a proposal to hire 652 additional prison guards and fill 1,200 vacant detention positions, far more than the combined 448 new agents planned for the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and U.S. Marshals Service.

Assistant Attorney General Lee Lofthus says the increased prison system funding does not reflect a de-emphasis of national security, only that the Bureau of Prisons "needs the bed space."

The new budget proposes to fund the operation of two new prisons, including the $237 million purchase and renovation of a supermaximum-security facility in Thomson, Ill. The administration plans to use the prison to house detainees who would be transferred from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when it closes.

The federal spending plan contrasts with the criminal justice strategies pursued in many cash-strapped states, including California, Kansas and Kentucky, where officials have closed prisons or allowed for the early release of some non-violent offenders.

In Kansas, for example, state officials last year closed three prisons and reduced the number of probation violators sent to prison to reduce detention costs.

Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which advocates alternatives to incarceration, says states have a "greater sense of urgency" to change policy because of their obligations to balance budgets.

"That sense of urgency isn't there at the federal level," Mauer says. "Prison expansion slows the momentum for the reconsideration of some of those policies."

Bryan Lowry, president of the federal prison employees association, says the extra resources still fall short of the need.

The Bureau of Prisons would have to hire 2,426 additional workers to reach 95% of its staffing level in the mid-1990s, according to an analysis by the American Federation of Government Employees.

Lowry says overcrowding and staffing shortages have been persistent problems, endangering officers and staffers.

Last year, Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley acknowledged that assaults on staff had become "more severe."

"The additional money sounds good, but it's still not enough," Lowry says. "This won't solve the staffing problems that already exist."
graph at http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-02-03-prison-budget_N.htm

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

February 03, 2010

Youth prison system under pressure- proposed Senate bill would require states to track use of restraints in juvenile detention

"A bill before the U.S. Senate would require states to track the use of restraints in juvenile detention, which some states do voluntarily."The research tells us unequivocally" restraint "can result in a child's death," says Tara Andrews of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, which is lobbying for the bill's passage."

Youth prison system under pressure
February 3, 2010
By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — Three years after a 15-year-old boy died in restraints, the youth prison where he was pinned to the floor is set to be closed.

The shuttering of Tryon Boys Residential Center is due to budget gaps that plague states across the USA — but also is a sign of the intense pressure on New York to improve its deeply troubled juvenile detention system.

In August, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found that the state uses excessive force on youths in custody; the federal department says it will sue the state if changes are not made. In December, a state-appointed task force said use of force and lack of mental health care are acute problems for the 1,600 children held in New York's juvenile facilities each year. Two weeks later, the Legal Aid Society sued the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) on behalf of youths in custody.

Federal investigators found youths in four facilities, including Tryon, were routinely pinned to the ground and handcuffed for infractions as minor as laughing loudly, sneaking a cookie or refusing to get out of bed. The restraints caused concussions, broken teeth and broken bones.

"At this point, it's pretty clear that the change needs to happen, it needs to be pervasive and it needs to happen now," says Legal Aid Society lawyer Tamara Steckler.

In his budget proposal last month, Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat, announced plans to close two facilities named by the Justice Department. That includes Tryon, where Darryl Thompson died in November 2006. In the incident, cited in the federal investigation, aides pinned him facedown and handcuffed him after he repeatedly asked for recreation time.

The economic crunch is forcing New York, like other states, to scrutinize a system that costs it $210,000 per child annually.

"One of the great ironies is that the economic crisis may be accomplishing what advocates like me have been saying for 30 years," says Mark Soler of the Center for Children's Law and Policy, an advocacy group. "It's just too expensive to lock up the kids."

New York's juvenile system, which has 31 residential facilities, is one of the nation's largest, even though New York is one of only two states that charge youths 16 or older as adults. More than half of youths in detention are there because of misdemeanors. More than 80% are black or Hispanic.

The reports and lawsuit have "focused public attention on an area of the juvenile justice system that has gone without scrutiny for years," says Jeremy Travis, head of the task force Paterson formed in 2008.

Common problems

Since 2000, the Justice Department has conducted at least 11 investigations into juvenile facilities in states including California, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland and Oklahoma. Its findings illustrate that the same problems persist: overreliance on physical restraint and insufficient mental health services.

A bill before the U.S. Senate would require states to track the use of restraints in juvenile detention, which some states do voluntarily.

"The research tells us unequivocally" restraint "can result in a child's death," says Tara Andrews of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, which is lobbying for the bill's passage.

Without reporting requirements, "very often abusive situations do not come to light," Soler says. Though some kids need to be incarcerated "so they don't hurt other people and don't hurt themselves," he says, use of restraints is "excessive."

Other states that have come under federal investigation, including Louisiana, have adopted practices pioneered in Missouri. There, the juvenile system converted to small facilities more like treatment centers than prisons, focused on counseling and stopped the use of restraints. Only 8.6% of youths released from custody are recommitted within three years, the Missouri Department of Youth Services says. In New York, the figure is 45%, the task force says.

"In looking at the national picture, the old model is under serious change," Travis says. "You have places like New York saying, we want to follow (Missouri's) lead and recognizing we're very much stuck in an old corrective punitive model."

'No tolerance'

One of the severest critics of New York's juvenile system is in charge of it. "I don't think that, objectively, anybody who looks at our system and systems across the country can say we are really doing a good job," says Gladys Carrion, OCFS commissioner.

Carrion, appointed in 2007, has installed video cameras in juvenile facilities and reinstituted the office of the ombudsman, which inspects youth prisons. She requires staff to track the use of restraints.

"I personally get a weekly report," she says. "We have no tolerance for this." The harsh reports, she says, are "levers for change."

Carrion has been criticized by juvenile prison employees, who say the facilities are understaffed, they haven't received necessary training, and the agency risks public safety by closing facilities without having adequate community-based programs to accommodate youths.

"You can't just simply do this by fiat, say we're going to have a different model and have it happen," says Stephen Madarasz of the Civil Service Employee Association, which represents youth prison staff.

Travis, the task force head, is "optimistic that there will be some pretty significant change, but it will take a decade," he says. "It took a decade in Missouri; it'll take a decade in New York."

Legal Aid's Steckler says Carrion has made progress, but not enough. "The video cameras and the data reporting has decreased restraints, but it obviously hasn't stopped them." What's needed, she says, is to end the notion that youths in custody are prisoners. "Until that shift occurs ... we're still talking about grown men restraining children."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-02-02-youth-prison-juvenile_N.htm

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

February 02, 2010

NY: Jim Crow Policing

Op-Ed Columnist
Jim Crow Policing
By BOB HERBERT
Published: New York Times. February 1, 2010

The New York City Police Department needs to be restrained. The nonstop humiliation of young black and Hispanic New Yorkers, including children, by police officers who feel no obligation to treat them fairly or with any respect at all is an abomination. That many of the officers engaged in the mistreatment are black or Latino themselves is shameful.

Statistics will be out shortly about the total number of people who were stopped and frisked by the police in 2009. We already have the data for the first three-quarters of the year, and they are staggering. During that period, more than 450,000 people were stopped by the cops, an increase of 13 percent over the same period in 2008.

An overwhelming 84 percent of the stops in the first three-quarters of 2009 were of black or Hispanic New Yorkers. It is incredible how few of the stops yielded any law enforcement benefit. Contraband, which usually means drugs, was found in only 1.6 percent of the stops of black New Yorkers. For Hispanics, it was just 1.5 percent. For whites, who are stopped far less frequently, contraband was found 2.2 percent of the time.

The percentages of stops that yielded weapons were even smaller. Weapons were found on just 1.1 percent of the blacks stopped, 1.4 percent of the Hispanics, and 1.7 percent of the whites. Only about 6 percent of stops result in an arrest for any reason.

Rather than a legitimate crime-fighting tool, these stops are a despicable, racially oriented tool of harassment. And the police are using it at the increasingly enthusiastic direction of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

There were more than a half-million stops in New York City in 2008, and when the final tally is in, we’ll find that the number only increased in 2009.

Not everyone who is stopped is frisked. When broken down by ethnic group, the percentages do not at first seem so wildly disproportionate. Some 59.4 percent of all Hispanics who were stopped were also frisked, as were 56.6 percent of blacks, and 46 percent of whites. But keep in mind, whites composed fewer than 16 percent of the people stopped in the first place.

These encounters with the police are degrading and often frightening, and the real number of people harassed is undoubtedly higher than the numbers reported by the police. Often the cops will stop, frisk and sometimes taunt people who are at their mercy, and then move on — without finding anything, making an arrest, or recording the encounter as they are supposed to.

Even the official reasons given by the police for the stops are laughably bogus. People are stopped for allegedly making “furtive movements,” for wearing clothes “commonly used in a crime,” and, of course, for the “suspicious bulge.” My wallet, my notebook and my cellphone would all apply.

The police say they also stop people for wearing “inappropriate attire for the season.” I saw a guy on the Upper West Side wearing shorts and sandals a couple weeks ago. That was certainly unusual attire for the middle of January, but it didn’t cross my mind that he should be accosted by the police.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a class-action lawsuit against the city and the Police Department over the stops. Several plaintiffs detailed how their ordinary daily lives were interrupted by cops bent on harassment for no good reason. Lalit Carson was stopped while on a lunch break from his job as a teaching assistant at a charter school in the Bronx. Deon Dennis was stopped and searched while standing outside the apartment building in which he lives in Harlem. The police arrested him, allegedly because of an outstanding warrant. He was held for several hours then released. There was no outstanding warrant.

There are endless instances of this kind of madness. People going about their daily business, bothering no one, are menaced out of the blue by the police, forced to spread themselves face down in the street, or plaster themselves against a wall, or bend over the hood of a car, to be searched. People who object to the harassment are often threatened with arrest for disorderly conduct.

The Police Department insists that these stops of innocent people — which are unconstitutional, by the way — help fight crime. And they insist that the policy is not racist.

Paul Browne, the chief spokesman for Commissioner Kelly, described the stops as “life-saving.” And he has said repeatedly that the racial makeup of the people stopped and frisked is proportionally similar to the racial makeup of people committing crimes.

That is an amazingly specious argument. The fact that a certain percentage of criminals may be black or Hispanic is no reason for the police to harass individuals from those groups when there is no indication whatsoever that they have done anything wrong.

It’s time to put an end to Jim Crow policing in New York City.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 2, 2010, on page A27 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/opinion/02herbert.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)

2nd National Prisoner's Families Conference, Feb 25 & 26th in Orlando, FL

For info go to the URL below
2nd National Prisoner's Families Conference, Feb 25 & 26th in Orlando, FL
http://solutionsforelpaso.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/conference-listing-of-workshops.pdf

Posted by lois at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2010

California WatchBlog Probe examines whether Chino inmates were locked in cages for days

California WatchBlog
Probe examines whether Chino inmates were locked in cages for days
January 12, 2010 | Michael Montgomery

The Office of the Inspector General is probing allegations that inmates at the California Institution for Men in Chino have been locked in outdoor, cage-like enclosures for extended periods, possibly days.

OIG investigators are assessing recent claims that inmates at the prison’s reception center were held in steel-and-wire pens and exposed to extreme conditions. “It’s not an investigation, but we are conducting a preliminary review,” said Laura Hill, special adviser to Inspector General David Shaw.

Last week we reported on testimony from Chino inmates who claimed they spent days locked in outdoor holding pens following a riot that destroyed two wings of the prison.

Now, reporter Steven Cuevas has added more meat to the allegations in a series airing this week on KPCC. According to Cuevas’s sources, prison staff were using the cages to hold inmates months before the riots because Chino had no place to house new arrivals.

The prison has been operating at more than 150 percent capacity. Cuevas writes: “One former inmate claims he spent a week in an outdoor cage with about 10 other prisoners last March. At night, they slept on the floor of an indoor holding tank with no bunks or running water. The cages and holding tanks aren’t meant to house inmates for more than a few hours.”

Terry Thornton, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said holding tanks were used to house Chino inmates only to help secure the prison after the riot, but no prisoner was denied food, water or medical attention. “It’s simply not true,” Thornton said.
http://www.californiawatch.org/watchblog/probe-examines-whether-chino-inmates-were-locked-cages-days

Posted by lois at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)