The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

June 29, 2009

MI-CA: Gov. Granholm offers to cage some of California's prisoners

State may take Calif. inmates
By Dawson Bell • Free Press Lansing Bureau • June 29, 2009
LANSING – Gov. Jennifer Granholm offered empty beds in Michigan prisons to house inmates from California today as the Golden State seeks solutions to prison overcrowding and a massive budget deficit.
Advertisement

Granholm sent a letter to California Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger after speaking to him personally, in which she called the offer an “opportunity (that) has great potential and could be mutually beneficial.” Granholm said several empty facilities and soon-to-be-vacated prisons in Standish and Muskegon could be available.

California faces the prospect of being forced to release tens of thousands of inmates to ease overcrowding, even as it addresses a $24.3 billion deficit.

Granholm’s letter said terms of a prison space sharing plan could be worked out in negotiations.
http://www.freep.com/article/20090629/NEWS06/90629052/Granholm+offers+prison
+space+for+Calif.+inmates

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

Mass. prison system overcrowded; Patrick aims to fix it

"The presence of inmates in the system taxes an already stretched prison system at a higher cost to the taxpayer. It costs $2,500 to supervise a person through parole, while it costs about $43,000 annually to incarcerate someone. And unsupervised transitions from prison lead to more crime and more victims, as an ex-inmate without parole supervision is twice as likely to go back to prison than a released inmate who goes on parole.
With the state taking away the option of doing more time for no post-release supervisions, "consequently we free up beds," Burke said.
The Patrick administration wants to make the matter a non-issue by requiring mandatory supervision for all who serve a state prison sentence equal to 25 percent of their sentence, with a minimum of nine months parole and a maximum of five years parole."

Mass. prison system overcrowded; Patrick aims to fix it
By Dan McDonald/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Jun 28, 2009
FRAMINGHAM —

The prison system in the state is overtaxed, and MCI-Framingham is no different.

As of last week, the Southside prison held 593 inmates - its capacity is 452.

The state system is at 146 percent capacity, state Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke said. While the state considers creating "better space" inside the prison, "There isn't anyone you talk to who says we can build our way out of this."

Instead, state officials like Burke seek policy tweaks.

Gov. Deval Patrick's administration is pushing reform that allows for a loophole letting prisoners opt to spend more time in jail and avoid parole supervisions upon release.

Some prisoners chose that option, which Burke's office says bogs down the system and causes higher recidivism rates.

More than 500 prisoners annually who are up for parole choose to stay in prison for the length of their terms, so that when they get out there is no parole supervision.

"It sounds strange, but it does happen. Whatever the reason, we've got to get those folks under supervision," Burke said.

All told, 965 inmates left correctional institutions unsupervised in 2008 because of sentencing restrictions, institutional behavior that precludes parole, or inmates opting to stay in prison for more time to avoid supervision.

The lack of parole is problematic for several reasons, state officials say.

The presence of inmates in the system taxes an already stretched prison system at a higher cost to the taxpayer. It costs $2,500 to supervise a person through parole, while it costs about $43,000 annually to incarcerate someone. And unsupervised transitions from prison lead to more crime and more victims, as an ex-inmate without parole supervision is twice as likely to go back to prison than a released inmate who goes on parole.

With the state taking away the option of doing more time for no post-release supervisions, "consequently we free up beds," Burke said.

The Patrick administration wants to make the matter a non-issue by requiring mandatory supervision for all who serve a state prison sentence equal to 25 percent of their sentence, with a minimum of nine months parole and a maximum of five years parole.

The governor is also taking aim at another prison reform that could shorten sentences and free up room inside the prisons.

State law hinders those nonviolent inmates serving mandatory minimum time for drug offenses to participate in work release-like programs, according to Burke's office.

But Patrick's administration wants to have those imprisoned to mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes to be eligible for parole after serving two-thirds of their maximum sentence.

The mandatory minimum sentences, in some cases cause nonviolent criminals to serve a sentence that is "disproportionate to the risk that these individuals pose to the community," according Burke's office.

As of Jan. 1, 26 percent of prisoners in the state system were imprisoned for drug offenses. Of MCI-Framingham's nearly 600 inmate population, 24 percent are there because of drug-related crimes.

"Mandatory drug sentences don't allow us to be as smart as we can be," he said. "Public safety shouldn't come with a price tag, but we should be smart."
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x768070128/Mass-prison-system-overcrowded-Patrick-aims-to-fix-it?view=print

Posted by lois at 05:03 PM | Comments (0)

June 28, 2009

MS: Free labor and $29.74 per day from the state...communities clamor for regional jails

Sunday, Jun. 28, 2009
Miss. communities clamor for regional jails
By JACK ELLIOTT JR. - Associated Press Writer

JACKSON, Miss. -- There are 11 county/regional jails scattered around Mississippi. With them, the Mississippi Department of Corrections has created its own cottage industry.

Locally, the prisons provide lockups for offenders, jobs for local residents and a free labor force for public works projects. So popular are they that at least three more could open within the next year.

The question is, does the state need the beds? Yes, says Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps.

"If you need a jail, what better way to get it than sign a 20-year agreement with the state?" Epps said. "The reason you want as many state inmates as you can get is because we are going to pay you $29.74 per inmate per day plus we pay medical expenses."

What about the free labor?

"These guys do things that you can't pay people to do - putting asphalt into holes, unstopping sewer lines, painting the courthouse."

Epps said another thing is important.

"You'll see that they are not wealthy counties and mostly rural places. These places did not have an approved jail. They've got one now," he said.

Chickasaw County broke ground earlier this year on its regional facility, which is to have 300 inmates, about 240 from the state.

Sheriff Jimmy Simmons said at the groundbreaking that the facility was a welcome addition.

Simmons said that the state's contracted guarantee of inmate reimbursement will effectively pay for the facility.

"We're going to have to have it and rather than spending taxpayers' money, we're actually saving taxpayers money," the sheriff said.

Statewide, the 11 regionals average about 277 inmates each. Epps said there are more at Bolivar and Kemper facilities.

Washington, Alcorn and Yazoo counties are in the process of bidding on regional jails. Hinds County recently scrapped its regional jail plan. A 75-bed expansion at Kemper County for female inmates will open this summer.

Epps said he will spend $34 million for regional facilities during the new fiscal year, which begins Wednesday.

Even though the overall inmate numbers are down about 600 from a year ago and lawmakers have approved new laws to reduce the population, Epps said he needs the beds at the regional facilities.

Epps said a state prison in Greene County is about 1,000 inmates over capacity, and one in Rankin County is 400 over capacity. That, he said, puts a strain on the infrastructure.

"If Yazoo, Alcorn, Chickasaw and Washington were ready, I could fill them from just downsizing those two. Our facilities are tearing up real badly. When you are over capacity, you're killing your facilities. Your bathrooms, showers, washers and dryers ... weren't built for that. You can't keep running them like this," he said.

Epps has applications from 16 other counties for regional jails. While he knows they don't have money to build their own jail, he doubts any more regional prisons will be approved soon.

"I have to be a good steward of taxpayer money. I can't farm out inmates when I have spaces for them. That's why I am telling them they need to look at building a jail," Epps said.
http://www.sunherald.com/218/story/1441770.html

Posted by lois at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2009

CT: HOUSE PASSES BUDGET : Rell Opposes Democrats' Budget Item That Would Close 2 Prisons

HOUSE PASSES BUDGET : Rell Opposes Democrats' Budget Item That Would Close 2 Prisons
By CHRISTOPHER KEATING
The Hartford Courant
June 27, 2009

The state has fewer prison inmates than it did on the day of the tragic Cheshire killings in July 2007.

The prison population had soared by 1,200 after Gov. M. Jodi Rell froze the parole system following the triple homicide. Now, that number has fallen back completely.

As a result, in their budget proposal, Democratic legislators called for closing two prisons in an attempt to save as much as $200 million annually. But Republicans and Rell sharply questioned the idea at a time when many believe that crime is still too high in citiesthroughout the state.

The prison debate will continue because Rell is expected to veto the overall budget, which includes the prison plan, that was passed by the House on Friday, 91-48.

Neither the House nor the Senate was able to pass the Democratic budget by margins able to override Rell's expected veto. As a result, lawmakers and Rell's budget director are expected to go back into bipartisan budget talks that had been suspended until after the Democratic votes this week.

"It was bad yesterday. It's bad today," Rell's spokesman, Christopher Cooper, said of the Democratic budget Friday. "It's unbalanced, unaffordable and unfinished."

While lawmakers have spun different numbers over the past week, the legislature's nonpartisan fiscal office said the Democratic budget included $2 billion in net spending cuts over the next two fiscal years. The same budget would raise $2.5 billion through tax increases.

The discussion of the prisons was one of many topics that arose during nearly five hours of debate Friday in the Hall of the House at the state Capitol.

Rep. Craig Miner, R-Litchfield, questioned the Democratic plan and then offered a Republican alternative budget with no prison closings and no tax increases. That plan was rejected, 104 to 35, largely on party lines.

When Democrats said Rell, too, wanted to close a prison, Cooper said the difference was that Rell had called simply for studying the feasibility of closing one prison if the inmate population dropped. That was different, he said, from a proposal that would force the state to close two prisons if the Democratic plan became law.

To counter the Democratic prison proposal, Rell's office released a letter by Rep. Michael P. Lawlor dated Oct. 17, 2007, after he had toured a prison in Enfield upon the request of prison guards who worked there. The letter was written about three months after the Cheshire killings, when the inmate population had increased by 791 since the day of the triple homicide on July 23, 2007. The population increased after that point.

Two longtime criminals who were out on parole could get the death penalty in the slayings of three members of the Petit family in a crime that shocked the state and caused the legislature to make changes in the law in a special session.

"We need more prison cells," Lawlor, D- East Haven, wrote to Rell in 2007. "We need more corrections officers. ... We need more halfway house beds for nonviolent offenders with mental illness and substance abuse issues, and we need secure inpatient beds for sex offenders."

"It was accurate at the time it was written," Lawlor responded in an interview Friday. "The prison population was going up very rapidly. It got to almost 20,000. ... As it turned out, the population did come down — way down. It's lower now than it was on the day of the Cheshire murders. It went up about 1,200 and came down about 1,200."

At about $45,000 to $50,000 per year, a reduction of 1,000 prisoners could save $50 million and 2,000 fewer inmates could save $100 million per year in prison costs, Lawlor said.

"The budget doesn't require them to pick two prisons and close them," Lawlor said. "It could be a wing in five different prisons. ... The Department of Corrections has a plan to do this. They won't tell us which ones. By the way, they've already closed down some wings of some prisons because the population has come down."

Cooper did not buy Lawlor's explanation.

"How is that going to save any money?" Cooper asked. "Five different wings? What's that going to change? You still have to heat the whole place. It's like many of their cuts: 'Governor, you figure it out.'"

During the lengthy debate Friday, lawmakers took a major detour in the middle of the day to battle over campaign finance reform. Rep. Corky Mazurek, D-Wolcott, offered an amendment to strip $61 million in public financing from the budget. Many lawmakers believed that issue had been settled years ago, and the measure was defeated after about 1 hour and 20 minutes of debate.

The budget bill also calls for these tax changes:

•Increasing the state's cigarette tax by 75 cents per pack on July 1.

•Imposing a 30 percent surcharge on the estate tax that is paid by family members if a person dies with more than $2 million to their name.

•Increasing the state income tax on couples earning more than $500,000 annually and individuals earning more than $265,000.

But all those tax increases would be moot under Rell's expected veto.

As the final speaker before the vote, House Majority Leader Denise Merrill of Mansfield offered the Democratic summary by saying that the party restored funding for prisoner re-entry programs, nursing homes, college scholarships, and the Life Star medical helicopter.

"We reversed the governor's decision to close courthouses" in Norwalk, Derby, Putnam, and other communities, Merrill said. "We couldn't figure out what would happen if we closed these courthouses. ... The judicial branch told us it would be very, very difficult to imagine" how cases would be handled with fewer courts.

" Connecticut will emerge from this economic crisis," Merrill said. "That's what we have to remember today. ... We can't cut everything."

Copyright © 2009, The Hartford Courant
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-house-budgetvote-0627.artjun27,0,4730350.story

Posted by lois at 11:32 AM | Comments (0)

June 26, 2009

CA: Governor dumps plan to build prison hospitals

Governor dumps plan to build prison hospitals
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, June 26, 2009
(06-25) PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger disowned a tentative agreement Thursday to build prison hospitals to settle lawsuits over shoddy health care for inmates, saying the state won't borrow $1.9 billion for the effort while it's slashing other services.

"It's just not the right time," state Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said, four weeks after he announced the plan to build two hospitals for 3,400 inmates, refurbish existing medical centers and start returning control of prison health care from federal courts to the state. "At this time, we're going to have to live within our means."

Schwarzenegger issued a statement saying he "cannot agree to spend $2 billion on state-of-the-art medical facilities for prisoners while we are cutting billions of dollars from schools and health care programs for children and seniors."

As Cate acknowledged, however, the agreement would not have worsened California's $24.3 billion general fund deficit, the focus of a partisan deadlock in the Legislature that could force the state treasurer to start issuing IOUs to creditors next week.

The health care money would have come from other sources: bonds for the new hospitals, and already-appropriated prison construction funds for the renovations to existing medical centers.
'Not backing away'

Cate said the state needs more prison hospital beds but will have to find another way to pay for them. He insisted that the Schwarzenegger administration is "not backing away from our dedication to improve health care to meet constitutional standards."

But Thursday's development returns the initiative to federal judges, one of whom has already threatened to order the state to spend more on prison mental health care.

Another judge has begun contempt-of-court proceedings against Schwarzenegger for defying his order to turn over $250 million that the Legislature has approved for prison construction, but which the state has not allocated. The state says federal judges lack authority to order California to spend money on prison construction.

"This will make the courts have to intervene more, because the state has said it won't do even what the secretary (Cate) says is necessary," said Donald Specter, a lawyer for inmates who sued in 2001 over health care in California's 33 prisons. "It shows, once again ... a completely dysfunctional system."

There was no comment from Clark Kelso, the receiver appointed by a federal judge to manage the state prison health system. "This is now a matter for the courts," said Luis Patino, Kelso's spokesman.
One death a week

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco removed the $1.1 billion health system from state control in 2005, saying an average of one inmate a week was dying because of inadequate care and that the state was unable to meet constitutional standards.

In a separate case, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento has found prison mental health care grossly substandard and ordered improvements.

Kelso has submitted a 10-year plan to build between 5,000 and 10,000 hospital beds, at a cost of $4 billion to $8 billion. He reached a tentative agreement with Cate last month to limit the plan to four years, reduce the number of beds and start returning some management functions to the state.

Schwarzenegger's rejection of the deal was disclosed in a letter from Cate to Kelso, citing the state's "precarious financial condition" and saying it wasn't clear whether all the new construction was "necessary to achieve constitutionally adequate medical care."
Population could be cut

The letter noted the governor's proposal to remove 19,000 of California's 170,000 prisoners by transferring undocumented immigrants to federal custody and releasing some elderly or seriously ill inmates to hospitals, local programs or electronic monitoring.

The courts may have more to say about prison population, however. A three-judge panel, including Henderson and Karlton, has concluded after extensive hearings in San Francisco that overcrowding at the prisons, now filled to twice their designed capacity, is the chief cause of poor health care. The panel has tentatively ordered the release of between 37,000 and 58,000 inmates to local custody, treatment programs or parole.

The Schwarzenegger administration has said it will appeal any final release order to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Karlton, meanwhile, said at a hearing June 16 that unless the state approved Cate's tentative agreement, or came up with an alternative to improve prison mental health care in the next three months, "I'm going to start eating into their budget in a real dramatic way."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/26/MNE718E0D4.DTL

Posted by lois at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)

June 25, 2009

FL: Powerful business lobby calls for a halt to prison construction & change in sentencing policies

Change sought in Florida prison system
A movement among powerful Florida leaders to overhaul the state's prison system is gaining steam as lawmakers grapple with shrinking resources.

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
Miami Herald
06.24.09

A call by Florida's most powerful business lobby to halt prison construction and reform the criminal justice system is gaining surprising traction among policymakers in the wake of a deepening budget crisis and growing evidence that building new prison beds will not reduce crime.

Four months after the head of Associated Industries of Florida stunned lawmakers with his plea to slow prison growth, a who's-who of business, religious and political leaders are asking Gov. Charlie Crist to consider alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders, particularly drug addicts.

Crist and state lawmakers this week received an ''open letter'' from opinion-makers calling for a ``bold and serious conversation about justice reform.''

The statement was signed by three former Florida attorneys general -- Jim Smith, Bob Butterworth and Richard Doran -- along with retired Department of Corrections secretary James McDonough and the heads of the Florida Association of Counties and the Florida Catholic Conference.

''At a time when Florida is in serious recession and facing a deep state budget crisis, the $2 billion-plus budget of the Florida Department of Corrections has grown larger; and without reform, that budget will continue to grow at a pace that crowds out other mission-critical state services such as education, human service needs, and environmental protection,'' the group wrote.

Calling itself the Coalition for Smart Justice, the group is asking state leaders to bolster education, drug and alcohol treatment and faith-based and character-building programs both within the state prison system and in community settings as an alternative to prison.

Coalition members also want Crist to ''immediately implement'' a bill passed by the Legislature in 2008 that created ''the much needed'' Correctional Policy Advisory Council to offer new directions for criminal justice administration.

Staying the course, coalition members wrote, will lead to ``too many non-violent individuals being incarcerated, too many prisons needing to be built at astounding public cost [and] too many young people moving from the juvenile justice system into the adult justice system.''

BREAKING CYCLE

At the root of the state's failures, the group says, is the unwillingness of lawmakers to invest in programs -- such as job training, education and substance-abuse treatment -- that can break the cycle of crime and reduce recidivism.

McDonough, the state's former drug czar and prisons chief, said Florida can avoid the need to build a new $100 million prison each year by spending one-fifth that amount on drug treatment. ''The math is irrefutable,'' McDonough said. ``That's $100 million right there that you don't have to spend immediately.''

Gretl Plessinger, DOC's spokeswoman, said the equation is far more complicated. Since the prison system runs on a five-year cycle based on ''strategic projections,'' the corrections agency cannot simply ``stop construction on a dime.''

''Several projects are nearing completion,'' Plessinger said. ``We've already spent money, and to stop construction now would cost taxpayers quite a lot of money.''

DOC Secretary Walter McNeil does not favor the early release of inmates, Plessinger said, but does agree with the coalition's goal of increased spending on drug treatment and other programs designed to aid offenders' safe return to their communities. Close to 90 percent of state inmates eventually are released, she said.

''Secretary McNeil knows inmates who receive basic education, job skills training and substance abuse treatment are less likely to commit another crime and return to prison,'' Plessinger said. ``Through re-entry [programs], we can reduce our recidivism rate which will increase public safety and lower our inmate population.''

Sterling Ivey, a Crist spokesman, declined to discuss the letter in depth. ''We have received the letter and we are currently reviewing the information,'' he said.

A driving force in the coalition is J. Allison DeFoor II, an admittedly unlikely prison reform activist as a former Monroe County sheriff, prosecutor, judge and reelection running mate for former Gov. Bob Martinez. Now an ordained Episcopal priest, the colorful politician tends a ministry at Wakulla Correctional Institution near Tallahassee.

Among DeFoor's gripes: though faith-based programs at Wakulla have reduced recidivism among inmates from 33 percent to just 7 percent, Florida's waiting list for such programs has grown to 10,000-strong. ''I've seen everything that doesn't work,'' he says. ``And I've seen what does work.''

''I can flatly tell you that 75 percent of the people in the system -- probably more than that -- have substance abuse and psychological problems,'' and treatment, education and counseling can help many of those men and women stay out of prison, he said.

PREVENTION

Butterworth, a former Broward sheriff, prosecutor and 20-year attorney general, said his two-year stint as secretary of the Department of Children & Families reinforced his belief in the value of prevention dollars -- which are typically the first to be cut during lean years.

''Sometimes the worst dollar we spend,'' Butterworth said, ``pays for bricks and mortar.''

Florida still will need prisons for violent felons, Butterworth said. But spending $1 billion over the next decade to build new prisons for drug addicts and people with mental illness, he added, is ``nuts. There's just got to be a better way.''

Steve Seibert, a former Pinellas County commissioner and secretary of the Deparment of Community Affairs under Gov. Jeb Bush, said he discovered another reason for reform while touring an Overtown community center: Leaders told him 70 percent of the neighborhood's men were ex-felons.

'That was an `Aha' moment for me,'' said Seibert, who as director of policy for the Collins Center for Public Policy is a coalition leader.

``All the affordable housing, economic development, parks, water and infrastructure-type stuff doesn't mean squat when 70 percent of the men in a community are ex-felons.''

And most Americans appear to agree with him. A just-released poll by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency showed that nearly eight in 10 Americans favor probation, restitution and community service over prison for ''nonserious, nonviolent, nonsexual'' offenders.

McDonough, who calls himself a pragmatist, said that ultimately the most powerful winds steering reform are financial.

''I think the recession probably will bring the pendulum swing to its highest point and it will start to swing the other way,'' he said. ``Legislators don't want to spend that much money.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/v-fullstory/story/1111002.html

Posted by lois at 08:40 PM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2009

MI: A new low? A candlelight vigil and prayers to keep a max security prison open

Standish Prison Candlelight Vigil Planned
Residents Continue Fight To Keep Prison Open
June 22, 2009
Standish Prison Candlelight Vigil Planned
STANDISH, Mich. -- Resurrection of the Lord is organizing a vigil with Standish area leaders over Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s plans to close the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility.

The candlelight vigil, 423 W. Cedar St., will be led by Fr. James Fitzpatrick beginning at 7 p.m.

The maximum security prison employs about 300 people and is Arenac County’s largest employer.

It’s slated to close on July 28.

The Standish prison is one of three maximum security prisons, along with five prison camps, expected to close as a way to save the state money.

Organizers of the vigil said there will be updates regarding recent events and a presentation on options for future protests.

Members of the Arenac County community have already taken a stand against the closure of the 19-year-old prison with a petition drive and past protests.

Combined, the closure of the eight prisons and prison camps will result in the layoff of an estimated 1,000 employees.
http://www.wnem.com/news/19820631/detail.html

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

June 17, 2009

FL: 3rd new juvenile prison to open in one county--privately run

3rd juvie prison to open
Old detention center to become facility for high-risk youth
By CHAD SMITH Thursday, June 11, 2009 ; Updated: 5:59 AM on Thursday, June 11, 2009

St. Augustine's juvenile detention center will close at the end of the month and will be replaced with a penitentiary for youthful offenders from around the state, meaning local youths will be held in Jacksonville while they await trial.

The state-run St. Johns Regional Juvenile Detention Center, on Avenue D near the county jail, is being shuttered to cut costs in the Department of Juvenile Justice and to make room for Florida's growing population of juvenile convicts, department spokeswoman Samadhi Jones said Wednesday.

It will become the county's third juvenile prison, ranking St. Johns among 14 other counties with three or more.

As of July 1, the 50-bed detention center will be divvied up between the St. Johns Youth Academy, designed for "moderate-risk" youth, and the St. Johns Juvenile Correctional Facility, a privately run prison for "high-risk" youth that is in the same complex as the current detention center.

The youth academy will get 34 beds, and the correctional facility, which currently can hold 32 inmates, will get the other 16.

Jones said the St. Augustine detention center was selected for conversion into a youth academy because it is relatively new and has "state-of-the-art" equipment.

"We're going to use it now for what we really need in the state of Florida, which is a high-risk residential facility," she said.

The St. Johns Youth Academy will serve as a replacement for the Santa Rosa Youth Academy, a 25-bed facility in the Panhandle that is being closed.

John A. Alexander, St. Johns County's chief administrative judge, said he was "irate" about the way the Department of Juvenile Justice has handled the transition.

Before the change goes into effect, Alexander and other judges, along with the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office, will need to coordinate with the Duval County detention center to sort out how the suspects will be booked, transported and monitored.

But, he said, very little of that has been discussed.

"Certainly nobody from Tallahassee has contacted the judicial system," the judge said. "We run a good program here. And I'm not a Pollyanna. I understand that you're going to cut programs. But let's coordinate the cuts."

Jerry Cameron, the county's assistant administrator, said the Sheriff's Office is looking into the possibility of setting up its own detention facility on the site.

While there is an average of about 35 youth in the detention center on a given day, about a third of them live in St. Johns County, and the majority come from Jacksonville or Putnam County.

What the county is proposing to do, Cameron said, is establish and operate a 12-bed facility where it could house its own youth and easily transport them between court appearances and the jail.

But, he said, it still isn't clear whether the county can legally run its own facility or whether the state would want to give up the money the county pays DJJ to house its youth, which amounts to between $700,000 and $800,000 annually.

"That takes care of the legal problem, and that takes care of the money problem," Cameron said.

Counties with three or more juvenile prisons:

Brevard - 3 (1 low, 2 moderate)

DeSoto - 3 (1 low, 2 moderate)

Duval - 3 (2 moderate, 1 high)

Hillsborough - 6 (5 moderate, 1 high)

Jackson - 4 (2 moderate, 1 high, 1 high/maximum)

Madison - 4 (4 moderate)

Manatee - 3 (2 moderate, 1 high)

Miami-Dade - 5 (1 low, 4 moderate)

Okaloosa - 5 (3 moderate, 2 high)

Okeechobee - 5 (2 low/moderate, 1 moderate, 1 high, 1 high/maximum)

Pasco - 5 (moderate)

Polk - 3 (moderate)

Santa Rosa* - 3 (1 low/moderate, 2 moderate)

St. Johns* - 3 (2 moderate, 1 high)

Volusia - 3 (2 moderate, 1 moderate/high)

* The figures for Santa Rosa and St. Johns counties will be current after the St. Johns juvenile detention center is converted into a residential facility, replacing the one in Santa Rosa.

Source: Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.

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

June 16, 2009

AZ: Public vs. Private prisons in economy budget

Legislators want private firms to run prisons
By Howard Fischer
Capitol Media Services
PublishedMay 20, 2009 - 02:15:48 am MST

PHOENIX — Republican legislative leaders are crafting a plan to farm out operation of three state prisons to private companies as a method of balancing the budget.

Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said he believes companies would pay the state at least $100 million in up-front cash for the right to operate the prisons.

That would help lawmakers deal with an anticipated $3.3 billion deficit this coming year.

And Kavanagh, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said the annual savings to the state for operating these three facilities could be $40 million.

At this point, lawmakers are looking at the state prison in Yuma which now houses about 2,300 inmates, the Perryville facility which has more than 4,000 beds, and the Eyeman unit of the state prison complex in Florence which at last count had close to 5,000 inmates.

The proposal is likely to get a fight from Democrats — and not just on philosophical grounds.

Senate Minority Leader Jorge Garcia, D-Tucson, called the savings “funny money.” He cited studies done by an outside consultant for the state Department of Corrections which show that, when all elements are considered, it actually costs taxpayers less to have the state operate prisons than it would to have them run by private companies.

Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, said he put little stock in that report, saying it was prepared during the administration of Democrat Janet Napolitano who never was a supporter of private prisons.

The idea of privately run prisons is not new. The state already contracts with private companies to house some inmates.

But those deals involve facilities that private companies build on their own, with the state paying a specific daily charge for each inmate housed there.

This would involve turning over already built — and paid-for — state facilities to private companies to operate, with the price the state pays based on bids received.

At last count, about 4,300 of the state’s more than 40,000 inmates were housed in private prisons in Arizona. Another nearly 4,900 are housed in private prisons in other states

Gov. Jan Brewer said she believes it is appropriate to house inmates in private prisons “in certain circumstances.”

The plan, scheduled for a vote today in the Senate Appropriations Committee, essentially builds on existing efforts by Republicans to plug the gap between anticipated revenues this coming year and expenses.

State sales and income tax collections have taken a nosedive as the national and state economies have gone into a recession, people are being laid off and consumers are buying less. GOP budget crafters are relying heavily on cuts to spending.

One new wrinkle is a plan to reduce state aid to cities and counties by up to $190 million.

Burns acknowledged that transfers some of the state’s fiscal problems onto local governments which have their own revenue issues. But he said the state’s problem is so big that it cannot afford to share as much as it has in the past in what it collects in vehicle license taxes.

Republican legislators have generally frowned upon a proposal by Gov. Jan Brewer to bridge the gap with a temporary tax that would raise $1 billion a year for three or four years. But House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, said all options — including taxes — remain on the table.

Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said lawmakers are looking at one other way to get more dollars: Hire back some of the auditors and collectors the state let go earlier this year from the Department of Revenue. How much that could raise, however, is debatable.

House Democrats have said more staffers could bring in $150 million. Kavanagh puts the figure at $50 million; Pearce said $35 million would be more realistic.

Kavanagh acknowledged that the size of the deficit could force lawmakers to adopt some accounting maneuvers that really do not solve the problem. These include taking certain expenses due in the coming fiscal year and pushing off payment into the following budget year, a move that technically “balances” the books as constitutionally required but does not actually cut spending.
http://www.svherald.com/articles/2009/05/20/news/state/doc4a13a7e8908d5390322661.txt

----------------------------------------------
Saving the state's budget: The Governor's plan
Balanced, realistic budget will preserve our critical services

Jun. 7, 2009 12:00 AM- Special for the Republic

Arizona's state budget deficit is one of the worst per capita in the United States.

With the new budget due in three weeks, Arizona has a deficit of roughly $4 billion, or 40 percent of last year's general fund expenditures.

We have so little cash that the state has to borrow millions just to pay monthly bills. The threat to vital services is so acute that a bold budget plan is absolutely critical to avoiding an economic catastrophe.

I have a plan that leads our state to the path of recovery, a plan that will bridge Arizona's troubled economic waters without destroying our schools, public safety, or the final safety net that sustains our most vulnerable populations.

Your state government is spending dramatically less. With my new fiscal year 2010 budget plan, roughly $600 million in cuts will be implemented, in addition to the $400 million in reductions I signed into law shortly after taking office.

This budget slashing is unprecedented in Arizona history. Thousands of state employees have lost jobs or have been furloughed. Services and programs have been curtailed. Any further significant cuts, however, would begin to unravel our public education, safety, health and/or corrections systems.

The majority of legislators seem unwilling participants in such recklessness, and I can assure you that I won't preside over the destruction of essential services within our great state.

Along with $1 billion in spending cuts, I propose using the maximum available of federal stimulus funds in fiscal year 2010, approximately $1 billion. My application of these funds will particularly protect K-12 education funding, our state universities, and our community colleges. Each of these systems are doing more with less money, but federal stimulus funds will help us bridge the gap without devastating our state's future - our children.

In addition to spending cuts and federal stimulus funds, my plan includes $1 billion in a 1 percent sales-tax increase, and roughly $1 billion in state long-term financing moves. My plan creates a spending cap to limit government when future revenues return, and cuts onerous taxes in the future to promote economic activity and job growth.

Some representatives and senators unfortunately propose nearly $1 billion in revenues that are completely unrealistic, including a plan to create a 50-year private contract to "operate" all Arizona prisons, including Arizona's death row. It also includes a large tax increase, but hides it by forcing cities and counties to be the tax collectors. The legislators' proposal also threatens the closure of numerous rural Arizona hospitals.

Only an authentic, balanced budget can bridge our financial-crisis gap, and only with additional revenues will we properly operate the vast majority of our general-fund operations: our schools, our prisons, and our critical health systems.

Jan Brewer is governor of Arizona.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/viewpoints/articles/2009/06/06/20090606brewer07.html

Posted by lois at 08:47 AM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2009

Testimony at Senate Hearing on national prison reform Commission introduced by Jim Webb

Testimony at Senate Hearing on national prison reform
June 13,2009

The U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs convened a hearing on proposed national prison reform legislation. Virginia Senator Jim Webb introduced bill S.714 in March to create a commission to thoroughly review the entire criminal justice system and make recommendations for reform in several areas of significant concern.

Since being introduced, the bill already has widespread support with 29 cosponsors in the Senate including Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Ranking Member Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Judiciary Committee member Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Numerous organizations, currently numbering 42, now endorse the legislative endeavor with interest continuing to expand as public awareness increases.

Other than Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC), Senator Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA), and Senator Mark R. Warner (D-VA), no other senators from the southeastern states, including Georgia and Florida, have as yet expressed their support for this bill as cosponsors.

Speaking at the June 11 hearing, entitled “Exploring the National Criminal Justice Act of 2009,” Senator Webb compared the condition of the criminal justice system to be no less critical than have been the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. and the economic crisis the country faces. The senator asserts, “…the disintegration of this system, day by day and year by year, and the movement toward mass incarceration, with very little attention being paid to clear standards of prison administration or meaningful avenues of re-entry for those who have served their time, is dramatically affecting millions of lives, draining billions of dollars from our economy, destroying notions of neighborhood and family in hundreds of communities across the country….” The proposed legislation is the first major effort to examine and reform the United States criminal justice system in more than forty years.

“We need to take a comprehensive look at our criminal justice system…. As a nation, we can spend our money more effectively, reduce crime and violence, reduce the prison population, and create a fairer system. It is time to take stock of what is broken and what works and modify our criminal justice policies accordingly.” (See related article: ‘Pew “1 in 31” report on corrections: Challenges and opportunities.’)

Collaboration between Senator Webb’s office and more than 100 organizations that represent prosecutors, judges, defense lawyers, former offenders, advocacy groups, think tanks, victims’ rights organizations, academics, prisoners, law enforcement, and numerous church organizations has generated significant interest and support for advancing this legislation.

Several experts in the legal, law enforcement, and volunteer services communities testified at the hearing, including Chief William Bratton of the Los Angeles Police Department, Professor Charles J. Ogletree of Harvard Law School, Pat Nolan, Vice President of the Prison Fellowship, and Brian W. Walsh, Senior Legal Research Fellow at the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies of The Heritage Foundation.

Serving as vice president of the volunteer service organization the Prison Fellowship, Pat Nolan testified, “My work has given me a close up view of our criminal justice system across the country; and I must tell you our prisons are in crisis. Corrections budgets are literally eating up state budgets, siphoning off money that could be going to schools, roads and hospitals. The crisis in our criminal justice system is national in scope; and only a national commission can conduct the type of review that will help guide us into better policies and safer communities.”

Brian W. Walsh with The Heritage Foundation encouraged support in saying, “Reform experts who are serious about criminal-justice reform should draw encouragement from Senator Webb’s efforts to date to reach out to elected officials on both sides of the aisle and to criminal-justice reform advocates across the conservative-to-liberal spectrum.”
http://www.examiner.com/x-7357-Atlanta-Criminal-Rehabilitation-Examiner~y2009m6d13-Testimony-at-Senate-Hearing-on-national-prison-reform

Posted by lois at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

June 09, 2009

NC: Education and Prison/Jail Spending

Education budgets outweigh prisons
Catherine Pritchard
Fayetteville Observer

Q: With the state so strapped for cash for the schools, I would like to know how much do we actually pay for our prison systems as compared to what we pay for our schooling? J.S., Fayetteville

A: Well, it all depends on who you mean by “we” and what you mean by “how much,” among other things. After all, public schools get funding at the federal, state and local level. And there are federal prisons, state prisons and county jails (where, we should point out, many of the inmates are awaiting trial and have not been convicted of a crime).

And any numbers we provide will inevitably include funds that are not going directly to what might be considered “prisons” or “schools.”

That said, here are some basic numbers from budget proposals for the 2010 financial year.

At the federal level, President Obama is proposing $46 billion for education and $7.6 billion for the Bureau of Prisons, including oversight of the system and prisoner re-entry programs.

North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue’s proposed budget for 2010 includes $11.4 billion for education and $1.3 billion for the Department of Correction, which includes prisons, parole and probation.

Closer to home, Cumberland County Manager James Martin’s budget proposal includes $75.4 million for schools and $11.5 million to run the county jail.

Housing one inmate does cost more than educating students, according to the state’s per-person estimates. The Department of Public Instruction in Raleigh estimated statewide spending per pupil at $8,552 this year, while the state Department of Correction lists a yearly cost per inmate of $27,911 for 2008.

But then prisoners live in prisons under armed guard, whereas students get to go home after school.
http://www.fayobserver.com/article?id=328546

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

MI: Closing 8 prisons by executive order of Gov.

"I'm just not that comfortable letting this many convicted felons out into a poor economy," said Senate Minority Leader Mike Prusi, an Ishpeming Democrat who is "furious" prison facilities in his Upper Peninsula district will be closed."

"Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections
Organization, a labor union for corrections officers, said too many inmates are being let out too quickly. The public better lock their doors," he said.

Michigan closing 8 prison facilities to save money
By DAVID EGGERT (AP)

LANSING, Mich. -- Three state prisons and five prison camps will be closed to save $120 million as budget-conscious Michigan moves toward incarcerating its lowest number of inmates in a decade, Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration said Friday.

The closings will result in layoffs, though it was unclear how many. The Department of Corrections will try to move as many of the 1,072 affected employees as possible into open jobs at other facilities.
said."

Theprisons and camps house about 4,600 inmates who will be transferred to other facilities if they still are incarcerated at the time of the closures. The Democratic governor wants to reduce the prison population of 47,550 to below 45,000 by Oct. 1, the lowest head count since 1999.

Critics warned the public is in danger and said the state's budget problems are driving corrections policies when it should be the other way around.

"I'm just not that comfortable letting this many convicted felons out into a poor economy," said Senate Minority Leader Mike Prusi, an Ishpeming Democrat who is "furious" prison facilities in his Upper Peninsula district will be closed.

Corrections Director Patricia Caruso, however, said public safety is the agency's top priority.

"But just as we are committed to the public's safety, we are also committed to spending their tax dollars wisely and in ways that make sense," she said. "The reorganization we are unveiling today makes sense from a public safety and budget perspective."

Prisons in Muskegon west of Grand Rapids, Standish north of Bay City and Kincheloe in the eastern U.P. will close between Aug. 1 and Nov. 30.

Prison camps to be closed in the same time period are in Shingleton, Painesdale and Iron River in the U.P.; Grayling in the northern Lower Peninsula; and White Lake in Oakland County north of Detroit.

The Standish prison is maximum-security, meaning every prisoner must have his own cell.

Corrections officials have decided some maximum-security inmates can share cells, drawing the ire of corrections officers who fear the change will endanger guards and inmates. The department will convert the Alger Maximum Correctional Facility in Munising to a level IV prison so it can bunk two prisoners per cell, nearly doubling the prison's bed capacity.

The prison closings come as tax revenues are continuing to slide in a state hit hard by the recession and the auto industry's woes. Michigan faces a budget shortfall of at least $1.7 billion in the fiscal year that starts in October, and there is not enough federal stimulus cash to offset all the lost revenue.

Because the governor's '09-10 budget proposal outlined in February promised unspecified prison closings, communities and corrections workers across the state had been anxiously awaiting Friday morning's announcement. The state also closed two prisons and a camp this fiscal year.

The prison population has fallen by 4,000 inmates since peaking at a record 51,454 in December 2006. Officials credit the decline to more paroles and commutations, fewer felony convictions and prison intakes, more GPS monitoring and an expanded program to keep parolees from committing new crimes. The number of criminals entering prisons dropped 9 percent in 2008, officials said, and was down 4 percent through April of this year.

Granholm's newly expanded parole board is releasing more inmates who have served beyond their minimum sentence.

Corrections spokesman John Cordell acknowledged the department is shrinking the prison population on a quicker timetable because of the budget crisis, but he said only offenders posing the "lowest possible risk" are being paroled sooner than they might otherwise have been.

The parole board is following recommendations from independent experts who found Michigan inmates stay in prison longer than is the case nationally despite receiving similar minimum sentences. Key Democratic and Republican lawmakers backed the parole changes in January but have not yet put those requirements into law.

Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections Organization, a labor union for corrections officers, said too many inmates are being let out too quickly.

"The public better lock their doors," he said.

While prison closures in recent years led to few layoffs because workers filled vacancies at other facilities, there will be fewer openings to apply for this time, Grieshaber said.

"There are undoubtedly going to layoffs - hundreds perhaps," he said.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/06/05/ap6511712.html

Posted by lois at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2009

NC: Small prison stubbornly survives through prison labor and poltical clout

Small prison stubbornly survives
The governor wants to close the 94-inmate facility to save money; it just won't go away.
May 31, 2009
BY ROB CHRISTENSEN AND BENJAMIN NIOLET, Staff Writers
RALEIGH - Union Correctional Center in Monroe is a relic from the 1930s prison road gangs that leaders in Raleigh keep trying to close.
Gov. Beverly Perdue wants to shut it down. So does the state Department of Correction. So do the efficiency experts, who say the prison is too small and antiquated to be cost-effective.

But the Union Correctional Center has survived the budget knife through a combination of insider political connections, local businesses and governments benefiting from cheap inmate labor, and preachers trying to save souls.

In the process, the Union Correctional Center serves another purpose. It is an example of how complicated and difficult it can be to cut government spending, even as the state faces a budget deficit of epic proportions.

North Carolina is facing a shortfall of as much as $4 billion, nearly 20 percent of the state's current $21.4 billion budget, in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

That deficit has grown since Perdue and the state Senate put together their budget proposals earlier this year, and the state House is now wrestling with where and how to cut spending.

But it won't be easy, as evidenced by the Union Correctional Center, a state lab that studies insects, a worker training program at the state Department of Labor and a program that monitors the Neuse River in Eastern North Carolina.

Perdue, a Democrat, proposed cutting all of those when she made her budget recommendations to the legislature, which must approve a balanced budget for North Carolina. They amounted to a small percentage of the budget deficit, but the Democrats who control the Senate declined to go along. They did not include Perdue's cuts when they approved a budget and sent it to the House.

Ran Coble, a veteran budget watcher, said it can be difficult to kill state programs, because they often have powerful political patrons, would lead to the loss of jobs or because they have well-connected policy advocates.

"Every legislator tends to protect programs in his or her own district," said Coble, executive director of the N.C. Center for Public Policy Research, a nonpartisan Raleigh think tank.

Union Correctional Center has had a bull's eye on its back since at least 1993, when an efficiency study recommended its closure. The report said North Carolina had too many small prisons -- four to six times the number of most states. Most of the prisons cited in that report have since been closed.

Perdue recommended that Union and two other small, antiquated prisons, in Haywood and Gates counties, be closed to save $3.4 million. Closing the Union County prison, which houses 94 inmates, would save $1.6 million, according to the Department of Correction.

Even though the state is facing a shortage of prison beds, state officials say inmates from the three prisons could be moved to larger, more efficient prisons where cells can house two inmates instead of one.

Efforts to close prisons, particularly in rural areas, provoke cries about jobs that will be lost. That's not the case in Union County, where only 36 people work at the prison, located in a fast-growing Charlotte suburb.

Prison labor

But the prison is popular in the business community and with local governments because it provides cheap labor. For the past decade, Union Correctional Center has hosted a work release program, where inmates are transferred in to spend the final two years of their sentences learning a trade.

Of the 94 inmates at Union Correctional Center, 65 are in the work release program with private companies, learning to become welders, electricians or other trades. Another eight inmates work for the towns of Monroe and Indian Trail, helping clean parks, mowing, picking up trash and cleaning up after storms.

More than 70 companies in Union County have used inmates during the past decade, said Ron Tarlton, the prison's superintendent. Currently, inmates are working for such companies as chicken processor Pilgrim's Pride, Showmars Restaurant, Hinson Electric, McCarter Electric, Weaver Automobile and United Process Mechanical Piping.

In some instances, companies can use the state prison system like a job placement agency. They order someone with specific skills -- such as a welder -- and a search will be made of the entire prison system. If found, the welder will be transferred to the Union Correctional Center, Tarlton said.

The inmates, who are paid slightly above minimum wage, typically work for a company for two years. The inmates are required to pay the prison $18 a day for their upkeep, pay for transportation costs to the job and, where appropriate, pay restitution. They can send any money that's left to help support their families or spend it in the prison canteen.

"The employers are highly impressed with the program," said Tarlton, who has worked at the prison for 28 years.

"The inmates are dependable and show up for work every day. These guys would rather be out on the job working than behind the fences."

The Union Correctional Center also has a powerful political patron in former state Sen. Aaron Plyler, a road contractor from Monroe. Plyler was one of the leading Democratic barons of the Senate until he retired in 2002.

Although out of office for the past seven years, Plyler, a popular, avuncular figure, mentored and did favors for many of the senators now in leadership positions. As a former appropriations chairman, Plyler knows how to work the process.

And Plyler, who has used inmates to work at his companies, thought it would be a mistake to close the prison.

"I think it would be an unusual move to close it when these people are out there making money for themselves and helping the area," Plyler said. "The city of Monroe has saved hundreds of thousands..."

So Plyler fired off letters to 20 legislative leaders, arguing that the work release program at Union Correctional Center was effective. He got the attention of the decision-makers in Raleigh.

"I don't have as much effect as I had at one time," Plyler, 82, said in a recent interview. "But I have a lot of friends."

Saving souls

For some state leaders, the motivation to keep the prison open had nothing to do with money. It was about an effort to save the souls inside the prison.

The Union County prison has been adopted by many area churches, which have an extensive prison ministry to help inmates redirect their lives.

The Rev. Al Lewis Jr., executive director of the Safer Communities Ministries, said he has sent "tons of information" to lawmakers. He said that of the 111 inmates who have gone through the program during the past three years, 90 are still out of prison.

"We are building a model that we think could go statewide," Lewis said.

As a result of the involvement of the churches, the prison has found champions among Republican lawmakers who normally might be in favor of cutting government.

State Sen. Eddie Goodall, an outspoken GOP conservative who represents Union County, is a fan of the outreach program. With the prison system over capacity, Goodall says there needs to be a good reason for closing the Union County unit.

"This ministry is a blessing to so many," Goodall wrote on the prison ministry's Web site. "God is using Al Lewis and his dedicated support team to bring new life to men who are willing to embrace the Word while learning the skills necessary to succeed outside the prison walls."

Stopped cold

Finally, Perdue's proposal to cut Union ran into a legislative iceberg in the form of Democratic Sen. John Snow, a retired district court judge from Murphy who is co-chairman of the Senate committee that oversees the prison budget.

Snow's mountain district includes Haywood County Correctional Center, one of the three prisons the governor wants to close. It is the only state prison west of Asheville. Local officials said closing the Haywood unit would deprive the western mountains of inmate work crews for roads, schools and local governments in several counties.

The Haywood County commissioners passed a resolution saying that it would cost the county $80,227, at minimum wage, to replace the 12,248 man-hours inmate work crews provide.

"Who's going to keep the highways clean if Haywood Correctional Center closes?" the commissioners asked in the resolution.

So Snow's committee put the money back in the budget for the three prisons that Perdue wanted to cut. The full Senate subsequently approved the committee's action.

It happened so fast that Democratic Sen. Ed Jones, the former mayor of Enfield, didn't know what was happening. Jones, whose district includes the Gates County Correctional Center, had been working with community leaders on plans to convert the prison into a community center and a disaster center.

He was whipsawed by the back-and-forth over the prisons.

"It's in, it's out, it's in, it's out," said Jones, a retired highway trooper.

The budget is now before the House, where Democratic Rep. Pryor Gibson, chairman of the House Finance Committee, represents the district where the Union County prison is located.

Gibson said the prison is some of the "lowest hanging fruit," making it a likely target for budget cutters. But he pledged to use all his power to save it.

"Aaron Plyler and I worked together for years to make sure it got back in [the budget]," Gibson said. "I'm tickled to death that the Senate put it back in."
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/v-print/story/1549236.html

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

May 29, 2009

AZ: Opponents Stop Federal Detention Center

SAN XAVIER DISTRICT NO LONGER CONSIDERING NOGALES HWY SITE FOR FEDERAL DETENTION CENTER
May 21, 2009
Tohono O’odham Nation and District Leaders Working Together to Identify Alternative Location

SELLS, AZ --- The San Xavier District of the Tohono O’odham Nation announced today that it is no longer seeking to construct a federal detention center on Nogales Highway, north of Pima Mine Road. The decision comes after an extensive public review process with both the Tohono O’odham Nation and surrounding communities.

The decision was finalized at a meeting that included San Xavier District representatives, the Tohono O’odham Legislative Council and Chairman Ned Norris, Jr. At the meeting, leaders voiced their support for identifying positive economic development opportunities in cooperation with regional planning efforts.

Chairman Ned Norris Jr. said, “The Nation strongly supports economic development and is committed to diversifying the Nation’s economy with projects that provide jobs and opportunities for Nation’s members and nonmembers alike. We are equally committed to pursuing economic development opportunities that compliment and expand the regional and southern Arizona economies.”

The San Xavier District and Tohono O’odham leaders are working together expeditiously to identify an alternative location for the proposed federal detention center. San Xavier District Chairman Austin Nunez said, “We appreciate the leadership role the Tohono O’odham Nation has taken in this process and its commitment to economic development in the San Xavier District. At a more suitable site, the federal detention center will bring hundreds of new jobs and millions of dollars in positive economic impacts to the area.”

The proposed federal detention center is designed for short-term detention of up to 750 individuals apprehended by the US Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other law enforcement agencies. The San Xavier District is one of eleven districts of the Tohono O’odham Nation, a federally-recognized sovereign tribe. Additional background information on the Tohono O’odham Nation can be found at http://www.tonation-nsn.gov/.

Posted by lois at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2009

CA: CCA to build prison for illegal immigrants in San Diego Co.

San Diego County approves immigrant prison
SAN DIEGO, May 26, 2009 (UPI) -- Local officials in the San Diego area have approved a private company's plans for a prison to house more than 2,000 illegal immigrants.

The 40-acre site on Otay Mesa is close to a San Diego County prison and to the San Diego Correctional Facility, which Corrections Corp. of America already operates under contract to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

CCA's plans call for 1,488 beds in the first phase of the new facility and 684 in the second, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday. The existing immigrant detention center holds 700 people. The county planning commission approved the plans last month, the newspaper said.

The existing CCA facility is on land with a lease that expires in 2015. The company has bought the site for the new prison.

"In order to retain federal inmate populations we currently manage in the San Diego Correctional Facility, we may be required to construct a new facility in the future," the company said in a report.

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2009/05/26/San-Diego-County-approves-immigrant-prison/UPI-30141243390315/

Posted by lois at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2009

More calls for California to shut down its youth prison system

More calls for California to shut down its youth prison system
By Karen de Sá
Mercury News
Posted: 05/25/2009

With California mired in near-catastrophic budget woes, a growing number of researchers are calling for the state to shut down its youth prison system, which they say has become too expensive, too mired in abusive practices, and too ineffective in enhancing public safety.

There are just six remaining prisons for the state's most serious juvenile offenders, and they house the lowest number of inmates ever recorded in modern history. That has left taxpayers in an era of deep cuts to education and social services footing a bill of a quarter-million dollars each year for each of the 1,600 youthful offenders now left in state custody.

In a report headed this week to legislators wrestling with a $21.3 billion budget shortfall, the San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice describes a way out: Shut down the state prison system for youthful offenders, and turn the population back to county probation departments that are sitting on empty beds in new and refurbished juvenile halls. The report echoes similar findings of the state's own Little Hoover Commission and Legislative Analyst's Office, which have also concluded that given adequate time and resources, counties could house even the most troubled juvenile offenders in far cheaper and more effective institutions.

"These wards are going to get out. They're coming back to every one of their communities," said Stuart Drown, executive director of the bipartisan Little Hoover Commission,
Advertisement
which advises the state on improving efficiency. "Why not get them the programs they need to stay out of jail and not go back? They're not getting that at the state."

Bernie Warner, head of California's Division of Juvenile Justice, argues there must always be a state system for the most serious, violent, gang-involved youth offenders, the majority of whom need specialized treatment for crimes as serious as murder and sexual assault.

"The counties do a great job in managing over 99 percent of all those in the juvenile justice system in California," Warner said, but "given who's left in the state system — the highest-risk, highest-need youth — I don't think it's in the best interest of public safety to have those youth in local detention facilities."

Burden to counties

Expanding on Warner's position, the president of the Chief Probation Officers of California says counties facing deep budget cuts simply cannot assume more responsibility. "This is probably one of those things where the state needs to stay in the business of corrections," said Don Meyer, Yolo County's probation chief. "There isn't any other place for them."

Yet in a report released late last year, the Little Hoover Commission advised the state to get out of the juvenile justice business by 2011, stating: "It is untenable to continue to invest money into a system that has failed for many years." The commission advised that Californians deserve an accounting for a poor investment by the state, given that 74 percent of youth offenders leaving the state system end up back in trouble with the law. The problems don't end there: The state also has done little to meet the requirements of a 4-year-old court order to improve conditions, according to an Alameda County Superior Court judge monitoring the case.

Now, Dan Macallair of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, has issued a report going one step further.

Using figures from the state's Corrections Standards Authority, his report states there are a sufficient number of beds in California's 58 county-based juvenile justice systems to absorb the entire state population of 1,637, "and still have nearly 600 empty beds remaining."

Even given the additional costs of creating treatment units within juvenile halls that are traditionally simply holding pens, the report says a shift to counties could result in significant savings: Counties spend about $25,000 a year on youth offenders — 10 times less than the state spends.

Counties up and down the state — including Santa Clara County — expanded their juvenile hall capacity in recent years following a mini-building boom. Now many of these facilities, including state-of-the-art high-security juvenile halls, remain partially empty. Santa Clara County has 390 beds in its juvenile hall, with a current population of about 300. Macallair's report identifies the county as one of the least-reliant on state institutions; there are now just 33 county youths in state custody, down from 328 in 2000.

Santa Clara County Probation Chief Sheila Mitchell said her department has worked hard to keep kids out of state prisons. She would not comment on the recommendation to shut down the state system, other than noting that the county's newly expanded juvenile hall — designed as a short-term detention facility — would be ill-suited for those serving years-long sentences and requiring intensive treatment.

Rehabilitation

Reformers say using surplus county beds for juvenile offenders in state custody would improve the prospects of rehabilitation, a notion many parents echo. Sharon James, a Merced transit worker, said she can only visit her 18-year-old son in a Central Valley prison twice a month, which has caused his condition — in a massive institution mired in violence — to worsen.

"I can look at him and see that he's given up on himself," James said of her son, charged with a robbery and fighting while on probation. The teen landed in a Stockton youth prison with the credits of a high school senior, but after almost two years in custody has not graduated.

"If he were closer, I could visit him every day, or as often as visits are allowed," James said. "I just don't want him to come home totally broken down — that's my biggest concern."
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12431880

Posted by lois at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)

Budget crisis could curtail Oregon's prison boom

Budget crisis could curtail Oregon's prison boom
by Susan Goldsmith, The Oregonian
Monday May 25, 2009, 9:20 PM

With nearly 14,000 people locked up in state prisons and another 35,000 under supervision from the Department of Corrections, criminal justice has been one of Oregon's most recession-proof industries.

The department's budget has grown at a 20 percent clip each biennium since 1995, and every household in the state pays $1,414 every two years to fund corrections.

But with a $4 billion state budget shortfall, legislators have tough choices to make about crime and punishment. If any real reform is to be made, however, it must pass one giant hurdle: Voter-passed initiatives.

In 1994, the public approved a measure that mandated much longer sentences for 16 crimes. That in turn drove the number of inmates in the state much higher, while keeping them there longer.

Lawmakers face either overhauling the criminal justice system or continuing down the same path, watching corrections eat up more and more revenue.

While the state's prison population has grown to nearly 14,000 people, crime has plummeted in every category. Criminal justice advocates say Oregon's model is a success, but researchers and data from here and across the nation show something different: Only a small percentage of the drop in crime can be attributed to more prisons and longer sentences.

In Salem these days, the criminal justice debates under way are philosophical: Should the state simply let large numbers of inmates walk free to balance the budget in the short term or retool the way Oregon manages corrections?

Some legislators and even the head of the Department of Corrections, a former Republican legislator, are quietly pushing for a new approach to criminal justice -- one that allows for a range of sanctions for lawbreakers so fewer people end up in prison.

"This is a structural nightmare. This is the box the Legislature is in," said Max Williams, director of Oregon's Department of Corrections. "If we can't change the size of the box, we are going to be stuck."
Ballot-box mandates

When Oregon voters handcuffed the Legislature in 1994 with Measure 11, they imposed long mandatory prison terms for 16 violent and sex-related offenses, required juveniles be prosecuted as adults for those crimes, and prohibited any earned time credit for anyone who received a Measure 11 sentence. At the same time, voters changed the state constitution to prevent lawmakers from tampering with sentences.

Then last fall, voters approved Measure 57, which mandated longer sentences for repeat property thieves and is expected to cost the state another $74 million in the next two years alone.

"We've got to do something to slow the growth of corrections in the short term and long term," said Rep. Chip Shields, D-Portland. "There is a tendency to want to be tough on crime no matter what. I think it takes courage to be more critical about what works and what doesn't in our corrections system."

Oregon is not alone in facing skyrocketing corrections costs. A March report from The Pew Charitable Trusts found that one in 31 people in the United States is in prison or jail, or on probation or parole.

In the past two decades, Pew found that the nation's correctional spending rose by 300 percent, outpacing every other government service from education to transportation. As correctional spending soared, crime rates fell to historic lows, even in states that put far fewer people behind bars, like New York. In Oregon, violent crime has plummeted 45 percent since 1996.

But criminal justice data show that get-tough-on-crime policies, like Oregon's Measure 11, account for a small percentage of the crime decrease across the nation. Here, the state's Criminal Justice Commission credits 13 percent of the 45 percent decrease in violent crime since 1996 to Measure 11.

Explaining the dramatic declines in crime rates is complex. No one is certain exactly why crime has fallen so low, but think tanks, researchers and Oregon's Criminal Justice Commission point to numerous factors, including demographic shifts, more people behind bars, improved economic conditions throughout the 1990s, and changing illegal drug manufacturing.

But Oregon district attorneys and crime victim advocates say the state's criminal justice template should be celebrated, not eviscerated by legislators.

"To undo two decades of success in the face of a budget crisis is ill-advised and will make Oregon a more dangerous place," said Kevin Neely, spokesman for the Oregon District Attorneys Association. "Oregonians have worked hard to craft a responsible sentencing scheme that offers alternatives to incarceration for less violent offenders and incapacitates our most dangerous criminals."
Experiment in Texas

But data from other states, like New York, make for a much more complicated picture. There, crime fell 51 percent between 1995 and 2007, and people were let out of prison in record numbers. Williams, the Oregon corrections chief, wants the discussion to be data-driven and believes a Texas correctional experiment has important lessons for Oregon.

Two years ago, according to the Council of State Governments, the Texas Legislature faced a dilemma: spend half a billion dollars building and operating state prisons, or rethink criminal justice.

A bipartisan group of legislators conducted a detailed analysis of criminal justice spending and spent half the funds earmarked for prison construction on a range of strategies. They included expanding drug treatment and mental health services for those in and out of prisons, along with the creation of intermediate sanctions, facilities, and programs for offenders under correctional supervision who were at risk of returning to prison.

According to the Council of State Governments, this radical reworking yielded stunning results. In one year, the Texas prison population increased by 529 people instead of the 5,141 who would have been incarcerated had the new policies not been implemented.

Shields, the Portland legislator, has proposed a number of criminal justice reforms, several of which legislators have, so far, refused to back. He'd like to see his colleagues delay implementation of Measure 57 and take on Measure 11 sentencing so that offenders could be eligible to shave some time off their sentences through earned time credit.

He also supports a bill to allow a judicial review of juvenile sentences under Measure 11 to determine if the offender could be moved from incarceration to community supervision without impact on public safety.

Crime Victims United and the Oregon District Attorneys Association oppose both options.

Neely's group and Crime Victims United have proposed a one-time release of nonviolent, low- and medium-risk offenders who were not sentenced under Measure 11 and are within six months of completing their sentence. They say this proposal will save the state between $78 million and $99 million during the next two years.

David Rogers, executive director of the nonprofit group Partnership for Safety and Justice, would like legislators to look at what other states have done to reduce prison costs. "States all over the country have woken up and found they are dumping way too much money into incarceration, and it's the most expensive and least effective way of maintaining public safety."

Oregon's revised budget numbers, released late last week, require the Department of Corrections to reduce spending by $77.8 million in the next two years -- a 9.3 percent cut.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Michael Marcus hopes the grim budget picture will prompt legislators to engage in a much more vigorous analysis of sentencing decisions.

"We should find out what's working and require that we drive our decisions that way," said Marcus, who has studied sentencing in Oregon for decades. "We use prisons the way addicts use drugs. The more prisons you build, the more you need."
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/05/budget_crisis_could_curtail_or.html

Posted by lois at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2009

Bid to divert California prisoners to county jails denounced

From the Los Angeles Times
Bid to divert California prisoners to county jails denounced
Local officials say they don't have the room or the funding to house the low-level felons that the governor wants to send them.
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Richard Winton

May 23, 2009

Local officials have vowed to fight a proposal by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to shave $1 billion from the state budget by shifting 23,000 state prisoners to overcrowded local jails during the next three years.

"This presents a serious danger to public safety," said Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley. "We are putting in jeopardy gains that have resulted in crime plunging in L.A. to its lowest level in 50 years."

The state's 33 prisons house about 155,000 inmates and are under a federal court order to relieve overcrowding. If state officials do not address the problem soon, a panel of three federal judges could set a cap on new prisoners and order thousands released.

"We are having to look at all options to reduce our population and avoid a cap or an inmate release order," said Seth Unger, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "We have in many ways cut to the bone."

The governor wants to slow the stream of offenders being sent to prison by changing state sentencing guidelines so those who commit low-level felonies such as fraud or grand theft, known as "wobblers," would be prosecuted for misdemeanors and sentenced to jail instead.

Facing a possible $24-billion state budget deficit, the governor's office estimates that changing the sentencing laws could save $99.9 million in the next fiscal year, $360 million the following year and $566 million the third year, said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the Department of Finance.

"The goal is to have flexibility in the sentencing but to keep the hardest offenders behind bars," Palmer said.

Before the proposal could take effect, state legislators would have to approve sweeping changes to the penal code, which some local officials hope is unlikely given the current gridlock in Sacramento. Lawmakers have, however, agreed to stem the flow of inmates to state prisons in recent years by prohibiting any legislation that would convert misdemeanor crimes into felonies.

Members of the governor's staff have been preparing legislation to support the proposal that they plan to present to legislative leaders during budget negotiations in coming days, Palmer said.

Local officials said much of the cost saved by the state would be passed on to them.

"It's another example of the state taking their problems and pushing it down to the local level even though all of us have equal economic problems," said William T Fujioka, Los Angeles County's chief executive.

The governor's plan would force counties to house the equivalent of the populations of four state prisons, including about 12,000 drug offenders.

Los Angeles County has about 19,000 inmates in its seven jails and is among 20 California counties that face court orders to relieve jail overcrowding.

The governor's office had not released estimates this week of how many prisoners would be sent to L.A. County under the plan, but local officials estimate that the number would be at least several thousand in the first year alone. In the last fiscal year, the county sent about 4,500 "wobbler" offenders to state prison, more than half for property crimes such as vehicle theft or receiving stolen property, according to county court records.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca met with state Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate last week to discuss the governor's proposal, which Baca said would force him to release inmates early to make room for the influx.

Los Angeles County Chief Probation Officer Robert Taylor said the plan, which he called unrealistic, would also strain the county's underfunded system for supervising probationers.

Civil rights advocates who have pushed to improve conditions at local jails said the proposal would worsen inmates' plight.

"Local jail overcrowding is already an unconstitutional epidemic in California," said Melinda Bird, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Many of the state's most powerful law enforcement groups have vowed to fight the plan. They include the Chief Probation Officers of California and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents L.A. police.

Paul Weber, the union's president, said many "wobbler" offenders are dangerous criminals who belong in prison, not jail. "The label 'low level' for offenders is often misleading," Weber said. "A great number of criminals currently designated low-level have serious criminal records or have plea-bargained to avoid more serious arrest charges."

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky agreed, saying the plan could overwhelm jail and probation systems statewide.

"To have this extent of an infusion of state prisoners to a system that can't handle them capacity-wise or management-wise would be really problematic, not just for L.A. but for San Francisco, Yolo, Mono" counties, Yaroslavsky said. "County jails are not state prisons."

Don Meyer, probation chief in Yolo County and president of the statewide council, said that for smaller counties, the governor's proposal amounts to an untenable budget cut.

Yolo County is considering closing one of its two jails, Meyer said, and won't have anywhere to put state prisoners.

The governor also proposed several other cost-cutting measures for state prisons last week after statewide ballot measures failed and the budget gap widened. Those include transferring 19,000 illegal immigrants to federal custody and releasing 26,000 nonviolent offenders 20 months early.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jails23-2009may23,0,5415230.story

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

May 19, 2009

MI: Several More Prisons to Close & More Parole

Monday, May 18, 2009
Michigan inmates fall to seven-year low
Charlie Cain / Detroit News Lansing Bureau

Lansing -- Michigan's prison population is at a seven-year low and for the first time a limited number of maximum security prisoners are being double-bunked as a way to save money.

The state has 47,706 inmates, down more than 7 percent from the record population of 51,454 in December 2006.

Corrections officials say they are on track to reduce the population to 44,000 by Oct. 1. That should allow the state to close several prisons besides the two prisons and one prison camp that have ceased operations this year.

With tax collections tanking, Gov. Jennifer Granholm and state lawmakers are eager to trim prison costs, which at $2 billion annually account for about one-fifth of all general fund spending.

The governor's budget plan for the upcoming fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1 calls for a $120 million cut in prison spending.

"We have been paroling inmates at a rapid rate and the prison intake is down as well," said Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Corrections Department.

He said it looks like 1,070 people will be paroled from prison during May -- up 30 percent from last year.

Granholm beefed up the size of the parole board this year to speed up the release of non-violent inmates who have served longer than their minimum term.

There are 1,400 empty beds in state prisons that were once filled to capacity.

Last week, corrections officials closed three housing units at two Upper Peninsula facilities to save $1.3 million by Oct. 1.

The 184 inmates at two closed units at Alger Maximum Correctional Facility in Munising were shipped to other state prisons.

Another unit with 103 inmates was closed at Marquette Branch Prison in Marquette. More than 60 inmates were transferred, while 50 were moved to other units at the facility to share cells with other inmates, a first for the state.

"We won't double-bunk maximum security inmates who will be a danger to other inmates or corrections officers," Marlan said.

But Mel Grieshaber, executive director of the Michigan Corrections Organization, which represents 8,500 prison officers, said he fears the move will endanger inmates and guards.

"We totally oppose double-bunking maximum security inmates because it compounds an already dangerous situation," he said.

"They are bad guys, the real worst of the worst. When trouble starts in places like that, it spreads very quickly.

"This just increases the danger of the situation out there."

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090518/METRO/905180331/1409/METRO/Michigan-inmates-fall-to-seven-year-low

Posted by lois at 06:47 PM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2009

AZ: Community activists, immigrant-rights advocates, tribal critics and local elected officials don't want to see a federal detention center

Tucson Region
Prison plan opposition grows
County's help sought to fight US facility slated for O'odham land near Sahuarita
By Erica Meltzer
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 05.18.2009

Community activists, immigrant-rights advocates, tribal critics and local elected officials don't want to see a federal detention center built near Pima Mine Road on the San Xavier District of the Tohono O'odham Nation.

Opponents, including residents of Rancho Sahuarita and the Rev. Robin Hoover of Humane Borders, asked the Pima County Board of Supervisors last week for the county's help in stopping the prison's construction.

The county's power lies only in raising questions and asking the federal government to require more study of the impact before signing off on the project. The county has no direct jurisdiction over projects built on sovereign Indian territory.

Pima County Supervisors Ramón Valadez and Sharon Bronson joined County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry in sending a letter Friday to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They raised numerous concerns about the project, including impacts on regional flooding, archaeological resources near the Santa Cruz River, traffic and conservation efforts.

The comments are in response to an environmental assessment prepared for the project that critics say ignores effects the prison would have outside the reservation.

The county asked that the federal government require an environmental-impact statement, which is a much more thorough study.
Many residents of neighboring Sahuarita say the assessment treats the project as if its impact stopped at the San Xavier District boundaries. The assessment does not address the schools, homes and parks in Rancho Sahuarita, less than a mile away.
"While they may be a quasi-sovereign nation, they do not exist in a vacuum," Rancho Sahuarita resident Linda Cooper said.
District Chairman Austin Nuñez said anyone who lives near the Tohono O'odham land should have known there was the potential for development there. He said the request for input from other communities is "more a courtesy than anything else."

"We feel the project is being considerate of the neighbors in terms of light pollution, in terms of noise pollution," he said. "We moved it further north of Pima Mine Road. It's a single story and should not be visible. The security will be maximum, even though it's a medium-security facility."

The district is hoping to build a 750-bed, 140,000-square-foot prison on 48 acres just east of the Santa Cruz River and about 4,000 feet north of Pima Mine Road. The prison would create around 300 jobs, and the district would be paid a percentage of the bed fee.

Pima Mine Road is the boundary between Sahuarita and the San Xavier District, one of 11 districts within the Tohono O'odham Nation. It's also the northern boundary of Sahuarita's largest population center, the 4,200-home Rancho Sahuarita master-planned community.
"On a personal level, I just think it's going to change a lot of people's lifestyles," said Julia Whetten, a Rancho Sahuarita resident. "We came here looking for safety and wanting to raise our children with the values we grew up with. To have something that's so close that is a reminder of the evils of the world is just not what I want for my children."
And Rancho Sahuarita residents aren't the only ones opposing the project.

Former Tohono O'odham Tribal Council member David Garcia, who is not a member of the San Xavier District, said the U.S. Border Patrol detention centers that have been built on the reservation should raise questions about the project, including what sort of liability the tribe and the district would face if prisoners were to file lawsuits over their treatment at the planned facility. He said hearings on the proposal are needed.

Hoover told the Board of Supervisors he is concerned that the prison will not meet state and federal standards for treatment of detainees because there is not the same accountability on tribal land.
Nuñez said the facility will meet the highest standards.

Valadez said he believes new prisons should be built in the same area as the existing state and federal prisons on South Wilmot Road, where residents knew what they were getting when they bought houses there.
Bronson said she has serious concerns about possible flooding from the reservation site.

Officials from the Bureau of Indian Affairs could not be reached Friday to talk about whether they would require the San Xavier District to do more to address community concerns.
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/293306

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

May 11, 2009

MI: Robert Scott Women's Prison to Close

Women's prison to close Sunday to save state money

BY CECIL ANGEL • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • May 10, 2009

The Robert Scott Correctional Facility, a women's prison in Northville Township, is to close May 17 as part of the state's cost-savings measures, meaning dozens of jobs will leave the township.

But the closure also could mean a boost in property taxes for the township after the land is sold and owned privately.

Township officials say they would like to be included in meetings about the future of the prison, which will be turned over to the real estate division of the state Office of Management and Budget.

For now, the township collects only $10,000 annually from the state in lieu of taxes to provide fire protection for the prison and the 1-square-mile Maybury Park, the other state-owned property in the township, Northville Township Manager Chip Snider said.

The 35-acre prison property is well-placed near freeways. The township's appraiser said that if the area was zoned commercial, real estate could go for about $150,000 an acre, and if it is zoned residential, it would be priced at $50,000 an acre.

By the end of the month, the facility will be mothballed and the last of the staff reassigned to other prisons, said Russ Marlan, spokesman for the Department of Corrections. The 880 inmates are being moved to the former Huron Valley Complex-Men in Ypsilanti, and will be out of the facility by May 17.

"It's on schedule," Marlan said.

Snider said he expects calls from people interested in buying the property, which is in the Beck Road and 5 Mile area.

The former 414-acre Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital closed in July 2003 and was sold for $31.5 million to Real Estate Interests Group Inc. Northville in 2005. The township is in talks to buy 332 acres.

Township officials have no specific zoning plans for the prison site but Snider says it's likely that it will be zoned commercial.
http://www.freep.com/article/20090510/NEWS02/905100536/1004/NEWS02/Women+s+prison+to+close+Sunday+to+save+state+money+

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

Florida prison becomes faith-based penitentiary

Florida prison becomes faith-based penitentiary

By Lois K. Solomon | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
May 11, 2009

Belle Glade - Glades Correctional Institution's 1,390 inmates have faith.

State prison officials hope to tap into that faith to boost morale, improve prisoner rehabilitation and minimize the immense boredom of life behind bars.

On Tuesday, the Palm Beach County prison becomes South Florida's first faith- and character-based penitentiary.

"Guys need programs and other things to do instead of running around in the rec yard all day," said Jerry Gary, 44, a Pompano Beach man serving a life sentence for first-degree murder and sexual battery.

Florida is the only state with prisons focused exclusively on faith and character. The program started at Lawtey Correctional Institution in 2003. It expanded to Hillsborough Correctional Institutional in 2004 and Wakulla Correctional Institution in 2006. Twenty-one states have or are developing faith dormitories, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Kathy Conner said.

Corrections officials say they expect the expansion of the program to Glades will help lower the rate at which prisoners return to prison. According to the state, 32.8 percent of released inmates return to prison within three years. Florida's rate is better than the national rate of 50 percent to 66 percent, depending on the study.

At Florida's other faith- and character-based institutions, the rate of return is even lower: 10 percent or below, according to preliminary state statistics. However, "the data is not mature enough to make any conclusions at this time," according to the Department of Corrections Web site.

Prison staff members and inmates say they are thrilled by the coming changes, but some criminologists and church and state observers are hesitant. They say states across the country are investing in faith-based prisons even though they have not proved to be more effective.

"It's a topic that's getting increasingly more attention, but there isn't much research to support them," said Daniel Mears, a Florida State University criminology professor. "The programs are likely to have better outcomes because any prisoner who is volunteering is likely willing to do the work …"

Glades inmates were given the choice of participating in the nondenominational program or being moved to another prison. Those accepted had to have good disciplinary records and promise to attend their programs, which include meetings and counseling, at least once a week after work.

About 10,000 of the state's nearly 98,000 prisoners are on waiting lists for the faith- and character-based prisons and seven faith-based and self-improvement dorms in traditional prisons.

The Florida programs depend on volunteers and there is no cost to the state. State employees are not allowed to teach the faith programs, a rule intended to guard against religious coercion by the government, Glades Warden Robert Shannon said.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State is closely watching the growth of Florida's faith-based prisons, an attorney for the organization said. It successfully sued the state of Iowa for allowing Prison Fellowship Ministries to supervise a prisoner unit; the suit also alleged discrimination against inmates who did not subscribe to its evangelical theology.

"When prisons start linking where inmates live to religious programs, that's where serious constitutional issues arise," said Alex Luchenitser, an Americans United attorney. "The question is, 'Are inmates being given incentives to enroll in a prison with a religious environment?'"

James Wilson attended a Christian fellowship meeting last week at Glades and gave the program a thumbs up. Wilson, 43, is scheduled for release in November after a 2006 conviction for lewd behavior and indecent assault on a child.

"I thought it would be a good idea for the betterment of guys going back into society," he said.

Rabbi Menachem Katz, director of prison outreach for the Surfside-based Aleph Institute, said he hopes the transformation leads to improvements for Glades' Jewish prisoners. Katz and volunteers visit and send gifts to about 15 Glades inmates. He said he hopes the new program makes the staff more amenable to allowing Jews to have Sabbath services Friday evenings instead of afternoons. Prison officials restrict gatherings among some inmates after dark.

"Now that there is a faith-based prison in South Florida, we hope we can get more rabbis and Jewish volunteers to visit Jewish inmates," Katz said.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/corrections/sfl-glades-correctional-faith-p0.ar0pnmay11,0,3144790.story

Posted by lois at 10:56 PM | Comments (0)

IA: New Maximum Security Prison--A new vision" ?

Penitentiary will express Iowa's vision for its prisons
ROX LAIRD May 10, 2009
Des Moines Register

One of Iowa's largest building projects was authorized with a single sentence in a legislative spending bill last year: "For the costs associated with the building of a new Iowa State Penitentiary at Fort Madison: $130,677,500."

The details of what that new penitentiary should look like were left up to the people who run Iowa's prisons. That may not be unusual for major state projects, but this is not an ordinary building.

This project could have a major role in shaping state prison policy and the lives of inmates for generations to come. Iowa has built only one fully maximum-security prison in the past 170 years. Given how long this institution has lasted, it is important that Iowa get it right in designing a replacement. Done right, it could be a model for other Iowa prisons.

The Iowa State Penitentiary is no ordinary prison. Unlike the eight other prisons with minimum- and medium-security levels, The Fort is an exclusively maximum-security facility. It houses the toughest cases, men with records of violence who are difficult to manage and pose the greatest escape risk. These inmates - a fourth of whom have serious mental-health issues - require intensive supervision. Some are serving very long sentences. Some who are serving life sentences will die there.

This prison should be designed, equipped and staffed in a way that provides a humane, secure and safe environment for all inmates and staff, of course. But it also should provide the proper environment and opportunities for those criminal convicts who will return to society to benefit from their time spent in the institution.

Thus, designing a new penitentiary is a rare opportunity to work from a clean slate and to create a maximum-security prison that could allow for fundamental changes in how inmates are housed, managed and presumably reformed.

The planning process is now under way. Fifteen teams of state prison workers and corrections officials are meeting with national corrections consultants and architectural firms. Those discussions will result in a written "program," which will describe how the facility will be used, from guard-prisoner interaction to how meals will be served. This is the most important part of the process because the program details will dictate the physical design and ultimately how the prison functions.

Old prison is inefficient, has been very dangerous

Whatever form the new penitentiary takes, it will be dramatically different from the current prison, which has occupied the same site on the west bank of the Mississippi River since 1839, seven years before Iowa became a state. Though the penitentiary has been expanded, renovated and modernized many times over the past century and three quarters, the original building - Cell House 17 - is still standing, though it no longer is used to house inmates.

Photographs from the turn of the century show inmates in long rows of barred cells, which are little changed from the cells used today. The stacked cell "ranges" - up to four levels of stone-walled boxes of roughly 50 square feet, with barred doors enclosing the open end - make management difficult, because guards cannot monitor inmates inside their cells without physically making rounds. Inmates move throughout the prison complex for all activities, whether it be for meals, classes, exercise in the yard or work details. This is not only staff-intensive, but dangerous.

At one point, in the 1970s and 1980s, there was some question whether the institution was run by inmate gangs or the guards. A riot in 1981 left one inmate dead and caused $1 million in damage, and the prison was put under federal court supervision for several years after a court ruling that conditions were "cruel and unusual."

Another wake-up call came in 1997, when a federal court ordered the state to provide better care for seriously mentally ill inmates confined to what was known as the "bug range," for the howling and banging inmates who threw feces and urine out their cell doors.

Although conditions have improved dramatically, two prisoners managed to escape four years ago by slipping away from a work detail and, taking advantage of a vacant guard tower, made their way over the wall. They were eventually apprehended, but the incident nonetheless shocked state leaders. The warden was replaced, and several major structural and procedural changes were made.
Design will determine how guards, prisoners interact

The impetus for replacing the penitentiary altogether came from a 2007 consultant's study of the state's overall correctional system, which also led to creation of a new system of classification that more precisely identified how many inmates belong in the maximum-security institution. Besides needing a huge investment in structural and mechanical improvements, the consultant concluded that a new prison would be far more secure and efficient to operate. State corrections officials have picked a site just north of the existing penitentiary near two prison farms operated by the institution.

There is much more to planning a new prison than arranging cells and guard towers, of course. Inside the walls of the Fort Madison prison is a Prison Industries plant, where inmates make and refinish furniture, a hobby-crafts shop and a small factory where cabinets and modular components are made for Habitat for Humanity home-building organizations in Iowa. There are classrooms for earning GED diplomas, space for treatment of drug and alcohol abusers and sex offenders, a library, a gymnasium and an outdoor exercise yard with baseball diamonds, tennis courts and weight-training equipment.

Those facilities are integral to the lives and rehabilitation of inmates. Just how they will be duplicated in the new prison is critical.

Also critical is a decision about how the inmates will be housed and managed by guards. State corrections officials envision a "pod" design, in which cells are clustered around common areas, where all meals are served and classes held without having to move inmates from place to place. This allows guards to directly interact with inmates and to see into all cells.

Beyond general concepts, prison officials are working on precise details of how the new prison should operate. Ultimately, these decisions will dictate not just how the prison is designed but how it functions, and more important, how it works for the lives of inmates.

There are many factors that dictate how effective prison will be for inmates, and the condition and operation of prisons is one important factor. Just as design of any building is an expression of the builder's vision, a new prison will be an expression of the state of Iowa for what it hopes to accomplish with the new penitentiary.
___
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090510/OPINION03/905100317/-1/OPI NION05&hl=en%3E

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

May 10, 2009

OH: Plans for prison labor at Capitol on hold

Plans for prison labor at Capitol on hold
Saturday, May 9, 2009 3:04 AM
By Alan Johnson
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Concerns from lawmakers and union leaders have prompted the Strickland administration to temporarily halt a plan to have prisoners do maintenance and grounds work at the Statehouse.

Andrea Carson, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said prisons Director Terry J. Collins "wants to slow down the process a bit."

The plan was for minimum-security, nonviolent inmates from the Pickaway Correctional Institution in Orient, Ohio, to work cleaning the Statehouse at night and doing outside work on the grounds during the day. Officials with the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board, the agency that oversees the Statehouse and grounds, were in discussion with the prison agency.

"We never had a date. We were just in the talking stages," Carson said. "We don't have a timetable."

The Capitol Square leaders saw prison labor as a chance to fill a gap cause by budget-driven cutbacks that reduced the workforce from 71 to 52, most of them members of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, the largest labor union representing state workers.

After the Capitol Square board approved the arrangement, complaints rolled in from union leaders and some lawmakers, including members of the Senate Finance & Financial Institutions Committee which is considering the agency's request to boost its budget by $300,000 over two years.

As a result, Collins ordered a reassessment, Carson said.

"We still think it's a good idea. The prisoners will be carefully screen. We feel safe with the inmates that we send outside the fence."

Minimum-security inmates frequently work at community-service projects across the state, including gardening at the Governor's Residence in Bexley.

http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/05/09/STATEHOUSE_INMATES.ART_ART_05-09-09_B2_16DQEF5.html?sid=101

Posted by lois at 02:20 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2009

VT: Legislature using budget bill to keep St Johnsbury prison for the jobs

Legislature using budget bill to save St Johnsbury prison
Fri May 8 2009

The Legislature has included in the state budget language intended to keep open the prison in St Johnsbury. Among the Douglas Administration's budget reduction proposals was closing the Northeast Regional Correctional Facility and laying off most of the employees. The inmates likely would be sent to prisons out of state. It costs the state less to pay another state to house inmates than to incarcerate them in Vermont. The House and Senate Appropriations Conference Committee included language that would require the governor to get legislative approval before he could close the prison.

“The prison in St Johnsbury is a vital part of our economy in the Northeast Kingdom, which is why I worked closely with the conference committee to make sure this language was included in the budget,” said Representative Robert South, D-St. Johnsbury. “Our region is one of the hardest hit by the current economic crisis and it’s critical the state do everything it can to keep Vermonters working, our businesses open and our communities vibrant.”

The budget language stipulates that the Douglas Administration cannot close or significantly reduce operations at the St Johnsbury facility without approval from both the legislative Joint Corrections Oversight Committee and the Joint Fiscal Committee.

“The Northeast Kingdom has among the highest unemployment rates in the state already,” said Representative Lucy Leriche, D-Hardwick.

“With so many families in the region relying on jobs at the prison and so many local businesses counting on the facilities positive impact on our local economies, I am happy to follow Rep. South’s lead fighting for these jobs.”

The House is expected to take the final vote on the budget on Saturday.
http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/may/legislature-using-budget-bill-save-st-johnsbury-prison

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

May 06, 2009

CA: Yolo City Supervisors Vote No On Rural "Re-Entry" Prison

Doors closed on county rural prison idea
By CRYSTAL LEE
Created: 05/06/2009

The Yolo County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to kill construction of a proposed rural state re-entry prison.

Supervisors decided that with a looming $24 million budget deficit and limited staff resources, continuing to pursue the re-entry prison is no longer worth the time and effort.

It was a different story last September, when supervisors offered the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation a site in the small community of Madison, against the angry protests of rural residents.

In the deal, Yolo County was eligible for $30 million for an expansion of its overcrowded jail in Woodland. The funding was part a statewide prison reform effort, signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in May 2007.

Now with the state struggling with financial problems of its own, the availability of the funding is increasingly dubious.

State Corrections officials told county staff that the Madison site could require infrastructure improvements that the county would have to fund.

Add to that, state Corrections staff were frustrating to work with, said Supervisor Helen Thomson, who supports the policy behind re-entry prisons. The facilities are intended to rehabilitate inmates in their final year of imprisonment by offering counseling and job skills opportunities.

"The policy is the right policy," Thomson said, "and it's not going to happen for a very long time in California."

The state Corrections Office seems "unable to cope with any kind
of progressive program or any kind of funding issue," Thomson said.

Supervisor Matt Rexroad agreed with Thomson that the idea behind the project was a good one, but the process for its execution is too difficult.

"I don't think we need to chase our tails anymore ... but it's too bad," Rexroad said.

Yet members of "Save Rural Yolo County," the grassroots organization protesting the re-entry prison, could not contain their joy at hearing their battle was won.

They exited the meeting chambers whooping and clapping.

Carla Phillips, the group's leading organizer, said she was not entirely surprised to see the project fail in the end. She said the Board of Supervisors tried to force the issue when the Madison site never met the specifications required by Corrections staff, which included existing urban infrastructure and community support for the project.

"If you're going to make it successful, set it up for success," Phillips said. "Don't set it up for failure."

Phillips said she would have supported a re-entry prison only if it were privately run and served Yolo County residents exclusively.
http://www.dailydemocrat.com/news/ci_12306066

Posted by lois at 05:13 PM | Comments (0)

April 30, 2009

The Montana Town That Wanted to Be Gitmo

The Montana Town That Wanted to Be Gitmo
By PAT DAWSON
Hardin Thu Apr 30, 2009
The coils of razor wire glint in the prairie sun like silver tumbleweeds piled against the tall chain-link perimeter fences of the forlorn Two Rivers Detention Facility in Hardin, Montana. Two years ago, the town (pop. 3,600) celebrated the completion of the state-of-the-art private jail capable of holding 464 inmates. Convinced that it would provide steady employment for over 100 locals, as well as accompanying economic benefits, the residents financed it through the sale of revenue bonds and turned it over to a for-profit prison-management corporation. On a 40-acre field at the edge of town where pronghorn antelope once grazed, they built it. But nobody came.

Hardin tried to recover. It sued the state for supposed mixed messages of encouragement - even though Montana prohibits the incarceration of prisoners convicted out of state. But though Hardin won the case, Two Rivers stayed empty and the $27 million of bonds went into default a year ago.

And then, a new source of hope appeared. A campaign pledge from President Barrack Obama to close the U.S. facility holding suspected terrorists at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, became an executive order. Quickly, the jail's backers made a new pitch. Why not house those 240 detainees at Two Rivers? Hardin's City Council two weeks ago passed a resolution to entice the detainees their way, saying they could provide "a safe and secure environment, pending trial and/or deportation." Hardin naturally assumed their federal politicians would lobby their cause.

Well, once again, Hardin's heart was broken. Reaction from Montana's three-man Congressional delegation was swift and unanimous, but hardly supportive. "I understand the need to create jobs, but we're not going to bring al-Qaeda to Big Sky Country - no way, not on my watch," said Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat.

Many local taxpayers are livid at Hardin officials. "It's been a complete fiasco since the beginning, and I don't see how they built it without any solid contracts," says Mike Carpata, a forester with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as he shopped for reloading supplies at Lammer's Trading Post, where locals and members of the Crow Tribe come to buy guns and ammo, beading supplies, or to sell for quick cash their saddles, buffalo robes and beaded-buckskin ceremonial costumes. But others remain supportive of the jail project - and the enterprise of the town's administrators. The store's fourth-generation owner, George Lammers, noting the drastic difference between subtropical, humid Gitmo and dry, wintry Hardin, says, "This place would be torture for some of those boys." But, he allows, "I think it would be great for all the law enforcement people to be here. It would help our housing market. Our city fathers wanted the economic benefits, but I guess they didn't foresee the political controversies."

For months, correction officers Glyn and Rae Perkins, husband and wife, were the only employees at the 96,000 sq. ft. Two Rivers facility. They were laid off on Jan. 23. "Those of us who were involved had such high hopes," she says. "The state blocked us at every stage. It could've been such a good thing. I sit here now, watching businesses close and people wondering if they'll lose their houses. It's sad. But the idea of housing Gitmo prisoners here just floors me. It would be scary."

It is easy to understand the economic appeal of the project, as the county's unemployment rate hovers around 10% and Hardin's central business district has seen much better days. On a Saturday morning, two 30ish sisters who had been up all night partying, wobbled along the sidewalk then slouched in the sun against one of many vacant storefronts lining Center Avenue. They said they needed a ride out of town and were afraid they might be picked up by the police and jailed, but then laughed with some relief when reminded that the closest lock-up, the Big Horn County Jail, was now so overcrowded that it was turning away misdemeanor offenders.

Posted by lois at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)

NV: Senators Vote to Reverse Governor's Recommendation to Close NSP

Nevada Lawmakers order state prison to remain open
By Geoff Dornan
Lake Tahoe Bonanza News Service

CARSON CITY, Nev. — Lawmakers Tuesday voted to reverse the governor’s budget recommendation and keep Nevada State Prison open for the next two years.

That decision and others made by the joint Senate Finance/Assembly Ways and Means subcommittee put a near $30 million hole in the Department of Corrections budget — a hole Director Howard Skolnik said they will need to fill somehow. He has warned repeatedly his department’s budgets can’t be cut any further in other areas without jeopardizing the safety of inmates and his staff.

Closure of NSP would actually have saved the department more than $33 million over the biennium.

Lawmakers also voted against Gov. Jim Gibbons’ recommended closure of the Tonopah Conservation Camp, which will add $1.98 million to the hole.

In addition, they voted to delete $5.47 million each year the governor’s budget had included as revenue form leasing Southern Nevada Correctional Center to the federal immigration service.

The panel chaired by Sen. Joyce Woodhouse, D-Las Vegas, offset part of the cost by reducing the budget $4.4 million to reflect new, lower projections for how many inmates Nevada will have in prison over the next two years.

They saved even more by voting to delay the opening of High Desert Prison Phase 5 — $11.2 million. In addition, the panel voted to delay the opening of Three Lakes Valley Conservation Camp two years. With Tonopah still open, the system doesn’t need the capacity and keeping it closed covers most of Tonopah’s operating costs — $1.6 million over the coming two years.

When all those numbers are put together, the total lawmakers will have to find to balance the Department of Corrections budget is $27.84 million.

Skolnik said he is concerned that lawmakers don’t also decide to eliminate the project to begin expanding Warm Springs prison in Carson City — which will replace NSP when that 146 year old institution is finally closed. The latest Capital Improvement Projects list includes $62 million in bonding to expand culinary and other core operations at Warm Springs — located next door to NSP — and add three new housing units.

He said he is also worried about protecting the plan to build a Southern Regional Medical Center for the prison system. At present, the only medical center in the system is located in Carson City.

Both of those projects are in danger because falling property tax revenues statewide may take as much as $126 million out of the $400 million in bonding capacity the CIP program is counting on.

Skolnik recommended closing NSP in the first place saying it was the only way he could meet the governor’s budget targets. The move was strongly opposed by unions representing the nearly 200 people who work there. They enlisted Carson City officials as well, who argued now is not the time to put all those people out of work.

Skolnik has said most of those jobs will come back as jobs at Warm Springs. But expanding that prison will take time.

He said the other thing he is concerned about is the decision to eliminate an additional warden’s position he requested for High Desert. He testified that southern Nevada prison is just too large to manage properly — more than double the size of Northern Nevada Correctional Center. His proposal would divide it into two adjacent prisons by basically building a fence through the middle of High Desert. One side would be medium security and the other close custody.

The committee agreed to add the two associate wardens so each prison would have two in that position. But they saved about $100,000 by eliminating the second warden, arguing one warden could still manage both institutions.

The proposals were approved unanimously by both Senate and Assembly members on the subcommittee.

The decisions must still be ratified by the full Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means committees, including finding a way to fill the hole in the corrections budget.
http://www.tahoebonanza.com/article/20090428/NEWS/904289967/1061&ParentProfile=1050

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

April 25, 2009

CA: State prisons chief proposes $400 million in cuts

State prisons chief proposes $400 million in cuts
afurillo@sacbee.com
Published Friday, Apr. 24, 2009

California corrections officials today unveiled $400 million in cost-cutting proposals that would reduce the state prison population by 8,000 inmates by next summer.

Agency Secretary Matt Cate said a proposed change in parole policies would cut the prison population by 4,000.

He said it would result in fewer offenders being returned on technical violations while at the same time lowering parole agent caseloads so they can spend more time supervising more serious and violent parolees when they are released.

The other half of the population reductions would come through expanded good behavior credits for inmates who complete education or job programs and through changes in the dollar value of property crimes, which would turn some thefts now prosecuted as felonies into misdemeanors.

The proposed changes in parole policies, the time credits and the adjustment on property crimes each require approval from the Legislature. Cate said the agency plans to submit a package of bills to the Legislature next week.

Cate said the department also plays to cut 150 of the 2,000 position at its headquarters office in downtown Sacramento. He also said that corrections officials are planning to close down one Division of Juvenile Justice youth prison.

The cuts came in response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's open-ended $400 million line-item veto earlier this year on Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spending budget, issued as part of the state's recent resolution to close its $40 billion budget gap.
http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/v-print/story/1808030.html

Posted by lois at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2009

MT: Jail Desperate for Prisoners Tries for Prisoners at Guantanamo

Hardin jail tries for detainees from Gitmo

By BECKY SHAY
Of The Gazette Staff
Economic development officials in Hardin are looking at the soon-to-close detention facility in Guantanamo Bay as a possible fix for the jail sitting empty in Hardin.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order Jan. 22 to close the Guantanamo detention facilities in Cuba where hundreds of enemy combatants have been held since 2002. The closure is to occur in a year, during which time remaining detainees must be returned to their home countries or detained elsewhere.

Meanwhile, a 460-bed detention facility sits empty in Hardin. Built by Two Rivers Authority, the city's economic development arm, the facility was meant to bring economic development to Hardin by creating more than 100 high-paying jobs.

While leaders continue to look for contracts to open the jail, which was completed in 2007, people in Hardin have approached Two Rivers executive director Greg Smith saying they have the answer: Get the contract to hold those prisoners from Guantanamo.
Smith said he started looking into the process to contract - which still isn't clear - and has talked to other possible players, including federal agencies and staffs of the Montana congressional delegation.

It's also not yet clear which agency would operate the facility that ends up holding the detainees.

The Hardin City Council voted Tuesday to support Two Rivers' efforts.

The council resolution states that the city "fully supports the efforts of the Two Rivers Authority to contact State and Federal officials for the purpose of inquiring into the possibility of housing Guantanamo detainees at the Two Rivers Authority in Hardin, Montana, and to determine whether the Two Rivers Detention Center could provide a safe and secure environment for housing said detainees."

Nationally, the focus has been on Alexandria, Va. The town boasts a detention facility and is close to federal courts.

That's nothing on Hardin, Smith said.

Although federal court services are in Billings, Smith contends that the 45 miles of interstate is very likely easier to traverse than several blocks in a metropolitan area.

Any city that takes the detainees is going to have issues to deal with, Smith said. But the federal government won't just dump detainees into an area without bolstering the system to provide them with the due process that is part of Obama's executive order.

"There are 50 states, and some state is going to get this and they're all going to have issues and they're all going to need money," Smith said. "But we have something the others don't."

Smith said Two Rivers Detention Center is a modern, empty facility. It is built so that with just minor conversions it can be upgraded from medium to higher security. Because the detainees would be the only prisoners in the facility, it would be easy to accommodate prisoners' dietary, language and religious requirements.

If someone were to escape, Smith said, there aren't any huge buildings nearby to dodge into. Montana is pretty homogenous, so detainees, many of Middle Eastern descent, would not easily blend into crowds, he said.

And bringing detainees to this area has happened before, Smith said. There were prisoner-of-war camps in Laurel during World War II. There were also internee camps in Missoula and near Powell, Wyo.

Offering a turnkey facility is practically a patriotic duty, Smith said.

"We're offering our president an option," he said. "If he wants it, we have it available. We want to step forward and say, 'Mr. President, we have a solution. How can we make it happen?' "

Smith said there's really no reason for Hardin not to be considered.

"We have to look at the obstacles to overcome and then overcome them," he said. "A lot of it is just getting people to think how it could work."

Two Rivers Authority ran into troubles shortly after construction on the facility finished in July 2007 when the state had no prisoners to send there. Hardin sought contracts with other states to bring in their prisoners, an effort that was shut down for months while the city sued Montana and eventually won the case but hasn't succeeded in finding contracts.

Without prisoners, TRA hasn't been able to repay $27 million in revenue bonds that paid for construction. The project went into default last year. The bond payments are being made from a reserve fund, which would have to be repaid along with the ongoing payments once the facility starts generating revenue.

For Smith and many in Hardin, that can't come soon enough. Smith said it is his job to "uncover every rock" to find ways to get the detention center operating. He knows there are options available, it's just a matter for finding them and seeking out contracts. People who don't like the idea of alleged enemy combatants coming to town can help, he said.

"To those who don't want it, help us find something so we can fill it," Smith said.
http://billingsgazette.net/articles/2009/04/23/news/state/21-hardin.txt

Posted by lois at 05:54 PM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2009

Philadelphia: Cost of prisons: it's criminal

Cost of prisons: it's criminal
Philadelphia Daily News
April 20, 2009

OUR APPROACH TO CRIMINAL justice has become so criminally dysfunctional that it may no longer shock to learn that in Philadelphia, we spend twice as much housing each prisoner as we do educating each child.

The city spends roughly $100 a day on each prisoner (see how we get to that figure on Page 21) and the total budget is a whopping $289 million. The city puts more people in prison than any other major muncipality in the nation.

And here's the real killer: Despite the fact that every year we spend more money and lock up more people - and for longer periods of time - we are no less beleaguered by crime than ever.

It's time to acknowledge that putting people away has less and less connection with controlling crime.

While the comparison to school spending may not be a shock, there are plenty of shocks for those bothering to give even a cursory look to our criminal-justice problem, both nationally and locally. For example, a Pew Center on the States released a report last month which piggy-backed on its earlier finding that one in every 100 adults was behind bars.

The new report says that in the United States, one adult out of 31 is in the correctional system - that means either in prison, or on parole, or probation. That is a shocking 7.3 million adults - more than the populations of Chicago, Philadelphia, San Diego and Dallas combined.

It's obvious that the sentencing, release and other criminal-justice policies have been a boon to the prison industry, but have done nothing to reduce the crime rate. (We can't imagine any other government program that has failed so absymally would be allowed, year after year, to expand its budget.)

And prisons and corrections have been devastating to budgets. Costs are rising faster for prisons than for any other government service except Medicaid. And health care is a huge factor in these costs, both physical and mental. In fact, four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in hospitals.

The national average for spending per inmate is $79; Philadelphia's higher rate is driven in part by overcrowding. Former Prison Commissioner Leon King says the city's prison population is 67 percent past capacity; that requires us to ship inmates to other facilities and pay for the privilege. In the past five years, spending for that has tripled. Meanwhile, spending on probation and parole, like managing offenders in the community, remains a fraction of prison costs; the national average is $4 a day. We should think of that next time we are outraged that a parolee kills a police officer. The solution is not just keeping everyone behind bars forever; also at issue is how little we spend to make sure parole or probation works.

Today, City Council is holding budget hearings on public safety. These are likely to be routine airing of budgets, and requests for more money. But we urge Council and the mayor to stop spending and start reforming.

It's worth taking a deeper look at reforms that the city could insitute to drive down populations and costs. Such an effort would dovetail with a national effort recently announced by Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. A congressional task force will study the problem of why we have one-fifth of the world's population and 25 percent of its prisoners, and recommended needed reforms. The bad news: it will take two years. Meanwhile, since we're in the middle of a race for the city's next district attorney, maybe it's also time for at least one candidate to tackle this issue head-on.
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/20090420_Cost_of_prisons__it_s_criminal.html

Posted by lois at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2009

Three book reviews: Abolishing The Prison Industrial Complex and Freeing All Political Prisoners

Abolishing The Prison Industrial Complex and Freeing All Political Prisoners
Sunday, April 19 2009
By Hans Bennett
Prisons Above all, these three highly-recommended books (available online at www.akpress.org) argue that prison-related issues are inseparable from racism, classism, sexism, and all oppression, so the more we know about prisons, the better informed multi-issue activist strategies will be. They conclude that in working to abolish all oppression, we must also work to abolish the PIC and free all political prisoners.
Abolishing The Prison Industrial Complex and Freeing All Political Prisoners
A Book review of:

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, edited by Lois Ahrens, PM Press, 2008.

Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners, edited by Matt Meyer, PM Press, 2008.

Abolition Now! Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against The Prison Industrial Complex, edited by the CR10 Publications Collective, AK Press, 2008.

2008 marked the ten-year anniversaries of both the prison abolitionist Critical Resistance (CR) conference in Oakland, CA that coined the phrase "prison industrial complex" (PIC) and the National Jericho Movement’s march in Washington DC that demanded the release of all US political prisoners and prisoners of war. To commemorate the 1998 events, the CR10 conference was held in Oakland in September, and Jericho organized a march to the United Nations in October.

These two important events in 1998 successfully re-energized the prison-activist and political prisoner support movements rooted in the 1960s and 1970s. However, while recognizing this accomplishment, three new books document how the prison industrial complex has actually grown bigger and stronger since 1998, while the post-911 climate has further escalated political repression. While recognizing this frustrating reality, these new books look honestly at both the accomplishments and shortcomings of the last ten years.

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix

The new book The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, reprints three comic books published as part of the Real Costs of Prisons Project (RCPP), which began in 2000. So far, 125,000 comic books have been printed, with over 100,000 distributed for free to community groups and college classes alike. Featuring artwork by Kevin Pyle, Sabrina Jones and Susan Willmarth, all three comic books can be freely downloaded at www.realcostofprisons.org.

Prison abolitionists Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore write in the book’s introduction that the RCPP’s value "has been to show us how the system of mass incarceration permeates our lives, who is paying the costs of that system and the many ways the system is vulnerable to people who put their thought and effort into organizing to shrink it." Significantly, the RCPP’s comics "demonstrate that the ideas we need to change the world can be explained simply enough and packaged attractively enough to be used by all kinds of readers." Prisoners and their families can "understand material usually circulated only among academics and those who focus on policy."

Editor Lois Ahrens writes that "a central goal of the comic books is to politicize, not pathologize." She argues that the "deregulation and globalization" of the last 30 years has "resulted in impoverishing urban economies, limiting opportunities for meaningful work and slashing funding for quality education, marginalizing the poor, and creating more inequality. The comic books place individual experience in this context and challenge a central message of neo-liberal ideology: the myth that people can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. In this paradigm, racism, sexism, classism, and economic inequality are not part of the picture. Most people now believe that change happens through personal transformation rather than political struggle and change."

The recent growth of the PIC and mass incarceration is staggering. Ahrens writes that "every year from 1947 through the beginning of the 1970s, approximately 200,000 people were incarcerated in the US. Today, there are more than 2.3 million men and women incarcerated, with more than 5 million more on parole and probation."

The 'Prison Town' comic book debunks the myth that building a new prison actually helps to revitalize a town with an ailing economy, and instead illustrates the many negative costs that a new prison can impose. Importantly, Prison Town also documents how many towns learned by example and cited the prisons’ negative impact in successful campaigns to stop prison construction in their community.

'Prisoners of the War on Drugs' is a heart-wrenching look at the victims of the so-called "war on drugs." At least according to its official purpose, the "war on drugs" has been a total failure, resulting in the mass incarceration of non-violent drug offenders at a huge, inefficient expense to tax-payers. Prisoners emphasizes "harm reduction" and treatment as a better solution, stating that the "war on drugs locks up more users than dealers. Most want to quit, but can’t. A year of treatment costs much less than a year of incarceration, plus: the person can work, pay taxes & take part in family life." While drug laws may seem insane, they appear to have unofficial motives that are highly rational. For example, they have served to accelerate mass imprisonment, the criminalization of poverty, and the erosion of civil-liberties.

'Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women & Their Children' concludes the three-comic book series. The stories presented here are mostly fictional, but are based on the writers’ research and personal experience working with women prisoners. Therefore, Ahrens explains that the stories "represent the lives of hundreds of thousands of people suffering as a result of the war on drugs." Perhaps most outrageous is the true story of Regina McKnight, the first woman in the US to be convicted of murder because of behavior while pregnant. When McKnight’s baby was delivered stillborn and an autopsy found traces of cocaine in the fetus she was arrested and convicted of murder with a 20-year sentence. In 2008, following several appeals and eight years in prison, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously reversed her conviction, after concluding that there is no medical evidence of cocaine causing stillbirths.

Let Freedom Ring

Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners, is an epic 877-page compilation of both pre-existing documents and original articles. Explaining the context of its release, editor Matt Meyer cites the recent persecution of the San Francisco Eight, who are former Black Panther Party (BPP) members being charged with a 30-year old crime. Beginning with the 2006 grand jury, "the state threw down a gauntlet. When it became clear that the investigations were reopening cases based on evidence obtained primarily through torture, the message was unmistakable: Be afraid, be very afraid, and don’t even think of fighting back. When these same men stood strong, firm on the principle that they would not take part in a new, government sponsored witch-hunt, they sent a counter-message on behalf of us all: we will not allow our communities, our struggles, our communities, our very lives to be criminalized by a corrupt and racist criminal justice system." This spirit of resistance to state repression flows throughout Let Freedom Ring.

The book’s many sections focus on a wide range of US political prisoners, featuring both facts about their case, and actual writing from the prisoners themselves. One particularly interesting section is titled Resisting Repression: Out and Proud, which includes the classic 1991 interview "Dykes and Fags Want to Know: Interview with Lesbian Political Prisoners," featuring Laura Whitehorn (released in 1999), a well as Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg, who were both pardoned by President Clinton in 2001. Also notable is a 1991 speech given by former BPP political prisoner Dhoruba Bin-Wahad, who was released after 19 years. Considered a groundbreaking speech from a Black Muslim revolutionary, Bin-Wahad declared that "we can not build a new society if we premise that society on the oppression of other people." Continuing the legacy of BPP co-founder Huey P. Newton, he argued that fighting the oppression of women and GLBTs is inseparable from the fight against capitalism, racism, and all oppression. Also featured is a tribute to the late Kuwasi Balagoon, who died in prison of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1986. In the words of poet Walidah Imarisha, Balagoon "was an anarchist in a Black nationalist movement, he was queer in a straight dominated movement, he was a guerrilla fighter after it was ‘chic,’ and he...demanded to be seen not as a revolutionary icon, but as a person, beautiful and flawed."

Abolition Now!

Abolition Now! was published to coincide with the CR10 conference. The introduction explains that Critical Resistance (CR) is not only "struggling to tear down the cages" of the prison industrial complex (PIC), but "also to abolish the actions of policing, surveillance, and imprisonment that give the PIC its power. We are also reminded that abolition is the creation of possibilities for our dreams and demands for health and happiness—for what we want, not what we think we can get."

The book features reflections and constructive criticism from a variety of CR organizers and activists. For example, Mills College professor Julia Sudbury emphasizes the "need for healing as an abolitionist practice. Many of us come to this work with our own wounds," and while "many of us draw energy and inspiration from these wounds," we are "also drained by these traumas...As a result our movement can be very ‘head’ oriented—talking, planning, thinking, writing—and not body and emotion oriented." Sudbury concludes that a "movement against a violent and violating phenomenon like the PIC cannot hope to be successful if we don’t directly address and heal the effects of that violence."

Former political prisoner Bo Brown argues that the movement should have more "street awareness" and not be limited to "legislative" goals and actions. "You have to do both. I think you can get lost in that and you can stay there and consider yourself a good person and never really get your hands dirty in a human kind of way...I’d like to see us come up with some kind of support group for families with prisoners that’s real. We need to figure out how to support the prisoners when they’re coming home. We need to understand post-traumatic shock on an ongoing, day-to-day basis."

Andrea Smith, co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence argues that "the criminalization approach proffered in the mainstream anti-violence movement doesn’t work. And, also, this criminalization approach obfuscates the role of the state in perpetrating gender violence. At the same time, we have to deal with the practical concerns for safety for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Thus, we are working on developing community accountability strategies that do not rely on the state, and also do not depend on a romanticized version of ‘community’...This intersects with work in indigenous rights movements, which have concepts of indigenous nationhood that are not based on nation-state forms of governance that rule through violence, domination, and control."

Abolition Now! also spotlights examples of organizations putting abolitionist strategy into practice, like with the LEAD Project’s group of transition homes for women returning from imprisonment in the Watts District of Los Angeles, called "A New Way of Life." Also, the UBUNTU Coalition in Durham, NC, works at responding to violence without reinforcing the PIC.

Prisons Are Everywhere

Above all, these three highly-recommended books (available online at www.akpress.org) argue that prison-related issues are inseparable from racism, classism, sexism, and all oppression, so the more we know about prisons, the better informed multi-issue activist strategies will be. They conclude that in working to abolish all oppression, we must also work to abolish the PIC and free all political prisoners.

--Based out of the SF Bay Area, Hans Bennett is an independent multi-media journalist (www.insubordination.blogspot.com) and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia (www.abu-jamal-news.com).

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

April 18, 2009

Orleans prison in bad shape, feds say. Fiscal, staff, security problems 'daunting'

Orleans prison in bad shape, feds say
Fiscal, staff, security problems 'daunting'
Saturday, April 18, 2009
By Bruce Nolan
Staff writer

Orleans Parish Prison faces a huge burden of financial, staffing, security and other problems -- the worst of them that the city, state and federal governments are not paying the full cost of housing their prisoners, according to federal consultants who visited the prison last year.

"Nearly three years (after Hurricane Katrina) it is difficult to adequately describe the scope and depth of the problems still confronting the sheriff's office as they attempt to rebuild the Orleans Parish jail system," reported two consultants from the National Institute of Corrections. The agency is an arm of the Federal Bureau of Prisons that provides technical assistance to wardens across the country.

" 'Daunting' does not begin to convey the enormity of the situation," they wrote.

Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman released a version of the report Friday, with some redactions of information he said dealt "specifically with security issues."

He said he invited the federal consultants in June to visit the prison for a week and offer recommendations for improvement. He said he was releasing their report in the interests of transparency, while acknowledging that he received it in October.

Once a vast complex of permanent and temporary buildings holding about 5,500 persons, the prison complex was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Several major buildings have been demolished or sit vacant and ruined.

The prison population now is about 2,840, Gusman said.

Consultants Rod Miller of Gettysburg, Pa., and Jeffrey Schwartz of Campbell, Calif., said they found a prison that performed well by some measures: only one recent suicide; no homicides; few escapes; few assaults on prisoners or staff; no gang control.

They also described a deeply troubled system full of systemic flaws.

Gusman released the report without an accompanying response from his office. He said he agreed with some of its findings and disagreed with others. He addressed some of the report briefly in an interview later.

Despite its record, patterns of inefficient staffing produce critical security lapses, the consultants said.

Financially, they noted that the prison has no tax income to cover operations, nor is it part of the city's general fund. Most of its income comes from "grossly inadequate" prisoner per diem payments from city, state and federal governments.

The consultants noted that the city and state pay $22.39 and $23.39 per day per prisoner, respectively. By comparison, the federal government pays $43 per head for its prisoners awaiting trial.

Gusman said all those payments should be in the range of $50; the consultants quoted figures of $65 to $85 per day.

Gusman described a successful economic model under former Sheriff Charles Foti in which the prison historically sustained itself on per diems collected on nearly twice as many prisoners. The system worked because they were sheltered more efficiently, in less labor-intensive buildings, he said.

But with some of those buildings gone, and much older buildings in use, prisoner numbers are down and the efficiency is gone, Gusman said.

The consultants painted a picture of the prison going broke, perhaps at the end of the year. But Gusman said the situation is not that dire.

"We've been doing everything in our power to cut costs," he said.

While the prison likely can remain in operation, it is at the limit, financially.

"We can't manage any major financial change in our position," he said.

Among other systemic problems, the consulted noted, were:

-- Police, prosecutors, public defenders and jailers' lack of regular communication in ways that might make their jobs easier. Gusman's relationship with much of the rest of Orleans Parish government "may be charitably described as 'strained,' " they said.

-- High staff turnover -- sometimes 50 percent per year -- and pay so low among Gusman's deputies that some leave for better-paying security jobs with the Recovery School District.

Gusman's scheduling also requires a regular work week of nearly 60 hours. The consultants also noted a "personality-driven," "good old boy" culture among the ranks. Gusman said he recently introduced promotional exams for the department, as well as two salary raises, although wages remain very low.

Arriving by invitation, the consultants are advisers and have no oversight authority over the prison. They cannot compel improvements nor require responses from Gusman.

Separately, however, the civil rights division of the Department of Justice has been conducting an investigation of the jail since at least last summer.

Gusman said Friday that he had no results from that inquiry.
http://www.nola.com/news/?/base/news-1/1240032894264560.xml&coll=1

. . . . . . .

Posted by lois at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2009

Seattle: Need for new jail questioned as the number of prisoners decreases

Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Need for new jail questioned as inmate numbers drop

By SCOTT GUTIERREZ
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

A shrinking number of inmates in the King County Jail is bucking prior forecasts and raising new questions about whether Seattle and its suburbs will need to build their own jail by 2013.

Seattle and its neighbors to the north and east have been studying where to build a 640-bed, $110 million jail based on King County's warnings last year that it would no longer have room for misdemeanor offenders in three years. Cities in South King County also are collaborating on a new jail to be built in Des Moines.

But instead of growing, the county jail's daily population is decreasing, by almost 6 percent during the last eight months, according to jail staff. The average daily population also declined 4 percent between 2007 and 2008, according to figures from a King County councilmember.

Both jail staff and a city-appointed panel are studying the trend, examining whether it is likely to continue. They're also revisiting prior estimates on jail populations by 2012, when King County is slated to terminate its jail contracts with Seattle and its suburbs.

"We would love not to build a new jail. I think at this point, we're really waiting for King County and whether they think the change is enough that they would have space for the cities to stay," said Catherine Cornwall, a Seattle senior policy analyst involved with the cities' plans.

"Until we have something in writing, in order to be responsible, we have to keep continuing forward with our planning effort," she said.

Prior studies have shown the downtown jail, with an average inmate census of 2,324 in 2008, running out of room.

Seattle has issued $5.6 million in debt for jail planning. Analysts are studying which of six potential sites are best suited for a new jail to be shared by Seattle and cities such as Bellevue and Shoreline. The King County Council offered to extend the cities contracts for jail space by a year of two, which would at least buy them more time to finish construction.

The proposal to build a new jail has plenty of opponents, from residents who don't want it in their backyard to officials who question whether it's necessary.

Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata, a skeptic of the city's need for a new jail, said he's optimistic that the current trend could be maintained through further use of alternatives to incarceration.

Seattle and King County have invested in jail alternatives that steer inmates into treatment and reduce their chances of re-offending. Seattle's share of misdemeanor population has declined 40 percent since 2001 through programs such as community courts, electronic home monitoring and special day-reporting options for low-level transient offenders who repeatedly wind up in jail because they miss court dates.

"I keep running into people in the community who feel the jail is not needed. These are not people from the liberal crowd. They're business owners, they're Republicans, and they're saying, why are we building this new jail?'" said Licata, who recently wrote about the issue in his Urban Politics blog.

Jail populations can ebb and flow, depending on factors such as crimes rates, budgets and changes in state law. Other factors, such as the economy and massive cuts this year at the state level to prisons and probation could also affect the numbers.

The recent decline is mostly due to fewer bookings from Seattle police, who are bringing in less felony and misdemeanor offenders during latenight shifts, said Kathy Van Olst, director of the county's Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. Whether it's due to a change in crime rates or enforcement policy is unclear, she said.

"Without knowing what exactly is the cause of that dip in population, it's difficult to predict the future or future declines in population," Van Olst said. "We're still trying to figure out why the population has decreased and we're working with the Seattle police to do that."

In Seattle, crime rates dropped between 2007 and 2008, with the biggest dip in narcotics arrests, from 4,200 to 2,650, said Mike Quinn, a strategy advisor to the Police Department.

There also were 400 less domestic violence arrests, in which officers have little discretion. In the downtown Pike-Pine corridor, which is plagued with drug activity, officers took a pro-active strategy with an emphasis on face-to-face contacts and moving people along rather than booking suspects, he said.

"You put all those pieces together and I think it explains some of this," he said, noting a recent uptick in crime rates this year.

A study in 2006 estimated the city would need 440 beds for misdemeanants, which include drunken driving, domestic violence, and minor assaults, by 2026. The recent changes also could result in plans to build a smaller jail.

The City Council appointed a Jail Capacity Advisory Group, a panel of police, prosecutors, county corrections staff, politicians, defense attorneys and citizens, to study the issue.

That group has cited other possible factors, such as fewer felony charges filed by the county Prosecutor's Office caused by changes in filing standards due the budget crisis. Some of those cases, however, would funnel into municipal courts, which likely would boost the cities' demand for jail space.

In addition, the county's jail at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent is slated for expansion in 2015 to better accommodate police departments on the south end and save having to take inmates to the downtown site.

County Councilwoman Kathy Lambert, who chairs the committee on Law, Justice and Health and Human Services, said the jail's average daily population is below predictions made 10 years ago. She doesn't support ending the cities' jail contracts yet because she thinks more more inmates with mental illness or substance abuse could be moved into programs.

Still, she thinks the cities will need their own jail, but that it could be downsized if they partner with the county in sharing alternative programs and bed space.

"If we're able to work together, hopefully it's the last jail we will need for many, many , many years," Lambert said.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/405115_jail15.html

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

April 15, 2009

PA: State begins construction on 1st of 3 new prisons

State begins construction on 1st of 3 new prisons
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
By Tom Barnes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

HARRISBURG -- A lot of businesses and industries have been hard hit by the ailing economy, but in Pennsylvania there's still one industry doing well -- prison construction.

The state Department of Corrections announced today that construction of the first of three new state prisons will begin this summer in Centre County, on the grounds of an existing state prison, State Correctional Institution Rockview.

The new medium-security prison, which will hold 2,000 inmates, is expected to open within three years. It will cost about $200 million, officials said. It will be called SCI Benner Township and will employ 650 people. It will share warehouses and administrative functions with SCI Rockview.

In the next several years, two more new prisons will be built -- a 2,000-inmate facility in Fayette County and a prison to hold 4,000 inmates in Montgomery County. The latter will add 2,000 new beds and provide 2,000 replacement beds for prisoners now housed at the existing SCI Graterford. The old prison will then be mothballed, meaning closed unless there is a need to reopen it in the future due to ever-increasing inmate population.

In all, officials plan to add nearly 9,000 beds to the prison system. Beside the 6,000 beds at the three new prisons, new housing units will be built in Crawford, Forest, Indiana and Northumberland counties.

The expansion projects will cost $862 million, paid for by through state capital budget.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09104/962730-100.stm

Posted by lois at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2009

NV: "Centers" proposed for parole violaters and people with drug & alcohol convictions

Centers proposed for low-risk offenders
By RACHELLE GINES Associated Press Writer
04/13/2009

CARSON CITY, Nev.—The Nevada Senate's top Democrat told lawmakers Monday that a new program for low-risk parole violators and drug and alcohol offenders would reduce the state's prison population and save millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, told Finance Committee members that SB398 would create a two-year pilot program of "intermediate sanction" centers for low-risk probation violators as well as people whose crimes are linked to alcohol or drug addictions.

Life skill and rehabilitative programs would be offered to about 400 participants a year, who would stay an average of six months.

Centers proposed for low-risk offenders
By RACHELLE GINES Associated Press Writer
04/13/2009

CARSON CITY, Nev.—The Nevada Senate's top Democrat told lawmakers Monday that a new program for low-risk parole violators and drug and alcohol offenders would reduce the state's prison population and save millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, told Finance Committee members that SB398 would create a two-year pilot program of "intermediate sanction" centers for low-risk probation violators as well as people whose crimes are linked to alcohol or drug addictions.

Life skill and rehabilitative programs would be offered to about 400 participants a year, who would stay an average of six months.

Horsford said the program could save the state more than $34 million over the next five years. He noted that it costs the state about $22,000 a year to incarcerate a prisoner, and a quarter of the new arrivals at Nevada prisons every year are parole violators returning to custody.

"Clearly there is a new and more innovative approach we can take that would ensure public safety and require the offender to go through their sentence, but also do it in a way that doesn't cost the state what we're spending now," Horsford said.

The program would use existing facilities and wouldn't require new beds. Horsford added that program participants wouldn't mix with other inmates and that a little more than half of the beds would be concentrated in southern Nevada.

Drug and alcohol treatment programs for
Advertisement
the centers would be provided through the Department of Health and Human Services, who would work with community service providers, DHH director Mike Willden said.

Willden told lawmakers an additional $2.2 million per year would be required to provide such programs, at a ratio of one staff person for every 27 inmates.

Bernie Curtis, chief of the Division of Parole and Probation, spoke in support of the bill, saying, "It's not going to cost us anything in parole and probation, frankly, to use these intermediate sanctions. We think it's a good start for a program that is needed in this state."

Maurice Lee, senior vice president of the WestCare Foundation, also favored the bill and said he has enjoyed success as an ex-offender who participated in a similar program. WestCare is a nonprofit organization that currently provides programs similar to those touted in SB398 both in Nevada and other states.

"I offer myself as an example personally. I have been incarcerated and went through a similar system of care that has helped me turn my life around," Lee said. "I now have 20 years outside of the system and I live in a state where I pay taxes, tithes in church and take care of six kids."

Lee told lawmakers, "Your investment goes a lot further than what is being stated here on paper." He said later that the prison population is expected to keep growing.

"Other states have learned quickly that they cannot build their way out of their criminal justice situation. There is no way to build enough prisons to continue housing people," Lee said.

Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno, praised the program, but said it's important to know all program costs before starting it.

"I question the cost. We don't want to find out in the haste to get it approved we haven't funded it properly," Raggio said.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12133087

Posted by lois at 08:37 AM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2009

WA: Plan to close McNeil Island prison has many critics Closing McNeil Island prison might save the state millions.

Plan to close McNeil Island prison has many critics
Closing McNeil Island prison might save the state millions. It definitely would cost jobs in Pierce County and hurt businesses in Steilacoom.

IAN DEMSKY
Published: 04/11/09

Fourteen years before Washington became a state, McNeil Island began housing its first inmates. Now, 134 years later, the expensive and isolated prison – the last of its kind in the country – faces potential closure as the state Legislature grapples with how to fill a sinkhole projected at $9 billion.

By cutting many inmate sentences short by one or two months to free up beds, the Senate Ways & Means Committee calculated that McNeil Island Corrections Center could be closed, saving almost $16 million by the end of this biennium. And the real savings, an estimated $31 million per year, would follow.

But when trying to understand what that would mean for Pierce County, there is more to consider than raw dollar figures, some critics say. Although it’s ultimately not for them to decide, the plan lacks the support of Department of Corrections Secretary Eldon Vail; the Teamsters union, which represents many of the 587 staff that work at McNeil; and the Department of Social and Health Services, which runs a civil commitment center for sex offenders on the island.

Ferrying people and supplies to and from the facility makes housing offenders at McNeil pricey. The prison has the highest per-inmate cost of the state’s medium security facilities, running $37,000 per inmate per year, $6,000 above the state average. McNeil costs nearly $50 million per year to operate.

The state House and the state Senate have made different pitches for trimming corrections costs.

The Senate would get most of its savings by reducing spending inside the prisons – including letting many inmates out a month or two early and closing McNeil – while the House proposes cutting back on supervision of ex-convicts after they get out of prison and go back into the community.

John Lane, the governor’s policy adviser on criminal justice, said the administration hasn’t seen a bill yet that would bring the average daily population of the system down far enough to close McNeil.

“We need to wait and see what happens at the end of session,” he said, noting that the administration generally agreed with Vail, who thinks the logistics of making cuts while maintaining the integrity of the system are best left to the agency itself.

“We’re going to have to make some hard decisions,” Vail said. “But I’d prefer they leave it to us to make those decisions.”

From Vail’s perspective, the state would likely be better served shutting down units in multiple prisons rather than closing an entire facility. That would give the department more flexibility as the state’s financial situation changes and as the inmate population fluctuates.

“Prison population tends to rise faster during an economic downturn,” Vail said.

There’s also the $165 million the state has spent since 1990 to improve the facilities on the island.

“I’d like to see us get the full life cycle out of the investment we put in,” he said.

And for its financial disadvantages, the prison has a number of advantages, Vail said. The facility has the added security of being on an island accessible only by boat, and it’s on the Interstate 5 corridor, making it convenient for visitors and staff.

Vail’s sentiments were echoed by Tracey Thompson, secretary of Teamsters Local 117, which represents about 500 of the prison’s corrections officers and other employees.

“It’s in a central location,” she said. “And it’s a significant number of jobs for Pierce County. There might be some opportunities for our folks to move into other prisons, but we have a lot of prisons in remote areas.”

It’s not clear how many jobs would be lost outright and how many would be moved elsewhere.

On Wednesday, the union ratified a new two-year contract that would ensure that employees at McNeil had seniority and transfer rights if the facility closed, said union spokesman Paul Zilly. It did not include a wage increase.

Thompson said she thought transferring the work of running the island’s ferry service, its fire department and its wastewater treatment plant to the DSHS also might pose a problem.

“They are under an obligation to bargain about changes in working conditions,” Thompson said. “They can’t unilaterally transfer work outside of our bargaining unit.”

The DSHS operates the Special Commitment Center, which opened in 1990 to house civilly committed sex offenders who are deemed a continuing threat even after their prison sentences. It’s currently home to about 300 residents.

Steve Williams, a spokesman for the DSHS, said having both the prison and the sex offender center on the island created an economy of scale.

“We consider what they do to be kind of our lifeline to the island,” he said. “They even have a SWAT-type team that we can call if we need it.”

The Senate estimated that transfer of those services would stick the DSHS with a yearly bill of $4.2 million (if they aren’t contracted out). Williams said DSHS calculations put the figure at $12 million.

Ron Lucas, the mayor of Steilacoom, which sits just across the water from McNeil, said closing the facility would hurt local shops and gas stations.

“It’s an issue that will have a bigger impact on small business in our community,” he said. “Small business is where you hire people.”

The town might also have to adjust its $100,000-a-year contract with the owners of Steilacoom Marine and Spirits, who pay for the privilege of running the local parking operation utilized by those going to the island.

If there is a nonfinancial silver lining to closing McNeil, it would be one fewer facility located in a county where officials have been fighting for years for a more equitable distribution of criminal justice facilities, especially offender treatment and work-release programs.

Hard-won requirements now make the state ship directly released inmates back to their county of origin. But Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney Gerry Horne has blamed the state work-release program for funneling into the county more than its fair share of ex-convicts; that, in turn, makes the crime rate worse because so many offenders return to crime after their release from prison.

Some offenders’ families also relocate to the areas around prisons.

Closing the prison wouldn’t have a huge impact, but it’s another small step toward parity, said deputy prosecutor Mark Lindquist.

“Here in Pierce County we’ve got Purdy (women’s prison), McNeil, the Special Commitment Center, Western State Hospital and the federal detention center,” he said. “Add all that together and it puts a burden on our criminal justice system and social services.”

Posted by lois at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2009

NV: CCA Proposal for Building 6,000 cages

Board of Prison Commissioners hearing April 14th: Question of for-profit prison plans to build 6,000 beds in Nevada
4-10-09

*I'm with the non-profit Private Corrections Institute and have been a researcher in the field of for-profit prisons for a dozen years. I've read scores of reports, most of the books on the subject and over 10,000 newspaper stories about them. I have obtained thousands of pages of documents under the Freedom of Information Act and through Open Records Act requests in at least ten states and dozens of municipalities. I've testified before numerous state legislative committees and municipalities around the country.

The Corrections Corporation of America has gotten approval for the building of a 1,500-bed prison in Pahrump, in Nye County, from the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee. They have proposed building another 1,500 beds there, plus 3,000 more beds in Storey County, east of Sparks, south of Highway 80 in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Park.

The corporation has claimed that it wants to hold only federal prisoners, that they will be short-term detainees, that those prisoners will be entirely from within the state of Nevada.
There is no reason to believe that those claims are true. The population of federal prisoners from Nevada is likely less than half the capacity of the proposed Pahrump prison. They have a contract for providing 750 beds only and have made it clear in other venues that it cannot remain in operation without filling their prisons to over 90% capacity. If they don't hold federal prisoners, there will be no requirement to pay prevailing wages, another promise they've made to Nye County. The state of Nevada could conceivably find itself hosting these prisons with no oversight at all.
Citizens in Pahrump were assured that the prison would have federal oversight, but it won't if it doesn't hold them, of course. CCA has simultaneously been marketing itself to take in thousands of California prisoners in various venues. They are holding perhaps a thousand in Eloy, Arizona at their Las Palmas prison. Reports that I'm receiving is that Las Palmas is out of control, with daily fights and green, low-paid staff overwhelmed with the staggering task of controlling this many imported gang bangers.

In a hearing addressing a possible repeal of the long standing Kansas ban on for-profit prisons, the state Secretary of Corrections nailed the problem. He said that he feared if these spec prison builders came back into Kansas "they would begin directing state correctional policy." That is exactly right. The Oklahoma Director was at that meeting. His state has been burdened with riot and escape-plagued prisons for over 15 years. Asked if he could venture in retrospect, whether he would have allowed them in to begin with, his answer was an unequivocal "No!"

CCA has made a mess of contracts with the state of Nevada in the past. Rooftop riots, sexual abuse of female prisoners and the dumping of contracts are but the tip of the iceberg.

The state of Nebraska crafted legislation that restricted the operation of any for-profit operator that proposed to site there. It was very common sense and reflected concerns for the safety of the people of that state. Because of the careful delineation of the conditions under which such a prison could be constructed and operated, no company has ever ventured there. They are simply unwilling to comply with the oversight and regulation legislators required.

Let me suggest that the state of Nevada needs to similarly protect itself before CCA begins construction in two months. I would hope that these issues can be addressed at the Board of Commissioners hearing on April 14th.

Frank Smith
www.privateci.org

Posted by lois at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2009

WA: Closing prisons, slashing sentences eyed to balance budget

Closing prisons, slashing sentences eyed to balance budget
By Jennifer Sullivan
Seattle Times staff reporter
April 9, 2009

OLYMPIA — Tough-on-crime legislation that has long filled courtrooms, prisons and parole offices across the country has apparently met its match — the economy.

In Washington and other states, lawmakers are considering budget cuts that would close prisons, loosen sentencing guidelines and slash probation terms.

With lawmakers in Olympia looking for nearly $4 billion in spending cuts, several high-ranking Democrats say the recession gives them an opportunity to add compassion to a criminal-justice system they believe has grown too large, too expensive and too harsh for some of the crimes.

"We need a massive re-look at what we're doing and what the focus is," said Senate Ways and Means Chairwoman Margarita Prentice, D-Renton.

Prentice is backing a plan in the Senate's proposed state budget to close the McNeil Island Correctional Complex, a 1,300-inmate, medium-security island prison in Pierce County.

The state has never closed a major prison before. The move would save about $16 million over the next two years, legislative budget staff said.

The Senate budget also would close Green Hill School, the state lockup for violent and gang-entrenched juveniles; downsize the state prison population by 1,900 inmates; and drop people convicted of low-level felonies and misdemeanors from probation.

The House, in its proposed budget, would cut probation time for violent felons and sex offenders; allow for home detention instead of incarceration in some cases; close the medium-security Naselle Youth Camp; and eliminate parole for nearly a third of all juvenile offenders.

6% of states' budgets

One in every 31 adults is incarcerated or on parole in the U.S. — a total of 7.3 million people, the Pew Center on the States reported last month.

Nationally, the prison inmate population has grown each year since 1972, said Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

But due to the recession, nearly every state is scrambling to find ways to cut criminal-justice costs, which eat up nearly 6 percent of state budgets, said Alison Lawrence, a policy specialist with the National Conference of State Legislatures.

States are releasing inmates early and are letting offenders trade incarceration for treatment programs, she said. Some, like Washington, Michigan and New York, are considering prison closures.

In Olympia, the Senate would cut $152 million from corrections and criminal justice in the 2009-11 state budget, while the House would cut more than $160 million.

Last year, Washington spent nearly $1.1 billion on criminal justice, which includes the Department of Corrections, the State Patrol, the Criminal Justice Training Commission, the courts system and the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, according to the state Office of Financial Management.

Nearly 18,000 people are housed in the state's 15 prisons. Still, Washington is far from a leader in incarceration rates nationally. According to the Pew study, Washington ranks 44th for the number of people per capita in prison or jail.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg attributes Washington's lower prison population to a 2002 law that allows prosecutors to steer many drug offenders to state-funded treatment instead of incarceration.

Last year, drug offenders totaled about 13 percent of the prison population, down from 22 percent in 2005, Satterberg said.

Some urge caution

Crime-victim advocate Jenny Wieland Ward says the state should study how to reduce the cost of corrections before closing prisons.

"There's smarter ways of dealing with budget cuts than closing McNeil," said Ward, executive director of Everett-based Families & Friends of Missing Persons & Violent Crime Victims. "There has got to be a more thoughtful process."

State Corrections Chief Eldon Vail agrees the state shouldn't rush into closing institutions. He suggests cutting costs by placing fewer offenders on probation — a strategy both the House and Senate propose, along with closing institutions.

Currently, the state supervises about 27,000 offenders on probation, Vail said. The House proposal would remove about 11,000 people from supervision while the Senate would cut 7,100, Vail said.

Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, worries the budget shortfall could cut into programs that provide drug, alcohol and mental-health treatment to adult and juvenile offenders. Hargrove, who chairs the Senate Human Services and Corrections Committee, said he would rather close expensive facilities like McNeil Island than put treatment programs on the chopping block.

Attorney General Rob McKenna, a Republican, said the state should look for new ways to pay for criminal justice.

"This state needs to have a serious conversation about public safety, how we're paying for it and how the public is suffering from inadequate law-enforcement resources," McKenna said.

When the economy is flush, lawmakers want to devote more money to public safety, he said. But when times are bad, criminal justice gets whacked.

"This is not the first time the state has balanced the budget by letting people out of prison early," McKenna added.

Sen. Mike Carrell, R-Lakewood, vehemently opposes any move to close prisons. He believes criminal-justice funding should be a higher priority this legislative session.

"Public safety has to be the first call," Carrell said. "What good does it do to have great schools if our children are raped, murdered and assaulted to and from school?"

"It's desperate times"

At Green Hill, news of the potential closure of the state's oldest and toughest juvenile-detention center was circulating though the population last week.

The facility in Chehalis holds about 200 medium- and maximum-security offenders ranging in age from 17 to 20.

Dan Robertson, deputy assistant secretary of the Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration, says closing Green Hill would be a mistake. Senate budget writers say the move would save nearly $14 million a year in operating costs.

But Robertson says it would cost more than $35 million to construct new facilities at Maple Lane School, a juvenile lockup near Centralia where Green Hill's offenders would be moved. Maple Lane primarily houses youth who have substance-abuse problems or mental illness or are incarcerated for sex offenses.

Instead of closing Green Hill, Robertson said his agency suggested closing Naselle Youth Camp, a medium-security facility that serves both boys and girls. That would save $10 million over the next two years.

Marybeth Queral, superintendent at Green Hill, doubts the state could re-create Green Hill's vocational programs for fiber-optic networking, welding, auto repair, embroidery and sign printing.

She's also concerned about the two offender populations mixing — many of Green Hill's offenders are known gang members serving time for violent felonies. Queral fears that Maple Lane's population could be preyed upon and manipulated by the older and more sophisticated offenders.

"I think it's desperate times. I think decisions are being made looking at the bottom-line dollar, not the potential impact," she said. "It could be very dangerous.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2009010460_criminaljusticecut
s09m.html

Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company

Posted by lois at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

NC: 3 of 7 prisons saved by Senate for closure. Schools cut.

Senate budget targets schools
Haywood prison spared in plan

Jordan Schrader April 7, 2009
Citizen Times

RALEIGH – State Senate budget writers released a spending plan Monday that would save money by boosting class sizes, giving fewer tests and prodding city school systems to fold.

More than 700 state employees would lose their jobs under the plan that the Senate will consider this week. Others could face furloughs, or unpaid time off.

Numerous programs would close, and the state's pair of signature preschool programs would merge.

But after local protests, budget writers avoided three cuts that Gov. Bev Perdue proposed affecting how criminals are rehabilitated in the mountains.
Prison spared

Haywood Correctional Center, an aging minimum-security prison in Hazelwood, comes off the chopping block — for now.

The prison is the only one west of Asheville. Corrections officials have been optimistic that its workers could be reassigned if it closes as proposed by Perdue, but Sen. John Snow said the distance would be too great.

“There wasn't anywhere for those folks to go,” said Snow, a Murphy Democrat who co-chairs the budget subcommittee on public safety. “The 44 employees that would be lost, would be lost, period.”

The plan also spares Camp Woodson, a Buncombe County wilderness camp aimed at turning around the most serious offenders in the juvenile justice system; and the Young Offenders Forest Conservation Program, also known as the BRIDGE program, which sends young inmates in the adult corrections system to fight forest fires in the mountains.

Four prisons in eastern and central North Carolina would close under the plan, down from seven in Perdue's proposal to the General Assembly.

Also tapped for closing: two aging youth lockups that are close to new units and a number of programs that target at-risk youths, like the Center for the Prevention of School Violence. Juvenile Justice Secretary Linda Hayes called those “very shocking” cuts that could cripple public safety efforts.

No new building projects are proposed in the budget, but senators added $2.6 million to continue planning for expansion of state medical schools — including a program that would bring third- and fourth-year medical students to Asheville — and for the Center for Health and Aging, a project of the Mountain Area Health Education Center.
Larger classes

Budget chairwoman Sen. Linda Garrou said boosting average class size by two students would save $320 million.

It's one of the largest cost-savings measures in the plan, which also assumes some tax increases without outlining what they are.

Senators “knew that we couldn't just cut our way out of the budget,” Garrou said.

The state faces a budget shortfall predicted to top $3 billion in the fiscal year that starts in July.

The Senate plan would leave some of the savings up to state agencies. Garrou said the extra authority would allow agencies to furlough state employees if necessary.

Some employees may volunteer for furloughs, Senate leaders said: for example, to take an unpaid long weekend.

Raising class size would allow school systems to build fewer new schools and the state to pay for 6,000 fewer teacher jobs, which Senate leaders said can be accomplished by not replacing teachers who leave.

Garrou, a Winston-Salem Democrat and former teacher, said she once taught a 40-student classroom.

Classes won't reach that size. They would go up by two students, growing to an average of 20 in kindergarten through third grade and more in upper grades, including to 29 in grades 10-12.

Perdue has said she would resist efforts to increase class size.

“The Senate made some good investments in what we know of its budget so far, but at this point in time Gov. Perdue is troubled by the proposed increase in class size,” said Perdue spokesman David Kochman. “An increase of two students per class means eliminating 6,200 teaching positions and reducing the amount of individual attention our kids receive in the classroom.”

But Garrou said the increases, which Republican leaders have also sought, are less harmful than alternatives.

“The most important thing is that we have a good teacher,” Garrou said.
Cutting programs, tests, school systems

The remaining educators would have fewer requirements for testing.

Senators proposed cutting funding, more than $3 million a year, for all tests not required by federal law or to obtain federal funding.

Among the subjects of tests to be dropped: reading competency, math competency, computer skills and end-of-course tests in geometry, algebra II, physical science, chemistry and physics.

Another $11 million per year in school savings would come from cutting the extra funding that goes to counties with more than one school system, starting in the 2010 school year.

That would require Asheville City Schools to merge into Buncombe County Schools unless taxes go up or the systems find other revenue.

The idea has been pushed by Senate Majority Leader Tony Rand, but it has strong opposition in the Senate. A committee debated Rand's proposal last month without taking a vote, airing criticism from some of the senators who represent the 15 city school systems.

Senators today will begin proposing changes to the plan. Garrou said they would have the chance to offer amendments.

The bill then gets a Senate vote before moving to the House. Sen. Martin Nesbitt, an Asheville Democrat, said he's doubtful the House would agree to school consolidation even if he and allies fail to remove the provision.

If it does become law, Nesbitt said he's glad it doesn't take effect immediately, giving schools time to prepare.

The budget would also find savings by merging the preschool subsidy program for at-risk 4-year-olds, More at Four, with the broader program aimed at readying young children for school, Smart Start.

Cutting More at Four funding from the education department would allow creation of a similar program in the health department, where Smart Start resides.

Garrou said the plan would save $40 million.

“It's probably smart to think of it as a whole,” said Sen. Joe Sam Queen, a Waynesville Democrat.

The tax portion of the budget remains undisclosed, including whether the Senate will follow Perdue's lead and propose increases in the cigarette and alcohol tax. But a number of court fees would go up under the plan.
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009904070332

Posted by lois at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

WV: Sen. Rockefeller tours site of new federal prison says it is a perfect fit for moutaintwop location

Senator tours site of federal prison in McDowell County
Mary Catherine Brooks
Register-Herald Reporter
April 09, 2009

Bringing attention to the nearly 350 jobs to be created by the federal prison now under construction in the McDowell County industrial park, Sen. Jay Rockefeller toured the facility Thursday.

The federal prison is a perfect fit for the isolated mountaintop location, Rockefeller explained.

“This will be a huge job producer,” he said. “I’ve been coming to McDowell County now for 35 or 40 years, and I’ve been watching it go downhill in terms of jobs ... This will be huge for the area.”

Rockefeller, D-W.Va., explained it is difficult to bring manufacturing jobs into the mountains, but the isolated area is “an advantage for the federal project,” he said.

“Then comes water and sewer,” he added.

The senator also promised the Coalfields Expressway would be completed; the problem is the cost, he said. It will cost about $100 million to construct the four-lane road near the prison.

“But make no mistake, these roads are all going to be completed,” he emphasized, though offering no timeline.

The Coalfields Expressway was not awarded any federal stimulus money, despite the impoverished economy of McDowell and Wyoming counties.

Rockefeller said the stimulus money was divided equally among the three congressional districts in West Virginia.

Construction of the Coalfields Expressway has begun in both Raleigh and McDowell counties, and will eventually traverse Wyoming County. The new road will be the first four-lane for both Wyoming and McDowell counties.

Nearly 350 jobs are expected to be created when the new prison opens next year in the Indian Ridge Industrial Park, just across the Wyoming County line. Sixty percent of those are expected to go to local people.

More than 600 additional jobs in service industries could be generated by the prison once it is up and running, officials said.

The prison’s annual budget is expected to put $35 million into the area economy, according to officials.

Local residents who are interested in working in the prison system — including secretaries and accountants, among other positions — are considered corrections officers first, officials noted. In the event of emergencies within the prison, those employees are expected to perform their trained assignments as corrections officers.

The jobs will include opportunities in food services, health services, management, education, recreation and computers, among other areas.

Job applications are available online at www.bop.gov.
http://www.register-herald.com/local/local_story_099221724.html

Posted by lois at 05:53 PM | Comments (0)

CA: Coalinga state prison still falls short, grand jury reports

Coalinga state prison still falls short, jury reports
Thursday, Apr. 09, 2009
By Eddie Jimenez / The Fresno Bee

Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga is still plagued with crowding, inadequate medical care and concerns that inmates could be exposed to Valley fever, according to a Fresno County grand jury report issued Thursday.

A grand jury report last year addressed the same problems and also issued the same recommendations.

The most recent report said a visit by grand jurors in late September revealed that the prison, designed to hold 2,200 inmates, housed 5,191 inmates -- including some in a gymnasium.
In addition, the Coalinga Regional Medical Center still does not have a secure medical wing for prisoners. Therefore, when inmates require hospitalization, they are driven a hour away to the Bakersfield Community Medical Center, where the prison contracts for 20 beds.

Taking inmates to Bakersfield for hospital care stretches the Coalinga prison's staff and budget, the report said.
Lack of state funding is stalling efforts to create a secure wing for prisoners at the Coalinga medical center, the grand jury said.
Valley fever -- widespread in the Coalinga area, according to the report -- remains an ongoing threat for inmates and staff. Prison officials have taken steps to address the problem, such as transferring inmates who have asthma and emphysema to other prisons.
Doctors also do not have adequate office space, the grand jury said.

State prison officials have alleviated some crowding by transferring inmates to out-of-state prisons, said Seth Unger, spokesman for California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Health care in the state prison system was taken over by a court-appointed federal receiver after a class-action lawsuit was filed.
The receiver is well aware of the health care issues raised in the grand jury report, said Luis Patiño, receiver spokesman.
"We are working diligently to remedy those problems," he said.
Pleasant Valley State Prison houses minimum-, medium- and maximum-security inmates.

Note from someone familiar with the distances mentioned: "I'm not sure how fast prison ambulances drive, but to get from Coalinga to Bakersfield in an hour requires averaging something over 100 mph."

Posted by lois at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)

April 07, 2009

AL: First Federal Prison for Women Touted as Boost for Economy

Groundbreaking set for Alabama's first federal women's prison
Posted by Tom Gordon --
Birmingham News April 06, 2009

Groundbreaking is scheduled Wednesday at the west Alabama site of what will be the state's first all-female federal prison.
The facility will be on 120 acres of a 650-acre site in southwest Pickens County, about 2.5 miles north of Aliceville on Alabama 14.

State Rep. Alan Harper, Aliceville's director of economic development, said the new prison will be part of the Federal Correctional Complex Aliceville. It will house 1,300 medium-security inmates, have 350 employees, and should open in 2011.

Harper said construction should cost about $185 million and should involve 500 to 600 workers on site. The project will be a joint venture between two construction companies: Caddell of Montgomery and W.G. Yates & Sons of Philadelphia, Ms. Local officials are hoping other prisons will added on the property over the next 10 years.

"A complex consists of usually three or more facilities," Harper said. "We expect that hopefully over the next 10-year period, we will see two more correctional facilities built on the site."

Harper said the project should be an economic boost for Pickens County, bringing in new residents and spurring the building of homes, hotels, restaurants and service stations. After the prison is completed, Aliceville plans to annex the site, he added.
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2009/04/groundbreaking_set_for_alabama.html

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

OH: Prison employees escape layoffs due to $59 million to prisons from stimulus bill

Prison employees escape layoffs
Monday, April 6, 2009 11:00 PM
By Alan Johnson
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
In today's eroding economy, this is news: The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction will not lay off 500 employees.

The agency that runs 30 state prisons said as recently as late February that it would be forced to make deep personnel cuts affecting 500 union and non-union employees. Many are in central office operations in Columbus, while others are in prisons around the state and include parole officers, chaplains and prison case managers.

However, prisons chief Terry Collins sent a letter to all employees on Friday informing them that there would be no "massive job abolishments or reductions" at this time.

Collins said the budget appears to be "tight but manageable." He did not rule out the potential need for future layoffs.

That is a major turnaround from Feb. 2, when Gov. Ted Strickland released his executive budget proposal. That day, Collins put out a memo saying that 500 positions would be eliminated "that will affect all areas of this agency."

He reaffirmed the 500 layoffs in a Feb. 20 memo to his staff when the state filed a required "intent to lay off" notice with the Department of Administrative Services.

But then two things happened: The state got a big chunk of money from the federal stimulus package (including $59 million for the prisons), and the Ohio Civil Services Employees Association ratified a contract that includes no pay raises and 10-day, unpaid furloughs for all employees.

A second labor union, Service Employees International Union District 1199, has not yet approved a contract with the state prison agency. But Becky Williams, president of SEIU District 1199, called the decision to forgo layoffs "not just a victory for our union members, but also a victory for the citizens of Ohio."

"The layoff of these vital positions would have placed the community at greater risk with less supervision of the parolee population and limited the amount of support services available," Williams said, noting that some parole officers are already handling caseloads up to 40 percent over manageable levels.

"This agreement will sustain services provided by the ODRC and prevent any further strain within a corrections system already in crisis," Williams said.
http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/04/06/nolayoffs.html?sid=101

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

April 05, 2009

IL: Guards and Police Want Prison Open: "Enough is Enough" "We already have the melons, now bring us the felons."

Organizer Kathy Newstrand even came up with a motto for their efforts: "We Thomson prison workers are saying 'enough is enough'
Barb Ickes | Posted: Saturday, April 4, 2009

THOMSON, Ill. - Squad cars lined the shoulder of the highway as more than 100 people filled a diner parking lot Saturday to rally for the opening of a prison and for the jobs that were promised long ago.

"Enough is enough," rally organizer Randy Newstrand said of the back-and-forth status of opening the Thomson Correctional Center, about 50 miles northeast of the Quad-Cities. "We're getting together to move Thomson forward. All those (police) officers you see are here to support us. There's someone from every village in the county. We're coming together."

Though the prison was built nearly eight years ago at a cost of $140 million, only a fraction of the state-of-the-art complex is being used. Politics and funding shortfalls have prevented the prison from becoming the economic and job center that many people in Carroll and Whiteside counties were counting on.lready have the melons, now bring us the felons."

When former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was removed from office, he was in the process of moving prisoners from the state prison at Pontiac to Thomson. But those plans went away with Blagojevich. And now Gov. Pat Quinn is proposing a budget that contains no money for the opening of Thomson.

"We feel if we sit back on our hands the governor's going to think we accept our fate, and we don't," Newstrand said. "They built this place for a reason. Now open it."

With the mostly vacant prison as a distant backdrop, state and local lawmakers took turns at the microphone, one of them promising to get Quinn's attention and another pointing out the state is spending enough on overtime at the Department of Corrections to get Thomson fully open and operational.

"The state spent $61 million in overtime last year for the Department of Corrections," said State Rep. Jim Sacia, R-Pecatonica. "And we can't get $40 million to open Thomson Prison? Folks, this is a no-brainer."

He said there still is time to try to talk to Quinn, adding the legislature has 57 days until voting on the governor's proposed budget, "and that means we have 57 days to change the governor's mind."

State Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-Ill., brought apologies to the rally for what he thought was a done deal on Thomson funding and urged rally-goers to keep up hope.

"I'd hoped to be coming up here to cut a ribbon today," he said. "I feel like I have failed in some way."

Jacobs also promised to get a group of lawmakers together to urge Quinn to reconsider ways of finding the money to open Thomson, which currently houses only about 130 prisoners in the minimum-security wing and never has held a prisoner in the large maximum-security wing.

"We're going to ask for a private meeting with the governor," he said. "We deserve a clear timeline. We're gonna get this thing done."

State Rep. Pat Verschoore, D-Milan, said that one way of getting Thomson open is to take into consideration that all the state's prisons are overcrowded. Because of the overcrowding, he said, it would not be necessary to close Pontiac.

He also agreed that overtime money could be diverted to Thomson.

Among those with the most riding on the prison are the 200-plus guards that were trained to work there but have since been scattered throughout the state to work at other centers.

Tom Barkley, of Milledgeville, said he quit his job of 15 years to work as a guard at Thomson. After he was trained, however, he was sent on the road.

The father of four, including a 1-and-4-year-old, has spent the last four months traveling each week to work at the state prison in Lincoln. The arrangement has created a hardship for his family, he said, and the state must pay for this lodging and travel.

"We don't know what's going to happen or when," he said, as one of his children sat atop his shoulders at the rally. "We hear different stories all the time. It's not easy."

Despite the frustrations that are felt by hundreds in the communities surrounding Thomson, rally organizers were trying to keep a positive focus on progress, and they also were keeping a sense of humor.

Organizer Kathy Newstrand even came up with a motto for their efforts: "We already have the melons, now bring us the felons."

EARLIER STORY: The message at a rally today that centered on the mostly unused prison at Thomson, Ill., was “Move Thomson Forward.”

But a secondary message was, “Enough is enough.”

More than 100 people gathered in the parking lot of a Thomson diner that was built to accommodate workers and visitors of the $140 million prison, listening to politicians from many levels of government. Their message was that the people of Carroll and Whiteside counties should not give up.

Illinois Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline, promised the rally goers that he would set up a private meeting with Gov. Pat Quinn, aimed at getting the governor “to change his mind” about funding for the correctional center.

The governor’s proposed budget does not contain the necessary funding to open the prison and use it to its full capacity of 1,600 inmates.

Former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was working on a plan to close the state prison at Pontiac and move those prisoners to Thomson. Even though about 200 people were trained to work as guards at Thomson, there is no funding to put them to work.

The trainees now are being transported to other state prisons during the week, which costs the state money in fuel and lodging.

Many of those workers said they have tired of living “in limbo.”

Posted by lois at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2009

California prepares to expand 3 prisons! They won't stop!

California prepares to expand 3 prisons
By DON THOMPSON
Associated Press Writer
Published: Wednesday, Apr. 1, 2009

SACRAMENTO -- The head of California's prison system said Wednesday that he will soon ask state legislators to approve expanding three prisons to hold an additional 2,800 inmates, adding to what already is the nation's largest state prison system.

The construction projects would be the first to draw money from a nearly $8 billion bond measure approved by lawmakers two years ago. The money has been stalled ever since by drafting problems that were corrected in the budget legislation that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law in February.

Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said he plans to seek approval within weeks to build cellblocks for about 900 inmates each at high-security Kern Valley and medium-security North Kern state prisons, both near Delano.

He also wants to convert a juvenile lockup near Paso Robles into a prison for 1,000 older men.

Adding cells is part of the state's response to a federal court finding that it must reduce prison overcrowding.

The $810 million Cate will seek from legislative budget committees would pay for those three expansions, plus building a re-entry center in Stockton for 500 inmates who are nearing the end of their prison terms. It would be the first of several planned regional re-entry centers to help inmates adjust in the months before they are paroled.

Actual construction of the four facilities will still depend on when the bond markets thaw, Cate said, because bonds to pay for construction can't be sold until then. Building the facilities would take about two years, he said.

Legislators approved $7.8 billion in revenue bonds in April 2007 to build more state prisons and county jails.

Cate also plans to soon ask legislators to approve expanding medium-security Wasco State Prison, though details are still being worked out, he said in an interview after his confirmation hearing.

The Senate Rules Committee plans to vote April 22 on whether to let Cate keep the job he has held for nearly a year. He needs approval by the full Senate by mid-May to continue to hold the post.

The proposed construction comes as a special panel of three federal judges is preparing a final order that could force the state to free about a third of its nearly 170,000 inmates. About 153,000 are in the state's 33 adult prisons, with the remainder in conservation camps, community correctional centers and private prisons in other states.

The judges tentatively ruled in February that severe crowding is causing unconstitutional conditions for physically and mentally ill inmates.

To that end, Cate said he is working with J. Clark Kelso, the federal court-appointed receiver who controls prison medical care, to see if some of the new cells Cate plans to build could be used for sick inmates.

Cate also is considering if some of the cells could be used for mentally ill inmates as part of a treatment plan due to be filed with another federal judge within 60 days.

"Let's maybe kill two birds with one stone," Cate said. "There are a number of options we are exploring."

Schwarzenegger's administration has argued it can use the $7.8 billion approved by legislators two years ago instead of approving up to $8 billion in additional borrowing sought by Kelso to improve inmate care.

But Cate told senators Wednesday that the $7.8 billion will likely not be enough to bring prisons up to constitutional standards. He said he is negotiating with Kelso to determine "the minimum we can live with in these tough times."
http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/1748098.html

Posted by lois at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2009

WA: Guards protest possible closing of prison.

Prison cuts would free hundreds of felons, critics contend
March 31, 2009
By LEVI PULKKINEN
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Proposed cuts to the Department of Corrections budget could see hundreds of felons released into the community early, corrections officers and victim advocates argued Tuesday in response to legislative proposals.

In separate plans, both legislative houses and Gov. Chris Gregoire have suggested significant cuts to the department budget in an effort to close a nearly $9 billion shortfall in state revenue. Included in House and Senate budgets are substantial reductions in funding to prisoner reentry programs, including drug and alcohol abuse treatment and work placement.

Contending that a Senate proposal to close the McNeil Island Corrections Center and other cuts could cause 1,400 to 1,900 convicts to be released early, prison employees union leader Tracey Thompson said too little has been done to research the impact such a move would have on public safety.

"Allowing early release when you're also reducing supervision just doesn't make sense," said Thompson, secretary treasurer with Teamsters Local 117, the union representing corrections officers. Prison workers, she added, "believe in what they do, and they believe in public safety and this is freaking them out."

The Senate proposal would see about 107 Department of Corrections positions cut during the coming two years, leaving the department roughly 662 workers short of the staffing level needed to support current service levels, according to state projections.

Suggested cuts would still see spending at the department increase by $31 million from 2009 to 2011, a time period when the department is expected to spend $1.8 billion to incarcerate and monitor convicted felons. While overall spending would increase under the proposal, the Senate plan would eliminate $124 million in expected expenses, either through spending cuts or by obtaining other funding sources.

A House budget proposal released Tuesday contained similar cuts in state spending but preserved current staffing levels by in part by directing $182 million in federal grant money to the department.

Reviewing the proposed changes, longtime crime victim advocate Jenny Wieland said she was concerned that both proposals would effectively force the Department of Corrections to release offenders earlier.

In reviewing the legislation, Wieland said she believes it's likely that about 950 offenders would be freed. Doing so, she said, would come as a shock to many crime victims.

"They are told (their assailant) is going to serve this amount of time, and if there's any good-time deduction, they're advised of that," Wieland said. "Now, all of a sudden, you're getting a letter that this offender is getting out early, and you have no input into that."

Under the Senate proposal, the department would close the McNeil Island Corrections Center by July 2010, moving the 1,300 inmates currently housed there to other facilities. The Department of Health and Social Services-run secure center for violent sexual predators on the island would remain in operation.

Both proposals take into account savings from a change in law allowing the department to issue 90-day housing vouchers to inmates who are scheduled for release but cannot find a place to live. Under existing law, offenders who are due to be released on so-called "good time" -- a 10 to 50 percent sentence reduction granted to inmates who behave in prison -- can't be freed until they establish a residence.

Also included the proposals are cuts to post-prison services and constraints, including one-year reductions in the amount of time offenders will be monitored by community corrections officers after they're released. Violent felons would be monitored by the department for three years instead of four after they're released from prison.

The Senate proposal would see a 50-percent cut to offender re-entry programs such as vocational training and mental health services, cutting spending on the program by $15.6 million. The competing proposal from the House would reduce funding for such programs by $10.6 million.

While the House proposal would preserve all proven programs, Thompson said both would eliminate several new initiatives that have shown merit but are still being reviewed.

She said she's concerned that the proposed cuts haven't been vetted in any systematic way.

"If the state were to undergo a thorough evaluation of the system, that would be fine, but that kind of processes has not happened," Thompson said. "I'm worried for public safety, and I'm worried that this is a kneejerk approach."

Reached for comment Tuesday, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman said department managers are reviewing both proposals but were not yet prepared to offer an opinion on them or the allegations made by critics. Department Secretary Eldon Vail is expected to offer a response Wednesday afternoon.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/404472_PRISON01ww.html

Posted by lois at 12:28 AM | Comments (0)

NJ: Guards protest closing of prison. Community wants it gone.

"The residents of this community believe in their hearts...they do not want the prison to be on that location," he said. "They view it as the way that their community can turn things around and they can't get it done with a prison on its most valuable property."
Star Ledger

Plan to close Riverfront State Prison in Camden draws controversy
by MaryAnn Spoto/The Star-Ledger
Sunday March 08, 2009

In their dreams for a city besieged by crime and unemployment, they envision concrete walls and barbed wire replaced by green parks and tidy homes.

"Riverfront State Prison has held Camden down since the day it opened on the waterfront," said Rodney Sadler, president of Save Our Waterfront, a citizens group.

But union leaders and some lawmakers say the decision to close the prison was driven purely by economics, could overburden county jails that house state inmates, and leaves little room if more crime produces more inmates.

"This was a rash decision without thinking it through, without any public input on it," said Assemblyman Scott Rudder (R-Burlington). "Why is this being expedited? What is really going on here?"

State officials say the move gives the state a rare opportunity to consolidate services and get an influx of cash from a property sale amid a $7 billion budget shortfall.

"Certainly because of the dire financial times we're in, we're looking at the efficiencies, looking at everything," said DOC spokeswoman Deirdre Fedkenheuer. "If you can close a prison, you have to do it."

The state plans to empty Riverfront before June by scattering the more than 800 inmates among other state prisons. The 17-acre site is scheduled to be auctioned April 20-24.

Treasury spokesman Tom Vincz said the auction date is not definite and depends on when the inmates are transferred. He said the state has not received an appraisal of the property. The Office of Legislative Services has said its assessed value is nearly $41 million.

However, in justifying the move, state corrections officials publicly overstated how much the prison population has dropped.

When confirming the decision to close Riverfront, officials said the number of inmates in New Jersey's prison system had decreased by 5,000 inmates -- from about 27,500 to about 22,000 --over the past six years. In reviewing the records, The Star-Ledger found the population actually fell by just 387 inmates during that time.

Fedkenheuer acknowledged the incorrect figures, but said the state was not trying to be misleading.

"It was wrong and it was not deliberate," she said.

A medium-security facility, Riverfront opened in 1985 and was designed to hold 408 inmates. In recent years it consistently housed more than 1,000 inmates, despite its new capacity of 631.

For the past decade, the state's prisons have held more prisoners than for which they were designed, prompting officials to double-bunk cells and convert program space into dormitories. A budget report from the Office of Legislative Services noted state prisons are operating at 36 percent above their design capacity.

Corrections officials, however, say prison populations are declining and there is space in the state's 10 other adult correctional facilities to absorb Riverfront inmates.

James Austin, a criminologist who advises state prisons on re-entry and parole, said moves to close prisons are not unusual.

"Many states are trying to cut corrections budgets, and the only way you can cut them is to close facilities," he said. "Very few systems are at their design capacity."

Citing the high number of state inmates still housed at county jails, Rudder and Assemblywoman Dawn Marie Addiego (R-Burlington) called on Gov. Jon Corzine to keep the prison open.

"I am shocked the governor wants to close one of the state's newest facilities when there isn't enough room for the prisoners we have already," Addiego said.

The plan is also getting static from the corrections officers union, whose members would also be scattered to other prisons.

"Public safety should not be compromised because somebody wants that property to look over at Philadelphia and build a condo on it or whatever else they want built," said Gregory Kelley, president of local 105 of the state corrections officers union.

Corrections officers argued poor conditions at Southern State, a Delmont-based medium-security facility in Cumberland County comprised of modular buildings, warrant closing that prison before Riverfront.

Camden County officials, however, say they'll be glad to see the prison go.

At a recent meeting in Lawnside, Camden County Freeholder Jeffrey Nash told an audience filled with angry corrections officers that the prison's closure is key to transforming the city. He said the prison was forced on residents and prevents the expansion of the city's downtown and of Rutgers University's Camden campus.

"The residents of this community believe in their hearts...they do not want the prison to be on that location," he said. "They view it as the way that their community can turn things around and they can't get it done with a prison on its most valuable property."

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/plans_to_close_riverfront_stat.html

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

MS: CCA Opening New Federal Prison: 2,500 cages---400 jobs

Thursday, April 2, 2009, 8:43am CDT
Corrections Corp. opens Mississippi prison
Nashville Business Journal

Corrections Corporation of America is opening a new prison in Natchez, Miss., that will house more than 2,500 federal prisoners and create some 400 jobs.

CCA won a federal contract to house a maximum of 2,567 inmates at its new Adams County Correctional Center in southwest Misssissippi. A group of prisoners — mostly illegal aliens in the process of being deported — will start arriving this fall, the company says.

The $128 million federal facility is the corrections company's fourth prison in Mississippi. Franklin-based CCA (NYSE:CXW) is the nation’s largest private prison operator.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour hailed the federal contract, saying in a statement that it “fills a public need and provides good-paying jobs to Mississippians.”

Tony Grande, CCA’s chief development officer, calls the prison industry “recession-resistant.” But in February, CCA suspended construction of a 2,040-bed correctional facility in Trousdale County, Tenn., citing uncertainty over when the facility’s beds could be filled. Company officials said they would hold off on building the prison until they had a better idea of when they could fill the beds. A 1,000-bed federal detention center in Nevada was also placed on hold.

Nevertheless, a 4.1 percent increase in inmates and a 5.2 percent increase in per diem rates helped CCA to a 16 percent jump in 2008 fourth quarter earnings, which were $40.5 million compared to $34.9 million in the same quarter a year earlier.

For the full year 2008, CCA reported a 9.8 percent increase in revenue and a 13.2 percent increase in net income per diluted share. The company added 8,275 additional beds last year, and CCA officials said they plan to invest about $132.1 million in capital expenditures in 2009, including $78.5 million in already announced prison construction and expansions.
http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2009/03/30/daily25.html

Posted by lois at 12:08 AM | Comments (0)

Prisons, Drugs in America: A Turning Point?

Prisons, Drugs in America: A Turning Point?
Neal Peirce / Apr 02 2009
For Release Sunday, April 5, 2009
© 2009 Washington Post Writers Group

An historic turning point in criminal justice and drug policy in America?

The fourth week of March was arguably just that:

On the way to Mexico City, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the first senior U.S. official to accept co-responsibility for the cartel-driven drug violence now ravaging Mexico. Clinton acknowledged that “our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” and that our three-decade long war on drugs has simply “not worked.”

In Albany, New York Gov. David Paterson and the Democratic legislative majority announced they’d reached agreement to roll back the punitive “Rockefeller drug laws” of the 1970s, starting with then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s insistence on mandatory minimum prison sentences for first-time, non-violent drug offenders.

But the biggest breakthrough of all may have come in the U.S. Senate, where Virginia’s Jim Webb (D), joined by two Republican and 13 Democratic colleagues, sponsored legislation for a high-level “National Criminal Justice Commission.”

This could be the official eye-opener, the crucial reexamination of America’s penal and drug policies that the nation has so sorely needed for years.

Why?

First, its chair would be appointed by the president–and President Obama has called Webb twice to commend his effort. A commission-endorsed reform agenda would provide Obama cover for major changes in this politically charged area.

Second, the Senate Democratic leadership is enthusiastically in favor and there’s smaller but significant Republican cosponsorship–Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, ranking GOP member of the Judiciary Committee, and South Carolina’s Lindsay Graham, ranking member on the Crime and Drugs subcommittee.

A third positive: Jim Webb–highly decorated Marine combat veteran, Navy Secretary under President Reagan–can hardly be labeled a “softie” on crime. He and his staff have spent two years researching the prison and drug issues, hearing from prosecutors, judges, crime victims, former offenders, inmates and police. “It was like tapping a nerve,” Webb declares– “all are saying we have a real mess on our hands.”

Webb defines the base problem: with just 5 percent of world population, the U.S. has 2.3 million people behind bars–25 percent of all prisoners worldwide. “Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong.”

Webb contends that our prisons, many seriously overcrowded, have become “places of violence, physical abuse and hate,” costing federal, state and local governments a tough-to-justify $68 billion a year.

We’re “warehousing” the mentally ill in our prisons where, the senator notes, they get scant professional treatment. Then he focuses on “the elephant in the bedroom” –the rise in drug incarcerations. In 1980, the U.S. incarcerated 41,000 drug offenders; today the figure tops 500,000–a 1,200 percent increase.

The commission, says Webb, would have to wrestle with the fact that more than half of Americans age 12 and over have at some time used an illegal drug. “In talking of legality and illegality, what does that do to the fiber of our society? I saw more drug use at Georgetown Law School than anywhere else I’ve been. A lot of those people went on to be judges.”

Yet what’s the answer? Should we be arresting people for recreational drug use–or, Webb asks, for addiction?

Then there’s race: African-Americans, he observes, comprise 12 percent of our population, use drugs at close to the national average, but represent 37 percent of drug arrests and 74 percent of drug offenders sentenced to prison. How’s that to be explained?

Conversely, Webb underscores how seriously gangs are impacting American society. Some, though not all, ride on the back of the drug trade. Mexican drug cartels, the most violent and visible, are operating in 230 American cities, not simply along the border. MS-13 gangs, notorious for drug smuggling, gun running and hits for hire, have spread across the U.S., even recruiting 2,000, Webb notes, in Northern Virginia across the Potomac from Washington.

Then there’s the problem of rural towns, hard hit by globalization, actively seeking prisons as a source for jobs.

Many American guards receive only brief on-the-job training. Webb contrasts this with Japan, where guards have a year’s preparation and inmates legitimately regard them but “mentors, disciplinarians, and friends.”

Bottom line: Webb’s commission, if Congress approves it, will have a massive, complex agenda. Yet its findings could prove a vital turning point, not only for the federal government (which holds just 10 percent of prisoners) but state and local governments nationwide. Many might be inspired to create their own commissions.

Some say Webb, representing historically conservative Virginia, is threatening his own political future. But if Webb can get us off the dime, thinking and acting afresh on critical prison and drug issues, he’ll be serving America as vitally as the bravest of his erstwhile Marine colleagues.
http://citiwire.net/post/831/

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

April 01, 2009

Lock 'Em Up Jailing kids is a proud American tradition.

Lock 'Em Up
Jailing kids is a proud American tradition.
By THOMAS FRANK
Wall Street Journal On-line
April 1, 2009

At first glance, the news from Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, is not good. In what is known locally as the "kids for cash" scandal, two judges have pleaded guilty to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks from a for-profit juvenile correctional facility -- a privately owned jail for kids, essentially.

And here is what the judges delivered, according to the charges of the U.S. Attorney overseeing the case: In 2003 one of them, Judge Michael Conahan, who had authority over such expenses, defunded the county-owned detention center, channeling kids sentenced to detention to the private jail -- along with the public's money.

For good measure, the feds charge, Mr. Conahan also agreed to send the private facility $1.3 million per year in public funds. Over the succeeding years, the private jail, along with a second lockup-for-profit that had opened in another part of the state, won tens of millions of dollars in Luzerne County contracts, allegedly with the two judges' help.

What has drawn the media's attention, though, is the remarkable strictness of the judges' judging. Mr. Conahan's alleged partner in the scheme, Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr., reportedly sent kids to the private detention centers when probation officers didn't think it was a good idea; he sent kids there when their crimes were nonviolent; he sent kids there when their crimes were insignificant. It was as though he was determined to keep those private prisons filled with children at all times. According to news stories, offenses as small as swiping a jar of nutmeg or throwing a piece of steak at an adult were enough to merit a trip to the hoosegow.

Over the years Mr. Ciavarella racked up a truly awesome score: He sent kids to detention instead of other options at twice the state average, according to the New York Times. He tried a prodigious number of cases in which the accused child had no lawyer -- here, says the Times, the judge's numbers were fully 10 times the state average. And he did it fast, sometimes rendering a verdict "in the neighborhood of a minute-and-a-half to three minutes," according to the judge tasked with reconsidering Mr. Ciavarella's work.

My question is, what have the Luzerne County judges done that deviates in the least from our American political traditions? These jurists have merely taken to heart the unvarying message of 40 years' worth of election results -- that more people, many more, need to go to jail -- and have come up with an entrepreneurial solution to the problem.

We the people say it loud and clear every Election Day, in high-crime periods as well as peaceful stretches: More of our population needs to be behind bars. We love retribution so much we make hits of TV shows in which society's ne'er-do-wells come in for lectures not only by stern, righteous judges, but by tattooed, mulletted bounty hunters as well.

And over the years we have embraced all sorts of instruments ensuring that more people got locked up for longer and longer stretches: Three strikes laws, mandatory sentencing laws, zero-tolerance policies. Maybe they aren't "fair," but they've helped to make the U.S. number one in percentage of population in the clink -- in fact, as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb pointed out in Parade magazine on Sunday, America has an amazing 25% of the world's prisoners.

Taking this path has not always been easy. In the 1990s, when we started to realize that child crooks were "superpredators" who needed to go to prison along with everyone else, some were unwilling to act. Others stepped up. "We've got to quit coddling these violent kids like nothing is going on," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) in 1996. "Getting some of these do-gooder liberals to do what is right is real tough. We'd all like to rehabilitate these kids, but by gosh we are in a different age."

But taking law and order to the next level in this different age required money, by gosh. Privatizing bits of the prison industry was a step in the right direction, but what we didn't have -- until recently -- were proper instruments for incentivizing the judiciary. That's what the "kids for cash" judges were apparently experimenting with.

Today the do-gooders revile those efforts as "kickbacks," but before long we will see them as legitimate tools of justice. Our laws governing lobbying and campaign contributions have struck the right balance between the wishes of the people and those of private industry, so why are we so quick to doubt that the same great results can be achieved by putting the government's justice-dealing branch on the same market-based course?

The public will get to see their neighbors' kids go to jail, the judge who sends them there will be able to afford a nice condo in Florida, and the company that satisfies the public's desire for punishment will make a handsome profit. It will be a win-win result for everyone.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123854010220075533.html#

Posted by lois at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

March 31, 2009

NY budget deal calls for closing 3 prison camps

NY budget deal calls for closing 3 prison camps
By MICHAEL VIRTANEN | Associated Press Writer
March 30, 2009
Newsday

ALBANY, N.Y. - The state budget negotiated by New York's Democratic leaders would close three minimum-security prison camps upstate and shutter a once prominent investigative agency established in the 1950s.

Paterson administration officials say Camp Pharsalia in Chenango County, Camp McGregor in Saratoga County and Camp Gabriels in Franklin County would close on or after July 1, saving an estimated $12 million in the budget year that starts Wednesday.

The inmate population in New York's prisons has dropped by about 10,000 in a decade.

Gabriels is at 29 percent of capacity, Pharsalia at 36 percent and McGregor under 20 percent, said Erik Kriss, spokesman for the Department of Correctional Services. Another camp, Georgetown in southern Madison County, will remain open.

The corrections commissioner would have the authority to also close the six prison annexes that are on the grounds of prisons.

The budget package contains measures proposed by a special sentencing commission expected to reduce the inmate population by another 1,600, including graduated sanctions for parole violations, Kriss said.

Another measure would allow inmates up to age 50 to go to six-month shock camps instead of the last three years of their sentences. The age limit now is 40. A third would enable some inmates convicted of violent crimes to shorten their sentences by six months of merit time for meeting various goals. Sex offenders and prisoners convicted of first-degree murder would be ineligible, Kriss said.

The budget package includes a proposal by Gov. David Paterson to save $4.15 million by letting the state Commission of Investigation go out of business. The commission has broad authority to investigate corruption, misconduct and mismanagement in state and local government.

The panel advocated continuing its broad powers, which critics say haven't been effectively used for several years, and combined into a single entity with the Inspector General's office and the Public Integrity Commission, the state government's other two watchdog entities.

Voting is expected this week on the $131.8 billion budget.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--nystatebudget-pri0330mar30,0,1886912.story

Posted by lois at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2009

Real Cost of Prisons Comix wins National Council on Crime and Delinquency PASS Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Announces
The 2008 PASS Award Winners
Oakland, CA, March 20, 2009

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency is pleased to announce the 2008 Winners of its respected PASS Awards (Prevention for a Safer Society). NCCD honors the media’s success and vital role in illuminating the people and programs that uncover the root causes of crime and those that promise to protect our most precious resource—our youth—against involvement in crime.

A critical link in successful policies related to youth and justice is the education of the public. The media is uniquely positioned to be this link, and we gratefully acknowledge their efforts to fulfill that responsibility. Each year the PASS Awards honor media professionals in the fields of print, literature, broadcast media, television, and film in recognition of thoughtful and factual coverage of the issues. Special consideration is given to those stories that highlight solutions to criminal and juvenile justice and child welfare problems.

NCCD is the nation's oldest private organization working to attain responsive and effective criminal justice, juvenile justice, and child welfare systems. For over 100 years, NCCD has been committed to promoting criminal justice strategies that are fair, humane, cost-effective, and uncompromising in public safety. The issues that have defined NCCD since its inception are the need for a separate and humane justice system for children, alternatives to incarceration, and the fundamental connection between social justice and public safety.

For more information on NCCD, please visit our website at www.nccd-crc.org

FILM
Ice T Presents “25 to Life” Deloss Pickett, Michael Dallum
“At the Death House Door” Steve James, Peter Gilbert

LITERATURE
American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment by Sasha Abramsky

Chasing Justice by Kerry Max Cook, Sandra Kaye Pressey, Kerry Justice Cook, Peter Hubbard

From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King by Robert Hillary King and Andrea Gibbons

I’ll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison by Walley Lamb

Letters From the Dhamma Brothers by Jenny Phillips, Pariyatti Press, Ron Cavanaugh

Maximum Security: The True Meaning of Freedom by Alan Gompers

Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration by Paul Wright, Tara Herivel and Dianne Wachtel

Stanley Tookie Williams Street Peace Series by Stanley Tookie Williams and Barbara Becnel

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix by Lois Ahrens, Kevin Pyle, Sabrina Jones, Susan Willmarth, Ellen Miller-Mack and Craig Gilmore

MAGAZINE
San Jose Mercury News
“A Painful Choice for Moms in Prison” Edwin Garcia, Karen Borchers, Miller-McCune
“Is This the Future of the War on Drugs?” by Vince Beiser,John Mecklin

NEWSPAPER
East Valley Tribune “Reasonable Doubt” by Ryan Gabrielson, Paul Giblin, Patti Epler
Long Beach Press-Telegram “Lots of Answers, but No Easy Fixes” byWendy Thomas Russell andTracy Manzer
Seattle Weekly “Neverminded” by Laura Onstot and Mike Seely
The Daily Review “Educate to Break Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline” by Tammerlin Drummond
The Sacramento Bee “Unprotected” Marjie Lundstrom, Sam Stanton, Autumn Cruz, Mitchell Brooks
The Village Voice “Teen Murders at Rikers Jail” by Graham Rayman, Tony Ortega
The Washington Post “Rehabilitating Juvenile Offenders” by Robert Pierre, Carol Morello Westword
“Stand and Deliver” byAdam Cayton-Holland, Patricia Calhoun, Anthony Camera

RADIO
American Radioworks -“Gangster Confidential" Michael Montgomery and Catherine Winter
KALW Radio “Prisons in Crisis: A State of Emergency in California” JoAnn Mar, Alyne Ellis
KQED/Forum “Prisoner Health” by Scott Shafer, Nick Vidinsky andDan Zoll

TELEVISION/ VIDEO
HBO - “The Wire, Season 5” by David Simon, Nina Kostroff Noble, Ed Burns, Joe Chappelle.Karen L.Thorson
SoCal Connected/KCET -“Inside Locke High” Angela Shelley andAlexandria Gales, Brett Wood, Michael Bloecher,Bret Marcus
NBC/Wolf Films “Law and Order: SVU - Confession” Dick Wolf, Neal Baer, Ted Kotcheff, Peter Jankowski, Arthur Forney, Judith McCreary

WEB
AlterNet -“Meet Gus Puryear” by Silja J.A. Talvi and Jan Frel
City Limits -“A Ballot’s Breadth Away from Rejoining Society” by Karen Loew, Curtis Stephen, Rosie McCobb
City Limits “Debating How to Police a Challenging Population” Karen Loew, Tram Whitehurst

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

March 29, 2009

MA: Freedom watch: Jailhouse bloc The real reason law-and-order types love mandatory-minimum sentencing? It's money in their pockets.

News Features, The Boston Phoenix
Freedom watch: Jailhouse bloc
The real reason law-and-order types love mandatory-minimum sentencing? It's money in their pockets.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE AND KYLE SMEALLIE | December 9, 2008

With aromatic puffs of change, Bay State stoners rejoiced on Election Day. But even the haziest of revelers may have missed the full significance of Question 2, a statewide ballot initiative to decriminalize marijuana possession in small amounts. Not only will this bring more humane and responsible marijuana laws, it will also suppress — however slightly — an insidious, contemporary offshoot of what President Dwight Eisenhower famously referred to as the "military-industrial complex": the idea that if private industry and government joined in promoting ever-increasing defense spending, war as well as national bankruptcy were more likely.

Almost a half-century later, that mindset has extended to both the local and federal law-and-order sectors, which have argued for, and experienced, virtually unabated growth. Today, law-enforcement groups regularly lobby against criminal-punishment reforms, and for the creation of new criminal statutes and overly harsh prison sentences. While these efforts are cloaked as calls for public safety, they are essentially creating more business for themselves.

The problem has become so widespread that some private correctional corporations — companies that subcontract services, and even privately owned jails and prisons, to all levels of government — have even lobbied the government to enact and maintain ever broader criminal laws and higher sentences. Those private prisons are now rolling in the profit, and taking on more prisoners every day as federal and state prisons run out of room to house their inmates.

But these lobbyists' success — and that of various law-enforcement groups — has given rise to a veritable "prison-industrial complex" that not only uses fear to suppress these groups' true intentions — it leaves taxpayers footing the bill.

Bleak house of detention
It was with these self-aggrandizing interests in mind that the Massachusetts Districts Attorneys' Association (MDAA) and other tough-on-crime groups fiercelyopposedthe marijuana-decriminalization referendum.

After all, if the penalties for minor marijuana possession were to remain on the statute books, more police, prosecutors, prison guards, and parole officers — and their lucrative overtime — would also be retained.

To their dismay, however, Question 2 passed by an overwhelming 65 to 35 percent voter margin, and will be implemented 30 days after election results are certified. As a result, many law-enforcement officials may soon be without an important source of job security and additional revenue — namely, the $30 million a year (as one study by a Harvard economics professor estimated) spent enforcing the soon-to-be-history current marijuana-possession laws.

Never mind that the forthcoming statutory reform is, from even a moderate law-and-order perspective, relatively benign. According to Question 2, anyone caught with less than one ounce will forfeit the substance and pay a $100 fine, while minors will additionally have to complete a drug-awareness program (including group sessions and community service). Current penalties for growing and trafficking in marijuana, as well as the prohibition against driving while high, will remain exactly as they are.

These facts were conveniently left out of the MDAA's efforts to "inform" voters.The group could not legally make direct contributions to ballot campaigns — publicly funded groups are unable to do so, thanks to a 1978 Supreme Judicial Court decision — yet in opposing Question 2, it still managed to fuel a whisper campaign and add misleading info to its Web site (hosted, by the way, on the state's ".gov" domain).

Thus, these law-enforcement officials were able to avoid any technical wrongdoing while lobbying for an increased legislative arsenal — feathering their own nests at the expense of liberty and sensible public policy.

Bear in mind, though, that our First Amendment protects not only speech, but also "the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." So state and local law-enforcement personnel, like other citizens, do have the right to lobby voters and even members of the legislature to promote more expansive criminal laws and stricter penalties. But self-serving lobbying and public-relations offensives, disguised as seeking protections for society, should be treated with exceptional scrutiny and skepticism.

Though disheartening, their actions are an age-old fact of life best described by Charles Dickens in his classic 1853 novel Bleak House: "The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself."

Coke vs. crack
A similar battle waged in Massachusetts last summer, when law-enforcement groups sought once again to thwart criminal-justice reform. At the time, a legislative effort to help nonviolent offenders find employment opportunities by changing Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) laws was brought before the State House of Representatives — and, thanks to the efforts of state Attorney General Martha Coakley and other law-enforcement officials, essentially squashed.

The proposed bill would have restricted the type of personal information that some employers receive, thereby assisting the many individuals saddled with CORI records who struggle to find employment and end up back behind bars.

Massachusetts's recidivism rates are nearly 40 percent, according to a study by the Urban Institute Justice Policy Center. And the CORI law's branding of even the most innocuous offender is, by all accounts, partly responsible for this dismal situation. So advocates of the bill asserted that changing CORI could ease the massive overcrowding at the state's prison system, which the Department of Corrections recently estimated to be operating at "144 percent of capacity." (Currently, there are 12,000 inmates imprisoned — a disgraceful state record.)

Another aspect of that same failed bill would have reduced mandatory-minimum sentences for certain drug offenses, which advocates said also contribute to overcrowding.

As the law stands, anyone convicted of selling drugs within 1000 feet of a school zone automatically receives a two-year prison term — leaving no room for judicial discretion. That means a first-time offender with no record could receive more prison time than, say, an armed robber. And the mandatory nature of these sentences eliminates the possibility of parole.

Because of the numerous schools in dense urban areas, poor, black, and Hispanic populations are at a greater risk of facing the mandatory-minimum measures, according to a recent Prison Policy Initiative study.

Yet despite the clear inequalities in the current law, as well as the benefits that reform holds out to both taxpayers and public safety — not to mention liberty — the legislative term ended in July with no action taken on the reform legislation.

This problem with drug sentencing is nothing new. For more than two decades, prison-reform supporters have condemned the federal sentencing disparities for the mostly middle and upper-class defendants caught using cocaine, and the mostly lower-class, inner-city habitants caught with cheaper crack cocaine.

Part of the now-infamous war on crime, a 100-to-1 ratio was implemented in sentencing for crack cocaine. So, a person caught selling five grams of crack received the same prison sentence as someone dealing 500 grams of powder cocaine.

The mandatory-minimums were harsh, too. That same person caught selling five grams of crack received a five-year minimum sentence; 50 grams or more and the minimum was 10 years.

Despite clear racial, economic, and cultural disparities, cries from constituents fell on deaf ears while law-enforcement lobbyists successfully cajoled and frightened congressional leaders.

US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, for one, strongly opposed reducing the crack-cocaine minimums. The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a 325,000 member national organization that bills itself as "the voice of our nations' law-enforcement officers," also spent $550,000 lobbying Congress over the past three years. Among their interests: stopping the Powder-Crack Cocaine Penalty Equalization Act, along with promoting a litany of other Draconian measures.

Prison business
To be fair, government employees weren't the only ones to lobby against crack-cocaine sentence equalization. A little-recognized subset of this vast prison-industrial complex lobbying community is composed of private correctional corporations, which sign lucrative contracts with governments to house inmates for profit, often shipping them to facilities out of state.

It is, of course, in these private prisons' economic interests to see more people in prison serving longer sentences. And with current facilities bursting at the seams, times for this burgeoning industry are good. The country's largest private prison provider, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), spent more than $2.7 million from 2006 through September 2008 on lobbying for stricter laws. Last year alone, the company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, generated $133 million in net income.

For the past 25 years, the CCA has built itself into a corrections powerhouse — it operates nearly 70 facilities housing more than 75,000 detainees. As it does for, say, contractors in Iraq, though, privatization comes with an inevitable lack of oversight. The CCA has been involved in numerous wrongful-death lawsuits, and it has been a constant target of prison-reform groups who claim the private facilities are understaffed and their detainees abused.

Yet another private prison provider, the GEO Group, which has annual revenue topping $1 billion, has come under intense scrutiny for dozens — if not hundreds — of inmate deaths in the past decade. One such prisoner death led to the recent indictment of Vice-President Dick Cheney on November 18, in which a rather ornery Texas state prosecutor claimed that Cheney's substantial investments in the GEO Group made him partly responsible for prisoner abuse — a dubious prosecutorial theory (in fact, it was dismissed this Monday), but with a grain of practical truth.

Nonetheless, states facing prison overcrowding turn to these corporations to outsource inmates. California, for example, has commissioned the CCA to ship convicts as far away as Tennessee (where financially strapped relatives and friends frequently cannot visit). The CCA has exported nearly 4000 California prisoners to states across the country under a $115 million contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Over the next three years, 8000 more are planned to be shipped out of the Golden State.

The societal costs — both human and financial — of these policies and practices are enormous, and growing. California — which carried a $15.2 billion deficit into this fiscal year — spends $10 billion per year on more than 170,000 inmates. Like the Bay State, California also faces high recidivism rates; state records show that more than two-thirds of released inmates return to prison within three years. In this context, a ballot battle — possibly more contentious than Massachusetts's Question 2 scuffle — raged this past election season. Two separate initiatives, each from vastly different perspectives, concerned the state's approach to criminal justice.

The first, Proposition 5, would have expanded treatment programs for those convicted of drug-related and nonviolent crimes. While the costs for more rehabilitation were estimated at $1 billion a year, analysts said $2.5 billion would have been saved from the reduction in prison costs. But, much like what transpired in Massachusetts, the California District Attorney's Association, along with other law-enforcement agencies, vehemently opposed the initiative. These agencies raised nearly $400,000 and, through the Web site of their umbrella group, People Against Proposition 5, issued "facts" such as "Proposition 5 creates an 'Express Lane' for drug dealers to get back on the streets and peddling dope to our kids."

Conversely, nearly $1 billion would have been added to the cops' coffers under Proposition 6, which proposed new laws for prosecutors to fight gang activity. Many of the same law-enforcement agencies that opposed Prop 5 supported Prop 6, joined by some "tough-on-crime" lawmakers who slashed $3 billion in education from the state's 2008 budget. Included among the Prop 6 supporters was — you guessed it — the CCA.

The CCA's lobbying efforts, as well as those of publicly funded law-enforcement agents, wasn't enough to convince Californians, as nearly 70 percent of voters opposed Prop 6. Yet similarly high numbers opted against Prop 5.

Maybe the cops' Prop 6 push for more crime-fighting money and power were too transparent for voters. Interestingly, though, their appeals to public safety in opposing Prop 5 seemed to work. California voters were quite possibly unaware that, by maintaining strict criminal laws and closing off alternatives to incarceration, law-enforcement agencies maintained their strength.

The 1 percent solution?
From Niccolò Machiavelli to Rudy Giuliani, fear has been the foundation of ever-expanding political power (and, for some, job status and security). And it continues to drive the prison-industrial complex.

Just as the United States Department of Justice was able to pressure Congress to enact the infamous USA-Patriot Act in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, here in the Bay State, an appeal to fear ("protect the children") prevailed in stampeding the legislature. In late July, Governor Deval Patrick signed into law "An Act Further Protecting Children," a bill providing stricter mandatory-minimum sentences for sex offenders who target children.

The way this legislation was presented made opposition appear callous and irresponsible. Who, after all, wouldn't want to keep child predators off the streets?

Yet tucked away in this bill are provisions that do far more than simply protect the young. The proposal enables prosecutors to obtain private records from Internet and telephone providers by issuing an "administrative subpoena." Prosecutors, having only to assert that records are "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation," were granted ever-expanding access into otherwise personal data. The telecoms, in turn, were granted blanket immunity from claims of privacy violation. There was no mass protest from the customers.

But at least one person did object. Newton's Democratic state senator Cynthia Creem voiced skepticism in a July 29 Newton TAB op-ed. Mindful that the most egregious provisions of the Patriot Act have been used to target not just terrorists but journalists, activists, and Muslim charities, she wrote: "I cannot support this attack on privacy rights when less-invasive and equally effective means are available. Our liberties should never be sacrificed in the name of prosecutorial convenience." A few other scattered voices in the State Senate echoed Creem. But perhaps Creem's reference to "convenience" missed the point — prosecutorial power appears to have been the more likely goal.

When the bill was passed by the Massachusetts House and presented to the Senate, Coakley, having learned that other politicians were questioning the bill's scope, lobbied hard so that no language would be changed (which would have required passage again through the House). With robust MDAA support, as well as the backing of key legislative leaders, 11 different role-call votes for amending provisions of the bill were voted down. Less than two weeks after this truncated debate, the bill became law. Experienced observers of the legislative process marveled at the ability of Coakley and her allies to forestall changes to the legislation.

The United States — "land of the free" — has five percent of the world's population, but it also, thanks to the lobbyists and officiants behind the prison-industrial complex, shamefully holds 25 percent of the world's incarcerated. It has a higher rate of imprisonment than the planet's most notorious despotisms. One in 100 Americans is in jail.

These citizens are not only unproductive, they cost the public $45 billion a year, according to a June report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. And yet they also keep a small army of officers and other law-enforcement support personnel on the job. The monumental taxpayer's tab that would be unnecessary with saner criminal-justice laws is virtually incalculable.

It is long past the time to re-think how much credence we should give to those who claim to be experts in law enforcement, but who, in reality, have simply discovered a steady and ever-increasing source of job security.

Their First Amendment right to lobby for endless new criminal laws and ever-tougher prison sentences is indeed constitutionally protected, but this does not mean that these law-enforcement officials' criminal "expertise" should endow them with a free pass from critical scrutiny. Legislators and the public need not sit by idly as their fellow citizens are unjustly arrested, prosecuted, and often incarcerated for increasingly lengthy periods of time as the law-enforcement industry's wallet grows fat. The next time prison-industrial-complex adherents tell us we need tougher laws and sentences for our own good, we should point out precisely whose good is being served.

Harvey Silverglate is a criminal defense and civil-liberties lawyer and writer. Kyle Smeallie, former associate editor of the Boston College Heights, is Silverglate's research assistant and paralegal. Silverglate's next book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, is forthcoming next year from Encounter Books.
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/73092-Freedom-watch-Jailhouse-bloc/
\

Posted by lois at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2009

The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009- will undertake a top-to bottom review of our entire criminal justice system and offer recommendations for reform"

Senator Jim Webb of VA has introduced The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009 today.

I encourage you to take a few minutes and read the full-bill http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/CriminalJusticeReform_Legislation.pdf

Here is a fact sheet on the Bill (http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/FactSheeti.pdf), which according to Senator Webb will be "undertake a top-to-bottom review of our entire criminal justice system" and to offer recommendations for reform."

Please encourage your Senators and Congresspeople to support passage of the Act.

Here is part of Webb's statement:

The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009 that I introduced in the Senate on March 26, 2009 will create a blue-ribbon commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom. I believe that it is time to bring together the best minds in America to confer, report, and make concrete recommendations about how we can reform the process.

Why We Urgently Need this Legislation:
With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses 25% of the world's reported prisoners.
Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980.
Four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals.
Approximately 1 million gang members reside in the U.S., many of them foreign-based; and Mexican cartels operate in 230+ communities across the country.
Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard and often nonexistent, undermining public safety and making it extremely difficult for ex-offenders to become full, contributing members of society.

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration.

Posted by lois at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

OT: Legislative Bureau Audit Finds Treatment of Mentally Ill Prisoners Inadequate for Women Especially

Audit finds problems with mentally ill inmates
By SCOTT BAUER | Associated Press Writer
March 25, 2009
Chicago Tribune
MADISON, Wis. - At a time when Wisconsin is taking steps to avoid a federal lawsuit over its handling of mentally ill inmates, an audit released Wednesday identified even more improvements needed in the prison system.

The Legislative Audit Bureau's recommendations include better screening of incoming inmates, enhanced training for corrections officers who deal with mentally ill inmates and improved planning for when they are released.

Department of Corrections spokesman John Dipko said the department would implement all of the audit's recommendations.

Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch said in a letter to auditors that his department faces significant challenges. Providing effective treatment in prison required prioritizing needs, using resources wisely, and emphasizing rehabilitation and treatment, he said.

Legislative Audit Committee Co-Chair Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, called the report disturbing.

"Mental illness can be managed," she said. "But the audit provides evidence this is not happening to the extent it should."

Wisconsin's mentally ill inmate population has been booming. While the total inmate population increased 3.9 percent between 2006 and 2008, the percentage of mentally ill inmates went up 14.3 percent. Last June, nearly 31 percent of the state's 22,451 inmates were identified as mentally ill.

The state's care of mentally ill female inmates has been a problem for years.

In 2006, the U.S. Justice Department declared the lack of mental health care at Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac, the state's largest women's prison, violated inmates' constitutional rights. The state agreed in September to make improvements to avoid a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit.

Federal investigators who toured Taycheedah in 2005 found mentally ill inmates locked in isolation cells and given psychotropic drugs without a doctor's supervision.

Under the agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, state corrections officials have up to four years to make improvements or face a lawsuit.

The state committed to building an $11 million, 45-bed addition for mentally ill women at the Wisconsin Resource Center in Winnebago. It is scheduled to be done in 2011.

The Department of Corrections has requested $7.6 million to build more treatment space at Taycheedah. Gov. Jim Doyle's proposed budget requests 149 more positions and $6.6 million to operate the addition at the Wisconsin Resource Center and to provide more services at Taycheedah.

The audit showed that the state spent nearly $60 million on mentally ill inmates in the 2007 fiscal year.

Among the report's findings:

-- The prisons don't have enough psychiatrists or psychologists to meet national standards.

-- Group and individual therapy is limited, although psychologists do monitor mentally ill inmates on a regular basis.

-- Correctional officers deliver most medications. In neighboring states, medical staff deliver most drugs.

-- Clearer policies, more centralized decision-making, and more detailed record-keeping could ensure the Wisconsin Resource Center runs more efficiently.

-- Mentally ill inmates accounted for more than 90 percent of special placements due to self-harm between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2008. Those placements require prison workers to check on inmates every 15 minutes.

-- Mentally ill inmates accounted for nearly 80 percent of assaults on staff in the past three years. Those assaults resulted in $874,200 in worker's compensation awards to staff in that time.

-- The Department of Corrections could strengthen its policies to ensure inmates receive disability and medical benefits in a timely way after leaving prison.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-wi-inmatementalhealt,0,1483471.story

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

SC: Prisons would close without stimulus

25 March 2009
Harrell: Prisons would close without stimulus
House Speaker Bobby Harrell said Wednesday the Senate should write a budget that leaves out $350 million in federal stimulus money as Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman suggested Tuesday.

Without the federal funds, South Carolina would have to close three to four prisons, release an unknown number of prisoners and lay off 4,000 to 5,000 teachers, Harrell said. Harrell said the dire results fall squarely on Gov. Mark Sanford who has twice requested a portion of the stimulus money be used to pay down state debt instead of flow to schools and law enforcement agencies.

"I am very frustrated," Harrell said. "We're talking about affecting lives of people in this state in a very bad way."

The House used about $350 million in stimulus funds to offset cuts to colleges, K12 education and law enforcement in its version of the budget approved earlier this month.

http://thestatecom.typepad.com/ygatoday/2009/03/harrell-prisons-would-close-without-stimulus.html

Posted by lois at 09:27 AM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2009

KS: Johnson County’s prison avoidance operation could lose more than $868,500 from the state

Johnson County’s prison avoidance operation could lose more than $868,500 from the state
Posted:03/21/2009

Mark Winton’s handshake was firm and his voice strong when he said he was a former drug addict on his last chance to stay out of prison.

“I know I can make it,” the Olathe man pledged.

Supporting him is one of the largest prison avoidance operations in Kansas. He’s among about 245 residents at a sprawling site at New Century AirCenter — a $12.8 million-a-year operation funded by Johnson County, the state, grants and user fees.

Most offenders there leave to work and make money. Governments save money.

These kinds of community alternatives are far cheaper than prisons. A recent Pew Center on the States report urged states to use them more and praised Kansas for helping fund the programs.

But when budgets are stressed, money for alternatives tends to shrink. The proposed state budget in Kansas now calls for cutting about $2 million that helps pay for the residential offender programs in Johnson and Sedgwick counties.

Johnson County stands to lose more than $868,500 from the state, and with its own tight budget, the county might have to reduce the $6.1 million it pays, said Betsy Gillespie, director of county corrections.

All that would boost other costs, Gillespie said, when offenders go to jail or prison instead.

It also would be a step back for a Johnson County operation that began with one building and 33 beds in the 1980s and gradually grew to four buildings, hundreds of beds and many operations.

Drunken drivers

Society and governments struggle with what to do with a constant flow of repeat drunken drivers, and the New Century complex provides one option.

Under Kansas law, a felony drunken driver can go to a county jail for up to one year but not to prison. This saves the state money on prisons but throws the cost onto the counties.

Two years ago, Johnson County started a work-release program for those with four drunken-driving convictions or more. The 60-bed unit generally runs near capacity, and 134 people were admitted last year. More than eight in 10 successfully served their time.

Repeat drunken drivers actually have more going for them than many other criminals, said Antonio Booker, a director at the county corrections center.

They tend to be older and have stable jobs, he said.

Michael Sesto, 47, of Shawnee, said last week that he was due for release in two days.

“This was a needed program for me,” the carpenter said, and it allowed him to keep working and keep his house. He got in trouble because he kept trying to meet the right woman in nightclubs, he said, and now he’s part of a church singles group.

For the DUI offenders, he said, alcohol treatment begins when they leave the program and start parole.

“That’s where the rubber meets the pavement,” he said, and more challenges are ahead.

‘Legal side of the law’

Don Womack, 34, breezed down a hallway waving a certificate of completion, which he got after serving 96 days for possessing cocaine.

He was among 155 criminals in another program, which allows them to work while attending self-improvement programs. They stay two to four months.

More than 500 people were admitted to that operation last year. More than three of four graduate successfully, according to past studies.

Here, as in the rest of the complex, residents can be seen by a nurse or mental health worker. Throughout the New Century complex, about 65 percent of residents get medicine for mental illnesses.

Womack, who came to the center from prison, stopped at the credit union on site, where people can deposit or cash checks and save money. Many can’t get a bank account on the outside or have never had one.

Womack found a good job at a Lenexa manufacturing company while serving time at New Century program and saved money toward a car.

“It gave me a chance to live on the legal side of the law,” he said. “I was at a point in my life when I was ready.”

Another building in the complex houses the therapeutic community, which is six months of substance abuse treatment and self-improvement work. It holds 40. Addicted clients can’t leave until they finish the six months. Many then move to work release.

Winton, 37, recently graduated from the treatment community into work release, where he hopes to learn to be an electrician.

He’s a cocaine addict who has been in and out of the system for more than 15 years, he said, including three stints in prison. He said the long drug treatment and improvement work got him past personal problems that fed anger, resentment and bad behavior.

“I came here with low self-esteem,” he said.

Winton said he intended to go straight and be a better father to his nine children by six women. He’ll really do it this time, he said.

He said he got to this point after using drugs while on probation. A judge sent him to New Century as a last chance to avoid prison.

Winton said he would make good on that chance.

So far, Booker said, “he’s done an excellent job.”

If Winton finally stops breaking the law, he’ll save the state the cost of locking him up. The Pew Center study puts the national average at $29,000 a year.

Every little bit helps.

In fiscal year 2008, the study reported, Kansas spent $341 million on corrections, or 5.6 percent of its general fund.
http://m.kansascity.com/kcstar/db_10893/contentdetail.htm;jsessionid=A7A42481212D882B1F56AE46E8669453?contentguid=XKtKydiX&storycount=19&detailindex=1&full=true#display

Posted by lois at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2009

OK: Major overhaul needed at 17 percent of DOC facilities

Major overhaul needed at 17 percent of DOC facilities
By BARBARA HOBEROCK World Capitol Bureau
Published: 3/18/2009 8:21 PM

OKLAHOMA CITY — Seventeen percent of the buildings at the state’s correctional facilities need major work or need to be torn down, according to a summary of an assessment obtained by the Tulsa World.

The preliminary architectural and engineering study of the buildings that make up the state’s 17 prisons found “no surprises,” said Rep. Randy Terrill, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Safety and the Judiciary.

A final version of the report will be used to determine if the state repairs crumbling infrastructure or shifts more inmates to private facilities.

The initial facility assessment ranked the 402 buildings at the state’s prisons on a scale of one to four.

A one ranking meant a building was new or minimal repairs were needed, while a four meant a building needed major renovation, replacement or to be torn down.

Terrill said 17 percent of the buildings earned a three or four rating, while more than 80 percent ranked one or two.

“I think the report mostly confirms what we suspected,” said Terrill, R-Moore. “Department of Corrections facilities are not in the best or absolute worst of shape.”

He said the final report will be a compass for lawmakers as they decide how to proceed.

Options include making minimal repairs, tearing down buildings, adding public beds to existing facilities, building a new, state-owned facility or contracting with private prisons for more beds, Terrill said.

Senate Democrats are concerned that
inmates could be pushed into private prisons when state facilities are capable of doing the job, said Senate Minority Leader Charlie Laster, D-Shawnee.

“Our concern is that there may be a desire on behalf of (Senate Republican) leadership to close some state facilities in favor of private prisons,” said Laster, who has not seen the report.

Senate President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee, R-Oklahoma City, declined to comment, saying through a spokesman that the preliminary report is incomplete.

Department of Corrections Director Justin Jones declined to comment.

Oklahoma has six private prisons that have 2,510 empty beds, said Renee Watkins, Department of Corrections administrator of private prisons and jails. Some states recently removed their inmates from private prisons here, Watkins said.

Oklahoma has 4,324 inmates in private prisons, which is about 19 percent of the population, Watkins said.

The study, done by The Durrant Group Inc., cost $415,000, said Jennifer Monies, as spokeswoman for House Speaker Chris Benge, R-Tulsa. The state received bids on the project, she said.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=298&articleid=20090318_298_0_OKLAHO830404

Posted by lois at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2009

Plan for Prison Closures Stirs Fears Distressed Towns in Upstate N.Y. Cite Dire Economic Consequences

"Gregory M. Hooks, a sociology professor at Washington State University, who analyzed the economies of prisons, said that among other problems, the pool of free inmate labor eliminates the pool of low-paid manual labor jobs, further depressing local economies. Prisons make communities dependent but without much return to the community, because the jobs are secured for life. And, he said, a local prison may make an area less attractive to other types of businesses, particularly those catering to tourists.
"On average, prisons don't do much of anything," Hooks said. "If you look at the poorest counties, the impact is negative. If you put a prison in a struggling county, they get worse, not better."

Plan for Prison Closures Stirs Fears
Distressed Towns in Upstate N.Y. Cite Dire Economic Consequences

By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 22, 2009

NORWICH, N.Y. -- On most mornings here, for about as long as anyone can remember, a green minibus arrives from the outskirts of town and discharges a crew of young men in look-alike gear: green pants and green or red sweat shirts. They rake leaves in the fall and shovel snow in the winter. They paint buildings and clean up debris. They helped put a roof on the county courthouse.

The workers rarely speak. "Just 'yes, sir' and 'no, sir,' " one city employee said.

The work crews are inmates from the nearby Camp Pharsalia, a minimum-security state prison tucked into a hillside a dozen miles outside town. For the city of Norwich, like other rural Upstate New York communities, the 110-inmate Pharsalia and other prison camps have become something of an economic lifeline, for decades providing not just manpower, but also jobs, in a region where work is hard to come by.

But with most governors and legislatures grappling with crushing budget deficits, what's good for rural economies is often proving bad for states.

New York is facing a $13 billion deficit, and a falling inmate population, and Gov. David A Paterson (D) has proposed saving about $26 million by shuttering four of the state's prison facilities, including Camp Pharsalia and nearby Camp Georgetown. Faced with the prospect of losing a big part of their economic base, these small, distressed towns and cities are banding together with a common cry: "Save Our Prison!"

"This is a major impact on a small community," said Paul Lashway, a Norwich resident and prison guard at Camp Pharsalia for the past 10 years. He is also a steward for the local corrections officers' union. "I thought we were trying to save jobs," he said. "Here, they're trying to take 'em." The prison union is leading an effort that includes lobbying the legislature, direct mailing and targeted radio ads in the affected communities.

It's a conflict being played out across the country. The number of inmates boomed in the 1980s and 1990s, in part because of high crime rates and stiff mandatory-sentencing laws that particularly targeted drug offenders. States rushed to build additional prisons to keep up with what appeared to be a growth industry. And many struggling, mostly rural, communities came to see prisons as a substitute for the family farms and the small manufacturing plants that were vanishing.

"Prison growth was a lot about economic development," said Tracy Huling, who produced a documentary about the phenomenon, titled "Yes, In My Backyard."

"It started in the '80s, when the farm crisis exploded across rural America," she said. "Agribusiness drove out family farms, and the economic base of a lot of rural communities just collapsed. In the absence of a real recovery strategy to address that, you have a lot of prisons."

The United States has the dubious distinction of being the country with the highest percentage of its citizens behind bars, more than one in a hundred, or 2.3 million people, according to the Pew Center on the States.

But a confluence of events has forced a fundamental rethinking. Crime rates have dropped sharply over the past two decades, and almost all states are facing budget deficits. Study after study has shown that giving nonviolent drug offenders treatment, instead of jail time, is far more effective at preventing repeat abuses. And it costs much more to keep a person incarcerated than to supervise him or her on probation.

As crime has receded as a major issue among voters, many state legislatures, including here in New York, are looking at rolling back mandatory drug sentencing laws. Some states, such as New Jersey, are experimenting with special "drug courts" for first-time offenders. Others, such as Rhode Island, have expanded "good time" early release programs or are allowing some prisoners to serve a portion of their sentences at home.

Some involved in the prison industry, as well as some in law enforcement, say this is the wrong time to be rolling back sentencing laws and closing prisons. "You know what happens in a recession," Lashway said. "Crime goes up."

And what is heralded by most as good news -- declining prison populations -- is being greeted with a sense of foreboding in places where prisons have become big business.

Norwich Mayor Joseph P. Maiurano has calculated the cost, for his city, and for surrounding Chenango County, one of New York's poorest: Fifty-nine corrections officers, and their family members, may have to leave the area for jobs in other facilities. About 40 local businesses will lose procurement funds. More than 50 local organizations benefit from the work the inmates provide.

The prison is a major employer, but it also has a direct impact on other services, such as postal services. The local post office is largely supported by the huge volume of inmate mail. With the loss of the prison, residents fear the post office could close, too.

Despite rural communities' attachment to their prisons, many experts dispute whether correctional facilities serve a long-term economic benefit.

Gregory M. Hooks, a sociology professor at Washington State University, who analyzed the economies of prisons, said that among other problems, the pool of free inmate labor eliminates the pool of low-paid manual labor jobs, further depressing local economies. Prisons make communities dependent but without much return to the community, because the jobs are secured for life. And, he said, a local prison may make an area less attractive to other types of businesses, particularly those catering to tourists.

"On average, prisons don't do much of anything," Hooks said. "If you look at the poorest counties, the impact is negative. If you put a prison in a struggling county, they get worse, not better."

The Pharsalia inmates -- the vast majority of them from New York City -- perform a variety of duties, including maintaining horse and ski trails, working in the public parks and thinning the forests. Maiurano estimated that for the city alone, he would need to hire four additional workers to make up for the loss of the free inmate labor.

"Where are we going to get another $100,000-plus dollars?" Maiurano asked in an interview in his office. "We don't have the income -- the growth isn't here."

One of those who has benefited is the Rev. Bruce W. Braswell, pastor of the Springvale Church in Norwich. He said the inmates painted and refurbished the 100-year-old church. "There's no way the church could have been rehabilitated," Braswell said. "It would have cost us a couple thousand dollars to do the same work."

He said Norwich is being unfairly targeted for a prison closing because Chenango County, with 50,000 people, is small and poor, far from any major population center and in the forgotten middle of the state. "Out of sight, out of mind," he said.

Lashway is mainly worried about his job.

Lashway, 41, is the single father of a 17-year-old boy, and it took him nine years of trying to get a job at Camp Pharsalia. After four years escorting the work crews, Lashway is a weapons trainer with a decade of experience, making $55,000 a year. If Pharsalia closes, he will be offered a job at another prison, but that might mean driving at least 1 1/2 hours each way.

In a region where jobs are scarce, he may not have any other choice.

"I'm trying not to think about that," Lashway said.

Paterson won't be the first governor to try to close prisons. George E. Pataki and Eliot Spitzer proposed closing some prisons while they were governors, including Pharsalia, but retreated in the face of widespread local protests.

The difference this time around is the deteriorating financial situation. "It costs a lot of money to keep it open," Eric Kriss, a spokesman for the State Department of Correctional Services, said of Camp Pharsalia.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/22/AR2009032202747.html

Posted by lois at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2009

MA Bar Association: MBA-backed criminal reform legislation returns for 2009-10 session

Lawyers Journal
MBA-backed criminal reform legislation returns for 2009-10 session
By Kelsey Sadoff
March 20, 2009

Criminal reform bills that failed to make it through last year’s legislative session are being reintroduced for the 2009-10 session with high expectations for their passage, which would usher in significant changes to the state’s criminal policies.

Last year, the Massachusetts Bar Association championed reforms to both sentencing guidelines and the Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) law, but the legislation was released from committee too late to advance before the end of the 2008-09 session. Immediate Past President David W. White Jr. made sentencing and CORI reform a priority for his term, and 2008-09 President Edward W. McIntyre has continued the push for reform.

The MBA is supporting a CORI bill that the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute and a coalition of groups, under the name of Massachusetts Alliance to Reform CORI (MARC), are focused on having addressed by the Legislature. The MBA has proposed recommendations for the CORI bill, which includes addressing access (law enforcement access versus non-law enforcement entities), accuracy and sealing old records.

The MBA’s Drug Policy Task Force is also set to issue a report this year that will include comprehensive data and facts that will strongly support arguments for sentencing reform in Massachusetts.

“This new legislative session holds much promise in the advancement of criminal sentencing and CORI reform legislative measures,” said MBA General Counsel and Acting Executive Director Martin W. Healy. “Criminal justice reforms have been identified as a priority area of interest by a number of legislators. We are in the second half of the (Gov. Deval) Patrick administration and the governor is considered a veteran on the Hill. We are hopeful that Patrick will push hard on these greatly needed reforms.”

More than 20 years ago, mandatory minimum sentencing reforms for drug offenders were enacted in Massachusetts to deal with crimes including trafficking, possession with intent to distribute, distribution in a school zone and distribution to a minor. The mandatory minimum sentences effectively ended an offender’s opportunity for parole if incarcerated.

Speaking against the current mandatory minimum sentencing policy at the Jan. 15 MBA House of Delegates meeting, the Drug Policy Task Force received HOD endorsement on two pieces of drug and treatment legislation that the MBA will support during the 2009-10 legislative session.

HOD unanimously voted in favor of the proposed legislation, which would revise the drug sentencing structure by eliminating mandatory minimums for most drug dealing crimes and expand parole and work release opportunities for incarcerated drug offenders, while also enhancing the existing system of diversion of drug offenders to drug treatment programs as an alternative to incarceration.

“The MBA is taking a position because current drug policies have failed; because they are expensive (Department of Correction’s inmate cost is more than $47,000; county jail is $39,000) and growing exponentially,” said MBA President Edward W. McIntyre.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Correction, the state prison population increased by 384 percent from 1980 to 2008 and the number of drug offenders increased 2,394 percent, from 109 in 1980 to 2,610 in 2008. Since the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing reforms, drug offenders have made up more than 25 percent of the state prison population, as opposed to the 4 percent of drug offenders making up the state prison population in 1980.

“Essentially, the MBA’s position is about deploying a public health approach rather than a failed criminal justices paradigm to drug offenders,” said McIntyre. “It’s about treatment rather than incarceration; about accelerated reintegration into the family unit, the community’s social structure and workforce. Studies from across the country and around the world demonstrate that intelligent policies that move away from the incarceration model to a treatment, accelerated assimilation program, reduce the rate of crime and the staggering cost of incarceration — which is the second most rapidly growing budget item next to health care.”

“Parole is really a function of getting a person in a productive relationship with society and their community,” said MBA immediate Past President David W. White Jr. and founding member of the Drug Policy Task Force. “Offering parole allows prisons to make room for more dangerous criminals, reducing the rate of crime overall by restoring families, neighborhoods and communities by making ex-offenders better citizens, and saves the taxpayers money.”

In the November 2008 general election, Massachusetts citizens voted to decriminalize marijuana. Legislators, who for years have been focused on discussion revolving around the belief that constituents want stronger punishments for low-level drug offenders, now have proof that the public actually wants to reduce the resources designated to punishment of low-level drug offenses. White believes the “commonwealth, now in severe economic crisis, can handle the drug sentencing issues in a way to save millions and millions of dollars.”

Furthermore, current mandatory minimum drug sentences have disproportionately impacted cities and their minority populations. Current school zone laws, which increase punishment drug offenses within 1,000 feet of a school with mandatory sentences — regardless of prior knowledge if school is in session, intent to distribute, time of day or awareness of proximity to a school — have created a situation where almost an entire city can be considered a school zone.

“The result is an impact on minorities,” said White. “The bill didn’t have that intent when it was enacted, but it has discriminatory consequences. We would like the statute changed to 100 feet.” White pointed out that approximately 300 people are sentenced for school zone offenses each year.

“In the commonwealth, we spend more money on jails and prisons then on higher education,” White said. “It is time for more sensible priorities.”
ttp://www.massbar.org/for-attorneys/publications/lawyers-journal/2009/march/mba-backed-criminal-reform-legislation

Posted by lois at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

March 20, 2009

Court Allows Brooklyn Jail to Reopen But Cannot Double Jail size Without Environmental and Land-Use Reviews

Court Allows Brooklyn Jail to Reopen
By SEWELL CHAN
March 18, 2009
NY Times

A Brooklyn judge has cleared the way for the city to resume sending inmates to the Brooklyn House of Detention, which stopped housing them overnight in 2003, but has ruled that the city’s effort to nearly double the size of the jail required environmental and land-use reviews.

The ruling, released on Wednesday by Justice Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, was a partial victory for the city and a partial victory for opponents of the jail, including community groups and elected officials.

“The court’s decision clears the way for the city to continue to use the Brooklyn Detention Center as a jail for Brooklyn, just as it has since 1957,” Correction Commissioner Martin F. Horn said in a statement. “We will continue to maintain the jail in a condition for occupancy at its capacity.”

Randy M. Mastro, a lawyer for the jail’s opponents, called the ruling “a huge victory for the community and a vindication of its right to meaningful public input before the city commits itself to such massive projects.”

The judge rejected the argument by community groups and the city comptroller that reopening the jail, which has 759 beds, required additional reviews. But she ruled that the city may not proceed on expanding the jail without such reviews. Plans call for a 720-bed expansion.

The jail, at 275 Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill, was not used to house inmates overnight from June 2003 until last November, when the department placed 31 inmates there. During those five years, the jail was used during the day to hold hundreds of inmates scheduled to appear at the adjacent courthouse.

Opponents of the jail said that its closing helped revitalize Downtown Brooklyn.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/nyregion/19jail.html?_r=2&ref=nyregion

Posted by lois at 10:31 AM | Comments (0)

NC: Critics: Perdue's closing plan may overload prisons Officials say state's correctional system is already above capacity.

Critics: Perdue's closing plan may overload prisons
Officials say state's correctional system is already above capacity.
By Dan Kane
Charlotte Observer
Friday, Mar. 20, 2009

At a time when the state's prisons desperately need new beds, Gov. Bev Perdue wants to cut them.

To help deal with the state's budget crisis, Perdue this week proposed closing five prisons, a prison hospital and a halfway house for women because they are among the system's most inefficient.

The cuts would save the state more than $25 million over the next two fiscal years, but they also eliminate space for 1,031 inmates at a time when the system could see another 2,300 inmates in the next 15 months.

Prison officials say they can move the displaced inmates into the remaining 72 facilities by putting two beds in some cells, putting beds in day rooms and other measures. But the closings add to a growing problem for a prison system that is already slightly above capacity, with 40,644 inmates behind bars. The system is expected to grow by another 9,000 inmates during the next 10 years.

The space crunch has led some lawmakers to call for legislation that would reduce some sentences. But Perdue, in a meeting Thursday with reporters and editors at The (Raleigh) News & Observer, said she is not ready to offer her support.

“I would like a discussion sometime about what other states are doing,” Perdue said. “I know after a decade there needs to be a very open public discussion about whether we invest more in community placement and education opportunities.”

State lawmakers charged with writing the prison budget say they peppered Perdue's staff about the capacity concerns.

“We couldn't get a clear answer,” said state Sen. Tom Apodaca, a Hendersonville Republican.

That's because prison officials say they do not yet know how they will deal with the predicted surge in inmates.

The projection comes from the N.C. Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission, which is charged with determining how many inmates the system will see for the next 10 years so that lawmakers can prevent the prison overcrowding that led to federal intervention two decades ago.

James French, a deputy correction secretary who oversees the prisons, said his staff is checking prisons to see how much additional capacity they may have. They are limited by federal requirements that say how much space each inmate needs to avoid overcrowding — which can create an unsafe environment for inmates and staff. Prison officials are already concerned at the level of double-bunking within the system.

“We're working on it, and we don't have a lot of time to waste,” French said. “This is a top priority for our management team right now.”

The proposed prison closings are causing heartburn for state officials in other ways.

Legislative budget writers say they are concerned that some of the prisons up for closing would mean inmates' families would have to drive longer distances for visits.

Haywood Correctional Center, a minimum security prison near Waynesville, is the system's westernmost and is roughly 90 miles from the western border.

Mary Pollard, the new executive director for N.C. Prisoner Legal Services, said she was concerned about the proposed closing of McCain Correctional Hospital in Raeford. It has become a geriatric care facility for the correction department.

French and Keith Acree, a department spokesman, said none of the inmates will end up in facilities that are not the right fit. Minimum security inmates, for example, will be moved to minimum security facilities.

Acree also said there are other prisons with specialized geriatric care.

Acree said prison workers will do their best to move an inmate to the next closest facility so families can continue to visit. But he anticipates inmates will be shuttled around the state.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/local/story/609711.html

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

March 19, 2009

NC: Perdue's budget tries again to close inefficient but job-rich NC prisons targeted since 1992

Perdue's budget tries again to close inefficient but job-rich NC prisons targeted since 1992
Gov. Beverly Perdue's roadmap for narrowing the state's $3.4 billion budget gap for the coming year includes closing seven of the state's 79 prisons, traditionally some of the biggest employers in rural areas.

By EMERY P. DALESIO
March 17, 2009- Seattle Times
Associated Press Writer
RALEIGH, N.C. —

Gov. Beverly Perdue's roadmap for narrowing the state's $3.4 billion budget gap for the coming year includes closing seven of the state's 79 prisons, traditionally some of the biggest employers in rural areas.

On the chopping block in Perdue's plan released Tuesday include the state's smallest prison — housing just 36 women in Wilmington who go to work during the day and return to their lockup at night — and a century-old former tuberculosis sanitarium in Hoke County that for years has served as a sort of nursing home for elderly inmates.

While all seven are described as old, small, and inefficient, each will have advocates arguing that the state jobs they represent are too important for their communities to lose. Five of the seven prisons have been recommended to be mothballed since a top-to-bottom study of state operations 16 years ago. Each time, advocates won the argument of local jobs over statewide efficiency.

"They each have their constituency. They each have economic benefits to their community. They are economic drivers," said Rep. Alice Bordsen, D-Alamance, a co-chairwoman of the House budget-writing subcommittee on public safety.

Closing all seven minimum-security prisons could cut 541 jobs — more than a hundred of those now vacant — or more than half of the 1,033 positions Perdue would ax from the state's work force for the fiscal year starting July 1. The prison closings would save more than $24 million a year once completed in 2010.

Perdue's budget recommends closing the Wilmington Residential Facility for Women in November and McCain Correctional Hospital in May 2010. She also recommended closing the Umstead, Gates, Haywood, Union and Guilford Correctional Centers by mid-2010. All but McCain and Guilford were recommended for closing by the Government Performance Audit Committee in 1992.

Even in recommending closing prisons and consolidating employees and inmates into bigger, more cost-effective prisons, Perdue fretted about the effect of job losses in some rural counties.

"It is an economic development hit in rural areas," she said.

The head of the a 55,000-member union representing state workers said the Perdue administration assured him that employees whose jobs are eliminated would be offered another state job within 35 miles of their former worksite. The question now is whether the General Assembly will go ahead and close the prisons, State Employees Association of North Carolina executive director Dana Cope said.

"I think every governor (since 1992) suggested these closures in their budgets and the General Assembly has never taken the steps to actually close them. This is not new to those particular facilities," Cope said.

The prisons employed 432 workers as of last week, Correction Department spokesman Keith Acree said. The largest is McCain, bordering Fort Bragg in Hoke County, with a staff of 224 overseeing 341 inmates. About 30 of the inmates are hospitalized though many others are over-60 and need regular nursing care, Acree said.

All but the Wilmington and Haywood cost more in 2008 than the $60.87 daily average cost for keeping an inmate in a minimum-security state prison, a Correction Department report said.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008876378_apxgrperduebudgetchoices.html

Posted by lois at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2009

Some Minnesota counties struggle with empty jails

Some Minnesota counties struggle with empty jails
By TOM ROBERTSON , Associated Press
Minneapolis Star Tribune
March 16, 2009

PARK RAPIDS, Minn. - This state-of-the-art jail facility in Park Rapids has enough beds to hold 116 prisoners. But on this day there are only 34.

Jail Administrator Sherri Klasen said that means lots of empty cells, as she tours a jail wing.

"This is a typical double-bunk cell," Klasen said. "Pretty sparse. That's the toilet."

When this facility was built in 2006, there were high hopes it would draw overflow prisoners from around the region, and help Hubbard County make some money from its neighbors.

But that isn't happening. The overcrowding from just a few years ago disappeared.

In fact, Minnesota Department of Correction figures show the number of prisoners in county jails is down 3.5 percent.

So Klasen has been shopping the jail around, sending out teletypes and e-mails, to county, state, and even federal corrections agencies.

So far, no luck.

"With the population down everywhere, I periodically make contact just to let them know that we're still out there, but I don't want to contact them so much that I become a pest," she said.

Empty jail cells often mean a big loss in revenue for counties trying to pay for new jail construction, especially since larger jails typically require more personnel to run them.

In Hubbard County, some officials say without that outside revenue, it would actually be cheaper for them to shut the jail down and send their inmates elsewhere.

Hubbard County Commissioner and former County Attorney Greg Larson said that's unlikely to happen. Still, he and others wonder what's going on.

It appears that region-wide, fewer people are going to jail.

"One of the things that was not foreseen was a downturn in business. The numbers I see from the courts indicate the courts are less busy than they were a few years ago," Larson said. "There is less of a workload, and other counties are experiencing the same thing."

Crime statistics aren't available yet for 2008, but Larson said that in the first half of last year, criminal court cases in Hubbard County were down nearly 25 percent from the year before. Civil cases, meanwhile, have continued to rise.

There's lots of speculation as to why jail populations are down.

Some say the state has a better handle on the meth problem that plagued communities a few years ago. Others wonder if perhaps it's due to an aging population. The children of baby boomers are growing beyond the age when they're most likely to commit crimes.

Eighty miles away in Crow Wing County, the story is the same.

The county has a jail facility with 286 beds, but more than a third of them are empty. Daily populations are about 50 inmates less than when the jail opened two years ago.

The number of prisoners Crow Wing County houses for the state has also dropped, and so has their revenue.

Jail administrator Jerry Negen said one reason for the decrease in inmates is that the courts are increasingly finding alternatives to jail time for law breakers. There's a big push for more specialized programs that reduce jail time in favor of more treatment and court supervision.

"They've got 30 plus people in our drug court right now that are doing well, so there's 30 people out of custody that they report to drug court," Negen said. "We also have in Crow Wing County DWI court... So there's another 15 to 20 on that. So there's where our numbers went, we believe."

The apparent recent drop in crime is surprising to Jim Franklin, director of the Minnesota Sheriff's Association.

Franklin said less crime and underpopulated jails is not what he would expect during a time of deepening recession.

"When you have a bad economy, statistically speaking, crime trends tend to go up. What we don't know is that this appears to be almost the opposite for the moment," Franklin said. "We don't know if it's the lull between the storm, or before the storm. ... It's kind of an unusual circumstance that we find ourselves looking at at the moment."

That circumstance that puts big financial pressure on counties that count on housing prisoners for revenue. As competition for inmates heats up, some counties have even dropped the daily rates they charge for holding inmates.

http://www.startribune.com/local/41308982.html?page=1&c=y
___

Information from: Minnesota Public Radio News, http://www.mpr.org

Posted by lois at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)

Prison Population Continues to Rise. To save money on prisons, states take a softer stance

Prison Population Continues to Rise
To save money on prisons, states take a softer stance
Good state by state map at this URL- http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-03-17-prison-economy_N.htm

By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
SALINA, Kan. — In a hushed conference room overlooking the town's main drag, eight convicted felons, including an aspiring amateur fighter, brandish bright Crayola markers.

Their goal is to match their personalities to one of four colors. Tim Witte, 27, on probation for evading arrest, eyes the task as if sizing up a fellow middle-weight on Kansas' gritty cage-fighting circuit. Witte and two drug offenders settle on orange.

The color, indicative of a restless, risk-taking personality, is the hue of choice for most offenders, says Michelle Stephenson, the corrections officer leading the unusual exercise.

Not long ago, Stephenson admits, the evening state-sponsored "behavioral modification" session — designed to help ex-offenders avoid costly prison time — might have been considered a perversion of this conservative state's strict law-and-order credo. But this isn't the same Kansas anymore.

"It used to be that it was more about waiting for them to mess up and send them back to prison," Stephenson says. "In this time and this economy, you can't afford to keep doing that. There is a better way to do business."
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Colorado | Death Penalty Information Center | Sentencing Project | National District Attorneys Association | Crayola | National Association of State Budget Officers | National Governor

The class is part of a state effort to save millions of dollars in prison costs by changing how criminals are treated. Kansas is closing some prisons, boosting support for offenders on probation and declining to return them to prison for every probation violation.

Here and across the nation, the deepening financial crisis is forcing dramatic changes in the hard-line, punishment-based philosophy that has dominated the USA's criminal justice system for nearly two decades.

As 31 states report budget gaps that the National Governor's Association says totaled nearly $30 billion last year, criminal justice officials and lawmakers are proposing and enacting cost-cutting changes across the public safety spectrum, with uncertain ramifications for the public.

There is no dispute that the fiscal crisis is driving the changes, but the potential risks of pursuing such policies is the subject of growing debate. While some analysts believe the philosophical shift is long overdue, others fear it could undermine public safety.

Ryan King of The Sentencing Project, a group that advocates for alternatives to incarceration, says the financial crisis has created enough "political cover" to fuel a new look at the realities of incarcerating more than 2 million people and supervising 5 million others on probation and parole.

"It's clear that locking up hundreds of thousands of people does not guarantee public safety," he says.

Joshua Marquis, a past vice president of the National District Attorneys Association, agrees the economy is prompting an overhaul of justice policy but reaches a very different conclusion about its impact on public safety.

"State after state after state appears to be waiting for the opportunity to wind back some of the most intelligent sentencing policy we have," Marquis says. "If we do this, we will pay a price. No question."

Among recent state actions:

• Kansas officials closed two detention facilities last month to save about $3.5 million. A third will be shuttered by April 1, says Roger Werholtz, chief of the state prison system. Inmates housed in the closed units will be moved to other facilities in the state.

• A California panel of federal judges recommended last month that the cash-strapped state release up to 57,000 non-violent inmates from the overcrowded system to help save $800 million.

• Kentucky officials last year allowed for the early release of non-violent offenders up to six months before their sentences end to serve the balance of their time at home.

• New Mexico and Colorado are among seven states where some lawmakers are calling for an end to the death penalty, arguing capital cases have become too costly to prosecute, reports the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks death penalty law and supports abolition of the death penalty.

"State governments operated on the principle that if you built it, they would come," King says of prison construction during the economic boom. Since 1990, corrections spending has increased by an average of 7.5% annually, reports the National Association of State Budget Officers.

"As soon as they built those prisons, they filled them," King says. "They were never able to keep up with it. There is certainly a different atmosphere now."

New approach to punishment

Kansas House Speaker Mike O'Neal admits he isn't the "logical guy" to lead the charge for anything that could be considered soft on crime.

During his 25 years in the state Legislature, O'Neal, a Republican, has sought longer sentences for sex offenders, backed tougher sanctions for drug dealers and supported executions.

"We're kind of a hang-'em-high state," O'Neal says.

Yet in 2007, as prison construction costs soared and state prisons reached near-capacity, O'Neal made what he calls a "surprising" political calculation: He helped push through a measure calling for a 20% reduction in probationers sent to prison for violating conditions of their release.

Despite O'Neal's fears that the new policy could allow offenders to commit other crimes, he felt spiraling costs demanded a new approach to punishing criminals.

The law gives local probation departments broader authority to decide whether technical violations of release, such as missed meetings with probation officers or failed drug tests, should result in prison. In Kansas, up to two-thirds of all new prison admissions each year are offenders who violated terms of their release.

The criminal justice overhaul has gained urgency because of the economic collapse, O'Neal says. Yet the sour economy also could jeopardize the new $4 million probation program. O'Neal is fighting to keep it, arguing it will save the state money over time.

So far, the cuts in prison admissions have saved about $80 million in future construction costs, state prison chief Werholtz says.

Among the most successful probation operations, Werholtz says, is the small community corrections office run by director Annie Grevas in Salina, a central Kansas town of about 46,000.

Over the past year, Grevas has transformed the enforcement-oriented operation, heavily focused on the surveillance of offenders, into a service broker. Probation officers now help offenders find work, health care, housing, counseling, transportation and child care.

During the past several months, for example, the office spent $110 to cover an offender's utility payments; $500 for a rent payment; $600 for six bikes the office loans to get to job interviews; $77 for a YMCA membership to help an offender improve his physical condition and $320 for eight anger-management counseling sessions.

All of the assistance is aimed at keeping offenders out of costly prison cells, although Kansas officials say they are only beginning to review whether the offenders who received the assistance have committed new offenses.

Last year, Grevas says Salina cut its probation revocations by 35%. "It is a total philosophical change," she says. "Just as we expected clients to change, we needed to change."

Sentencing policies criticized

Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, says financial troubles are forcing fundamental changes in criminal justice philosophy well beyond Kansas.

"Out of this turmoil, some states realize that the size of the prison population is more than they can bear," he says. "And the public safety yield (from jailing so many) is largely uncertain."

He says mandatory minimum sentencing and the so-called "three-strikes" mandatory life terms for repeat offenders, which swept the country in the early 1990s, "may have to be modified or completely undone."

A report out this month by the Pew Center on the States, a public policy research group, found costly prison growth and higher incarceration rates do not reflect an increase in crime or the nation's population.

"More people are behind bars principally because of a wave of policy choices that are sending more lawbreakers to prison and … imposing longer prison stays on inmates," the report says.

As a result, it concluded, state corrections-related costs have soared from $10.6 billion two decades ago to more than $44 billion last year.

"Coupled with tightening state budgets, the greater prison expenditures may force states to make tough choices about where to spend their money," it said.

Margaret Colgate Love, director of the American Bar Association's Commission on Effective Criminal Sanctions, says the public "is very ready to support crime-control strategies aimed at helping people."

She says strict sentencing policies have "devastated" families and contributed to the "disastrous" overcrowded prison system in California, one of the first states to adopt the three-strikes sentencing law.

"Every time we say something or someone is soft on crime, we perpetuate a dysfunctional response to crime control," Colgate Love says. "If one good thing comes out of this economic crisis, it would be that we deal with people differently."

New Mexico, citing excessive costs, is making a dramatic change in its system. Lawmakers voted last week to abolish the death penalty, a move projected to save the state "millions of dollars," according to a state report on the measure's fiscal implications. Gov. Bill Richardson has until today to decide whether to veto the legislation.

"New Mexico does not receive much return on its death penalty investment," the state report said, adding there is just a 4.5% chance that any "multimillion-dollar" death penalty prosecution will end with an execution.

David Albo, a Republican delegate to the Virginia Legislature who has supported eliminating parole and harsher sentences for drug dealers, rejects money-saving proposals that involve early release of offenders, prison closures and other strategies.

This year, Virginia lawmakers defeated a proposal to allow for the early release of non-violent offenders as part of a plan to save $5 million. Albo and other opponents argued altering punishments amounted to "fraud on the citizens of Virginia."

"If a jury said you are going to serve 10 years, you don't go back and change that," Albo says. "I'm against anything that changes a person's sentence."

'My goal is to break the chain'

Patrick Young swears he'll do better this time.

Now on probation in Kansas for burglary, theft and failure to register as a sex offender, Young, 29, has been to prison four times since age 17. Three of those prison terms were triggered by violations of probation or parole.

The sex offense, involving a relationship with a 15-year-old girl when he was 17, has turned off more than one prospective employer, Young says.

His case is one of many that will test how well Kansas' new approach to crime and punishment works. In regular meetings with his case officer, Young is getting more support than he has received at any time in his adult life.

More than a year ago Young, given his long record of failure, likely would have been buried in the state prison system, says Ruth McDaniel, a Salina corrections officer who manages his case.

Now, McDaniel believes Young has better than long odds of successfully completing his sentence outside prison walls. She says he has matured since starting his term of supervision in Salina in March 2007.

Before he was laid off at the end of February, he was a forklift operator at a local food company for 18 months, the longest stretch of continuous employment in his life.

McDaniel helped arrange family counseling sessions to teach Young how to cope with the recent birth of a son. He is seeking financial aid to enroll in an electronics course to improve his chances at a better job.

"He has good family support," McDaniel says, adding that he has repaired strained relationships with his parents. "I see him as someone who will successfully complete his probation."

Young still has a ways to go. He must pay $7,000 in fines before he is released from supervision. That means finding more steady work amid an economic crisis.

"When I went to prison, I didn't get a lick of help," he says. "My goal is to break the chain. This place has given structure to somebody who didn't know how to change."

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

March 17, 2009

OR: State may need to use jail to imprison women as a result of Measure 57

State wants to send female inmates to Wapato jail
by Edward Walsh, The Oregonian
Sunday March 15, 2009, 9:03 PM

The long-shuttered Wapato jail may finally open to house female prison inmates, whose numbers are expected to surge in the coming years, under a proposal being discussed between the state Department of Corrections and Multnomah County.

Corrections Department Director Max Williams made the proposal at a recent meeting with County Commission Chairman Ted Wheeler.

Under the plan, the state would pay the county about $4 million during the next two years to take over responsibility for up to 200 female inmates from the Portland area who are within a year of being released.

A promise to open Wapato was a key part of Wheeler's successful 2006 election campaign. Peter Ozanne, the county's deputy chief operating officer for public safety, said county officials are "very interested" in Williams' proposal.

The use of part of the 525-bed Wapato jail would provide a short-term solution to a looming problem for the state prison system. The only women's prison in Oregon is Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville.

Coffee Creek has 1,240 beds and housed 1,096 female inmates as of last week, according to the state. The DOC forecasts that 345 female inmates will enter the prison system during the 2009-11 budget cycle, 281 of them sentenced under the terms of Measure 57.

Measure 57, which Oregon voters passed in November, lengthened sentences for repeat drug and property crimes and required drug and alcohol treatment for offenders.

Crimes covered by Measure 57 include dealing methamphetamine, heroin or cocaine, aggravated theft from the elderly, property crimes such as burglary and auto theft, and identify theft. Almost half of those convicted of ID theft are women.

The use of Wapato jail to house state female inmates would relieve a nagging, five-year headache for Multnomah County. The empty jail in the St. Johns area of North Portland stands as a tower of embarrassment to county government. It was completed in 2004 at a cost of $58 million, but it has never housed a single inmate because the county doesn't have the operating money.

Meanwhile, the county will spend $379,000 in the next fiscal year to maintain the jail.

Williams said Coffee Creek is expected to reach capacity in July 2010. He said one alternative would be to convert an industrial work area for inmates into dormitory-style housing at a cost of about $2 million.

Instead, Williams suggested to Wheeler that overflow female inmates who are nearing their release dates be sent to Wapato, which the county would run. The proposed $4 million state payment would include the cost of operating part of the jail through June 2011.

One likely complication in reaching a state-county agreement on Wapato is a thick set of restrictions set out in a conditional-use permit granted by the city of Portland before construction began. Williams said this could affect such issues as outdoor recreation areas, outside work crews and inmates' release into the community.

Williams disclosed his conversation with Wheeler after state officials were asked about Senate Bill 684, introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene. The measure would compel Multnomah County to sell Wapato to the Corrections Department. The bill appropriates $1 to buy the jail but also sets out a detailed process to agree on a fair price.

Williams said that his department had nothing to do with the bill and that he has not discussed a possible jail purchase with lawmakers. "I would not seek legislation to force them to sell something for $1," he said.

Prozanski called the bill "basically a placeholder" as state officials consider options for Oregon's growing prison population.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009//state_wants_to_send_female_inm.html

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

March 16, 2009

Alaska: Lawmakers have second thoughts on "jumbo" state prison & another article on committment to building prison

Prison costs raise concern
MAT-SU FACILITY: Lawmakers take new look at privatizing amid budget crunch.
By SEAN COCKERHAM
Published: March 15th, 2009

JUNEAU -- Legislators are cringing at the cost of the planned new jumbo state prison in the Matanuska-Susita Borough and want to look at turning it into a private prison. That's a topic that in the past proved to be one of the most contentious in Alaska politics.

State representatives are also reluctant to pony up an additional $20 million the Palin administration has requested for the $240 million project. Enthusiasm for the project isn't what it used to be before oil prices plummeted, dragging state revenues down with them.

Fairbanks Republican Rep. Mike Kelly took over the corrections budget in the state House this year and said that -- if he could -- he would slow the project down. But the bonds for construction have already been sold. That's left lawmakers with few options.

One is to privatize operations of the prison when it opens. So Kelly put language in the budget that passed the House on Friday asking the corrections department to investigate doing just that.

"The intent says, hey, take a look at what we might save in this (expensive) hill to climb and see if we have a private operator -- if that would make sense," Kelly said.

Private prisons have been hugely controversial in Alaska.

"They've figured prominently into a lot of the problems we've had," said Eagle River Republican Rep. Bill Stoltze, an influential supporter of keeping the project in state hands.

The ongoing federal corruption investigation, which has resulted in indictments or guilty pleas from 12 lawmakers, lobbyists and others, began with inquiry into a push to build a private prison in the state. Bill Weimar, once king of Alaska's private halfway houses, pleaded guilty to corruption charges last year after funneling $20,000 in 2004 to help a state legislative candidate, knowing that if elected the candidate would support his interest in building a private prison.

NUMBER OF PRISONERS DOWN

Political battles over private prisons in Alaska kept the state's jail-building efforts on hold for a decade. In the meantime, the lack of space in Alaska's correctional system has the state sending hundreds of Alaska prisoners to a private prison in Arizona.

Using both raw political muscle and arguments about saving money and bringing Native prisoners home, backers of the private prisons won legislative support for successive plans aimed at facilities in Anchorage, Delta Junction, Kenai and Whittier. Among the members of the consortium that pushed for private prisons was Veco, the now-defunct construction firm that is at the heart of Alaska's political corruption scandal. But each private plan eventually died in the face of local opposition, resistance from prison guard unions and skepticism from governors of both parties.

The prison fight appeared to be over after Senate President Lyda Green, who is now retired, pushed through the new state prison to be built in her home area of the Mat-Su. The planned Goose Creek Correctional Center, about nine miles north of Point Mackenzie, will be the largest prison in Alaska at 1,536 beds. The Mat-Su Borough sold the $240 million in construction bonds for it earlier this year.

The state is to lease the prison for 25 years, covering the borough's bond payments.

Fairbanks Rep. Kelly said the number of Alaska prisoners is down, at least for the moment, and it would have been a lot cheaper for the state to leave the prisoners in Arizona. But that's not going to happen, with the Mat-Su construction going ahead.

The top budget writer in the state House, Rep. Mike Hawker, also supports a privatization study.

"It's something that always has to be considered as we look at declining state revenues and an inability to meet our spending levels," the Anchorage Republican said.

REPORT DUE BACK IN 2010

The Mat-Su prison is estimated to have over 350 staff jobs after it opens in 2012. Hawker said that's going to be a problem unless state government figures out a way to deal with its gap between expenses and income as oil production steadily declines.

"Adding and keeping those employees on the state is not something we're going to be able to sustain into the very near term future here," Hawker said. "Whether it's operated on a (private) contract basis or operated on a state-owned basis, we frankly don't have the money to do either one in the future for very long."

Corrections officials are asked to report back with their findings on privatization by next spring.

State corrections officials have never been big fans of privatizing their work. Deputy Corrections Commissioner Dwayne Peeples said officials haven't come up with a position on the potential of privatizing the Mat-Su prison. But he said any savings would "probably be fairly marginal." Costs of the construction bonds, the utilities and food would all be basically the same whether it is a private or public prison, he said.

"The only cost difference you would really have would be in staff operating. And that's really hard to come up with what the private sector could do versus the state," he said.

He said the only way to get good cost numbers would be to put the contract out to bid and then sit down and negotiate. "Because everybody off the cuff will spin you theories and cost estimates and everything else that are probably meaningless until you sit down and say 'hey you've got to sign the contract and actually do it," he said.

Peeples said has hasn't figured out exactly how he's going to do the privatization study other than "do some literature research and say, this is what the literature says."

Rep. Kelly said he knows it's difficult but plans to work with Peeples to figure out how to get meaningful information. He said the cost to the state of paying the bonds and running the Mat-Su prison is going to combine for around $30 million a year.

Kelly also put language in the budget limiting the state spending on the project. Peeples said that looks to impede the Palin administration from getting up to $20 million it has requested to deal with higher interest rates in the project. That's not going to stop construction, he said, but could pose a problem depending on cost overruns.

The governor could still get the additional $20 million through the separate state House construction budget, which is being crafted by Rep Stoltze of Chugiak -- a prison supporter. The state Senate also has not had its crack at the budget yet this year.

Sean Cockerham is covering the legislative session from Juneau. Read more on our Alaska Politics blog at adn.com/alaskapolitics.
http://www.adn.com/news/politics/story/723646.html

-----
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/matsu/story/726662.html

Anchorage Daily News

Borough committed to building new prison
$240 MILLION: Bonds issued and contractor has been selected.

By RINDI WHITE
Published: March 17th, 2009

WASILLA -- Borough officials say construction of a new state prison inMat-Su is on track despite news that some state lawmakers are having second thoughts about the cost.

"We're building the prison," Borough Manager John Duffy said Tuesday.

Duffy said the $240-million project has reached a point of no return. Bonds backed by the state have been issued, and a contractor who will design and build the project has been selected.

If the borough had not successfully sold bonds for the project, the
borough's stance might be different.

"Back in December, I was very worried that if we didn't get the bonds sold, we might be faced with this issue of going back to the legislature," Duffy said.

The borough manager said he was as surprised as anyone when he heard some state legislators were concerned about the overall cost of the prison and wanted to reopen the idea of contracting with a private business to run the prison, he said.

Fairbanks Rep. Mike Kelly recently added language to a House bill to have the state corrections department study the cost of privately running the prison.

The news wasn't completely unexpected, however. The public versus private prison debate has surfaced every few years in Alaska. This time the economy is a major factor. With oil prices low, some legislators fear yearly lease payments and the cost of operating the 1,536-bed prison is too much. This year, the state is scheduled to make its first lease payment of $17 million.

Duffy said the borough has opposed previous efforts to privatize, but has not yet weighed in on whether it wants a privately-run prison in the Valley.

"We did have concerns the last go around because it was a noncompetitive process. Our feeling then, and I don't think it's changed -- but maybe -- is that correctional officers ... ought to be public employees," Duffy said. "I guess we'll start talking about that."

Posted by lois at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)

FL: GEO Proposed 3,000 cage prison near Florida City

Corporation offers to build prison near Florida City
GEO Group proposes to build a 3,000-bed correctional facility near Florida City that would cost $100 million and create 900 jobs.
BY KYLE BAILEY
Special to The Miami Herald

A corporation wants to build a 3,000-bed correctional facility near Florida City.

If approved, the GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections, would build the $100 million complex at the northeast corner of Southwest 382nd Street and 187th Avenue in unincorporated Miami-Dade County.

It would add 900 jobs, said Jerry Proctor, a lawyer representing the GEO Group.

He presented the company's plan at Tuesday's Florida City Commission meeting.

Proctor said the company would seek zoning approval from the Board of County Commissioners in ``about two to three weeks.''

He said GEO is still looking for a tenant, either from the local, state or federal government.

One government agency might be the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.

''The facility is an excellent candidate for use by ICE for its detention requirements,'' according to a packet given to the Florida City Commission.

The federal agency has undocumented workers detained for immigration hearings or for actual deportation.

Pablo E. Paez, director of GEO's corporate relations, said in an e-mail that it was company policy not to ``comment on specific projects being considered.''

But he did say, ``As part of our business development efforts, our company will from time to time explore potential locations for future facilities.''

He later followed that up with an e-mail stressing, ``I'd like to emphasize that we do not currently have a client or any immediate plans for a potential facility in South Dade.''

At Florida City's meeting, GEO Group representatives talked about the economic benefits of having the facility if it is built. They estimated that the combined construction and day-to-day operations of the prison would create 900 jobs and generate nearly $28 million in local spending.

Florida City leaders responded positively.

''The prospect of new, good paying jobs coming into the city is always a positive thing,'' Mayor Otis Wallace said.

If approved by the county, the proposed detention facility will be located minutes from the South Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center also operated by the GEO Group.

GEO began managing that facility in July 2005 through a contract with the Florida Department of Children and Families.

The facility treats men and women under court order to receive treatment in a secure psychiatric hospital.

As part of the state contract GEO built what is now a 238-bed facility. It was finished in 2008 to replace the old facility.

It was the first state psychiatric hospital that is fully operated by a private company through a public-private partnership, according to GEO's website.

No date has been set for the completion of the new facility if it is approved.

GEO operates prison facilities in 16 states.

One of them was recently in the news.

Two prison riots erupted in West Texas at GEO's Reeves County Detention Center in December and last month.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/communities/south/story/949461.html

Posted by lois at 10:13 PM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2009

Real Cost of Prisons Comix (the book)

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
edited by Lois Ahrens
PM Press
Reviews: http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=loisahrens#reviews
Ordering info:
https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=48

One out of every hundred adults in the U.S. is in prison. This book provides a crash course in what drives mass incarceration, the human and community costs, and how to stop the numbers from going even higher. This volume collects the three comic books published by the Real Cost of Prisons Project. The stories and statistical information in each comic book is thoroughly researched and documented.

Prison Town: Paying the Price tells the story of how the financing and site locations of prisons affects the people of rural communities in which prison are built. It also tells the story of how mass incarceration affects people of urban communities where the majority of incarcerated people come from.

Prisoners of the War on Drugs includes the history of the war on drugs, mandatory minimums, how racism creates harsher sentences for people of color, stories on how the war on drugs works against women, three strikes laws, obstacles to coming home after incarceration, and how mass incarceration destabilizes neighborhoods.

Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children includes stories about women trapped by mandatory sentencing and the "costs" of incarceration for women and their families. Also included are alternatives to the present system, a glossary and footnotes.

Over 125,000 copies of the comic books have been printed and more than 100,000 have been sent to families of people who are incarcerated, people who are incarcerated, and to organizers and activists throughout the country. The book includes a chapter with descriptions about how the comix have been put to use in the work of organizers and activists in prison and in the "free world" by ESL teachers, high school teachers, college professors, students, and health care providers throughout the country. The demand for them is constant and the ways in which they are being used is inspiring.

The Buzz:

"I cannot think of a better way to arouse the public to the cruelties of the prison system than to make this book widely available."
--Howard Zinn

"The Real Cost of Prisons comics are among the most transformative pieces of information that the youth get to read. We take it with us to detention centers, group homes, youth shelters and social justice organizing projects. Everywhere we go we see youth nodding with agreement and getting excited to see their reality validated in print. The Real Cost of Prisons helps youth know what's up and gives them the push they need to get active in the struggle to make interpersonal and community-wide change."
--Shira Hassan, Co-Director Young Women's Empowerment Project, Chicago, IL

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

March 13, 2009

FL: Private Prison Problems Not Quickly Fixed

Report: Florida prison problems not quickly fixed
By JESSICA GRESKO , 03.12.09, 04:11 PM EDT

The agency that oversees Florida's six privately run prisons needs to ensure that problems found during audits - such as broken alarms and unsanitary infirmaries - are quickly fixed, lawmakers were told Thursday as part of a report reviewing the agency.

Audits of private prisons by the Florida Department of Corrections had previously found broken escape sensors and buildings that had not been checked for any attempts by inmates to tunnel out. Audits also found delays in medical care and problems involving contraband.

"Some of these problems were repeated year after year at the same prisons," said analyst Vic Williams, who summarized the report for lawmakers in testimony before the Senate Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations.

The report was written by the Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability and released in December. Lawmakers heard a formal presentation of the details Thursday.

An official with the Department of Management Services, the agency that oversees the private prisons, told lawmakers that his agency has already begun to address some of the issues raised by the report.

"We've already started the process to implement a lot of these recommendations," Department of Management Services' J.D. Solie told the panel.

Solie promised that any future violations found by Department of Corrections audits would be corrected within 45 days.

"This is an eye-opening report," said Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami.

The state has six private prisons housing approximately 8,000 inmates or about 8 percent of the state's inmates. The facilities cost the state about $133 million a year, or some 6 percent of the Department of Corrections' $2.2 billion budget.

The state currently contracts with two private prison companies: Nashville-based Corrections Corp. of America and Boca Raton-based GEO Group Inc. The state's 131 other facilities are run by the Florida Department of Corrections.

CCA said in a statement that it has "worked closely" with the state to "ensure contract compliance and will continue to do so." A message left for a spokesman at GEO was not immediately returned.

Among recommendations, the report also said private prisons should be required to track the percentage of inmates who successfully complete substance abuse and education programs.

It also noted that phone calls made from private prisons are more expensive than calls from prisons run by the Department of Corrections. A 15 minute phone call from a private prison costs around $6 while the same call costs 50 cents in a state-run prison, lawmakers were told.

And while families can visit state-run prisons on Saturdays and Sundays, private facilities allow visits either every other weekend or only one of the two weekend days, the report found.

The Department of Management Services said future contracts would require private prisons to measure and report graduation rates from education and treatment programs. Contracts will also require that phone call prices be "more in line" with the cost at state-run prisons, according to a written reply from the agency.

But, the agency wrote it believed the visitation policies at private prisons were appropriate, though it agreed to ask inmates and families about their satisfaction.

Copyright 2009 Associated Press.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/03/12/ap6161623.html

Posted by lois at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2009

MS:Omnibus spending Bill brings $205 million for construction of Federal Prison in Yazoo

Spending bill brings large windfall to Mississippi

By CHRIS TALBOTT • March 12, 2009

JACKSON - The federal omnibus spending bill that President Barack Obama signed on Wednesday funnels millions of dollars to Mississippi, including $205 million for construction at the Yazoo City federal prison.

Other big ticket items include $61 million for construction of Mississippi River levees and $31.5 million to continue work at the national strategic petroleum reserve site in Richton.

The money is part of the regular federal budget and separate from the federal stimulus package that also is expected to bring $2.8 billion to the state.

"With these funds we will be able to continue the important work of improving our state's infrastructure, enhancing quality of health care and education and creating an environment to attract new businesses," said U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., the ranking Republican on the Senate appropriations committee.

Highlights from the spending bill provided by Cochran's office include:

# $6.2 million in several earmarks for the University of Southern Mississippi.

# $1.9 million for widening of West Fourth Street in Hattiesburg.

# $6.5 million for construction of the Mississippi biotechnology research park at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.

# $1.5 million to the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies to complete construction of a facility focusing on rehabilitation, conservation and education regarding marine mammals.

# $20.8 million to construct mooring cells for barges along the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway.

# $2.8 million to revitalize Capitol Street in Jackson.

# $10 million for the port of Gulfport.

By far, the largest project slated for Mississippi is new construction on the existing federal prison site in Yazoo City.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has put out bids for a contract to build a new high-security penitentiary, a minimum-security prison camp and other structures at the current prison site. The facilities will be about 50,000 square meters and will house about 1,500 prisoners.

Funding for the national strategic petroleum reserve site in Richton was mostly left in place. Congress cut in half to $205 million what the Bush recommended spending on the reserve.

Cochran said he was pleased the spending bill will allow construction to begin at the site. Property purchases were completed last year and a revised environmental impact statement is now being conducted.
Advertisement

"At a time of economic uncertainty it is important for the United States to continue to make provisions for the future," he said. "As long as our country remains dependent on foreign oil, we need to have oil reserves ready in case of natural or other disaster."

It's impossible to tell exactly how much money will be coming to Mississippi out of the spending bill. A nonpartisan budget watchdog group estimates, however, that the state is among the big winners when it comes to earmarks.

Taxpayers for Common Sense estimates that both Cochran and Mississippi's other senator, Roger Wicker, sit atop the heap when it comes to earmarks, the controversial practice of steering money to pet projects.

The group says Cochran is the congressional champion with $437.7 million in earmarks brought to the state both alone and in combination with lawmakers from other states. Wicker is No. 2 on the list at $391 million.

Mississippi is third overall in earmarks, the group's research shows, with a total of $325 million, a figure that doesn't include multistate funding.

"This is where Mississippi is always impressive," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Mississippi trails much larger California ($568.7 million) and Texas ($370 million) overall, but swamps them when earmarks are figured on a per capita basis. Mississippi is fourth in the country with $110.59 per resident accrued in earmarks. Alaska remains No. 1 at $209.71 per resident.

Overall, the group estimates there are $7.7 billion in earmarks in the $410 billion spending plan.

Ellis said the group uses Congress' own definition of an earmark to reach its conclusions. But Margaret McPhillips, a spokeswoman for Cochran, said it's impossible to tell how much money legislators steered toward the state in earmarks because the definition is debatable.

Wicker said he still feels the government spends too much money, but does not favor taking the right to choose what projects are approved away from Congress.
http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/article/20090312/NEWS01/903120331/1002

Posted by lois at 04:13 PM | Comments (0)

IL : Pontiac Prison to Stay Open After Months of Lobbying by town and guard's unions

" PCC is the only institution in the state to currently house condemned inmates. It also has the largest segregation unit in which many of the state’s “worst of the worst” inmates are housed.
Pontiac is the state’s only facility that provides single cells for most maximum-security inmates."

Pontiac Correctional Center will remain open according to an announcement from the governor’s office and from Sen. Dan Rutherford
By Sheila Shelton
Pontiac Daily Leader
Thu Mar 12, 2009
Pontiac, Ill. -

After months of waiting, praying and hoping, an announcement on the fate of Pontiac Correctional Center has been rendered.
And, for the people of Pontiac and those who work at PCC, the facility will remain open.
Gov. Pat Quinn announced late this morning that Pontiac Correctional Center is not going to close, at least for now.
Quinn’s office said the decision is another step in the governor’s efforts to ensure greater fiscal responsibility in state government.
PCC provides approximately 600 jobs and generates approximately $54.4 million in revenue for the area.

“Keeping Pontiac open will ensure nearly 600 people in the region keep their jobs, prevent hundreds of families from being uprooted, and allow Pontiac to maintain one of its largest sources of revenue,” said Quinn in a released statement.
The prison was slated to close by Dec. 31, 2008, by order of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The closure did not occur as scheduled because of court injunctions that prevented the movement of officers and inmates from the facility.
State Sen. Dan Rutherford, R-Chenoa, released comments on PCC shortly after Quinn’s announcement.
“I am pleased to share the good news that Pontiac Correctional Center will remain open and operational," said Rutherford in his release. "For the past few days, I have been working with Gov. Quinn's office regarding Pontiac Correctional Center. I was not authorized to make an announcement until this afternoon.”
Rutherford said earlier that he felt the announcement by Quinn would come sometime next week when he announces the state’s budget for the coming year.
The current budget holds money for the operations of PCC through the end of this fiscal year on June 30.
Pontiac Mayor Scott McCoy said his first reaction to the announcement was “excuse me while I do my happy dance.”
“Gov. Quinn did his due diligence and came to the conclusion that Pontiac Prison is an important part of the Illinois Department of Corrections, and closing it is not in the best interest of the state of Illinois.”
“I thank the governor for his hard work on this situation,” said McCoy. “It’s a very good day for Pontiac and Livingston County.”
Former PCC officer and current Dwight Correctional Center Maj. Kevin DeLong said shortly after noon today that he is very thankful to Quinn.
“PCC is full of great staff and people have worked very hard there and it is wonderful it is staying open,” he said.
”It is finally a sigh of relief after constantly checking the news and Internet everyday we are now ready to get back to normal,” said DeLong’s wife, Stephanie. “I hope we never have to go through this again.”
Blagojevich announced last May that he would be closing PCC after he had first announced he would close the Roundhouse at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet.
Apparent political pressure forced Blagojevich to reconsider closing the oldest cell house at Stateville and decide to close the entire Pontiac facility instead.
PCC is the only institution in the state to currently house condemned inmates. It also has the largest segregation unit in which many of the state’s “worst of the worst” inmates are housed.
Pontiac is the state’s only facility that provides single cells for most maximum-security inmates.
Central Illinois lawmakers, elected officials and community action groups have been vocal supporters of keeping Pontiac open, citing security of the employees and inmates as an additional reason to maintain the prison here.
Henry Bayer, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31, issued a statement from Springfield.
"Gov. Quinn is doing the right thing by keeping Pontiac open. The state prison system is dangerously overcrowded, and closing any prison would make a bad situation much worse. The closure of Pontiac would also have forced hundreds of AFSCME members to face the terrible choice of losing their jobs or leaving their homes in the Livingston County area.”
http://www.pontiacdailyleader.com/news/x1331524721

Posted by lois at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)

PA: Officials present preliminary plans for Graterford Prison replacement

03/11/2009
WEB EXCLUSIVE ... Officials present preliminary plans for Graterford Prison replacement
By: David Hare , For The Valley Item

At a Skippack Township Board of Supervisors meeting March 11, state officials presented preliminary plans for two new prisons that will replace Graterford State Prison.

The project is part of the state's efforts to address prison overcrowding. The new facility will house up to 4,000 inmates, according to the state's Department of General Services.
Design-build requests for proposals, or RFPs, will open in June, said Liz O'Reilly, deputy secretary of public works at the DGS.
The design-build concept will enable construction to begin as soon as possible this year by requiring the contractors who win the bid to design the structures as they are being built, according to O'Reilly.

"We're aiming to have shovels in the ground by Labor Day," she said.
DGS has hired Hill International Co. to oversee the project.
Marc Goldberg, deputy secretary for administration at the state's Department of Corrections, said Pennsylvania's prison population has grown by 21 percent in the past six years, from 37,995 in 2001 to more than 49,300 today.
The prison population is predicted to grow an average of 4 percent each year through 2012, according to Goldberg.
Graterford currently holds 3,400 inmates. The two new prisons would house about 4,000 inmates: 2,000 in a medium security facility, and another 2,000 in an adjacent maximum security facility.
"Every inmate is given a complete assessment of what they need when they're with us," Goldberg said. "About 90 percent of these inmates are going to eventually be released, so we do the best we can to make sure they're prepared for that transition. Education is a big part of that."
The Graterford project is part of a broader state construction initiative that will add nearly 9,000 beds to the state's prison system, according to Department of General Services. Other projects include new prisons in Centre and Fayette counties, as well as four additional housing units in Crawford, Forest, Indiana and Northumberland counties.
At Wednesday's meeting Skippack resident Rich Lowry said he didn't have a problem living near the old prison, but now that it's being shut down, he wondered why the new prison couldn't be built in a more rural area.
"If ever there was a time to move it, now's the time," Lowry said. "The prison doesn't support this area, we the taxpayers do."
Other residents also made comments indicating they were against the project and pleaded with the township supervisors to intervene on their behalf.
Supervisors Chairman Mark Marino said the township is limited in what it can do since the state owns the prison property.
"We can't say no to them building here," Marino said, then added, "We're citizens here too."
http://www.valleyitem.com/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=1306&dept_id=187831&newsid=20278413
This and other news about the financing and siting of prisons can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Posted by lois at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2009

GA:: CCA takes over jail as ICE detention center

March 9, 2009
CCA bringing 160 jobs to Georgia
Atlanta Business Chronicle

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) landed a contract to manage detainee populations for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the North Georgia Detention Center in Gainesville, Ga.

The deal will bring 160 jobs to Hall County.

Nashville, Tenn.-based CCA will house up to 500 ICE detainees at the facility. The company will lease the former Hall County Jail for 20 years with two five-year renewal options. CCA expects to open the facility during the second quarter.

The facility will employ 160 correctional professionals in security, facility management, accounting, health services, human resources, business management, quality assurance and education.

Georgia’s soaring inmate population is overwhelming its capacity, and the state Department of Corrections has turned to the private sector to help fill the gap.

Georgia, like many states facing a budget crunch in a worsening economy, wants privately owned and operated detention centers to help handle its growing number of prisoners. Private prisons, proponents say, can save governments from 10 percent to 15 percent in inmate housing costs.

Georgia’s inmate population has grown from more than 47,000 in 2002 to 56,022 in 2008, thanks in large part to mandatory sentences. In 2004, Georgia ranked 11th in the nation for length of sentences served, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The state had the fifth-highest inmate population in the United States in 2007 and a budget of $950 million, according to the Department of Corrections.

CCA and Houston-based Cornell Companies Inc. already operate private detention centers housing 5,122 prisoners, or 9.2 percent of state inmates in Georgia. Private prisons held 7.4 percent — or about 120,000 — of the nation’s 1.59 million inmates in 2007.

CCA currently runs 63 facilities in 19 states and Washington, D.C.
http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2009/03/09/daily5.html

Posted by lois at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)

Tennessee: State eyes cost-effective alternatives to prison

Commissioner George Little: “We can figure out how to better manage those populations,” he said. “What I think it opens up is a discussion of who we are locking up, how long they are being locked up and do we have the right people in our prisons and jails.”

Tennessee: State eyes cost-effective alternatives to prison
Monday, March 9, 2009
By: Lauren Gregory
Chattanooga Times Free Press

Housing a prisoner costs about $60 a day in Tennessee, so locking someone up for not paying $45 a month in probation fees doesn’t make sense, according to Tennessee’s corrections commissioner.

Allowing nonviolent inmates approved for parole to sit behind bars for days or weeks, racking up costs the state could cut in half if they immediately were placed in halfway houses also is counterproductive, Commissioner George Little said.

“We can figure out how to better manage those populations,” he said. “What I think it opens up is a discussion of who we are locking up, how long they are being locked up and do we have the right people in our prisons and jails.”

With the state’s budget crisis forcing $42 million in cuts to a corrections program that will receive almost no federal stimulus money, Mr. Little is championing an increased emphasis on community corrections programs such as halfway houses.

He asked Gov. Phil Bredesen to include money for the facilities, which help paroled offenders transition into society by providing housing, structure and assistance finding employment, in his 2010 budget.

The governor’s budget should be complete later this month, spokeswoman Lydia Lenker said.

State Rep. G.A. Hardaway, D-Memphis, introduced legislation that would establish a pilot halfway house program for the state with that money.

The pilot program would increase state expenditures by $410,900, according to documents, and for that reason faces an uphill battle, said Rep. Gerald McCormick, R-Chattanooga.

PAY NOW OR PAY LATER

Rep. McCormick is a member of the House’s State and Local Government Committee, which has the bill. He said he doesn’t anticipate the legislation surviving if Gov. Bredesen doesn’t approve money for it.

“If it’s not already included in the governor’s budget, there is a very, very, very little chance it will pass,” Rep. McCormick said. “I’d have to vote against it. It’s not that it’s not a good cause, but there are a lot of good causes out there and, in this environment, it would be unfair to put that one at the top.”

Committee Chairman Rep. Curry Todd, R-Collierville, agreed.

“I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” he said.

Rep. Hardaway did not return calls or an e-mail seeking comment.

State Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, said he will be disappointed if his colleagues focus on a program’s upfront costs without considering ultimate savings.

“In state government, we need to continue to look for ways to save money in the long run, and that means ensuring that money we spend today will save us money in the future,” Sen. Berke said.

Supporters of halfway houses say there is good reason to view community corrections that way. A small initial investment in halfway houses will save billions of dollars in prison construction costs down the road, said Tim Dempsey, chief executive officer of Chattanooga Endeavors, a nonprofit organization that helps ex-prisoners find employment.

“On the one hand, you say, ‘How can we afford to take on anything new?’” Mr. Dempsey said. “But on the other hand, this is an extremely cost-effective way to keep people out of prison and keep them from returning in the long term.”

The Washington, D.C.-based Pew Center on the States released a report last week that concluded Tennessee, along with all other states, would benefit from that type of thinking.

“New community supervision strategies and technologies need to be strengthened and expanded, not scaled back,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project, which generated the report.

“Cutting them may appear to save a few dollars, but it doesn’t,” Mr. Gelb said. “It will fuel the cycle of more crime, more victims, more arrests, more prosecutions and still more imprisonment.”

potential impact

Calvin Figgures, director of prison ministry at Shady Grove Baptist Church in Chickamauga, Ga., has recognized a local need and doesn’t want to wait for state funding. He hopes to be able to secure a grant through the federal Second Chance Act, which former President George W. Bush signed into law last year to provide support services to ex-prisoners, to open several halfway houses in Chattanooga.

An ex-offender himself, Mr. Figgures spent eight years in prison on drug charges. He says a halfway house was behind his successful turnaround.

“It’s like a family,” he said. “It’s loving, and it gives a person a sense of self. And not only that, it helps give you a solid foundation. In prison, they tell you what to do, when to shower, when to go to bed. In a halfway house setting, they give you a sense of responsibility again but with monitoring.”

Mr. Little said that ultimately makes the entire community safer.

“The argument (for creating more halfway houses) is fiscal, but the long-term benefit is going to be quality of life and public safety,” he said.
BY THE NUMBERS

* $645 million: Department of Correction budget last year

* $60: Cost to house an inmate for a day

* $25: Cost to keep someone in a halfway house for a day

* 40: Percentage of all inmates incarcerated for technical violations of probation or parole

* $100,000: Prison building cost, per bed

* $50 million: Annual operating cost for recently expanded Morgan County Correctional Complex

* $1 billion: Cost to operate the 2,400-bed Morgan County facility over the next 20 years

HALFWAY HOUSES

* Nashville — 55

* Knoxville — 10

* Memphis — 9

* Chattanooga — 1

Source: Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole

Source: Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner George Little
http://timesfreepress.com/news/2009/mar/09/tennessee-state-eyes-cost-effective-alternatives-p/?local

Posted by lois at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

March 08, 2009

PA: Rendell's prison plan could lock him up in costly quandary Increased budget likely to cause inmate population to swell

Rendell's prison plan could lock him up in costly quandary
Increased budget likely to cause inmate population to swell
Sunday, March 08, 2009
By Daniel Malloy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Excellent chart:
http://www.post-gazette.com/downloads/20090308Correction_population.pdf

The nation's economic crisis has put a damper on most new construction, but there's one area where building is booming like it's 1999 -- prisons.

Pennsylvania's state correctional facilities are at 114 percent of capacity and several construction projects are in the works to meet demands for space. Gov. Ed Rendell's proposed budget includes more than $1.8 billion for the Department of Corrections, a nearly 10 percent increase dedicated mostly to construction and increased staffing.

According to a report released last week by the Pew Center on the States, such spending is folly, especially under budget constraints. The report recommends that states devote more resources to the far-less-costly options of probation and parole, and incarcerate fewer people.

Pa.'s correctional population rises ... As the state's costs skyrocket

Rendell's prison plan could lock him up in costly quandary
Increased budget likely to cause inmate population to swell
Sunday, March 08, 2009
By Daniel Malloy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Excellent chart:
http://www.post-gazette.com/downloads/20090308Correction_population.pdf

"After an extraordinary, quarter-century expansion of American prisons, one unmistakable policy truth has emerged: We cannot build our way to public safety," the report states.

"[N]ew national and state research shows that we are well past the point of diminishing returns, where more imprisonment will prevent less and less crime. With the costs of imprisonment rising and the benefits falling, our ability to keep communities safe depends more than ever upon our ability to better manage the 5 million offenders on probation and parole."

According to the report, the average spending per inmate per day in Pennsylvania was $97.72 last year -- more than triple the cost from 25 years ago. The number of inmates in the state is expected to rise from 49,000 at the start of this year to nearly 58,000 by the end of 2013.

Compare that to $8.03 per day for parole and $1.83 for probation.

The Rendell budget proposal for fiscal year 2009-2010 also increases funding for the Board of Probation and Parole, which plans to use the money to hire more field agents. But the 8.3 percent increase brings the department's budget to $99.2 million, less than one-eighteenth of Department of Corrections spending.

Even the DOC agrees that bringing down the prison population -- as the Pew report recommends -- is a good idea. But as Mr. Rendell's parole quandary suggests, it isn't easy politically or logistically.
Violent vs. nonviolent

In September, a parolee shot and killed a Philadelphia police officer a month after his release from prison, where he had been serving a sentence for a 1998 robbery and aggravated assault.

After the killing, Mr. Rendell imposed a moratorium on all parole in the state, causing prison populations to spike. He lifted the moratorium for nonviolent offenders in October, then for violent offenders in January.

The 11-member Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing is looking at reforming parole guidelines, but legislators might tackle a sweeping reform of their own -- a mandate that repeat violent offenders serve out their maximum sentences. A bill is still in the drafting stages, but Mr. Rendell already has voiced support for such a measure.

While getting tougher on violent offenders -- classified as people convicted of murder, manslaughter, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, theft or arson -- policymakers are looking at ways to get nonviolent offenders out from behind bars.

Acts 81-84, signed by Mr. Rendell in September, create new avenues for shorter or alternative sentences -- including an expansion of the therapy-driven state intermediate punishment program. But DOC estimates that this will merely slow the prison population growth rate.

Department statistics show a sharp rise in the number of nonviolent offenders in the prisons. In 2008 nonviolent offenders comprised 41 percent of the prison population, with 44 percent classified as violent (the rest are parole violators). In 2002, it was 51 percent violent, 30 percent nonviolent.

DOC spokeswoman Susan McNaughton pointed to tougher sentences -- including mandatory minimums -- for gun and drug convictions as contributors to the rise of nonviolent prisoners. For example, a first-time conviction for trafficking more than 10 grams of cocaine carries a mandatory three-year minimum sentence.

Rep. Tom Caltagirone, D-Berks, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said he wants to take a hard look at mandatory minimums, but it's difficult to gain support from legislators wary of being labeled as soft on crime.

"We have all these stupid mandatories," Mr. Caltagirone said. "It's a knee-jerk reaction: 'We're going to get all the bad guys off the street.' ...

"The violent offenders -- repeat, serious offenders -- absolutely we need to lock them up. But do we need to lock up everybody?"
Addressing the alternative

Allegheny County Judge John A. Zottola said the overstretched prison system does play a role in his sentences.

"You're always thinking in the back of your mind that there's an issue for overcrowding," Judge Zottola said. "You're often looking at alternatives to putting people in jail -- if it keeps the public safe."

As the Pew report points out, imprisonment alternatives are often more effective than a prison sentence, while being less expensive to the public. A prime example is diversionary courts.

Allegheny County has specialized courts for DUI, drugs, prostitution and people with mental illnesses, and administrators plan to begin a veterans' court this year.

The diversionary courts place offenders on probation and require regular court appearances to make sure the participants are following prescribed plans.

Several studies have shown that the diversionary programs reduce recidivism and save taxpayer dollars by keeping offenders out of jail or prison.

Judge Zottola, who presides over mental health court and said he expects to do the same for veterans' court, said aside from the taxpayer benefit, alternative courts are "the right thing to do in terms of helping people and changing lives."

Those defendants, as well as ones who are re-entering the community from jail or prison, are under the supervision of the Board of Probation and Parole.

Larry Ludwig, Pittsburgh district director for the board, oversees about 70 agents and 4,000 cases in six southwestern Pennsylvania counties. In the process of filling a few open agent positions, Mr. Ludwig said he's happy to be in one of few state agencies with the ability to hire.

"We've had the governor's cooperation because of the job we have and the fact that we tend to reduce the prison population," Mr. Ludwig said.

Mr. Rendell employed Temple University professor John Goldkamp to conduct a review of parole procedures during the moratorium, and Mr. Ludwig said he's in the process of implementing Mr. Goldkamp's recommendations.

A key step is to target the highest risk violent offenders as they leave prison and commit the most resources to overseeing them as they make the transition. Mr. Ludwig said group therapy sessions form part of the new "violence prevention booster."

Parole board agents specialize in certain types of cases -- drugs, sex offenses, etc. -- and each offender's level of supervision is based on a "risk score."

Mr. Ludwig said when there's a misstep like a failed drug test, offenders are sanctioned. Repeat or serious problems could get an offender sent to a halfway house like the Renewal Center, Downtown, or back to prison.

According to the Board's statistics, 21 percent of parolees committed another crime during their first year on parole in 2007, which was down from 28 percent in 2003. The parole recidivism rate in an offender's first three years is 49 percent.

Those offenders often return to one of the state's 26 prisons.

Ms. McNaughton said that in addition to building more residential units at existing prisons, there are plans for a new prison next to SCI Rockview in Centre County, two new prisons to replace the current SCI Graterford in Montgomery County, and a new prison at an undetermined site in Fayette County.

The combined taxpayer price tag for the four projects: $800 million.
article: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09067/954051-85.stm

Posted by lois at 04:58 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2009

KS: two prisons stay open because of $14 million stimulus money

Secretary says revised budget will keep prison open

By DAVE SEATON
Publisher
Winfield Courier (KS)
3-3-09
Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz has told department staff the Winfield prison would stay open under a revised budget proposed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

The revised budget would include federal stimulus funds.

Cuts already announced in corrections would amount to $14.8 million, Werholtz said in a memo issued Friday, Feb. 27. This is about 5 percent of the department's total spending.

Werholtz said approval of the governor's revised budget would allow the department to continue funding a number of programs that have been considered for possible reduction or elimination.

"Specifically these include the suspension of operations of the facilities at Winfield and Norton," he said.

The department would also avoid significant reductions in parole services and community corrections, Werholtz said, and "elimination of special enforcement officers and virtual elimination of the remainder of offender programs."

Werholtz made similar remarks to a Cowley County task force at a meeting in his office last Friday.

Skepticism remains among leading Republican lawmakers about using stimulus funds. House speaker Mike O'Neal, R-Hutchinson, and others have expressed reservations about building the "one-time money" into the state's budget.

The state expects to receive $1.7 billion in stimulus funds.

The Sebelius administration has allocated $81 million of that money to the department of corrections over two years, according to Werholtz.

Local lawmakers took a wait-and-see attitude about the stimulus money late last week.

"We are all flying blind," said Sen. Steve Abrams, R-Arkansas City, who attended the meeting with Werholtz. "It all depends on the revenue estimates in April."

State Treasurer Dennis McKinney said he expected revenue to pick up in April when 2008 tax returns were due. Estimates of future revenue, however, depend on the assessment of the Kansas economy by a team of experts, McKinney said.

Rep. Kasha Kelley also attended the meeting with Werholtz. She is a member of the appropriations committee in the House of Representatives. She called the stimulus money "a real unknown."

Lt. Gov. Mark Parkinson has chaired a task force to follow the stimulus legislation in Washington. He will succeed Sebelius when she resigns as governor to become secretary of health and human services in the Obama administration.

Democrats in the Legislature expect Parkinson to pursue Sebelius' revised budget proposal.

"I hope they accept it. It would be foolish not to," said Rep. Ed Trimmer, D-Winfield.

During the meeting with Werholtz, Kansas Veterans Commission Executive Director Jack Fowler said closure of the Winfield Corrections Facility would cost the Kansas Veterans Home at Winfield an estimated $1.8 million in services. The prison pays the utilities and provides laundry, food and maintenance services to the veterans home, according to WCF warden Emmalee Conover.

The two institutions are located on the campus of the former Winfield State Hospital.

Along with several others at the meeting with Werholtz, Winfield City Manager Warren Porter pointed to the close relationship between the prison and the community.

Porter cited 33,000 inmate hours provided to the city last year, with city supervision. "I really believe we have tried to embrace the prison and the department in the community," he said.

Arkansas City City Manager Steve Archer said inmate work had saved Arkansas City $183,000 last year.

Mick Roark, manager of Northern Contours, which employs inmates at its Strother Field plant making wood-fiber panels for kitchens and bathrooms, said his company would have to end its Cowley County operation if the prison closed.

Northern Contours employs some 26 inmates. The minimum-wage inmate labor is needed to meet competition from China, Roark said.

Marvin Estes, superintendent of USD 465 at Winfield, said closure of the prison would affect 83 students, 64 in Winfield, 15 in Arkansas City and others in smaller communities

Estes mentioned the Brothers in Blue, local men who visit inmates, and the presence of inmates at local church services. "I can't imagine any program any better to value and integrate inmates than the ones we have in Winfield," Estes said.

Cowley County Administrator Leroy Alsup offered the use of unfilled beds at the Cowley County jail, if appropriate. An upturn in the prison population is under way and expected to continue, according to Werholtz.

Werholtz expressed concern that the state's widely recognized re-entry programs for inmates not be allowed to disappear. He thanked the Cowley County group for coming to Topeka to tell its story.

http://winfieldcourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=29140

Posted by lois at 12:45 PM | Comments (0)

March 03, 2009

CA: State to stop imprisoning undocumented immigrants with prior convicitions

From the Los Angeles Times
State to stop imprisoning some illegal-immigration repeat offenders
Federal government should deal with those with prior convictions who unlawfully return to the U.S. after being deported, because California prisons are crowded, state corrections chief says.
By Michael Rothfeld

March 3, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento — California corrections officials say the state will no longer spend the estimated $10 million a year it costs to lock up undocumented immigrants with prior convictions who reenter the country illegally after being deported.

The stance refers to immigrants who had committed crimes in California and finished serving their terms.

In the past, the state kept them on parole after deportation and incarcerated them for four to eight months for violating their parole by reentering the country illegally. But California is facing an order from a panel of federal judges to reduce the population of its overcrowded prisons.

In a letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Friday and in a news conference Monday, California corrections chief Matt Cate said the federal government should prosecute illegal immigrants who return to the country after deportation because that is a crime under federal law.

Now, when illegal immigrants are released from state prison and given to federal authorities for deportation, they will automatically be discharged from parole.

"Those short prison stints are not punishment enough for these repeat offenders, yet they cost California millions every year to recycle them through our parole process, exacerbating the crowded positions in our prisons," Cate, secretary of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in his letter to Napolitano. "California can no longer afford this practice."

Michael Keegan, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the agency had received the letter and was reviewing it.

"We . . . will be responding to the state of California through the proper channels as soon as we're done analyzing the information," he said.

Out of 12,000 undocumented immigrants released to federal authorities for deportation in 2007, nearly 1,600 returned illegally and were sent to prison, which cost the state up to $10 million a year, corrections officials said. Under federal law, they could have been prosecuted and given sentences for up to 20 years for returning to the country illegally, Keegan said.

"In far too many cases, when the federal government did not prosecute, the only recourse was a four- to eight-month parole revocation term," Cate told reporters.

Cate said the immigrants use up resources when they are admitted to state prison because they undergo medical and mental health reviews, but their terms are so short there is no time for rehabilitation.

The state has always had the option of dealing with illegal immigrants by turning them over to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to be deported, even if federal prosecutors decline to file charges. State officials, however, preferred sending repeat offenders to prison so they would receive some punishment, said Seth Unger, a spokesman for the state corrections department.

The situation has changed now that three federal judges have said they intend to order the state to reduce its prison population by nearly 60,000 inmates. And Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month cut $400 million from the state prisons’ budget.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisons3-2009mar03,0,1145145.story

Posted by lois at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2009

KS: Stimulus Money Could Keep Prison Open

2/28/2009
Stimulus money could save local prison
By DAVE SEATON
Publisher
Winfield Daily Courier

A new state budget being put together by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius may take the Winfield Correctional Facility off the chopping block.

Kansas Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz told a Cowley County task force Friday the governor's revised budget contained $40.5 million in stimulus money for corrections in fiscal year 2010.

"If that's the budget the Legislature adopts," Werholtz said, "I think Winfield's off the radar."

Werholtz said he hoped D cell block at the Winfield prison would remain closed for about six months. The cell block was tabbed for closure in April to save money in fiscal year 2009, which ends June 30.

"We're trying to do things that will allow us to get back to where we came from," Werholtz said.

Some $40.5 million in stimulus funds for corrections are expected to go into the governor's revised fiscal 2011 budget as well, according to Werholtz. Equal amounts will be backed out each year into the state general fund, he said.

The stimulus funds will fill the gap in the 2010 budget and allow the Department of Corrections to avoid closing prisons at Winfield or Norton in the coming year, Werholtz implied. Kansas may receive a total of $1.7 billion in stimulus money over two years.

It is unclear just what might happen to the state budget beyond fiscal 2010.

"I feel like we're all flying blind," said Sen. Steve Abrams, R-Arkansas City.

Abrams, along with Reps. Kasha Kelley, R-Arkansas City, and Ed Trimmer, D-Winfield, were present as Werholtz met the task force of nine local leaders in his department's offices in Topeka Friday afternoon.

WCF Warden Emmalee Conover opened the discussion, recounting events since cuts were made in the department's current budget by the governor and the Legislature.

With the stimulus money, cuts for the coming fiscal year could be held at 10 percent of the governor's budget proposal submitted in January, Werholtz said. This would not save satellite prisons at Toronto nor Stockton, day reporting centers in Wichita and Topeka, nor an addiction therapy program at Osawatomie, he said.

At 10 percent, the El Dorado North unit could close and a number of programs for inmate re-entry and community support could be lost, Werholtz said. Only if cuts reached 18 percent would the prisons at Winfield and Norton be closed, he said.

Heidi Hill, director of the Cowley First economic and community development agency, organized the trip to Topeka and the presentation there. She spoke in support of keeping WCF open, striking a theme of partnership between the community and the prison.

Also speaking were Warren Porter, Winfield city manager; Steve Archer, Arkansas City manager; Marvin Estes, superintendent of Winfield schools; Mick Roark, manager of Northern Contours, an employer of WCF inmates; and Dotty Smith, Arkansas City commissioner.

Werholtz expressed gratitude for the task force visit.

"What I'm grateful for is just the fact that you have come out and shared that information," he said.

Werholtz invited Hill to send a letter of support for the Winfield facility.
http://winfieldcourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=29088

Posted by lois at 10:59 AM | Comments (0)

WI: News Republic Editorial: Time to cut state prison population?

Baraboo News Republic (WI)
Sauk County's Daily Newspaper
Saturday, February 28, 2009

News Republic Editorial: Time to cut state prison population?

With our national, state and local economies circling the bowl, legislators at all levels of government are looking to repair the damage and put us back on the road to prosperity.

Nationally, of course, there is President Barack Obama's much-scrutinized $787 billion stimulus plan.

Obama and his Democratic majority in Congress believe their venture is a bold, brilliant, can-do, must-do vehicle that will move people back to work and drive us out of the recession before it morphs into The Great Depression, Part II.

In our state of Wisconsin we have a man with his own budget and some novel ideas tucked between the numbers.

And one of Gov. Jim Doyle's proposals — targeting Wisconsin's prison system — has the big dogs in the state's GOP barking that our state leader is soft on crime. Here's why:

Felons could earn earlier extended supervision, probation for minor crimes would be eliminated and real-time tracking for some sex offenders could end under Doyle's broad-brush changes to Wisconsin's prison policy.

Heard over the roar of Republican carping, Rick Raemisch, the state's corrections secretary, said these moves should ease the crowding in our prisons and better prepare convicts for life after incarceration.

Raemisch said the moves should generate substantial savings for the state, which faces a $5.7 billion shortfall by mid-2011.

States have been pondering alternatives to incarceration for 10 years. At least a half dozen, including California and New York, are considering early release to lessen costs.

Raemisch, of course, was appointed by Doyle so no one should be surprised that he supports the boss's agenda.

"We have a saying — never waste a crisis," Raemisch said. "Some things people wouldn't look at before, they'll take a hard look at now. ... The days of locking people up and forgetting they're in prison are over."

Republicans, the loyal opposition, called Doyle's deal soft on crime.

"It's a let 'em loose early plan," said state Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford. "To sacrifice public safety to save a few bucks, I find appalling."

Suder has a point if, indeed, early release of inmates puts the public in peril.

But when you compare our inmate numbers to the State of Minnesota, you have to wonder if we have too many people behind bars.

Wisconsin's prison population stands at more than 22,000. Minnesota has about 7,000 inmates. Is it because the Gopher State produces a better class of people? Of course not. (After all, let's not forget most of them are Vikings fans).

Or could it be, simply, that Minnesota's prison policy reflects the model Doyle is trying to duplicate.

Certainly, there is money to be saved. Our state prison system has more than 18 institutions and costs more than $1 billion per year. And we've been struggling with overcrowding for years.

According to Raemisch, each inmate costs the state about $29,000 a year to keep caged.

A report released in January found Wisconsin's facilities are in decay. It recommended more than $1.2 billion in upgrades over the next decade, including nearly 9,000 new beds to cope with the crowd of convicts.

But Doyle's budget would reduce the inmate population and also the need for upgrades.

Under the Doyle deal:

* Prisoners could earn "positive adjustment" days for good behavior, and become eligible for extended supervision earlier. Inmates convicted of serious felonies, such as homicide and child sexual assault, wouldn't be eligible for the program.

* Inmates on extended supervision would be able to earn good behavior days, allowing them to finish their sentences sooner. That could mean an estimated 3,000 inmates, according to Raemisch.

* Probation for nonviolent offenders convicted of misdemeanors would be eliminated. Raemisch said about 7,000 offenders could qualify.

* Corrections would decide whether serious sex offenders need real-time GPS tracking after a year or if checking their movements once a day would be appropriate. State law requires real-time monitoring for the worst sex offenders.He said the plan would make work safer for guards by giving them fewer inmates to supervise, allowing them to focus on the most dangerous.

Raemisch said the initiatives would help offenders readjust to society by teaching them how to behave and follow the rules.

"This shouldn't, by any means, be considered opening up the back doors to the institutions or letting people that are violent back out on the streets," Raemisch said. "If I didn't think we could do this safely, I wouldn't be talking to the governor about it."

To be sure, saving money is not a valid reason to release dangerous criminals back into our communities. But if done carefully, as Raemisch promises, this might be a smarter option than long-term incarceration, which some believe fails to rehabilitate and often refines and refocuses the criminal inclination.

After all, if Minnesota can do this without putting its citizens in jeopardy, why can't we?
http://www.wiscnews.com/bnr/opinion/440872

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

February 25, 2009

Missouri senator proposes bill to lengthen prison stays

Missouri senator proposes bill to lengthen prison stays
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Missourian
BY Michael Bushnell

JEFFERSON CITY – Before he even was sworn in as a state senator for his first term, Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, filed a bill to require criminals to serve prison terms closer to their actual sentences than is current practice.

Currently, the average convicted felon serves less than one half of the actual sentence before release, according to the Missouri Corrections Department.

But Sen. Schaefer proposes requiring a minimum of 85 percent of a sentence be served before release. He acknowledged he has found it difficult to promote a bill perceived as increasing prison populations and the costs associated with them, while the state grapples with a more than $250 million budget shortfall.

Schaefer said his main goal is not to incarcerate large numbers of people for a much longer time, but to create more truthful sentencing. He said judges are currently sentencing felons to exorbitant prison terms, knowing they will only serve a fraction of the time.

"Right now judges are getting pre-sentencing reports for what length prison terms they can give," Schaefer said. "So you'll get a judge giving a twenty-year sentence because they believe the person needs to spend at least four years in prison. If the judge knew, and the victim knew for certain that the defendant would serve 85 percent of whatever sentence was given, you would see sentences reflecting that."

The state Corrections Department reports there are 30,377 felons serving time in state prison at a daily cost of $45.02 per inmate. That amounts to a taxpayer cost of $1.37 million every day to house Missouri inmates. According to the department, felons currently in state are projected to serve 47.5 percent of their sentence before release. Legislative staff report the average sentence of those released in 2008 was slightly greater than 38 percent of the original sentence.

Schaefer said he is trying to get Missouri in line with the federal government and a majority of the states, many of which enacted truth in sentencing bills in the mid-1990s. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the federal government requires those convicted of federal crimes to serve a "substantial portion" of their sentences, which in the vast majority of cases is at least 85 percent.

A federal "truth-in-sentencing" law passed in 1994 committed federal funds to states that require felons to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. The Department of Justice reports that 27 states plus the District of Columbia meet that requirement.

Democrats have expressed concern about the bill, in no small part because of the estimated cost. The analysis of the bill estimated a minimum cost of nearly $40 million in the 2011 fiscal year, something that Sen. Jeff Smith, D-St. Louis, said makes the legislation unpalatable.

"In a time of such lean budgets, when we're facing the crisis we face, the last thing we need is a bill with a huge fiscal note that's going to cost corrections millions of dollars," said Smith, who, like Schaefer, serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee where the bill is assigned.

Smith also said it is inaccurate to think judges will immediately start issuing shorter sentences to reflect the mandatory sentencing.

"It takes years for changes to run through a system," he said. "It would take years for judges to start issuing shorter sentences that were 'true.' That would be millions of dollars in increased costs to prisons, and that's where we don't need to be budget-wise."

Schaefer countered by saying that the Corrections Department took the worst-case scenario in determining the cost and that judges would immediately change their sentencing formulas.

"I will tell you that the Department of Corrections will do anything to not lose the discretion to allow people to serve as little as five percent of a sentence," he said. "You could take a sky-is-falling amount for every dollar. What corrections is assuming is that judges will keep giving these long sentences, and I've talked to a lot of judges and I don't think that's a reasonable statement."

At a recent committee hearing on the legislation, three witnesses testified against the bill, saying it would remove a major incentive for felons to stay out of trouble and improve their lives following incarceration. Defense lawyer Dan Dodson, representing the Missouri Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said early release dates act as an incentive for felons to remain out of trouble.

Dodson said the legislation would either lengthen prison terms or shorten the time that convicted felons spent on probation, because they would be spending more of the sentence incarcerated. He said that, under that second option, convicts spending less time under the eye of the government could increase the likelihood of criminal recidivism.

"Let's say judges recalibrate it to where they really wanted someone to go (to prison) for four years, and they would normally give them a ten-year sentence to serve four," Dodson said. "Now what you'd get, they're going to get a five-year sentence and serve four or so, but instead of that person going back out on the street with probation as the carrot and the stick and we can say 'we're going to still watch you for a while,' you can't do that anymore."

More than two dozen states have laws that comply with the federal "truth-in-sentencing" standards. Various studies of those states have found mixed results.

A 2001 study published by the U.S. Justice Department that analyzed the first five years of Virginia's truth-in-sentencing law found a decrease in recidivism. But the study also reported a nearly one-third increase in the length of prison terms and an expansion in the state's prison budget.

The Judiciary Committee's vice chairman said he worries about the cost and that the state may have to build a new prison or two. He said the bill might have been easier to get through in the days of budget surpluses.

"I will say, philosophically, I support what Sen. Schaefer is trying to do," said Sen. Jack Goodman, R-Mt. Vernon. "The problem is that our taxpayers fund that bill. While we do have an obligation to keep our streets safe, this year any bill that costs a lot of money is going to be difficult to pass."

Nonetheless, Schaefer told the committee that a law like this could be implemented at a much lower cost than estimated, because it doesn't mandate longer prison terms or incarcerating people who wouldn't be without this legislation.

"This doesn't affect anyone's ability to be sentenced to mental health treatment or drug treatment," he said. "All it does is, when a sentence is handed down, it requires that a sentence actually be served."
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2009/02/24/felon-bill/

Posted by lois at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2009

VA: Meherrin River Regional Jail project up in the air

Meherrin River Regional Jail project up in the air
By Luz Lazo
Published: February 23, 2009
Richmond Times Dispatch
DINWIDDIE -- A plan to build a $100 million regional jail for Brunswick, Dinwiddie and Mecklenburg counties would alleviate the need for inmate space in all three localities dealing with overcrowded and inadequate local jails, local officials said.

The regional jail, which has been in the planning stages for nearly four years and was originally estimated to cost $150.2 million, will help the counties save money and will make the jail system more efficient in all three jurisdictions.

The project had not been included in the governor's 2009-10 budget proposal, but this month legislators in both houses approved amendments to include the project in their respective budget bills, making it more likely that it will move forward in the next few years.

A state funding match, however, may not be available until 2013.

The Meherrin River Regional Jail Authority, formed in early 2008, initially wanted to build an 800-bed jail but has scaled back its plans to 408 beds.

The current plan consists of building a main facility in Brunswick County, near Alberta, that will accommodate the pretrial and sentenced prisoners from Brunswick and Dinwiddie as well as the sentenced prisoners from Mecklenburg. A smaller satellite jail near the government offices in Mecklenburg will accommodate the pretrial and work-release populations from Mecklenburg.

The authority last year took a $10 million loan to use toward the purchase of a 126-acre site in Brunswick County, the design of the facilities and the preliminary site work. Officials have interviewed for the architectural design and have the permits needed to launch construction.

The facilities would be built with a capacity for expansion, and one superintendent would oversee both locations. Once the replacement facilities are built, the local jails will be closed, officials said.

"We will still have to pay for the operational cost, but we won't be at the mercy of other facilities," Dinwiddie County Administrator W. Kevin Massengill said. "We will be saving money, and it just works more efficiently."

. . .

Dinwiddie's local jail -- built in the early 1970s -- houses a maximum of 64 inmates, but the county usually has more than 100 inmates per day, Sheriff B.B. "Dusty" Rhodes said.

"We need our regional jail. We are going to grow and with that growth, we are going to have an increase in crime," he said. "As far as I know, we have gone as high as 150 [inmates] and as low as 95. We have always had more than the 64 that this jail was built for 30 years ago."

On a daily basis, the county jail will house only 55 inmates because the facility is required to keep nine empty beds for arrests made overnight and on weekends.

To cope with the overflow, the county rents beds in four regional jails: Southside Regional in Emporia, Riverside Regional in Hopewell, Piedmont Regional in Farmville and Rappahannock Regional in Stafford. When those facilities are full, inmates are taken as far away as Staunton, Rhodes said.

"That runs into a great expense for the taxpayers. If we had our own regional jail, we wouldn't have to be transporting to four different areas, which is what we are doing now. We are sending deputies at 6 a.m. in the morning to bring inmates to court," he said, adding that the trips take time from deputies' law-enforcement duties.

The cost for bed rental alone at the end of the year is more than $1 million, Massengill said. Deputies' time and transportation costs are a separate tab, he said.

A trip from the Brunswick site where the regional facility is being planned to the Dinwiddie County courthouse would take about 25 minutes, compared with the two to three hours it takes now, Rhodes said.

. . .

In 2005, the three jurisdictions began to work together to address the situation and in early 2008 formed the Meherrin River Regional Jail Authority -- named after the river that crosses all three counties.

The General Assembly granted the counties an exemption to a state moratorium on prison-building, allowing them to pursue the construction of the facility. They also met all the requirements from the Board of Corrections.

"We have done everything that is required," said Wayne Carter, Mecklenburg's county administrator. "The state historically always pays 50 percent on construction and renovation of regional jails. . . . When we started, we felt fairly confident that we would get the funding. We were very surprised when we did not make the government's budget."

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine presented a budget to the General Assembly that reflects the tough economic crisis and leaves out several projects, press secretary Gordon Hickey said. He said he didn't know whether the project had been presented to the governor to be included in the budget and added that the assembly would be able to add it if it chooses to.

"The governor has to make a lot of difficult decisions," he said. "The budget is now in the hands of the General Assembly. It will come back to the governor, and he will make a decision on what to leave and take out."

The House and the Senate this month approved amendments adding the Meherrin River Regional Jail project to their respective budget bills, which are now a part of the 11-member Budget Conference Committee package.

The House amendment authorizes the construction of the project without allocating any money to it, while the Senate amendment requests that a facility of no more than 400 beds be built with construction at just one site, for which the state's share of the capital costs of construction should not exceed $50 million. Under their plan, the reimbursement of the state's portion would not occur before July 1, 2012.

Del. Rosalyn R. Dance, D-Petersburg, who supports the project and offered an amendment to the budget bill, said she hopes funding would be allocated for the project in the coming years.

The project, she said, will ease overcrowding in the local jails, and its design will provide a safer and more secure environment for inmates and guards. She is optimistic that a budget compromise will be worked out to the counties' satisfaction.

Brunswick County Administrator Charlette T. Woolridge points out that the bonds for the state's share of construction would not have to be issued until 2012 and would not affect the current two-year budget.

If funds are not allocated for the project in the current budget, construction will be delayed and local officials will try to get the funding next year.

In the meantime, Massengill said, paying for jail space will be a bigger challenge for the counties facing tight budgets under the current economic crisis.

He said the counties will continue to lobby for the state funds.

"We, as three jurisdictions, cannot afford to pay for a jail this size without the help of the state," he said.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/JAIL23_20090222-222207/213052/

Posted by lois at 09:58 AM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2009

WI: Prison future creates high anxiety in Appleton

Prison future creates high anxiety in Appleton
Morris Sun Tribune
Published Saturday, February 21, 2009
By Tom Cherveny
West Central Tribune

APPLETON — Anxiety levels are running high in Appleton, where workers at the Prairie Correctional Facility are fearful that a proposal to transfer inmates to the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Faribault will cost them their jobs.

“Devastating’’ is how Appleton Mayor Ron Ronning, himself an employee of the private prison, described the consequences to his community should the facility be closed or mothballed. The mayor was among well over 120 people, most of them employees of the facility, who packed the Appleton Civic Center on Friday morning for a town meeting hosted by State Sen. Gary Kubly, DFL-Granite Falls, and State Rep. Andrew Falk, DFL-Murdock.

Mayor Ronning said he feared that Appleton and the surrounding rural area could see a major exodus of jobs and suffer the economic strife that gripped it during the farm crisis of the 1980s, when businesses shuttered their windows and homes were left vacant.

The 1,600-bed Appleton facility is currently housing 542 inmates from Minnesota and another 525 from the state of Washington, according to Tim Wengler, its warden. The state of Washington has been slowly reducing its number of inmates.

Joan Fabian, commissioner of the state Department of Corrections, has proposed moving the Minnesota inmates at Prairie Correctional Facility to Faribault, which has recently been expanded by 80 beds and is being remodeled. It would continue to use the Appleton facility on an “as needed basis,’’ according to Kubly.

The loss of the Minnesota inmates would force Corrections Corporation of America, owner of the Appleton facility, to pare its staffing accordingly, Wengler told the Tribune. He said CCA is working aggressively to contract prisoners from other states, but acknowledged that it is proving difficult.

It is currently negotiating with Alaska, but he noted that nearly every state is facing serious budget deficits and looking at ways to cut costs.

The Appleton prison currently employs 269 people, down from a high of 370 positions. It has been paring its work force through attrition, and has not hired since last July, according to Prairie Correctional Facility officials.

The Department of Corrections has provided testimony at the Capitol claiming that moving inmates to Faribault would save money, according to Kubly. Information provided by the department indicated that it costs Minnesota $77.11 per day to house an inmate in Appleton, when transportation and other costs are added to the daily contract cost with the private facility. The DOC claims it can house inmates at Faribault for an average of $55.38 per day.

Those numbers were challenged at the town meeting. Swift County Commissioner Gary Hendrickx told the legislators that the DOC’s annual report for 2008 showed that its average inmate costs at Faribault were just over $109 per day.

Kubly said that he has met with Fabian, who said the DOC’s figures comparing costs at Appleton and Faribault are the “marginal costs’’ and do not include all of the fixed costs.

Appleton prison officials said the state is saving money by using the private facility, while inmates are receiving services every bit the equal of that offered by the state system. Wengler told the Tribune the state can save $25 million a year by keeping its inmates in Appleton.

Kubly and Falk said they would work to arrange a meeting between Fabian and Prairie Correctional Facility officials so that those points can be made.

Kubly said he will also be introducing legislation that would require the state to give preference to keeping inmates in Appleton. But he and Falk cautioned that it may be difficult to obtain support from a majority in both chambers for such legislation when the DOC claims it can save money by moving inmates to Faribault.

“We can’t be here if we don’t have this facility,’’ said Shelley Koski, a mental health professional at Prairie Correctional Facility. She told the legislators she had moved to Appleton for her position. She and others warned that they would have no choice but to leave the region for employment if they lose their jobs at Prairie Correctional Facility.

Ronning said the repercussions of those job losses would be felt well beyond Appleton. The facility’s employees come from communities as far away as Willmar. They represent an estimated $45 million in economic activity to the region.

The Prairie Correctional Facility employees are parents to 112 students enrolled in area schools, including 90 at the Lac qui Parle Valley High School in rural Madison. The facility also pays more than $475,000 annually in property taxes, according to information presented at the meeting.
http://www.morrissuntribune.com/articles/index.cfm?id=16527§ion=News

Posted by lois at 04:32 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2009

Enforcement Gone Bad

Editorial- NY Times
Enforcement Gone Bad
Published: February 21, 2009

The failures of the immigration system are many and severe, but the main problem is not that the country is catching too few undocumented immigrants. It is catching too many. Since the early 1990s, you could write the federal government’s immigration strategy on a cardboard sign: Deport Them All.

A report last week from the Pew Hispanic Center laid bare some striking results of that campaign. It found that Latinos now make up 40 percent of those sentenced in federal courts, even though they are only about 13 percent of the adult population. They accounted for one-third of federal prison inmates in 2007.

The numbers might suggest we are besieged by immigrant criminals. But of all the noncitizen Latinos sentenced last year, the vast majority — 81 percent — were convicted for unlawfully entering or remaining in the country, neither of which is a criminal offense.

The country is filling the federal courts and prisons with nonviolent offenders. It is diverting immense law-enforcement resources from pursuing serious criminals — violent thugs, financial scammers — to an immense, self-defeating campaign to hunt down ... workers.

The Pew report follows news this month that even as a federal program to hunt immigrant fugitives saw its budget soar — to $218 million last year from $9 million in 2003 — its mission went astray. According to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, of the 72,000 people arrested through last February, 73 percent had no criminal record. Border Patrol agents in California and Maryland, meanwhile, tell of pressure to arrest workers at day-labor corners and convenience stores to meet quotas.

The country needs to control its borders. It needs to rebuild an effective immigration system and thwart employers who cheat it. It needs to bring the undocumented forward and make citizen taxpayers of them.

For all the billions spent on fences, raids, patrols and prisons, the number of illegal immigrants has steadily grown to about 12 million last year from four million in 1992. So has the need to overhaul the many parts of a festering, broken system: to clear out backlogs in legal immigration, to rescue families from limbo, to throw sunlight on the shadow economy, to deter unlawful hiring, to replace chaos with lawfulness and order. All those priorities have languished in the deportation era.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22sun3.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2009

NV: Legislative panel discusses prison plans

Legislative panel discusses prison plans
Feb. 19, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Legislative panel discusses prison plans
By BRENDAN RILEY
The Associated Press

CARSON CITY — Told that the state's prison population is lower than expected, members of a Senate-Assembly budget panel said Thursday that they would like a delay in new prison construction and an end to plans to shut down an old prison and an inmate camp.
Lawmakers commented after Corrections Director Howard Skolnik said the current total of 12,689 inmates is 725 less than what had been projected in the $481 million, two-year prison system budget plan outlined in mid-January by Gov. Jim Gibbons.

Skolnik also said local authorities in the Las Vegas and Reno areas, Nevada's population centers, have advised him that crime rates are flat. That would factor into new inmate projections being prepared by prison system consultants.

Assemblywoman Kathy McClain, D-Las Vegas, the subcommittee chairwoman, said she would like to see "a little more thought" put into initial administration plans to shut down the old Nevada State Prison in Carson City and an inmate camp near Tonopah and to build a new prison at Indian Springs, in southern Nevada.

McClain was joined by Assembly members Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, and Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka, in saying the Tonopah camp should remain open.
"We're all pretty convinced that's not a good policy," said Leslie, adding that she also opposes the plan to close the medium-security prison in Carson City, which dates to the 1870s.

Skolnik said reasons for the inmate population not climbing as expected could include the addition of more police in Las Vegas, resulting in more crime prevention; and also a drop in population in southern Nevada and an economic downturn that has cut into opportunities for criminals.

"Because of the economic downturn there's a lot more cocooning going on," Skolnik said. "People are staying home. They're not out on the street. It's harder to become a victim if you're locked in your house watching TV."

While Skolnik said he still expects a need for future prison system expansion, Richard Siegel of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada questioned whether the expansion is needed and noted that 20 percent of the beds in various prison facilities are now vacant.
Siegel also said he was optimistic that the current prison population could be maintained. He said state parole authorities are "more proactive" now in returning convicts to the streets, and a major study panel on which he serves is looking for ways to hold down the number of inmates behind bars.

Siegel also said Nevada has one of the best rates in the nation of people who get paroles and manage to stay out of prison afterward.

Find this article at: http://www.lvrj.com/news/breaking_news/39883807.html

Posted by lois at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

Report: Prison Rehab Programs Are Working. Prison Population Has Stopped Expanding

Report: Prison rehab programs working
By Mike Ward | Thursday, February 19, 2009
Austin American Statesman

Texas’ prison population has stopped growing for the time being, thanks in part to a controversial changes in corrections policy two years ago that ballooned funding for rehabilitation programs, new statistics indicate.

That means Texas will not have to consider building new prisons that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, at a time when the economic collapse is pinching the state budget, officials said today.

”We put 6,000 treatment beds on line in the past two years … and this is the initial result: Just what we expected,” said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, who co-authored legislation mandating the greatly-expanded treatment programs in 2007.

Echoing sentiments from colleagues, Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, said the statistics show “a dramatic turnaround.”

Today’s Legislative Budget Board testimony to the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee marked the first public report card on the new programs, which two years ago were championed by corrections advocates as a step forward and opposed by some prosecutors and police groups as too soft on crime.

“Crime is down, the programs are working,” said Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice what operates the 112-prison system. “It’s been proven before that these types of programs have an impact on recidivism, so these new numbers are no surprise.”

Even so, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley while he thinks some of the reforms have proven beneficial, such as expanded drug-treatment slots, he cautioned against reading too much into the new statistics.

“I would be very skeptical from making a connection between the numbers and legislation that passed two years ago, especially if you look back at at the LBB numbers — their predictions weren’t particularly accurate,” he said. “I would agree that the system does seem stable right now. The parole rate in the last five years has been very stable.”

According to the report, the number of convicts in Texas’ state prisons is expected to remain steady this year, and then decline slightly the following year — for the first time in several years.

In 2012, however, the prison population could begin increasing again and by 2014 will grow to almost 158,000 - from the current 154,000.

Billed at the time as the biggest shift for Texas corrections policy in years, the 2007 changes greatly expanded the capacity of in-prison drug and alcohol-treatment programs, opened new transition treatment centers to help convicts succeed once they got out, expanded counseling and specialized drug-treatment programs and opened new lockups designed especially for habitual drunk drivers.

Total cost was more than $227 million.

At the time, while proposing an additional $14 million for rehabilitation and treatment programs, Gov. Rick Perry had asked for $125.8 million to build two new medium-security prisons to add 1,000 beds, and converting a Texas Youth Commission lockup to a prison for adults to add 600 more.

Perry in 2005 had vetoed probation reforms that contained many elements of the 2007 plan.

The adult prisons were never approved, and that funding was diverted to the Whitmire-Madden plan that, at the time, made some legislative leaders nervous. The package beefed up funding for local probation departments to treat and rehabilitate some non-violent criminals in their communities, rather than sending them to a state prison.

“It looks very much like we thought it would at this point,” said state Rep. Jerry Madden, co-author of the plan who at the time was chairman of the House Corrections Committee.

Funding is being sought this year for additional treatment beds, which could further reduce the prison population, he said.

“The numbers clearly show if we worked toward providing adequate programming for alcohol and drug treatment, mental health and probation and other programs, that it can work.”
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/politics/entries/2009/02/19/report_prison_rehab_programs_w.html

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

PA: New Bigger Prison to Proposed to Replace Graterford

New state prison planned
Thursday, February 19, 2009
By KEITH PHUCAS
Times Herald Staff

COURTHOUSE — Pennsylvania is planning to replace Graterford Prison with a new facility to reduce overcrowding, and construction could begin as early as next fall, according to the state’s Department of General Services.

Once the new facility is constructed, the prison would house up to 4,000 inmates, according to Ed Myslewicz, a spokesman for the state Department of General Services. The construction could cost between $350 million and $400 million.

The prison population in Pennsylvania has grown by 21 percent over the past six years from 37,995 in 2001 to more than 49,300 today in the state’s 27 correctional institutions, according to Department of Corrections figures. Currently, Graterford holds 3,400 prisoners.

The prison population is predicted to grow an average of 4 percent each year through 2012, according to state officials.

“We’ve been looking to expand because of the increase in inmate populations over the past few years,” said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton. She said the average cost of building a prison in the state is about $200 million.

Myslewicz said money to build the new prison would come from the capital budget that was approved by the state’s General Assembly. State lawmakers authorized funding seven projects at an estimated cost of $862 million.

Employing a “design-build” concept would require approved construction contractors to design the structures as they are being built later this year. Requests for proposals are expected to go out in the spring.

“The state plans to put out design-build requests (for proposals) to get as many proposals as we can from construction companies,” Myslewicz. “We’re keeping an eye on costs to give the greatest value for taxpayers.”

The existing Graterford facility prison, which was built in 1929, will be mothballed because of the high costs and operational challenges it presents.

According to the Department of Corrections, the current facility is “difficult to manage, is very staff intensive” and would need more than $60 million to maintain operations during the next decade.

The planned prison is expected to operate using the existing 1,200 employees and is expected to pay for itself in 20 years with the operational savings.

The Graterford project is part of a broader state construction initiative that plans to add about 9,000 beds to the prison system. Other proposed building projects include prisons in Centre and Fayette counties. Prison officials also plan to add four housing units at correctional facilities in Crawford, Forest, Indiana and Northumberland counties.

County Commissioner Bruce L. Castor Jr., a former district attorney, welcomed the state’s efforts to deal with the overcrowding issue at Graterford — the facility that has been “a good neighbor.”

As well, he believes the proposed project would give a boost to the area’s lagging economy.

“Any expansion would be an opportunity to put more local residents to work in Montgomery County,” Castor said.

The Graterford facility would be built on existing state land and be completed within three years. The proposed prison will be certified according to energy-saving Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) ratings.

McNaughton said her agency is working to develop programs to keep nonviolent offenders out of state prison facilities to make room for violent offenders.
http://www.timesherald.com/articles/2009/02/19/news/doc499cd2a850d3c922029465.txt

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

February 19, 2009

FL: Business lobby: Don't build prisons, release inmates instead

Business lobby: Don't build prisons, release inmates instead

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
Miami Herald

As lawmakers grapple with the need to build nearly 20 new Florida prisons in the next five years on a cratering state budget, a powerful business lobby is proposing what they acknowledge is a radical idea: stop building beds and release nonviolent inmates instead.

The group, Associated Industries of Florida, has released a position paper calling on lawmakers to halt the scheduled construction of three new prisons, each with the ability to house 1,300 inmates. Building the prisons is expected to cost $300 million, plus an additional $81 million per year in operating costs.

The Department of Corrections could forgo the prison construction by releasing about 3,900 inmates, the group recommends. The prisoners should be near the end of their term, and the release should not include any violent felons, pedophiles or sexual predators, the statement says.

Barney T. Bishop, Associated Industries' president, acknowledges that some conservatives might find it ''left wing for a business association executive'' to support the release of prison inmates. But ''it doesn't make sense to me,'' he said, ``to build those prisons.''

And Bishop may not be alone in seeking unconventional solutions to the state's budget woes. State Sen. Victor D. Crist, the powerful chairman of the Justice Appropriations Committee, said he, too, has been looking at ways to avoid a new prison-building binge with tax dollars that don't exist.

Crist, a Tampa Republican, supports the idea of halting prison construction. But, he says, Bishop's proposal to release some inmates will be a tough sell.

''Both AIF and the Florida Senate are on the same page with the idea of saving money by slowing down the construction of beds,'' Crist said. ``But we're on two different pages on how to accomplish that.''

Among other things, Crist proposes the state save about $24 million by contracting with either public or privately run prisons just outside Florida's borders to house 450 inmates. The prisons should be no more than 100 miles from the state and should only house inmates with no ties to Florida, such as recent migrants.

''The correctional systems in surrounding states, especially private operators, have a significant amount of beds available,'' Crist said.

Crist also suggests the Department of Corrections could take over operation of secure facilities recently vacated by juvenile justice administrators, who have been aggressively cutting costs as well. The facilities could house inmates nearing the end of their sentences who are in work-release programs.

State Rep. J.C. Planas, a Miami Republican and lawyer, said there's another speed bump on the way to releasing some inmates: The proposal would require revising state law, which requires that prisoners serve most of their sentences before release. `

''From my perspective, everything is on the table,'' said Planas, who chairs the Public Safety & Domestic Security Policy Committee. ''But that is a quasi-last resort,'' he said of the release proposal.

Bishop's proposal is emphatic that no ''violent felons, pedophiles or sexual predators'' be included in any early release and that the pool of potential releases be restricted to inmates nearing the end of their sentences.

''But to do so without providing these inmates with some services dooms many to recidivate and end up back in a prison at a substantially higher cost to the taxpayers, not mentioning the future victims,'' his position paper states.

Crist's response: ``That will include thieves, burglars and assaulters.''

``It would include a number of individuals who prey on society and drive up the cost to law enforcement back home, so that defeats the purpose. We'd just be shifting costs.''

DOC spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said DOC Secretary Walt McNeil agrees with Bishop's recommendation that inmates released from a state prison receive life skills training, basic education and substance abuse and mental healthcare to improve their chances of staying out of prison. About one-third of inmates are back behind bars within three years.

Florida lawmakers may need to cut 19.5 percent, or $5 billion, from the current year's budget when they tackle a spending plan for budget year 2010, Crist said. Citing tanking state revenues, DOC Secretary Walter McNeil announced last month he had laid off 66 probation officers.

In recent weeks, Florida's prison population had topped 100,000, though the census stood at 99,691 on Wednesday, said Plessinger.

The Criminal Justice Estimating Conference, which forecasts prison admissions, estimates a state prison population of 106,086 by the end of the next budget year, a slight drop from prior forecasts, records show. Based upon prior forecasts, prison administrators said they would need to build 19 new prisons in the next five years, Plessinger said.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/911176.html

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

February 18, 2009

NH: Officials praise planned prison closing Many hopeful about future use of the land

Officials praise planned prison closing
Many hopeful about future use of the land

By ANNMARIE TIMMINS
Monitor staff
February 16, 2009
Laconia, NH

The governor's announcement last week that he intends to close the Lakes Region prison by July was long overdue for many in Laconia who have always imagined something better on the prison's 400 acres with lake access and magnificent views. But the celebration has been bittersweet because closing the prison is likely to mean about 80 layoffs.

"I think there must be a better use for the property," said Rep. Judith Reever, a Laconia Democrat. "But I feel very badly for the people who are going to lose their jobs."

Mayor Matt Lahey, whose opposition to the prison dates back years, told The Citizen of Laconia last week that Gov. John Lynch's plan is "certainly not a cause for joy" given the lost jobs.

Even former mayor Paul Fitzgerald, among the biggest opponents of the prison, acknowledged the downside yesterday.

"I wish it (had been closed) years ago, but I'm pleased it's happening. I never thought it was an appropriate institution for this area and I still don't. But I realize (closing it) will create a personal hardship for some folks, and I hope the state will take care of those people."
The Lakes Region Facility sits on Lake Winnisquam and overlooks Opechee Bay. It became state land more than a century ago when a local family donated it.

For the first 90 years, the property was home to the Laconia State School, a home for the developmentally disabled.

When the state closed the school in 1991, it recast the property as a minimum/medium security prison for nonviolent offenders. Laconia officials fiercely objected, arguing that putting a prison there wasted some of the city and state's nicest land.

City officials lost the fight but secured a couple of concessions: the prison would be temporary and would house no more than 300 inmates.

Locals then turned to imagining a better future. They dreamed about a technical college, a job training center or a nursing home taking over the grounds.

Any of those, they said, would be a more welcome neighbor and allow locals to enjoy the trails and the Lake Winnisquam beachfront on the grounds. But the city's dreams were cut short.

The state reneged on the closure deadline and gradually increased the capacity of the prison, leaving the city bitterly angry and disappointed. Now that a statewide budget crisis has forced Lynch to recommend closing the prison to save money, local officials are cautiously beginning to look toward the future.

Rep. Beth Arsenault, a Laconia Democrat, said her husband enjoys walking the trails on the public part of the property and her family isn't afraid to use the beach on Lake Winnisquam.

But some families are leery because the public portion is less than a half mile from the prison and pedestrians are likely to run across prison guards while there.

"There are other state functions that could happen there that would not be incompatible with the state park," she said. "It's a beautiful piece of property bordering on a lake."

Reever said she thinks the site could be used in a more tourist-friendly manner, such as a state park.

City Councilor Greg Knytych, whose ward includes the prison, agreed with the notion of making the place a state park.

"It really could be one of the state landmark parks," he said. "Tourism is probably the largest sector of jobs in this region and I think something like that would bring tourists in."

The section across the street from the prison, which borders Lake Opechee, is already being used for community garden space through an agreement with the local conservation group.

"I really see keeping it open land," Knytych said. "I think this is a good thing, and a lot of my constituents feel the same way."

Given the economic climate, no one expects the state to immediately put money into converting the property into something else. But Fitzgerald said he hopes the state won't let the buildings fall into further disrepair.

Jane Wood, a member of the Belknap County Economic Development Commission, embraced Lynch's announcement, although she's reminding herself that the Legislature still must weigh in on the plan.

"I was taken a bit by surprise at the news," she said yesterday. "And I'm not entirely sure what to think would be possible in this economic climate. But I have to think there would be some wonderful uses for that property that would make more ecological sense."

Wood wasn't sure what role, if any, the development commission could play in re-imagining the property. If the property were to go up for private sale, it would go on the council's inventory, and the council could provide some financing, Wood said.

But no one has said whether the land will remain the state's or be available for private development.

Wood, Fitzgerald and the others said they hope the state would include Laconia in any talks about the land's future use. The relationship between the state and city has been strained, they said, but it shouldn't be.

"Laconia has been ignored in the past by the state," Fitzgerald said. "And the city is a little leery of the state. But my hope is that the governor will not continue that."
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090216/FRONTPAGE/902160303/1103/RSS02

Posted by lois at 10:01 PM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2009

Texas-New Mexico Border Series Immigrant Inmates Caught in Outsourcing Labyrinth

Americas Program Report
Texas-New Mexico Border Series
Immigrant Inmates Caught in Outsourcing Labyrinth

Tom Barry | February 16, 2009

Imprisoned immigrants in the large prison complex outside the small West Texas town of Pecos have rioted twice over the past few months complaining about inadequate medical care. Their complaints, sparked by the death of a sick inmate in solitary confinement, echo a chorus of similar complaints around the country about medical care in immigrant prisons.

Medical care, like most aspects of imprisonment in America, is outsourced at the Reeves County Detention Center. As a result, imprisoned immigrants don't know who exactly is imprisoning them, who is responsible for their medical care, and who they should petition when they have grievances.

Throughout America but particularly along the Southwest border, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, both legal and illegal, find themselves at the center of a booming prisoner outsourcing business. The imprisonment of immigrants is enriching a handful of private prison corporations and correctional healthcare firms while providing a stream of revenues to county governments in rural America.

Back in the mid-1980s the Reeves County government decided that its best hope for economic development was building a "speculative prison." At the time, this remote county, which occupies the northern reaches of the Chihuahua Desert, was reeling economically.

Cotton farmers and cattle ranchers abandoned their homesteads as ground water levels dropped and drilling costs increased. The oil boom that started in the 1950s went bust in the 1980s as oil reserves dwindled. The closure of the area's large sulfur mine and a food processing company in the early 1990s left hundreds more unemployed.

Seeking to take advantage of its remote location and the large number of unemployed, the county entered into the incipient business of outsourcing prisoners in 1986.

By bidding down the costs of providing prison beds and employing prison guards, Reeves County has over the past couple of decades expanded the initial 300-bed prison to the current 3,763-bed prison complex. The Reeves County Detention Center is now the center of the county's economic life.

The county, where one of every three residents lives below the poverty line, is projecting $67.2 million of revenues to come streaming into county coffers in 2009 from the immigrant prison business. Nearly 500 residents find employment in the immigrant prison, which pays guards $14.95 an hour.

Prison outsourcing is all about expenses, revenues, and profits. In other words, prisoner providers—in this case, mainly the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)—seek to do business with public and private prisons that have the lowest costs and hence lowest per-diem bed costs. The more prisoners that occupy the beds of the Reeves County Detention Center, the higher the revenues that come from the per-diem payments, and the higher the profit.

The bottom line of the prisoner outsourcing business is essentially the same as any other business, namely the sum of revenues and expenses. But in the case of Reeves County Detention Center, as with scores of other immigrant prisons, the prison business is somewhat more complicated—involving a labyrinth of federal agencies, local governments, private contractors and subcontractors, public bonds, and private investors.
The Reeves County Labyrinth

Not having enough room in federally-owned prisons and unwilling to build new ones, the Bureau of Prisons, like most federal detention agencies, outsources an increasing number of its charges and most all of its immigrant detainees. BOP outsources virtually all of its low-security "criminal alien residents" to county/private prisons in the Southwest.

Anticipating an ever-increasing demand for what the prison industry calls "beds," Reeves County has issued a series of project revenue bonds to finance the construction and maintenance of its ever-expanding prison. Convinced that the boom in the prison business will endure, private investors buy these bonds, thereby providing the $90 million the county needed for its prison project.

Reeves County functions as a kind of front man for the private prison industry. Being a government, it can issue revenue bonds that attract investors because the bond income (from a portion of the per-diem payments from the federal government) is not subject to income tax. Because the prison is a public facility, all capital and operating expenditures are also exempt from sales and property taxes.

The federal, state, and local governments lose all these tax revenues. But being tax-exempt keeps costs low, and makes the Reeves County Detention Center an attractive proposition for both the federal government and the private prison industry.

Although Reeves County initially ran the prison itself, it now contracts with GEO Group, the world's second largest prison corporation, to manage and operate the prison. For three years, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) also ran the prison for the county.

GEO Group has no investment in the prison, portions of which were destroyed by fire during the recent riots. It receives a large annual management fee—$4.75 million in 2008—from the county as well an annual administrative fee—$1.25 million in 2008—to cover the payroll costs of its 12-member management team, including the warden with his $125,000 salary.

The immigrant inmates, who are technically under federal government custody and held in a government-owned prison, see only the private face of America's prison industry. That's GEO Group, which runs the prison and hires and supervises the hundreds of prison guards who are paid by the county. The premier spot in the prison's parking lot is reserved for "GEO Executive," and the warden and all the other top management are GEO officials that answer to corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida.

GEO Group, which represents the "20-year evolution of Wackenhut Corrections," says it is a "global leader in the delivery of diversified government outsourced services." Founded with the slogan, " G lobal E xpertise in O utsourcing," GEO Group is a transnational corporation that specializes in providing security and prison "services" to governments around the world.

Working closely with GEO at the Reeves County Detention Center is Physicians Network Association (PNA), which is a private firm that says it specializes in "correctional healthcare." PNA is responsible for the healthcare at the Reeves immigrant prison and at nine other prisons run by GEO, including five others in Texas. PNA was contracted by the county before the GEO operations and management contract. In GEO's contract with the county, healthcare services are explicitly left as county responsibilities. But the county has subcontracted out medical services to PNA, which receives a $5.85 per-diem fee from the county.
Private-Public Complex

The BOP and other federal agencies could, of course, build and operate their own prisons. However, since the early 1980s the federal government has increasingly outsourced its inmates, especially immigrants.

The launching of the "drug war" that resulted in mass imprisonment of drug users and low-level street distributors set the stage for this new era of prisoner outsourcing. Faced with the rising number of convicted prisoners and the rise of illegal immigration, public prisons and detention centers became overcrowded. But there was little political will either at the federal or local level to use tax money to build new prisons.

Conveniently, the rise of the political right in the late 1970s and especially during the Reagan administration brought with it a new widely shared ideological conviction that favored government downsizing and privatization. In 1983, faced with increasing numbers of detained immigrants, the Immigration & Naturalization Service (INS), with the blessing of President Reagan, began outsourcing immigrants.

While INS took the first step toward outsourcing federal detainees to private prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons eventually followed. At first, most of this outsourcing went directly to private firms. CCA and Wackenhut got their start in the prison business as outsourcers of detained immigrants for the INS in 1983-85.

Over the last couple of decades, county governments have joined the prisoner outsourcing bandwagon, commonly in collaboration with the private prison industry. CCA, GEO, and other private prison firms have seized on the opportunity of public financing to build and maintain the prisons they operate.

Today, there are scores of counties that have followed the example of Reeves County, building new prisons with project revenue bonds to house outsourced prisoners from federal agencies and state governments. These generally poor and rural counties now constitute a central component of America's prison outsourcing industry.

What started out as a privatization of a core responsibility of government has over the past 25 years evolved into a prison complex in which private investors and corporations are dominant but in which local government has a new and expanding role.

As seen in Reeves County, the prison business is a complex labyrinth that is run for profit by corporations such as GEO. Yet the booming private prison industry in Pecos and elsewhere is fundamentally dependent on the government for a steady supply of prisoners, for ever-increasing per-diems, and even for the capital to build and maintain the private prison labyrinth.

When the Bureau of Prisons signed the most recent contract with Reeves County to provide as many as 3,763 prison beds for "criminal alien residents," it was GEO Group, not the county, which announced the new contract. In its January 2007 media release to business publications, GEO Group boasted that it believed "that the Reeves County Detention Complex (the 'Complex') is the largest detention/correctional facility under private management in the world."

It's a part of a yet larger complex that is immensely profitable. At a time when most other industries are retracting, the private prison industry continues to boom. GEO Group experienced another record year in 2008, as its net income rose more than 14%.

Key to the prison complex's lustrous bottom line are the outsourced immigrant inmates of Reeves County. Even as they rioted to demand decent healthcare, these outsourced immigrants were a major source of profits for the private/public prison complex.

Tom Barry directs the TransBorder Project of the Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org) at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC. He blogs at http://borderlinesblog.blogspot.com/.

To reprint this article, please contact americas@ciponline.org. The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily represent the views of the CIP Americas Program or the Center for International Policy.
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5871

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

February 14, 2009

PA: Suit Names 2 Judges Accused in a Kickback Case

Suit Names 2 Judges Accused in a Kickback Case
By IAN URBINA
Published: February 13, 2009
NY Times

Several hundred families filed a class-action suit Friday against two Pennsylvania judges who pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks for sending juveniles to private detention facilities.

“At the hands of two grossly corrupt judges and several conspirators, hundreds of Pennsylvania children, their families and loved ones, were victimized and their civil rights were violated,” said Michael J. Cefalo, one of the lawyers representing the families. “It’s our intent to make sure that the system rights this terrible injustice and holds those responsible accountable.”

Pennsylvania lawmakers called on Friday for hearings into the state’s juvenile justice system. And the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, which blew the whistle on the judges, said it had sworn affidavits from families who said they had sought court-appointed counsel but were told that their children would have to wait weeks, sometimes months, for a lawyer. During that time, the children would have to remain in detention, the families said.

The two judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Scranton, Pa., to wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years in prison.

As many as 5,000 juveniles are believed to have appeared before Judge Ciavarella while the kickback scheme was going on. The judges are currently free on an unsecured $1 million bond, and they have surrendered their passports and a condominium in Florida. Neither is allowed out of the state without permission.

State Senator Stewart J. Greenleaf, a Republican from Montgomery County who is the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee, said he intended to hold a hearing to find ways to help the children and their families once the federal investigation was done. A spokesman in Mr. Greenleaf’s office said one option was to provide money from the crime victims compensation fund.

“Money is important, but my son’s life has already been completely destroyed,” said Ruby Cherise Uca, whose son, Chad, 18, was sentenced to three months of detention by Judge Ciavarella in 2005, when Chad was in eighth grade.

Chad, who had no prior offenses, was charged with simple assault after shoving a boy at school and causing him to cut his head on a locker. Chad returned to school his freshman year, but he was so far behind in classes and so stigmatized by his teachers and peers, his mother said, that he soon dropped out.

Federal investigators remained silent Friday about whether they would file charges against the operators of the detention centers or who else they were considering as possible conspirators.

But a law enforcement official confirmed Friday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited a transitional housing program in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where Judge Ciavarella furloughed inmates who had been sentenced by other judges, as federal authorities continue to scrutinize actions by Judge Ciavarella and Judge Conahan.

Lawyers for Robert J. Powell, the owner of one of the detention centers, released a letter saying Mr. Powell was not complicit in the kickback scheme but was a victim of demands from the judges for payment.

Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, said that juveniles should not be allowed to waive their right to counsel, as is permitted in Pennsylvania, and that if families wanted a lawyer but could not afford one, they should get representation.

Mr. Schwartz added that Luzerne County, where the judges handled cases, had only one public defender on staff for juveniles. The juvenile court processes about 1,200 juvenile defendants a year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/14judge.html?scp=2&sq=PA&st=cse
A version of this article appeared in print on February 14, 2009, on page A13 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2009

Excellent article " The New Political Economy of Immigration"

The New Political Economy of Immigration

By Tom Barry

This article is from the January/February 2009 issue of Dollars & Sense: The Magazine of Economic Justice available at http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/0109barry.html

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 drastically altered the traditional political economy of immigration. The millions of undocumented immigrants—those who crossed the border illegally or overstayed their visas—who were living and working in the United States were no longer simply regarded as a shadow population or as surplus cheap labor. In the public and policy debate, immigrants were increasingly defined as threats to the nation’s security. Categorizing immigrants as national security threats gave the government’s flailing immigration law-enforcement and border- control operations a new unifying logic that has propelled the immigrant crackdown forward.

Responsibility for immigration law-enforcement and border control passed from the Justice Department to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In Congress Democrats and Republicans alike readily supported a vast expansion of the country’s immigration control apparatus—doubling the number of Border Patrol agents and authorizing a tripling of immigrant prison beds.

Today, after the shift in the immigration debate, the $15 billion-plus DHS budget for immigration affairs has fueled an immigrant-crackdown economy that has greatly boosted the already-bloated prison industry. Even now, with the economy imploding, immigrants are currently behind one of the country’s most profitable industries: they are the nation’s fastest growing sector of the U.S. prison population.

Across the country new prisons are hurriedly being constructed to house the hundreds of thousands of immigrants caught each year. State and local governments are vying with each other to attract new immigrant prisons as the foundation of their rural “economic development” plans.

While DHS is driving immigrants from their jobs and homes, U.S. firms in the business of providing prison beds are raking in record profits from the immigrant crackdown. Although only one piece of the broader story of immigration, it’s all a part of the new political economy of immigration.
Dangerous People

In the new national security context, undocumented immigrants are not just outlaws: They are “dangerous people” who threaten the homeland.

The two DHS agencies involved in immigration enforcement—Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Enforcement (CBP)—have seen their funds increased disproportionately over the last several years, doubling in size while total DHS funding has increased by just a third. The funding for these two agencies is set to rise 19.1% in 2009 while the overall DHS budget will increase by only 6.8%. Hunting down immigrants has become a top DHS priority. As, DHS says its mission is “to prevent terrorist attacks against the nation and to protect our nation from dangerous people.”

Immigrants caught up in DHS dragnets, worksite enforcement raids, and border patrols were the “metrics of success” that DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff pointed to in his July 18, 2008 congressional testimony. He used the dramatically increased number of immigrant apprehensions and “removals” as metrics to show that DHS is succeeding in its goal to “secure the homeland and protect the American people.”

While the increased numbers of immigrants being arrested, imprisoned, and deported certainly demonstrate that DHS is busy, they don’t demonstrate that DHS is stopping terrorism. Never in its congressional testimonies or media releases does DHS present evidence that show how the number of immigrants captured improves national security.

A 2007 study by the Transnational Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University found that there has been no increase in terrorism or national security charges against immigrants since 2001. In fact, despite the increased enforcement operations by Homeland Security, more immigrants were charged annually in immigration courts with national security or terrorism-related offenses in a three-year period in the mid-1990s (1994–96) than in a comparable period (2004–2006) since Sept. 11. According to the TRAC study, “A decade later, national security charges were brought against 114 individuals, down about a third. Meanwhile for the same period, terrorism charges are down more than three-fourths, to just 12.”
Enforcing the “Rule of Law”

Rather than addressing immigration as the complex socioeconomic issue that it is, Homeland Security has reduced immigration policy to a system of crime and punishment. Applying the simplistic law-and-order logic propagated by restrictionists, DHS regards undocumented immigrants not as workers, community members, and parents but as criminals.

Following the lead of the anti-immigration institutes and right-wing think tanks, Chertoff came to Homeland Security with a new interpretation of the department’s immigration law enforcement and border control operations: Commitment to a strict enforcement regime to protect the country against foreign terrorists, and to reassert the “rule of law.”

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the restrictionist camp found that their messaging about the “illegality” and “criminality” of undocumented immigrants took on a new resonance. They proceeded to upscale their “what don’t you understand about illegal?” message, to a more conceptual framing of undocumented immigration. Undocumented immigrants now represented a threat to the “rule of law” inside a nation that had just come under foreign attack by foreign outlaws.

Their new language about immigration policy started popping up everywhere, from the pronouncements of immigrant-rights groups to the Democratic Party platform. Instead of promising an “earned path to citizenship,” as it has in the past, the party stated that undocumented immigrants will be required to “get right with the law.”

Looking ahead, Janet Napolitano, President Obama’s nominee to replace Chertoff, while no anti-immigration hardliner, still seems poised to adopt the same law-and-order logic. As a lawyer, former federal prosecutor, and a governor who has insisted on more border control and stood behind a tough employer-sanctions law, Napolitano can be expected to follow the lead of Chertoff and the Democratic Party in insisting that current immigration laws be strictly enforced “to reassert the rule of law.”

Immigrants Mean Business

Political imperatives—protecting the homeland and enforcing the “rule of law”—have over the past eight years countervailed against the economic forces that have historically led in setting immigration policy. Although the immigrant labor market persists, the increased risks for both employer and worker, along with the recessionary economy, appear to be exercising downward pressure on both supply and demand.

But even in the flagging economy, the immigrant crackdown has invigorated other market forces. Eager to cash in on immigrant detention, private prison firms and local governments are rushing to supply Homeland Security and the Justice Department with the prisons needed to house the hundreds of thousands of immigrants captured by ICE and Border Patrol agents.

In the prison industry, bed is a euphemism for a place behind bars. Even President Bush talked the prison-bed language when discussing immigration policy. When visiting the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas in 2006 to promote the immigrant crackdown, the president said: “Beds are our number one priority.”

The number of beds for detained immigrants in DHS centers has increased by more than a third since 2002. There are now 32,000 beds available for the revolving population of immigrants on the path to deportation, and another 1,000 are scheduled to come on line in 2009. This doesn’t include beds for immigrants in Homeland Security custody that are provided by county, state, and the federal Bureau of Prisons.

At the insistence of such immigration restrictionists as Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 contained an authorization for an additional 40,000 beds to accommodate immigrants under U.S. government custody.

At the onset of the immigration crackdown two years ago, ICE dubbed its promise to find a detention center or prison bed for all arrested immigrants “Operation Reservation Guaranteed.” The Justice Department has a similar initiative to ensure that the U.S. Marshals Service has beds available for detainees—about 180,000 a year, of whom more than 30% are held on immigration charges.

Most of the prison beds contracted by ICE and DOJ’s Office of Federal Detention Trustee are with local governments; ICE has more than 300 intergovernmental agreements with county and city governments to hold immigrants, while DOJ has some 1200 such agreements. In many cases, particularly with contracts for hundreds of prison beds, the local government then subcontracts with a private prison company to operate the facility.

Prison beds translate into per diem payments from the federal government that are well above the hotel room rates in the remote rural communities where most of these immigrant prisons are located. With these per diems running from $70 to $95 for each immigrant imprisoned, local governments and private firms are hurrying to expand existing facilities or to create new ones.
Depending on Immigrants

The uptick in immigrant detention that saved the industry in 2000 (see sidebar) turned into a mighty upswing in demand for immigrant prison beds after Sept. 11 and the ensuing immigrant crackdown. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has reported record profits for the last few years, largely on the strength of increasing demand from its ICE and USMS “customers.”

Forty percent of total CCA revenue comes from three federal contractors: Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Marshals Service, and ICE. In its 2007 Security and Exchange Commission filing, CCA stated: “We are dependent on government appropriations.” CCA Chairman William Andrews warned investors that the company’s high returns could be threatened by a change in the policy environment: “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts…or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws.”

But to understand just how well the prison business is faring and how immigrants are key to prison profits, you can listen in on the prison firms’ quarterly conference call with major Wall Street investment firms of November 2008.

Corrections Corporation of America boasted that it enjoyed a $33.6 million increase in the third quarter over last year, while earnings rose 15% during the same period. Formerly known as Wackenhut, GEO Group, the nation’s second largest prison company, saw its earnings jump 29% over 2007. Cornell Companies, another private prison firm that imprisons immigrants, reported a 9% increase in net revenues in the third quarter.

Private prison companies aren’t worried that the Democratic Party sweep will mean fewer beds. GEO Group’s chairman George Zoley on Nov. 3 assured investors: “These federal initiatives to target, detain and deport criminal aliens throughout the country will continue to drive the need for immigration detention beds over the next several years and these initiatives have been fully funded by Congress on a bipartisan basis.”

Addressing investor fears that recent decreases in undocumented immigration inflows might dampen company returns, CCA CEO and board chairman John Ferguson said, “So even though we have seen the border crossings and apprehensions decline in the last couple of years, we are really talking about dealing with a population well north of 12 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States.”

The CCA chief assured investors that the company’s dependence on detained immigrants is not a factor of policy but rather of law enforcement. “The Federal Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Marshals Service, Immigration and Custom Enforcement are carrying out statutory obligations for their responsibility….We should continue to see their utilization of the private sector to meet their statutory obligations and requirements.”

The prison executives even intimate that the economic crisis will fatten their business. When asked by an investment company representative about a Ü possible downturn in detained immigrants, James Hyman, president of Cornell Companies, said, “We do not believe we will see a decline in the need for detention beds particularly in an economy with rising unemployment among American workers.”

Immigrant Prisons as Economic Development

Hundreds of local governments are also attempting to take advantage of this rising demand for immigrant prison beds by opening their jails to immigrants under ICE and DOJ custody and by building new jails to meet the anticipated increased demand.

Financial considerations weigh heavily for cash-strapped county commissions and sheriff departments. As Sheriff Roger Mulch told Jefferson County (Illinois) commissioners in late February 2008, “ICE, during the last three months, has been hot to do business with us.” Each locality negotiates independently with ICE and USMS to set the per diem rates, and as the demand from the feds for local jail beds increases, county sheriff departments are negotiating ever-higher rates.

Along the U.S.-Mexico border, particularly in Texas, prisons are a booming industry. Near the border town of Del Rio, the county’s Val Verde Correctional Facility, which is owned and run by GEO Group, had only 180 beds eight years ago. Today, after undergoing its second 600-bed expansion, the maximum-security jail can fit 1,425 prisoners.

In Texas’ Willacy County, the county government opened the country’s largest immigrant detention center in 2006, and is currently pursuing a federal contract to host one of three new family detention centers for immigrants.

County Commissioner Ernie Chapa, explaining how the county government financially depends on jailing immigrants, said: “We would love to have 2,500 [illegal immigrants] but we know that’s not going to be ... If we get 2,200 to 2,300, we’d be very happy.”

Joining in the celebration of the opening of the new jail for immigrants, Willacy County Judge Simone Salinas said, “We are proud to have been able to bring on these new detention beds in record time, which will result in improved border security not only for county residents but also our nation.”

“You talk about economic development, this is it,” Salinas told a reporter, noting the county’s initial cut is $2.25 a day per occupied bed.

A year later, a new agreement with ICE for another thousand beds was greeted enthusiastically by some officials in what is one of the poorest counties in the nation. The new county judge Eliseo Barnhart said the expansion of the immigrant detention center run by CCA will “bring jobs that are needed in Willacy County and it means income, which we desperately need.”

“It’s almost like a futures market. You have private prison companies gambling on expansion of the immigrant detention system, and basically prison speculators who are convincing communities to do this,” Bob Libal, director of Grassroots Leadership in Austin and an organizer with South Texans Opposing Private Prisons, told the Denver Post. “It’s a sick market, but a market nonetheless,” Libal said.

New Political Economy of Immigration

What started off as a war against terrorism has devolved into a war against immigrants. The current “enforcement-only” approach to immigration policy has created a morass of new problems, including a host of human rights and financial issues associated with the annual detention and removal of immigrants. The immigrant crackdown has given rise to an unregulated complex of jails, detention centers, and prisons that create profit from the immigrant crackdown.

At the outset of a new administration and new era, the political economy of immigration is decidedly anti-immigrant. Political and economic factors have combined to create a harsh environment for undocumented immigrants, present and future. Immigration reform may not be a top priority, but the Obama administration and new Congress would do well to begin to address the challenge of reshaping the political economy of immigration.

First steps could include a more careful articulation of the intersection of immigration, rule of law, and national security. Napolitano should explain that the real threat to the rule of law is not having an immigration policy that provides a legal pathway to integration for the 11 million immigrants already within the United States.

What’s more, she would do well to disarticulate the links established by the Bush administration between immigrants and terrorists. At the same time, closer links must be made between immigration policy and economic policy, guarding against labor exploitation while considering domestic economic need.

Instead of a policy based on a calm assessment of the costs and benefits of immigrant labor to the U.S. economy, current immigration policy has been hijacked by the politics of fear, resentment, scapegoating, and nativism. The “enforcement only” immigration policy has fostered a national immigrant prison complex that feeds on ever-increasing numbers of arrested immigrants. As County Commissioner Ernie Chapa said, “Any time the numbers are high, it’s good for the county because it brings more income.”
-----
Immigrant Detention in the United States By the Numbers

* Immigrants caught by DHS in 2007: 960,756
* ICE detentions that year: 311,169
* Rise in detentions since 2006: 21%
* DHS 2009 budget for Border Security & Immigration Enforcement: $12.14 billion
* Change from 2008: up 19%
* Change since Bush took office: up more than 150%
* Money for ICE “custody operations”: $1.8 billion
* Number of new “beds” this will provide: 1,000
* Total number of 2009 ICE beds: 33,400
* Average per diem for immigrant detention to private prison firms in 2007: $87.99

Sources: “Immigration Enforcement Actions: 2007,” Annual Report Department of the Homeland Security Office of Immigration Statistics, December 2008; “DHS Announces $12.14 Billion for Border Security & Immigration Efforts,” Department of Homeland Security, January 2008; Leslie Berestein “Detention Dollars” The San Diego Union Tribune May 2008; “Summary: 2009 Homeland Security Appropriations” Committee on Appropriations, September 2008.

Detention Profiteers

There may be a new boom in immigrant detention, but captive immigrants as good business is a concept that dates back two decades. Immigrants were the industry’s first prisoners.

It all began in 1983 when a klatch of wealthy Tennessee Republicans decided private prisons were just what the country needed to solve the problems of prison riots, overcrowding, and increasing costs. They formed the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), with the mission to “provide in partnership with government meaningful public service,” and succeeded in persuading the Reagan administration to help launch prison privatization by having the Immigration and Naturalization Service (ICE’s legacy agency) issue CCA a contract to keep immigrants locked up in Houston.

Wackenhut Corrections (recently renamed GEO Group), a private security services firm, branched into the private prison industry when it entered a contract in 1987 to operate an INS immigrant detention center in Colorado.

Using their experience in immigrant detention, CCA and Wackenhut soon began successfully soliciting states and counties to enter into private prison pacts, while winning dozens of new contracts with the federal government. However, the initial enthusiasm of governments at all levels faded with increasing abuse scandals at CCA and Wackenhut prisons, leading some states to cancel contracts and pull prisoners out.

But immigrant detention once again saved the day for CCA, Wackenhut, and other teetering private prison firms. The 1996 immigration law that broadened the guidelines for deporting undocumented and legal immigrants started to kick in, resulting in a rising federal demand for more immigrant detention beds that the private prison industry was happy to supply.
-------

Tom Barry, a senior analyst at the Center for International Policy, directs the TransBorder Project of the Americas Policy Program.
SOURCES: “Immigration Enforcement: The Rhetoric, The Reality,” TRAC Immigration, 2007; “Corrections Corp. of America Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript,” Seeking Alpha, November 2008; “The GEO Group, Inc. Q3 2008 (Qtr End 9/28/08) Earnings Call Transcript,” Seeking Alpha, November 2008; “Cornell Companies Inc. Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript,” Seeking Alpha, November 2008; “Mulch: Jail May Soon House Immigrants”, Register News February 2008; “Willacy County Goes $50 Million More In Debt to Expand MTC’s Tent City,” Texas Prison Bid’ness Blog, August 2007; “Federal detention center in Willacy to expand,” The Monitor, July 2007; “Inmate count continues to climb at detention center,” Brownsville Herald, April 2008.

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/0109barry.html

Posted by lois at 03:15 PM | Comments (0)

PA: Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit

Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit
February 12, 2009
By IAN URBINA and SEAN D. HAMILL
NY Times

At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.

“I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare,” said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. “All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing.”

The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.

“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.

The case has shocked Luzerne County, an area in northeastern Pennsylvania that has been battered by a loss of industrial jobs and the closing of most of its anthracite coal mines.

And it raised concerns about whether juveniles should be required to have counsel either before or during their appearances in court and whether juvenile courts should be open to the public or child advocates.

If the court agrees to the plea agreement, both judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and resign from the bench and bar. They are expected to be sentenced in the next several months. Lawyers for both men declined to comment.

Since state law forbids retirement benefits to judges convicted of a felony while in office, the judges would also lose their pensions.

With Judge Conahan serving as president judge in control of the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts, they set the kickback scheme in motion in December 2002, the authorities said.

They shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, arguing that it was in poor condition, the authorities said, and maintained that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers.

Prosecutors say the judges tried to conceal the kickbacks as payments to a company they control in Florida.

Though he pleaded guilty to the charges Thursday, Judge Ciavarella has denied sentencing juveniles who did not deserve it or sending them to the detention centers in a quid pro quo with the centers.

But Assistant United States Attorney Gordon A. Zubrod said after the hearing that the government continues to charge a quid pro quo.

“We’re not negotiating that, no,” Mr. Zubrod said. “We’re not backing off.”

No charges have been filed against executives of the detention centers. Prosecutors said the investigation into the case was continuing.

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Judge Ciavarella was unusually harsh. He sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a state rate of 1 in 10. He also routinely ignored requests for leniency made by prosecutors and probation officers.

“The juvenile system, by design, is intended to be a less punitive system than the adult system, and yet here were scores of children with very minor infractions having their lives ruined,” said Marsha Levick, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.

“There was a culture of intimidation surrounding this judge and no one was willing to speak up about the sentences he was handing down.”

Last year, the Juvenile Law Center, which had raised concerns about Judge Ciavarella in the past, filed a motion to the State Supreme Court about more than 500 juveniles who had appeared before the judge without representation. The court originally rejected the petition, but recently reversed that decision.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that children have a constitutional right to counsel. But in Pennsylvania, as in at least 20 other states, children can waive counsel, and about half of the children that Judge Ciavarella sentenced had chosen to do so. Only Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina require juveniles to have representation when they appear before judges.

Clay Yeager, the former director of the Office of Juvenile Justice in Pennsylvania, said typical juvenile proceedings are kept closed to the public to protect the privacy of children.

“But they are kept open to probation officers, district attorneys, and public defenders, all of whom are sworn to protect the interests of children,” he said. “It’s pretty clear those people didn’t do their jobs.”

On Thursday in Federal District Court in Scranton, more than 80 people packed every available seat in the courtroom. At one point, as Assistant United States Attorney William S. Houser explained to Judge Edwin M. Kosik that the government was willing to reach a plea agreement with the men because the case involved “complex charges that could have resulted in years of litigation,” one man sitting in the audience said “bull” loud enough to be heard in the courtroom.

One of the parents at the hearing was Susan Mishanski of Hanover Township.

Her son, Kevin, now 18, was sentenced to 90 days in a detention facility last year in a simple assault case that everyone had told her would result in probation, since Kevin had never been in trouble and the boy he hit had only a black eye.

“It’s horrible to have your child taken away in shackles right in front of you when you think you’re going home with him,” she said. “It was nice to see them sitting on the other side of the bench.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html

Posted by lois at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2009

CA: The Prison Overcrowding Fix

News Analysis
The Prison Overcrowding Fix
By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: February 10, 2009

In San Francisco last week, a federal court was hearing final arguments in the prison overcrowding lawsuit that led Monday to an unprecedented decision to reduce the nation’s largest prison system by one-third. Just a few blocks away, a state appellate court was affirming a life sentence for Ali Foroutan, convicted of possession of 0.03 gram of methamphetamine.

Critics of California’s justice system say Mr. Foroutan’s sentence under the “three-strikes law,” which mandates 25 years to life in prison for three-time felons, is the kind of punishment that has made the state’s prisons the most overcrowded in the nation.

Federal judges tentatively ruled Monday that packed facilities were the chief impediment to adequate health care in prisons — a system so flawed it was tantamount to a violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Monday’s ruling signaled the court’s intention to cap the number of prisoners at about 101,000, a reduction of 55,000. It came after more than a decade of federal court orders from exasperated judges who demanded that the state improve its facilities and personnel, after the appointment of the most powerful federal receivership since the days of forced racial integration in the South, and after the death of scores of prisoners who committed suicide or died of preventable illnesses.

The judges encouraged the state to negotiate with inmates’ lawyers to cut the prison population from 156,000, which is about double the system’s capacity, within three years. If the state refuses to negotiate such a plan, the judges could order specific actions, including shortened prison sentences, diversion of nonviolent felons to county programs, and parole reforms that would cut down recidivism.

Few releases of prisoners would be necessary to reduce the prison population if the state carried out sentencing and parole reforms, which could save $903 million a year, according to the federal judges. They also argued that such reforms could be achieved without jeopardizing public safety.

Attorney General Jerry Brown of California vowed to appeal the judges’ final order to the United States Supreme Court, a prospect that could delay the carrying out of the prison population cap or overturn it.

The case is significant because of the scale of the proposed prisoner reduction, and also because it shines a harsh light on the failures of state government to address the problem for years.

Decades of tough-on-crime laws coupled with a failure to finance prison programs have left prisoners stacked three bunks high in prison gymnasiums and hallways throughout the state. With few probation and parole programs available, about two-thirds of all ex-convicts return to prison within three years.

California’s 13-year-old three-strikes law, which doubles sentences for second-time felons, and reserves life sentences for even nonviolent third-felony offenders like Mr. Foroutan, has also increased the prison population by thousands. As of March 2008, there were 41,284 prisoners serving time under the three-strikes law. In 2005, the California Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated that the law cost the state $500 million annually.

California is the only state in the nation that paroles 98 percent of released inmates, even if they have completed their sentences. About 70,000 parolees return to prison every year. Nationally, states parole an average of 40 percent of their released inmates.

“That is a major reason for the overcrowding problem,” said Joan Petersilia, a parole expert at the RAND Corporation. “Everybody goes on parole in California,” she said. “Everybody serves at least one year” on parole. Many parolees go back to prison for violations, including failed drug tests.

But Stuart Drown, executive director of the Little Hoover Commission, a state-financed watchdog organization, said sentencing reform was the key to reducing prison population.

The Legislature, Mr. Drown says, has added thousands of new penalties for new and old crimes. “We don’t track how judges are sentencing people on a statewide basis,” he said. “We don’t have a sentencing policy.”

In other states, sentencing commissions monitor penalties to help policy makers anticipate how many prisoners will be coming and for how long.

California has no such data, Mr. Drown said. Proposed sentencing commissions have been defeated in the Legislature at least 10 times, according to Ms. Petersilia.

This case began not as an overcrowding lawsuit but as an effort to address inadequate health care. After the state failed to improve its care, Judge Thelton E. Henderson appointed a federal receiver to take over the medical system, and the receiver has demanded billions of state dollars to build health care facilities.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has responded with a mix of conciliatory gestures — supporting an as-yet underfinanced initiative to build space for 53,000 prisoners — and defiance, as when he called for the dissolution of the receivership.

Eventually the receiver concluded that new prison facilities could not be added quickly enough to stem the deaths and injuries to prisoners or to outpace the rising prison population.

Lawyers for the state have argued that the federal courts lack the authority to order prison reforms costing billions of dollars, especially at a time when California is facing a $40 billion deficit.

Counties in California say they cannot afford to serve parolees’ rehabilitation needs without additional financing, as many other states do.

Kara P. Dansky, a lecturer at Stanford Law School, believes that the judges may have the authority to push through sweeping reforms, including more financing for counties, under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

The state disagrees that the court has such authority and plans to appeal to the Supreme Court, which could delay any outcome. Ms. Dansky said policy makers would be watching the case closely. “This is one of the areas that the law is unclear on because we’ve never seen a case like this,” she said.
A version of this article appeared in print on February 11, 2009, on page A17 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/us/11prisons.html?ref=todayspaper

Posted by lois at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)

February 10, 2009

CA: Panel of Judges Rule State must release up to 57,000 prisoners---3 articles

From the Los Angeles Times
Judges back a one-third reduction in state prison population
Jurists issue tentative ruling in lawsuit brought by inmates, who say overcrowding in state prisons violates their right to adequate healthcare.
By Michael Rothfeld

February 10, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento — A panel of three federal judges, saying overcrowding in state prisons has deprived inmates of their right to adequate healthcare, tentatively ruled Monday that the state must reduce the population in those lockups by as many as 57,000 people.

The judges issued the decisionafter a trial in two long-running cases brought by inmates to protest the state of medical and mental healthcare in the prisons.

Although their order is not final, U.S. District Court Judges Thelton Henderson and Lawrence Karlton and 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt effectively told the state that it had lost the trial and would have to make dramatic changes in its prisons unless it could reach a settlement with inmates' lawyers.

State officials immediately said they would appeal.

If the state is ordered to reduce the prison population, it would likely be able to do so over two or three years, so it would not have to release large numbers of inmates at once. Some methods of cutting the population include limiting new admissions, changing policies so parole violators return to prison less frequently, and giving prisoners more time off of their sentences for good behavior and rehabilitation efforts.

The judges said these types of measures could save the state more than $900 million a year in prison costs, money that could be used by cities and counties to put those who otherwise would have gone to prison into local jails or treatment programs.

The state's 33 prisons were designed for 84,000 inmates, and they now hold 158,000, nearly double their designed capacity. The rest of the 170,000 in the correctional system are in out-of-state prisons and other facilities. The judges found that with inmates crammed into institutions, they could not receive the care to which they are entitled under the U.S. Constitution.

"There is . . . uncontroverted evidence that, because of overcrowding, there are not enough clinical facilities or resources to accommodate inmates with medical or mental health needs at the level of care they require," the judges wrote in a 10-page decision.

They said that triple-bunking of inmates in prison gymnasiums has increased the risk of infectious disease and that a shortage of doctors, nurses and correctional officers has denied inmates access to treatment and a decent system to keep their medical records in order.

In the ruling, the judges said they believe the state's prisons can safely operate at 120% to 145% of their designed capacity. Based on the current prison population, that would mean a potential reduction of 36,000 to 57,000 inmates. They reserved the right to change their numbers and did