The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

March 19, 2010

News of the sick: Chicago: Sherriff to save money by serving prisoners breakfasst at 4:30 AM

Sheriff Tom Dart. In an attempt to save money, Dart will have prisoners arrive to breakfast at 4:30 a.m.

03-18-10 -Huffington Post
Sheriff Tom Dart has been cutting costs with a vengeance at the Cook County Department of Corrections. And on Thursday, he announced another nearly $2 million dollars in savings.

This time, it's coming at the expense of breakfast.

Right now, prisoners in Cook County are brought breakfast in their cells, starting around 4:30 a.m. But because many prisoners are still asleep at that time, spokesman Steve Patterson told the Sun-Times' Michael Sneed that many breakfasts go uneaten.

"The prisoners are usually still sleeping at that time . . . and Sheriff Dart is tired of seeing stacks of uneaten trays of food left in the hallways," Patterson said.

Instead, prisoners will now need to leave their cells at the same time if they want to eat.

Dart estimates that the savings in uneaten breakfasts will add up to around $1 million. The remaining cuts come from a $750,000 prison laundry program that will be ended. Instead of contracting laundry out, prisoners will wash it themselves.

NBC Chicago also reported that just two weeks ago, Sheriff Dart announced the closing of two unused prisons that will save Cook County around $15 million.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/18/sheriff-tom-dart-announce_n_504699.html

Posted by lois at 06:42 PM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2010

Canada: Proposed Youth Criminal Justice Act would give judges power to consider non-criminal behavior when sentencing youth

Youth sentencing changes proposed
Amendment named for Quebec teen who died in 2004
March 16, 2010 | 4:11 PM ET \
The Canadian Press

The Conservative government hopes changes proposed Tuesday will make "protection of society a primary goal" of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said he wants to give judges the power to consider non-criminal behaviour when sentencing Canadians under age 18.

Such behaviour would include a "casual attitude to the law [and] complete lack of empathy for the victim," said Nicholson, flanked by the mothers of two youths who were killed by young offenders.

The changes would also permit sentencing judges to take into account evidence of previous brushes with the law that did not result in charges or convictions.

The amendments are dubbed "Sebastien's Law" in memory of Sebastien Lacasse, a 19-year-old Quebecer stabbed to death by a group of youths after making racially charged comments about his ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend at a house party in 2004.

The 17-year-old ringleader pleaded guilty and was sentenced as an adult.

The proposed changes come as youth crime is on the decline in Canada. In 2006-2007, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 56,463 young offenders committed offences across Canada, according to Statistics Canada.

That represented a slight rise — 0.34 per cent — over 2005-2006 but was a 26 per cent drop from 2002-2003, when 76,153 young offenders committed offences.

The Conservatives vowed in 2008 to reduce protections under the Youth Criminal Justice Act for young people convicted of serious crimes.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/03/16/justice-youth-act.html#ixzz0iRb2L5NT

Posted by lois at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2010

Prison agency: Throwing away books was mistake

Prison agency: Throwing away books was mistake
By CHRISTOPHER WILLS - Associated Press Writer
Belleville News- Monday, Mar. 15, 2010

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. -- The Illinois Corrections Department said Monday it made a mistake by throwing away three trash bins' worth of books - most in unopened boxes from the publisher - that had been donated to state prisons.

The books ranged from mystery and self-help titles to religion and history, and were tossed in the trash containers outside the department's Springfield headquarters last week.

Department spokeswoman Sharyn Elman said some of the books had suffered water damage and had to be discarded, but the rest should have been given to charity. She said the department contacted multiple charities and could find no takers but still should have kept the books instead of throwing them away.

The books were thrown out only after prison libraries got all the copies they wanted, she added.

"We at the Illinois Department of Corrections have a commitment to education," Elman said. "Reading is key to that and we are taking this very seriously."

Elman said the books were donated last year, before the department adopted a policy against accepting such large gifts. Now, she said, donations are limited to only what the department can use.

The books included "Word," a book on religion aimed at African-American readers, and "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea," a look at the legacy of Greek civilization. Another, "10 Secrets I Learned from 'The Apprentice,'" offers tips for success gleaned from the Donald Trump reality show.

They were donated by Berean Prison Ministries of Peoria. Ed Meister, one of the organization's founders, said he has no objection to the department throwing away unneeded books.

Read more: http://www.bnd.com/2010/03/15/1174992/prison-agency-throwing-away-books.html#ixzz0iLQjo97A

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

March 11, 2010

MA: Patient’s death at Bridgewater is ruled homicide

Patient’s death after scuffle is ruled homicide

By Jonathan Saltzman and Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff | March 10, 2010

The death of a psychiatric patient who scuffled with correction officers at Bridgewater State Hospital in May has been ruled a homicide, according to a death certificate that found 23-year-old Joshua Messier had suffered “blunt impact of head and compression of chest’’ while being restrained by guards.

The homicide ruling, by the state medical examiner’s office, differs from the description offered by prison officials last spring. Spokeswoman Diane Wiffin said then, “There is no indication that there was any excessive force at this time.’’

Hospital records obtained by the Globe yesterday show that Messier was brought to the emergency room of Brockton Hospital May 4 in cardiac arrest, with a bruise on his forehead and cheek; dried blood on his nostrils and in his hair; ligature marks or indentations on his neck, wrists, and ankles; and a scrape on his eyebrows.

Wiffin pledged at the time that prosecutors, the State Police, and the Massachusetts Department of Correction would review Messier’s death, and yesterday she said in a brief statement that the case remains under investigation by Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz. She also said “actions taken by DOC medical and security staff were done in accordance with standard procedure.’’

Bridget Norton Middleton, a spokeswoman for Cruz, declined to say when she expects her office’s investigation to conclude, but said the death is “certainly something that we’re actively looking at.’’ Middleton said officials had been awaiting the medical examiner’s ruling on the cause of death; that ruling was issued Feb. 3, and a copy was obtained by the Globe yesterday.

Steve Kenneway, president of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, said he heard that Messier assaulted two officers and that other officers then helped subdue him. Messier, he said, was then placed in restraints and walked across a large yard to an indoor facility. It was there that he suffered heart failure, Kenneway said.

“It was a clean use of force,’’ he said. “The last thing we want the public to think is an inmate was murdered by a correctional officer. That’s clearly not the case.’’

Kenneway, whose association represents about 5,000 correction officers, said the medical examiner’s designation of the death as a homicide was simply a legal term to indicate that someone was involved in Messier’s death.

Messier was a country club attendant from Charlton who graduated from Shepherd Hill Regional High School and briefly attended the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He was diagnosed about six years ago with schizophrenia and paranoia, said his mother, Lisa Messier.

Messier had been charged after allegedly hitting three staff members at the Harrington Memorial Hospital psychiatric ward in Southbridge while undergoing treatment. A judge ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and he had been at Bridgewater State Hospital for more than a month when he died.

Bridgewater State is run by the Department of Correction and is supposed to be a “safe, secure, and humane environment to all persons requiring specialized care and treatment,’’ according to the state’s website. Patients have been charged with or convicted of crimes and have “the potential for endangering themselves or others,’’ the site says.

Lisa Messier said she had feared for her son’s safety at Bridgewater and was devastated by his death, which occurred less than two hours after she had visited him at the hospital.

“It’s a nightmare that people have to go through this, and all my son needed was some help,’’ she said. “This shouldn’t have happened.’’

She said she was relieved when she got a call from the medical examiner’s office recently and was read a copy of the death certificate, because, she said, it confirmed her suspicions that her son had been killed. The death certificate was signed by Dr. Mindy J. Hull, a pathologist for the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

“I’m glad the truth is in there,’’ Lisa Messier said. She said she hopes someone is charged in her son’s death.

The Messier family has retained Andrew C. Meyer Jr., a Boston personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer. Meyer has written state Attorney General Martha Coakley that the Messier family intends to file a wrongful-death suit against the state in federal court. He said in an interview yesterday that patients and relatives have told Lisa Messier that correction officers took her son “into a back room and caused him this harm.’’

“They clearly not only failed to protect him from himself - this is a boy who had mental disabilities and needed some attention - they harmed him with what appears to be extraordinary force, causing his death,’’ Meyer said.

Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, called for an independent review of Messier’s death. She called his placement at Bridgewater State an example of the “criminalization of mental illness,’’ with inmates sent to the correctional facility because the mental health system has failed to help them.

“This is a hospital,’’ she said. “He was someone who needed to be protected and cared for and made well enough to leave.’’
© Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

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

March 09, 2010

MA: Some at Bristol jail got boost in pension. Sheriff’s hires gained windfall

Some at Bristol jail got boost in pension
Sheriff’s hires gained windfall
By Andrea Estes
Boston Globe Staff / March 9, 2010
ed as a part-time, on-call pharmacist for the New Bedford Board of Health, making $2,200 a year.

Then, in 2001, he took a $77,000-a-year pharmacist job in the office of Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson. After working exactly three years - public retirees’ pensions are based on their top three years’ salary - Tweedie retired, boosting his pension from $1,171 a year to $46,781.

Tweedie said he was not aware, when he took the job, that it would increase his pension dramatically.

“I didn’t know I was going to get anything,’’ he said in an interview. But, he said, “I was fortunate to be able to work there.’’

Tweedie is one of many current and former employees of Hodgson’s who have greatly enhanced their retirement benefits by working for the sheriff, a Globe review of payroll and pension records found.

Some employees transferred from other public agencies or private companies, working just long enough to qualify for the most generous pensions allowed under state law. Others were given titles that automatically qualified them for richer benefits, even though those titles are supposed to be reserved for jobs deemed dangerous.

Hodgson, a tough-talking Republican renowned for trying to charge inmates for room and board, acknowledged that some employees have seen their pensions balloon as a result of their service in his office. But, he said, he plays no role in awarding benefits, and the employees are simply taking what is available to them under law.

Governor Deval Patrick and the Legislature tightened pension rules last year, but loopholes remain.

“The Legislature created the law, not me,’’ Hodgson said in an interview. “If there’s any reform anyone should suggest, it’s not in my world. We have to conform to state policies and procedures and the laws of the Commonwealth.’’

But Hodgson himself has given out an unusually high number of special job titles that automatically qualify employees for bigger pensions. Many current and former employees of the Bristol County sheriff’s office have been designated assistant deputy superintendents, putting them in the most lucrative pension category.

This category, meant for correction officers, police officers, and others whose hazardous duties often force them to cut their careers short, allows employees to retire with a generous benefit at age 55, 10 years earlier than most other public employees. In corrections, the category, known as Group 4, generally covers employees who have regular contact with inmates.

Under Hodgson’s administration, employees with administrative, clerical, and even construction duties have received this classification, and many have retired with the more lucrative benefits.

In recent years, Hodgson has appointed assistant deputy superintendents for construction renovation, information services, human resources, support services, policy development and compliance, capital projects, finance administration, employee health programs, public programs, and food services.

Hodgson said the assistant deputy superintendents were given the titles because of their responsibilities, not to increase their pensions.

“If someone is an ADS, they’ve got people working under them and have a high degree of responsibility in the command,’’ he said. “I don’t look at it like, ‘You might be able to retire in Group 4.’ ’’

A succession of employees have retired from Hodgson’s office with enhanced benefits.

One was former state correction commissioner Kathleen Dennehy, who, after being terminated by Patrick in 2007, took a job with Hodgson as superintendent of security and operations. She retired 18 months later at age 54 with a pension of more than $106,000, more than $45,000 a year higher than it would have been if she had retired as correction commissioner. If she collects her pension for another 25 years, Dennehy will have received in excess of a million dollars in additional benefits.

Dennehy did not return calls seeking comment, but according to Hodgson, she was forced to retire because of an illness in the family.

William Walsh worked in Bristol County Juvenile Court for 25 years, then Brockton District Court for four years, before being hired by Hodgson as assistant deputy superintendent for community corrections in June 2003. Two years later, he retired with an annual pension of about $50,000. If he had retired from his court job, he would have received roughly half as much.

Walsh said that he left Brockton because he feared being laid off and that he retired from the Bristol sheriff’s office after two major operations.

“My doctor said: ‘Working in that job, you don’t realize how much stress is leading to your condition. See if you can retire,’ ’’ Walsh said in an interview. “I wasn’t into milking the system. I worked 32 years for the government. I left because the doctors said to.’’

Such pension deals, which cost taxpayers millions of dollars, could damage the image Hodgson has cultivated as a fiscal hawk. The Republican, who is facing two challengers this year, tried to charge inmates $5 a day, but the Supreme Judicial Court rejected the plan. He has also drawn notice by limiting meal portions, switching from orange juice to Tang, and eliminating coffee. He complained last year that he was running out of money and might have to ask the National Guard to run the jail.

Hodgson asserted in the interview that he has saved taxpayers millions of dollars by running a streamlined agency that has operated in the black every year, despite state cutbacks.

Last year, a number of Hodgson’s employees, fearful that they would lose their special benefits, retired before a new state law took effect. That law, which merged sheriffs’ departments with the state, would have required them to file with the Massachusetts Retirement Board instead of the Bristol County board, subjecting their retirement applications to tougher scrutiny.

Nicola Favorito, executive director of the State Retirement Board, said that in deciding which benefits retiring employees are entitled to, the board not only looks at their titles, but their duties. If they have limited contact with inmates, he said, they could be bounced out of Group 4.

“We want to know what they do and do they have the title legitimately,’’ he said. “Because there is so much variation in the sheriffs’ offices for positions such as ADS, we have to look on a case-by-case basis. The more the [employee’s] correctional responsibilities, the more it suggests Group 4 is warranted.’’

Hodgson acknowledged that many assistant deputy superintendents scrambled to retire before the state takeover, but he said the same thing happened in other sheriffs’ departments that merged with the state.

The pension law that took effect last year would make it more difficult for workers, such as Tweedie, to use their service in unpaid or low-paid positions toward their retirement benefits. Effective July 1 last year, only the years that workers earn $5,000 or more are included in the calculations.

A bill filed by the Patrick administration seeks to limit the proliferation of Group 4 benefits. Under the plan, retirees’ pensions would be prorated according to the years they spent in different pension classifications.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/03/09/some_at_bristol_jail_got_boost_in_pension/

Posted by lois at 10:12 PM | Comments (0)

March 07, 2010

Woman charged in breast milk assault on jailer

Woman charged in breast milk assault on jailer
March 7, 2010

OWENSBORO, Ky.—A woman in jail for public intoxication was accused of assaulting a jailer by squirting breast milk at her. WYMT-TV reported that a 31-year-old woman was arrested Thursday on a misdemeanor charge of public intoxication. But as she was changing into an inmate uniform, she squirted breast milk into the face of a female deputy who was with her.
The woman now faces a felony charge of third degree assault on a police officer. Her bond was set at $10,000.
http://www.boston.com/news/odd/articles/2010/03/07/woman_charged_in_breast_milk_assault_on_jailer/?s_campaign=8315

Posted by lois at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2010

Most House Republicans Vote to Let Schoolchildren Be Held Down, Tied Up, and Put in Solitary Confinement

Most House Republicans Vote to Let Schoolchildren Be Held Down, Tied Up, and Put in Solitary Confinement
By James Ridgeway and Jean Casella | March 5, 2010
Solitary Watch

On Wednesday afternoon, the United States House of Representatives passed H.R. 4247, the Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act (now being called the Keeping All Students Safe Act), by a vote of 242-153. In the final vote count, 238 Democrats and just 24 Republicans voted for the bill, while 8 Democrats and 145 Republicans voted against it.

H.R. 4247 was introduced in December by Education and Labor Committee chair George Miller (D-CA) and Committee member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and bill passed out of committee with bipartisan support. Their goal, Miller and Rodgers wrote in a joint op-ed for CNN, was simply to "outlaw child abuse in schools." The bill's stated purposes include the following:

(1) prevent and reduce the use of physical restraint and seclusion in schools;

(2) ensure the safety of all students and school personnel in schools and promote a positive school culture and climate;

(3) protect students from—

(A) physical or mental abuse;

(B) aversive behavioral interventions that compromise health and safety; and

(C) any physical restraint or seclusion imposed solely for purposes of discipline or convenience;

(4) ensure that physical restraint and seclusion are imposed in school only when a student’s behavior poses an imminent danger of physical injury to the student, school personnel, or others....

It's hard to decide which is more shocking: the fact that 153 members of the United States Congress would see fit to vote against such a bill, or the fact that it was needed in the first place.

In fact, the bill's findings state that "physical restraint and seclusion have resulted in physical injury, psychological trauma, and death to children in public and private schools." The House Education and Labor Committee conducted hearings on the subject last spring, after the Government Accountability Office published a report that began with the following statement:

Although GAO could not determine whether allegations were widespread, GAO did find hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and death related to the use of these methods on school children during the past two decades. Examples of these cases include a 7 year old purportedly dying after being held face down for hours by school staff, 5 year olds allegedly being tied to chairs with bungee cords and duct tape by their teacher and suffering broken arms and bloody noses, and a 13 year old reportedly hanging himself in a seclusion room after prolonged confinement.

Special education students were especially vulnerable to this kind of treatment, the report found:

For example, teachers restrained a 4 year old with cerebral palsy in a device that resembled a miniature electric chair because she was reportedly being “uncooperative.”....Teachers confined [a 9 year old with learning disabilities] to a small, dirty room 75 times over the course of 6 months for offenses such as whistling, slouching, and hand waving....In another case, a residential day school implemented a behavior plan, without parental consent, that included confining an 11-year-old autistic child to his room for extended periods of time, restricting his food, and using physical restraints. The child was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder as a result of this treatment.

A report published earlier last year by the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) provided additional examples, including one in which a 7-year-old Wisconsin girl, who was diagnosed with an emotional disturbance and ADHD, died of suffocation after several adult staff pinned her to the floor in a "prone restraint" because she was blowing bubbles in her milk.

A handful of earlier accounts also exposed the widespread use in schools of "seclusion rooms" or "time-out rooms"--basically, solitary confinement cells for difficult-to-control children. Mary Hallowell wrote about one such case in her 2009 book Forgotten Rooms. According to an article the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Education researcher Mary Hollowell spent months chronicling an alternative high school in rural Georgia before she discovered the awful secret that continues to haunt her today. Walking with the principal down a hall, Hollowell heard a loud pounding. She followed the principal into a room and then through a connecting doorway that led to a solitary confinement cell double bolted from the outside.

“The cell was dark inside and had a small, square window,” she said. “It was the kind of set-up you saw in a mental institution, not a school.” Inside the cell was a boy Hollowell recognized; she had tutored him in reading and even had artwork from him. “I felt like I had been punched in the stomach when I realized what I was seeing,” she says. “The principal’s comment to me was that most people didn’t know this room was there.”

The "seclusion room" at a Georgia school, where a 13-year-old hanged himself.

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported: “Seclusion rooms are allowed in Georgia public schools provided they are big enough for children to lie down, have good visibility and have locks that spring open in case of an emergency such as a fire. In 2004, Jonathan King, 13, hanged himself in one such room, a stark, 8-foot-by-8-foot 'timeout' room in a Gainesville public school.” Jonathan was also a special ed student, who had ADHD and depression. He had talked about suicide to the school psychologist, but she concluded it was "an escape or attention-getting technique," according to the Gainesville Times. A civil rights lawsuit brought by his parents was thrown out of federal court.

These are the sorts of abuses that H.R. 4247 seeks to address. And the pressing need for federal legislation is clear from the GAO report: "GAO found no federal laws restricting the use of seclusion and restraints in public and private schools and widely divergent laws at the state level," it said. In addition, "GAO could not find a single Web site, federal agency, or other entity that collects information on the use of these methods or the extent of their alleged abuse."

Yet 153 members of Congress chose to vote against a law that would expose and limit what can in some cases only be described as the torture of schoolchildren.

Perhaps not so shocking after all: In a country that condones torture not only in its military detention centers, but in its state and federal prisons, immigration jails, and juvenile detention centers, it was only a matter of time before it trickled down, even into our schools.

http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/most-house-republicans-vote-to-let-schoolchildren-be-held-down-tied-up-and-put-in-solitary-confinement/

Posted by lois at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2010

For Jamie Scott, an $11 Robbery in Mississippi May Carry a Death Sentence

(Wexford is the private "health care" provider.) "Wexford refuses to fill critical medical positions. Wexford refuses to grant off-site visits for seriously ill inmates. Wexford refuses to renew critical prescription medicine for inmates. And, according to those who worked for the company, and some who still do, the company’s insistence on the bottom line over the care of its charges causes inmates to suffer, sometimes with lasting, even fatal, results. The investigation prompted hearings on prison health care in the New Mexico state legislature, and in December 2006, after just two years with Wexford, Governor Bill Richardson ordered the New Mexico Corrections Department to find a new health care provider. "

"According to information compiled by the Private Corrections Working Group, Wexford’s record includes lawsuits by prisoners and current or former employees in at least four states, as well as allegations involving racial discrimination and improper gifts to public officials. "
See link to Solitary Watch below.

http://www.freethescottsisters.blogspot.com/
info on the campaign to free the Scott sisters

For Jamie Scott, an $11 Robbery in Mississippi May Carry a Death Sentence

On February 25, a small crowd gathered outside the state capitol in Jackson, Mississippi, to push for the release of sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott, who are serving two consecutive life sentences apiece for a 1993 armed robbery in which no one was injured and the take, by most accounts, was about $11. Supporters of the Scott sisters have long tried to draw attention to their case, as an extreme example of the distorted justice and Draconian sentencing policies that have overloaded prisons, crippled state budgets, and torn families apart across the United States. But in recent months, their cause has taken on a new urgency, because for Jamie Scott, an unwarranted life sentence may soon become a death sentence.

Jamie Scott, 38, is suffering from kidney failure. At the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF) in Pearl, where Jamie and Gladys are incarcerated, medical services are provided by a private contractor called Wexford, which has been the subject of lawsuits and legislative investigations in several states over inadequate treatment of the inmates in its care. According to Jamie Scott’s family, in the six weeks since her condition became life-threatening, she has endured faulty or missed dialysis sessions, infections, and other complications. She has received no indication that a kidney transplant is being considered as an option, though her sister is a willing donor.

Jamie Scott’s family and legal advisors believe the poor health care she is receiving in prison places her life at risk. They have sent pleas for clemency or compassionate release to Governor Haley Barbour, whose tough-on-crime posturing and dubious record on issuing pardons do not bode well for Jamie. The Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) has a provision for what it calls “conditional medical release,” but Scott is not a candidate, department spokesperson Suzanne Garbo Singletary said in an email last week, because “MDOC policy provides that an inmate must have a condition that is ‘incapacitating, totally disabling and/or terminal in nature’ in order to qualify.” So Jamie Scott appears to be caught in a deadly Catch-22: In order to be released from prison, she must convince the MDOC that her illness is terminal or “totally disabling”; but the only sure way for her to prove this is to die in prison.

Cruel and Unusual Health Care

In telephone interviews earlier this week, the Scott sisters’ mother, Evelyn Rasco, described the treatment Jamie has received at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (CMCF), based on her own observations and information provided by her two daughters. Jamie, who has diabetes and bouts of high blood pressure, said that medical staff at the prison first diagnosed possible kidney problems in 1997–but until recently, she received minimal treatment outside of her regular insulin. Jamie’s physical and mental health suffered last fall when she spent 23 days in solitary confinement (for being found in an “unauthorized area” in the prison gym) and was cut off from her routine of work, classes, church, and occasional visits with her sister. Then, in mid-January, Jamie became seriously ill when both her kidneys began shutting down. She was sent to the prison infirmary and, after a week’s delay, taken to the hospital. There, doctors inserted a shunt in Jamie’s neck to allow her to receive dialysis through a catheter, and she was promptly returned to prison.

Rather than letting Jamie Scott leave the prison regularly for dialysis, prison authorities chose to truck in dialysis machines. About three times a week, Jamie has received hemodialysis in a trailer on the prison grounds—if the machines are working properly, which she reports isn’t always the case. At one session, Jamie told her mother, the blood was flowing out of her through a catheter into the dialysis machine—but it wasn’t flowing back in, so the treatment had to be stopped. At the end of January, another inmate looked in on Jamie, who was locked up alone in her cell, and found her unconscious. She was rushed to the hospital, where doctors told her there were problems with the shunt inserted into her neck. They made adjustments, and she was again taken back to prison.

Evelyn Rasco lives in Pensacola, Florida, where she cares for her daughters’ five children while they are behind bars. Since Jamie and Gladys went to prison, Rasco’s husband of 30 years died of a heart attack; another daughter died of congestive heart failure; and her oldest son was away for several years serving with the Army in Iraq. In a letter to supporters last year, Jamie Scott wrote: “When I think of the word ‘strongest,’ I think of my mother. She is 4 feet 9 inches tall and has the strength of Job in the Bible.”

Rasco lacks the time and financial resources to visit her daughters often, but in mid-February, she managed to make the trip to Mississippi. When she visited the prison on February 18, along with Jamie’s 18-year-old son, Jamie was feeling sick but was able to make it to the visiting room. When Rasco returned two days later, she found Jamie in a cell attached to the infirmary. “She was real weak,” Rasco said. “She couldn’t walk.” An infection appeared to have developed at the site of Jamie’s catheter, which had filled with blood and pus. Nurses reportedly told Rasco that Jamie should be in the hospital, but the paperwork hadn’t been done.

Rasco said that when she entered her daughter’s cell, Jamie was sitting on the edge of a hospital bed with dirty linens, near a toilet and wash bowl that had not been cleaned. Prison staff arrived with a plate of food—a hamburger swimming in grease, some side dishes, and a cookie–but Jamie said it looked so bad she couldn’t eat it. The doctors at the hospital had given her a list of foods she should eat, including meat, fish, and vegetables, but they were not available, and she did not have permission to purchase food at the prison commissary. (That permission has since been granted.) So Jamie sat on her grimy bed eating a Snickers bar. “She sat right there with me,” Rasco said, “and tried to give me a piece.” Knowing it was the only nourishment her daughter was likely to have, her mother declined.

Since Evelyn Rasco’s visit, Jamie was back in the hospital for a day after experiencing chest pains following dialysis, and to a clinic where her dialysis shunt was again adjusted and she was tested for infections. To date, the family does not know the results.

Evelyn Rasco also said that when Gladys Scott, 34, learned of her sister’s kidney failure, she immediately offered to give Jamie a kidney. If Gladys were to prove a viable match, this would be by far the best medical option for Jamie: Studies show that patients in their thirties who receive successful transplants live considerably longer than those who remain on dialysis. Gladys says that CMCF staff told her that state prisoners don’t qualify as donors, and that a transplant would be too expensive, though there is no indication that their statements reflect official MDOC policy. Rasco said that she was hoping the prison would at least let Gladys to care for Jamie—feed her and bathe her—as inmates are sometime allowed to do for ailing relatives. When Rasco last spoke to her, Gladys had not received the necessary permission.

Chokwe Lumumba, a longtime activist and attorney who also serves on the Jackson City Council, is representing the family in the medical matter. In an interview last week, Lumumba said, “Our first idea is to get some medical attention into the jail. Asking for a private doctor to go in there and see her.” But what Jamie Scott really needs, he told me, is “to be in hospital until a kidney transplant.”

Suzanne Garbo Singletary, Director of the MDOC’s Division of Communications, replied to several email inquiries regarding Jamie Scott’s care. In one email, she wrote that “MDOC cannot comment on any specific medical condition or treatment for an inmate.” In another, she referred to patient privacy laws when asked whether a kidney transplant was being considered for Jamie Scott. Regarding transplants for state prisoners in general, Singltary said that “the state would pay for a needed and necessary transplant” and would do so “when evaluated the Dr. as needed [sic].” Singletary added in another message: “Dialysis units are fully operational with no malfunctions documented in the past several years.” She also restated the MDOC’s policy that “chronic, but stable, medical conditions are not eligible for conditional medical release consideration.”

At the Central Mississippi Correctional Center, Jamie Scott’s care is in the hands of Wexford Health Sources, a Pittsburgh-based private company that provides prison medical services. According to information compiled by the Private Corrections Working Group, Wexford’s record includes lawsuits by prisoners and current or former employees in at least four states, as well as allegations involving racial discrimination and improper gifts to public officials. In 2006, the Santa Fe Reporter launched an investigation into Wexford, which supplied health care to New Mexico’s 6,000 prisoners. It discovered widespread complaints about Wexford’s care.

Those who have raised concerns about Wexford include the company’s former regional medical director, the former medical director of Lea County Correctional Facility (LCCF) in Hobbs and numerous former and current Wexford medical employees. Their allegations are all hauntingly similar:

Wexford refuses to fill critical medical positions. Wexford refuses to grant off-site visits for seriously ill inmates. Wexford refuses to renew critical prescription medicine for inmates. And, according to those who worked for the company, and some who still do, the company’s insistence on the bottom line over the care of its charges causes inmates to suffer, sometimes with lasting, even fatal, results.

The investigation prompted hearings on prison health care in the New Mexico state legislature, and in December 2006, after just two years with Wexford, Governor Bill Richardson ordered the New Mexico Corrections Department to find a new health care provider.

Wexford’s reported resistance “to grant off-site visits for seriously ill inmates,” is particularly relevant to the case of Jamie Scott, and the potentially dangerous delays she has experienced before being sent to the hospital. The same issue surfaced in a 2002 case in Pennsylvania, where a 26-year-old prisoner named Erin Finley suffered a fatal asthma attack in prison while under Wexford’s care. According to the Wilkes Barre Times Herald, Finley’s family eventually received a $2.15 million settlement, after their lawyer presented evidence showing that “Finley desperately sought medical care for severe asthma she had had since she was a child, but she was repeatedly rejected based on a prison doctor’s belief that she was ‘faking’ her symptoms.” On the day of her death, Finley was taken to the prison infirmary several hours after complaining that she was having trouble breathing. A physician’s assistant examined her and told the doctor she needed to go to a hospital, “but he refused to see her and left the prison at 2:40 p.m. Twenty minutes later, Finley lost consciousness and stopped breathing,” according to the Times Herald. Finally she was sent to the hospital—only to be pronounced dead.

In Mississippi, where Wexford took over health care for the majority of the state’s prisoners in 2006 under a three-year, $95 million contract, the Jackson Clarion Ledger reported in November 2008 that “a search of the federal court system found more than a dozen open lawsuits filed by inmates against MDOC on medical issues.” At Central Mississippi Correctional Facility–the prison where the Scott sisters are housed—the sister of a dead inmate said she watched her brother waste away for months from inadequately treated Crohn’s Disease, an inflammation of the digestive tract. “He literally starved,” Charlotte Byrd said of her brother William Byrd, who died in November 2008. “We watched him turn into a skeleton.” Byrd told the Clarion Ledger that people might lack sympathy for prisoners like her brother, a convicted rapist, but “Even a dog needs medical attention.” She said she believes that “If they are doing him that way, they are going to let somebody else die, too.”

In fact, Mississippi has one of the highest prisoner death rates in the nation, according to a review of prison statistics carried out by the Jackson Clarion Ledger’s Chris Joyner, and the death rate in 2007 was 34 percent higher than in 2006—the year Wexford took over the MDOC’s medical care. A December 2007 report conducted by the Mississippi Legislature’s Joint Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review (PEER) concluded that inmates were not receiving timely and adequate medical treatment from Wexford. Among other things, the PEER report found that Wexford “did not meet medical care standards set forth under its contract with the state,” and that the company “did not adhere to its own standards in following up on inmates with chronic health problems.” When questioned about the report and the high prisoner death rates, the Clarion Ledger reported, Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps “said he is satisfied with the contractor’s performance.” The budget presented by Epps for the coming fiscal year, which begins on July 1, 2010, shows a request of $37.4 million to Wexford for medical services.

In response to questions about care provided by Wexford, MDOC spokesperson Suzanne Garbo Singletary wrote: “Jamie Scott is receiving quality medical care for her condition. Wexford provides basic medical care for all inmates at MDOC prisons. Inmates are sent to hospitals if the need for hospital care arises.” Singletary stated that such decisions are made by the attending doctor at the prison, who is a Wexford employee. Wexford did not respond to requests for comment.

Unpardonable Offenses

Nancy Lockhart, a legal investigator and analyst based in South Carolina, has been working with Evelyn Rasco for several years, organizing a grassroots campaign to secure decent treatment for the Scotts and either a review of their case or some provision for their early release. In interviews last week, Lockhart said that she had helped Rasco appeal to the Obama Justice Department, which informed her that the statute of limitations was up for civil rights claims. They plan to try again, offering proof of earlier letters to the DOJ. They have also organized letter writing and email campaigns to numerous state and MDOC officials, and set up a web site. The Scott sisters’ group of supporters is growing, but they have received no meaningful responses to their pleas.

During her recent visit to Mississippi, Evelyn Rasco had the opportunity to confront Corrections Commissioner Christopher Epps in person when she attended a meeting at the state capitol on prison budget cuts. She spotted the Epps, whom she recognized from his photograph, walked up to him, and told him about her daughter’s poor health and the problems with her medical treatment. According to Rasco, Epps said that he was getting a lot of messages about Jamie Scott, and that he would do what he could obtain a pardon or clemency for the Scott sisters. He told her that he was “giving his word on this,” although he had no power to actually make it happen himself.

The person who could make it happen is Governor Haley Barbour, whose past record on pardons does not bode well for Jamie and Gladys Scott. Barbour, who took office in 2004, was initially known for refusing to grant any pardons. In his second term he changed course–but only for a particular set of offenders. A 2008 investigation by the Jackson Free Press found that Barbour had pardoned or suspended the sentences of five murderers, four of whom had killed their former or current wives or girlfriends. All five men were part of a prison trusty program under which they did odd jobs at the governor’s mansion. Writing in Slate, Radley Balko summarized Haley Barbour’s policy on pardons as “show[ing] mercy only to murderers who work on his house.”

Jamie Scott’s health crisis has also coincided with a protracted struggle between the governor and state legislators over how to handle budget shortfalls. Throughout, the ambitious Barbour, who is talked about as a possible 2012 presidential candidate, has appeared determined to polish his reputation for being both fiscally conservative and tough on crime. With revenue down due to the recession, Barbour implemented a series of deep, across-the-board cuts to state spending in the current fiscal year. Last week the he vetoed a bill that would have restored some of that funding, primarily to education. At the same time, he asked the legislature to put $16 million back into the Department of Corrections budget. “We have the resources to restore funding to our priorities this year,” the governor said in a statement, “including law enforcement and corrections.”

Against opponents who argued that Mississippi already spends more on prisoners than it does on schoolchildren, Barbour held up the specter of what could happen if prison spending was cut: 3,000 to 4,000 inmates would have to be released early. “The threat of convicted criminals on the streets,” the Jackson Free Press wrote earlier this month, “has provided Barbour a rhetorical trump card in budget negotiations.”

Jamie and Gladys Scott

Even amidst this kind of rhetoric, it would be difficult to see the Scott sisters as dangerous or violent offenders, although the state of Mississippi went to great lengths to depict them as such. On Christmas Eve of 1993, Jamie and Gladys, then 22 and 19, were both young mothers with no criminal records. They were at the local mini-mart buying heating fuel when they ran into two young men they knew, who offered to give them a ride. Sometime later that evening, the two young men were robbed by a group of three boys, ages 14 to 18, who arrived in another car, armed with a shotgun.

Jamie and Gladys say that they had already left the scene to walk home when the robbery took place, and had nothing to do with it. The state insisted they were an integral part of the crime, and in fact had set up the victims to be robbed. Wherever the truth lies, trial transcripts clearly reveal a the case based on the highly questionable testimony of two of the teenaged co-defendants–who had turned state’s evidence against the Scott sisters in return for eight-year sentences—and a prosecutor who appears determined to demonize the two young women.

Jamie and Gladys Scott were not initially arrested for the crime. But ten months later, the 14-year-old co-defendant–who had been in jail on remand during that time–signed a statement implicating them. When questioned by the Scotts’ attorney, the boy confirmed that he had been “told that before you would be allowed to plead guilty” to a lesser charge, “you would have to testify against Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott.” The boy also testified that he had neither written nor read the statement before signing it. It had been written for him by someone at the county sheriff’s office, he said, and he “didn’t know what it was.” But he had been told that if he signed it “they would let me out of jail the next morning, and that if I didn’t participate with them, that they would send me to Parchman [state penitentiary] and make me out a female”—which he took to mean he would be raped. The 18-year-old co-defendant who testified against the Scott sisters also said he was testifying against the Scotts as a condition of his guilty plea to a lesser charge.

But the prosecutor succeeded in depicting Jamie and Gladys Scott not only as participants in the crime robbery, but as its masterminds—two older women who had lured three impressionable boys into the robbing the victims at gunpoint. (This despite the fact that the oldest of the co-defendants was just a year younger than Gladys, and was driving around with a shotgun in his car.) In his summation, he told the jury:

They thought it up. They came up with the plan. They duped three young teenage boys into going along and doing something stupid that is going to cost them the next eight years of their lives in the penitentiary.

That probably makes me, at least, as mad about this case, simply at least as much, as the fact that two people got robbed. That three young boys were duped into doing the dirty work.

The prosecutor also reminded jurors that while Jamie and Gladys Scott admittedly did not have a weapon, the judge’s instructions “tell you that if they encourage someone else or counsel them or aid them in any way in committing this robbery they are equally guilty.”

It took the jury just 36 minutes to convict the Scott sisters. And while there was a range of possible sentences for the crime of armed robbery, the state asked for—and received—two consecutive life sentences for the Scott sisters. In contrast, Edgar Ray Killen, the man convicted in 2005 of manslaughter in the 1964 deaths of civil rights workers Schwerner, Cheney, and Goodman, received a sentence of 60 years–meted out by the same judge who presided over the trial of Jamie and Gladys Scott. A direct appeal, carried out by the same lawyers who defended them at trial, failed to overturn the Scotts’ conviction.

Because they were tried for a crime committed before October 1994, when even harsher sentencing rules were put in place in Mississippi, the Scott sisters will be eligible for parole in 2014, after they have served 20 years—though there is no guarantee they will receive it. In the meantime, Evelyn Rasco is praying for mercy, for a good lawyer—and for her daughter Jamie to live that long.
http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/about/for-jamie-scott-an-11-robbery-in-mississippi-may-carry-a-death-sentence/

Posted by lois at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2010

California man gets eight years for stealing cheese Robert Ferguson was sentenced under the 'three strikes' law, as critics again plea for reform of state's overcrowded prisons

California man gets eight years for stealing cheese
Robert Ferguson was sentenced under the 'three strikes' law, as critics again plea for reform of state's overcrowded prisons
Wednesday 3 March 2010
The Guardian
Daniel Nasaw

A California man has been sentenced to up to eight years in prison for stealing a $3.99 (£2.60) bag of shredded cheese in a case critics say shows the need for reform of the state's criminal justice system and the overcrowded state of its prisons.

Robert Ferguson, who prosecutors say has a nearly 30-year record of convictions for burglary and other offences, avoided a life sentence under the state's controversial "three strikes" law after a psychological evaluation deemed him bipolar and unable to control his impulses to steal, the Sacramento Bee reported.

Prosecutor Clinton Parish said Ferguson had spent 22 of the past 27 years behind bars but had failed to show he could obey the law. A judge sentenced him to seven years and eight months in prison, but he could be eligible for parole in three years.

The ruling came amid critical overcrowding in the California prison system, to which years of tough policies, the "war on drugs" and one of the highest US recidivism rates have contributed. The system held 166,569 inmates in August, but remains so overcrowded nearly 8,000 have been sent to prisons outside the state.

The state's three strikes law, passed in 1994, significantly increased the amount of time repeat convicted criminals serve in prison. It provides 25 years to life in prison for a third felony conviction by an offender with two or more prior serious or violent criminal convictions. As of March 2008, more than 41,000 people were in prison under the three strikes law. A 2005 legislative report estimated the law, including its application to nonviolent offences, added about $0.5bn in costs annually.

With prisoners stacked three-high in bunk beds in gymnasiums and packed into hallways and classrooms, California's prison system is so overcrowded that a series of judges have ruled conditions violate the US constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Last month, a federal judge ordered the state to reduce overcrowding by 55,000, the same week that a state court approved a life sentence for a man convicted of possessing 0.03 grams of methamphetamine.

America's most populous state has been crippled by political discord, unable to close a $20bn budget gap. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for a 12% cut in the state's prison budget, to $8.1bn.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/03/california-eight-years-stealing-cheese

Posted by lois at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2010

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

The corrections Rendell's budget needs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 05, 2010

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

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

By Laura Nichols Email
Penn State Collegian Staff Writer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 02, 2010

NY: Jim Crow Policing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 01, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 30, 2010

"Compassionate Release" has little effect on early release of sick and dying priosoners

January 30, 2010
Law Has Little Effect on Early Release for Inmates
By CARA BUCKLEY
NY Times
COXSACKIE, N.Y. — With his swollen legs and a throaty rasp that whistles like a kettle through his broken teeth, Eddie Jones is an unlikely man to make history.

He is 89 and dying, a former loan shark who, at 69, shot another man dead on a Harlem street in what he claimed was self-defense. Now he is serving a sentence of 25 years to life in a prison hospital bed in this upstate town, riddled with heart disease and probably cancer, though his doctors are not certain about the cancer because Mr. Jones has refused most every medical test.

Mr. Jones’s original parole date was in 2015, but he stands to go free in the coming weeks under a new state law that makes chronically as well as terminally ill inmates eligible for early release. Inmates must be deemed physically or cognitively unable to present a threat to society.

The law, passed with the state budget last April, expanded the eligibility list to add those convicted of violent crimes including second-degree murder (like Mr. Jones), first-degree manslaughter and sex offenses, so long as the ailing inmates have served half their time.

But despite fanfare within the corrections field about the humanitarian and financial benefits of compassionate release — New York is one of a dozen states that have expanded, enacted or streamlined programs over the past two years — the policy shift has had minimal effect. Experts attribute this to the fear that freed inmates, no matter how sick, might commit further crimes, as well as to the difficulty of placing dying criminals in nursing homes.

“The problem is, when we start trying to put people out, there are others in the community who are sure we’re trying to make more crime in the community,” said Dr. Lester Wright, chief medical officer for the New York State Department of Correctional Services. “We’re also competing for beds. Some people think my patients aren’t as valuable as other people in society.”

The embrace of compassionate release comes as the nation’s prison population is at a historic high — 1.6 million people as of 2008, according to the Justice Department — compounded by a surge in aging and sick inmates serving longer sentences. In 2008, there were 74,100 inmates age 55 and older, a 79 percent increase from 1999. New York estimates the cost of caring for a gravely ill inmate at $150,809 a year.

Once released, they are usually cared for by family members or placed in nursing homes or hospices, their expenses largely covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

But while the new state guidelines led to a rise in applications for medical parole — 202 inmates last year, compared with 66 in 2008 — they have hardly led to more releases. Mr. Jones would, in fact, be the first freed under the new guidelines (the seven inmates released last year were eligible under the old rules).

The National Conference of State Legislatures said 39 states had compassionate release programs, but many of them also have minimal impact.

In California, where federal judges ordered the state to cut the prison population by 40,000, three people were granted compassionate release last year. In Alabama, where prisons are at double their capacity, four sick inmates were let out on compassionate release in the 2009 fiscal year; 35 other prisoners in Alabama died while their applications were being reviewed.

Since New York adopted medical parole in 1992, at the height of the AIDS crisis, 364 people have been released.

“Medical parole was designed to consider the humanitarian needs of inmates as well as the safety of the community,” said Brian Fischer, commissioner of the State Department of Correctional Services. “Anybody can tell us they want medical parole, but the numbers who qualify are going to be a lot smaller than the ones who want it.”

Advocates for prisoners argue that fear of recidivism is unreasonable, especially for convicts close to death. Corrections officials said during the 18 years the program in New York has been in effect, three medically paroled inmates have ended up back in prison, none for violent crimes.

“Politicians and high-level officials and bureaucrats don’t want to be accused of being soft on crime, even if the prisoners are terminally ill and there’s no possible risk to public safety,” said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison advocacy group.

Indeed, the release last summer in Scotland of a sick Libyan man convicted in the bombing of an airplane over Lockerbie created an international furor. Last fall, anger over New York’s new law erupted when Gregory Felder, who was convicted of murdering a Radio Shack employee on Long Island in 2004 and is now gravely ill, was considered for parole. (He was turned down; and a legislative loophole that had made him eligible despite having not yet served half his sentence was subsequently closed.)

Other cases have unfolded far from the public glare. Cinderella Marrett, 74, who was caught at Kennedy International Airport in 2007 smuggling cocaine in her girdle — to offset medical expenses, her daughter said — was released in May 2009. Stricken with cancer, she is living in a nursing home in the Bronx.

Since 2005, at least 16 New York inmates have died while waiting for the parole board to decide their fate.

Timothy McGowan, a once-burly high school dropout from Deer Park, N.Y., spent half of his 50 years behind bars for 11 felony convictions, including robbery and second-degree manslaughter. By the time he was thrown back in prison for a parole violation in April 2009, cancer was consuming his lungs, whittling away his body and creeping up his brain stem.

In July, when Mr. McGowan could barely walk, his prison doctors applied on his behalf for compassionate release; his final wish was to have one last cup of tea with his mother in their Long Island home. Instead, he died at the Fishkill Correctional Facility on Nov. 7, two days before the parole board was to hear his case.

Among the prisoners in New York newly eligible but denied release last year was Sergio Black, 38, a former Marine who said he had fought in the first gulf war.

Mr. Black was convicted in 2005 of raping his former companion, which he denied. In 2006, his spinal cord was injured in a prison basketball game. Now a quadriplegic in the Walsh Regional Medical Unit of the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, N.Y., Mr. Black is a “poster boy for medical parole,” according to his lawyer, Stephen Dratch, because it would be difficult for him to commit another physical crime. But the parole board rejected his application, saying Mr. Brown “exhibited little or no insight or remorse for the victim.”

Mr. Jones, the near-nonagenarian and former loan shark known by his hospice aides as the Harlem Knight, was supposed to go before the parole board in December, but the hearing was pushed back twice because the court had not yet sent a transcript from his sentencing. His next scheduled parole date is next month, and he remains bedridden in the hospice at the Coxsackie state prison.

A long-lost niece, Marcy Jones, who lives in Washington, has poured her heart into pushing corrections officials and the governor’s office to grant the parole. She is optimistic enough that she has bought her uncle a new wardrobe and has set up a battery of medical appointments for him.

“Once I get him out, I’m going to advocate for others,” Ms. Jones said. “There are other Uncle Eddies out there.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/nyregion/30parole.html

Posted by lois at 05:44 PM | Comments (0)

Pregnant and Shackled: Hard Labor for Arizona's Immigrants

Pregnant and Shackled: Hard Labor for Arizona's Immigrants
By Valeria Fernandez, New America Media
Posted on January 28, 2010, Printed on January 30, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145428/

PHOENIX, Ariz.-- Miriam Mendiola-Martinez, an undocumented immigrant charged with using someone else’s identity to work, gave birth to a boy on Dec. 21 at Maricopa Medical Center. After her C-section, she was shackled for two days to her hospital bed. She was not allowed to nurse her baby. And when guards walked her out of the hospital in shackles, she had no idea what officials had done with her child.

Like Mendiola-Martinez, pregnant inmates in Maricopa County Jail are routinely denied bond because they are undocumented immigrants. That means they can’t get out of jail for their childbirth, even if they are awaiting trial for a minor offense.

In some cases, undocumented immigrants are shackled as they are transported to the jail-contracted hospital, and shackled during and after childbirth.

Hospital authorities don't control this practice and medical personnel involved in these cases declined to be interviewed.

All hospitalized inmates are treated in the same manner as Mendiola-Martinez, according to Lt. Brain Lee, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. He said she had a “soft restraint” attached on one leg to her bed to prevent escape.

That soft restraint was a 12-foot-long chain.

“I could barely walk, I don’t think I could have escaped or even dared to run. I don’t think there was a need for them to do that,” said 34-year-old Mendiola-Martinez.

She says she was shackled during the two last months of her pregnancy too. Every time she had a pre-natal appointment, she waited in a small un-ventilated room with 20 other women. She had to sit in the floor. The chains were heavy and hurt her waist. Mendiola-Martinez often wept. She feared that her sadness could hurt the baby.

Unequal Justice

Mendiola’s story would have been different if she hadn’t been undocumented. She would have been released on bond before her baby was born because she had committed a non-violent crime, according to David Black, a criminal defense attorney who took her case pro-bono.

But in November 2006, Arizona voters approved a law that denies undocumented immigrants the right to post bail. Proposition 100 was authored by Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, as a way to keep undocumented immigrants who had been charged with “serious crimes” from being released.

The Arizona legislature included among those accusations minor offenses like possession of false documents, which undocumented immigrants frequently use to obtain employment.

The law, which is unique in the nation, is being challenged in the U.S. District Court of Arizona by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on the basis that it violates the Constitution by unjustly denying a select group of people a fair hearing. The lawsuit, however, doesn’t include the cases of pregnant women.

“I think Prop. 100 puts migrant women at a disadvantage and treats them unfairly,” said Bob McWhirter, a senior attorney with the Maricopa Legal Defender’s office.

About 1,500 pregnant women come through the Maricopa County Estrella jail every year. In 2009, 35 of them gave birth while in custody, according to Maricopa Medical Center records. More than 70 percent of the women detained in Maricopa County jails are accused of non-violent crimes and haven’t been sentenced yet. About 11 percent of them are undocumented immigrants. Health and county authorities say they don’t keep records on the immigration status or ethnicity of the women who give birth.

In October 2008, a federal judge ruled that conditions at the Maricopa County Jail, overseen by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, were unconstitutional and jeopardized the health and safety of the prisoners. The judge ordered jail officials to ensure that detainees received proper medical care, medicine and food that complied with federal standards. That same year, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care said the county’s jails did not comply with federal standards due to their failure to submit reports on jail conditions.

More Shackling Cases

Although Mendiola-Martinez’s story is not unique, it is difficult to track how many other women have shared her experience because most of them have been deported. Yet other detainees attest to the poor treatment of pregnant immigrants inside the county jails.

In October 2008, Alma Chacón, an undocumented immigrant arrested during a traffic stop for having outstanding unpaid tickets, delivered her baby in a “forensic restraint,” according to hospital records. Chacón said detention officers shackled her hands and legs during childbirth. She couldn’t nurse or hold her baby until she was released from immigration custody almost 70 days later.

Chacón’s case caught the attention of the federal Department of Justice, which is currently conducting a civil rights investigation into Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office.

The sheriff’s office says it doesn’t have a policy regarding the shackling of pregnant women. Spokesperson Aaron Douglas said they had no intention of changing the practice. But when questioned directly by New America Media about these cases, Arpaio said that everything was done “legally.” Yet, he added, he may consider reviewing the practice.

Still, critics point out that pregnant inmates who have been sentenced to state prison are treated better than inmates who are awaiting their sentencing in Maricopa County jails.

The Arizona Department of Corrections, which oversees state prison inmates, initiated a policy in 2003 that states: “A pregnant women will not be restrained in any manner while in labor, while giving birth, or during the postpartum recovery period.”

In 2008, the Federal Bureau of Prisons barred the shackling of pregnant inmates in federal prisons except when it was necessary for security concerns. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doesn’t have a specific policy prohibiting their use. But advocates at the Rebecca Project, which is part of a national anti-shackling coalition, said they are in conversation with ICE to put regulations in place.

The practice of shackling women during childbirth is frowned upon by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. They say that shackling women during labor, delivery and post-partum is dangerous to a woman’s health and that of her unborn child.

Maricopa County is not unique in the practice of shackling pregnant women. Only six states in the nation have laws regulating the use of restraints on pregnant inmates: California, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Texas and Vermont.

Advocates are hoping to include Arizona on the list.

Voces por la Vida, a pro-life group in Phoenix directed by Rosie Villegas-Smith, is leading the charge for anti-shackling legislation.

“Undocumented women are the most vulnerable here because they don’t have a right to be released on bond,” she said.

Villegas-Smith says Arizona lawmakers are endangering the health of women and children in the name of fighting illegal immigration.

“I think a distinction has to be made and some humanity brought into Maricopa County laws, to allow [undocumented] nursing mothers and pregnant women to have their children outside of detention,” said Delia Salvatierra, Mendiola’s immigration attorney.

When contacted by New America Media, Rep. Martha Garcia, D-Phoenix, said she would try to introduce a bill to ban the use of shackling.

“My main concern is that women are traumatized by being shackled and what this does to their babies, too,” said the legislator, who is involved in the public health outreach program Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies.

“It makes me really angry that this is happening in the state of Arizona, because I believe the treatment of immigrants is worse here than anywhere else,” Garcia added.

The issue will be hard to push in the Arizona state legislature. Over the last five years, conservative Republicans have supported a series of anti-immigrant laws, aimed at creating a hostile environment in the state to push migrants out.

The most recently enacted law, House Bill 2008, requires state employees to report immigrants who apply for public benefits to ICE. The law, sponsored by Republican leadership as part of a special session budget package, is causing pregnant immigrant women to be afraid of requesting free pre-natal services and health care.

Humanitarian Release

On Dec. 24, the date of her sentencing, Mendiola-Martinez was brought into the courtroom in a wheel chair, her hands and legs shackled.

“It was never my intention to hurt the victim. Please forgive me and let me go back to my children,” she told the judge. She was sentenced to time served and two years of probation. ICE didn’t take her into custody after her release from jail for “humanitarian reasons,” according to Vincent Piccard, a spokesperson for that agency.

Mendiola-Martinez was able to hold her baby again on Christmas Day. She takes joy in being with him and smiles when she watches him sleep. Secretly, though, she searches his face for any sign that her depression in jail might have had a negative effect on him while he was in her womb. Her children are U.S. citizens, but her future in the country where she’s lived for the past 15 years is still uncertain.

“I wish they would change things,” she said of current immigration laws. “Because when they do this to us, they do it to our children.”

© 2010 New America Media All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/145428/

Posted by lois at 05:39 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2010

WI: Dungeons & Dragons Prison Ban Upheld

Dungeons & Dragons Prison Ban Upheld
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: January 26, 2010

Prisons can restrict the rights of inmates to nerd out, a federal appeals court has found.

In an opinion issued on Monday , a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit rejected the claims in a lawsuit challenging a ban on the game Dungeons & Dragons by the Waupun Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.

The suit was brought by a prisoner, Kevin T. Singer, who argued that his First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights were violated by the prison’s decision to ban the game and confiscate his books and other materials, including a 96-page handwritten manuscript he had created for the game.

Mr. Singer, “a D&D enthusiast since childhood,” according to the court’s opinion, was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for bludgeoning and stabbing his sister’s boyfriend to death.

Prison officials said they had banned the game at the recommendation of the prison’s specialist on gangs, who said it could lead to gang behavior and fantasies about escape.

Dungeons & Dragons could “foster an inmate’s obsession with escaping from the real-life correctional environment, fostering hostility, violence and escape behavior,” prison officials said in court. That could make it more difficult to rehabilitate prisoners and could endanger public safety, they said.

The court, which is based in Chicago, acknowledged that there was no evidence of marauding gangs spurred to their acts of destruction by swinging imaginary mauls, but it ruled nonetheless that the prison’s decision was “rationally related” to legitimate goals of prison administration.

“We are pleased with the ruling,” said John Dipko, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, who added that the prison rules “enable us to continue our mission of keeping our state safe.”

News of the decision spread quickly though the network of blogs that discuss such games and to those devoted to the law, where many commentators revealed perhaps more of their own history as gamers than they might have intended. On The Volokh Conspiracy, a legal blog, a particularly rollicking discussion ensued, kicked off with a post by Ilya Somin, an associate professor of law at George Mason University, who asked, “Should prisons ban ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ on the grounds that it might encourage escape attempts?”

In an interview, Professor Somin said the prison’s action was reminiscent of a media frenzy in the 1980s surrounding the supposedly pernicious effects of gaming. “Ideally, you should really have more evidence that there is a genuine harm before you restrict something,” he said.

The comments accompanying Professor Somin’s post ranged from hoots of outrage over the ban to constitutionally nuanced discussion, but they showed that there were many lawyers who at some point owned a pouch with some dice of more than six sides. And none of them seemed to think that the risk to the nation’s prisons could be found in the works of Gary Gygax or other creators of the genre.

As Andrew Oh-Willeke, a lawyer in Denver, wrote, “If more inmates were über-nerdy D&D players, life would be good.”
A version of this article appeared in print on January 27, 2010, on page A16 of the National edition.

Posted by lois at 06:42 PM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2010

NY State: a proposed new law which would lift the tax exemption on commissaries with a portion of sales tax going localities

This proposed legislation in NY would create just one more way that local rural communities could benefit from the poor who are kept behind the prison walls. See attached proposed Bill.
New Yorkers: contact your legislators and ask them to vote against this Bill.

"AN ACT to amend the correction law, in relation to charging taxes on sales of commissaries and canteens"

Current law, which exempts these transactions from
sales taxation, prevents localities in which correctional institutes are
located from receiving their local share of sales tax which would be
forthcoming were these sales to occur in non-institutional setting.
These sales are estimated at $23 million statewide, with $13 million
subject to the sales. This represents a significant loss of revenue for those localities with prison facilities. Further it is not appropriate that prisoners are exempted from sales and compensating use tax on goods that are taxable simply because they are bought in prison commissaries.

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

January 20, 2010

New Orleans: Sex Workers Now Being Charged as "sex offenders"

Her Crime? Sex Work in New Orleans
By Jordan Flaherty
ColorLines magazine
With police charging sex workers as sex offenders—the majority of them Black women—activists hope the city’s mayoral elections next month will pave the way for fighting the law.

January 13, 2010

Tabitha has been working as a prostitute in New Orleans since she was 13. Now 30 years old, she can often be found working on a corner just outside of the French Quarter. A small and slight white woman, she has battled both drug addiction and illness and struggles every day to find a meal or a place to stay for the night.

These days, Tabitha, who asked that her real name not be used in this story, has yet another burden: a stamp printed on her driver’s license labels her a sex offender. Her crime? Sex work.

New Orleans city police and the district attorney’s office are using a state law written for child molesters to charge hundreds of sex workers like Tabitha as sex offenders. The law, which dates back to 1805, makes it a crime against nature to engage in “unnatural copulation”—a term New Orleans cops and the district attorney’s office have interpreted to mean anal or oral sex. Sex workers convicted of breaking this law are charged with felonies, issued longer jail sentences and forced to register as sex offenders. They must also carry a driver’s license with the label “sex offender” printed on it.

Of the 861 sex offenders currently registered in New Orleans, 483 were convicted of a crime against nature, according to Doug Cain, a spokesperson with the Louisiana State Police. And of those convicted of a crime against nature, 78 percent are Black and almost all are women.

The law impacts sex workers in both small and large ways.

Tabitha has to register an address in the sex offender database, and because she doesn’t have a permanent home, she has registered the address of a nonprofit organization that is helping her. She also has to purchase and mail postcards with her picture to everyone in the neighborhood informing them of her conviction. If she needs to evacuate to a shelter during a hurricane, she must evacuate to a special shelter for sex offenders, and this shelter has no separate safe spaces for women. She is even prohibited from very ordinary activities in New Orleans like wearing a costume at Mardi Gras.

“This law completely disconnects our community members from what remains of a social safety net,” said Deon Haywood, director of Women With A Vision, an organization that promotes wellness and disease prevention for women who live in poverty. Haywood’s group has formed a new coalition of New Orleans activists and health workers who are organizing to fight the way police are abusing the 1805 law.

Activists like Haywood believe that using the law in this way is part of an overall policy by the New Orleans Police Department to go after petty offenses. According to a report from the Metropolitan Crime Commission, New Orleans police arrest more than 58,000 people every year. Of those arrested, nearly 50 percent are for traffic and municipal offenses, and only 5 percent are for violent crimes.

“What this is really about is over-incarcerating poor and of-color communities,” said Rosana Cruz of VOTE-NOLA, a prison reform organization that is also a part of the new coalition.

Haywood, Cruz and other activists believe they have an opportunity with the mayoral and city council elections next month to change the system. With all of the candidates attempting to distance themselves from Mayor Nagin, who is prevented by term limits from running again, the new mayor is likely to be open to making changes. This includes hiring a new police chief, as all the candidates have pledged to do. Advocates are hoping this is an opportunity to shift the department’s focus. “When there's a new police chief, we can educate them,” said Haywood.

Many of the women Haywood’s group works with are at the most high-risk tier of sex work. They meet customers on the street and in bars, Haywood said. Most women are dealing with addiction and homelessness, and many cannot get food stamps or other public assistance because of felony convictions on their record.

“I’m hoping that the situation will look different because of this coalition,” Haywood said. “I can’t tell you how overwhelmed we’ve been from the needs of this population.”

Miss Jackie is one of those women. A Black woman in her 50s, she was arrested for sex work in 1999 and charged as a sex offender. Her real name, which she declined to give for this story, was added to the registry for 10 years. Miss Jackie says that when the registration period was almost over she was arrested for possession of crack. She says the arresting officer didn’t find any drugs on her person, but the judge ruled that she needed to continue to register as a sex offender for another 15 years (the new federal requirement for sex offenders) because her arrest was a violation of her registration period.

"Where is the justice?” she asked, speaking through tears. “How do they expect me to straighten out my life?” Struggling with basic needs like housing, Miss Jackie added: “I feel condemned."

Advocates and former defendants claim that the decision over who is charged under which penalty is made arbitrarily, at the discretion of police and the district attorney’s office, and that the law disproportionately affects Black people, as well as transgender women. When asked about the allegations of abusing the crime against nature statue, New Orleans Police Department spokesman Bob Young responded: “Persons are charged according to the crime they commit.”

Wendi Cooper’s story, however, paints a different picture.

In 1999, Cooper had recently come out as transgender. A Black transwoman, she tried prostitution a few times and quickly discovered it wasn’t for her. But before she quit, she was arrested. At the time, Cooper was happy to take a plea that allowed her to get out of jail and didn’t think much about what the “crime against nature” conviction would mean on her record. As she got older and began work as a healthcare professional, the weight of the sex offender label began to upset her more and more. “This is not me,” she said. “I’m not that person who the state labeled me as…it slanders me.”

Cooper appealed to the state to have her record expunged and talked to lawyers about other options, but she still must register for at least another five years and potentially longer. “I feel like I was manipulated, you know, pleading guilty to this crime…And it’s hard, knowing that you are called something that you’re not,” she said. She is also afraid now that the conviction will prevent her from getting her license as a registered nurse or from being hired.

Although some women have tried to fight the sex offender charges in court, they’ve had little success. The penalties they face became even harsher in 2006 when Congress passed the Adam Walsh act, requiring tier-1 (the least serious) sex offenders to stay in the public registry for 15 years. There’s also an added danger to fighting the charges, according to Josh Perry, a former attorney with the Orleans Public Defenders office.

“The way Louisiana’s habitual offender law works, if you challenge your sentence in court and lose, and it’s a third offense, the mandatory minimum is 20 years. The maximum is life,” he explained.

Perry estimates that on an average day two or three people are arrested for prostitution in New Orleans, and about half of them are charged under the crime against nature statute. “Right now, there are 39 people being held at Orleans Parish Prison [for] crimes against nature,” Perry told a gathering of advocates last August. “And another 15 to 20 people…charged with failure to register as a sex offender.”

Sex workers accused as sex offenders face discrimination in every aspect of the system. In most cases, they cannot get released on bond, because they are seen as a higher risk of flight than people charged with violent crimes. “This is the level of stigma and dysfunction that we’re talking about here,” said Perry. “Realistically, they’re not getting out.”

Advocates have said the ideal solution would be to get state lawmakers to change the law, but they feel there’s little hope of positive reforms from the current legislature. For now, organizers want to put pressure on police and the district attorney’s office to stop charging sex workers under the crime against nature statute.

There is a great deal of work that needs to be done. Haywood is working with lawyers and national allies to develop a legal strategy, as well as a broad local coalition that includes criminal justice reform organizations like VOTE-NOLA and activist groups like the New Orleans chapters of Critical Resistance and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence.

“We’re trying to organize, but we’re also working on the human rights side of how it’s affecting their lives,” she said. “This is a population that works in crisis mode all the time.”

Jennifer, a 23-year-old white woman who asked that her real name not be used in this story, has been working as a prostitute since she was a teenager, and also works as a stripper at a club on Bourbon Street. She recently broke free of an eight-year heroin addiction. Unless the law changes, she will have the words “sex offender” on her driver’s license until she is 48 years old.

Haywood said that stories like this show that the law has the effect of forcing women to continue with sex work. “When you charge young women with this—when you label them as a sex offender—this is what they are for the rest of their lives,” she said.

Jennifer said it’s affected her job options. “I’m not sure what they think, but a lot of places wont hire sex offenders,” she said.

Haywood said the women she sees have few options. Many of them are homeless. They are sleeping in abandoned houses or on the street, or they are trading sex for a place to stay. “The women we work with, they don't call it sex work,” she said. “They don't know what that means. They don’t even call it prostitution. They call it survival.”

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist, an editor of Left Turn Magazine, and a staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and audiences around the world have seen the television reports he’s produced for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, GritTV, and Democracy Now. His post-Katrina reporting for ColorLines shared an award from New America Media for best Katrina-related reporting in ethnic press. Haymarket Press will release his new book, FLOODLINES: Stories of Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six, in 2010. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org
http://www.colorlines.com/printerfriendly.php?ID=673

Posted by lois at 05:58 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2010

Editorial: Sentenced to Abuse

Editorial: Sentenced to Abuse
Published: January 14, 2010
NY Times

The Justice Department needs to act swiftly and decisively to protect young people who are being battered and raped in juvenile corrections facilities all across the country. A shocking new study by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics surveyed more than 9,000 young people in custody and found that 12 percent reported being sexually abused one or more times, mainly by staff members.

Particularly alarming, the study found several juvenile facilities where 30 percent or more of the young people reported being raped. Some of the institutions with high rates of victimization were in Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.

These latest findings are consistent with those reported in June by a federal commission created by Congress under the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act. The commission, which examined the problem for five years, also outlined a list of sensible policy changes, which the Justice Department has the power to make mandatory for all corrections institutions that accept federal money.

The commission said that corrections facilities must make it easier for victims to report abuse without fear of reprisal and promptly and thoroughly investigate all rape claims. It said that prison employees must be better screened before they are hired, and they must be better trained in how to deal with vulnerable young people.

The commission also called on state corrections agencies to develop written zero-tolerance rules for employees of adult and juvenile facilities — and write those rules into union contracts. Employees must be put on notice that they will be held accountable if they participate in sexual assaults or look the other way when they occur.

The 2003 law gave the United States attorney general until June of this year to evaluate the commission’s findings and issue new rape-prevention standards. But juvenile justice advocates worry that the Justice Department will allow state corrections officials to water down those requirements, partly by arguing that they will be too expensive to implement. The department should not allow that to happen. If it does, Congress will have to strengthen the legislation. Zero tolerance for abuse in prisons or juvenile facilities must be the law of the land.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 15, 2010, on page A26 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15fri3.html

Posted by lois at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2010

Officials Hid Truth of Immigrant Deaths in Jail

Officials Hid Truth of Immigrant Deaths in Jail
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: January 9, 2010- NY Times

Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation’s immigration jails. For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. Even in 2008, when The New York Times obtained and published a federal government list of such deaths, few facts were available about who these people were and how they died.

But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.

The documents, obtained over recent months by The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, concern most of the 107 deaths in detention counted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since October 2003, after the agency was created within the Department of Homeland Security.

The Obama administration has vowed to overhaul immigration detention, a haphazard network of privately run jails, federal centers and county cells where the government holds noncitizens while it tries to deport them.

But as the administration moves to increase oversight within the agency, the documents show how officials — some still in key positions — used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.

As one man lay dying of head injuries suffered in a New Jersey immigration jail in 2007, for example, a spokesman for the federal agency told The Times that he could learn nothing about the case from government authorities. In fact, the records show, the spokesman had alerted those officials to the reporter’s inquiry, and they conferred at length about sending the man back to Africa to avoid embarrassing publicity.

In another case that year, investigators from the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that unbearable, untreated pain had been a significant factor in the suicide of a 22-year-old detainee at the Bergen County Jail in New Jersey, and that the medical unit was so poorly run that other detainees were at risk.

The investigation found that jail medical personnel had falsified a medication log to show that the detainee, a Salvadoran named Nery Romero, had been given Motrin. The fake entry was easy to detect: When the drug was supposedly administered, Mr. Romero was already dead.

Yet those findings were never disclosed to the public or to Mr. Romero’s relatives on Long Island, who had accused the jail of abruptly depriving him of his prescription painkiller for a broken leg. And an agency supervisor wrote that because other jails were “finicky” about accepting detainees with known medical problems like Mr. Romero’s, such people would continue to be placed at the Bergen jail as “a last resort.”

In a recent interview, Benjamin Feldman, a spokesman for the jail, which housed 1,503 immigration detainees last year, would not say whether any changes had been made since the death.

In February 2007, in the case of the dying African man, the immigration agency’s spokesman for the Northeast, Michael Gilhooly, rebuffed a Times reporter’s questions about the detainee, who had suffered a skull fracture at the privately run Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. Mr. Gilhooly said that without a full name and alien registration number for the man, he could not check on the case.

But, records show, he had already filed a report warning top managers at the federal agency about the reporter’s interest and sharing information about the injured man, a Guinean tailor named Boubacar Bah. Mr. Bah, 52, had been left in an isolation cell without treatment for more than 13 hours before an ambulance was called.

While he lay in the hospital in a coma after emergency brain surgery, 10 agency managers in Washington and Newark conferred by telephone and e-mail about how to avoid the cost of his care and the likelihood of “increased scrutiny and/or media exposure,” according to a memo summarizing the discussion.

One option they explored was sending the dying man to Guinea, despite an e-mail message from the supervising deportation officer, who wrote, “I don’t condone removal in his present state as he has a catheter” and was unconscious. Another idea was renewing Mr. Bah’s canceled work permit in hopes of tapping into Medicaid or disability benefits.

Eventually, faced with paying $10,000 a month for nursing home care, officials settled on a third course: “humanitarian release” to cousins in New York who had protested that they had no way to care for him. But days before the planned release, Mr. Bah died.

Among the participants in the conferences was Nina Dozoretz, a longtime manager in the agency’s Division of Immigration Health Services who had won an award for cutting detainee health care costs. Later she was vice president of the Nakamoto Group, a company hired by the Bush administration to monitor detention. The Obama administration recently rehired her to lead its overhaul of detainee health care.

Asked about the conference call on Mr. Bah, Ms. Dozoretz said: “How many years ago was that? I don’t recall all the specifics if indeed there was a call.” She added, “I advise you to contact our public affairs office.” Mr. Gilhooly, the spokesman who had said he had no information on the case, would not comment.

On the day after Mr. Bah’s death in May 2007, Scott Weber, director of the Newark field office of the immigration enforcement agency, recommended in a memo that the agency take the unusual step of paying to send the body to Guinea for burial, to prevent his widow from showing up in the United States for a funeral and drawing news coverage.

Mr. Weber wrote that he believed the agency had handled Mr. Bah’s case appropriately. “However,” he added, “I also don’t want to stir up any media interest where none is warranted.” Helping to bury Mr. Bah overseas, he wrote, “will go a long way to putting this matter to rest.”

In the agency’s confidential files was a jail video showing Mr. Bah face down in the medical unit, hands cuffed behind his back, just before medical personnel sent him to a disciplinary cell. The tape shows him crying out repeatedly in his native Fulani, “Help, they are killing me!”

Almost a year after his death, the agency quietly closed the case without action. But Mr. Bah’s name had shown up on the first list of detention fatalities, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and on May 5, 2008, his death was the subject of a front-page article in The Times.

Brian P. Hale, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an interview that the newly disclosed records represented the past, and that the agency’s new leaders were committed to transparency and greater oversight, including prompt public disclosure and investigation of every death, and more attention to detainee care in a better-managed system.

But the most recent documents show that the culture of secrecy has endured. And the past cover-ups underscore what some of the agency’s own employees say is a central flaw in the proposed overhaul: a reliance on the agency to oversee itself.

“Because ICE investigates itself there is no transparency and there is no reform or improvement,” Chris Crane, a vice president in the union that represents employees of the agency’s detention and removal operations, told a Congressional subcommittee on Dec. 10.

The agency has kept a database of detention fatalities at least since December 2005, when a National Public Radio investigation spurred a Congressional inquiry. In 2006, the agency issued standard procedures for all such deaths to be reported in detail to headquarters.

But internal documents suggest that officials were intensely concerned with controlling public information. In April 2007, Marc Raimondi, then an agency spokesman, warned top managers that a Washington Post reporter had asked about a list of 19 deaths that the civil liberties union had compiled, and about a dying man whose penile cancer had spread after going undiagnosed in detention, despite numerous medical requests for a biopsy.

“These are quite horrible medical stories,” Mr. Raimondi wrote, “and I think we’ll need to have a pretty strong response to keep this from becoming a very damaging national story that takes on long legs.”

That response was an all-out defense of detainee medical care over several months, including statistics that appeared to show that mortality rates in detention were declining, and were low compared with death rates in prisons.

Experts in detention health care called the comparison misleading; it also came to light that the agency was undercounting the number of detention deaths, as well as discharging some detainees shortly before they died. In August, litigation by the civil liberties union prompted the Obama administration to disclose that more than one in 10 immigrant detention deaths had been overlooked and omitted from a list submitted to Congress last year.

Two of those deaths had occurred in Arizona, in 2004 and 2007, at the Eloy Detention Center, run by the Corrections Corporation of America. Eloy had nine known fatalities — more than any other immigration jail under contract to the federal government. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement was still secretive. When a reporter for The Arizona Republic asked about the circumstances of those deaths, an agency spokesman told him the records were unavailable.

According to records The Times obtained in December, one Eloy detainee who died, in October 2008, was Emmanuel Owusu. An ailing 62-year-old barber who had arrived from Ghana on a student visa in 1972, he had been a legal permanent resident for 33 years, mostly in Chicago. Immigration authorities detained him in 2006, based on a 1979 conviction for misdemeanor battery and retail theft.

“I am confused as to how subject came into our custody???” the Phoenix field office director, Katrina S. Kane, wrote to subordinates. “Convicted in 1979? That’s a long time ago.”

In response, a report on his death was revised to refer to Mr. Owusu’s “lengthy criminal history ranging from 1977 to 1998.” It did not note that except for the battery conviction, that history consisted mostly of shoplifting offenses.

A diabetic with high blood pressure, he had been detained for two years at Eloy while he battled deportation. He died of a heart ailment weeks after his last appeal was dismissed.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 10, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
Links to other articles on these stories at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/us/10detain.html

Posted by lois at 10:46 AM | Comments (0)

January 08, 2010

Justice Department Study: Youths Sexually Abused in Juvenile Prisons

Study: Youths sexually abused in juvenile prisons
USA Today 1-8-10
By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY

More than 12% of youths in juvenile prisons are sexually abused while in custody there, according to a Justice Department study out Thursday, and the vast majority of cases involve female staff and boys under their supervision.

In the worst facilities surveyed — in Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina and Texas — more than 30% of youths reported they had been sexually victimized. The study, the first of its kind, shows a rate of sexual assault more than seven times higher than that indicated by a 2008 Justice Department report that collected sexual abuse claims to juvenile facility administrators. It is also higher than a similar study of adult prisons because of the "very high rate of staff sexual misconduct," said Allen Beck, who directed the survey for the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The survey of 9,198 youths ages 13 to 21 — all in custody by order of a juvenile court — included methods to eliminate interviews considered unreliable. The survey covered 195 facilities, at least one in each state. Approximately 26,550 juveniles — 91% of them boys — are held in more than 500 such facilities around the country.

The survey showed that 10.3% of youths reported the sexual contact was with staff, compared with 2.6% who reported sexual victimization by other youths. In nearly half the incidents with staff, youths reported having sexual contact as a result of force.

The study sets a wider definition of sexual contact than rape, Beck said. Nonetheless, "these are all things that in the outside world would be considered violent or, by definition in law, they are illegal," he said.

Sexual victimization of youths in custody "is one of those hidden closets of the system," said Bart Lubow, director of the juvenile justice and strategy group for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which advocates for children. The rates at the worst facilities are "so high they're stunning," he said. "I am, on the other hand, never surprised as people peel the layers of the youth corrections onion and expose more and more things that make you cry."

Linda McFarlane of Just Detention International, an advocacy group focused on eliminating sexual abuse in prison, called the highest rates of abuse "shocking beyond belief."

"The incredibly high rates of staff misconduct is shocking and disturbing," McFarlane said. "We just need to do a better job with training and recruitment and hiring and supervision."

The survey showed that gay youths reported higher levels of sexual abuse from other juveniles, and so did youths who had been abused before coming to the facility.

That makes the survey valuable for juvenile facilities other than the type covered in the survey, she said. "While we can't say we know what's happening in, say, the smaller group-home settings … we can look at the information in this report and use it to protect those (particularly vulnerable) kids."

In Maryland, where 36% of youths surveyed at Backbone Mountain Youth Center said they had been victimized, the state Department of Juvenile Services said in a statement Thursday there will be an independent investigation by the state human resources and health agencies.

At Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility in Indiana, which also had among the highest rates of abuse in the study, four female guards were suspended a month ago after a report of sexual abuse, said Edwin Buss, state corrections commissioner.

Indiana officials say their own surveys show a much lower rate of sexual victimization.

"We're not denying that this happens," said Amanda Copeland, executive director of research and technology for the state Corrections Department. "We would be foolish to say that it never happens. We're just questioning the extent to which it's being reported" by the Justice Department. But the survey "gives us something to work with. Whether we agree with the percentages or the ratings or not, we recognize that we have issues and we need to address them, and we're taking steps to do so."

MAP of JUVENILE FACILITIES WITH HIGH RATES OF SEXUAL VICTIMIZATION at this URL
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-01-07-juvenile-prison-sexual-abuse_N.htm

Posted by lois at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)

January 07, 2010

CA: Prison to ax its woodworking classes. Adult programs and rehabilitation programs have 2/3 of their budgets cut

Prison to ax its woodworking classes
Written by Ashley Archibald, The Union Democrat
January 05, 2010 Sonora, CA

For the past 10 years, Randy Bland has held a job that might make some people nervous.

He oversees the mill and cabinetry class at Sierra Conservation Center, a program that teaches inmates the basics of the cabinet-making trade.

That’s 27 felons bearing power tools.

“I love it,” Bland, 51, said, standing in the kitchen that his wife, Susan, designed and he created in their Sonora home. “It’s a satisfying thing. I’d do it until I retired.”

However, deep cuts in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation budget mean that this, a graphic design class and a print shop all will be axed from the SCC curriculum by the end of January.

The Department of Corrections saw a $1.2 billion budget cut in 2009, forcing the department to pick certain programs to be reworked or discarded, according to spokeswoman Peggy Bengs.

Adult programs and rehabilitation programs took the brunt of it, as two-thirds of their budgets disappeared. Cutting certain classes, like mill and cabinetry, on a statewide scale saves the department $250 million, Bengs said.

"The state is emphasizing programs that reduce recidivism,” Bengs said. “We’re looking at vocational programs linked to job market demands that take 12 months to complete. Those reduce recidivism by 9 percent.”

The programs that survived budget cuts tended to be those that provide certification on top of satisfying the job market in the area where prisoners spend their parole periods.

The state prioritizes programs that can provide those certificates, Bengs said. Those include the automotive or welding programs, among others.

In Bland’s view, the mill and cabinetry program provides his students not only skills that can be used in a number of areas, but also valuable life skills that prepare people who haven’t had normal social interaction for the workplace.

“It can be tough,” he said. “You have a small shop and a lot of people. Personalities can clash.”

And part of the training is learning to work with people of different races, personality types and backgrounds. Learning a trade teaches them confidence, he said, a commodity a person doesn’t have a lot of when they are released with the stigma of having served time.

Bland created the class using state-mandated curriculum and textbooks, but put a heavy dash of his own hands-on style in to make sure his students learned. Students who had been around longer were put in charge of projects and given a team of less-experienced students to encourage peer teaching, Bland said.

He was there to supervise, answer questions and solve problems, both with the cabinets and between the inmates. He also made sure the shop had what it needed to be a good learning environment.

At this point, he said, the shop is state-of-the-art.

“It’s a wonderful shop, the state has been kind to me,” Bland said. “They put you in there and you make it what it is. You decide what to buy, what kind of machinery and how you run it.”

To get some of the supplies, Bland wrote grants and lobbied for resources.

The happy beneficiaries of the program include not just prisoners, but also budget-weary state and local agencies that need the services the program provides but can’t afford — like the Mi-Wuk-Sugar Pine Fire Protection District.

Fire Chief Randy Miller had a problem. The department needed a new firehouse, but it had a $20,000 budget to create a multi-purpose 1,300-square-foot building.

“You pay for stuff and then you blink your eyes and that budget is gone,” Miller said.

By using Bland’s shop, the fire department only had to pay for the materials needed to make the cabinets for the kitchen, saving a hefty sum of money for quality work, Miller said.

“For what it cost us, there is no way I could get this stuff, no way,” he said. “We had them put a cabinet in that we’ll put a counter top on. When it came back, we had to nudge that thing in there. It fit perfectly.”

Now that the program is ending, Bland is already getting calls for cabinet work in the county. He owned a business, Precision Woodworking, in the area from 1982 to 2000 when he quit to work in the prisons. But he’s not sure if he wants to launch a new business at this point in his life.

He doesn’t have a shop, and the shop at the prison will be dismantled. Equipment that can’t be used by the Education Department as a result of reductions will be given away to other institutions that request the equipment, Bengs said.

“If I’m laid off, I’m going to have to do something,” Bland said. “It’ll be low key.”
http://www.uniondemocrat.com/2010010598784/News/Local-News/Prison-to-ax-its-woodworking-classes

Posted by lois at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 15, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compared to other state departments, the prisons stood out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suicide watch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Effects on patient care

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Official Hopes Prison Crisis May Spur Change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ms. Carrión acknowledged that she needed to do better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 14, 2009

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

New York Finds Extreme Crisis in Youth Prisons

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: December 13, 2009
NY Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 13, 2009

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics

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

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

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

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

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

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

They plan to publish a report early next year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 11, 2009

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

The Graying of America’s Prisons: Part Two

By James Ridgeway
Thursday, December 10th, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Low Recidivism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 06, 2009

MA: Woman serving shoplifting sentence dies at Framingham

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 04, 2009

NY Times Editorial: Protection for the Vulnerable---stepping up the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act--including report on atrocities by guards at the Westchester Co Jail in N

NY Times Editorial
Protection for the Vulnerable
Published: December 3, 2009

The federal government is stepping up enforcement of an important law — the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act — which authorizes the Justice Department to sue prisons, jails, mental institutions, nursing homes and other facilities that violate the constitutional rights of the confined. In New York State, the department has already intervened three times this year to try to improve protections for vulnerable people.

Earlier this fall, the department threatened to sue New York’s juvenile justice system unless it agreed to correct barbaric conditions and abusive practices at some facilities. It has involved itself in a lawsuit brought against the state on behalf of thousands of mentally ill adults who are being isolated from the community, in clear violation of sound medical practice and federal law.

In a “letter,” actually a 40-page report, to Westchester County made public this week, the Justice Department detailed abusive conduct by guards at the Westchester County Jail in Valhalla.

The jail came under federal scrutiny in 2000 after a guard kicked a mentally ill man into a coma. The injured man later died, and the guard was convicted and sent to prison. The Justice Department inspected the jail last year, and the new report found that some conditions violate the inmates’ constitutional rights.

The investigation relied in part on videotapes that corrections officers made of their encounters with inmates in order to protect themselves from charges of abuse. In this case, federal officials say, the tapes showed them repeatedly injuring or needlessly inflicting pain on inmates. According to investigators, the officers obscured what actually happened by filing inaccurate incident reports. Supervisors who could have uncovered the abuse by viewing the videos seem not to have done so.

In what investigators described as a typical case, officers justified placing a woman in restraints and spraying her with mace by describing her in the incident report as out of control and “very combative.” The report says the tape shows an officer driving the woman’s head into a wall, while other officers wrestled her to the floor, applying handcuffs and leg restraints. An officer then sprayed her face with mace. The report also cites pronounced deficiencies in medical care at the jail. And, as is often the case in jails and prisons, the Westchester facility’s care for mentally ill inmates is said to fall far short of constitutional standards.

Westchester will need to make sweeping reforms to bring its jail into compliance with federal law and basic standards of decency. If it fails to do so, the Justice Department should sue the county to force those changes.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 4, 2009, on page A34 of the New York edition.

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

November 30, 2009

Telemundo: Unbelievable Even for Arpaio: Woman Forced to Give Birth While Shackled

Video: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Forces Woman to Give Birth While Shackled
by Mariela Rosario | 11.18.2009
Telemundo
The news team for Telemundo 52 recently reported on Alma Minerva Chacon, a women who was terrorized by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Unfortunately, she is just the latest in a long line of Latinos who have suffered at the hands of the ruthless Sheriff whose personal goal is to rid Arizona of all "illegals" and just maybe, all Latinos. Arpaio has repeatedly stated that he is breaking no laws and just enforcing the constitution by arresting more than 600 Latinos a year. But the problem with his tactics is that less than half of those arrested are even in this country illegally.

The most recent atrocity committed by the self-proclaimed "America's Toughest Sheriff" involves a woman who was detained while 9-months pregnant. Alma Minerva Chacon's case has been receiving media attention due to the brutality with which she was treated. The very same night of her arrest, Chacon went into labor and found herself afraid and alone, being rushed to a local hospital with her hands and legs chained in shackles.

Once she reached the hospital, nurses repeatedly begged the Sheriff's staff to allow them to unchain the mother, but they refused and Chacon was forced to give birth while still shackled to the bed. At one point, the nurse asked for them to release her so that she could be escorted to the bathroom for a urinalysis, but even that request was denied. But the worst came once Chacon gave birth to her baby girl.

Still chained to the bed, Arpaio's police staff refused to allow Chacon to hold her newborn baby and then warned her that if no one came to pick up the child within 72 hours, she would be turned over into state custody. Telemundo 52 sat down with Chacon and let her tell her side of the story. Check out the interview below and if you don't support Sheriff Arpaio's barbaric practices sign the petition at www.SheriffJoeMustGo.com:
http://www.latina.com/lifestyle/news-politics/video-sheriff-joe-arpaio-forces-woman-give-birth-while-shackled

Posted by lois at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)

Sick but True: GA Jail Painted Pink, Jumpsuits and Handcuffs Pink

GA jail goes pink
Posted: Nov 27, 2009 11:50 AM EST
BEN HILL CO, GA (NBC) - Georgia's Ben Hill County jail is getting a new look, and most inmates won't be thrilled.

The Sheriff is painting the entire jail bright pink.

Pure Pepto Bismol Pink will cover every wall inside the jail.

"We are also going to have pink shower shoes, pink wash clothes, pink towels, pink sheets and pink blankets," said jail administrator Martin Hough.

But why so much pink?

The Sheriff says there are plenty of reasons.

"Our goal here is not to just have a calming effect on all of the inmates but to make them not want to come back to the Ben Hill County Jail," said Sheriff Bobby McLemore.

Its been six years since the jail was painted so most cells are overloaded with graffiti.

It can also help keep the inmates behind bars.

Just months ago two inmates escaped from the jail wearing orange jumpsuits.

"If you see a bright pink jumpsuit you know we got an inmate on the lose," said the Sheriff.

And the girls?

They get bright lime green.

The sheriff is taking it very seriously, all the way down to bright pink handcuffs.

"This is our decor and if they don't like our decor then they don't have to come back to our jail," said the Sheriff.

Officials are hoping the new colors work wonders on the inmates.

"They really need soothing in jails they are extremely difficult to manage in county jails," said Hough.

They are hoping to have everything pink within the next month.

video:
http://www.14wfie.com/global/category.asp?c=151146&clipId=&topVideoCatNo=15032&topVideoCatNoB=135100&topVideoCatNoC=72953&topVideoCatNoD=129537&topVideoCatNoE=169932&autoStart=true&clipId=4337721&topVideoCatNo=undefined&autoStart=true

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

November 25, 2009

VA: Charges by women prisoners focus on being denied access to religious services and segregated wing for women thought to be lesbians

Officials investigate complaints at women's prison
By DENA POTTER Associated Press Writer
November 24, 2009
TROY, Va. - Corrections officials are investigating whether inmates are being denied access to religious services at Virginia's largest women's prison, scrutiny partly prompted by earlier allegations that the lockup segregated masculine-looking lesbian prisoners.

State Sen. Frank Ruff, R-Mecklenburg, said he was told access to religious services had been curtailed in interviews with dozens of former volunteers at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.

He asked the Department of Corrections to investigate in June after conducting those interviews and reading a story by The Associated Press about the practice of housing prisoners with masculine appearances in a separate wing.

Prisoner rights advocates, inmates and their families say they also have asked the department to investigate changes at the 1,200-inmate prison since Warden Barbara Wheeler took over in 2004 and brought in Major Michael Frame as head of security in 2008.

"Fluvanna was recognized certainly regionally if not nationally as being a role-model women's prison," Ruff said in an interview. "That does not appear to be the case at this time."

Department director Gene Johnson told Ruff in a July 8 letter he was sending investigators to the prison, but he had the impression things were running smoothly.

"I am taking this action not because I believe there has been any misconduct or malfeasance at the facility, indeed all reports I receive would indicate things are operating as they should," Johnson wrote.

Department spokesman Larry Traylor said the investigators' report isn't finished and may not be made public.

Wheeler declined interview requests, while Frame didn't return phone and e-mail messages.

Ruff was particularly concerned that inmates did not have the access to religious programs and services that they did under the previous administration, when he said about a third of the women attended services.

Inmates now must designate a religion and be approved and placed on a list to attend services. Only about 250 inmates are allowed to attend. Prison officials update the overall activity list, which includes those allowed to attend religious services, only once every three months.

Federal law allows prisons to limit religious freedoms only for compelling reasons, like safety, but requires that it be done in the least restrictive way. So requiring prisoners to designate a religion is OK, but requiring inmates to do so every three months or be denied access to religious services is excessive, said Helen Trainor, director of the Virginia Institutionalized Persons Project.

Gail Bradley, 53, who is serving time for theft and fraud, says the list to attend church has been full since she got to Fluvanna in December.

Several inmates said they have been turned away from religious services for punitive reasons, such as their hair being too long. If inmates go to segregation or are moved to another housing unit, they are removed from the list and denied services.

Lay chaplain visits and numerous self-help and other programs run through the chaplain's office were stopped. Ruff said some programs were suspended after administrators learned about his meeting with the volunteers.

Ruff also asked corrections officials to look into what inmates and some guards said was a practice of placing inmates with more masculine features in a separate cell block, referred to by inmates and guards as the "butch wing" or "locker room wing." The moves were intended to curb sexual activity and break up relationships, the prisoners and guards told the AP article for an published in June.

Wheeler has denied that prisoners were targeted because of their sexuality or appearance, and the practice apparently stopped this summer soon after the AP asked about it.

Among other changes made under Frame and Wheeler's watch, according to letters and interviews with more than 30 inmates, and interviews with advocates, former volunteers and a prison guard, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of being fired:

_Inmates are placed on a waiting list to use the restroom at night, early morning or during long lockdowns because their cells do not have toilets. Many say the wait can be up to an hour or longer, and that if an inmate relieves herself in her cell she is sent to segregation.

_Inmates have two white cotton blankets for their beds and can only wash one every three months instead of once per week, as department policy outlines. In response to an inmate's August 2008 grievance obtained by the AP, Wheeler responded, "One clean blanket every 90 days is more than sufficient."

_Although department policy allows females' hair to touch their shoulders, Fluvanna bans hair past the top of the collar. Inmates say they have been turned away from meals, visits, church, educational classes and graduation ceremonies because their hair was not in compliance.

_Despite it being against department policy, inmates say officers regularly withhold food as punishment.

Marguerite Richardson, 54, is serving 57 years for a series of robberies. She has been at Fluvanna since it opened in 1998 and says the focus has changed from rehabilitating inmates to "this kind of blanket it's-going-to-be-rough-on-you thinking."

Frame came to Fluvanna after the prison's former head of security was fired and later convicted for having sex with inmates. Because of that, Ruff said it was no surprise Frame "came in with a heavy hand."

Alicia Yates Hill, 35, first came to Fluvanna in 1999 for writing bad checks. She said she knew she was in prison, but "I felt like a human being." She came back four years later for probation violation and said everything had changed.

"I know that I'm here for punishment and rehabilitation," she wrote. "However, does it have to be hell?"
http://www.wtkr.com/news/dp-va--womensprison-inv1124nov24,0,3711517.story

Posted by lois at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2009

OR: Marion Co Jail To Allow Postcards Only

Oregon jail to allow only postcards for inmates
Story Published: Nov 22, 2009 at 1:53 PM PST
By Stacy Barchenger, (Salem) Statesman Journal

SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Marion County jail inmates soon won't be able to get letters from the outside. They'll have to settle for postcards.

Starting as soon as Jan. 1, jail officials are going to limit incoming and outgoing mail to postcards only. Current policy allows letters with no limit on the number of pages. The policy will save the county money and man-hours spent sorting through more than 1,000 pieces of general mail inmates receive each week.

"We're not trying to be mean or make people upset," Marion County Sheriff Jason Myers said.

"It's about efficiency and safety in the workplace."

Inmates will be required to purchase standardized pre-stamped 3.5-by-8.5-inch postcards from a commissary. The postcards feature a photo of the jail. The new rules will not affect mail to and from public officials or legal mail.

The benefits of the new policy include decreased traffic of contraband items through the jail, as well as saving time and costs, Marion County jail Cmdr. Jeff Holland said. The most common contraband item deputies find is pornography, Holland said.

Contraband has "been a problem off and on as long as I've been in the business - 23 years," Holland said. Each year, the county spends about $60,000 to cover man-hours spent sorting jail mail, Holland said.

"We estimate by going to the postcard system we can cut that by half," Holland said.

It takes about nine hours per day to process mail, Holland said. That amount of time will be scaled back, and deputies will use the time to patrol the grounds and focus on safety, the sheriff said.

"We'll be able to refocus the time on safety and security of the facility," Myers said.

When mail is delivered to the jail, it is first sorted by an administrative staffer, according to sheriff's office spokeswoman Lt. Sheila Lorance.

Deputies then open the mail and remove the envelope flap and stamp, checking for contraband items and making sure the piece doesn't violate the mail policy, sheriff's officials said. Deputies will keep searching the mail for blacklisted items.

For inmates, their families and the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, the policy calls into question the roll of communication in the life of an inmate.

"We think that it is a bad policy if it is going to limit the way the inmates are going to be able to communicate with their families in a meaningful way," said Jann Carson, associate director of the ACLU of Oregon.

Carson was not familiar with the Marion County jail's plans but spoke generally of the importance of communication between inmates and family.

"One of the best ways that we make ex-convicts reintegrate is keeping those ties to families while they are incarcerated," Carson said. "If this policy is going to make that more difficult, that is troubling."

Timothy Jones, 47, is serving a sentence in the jail for a probation violation.

"I don't know what you can say on a 3-by-8," Jones said. "Some of us got kids and other things that we need to discuss with our families."

Jones said he was worried some families might not be able to afford postcards and stamps. He said when posters went up on bulletin boards in the jail last week, inmates were generally worried.

There were "a lot of people with animosity toward it," Jones said. "They're deeply concerned."

As an inmate, Jones doesn't know that he has the resources to fight back. When asked if the policy is fair, Jones seemed indifferent.

"I'm incarcerated; what is fair?" he said. "I think it is more unfair to our families."

The Marion County jail serves as a holding facility for people awaiting trial and convicted offenders serving less than one-year sentences. Convicted offenders sentenced to more than one year in custody are transferred to prisons supervised by the Department of Corrections.

Sondelyn Laughlin of Keizer writes to a longtime family friend in custody, sometimes sending three letters per week.

"I know a lot of people that depend on family letters to uplift them and keep them part of their life," Laughlin said. "This will even affect those who are not convicted yet, and that seems barbaric."

Laughlin said she was upset and sad when she heard about the new policy. Though it has created an obstacle, she won't stop writing to her friend.

"I guess I'll have to write 10 postcards a day," she said. "Like pages of a letter, it will be pages of a postcard."

Holland said he didn't know of any other Oregon jails that allow only single-sheet postcards, though he said about 15 jails were seriously considering it.

At this time, neither the Polk County jail nor Oregon Department of Corrections are considering a postcard-only policy.

Marion County's new mail system is modeled after one at the Maricopa County, Ariz., Holland said.

That jail piloted the postcard-only program in May 2007 after it was suggested by an employee, according to Lt. Robert Eastlund with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office.

The restrictions significantly cut back on contraband items, especially drugs, and gang messages being passed into the jail, Eastlund said.

When it was first implemented at the Phoenix jail, the county was sued. The case went to the federal district court, which ruled in favor of the jail's policy and found there was no infringement on communication, Eastlund said. Inmates still had the ability to use telephones for private conversations, Eastlund said.

"We weren't violating anybody's civil rights," Eastlund said. "There is no right to privacy when it comes to this."

The policy's two-year tenure at the 9,100-inmate jail system has been a success. However, it hasn't entirely stopped attempts to send contraband to inmates. Deputies are starting to find contraband slipped between the sheets of postcards, Eastlund said.
http://www.katu.com/news/local/70708727.html

Posted by lois at 04:33 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2009

Prison Treatment Cuts Could Feed Recidivism in Calif.

Prison Treatment Cuts Could Feed Recidivism in Calif.
November 20, 2009

An 80-percent reduction in prison addiction-treatment capacity could lead to a proportional increase in recidivism in California, some experts say.

The Contra Costa Times reported Nov. 12 that $1.2 billion in budget cuts for state prisons will mean that just 2,350 inmates will receive addiction treatment next year, down from 12,164. Nine-month programs will be cut to three months, which critics say could limit their effectiveness.

"Those inmates will have very little treatment service to deal with behavioral issues that they've spent years to develop, most of which was put on them from an early age," said Darrol Monfils, a counselor at the California Institution for Women. "Their chances of succeeding are slim."

"California prisoners will be paroling inmates with little or no rehabilitation," Monfils said. "They will be paroling with the same behaviors as they did when they arrived. Now, having said that, there will be a few exceptions to the rule, but they will be the larger minority."

A state corrections department spokesperson said the agency is "scientifically evaluating and assessing inmates, those at the highest risk of recidivism and so we are targeting our resources to that population group and identifying what their needs are."

David Conn, senior vice president for treatment provider Mental Health Systems, Inc., said the state made the cuts only reluctantly. "These were sort of last-minute budget cuts to balance the budget, and everyone agrees it's probably a foolish decision," he said. "Individuals who are incarcerated to support drug habits will not receive substance abuse treatment. The likelihood of them reoffending increases significantly."
http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2009/prison-treatment-cuts-could.html?log-event=sp2f-view-item&nid=58043132

Posted by lois at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)

Artist's right to free speech under fire in PA state prison

Artist's right to free speech under fire in PA state prison
11/23/2009
November 09- Human Rights Coalition call for support
The situation:
PA state prison guards, supported by the prison administration and the Secretary’s Office of the Department of Corrections have confiscated artwork from a prisoner. Why? Because it depicts the artist's perspective on the existence of racial oppression within the PA criminal justice system (a viewpoint quite unpopular with prison guards and administrators). The artist has filed a civil suit against the Department of Corrections, asking for the return of his artwork and for the court to issue an order preventing further confiscations. The Human Rights Coalition is reaching out to you to show your support for freedom of speech and expression.

The story:
Leonard Jefferson is a prolific artist who has used his art to provide analysis and commentary concerning Pennsylvania's criminal justice system and his lived experience behind bars. His art is typically small/medium-sized pen & ink drawings of prison settings; he has used his art to do outreach to the general public by sending it to various individuals and organizations, including human-rights groups.

In April 2009, he completed Sista-matized, a drawing depicting a row of men caged in a cell block; superimposed is the image of a black female prison guard- who is obviously distraught- and below, a courtroom scene in which the judge, jury, prosecution, and public defender are robed and hooded Klan members. The defendant is a black man with a sign across his back that reads, "nigger". On the desk of the prosecutor is a copy of a book entitled Genocide for Dummies; on the side of the book is printed "Property of the DA's office".

This drawing was confiscated from him during a cell search in July 09 at State Correctional Institute (SCI) Albion, at the discretion of the corrections officers who were conducting the search. The reason they gave on the official prison paperwork was that the drawing was "racial artwork". Mr. Jefferson filed requests and grievances for the return of the drawing, which were denied. The justification given on the final denial by the Secretary of Corrections' office (the head of the PA state prison system) was that the drawing had "negative connotations towards Corrections Officers, Judges, and the Criminal Justice System". That is to say, they didn't like it because it calls these people and groups perpetrators of racial oppression and genocide.

Mr. Jefferson finished the necessary paperwork in October, and filed a pro se (representing himself) civil suit with the county court, asking for a list of redresses-- including court costs, damages ($1000), the return of his artwork and an order preventing the prison from further arbitrary confiscations.

What you can do-
(any or all of the following):

1. Sign the letter of support, or use it as a template to write your own & send it to the judge & "cc" list included below.

2. If your organization has lawyers on staff, have them file an "amicus curiae" brief with the court on the subject of art, racial & political themes, social commentary & the role of the artist in society.

3. Display Sista-matized in a public place with an explanation of the situation & of the importance of supporting artists who put their safety and lives at risk to tell the truth as they see it.

How to send letters of support:
-Complete and sign the letter (better yet, write one in your own words!) and send it to the presiding judge:

Honorable Judge John Garhart
Court of Common Pleas of Erie County, PA
140 West Sixth Street
Erie, PA 16501

-then send copies to:

Leonard Jefferson(#CL-4135)
SCI Albion
10745 Route 18
Albion, PA 16475-0002

Secretary of Corrections Jeffrey Beard
2520 Lisburn Road
P.O. Box 598
Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598

Superintendent Raymond Sobina
SCI Albion
10745 Route 18
Albion, PA 16475-0001

Human Rights Coalition
4134 Lancaster Ave
Philadelphia, PA 19104
attn: Support Committee

Human Rights Coalition thanks you for your solidarity and support!

Questions/comments? Email HRC Support Committee at: hrc.philly.support@gmail.com

To see the confiscated drawing go to this website: http://defenestrator.org/node/369
Please forward this message.

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

November 21, 2009

Indiana prison stops serving lunch three days a week Civil rights groups, lawmakers critical of program at Plainfield eliminating midday meal 3 days a week

"Plainfield Correctional spokesman Kevin Mulroony said two square meals a day provide the same calories -- 2,500 -- as three meals. Breakfast and lunch are combined into what is being called "brunch" -- but is predominantly breakfast food served at 6 a.m. Dinner is served 10 hours later, at 4 p.m. Lunch is served at 11:30 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays."

Indiana prison stops serving lunch three days a week
Civil rights groups, lawmakers critical of program at Plainfield eliminating midday meal 3 days a week
By John Tuohy
Posted: November 20, 2009
Indianapolis Star Tribune

The inmates at Plainfield Correctional Facility can't be accused of getting a free lunch.

Or any lunch at all. At least on some days.

The medium security prison in Hendricks County has eliminated lunch on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays -- part of a pilot program that could go statewide.

The Indiana Department of Correction insists it's not about saving money but what's in the best interest of prisoners. Officials say they have received few complaints since rolling out the changes last month.

But others, including civil rights organizations and lawmakers, are highly skeptical of any benefits -- and think it's potentially dangerous.

Because of tight budgets, a handful of other states have cut meals to save money. But Indiana prison officials said the driving force here was to give prisoners more classroom and recreational time.

"Serving meals is a time-consuming effort that takes hours," Indiana Department of Correction spokesman Doug Garrison said. "By eliminating one meal, we are able to operate our programs more efficiently."

Plainfield Correctional spokesman Kevin Mulroony said two square meals a day provide the same calories -- 2,500 -- as three meals. Breakfast and lunch are combined into what is being called "brunch" -- but is predominantly breakfast food served at 6 a.m. Dinner is served 10 hours later, at 4 p.m. Lunch is served at 11:30 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays.

Mulroony said the new schedule frees up weekends for education classes, religious services and family visits for the inmates, who often have busy schedules into the night.

But the Republican chairman of the state Senate corrections and criminal subcommittee said he can see few benefits in such a drastic change.

"We should treat our inmate population like human beings," said Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel. "Denying food or cutting back on meals is beneath the dignity of the state of Indiana and is not in sync with our Hoosier values. It is my hope that the corrections officials will come before us and reassure us that they are treating the prisoners in a humane way."

State Rep. Bill Crawford, D-Indianapolis, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he doubts that the prisoners are still getting their recommended calories.

"I'd like to see an accounting of that," Crawford said.

A review of four weeks of menus reveals that the prisoners are getting shortchanged a main-course item each Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

For example, during the first week of the pilot program, the four lunch main courses were goulash, bologna, taco meat and sloppy Joes. At weekend brunch, they were bologna, peanut butter, and oatmeal and sausage. Dinners remained generally the same -- one main course.

Mulroony acknowledged that traditional lunch offerings such as chicken quarters and meat with macaroni and cheese were missing at brunch. But he said the heavier foods aren't included because they are served just as early as breakfast.

"You try to serve more breakfast-type items because the offenders are still eating at 6 in the morning," he said.

Although prison officials said they were not trying to cut expenses when they made the move, the private contractor that handles food service for prisons has had trouble staying within its promised budget since landing the $258 million, 10-year deal in 2005.

At the time, Aramark boasted that it would save the state $11 million and cut the average cost of a meal from $1.41 to 99 cents. But since then, it has exceeded its projected annual budget increase of 6 percent.

The company told the committee that rising gas prices had driven up the cost of food and that the rising prison population was increasing its expenses.

The DOC's food service allocation jumped from $28.9 million for 2009 to $36 million for 2010 and to $40 million for 2011, according to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Aramark was provided a list of written questions by The Indianapolis Star but referred all inquiries about the program to the DOC.

Whatever the reason for cutting meals, advocates for inmates' rights think it is dangerous to tinker with a prisoner's food.

Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, said cutting lunch creates "a tremendous gap between meals."

"Making prisoners go hungry for long periods is not the way to solve anything," she said. "Food is not the place to make cuts, especially since it is such a small percentage of a prison's budget."

Food service accounts for about 5 percent of DOC's $726 million budget in 2010.

Skipping meals can be dangerous for certain inmates, such as those with diabetes and hepatitis. But Mulroony said 33 inmates with special needs still receive regular lunches on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

He said there have been few complaints from the 1,600 inmates about the change.

Gil Holmes, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, said the organization was aware of the change but had not received any complaints from prisoners.

Until it does, the ACLU of Indiana probably won't take any action, Holmes said.

The DOC said the pilot program would last an indefinite length of time and is being reviewed to determine other prisons where it might work. Eventually, all 30 prisons in the system could switch to the new eating schedule, Garrison said.

And, DOC officials said, inmates can always get chips, cookies and Ramen noodles in the commissary to tide them over between meals. Prisoners have to pay for those.

"You'd be amazed at what prisoners can do with a bag of Ramen," Mulroony said. "It's good as anything served in a restaurant."

State Rep. Bill Crawford, D-Indianapolis, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he doubts that the prisoners are still getting their recommended calories.

"I'd like to see an accounting of that," Crawford said.

A review of four weeks of menus reveals that the prisoners are getting shortchanged a main-course item each Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

For example, during the first week of the pilot program, the four lunch main courses were goulash, bologna, taco meat and sloppy Joes. At weekend brunch, they were bologna, peanut butter, and oatmeal and sausage. Dinners remained generally the same -- one main course.

Mulroony acknowledged that traditional lunch offerings such as chicken quarters and meat with macaroni and cheese were missing at brunch. But he said the heavier foods aren't included because they are served just as early as breakfast.

"You try to serve more breakfast-type items because the offenders are still eating at 6 in the morning," he said.

Although prison officials said they were not trying to cut expenses when they made the move, the private contractor that handles food service for prisons has had trouble staying within its promised budget since landing the $258 million, 10-year deal in 2005.

At the time, Aramark boasted that it would save the state $11 million and cut the average cost of a meal from $1.41 to 99 cents. But since then, it has exceeded its projected annual budget increase of 6 percent.

The company told the committee that rising gas prices had driven up the cost of food and that the rising prison population was increasing its expenses.

The DOC's food service allocation jumped from $28.9 million for 2009 to $36 million for 2010 and to $40 million for 2011, according to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Aramark was provided a list of written questions by The Indianapolis Star but referred all inquiries about the program to the DOC.

Whatever the reason for cutting meals, advocates for inmates' rights think it is dangerous to tinker with a prisoner's food.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009911200392

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

NC: Women Prisoners File Class Action Suit Against DOC for Extensive Sexual Violence

Prisoners allege sex abuse
NC News and Observor
Nov. 20, 2009
BY MANDY LOCKE - Staff Writer
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/crime_safety/story/201215.html
RALEIGH -- Four female inmates have filed a federal class-action lawsuit accusing North Carolina prison officials of subjecting female prisoners to extensive sexual violence and harassment amounting to cruel and unusual punishment.

The lawsuit claims that the women were raped, groped, threatened and sexually humiliated. The women, represented by N.C. Prisoner Legal Services, demand that state prison officials pay them for their distress and "end a pattern of sexual misconduct in all women's prisons operated by [the state Department of Correction]." The women, who agreed to be named in the lawsuit, are asking to speak on behalf of the state's roughly 2,900 female prisoners in their fight against officials.

The claim comes on the heels of at least seven separate sexual assaults on female inmates for which the state has offered payouts to avoid legal action. Those awards were also won at the behest of Prisoner Legal Services, a nonprofit group that addresses legal concerns of inmates.

The lawsuit targets top administrators at the state Department of Correction and seven former and current staff members accused of assaulting and harassing the prisoners or protecting employees who did.

Correction Department officials declined to comment Thursday, saying they had just received the suit and had not had time to review it.

State law forbids prison staff from engaging in sexual intercourse with inmates, regardless of consent. The four women suing say they were targeted against their will.

Sandra Etters said she was repeatedly handcuffed, then raped by a male guard who stalked her in the laundry facility during her overnight shift at Women's Prison while the correctional officer assigned to supervise her was sleeping.

Ronda Singletary said that a male correctional officer who is not fully named in the suit exposed himself to her in the canteen. When she reported the incident, other guards told her they would need to witness it and encouraged her to lure the officer into another interaction. They only intervened when the officer put his penis in her hand.

Deven Deal said that a male nurse, who is not fully named, pushed her into a janitor's closet, fondled her and ordered her to expose herself. While she was at Southern Correctional, another women's prison, Deal said she was forced to change clothes in front of another male employee.

Louretha King, a prisoner at Women's Prison, said that a female correctional officer verbally propositioned and stalked her. After she reported it to supervisors, King said the officer pointed a rifle at her.

Each of the women had exhausted the prisons' grievance procedure, which allows inmates to file complaints about treatment. In two of the instances, prison officials said the complaints couldn't be substantiated. In another, they said the matter was closed after an inmate declined to be transferred into segregated isolation at another prison for her safety. In one claim, they said the matter was closed when the targeted employee resigned.

Rape in prison became a national focus in 2003, when Congress passed a sweeping law that obligated prison officials to adopt policies that blocked sexual violence. Congress also required that independent consultants study the prevalence of sexual assaults in state and federal prisons.

A sample of randomly selected inmates showed that North Carolina prisons fared better than most states for occurrences of sexual assaults. Of the five prisons selected for review in North Carolina, none reported more than 4.7 percent of inmates saying they were victimized in nonconsensual acts.

None of the prisons selected for study in North Carolina, though, housed women. Experts say female inmates are far more susceptible to abuse than men.

James Aiken, a correctional expert on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, a board formed to enforce the federal law, said in an affidavit filed with the lawsuit that North Carolina prisons are failing women, indicated by their previous settlements with inmates who were sexually violated.

Aiken said the frequent payouts reveal a "defective correctional culture and indicate that staff are not performing the basic security delivery expected in an inmate population."

This and other news about women and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Posted by lois at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2009

PA: Donna Pfender, Pres., Fight for Lifers West. Senate Judiciary Cmte Hearing on Prison Overcrowding and Sending Prisoners to MI

Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearing on
Prison Overcrowding
November 16, 2009
Harrisburg, PA

Donna Pfender, President – Fight For Lifers West

Good afternoon to the Chairman, Senator Greenleaf; to the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee; to Senator Greenleaf’s aide, Gregg Warner; Ladies and Gentlemen.
I wish to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to testify today about the impact that transferring inmates to other states will have, not only on the inmates themselves, but on their family members and loved ones.
When I first heard that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections was in negotiations with other states to transfer inmates in a bid to alleviate overcrowding, my first reaction was one of disbelief. I couldn’t believe that human beings were being treated as commodities to be bought, sold or bartered for any reason. I knew about the Interstate Compact Act, but this was on a whole new level. I wondered why this wasn’t considered as an Eighth Amendment violation for “deliberate indifference” as well as an “objectively serious deprivation?” I felt not only that inmates were being dehumanized but that their family structures would fall apart.

I told myself that this couldn’t happen in the land of the free. After all, inmates’ family members are not incarcerated, but affected directly. I told myself that surely people will stand up and protest when they realize the inhumanity of such a proposal and that there would be a public outcry to stop such alienation and separation of Pennsylvania families. Then it hit me that it could happen to my own daughter; to our family! She is serving life without parole sentence in Pennsylvania and has been incarcerated for over 25 years. I asked myself, “Will they move lifers?” A short while later I got an e-mail from another PA inmate support group stating that 300 lifers were to be moved from SCI, Graterford to Michigan if they had not had a visit in the past 4 years. In addition, programs such as G.E.D.s would no longer be offered to lifers. E-mails and phone calls were generated across Pennsylvania and across the United States. Everybody had questions. Everyone appeared to be in disbelief. There were even people from other countries who contacted us to see if it was true.
Shortly thereafter, we had our regular monthly meeting on October 17, 2009 and the issue of moving inmates to other states was a hot topic on our agenda. Before the meeting began, Ruby, a small, frail, African American woman walked up to me and was visibly shaken and upset. She told me that her nephew was a lifer at Graterford and she had received a letter from him that he would be transferred to California in January. I told her that surely that couldn’t be true because California is known to have the most overcrowded prison population in the country.

I told her I would see what I could find out. When the topic came up on the agenda, I asked her to tell the other members what she had told me. Ruby rarely speaks in meetings but she courageously told the others what she had learned. You could have heard a pin drop. As I looked around the room, I could see the incredulous faces of those in attendance who had not yet heard about the transfers or thought that it couldn’t be possible. At that time, nothing had been confirmed. I later spoke with prison advocates in California who told me that they were also shipping in prisoners from the state of Oregon. Later that week, we were to learn that even more states were being considered to ship Pennsylvania prisoners to and that inmates had already been informed that they would be moving out of state. We were all in shock!
We all understand that the problem of overcrowding leads to dangerous conditions not only for the prison staff, but for the inmate population, visitors, outside vendors and society in general. Overcrowding can contribute to outbreaks of physical aggression, disease, medical neglect, abuse, extensive isolation, suicides, suspicious deaths, chronic mental and physical problems, insufficient or no education and a population not ready for re-entry back into society. Every time a human being is locked away in a facility where they are warehoused and treated as non-human, they become a further threat to society and more victims will likely result. While prison costs keep escalating, funding is taken from outside education and social programs to build yet more institutions and the prison system continues to burst at the seams.
Not only have I heard reports from California, about shipping prisoners either in or out of state, but also from other associates throughout the United States. This is not a problem confined to Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania seems to be doing it on a grander scale. It seems prisoners are being shuffled around from state to state to appease overcrowding laws and court orders, while the public is unaware of the increased burden in taxes that are being levied on them in order to accomplish this.
As a member of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee to the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole in Pittsburgh, I asked District Director, Larry Ludwig, if inmates could be paroled if the institution didn’t give a recommendation and he told me no. I had countless letters from inmates who said they were still sitting in prison even after they had complied with all of their program requirements. They said that often, they were told they needed to have additional, newly adopted, programs and that the waiting lists to get on them were very long. So, they continued to sit in prison. I question why such programs couldn’t be handled upon release? Wouldn’t it create jobs and relieve overcrowding? I had reports that inmates due for parole had been told that their records had been lost. At the State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs, 300 such records were found and a guard was reported by another officer who had located them months later.
One woman, housed at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy, sent me a copy of a court order from a Judge remanding her into the community, but she was still in Muncy nine (9) months later. It made me question if there were people still in prison who should have been sent home or to other facilities? I also learned that inmates with drug or alcohol records were held back when their parole minimum dates came up, even though they had no history of violent crime. Why couldn’t they have been given further treatment outside of prison walls? They too, remained in prison, padding the institutional profiles.
I also question how inmate advocacy groups can keep track of prisoners who were sentenced in Pennsylvania, but will now be housed elsewhere? What will happen with the “Right to Know Act?” Will it cross state lines? How can prison advocacy groups serve our fellow Pennsylvanians when we don’t know where they are located? Will this information be made readily available? Will families and loved ones be informed? Will the families survive? Questions, unanswered questions.
And then, we worry about the high cost of exorbitant phone bills that will only increase if a loved one is moved even farther away. We worry about higher traveling expenses to visit them and if we will ever be able to see them again? Under the Department of Corrections Handbook for Visitors (DC-ADM 812, p.20, enclosed), it states that, “Visitation by relatives and friends are encouraged by the Department. Visitation helps to keep the inmate’s family together. A child needs to know that his/her mother or father is still a part of his/her life and that he/she will be able to see his/her parent. A husband and wife need to be able to share his/her daily struggles and joys with each other. Visitation is also important to the morale of the inmate. Research has shown that an inmate who receives regular visits readjusts much better once he/she is released from prison.”
Those who don’t have loved ones on the inside may reason that some inmates don’t receive visitors because their families don’t care. I have spoken to many family members that, for a variety of reasons, are unable to visit although they would like to. For example, many offenders are housed at opposite ends of Pennsylvania from where their families live. Family members often don’t have the resources to visit so far away, or get days off from work that match the days when visits are allowed. (See: DC-ADM, p. 47, Family Finances, enclosed)
Sometimes, loved ones travel far distances of up to 10 hours with small children or elderly relatives, only to be turned away. Days to visit have been scaled down and there are numerous reports of prison officials treating visitors with distain and disrespect. Some family members need to work more than one job just to support their families on the outside and then there is the added cost of helping their loved ones on the inside with the high commissary costs. Inmates are employed at slave wages making anywhere from nineteen (19) to forty five (45) cents/hr. and the food budgets for the institutions keep being cut.
Not only are families paying taxes at work to support their loved one on the inside, but they typically also help them with commissary and medical co-pays so they can maintain some manner of human dignity and health.
I have heard many times, that families will save for months or even years to make a costly trip to visit a loved one on the inside. Work schedules, school schedules, institution visiting days and the weather are other factors that impact families that must travel long distances. Imagine if they were in another state?
We worry about ever increasing commissary costs, phone fees and no choice in vendors. We worry about “out of sight, out of mind” and what will happen to those on the inside that we love. If they report problems, we won’t be able to visit them to assure ourselves that they are alright. Will there be groups in other states such as the Pennsylvania Prison Society’s Official Visitors that will be able to visit our loved ones and intervene if necessary? Will the PA Official Visitors be allowed to visit out of state institutions?
Secretary Beard is quoted in the 10/15/2009 edition of the Philadelphia Enquirer “that the other states would not require any special programming, only basic religious, recreational and similar perfunctory programs.” Nothing is mentioned about education or preparing them for re-entry. Nothing is mentioned of how much it will cost Pennsylvania tax payers for each inmate transferred.
On 11/13/2009 there was a report by Andy Sheehan on KDKA news about the high cost of housing elderly lifers. It stated that housing inmates convicted of serious crimes are elderly, infirm and expensive and that their risk of committing a new crime is negligible. Rep. Frank Dermody argues that the state should more aggressively pursue alternative sentencing for many of the elderly inmates to make room for younger, violent criminals currently being housed out of state.
In the 11/04/2009 edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Bill Dimascio wrote an excellent article titled “Bizarro” (enclosed) about the state ignoring solutions to costly prison overcrowding. I recommend that everyone here read it.
In closing, I would just like to ask this panel to think about how they would feel if someone in their family was arrested for a crime and sentenced to prison in Pennsylvania? What if later they were told that their loved one would be moved to a far away state? Of course, no one ever thinks that one of their loved ones will ever wind up in prison. I didn’t either. Thank you.

Posted by lois at 04:46 PM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2009

Bill would limit needle exchanges to 1000 feet of school, park, library, college, video arcade or any place children might gather

“Clearly the intent of this rule is to nullify the lifting of the ban.”

Bill Would Limit Needle Exchanges
By KATIE ZEZIMA - NY Times
Published: November 8, 2009

BANGOR, Me. — For years, the location of this city’s needle exchange program, in a nondescript strip mall close to highways and bus lines, was seen as a major asset.

A heroin addict picking up a clean needle as part of a program run by the Down East AIDS Network in Ellsworth, Me.

But now, AIDS activists say, that very location could undermine what happens inside the exchange.

A bill working its way through Congress would lift a ban of more than 20 years on using federal money for needle exchange programs. But the bill would also ban federally financed exchanges from being within 1,000 feet of a school, park, library, college, video arcade or any place children might gather — a provision that would apply to a majority of the country’s approximately 200 exchanges.

“This 1,000-foot rule is simply instituting the ban in a different form,” said Rebecca Haag, executive director of the AIDS Action Council, an advocacy group based in Washington. “Clearly the intent of this rule is to nullify the lifting of the ban.”

Under a separate bill, all exchanges in Washington within the 1,000-foot perimeter would be barred from receiving city money as well as federal money.

“Let’s protect these kids,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, who introduced the Washington bill. “They don’t need to be playing kickball in the playground and seeing people lined up for needle exchange.”

Both bills have passed the House and a Senate subcommittee and await Senate action.

Advocates and organizations including the N.A.A.C.P. are lobbying Congress to kill the 1,000-foot provisions. The promise of federal money could not come at a better time, these officials say, as states are cutting their health and human services budgets and private donations are dropping precipitously. At least four needle exchanges have closed this year because of a lack of financing.

Many exchanges are run by organizations that provide broad-based health services like testing for the AIDS virus and hepatitis C, mental health counseling, medical referrals and condom distribution. Advocates worry that if needle exchanges disappear, drug users will lose access to those other services.

The rule “is going to kill us,” said Ellis Poole, executive director of the Harm Reduction Center of Southern Oregon, which is 997 feet from a high school in Roseburg. The center runs a needle exchange and offers antidrug programs to high schools in the area. With donations plummeting, it has a $374,000 budget deficit for 2009. Mr. Poole said he worried that the center’s programs would be threatened if the bill passed.

“We could move a few feet down, but the building is more expensive at the other end,” Mr. Poole said. “I have to beg for money for computers. I have to ask people to come clean the carpet at no charge.”

Officials at exchanges in cities like Chicago, New York and Washington say there are few, if any, places that could house a needle exchange under the rule.

“I was thinking, ‘A thousand feet, how much is that?’ ” said Raquel Algarin, executive director of the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center in Manhattan. “And then I found myself thinking, ‘We’d probably be doing syringe exchange in the middle of the East River, and any exchange on the West Side would be in the Hudson River.’ How do you work that out?”

Many advocates also worry that smaller, rural exchanges, which lack the fund-raising abilities and infrastructure of many larger, urban exchanges, will be affected by the 1,000-foot rule.

In Maine, which officials say has one of the highest rates of prescription drug abuse per capita in the country and is grappling with a recent influx of heroin, AIDS activists worry that they will receive less money just as their client base is growing. The state’s four exchanges — in Augusta, Bangor, Ellsworth and Portland — would be ineligible for federal money.

“The federal funding would be key for us,” said Patricia A. Murphy, executive director of the Eastern Maine AIDS Network in downtown Bangor.

Upon entering the office, squeezed between a veterans center and a music store, drug users are escorted into a small room, where a trained staff member checks them in, using only first names and case numbers, and carefully counts their needles.

Under Maine law, drug users may receive one clean needle for every dirty one they turn in. The exchange offers users a variety of needle sizes, along with tourniquets, antiseptic ointment, condoms and information on safe needle use, and helps refer clients to clinics and treatment centers that deal with sexually transmitted diseases. The center also has a food bank, which clients are urged to use.

Those who have built a level of trust with Ms. Murphy and her staff send fellow drug users to the office. The number of users enrolled in the needle exchange here has doubled in the past year, while funding fell by about 15 percent.

The federal money, Ms. Murphy said, would allow the exchange to grow with the number of clients, many of whom come from rural northern and eastern Maine, and set up mobile needle exchange units in communities more than 100 miles from Bangor.

“This is a critical piece of harm reduction,” Ms. Murphy said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, intravenous drug use directly or indirectly accounts for about one-fifth of the nation’s 1.1 million H.I.V. cases, and needle exchanges are an effective way to stem the spread of infection. The World Health Organization said in a 2004 report that there was “compelling evidence” that increasing needle exchanges reduced H.I.V. transmission. It cited studies showing that the rate of infection dropped up to 18 percent in cities with an exchange.

Luke, a 30-year-old Bangor resident who did not want to give his last name, said he exchanged his needles, and sometimes those of his friends, about once a week. He said he had become addicted to Suboxone, a drug intended to treat opiate addiction that officials say more people are starting to abuse.

In a black hooded sweatshirt and red sneakers, Luke said he often also picked up condoms and guides on how to inject drugs more safely. He said he came to the facility because its location made it discreet and few people knew what it was.

A 23-year-old man who is addicted to heroin and exchanges needles at the Down East AIDS Network in Ellsworth called the 1,000-foot limit “ridiculous.” The man, who did not want to give his name because of his addiction, said he started using heroin eight years ago and exchanging needles four years ago. He said he often picked up needles he saw on the ground and brought them in for safe disposal.

“It’s a dangerous thing to do,” the man said of his heroin use, “but it’s best to take every precaution you can. If you’re going to do this stuff, you should do it right.”
A version of this article appeared in print on November 9, 2009, on page A9 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/health/policy/09needle.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Needle%20Exchange&st=cse

Posted by lois at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

UK: Christian charity plans to open private prison in Cornwall

Christian charity plans to open private prison in Cornwall
Monday, November 09, 2009, 11:27

CORNWALL could get a brand new prison run by the county's Christian community, according to ambitious plans revealed today.

The newly-formed Carpenters House project wants to build the site as soon as 2012 as it aims to provide the county with what would be its only prison.

Those behind the plans claim they can cut re-offending rates and help the Government provide much-needed space for prisoners.

The Ministry of Justice says it needs another 12,000 spaces by 2014, while many of the 700 or so offenders from the region are locked up miles away from home, often in areas difficult for family members to reach.

Former Caradon District Councillor Mike Critchley, the project's chairman, said the idea had already won the support of Cornish Christian groups.

He said: "It is an ambitious project but the need is massive.

"We've talked to a lot of people and our consultant has been the Governor of five prisons.

"What we're talking about is not a Bible college.

"It's all about giving guys the ability to respect themselves.

"Once they've got that it gets you to respect other people."

The project is being spearheaded by the Kainos Community, a faith-based charity that has operated its Challenge to Change programme in prisons for 12 years.

They say they have slashed re-offending rates among inmates they have worked with to 13 per cent – way below the national average of 60 per cent within two years of release.

Mr Critchley added: "Prisoners are not beaten over the head with a bible.

"The organisation has got a fantastic track record.

"As a councillor, re-offending was one of the things I took an interest in because the rates are just alarming.

"There is a huge and urgent need for this – that's the bottom line."

Bosses are now trying to raise cash to provide the Government with a feasibility study, then formally lodge its proposals by next year.

A HM Prison Service spokesman confirmed the National Offender Management Service, which runs prisons in England and Wales for the Ministry of Justice, was aware of the Carpenters House project, but said it had "no current plans" to build faith-specific prisons.
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Christian-charity-plans-open-private-prison-Cornwall/article-1494736-detail/article.html

Posted by lois at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2009

NYC: Varick Street jail for detained immigrants run by Alaska Native Corporation bills ICE $227.68 for each prisoner

Immigrant Jail Tests U.S. View of Legal Access
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: November 1, 2009- NY Times

A startling petition arrived at the New York City Bar Association in October 2008, signed by 100 men, all locked up without criminal charges in the middle of Manhattan.

Daniel I. Miller, a former detainee at the Varick Street center, complained of abuses there. “These people have no rules,” he said.

In vivid if flawed English, it described cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day.

The petitioners were among 250 detainees imprisoned in an immigration jail that few New Yorkers know exists. Above a post office, on the fourth floor of a federal office building in Greenwich Village, the Varick Street Detention Facility takes in 11,000 men a year, most of them longtime New Yorkers facing deportation without a lawyer.

Galvanized by the petition, the bar association sent volunteers into the jail to offer legal counsel to detainees — a strategy the Obama administration has embraced as it tries to fix the entire detention system.

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement considers the access to legal services at Varick Street as a good model,” said Sean Smith, a spokesman for Janet Napolitano, secretary of homeland security, who oversees immigration enforcement.

But the lawyers doing the work have reached a different conclusion, after finding that most detainees with a legal claim to stay in the United States are routinely transferred to more remote jails before they can be helped. The lawyers say their effort has laid bare the fundamental unfairness of a system where immigrant detainees, unlike criminal defendants, can be held without legal representation and moved from state to state without notice.

In a report to be issued on Monday, the association’s City Bar Justice Center is calling for all immigrant detainees to be provided with counsel. And an article to be published this month in The Fordham Law Review treats the Varick jail as a case study in the systemic barriers to legal representation.

The new focus on Varick highlights the conflict between two forces: the administration’s plans to revamp detention, and current policies that feed the flow of detainees through the system as it is now. A disjointed mix of county jails and privately run prisons, where mistreatment and medical neglect have been widely documented, the detention network churns roughly 400,000 detainees through 32,000 beds each year.

“Any attempt to get support or services for them is stymied because you don’t know where they’re going to end up,” said Lynn M. Kelly, the director of the Justice Center.

When she asked that the lawyers’ letters of legal advice be forwarded to detainees who had been transferred from Varick, she said the warden balked, saying he had to consider the financial interests of his private shareholders: 1,200 members of a central Alaskan tribe whose dividends are linked to Varick’s profits under a $79 million, three-year federal contract.

Federal officials would not discuss their transfer policies, but asked for patience as they try to make the detention system more humane and cost-effective.

“We inherited an inadequate detention system from the previous administration that does not meet ICE’s current priorities or needs,” said Matthew Chandler, a Homeland Security spokesman. Officials say they are committed to a complete overhaul, including less-penal detention centers with better access to lawyers.

The volunteer lawyers and the petition’s author, an ailing refugee from torture in Romania who spent eight months inside Varick, say many problems persist there, though the added scrutiny has led to improvements. Detainees who want a Gideon Bible no longer have to pay the commissary $7. Immigration officials are more responsive when a lawyer complains that a detainee in pain is not getting treatment.

But most detainees do not have a lawyer, and the few who do include men who have fallen prey to incompetent or fraudulent practitioners. Recurrent complaints include frigid temperatures, mildew and meals that leave detainees hungry and willing to clean for $1 a day to pay for commissary food. That wage is specified in the contract with the Alaskan company, which budgeted 23,000 days of such work the first year, and collects a daily rate of $227.68 for each detainee.

The Alaska connection is one of the stranger twists in the jail’s fitful history. Opened as a federal immigration detention center in 1984, Varick became chronically overcrowded after 1998, when new laws mandated the detention of all noncitizens who had ever committed a crime on a list of deportable offenses, expanded to include misdemeanors like drug possession.

A Dominican man there died of untreated pneumonia in 1999 — the first reported death in the nationwide detention system, which now counts 106 since October 2003.

The Varick facility, which is on the corner of Houston Street, fell short of national detention standards adopted in 2000, because it lacks any outdoor recreation space. But under a grandfather clause, it was allowed to remain open until 9/11, when the terror attack, blocks away, forced its evacuation. For years, it was shuttered. It quietly reopened in February 2008, operated by Ahtna Technical Services Inc., a subsidiary of Ahtna Inc. — still with no access to fresh air.

As an Alaska Native corporation, Ahtna has won numerous federal contracts without having to compete with other companies; last year it paid its tribal shareholders about $500 each in dividends. It hires a Texas subcontractor to supply guards and transportation, along with the shackles and belly chains routinely used on detainees being moved in or out.

Varick’s population includes illegal immigrants, asylum-seekers and legal immigrants who face deportation because they have past criminal convictions. Almost half of those screened by the volunteer lawyers have already been in detention for four to six months, according to the bar association report, and nearly 40 percent have legal grounds to contest deportation.

A few, the report says, have a possible claim to citizenship, which would make their detention unlawful. But the volunteers, including lawyers from 16 corporate firms, say they can offer only rudimentary legal triage to a handful of detainees a week.

The Department of Justice is asking Congress for money to expand the law project, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement invites Washington officials to visit the weekly triage sessions. The agency allowed a reporter to observe a session, but not to tour the jail. On a recent Thursday, only 11 of 35 detainees who had signed up made it into one of five glassed-in booths where they could consult with pairs of legal volunteers.

One, a 25-year-old Mexican, had been delivering food for an Italian restaurant on Madison Avenue until his detention. After a week in Varick, the government had not served him with a “notice to appear” telling why he was detained and setting the date and place where he would be heard by an immigration judge.

Volunteers were researching his case a week later when he was transferred to Atlanta. It could just as easily have been Louisiana or Texas, far from any free legal help, said Maria Navarro, a Legal Aid lawyer who supervises the volunteers. Even in cities, she said, lawyers are reluctant to represent detainees who may be suddenly moved far away.

Another 25-year-old, who had come to New York as a legal immigrant from Belize at age 2, told lawyers he had worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken to support his 5-year-old daughter, a citizen, when his sickle-cell anemia permitted. After a standing huddle, the lawyers told him that because his notice listed old convictions for possession of marijuana, he was ineligible for release on bond or with an electronic monitoring bracelet.

A Haitian, who had served time for at least one drug-related offense, had a lawyer but wanted a second opinion after being held in Varick for 16 months. He described himself as a barber, interpreter and legal resident of Brooklyn for 23 years.

“It is double jeopardy,” he protested, nursing a swollen jaw with teeth missing. “I become a diabetic here, because of anxiety, stress and suicidal conditions.”

Yet a detainee from the former Soviet Union praised the jail. “Varick is heaven” compared with some county jails in New Jersey (Bergen and Monmouth) and Florida, he said, citing abuse by anti-immigrant guards.

A century-long line of Supreme Court decisions holds that immigration detention is not a punishment or deprivation of liberty, and does not require legal counsel for fundamental fairness.

But Daniel I. Miller, 39, the Romanian whose petition reached the bar association, said his own case showed how high the stakes can be. Mr. Miller, a chef, fled his native land in 1994 after the secret police mutilated him for advocating gay rights. In New York, he had already been paroled for a criminal conviction — for signing his partner’s name on a contract — when immigration authorities detained him.

To no avail, records show, his lawyer and an outraged doctor at St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan urged his release from Varick for treatment of tumors on his liver. Instead, he was transferred in April to the Orange County Jail in Goshen, N.Y., where he said he also circulated a petition. The authorities there accused him of trying to start a riot and sent him to segregation with a murder defendant.

“These people have no rules, that’s the main problem,” Mr. Miller said, speaking from the Midtown office where he is starting an organic catering business. He credits his lawyer, Howard Brill, for that turnaround: On Sept. 2, after almost a year in custody, an immigration judge granted him the right to stay in the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/nyregion/02detain.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

Posted by lois at 09:01 PM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2009

Peter Shellem, Investigative Reporter Who Wrote About Wrongful Convictions, Dies at 49

Peter Shellem, Investigative Reporter Who Wrote About Wrongful Convictions, Dies at 49

By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: October 31, 2009
New York Times

Peter Shellem, whose relentless digging into dusty court records, erroneous crime-lab reports and coerced confessions during his 23 years as a reporter for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., led to the release of five wrongly convicted prisoners, died Oct. 24 at his home in Gardners, Pa. He was 49.

In one case, a man who was a teenager when he was convicted of killing a neighbor was released after 28 years in prison. In another, DNA evidence that Mr. Shellem recovered from a professor’s refrigerator in Leipzig, Germany, exonerated a retarded man of rape and murder.

Mr. Shellem committed suicide, his son Philip said, but the Cumberland County coroner, Michael Norris, would not confirm the cause of death.

Although Mr. Shellem’s investigative work was not widely known outside of central Pennsylvania, Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York, called him “a rare, one-man journalism innocence project.”

“He got into the nitty-gritty details of cases, and when he began to believe that somebody was wrongfully convicted he wouldn’t stop until he got justice,” Mr. Scheck said Monday. “Justice from the Fourth Estate has always been a great safety valve of our legal system, and Pete Shellem was that safety valve in Pennsylvania.”

In a profile in 2007, American Journalism Review wrote of Mr. Shellem, “No one keeps records on such things, but experts on journalism and the wrongly convicted cannot think of a present-day reporter who by himself has compiled a résumé of freed prisoners as thick as Shellem’s.”

Among them is Steven Crawford, who was arrested in 1970, when he was 14, after a friend was bludgeoned to death with a hammer. In 2001, Mr. Shellem learned that an old briefcase had been found in the attic of a deceased detective who had worked on the case. Notes in the briefcase suggested that a state police chemist had altered laboratory results to help convict Mr. Crawford. The Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office supported Mr. Crawford’s release after 28 years in prison.

In 1988, Barry Laughman, a man with an IQ of about 70, was sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a distant relative, Edna Laughman. Fifteen years later, Mr. Shellem’s series in The Patriot-News pointed to flaws in the case, including a confession that appeared to have been coerced. He also tracked down microscope slides of semen recovered from the victim’s body that had been taken to Germany by a professor who had tried, but failed, to identify the DNA. DNA techniques that had improved since the trial showed that Mr. Laughman was not the killer. He was freed in 2003.

“In the Laughman case, Pete was beating his head against the wall for years and no one would listen to him,” Bill Moushey, director of the Innocence Institute of Point Park University in Pittsburgh, said Monday. “Some law enforcement people brought personal attacks against him, trying to debunk his work, but he stood strong and eventually that retarded kid walked out of prison.”

Among the other prisoners freed by Mr. Shellem’s investigations is David Gladden, who was convicted in 1995 of killing a 67-year-old woman, Geneva Long, and burning the body. Ten years later, Mr. Shellem discovered that a convicted serial killer had lived next door to Ms. Long; he had killed his known victims in the same way.

Mr. Shellem interviewed a witness who had testified that he was with Mr. Gladden at the time of the crime. The witness recanted, saying he had been coerced into confessing a role in the crime. Mr. Gladden walked out of prison on Feb. 16, 2007.

“I don’t start writing until I’m sure I’m right,” Mr. Shellem told The American Journalism Review, “and if people need to be embarrassed into doing the right thing, I’m happy to oblige them.”

Peter Joseph Shellem was born in Philadelphia on Oct. 6, 1960, one of five children of Harry and Josephine Shellem. Besides his son Philip, he is survived by his wife of 24 years, the former Joyce Elser; another son, Alek; a brother, Paul; and a sister, Karen Cain.

Mr. Shellem graduated from Temple University with a degree in journalism in 1983. While in college, he worked at The Delaware County Times. He was a reporter for The Mercury, in Pottstown, Pa., before being hired by The Patriot-News in 1986.

A bearded, barrel-chested man, Mr. Shellem could have been cast as a B-movie reporter. He knew the first names of many bartenders in Harrisburg. He would sit in a bar poring over court transcripts and interviewing sources.

“I don’t want to lead anyone to believe I go to bars only to get stories,” he once said, “although it would be nice if my editors did.”
A version of this article appeared in print on November 1, 2009, on page A37 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2009

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

Navajo hope stimulus cash closes a revolving prison door

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

October 31, 2009-- LA Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

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

October 30, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 17, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Federal pressure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The tears start'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Let us stay'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 13, 2009

Two former state employees accused of raping three women prisoners as they worked on OK governor's grounds

Prisoners Say They Were Raped on Job Detail

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 12, 2009
NY Times
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Prosecutors are investigating accusations that two former state employees at the Oklahoma governor’s mansion raped three female prison inmates assigned to work on the mansion’s grounds.

Neither man has been charged, but the Department of Central Services fired both of them on Sept. 29 for violating departmental policies after a three-month Department of Corrections investigation.

The accusations raise questions about security at the chief executive’s residence and about the oversight of a program meant in part to reward good behavior by allowing inmates to leave prison for the day and work off site.

Department of Corrections officials believe the state workers who supervised the inmates at the governor’s mansion committed sexual battery, forcible sodomy and rape against inmates from the Hillside Community Corrections Center, a department spokesman, Jerry Massie, said Monday. The department recently turned its findings over to the office of the Oklahoma County district attorney, David Prater.

Assistant District Attorney Scott Rowland said Monday that prosecutors met with Department of Corrections investigators for two hours Friday and that the investigation was continuing. Neither of the employees responded to phone messages seeking comment.

The inmates, two of whom have since been released from prison, say the assaults happened between March 2008 and January 2009. The Department of Corrections did not begin investigating until June 1, after one woman came forward after her release, Mr. Massie said.

The women said they were attacked in a storage building outside the security fence that surrounds the mansion’s 14-acre grounds, Mr. Massie said.

Janet Roloff, a lawyer for one of the women, said her client had endured a “violent, bloody rape” that left her with emotional and physical scars. It is illegal for a supervisor and an inmate to have sex, and Ms. Roloff scoffed at the notion that any sex between her client and the state workers was consensual.

“My client was dragged down, held down by one and raped by another,” she said. “That doesn’t sound very consensual, does it?”

Ms. Roloff said her client had been afraid to report the attack until after her release, for fear of retribution. She said the woman had come forward to try to persuade prison officials to stop sending female inmates to the governor’s mansion.

The Corrections Department is interviewing other women who took part in the program, Mr. Massie said. The program was suspended after the accusations surfaced but has since resumed.

The accusations came a month after three state troopers assigned to guard the mansion were disciplined for falsifying hours, saying they were working when they were not.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 13, 2009, on page A21 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/us/13okla.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Oklahoma&st=cse

Posted by lois at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2009

Stanidsh MI begs for prisoners from PA DOC Commissoner Beard

MDOC's letter to Pennsylvania regarding PA inmates in Standish Max
Following is the Michigan Department of Corrections' letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections in its entirety. Standish max is mentioned in paragraph three.

Secretary Jeffrey A. Beard
Department of Corrections
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
P.O. Box 598
Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598

Dear Secretary Beard:

Thank you for your recent letter asking for the Michigan Department of Corrections’ (MI DOC) proposal on housing Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ (PA DOC) prisoners in Michigan through an Inmate Transfer Agreement. Michigan would be very interested in pursuing such an opportunity and attached please find our proposal detailing the rates, capacities and services available.

We currently have two prisons that may be of particular interest and would be a good fit for the approximately 1,000-1,500 prisoners the PA DOC is looking to transfer.

10-6-09
We will soon be closing the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison which houses 604 prisoners. It is located just off Interstate 75 north of Saginaw in Standish, Michigan, in proximity to airports. The facility opened in 1990 and is in excellent condition. While this is mostly a single-cell facility (one housing unit was double bunked), it could easily be reconfigured to a lower security level and be double bunked.

We will also soon be closing the Muskegon Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison which houses 1,326 prisoners. It is located off U.S. 31 in Muskegon, Michigan, and in proximity to airports. The facility opened in 1974 and is also in excellent operating condition.

Currently both of these facilities are fully staffed with highly trained, professional, hard-working, knowledgeable and responsible correctional employees. Our correctional staff is second to none in the nation.

The reason we have facilities available for potential use by the PA DOC is due to the decline in our population. For the past several years, the MI DOC has been closing prisons as the prison population drops. We are experiencing a decline for several reasons including:

• Prison intake was down 9% in 2008 and is down 8% through August of 2009.

• Total felony court dispositions have declined for the second straight year, following eight straight years of growth. Felony court dispositions across the entire state of Michigan decreased by almost 4% in 2008 and have decreased by another 6.3% in 2009 through June.

• In 2008, the Michigan Prisoner ReEntry Initiative (MPRI) went statewide and expanded to 18 regional sites that now cover all 83 counties. The preliminary data for the first 13,000 former prisoners worked with shows that the return to prison rate has improved from 1 out of 2 returning within two years to 1 out of 3 returning in two years.

• Due to the success of MPRI, the rate of prisoners paroled is up and parole failures are down.

• With prison intake down, the parole rate up and parole failures reduced, Michigan’s prison population is at its lowest level in eight years.

I believe this opportunity has tremendous potential and could be mutually beneficial to both our states. It would allow Pennsylvania to address its immediate need for additional prison beds and let some of Michigan’s experienced and accomplished correctional staff continues working as they face the likelihood of layoff. In addition, the fact that we now share the same prisoner health care provider could help ease any potential concerns associated with this very important area of effective prisoner management.

I am confident we can provide a safe and secure environment for Pennsylvania prisoners and do so in a very competitive and cost-effective manner. In addition, we can assist you in creating safer communities in Pennsylvania by applying the principles of our successful prisoner reentry program and help your inmates return home and become productive citizens.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any additional questions or concerns. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
Patricia L. Caruso, Director
Michigan Department of Corrections
http://www.arenacindependent.com/detail/83002.html

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

October 10, 2009

Angola 3: Herman Wallace's Appeal Denied After 37 Years in Solitary Confinement

Appeal Denied After 37 Years in Solitary Confinement
by James Ridgeway. The Unsilent Generation
Posted: 10 Oct 2009

The Louisiana State Supreme Court Friday denied an appeal from Herman Wallace, who has been held in solitary confinement for more than 37 years. Wallace and Albert Woodfox are members of what has become known as the Angola 3, whose story I have been covering for Mother Jones. Convicted of the 1972 murder of a prison guard at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, both men maintain their innocence; they believe they were targeted for the crime and relegated to permanent lockdown because of their organizing work with the prison chapter of the Black Panthers. Wallace, who is now 68 years old, was recently transferred from Angola to the Hunt Correctional Center near Baton Rouge, where he continues to be held in solitary. Two days ago, Wallace descended even deeper into the hole, placed in a disciplinary unit called Beaver 5 for unknown violations of prison policy.

Herman Wallace launched the appeal of his conviction nearly a decade ago. His lawyers have introduced substantial evidence showing that the state’s star witness, a fellow prisoner named Hezekiah Brown, was offered special treatment and an eventual pardon in exchange for his testimony against Wallace and Woodfox. In 2006, a judicial commissioner assigned to study the case found that there were grounds for overturning the conviction, but Wallace’s application was subsequently denied–by the state district court, court of appeals, and now by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

While every setback comes as a blow to a man nearing 70 who has spent nearly four decades in lockdown, one of Wallace’s attorneys said tonight that this denial by the state’s highest court came as no surprise, since it has a reputation for refusing to overturn the decisions of lower courts. Today’s ruling opens the doors to a federal habeas corpus challenge, beginning with the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana at Baton Rouge. Here, if Wallace is lucky, his case will be reviewed by a fact-finding federal magistrate, and his conviction overturned by a federal judge. This is what happened to Albert Woodfox last year. Yet Woodfox, too, remains in prison–and in solitary confinement–as the state appeals the judge’s decision.

Louisiana’s Attorney General, James “Buddy” Caldwell, has stated that he opposes releasing the two men “with every fiber of my being,” while the Warden of Angola and Hunt prisons, Burl Cain, has more than once suggested that the two men must be held in solitary because they ascribe to “Black Pantherism.”

In addition to their criminal appeals, Wallace and Woodfox (along with Robert King, who was released in 2001), have a case pending on constitutional grounds. They argue that the conditions and duration of their time in solitary confinement constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Their lawyers have submitted reports showing the effects of decades of solitary confinement on men in their sixties—including arthritis, hypertension, and kidney failure, as well as memory impairment, insomnia, claustrophobia, anxiety, and depression. The suit also argues that Wallace and Woodfox are being held in lockdown for their political beliefs, in violation of the First Amendment.
http://unsilentgeneration.com/

Posted by lois at 10:52 PM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2009

Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among High School Dropouts: including jail or juvenile detention for 1 in 4 African American young men who drop out of school.

"The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime."

"The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts."

Study Finds High Rate of Imprisonment Among Dropouts
By SAM DILLON
Published NY Times: October 8, 2009

On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging.

The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts.

Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high school dropouts.

“We’re trying to show what it means to be a dropout in the 21st century United States,” said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern, who headed a team of researchers that prepared the report. “It’s one of the country’s costliest problems. The unemployment, the incarceration rates — it’s scary.”

A coalition of civil rights and public education advocacy groups and a network of alternative schools in Chicago commissioned the report as part of a push for new educational opportunities for the nation’s 6.2 million high school dropouts.

“The dropout rate is driving the nation’s increasing prison population, and it’s a drag on America’s economic competitiveness,” said Marc H. Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League, one of the groups in the coalition that commissioned the report. “This report makes it clear that every American pays a cost when a young person leaves school without a diploma.”

The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime.

Daniel J. Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the study was consistent with other economic studies of the dropout crisis, though he said the methodology of its cost-benefit analysis “lacked transparency.”

“The report’s strength is that it reveals in clear terms that there’s a real crisis with the high numbers of young, especially minority males, who drop out of school and wind up incarcerated,” Mr. Losen said.

Previous studies have come up with estimates of the same order of magnitude on the social cost of low graduation rates. A 2007 study by Teachers College, Princeton and City University of New York researchers, for instance, estimated that society could save $209,000 in prison and other costs for every potential dropout who could be helped to complete high school.

The new report, in its analysis of 2008 unemployment rates, found that 54 percent of dropouts ages 16 to 24 were jobless, compared with 32 percent for high school graduates of the same age, and 13 percent for those with a college degree.

Again, the statistics were worse for young African-American dropouts, whose unemployment rate last year was 69 percent, compared with 54 percent for whites and 47 percent for Hispanics. The unemployment rate among young Hispanics was lower, the report said, because included in that category were many illegal immigrants, who compete successfully for jobs with native-born youths.

The unemployment rates cited for all groups have climbed several points in 2009 because of the recession, Mr. Sum said.

Young female dropouts were nine times more likely to have become single mothers than young women who went on to earn college degrees, the report said, citing census data for 2006 and 2007.

The number of unmarried young women having children has increased sharply in some communities in part, Mr. Sum said, because large numbers of young men have dropped out of school and are jobless year round. As a result, young women do not view them as having the wherewithal to support a family.

“None of these guys can afford to own a home, they just don’t have any money,” he said. “And as a result, any time they father a child it’s out of wedlock. It wasn’t like this 30 years ago.”

He cited his hometown, Gary, Ind., as an example. “Back in the 1970s, my friends in Gary would quit school in senior year and go to work at U.S. Steel and make a good living, and young guys in Michigan would go to work in an auto plant,” he said. “You just can’t do that anymore. Today, you have a lot of dropouts who are jobless year round.”

Link to the study: http://www.clms.neu.edu/publication/documents/The_Consequences_of_Dropping_Out_of_High_School.pdf

A version of this article appeared in print on October 9, 2009, on page A12 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/education/09dropout.html?_r=1&ref=us

Posted by lois at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2009

Supreme Court to consider life without parole for juveniles sentenced for non-murder convictions?

Supreme Court to consider juvenile 'lifers'
Does life without parole for minors who didn't kill constitute cruel and unusual punishment?
By David G. Savage
September 28, 2009

Reporting from Washington - Joe Sullivan was 13 years old when he and two older boys broke into a home, where they robbed and raped an elderly woman. After a one-day trial in 1989, Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole.

Terrance Graham was 16 when he and two others robbed a restaurant. When he was arrested again a year later for a home break-in, a Florida judge said he was incorrigible. In 2005, Graham received a life term with no parole.

The two young convicts represent an American phenomenon, one the Supreme Court is set to reconsider in the fall term that opens Oct. 5. At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder.

According to Amnesty International, "The United States is the only country in the world that does not comply with the norm against imposing life-without-parole sentences on juveniles."

Nearly all of the estimated 2,500 U.S. prisoners serving life terms for juvenile crimes, the group said, were guilty either of murder or of participating in a crime that led to a homicide. But 109 inmates are serving life sentences for other crimes committed when they were younger than 18.

Sullivan's and Graham's lawyers do not claim the young men deserve to go free.

"We are not asking for Mr. Graham to be released any time soon," attorney Bryan Gowdy said. "We are asking the court to declare unconstitutional a sentence of life without parole for these crimes. It would be entirely different if Mr. Graham had a meaningful opportunity for parole."

The question will be an early test of whether Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor, will align herself with the court's tough-on-crime conservatives or join with its liberals to strike down prison policies perceived as going too far.

Sullivan’s and Graham’s cases will be heard in November. Many lawyers and prosecutors said that until the Supreme Court agreed this year to take up the issue, they were unaware of juveniles receiving such sentences.

Sullivan, now 33, has been in prison for 20 years. The Florida appeals court and the state Supreme Court refused to review his sentence. When his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida Atty. Gen. Bill McCollum said the appeal should be dismissed on the grounds that it was too late to raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment.

A lawyer for Graham has called his client's life sentence freakish and unfair. A second youth who participated in the restaurant robbery hit an employee with a club. He was later arrested for robbing a gas station and sentenced to three years in prison. He has since been released.

Florida leads the nation in sending teenagers to prison for life with no possible parole for crimes such as burglary, assault or rape. It has at least 77 such inmates. California and six other states also have at least one.

"This is a hidden group. They don't get a lot of attention because there was no homicide," said Paolo Annino, a law professor at Florida State University who has compiled national data on these prisoners.

California officials said they were unaware of having four such inmates until they checked their database at Annino's request. Two years ago, California joined many other states in prohibiting the sentencing of young offenders to life in prison.

But that measure did not affect inmates who had already been sentenced.

Annino and others point to two trends in the 1980s that led to juveniles serving life terms. First was the national move to abolish parole, reflecting fears that violent criminals could not be safely released. Second was the increased prosecution of young criminals as adults.

In defense of its life-in-prison policy, Florida's lawyers have pointed to several deadly attacks on European visitors carried out by young criminals.

These violent incidents were "threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's lawyers said in the opening paragraph of their brief to the Supreme Court in the Graham case.

Pie chart on states imprisoning juveniles for crimes other than murder:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-preview28-2009sep28,0,1454652.story

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

September 23, 2009

AZ: 2 articlles on the horrible cruel death of Marcia Powell. Prison guards punished in Marcia Powell's Death: 3 fired, two leave, 10 receive suspensions ranging form 40 to 80 hours, one demoted

Details emerge in inmate's heat-related death
Report describes miscommunications, policy violations
by Casey Newton - Sept. 24, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Disturbing new details emerged Wednesday in the death of Marcia Powell, an Arizona state prison inmate who died of heat-related causes after being left in an outdoor cage for hours.

The Arizona Department of Corrections' internal investigation of Powell's death on May 20 runs about 3,000 pages. The department announced this week that it has disciplined 16 people in connection with the incident, with five employees fired or forced to resign. A criminal investigation is ongoing.

Interviews with prison staff members, inmates and medical personnel illustrate how a series of policy violations and miscommunications led to Powell's collapse at Arizona State Prison Complex-Perryville in Good- year. She later died at West Valley Hospital.

Among the report's findings:

• Powell passed out in her cell on the morning of May 19. A few minutes before, she had announced she was suicidal. She was taken to an outdoor cage to await transfer to a psychiatric unit. But the sergeant who saw Powell lose consciousness never reported the incident to supervisors, despite the fact that Powell said she was having trouble breathing.

• At least 20 inmates told investigators that Powell was denied water for most or all of the time she was in her cage, despite regular requests. Corrections officers said Powell was given water.

• Powell was taking psychotropic medications that made her particularly sensitive to the heat, but medical personnel did not convey that fact to corrections officers.

• After more than two hours in the sun, Powell requested to be taken back to her indoor cell. Her request was denied.

• Powell was apparently denied a request to use the restroom and defecated in the cage. A corrections officer discovered that Powell had soiled herself but left her where she was. Medical personnel would later discover feces underneath her fingernails and all over her back.

• The psychiatric unit to which Powell was awaiting transport should have accepted her hours before she died, the report found, but a series of miscommunications prevented her from being taken in.

Powell, who was serving a sentence for prostitution, said she felt suicidal at 11 a.m. on May 19 and was escorted to the outdoor cage to await transportation for psychiatric care at the prison complex detention unit.

Officers seeking to move Powell to the unit were first told that it did not have available beds. Later, another inmate in the unit refused to put handcuffs on to be taken back to her cell, causing the staff to trigger its incident command system. The incident took more than 90 minutes to resolve, during which time no other inmates were brought into the unit.

Officers monitoring Powell were wary of asking psychiatric-unit staffers to accept another inmate during the standoff, even though three beds had become available. But investigators said it would have been possible to transfer Powell, since the uncooperative inmate was locked in a secure cell.

Prison policy calls for inmates to be kept in outdoor cells for a maximum of two hours. The cells had no shade, and on the day Powell died, temperatures hit 107.5 degrees.

Officers did not properly log Powell's time in the outdoor cell or when they checked on her. When she collapsed, no one could say for certain how long she had been there.

Doctors on the scene said Powell's body temperature was at least 108 degrees but may have been higher, since their thermometers topped out at 108.

Charles Ryan, corrections department director, called Powell's death "unconscionable" and "an absolute failure."

The most bitterly disputed aspect of the case concerns whether Powell was denied water.

Nearly all of the inmates interviewed by investigators reported that Powell screamed out for water regularly but was repeatedly denied. Others said she was granted water only once or twice in nearly four hours.

"I need some water - just a drop," one inmate overheard Powell tell a corrections officer, who reportedly ignored her.

Another inmate reported that a corrections officer mockingly repeated Powell's requests for water back to her, without giving her any.

All of the corrections officers interviewed for the report said Powell had been given water throughout her outdoor confinement.

Both inmates and staff members said Powell's history of mental illness and frequent erratic behavior meant that some of her requests were not taken seriously. She did not get the staff's undivided attention until she collapsed at 2:40 p.m.

Timothy Johnson, a physician's assistant who attempted to revive Powell, swore repeatedly at investigators when asked about Powell's death.

"This should not have happened," he said.

Workers Punished In Inmate's Death
Marcia Powell Left In Outdoor Holding Cell For 4 Hours In Triple-Digit Heat
September 22, 2009

PHOENIX -- Sixteen Arizona prison workers have been disciplined or fired for the death of an inmate left in an outdoor cage.
Three of those disciplined were fired, two stepped down in place of being fired, 10 received suspensions ranging from 40 to 80 hours, and one was demoted. Two others will be disciplined after they return from medical leave.

Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan announced the moves Tuesday, calling the death "the most significant example of abuse" of an inmate that he's aware of within the department.
"That is an absolute failure," Ryan said Tuesday. "The inmate should not have been left in the enclosure that length of time."

Ryan declined to provide the names of the corrections employees who were disciplined, saying it would be inappropriate considering they have the right to appeal their punishments.

Marcia Powell, 48, died last May, about 10 hours after she collapsed in an outdoor, unshaded holding cell at the Perryville prison in Goodyear.

Her body's core temperature had risen to 108 degrees, according to the autopsy report.

The autopsy revealed Powell had first and second-degree burns on her face, chest and arms.

The report also turned up traces of medication in Powell’s blood for treating Parkinson’s disease and depression.

Ryan said at the time Powell was left in the cell nearly twice as long as she should have under department policy.

Ryan said Powell's cell was 20 yards from a staffed control room from where corrections officers should have been watching her.

Donna Hamm, director of Tempe-based Middle Ground Prison Reform, said the employees' punishment helps show other prison workers that they will be held accountable for their actions.

"There was an established policy, and had it been followed, Marcia Powell would be alive today," Hamm said.

She said County Attorney Andrew Thomas should charge the employees involved in Powell's death.

"If that happens, the message is crystal clear to department employees about their responsibilities and the consequences of not following their own policy," Hamm said.

Powell arrived at the Perryville prison in August 2008.

Powell was placed alone in the cell while being moved to an onsite detention unit after seeing a prison psychologist. Ryan said a disturbance at the detention unit prompted Powell's placement in the holding cell. He would not elaborate on the nature of the disturbance.

Ryan said officers gave Powell bottled water, as required under prison policy.

Officers did not remove her after two hours as they should have done under department policy, according to Ryan.

"It is intended to be temporary," Ryan said. "It is not intended to be a place where they are held for an inordinate amount of time."

Powell had been in and out of state prisons and had a long history of mental illness, Ryan said.
http://www.kpho.com/news/21071761/detail.html

-----------------
AZ corrections workers disciplined in inmate death
By AMANDA LEE MYERS (AP) – 9-22-09

PHOENIX — Sixteen Arizona corrections employees have been fired, suspended or otherwise disciplined for their roles in the death of an inmate left in an outdoor holding cell for four hours in triple-digit heat and for a "wait-them-out" practice at the prison where she died.

Three of those disciplined were fired, two stepped down in place of being fired, 10 received suspensions ranging from 40 to 80 hours, and one was demoted. Two others will be disciplined after they return from medical leave.

Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan announced the moves Tuesday, calling the death the "most significant example of abuse" of an inmate that he's aware of within the department.

Marcia Powell, who was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution, died from heat-related complications hours after she collapsed May 19 in an uncovered outdoor cell at the Perryville prison in the west Phoenix suburb of Goodyear. She had been in the cell for nearly four hours, despite a policy that set a two-hour limit.

Powell, 48, was being held in the outdoor cell while being transferred from one section of the prison to an observation ward after seeing a psychologist. An autopsy report showed she had first- and second-degree burns on her face and body and a core body temperature of 108 degrees.

"That is an absolute failure," Ryan said Tuesday. "The inmate should not have been left in the enclosure that length of time."

The autopsy also found that Powell's death was an accident and that she had anti-psychotic drugs in her system. Such drugs are known to make people more susceptible to heat-related illnesses.

Ryan declined to provide the names of the corrections employees who were disciplined, saying it would be inappropriate considering they have the right to appeal their punishments. Those disciplined included a deputy warden, a prison psychologist, a chief of security and various officers.

A call to the union that represents Arizona corrections workers was not immediately returned Tuesday evening.

During the administrative investigation of Powell's death, Ryan said investigators with the Office of the Inspector General uncovered a so-called "wait-them-out" practice at the Perryville prison that went on for about a year. Inmates were placed in outdoor and indoor holdings cells for hours at a time as an alternative to using force, he said.

While Powell was not in a holding cell under that practice, Ryan said, an inmate was left in an outdoor cell for 20 hours three days before Powell's death; she did not require medical treatment. He said no one died under the "wait-them-out" practice.

The state prisons system ended its use of outdoor prison cells weeks after Powell's death. Arizona's 10 prisons had 233 outdoor cells for temporarily holding inmates awaiting transfer to punishment wards, medical units, other prisons or work assignments.

Ryan said the cells at Perryville are now used as exercise or short-term waiting areas. They are now shaded, and have misters and benches.

The criminal investigation into Powell's death is finished and at the Maricopa County attorney's office, which will decide if any corrections employees will be charged.

Donna Hamm, director of Tempe-based Middle Ground Prison Reform, said the employees' punishment helps show other prison workers that they will be held accountable for their actions.

"There was an established policy, and had it been followed, Marcia Powell would be alive today," Hamm said.

She said County Attorney Andrew Thomas should charge the employees involved in Powell's death.

"If that happens, the message is crystal clear to department employees about their responsibilities and the consequences of not following their own policy," Hamm said.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gsV8vjqxQYd1axkrcnJIPHOyKSFAD9ASOBFG3

Posted by lois at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2009

Medical Inattention in New York Prisons

Editorial
Medical Inattention in New York Prisons
NY Times
Published: September 15, 2009

Prison inmates are the sickest people in society, with infection rates for blood-borne viruses like H.I.V. and hepatitis C far higher than the general population. Failing to test, counsel and treat these inmates makes it more likely that they will spread infection once they are released and suffer catastrophic illnesses that shorten their lives and drive up public health costs.

The New York State Legislature had this problem in mind when it passed a bill that requires the State Department of Health to ensure that prison H.I.V. and hepatitis programs are operating effectively and meet prevailing medical standards. Corrections officials, who tend to rebel against oversight of just about any kind, want Gov. David Paterson to veto this bill. He should ignore them and sign it.

The state correctional system has unquestionably improved medical care over the last several years. But a recent report by the Correctional Association of New York, which is authorized by the Legislature to monitor the prisons, found troubling inconsistencies in care in the state prison system, which is said to house 20 percent of the H.I.V.-infected inmates in the United States.

The report, based on state records, estimates that the state has identified through testing fewer than half of the H.I.V.-positive inmates and only about 70 percent of those with hepatitis C. The report finds that the number of people receiving treatment varies significantly from place to place, which is suspicious given that the population is fairly homogenous. The variation raises questions about the consistency and effectiveness of medical policies from prison to prison.

Prison medical officials argue that the treatment regime is fine and that oversight is unnecessary. But critics in the Legislature rightly point out that the prison health system is the only one in the state not overseen by the Health Department. The prison system, with about 4,000 infected inmates, is the largest provider of treatment for H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, in the state.

Other critics argue than the Health Department’s initiative would cost money at time when the state can’t afford it. But better diagnoses and treatment in prison would save more money than it would cost by preventing further infections and keeping many patients from moving on to costly, catastrophic illnesses.

A version of this article appeared in print on September 15, 2009, on page A32 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/opinion/15tue2.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2009

Dallas PA: State to investigate allegations about Dallas prison guards

Friday, September 11, 2009 10:27 am
State to investigate allegations about Dallas prison guards
Fed Up! says prisoners claim guards facilitated suicide of convicted murderer Matthew Bullock.
By Steve Mocarsky – Times Leader Staff Writer

The state Department of Corrections will investigate prisoner allegations that guards at the State Correctional Institution at Dallas facilitated and encouraged the suicide of convicted murderer Matthew Bullock on Aug. 24.

Bret Grote, an investigator with the chapter, said credible prisoners who were confined in cells near Bullock contacted the organization claiming that Bullock, though a known suicide risk, was moved from a video-equipped cell to one without monitoring capabilities.

And on the morning of the suicide, two guards at the Jackson Township facility had been kicking on Bullock’s cell door, saying, “Kill yourself, you little p****,” according to one prisoner report, Grote said.
Prisoners also reported to Fed Up! that prison staff failed to place Bullock on suicide monitoring watch after Bullock stated his intention to kill himself. Hours later, Bullock was found by guards on the next shift hanging dead from his cell door, Grote said.
“No one, much less the mentally ill, should be held in Dallas’ (restricted housing unit). It’s a torture chamber, and for Matthew Bullock, it was a death sentence,” he said.

A Luzerne County jury found Bullock guilty of third-degree murder but mentally ill in the strangulation death of 33-year-old Lisa Hargrave in the couple’s Wilkes-Barre apartment on Jan. 1, 2003.

Hargrave was 22 weeks pregnant. The jury also found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter but mentally ill for the fetus’ death.
Grote noted that Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas Judge Joseph Augello in November 2003 ordered Bullock to serve 20 to 60 years at a secure mental-health facility, and on July 15 “for reasons not yet known to the public, (Bullock) was moved from a state mental health facility at SCI Waymart to SCI Dallas, which is not a mental health facility and is not equipped to provide substantial mental health care.”

Grote said he planned soon to forward this information to various state officials, including Gov. Ed Rendell and officials at SCI Dallas and the Department of Corrections.
Bullock’s father, Robert Bullock, of Dallas, said he and his wife, Phyllis, needed more time to digest the information and declined to comment on Thursday.

PSP found no wrongdoing
Sue Bensinger, deputy press secretary for the state Department of Corrections, said Bullock “exhibited no indications of suicidal behavior prior to his committing suicide.”
Bensinger said Bullock had been discharged from the mental health unit at SCI Waymart because he had been exhibiting no signs of suicidal tendencies there, and, after arriving at SCI Dallas, he wasn’t on suicide watch because he still exhibited no signs of suicidal behavior.

According to Times Leader archives, prosecutors at Bullock’s sentencing hearing said he would be placed in a “hospital within a prison” setting and, if his condition improved, he could be transferred to a state prison with a judge’s permission.

Bensinger noted state police investigated Bullock’s death, as they do for any death that occurs in a prison, and found no wrong doing.A trooper at state police Troop P in Wyoming confirmed Thursday that there is no ongoing investigation into Bullock’s death.
Still, Bensinger said the information would be forwarded to the department’s Office of Professional Review.“We take all these kinds of allegations very seriously,” she said.

Bullock reportedly distraught

Grote also said the restricted housing unit in which Bullock was being held “employs the practice of solitary confinement, in which people are isolated for 23 or more hours a day in cells the size of a small bathroom, often under extremely harsh conditions.
“Solitary confinement is known to exacerbate mental illness and the practice of holding people in isolation – particularly the mentally ill – has been condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations,” Grote said.
He said Bullock was reportedly distraught over “constant harassment and intimidation” from guards, and about conditions in the SCI Dallas restricted housing unit, such as 24-hour lighting, extreme heat and poor ventilation in the cells.

“These conditions and extensive abuse by guards, have been the focus of an investigation by the Human Rights Coalition, who over the past three months have been compiling dozens of reports of human rights abuses at SCI Dallas, including encouragement of prisoner-on-prisoner violence, guards arriving to work drunk, prisoners being called racist slurs and retaliation – including death threats – against anybody who dares exercise their constitutional rights to file inmate grievances or civil suits regarding conditions of confinement,” Grote said.

DOC’s Bensinger said she didn’t have the size of solitary confinement cells immediately available, but she confirmed there is 24-hour “very dim lighting” during sleeping hours, “which ensures officers can, indeed, see into cells.”
http://www.timesleader.com/news/State_to_investigate_allegations_about_Dallas_prison_guards_09-11-2009.html

Posted by lois at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2009

Study Finds Only Half of All Federal and State Prisons offer Methadone and Buprenorphine and Only In Very Limited Circumstances

Study finds US prison system falls short in treating drug addiction

PROVIDENCE, RI – Almost a quarter of a million individuals addicted to heroin are incarcerated in the United States each year. However, many prison systems across the country still do not offer medical treatment for heroin and opiate addiction, despite the demonstrated social, medical and economic benefits of opiate replacement therapy (ORT).

According to new research from The Miriam Hospital, Brown University and their affiliated Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, just half of all federal and state prison systems offer ORT with the medications methadone and buprenorphine, and only in very limited circumstances. Similarly, only twenty-three states provide referrals for some inmates to treatment upon release from prison. These policies are counter to guidelines issued by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which say prisoners should be offered ORT for treatment of opiate dependence.

The study's findings are published online by Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

"Pharmacological treatment of opiate dependence is a proven intervention, is cost-effective and reduces drug-related disease and reincarceration rates, yet it remains underutilized in U.S. prison systems," said Amy Nunn, ScD, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of medicine (research) at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. "Improving correctional policies for addiction treatment could dramatically improve prisoner and community health as well as reduce both taxpayer burden and reincarceration rates."

"Opiate addiction, like all forms of addiction, causes long-term changes to the structure and functioning of the brain, which is why it is classified as a disease. Addiction requires treatment just as other chronic diseases, like diabetes and cancer, do. Unfortunately, there is a large gap between the number of prisoners who require addiction treatment and those who actually receive it," added senior author Josiah Rich, MD, MPH, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at The Miriam Hospital and Alpert Medical School.

The U.S. has the world's highest incarceration rate, with approximately 10 million individuals incarcerated each year. More than half of inmates have a history of substance use and more than 200,000 people with heroin addiction are incarcerated annually. Inmates face disproportionately higher burdens of mental illness, substance use and infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Meanwhile, their transition back to their communities is often associated with increased sexual health and drug-related risks, and more than half will relapse within one month of their release.

For the past four decades, methadone has been the treatment of choice for opiate dependence. It prevents withdrawal symptoms and drug cravings, blocks the euphoric effects of other opiates, and reduces the risk of relapse, infectious disease transmission and overdose death. The drug buprenorphine is a newer treatment for opiate replacement that has less likelihood of overdose and is associated with less social stigma. Like methadone, it prevents withdrawal symptoms when an individual stops taking opioid drugs by producing similar effects. Both methadone and buprenorphine are included in WHO's "Essential Medicines" list of drugs that should be made available at all times by health systems to patients.

The Miriam/Brown research team surveyed the medical directors at the 50 state departments of corrections, along with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the District of Columbia prison, about their facilities' ORT prescribing policies and referral programs for inmates leaving prison. They received a total of 51 of 52 responses.

Although it appears methadone is offered more frequently that buprenorphine, only 28 facilities (55 percent) offer it under any circumstances, although more than half of these provide it only to pregnant women or for chronic pain management. Approximately 45 percent of facilities provided some community linkage to methadone treatment post-release. Meanwhile, only seven prison systems (14 percent) offer buprenorphine in some circumstances, while 15 facilities (29 percent) offer referrals for some inmates to community buprenorphine providers upon release.

When asked why these treatments are not available in their prison system, the majority of facilities indicated they prefer drug-free detoxification over ORT. A number of prison systems also cited security concerns about providing methadone and buprenorphine to inmates. Interestingly, 27 percent of medical directors said they did not know how beneficial methadone is for treating inmates with opiate addiction, while half were unaware of the benefits of buprenorphine.

A major barrier to providing ORT after incarceration appears to be the lack of partnerships with community ORT providers. Many providers also cited their focus on inmate health during incarceration, rather than upon release, as another reason for not linking inmates to ORT after they've been released.

"In spite of overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrating that pharmacological treatment for addiction has greater health and social benefits than abstinence-only policies, many prison directors are philosophically opposed to treating substance use. Most prisons also do not provide referrals for substance use treatment for prisoners upon release," said Nunn. "These trends contribute to high reincarceration rates and have detrimental impacts on community health. Our interviews with prison medical directors suggest that changing these policies may require an enormous cultural shift within correctional systems."

###

The study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA/NIH) and Center for AIDS Research (CFAR); and the Tufts Nutrition Collaborative. In addition to Nunn and Rich, co-authors include Nickolas Zeller and Ank Nijhawan from both The Miriam Hospital and Alpert Medical School; Samuel Dickman from Brown University; and Catherine Trimbur from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.

The Miriam Hospital, established in 1926 in Providence, RI, is a private, not-for-profit hospital affiliated with The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a founding member of the Lifespan health system. For more information about The Miriam Hospital, please visit www.miriamhospital.org

The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University is Rhode Island's only school of medicine. Since granting its first MD degrees in 1975, Alpert Medical School has become a national leader in medical education and biomedical research.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/l-sfu090809.php

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

September 02, 2009

ColorLines Review: The Real Cost of Prisons Comix: Vivid comics show the impacts of mass incarceration on communities of color

Issue #52, Sept/Oct 2009
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
By Jenna M. Lloyd
Vivid comics show the impacts of mass incarceration on communities of color.

September 2, 2009

Locking 2.3 million people behind bars is a vast social project. It takes work to hide the equivalent of a large US city in plain sight. The explanations served up on the nightly news and by tough-on-crime politicians graphically focus on violent crime, despite its decline. More prisons, they say, will create safe and drug free communities.

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix (PM Press), winner of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency’s PASS Award, asks whether the billions of dollars invested annually in mass incarceration delivers on these promises.

Hidden behind these fear-provoking images, the book documents the steep human costs exacted on individual health and freedom, family unity, and community well being. What else could be done with the social wealth and creativity now trapped into cycles of cage-building and neighborhood abandonment?

Through powerful graphics and a wealth of grim statistics The Real Cost of Prisons Comix depicts how the past 30 years of unprecedented prison growth have reshaped the landscape of our urban and rural communities. By showing the concrete work that goes into building and maintaining the prison-industrial complex—from the peddlers of fear to the parole officer—the book serves as a smart, accessible primer on the politics and economics driving prison expansion. Prisons are filled with people who have dreams, raise children, and belong to communities most will rejoin.

The RCPC shows visceral narratives of their lives and the collision of racism, poverty, sexism to trace the systematic ways in which mass incarceration builds on and exacerbates these powerful inequities. Most importantly, it suggests concrete alternatives that can help rebuild safe, healthy communities.

Shrinking the system becomes as important a harm reduction strategy as needle exchange and drug treatment.

Three accomplished comic artists collaborate with long time activists and draw on the work of dozens of researchers imprisoned people, and advocates, to examine one dimension of mass incarceration. Kevin Pyle’s "Prison Town: Paying the Price" shows how millions of dollars poured into moving people hours away from their homes fails to generate promised economic growth for struggling rural communities.

In "Prisoners and the War on Drugs," Sabrina Jones takes on racial disparities in drug laws and policing practices that result in African American and Latino people comprising 93% of those incarcerated in New York, and that lock up more drug users than dealers.

Susan Willmarth’s "Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children" examines how women are the fastest growing group of people being imprisoned. Most women are imprisoned for non-violent crimes, half of them drug offenses. But lifetime bans on welfare, public housing, and student loans for felony drug convictions only exacerbate already serious problems of poverty, racism, abuse, and drugs women face in their daily lives.

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix grew out of a popular education project Lois Ahrens began in 2000. Since the first printing in 2005, over 115,000 copies have been distributed free of charge, and project’s website receives over 30,000 page views each month. One of the great things about this book as an organizing tool is that it includes letters from readers of the comic books—imprisoned people, political organizers, policy makers, teachers, social service providers—which give us a sense of how resonant these comics have been, and all of the ways they have been put to work on the ground.


The economic depression and fiscal crises facing so many states make the alternatives to mass incarceration the book outlines all the more timely. But it’s also a time when the government is pouring even more money into locking up immigrants. Doing away with prisons isn’t just an issue of pure economics, but will also require confronting the racism, economic inequalities, and sexism that work to fuel the futureless future that they represent.

Larson, a man who is imprisoned in Sing Sing, reminds us: “Anyone planning a prison they’re not going to build for ten or fifteen years is planning for a child, planning prison for somebody who’s a child right now.” What dreams are never realized when billions go to jails and prisons instead of to rebuilding our decimated cities? The Real Cost of Prisons Comix gives us a solid place to begin building the healthy, safe, and free futures we want.

Jenna M. Loyd is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York. She is also co-editing a collection, Beyond Walls and Cages, that analyzes the connections between US migration policy and mass incarceration, and activist efforts to the brutalities of both systems. She can be reached at jloyd@gc.cuny.edu.
http://colorlines.com/article.php?ID=598

Posted by lois at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)

SILENT TORTURE: Dog Days Turn Deadly in America’s Prisons

SILENT TORTURE: Dog Days Turn Deadly in America’s Prisons
by James Ridgeway
First published in his blog Unsilent Generation on 1 September 2009
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2009/090109Ridgeway.shtml

The U.S. government made a point of building new air-conditioned facilities for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. However, many of our equally hot southern states do not share that concern for human decency, and many deaths have and are occurring as the result.

The summer of 2009 had barely begun when Marcia Powell, a 48-year old inmate at Arizona’s Perryville Prison, was baked to death. Powell, whom court records show had a history of schizophrenia, substance abuse, and mild mental retardation, was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution. At about 11 a.m. on May 19, a day when the Arizona sun had driven the temperature to 108 degrees, she was parked outdoors in an unroofed, wire-fenced holding cell while awaiting transfer to another part of the prison. A deputy warden and two guards had been stationed in a control center 20 yards away, but nearly four hours had passed when she was found collapsed on the floor of the human cage. Doctors at a local hospital pronounced Powell comatose from heat stroke, and she died later that night after being taken off life support. Two local churches stepped in to provide a proper funeral and burial.

Arizona Department of Corrections director Charles Ryan said the guards had been suspended pending a criminal investigation, and expressed “condolences to Ms. Powell’s family and loved ones”–a strange statement, considering Ryan had made the decision to quickly pull the plug on his comatose prisoner because, he said, no next of kin could be found. In fact, as Stephen Lemons of the Phoenix New Times has reported, Powell was judged an “incapacitated adult” and placed under public guardianship–but her guardians were not consulted before the ADC elected to let her die. Lemons also noted some unsavory chapters in Ryan’s recent career:

Ryan’s own bio on the ADC Web site touts that he was “assistant program manager for the Department of Justice overseeing the Iraqi Prison System for almost four years.” Ryan was contracted by the DOJ to help rebuild Iraqi prisons, one of those being the notorious Abu Ghraib.

Following Powell’s death, Ryan banned most uses of unshaded outdoor holding cells in Arizona, except in “extraordinary circumstances.” Most Southern states already restrict their use. But baking in the sun is only one of many ways to die in America’s prisons in the summertime. Recent years have seen scattered reports of heat-related prison deaths in California and Texas, among others. The prevalence of mental illness among the victims may be linked to anti-psychotic drugs, which raise the body temperature and cause dehydration, and at the same time have a tranquilizing effect that may mask thirst.

In 2006, 21-year-old Timothy Souders, another mentally ill prisoner, died of heat exhaustion and dehydration at a Jackson, Michigan prison during an August heat wave. For the four days prior to his death, Souders had been shackled to a cement slab in solitary confinement because he had been acting up. That entire period was captured on surveillance videotapes, which according to news reports clearly showed his mental and physical deterioration.

The vast majority of U.S. civilian prisons and jails are not air conditioned. (In contrast, the U.S. made a point of building new air-conditioned facilities for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and phasing out the older structures.) In Texas, only 19 of 112 prisons have air-conditioning. Earlier this summer, the chair of Texas State Senate’s Judiciary Committee, John Whitmire (D-Houston), told the Houston Chronicle that enduring the heat is “part of the reality of going to prison. There are a lot of inconveniences to serving time. There’s no question it’s hot.” He said he thought few Texans would be sympathetic to the prisoners’ suffering.

Apparently anticipating a similar lack of sympathy, the Florida Department of Corrections proudly advertises the absence of air-conditioning in most of its prisons. On a web page that debunks a host of “misconceptions” that might indicate soft treatment of Florida’s prisoners, it assures readers that the majority of inmates live without air-conditioning or cable television.

In a 2002 report on the risks of heat-related illness at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, compiled for the ACLU, a physician who reviewed conditions on Death Row wrote the following:

An individual free to respond to the stress created by a hot environment would normally take steps to cool his body. If no air conditioning were available, he would at least respond by seeking a cooler location, blocking out radiant heat from the sun by positioning himself in the shade or screening himself from the sun, maximizing evaporation by wetting his body and clothes with water and using fans to create cross-ventilation, and moving away from physical structures which absorb and radiate heat.

None of these natural survival responses to excessive heat are available to the Death Row prisoners. The prisoners’ cells, especially Willie Russell’s Plexiglas covered cell, are stifling hot yet prisoners have to close their windows and cover their bodies at night despite intense heat in order to protect themselves from mosquitoes and other insects. Many of the prisoners have no access to fans, either because they are too poor to buy fans or because their fans have been confiscated as punishment. They have infrequent access to cooling showers, and sometimes, even access to water is extremely limited. The prisoners are not allowed to shade their windows from direct sunlight. They have extremely limited access to the outdoor exercise-pens and in any event those pens provide no relief from the heat because they are not shaded....

It is my opinion, based on my observations during my visit to Unit 32-C, Death Row and on my training, experience, and familiarity with the extensive body of medical literature on the subject of thermoregulation, that all of the inmates on Death Row are at high risk of heat stroke and heat-related illness.

A first-hand account of enduring the summer heat at the nation’s largest maximum-security prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, was provided by Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore. Whitmore, who has served more than 30 years of a life sentence, much of it in solitary confinement, kept a journal during a 2007 August heat wave:

August: It was so hot in here last night...I looked for the open flame in the cell. During the day you expect it to be 100 degrees, but not at night. More is yet to come.

9 August: The fire inspector came on the tier today doing the same fake B/S, but he was soaking wet b/c it is so hot in here. He was RED RED in the face like he was going to pass out. He was looking at us like Lord, give me their endurance.

12 August: I could not sleep last night. It had to be at least 98 degrees in here. I passed out around 2.20 am and got up at 5.14...I have not stopped sweating since yesterday....

31 August: The last day of hell month. This had to be the hottest for August in 200 years.

More recently, in letters to a friend, Whitmore described this past summer at “the Gola”:

June 11, 2009: Heat is on in the Gola, 93 degrees. I would have replied yesterday, but man it was so hot in here and I sweated all day. So I am writing before it gets too hot. And it’s just June. It was 76 degrees that morning at 5.30 am and 94 degrees after twelve noon. It should get that hot today too....

June 27, 2009: Hot n Humid Gola 99 degrees. If you heard that it’s getting hot in Angola, you heard wrong, because it have been steaming hot in Angola for the whole month of June but I know H will be alright, even at his age he can stand the heat. Plus: he knows what to do to cool down some: put some water on the floor and lay in it or put a wet sweat shirt on to stay cool....

July 12, 2009: The sweatbox Louisiana. With temperature 98 degrees everybody is on the floor. All you need is to wet it or your clothes. It’s all about survival in this man made hell....

August 10, 2009: I ran like a wild horse in that 96 degree heat today. I sweated all my body liquids so I had to replace it by drinking water the whole of the day. Only the strong survive.

Born in 1936, James Ridgeway has been reporting on politics for more than 45 years. He is currently Senior Washington Correspondent for Mother Jones, and recently wrote a blog on the 2008 presidential election for the Guardian online. He previously served as Washington Correspondent for the Village Voice; wrote for Ramparts and The New Republic; and founded and edited two independent newsletters, Hard Times and The Elements.

Ridgeway is the author of 16 books, including The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11, It’s All for Sale: The Control of Global Resources, and Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture. He co-directed a companion film to Blood in the Face and a second documentary film, Feed, and has co-produced web videos for Guardian Films.

Additional information and samples of James Ridgeway’s work can be found on his web site, http://jamesridgeway.net.

Posted by lois at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2009

Op-Ed: Bob Herbert- "Innocent But Dead"

Op-Ed Columnist
Innocent but Dead
By BOB HERBERT
Published: August 31, 2009

There is a long and remarkable article in the current New Yorker about a man who was executed in Texas in 2004 for deliberately setting a fire that killed his three small children. Rigorous scientific analysis has since shown that there was no evidence that the fire in a one-story, wood frame house in Corsicana was the result of arson, as the authorities had alleged.

In other words, it was an accident. No crime had occurred.

Cameron Todd Willingham, who refused to accept a guilty plea that would have spared his life, and who insisted until his last painful breath that he was innocent, had in fact been telling the truth all along.

It was inevitable that some case in which a clearly innocent person had been put to death would come to light. It was far from inevitable that this case would be the one. “I was extremely skeptical in the beginning,” said the New Yorker reporter, David Grann, who began investigating the case last December.

The fire broke out on the morning of Dec. 23, 1991. Willingham was awakened by the cries of his 2-year-old daughter, Amber. Also in the house were his year-old twin girls, Karmon and Kameron. The family was poor, and Willingham’s wife, Stacy, had gone out to pick up a Christmas present for the children from the Salvation Army.

Willingham said he tried to rescue the kids but was driven back by smoke and flames. At one point his hair caught fire. As the heat intensified, the windows of the children’s room exploded and flames leapt out. Willingham, who was 23 at the time, had to be restrained and eventually handcuffed as he tried again to get into the room.

There was no reason to believe at first that the fire was anything other than a horrible accident. But fire investigators, moving slowly through the ruined house, began seeing things (not unlike someone viewing a Rorschach pattern) that they interpreted as evidence of arson.

They noticed deep charring at the base of some of the walls and patterns of soot that made them suspicious. They noticed what they felt were ominous fracture patterns in pieces of broken window glass. They had no motive, but they were convinced the fire had been set. And if it had been set, who else but Willingham would have set it?

With no real motive in sight, the local district attorney, Pat Batchelor, was quoted as saying, “The children were interfering with his beer drinking and dart throwing.”

Willingham was arrested and charged with capital murder.

When official suspicion fell on Willingham, eyewitness testimony began to change. Whereas initially he was described by neighbors as screaming and hysterical — “My babies are burning up!” — and desperate to have the children saved, he now was described as behaving oddly, and not having made enough of an effort to get to the girls.

And you could almost have guaranteed that a jailhouse snitch would emerge. They almost always do. This time his name was Johnny Webb, a jumpy individual with a lengthy arrest record who would later admit to being “mentally impaired” and on medication, and who had started taking illegal drugs at the age of 9.

The jury took barely an hour to return a guilty verdict, and Willingham was sentenced to death.

He remained on death row for 12 years, but it was only in the weeks leading up to his execution that convincing scientific evidence of his innocence began to emerge. A renowned scientist and arson investigator, Gerald Hurst, educated at Cambridge and widely recognized as a brilliant chemist, reviewed the evidence in the Willingham case and began systematically knocking down every indication of arson.

The authorities were unmoved. Willingham was executed by lethal injection on Feb. 17, 2004.

Now comes a report on the case from another noted scientist, Craig Beyler, who was hired by a special commission, established by the state of Texas to investigate errors and misconduct in the handling of forensic evidence.

The report is devastating, the kind of disclosure that should send a tremor through one’s conscience. There was absolutely no scientific basis for determining that the fire was arson, said Beyler. No basis at all. He added that the state fire marshal who investigated the case and testified against Willingham “seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires.” He said the marshal’s approach seemed to lack “rational reasoning” and he likened it to the practices “of mystics or psychics.”

Grann told me on Monday that when he recently informed the jailhouse snitch, Johnny Webb, that new scientific evidence would show that the fire wasn’t arson and that an innocent man had been killed, Webb seemed taken aback. “Nothing can save me now,” he said.
A version of this article appeared in print on September 1, 2009, on page A29 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/opinion/01herbert.html?_r=1&em

Posted by lois at 08:48 PM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2009

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

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

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

August 28, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 22, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compounding matters, the prison system is over its capacity.

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

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

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

"I see worsening conditions," she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 18, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 17, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reports cite staffing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other prisons pay more

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starting pay at Otter Creek is $8.25 an hour.

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

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

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

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

Most employees are male

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starting pay at Otter Creek is $8.25 an hour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Starting pay at Otter Creek is $8.25 an hour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 15, 2009

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

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

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

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

The one successful suicide was July 19.

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

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

August 10, 2009

Mentally Ill Youth Strain Juvenile System

Mentally Ill Offenders Strain Juvenile System
By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: August 9, 2009
NY Times

FRANKLIN FURNACE, Ohio — The teenager in the padded smock sat in his solitary confinement cell here in this state’s most secure juvenile prison and screamed obscenities.

The youth, Donald, a 16-year-old, his eyes glassy from lack of sleep and a daily regimen of mood stabilizers, was serving a minimum of six months for breaking and entering. Although he had received diagnoses for psychiatric illnesses, including bipolar disorder, a judge decided that Donald would get better care in the state correctional system than he could get anywhere in his county.

That was two years ago.

Donald’s confinement has been repeatedly extended because of his violent outbursts. This year he assaulted a guard here at the prison, the Ohio River Valley Juvenile Correctional Facility, and was charged anew, with assault. His fists and forearms are striped with scars where he gouged himself with pencils and the bones of a bird he caught and dismembered.

As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”

At least 32 states cut their community mental health programs by an average of 5 percent this year and plan to double those budget reductions by 2010, according to a recent survey of state mental health offices.

Juvenile prisons have been the caretaker of last resort for troubled children since the 1980s, but mental health experts say the system is in crisis, facing a soaring number of inmates reliant on multiple — and powerful — psychotropic drugs and a shortage of therapists.

In California’s state system, one of the most violent and poorly managed juvenile systems in the country, according to federal investigators, three dozen youth offenders seriously injured themselves or attempted suicide in the last year — a sign, state juvenile justice experts say, of neglect and poor safety protocols.

In Ohio, where Gov. Ted Strickland, a former prison psychologist, approved a 34 percent reduction in community-based mental health services to reduce a budget deficit, Thomas J. Stickrath, the director of the Department of Youth Services, said continuing cuts would swell his youth offender population.

“I’m hearing from a lot of judges saying, ‘I’m sorry I’m sending so-and-so to you, but at least I know that he’ll get the treatment he can’t get in his community,’ ” Mr. Stickrath said.

But youths are often subjected to neglect and violence in juvenile prisons, and studies show that mental illnesses can become worse there.

George, 17, an inmate at Ohio River Valley, detailed his daily cocktail of psychiatric medications, including Abilify and Seroquel. In addition to having bipolar disorder, he is a sex offender and is H.I.V. positive — severe stigmas in prison.

“I be getting punked,” he said, using prison slang to describe how gang youths routinely humiliate him. He blinked, and his leg shook uncontrollably. “They take my food, they hit me, they make me do things.”

Demetrius, 16, another inmate there, said he had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Officials said he has psychotic episodes and attacks other inmates. In an interview in June, he said he was receiving no mental health counseling or medications. Andrea Kruse, a spokeswoman for Mr. Stickrath, said that since July 1, he has had more than 20 counseling sessions.

According to a Government Accountability Office report, in 2001, families relinquished custody of 9,000 children to juvenile justice systems so they could receive mental health services.

Donald has been in and out of mental health programs since he attacked a schoolteacher at age 5. As he grew older, he became more violent until he was eventually committed to the Department of Youth Services.

“I’ve begged D.Y.S. to get him into a mental facility where they’re trained to deal with people like him,” said his grandmother, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma of having a grandson who is mentally ill. “I don’t think a lockup situation is where he should be, although I don’t think he should be on the street either.”

Lawsuits and federal civil rights investigations in Indiana, Maryland, Ohio and Texas have criticized juvenile corrections systems for failing to meet their obligation to prohibit cruel and unusual punishment of prisoners.

Despite downsizing to about 1,650 juvenile inmates from about 10,000 youth offenders in 1996, California’s state system remains under a 2004 federal mandate to improve conditions, including mental health services — the result of a class-action lawsuit that documented the systematic physical and sexual abuse of wards.

Under a plan to reduce the state juvenile inmate population, many youths who once would have been held by the state are now detained by the Los Angeles County juvenile detention system. Los Angeles County is also under a federal mandate to improve psychiatric services for juvenile inmates, especially at the six camps at its Challenger Memorial Youth Center, which holds most of the county’s medium- and high-risk offenders and most of its mentally ill ones.

“We were told that the Challenger camps are, paradoxically, the only camps at which staff are authorized to carry O.C. spray,” wrote federal civil rights investigators in a 2008 report to county authorities, referring to oleoresin capsicum, known as pepper spray. “One supervisor told us that he believed that allowing staff to carry and use O.C. spray made sense given the ‘mental health population.’ ”

The investigators also recounted how staff members body slammed unruly juveniles, often breaking their bones.

In May, a reporter toured the Los Angeles County Central Juvenile Hall with Eric Trupin, a consultant hired by the Department of Justice to monitor mental health services in California’s juvenile justice system. Dr. Trupin, a psychologist, said some detainees appeared to be held there for no reason other than that they were mentally ill and the county had no other institution capable of treating them.

One inmate at the county’s juvenile hall, Eric, 18, was given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescribed Risperdal, a powerful antipsychotic, to help him avoid violent flashes of temper.

A public defender who specializes in juvenile mental health issues, said Eric had been arrested more than 20 times near his South Los Angeles home. Dr. Trupin worried that if Eric is released and arrested again, he will be charged as an adult and enter the Los Angeles County jail, the nation’s largest residential mental institution, with 1,400 mentally ill inmates.

In the 1960s and ’70s, the increasing availability of antipsychotic medications coincided with a national movement to close public mental hospitals. Many private hospitals barred psychotic patients, including juveniles. By the 1980s, juvenile justice systems had become the primary providers of residential psychiatric care for mentally ill youths.

But as cutbacks have worsened, the debate has intensified over what constitutes adequate mental health care. Often juvenile justice systems have very little to go on when attempting a diagnosis.

“Often Daddy is nowhere to be found, Mommy might be in jail,” said Daniel Connor, a psychiatrist for the Connecticut juvenile corrections system. “The home phone is cut off. The parent speaks another language, so it’s often hard to figure out exactly what’s going on with each kid.”

School records often do not arrive with arrested youths, nor do files often come from other corrections institutions. The lack of information is particularly problematic when psychiatrists try to prescribe medications. Joseph Parks, medical director for the Missouri Department of Mental Health and a national expert on pharmaceutical drug use in corrections facilities, said many juvenile offenders are prescribed multiple psychiatric drugs as they move from mental health clinics to detention halls to juvenile prisons.

A decade ago, it was rare to find juvenile offenders on two psychotropic drugs at once, Dr. Parks said. Now, many take three or four at a time, often for nonprescribed uses like helping the youths sleep.

“If you just give a kid a pill, the prison administration doesn’t have to do anything differently,” he said. “The staff doesn’t have to do anything differently. The guards don’t have to get more training.”

Census studies of child mental health professionals show chronic shortages. A 2006 study estimated that for every 100,000 youths, there were fewer than nine child psychiatrists. Dr. Penn of Texas said the state youth prison system there recently instituted a system of telepsychiatry sessions, conducting videoconferences between mental health professionals and youths being detained hundreds of miles away.

Inadequate mental health services increases recidivism. In a February report on psychiatric services at the Ohio River Valley center, Dr. Cheryl Wills, an independent mental health expert, found that officials were unnecessarily extending incarceration for youths who acted out because of their mental illnesses.

Mr. Stickrath, the director of the Ohio Department of Youth Services, said that one challenge in dealing with large numbers of psychologically ill youths is determining who is “mad versus bad.” He mentioned Donald, whose file he knew by heart.

“He’s been in 130 fights since he’s been with us, and there were no resources in the small county he’s from to deal with him,” Mr. Stickrath said. “Our staff worked to get him in a sophisticated psychiatric residential program, but they said he had to leave because he was attacking staff.”

Mr. Stickrath shook his head. “He just wears you out.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/us/10juvenile.html?_r=1&hpw

Posted by lois at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)

August 07, 2009

Video: Children Given One Strike: A Lifetime Without Redemption

Link to a documentary about Juvenile Life Without Parole produced by a group of University of Pennsylvania Law Students which featured interviews with Anita Colon and Bradley Bridges from the Defender's Association.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZ1gpPZEIU

Posted by lois at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

August 05, 2009

TX: After 15 years, waiting list ends for prison drug treatment programs

After 15 years, waiting list ends for prison drug treatment programs
New facilities helped curtail backlog.
By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, August 05, 2009

For the first time since the Texas prison system's substance-abuse treatment programs began nearly 15 years ago, amid controversy over their cost and effectiveness, programs have no waiting list, prison officials said Tuesday.

In years past, thousands of drug- and alcohol-addicted convicts had to wait for months — in some cases years — for space to open up in the treatment programs, filling prisons with felons who could have been paroled, and confounding a smooth transition of convicts from prisons to programs to parole.

But officials said that because the Legislature voted two years to ago greatly expand the treatment programs, the chronic backlog that had plagued them since their inception, at the behest of then-Gov. Ann Richards, is now gone. At the same time, the prison population has decreased slightly in recent months, part of a national trend.

"It shows all the parts of our criminal justice system are working together right now ... and that's the first time in 16 years that I've been able to say that," said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, a Democrat from Houston who helped Richards push the treatment programs through the Legislature in the early 1990s.

"This will go down as a very important day in the history of our system," he said. "What it will mean for most Texans is it will enhance public safety. If inmates can get the treatment they need, when they need it, they will come out a better person than when they came in."

It was not clear how long the absence of a waiting list would last.

Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the waiting lists had dwindled until Friday, when all major prison substance-abuse treatment programs caught up with demand — thanks in part to the recent opening of a 400-bed contract treatment center in Burnet.

Another treatment center with 550 bunks is slated to open soon in the East Texas city of Henderson, she said.

"There are a few inmates with special needs that may be waiting for a day or so, but the backlog is gone for now," said Stuart Jenkins, the state's parole director whose division of the prison system oversees 78,000 ex-convicts on parole. "It's good news, definitely."

Rissie Owens, chairwoman of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, said the agency in past years had approved thousands of convicts for parole on the condition that they complete a treatment program, only to see them sit in prison for months — even years — because no space was available.

"We can actually vote them into a program now and have them get in," she said. "That's great."

Billed as the biggest shift for Texas corrections policy in years, the 2007 expansion of treatment programs by lawmakers greatly expanded the capacity of in-prison drug- and alcohol-treatment programs, opened transition treatment centers to help convicts succeed once they got out, expanded counseling and specialized drug-treatment programs, and opened lockups designed especially for habitual drunken drivers. The cost was more than $227 million.

In 2007, Gov. Rick Perry proposed building two medium-security prisons, but legislative leaders opted for expanding the treatment programs instead, despite some concern about whether the initiative would work.

More controversial was the expansion of prison treatment programs in the early 1990s by Richards, who touted her experience as a recovering alcoholic. But owing to wary legislators and a tight budget, many of the proposed 12,000 beds were never built — and many of those that were built were used to house regular convicts, not those in treatment.

Budget red ink in 2003 cut those programs further.

State Rep. Jerry Madden, a Republican from Richardson who co-authored the 2007 legislation with Whitmire, said that having treatment beds available for convicts will mean that they can complete therapy programs before they are released from prison, giving them a better chance of success upon release. "This is exactly what we had in mind, where we wanted to be someday — even though I'm somewhat surprised we got here so quickly," Madden said. "We know the history of the programs shows they work if they're done right."

"I always thought I'd be a really old man before I saw this day come, and I'm surprised it didn't take that long," said Whitmire, who turns 60 on Aug. 13.
http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/2009/08/05/0805drugrehab.html

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

August 04, 2009

NY: Justice Department Finds That Erie County Jails Abuse of Prisoners Violates Their Constitutional Rights

U.S. probe finds abuses at Erie County jails
By Matthew Spina
Buffalo NEWS STAFF REPORTER
July 29, 2009

A pregnant inmate thrown to the floor while being booked. Guards looking the other way when inmates fight. Jail deputies beating inmates in a remote elevator where no security camera is watching.

Those were among the abuses the U.S. Justice Department found in an almost two-year investigation of Erie County's two jails.

The federal investigators concluded that the jails violate the constitutional rights of their inmates and subject them to brutality as well as poor care on several levels.

In its 50-page report, the Justice Department says the Erie County Holding Center in Buffalo and the Correctional Facility in Alden have failed to correct their serious problems even after being warned for years by other agencies.

The Justice Department called the administrative effort by Sheriff Timothy B. Howard's Jail Management Division "woefully inadequate" and said it has led to a "pattern of serious harm to inmates, including death."

"We conclude that the conditions of confinement violate the constitutional rights of inmates," the Justice Department said in a letter to County Executive Chris Collins, who months ago shut off all county cooperation with the probe begun in November 2007, before he took office.

Not only did Erie County refuse to cooperate -- on the county attorney's advice -- the county attorney sought out some inmates whom the federal authorities had interviewed in other facilities and asked them to reveal their testimony, the Justice Department revealed.

"Much of what is in the report is based on fiction and not reality," said County Attorney Cheryl A. Green, who said she conducted those follow-up interviews to assess whether the inmates had been coached and to determine whether their testimony would be accurately presented.

But in an interview Wednesday, Green withheld judgment on the stories of excessive force.

The Justice Department listed almost 14 pages of corrections it wants to see and discussed the possibility of a lawsuit to force Erie County to comply with the federal Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act.

Many improvements are under way in the county's two jails, Green said, adding that she did not believe the report will lend more credence to lawsuits filed against Erie County over jail conditions.

Others, however, predict the Civil Rights Division's report will bolster legal claims by people who say they were mistreated, neglected, abused or denied crucial medical care in the jails. Erie County has paid out millions to settle such claims over the years. More cases are pending.

"Regrettably, as has happened so often in the past, more inmates, prisoners and their families will likely sue the county due to the conditions in the jails," County Comptroller Mark C. Poloncarz said. "That was avoidable, and further deaths and injuries could have been prevented had the sheriff addressed these deficiencies."

Erie County's two jails receive some 23,000 people a year, the Justice Department said, and the Holding Center is New York's second-largest pretrial detention facility. Issues of crowding, poor medical care and filth, especially at the Holding Center, have been public issues for years.

Allegations of brutality have been less common. But the Justice Department said it learned of several cases involving "excessive use of force." For example:

-- Holding Center deputies take inmates on "elevator rides" in an isolated elevator without a security camera. Inside they are beaten, the report said.

-- A pregnant inmate being booked into the Holding Center in August 2007 was struck in the face, thrown to the ground and kneed in the side, losing two teeth, the Justice Department said. When the inmate said she was pregnant, the deputies said they thought she was just fat.

--An inmate being cavity-searched in August 2008 asked that a deputy change the rubber gloves obviously stained from the cavity searches of other inmates. The deputy responded by hitting the inmate in the head and telling him he "did not have to do a damn thing," the Justice Department said.

-- A correctional facility inmate died of a stroke in March 2007 after officers forced his head against a wall and personnel ignored his request for medical help, the Justice Department said. The inmate has been previously identified as Joseph Balbuzoski, who was awaiting trial on charges of burglary and grand larceny.

-- An inmate shouting and yelling at the arrival of the new year in January 2008 was punched, kicked and had a sheet tied around his neck with the threat to hang him. He was then shackled and punched again while in an isolation cell, the report said.

The Justice Department heard of deputies and officers looking the other way when inmates were attacking inmates or not intervening when they clearly witnessed violence. For example:

-- In February 2007, an inmate stabbed another inmate with a broken broom handle. The deputy on duty said he did not see the assault because he was moving a box onto an elevator at the time. The report did not indicate whether this occurred in the correctional facility or the Holding Center.

-- On Nov. 26, 2007, the report said, a deputy watched but did not intervene when an inmate threw a chair across the law library at another inmate because he considered him a snitch.

The Justice Department investigators said they were told of inmates pitted against one another by guards; inmates egged on to beat up sex offenders or suspected sex offenders; and inmates being enlisted to discipline other inmates in exchange for favors.

Warnings about jail conditions go back years. Lawsuits were filed in the 1990s against crowding at the Holding Center. More recently, staff from the State Commission of Correction, which polices local jails, have said the Holding Center is in "the most protracted period of noncompliance" by any facility in the state. The commission has called its medical care "negligent and incompetent."

"The Department of Justice report confirms many of the same problems we have identified and brought to the attention of Erie County over the past several years," said Thomas A. Beilein, the former Niagara County sheriff who heads the commission. "I am hopeful that this report, and our previous reports, will motivate Erie County to address the many deficiencies at the Erie County Holding Center and bring the facility into compliance."

The Justice Department provided a few examples of warnings that have gone unheeded, including this one: Since 2003, at least 23 Holding Center inmates either committed suicide, attempted suicide or took steps that demonstrated suicidal thoughts, the report said.

In 2008, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care said Erie County should stop housing suicidal inmates in cells that gave them the chance to hang themselves cells with steel beds, missing wall plates, bars on windows. But the Justice Department said the county will still put suicidal inmates in unsafe cells.

The Justice Department accused county officials of being "deliberately indifferent" and not taking incidents of suicide andthe warnings of outside agencies seriously.
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/buffaloerie/story/748556.html

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

August 02, 2009

Story and Editorial: Trapped in Tamms: In Illinois' only supermax facility, inmates are in cells 23 hours a day

Opinion: Why Tamms Matters to All
Sunday, Aug. 02, 2009

Many people who read today's front-page story about the Tamms supermax prison probably won't have much empathy for Faygie Fields, Chris Marcum and the other inmates discussed. So what if murderers and violent criminals are kept in solitary confinement for years on end?

But Illinois residents should care -- if not for the inmates, then for themselves.

We're a nation that disavows cruel and unusual punishment of criminals, and most reasonable people would agree that keeping someone in solitary confinement 23 hours a day for 10 years or more -- the fate of 54 of the Tamms inmates -- is cruel and unusual. They don't get any phone calls, or education or religious services; just walls.

The people who created Tamms never envisioned such extended stays; they thought inmates would be sent there for a year at most. Their idea was to deter violence in prisons, but a union spokesman for state prison guards said violence actually has increased in the past decade.

Not only is Tamms not accomplishing its objective, but it seems to be creating new problems. Keeping inmates in solitary confinement for years causes many of them to either develop mental problems, or to worsen existing conditions. Many of these men eventually will be released back into society.

Gov. Pat Quinn has ordered Michael Randle, his new director of the state Department of Corrections, to investigate Tamms. Good. People who commit crimes deserve to be punished, but the state needs to be smart and humane on how it goes about it.
http://www.bnd.com/editorial/story/866411.html
Story follows.....
www.yearten.org (Tamms Year Ten Organizing Committee)

Trapped in Tamms: In Illinois' only supermax facility, inmates are in cells 23 hours a day
Sunday, Aug. 02, 2009
BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK AND BETH HUNDSDORFER - News-Democrat
Belleville News Democrat
PART I
Faygie Fields' escape from years of solitary confinement on the toughest wing of Illinois' only state-run supermax prison began with food.

He claimed there were rat droppings in his rice, bugs in his beans and poison in his Tylenol.

Guards at the supermax Tamms Correctional Center in the southern tip of Illinois told Fields to cut it out. He wasn't going to fake his way to the easier prison mental health unit. It was all an act, they said. He had tried it before.

Reports from other lockups, where Fields was often held in solitary, laid out his dismal disciplinary history. He threw Kaopectate, milk cartons, urine, tomatoes, Kool-Aid, a food tray. He grabbed at keys. He pulled away from handcuffs. Fields was just plain bad, the reports concluded.

What the supermax staff didn't know because records were not initially forwarded was that while in his teens, Fields had been committed four times to Chicago-area mental hospitals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and collected disability payments because of mental illness. Untreated schizophrenics can result in violent actions. Fields was sentenced to state prison in 1984 at age 25 for shooting a man to death during a drug deal.

According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, Fields is among the "worst of the worst," an extremely violent inmate who cannot be safely held anywhere but at Tamms, a maximum discipline and security prison.

But critics of the prison say Fields is a victim of a deeply flawed policy that punishes mentally ill inmates for behavior they cannot control by placing them in solitary confinement for long periods, in many cases 10 years or more.

Such punishment, some critics say, amounts to torture worse than that experienced by suspected terrorists at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

After his transfer 11 years ago to Tamms, Fields coped in ways bizarre and self-destructive common to many inmates held in continuous solitary confinement. He sliced his arms and throat with bits of glass, metal and paint chips. A prison doctor who stitched him up once testified he didn't always inject anesthetic because the skin of many Tamms inmates became numb from massive scarring from repeated self-mutilation.

Fields smeared excrement in his cell so often that maintenance men painted it with an easier to clean coating. He swallowed glass. Prison officials charged him $5.30 for tearing up a state-owned sheet to make a noose to kill himself.

And then in 2004, after he had been held alone and often naked in a segregation cell for nearly six years, two psychiatrists called to testify in an ongoing lawsuit about conditions at the prison examined him and his medical records and said Fields was a schizophrenic who needed immediate treatment. They also reviewed a long-ignored 1999 report by psychiatrist Dr. Bernard Rubin, a former director of the Illinois Department of Mental Health, diagnosing Fields a year after his arrival at Tamms as a paranoid schizophrenic whose condition was deteriorating. The MacArthur Justice Center of Chicago filed the lawsuit on behalf of Fields and three other Tamms inmates.

Two Illinois Department of Corrections psychiatrists did not find Fields to be a schizophrenic. The prison's supervising psychologist, Kelly Rhodes, countered that Fields was trying to fake his way to easier time. Under oath, Rhodes described self-mutilation as a game.

"They'll compete with each other to see who can cut because it's fun," she said, according to a deposition.

The lawsuit resulted in a court order moving Fields in 2005 to the Tamms mental health unit where, like all inmates at the supermax, he is held in solitary but receives treatment.

The psychiatrists who testified on his behalf said Fields' multiple convictions for aggravated assault against guards resulted from behavior symptomatic of his mental illness.

If he hadn't been charged with crimes in prison, Fields could have been paroled in 2004 after serving 20 years of a 40-year sentence. But Fields must serve all the extra time for throwing food, urine and committing other offenses against guards. That amounts to 34 years, or 54 years total that he must serve before becoming eligible for parole in 2038, at age 79.

Ten years of solitary

Illinois has about 45,000 state prisoners. The state built Tamms to reduce violence among prisoners statewide by taking the "worst of the worst" and holding them in solitary confinement at one location for about a year, or until their behavior improved.

But 54 inmates at Tamms have been held in continuous solitary confinement for more than 10 years, according to an investigation by the Belleville News-Democrat. They include 39 like Fields who have been held continuously since they were transferred there in 1998, the year the prison opened.

Many others have been held for seven, eight or nine years. All Tamms inmates are held in solitary. They spend 23 hours a day in their cells. In March, the torture watchdog group Amnesty International issued a statement citing Tamms:

"The harsh conditions of isolation endured by many prisoners for years on end appear to be unnecessarily punitive and may breach international standards for humane treatment," it said.

George Welborn, Tamms' first warden, defended the prison's treatment of prisoners.

"It's very, very hard time. ... Is it constitutional incarceration? Yes it is. The court cases to this point have shown that. We're not beating them. We're not starving them," he said.

Shortly after Gov. Pat Quinn appointed Michael Randle as the new director of the Illinois Department of Corrections in June, Quinn directed him to investigate Tamms. Randle said after spending a day at Tamms, he believed it held highly dangerous prisoners who could not be imprisoned elsewhere. Records show that the majority of Tamms inmates are convicted murderers and that a small number have murdered staff and inmates at other prisons.

"I am not comfortable at this point having those offenders out of Tamms," he said during a telephone interview.

Randle would not say whether he considers 10 years and more in solitary confinement to be cruel. He conceded that harsh conditions such as not allowing telephone calls, religious services or education programs might be eased.

"There are things we are going to continue to look at in terms of giving offenders an avenue to demonstrate the appropriate conduct to earn their way out of Tamms," he said.

The News-Democrat's investigation found that Tamms may not only house the "worst of the worst.'' Prison and court records also raised questions about the prison medical staff's ability to identify inmates with serious mental problems who need treatment.

The investigation showed:

* Of 247 Tamms inmates listed June 30 on the prison's roster, 138 had not been convicted of a crime after entering the prison system.

* Of the remaining 109 inmates convicted of a crime after entering prison, 55 committed assaults such as throwing body wastes and spitting on or struggling with guards, and possessing contraband or homemade weapons -- acts that did not lead to serious injury and can be attributed in some cases to mental illness and a need for self-protection.

* Of the more than 250 inmates transferred to Tamms since 1999, records provided by the Department of Corrections show that only six who passed through the mental health screening process were placed in the prison's Special Treatment Unit for seriously mentally ill prisoners, despite a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice study that shows that 15-23 percent of state prison inmates are seriously mentally ill. Department of Corrections chief counsel Ed Huntley would not provide information about the total of inmates Tamms staff rejected for mental health reasons who were returned to other lockups.

* Sixteen inmates at the supermax entered the prison system for relatively minor crimes, such as car theft, forgery, burglary and drug offenses, but incurred huge amounts of additional time -- 92 years in one case -- for in-prison crimes including guard assaults and possessing a shank, or homemade knife. State law requires this time be served consecutively, or after the original sentence.

Tamms, a 500-bed, $70-million cluster of concrete buildings in Alexander County, is smaller than some county jails. The state keeps it half full so that there is room to transfer inmates if a riot occurs elsewhere.

Many of its inmates live in segregation or the disciplinary part of the prison.

Information from the Department of Corrections shows that from Jan. 1 to June 30, Tamms transferred 15 inmates to other prisons. But of this number, three inmates were within a few months to a year from parole and had to be transferred under a regulation that prohibits Tamms prisoners from being released into the public directly from the supermax.

A 2001 study by Southern Illinois University Carbondale graduate student Chad Briggs questioned the value of Tamms as a deterrent to violence. He concluded that despite sending inmates to the supermax, the rate of assaults on guards throughout the prison system either stayed the same or increased.

Prison violence has increased in recent years, said the guards' union spokesman Anders Lindall of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Too few guards and prisoner overcrowding are to blame, he said.

"The state tells us they can't track the data, even on a facility-by-facility basis, but based on the anecdotal evidence that we've seen from our members, violence has increased," Lindall said.

The Tamms Year Ten Committee, a confederation of activists supported by at least two Chicago area state representatives, is also monitoring conditions at the prison. One of the state representatives is Julie Hamos, D-Evanston, who has introduced a bill to improve conditions at Tamms.

"It is a form of insanity to put people in a place that provokes mental illness and then waste taxpayers' money to treat the symptoms," said committee member Laurie Jo Reynolds. "Or worse yet, releasing them without treatment. ... Either they went in crazy, or they go crazy once they are there."

Extended isolation

Solitary confinement beyond 30-90 days invariably leads to mental breakdown and behavior that becomes worse, not better, according to Dr. Terry A. Kupers of the Wright Institute, a clinical psychology graduate school in Berkeley, Calif. Kupers is one of three psychiatrists who diagnosed Fields as a schizophrenic.

"Anything in solitary longer than three months, what it does is the individual feels hopeless. One of the universal fears that people in supermaxes tell me is, 'I'm going to die in here,'" said Kupers, who has conducted hundreds of court-ordered interviews of men in long-term isolation, including Tamms inmates.

"They know they can't control their behavior enough, or please their wardens enough to ever get out," he said. "Twenty-three hours a day alone in a cell causes many inmates to brutally attack themselves.

"In the adult male population of the United States, self-mutilation occurs only in solitary confinement," he said. "It's an epidemic across the country. They're not faking."

In a prison population such as Tamms, where most inmates are murderers, Chris Marcum of Granite City might seem out of place. At age 20, he was sentenced in Madison County Circuit Court to six years for burglary with parole after three years.

But Marcum, now 32, got nine years added to his sentence because he possessed a shank and committed other in-prison crimes. In Tamms he was known as a "cutter." His left arm is covered front and back from forearm to biceps with long, whitish scars.

"I just wanted to feel something. It was the only way I coped with, at the time, with being incarcerated. You lose all sense of everything. It helped me with what I was going through, but it hurt a lot," he said.

Unlike some cutters, he said he did not handle his body wastes.

"I've seen in other prisons inmates cut on themselves, but there wasn't that many people doing it. But at Tamms, every wing I went on there was at least one inmate that had a glass shield on his door, played with his feces and cut on himself."

The shields prevent inmates from throwing body wastes through any of about 400 dime-sized holes in their cell doors.

His mother, Nancy Marcum, would visit him in the Tamms visiting room, where the inmate is behind Plexiglas and chained to a concrete block. She said her son, "kept his arms under the table so I couldn't see. When I found out this was happening, all I could do was cry."

In several lawsuits challenging conditions at Tamms, prison officials have testified that self-mutilation is not a symptom of serious mental illness because the inmate can stop at will.

Chicago attorney Jean Snyder, the lead attorney in the lawsuit involving Faygie Fields, said, "What kind of a guy is slicing up his penis and his arms to get out of prison? Is it an answer to say he could stop it if he wanted to?"

Explosive situation

When he was 7 years old, Tamms inmate Jerome Moore used drugs. At age 10, he was confined to a state mental ward. At 11, he was selling drugs and living on the street. He was shot that same year and spent weeks in a hospital. Sent to juvenile detention at 13, Moore was suspected of but never charged with a double homicide. At age 17, Moore was sentenced to state prison for attempted murder. In 2000, at age 19, he was sent to Tamms.

Forensic psychologist Michael E. Althoff, of Carbondale, outlined this history of Moore in a 2005 mental evaluation. Yet, despite documented mental illness, prison officials regarded Moore as a "malingerer" who faked symptoms.

What was different in Moore's case was that besides the finding of "malingering," Althoff confirmed a diagnosis of "intermittent explosive disorder," uncontrollable rage totally out of proportion to a perceived insult or threat.

Moore faced a maximum of 23 years for attempted murder but now must serve at least 38 years. The extra time came from assaults on guards -- incidents that, except for one, did not include a weapon or result in serious injury but instead consisted of throwing food and body wastes or twisting away from handcuffs.

Psychiatrist Dr. Stuart Grassian of Chestnut Hill, Mass., who was on the staff of Harvard Medical School for nearly 30 years and has written widely about the effects of solitary confinement, said inmates like Moore are likely to continue to commit impulsive violence as long as they are kept in solitary confinement. He said prison mental health staff often have distorted views of supermax inmates.

"There's a tremendous pull toward seeing everything that you're looking at as bad behavior that needs to be punished, rather than recognizing that it's actually a response to mental illness," Grassian said. "People tend to think of them (supermax inmates) as the James Cagneys of the prison system. They're not. They are actually the wretched of the earth. ... The paradigm (model) in the prison system is if you punish bad behavior enough it'll get better. That's obviously a paradigm that doesn't work."

Marcum, the former Tamms inmate from Granite City, said he remembers a lot of behavior that caused guards to react, but none more bizarre than when inmate Anthony Gay of Rock Island ate his own flesh. The incident is corroborated in federal court documents.

"I was in the infirmary for 11 days because I was on a hunger strike and he was there on suicidal watch," Marcum said. "And every four hours they came around and took my vitals. And he did it right in front of the window when I was standing there at my cell getting my vitals checked. He just cut a little piece of his skin off and ate it. Right in front of them and they didn't do nothing except go in his cell and search for the object he used to cut on himself."

Tamms' first warden

Welborn, Tamms' first warden, hadn't expected the reporters who showed up at his door in Anna, 20 miles north of the prison in Tamms. He regarded them warily. But when Welborn, who helped design Tamms, heard one of them say, "Darrell Cannon says hello," he smiled and said, "How is DC?"

Welborn and Cannon, a murderer convicted in Cook County, formed an unlikely alliance at the maximum security Menard Correctional Center in Chester. Welborn was the warden; Cannon was an inmate who, he said, helped Welborn ease tension between gang members and guards.

Cannon said he was astounded in 1998 to be rousted out of his Menard cell and shipped to the newly opened supermax at Tamms. When he got to Tamms, Cannon said Welborn came to his cell and told him, "Hey look. You do one year down here and if you don't have any tickets, no disciplinary problems, after that you'll be shifted outside again."

But Cannon did nine years at Tamms and got out only after a federal judge ordered his parole following testimony that crooked Chicago detectives set him up on the murder charge.

Welborn, who retired in 2002, said he never expected inmates to be held at Tamms for 10 years or more.

"I don't lose a lot of sleep over those guys who have been there 10 years ... (but) I think they should have been given the opportunity to go back to a reduced security facility and then, if they screw up again, it's right back to Tamms. It was not intended to be a place where guys would be there for eight to 10 years."

In a lawsuit deposition, Welborn disputed allegations that the policy of holding prisoners alone amounted to solitary confinement.

"This isn't like throwing a guy in a closet," he testified.

Cannon disagreed.

"It was total solitary confinement. There were times I would wake up shaking. It would be my system trying to, I don't know, go haywire. I would have to get up off that concrete bed and go to the sink and run some cold water and wait until the sink fills up and then throw the water all over me," he said. "And I would have to talk to myself and say, 'Hey, look. Do not break. You can't let this happen.'"

Cannon said he never engaged in self-mutilation but knew of many inmates who did.

"I would walk the floor in circles. And I may do that for two hours straight," he said.

He set aside a special night for the music of his youth.

"Saturday night was dedicated to all the old songs. Blue Moon. Stand By Me ... all those old songs I could think of. I would try to remember the words. I would sing just loud enough where I could hear myself."

Back to Tamms

Richard Conner, a murderer doing life, attempted to hang himself in his cell at Tamms in December, but wound up instead in a coma at Heartland Community Hospital in Marion.

Although the Department of Corrections won't talk about it, members of the Tamms Year Ten Committee believe Conner tried to kill himself a few weeks earlier by slitting his wrists.

After recovering, the prison system sent Conner, 38, to its Dixon Psychiatric Unit and then on to the maximum security Stateville Correctional Center at Joliet. And there, on April 2, guards opened the cell that Conner shared with Jameson S. Leezer and found Leezer dead. Leezer, a car thief, was 18 days from parole.

An autopsy showed that Leezer had been strangled, and Conner, the only other person in the locked cell, was the obvious suspect. Instead of returning him to the prison system psychiatric hospital at Dixon, authorities sent Conner back to Tamms.

No decision has been made on whether to prosecute Conner for Leezer's murder. A Department of Corrections directive issued on May 11 stated that any Tamms inmate transferred out must be held in a single cell.

In another incident, guards found Robert Foor, 33, dead on June 23 in his cell in the Tamms Special Treatment Unit, or mental ward. He was convicted of robbery and burglary in 1994 and given nine years but accrued eight years of extra time because of in-prison convictions.

Debbie Elsoff of Malta, Ill., Foor's mother, said that an autopsy did not determine how her son died. She said that when she informed prison officials that she could not afford to pay for her son's cremation or to have his body shipped home, they said they would cremate him there but could not turn over his remains because of state law.

"I cried all night when I heard that," said Elsoff.

Later, a non-profit group agreed to pay for Foor's cremation, and his remains were sent to his mother.

Malcolm Young, who until recently was the director of the prison reform organization The John Howard Association, said the policy at Tamms to use extreme discipline to respond to problems that many consider are caused by mental illness causes psychological deterioration, even worse behavior and sometimes suicide.

"It is not a dirty place. It's not a hole in the ground with mice and rats and everything else," he said, "But it is just total isolation and it operates to purposely deprive the men that are there from contact with other people."

Young, a lawyer at Northwestern University's Bluhm Legal Clinic, said even the way inmates are moved to the yard reinforces the debilitating effect of solitary confinement. The yard represents the one hour a day when inmates are not in their cells, yet they are still alone in a concrete box with a roof of steel mesh that half covers the sky.

Inmates head to the yard handcuffed and shackled inside a special caged chute with two guards outside the wire keeping pace.

"It's just the mechanical way they do it. It's like a ballet that emphasizes the separation between the prisoner and any other human being," he said. "The design of the place. The way the windows are situated too high to see out of. All of it just drives home that you are in a totally sterile environment as is possible to put you in and keep it legal."

For more than eight years, Nancy Meyer of Elgin has corresponded with Tamms prisoners. She often drives the 700-mile round trip to visit about a dozen men there she has come to know well.

Meyer said she sends money to inmates and contacts family members who often haven't heard about their loved ones for years. Some tell her not to call again.

Of the inmates on her list, Faygie Fields is her favorite. She says that even though Fields is a grown man and a convicted murderer, something about his optimism, even cheerfulness, makes her heart go out to him. In his Tamms mugshot, Fields is smiling.

"I see that face and he smiles and I say, 'Faygie, how are you doing? You're not hurting yourself anymore because if you are I won't come to see you.' He always says he isn't, but I know he will."

In a handwritten letter dated April 6, Fields used a plus sign for the word "and," capital letters for emphasis and dropped question marks in odd places.

While the sentences were fragmented and the grammar vague, the message was clear: "Please know that Tamms is driving ME CRAZY all of them keep saying none of us can leave here. But keeps all here? + in a Eternal Twilight Zone that has no ending?"
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/story/865377.html

Posted by lois at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)

July 30, 2009

Prisons ban prisoners from having pen pal ads

Prisons ban inmates from having pen pal ads

By JESSICA GRESKO (AP) July 29, 2009

MIAMI — In her online profile, Paula Jones says she is 42, "nonjudgmental" and likes fishing, gardening and cuddling. There's a catch, though. Jones' picture shows her in her blue Florida prison uniform. She won't be out until at least 2010.

Her listing is posted on a Web site called WriteAPrisoner.com. She's looking for a pen pal.

"If you're looking for someone genuine and true, I'm looking for you," her profile says. "I'm just a stamp away."

By posting her profile, however, Jones is breaking a rule. Florida officials have banned inmates from having the Match.com-style listings, saying prisoners just create problems for their outside-the-pen pals.

Other states — Missouri, Montana, Indiana and Pennsylvania — have similar restrictions. Now lawsuits in Florida and elsewhere say the bans are unfair and violate First Amendment rights.

"The public knows when they're writing to these people that they're prisoners," said Randall Berg Jr., a lawyer representing two pen pal groups — including Florida-based WriteAPrisoner.com — that have sued in the state. "Nobody is being duped here."

WriteAPrisoner.com president and owner Adam Lovell says the bulk of the people who use his site to write to inmates are from religious groups, military people stationed overseas and others affected by the prison. Fraud isn't as widespread as Florida corrections officials suggest, he said.

Jones, who is serving time in a women's prison north of Orlando, wrote in a letter to The Associated Press that she's not a danger to potential pen pals. She says she wants someone to write to for emotional support and to be less lonely.

"Not everyone has (ulterior) motives, lies or solicits," wrote Jones, who pleaded guilty to cocaine possession with the intent to sell. "Some of us ... even if it's very few are truly genuine and hope to meet someone good in our life."

But the Florida Department of Corrections doesn't want to take any chances. In 2003, the department changed its policy to prohibit inmates from advertising for pen pals or getting mail from pen pal groups. Inmates who continue to advertise can have privileges such as visitation or phone calls revoked.

The department made the change after receiving complaints from people who had been taken advantage of and from victims and their families who saw prisoners' ads, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger.

"We're doing it to protect the public," Plessinger said. "Inmates can have pen pals — they just can't solicit for pen pals."

Other states make similar arguments and have now drawn similar lawsuits.

In Indiana, the American Civil Liberties Union is representing prisoners protesting the state's policy, which also prevents inmates from advertising on Web sites or receiving mail from pen pal organizations.

The ACLU also says it is working on a lawsuit over Missouri's policy and investigating the policy in Montana, where inmates may not receive mail from people who identify themselves as a pen pal.

For now, some Florida inmates are ignoring the ban and listing themselves anyway. The inmates communicate with the sites by sending letters in the mail, and sometimes family members pay the fees for the sites, about $40 a year for WriteAprisoner.com and other sites.

On WriteAprisoner.com, Florida members range from a 41-year-old who tells potential pals she's a 36DD to a 28-year-old who says he has had a "bumpy lifestyle" and is on death row for a crime he didn't commit.

Then there's a man spending life in prison for first-degree murder who has found another way around the ban.

"Please note that the Florida prison system is now locking us up in confinement for placing ads for pen pals," he writes on his WriteAPrisoner.com page. "So if you respond to this ad please don't mention the profile."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5icLlTU8W7B9-ukRvnzaJ9UomtgqgD99O2HH01

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

July 28, 2009

NY Times Editorial: 12 and in Prison

Editorial
12 and in Prison
Published: July 27, 2009- NY Times

The Supreme Court sent an important message when it ruled in Roper v. Simmons in 2005 that children under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed were not eligible for the death penalty. Justice Anthony Kennedy drew on compassion, common sense and the science of the youthful brain when he wrote that it was morally wrong to equate the offenses of emotionally undeveloped adolescents with the offenses of fully formed adults.

The states have followed this logic in death penalty cases. But they have continued to mete out barbaric treatment — including life sentences — to children whose cases should rightly be handled through the juvenile courts.

Congress can help to correct these practices by amending the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, which is up for Congressional reauthorization this year. To get a share of delinquency prevention money, the law requires the states and localities to meet minimum federal protections for youths in the justice system. These protections are intended to keep as many youths as possible out of adult jails and prisons, and to segregate those that are sent to those places from the adult criminal population.

The case for tougher legislative action is laid out in an alarming new study of children 13 and under in the adult criminal justice system, the lead author of which is the juvenile justice scholar, Michele Deitch, of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. According to the study, every state allows juveniles to be tried as adults, and more than 20 states permit preadolescent children as young as 7 to be tried in adult courts.

This is terrible public policy. Children who are convicted and sentenced as adults are much more likely to become violent offenders — and to return to an adult jail later on — than children tried in the juvenile justice system.

Despite these well-known risks, policy makers across the country do not have reliable data on just how many children are being shunted into the adult system by state statutes or prosecutors, who have the discretion to file cases in the adult courts.

But there is reasonably reliable data showing juvenile court judges send about 80 children ages 13 and under into the adult courts each year. These statistics explode the myth that those children have committed especially heinous acts.

The data suggest, for example, that children 13 and under who commit crimes like burglary and theft are just as likely to be sent to adult courts as children who commit serious acts of violence against people. As has been shown in previous studies, minority defendants are more likely to get adult treatment than their white counterparts who commit comparable offenses.

The study’s authors rightly call on lawmakers to enact laws that discourage harsh sentencing for preadolescent children and that enable them to be transferred back into the juvenile system. Beyond that, Congress should amend the juvenile justice act to require the states to simply end these inhumane practices to be eligible for federal juvenile justice funds.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 28, 2009, on page A24 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/28/opinion/28tue1.html?_r=1&hpw

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

MA: Lawmakers say it's unlikely mental health cuts a factor in prison suicide of one woman and the attempted suicide of two others

Lawmakers say it's unlikely mental health cuts a factor in prison suicide
By Michael Morton/Daily News staff
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Jul 28, 2009
FRAMINGHAM —

Area lawmakers who visited MCI-Framingham after an inmate's suicide said yesterday that mental health cuts did not appear to have played a role but that more prison programs are needed to develop useful skills and give hope.

"There is very little opportunity and very little for them to look forward to after get ting out of there," said state Rep. Carolyn Dykema.

Staff and administrators, she said, are doing the best they can with limited resources.

Dykema, D-Holliston, and other legislators commended staff who cut down and saved two other women who attempted to hang themselves on July 19. A third inmate, Christina Morando, 22, of Swampscott could not be revived.

"Clearly the corrections officers there are committed to their jobs and they really did an exceptional job responding to these emergencies," said state Rep. Pam Richardson, D-Framingham.

Following Morando's death, prison reform advocates said budget cuts had left the state's overcrowded prisons with too few mental health clinicians.

In Framingham, two mental health staff and two vacant spots were cut. That left 2 full-time psychiatrists, a part-time psychiatrist and roughly 30 mental health professionals for 593 inmates, at least 60 percent of whom have open mental health cases.

But the legislators said the cuts left core services intact and had not seemed to contribute to the suicide attempts of the three inmates, all of whom had open mental health cases but were deemed fit to live in the general population and not in a special unit.

"There hadn't been any indication from what they could tell that this was in process, so they were surprised," said Newton Rep. Kay Khan, a Democrat who said earlier that suicides sometimes happen despite quality prison care. "From what they told us, they seem to be providing quite a bit of service."

Khan, the head of the Task Force on Women in Prison for the Legislature's female caucus, had been scheduled to join Dykema, Richardson, Rep. Danielle Gregoire, D-Marlborough, and Ellen Story, D-Amherst, for a visit to MCI-Framingham the day after Morando's death.

While Khan agreed to postpone the trip, she invoked the group's legislative right to visit the prison the following Thursday, meeting with a top official from the Executive Office of Public Safety, the Department of Corrections head, the facility superintendent and prison health staff.

While the "more mental health professionals you have, the better," Khan said, the staff seemed to be keeping up with its caseload.

Khan acknowledged, however, that the closing of state hospitals for the mentally ill had led to incarcerations and called for programs to treat substance abuse and mental health problems in other settings, such as Framingham's jail diversion program.

Dykema and Richardson said MCI-Framingham also needs more programs to help inmates develop useful skills, preparing them to return to society and giving them hope for a better life. Like Khan, though, they also noted the state's strained finances.

"As with everything else these days, it boils down to resources," Dykema said.

While money is tight, the legislators commended prison officials for their interest in creating new programs.

After Morando's death, a Department of Correction spokeswoman said the agency had implemented most of the recommendations from a report following an earlier spate of suicides but still needed money to create safer cells for suicidal inmates and transitional spaces for those coming off mental health watches.

Khan said she and her fellow legislators plan to return to the prison this fall for a follow-up.

"We will certainly continue to keep on this," she said. "I think it's something that has to be watched carefully."
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x1202627432/Lawmakers-say-its-unlikely-mental-health-cuts-a-factor-in-prison-suicide

Posted by lois at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2009

Prisons Becoming Warehouses for the Old

Prisons Becoming Warehouses for the Old
By James Ridgeway
July 25, 2009
Prisons Becoming Warehouses for the Old
July 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment

AGING BEHIND BARS SERIES

I have written hefore about the aging population in American prisons and jails, due in large part to the draconian sentencing policies of the courts, federal, state, and local. As a result these places seem destined to become nursing homes surrounded by razor wire.

Angola prison in Louisiana, for instance, boasts that some 90 percent of its population will die there. The prison has managed to equip itself with a hospice, and trained inmates to attend to a convict’s last days. Burl Cain, the warden, is backed up by a phalanx of Christian fundamentalist preachers who freely roam the 18,000 acre former slave plantation recruiting inmates to be preachers. The clergy instruct prisoners their only way out is through redemption made possible by the acceptance of Jesus Christ. When an elderly inmate, knowing his end was near, sought to be win release so as to die in the so-called “free world,” the parole board refused. The procedure is to go to your death in the Christian way–from cell to hospice to a prison cemetery where your grave will be dug by the inmates who will mark your bruial with gospel hymns

The travesty at Angola is held up as a model for the nation and Cain celebrated by the media as a new corrections messiah. Elsewhere,old,sick people,piled into these living tombs by the courts, stand in line for hours to get an aspirin; arthritic old women are made to climb into upper bunk beds.Parapalegic men are denied canes, which are ruled to be weapons, and instead must crawl to the toilets.People are locked in solitary for years. Mentally ill convicts who act out in the general population are put into solitary because they howl and scream in public. Locked down, they go truly mad. Old sex offenders can be released into the hands of friends or family. but often noone wants them, so they are released to the county jail, reindicted, and sent back to prison.

The American public is up in arms about CIA jails in far away places. But it could care less about American prisons. Now a new report by the Sentencing Project in Washington adds to the growing body of information about prisons here at home. No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America contains, among other things, the first nationwide collection of life sentence data documenting race, ethnicity and gender, and reveals “overwhelming racial and ethnic disparities in the allocation of life sentences”: 66% of all persons sentenced to life are non-white, and 77% of juveniles serving life sentences are non-white.

The the report’s key findings:

140,610 individuals are serving life sentences, representing one of every 11 people (9.5%) in prison. Twenty-nine percent (41,095) of the individuals serving life sentences have no possibility of parole.

The number of individuals serving life without parole sentences increased by22% from 33,633 to 41,095 between 2003 and 2008. This is nearly four times the rate of growth of the parole-eligible life sentenced population.

In five states—Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York—at least 1 in 6 people in prison are serving a life sentence.

The highest proportion of life sentences relative to the prison population is in California, where 20% of the prison population is serving a life sentence, up from 18.1% in 2003. Among these 34,164 life sentences, 10.8% are life without parole.

Racial and ethnic minorities serve a disproportionate share of life sentences. Two-thirds of people with life sentences (66.4%) are nonwhite, reaching as high as 83.7% of the life sentenced population in the state of New York.

There are 6,807 juveniles serving life sentences; 1,755, or 25.8%, of whom are serving sentences of life without parole.

Seventy-seven percent of juveniles sentenced to life are youth of color.

There are 4,694 women and girls serving life sentences, 28.4% of females sentenced to life do not have the possibility of parole.

http://unsilentgeneration.com/2009/07/25/prisons-to-become-warehouses-for-the-old/

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

July 24, 2009

When an ID is not ID

When an ID is not ID
by Mecke Nagel
Professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested at his own home in Cambridge, MA, after producing an ID to the police that asked him to show that he was lawfully at his own residence (what to do if one is subletting or house sitting and the owner is somewhere overseas and can’t be reached? Spend an indefinite time in county jail till the rightful resident can be reached?).
After producing TWO identification cards with photo and proper address, the police proceeded to arrest him, anyway.
What where they looking at? Why even bother to ask for an ID when confronting a person who happens to be of darker skin complexion in the USA? Does the ID warp into something else—an alien tool that strangers in this brave new world produce to trick the person who is sent to a location “to keep the peace”, or keep a lid on disturbances?
They were foremost looking at an “uppity black man” who dared to ask for his rights, for the officer to identify themselves. Oh, the subject dares to talk back and turn the gaze on the inspector who is asked to produce an ID!
“Look, a Negro”—the haunting (child’s) exclamation opening Fanon’s Black Skin White Mask is at the core of this gaze. And didn’t President Obama say that we are still haunted by race? It’s time to unmask the specters of whiteness, masquerading “objective” justice & the rights bearing subject and getting carte blanche (!) in judicial review. Such was the decision of the 9th Circuit court regarding an unjustified arrest of a Filipino American lawyer who produced an authentic 100 dollar bill and was arrested for doing so: "Although the arrest was unfortunate, we cannot say that the officers' belief that (the bill) was fake was plainly incompetent... The arrest, therefore, was not clearly established as unlawful." (Rodel Rodis, July 23, 2009 blog on his case “Rodis vs. City and County of San Francisco et al”). Rodis notes: “Instead of viewing the case objectively as they did earlier - whether under the ‘totality of circumstances’ the arrest was reasonable, the judges now applied the subjective test of whether the officers ’ belief that the bill was fake was ‘plainly incompetent’” (emphasis, MN). How ironic then that Sonia Sotomayor has been quizzed by senators whether she could set aside her subjective experiences as a Latina if confirmed to the Supreme Court. Such stringent standards do not apply to officers, who are vested with upholding the (white) supremacy of the law. As far as people of color in the US are concerned, Dred Scott (1857; annulled by 14th Amendment) still has a footing as “legal” precedence in the USA (being treated as chattel or private property and thus having no rights that a white man ought to respect).
In the words of a French philosopher one must say politely to Prof. Gates: “this is not an ID.”
Dr. Nagel teaches multicultural philosophy at SUNY Cortland and occasionally at area prisons and secure centers. She is studying penal abolition and African peacemaking approaches.

Posted by lois at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2009

Editorial NY Times: Childbirth in Chains

If you haven't called Governor Paterson's office, please do. He still hasn't signed the Bill! You do not need to live in NY. The number is 518-474-8390. Please forward widely.

Editorial- New York Times
Childbirth in Chains
Published: July 20, 2009

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called several years ago for an end to the barbaric and medically hazardous practice of shackling female prisoners during labor. In addition to further frightening these vulnerable women, the practice of chaining their legs, wrists and even their abdomens makes treatment and delivery more difficult and places mother and child at greater risk of harm.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons must have had these facts in mind last fall when the bureau ended the routine use of restraints for women in labor and limited shackling to cases in which a woman presents a danger to herself, the baby or the staff. Five states have similar policies. New York would become the sixth — if Gov. David Paterson signs an antishackling bill that sailed through the Legislature this spring.

The bill has caused a debate about how many pregnant women are actually shackled in New York. But recent interviews of female inmates by the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit group that monitors prison conditions, suggests that the practice may be more common than corrections officials know. In any case, the bill would put an end to it, by establishing clear guidelines that carry the authority of law.

Modeled on federal prison policy and laws in other states, the New York bill would prohibit women from being shackled while being taken to the hospital for a delivery. A woman could be cuffed by one wrist in cases in which she presented a danger to herself, hospital staff or corrections workers. But it seems highly unlikely that a woman doubled over in labor pains would be able to attempt an escape or overcome corrections officers.

Governor Paterson, whose staff members have recently been quibbling with technicalities in the bill, should make it clear whether he thinks the measure needs minor changes or clarifications. Otherwise, he should sign the bill into law and bring New York into line with the federal government and the other states that have wisely acted to protect pregnant inmates and their children during labor.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 21, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.

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

July 10, 2009

Once Again, Guilty of Having HIV

Once Again, Guilty of Having HIV
posted 2009-07-09
by Cynthia Fernandez
CHLP Intern

Last week, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported a case of a young woman arrested for prostitution in Knoxville, Tennessee, who faces a three-to-fifteen-year prison term for “aggravated prostitution” solely because she is HIV-positive. While individuals convicted of prostitution in Tennessee who do not have HIV face misdemeanor charges that usually amount to a fine and probation, those living with HIV face a felony charge and an additional three to fifteen years due to their health status. Because the woman is a repeat offender, she will also have to register as a sex offender and will face the same restrictions as child molesters and rapists.

State officials cite public health and safety as the rationale for the aggravated prostitution law, but their efforts are severely misguided. Not only is the law discriminatory, it also has shown no deterrent effect. The woman has been arrested at least eight times for prostitution, and this recent arrest was her third arrest for aggravated prostitution. Furthermore, the law further stigmatizes HIV infection and women who rely on consensual sex in exchange for money to make a living. A more effective way to treat this woman, who dropped out of high school in the ninth grade due to drug addiction and has been a sex worker since age 19, would be to offer her drug rehabilitation and access to medical care and educational services to at least increase the odds that she has alternatives to sex work in order to survive. Instead, in their infinite wisdom, Tennessee legislators and prosecutors, by making her a registered sex offender, have effectively ensured that she will not have access to many residential drug treatment programs available to other addicts because she will not be allowed to live anywhere that houses juveniles. She faces these severe restrictions even though she has no history of committing any kind of sexual assault. Incarcerating and then branding someone like this woman a sex offender will only serve to further marginalize her and prevent her from receiving the care she needs.

Adding insult to injury, Knoxville Police Department Sgt. Chris Baldwin defended the law in the article and expressed concern for the male customers’ “moral and physical well-being.” Why should society place more value on the well-being of the man who solicits sex for money than on the woman who provides it? Baldwin’s statements and selective concern show the ignorance, the sexist double standard, and the misguided policy choices that serve as rationales for criminalizing HIV status. He is quoted as saying, “when a customer is exposed, then everybody he comes into contact with are at risk as well.” Yes, HIV can be transmitted through condomless sex, but this would place at further risk only those who in turn have condomless sex with that person who has become infected. Casual transmission to household members is a scientific impossibility and it is dangerous, if depressingly predictable, that someone in a position of power could be so ill-informed about basic modes of HIV transmission.

The Knoxville News Sentinel article reporting on the case also uses incredibly derogatory language, referring to the woman as a “hooker” and discussing her “turning tricks” for a living. The article also published several mug shots of the woman; for effect, I suppose? Her eyes are glazed over in every shot and if anything, they elicit a feeling of deep sympathy, which I am assuming was not the effect the article’s author intended.

While this law is intended to prevent those with HIV from acting as sex workers, in reality it does nothing to remedy the public health problem. Its enforcement prevents those most in need from receiving services and only exacerbates their marginalization by incarcerating and then branding them sexual predators. The continued prosecution of consensual sex, particularly while looking the other way at the man soliciting the service, is hateful and wrongheaded, and the sensational reporting that accompanies the criminalization of HIV further fuels HIV-related stigma and contributes to the perception that society needs to be protected from those living with HIV.
http://hivlawandpolicy.org/posts/view/43
This and other outrageous but true news about women and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Posted by lois at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)

June 29, 2009

Editorial: Two Meals and Not Always Square

Editorial: Two Meals and Not Always Square
Published: Sunday June 28, 2009
NY Times

With budgets tight, states and local governments have been looking at prisons — and prison food — as a place to save money. Three days a week, Georgia now serves inmates only two meals. And across the country, there have been increasing reports of substandard food. This is inhumane. Adequate meals should be a nonnegotiable part of a civilized penal system. It is also bad policy. Researchers have found a connection between poor food quality and discipline problems and violence.

Georgia has nevertheless decided to save on staff costs by serving just two meals on Friday, as it already did on Saturday and Sunday. The state says it gives prisoners the same number of calories on days when one meal is skipped. Even if it does — and some prisoners’ advocates are skeptical — it can be oppressive to go so long without eating.

In Alabama earlier this year, a federal judge ordered the Morgan County sheriff locked up in his own jail for contempt for failing to adequately feed his inmates. Alabama allows sheriffs to keep food money they do not spend, and the sheriff reportedly pocketed more than $200,000 over three years.

Prisoners’ rights advocates say they are receiving an increasing number of complaints from inmates nationwide who report being served spoiled or inedible food or inadequate portions. Earlier this year, a riot at Reeves County Detention Center in Texas caused heavy damage to a prison building. Inmates said it was prompted in part by poor food.

Cutbacks in food could violate inmates’ constitutional rights, notes Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, if they create a substantial risk of serious harm — a particular concern for inmates with diabetes and other illnesses.

If states and localities want to save money on corrections, they should reduce their prison and jail populations. The United States, which has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has almost one-quarter of its prisoners. Many are in for nonviolent crimes that could be punished in more constructive, and less costly, ways. If governments decide to put inmates behind bars, they have to give them adequate food — which means no less than three healthy meals a day.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 29, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29mon2.html?_r=1&hpw

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

June 27, 2009

MI: Prson Backers Pray to Keep Prison Open

Prison backers turn to prayer to save closing facility
By Kathryn Lynch-Morin
Bay City Times
6-26-09
STANDISH — About 350 people attended a candlelight vigil Monday at Resurrection of the Lord Catholic Church in Standish to pray for a meeting between local leaders who are committed to saving the prison and Gov. Jennifer Granholm who announced earlier this month that the prison would close later this year.

Standish City Manager Michael J. Moran III attended the vigil and said he is still optimistic that Gov. Jennifer Granholm will meet with city and state officials to discuss the closing of the prison.

"Hopefully we can give her enough reason to reconsider her executive order," Moran said. "If not, we feel that we have other options we can discuss with her."

He said the mood at the vigil was different than that of the rally that took place at the same church June 12.

"It was more of a formalized religious experience in a way," Moran said.

The Rev. James Fitzpatrick organized the vigil as well as a petition that collected nearly 8,000 signatures and the rally to try and urge Granholm to change her mind about closing the prison, Standish's largest employer.

http://www.correctionsone.com/corrections/articles/1849627-Prison-backers-turn-to-prayer-to-save-closing-facility/

Posted by lois at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)

AZ: Right-wing vigilantes kills a woman's child and her husband in their house in a border town

New Border Fear: Violence by a Rogue Militia
By JESSE McKINLEY and MALIA WOLLAN
NY Times
Published: June 26, 2009

ARIVACA, Ariz. — “Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband!” the woman shouted to the 911 dispatcher. “They’re coming back in! They’re coming back in!”

Arivaca finds itself a town both terrified and angered.

Multiple gunshots are then heard on a tape of the call.

The woman, Gina Gonzalez, survived the attack after arming herself with her husband’s handgun, but both he and their 10-year-old daughter died.

The killings, last month, have terrified this small town near the Mexican border, in part because the authorities have now tied them to what they describe as a rogue group engaged in citizen border patrols.

The three people arrested in the crime include the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a Washington State-based offshoot of the Minutemen movement, in which citizens roam the border looking for people crossing into the country illegally. Former members describe the group’s leader, Shawna Forde, 41, as having anti-immigrant sentiments that are extreme, at times frightening, even to people accustomed to hard-line views on border policing.

The authorities say that the three suspects were after money and drugs that they intended to use to finance vigilantism, and that members of the group may have been involved in at least one other home invasion, in California.

“There was an anticipation that there would be a considerable amount of cash at this location,” said Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, since, he said, Ms. Gonzalez’s husband, Raul J. Flores, had previously been involved in narcotics trafficking, an assertion the family denies.

A Pima County public defender representing Ms. Forde had no comment on the case. Nor did lawyers for the other suspects, Jason E. Bush, 34, and Albert R. Gaxiola, 42. All three remain in custody, charged with first-degree murder, assault and burglary.

Merrill Metzger, who worked for the group for six months just as it was getting started in 2007, said Ms. Forde had often traveled from Washington to Arizona with weapons. In March, while stopping over at his home in Redding, Calif., she presented a plan for the group to undertake, Mr. Metzger, her half-brother, said in a telephone interview.

“She was sitting here talking about how she was going to start an underground militia and rob drug dealers,” he said.

Mr. Metzger quit the group, alarmed, he said, by a number of things, including Ms. Forde’s demand for extreme loyalty, right down to the choice of cuisine.

“I had to take an oath, and part of the oath was that I couldn’t eat Mexican food,” he said. “That’s when red flags went up all over for me. That seemed like prejudice.”

Another former member, Chuck Stonex, a retired independent contractor, said Ms. Forde had talked about buying a ranch near Arivaca and building a compound. He said that in October, he took an excursion with her into the desert north of here, where, wearing camouflage and carrying handguns and rifles, they searched for illegal immigrants.

“It’s just like hunting,” Mr. Stonex said, describing the tracking skills the group used. “If you’re going out hunting deer, you want to scout around and get an idea what their pattern is, what trails they use.”

Mr. Stonex said he treated one of the suspects, Mr. Bush, for a flesh wound the day of the attack on Ms. Gonzalez’s family. Ms. Gonzalez had presumably shot Mr. Bush in warding off the attackers, but, Mr. Stonex said, the wound did not raise his suspicions, because, he said, Ms. Forde offered what seemed a plausible explanation: “They’d been jumped by border bandits.”

“They were very relaxed, having casual, normal chitchat,” he recalled.

Small numbers of Americans have always viewed border patrolling as a patriotic duty, but the most recent incarnation — the Minutemen movement, which takes its name from citizen militias formed during the Revolutionary War — gained steam in 2005, when hundreds of volunteers flocked to border locations.

Their patrols initially drew praise from some political leaders, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, but also raised concerns that the activities were thin veils for racism and xenophobia. Over time, the movement has also suffered from infighting, with some groups, like Ms. Forde’s, advocating increasingly confrontational tactics while others have simply monitored the border and reported illegal crossings to the authorities.

Pima County Sheriff’s Office

Gilbert Mungaray, 80, says he “can’t imagine why” his grandson and great-granddaughter were killed.

Since the killings here, members of some better-known groups involved with the movement have scrambled to disassociate themselves from Minutemen American Defense. Others had begun doing so well beforehand. The 750-member San Diego Minutemen, for instance, started warning people on its Web site in January to avoid Ms. Forde.

According to Ms. Gonzalez’s 911 call, the killers arrived shortly after midnight on May 30, dressed in uniforms resembling those of law enforcement personnel. They told the family that they were looking for a fugitive. Actually, the authorities say, the three suspects believed that Ms. Gonzalez’s husband, Mr. Flores, 29, was holding both drugs and money at their remote home.

Sheriff Dupnik has said there is ample drug activity between here and the border. The suggestion has angered the residents of Arivaca, a town of retirees, artists and working people about 50 miles south of Tucson. “This is a good town,” said Fern Loveall, 76. “It’s a good place to live, and it’s a good place to raise kids. What they’re saying about it isn’t true.”

Members of Mr. Flores’s family also denied that he had had any connection to the drug trade.

“