The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

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.

“He was a good guy,” said Gilbert Mungaray, his 80-year-old grandfather. “I know what happened, but I can’t imagine why.”

The family’s house was silent this week. An American flag hung on the porch, and three pink roses adorned the front door. Down a dirt road, at the local community center, a picture of Brisenia, the slain daughter of Mr. Flores and Ms. Gonzalez, had been placed in a frame with a small black ribbon affixed to it.

For the regulars at La Gitana Cantina, a friendly establishment with a mixed clientele of Anglos and Mexican-Americans, emotions have ranged from abject sorrow to rage.

“I’ve had people come into the bar and just put their heads in their hands, and all the sudden they’ve got tears pouring down their face,” said Karen Lippert, a bartender. She added that while Mr. Gaxiola was a local, the two other suspects were not.

“This is not us guys,” she said. “It’s the not the way us guys operate.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/us/27arizona.html?ref=us
This and other outrageous but true news can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

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

June 18, 2009

N.M. ACLU sues private prison company GEO Group for ‘cruel and unusual punishment’

N.M. ACLU sues private prison company GEO Group for ‘cruel and unusual punishment’
By Gwyneth Doland 6/17/09 3:31 PM

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico is suing a privately-run prison in Clayton for imposing cruel and unusual punishment, charging that in December, 2008, prison guards kept seven nude or semi-nude prisoners locked in a cold shower room for hours after a prison lockdown ended.

The suit, filed today in federal court, claims that prison guards at the Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility teased and taunted the prisoners and a female guard videotaped the naked men. After the two-hour lockdown ended, employees told the inmates that they couldn’t find the key to the shower room door, so the inmates were given the option of crawling through a filthy cinderblock hole in the shower room wall or waiting for guards to find the key.

Several prisoners developed skin conditions after the incident and were denied treatment, the lawsuit charges.

The director of corporate relations for the GEO Group, which manages the prison, declined to comment on the lawsuit, writing in an e-mail: ”As a matter of policy, our company does not comment on litigation related matters.”

“New Mexico has one of the largest percentage of inmates housed in privately-run prison facilities in the country,” Bryan J. Davis, a cooperating attorney for the ACLU of New Mexico, said in a press release.

“These prisons go up, the employees don’t receive adequate training, and the inmates suffer the consequences. It’s irresponsible on the part of the private prison companies and the state that contracts with them.”

The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages against the GEO Group and several employees.
http://newmexicoindependent.com/29767/nm-aclu-sues-private-prison-for-cruel-and-unusual-punishment

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Operator of private NM prison sued by 7 inmates

By DEBORAH BAKER – 6-17-09

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the operator of New Mexico's newest private prison on behalf of seven inmates who claim they were taunted by guards and videotaped while locked for hours in a shower room.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Albuquerque named The GEO Group Inc. and wardens and other employees of the Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility in Clayton.

The medium-security men's prison in far northeastern New Mexico opened last summer to house state inmates.

The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU of New Mexico, alleges the inmates' constitutional rights were violated in a Dec. 10, 2008, incident.

Warden Timothy Hatch declined to discuss the matter, referring inquiries to a GEO spokesman, Pablo Paez, at the company's Boca Raton, Fla., headquarters.

"As a matter of policy, our company does not comment on litigation related matters," Paez said in an e-mail.

According to the lawsuit, the seven inmates were locked in a cold shower room with little or no clothing for five hours, then coerced into crawling out through a small, dirty hole in the shower wall after guards said they couldn't find the key.

The inmates were in the shower room when a disturbance in a neighboring pod prompted a lockdown, and Hatch ordered the seven locked in the shower room, according to the complaint.

It said two of the men were naked, while the others wore boxer shorts or had small towels.

A female guard filmed the men with a video recorder and "giggled and danced" while doing so, the lawsuit alleges. Other guards passed by and laughed at them, the lawsuit claims.

Tear gas from the neighboring pod, where the disturbance occurred, wafted into the shower room and bothered an inmate who had breathing problems, but he was denied access to his inhaler, according to the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

The plaintiffs allege they were kept in the shower without additional clothing or access to a bathroom for three hours after the incident in the neighboring pod had been resolved, and then told they would have to crawl through the hole to get out.

Bryan J. Davis, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, said in a statement that employees of private prisons aren't adequately trained, and "the inmates suffer the consequences."

"It's irresponsible on the part of the private prison companies and the state that contracts with them," he said.

According to the New Mexico Department of Corrections, 46 percent of state inmates are housed in privately operated facilities with which the state contracts. The GEO Group has the bulk of those inmates, with prisons in Clayton, Hobbs and Santa Rosa.

The Clayton prison has 577 inmates, said department spokeswoman Tia Bland.

"The Corrections Department is aware of what happened during this incident. We believe the validity of this lawsuit is questionable," Bland said.

She also said the corrections officers at Clayton had received the same training as correctional officers who work at state-operated prisons.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5joGv_Qjs5_Qs-_txnTAEXZsg0cNgD98SN8I83

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

June 16, 2009

Bail granted for imprisoned HIV-positive pregnant woman in Maine

Bail granted for imprisoned HIV-positive pregnant woman in Maine

This morning, National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Center for HIV Law and Policy, and Elizabeth Frankel and Valerie Wright of the Maine law firm Verrill Dana, LLP, filed an emergency amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief on behalf of 28 public health experts, advocates, and organizations challenging the imprisonment of an HIV positive pregnant woman in order to protect her “innocent” “unborn child.”

Ms. Quinta Tuleh, a 28 year-old woman from Cameroon, was arrested in January 2009 for allegedly having false immigration documents. Shortly after her arrest, she learned she was both pregnant and HIV positive. On May 14, 2009, instead of sentencing her to “time served,” which was consistent with the federal sentencing guidelines and the recommendations of her attorney and the United States Attorney’s Office, United States District Court Judge John Woodcock extended Ms. T’s sentence to 238 days, making clear that the sentence was calculated specifically to ensure that she remained incarcerated for the duration of her pregnancy. See Judge Jails Pregnant Woman Until Baby is Born and Behind Bars for Being Pregnant and HIV-Positive.

Judge Woodcock stated: “My obligation is to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant, and that public, it seems to me at this point, should include the child she’s carrying…I don’t think the transfer of HIV to an unborn child is a crime technically under the law, but it is as direct and as likely as an ongoing assault.” Judge Woodcock reasoned that the Federal Sentencing Guideline permits enhanced sentencing for pregnant women and that extended imprisonment would protect her “unborn child. ”

As is often the situation in cases involving pregnant women, Courts feel pressed to make decisions without benefit of full briefing, input from experts or amicus participation. Indeed, uncertain of Ms. T’s due date and how long he would need to extend the sentence to ensure she was imprisoned through her due date, the Judge looked out over the courtroom and said “So maybe we ought to consult with the women here. Any sense of what a safe range would be?”

The Amicus brief filed this morning provided the Court with the expert information unavailable at the sentencing hearings. The brief outlines legal problems with depriving pregnant women of their liberty in order to advance alleged state interests in fetal health and the public health problems with assuming that jails and prisons provide superior or even adequate health care. As an expert declaration filed by Dr. Robert L. Cohen stated: “Based upon my thirty years of experience in the delivery, administration, research, evaluation, and monitoring of medical care in jails and prisons throughout the United States, it is my opinion that it is very often the case that the medical care available to prisoners falls well below that available to non-prisoners.”

Ms. T is being represented by Zachary L. Heiden of the Maine ACLU.

NAPW and Center for HIV Law and Policy are grateful to Laura McTighe, Director of Project UNSHACKLE, Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP), for her extraordinary help in this effort and the numerous public health experts, advocates, and organizations appearing as amici on this brief, including:

National Women’s Health Network, National Association of People with AIDS, Frannie Peabody Center, Mardge H. Cohen, M.D., Howard Minkoff, M.D., ACT UP Philadelphia, African Services Committee, AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Alliance of AIDS Services – Carolina, American Medical Students Association, Black Women’s Health Imperative, Chicago Women’s AIDS Project, Circle of Care, Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project, HIV Law Project, Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, Liberty Research Group, National AIDS Fund, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, Rebecca Project for Human Rights, Twin States Network, Women Organized to Respond to Life-Threatening Disease (WORLD), Women Rising Project, Women Together for Change Project, Jeff Berry, Wendy Chavkin, M.D., MPH, Leslie Gise, M.D., and Sean Strub.

We are pleased to report that the Court granted bail this morning, allowing Ms. T’s release pending appeal in the case.
Posted by Wyndi on June 15, 2009 01:54 PM

and

Dear Friends and Allies:

NAPW is pleased to announce that yesterday morning a federal District Court judge, responding to a motion for bail and our emergency amicus brief, released Quinta Tuleh, a 28 year-old pregnant woman, from federal custody.

Ms. Tuleh, a woman from Cameroon, had already served 114 days in jail for allegedly having false immigration documents. Shortly after her arrest, she learned she was both pregnant and HIV positive. On May 14, 2009, instead of releasing her, a US District Court Judge extended Ms. Tuleh's sentence to ensure that she remain incarcerated for the duration of her pregnancy. (Judge Jails Pregnant Woman Until Baby is Born and Behind Bars for Being Pregnant and HIV-Positive.)

At the sentencing hearing, Judge Woodcock stated: "My obligation is to protect the public from further crimes of the defendant, and that public, it seems to me at this point, should include the child she's carrying...I don't think the transfer of HIV to an unborn child is a crime technically under the law, but it is as direct and as likely as an ongoing assault."

As is often the situation in cases involving pregnant women, Courts make decisions without the benefit of full briefing or input from experts. Indeed, uncertain of Ms. Tuleh's due date and how long he would need to extend the sentence to ensure she was imprisoned through her due date, the Judge looked out over the courtroom and said "So maybe we ought to consult with the women here. Any sense of what a safe range would be?"

Yesterday morning, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Center for HIV Law and Policy and attorneys Elizabeth Frankel and Valerie Wright of the Maine firm Verrill Dana, LLP filed an emergency amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief on behalf of 28 public health experts, advocates, and organizations, as well as a declaration from prison health expert Dr. Robert L. Cohen. The brief and expert testimony provided legal and public health information challenging the incarceration of a pregnant woman in order to protect an "innocent" "unborn child."

The judge called the brief "articulate and helpful" during yesterday's hearing where he released Ms. Tuleh on bail pending an appeal of her sentence to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Ms. Tuleh will now be receiving medical, housing, and other support coordinated by the Frannie Peabody Center, a Portland, Maine community-based HIV resource center. Ms. Tuleh has expressed that she is deeply touched by all of the support she has received. The picture of her yesterday, smiling from ear to ear speaks volumes.

Ms. Tuleh is being represented on her appeal by Zachary L. Heiden of the Maine ACLU.

NAPW and Center for HIV Law and Policy are grateful to Laura McTighe, Director of Project UNSHACKLE, Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP), for her extraordinary help in this effort.

Your continued support of NAPW makes this kind of effective, cross issue collaboration possible. Please contribute what you can to NAPW so that we can continue our collaborative and successful advocacy on behalf of all pregnant women.
Yours Truly,
Lynn M. Paltrow
Executive Director
National Advocates for Pregnant Women
www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org

Posted by lois at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)

June 09, 2009

Prisons Saving Money By Serving Less Food

Prisons Saving Money By Serving Less Food
June 5, 2009 |

Prisons in some American states are taking advice to tighten their belts literally by slimming down the amount of food they serve to inmates.

Prisoners in Georgia are now going without lunch three days in a row — the Department of Corrections recently eliminated midday meals on Fridays in addition to weekends.

Ohio is also considering two-meal weekend menus by serving brunch instead of breakfast. And other states are cutting back on the amount of milk and fresh fruit prisoners get.

Prison officials in Georgia say inmates are still getting enough to eat because portions are bigger on two-meal days.

But Barbara Helie said if she didn't give her 25-year-old son $60 a week to buy extra food from Georgia's Valdosta State Prison commissary, he would go hungry.

"I don't know how the guys who don't have someone on the outside helping out handle it," Helie said. "Food has been an ongoing issue for him.... He's hungry a lot."

The decision to eliminate Friday lunches in Georgia is linked to another cost-cutting measure. To save on gas, the Department of Corrections changed the prisoners' workweek from five eight-hour days to four 10-hour days.

Inmates got less food on weekends because they weren't exerting themselves working, said Calvin Brown, the deputy director of facility operations at the Georgia Department of Corrections. Now that inmates don't work on Fridays either, it makes sense to cut lunch on that day, too, he said.

About five per cent of Georgia prisoners still get three meals a day because of special dietary needs from conditions like diabetes.

Critics say the cutbacks could lead to food hoarding and violence.

Gordon Crews, a professor at Marshall University in West Virginia, wrote a book on violence in correctional systems.

Link to violence

Food has been linked to prison violence in the past, he said. He cited the example of a riot at the Reeves County Detention Centre in Texas that was partly caused by poor quality food.

Data obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request show that inmate assaults in Georgia have increased substantially this fiscal year. Prison officials denied the rise in violence is linked to cuts in food.

Prison administrators have seen inmate populations go up while budgets go down. The state of Georgia cut 10 per cent from the Department of Correction's $1.1-billion budget this fiscal year. Food has been identified as an area where they can save money.

Ohio prisons director Terry Collins said replacing breakfast with brunch on weekends "could save us some real dollars when it comes to staffing and food costs." He said he doesn't expect prisoners will be upset because the meals will be of the same quality.

"I don't expect them to be as good as mom's home cooking," he said. "But the food should be cooked and presented properly."
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/06/05/us-prison-food005.html

Posted by lois at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

June 04, 2009

Foes of Rockefeller Drug Law Reform Attack Recent Changes By False Charges of Threats to Public Safety by Judges Sealing Records

From the Center for Community Alternatives (NY)
Those opposed to the recently enacted Rockefeller Drug Law Reform have seized upon a small, but important aspect of the legislation - conditional sealing - as a way to attack the recent reforms and create the misperception that drug law reform will diminish public safety. Their criticism overlooks the fact that the conditional sealing legislation is an important tool for fostering New York's commitment to promoting public safety by ensuring the successful and productive reentry of people with criminal history records into our communities - a commitment best demonstrated by the 2006 amendment to the Penal Law establishing reentry and reintegration as a sentencing goal. Ultimately, conditional sealing is a well-considered mechanism for ensuring that people who have demonstrated a commitment to their rehabilitation (by completing substance abuse treatment and a court-imposed sentence) will have a fair opportunity at employment, housing, education, and other aspects of full community membership. For a reasoned response to the misperceptions created by opponents to drug law reform and an explanation of how conditional sealing can enhance public safety, click here.
http://www.communityalternatives.org/pdf/conditionalSealingResponse.pdf

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

June 01, 2009

AZ: Acting Director of AZ DOC attends Marcia Powell's Memorial Service---organizing continues

Charles Ryan Attends Marcia Powell's Memorial Service, Says He Didn't Know Powell Had Guardian
By Stephen Lemons in Feathered Bastard
Saturday, May. 30 2009 @ 3:05PM

About 200 people packed the pews at Encanto Community Church today at noon for a memorial service for Marcia Powell, the 48-year-old inmate at Goodyear's Perryville Prison who died early the morning of May 20. This was following her confinement the day before in an outdoor cage where she endured temperatures of more than 107 degrees for at least four hours before collapsing.

The service was presided over by Rev. Liana Rowe, and featured prayers, hymns, and speakers such as criminal defense advocate Jameson Johnson and Middle Ground Prison Reform's Donna Hamm. Powell's body is still being held by the Medical Examiner pending an investigation into next of kin by Powell's court-appointed guardian, the Maricopa County Public Fiduciary. Instead of a casket, there were two photos of Powell on the dais next to a tall lit candle.

The most notable attendee was Arizona Department of Corrections' Interim Director Charles Ryan, whom I questioned outside the church following the service. It's Ryan who made the decision to discontinue Powell's life support after she had been transported to West Valley Hospital.

Friday, the ADC announced that the use of outside enclosures like the one Powell was caged in would be suspended until they were retrofitted with shade and a water supply. Ryan went even further today when asked about the possibility of doing away with the cages altogether.

"After conferring [yesterday] with the Governor's office and the Governor," said Ryan. "We have decided we are going to discontinue using the holding enclosures, in spite of consideration for retrofitting with shade or water. We will no longer use them."

Ryan said Powell was being transferred to an observation cell when she was left in the outside cage. In the future, Ryan said such transfers will be taken to a holding area inside a building that's climate controlled, so that the weather is no longer an issue.

Regarding Ryan's decision to pull the plug on Powell while she was at West Valley Hospital on life support, Ryan said he did so on the advice of Powell's doctors, who told him it would be inhumane to do otherwise. He also indicated that at the time he made the decision, he was unaware that Powell had a guardian.

"The search of the records at the department, at the institution file, and the electronic record did not reveal any guardians," claimed Ryan. "There was no legal guardian known to the department at the time the decision was made.

"The only person who was listed was a friend, and the attempt to find the friend led to a disconnected telephone number and to an address that was not occupied."

But why pull the plug on Powell just hours after she had been admitted, when another day or so and a little more digging might have revealed the fiduciary's guardianship?

"The attending physician in the emergency room," explained Ryan, "in consultation with the department's doctors, clearly indicated that there was no possibility that life could be sustained, that she was terminal. And the doctor reiterated several times it was inhumane to continue to sustain her life on life support."

During the services for Powell, Donna Hamm restated her call for an independent investigation into Powell's death, and said she was calling on the U.S. Justice Department to look into it. However, Ryan said he retained confidence in ADC's criminal investigations unit to look into the matter, though that unit ultimately reports to him.

"There has been an autopsy completed," said Ryan. "The results of the toxicology report will not be known, I think, for about six weeks...The investigation itself...will be completed before then. It is my intention once that...portion of the investigation is completed, I intend to have it reviewed for completeness and objectivity by another agency, and very likely that would be or start with the Department of Public Safety."

I also asked Ryan why the department switched out photos of Powell on its Web site, to leave a more flattering image of Powell online. He said the reason was to show "another picture of her" while she was incarcerated. That's a no-brainer of course. Why the department felt the need to show another photo of Powell is a question Ryan successfully tiptoed around.

In addition, Ryan conceded that he was the "Interim Director" of ADC, not its confirmed "Director," as he's mentioned as being on the ADC Web site. He ascribed the mislabeling to an "oversight."

I have to give Ryan points for attending the service to begin with and for allowing me to interview him. However, I still find troubling his statement that there was no record of Powell's guardianship in the ADC's files. I was able to obtain a record of Powell's guardianship simply by consulting the clerk of superior court's records.

Also, I think that if Powell had been kept alive a little longer, it would not have taken much digging to find paperwork related to the guardian's appointment. Indeed, at one point in the court record, the court is officially advised by Powell's guardian that she has a new address; i.e., Perryville Prison. Isn't the ADC supposed to have access to all such court records related to an inmate?

Presumably, it is the guardian that had the legal authority to pull Powell's plug (assuming next of kin could not be located), not Ryan. And Ryan's department should have known there was a guardian. How ADC didn't know, when a review of the clerk of court's records reveals the existence of a guardianship for Powell, requires some explanation.

More on the service itself in next week's Bird column. I will say this, as sad as Powell's death was, I find it heartening that many in Phoenix do care about the demise of this woman, one of society's forgotten. And if that concern persists, perhaps a repeat of this incident will be less likely in the future.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2009/05/charles_ryan_attends_marcia_po.php.

From an anonymous blog post...
AddThis
Inmate killed in punishment cage in 103-107 F No Shade
Perryville Womens Unit; Goodyear, AZ
This inmate Marcia Powell ADC # 109416 who was a having problems with her paranoid schizophrenia on May 19, 2009 was being punished by the Deputy Warden; for not going to work. Was put in a cage with a cement slab, no shade; in 103-107 Degree heat. This prison has had many problems with women dying. They have had media out there and has told the media they do not use the cage that has been seen. But, the local media does not report their news correctly in Phoenix, AZ. And they apparently did not know about the 2nd CAGE. It is out of public view. The families of these women in this prison will not speak out. They are afraid for their family memebers in there. And if they speak out then they are stop for 90 days. And if they appeal the decision then they are punished for another 90 days. And if you keep trying then you can be stopped altogeather. Now our Government and President are hollering about GITMO PRISONERS being treated bad. Would they allow the GITMO PRISONERS to be treated like that. Sitting in the sun for 4 hours to end up DEAD. Because, that is what happened to this woman. And she was a mother of 2 children. But, you don't hear about this in the NATIONAL NEWS OR IN CONGRESS. And the former Governor of Arizona Janet Polatano; she knew how the inmates get treated in Arizona. She did not want to do anything to hurt her politico career. Ms. Polatano is only looking out for herself and her politico ambissions.
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/alert/?alertid=13409481&content_dir=ua_congressorg

Posted by lois at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2009

Phoenix: Prisoners at Maricopa County Jail on Hunger Strike

"In the past four days, the number of inmates refusing to eat has grown. On Thursday, 1,504 refused the evening meals. On Friday, 1,800 refused to eat. On Saturday 1,219 did not eat and on Sunday night, 1,080 inmates turned down the evening meal, Arpaio said."

Hunger Strike Leads To Lockdown
Omadelle Nelson
Reporter, KPHO.com
UPDATED: 3:11 pm MST May 18, 2009

PHOENIX -- Three out of seven Maricopa County jails were placed on indefinite lockdown at 3 p.m. as a security precaution in the midst of an inmate hunger strike, Sheriff Joe Arpaio said.

The lockdown means inmates are be required to remain in their cells, and no visitors are allowed. Nearly 4,200 medium and maximum security inmates are affected, Arpaio said.

The pro-immigration movement Puente said in a statement, "Sheriff Joe Arpaio announcement to put prisoners on lockdown for exercising their right of free speech is a blatant disregard of human rights of prisoners."
CSI collection of products

Puente leaders said they plan to hold a candlelight vigil at the Fourth Avenue and Madison jail at 7:30 p.m.

In the past four days, the number of inmates refusing to eat has grown. On Thursday, 1,504 refused the evening meals. On Friday, 1,800 refused to eat. On Saturday 1,219 did not eat and on Sunday night, 1,080 inmates turned down the evening meal, Arpaio said.

Arpaio said the strike began two weeks ago the day of a protest against him.

The inmates said they don't like the quality of the food.

Jail officials said they're concerned that it could become a violent situation for those who don't want to participate in the hunger strike.

Arpaio said inmates get 2,500 calories a day, and he does not plan to change the menu.

"They may not like the food. The food is rather bland, but you know what, they're getting it free right now, said Arpaio, "We've got people on the streets lining up; people out of work that have no money, trying to find jobs and feed their families, and these guys are complaining."

Arpaio said six inmates had asked to be put in protective custody because they wanted to eat but were afraid of retaliation from other inmates.
http://www.kpho.com/news/19488085/detail.html

Posted by lois at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)

AZ: Women serving a 27 month sentence for prostitution dies in holding cell after four hours in 103 degree heat.

Tragic cage death ends woeful life
May. 24, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Marcia J. Powell, a mentally ill prostitute and drug addict, died like a dog last week, roasting in a cage in the fearsome sun at the state prison at Perryville.

She was 48 years old.

Her final tortured hours in an outdoor enclosure last Tuesday mimicked those of a five-year-old law-enforcement canine named Rik that died at Perryville in 2007 after having been left by handlers in an exercise run for three hours. Temperatures that day reached 105.

The temperature in Powell's cage last week exceeded 107. She was locked up for an hour longer than the dog before she collapsed.

There are many questions to be answered by the Department of Corrections about Powell's final hours. But her death is only the gruesome exclamation point on a long list of institutional failures that got her there.

DOC officials say that Powell had a rap sheet going back decades and included at least 10 sex and six drug convictions. She'd been in and out of Arizona prisons since 1994.

Records indicate that she left home in California at 15 with a ninth-grade education, no marketable skills and a serious mental illness. A presentencing report describes her as bipolar.

Last summer, she was sent to prison for more than two years on a prostitution charge.

"It's awful the way this woman died," said Donna Leone Hamm, executive director of Middle Ground Prison Reform Inc., which for years has advocated for Arizona inmates and their families. "No one cared much about her when she lived. I hope at least that we care about the way she died."

DOC is investigating the incident. Several employees already are on administrative leave.

After Powell collapsed, she was taken to the hospital and placed on life support. A DOC spokesman told me that the department was unable to locate any family members.

So when the time came to decide whether to pull the plug on the machines keeping her alive, it fell to prisons Director Charles Ryan. Powell was taken off life support at 11:15 p.m. Tuesday; she died at 12:42 a.m. Wednesday.

"The death of Marcia Powell is a tragedy and a failure," Ryan said later. "The investigation will determine whether there was negligence and tell us how to remedy our failures."

I'm not so sure.

For one thing, DOC should not be conducting the investigation. It should fall to an outside agency. The governor should demand it.

According to Hamm, she contacted then-prisons Director Dora Schriro in late 2007 about the practice of placing prisoners in outdoor cages.

"Because no one had died or had been permanently injured, I couldn't get anyone - including the press - interested," Hamm said.

Questions like that are only a beginning.

Powell's horrific death and her woeful life should finally get us to ask why Arizona's failed mental-health system transforms county jails and prisons into mental-health institutions.

It should get us to ask why we criminalize people like this but don't adequately treat them, since it's clear that taxpayers end up footing the bill for their care one way or another.

Powell told state officials that she had two children who were given up to foster care, but DOC says the state has no record of that. Police also checked the address of a name she'd listed as a friend on prison records but found no one living in the abandoned house.

In spite of spending years in the system, Powell's life remains a mystery. Her death is a tragedy, although perhaps not on the level of Rik the law-enforcement dog.

There was a public outpouring for him.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2009/05/23/20090523Montini0524.html

Ariz. inmate dies after hours in outdoor cell
By JONATHAN J. COOPER-5-22-09

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona inmate who died after spending nearly four hours in the desert heat was left in an outdoor holding cell for twice as long as she should have been, the state prisons director said Wednesday.

Three corrections officers have been put on paid leave while the state investigates Wednesday's heat-related death of Marcia Powell, who was left in her unshaded cell in 103-degree heat at a prison in Goodyear.

"The death of Marcia Powell is a tragedy and a failure," prisons director Charles Ryan said. "The investigation will determine whether there was negligence and will tell us how to remedy our failures."

Powell, who was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution, was placed alone in the cell while being moved to an onsite detention unit. Ryan said officers placed Powell in the cell after a disturbance at the detention unit, but he would not elaborate on the nature of the disturbance.

Officers gave Powell, 48, bottled water, as required under prison policy, Ryan said. Corrections officers were 20 yards away in a control room while she was in the cell. Investigators will try to determine how much water she was given and whether she drank it.

Officers did not remove her after two hours as they should have done under department policy, Ryan said at a news conference.

"It is intended to be temporary," he said. "It is not intended to be a place where they are held for an inordinate amount of time."

The criminal probe, conducted by the Corrections Department's investigations unit, will seek to determine whether officials were negligent in their treatment of Powell, who collapsed at 2:40 p.m. Tuesday and died later at a hospital.

Ryan said he hopes to release a report into Powell's death by late next week. The Maricopa County Attorney's office will then decide whether to charge the corrections officers involved.

Ryan would not release the names or disciplinary records of the deputy warden, captain and lieutenant placed on paid leave.

He said he told all state prison wardens to monitor the temperatures at outdoor holding cells while they are housing inmates.

Powell is the 79th person to die in state prisons since July 2008, according to Ryan. He said most of the deaths were from natural causes, but there were three suicides and one murder.

Corrections officials were unable to locate family members for Powell.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Posted by lois at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)

May 18, 2009

NY: Prison play canceled in NY over fight with unions

Prison play canceled in NY over fight with unions
May 17, 2009

WOODBOURNE, N.Y. - The show won't go on after all.

A troupe of 18 inmates at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility were scheduled to perform an original play Wednesday.

But the New York State Department of Correctional Services canceled the show because union workers threatened to picket.

The unions have been angry since last November when the state announced it would close 12 prison farms as part of budget cuts.

In January 2008, inmates began writing and rehearsing a play about living behind bars and keeping a family.

But Kevin Walker, regional vice president for prison guards' union, says the union sees no value in theater work for inmates.

He called it a "waste of manpower and funding."

It's unclear if the show will be rescheduled.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bcny--prisonplaycancele0517may17,0,4424464.story

Posted by lois at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2009

LA: Free From Prison At Last: For an Aging Angola Inmate, Death Is the Only Release

Free From Prison At Last: For an Aging Angola Inmate, Death Is the Only Release
May 8, 2009
By James Ridgeway

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the growth in harsh sentencing and parole restrictions are filling the nation’s prisons with old and infirm prisoners. While these prisoners couldn’t do much damage if they tried, they are rarely shown any mercy, and there is little interest in alternatives such as letting them out for monitored house arrest as they near death, so that they can spend their final moments in the “free world.”

The Shreveport Times earlier this year profiled one such prisoner, Douglas Dennis, 73, a severely ill, wheelchair bound inmate at the Lousiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Dennis had been convicted of killing an accountant in the Shreveport city jail in 1957 and killing another inmate at Angola in the 1960s, and was serving two life sentences. In January, he appeared before the parole board, asking for clemency on the basis of his recent good record and good works at Angola, and his age and health problems, saying he wanted to be set free before he died. The request–which his lawyer called his “last chance,” since it only happens once every five years–was unanimously rejected by the board. As the paper reported, his case was far from unusual:

Louisiana’s prison system holds 5,023 adult offenders over age 50 — more than three times the number in 1997, when about 1,500 inmates over age 50 were in the system. Age 50 is considered geriatric by corrections standards. Hard lives of drug abuse and poor health can make a 50-year-old inmate appear 10 or 20 years older, experts say….

Nationally, fewer than 5 percent of older inmates who are released commit new crimes. In Louisiana, of all inmates who were released in 2003 and who later returned to prison, only 1.3 percent were age 50 or older. For inmates age 55 or older, that figure drops to 0.6 percent, according to Louisiana Department of Corrections data as of June 30, 2008. By comparison, the highest recidivism rate for inmates released in 2003 was 9.9 percent for two age groups — 21-24 and 25-29.

At Angola, some 85 to 90 percent of those imprisoned die within its walls. Living death is such a matter of fact within Angola that the place has a hospice to ease the final passage, an elaborate funeral setup, and a large graveyard. Angola’s notorious warden, Burl Cain, has made it clear that he believes, quite literally, that the only way out of the place should be through the redempton found in embracing Christ; he has made it his mission to bring salvation to prisoners facing death by natural causes, as well as by lethal injection in Angola’s death house. As a result of his ministry, Cain has become the subject of heroic profiles in evangelical publications, and Angola has become a popular stop for Christian fundamentalist groups, who are welcomed on tours.

This week, the Shreveport Times reports the death of Dennis, apparently from a heart attack, in Angola’s hospital. The paper reports that state will conduct an autopsy, then hs body will be released to a funeral home and cremated. After that Dennis’s friend, author Abigail Pagett, will send him off in a manner not exactly dictated in Christian practice.

Padgett will place the ashes in a Viking boat that Dennis crafted in prison and set it on fire in the ocean. She said she and Dennis had planned this kind of funeral during Padgett’s visits to the prison.

At his January hearing before the parole board, those testifying in favor of Dennis included several corrections officers, a former warden, the former FBI agent who tracked Dennis after he escaped in 1979 (and lived a crime-free life in California for six years before being caught), and “the daughters of Elayn Hunt, late head of the corrections department, who said their mother’s dying wish had been that Dennis, who had served as her inmate chauffeur, be released.”

But the family of Dennis’s Shreveport victim told the Times that they strenuously opposed his release. And a reader commenting on his death in prison summed up what may be the dominant public opinion on the subject: “Life should mean life. So many others deserve to have life in prison for taking someone else’s life and are still out today. I don’t care if you are sorry and old and sick now. If you make mistakes when you are young, they tend to follow you until you are gone.”
http://unsilentgeneration.com/

Posted by lois at 04:19 PM | Comments (0)

May 07, 2009

Girls on Our Streets

Op-Ed Columnist
Girls on Our Streets
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: May 6, 2009- NY Times

Jasmine Caldwell was 14 and selling sex on the streets when an opportunity arose to escape her pimp: an undercover policeman picked her up.

The cop could have rescued her from the pimp, who ran a string of 13 girls and took every cent they earned. If the cop had taken Jasmine to a shelter, she could have resumed her education and tried to put her life back in order.

Instead, the policeman showed her his handcuffs and threatened to send her to prison. Terrified, she cried and pleaded not to be jailed. Then, she said, he offered to release her in exchange for sex.

Afterward, the policeman returned her to the street. Then her pimp beat her up for failing to collect any money.

“That happens a lot,” said Jasmine, who is now 21. “The cops sometimes just want to blackmail you into having sex.”

I’ve often reported on sex trafficking in other countries, and that has made me curious about the situation here in the United States. Prostitution in America isn’t as brutal as it is in, say, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Cambodia and Malaysia (where young girls are routinely kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured by brothel owners, occasionally even killed). But the scene on American streets is still appalling — and it continues largely because neither the authorities nor society as a whole show much interest in 14-year-old girls pimped on the streets.

Americans tend to think of forced prostitution as the plight of Mexican or Asian women trafficked into the United States and locked up in brothels. Such trafficking is indeed a problem, but the far greater scandal and the worst violence involves American teenage girls.

If a middle-class white girl goes missing, radio stations broadcast amber alerts, and cable TV fills the air with “missing beauty” updates. But 13-year-old black or Latina girls from poor neighborhoods vanish all the time, and the pimps are among the few people who show any interest.

These domestic girls are often runaways or those called “throwaways” by social workers: teenagers who fight with their parents and are then kicked out of the home. These girls tend to be much younger than the women trafficked from abroad and, as best I can tell, are more likely to be controlled by force.

Pimps are not the business partners they purport to be. They typically take every penny the girls earn. They work the girls seven nights a week. They sometimes tattoo their girls the way ranchers brand their cattle, and they back up their business model with fists and threats.

“If you don’t earn enough money, you get beat,” said Jasmine, an African-American who has turned her life around with the help of Covenant House, an organization that works with children on the street. “If you say something you’re not supposed to, you get beat. If you stay too long with a customer, you get beat. And if you try to leave the pimp, you get beat.”

The business model of pimping is remarkably similar whether in Atlanta or Calcutta: take vulnerable, disposable girls whom nobody cares about, use a mix of “friendship,” humiliation, beatings, narcotics and threats to break the girls and induce 100 percent compliance, and then rent out their body parts.

It’s not solely violence that keeps the girls working for their pimps. Jasmine fled an abusive home at age 13, and she said she — like most girls — stayed with the pimp mostly because of his emotional manipulation. “I thought he loved me, so I wanted to be around him,” she said.

That’s common. Girls who are starved of self-esteem finally meet a man who showers them with gifts, drugs and dollops of affection. That, and a lack of alternatives, keeps them working for him — and if that isn’t enough, he shoves a gun in the girl’s mouth and threatens to kill her.

Solutions are complicated and involve broader efforts to overcome urban poverty, including improving schools and attempting to shore up the family structure. But a first step is to stop treating these teenagers as criminals and focusing instead on arresting the pimps and the customers — and the corrupt cops.

“The problem isn’t the girls in the streets; it’s the men in the pews,” notes Stephanie Davis, who has worked with Mayor Shirley Franklin to help coordinate a campaign to get teenage prostitutes off the streets.

Two amiable teenage prostitutes, working without a pimp for the “fast money,” told me that there will always be women and girls selling sex voluntarily. They’re probably right. But we can significantly reduce the number of 14-year-old girls who are terrorized by pimps and raped by many men seven nights a week. That’s doable, if it’s a national priority, if we’re willing to create the equivalent of a nationwide amber alert.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/opinion/07kristof.html?ref=opinion

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

April 30, 2009

The Montana Town That Wanted to Be Gitmo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 23, 2009

After Losing Freedom, Some Immigrants Face Loss of Custody of Their Children

After Losing Freedom, Some Immigrants Face Loss of Custody of Their Children
By GINGER THOMPSON- NY Times
Published: April 22, 2009

CARTHAGE, Mo. — When immigration agents raided a poultry processing plant near here two years ago, they had no idea a little American boy named Carlos would be swept up in the operation.

One of the 136 illegal immigrants detained in the raid was Carlos’s mother, Encarnación Bail Romero, a Guatemalan. A year and a half after she went to jail, a county court terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to her child on grounds of abandonment. Carlos, now 2, was adopted by a local couple.

In his decree, Judge David C. Dally of Circuit Court in Jasper County said the couple made a comfortable living, had rearranged their lives and work schedules to provide Carlos a stable home, and had support from their extended family. By contrast, Judge Dally said, Ms. Bail had little to offer.

“The only certainties in the biological mother’s future,” he wrote, “is that she will remain incarcerated until next year, and that she will be deported thereafter.”

It is unclear how many children share Carlos’s predicament. But lawyers and advocates for immigrants say that cases like his are popping up across the country as crackdowns against illegal immigrants thrust local courts into transnational custody battles and leave thousands of children in limbo.

“The struggle in these cases is there’s no winner,” said Christopher Huck, an immigration lawyer in Washington State.

He said that in many cases, what state courts want to do “conflicts with what federal immigration agencies are supposed to do.”

“Then things spiral out of control,” Mr. Huck added, “and it ends up in these real unfortunate situations.”

Next month, the Nebraska Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal by Maria Luis, a Guatemalan whose rights to her American-born son and daughter were terminated after she was detained in April 2005 on charges of falsely identifying herself to a police officer. She was later deported.

And in South Carolina, a Circuit Court judge has been working with officials in Guatemala to find a way to send the baby girl of a Guatemalan couple, Martin de Leon Perez and his wife, Lucia, detained on charges of drinking in public, to relatives in their country so the couple does not lose custody before their expected deportation.

Patricia Ravenhorst, a South Carolina lawyer who handles immigration cases, said she had tried “to get our judges not to be intimidated by the notion of crossing an international border.”

“I’ve asked them, ‘What would we do if the child had relatives in New Jersey?’ ” Ms. Ravenhorst said. “We’d coordinate with the State of New Jersey. So why can’t we do the same for a child with relatives in the highlands of Guatemala?”

Dora Schriro, an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said the agency was looking for ways to deal with family separations as it prepared new immigration enforcement guidelines. In visits to detention centers across the country, Ms. Schriro said, she had heard accounts of parents losing contact or custody of their children.

Child welfare laws differ from state to state. In the Missouri case, Carlos’s adoptive parents were awarded custody last year by Judge Dally after they privately petitioned the court and he terminated Ms. Bail’s rights to Carlos.

In February, immigration authorities suspended Ms. Bail’s deportation order so she could file suit to recover custody. Ms. Bail’s lawyer, John de Leon, of Miami, said his client had not been informed about the adoption proceedings in her native Spanish, and had no real legal representation until it was too late.

The lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, Joseph L. Hensley, said his clients had waited more than a year for Ms. Bail to demonstrate her commitment to Carlos, but the judge found that she had made no attempt to contact the baby or send financial support for him while she was incarcerated. The couple asked not to be named to protect Carlos’s privacy.

Ms. Bail came to the United States in 2005, and Carlos was born a year later. In May 2007, she was detained in a raid on George’s Processing plant in Butterfield, near Carthage in southwestern Missouri.

Immigration authorities quickly released several workers who had small children. But authorities said Ms. Bail was ineligible to be freed because she was charged with using false identification. Such charges were part of a crackdown by the Bush administration, which punished illegal immigrants by forcing them to serve out sentences before being deported.

When Ms. Bail went to jail, Carlos, then 6 months old, was sent to stay with two aunts who remembered him as having a voracious appetite and crying constantly. But they also said he had a severe rash and had not received all of his vaccinations.

The women — each with three children of their own, no legal status, tiny apartments and little money — said the baby was too much to handle. So when a local teachers’ aide offered to find someone to take care of Carlos, the women agreed.

Then in September 2007, Ms. Bail said, the aide visited her in jail to say that an American couple was interested in adopting her son. The couple had land and a beautiful house, Ms. Bail recalled being told, and had become very fond of Carlos.

“My parents were poor, and they never gave me to anyone,” Ms. Bail recalled. “I was not going to give my son to anyone either.”

An adoption petition arrived at the jail a few weeks later. Ms. Bail, who cannot read Spanish, much less English, said she had a cellmate from Mexico translate. With the help of a guard and an English-speaking Guatemalan visitor, Ms. Bail wrote a response to the court.

“I do not want my son to be adopted by anyone,” she scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper on Oct. 28, 2007. “I would prefer that he be placed in foster care until I am not in jail any longer. I would like to have visitation with my son.”

For the next 10 months, she said, she had no communication with the court. During that time, Judge Dally appointed a lawyer for Ms. Bail, but later removed him from the case after he pleaded guilty to charges of domestic violence.

Mr. Hensley, the lawyer for Carlos’s adoptive parents, said he had sent a letter to Ms. Bail to tell her that his clients were caring for her son, as did the court, but both letters were returned unopened. “We afforded her more due process than most people get who speak English,” Mr. Hensley said.

Ms. Bail said she had asked the public defender who was representing her in the identity theft case to help her determine Carlos’s whereabouts, but the lawyer told her she handled only criminal matters. “I went to court six times, and six times I asked for help to find my son,” she said. “But no one helped me.”

Ms. Bail got a Spanish-speaking lawyer, Aldo Dominguez, to represent her in the custody case only last June. By the time he reached her two months later — she had been transferred to a prison in West Virginia — it was too late to make her case to Judge Dally, Mr. Dominguez said.

“Her lifestyle, that of smuggling herself into the country illegally and committing crimes in this country, is not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child,” the judge wrote in his decision. “A child cannot be educated in this way, always in hiding or on the run.”

Next Article in US (1 of 32) » A version of this article appeared in print on April 23, 2009, on page A15 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/23children.html?pagewanted=all

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

Lauderdale County Mississippi can now use a portion of the money collected from inmate telephone service for the local jail ministry program.

Lauderdale County Mississippi can now use a portion of the money collected from inmate telephone service for the local jail ministry program.
April 22, 2009

Gov. Haley Barbour signed a bill earlier this month that authorized use of the money. The bill took effect when Barbour signed it.
Lauderdale County’s Good News Jail and Prison Ministry provides volunteers and a full time chaplain to participate in non-denominational worship with inmates. It has been funded by local donations. The bill allows the county to use up to $25,000 from the inmate phone service for the jail ministry.
From the Corrections Reporter

Posted by lois at 01:44 PM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2009

N.J. prisons confiscate collection of prisoner poems and stories

Published in the Millburn NJ Item weekly paper
Inmates' creative voices silenced
(by Jessica Maxwell - April 29, 2009)

When township resident and author Kal Wagenheim published a book of creative works written by prisoners at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, his goal of having the inmates see their writing published was put on hold when he learned the book was banned from the prison. "Inside/Out: Voices From New Jersey State Prison," self-published by Wagenheim earlier this year, is a collection of poems, short stories and essays written by 43 inmates at the prison. The book came as a result of the monthly creative writing course Wagenheim had been teaching to the inmates for about six years through the Hispanic Americans for Progress or HAP program.

Wagenheim received an e-mail from the Department of Corrections ombudsman Dan DiBenedetti which stated that the book references illegal activities such as gang activity, drug use, assaultive behavior and murder.

"I was told that it contained descriptions of criminal offenses and that it wouldn’t be allowed in the prison," said Wagenheim. "I don’t believe there is anything harmful in there. Ninety percent of their expressions are of sadness and regret for what they have done."

The final decision regarding the banning will be made by Corrections Commissioner George Hayman. Wagenheim spoke to Hayman last week and was told the issue is under review but there is no time frame for when a decision will be made.

Wagenheim recently learned that several transferred inmates were allowed to receive copies of the book.

"There were several prisoners that I taught at the New Jersey State Prison that were transferred to other prisons, including the one in Rahway. I just got word that those prisoners in Rahway received copies of the book," said Wagenheim. "I am puzzled and I am trying to figure it all out."

The book was published as a tribute to the writers and Wagenheim is saddened that the inmates might never get a chance to see the finished product.

"Some of the Rahway prisoners who were able to read the book sent me glowing letters. They are ecstatic over seeing their work in print," said Wagenheim.

Wagenheim has said the most telling endorsement he received about the book came from Theo Bensen, a research program specialist at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation in Sacramento, Ca. Wagenheim published Bensen’s comments in the "Praise from readers" section in his book.

"It is hard to believe that people in such dire circumstances can create such lovely work," Bensen wrote. "I must also believe that this was an excellent form of anger management for the authors; having the chance to pour their hearts out in a positive way. This program might well be transplanted to other institutions."

Still upset over the canceling of his creative writing class in 2006, Wagenheim hopes prison officials will consider reinstating his class and others that were disbanded. According to Wagenheim, the HAP program and subsequently his creative writing course were canceled after prison officials found cell phones and several weapons in the prison.

"Just because one or two people may have taken part in something illegal, does that mean you shut down the entire educational program?" said Wagenheim. "I think it’s really unwise and I feel sad for the inmates. There have been studies done that show the more education we have in the prisons the less chance there will be repeat offenses. If you train people in a positive way the hope is that they will go out into the world, get jobs, support their families and pay their taxes. So it’s good for the inmates and it’s good for you and me, the taxpayers."
***
Kal W. comment: This article was published before we learned that the books in Rahway prison were
confiscated also. I have since contacted The Item, and other newspapers, to see if they will follow up
on the current negative development.

----------------------------------------------------
N.J. prisons confiscate collection of prisoner poems and stories
April 20, 2009 21:02PM
by Chris Megerian/Statehouse Bureau

In one New Jersey prison, a published collection of poems and prose penned by prisoners is in a lockup of its own while corrections authorities decide whether it is inflammatory.

Author Kal Wagenheim, who taught creative writing to some of the state's most dangerous inmates for six years, collected his students' poems, short stories and essays into a soft-covered book that he published earlier this year. But when he tried to send copies of the book into the prison, a mailroom supervisor confiscated them because parts were considered inflammatory, Department of Corrections spokesman Matt Schuman said.
"When you're dealing with prisons, safety and security are paramount," Schuman said.

A final decision on the collection, "Inside/Out: Voices From New Jersey State Prison," will be made by Corrections Commissioner George W. Hayman. The commissioner today said he has no timetable and would meet with Wagenheim after he makes his decision.

Wagenheim said he was angry inmates would not be able to see the writing they composed behind bars.

"I think it's ridiculous," said Wagenheim, 74, of Millburn. "What harm could there be in a book like that?"

In an e-mail sent to Wagenheim last Monday, Department of Corrections ombudsman Dan DiBenedetti said some of the topics were inappropriate.

"The book contains references to illegal activities such as gang activity, drug use, assaultive behavior and murder," he wrote.

The 187-page book features the work of 43 inmates, at least three-quarters convicted of murder or manslaughter and all housed at the maximum-security prison. The collection contains a mix of fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

Several of the writers express regret for their criminal actions in essays with titles like "School of Hard Knocks" and "Change is Possible."

"I was 16 when I was arrested, and in prison by the age of 17," wrote Luis Beltran, who was sentenced to at least 60 years for murder. "It's like I also died that day and I am being kept alive to regret it every hour of every day."

Other writers reflected on the dangers of growing up on the street.

"Bullets poppin' out of guns/Caskets droppin' filled with sons/who look like each other./Brothers from another mother/who cried tears ... living in fear," wrote Dudley Rue, also in prison for murder.

Wagenheim, who wrote biographies of baseball legends Babe Ruth and Roberto Clemente and also taught several courses at Columbia University, was brought in to teach creative writing by Hispanic Americans for Progress, a nonprofit organization founded by inmates at New Jersey State Prison, which houses about 1,800 inmates.

Prison officials disbanded Hispanic Americans for Progress and canceled Wagenheim's once-a-month class in 2006 after a loaded handgun and three knives were found in the prison. Hector Sanabria, a Wagenheim student who is serving a 90-year sentence for three murders, was accused of helping smuggle the weapons.

A March 2008 appellate court decision upholding the disciplinary charges against Sanabria, 48, said he used Hispanic Americans as cover to avoid being caught smuggling.

Two of Sanabria's pieces are included in Wagenheim's book. In one essay, "The Consequences of Not Caring," he reflects on the decisions that landed him in prison and the pain of not being able to see his family.

"I am a man doing 90 years to life and I understand the meaning of life more now than ever," he wrote. "I miss talking to my mother and being around my brothers and sisters. I feel their love and at the same time feel pain, because I am unable to share my love with them."

Wagenheim said the canceling of the class spurred his decision to publish the book.

"I felt a sort of a duty to these men that their work would be preserved," he said.

Schuman, who declined to comment on the smuggling case, said the prison still has a variety of educational and vocational programs.

Jim Gondles, executive director of the American Correctional Association, said prison administrators generally try to keep out books that are considered harmful.

"It's not unusual for them to prevent stories and books that have to do with crime and violence from the prison," he said. "(Inmates) don't have the constitutional right to get anything and everything they want."

Corrections spokeswoman Danielle Hunter said inmates could use "inappropriate" writing to plan crimes or encourage violent activity.

"Anything is possible," she said. "Our inmates are very creative."

Wagenheim said he hopes the collection, published with the help of a do-it-yourself service based in California, presents a more nuanced look at New Jersey's inmate population.

"The human condition is a very complex one," he said. "There's a lot of people who have done some very bad things in life, but they're also capable of doing some good things."
From an entry on the Writing from Inside pages of the Real Cost of Prisons Project:

Inside Out: Voices from New Jersey State Prison
Poems, stories, memoirs, and commentaries by forty-three inmates. This is a 20-page sampler assembled by Kal Wagenheim, who for 5 years directed a creative writing workshop at the NJ State Prison in Trenton NJ. It is a small part of a 70,000 word book with inmates' poems, stories, essays. Some of the poems are also available online at http://www.jerseyworks.com/trentonstate.html. The 20 page sampler can be found at:
http://realcostofprisons.org/materials/voices-trenton.doc

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/nj_prisons_confiscate_collecti.html

Posted by lois at 03:09 PM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2009

TX: UNICOR continues to use prisoners to recycle electornics

Prison inmates dismantle Ark. recycled electronics
© 2009 The Associated Press
April 19, 2009, 7:41PM

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Some federal prison inmates spend their days tearing apart cellular phones and dismantling computers recycled in Arkansas.

The prisoners, working as part of the Federal Prison Industries, salvage copper and other materials later sold to metal dealers. Last year alone, the prison industry had $10.5 million in net sales.

Unicor, a part of the Federal Prison Industries, uses 876 inmates in seven federal prisons to do the electronic recycling work, according to a company financial statement. Most of northwest Arkansas' recycled electronics go to the federal prison in Texarkana, Texas.

The work is part of a voluntary program and pays well above the standard wage for an inmate, said Steve Wentzel, an executive assistant at the Texarkana prison. Wentzel said the work is so popular, there's a waiting list to take on a spot.

However, using prison labor has drawn the ire of private companies in the recycling business. Barbara Kyle of Electronics TakeBack Coalition in San Francisco said the practice undercuts companies that are more environmentally responsible.

Within the last two years, states such as Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington have banned the practice of using prisoner labor to recycle in most cases, she said.

"You may want to consider why Arkansas has such a good deal," Kyle told the Morning News newspaper of Springdale.

The Justice Department has investigated some Unicor operations, finding that lead exposure at an Elkton, Ohio, prison was as much as 15 times higher than the federally accepted level for a job site. The recycling center at the prison was shut down last year as a result.

Lead poisoning can lead to severe nerve damage.

Several people sued Unicor in Marianna, Fla., last year because they claim they were exposed to dangerous chemicals while working near the computer recycling program in the federal prison. The pending lawsuit includes both inmates and workers in the prison.

Unicor has consistently defended its practices as safe. The newspaper said it was unable to reach company officials for comment.

Despite those concerns, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality encourages local governments to work with Unicor because it usually costs them nothing. Nearly 3,000 tons of electronic waste were recycled in Arkansas last year, and estimates indicate that number will grow each year.

"They take everything and don't charge anything," ADEQ spokesman Aaron Sadler said. "We operate basically as a coordinating entity. We get them in touch with Unicor to get the waste moved."
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6381623.html

Posted by lois at 09:05 AM | Comments (0)

April 18, 2009

Bryne Grants and another conscequence featured in new film: "American Violet"

Taking Drug Task Forces to Task
By: Lewis Beale
April 17, 2009

In November 2000, a drug task force arrested 28 residents of Hearne, Texas, almost all of them African-American, and charged them with distributing crack cocaine. Pressed to plead guilty to the charges by their public defenders, several of the accused did, but Regina Kelly, a single mother of four, refused. The American Civil Liberty Union's Drug Law Reform Project eventually took up the case and filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 15 of the arrestees, accusing the local district attorney and the

South Central Texas Narcotics Task Force with conducting racially motivated drug sweeps for more than 15 years.
That case, which wound up with the charges against all the ACLU's clients being dropped due to insufficient evidence and the tainted testimony of an unreliable police informant, is now the basis of a movie, "American Violet", opening nationwide on April 17th. Starring newcomer Nicole Beharie as Kelly, as well as Alfre Woodard, Tim Blake Nelson and Charles S. Dutton, the film is practically a primer on drug-task-force abuses under what is known as the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Program.

Enacted in 1988, and recently refunded under President Obama's stimulus package, the Byrne grant program is designed to help states and local jurisdictions fight drugs and the violent crime associated with drug trafficking. The program provides federal money in 29 specific "purpose areas," including crime-victim assistance and alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders, but most of the grants are intended for police activity. And a good deal of the money disbursed is predicated on the number, not the quality, of drug arrests.

"Throughout America, Byrne grants are consistently used to target very low-level drug dealers for arrest and long-term incarceration," said Graham Boyd, lawyer for the Hearne plaintiffs and director of the ACLU's Drug Law Reform Project. "You have a drug task force whose goal is to arrest as many people as they can, their funding stream is based on that, so they rely on confidential informants, and their racial profiling is staggering."

"The block grant is based on population and crime rate," added Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance Network. "Because it's based on arrests, the incentive is to focus on arrests, and the more the better. They have an incentive to go after low-level drug dealers, and it leads to civil rights offenses because they have quotas to fill, and that might entail cutting corners."

Hearne was not the first case, nor the most notorious, involving drug-task-force abuses. That honor belongs to Tulia, another small Texas town where, on July 23, 1999, and based on the word of a single informant, 46 people, 39 of them African-American, were accused of selling drugs. As recounted in Tulia, Texas, a documentary recently shown as part of PBS' Independent Lens series [available on DVD at www.newsreel.org], the informant, Tom Coleman — at one point named "Texas Lawman of the Year" - had a checkered law enforcement career, did not wear a recording device during any of his alleged drug buys, made numerous evidentiary errors and was accused of being a racist.

In 2003, a Texas court voided 38 of the Tulia arrests (several of the cases had already been dismissed), and in 2005, Coleman was convicted of perjury when a jury found he had lied about his own arrest for theft during a hearing on the drug cases.
As egregious as these cases were, Boyd says incidents like this are "still happening all over America." And they serve to point out several gaping holes in the well-intentioned, but flawed, Byrne grant program:

• The use of confidential informants, many of them criminals themselves, whose uncorroborated testimony is used to obtain drug convictions. The Hearne informant, for example, had a history of drug addiction and mental illness. "The way informants get used reflects a reality that there are few checks and balances on how law enforcement uses them," said Boyd. "It's easier for them to do this than send in an undercover officer."

• The lack of jurisdictional control. "There's a problem that goes with regional drug task forces," said Piper. "Because they are made up of people from different areas, there is a lack of oversight. There is no one entity you can blame, because they're multi-jurisdictional." Case in point: In both Hearn and Tulia, the cases were solved on the county, not town, level.

• The task forces are self-sustaining. "They use asset forfeiture, which only exists for drug crimes," said Piper, "so police tend to focus on that. Because they can keep what they seize [cash, cars, weapons, etc.] and they get the federal money, they are independent from state and local concerns, and they don't have to go to the city council and justify what they're doing."

• The impact on the black community. African-Americans, who make up about 13 percent of the total population, now account for more than 50 percent of all drug arrests. Piper refers to mass drug arrests in Hearne, Tulia and other places as being akin to "Vietnam War-like body count statistics," which are "used to measure success."

At least Texas got the message. The Lone Star State became the first in the country to require corroboration of informant information to make a drug arrest. Texas also stopped taking Byrne money for drug cases and made them the responsibility of the state police, the Texas Rangers.

And the state changed its drug-war measurement criteria. Officers used to be graded on how many arrests they made; now it's how many drug trafficking organizations they have identified, infiltrated and dismantled. "You actually lose points the more end users — drug offenders, people selling to feed their habits — you arrest," said Piper. "What they're trying to do is get people to stay undercover, work their way up, so they can take down a big trafficker, and that's revolutionary." Because of this, says Piper, drug arrests in Texas dropped by 40 percent last year, but drug seizures doubled.

Still, there are more than 600 drug task forces in the country, and at least a dozen Hearne-like scandals reported in the last 10 years. That might not seem like a lot, but it's more than enough for the people sent to jail on tainted evidence, perjured testimony or pressured into plea bargains in order to avoid jury trials and potential sentences of 30 years or more.
Even worse, says Boyd, is that in small, under-financed communities, the desperation for Byrne grant money is so great, "there's evidence of police being taken off Main Street and being put into these drug task forces."

The bottom line is what this all says about how the war on drugs is being waged, and according to Boyd, Hearne and Tulia "are Exhibit A on why the war is a failure. It's ineffective, expensive and generates a level of racial targeting that has no place in America today."

At least, added Piper, there's a little ray of hope emerging from the Obama administration. Naming Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske — known for progressive and community-based approach to drug issues — to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy could mean that law enforcement will not be the drug czar's only emphasis.

"Both Obama and Kerlikowske have talked about dealing with this as a treatment issue, dealing with the demand side," says Piper. "Short of repealing drug prohibition, it's the most effective way of hurting the drug cartels — you're reducing their profits."
http://www.miller-mccune.com/legal_affairs/taking-drug-task-forces-to-task-1074

Posted by lois at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2009

National support sought for Sign-on to support NY's Anti-Shackling Bill

Sign-on to support NY's Anti-Shackling Bill
Letter of Support for A.3373-A
National support is sought for this Bill. You can sign-on individually or as an organization by contacting Tina Reynolds. Contact info at the bottom of this email.

National support is being sought to sign-on please contact Tina Reynolds

Please join the Correctional Association of New York, the New York Civil Liberties Union, Legal Aid Society's Prisoners' Rights Project and Women on the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH) in calling on New York State lawmakers to end to the degrading, unnecessary and dangerous practice of shackling incarcerated pregnant women.

http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5765/images/Shackling_Bill_A3373A.pdf (copy of the bill)
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5765/images/Shackling_Bill_FINAL.pdf (sign on letter)

Here is an Anti-Shackling Bill sign-on letter in support of A.3373-A, which forbids the use of restraints on incarcerated women during labor and post-delivery recovery, and restricts the use of restraints during transport to and from the hospital before and after child birth.

Sponsored by Assemblymember N. Nick Perry, Assembly Majority Whip, A.3373-A has been voted out of all necessary Committees and is likely to come to the Assembly floor for a full vote very soon. Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Chair of the Social Services, Children and Families Committee, plans to introduce the same bill in the Senate during this legislative session.

If you would like to add your name or your organization's name, please email Tina Reynolds, Executive Director of WORTH and Co-Chair of the Coalition's Incarcerated Mothers Committee, by FRIDAY, MAY 1: treynolds@womenontherise-worth.org.

Thank you,

Tamar Kraft-Stolar
Women in Prison Project Director
Correctional Association of New York
2090 Adam Clayton Powell Blvd, Ste 200
New York, NY 10027
www.correctionalassociation.org

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

April 10, 2009

CA: Coalinga state prison still falls short, grand jury reports

Coalinga state prison still falls short, jury reports
Thursday, Apr. 09, 2009
By Eddie Jimenez / The Fresno Bee

Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga is still plagued with crowding, inadequate medical care and concerns that inmates could be exposed to Valley fever, according to a Fresno County grand jury report issued Thursday.

A grand jury report last year addressed the same problems and also issued the same recommendations.

The most recent report said a visit by grand jurors in late September revealed that the prison, designed to hold 2,200 inmates, housed 5,191 inmates -- including some in a gymnasium.
In addition, the Coalinga Regional Medical Center still does not have a secure medical wing for prisoners. Therefore, when inmates require hospitalization, they are driven a hour away to the Bakersfield Community Medical Center, where the prison contracts for 20 beds.

Taking inmates to Bakersfield for hospital care stretches the Coalinga prison's staff and budget, the report said.
Lack of state funding is stalling efforts to create a secure wing for prisoners at the Coalinga medical center, the grand jury said.
Valley fever -- widespread in the Coalinga area, according to the report -- remains an ongoing threat for inmates and staff. Prison officials have taken steps to address the problem, such as transferring inmates who have asthma and emphysema to other prisons.
Doctors also do not have adequate office space, the grand jury said.

State prison officials have alleviated some crowding by transferring inmates to out-of-state prisons, said Seth Unger, spokesman for California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Health care in the state prison system was taken over by a court-appointed federal receiver after a class-action lawsuit was filed.
The receiver is well aware of the health care issues raised in the grand jury report, said Luis Patiño, receiver spokesman.
"We are working diligently to remedy those problems," he said.
Pleasant Valley State Prison houses minimum-, medium- and maximum-security inmates.

Note from someone familiar with the distances mentioned: "I'm not sure how fast prison ambulances drive, but to get from Coalinga to Bakersfield in an hour requires averaging something over 100 mph."

Posted by lois at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)

April 06, 2009

The New Debtors’ Prisons and "A New Push to Squeeze Defendants"

Editorial
The New Debtors’ Prisons
NY Times
Published: April 5, 2009

Here is a tale that sounds like it comes right from the pages of “Little Dorrit,” Charles Dickens’s scathing indictment of Victorian England’s debtors’ prisons. Unfortunately, it is happening in 21st-century America.

Edwina Nowlin, a poor Michigan resident, was ordered to reimburse a juvenile detention center $104 a month for holding her 16-year-old son. When she explained to the court that she could not afford to pay, Ms. Nowlin was sent to prison. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which helped get her out last week after she spent 28 days behind bars, says it is seeing more people being sent to jail because they cannot make various court-ordered payments. That is both barbaric and unconstitutional.

In 1970, the Supreme Court ruled that it violates equal protection to keep inmates in prison extra time because they are too poor to pay a fine or court costs. More recently, the court ruled that a state generally cannot revoke a defendant’s probation and imprison him for failing to pay a fine if he is unable to do so.

That has not stopped the practice. In Georgia, poor people who cannot pay off fines — plus a monthly fee to the private company that collects the payments — are often sent to jail for nonpayment, according to Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. In 2006, the center sued on behalf of a woman who was locked up in Atlanta for eight months past her original sentence because she could not pay a $705 fine.

Until a few years ago, the police in Gulfport, Miss., regularly did sweeps of the city’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods, identified people with unpaid fines, and put them in jail. Defendants who could not pay were forced to remain there until they “sat off” their fines. The city ended the practice after it was sued.

Prisoners’ rights advocates worry that in these hard times, when government budgets are under pressure, courts and prisons will get even tougher about forcing indigent defendants to pay costs and fees, and will imprison more of them if they cannot come up with the money. The government should be helping people on society’s margins build productive lives. Throwing them in jail for being poor makes that much more difficult.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/opinion/06mon4.html?_r=1
----
A New Push to Squeeze Defendants
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
April 6, 2009
NY Times

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Valerie Gainous paid her debt to society, but almost went to jail because of a debt to Florida’s courts.

In 1996, she was convicted of writing bad checks; she paid restitution, performed community service and thought she was finished with the criminal justice system. Earlier this year, however, she received a letter from Collections Court telling her that she was once again facing jail time — this time, for failing to pay $240 in leftover court fees and fines, which she says she cannot afford.

Ms. Gainous has been caught up in her state’s exceptionally aggressive system to collect the court fines and fees that keep its judiciary system working. Judges themselves dun citizens who have fallen behind in their payments, but unlike other creditors, they can throw debtors in jail — and they do, by the thousands.

As Florida’s budget has tightened with the economic crisis, efforts to step up the collections process have intensified, and court clerks say the pressure is on them to bring in every dollar. “I would say there is an even more dramatic focus on those funds now,” said Beth Allman, the spokeswoman for the Florida Association of Court Clerks.

Other states are intrigued by Florida’s success, and several, including Michigan and Georgia, have also cracked down on people who owe fines. John Dew, the executive director of the Florida Clerks of Court Operations Corporation, said that when he attends national conferences about fees collection these days, states “are really looking to what we’re doing in Florida.”

With 44 states looking at budget deficits totaling $90 billion this year, 25 state court systems already have budget shortfalls, said Dan Hall, the vice president of the National Center for State Courts. Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court told the American Bar Association in a recent speech that the state courts were in crisis because of budgetary and other issues.

States facing lower revenue from income and property taxes are taking action that includes court cutbacks and fee increases. Oregon will try to save $3.1 million by closing its courthouses every Friday for four months and cutting the pay of 1,800 court workers by 20 percent. New Hampshire began suspending civil and criminal jury trials in eight counties for a month, starting last December, and postponed filling seven of the state’s 59 vacant judgeships.

Massachusetts is looking to cut its court system budget by 7.5 percent, which will almost certainly mean staff cuts. Maine is no longer staffing the metal detector checkpoints at its local courthouses. Utah is looking at imposing an $8 “conviction fee” to pay for its security and metal detectors; civil filing fees in the state will be raised as well. Florida has cut its court payroll by 10 percent, with more cuts expected.

Mr. Hall, of the courts organization, said that when states cut their judicial budgets, they “really cut deep into the fabric of our society” by causing delays of weeks or even months in resolving cases. In Iowa, for example, where the courts are trying to make up for a $3.8 million budget cut, courthouses in every county will close for eight days until June 30, and the travel budgets have been cut for judges who go from county to county to hear cases. This means delays for rural residents who have matters that have to be heard by a district judge, including divorce.

Access to efficient courts is essential to helping people resolve life’s crises — foreclosures, debt collection, divorce, child support — said Rebecca Love Kourlis, the executive director of the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver. “You can’t put them on the back burner and say, ‘we’ll get back to you when we have more money and more staffing.’ ”

Advocates for the poor have urged other states not to follow Florida’s example of squeezing defendants harder to make up for budget cuts. Rebekah Diller, deputy director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, said the state’s system wasted resources “to get blood from a stone.” Judges, she said, should not become “debt collectors in robes,” which she called both demeaning to the judges and humiliating for the people who must stand before them.

Rhode Island seems to agree. Faced with statistics showing that arrests for nonpayment cost far more than they bring in, the state passed a law in August granting judges latitude to waive court debts for poor defendants.

Florida, however, has continued to tighten its grip. Since 2004, the Legislature has required courts to substantially support their operating expenses through fees collected by county clerks. Some of the clerks use collection agents, while about a third use the collections courts, state officials said. Here in Leon County alone, 839 people were arrested and jailed in the year ending last September over court debts or failure to appear at collections court, according to a study by the Brennan Center. Other Florida counties have less stringent policies.

Around Leon County, there are some 5,400 outstanding “blue writs” — the civil equivalent of an arrest warrant for failing to appear and pay fees. Some people come in and pay when they receive their summons; others spend a night or more in jail, often having been arrested when the writ pops up during incidents like routine traffic stops.

In part, the numbers are high because it can be expensive to be arrested. Fines and fees for a first offense on third-degree felonies like credit card fraud or possession of cocaine are around $500, said Nancy Daniels, a Florida public defender who works in Tallahassee: $340 in court costs, a $100 prosecution fee and $50 for the public defender application fee. If the defendant cannot pay up front, starting a payment plan costs $25.

Constitutional law forbids jailing people solely over fees and fines that they cannot pay, but Florida officials argue that, technically, they are jailing people because they violated court orders, not because they failed to pay fines. Charles A. Francis, the chief judge of the state’s Second Judicial Circuit, said most judges found collections court “the most unpleasant part of the job.” The judges try not to jail people over fees, he insisted, but added, “Do you allow the orders of your court to go ignored?”

Few people are truly unable to afford monthly payments, he argued.

Shannon Russell, the supervisor of the Leon County collections department, said: “People come in and say, ‘I can’t pay this.’ My answer is, ‘you shouldn’t have gotten arrested.’ ”

Estimates for the amount collected by the county vary; the Brennan study said the program took in $18,365 from those arrested for the 12 months studied, after costs, while the county court system said the overall program brought in $768,000 last year, an amount boosted by the threat of a court process.

When Ms. Gainous appeared at a recent collections court hearing, Judge Nina Ashenafi Richardson spoke compassionately, but nonetheless pressed each of the dozens of people in the courtroom to pay what they could or face arrest.

Ms. Gainous, 39, a single mother of four, said she had been sick and could not even make a $40 down payment on her $240 in fees.

Suddenly, there was a startling moment of grace: Another woman waiting in the courtroom, Latasha Penny, volunteered to pay the $40 for her. Ms. Gainous hugged her and sobbed.

When Ms. Penny’s case came up, Judge Richardson reduced her monthly payment on $345 in fines to $30, from $45. “You did a very nice thing earlier,” Judge Richardson said with a smile.

Days later, Ms. Gainous was still incredulous, and said that she would pay the $10 a month. “It’s still hard,” she said. “But I’m going to try to get that in, to keep from going to jail for being poor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/us/07collection.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Posted by lois at 09:37 AM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2009

Lock 'Em Up Jailing kids is a proud American tradition.

Lock 'Em Up
Jailing kids is a proud American tradition.
By THOMAS FRANK
Wall Street Journal On-line
April 1, 2009

At first glance, the news from Luzerne County, in northeastern Pennsylvania, is not good. In what is known locally as the "kids for cash" scandal, two judges have pleaded guilty to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks from a for-profit juvenile correctional facility -- a privately owned jail for kids, essentially.

And here is what the judges delivered, according to the charges of the U.S. Attorney overseeing the case: In 2003 one of them, Judge Michael Conahan, who had authority over such expenses, defunded the county-owned detention center, channeling kids sentenced to detention to the private jail -- along with the public's money.

For good measure, the feds charge, Mr. Conahan also agreed to send the private facility $1.3 million per year in public funds. Over the succeeding years, the private jail, along with a second lockup-for-profit that had opened in another part of the state, won tens of millions of dollars in Luzerne County contracts, allegedly with the two judges' help.

What has drawn the media's attention, though, is the remarkable strictness of the judges' judging. Mr. Conahan's alleged partner in the scheme, Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr., reportedly sent kids to the private detention centers when probation officers didn't think it was a good idea; he sent kids there when their crimes were nonviolent; he sent kids there when their crimes were insignificant. It was as though he was determined to keep those private prisons filled with children at all times. According to news stories, offenses as small as swiping a jar of nutmeg or throwing a piece of steak at an adult were enough to merit a trip to the hoosegow.

Over the years Mr. Ciavarella racked up a truly awesome score: He sent kids to detention instead of other options at twice the state average, according to the New York Times. He tried a prodigious number of cases in which the accused child had no lawyer -- here, says the Times, the judge's numbers were fully 10 times the state average. And he did it fast, sometimes rendering a verdict "in the neighborhood of a minute-and-a-half to three minutes," according to the judge tasked with reconsidering Mr. Ciavarella's work.

My question is, what have the Luzerne County judges done that deviates in the least from our American political traditions? These jurists have merely taken to heart the unvarying message of 40 years' worth of election results -- that more people, many more, need to go to jail -- and have come up with an entrepreneurial solution to the problem.

We the people say it loud and clear every Election Day, in high-crime periods as well as peaceful stretches: More of our population needs to be behind bars. We love retribution so much we make hits of TV shows in which society's ne'er-do-wells come in for lectures not only by stern, righteous judges, but by tattooed, mulletted bounty hunters as well.

And over the years we have embraced all sorts of instruments ensuring that more people got locked up for longer and longer stretches: Three strikes laws, mandatory sentencing laws, zero-tolerance policies. Maybe they aren't "fair," but they've helped to make the U.S. number one in percentage of population in the clink -- in fact, as Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb pointed out in Parade magazine on Sunday, America has an amazing 25% of the world's prisoners.

Taking this path has not always been easy. In the 1990s, when we started to realize that child crooks were "superpredators" who needed to go to prison along with everyone else, some were unwilling to act. Others stepped up. "We've got to quit coddling these violent kids like nothing is going on," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) in 1996. "Getting some of these do-gooder liberals to do what is right is real tough. We'd all like to rehabilitate these kids, but by gosh we are in a different age."

But taking law and order to the next level in this different age required money, by gosh. Privatizing bits of the prison industry was a step in the right direction, but what we didn't have -- until recently -- were proper instruments for incentivizing the judiciary. That's what the "kids for cash" judges were apparently experimenting with.

Today the do-gooders revile those efforts as "kickbacks," but before long we will see them as legitimate tools of justice. Our laws governing lobbying and campaign contributions have struck the right balance between the wishes of the people and those of private industry, so why are we so quick to doubt that the same great results can be achieved by putting the government's justice-dealing branch on the same market-based course?

The public will get to see their neighbors' kids go to jail, the judge who sends them there will be able to afford a nice condo in Florida, and the company that satisfies the public's desire for punishment will make a handsome profit. It will be a win-win result for everyone.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123854010220075533.html#

Posted by lois at 05:31 PM | Comments (0)

March 31, 2009

"How PersonhoodUSA Will Hurt All Pregnant Women" and Do People Who Support "Traditional Values" Value Pregnant Women? by Lynn Paltrow of Nationa Advocates for Pregnant Women

Please read Lynn's articles on Personhood and watch Dr. Deborah Frank debunk the mythology of "crack babies"

"How PersonhoodUSA Will Hurt All Pregnant Women"
by Lynn Paltrow
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-m-paltrow/how-personhoodusa-and-the_b_176530.html
March 24, 2009

PersonhoodUSA apparently sees itself as the new, hipper, more effective incarnation of the anti-abortion movement. PersonhoodUSA hopes that by establishing the "pre-born, as legal persons with protection under the law" it will end the "injustice of abortion." Its attempt to do this last November through a "personhood" ballot measure in Colorado's failed miserably. Nevertheless, PersonhoodUSA, is committed to "working tirelessly to establish personhood in every State."

What supporters of this approach don't mention is that if the unborn have legal personhood rights, pregnant women won't. There is really no way around this. As National Advocates for Pregnant Women's video demonstrates, if successful, this strategy will mean that upon become pregnant, women will lose their civil and human rights.

As Angela Carder learned it is not just life vs. choice - but life vs. life. Angela Carder, 25 weeks pregnant, was critically ill. More than anything, she wanted to live. A court, however, ordered cesarean surgery based on claims of fetal rights. The surgery was performed over her objections as well as those of her physicians and family. Angela Carder died two days later - the cesarean surgery listed as a contributing factor. The fetus was born alive but died within two hours.

PersonhoodUSA doesn't address how personhood laws will affect women like Ms. Carder and others who have no intention of ending a pregnancy. Perhaps this is why legislators in at least five states have introduced bills that carry their message and several more are working on ballot measures like the one in Colorado.

In fact, North Dakota's house recently passed a personhood bill that would require the state to interpret all of the state's laws to apply to "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens" including a fertilized egg. In addition to inviting such facetious Onion-like headlines as "North Dakota House Passes 'Homo' Rights Law, this bill creates the basis for policing all pregnant women.

Upon becoming pregnant, women would lose their right to medical privacy, since under North Dakota law doctors are required to report to child welfare authorities whenever they have reasonable cause to suspect that a child (an organism) is abused or neglected. Accordingly, if this bill passes, pregnant women in North Dakota who are obese, have diabetes, or smoke should probably report directly to child welfare authorities - or perhaps some new agency, such as the Department of Organism Protection.

Indeed, a recent horrifying incident in California could become commonplace in North Dakota. A pregnant woman in California experienced a miscarriage at one-month gestation. Her doctor advised her to preserve the embryonic tissue in the freezer until she and her husband decided whether to request genetic testing or to take the remains to a mortuary. When they decided against testing, they called a mortuary. They were asked for a death certificate and were directed to the County Coroner to obtain one. The Coroner instructed them to call the police. When they complied, the police heard the words "human remains" and responded by descending on their home, entering without a warrant, and searching for what they assumed was the evidence of a crime against a person.

While the California case reflects miscommunication, families that experience miscarriages would have to expect such intrusions in states that pass personhood laws. Similarly pregnant women who miss prenatal care appointments, don't take prenatal vitamins, or drink any amount of alcohol could be deemed abusive under criminal child [organism] abuse and endangerment laws. Personhood laws would also provide the basis for prosecuting women for murder, manslaughter, or negligent homicide if they suffered miscarriages or stillbirths.

In fact states with these laws would look a lot like South Carolina, the only state that has, by judicial fiat, effectively adopted a personhood law. More than 90 pregnant women and new mothers have been arrested there based on fetal personhood claims. Recently, a pregnant woman in South Carolina fell from a 5th floor window. The press reported this incident as a suicide attempt. She survived but suffered a stillbirth as a result of the fall. Last month she was arrested on charges of homicide by child abuse and is still being held without bail.

PersonhoodUSA asserts that "each and every human being must be respected and protected from fertilization until natural death." Their legislation, however, would have the effect of excluding pregnant women from this protection. People committed to a true culture of life need to oppose their legislative proposals, supporting instead ones that include the interests of the women who give that life.

Lynn M. Paltrow
March 30, 2009
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-m-paltrow/do-people-who-support-tra_b_180946.html
Do People Who Support "Traditional Values" Value Pregnant Women?

I have to thank Andrea Lafferty, of the Traditional Values Coalition for her response to a piece I wrote opposing Personhood USA's efforts to give full constitutional rights to the unborn from the moment of fertilization. In her commentary she hopes to discredit my organization, National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) by exposing our commitment to all pregnant women, including those who love their children but are unable to overcome a drug problem in the short term of pregnancy.

Ms. Lafferty argues that NAPW has an "extremist agenda." Specifically she highlights the fact that NAPW "defends drug-addicted women from prosecutions for endangering their unborn babies." Indeed we do, and at least for one reason we would have thought Ms. Lafferty and her Coalition, would approve of: because threatening pregnant women with prosecution creates an incentive for them to have abortions.

Given how hard it is for most people to overcome an addiction problem quickly (just ask Rush Limbaugh) as well as the difficulty of obtaining appropriate treatment (especially for pregnant and parenting women), laws that threaten to punish women who carry their pregnancies to term in spite of a drug problem place substantial pressure on them to get unwanted abortions.

In fact, this kind of prosecution in North Dakota (one of the states where a personhood bill has been introduced) compelled a pregnant woman to have an abortion. In 1992 Martina Greywind, who was approximately twelve weeks pregnant, was arrested. She was charged with reckless endangerment based on the claim that by inhaling paint fumes, she was creating a substantial risk of serious bodily injury or death to a "person" -- her "unborn child." After her arrest, a lawyer for the anti-abortion group Lambs of Christ filed a petition seeking to have the woman's brother, Ken Greywind, appointed her legal guardian. Mr. Greywind explained in court papers "I believe she is contemplating an abortion in order to have the charge of reckless endangerment dismissed."

Ms. Greywind did obtain an abortion. And indeed, the prosecutor dropped the charges citing the fact that she had "terminated her pregnancy."

We admit it. NAPW opposes laws that create an incentive for women to terminate otherwise wanted pregnancies. We would hope that such opposition would provide common ground for NAPW, Ms. Lafferty and her organization.

We would also hope that we could work together to spread the good news about these mothers and their children. Ms. Lafferty says in her comments about NAPW that we defend mothers who "are addicting their unborn babies and subjecting them to extreme risks of mental retardation or death." Ms. Lafferty, like many people, believes that a pregnant woman who uses any amount of an illegal drug - and crack cocaine in particular -- will inevitably harm her "unborn child."

For nearly two decades, the popular press was filled with inaccurate information about the effects of in utero cocaine exposure. Media hype, however, is not the same as scientific evidence. In 2004 leading researchers in the field of prenatal exposure to drugs signed an open letter explaining that these women are not "addicting" their "unborn babies." "Addiction" they wrote "is a technical term that refers to compulsive behavior that continues in spite of adverse consequences. By definition, babies cannot be 'addicted' to crack or anything else."

Moreover, these experts as well as federal courts and leading federal government agencies now confirm that "the phenomena of "'crack babies' . . . is essentially a myth." As the National Institute for Drug Abuse has reported, "Many recall that 'crack babies,' or babies born to mothers who used crack cocaine while pregnant, were at one time written off by many as a lost generation... It was later found that this was a gross exaggeration." And, as the U.S. Sentencing Commission has concluded, "[t]he negative effects of prenatal cocaine exposure are significantly less severe than previously believed" and those negative effects "do not differ from the effects of prenatal exposure to other drugs, both legal and illegal." Most recently the New York Times, relying on actual experts, including the pediatrician featured in this NAPW video, set the record straight with a story entitled "The Epidemic That Wasn't".

So instead of assuming the worst, we could join forces and together oppose punitive approaches that are known to encourage some women to have abortions, and to discourage many more from seeking prenatal care.

NAPW knows that there are not two kinds of women -- those who have abortions and those who have babies. Sixty-one percent of women who have abortions are already mothers, and another 24 percent will go on to become mothers. Over the course of their lives, 85 percent of all women bring life into this world. NAPW advocates for all of them. We don't expect Ms. Lafferty to join us in our work to ensure that women have access to safe legal abortion services, but we do hope she will support our efforts to ensure that women who do want to go to term aren't punished for doing so.

And watch the video.....If you have never had the opportunity to hear Dr. Deborah Frank speak this is it....

This video is based on a lecture that Dr. Deborah A. Frank, Pediatrician gave on February 11th 2009 at a continuing education program entitled Drugs, Pregnancy and Parenting: What the Experts in Medicine, Social Work and Law Have to Say.

Deborah Frank, M.D. is a Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, where she has taught since 1981. She is also the Founder and Director of the Grow Clinic at Boston Medical Center, and Principal Investigator of the Children's Sentinel Nutrition Assessment Program ("C-SNAP"). C-SNAP's goal is to monitor the impact of policy changes on nutrition, growth and development of low-income children, ages 0-3 years. She also conducts research funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and has given testimony to the United States and Massachusetts House and Senate.

Dr. Frank has written numerous peer-reviewed and published scientific articles and papers including, Deborah A. Frank et al., Maternal Cocaine Use: Impact on Child Health and Development, 40 Advances in Pediatrics 65 (1993). She is also the author of the seminal meta analysis published by The Journal of the American Medical Association (“JAMA”), one of the most distinguished peer-reviewed medical journals in the United States. This comprehensive, systematic, and authoritative analysis of the medical research assessing the relationship between maternal cocaine use during pregnancy and adverse developmental consequences for the fetus and child concluded that:

"[T]here is no convincing evidence that prenatal cocaine exposure is associated with any developmental toxicity difference in severity, scope, or kind from the sequelae of many other risk factors. Many findings once thought to be specific findings of in utero cocaine exposure can be explained in whole or in part by other factors, including prenatal exposure to tobacco, marijuana, or alcohol and the quality of the child’s environment."

Here is the URL for the video http://www.vimeo.com/3916613

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

March 28, 2009

NY: Camp Gabriels Hopes to Become a "Treatment Center" in response to changes in Rockeffer Drug Laws

They never give up thinking about how to lock people up!

Senator pushes plan to turn Camp Gabriels into a treatment center
By EMILY HUNKLER, Enterprise Staff Writer
March 6, 2009

GABRIELS - Local institutions and politicians have come together to once again try and save Camp Gabriels, and this time it would mean turning the prison into a treatment center for drug-and alcohol-addicted, nonviolent offenders.

In an effort to showcase the potential of Camp Gabriels becoming a transitional treatment prison, state Sen. Betty Little, R-Queensbury, toured the facilities Thursday with Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, chairwoman of the Crime Victims, Crime and Corrections Committee, which oversees the state Department of Correctional Services. Representatives from the governor's offices and the state Department of Correctional Services were also there.

"If I thought this was an impossible situation, I would have said to Betty, 'It won't work, it's too far north,'" Hassell-Thompson, D-Bronx, said, sitting at a table in Gus's Diner following the tour. "But I'm not clear that we have the shovel-ready plan that we need to have in order to qualify (for federal stimulus money)."

Little said it was important to remember that, unlike more metropolitan prisons, there is little other use for the Camp Gabriels facility, and not many opportunities in the area to absorb the displaced workforce.

"If 30 families moved as a result, those 30 families affect the schools and the retail stores and the diners," Little said. "A lot of those corrections officers are volunteer firemen; there's a real trickle-down effect here that will be felt."

Gov. David Paterson announced in December his proposal to close New York's four minimum-security prison camps as a means of saving money, citing declining prison population as a reason.

The plan proposed to keep it open, still very much in the conceptual stages, would partner Camp Gabriels with St. Joseph's Rehabilitation Center in Saranac Lake to provide addiction treatment services for the inmates, and Paul Smith's College has proposed renovating the prison's kitchen and creating a culinary program for inmates to earn professional certificates before being released.

"I haven't seen many facilities that are this open, not having walls, and when you have a rehabilitated person going from a less secured facility to a community, it's an easier transition," said Mary Kavaney, the deputy commissioner and counsel for the state Department of Correctional Services. "I don't think you can have that transition from behind the wall to the community without some other step. So it's very unique in that way."

And the plan seems to be in line with Paterson's hopes of reforming the Rockefeller drug laws, to change the emphasis from incarceration to treatment.

According to St. Joseph's Rehabilitation Center CEO Bob Ross, of the 13,400 New York inmates serving drug offense sentences, 39 percent of those are for possession, not dealing, and 80 percent have never been convicted of a violent offense.

But first, a plan must be developed.

Ross said he plans to work with the senators to create a comprehensive plan and cost-benefit analysis of the proposed programs.

"With this kind of program, the costs are worth the costs," Little said.

Mike Facteau, chief steward for Camp Gabriels, said he thought the tour was very positive and looks forward to progress.

"These inmates are going to be going back to her (Hassell-Thompson's) area, and she just wants to make sure that those inmates have the best credentials when they return," he said, adding that the corrections officers are anxious to know the outcome. "They're apprehensive. They know it all depends on the budget. But there is always hope. You never give up."

Posted by lois at 10:05 PM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2009

FL:Woman joins sex-offender group living under Julia Tuttle Causeway

Mar. 23, 2009
Woman joins sex-offender group living under Julia Tuttle Causeway
By FRED GRIMM. Miami Herald
It's as if Voncel Johnson has been thrust into a bizarre social experiment.

Forcing so many men to live like post-apocalyptic trolls beneath a bridge in the middle of Biscayne Bay wasn't quite mad enough. Now they've added a woman.

For two years, a colony of convicted sex offenders under the Julia Tuttle Causeway has lived in a public health travesty, without water or toilets or electrical service. They sleep in tents, shacks, the back seats of cars in the last realistic address in metropolitan Miami unaffected by city and county sex-offender residency laws.

The numbers have been growing steadily as more convicted sex offenders emerge from prison and are consigned to finish out their wretched lives under a bridge.

The population was up to 52 men Monday. And Voncel Johnson.

GENDER EQUITY

In a peculiar nod to gender equity, the Florida Department of Corrections informed her last week that she too had only one residency option in Miami-Dade County -- the Tuttle. ''They just give me a blanket and a pillow and sent me . . . here?'' she asked, talking over the incessant thump-thump-thump of the freeway traffic overhead. ``I just broke down.''

A community backward enough to create a subterranean de-facto prison camp of male sex offenders thrusts a single woman into the mix -- just to see what happens.

It's an ironic setting for Voncel Johnson. The 43-year-old woman, who grew up in poverty and neglect in the Brownsville section of Miami, told me she was sexually molested at age 6 and gang-raped at 16. ''I have a hard time trusting men,'' she said.

In 2004, Johnson pleaded guilty to a charge of lewd and lascivious exhibition (without physical contact) with a minor. She claimed Monday the charge was unfounded but at the time a plea offer with one year probation and no prison time seemed prudent. Except she twice failed to meet sex-offender registration requirements. Her probation was revoked. She did 10 months at Broward Correctional Institute.

COMMON REFRAIN

She repeated a common refrain -- sometimes delusional -- among the bridge outcasts. ``I never would have done that plea deal if I'd known they'd send me here. I could've fought those charges.''

But offender laws leave the state Department of Corrections no options for a sex offender. Voncel Johnson's parole officer did find her a motel room for three days last week. And she was offered a slot in a residential offender program in another county. But Johnson refused to leave Miami. ``All my family lives here. I've never been any place but Miami.''

It was probably a foolish decision, but Johnson harbors some vague notion about gutting it out beneath the Tuttle until her parole ends May 5. ''Then I can find some place to live.'' She seems unable to grasp that residency restrictions are forever.

Meanwhile, the men beneath the Tuttle gave her a battered old camper trailer. ''We watch out for her,'' insisted Juan Carlos Martin, who has been under the bridge so long that the address on his driver's license reads ''Julia Tuttle Causeway Bridge.'' He said it was as if city, county and state officials purposely cram more and more men into an unliveable, hopeless, crowded space, knowing that eventually something awful might happen. And now they add a woman.

Martin said, ``They need to get her out of here.''
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/fred-grimm/story/964528.html

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

March 26, 2009

OT: Legislative Bureau Audit Finds Treatment of Mentally Ill Prisoners Inadequate for Women Especially

Audit finds problems with mentally ill inmates
By SCOTT BAUER | Associated Press Writer
March 25, 2009
Chicago Tribune
MADISON, Wis. - At a time when Wisconsin is taking steps to avoid a federal lawsuit over its handling of mentally ill inmates, an audit released Wednesday identified even more improvements needed in the prison system.

The Legislative Audit Bureau's recommendations include better screening of incoming inmates, enhanced training for corrections officers who deal with mentally ill inmates and improved planning for when they are released.

Department of Corrections spokesman John Dipko said the department would implement all of the audit's recommendations.

Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch said in a letter to auditors that his department faces significant challenges. Providing effective treatment in prison required prioritizing needs, using resources wisely, and emphasizing rehabilitation and treatment, he said.

Legislative Audit Committee Co-Chair Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, D-Alma, called the report disturbing.

"Mental illness can be managed," she said. "But the audit provides evidence this is not happening to the extent it should."

Wisconsin's mentally ill inmate population has been booming. While the total inmate population increased 3.9 percent between 2006 and 2008, the percentage of mentally ill inmates went up 14.3 percent. Last June, nearly 31 percent of the state's 22,451 inmates were identified as mentally ill.

The state's care of mentally ill female inmates has been a problem for years.

In 2006, the U.S. Justice Department declared the lack of mental health care at Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac, the state's largest women's prison, violated inmates' constitutional rights. The state agreed in September to make improvements to avoid a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit.

Federal investigators who toured Taycheedah in 2005 found mentally ill inmates locked in isolation cells and given psychotropic drugs without a doctor's supervision.

Under the agreement with the U.S. Justice Department, state corrections officials have up to four years to make improvements or face a lawsuit.

The state committed to building an $11 million, 45-bed addition for mentally ill women at the Wisconsin Resource Center in Winnebago. It is scheduled to be done in 2011.

The Department of Corrections has requested $7.6 million to build more treatment space at Taycheedah. Gov. Jim Doyle's proposed budget requests 149 more positions and $6.6 million to operate the addition at the Wisconsin Resource Center and to provide more services at Taycheedah.

The audit showed that the state spent nearly $60 million on mentally ill inmates in the 2007 fiscal year.

Among the report's findings:

-- The prisons don't have enough psychiatrists or psychologists to meet national standards.

-- Group and individual therapy is limited, although psychologists do monitor mentally ill inmates on a regular basis.

-- Correctional officers deliver most medications. In neighboring states, medical staff deliver most drugs.

-- Clearer policies, more centralized decision-making, and more detailed record-keeping could ensure the Wisconsin Resource Center runs more efficiently.

-- Mentally ill inmates accounted for more than 90 percent of special placements due to self-harm between July 1, 2005, and June 30, 2008. Those placements require prison workers to check on inmates every 15 minutes.

-- Mentally ill inmates accounted for nearly 80 percent of assaults on staff in the past three years. Those assaults resulted in $874,200 in worker's compensation awards to staff in that time.

-- The Department of Corrections could strengthen its policies to ensure inmates receive disability and medical benefits in a timely way after leaving prison.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-wi-inmatementalhealt,0,1483471.story

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

March 24, 2009

The New Yorker: Annals of Human Rights Hellhole The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture?

Annals of Human Rights
Hellhole
The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture?
by Atul Gawande March 30, 2009, The New Yorker

Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.

Children provide the clearest demonstration of this fact, although it was slow to be accepted. Well into the nineteen-fifties, psychologists were encouraging parents to give children less attention and affection, in order to encourage independence. Then Harry Harlow, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, produced a series of influential studies involving baby rhesus monkeys.

He happened upon the findings in the mid-fifties, when he decided to save money for his primate-research laboratory by breeding his own lab monkeys instead of importing them from India. Because he didn’t know how to raise infant monkeys, he cared for them the way hospitals of the era cared for human infants—in nurseries, with plenty of food, warm blankets, some toys, and in isolation from other infants to prevent the spread of infection. The monkeys grew up sturdy, disease-free, and larger than those from the wild. Yet they were also profoundly disturbed, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively, and mutilating themselves.

At first, Harlow and his graduate students couldn’t figure out what the problem was. They considered factors such as diet, patterns of light exposure, even the antibiotics they used. Then, as Deborah Blum recounts in a fascinating biography of Harlow, “Love at Goon Park,” one of his researchers noticed how tightly the monkeys clung to their soft blankets. Harlow wondered whether what the monkeys were missing in their Isolettes was a mother. So, in an odd experiment, he gave them an artificial one.

In the studies, one artificial mother was a doll made of terry cloth; the other was made of wire. He placed a warming device inside the dolls to make them seem more comforting. The babies, Harlow discovered, largely ignored the wire mother. But they became deeply attached to the cloth mother. They caressed it. They slept curled up on it. They ran to it when frightened. They refused replacements: they wanted only “their” mother. If sharp spikes were made to randomly thrust out of the mother’s body when the rhesus babies held it, they waited patiently for the spikes to recede and returned to clutching it. No matter how tightly they clung to the surrogate mothers, however, the monkeys remained psychologically abnormal.

In a later study on the effect of total isolation from birth, the researchers found that the test monkeys, upon being released into a group of ordinary monkeys, “usually go into a state of emotional shock, characterized by . . . autistic self-clutching and rocking.” Harlow noted, “One of six monkeys isolated for three months refused to eat after release and died five days later.” After several weeks in the company of other monkeys, most of them adjusted—but not those who had been isolated for longer periods. “Twelve months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially,” Harlow wrote. They became permanently withdrawn, and they lived as outcasts—regularly set upon, as if inviting abuse.

The research made Harlow famous (and infamous, too—revulsion at his work helped spur the animal-rights movement). Other psychologists produced evidence of similarly deep and sustained damage in neglected and orphaned children. Hospitals were made to open up their nurseries to parents. And it became widely accepted that children require nurturing human beings not just for food and protection but also for the normal functioning of their brains.

We have been hesitant to apply these lessons to adults. Adults, after all, are fully formed, independent beings, with internal strengths and knowledge to draw upon. We wouldn’t have anything like a child’s dependence on other people, right? Yet it seems that we do. We don’t have a lot of monkey experiments to call upon here. But mankind has produced tens of thousands of human ones, including in our prison system. And the picture that has emerged is profoundly unsettling.

Among our most benign experiments are those with people who voluntarily isolate themselves for extended periods. Long-distance solo sailors, for instance, commit themselves to months at sea. They face all manner of physical terrors: thrashing storms, fifty-foot waves, leaks, illness. Yet, for many, the single most overwhelming difficulty they report is the “soul-destroying loneliness,” as one sailor called it. Astronauts have to be screened for their ability to tolerate long stretches in tightly confined isolation, and they come to depend on radio and video communications for social contact.

The problem of isolation goes beyond ordinary loneliness, however. Consider what we’ve learned from hostages who have been held in solitary confinement—from the journalist Terry Anderson, for example, whose extraordinary memoir, “Den of Lions,” recounts his seven years as a hostage of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Anderson was the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press when, on March 16, 1985, three bearded men forced him from his car in Beirut at gunpoint. He was pushed into a Mercedes sedan, covered head to toe with a heavy blanket, and made to crouch head down in the footwell behind the front seat. His captors drove him to a garage, pulled him out of the car, put a hood over his head, and bound his wrists and ankles with tape. For half an hour, they grilled him for the names of other Americans in Beirut, but he gave no names and they did not beat him or press him further. They threw him in the trunk of the car, drove him to another building, and put him in what would be the first of a succession of cells across Lebanon. He was soon placed in what seemed to be a dusty closet, large enough for only a mattress. Blindfolded, he could make out the distant sounds of other hostages. (One was William Buckley, the C.I.A. station chief who was kidnapped and tortured repeatedly until he weakened and died.) Peering around his blindfold, Anderson could see a bare light bulb dangling from the ceiling. He received three unpalatable meals a day—usually a sandwich of bread and cheese, or cold rice with canned vegetables, or soup. He had a bottle to urinate in and was allotted one five- to ten-minute trip each day to a rotting bathroom to empty his bowels and wash with water at a dirty sink. Otherwise, the only reprieve from isolation came when the guards made short visits to bark at him for breaking a rule or to threaten him, sometimes with a gun at his temple.

He missed people terribly, especially his fiancée and his family. He was despondent and depressed. Then, with time, he began to feel something more. He felt himself disintegrating. It was as if his brain were grinding down. A month into his confinement, he recalled in his memoir, “The mind is a blank. Jesus, I always thought I was smart. Where are all the things I learned, the books I read, the poems I memorized? There’s nothing there, just a formless, gray-black misery. My mind’s gone dead. God, help me.”

He was stiff from lying in bed day and night, yet tired all the time. He dozed off and on constantly, sleeping twelve hours a day. He craved activity of almost any kind. He would watch the daylight wax and wane on the ceiling, or roaches creep slowly up the wall. He had a Bible and tried to read, but he often found that he lacked the concentration to do so. He observed himself becoming neurotically possessive about his little space, at times putting his life in jeopardy by flying into a rage if a guard happened to step on his bed. He brooded incessantly, thinking back on all the mistakes he’d made in life, his regrets, his offenses against God and family.

His captors moved him every few months. For unpredictable stretches of time, he was granted the salvation of a companion—sometimes he shared a cell with as many as four other hostages—and he noticed that his thinking recovered rapidly when this occurred. He could read and concentrate longer, avoid hallucinations, and better control his emotions. “I would rather have had the worst companion than no companion at all,” he noted.

In September, 1986, after several months of sharing a cell with another hostage, Anderson was, for no apparent reason, returned to solitary confinement, this time in a six-by-six-foot cell, with no windows, and light from only a flickering fluorescent lamp in an outside corridor. The guards refused to say how long he would be there. After a few weeks, he felt his mind slipping away again.

“I find myself trembling sometimes for no reason,” he wrote. “I’m afraid I’m beginning to lose my mind, to lose control completely.”

One day, three years into his ordeal, he snapped. He walked over to a wall and began beating his forehead against it, dozens of times. His head was smashed and bleeding before the guards were able to stop him.

Some hostages fared worse. Anderson told the story of Frank Reed, a fifty-four-year-old American private-school director who was taken hostage and held in solitary confinement for four months before being put in with Anderson. By then, Reed had become severely withdrawn. He lay motionless for hours facing a wall, semi-catatonic. He could not follow the guards’ simplest instructions. This invited abuse from them, in much the same way that once isolated rhesus monkeys seemed to invite abuse from the colony. Released after three and a half years, Reed ultimately required admission to a psychiatric hospital.

“It’s an awful thing, solitary,” John McCain wrote of his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam—more than two years of it spent in isolation in a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot cell, unable to communicate with other P.O.W.s except by tap code, secreted notes, or by speaking into an enamel cup pressed against the wall. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” And this comes from a man who was beaten regularly; denied adequate medical treatment for two broken arms, a broken leg, and chronic dysentery; and tortured to the point of having an arm broken again. A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam, many of whom were treated even worse than McCain, reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered.

And what happened to them was physical. EEG studies going back to the nineteen-sixties have shown diffuse slowing of brain waves in prisoners after a week or more of solitary confinement. In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury.

On December 4, 1991, Terry Anderson was released from captivity. He had been the last and the longest-held American hostage in Lebanon. I spoke to Keron Fletcher, a former British military psychiatrist who had been on the receiving team for Anderson and many other hostages, and followed them for years afterward. Initially, Fletcher said, everyone experiences the pure elation of being able to see and talk to people again, especially family and friends. They can’t get enough of other people, and talk almost non-stop for hours. They are optimistic and hopeful. But, afterward, normal sleeping and eating patterns prove difficult to reëstablish. Some have lost their sense of time. For weeks, they have trouble managing the sensations and emotional complexities of their freedom.

For the first few months after his release, Anderson said when I reached him by phone recently, “it was just kind of a fog.” He had done many television interviews at the time. “And if you look at me in the pictures? Look at my eyes. You can tell. I look drugged.”

Most hostages survived their ordeal, Fletcher said, although relationships, marriages, and careers were often lost. Some found, as John McCain did, that the experience even strengthened them. Yet none saw solitary confinement as anything less than torture. This presents us with an awkward question: If prolonged isolation is—as research and experience have confirmed for decades—so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any other country in history has?

Recently, I met a man who had spent more than five years in isolation at a prison in the Boston suburb of Walpole, Massachusetts, not far from my home. Bobby Dellelo was, to say the least, no Terry Anderson or John McCain. Brought up in the run-down neighborhoods of Boston’s West End, in the nineteen-forties, he was caught burglarizing a shoe store at the age of ten. At thirteen, he recalls, he was nabbed while robbing a Jordan Marsh department store. (He and his friends learned to hide out in stores at closing time, steal their merchandise, and then break out during the night.) The remainder of his childhood was spent mostly in the state reform school. That was where he learned how to fight, how to hot-wire a car with a piece of foil, how to pick locks, and how to make a zip gun using a snapped-off automobile radio antenna, which, in those days, was just thick enough to barrel a .22-calibre bullet. Released upon turning eighteen, Dellelo returned to stealing. Usually, he stole from office buildings at night. But some of the people he hung out with did stickups, and, together with one of them, he held up a liquor store in Dorchester.

“What a disaster that thing was,” he recalls, laughing. They put the store’s owner and the customers in a walk-in refrigerator at gunpoint, took their wallets, and went to rob the register. But more customers came in. So they robbed them and put them in the refrigerator, too. Then still more customers arrived, the refrigerator got full, and the whole thing turned into a circus. Dellelo and his partner finally escaped. But one of the customers identified him to the police. By the time he was caught, Dellelo had been fingered for robbing the Commander Hotel in Cambridge as well. He served a year for the first conviction and two and a half years for the second.

Three months after his release, in 1963, at the age of twenty, he and a friend tried to rob the Kopelman jewelry store, in downtown Boston. But an alarm went off before they got their hands on anything. They separated and ran. The friend shot and killed an off-duty policeman while trying to escape, then killed himself. Dellelo was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He ended up serving forty years. Five years and one month were spent in isolation.

The criteria for the isolation of prisoners vary by state but typically include not only violent infractions but also violation of prison rules or association with gang members. The imposition of long-term isolation—which can be for months or years—is ultimately at the discretion of prison administrators. One former prisoner I spoke to, for example, recalled being put in solitary confinement for petty annoyances like refusing to get out of the shower quickly enough. Bobby Dellelo was put there for escaping.

It was an elaborate scheme. He had a partner, who picked the lock to a supervisor’s office and got hold of the information manual for the microwave-detection system that patrolled a grassy no man’s land between the prison and the road. They studied the manual long enough to learn how to circumvent the system and returned it. On Halloween Sunday, 1993, they had friends stage a fight in the prison yard. With all the guards in the towers looking at the fight through binoculars, the two men tipped a picnic table up against a twelve-foot wall and climbed it like a ladder. Beyond it, they scaled a sixteen-foot fence. To get over the razor wire on top, they used a Z-shaped tool they’d improvised from locker handles. They dropped down into the no man’s land and followed an invisible path that they’d calculated the microwave system would not detect. No alarm sounded. They went over one more fence, walked around a parking lot, picked their way through some woods, and emerged onto a four-lane road. After a short walk to a convenience store, they called a taxi from a telephone booth and rolled away before anyone knew they were gone.

They lasted twenty-four days on the outside. Eventually, somebody ratted them out, and the police captured them on the day before Thanksgiving, at the house of a friend in Cambridge. The prison administration gave Dellelo five years in the Departmental Disciplinary Unit of the Walpole prison, its hundred-and-twenty-four-cell super-maximum segregation unit.

Wearing ankle bracelets, handcuffs, and a belly chain, Dellelo was marched into a thirteen-by-eight-foot off-white cell. A four-inch-thick concrete bed slab jutted out from the wall opposite the door. A smaller slab protruding from a side wall provided a desk. A cylindrical concrete block in the floor served as a seat. On the remaining wall was a toilet and a metal sink. He was given four sheets, four towels, a blanket, a bedroll, a toothbrush, toilet paper, a tall clear plastic cup, a bar of soap, seven white T-shirts, seven pairs of boxer shorts, seven pairs of socks, plastic slippers, a pad of paper, and a ballpoint pen. A speaker with a microphone was mounted on the door. Cells used for solitary confinement are often windowless, but this one had a ribbonlike window that was seven inches wide and five feet tall. The electrically controlled door was solid steel, with a seven-inch-by-twenty-eight-inch aperture and two wickets—little door slots, one at ankle height and one at waist height, for shackling him whenever he was let out and for passing him meal trays.

As in other supermaxes—facilities designed to isolate prisoners from social contact—Dellelo was confined to his cell for at least twenty-three hours a day and permitted out only for a shower or for recreation in an outdoor cage that he estimated to be fifty feet long and five feet wide, known as “the dog kennel.” He could talk to other prisoners through the steel door of his cell, and during recreation if a prisoner was in an adjacent cage. He made a kind of fishing line for passing notes to adjacent cells by unwinding the elastic from his boxer shorts, though it was contraband and would be confiscated. Prisoners could receive mail and as many as ten reading items. They were allowed one phone call the first month and could earn up to four calls and four visits per month if they followed the rules, but there could be no physical contact with anyone, except when guards forcibly restrained them. Some supermaxes even use food as punishment, serving the prisoners nutra-loaf, an unpalatable food brick that contains just enough nutrition for survival. Dellelo was spared this. The rules also permitted him to have a radio after thirty days, and, after sixty days, a thirteen-inch black-and-white television.

“This is going to be a piece of cake,” Dellelo recalls thinking when the door closed behind him. Whereas many American supermax prisoners—and most P.O.W.s and hostages—have no idea when they might get out, he knew exactly how long he was going to be there. He drew a calendar on his pad of paper to start counting down the days. He would get a radio and a TV. He could read. No one was going to bother him. And, as his elaborate escape plan showed, he could be patient. “This is their sophisticated security?” he said to himself. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”

After a few months without regular social contact, however, his experience proved no different from that of the P.O.W.s or hostages, or the majority of isolated prisoners whom researchers have studied: he started to lose his mind. He talked to himself. He paced back and forth compulsively, shuffling along the same six-foot path for hours on end. Soon, he was having panic attacks, screaming for help. He hallucinated that the colors on the walls were changing. He became enraged by routine noises—the sound of doors opening as the guards made their hourly checks, the sounds of inmates in nearby cells. After a year or so, he was hearing voices on the television talking directly to him. He put the television under his bed, and rarely took it out again.

One of the paradoxes of solitary confinement is that, as starved as people become for companionship, the experience typically leaves them unfit for social interaction. Once, Dellelo was allowed to have an in-person meeting with his lawyer, and he simply couldn’t handle it. After so many months in which his primary human contact had been an occasional phone call or brief conversations with an inmate down the tier, shouted through steel doors at the top of their lungs, he found himself unable to carry on a face-to-face conversation. He had trouble following both words and hand gestures and couldn’t generate them himself. When he realized this, he succumbed to a full-blown panic attack.

Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, received rare permission to study a hundred randomly selected inmates at California’s Pelican Bay supermax, and noted a number of phenomena. First, after months or years of complete isolation, many prisoners “begin to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind—to organize their own lives around activity and purpose,” he writes. “Chronic apathy, lethargy, depression, and despair often result. . . . In extreme cases, prisoners may literally stop behaving,” becoming essentially catatonic.

Second, almost ninety per cent of these prisoners had difficulties with “irrational anger,” compared with just three per cent of prisoners in the general population. Haney attributed this to the extreme restriction, the totality of control, and the extended absence of any opportunity for happiness or joy. Many prisoners in solitary become consumed with revenge fantasies.

“There were some guards in D.D.U. who were decent guys,” Dellelo told me. They didn’t trash his room when he was let out for a shower, or try to trip him when escorting him in chains, or write him up for contraband if he kept food or a salt packet from a meal in his cell. “But some of them were evil, evil pricks.” One correctional officer became a particular obsession. Dellelo spent hours imagining cutting his head off and rolling it down the tier. “I mean, I know this is insane thinking,” he says now. Even at the time, he added, “I had a fear in the background—like how much of this am I going to be able to let go? How much is this going to affect who I am?”

He was right to worry. Everyone’s identity is socially created: it’s through your relationships that you understand yourself as a mother or a father, a teacher or an accountant, a hero or a villain. But, after years of isolation, many prisoners change in another way that Haney observed. They begin to see themselves primarily as combatants in the world, people whose identity is rooted in thwarting prison control.

As a matter of self-preservation, this may not be a bad thing. According to the Navy P.O.W. researchers, the instinct to fight back against the enemy constituted the most important coping mechanism for the prisoners they studied. Resistance was often their sole means of maintaining a sense of purpose, and so their sanity. Yet resistance is precisely what we wish to destroy in our supermax prisoners. As Haney observed in a review of research findings, prisoners in solitary confinement must be able to withstand the experience in order to be allowed to return to the highly social world of mainline prison or free society. Perversely, then, the prisoners who can’t handle profound isolation are the ones who are forced to remain in it. “And those who have adapted,” Haney writes, “are prime candidates for release to a social world to which they may be incapable of ever fully readjusting.”

Dellelo eventually found a way to resist that would not prolong his ordeal. He fought his battle through the courts, filing motion after motion in an effort to get his conviction overturned. He became so good at submitting his claims that he obtained a paralegal certificate along the way. And, after forty years in prison, and more than five years in solitary, he got his first-degree-homicide conviction reduced to manslaughter. On November 19, 2003, he was freed.

Bobby Dellelo is sixty-seven years old now. He lives on Social Security in a Cambridge efficiency apartment that is about four times larger than his cell. He still seems to be adjusting to the world outside. He lives alone. To the extent that he is out in society, it is, in large measure, as a combatant. He works for prisoners’ rights at the American Friends Service Committee. He also does occasional work assisting prisoners with their legal cases. Sitting at his kitchen table, he showed me how to pick a padlock—you know, just in case I ever find myself in trouble.

But it was impossible to talk to him about his time in isolation without seeing that it was fundamentally no different from the isolation that Terry Anderson and John McCain had endured. Whether in Walpole or Beirut or Hanoi, all human beings experience isolation as torture.

The main argument for using long-term isolation in prisons is that it provides discipline and prevents violence. When inmates refuse to follow the rules—when they escape, deal drugs, or attack other inmates and corrections officers—wardens must be able to punish and contain the misconduct. Presumably, less stringent measures haven’t worked, or the behavior would not have occurred. And it’s legitimate to incapacitate violent aggressors for the safety of others. So, advocates say, isolation is a necessary evil, and those who don’t recognize this are dangerously naïve.

The argument makes intuitive sense. If the worst of the worst are removed from the general prison population and put in isolation, you’d expect there to be markedly fewer inmate shankings and attacks on corrections officers. But the evidence doesn’t bear this out. Perhaps the most careful inquiry into whether supermax prisons decrease violence and disorder was a 2003 analysis examining the experience in three states—Arizona, Illinois, and Minnesota—following the opening of their supermax prisons. The study found that levels of inmate-on-inmate violence were unchanged, and that levels of inmate-on-staff violence changed unpredictably, rising in Arizona, falling in Illinois, and holding steady in Minnesota.

Prison violence, it turns out, is not simply an issue of a few belligerents. In the past thirty years, the United States has quadrupled its incarceration rate but not its prison space. Work and education programs have been cancelled, out of a belief that the pursuit of rehabilitation is pointless. The result has been unprecedented overcrowding, along with unprecedented idleness—a nice formula for violence. Remove a few prisoners to solitary confinement, and the violence doesn’t change. So you remove some more, and still nothing happens. Before long, you find yourself in the position we are in today. The United States now has five per cent of the world’s population, twenty-five per cent of its prisoners, and probably the vast majority of prisoners who are in long-term solitary confinement.

It wasn’t always like this. The wide-scale use of isolation is, almost exclusively, a phenomenon of the past twenty years. In 1890, the United States Supreme Court came close to declaring the punishment to be unconstitutional. Writing for the majority in the case of a Colorado murderer who had been held in isolation for a month, Justice Samuel Miller noted that experience had revealed “serious objections” to solitary confinement:

A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short confinement, into a semi-fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others, still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover suffcient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community.

Prolonged isolation was used sparingly, if at all, by most American prisons for almost a century. Our first supermax—our first institution specifically designed for mass solitary confinement—was not established until 1983, in Marion, Illinois. In 1995, a federal court reviewing California’s first supermax admitted that the conditions “hover on the edge of what is humanly tolerable for those with normal resilience.” But it did not rule them to be unconstitutionally cruel or unusual, except in cases of mental illness. The prison’s supermax conditions, the court stated, did not pose “a sufficiently high risk to all inmates of incurring a serious mental illness.” In other words, there could be no legal objection to its routine use, given that the isolation didn’t make everyone crazy. The ruling seemed to fit the public mood. By the end of the nineteen-nineties, some sixty supermax institutions had opened across the country. And new solitary-confinement units were established within nearly all of our ordinary maximum-security prisons.

The number of prisoners in these facilities has since risen to extraordinary levels. America now holds at least twenty-five thousand inmates in isolation in supermax prisons. An additional fifty to eighty thousand are kept in restrictive segregation units, many of them in isolation, too, although the government does not release these figures. By 1999, the practice had grown to the point that Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Nebraska, Nevada, Rhode Island, and Virginia kept between five and eight per cent of their prison population in isolation, and, by 2003, New York had joined them as well. Mississippi alone held eighteen hundred prisoners in supermax—twelve per cent of its prisoners over all. At the same time, other states had just a tiny fraction of their inmates in solitary confinement. In 1999, for example, Indiana had eighty-five supermax beds; Georgia had only ten. Neither of these two states can be described as being soft on crime.

Advocates of solitary confinement are left with a single argument for subjecting thousands of people to years of isolation: What else are we supposed to do? How else are we to deal with the violent, the disruptive, the prisoners who are just too dangerous to be housed with others?

As it happens, only a subset of prisoners currently locked away for long periods of isolation would be considered truly dangerous. Many are escapees or suspected gang members; many others are in solitary for nonviolent breaches of prison rules. Still, there are some highly dangerous and violent prisoners who pose a serious challenge to prison discipline and safety. In August, I met a man named Robert Felton, who had spent fourteen and a half years in isolation in the Illinois state correctional system. He is now thirty-six years old. He grew up in the predominantly black housing projects of Danville, Illinois, and had been a force of mayhem from the time he was a child.

His crimes were mainly impulsive, rather than planned. The first time he was arrested was at the age of eleven, when he and a relative broke into a house to steal some Atari video games. A year later, he was sent to state reform school after he and a friend broke into an abandoned building and made off with paint cans, irons, and other property that they hardly knew what to do with. In reform school, he got into fights and screamed obscenities at the staff. When the staff tried to discipline him by taking away his recreation or his television privileges, his behavior worsened. He tore a pillar out of the ceiling, a sink and mirrors off the wall, doors off their hinges. He was put in a special cell, stripped of nearly everything. When he began attacking counsellors, the authorities transferred him to the maximum-security juvenile facility at Joliet, where he continued to misbehave.

Felton wasn’t a sociopath. He made friends easily. He was close to his family, and missed them deeply. He took no pleasure in hurting others. Psychiatric evaluations turned up little more than attention-deficit disorder. But he had a terrible temper, a tendency to escalate rather than to defuse confrontations, and, by the time he was released, just before turning eighteen, he had achieved only a ninth-grade education.

Within months of returning home, he was arrested again. He had walked into a Danville sports bar and ordered a beer. The barman took his ten-dollar bill.

“Then he says, ‘Naw, man, you can’t get no beer. You’re underage,’ ” Felton recounts. “I says, ‘Well, give me my ten dollars back.’ He says, ‘You ain’t getting shit. Get the hell out of here.’ ”

Felton stood his ground. The bartender had a pocket knife on the counter. “And, when he went for it, I went for it,” Felton told me. “When I grabbed the knife first, I turned around and spinned on him. I said, ‘You think you’re gonna cut me, man? You gotta be fucked up.’ ”

The barman had put the ten-dollar bill in a Royal Crown bag behind the counter. Felton grabbed the bag and ran out the back door. He forgot his car keys on the counter, though. So he went back to get the keys—“the stupid keys,” he now says ruefully—and in the fight that ensued he left the barman severely injured and bleeding. The police caught Felton fleeing in his car. He was convicted of armed robbery, aggravated unlawful restraint, and aggravated battery, and served fifteen years in prison.

He was eventually sent to the Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum-security facility in Joliet. Inside the overflowing prison, he got into vicious fights over insults and the like. About three months into his term, during a shakedown following the murder of an inmate, prison officials turned up a makeshift knife in his cell. (He denies that it was his.) They gave him a year in isolation. He was a danger, and he had to be taught a lesson. But it was a lesson that he seemed incapable of learning.

Felton’s Stateville isolation cell had gray walls, a solid steel door, no window, no clock, and a light that was kept on twenty-four hours a day. As soon as he was shut in, he became claustrophobic and had a panic attack. Like Dellelo, Anderson, and McCain, he was soon pacing back and forth, talking to himself, studying the insects crawling around his cell, reliving past events from childhood, sleeping for as much as sixteen hours a day. But, unlike them, he lacked the inner resources to cope with his situation.

Many prisoners find survival in physical exercise, prayer, or plans for escape. Many carry out elaborate mental exercises, building entire houses in their heads, board by board, nail by nail, from the ground up, or memorizing team rosters for a baseball season. McCain recreated in his mind movies he’d seen. Anderson reconstructed complete novels from memory. Yuri Nosenko, a K.G.B. defector whom the C.I.A. wrongly accused of being a double agent and held for three years in total isolation (no reading material, no news, no human contact except with interrogators) in a closet-size concrete cell near Williamsburg, Virginia, made chess sets from threads and a calendar from lint (only to have them discovered and swept away).

But Felton would just yell, “Guard! Guard! Guard! Guard! Guard!,” or bang his cup on the toilet, for hours. He could spend whole days hallucinating that he was in another world, that he was a child at home in Danville, playing in the streets, having conversations with imaginary people. Small cruelties that others somehow bore in quiet fury—getting no meal tray, for example—sent him into a rage. Despite being restrained with handcuffs, ankle shackles, and a belly chain whenever he was taken out, he managed to assault the staff at least three times. He threw his food through the door slot. He set his cell on fire by tearing his mattress apart, wrapping the stuffing in a sheet, popping his light bulb, and using the exposed wires to set the whole thing ablaze. He did this so many times that the walls of his cell were black with soot.

After each offense, prison officials extended his sentence in isolation. Still, he wouldn’t stop. He began flooding his cell, by stuffing the door crack with socks, plugging the toilet, and flushing until the water was a couple of feet deep. Then he’d pull out the socks and the whole wing would flood with wastewater.

“Flooding the cell was the last option for me,” Felton told me. “It was when I had nothing else I could do. You know, they took everything out of my cell, and all I had left was toilet water. I’d sit there and I’d say, ‘Well, let me see what I can do with this toilet water.’ ”

Felton was not allowed out again for fourteen and a half years. He spent almost his entire prison term, from 1990 to 2005, in isolation. In March, 1998, he was among the first inmates to be moved to Tamms, a new, high-tech supermax facility in southern Illinois.

“At Tamms, man, it was like a lab,” he says. Contact even with guards was tightly reduced. Cutoff valves meant that he couldn’t flood his cell. He had little ability to force a response—negative or positive—from a human being. And, with that gone, he began to deteriorate further. He ceased showering, changing his clothes, brushing his teeth. His teeth rotted and ten had to be pulled. He began throwing his feces around his cell. He became psychotic.

It is unclear how many prisoners in solitary confinement become psychotic. Stuart Grassian, a Boston psychiatrist, has interviewed more than two hundred prisoners in solitary confinement. In one in-depth study, prepared for a legal challenge of prisoner-isolation practices, he concluded that about a third developed acute psychosis with hallucinations. The markers of vulnerability that he observed in his interviews were signs of cognitive dysfunction—a history of seizures, serious mental illness, mental retardation, illiteracy, or, as in Felton’s case, a diagnosis such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, signalling difficulty with impulse control. In the prisoners Grassian saw, about a third had these vulnerabilities, and these were the prisoners whom solitary confinement had made psychotic. They were simply not cognitively equipped to endure it without mental breakdowns.

A psychiatrist tried giving Felton anti-psychotic medication. Mostly, it made him sleep—sometimes twenty-four hours at a stretch, he said. Twice he attempted suicide. The first time, he hanged himself in a noose made from a sheet. The second time, he took a single staple from a legal newspaper and managed to slash the radial artery in his left wrist with it. In both instances, he was taken to a local emergency room for a few hours, patched up, and sent back to prison.

Is there an alternative? Consider what other countries do. Britain, for example, has had its share of serial killers, homicidal rapists, and prisoners who have taken hostages and repeatedly assaulted staff. The British also fought a seemingly unending war in Northern Ireland, which brought them hundreds of Irish Republican Army prisoners committed to violent resistance. The authorities resorted to a harshly punitive approach to control, including, in the mid-seventies, extensive use of solitary confinement. But the violence in prisons remained unchanged, the costs were phenomenal (in the United States, they reach more than fifty thousand dollars a year per inmate), and the public outcry became intolerable. British authorities therefore looked for another approach.

Beginning in the nineteen-eighties, they gradually adopted a strategy that focussed on preventing prison violence rather than on delivering an ever more brutal series of punishments for it. The approach starts with the simple observation that prisoners who are unmanageable in one setting often behave perfectly reasonably in another. This suggested that violence might, to a critical extent, be a function of the conditions of incarceration. The British noticed that problem prisoners were usually people for whom avoiding humiliation and saving face were fundamental and instinctive. When conditions maximized humiliation and confrontation, every interaction escalated into a trial of strength. Violence became a predictable consequence.

So the British decided to give their most dangerous prisoners more control, rather than less. They reduced isolation and offered them opportunities for work, education, and special programming to increase social ties and skills. The prisoners were housed in small, stable units of fewer than ten people in individual cells, to avoid conditions of social chaos and unpredictability. In these reformed “Close Supervision Centres,” prisoners could receive mental-health treatment and earn rights for more exercise, more phone calls, “contact visits,” and even access to cooking facilities. They were allowed to air grievances. And the government set up an independent body of inspectors to track the results and enable adjustments based on the data.

The results have been impressive. The use of long-term isolation in England is now negligible. In all of England, there are now fewer prisoners in “extreme custody” than there are in the state of Maine. And the other countries of Europe have, with a similar focus on small units and violence prevention, achieved a similar outcome.

In this country, in June of 2006, a bipartisan national task force, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons, released its recommendations after a yearlong investigation. It called for ending long-term isolation of prisoners. Beyond about ten days, the report noted, practically no benefits can be found and the harm is clear—not just for inmates but for the public as well. Most prisoners in long-term isolation are returned to society, after all. And evidence from a number of studies has shown that supermax conditions—in which prisoners have virtually no social interactions and are given no programmatic support—make it highly likely that they will commit more crimes when they are released. Instead, the report said, we should follow the preventive approaches used in European countries.

The recommendations went nowhere, of course. Whatever the evidence in its favor, people simply did not believe in the treatment.

I spoke to a state-prison commissioner who wished to remain unidentified. He was a veteran of the system, having been either a prison warden or a commissioner in several states across the country for more than twenty years. He has publicly defended the use of long-term isolation everywhere that he has worked. Nonetheless, he said, he would remove most prisoners from long-term isolation units if he could and provide programming for the mental illnesses that many of them have.

“Prolonged isolation is not going to serve anyone’s best interest,” he told me. He still thought that prisons needed the option of isolation. “A bad violation should, I think, land you there for about ninety days, but it should not go beyond that.”

He is apparently not alone among prison officials. Over the years, he has come to know commissioners in nearly every state in the country. “I believe that today you’ll probably find that two-thirds or three-fourths of the heads of correctional agencies will largely share the position that I articulated with you,” he said.

Commissioners are not powerless. They could eliminate prolonged isolation with the stroke of a pen. So, I asked, why haven’t they? He told me what happened when he tried to move just one prisoner out of isolation. Legislators called for him to be fired and threatened to withhold basic funding. Corrections officers called members of the crime victim’s family and told them that he’d gone soft on crime. Hostile stories appeared in the tabloids. It is pointless for commissioners to act unilaterally, he said, without a change in public opinion.

This past year, both the Republican and the Democratic Presidential candidates came out firmly for banning torture and closing the facility in Guantánamo Bay, where hundreds of prisoners have been held in years-long isolation. Neither Barack Obama nor John McCain, however, addressed the question of whether prolonged solitary confinement is torture. For a Presidential candidate, no less than for the prison commissioner, this would have been political suicide. The simple truth is that public sentiment in America is the reason that solitary confinement has exploded in this country, even as other Western nations have taken steps to reduce it. This is the dark side of American exceptionalism. With little concern or demurral, we have consigned tens of thousands of our own citizens to conditions that horrified our highest court a century ago. Our willingness to discard these standards for American prisoners made it easy to discard the Geneva Conventions prohibiting similar treatment of foreign prisoners of war, to the detriment of America’s moral stature in the world. In much the same way that a previous generation of Americans countenanced legalized segregation, ours has countenanced legalized torture. And there is no clearer manifestation of this than our routine use of solitary confinement—on our own people, in our own communities, in a supermax prison, for example, that is a thirty-minute drive from my door.

Robert Felton drifted in and out of acute psychosis for much of his solitary confinement. Eventually, however, he found an unexpected resource. One day, while he was at Tamms, he was given a new defense lawyer, and, whatever expertise this lawyer provided, the more important thing was genuine human contact. He visited regularly, and sent Felton books. Although some were rejected by the authorities and Felton was restricted to a few at a time, he devoured those he was permitted. “I liked political books,” he says. “ ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem,’ Winston Churchill, Noam Chomsky.”

That small amount of contact was a lifeline. Felton corresponded with the lawyer about what he was reading. The lawyer helped him get his G.E.D. and a paralegal certificate through a correspondence course, and he taught Felton how to advocate for himself. Felton began writing letters to politicians and prison officials explaining the misery of his situation, opposing supermax isolation, and asking for a chance to return to the general prison population. (The Illinois Department of Corrections would not comment on Felton’s case, but a spokesman stated that “Tamms houses the most disruptive, violent, and problematic inmates.”) Felton was persuasive enough that Senator Paul Simon, of Illinois, wrote him back and, one day, even visited him. Simon asked the director of the State Department of Corrections, Donald Snyder, Jr., to give consideration to Felton’s objections. But Snyder didn’t budge. If there was anyone whom Felton fantasized about taking revenge upon, it was Snyder. Felton continued to file request after request. But the answer was always no.

On July 12, 2005, at the age of thirty-three, Felton was finally released. He hadn’t socialized with another person since entering Tamms, at the age of twenty-five. Before his release, he was given one month in the general prison population to get used to people. It wasn’t enough. Upon returning to society, he found that he had trouble in crowds. At a party of well-wishers, the volume of social stimulation overwhelmed him and he panicked, headed for a bathroom, and locked himself in. He stayed at his mother’s house and kept mostly to himself.

For the first year, he had to wear an ankle bracelet and was allowed to leave home only for work. His first job was at a Papa John’s restaurant, delivering pizzas. He next found work at the Model Star Laundry Service, doing pressing. This was a steady job, and he began to settle down. He fell in love with a waitress named Brittany. They moved into a three-room house that her grandmother lent them, and got engaged. Brittany became pregnant.

This is not a story with a happy ending. Felton lost his job with the laundry service. He went to work for a tree-cutting business; a few months later, it went under. Meanwhile, he and Brittany had had a second child. She had found work as a certified nursing assistant, but her income wasn’t nearly enough. So he took a job forty miles away, at Plastipak, the plastics manufacturer, where he made seven-fifty an hour inspecting Gatorade bottles and Crisco containers as they came out of the stamping machines. Then his twenty-year-old Firebird died. The bus he had to take ran erratically, and he was fired for repeated tardiness.

When I visited Felton in Danville last August, he and Brittany were upbeat about their prospects. She was working extra shifts at a nursing home, and he was taking care of their children, ages one and two. He had also applied to a six-month training program for heating and air-conditioning technicians.

“I could make twenty dollars an hour after graduation,” he said.

“He’s a good man,” Brittany told me, taking his arm and giving him a kiss.

But he was out of work. They were chronically short of money. It was hard to be optimistic about Felton’s prospects. And, indeed, six weeks after we met, he was arrested for breaking into a car dealership and stealing a Dodge Charger. He pleaded guilty and, in January, began serving a seven-year sentence.

Before I left town—when there was still a glimmer of hope for him—we went out for lunch at his favorite place, a Mexican restaurant called La Potosina. Over enchiladas and Cokes, we talked about his family, Danville, the economy, and, of course, his time in prison. The strangest story had turned up in the news, he said. Donald Snyder, Jr., the state prison director who had refused to let him out of solitary confinement, had been arrested, convicted, and sentenced to two years in prison for taking fifty thousand dollars in payoffs from lobbyists.

“Two years in prison,” Felton marvelled. “He could end up right where I used to be.”

I asked him, “If he wrote to you, asking if you would release him from solitary, what would you do?”

Felton didn’t hesitate for a second. “If he wrote to me to let him out, I’d let him out,” he said.

This surprised me. I expected anger, vindictiveness, a desire for retribution. “You’d let him out?” I said.

“I’d let him out,” he said, and he put his fork down to make the point. “I wouldn’t wish solitary confinement on anybody. Not even him.” ♦
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande

Posted by lois at 07:24 PM | Comments (0)

March 18, 2009

Alabama raising rates for inmate work squad labor. State get $15 a day. Prisoners get $2.

Alabama raising rates for inmate work squad labor
Monday, March 16, 2009
TOM GORDON
Birmingham (AL) News staff writer

The state Department of Corrections began in October 2007 charging cities, counties and other governing bodies for labor done by prisoners, such as picking up trash along highways.

That price will go up by 50 percent in October as the department seeks to close a gap in funding.

This year, there is a $43.3 million difference in the funding the corrections department gets from the state of Alabama and the amount it takes to run the system.

The department narrows the gap by charging for inmate squad labor, raising revenue through the prison work release program and other steps.

On Oct. 1, the start of fiscal 2010, the rate will increase from $10 per inmate, per day to $15.

For one agency, the Alabama Department of Transportation, the rate has already more than doubled. ALDOT started paying for inmate squads in the spring of 2007, and until recently was paying $20. In February, the rate rose to $50 per inmate per day, Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said.

ALDOT officials said they understand the need for increasing the fees.

"We have been talking about it," said ALDOT director Joe McInnes. "But whatever it is, it's going to be about 55 percent savings for us. It's going to be about 45 percent of what we are paying outside contractors now. Obviously they're looking for ways to increase their resources, and we need their help, and ... with this kind of savings, we think it's a good deal if we can get them to do more of this kind of work for us."

Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen has estimated that the new rates will bring in about $3 million each year.

"What we've been trying to do with this is ... raise revenue to meet our operational costs," Corbett said.
Alabama raising rates for inmate work squad labor - Page 2

In fiscal 2007, Corrections took its first step toward raising revenue from the work squads. In that year, according to the department's annual report, inmate squads from 14 state prison facilities performed 103,000 man-hours per month, "equivalent to a labor savings of almost $6 million to government agencies within the state."

In the spring of 2007, Allen said he got permission from Gov. Bob Riley to begin charging for the work squad labor. He put his plan into operation in the year's final quarter, when the department asked the state and local agencies to consider paying. More than $15,000 in fees came in, and a chunk of that came from ALDOT. .

That $15,000 sum was dwarfed by fees earned in fiscal 2008. In that year, Corbett said, inmate squads worked more than 1.3 million hours and generated nearly $1.2 million in fees. If the inmates had been working for minimum wage, the fees would have amounted to more than $6.9 million, Corbett said.

Unlike inmates in work release, who generally keep 60 percent of what they earn in civilian jobs, those on the work squads earn $2 a day.

Prisoners at work:

On a recent chilly morning, some $2-a-day inmates from the Childersburg Work Release/Community Work Center were picking up trash for ALDOT on U.S. 280, just east of the main business district in Chelsea. On the highway's shoulder and median were diamond-shaped orange metal signs bearing the black-lettered advisory, "State prisoners at work."

Wearing day-glo green ALDOT vests and rubber gloves, the prisoners were using a long tool with a retractable claw called a picker to retrieve trash and other debris and put it in a plastic bag. Their supervisor was Leon Maddox, an employee from the ALDOT district office in Calera who took them to the work site in a white van with two flashing strobe lights on its roof.

Two of Maddox's trash pickers were Clay Streetman of Hurtsboro and Samuel Grayson of Bessemer. Their work day would last about six hours, and both said they liked the opportunity to get out in the open.

"It's a better feeling compared to being inside of the prison," Grayson said.

What the inmates usually pick up are bottles, paper wrappers, beer cans, pieces of cardboard and sometimes a dead opossum or the carcass of another animal. Once Grayson found a complete set of female undergarments. Another time, he found a tattered $20 bill.

During a recent week, Maddox said, squad members picked up about 2,300 pounds of roadside trash.

Childersburg warden Rodney Huntley typically has more than 550 inmates in his facility, a majority of whom are eligible for work squad details. The more of them who are out working, the better it is for them and for him and his staff.

"An idle mind is the devil's workshop," Huntley said. "So work in and of itself helps to keep the camp calm and keeps issues down."
http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/metro.ssf?/base/news/1237191350113770.xml&coll=2&thispage=2

Posted by lois at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2009

Real Cost of Prisons Comix (the book)

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
edited by Lois Ahrens
PM Press
Reviews: http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php?story=loisahrens#reviews
Ordering info:
https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=48

One out of every hundred adults in the U.S. is in prison. This book provides a crash course in what drives mass incarceration, the human and community costs, and how to stop the numbers from going even higher. This volume collects the three comic books published by the Real Cost of Prisons Project. The stories and statistical information in each comic book is thoroughly researched and documented.

Prison Town: Paying the Price tells the story of how the financing and site locations of prisons affects the people of rural communities in which prison are built. It also tells the story of how mass incarceration affects people of urban communities where the majority of incarcerated people come from.

Prisoners of the War on Drugs includes the history of the war on drugs, mandatory minimums, how racism creates harsher sentences for people of color, stories on how the war on drugs works against women, three strikes laws, obstacles to coming home after incarceration, and how mass incarceration destabilizes neighborhoods.

Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children includes stories about women trapped by mandatory sentencing and the "costs" of incarceration for women and their families. Also included are alternatives to the present system, a glossary and footnotes.

Over 125,000 copies of the comic books have been printed and more than 100,000 have been sent to families of people who are incarcerated, people who are incarcerated, and to organizers and activists throughout the country. The book includes a chapter with descriptions about how the comix have been put to use in the work of organizers and activists in prison and in the "free world" by ESL teachers, high school teachers, college professors, students, and health care providers throughout the country. The demand for them is constant and the ways in which they are being used is inspiring.

The Buzz:

"I cannot think of a better way to arouse the public to the cruelties of the prison system than to make this book widely available."
--Howard Zinn

"The Real Cost of Prisons comics are among the most transformative pieces of information that the youth get to read. We take it with us to detention centers, group homes, youth shelters and social justice organizing projects. Everywhere we go we see youth nodding with agreement and getting excited to see their reality validated in print. The Real Cost of Prisons helps youth know what's up and gives them the push they need to get active in the struggle to make interpersonal and community-wide change."
--Shira Hassan, Co-Director Young Women's Empowerment Project, Chicago, IL

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

March 06, 2009

PA: Does any 11-year old deserve life in prison?

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Does any 11-year-old deserve life in prison?
By Chris Togneri
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, February 28, 2009

Fears that someone might try to harm an 11-year-old homicide suspect prompted authorities to place extra patrols at a Beaver County detention center, tripling taxpayers' cost to house him, officials said Friday.

A week after charging Jordan Anthony Brown with killing his father's fiancee and her unborn son, authorities were still grappling with a system not accustomed to handling children so young accused of such crimes. Large questions loom: Was he capable of premeditated murder? Should he be tried as an adult? Is it inhumane to sentence kids to life in prison without parole? Why did he have access to a gun?

Brown was moved Wednesday from the Lawrence County Jail to the Allencrest juvenile center, prompting law enforcement to increase security. Kenzie Houk, 26, and the son she planned to name Christopher were buried Thursday.

Even in a facility designed for kids, Brown is the youngest inmate, Allencrest director Bob Rose said.

"We watched him a little closer when he was with the population early on, like we would with any new inmate," Rose said. "So far, so good. We look for any signs or symptoms. We are always alert to that, and we're particularly alert to that, given the nature of this offense.

"To this point, we have not seen a need to isolate him."

Police in Brighton and Beaver check the area frequently, and a sheriff's deputy guards the Allencrest perimeter around the clock, said Beaver County Solicitor Myron Sainovich. The extra security means Lawrence County is paying $4,500 a week to house Brown in Beaver County, rather than the typical $1,400.

Moving Brown to an isolated ward of the Beaver County Jail would be cheaper, Sainovich said. The jail has housed four minors since 2000.

If Brown is moved, he would be placed in an isolation cell where two guards could watch him 24 hours a day, Sainovich said. He would have access to a shower, a computer, medical care and psychological treatment. A camera would monitor his movements.

Charged with two counts of homicide as an adult, Brown is due in court March 24 for a preliminary hearing.

Brown's uncle described him as a typical 11-year-old boy who likes video games, football and dirt bikes and adores his father.

Prosecutors believe Brown was jealous of Houk and having trouble adjusting to their blended family when she and her two daughters moved in. They say he shot Houk in the head as she lay in bed at the family's rented home in New Galilee.

Dr. Paul Friday, head of clinical psychology at UPMC Shadyside, believes it's important to understand that the human brain does not fully develop until about age 25.

"Normal people know when crazy ideas are crazy," he said. "Does he understand the difference between good and bad? Yes, probably. But the chances of an 11-year-old understanding consequences in the same way he would when he is 21 is nonexistent."

If convicted as charged, Brown would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. If that happens, he could be the youngest American ever to receive such a sentence.

"We know of eight cases where 13-year-olds were sentenced to life in prison without parole, but our research shows no evidence of any children under 13, ever," said Michelle Leighton, the director of Human Rights Programs at the University of San Francisco School of Law. "He would be the youngest."

Leighton co-authored the 2008 study "Sentencing Our Children to Die in Prison," which shows the United States is the only country that sentences juveniles to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Pennsylvania has more juvenile lifers than any state.

In Pennsylvania, anyone 10 or older charged with homicide automatically starts in adult court. Defense attorneys can petition to move such cases to juvenile court. Brown's attorney, Dennis Elisco, has vowed to do so.

There is precedent for granting such a move:

• In 2007, an Elizabeth Township girl who said she fatally shot her father because he sexually abused her had her case moved to juvenile court. Last year, Rachel Booth, who was 13 when she stood over her sleeping father with a 12-gauge shotgun and shot him in the face, reached a plea deal with prosecutors allowing her to avoid jail.

• D.L. Timothy Fullum of Homewood had his case moved to juvenile court in 2004. He was 16 when he fatally stabbed his friend, Israel Cyrus, 15, during a scuffle as the two walked along a street. In juvenile court, he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and held at a juvenile facility until he turned 21.

When Elisco petitions to transfer Brown's case, Lawrence County District Attorney John Bongivengo will have to decide whether to fight such a move.

"I have not made a decision yet," Bongivengo said. "It's something I'm definitely struggling with. Whatever decision I make, I'm probably going to be uncomfortable with it. I've got to make a decision that I can live with."

Houk's family wants Brown tried as an adult. They believe the slayings were calculated and accuse Brown of threatening to "pop" Houk and her daughters at least two months before the killing. They called him a skilled shooter who understood the consequences of pulling the trigger.

"There's no kid in him," said Jack Houk, Kenzie Houk's father.

"He was a miserable child," said Jennifer Kraner, 32, the slain woman's sister. "We tried to love him. But there was some sort of issue."

Leighton thinks it would be "morally reprehensible" to try an 11-year-old as an adult.

"This child is obviously extraordinarily disturbed and troubled -- that's evident by his actions -- but that does not make him an adult," she said. "We can't pretend that they are adults. No other country does that. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't bring back the dead, and it doesn't help anyone."

Dr. Anthony Mannarino, director of the Center for Traumatic Stress in Children at Allegheny General Hospital in the North Side, said an 11-year-old is more likely to be impulsive than rational.

Bongivengo has said he will not pursue charges against Brown's father, Christopher Brown, for allowing the boy access to guns. But, Mannarino cautioned, mixing the unpredictability of youth with access to a firearm is a dangerous combination.

"We all have that thought of wanting to kill someone once in awhile, but as adults we think it through and we don't act on it," Mannarino said. "An 11-year-old is more likely to follow through on an emotional thought. And to give them access to a gun is really a mistake.

"That's one of the tragedies in this situation. If the kid did not have a gun, this doesn't happen."
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_613846.html

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

March 04, 2009

UT: Senate panel OKs prison-education overhaul. Sponsor says prisoners should pay bigger share of their behind-bars education

Senate panel OKs prison-education overhaul. Sponsor says prisoners should pay bigger share of their behind-bars education
By Steve Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
Posted:03/03/2009

The state prisons are one step away from changing how inmates learn while locked up.

HB100 -- which aims to make prisoners pay for more of their own education through a loan system -- got a nod from a legislative committee Monday. It now heads to the Senate floor.

The measure met intense opposition from Sen. Brent Goodfellow, D-West Valley City.

Goodfellow helped establish the existing system. It takes nearly $1 million in prison-phone-generated fees and sends it to the Board of Regents. They then dole that cash out to the colleges that help inmates earn degrees.

Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, wants to make prisoners repay about $1,500 within five years after their release. He also wants to keep phone-surcharge cash in the Department of Corrections, so its officials can run prison schooling as they see fit. They plan to focus more on vocational training and say that would better equip inmates to land jobs once they're released.

With a Monday amendment, the bill now would require the prisons to tell colleges what sort of class they wish to add and give the schools the first opportunity to teach it before looking elsewhere.

Salt Lake Community College officials had opposed the bill, saying they felt shut out of a program they had supported for years. But they now support the measure with the Monday change.

Goodfellow, who is also an SLCC administrator, assailed the bill and criticized Corrections for relying on education instead of using its own budget to aid prison schooling. Now, he said, Corrections wants to fix a program that isn't broken; a program he called "a model for the whole country."

He said prisoners and their families are already strained by the pricey phone surcharge. To require inmates to add a loan on to those fees, he said, is "unconscionable."

But Wimmer said the current system forces taxpayers -- potentially including victims of crimes -- to fund education for offenders. Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens are left to struggle to pay their pricey college tuition.

He said the move also would save Salt Lake Community and Snow colleges millions of dollars from their own budgets that they have used to subsidize prison schooling.

Sen. Karen Morgan, D-Cottonwood Heights, asked if forcing inmates to go into debt would deter them from taking classes, but Corrections Deputy Director Mike Haddon insisted there is already a long waiting list to get in -- thanks to the colleges cutting back the number of offered courses on the heels of budget cuts.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_11826588

Posted by lois at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)

March 03, 2009

GAO Finds ICE Program Expanded Without Proper Oversight

MARCH 3, 2009, 7:03 P.M. ET
Study Finds ICE Program Expanded Without Proper Oversight
Wall St. Journal On-Line
By MIRIAM JORDAN

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement program that trains local police to arrest illegal immigrants suspected of committing serious crimes has expanded without appropriate oversight, leading to the arrest of thousands for minor infractions, according to a study scheduled to be released Wednesday.

The Government Accountability Office report comes amid calls from human-rights organizations and immigrant advocates for former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, in her new role as secretary of Homeland Security, to bring down the curtain on the so-called 287g program. The program has been a symbol of the Bush administration's crackdown on illegal immigration.

The GAO review, requested by the House and Senate homeland-security panels, found that program participants used their 287g authority "to process individuals for minor crimes, such as speeding, contrary to the objective of the program."

ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, has touted the program as a public-safety measure designed to deport immigrants who committed serious crimes.

The GAO report said that ICE hasn't established clear objectives or supervision for the program after training local law enforcement. More than half of the 29 participating agencies that the GAO contacted for its study reported concerns from community members that the program led to racial profiling and intimidation.

An estimated 12 million immigrants, mainly from Latin America, live in the U.S. illegally. Since January 2006, the program has arrested more than 79,000 individuals suspected of being in the country illegally. More than 950 state and local law-enforcement officials, including highway patrol, sheriff deputies and police, have been trained and certified through the program in 67 jurisdictions, including Alabama, Florida, Arizona and California.

The 287g program has been hailed by politicians and groups who favor tough measures, particularly deportation, to punish people in the country illegally. But there has been growing criticism of the program by immigrant groups and Democratic leaders since President Barack Obama took office.

One of the program's biggest advocates has been Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County. His deputies have arrested more than 1,400 people in the Phoenix area for immigration violations since the county partnered with ICE in 2007.

Last month, Sheriff Arpaio marched about 200 illegal immigrants in shackles and prison stripes from the county jail to a "Tent City" where inmates are housed. On Saturday, 5,000 immigration activists from across the country descended on Phoenix to protest the sheriff's actions.

"Sheriff Arpaio is the poster boy for all that is wrong with the 287g program," said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group.

Last week, four Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee asked Secretary Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether Mr. Arpaio's deputies have used skin color as a pretense to stop Hispanics and arrest illegal immigrants. The four Democrats have also called on Secretary Napolitano to terminate the Maricopa County agreement if irregularities cannot be addressed.

ICE referred all the questions about the 287g program to the Homeland Security Department. "Secretary Napolitano is undertaking a broad review of all immigration and border-security programs, policies and initiatives, specifically the 287g program," said Amy Kudwa, a spokeswoman for the department.

On Wednesday, the House homeland-security panel will hold a hearing to receive testimony about the 287g program. The GAO report, which is entitled "Better Controls Needed Over Program Authorizing State and Local Enforcement of Federal Immigration Laws," will be presented during the session.

The GAO report comes as scrutiny of the 287g program has intensified.

Last week, Justice Strategies, a nonprofit research group, said in its own report about the program that enforcing immigration has distracted local police from their mission of tackling crime and keeping communities safe. The report also said that the ICE program placed a financial burden on states and localities that participate.

Comprehensive immigration reform, which Congress has failed to pass, should be the goal of the Obama administration, according to the report. The 287g program "amounts to a local and state bailout of the failed federal immigration enforcement business," the report says.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123612361681523585.html

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

February 26, 2009

The Scott Sisters: Two Life Sentences for 11 Dollars? By Anthony Papa

The Scott Sisters: Two Life Sentences for 11 Dollars?
By Anthony Papa
February 25, 2009

Talk about injustice. How do you wind up in prison serving two life terms for a robbery that netted 11 dollars? That question has haunted first time offenders Gladys and Jamie Scott for the past 15 years.

On December 24, 1993, Scott County Sheriff's Department in Mississippi arrested the sisters for an armed robbery they vehemently deny participation in. In 1994 they were convicted after being implicated in the crime by three young Black men who confessed to the robbery in exchange of a plea bargain that gave them 10 months. The sisters were not offered a plea and went to trial.

Time has passed slowly for these sisters as they watched from behind bars their five children grow into adults and mourned the lost of their father. They have felt the pain of exhausting all their legal remedies while being denied relief at every level.

According to Nancy Lockhart, M.J., a legal analyst who has worked tirelessly over the years to help set free the Scott sisters she says she will never forget the frigid Chicago morning when she opened a letter from Mrs. Evelyn Rasco, the mother of the Scott sisters. She told the story of her daughters and her plight to help free them. "How can they give my daughters two life sentences for a crime that netted 11 dollars where no one was injured?" This prompted Lockhart to become the Scott sister's lifeline for hope. She began a campaign to try freeing them.

The Scott Sisters challenged their convictions on direct appeal arguing that there was insufficient evidence to convict them and the guilty verdict was against the overwhelming weight of evidence, which should have exonerate them. The court of appeals found no error and affirmed the convictions on December 17, 1996. As a result, they filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court, which was denied on May 15, 1997. They consequently filed an Application for Leave to File Motion to Vacate Conviction pursuant to the Mississippi Post Conviction Collateral Relief Act. The Supreme Court also denied that application.

In 1998 one of the sentenced men signed an affidavit telling that the Scott sisters were not involved with the crime. The affidavit along with two others that pointed to the sister's innocence were secured by their attorney and submitted for post conviction relief. Then attorney Chokwe Lumumba submitted a request for commutation of sentence and/or pardon to the governor. It was subsequently denied.

Gladys and Jamie Scott have maintained their innocence. They have spent nearly 15 years in prison for a crime they did not commit that netted the sum of 11 dollars. It is time for them to join their families.

For more information about the Scott sister's case please go to: www.freethescottsisters.com.
The Committee to Free the Scott Sisters: 641-715-3900 Ext. 99222
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-papa/the-scott-sisters-two-lif_b_169468.html

Posted by lois at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2009

Enforcement Gone Bad

Editorial- NY Times
Enforcement Gone Bad
Published: February 21, 2009

The failures of the immigration system are many and severe, but the main problem is not that the country is catching too few undocumented immigrants. It is catching too many. Since the early 1990s, you could write the federal government’s immigration strategy on a cardboard sign: Deport Them All.

A report last week from the Pew Hispanic Center laid bare some striking results of that campaign. It found that Latinos now make up 40 percent of those sentenced in federal courts, even though they are only about 13 percent of the adult population. They accounted for one-third of federal prison inmates in 2007.

The numbers might suggest we are besieged by immigrant criminals. But of all the noncitizen Latinos sentenced last year, the vast majority — 81 percent — were convicted for unlawfully entering or remaining in the country, neither of which is a criminal offense.

The country is filling the federal courts and prisons with nonviolent offenders. It is diverting immense law-enforcement resources from pursuing serious criminals — violent thugs, financial scammers — to an immense, self-defeating campaign to hunt down ... workers.

The Pew report follows news this month that even as a federal program to hunt immigrant fugitives saw its budget soar — to $218 million last year from $9 million in 2003 — its mission went astray. According to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, of the 72,000 people arrested through last February, 73 percent had no criminal record. Border Patrol agents in California and Maryland, meanwhile, tell of pressure to arrest workers at day-labor corners and convenience stores to meet quotas.

The country needs to control its borders. It needs to rebuild an effective immigration system and thwart employers who cheat it. It needs to bring the undocumented forward and make citizen taxpayers of them.

For all the billions spent on fences, raids, patrols and prisons, the number of illegal immigrants has steadily grown to about 12 million last year from four million in 1992. So has the need to overhaul the many parts of a festering, broken system: to clear out backlogs in legal immigration, to rescue families from limbo, to throw sunlight on the shadow economy, to deter unlawful hiring, to replace chaos with lawfulness and order. All those priorities have languished in the deportation era.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/opinion/22sun3.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2009

PA: Suit Names 2 Judges Accused in a Kickback Case

Suit Names 2 Judges Accused in a Kickback Case
By IAN URBINA
Published: February 13, 2009
NY Times

Several hundred families filed a class-action suit Friday against two Pennsylvania judges who pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks for sending juveniles to private detention facilities.

“At the hands of two grossly corrupt judges and several conspirators, hundreds of Pennsylvania children, their families and loved ones, were victimized and their civil rights were violated,” said Michael J. Cefalo, one of the lawyers representing the families. “It’s our intent to make sure that the system rights this terrible injustice and holds those responsible accountable.”

Pennsylvania lawmakers called on Friday for hearings into the state’s juvenile justice system. And the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, which blew the whistle on the judges, said it had sworn affidavits from families who said they had sought court-appointed counsel but were told that their children would have to wait weeks, sometimes months, for a lawyer. During that time, the children would have to remain in detention, the families said.

The two judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, pleaded guilty in Federal District Court in Scranton, Pa., to wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years in prison.

As many as 5,000 juveniles are believed to have appeared before Judge Ciavarella while the kickback scheme was going on. The judges are currently free on an unsecured $1 million bond, and they have surrendered their passports and a condominium in Florida. Neither is allowed out of the state without permission.

State Senator Stewart J. Greenleaf, a Republican from Montgomery County who is the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee, said he intended to hold a hearing to find ways to help the children and their families once the federal investigation was done. A spokesman in Mr. Greenleaf’s office said one option was to provide money from the crime victims compensation fund.

“Money is important, but my son’s life has already been completely destroyed,” said Ruby Cherise Uca, whose son, Chad, 18, was sentenced to three months of detention by Judge Ciavarella in 2005, when Chad was in eighth grade.

Chad, who had no prior offenses, was charged with simple assault after shoving a boy at school and causing him to cut his head on a locker. Chad returned to school his freshman year, but he was so far behind in classes and so stigmatized by his teachers and peers, his mother said, that he soon dropped out.

Federal investigators remained silent Friday about whether they would file charges against the operators of the detention centers or who else they were considering as possible conspirators.

But a law enforcement official confirmed Friday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation visited a transitional housing program in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where Judge Ciavarella furloughed inmates who had been sentenced by other judges, as federal authorities continue to scrutinize actions by Judge Ciavarella and Judge Conahan.

Lawyers for Robert J. Powell, the owner of one of the detention centers, released a letter saying Mr. Powell was not complicit in the kickback scheme but was a victim of demands from the judges for payment.

Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, said that juveniles should not be allowed to waive their right to counsel, as is permitted in Pennsylvania, and that if families wanted a lawyer but could not afford one, they should get representation.

Mr. Schwartz added that Luzerne County, where the judges handled cases, had only one public defender on staff for juveniles. The juvenile court processes about 1,200 juvenile defendants a year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/14/us/14judge.html?scp=2&sq=PA&st=cse
A version of this article appeared in print on February 14, 2009, on page A13 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2009

NY: Jail Guard Union Throws Party for Indicted Rikers Island Guards

Jail Guard Union Throws Party for Indicted Guards
Posted by Graham Rayman at 2:47 PM, February 9, 2009
Last Friday, the Voice has learned, the union for correction officers held a 10-hour fundraiser to benefit three members who were indicted two weeks ago for deputizing teen inmates as enforcers in a Rikers Island jail.

In the fallout that has followed the murder of teen Christopher Robinson, Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson got indictments against the officers for ordering a group of teens to beat up other teens at the Robert N. Davoren Center, the area where young offenders are held. They called their operation, "The Program." Robinson was beaten to death for refusing to go along with "The Program," officials have said.

The fundraising party for the indicted jail guards was held from 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. at a Queens nightclub called De River, which bills itself as the "hottest Caribbean Themed" club in the city. More than 400 correction officers attended, paying $30 at the door, and raising $13,000 for the families of the indicted officers.
Fliers announcing the fundraiser were posted last week, but jail officials in some cases ordered the fliers to be taken down.

The indictments have caused anger among a segment of correction officers, some of whom wanted to stand in silent protest at the arraignment two weeks ago of their fellow officers. And union chief Norman Seabrook has said the officers are being "scapegoated."

Discussing the fundraiser, Correction Officers Benevolent Association spokesman Michael Skelly explained that the union cannot use its funds to post bail for the indicted officers

"We don't believe they are guilty of any wrongdoing," he said. "We were concerned about the officers and their family members, so we felt it imperative to create something when individual officers could support them."

"Certainly, I think it is widely believed amongst the correction officers that this was a totally unprecedented, unfair bail amount in the first place," he added. "These are blue collar municipal workers who are not millionaires living in Park Avenue apartments under house arrest. We think it was a miscarriage of justice.

Skelly explained that the lengthy duration of the fundraiser was to allow officers from the three different shifts to come to the event.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/02/_last_friday_th.php

Posted by lois at 04:36 PM | Comments (0)

PA: Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit

Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit
February 12, 2009
By IAN URBINA and SEAN D. HAMILL
NY Times

At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.

“I felt like I had been thrown into some surreal sort of nightmare,” said Hillary, 17, who was sentenced in 2007. “All I wanted to know was how this could be fair and why the judge would do such a thing.”

The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.

“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.

The case has shocked Luzerne County, an area in northeastern Pennsylvania that has been battered by a loss of industrial jobs and the closing of most of its anthracite coal mines.

And it raised concerns about whether juveniles should be required to have counsel either before or during their appearances in court and whether juvenile courts should be open to the public or child advocates.

If the court agrees to the plea agreement, both judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and resign from the bench and bar. They are expected to be sentenced in the next several months. Lawyers for both men declined to comment.

Since state law forbids retirement benefits to judges convicted of a felony while in office, the judges would also lose their pensions.

With Judge Conahan serving as president judge in control of the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts, they set the kickback scheme in motion in December 2002, the authorities said.

They shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, arguing that it was in poor condition, the authorities said, and maintained that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers.

Prosecutors say the judges tried to conceal the kickbacks as payments to a company they control in Florida.

Though he pleaded guilty to the charges Thursday, Judge Ciavarella has denied sentencing juveniles who did not deserve it or sending them to the detention centers in a quid pro quo with the centers.

But Assistant United States Attorney Gordon A. Zubrod said after the hearing that the government continues to charge a quid pro quo.

“We’re not negotiating that, no,” Mr. Zubrod said. “We’re not backing off.”

No charges have been filed against executives of the detention centers. Prosecutors said the investigation into the case was continuing.

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Judge Ciavarella was unusually harsh. He sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a state rate of 1 in 10. He also routinely ignored requests for leniency made by prosecutors and probation officers.

“The juvenile system, by design, is intended to be a less punitive system than the adult system, and yet here were scores of children with very minor infractions having their lives ruined,” said Marsha Levick, a lawyer with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.

“There was a culture of intimidation surrounding this judge and no one was willing to speak up about the sentences he was handing down.”

Last year, the Juvenile Law Center, which had raised concerns about Judge Ciavarella in the past, filed a motion to the State Supreme Court about more than 500 juveniles who had appeared before the judge without representation. The court originally rejected the petition, but recently reversed that decision.

The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that children have a constitutional right to counsel. But in Pennsylvania, as in at least 20 other states, children can waive counsel, and about half of the children that Judge Ciavarella sentenced had chosen to do so. Only Illinois, New Mexico and North Carolina require juveniles to have representation when they appear before judges.

Clay Yeager, the former director of the Office of Juvenile Justice in Pennsylvania, said typical juvenile proceedings are kept closed to the public to protect the privacy of children.

“But they are kept open to probation officers, district attorneys, and public defenders, all of whom are sworn to protect the interests of children,” he said. “It’s pretty clear those people didn’t do their jobs.”

On Thursday in Federal District Court in Scranton, more than 80 people packed every available seat in the courtroom. At one point, as Assistant United States Attorney William S. Houser explained to Judge Edwin M. Kosik that the government was willing to reach a plea agreement with the men because the case involved “complex charges that could have resulted in years of litigation,” one man sitting in the audience said “bull” loud enough to be heard in the courtroom.

One of the parents at the hearing was Susan Mishanski of Hanover Township.

Her son, Kevin, now 18, was sentenced to 90 days in a detention facility last year in a simple assault case that everyone had told her would result in probation, since Kevin had never been in trouble and the boy he hit had only a black eye.

“It’s horrible to have your child taken away in shackles right in front of you when you think you’re going home with him,” she said. “It was nice to see them sitting on the other side of the bench.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html

Posted by lois at 02:52 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2009

Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash

Pa. judges accused of jailing kids for cash
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM and MARYCLAIRE DALE, \Associated Press Writers Michael Rubinkam And Maryclaire Dale, Associated Press Writers

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. – For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.

The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

"I've never encountered, and I don't think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids' lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money," said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.

No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.

The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles' records expunged.

Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it.

Many appeared without lawyers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.

The judges are scheduled to plead guilty to fraud Thursday in federal court. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years behind bars.

Ciavarella, 58, who presided over Luzerne County's juvenile court for 12 years, acknowledged last week in a letter to his former colleagues, "I have disgraced my judgeship. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame." Ciavarella, though, has denied he got kickbacks for sending youths to prison.

Conahan, 56, has remained silent about the case.

Many Pennsylvania counties contract with privately run juvenile detention centers, paying them either a fixed overall fee or a certain amount per youth, per day.

In Luzerne County, prosecutors say, Conahan shut down the county-run juvenile prison in 2002 and helped the two companies secure rich contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, at least some of that dependent on how many juveniles were locked up.

One of the contracts ­ a 20-year agreement with PA Child Care worth an estimated $58 million ­ was later canceled by the county as exorbitant.

The judges are accused of taking payoffs between 2003 and 2006.

Robert J. Powell co-owned PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care until June. His attorney, Mark Sheppard, said his client was the victim of an extortion scheme.

"Bob Powell never solicited a nickel from these judges and really was a victim of their demands," he said. "These judges made it very plain to Mr. Powell that he was going to be required to pay certain monies."

For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Ciavarella was ridiculously harsh and ran roughshod over youngsters' constitutional rights. Ciavarella sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a statewide rate of one in 10.

The criminal charges confirmed the advocacy groups' worst suspicions and have called into question all the sentences he pronounced.

Hillary Transue did not have an attorney, nor was she told of her right to one, when she appeared in Ciavarella's courtroom in 2007 for building a MySpace page that lampooned her assistant principal.

Her mother, Laurene Transue, worked for 16 years in the child services department of another county and said she was certain Hillary would get a slap on the wrist. Instead, Ciavarella sentenced her to three months; she got out after a month, with help from a lawyer.

"I felt so disgraced for a while, like, what do people think of me now?" said Hillary, now 17 and a high school senior who plans to become an English teacher.

Laurene Transue said Ciavarella "was playing God. And not only was he doing that, he was getting money for it. He was betraying the trust put in him to do what is best for children."

Kurt Kruger, now 22, had never been in trouble with the law until the day police accused him of acting as a lookout while his friend shoplifted less than $200 worth of DVDs from Wal-Mart. He said he didn't know his friend was going to steal anything.

Kruger pleaded guilty before Ciavarella and spent three days in a company-run juvenile detention center, plus four months at a youth wilderness camp run by a different operator.

"Never in a million years did I think that I would actually get sent away. I was completely destroyed," said Kruger, who later dropped out of school. He said he wants to get his record expunged, earn his high school equivalency diploma and go to college.

"I got a raw deal, and yeah, it's not fair," he said, "but now it's 100 times bigger than me."
http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_11680195

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

February 06, 2009

CT: Gov. delays sending 16 & 17 year old youth to juvenile system

Criminal justice initiative clipped in Rell budget
By Keith M. Phaneuf
Journal Inquirer
Published: Thursday, February 5, 2009
HARTFORD — Though criminal justice initiatives traditionally are one area both political parties insist are immune to budget cuts, even they may not be safe in this economic climate.

The budget proposal Gov. M. Jodi Rell unveiled Wednesday would delay for two years an initiative to transfer most 16- and 17-year-offenders from the adult courts to the juvenile system.

That switch, which was supposed to occur in January 2010, would be delayed until January 2012.

Municipal leaders urged Rell to order this delay, noting that the switch would place an added financial burden on their police departments and other forms of support services. Juvenile cases, in general, carry a much higher price tag than other cases.

Connecticut is one of just three states that treats offenders in this age group as adults. An estimated 10,000 16- and 17-year-olds are prosecuted as adults each year, with about 60 percent becoming repeat offenders.

Advocates of the switch have argued that rehabilitation programs for 16- and 17-year-olds would be much more effective if these offenders are treated outside of the adult system.

The change is expected to cost the state close to $100 million in the first two years, not only to expand support programs, but also to expand courts and staff at the juvenile level.

The governor’s budget proposal for the next two fiscal years also would make several other changes, including:

• Canceling the planned Juvenile Justice Urban Cities Pilot Program.

• Closing courthouses in Meriden and Bristol, and realigning four towns amid judicial districts based in Middlesex and Waterbury counties.

• Leaving vacant five judge positions over the next two years. An additional 65 posts within the Judicial Department that have been vacant since the state’s 2003 early retirement program would be eliminated permanently.

• And canceling 60 community based, residential program beds for offender re-entry programs.

“Although each of the initiatives is very important, the state’s dire economic circumstances requires review of the initiatives that are not currently operating,” the governor’s budget message reads.

The recession has lowered projected collections for all state taxes. The current $18.4 billion state budget is $922 million in deficit, according to Rell.

Even more important, both the Rell administration and the legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis have projected that under current spending and tax policies, the next two fiscal years face huge, built-in deficits.

Rell’s budget office places the two-year shortfall at a combined $6 billion, while OFA pegs the deficit at $8.7 billion.

http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2009/02/05/connecticut/doc498af5918966c985809856.txt

Posted by lois at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)

February 05, 2009

PA: Cut spending with inmate fees, not guard jobs, union says

Warning....an infuriating article!

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Cut spending with inmate fees, not guard jobs, union says
By Brad Bumsted
STATE CAPITOL REPORTER
Thursday, February 5, 2009

HARRISBURG — Inmates who committed crimes from burglary to murder pay token amounts for health care and have access to wide meal variety and reduced-price snacks from the commissary, a union representing prison workers told the Rendell administration.

As the state seeks to cut costs, with threatened furloughs of government workers included, Gov. Ed Rendell should know that inmates pay nothing for clothing handed out during their entry into 27 institutions statewide and get free soap and toilet paper, says the memo from the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association obtained by the Tribune-Review.

The union representing about 10,800 officers and prison workers delivered the memo during a meeting with administration officials last week, at which the union was warned that workers could be furloughed, union President Don McNany said.

Inmates pay $5 for a "sick call," and their co-pay for prescriptions is $5, McNany said.

"I'm sure you or I would like a health plan like that," he said.

As state officials wrestle with ways to reduce a projected $2.3 billion budget deficit, McNany thinks it's time that inmates pay more for basic services.

Pennsylvania has about 46,000 inmates and more than 8,000 corrections officers. In the fiscal year that begins July 1, it will cost state taxpayers $34,844 to house, feed and clothe each inmate, according to Rendell's budget proposed Wednesday. Health care costs average $4,624 per inmate.

The total amount Pennsylvania spends on corrections would increase from $1.64 billion to $1.8 billion under Rendell's spending plan. He proposes adding 2,400 beds in prisons and community corrections facilities.

Requiring prisoners to pay for toilet paper isn't high on Rendell's priority list as he grapples with the deficit, spokesman Chuck Ardo said.

"The yield from their suggestions would produce little money, while at the same time agitating the prison population," Ardo said. "It seems that little good would come from it."

McNany thinks the state could save millions of dollars by making prisoners pay. He contends most inmates have money to spend at the institutions. And those who can afford it should contribute more to their health care, he said.

Laying off corrections officers when prisons are "overcrowded and understaffed" would court serious trouble, McNany said.

He contends that prices at the commissaries are below what consumers pay.

Susan McNaughton, a Corrections Department spokeswoman, said: "We have to remember, (inmates) are only getting paid 19 cents to 42 cents an hour." Cigarettes are full price at commissaries, she said.

The state pays some inmates who don't have jobs 72 cents a day for "idle time," McNaughton confirmed.

"You mean for just sitting around? That is totally ridiculous," said state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, D-Penn Hills, who thinks the House should consider making inmates pay more for some provisions and benefits.

Those who get money for sitting in cells are paid because "through no fault of their own" jobs are unavailable, McNaughton said. Inmates who refuse to work or attend classes do not get paid, she said.

Inmates receive 10 postage-paid envelopes for free each month. Tax money pays for that, McNaughton said, but inmates' money is recycled back from commissary and snack machine purchases to reimburse the state for postage.

To reduce costs, the union memo suggests that prison meals could be reduced to cereal and toast or eggs for breakfast, soup and sandwich for lunch, and a full dinner. Now the choices for breakfast vary daily, ranging from scrambled eggs one day to pastry on another and hot cakes the next, McNaughton said.

Inmates should pay a fee for meals, the union argues. "They probably eat better than you and I do," McNany said.

Inmates pay if they want cable TV in their cells, McNaughton said. She said a $1.50 reduction in cable bills last month was a one-time reduction paid for with commissary profits.

If inmates destroy their clothing, they must pay for replacements, McNaughton said.
From Lois.....
---Maybe McNany should spend 20 years in prison eating the food and getting the "health care" and then he can report back on how it is.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_610309.html

Posted by lois at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2009

Defining ‘Cruel and Unusual’ When Offender Is 13

Sidebar
Defining ‘Cruel and Unusual’ When Offender Is 13

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: February 2, 2009

In 1989, someone raped a 72-year-old woman in Pensacola, Fla. Joe Sullivan was 13 at the time, and he admitted that he and two older friends had burglarized the woman’s home earlier that day. But he denied that he had returned to commit the rape.

The victim testified that her assailant was “a colored boy” who “had kinky hair and he was quite black and he was small.” She said she “did not see him full in the face” and so would not recognize him by sight. But she recalled her attacker saying something like, “If you can’t identify me, I may not have to kill you.”

At his trial, Mr. Sullivan was made to say those words several times.

“It’s been six months,” the woman said on the witness stand. “It’s hard, but it does sound similar.”

The trial lasted a day and ended in conviction. Then Judge Nicholas Geeker, of the circuit court in Escambia County, sentenced Mr. Sullivan to life without the possibility of parole.

“I’m going to send him away for as long as I can,” Judge Geeker said.

Mr. Sullivan is 33 now, and his lawyers have asked the United States Supreme Court to consider the question of whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment extends to sentencing someone who was barely a teenager to die in prison for a crime that did not involve a killing.

People can argue about whether the punishment in Mr. Sullivan’s case is cruel. There is no question that it is unusual.

According to court papers and a report from the Equal Justice Initiative, which now represents Mr. Sullivan, only eight people in the world are serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed when they were 13. All are in the United States.

And there are only two people in that group whose crimes did not involve a killing. Both are in Florida, and both are black.

Joe Sullivan is one; Ian Manuel, who is in prison for a 1990 robbery and attempted murder, is the other.

About 1,000 people under 15 are arrested on rape charges every year, according to Justice Department data. But none of them have been sentenced to life without parole since Mr. Sullivan was. Indeed, no 13-year-old has been sentenced to life without parole for any crime that did not involve a killing in more than 15 years.

Florida’s attorney general, Bill McCollum, waived his right to file a response to Mr. Sullivan’s petition to the Supreme Court, a sign suggesting that he considers the case insubstantial if not frivolous. Sandi Copes, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCollum’s office, declined to discuss the case.

Last month, the court indicated that it found the case more interesting than Florida does, requesting a response from the state. That probably means that at least one justice considered the case significant or difficult. But it is nothing like a guarantee that the court will agree to hear it.

On the other hand, the question of whether life without parole for juveniles is constitutional is the logical next step following the court’s 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons, which struck down the death penalty for crimes committed by 16- and 17-year-olds. Writing for the majority in that case, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said that even older teenagers are different from adults. They are less mature, more impulsive, more susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to change for the better over time.

Last year, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the court issued another ruling that helps frame Mr. Sullivan’s case. That decision said crimes against individuals that did not involve killing, including the rape of a child by an adult, may not be punished by death.

In 2007, after Mr. Sullivan had served almost two decades in prison, a Florida appeals court declined to have another look at his case. The Roper decision, the appeals court said, “established only one new constitutional right, the right for a juvenile not to be given the death penalty.”

Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State, said it was time for the Supreme Court and the legal system to widen its relentless focus on capital cases and to look at other severe sentences as well. Cases involving the death penalty receive careful review at multiple levels, he said. Life sentences can receive almost none.

Mr. Sullivan’s trial, for instance, lasted a day. He was represented by a lawyer who made no opening statement and whose closing argument occupies about three double-spaced pages of the trial transcript. The lawyer was later suspended, and the Florida Bar’s Web site says he is “not eligible to practice in Florida.”

There was biological evidence from the rape, but it was not presented at the trial. When Mr. Sullivan’s new lawyers recently sought to conduct DNA testing on it, they were told that the state had destroyed it in 1993.

“I absolutely believe he is innocent,” Bryan A. Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, said of Mr. Sullivan. Mr. Stevenson said he believed that one of the older youths who committed the burglary with Mr. Sullivan and who testified against him was probably the actual assailant.

But the point made by Mr. Sullivan’s brief to the Supreme Court is not that he is innocent. It is not even that he should be released after 20 years in prison. It is only that he should someday be allowed to make his case to the Florida Parole Commission.

“I don’t think it’s possible to say that a 13-year-old will never change and that life without parole is an appropriate punishment,” Mr. Stevenson said.

Aside from Mr. Sullivan’s case, it seems there is only one other appeals court decision about whether young teenagers may be locked away forever for rape. It was issued 40 years ago in Kentucky, and it involved two 14-year-olds. The court struck down the part of the sentences precluding the possibility of parole.

Juveniles “are not permitted to vote, to contract, to purchase alcoholic beverages or to marry without the consent of their parents,” the court said. “It seems inconsistent that one be denied the fruits of the tree of the law, yet subjected to all of its thorns.”

» A version of this article appeared in print on February 3, 2009, on page A12 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/us/03bar.html?ref=us

Posted by lois at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2009

MA: Another suicide at Souza-Baranowski

Inmate found dead in Shirley prison cell
Suicide believed to be the cause
By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff | January 27, 2009
A state prison inmate was found dead in his cell yesterday morning in an apparent suicide. The death came despite the man's known history of mental illness and at least one past suicide attempt, according to a state official and lawyers involved in his case. It was the second such death in a state prison facility in less than a month.

Donovan Walker, a 42-year-old who was originally from Haverhill and was serving a life sentence for murder, was found at 8:44 a.m. in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, a maximum security prison in Shirley. He was found hanging by a T-shirt and was pronounced dead two hours later at Leominster Hospital, said Diane Wiffin, spokeswoman for the state Department of Correction.

Wiffin said the death was referred to the local district attorney's office for investigation, and that the prison followed proper emergency response procedures.

But the apparent suicide has worried inmate advocates and lawyers who worked with Walker and said his death could have been prevented, given his history of mental illness and the previous suicide attempt.

The death was particularly troubling, advocates said, given the department's recent success in preventing suicides after an alarmingly high rate of deaths several years ago.

"There's a long history here," said Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, an inmate advocacy group.

The Department of Correction reported no suicides in 2008, after seven in 2005, and 15 deaths from 2004-2006. This month, Richard J. Sharpe, 54, the cross-dressing dermatologist who fatally shot his estranged wife, was found dead of an apparent suicide at the state prison in Norfolk.

Wiffin said yesterday that the deaths of Sharpe and Walker remain under investigation.
Leslie Walker's agency became familiar with Donovan Walker - they are not related - last week after receiving a tip alleging that the inmate was beaten by a correctional officer so badly that he was brought to an outside hospital.

Early last week, an advocate attempted to visit Walker but could not because he was on mental health watch. On Friday, he was removed from suicide watch and an advocate was able to see him. Walker reported that he was beaten for not tucking in his shirt.

Wiffin would not comment on reports that Walker was beaten by an officer, or that he had been placed on suicide watch days earlier, saying the case remains under investigation.

The death is a tragedy for a man whose history of mental illness was part of the case against him, lawyers said. Walker was convicted of the 1999 fatal stabbing of a man outside an American Veterans Post bar in Haverhill. He was chased out of the bar by the man he eventually stabbed.

But lawyers had tried to raise a self-defense argument, saying Walker's limited mental capacity made him unaware of his surroundings or any alternatives to resorting to the stabbing, such as fleeing.

According to Ruth Greenberg, a Swampscott lawyer who represented Walker during an appeal, her client did not know well enough to get away. He did not have a criminal record before the stabbing. He worked as a home aide for elderly people. And even in his limited capacity, he was a good man, she said.

"It was sad every step of the way," she said. "He didn't understand what was happening around him that much, but he was a good person. He was kind. This is tragic."

Posted by lois at 05:35 PM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2009

U.S. Issues Scathing Report on Immigrant Who Died in Detention

January 16, 2009
U.S. Issues Scathing Report on Immigrant Who Died in Detention
By NINA BERNSTEIN
NY Times
Federal immigration officials investigating the death of a New York computer engineer from China who died in their custody last summer said Thursday that supervisors at a Rhode Island detention center had denied the ailing man appropriate medical treatment on multiple occasions and that employees had dragged him from his cell to a van as he screamed in pain.

As they disclosed their findings, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ordered an end to their contract with the center, the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., a locally owned jail where the engineer, Hiu Lui Ng, spent his final month after a year in immigration detention. They said they had asked that the United States attorney in Boston review the case for possible criminal prosecution.

The federal investigation began last summer, soon after The New York Times reported on the death of Mr. Ng, 34. His extensive cancer and fractured spine had gone undiagnosed, despite his pleas for help, until shortly before he died in custody on Aug. 6.

Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the federal agency, said the investigation showed that supervisors at the Wyatt detention center had in effect prevented Mr. Ng from meeting with his lawyer by refusing him the use of a wheelchair when he was too ill and in too much pain to walk.

The 33-page investigation report also found that the guards and medical staff, acting on orders of the warden, violated the jail’s policy on the use of force when Mr. Ng was dragged to a van for a trip to Hartford, where his lawyers say he was pressured to withdraw all his appeals and accept deportation.

The jail’s overhead surveillance video cameras captured everything. But another, hand-held camcorder turned on and off 13 times at a signal from the captain in charge, according to the report, created another version of the episode, apparently in an effort to document that Mr. Ng was faking his illness and refusing to go to the hospital for a CT scan.

Investigators interviewed 158 people in the course of their inquiry, but the surveillance videotapes clearly told them most of what they needed to know. At one point, they wrote, the captain cursed Mr. Ng, calling him an idiot, and ordered him to “stop whining.”

Mr. Ng kept saying that he could not walk, begged for a wheelchair, and “continued to scream,” the report said, as he was pulled under his armpits from his bed, and to another part of the jail to be shackled.

John J. McConnell Jr., the lawyer representing Mr. Ng’s family in a planned lawsuit against the jail and the federal immigration agency, called the report “damning” but added that the investigating agency shared the blame because Mr. Ng “should not have been detained in the first place.”

“The people involved in that torturous treatment,” he said, “should be ashamed of themselves.”

Dante Bellini, a spokesman for Wyatt, called the results of the investigation “disappointing.” Last month, citing its investigation, the immigration agency removed all of its detainees from Wyatt.

“We will continue to look at ways to reverse this,” Mr. Bellini said. “We will continue to look at all our options and filling our beds. But we will steadfastly maintain that we had nothing to do with the detainee’s death.”

Last week, Wyatt announced that it was punishing seven employees in connection with the case, with penalties ranging from termination to reprimand. “We took stern and appropriate action,” Mr. Bellini said.

Mr. Ng, who had no criminal record, overstayed a visa years ago and had been applying for a green card through his wife, a United States citizen, when he was taken into detention in July 2007 and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.

One of the most harrowing parts of the federal report is its detailed description of the videos made as Mr. Ng was forcibly taken from his cell to a van.

The tape from the hand-held camcorder begins with the captain’s instructing Mr. Ng that “he needed to move on his own,” telling him he would not be given a wheelchair and repeatedly ordering him to stand up.

“Mr. Ng was visibly crying and appeared to have difficulty standing,” the report said, adding that the captain then appeared to signal the officer holding the camcorder to stop recording.

“Mr. Ng asked captain to believe him that he could not move his legs,” the report went on. As he struggled to put on his shoes, apparently in pain, the captain urged him to hurry up. When Mr. Ng told a nurse that he wanted to go to the hospital to take the medical test to determine the cause of his pain and disability, but needed a wheelchair, she was dismissive: “She stated that he could go; he was just refusing to go.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/us/16detain.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=detention%20center&st=cse

Posted by lois at 11:46 PM | Comments (0)

No evidence Jessica's Law works, California officials say

There's no evidence Jessica's Law works, California officials say
A state board says tight residency limits on sex offenders have driven many to homelessness, which could propel them back into crime. The state spends $25 million housing some of the offenders.
By Michael Rothfeld
January 14, 2009
LA Times

Reporting from Sacramento -- A state panel is urging the governor and legislators to change "Jessica's Law," saying its restrictions on where sex offenders can live are counterproductive and calling the nearly $25 million a year spent to house them a poor use of taxpayers' money.

The residency restrictions, passed by voters more than two years ago in Proposition 83, have never been shown to prevent new crimes and may reduce public safety, the panel says.

Since 70% of voters approved the initiative, "the availability of suitable housing has plummeted," the state's Sex Offender Management Board said in a report sent to lawmakers this week.

The state previously had more modest residency limits that applied only to certain sex offenders. Jessica's Law expanded the restrictions to all sex offenders and greatly reduced the locations where they could reside.

Barring sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of schools, parks and other areas where children gather has driven many into homelessness, an unstable situation that can propel them back to crime, according to the board.

State corrections officials say they find housing and pay rent for about 800 who are on parole, but they cannot house them all; the number of homeless sex offenders on parole is 12 times as large as it was when the law was passed.

"It seems unwise to spend such resources as a consequence of residence restriction policies which have no track record of increasing community safety," board members wrote.

Proposition 83 expanded both the categories of sex offenders included and the limits on where they could live.

Scott Kernan, undersecretary for adult operations at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said his agency is discussing plans to scale back its housing of sex offenders, some of whom have their rent paid by the state for several years while they are on parole, to a shorter period such as 60 or 90 days.

"I don't know that we can continue to pay long-term for sex offender housing in the current fiscal situation," Kernan said.

He said the housing, often in motels or halfway-house settings where multiple sex offenders live, was always meant to be transitional. But with the passage of Jessica's Law, he said, many have been housed for longer because they have little money and their families' residences may fall in a prohibited zone.

And Kernan said some local officials have created extra barriers -- for example, creating parks on highway medians to make certain neighborhoods off-limits.

The Sex Offender Management Board was created in 2006, with 17 members to be appointed by lawmakers and the governor. It includes state and local officials from law enforcement, judicial and social services backgrounds.

It has advocated for the state to focus on the offenders who pose the highest risk and to use practices -- such as treatment -- that have been shown to work. The state does not provide treatment while offenders are in prison. Jessica's Law makes little distinction between high- and low-risk offenders, addressing all of them equally with lifetime residency restrictions and satellite tracking.

State lawmakers can alter the initiative with a two-thirds vote. Robert Coombs, a spokesman for the board's chairwoman, said the members found it infeasible to call for abolishing the residency restrictions, given the sweeping voter approval of Proposition 83. He said state and local officials have the power to interpret the law to allow more housing for sex offenders, but the board believes that the likelihood of legislators fixing the problems in more comprehensive ways -- at least in the short term -- is slim.

"I can't imagine a policymaker who would put their name on something that says we want to make it easier for sex offenders to find housing," Coombs said. "Even though it's a strong public safety concept," lawmakers would be setting themselves up for political attack.

Responding to the criticism that residency restrictions have no benefit to public safety, state Sen. George Runner (R-Lancaster), an author of the initiative, said, "I do believe the general public would say a child molester should not live across the street from a school."

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a strong supporter of Proposition 83, has said he is open to revisions but has not suggested any.

Jeanne Woodford, a former state corrections secretary under Schwarzenegger, said the residency restrictions should be abolished. She said many states are reexamining their handling of sex offenders in light of studies showing that there is little utility in registration requirements and other laws the public has supported to keep track of them.

"The bottom line is, this is really what happens when we allow our emotions to get the best of us, as opposed to dealing with the facts," she said.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-offenders14-2009jan14,0,7229747.story

Posted by lois at 12:14 AM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2009

Bush Justice Department appointee hired 65 of 63 "right-thinking Americans"...not "mold spores" or "commies" for civil rights and voting sections

Justice appointee wanted to purge liberals
By AP Wire
Created 01/14/2009

WASHINGTON - To Bradley Schlozman, they were "mold spores," "commies" and "crazy libs."

He was referring to the career lawyers in the Justice Department's civil rights and voting rights sections. From 2003 to 2006, Schlozman was a Bush appointee who supervised them. Along with several others, he came to symbolize the mid-level political appointees who brought a hard-edged ideology to the day-to-day workings of the Justice Department.

"My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs right out of the section," he said in an e-mail in 2003. "I too get to work with mold spores, but here in Civil Rights, we call them Voting Section attorneys," he confided to another friend.

He hoped to get rid of the "Democrats" and "liberals" because they were "disloyal" and replace them with "real Americans" and "right-thinking Americans."

He appears to have succeeded by his standards, according to an Inspector General's report released Tuesday. Among the newly hired lawyers whose political or ideological views could be discerned, 63 of 65 lawyers hired under Schlozman had Republican or conservative credentials, the report said.

"Bitch slapping a bunch of (these) attorneys really did get the blood pumping and was even enjoyable once in a while," Schlozman wrote three years later when he left to become the U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo.

The Inspector General concluded Schlozman violated the civil services laws while at the Justice Department. Although the president's appointees are entitled to run the department and set policy, they are prohibited from considering "political affiliations" in deciding on who serves in career positions in the federal government.

"We found that Schlozman inappropriately considered political and ideological affiliations in hiring career attorneys," said the report issued jointly by Inspector General Glenn Fine and H. Marshall Jarrett, who heads the Office of Professional Responsibility. The report cited the abusive language as evidence of the harsh political tone.

Peter Carr, a Justice Department spokesman, said it "describes troubling conduct" from the recent past, but added, "We are confident that the institutional problems identified in today's report no longer exist and will not occur."

Separately, the U.S. attorney's office in Washington announced it will not seek to prosecute Schlozman for giving false testimony to Congress. Patricia Riley, a spokeswoman for that office, said the acting U.S. attorney Jeffrey Taylor stepped aside from the case, and six career prosecutors looked into the case against Schlozman.

Joseph Rich, the former chief of the Voting Rights section, said the report "confirms the disdain and vitriol they had for career civil rights attorneys. He called us `mold spores.' That kind of us epitomizes his view. He was probably the most miserable person I ever worked for," said Rich, who retired in 2007 after a 37-year career at the Justice Department.
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2008 All rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2009/01/14/justice-appointee-wanted-purge-liberals

Posted by lois at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

VA: Doctor refused to treat woman while she is shackled

The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, VA

Shackles not what doctor ordered
A Fredericksburg doctor this week refused to treat a handcuffed inmate

Date published: 1/14/2009

BY JIM HALL

When Dr. Declan Burke, a Fredericksburg obstetrician/gynecologist, walked into his exam room Monday, he discovered that his patient, a female jail inmate, was in handcuffs.

"Please take off the manacles," he said to the correctional officer who was with the inmate.

"No, I can't," the guard replied.

Burke insisted, so the officer called her supervisor at the Rappahannock Regional Jail. The supervisor agreed with the officer. The handcuffs would remain in place during the exam.

Burke said he wanted the handcuffs removed to examine the patient completely. It was the first time in 20 years that he has refused to treat a jail inmate.

The superintendent of the regional jail in Stafford County said that restraints are needed to prevent violent behavior.

"I respect his office policy," said Joseph Higgs, "but I am not going to compromise the safety of that doctor, his nurse or my officer by removing restraints on an inmate that may well have created a problem."

Health workers must sometimes restrain unruly patients. But what about the patient who arrives for treatment in shackles? Can a doctor insist that they be removed?

Several hospitals, state legislatures and departments of corrections nationwide have debated the shackling of pregnant inmates during labor and delivery.

At Mary Washington Hospital's emergency department, prisoners from the Rappahannock Regional Jail are not shackled while being treated.

"The handcuffs are removed, and a prison guard sits one-on-one with the patient," said Kathleen Allenbaugh, hospital spokeswoman.

When state inmates are taken for medical care, the decision whether to shackle during treatment is made on a case-by-case basis, said Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections.

"Several factors come into play," Traylor said in an e-mail. "The most significant being the offender's history of behavior. When possible we will consider removal of either the handcuffs or the leg irons depending on the area that requires treatment."

Burke described his patient as a "small, frail-looking woman" in her 30s. He said he did not know her criminal history. She was there because of complications of a hysterectomy.

Burke said the guard removed the prisoner's leg shackles for the pelvic exam. He also said he wanted the handcuffs removed to do a breast exam.

With the handcuffs in place, "I could have done a limited exam. I couldn't have done the adequate exam I wanted to do," he said.

Burke said he did not fear for his safety. His nurse and the guard were in the room.

The guard and inmate eventually left Burke's Central Park office without the inmate being treated.

Higgs said the jail's policy is consistent for all prisoners, male or female, sentenced or accused.

"Normally, when we take them out into the community, even to funerals, they remain cuffed," Higgs said.

Burke's patient had been convicted in Stafford County and had a history of violence, Higgs said.

"The doctor has no knowledge of the history of this inmate at this facility. We do," he said.

The inmate will see another doctor and will be handcuffed during the exam, he said.

http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2009/012009/01142009/438371

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

January 09, 2009

AL: As His Inmates Grew Thinner, a Sheriff’s Wallet Grew Fatter

January 9, 2009
As His Inmates Grew Thinner, a Sheriff’s Wallet Grew Fatter
By ADAM NOSSITER
NY Times

DECATUR, Ala. — The prisoners in the Morgan County jail here were always hungry. The sheriff, meanwhile, was getting a little richer. Alabama law allowed it: the chief lawman could go light on prisoners’ meals and pocket the leftover change.

And that is just what the sheriff, Greg Bartlett, did, to the tune of $212,000 over the last three years, despite a state food allowance of only $1.75 per prisoner per day.

In the view of a federal judge, who heard testimony from the hungry inmates, the sheriff was in “blatant” violation of past agreements that his prisoners be properly cared for.

“There was undisputed evidence that most of the inmates had lost significant weight,” the judge, U. W. Clemon of Federal District Court in Birmingham, said Thursday in an interview. “I could not ignore them.”

So this week, Judge Clemon ordered Sheriff Bartlett himself jailed until he came up with a plan to adequately feed prisoners more, anyway, than a few spoonfuls of grits, part of an egg and a piece of toast at breakfast, and bits of undercooked, bloody chicken at supper.

The shock in the courtroom on Wednesday was palpable: a sheriff was going to jail — if, as it turns out, only for one night — because his prisoners did not like the food. The world was upside down.

“You’re never going to satisfy any incarcerated individual,” grumbled the head of the Alabama Sheriffs Association, Bobby Timmons. Besides, Mr. Timmons said, “an inmate is not in jail for singing too loud in choir on Sunday.”

Melanie Velez, a lawyer for the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, which represents the inmates, took a different position. “Our clients, all they want is sustenance,” Ms. Velez said. “They shouldn’t be punished by not being given adequate nutrition. After every meal, they are hungry.”

The sheriff’s defenders, like Mr. Timmons, said Sheriff Bartlett, who told the court his salary was about $64,000, was merely following the law — Alabama law.

“He has not violated any laws of the state of Alabama,” Mr. Timmons said. “Everything he has done is by the rules, including the feeding allowance.”

But that was the whole problem, in Judge Clemon’s view. An unusual statute here dating from the early decades of the 20th century allows the state’s sheriffs to keep for themselves whatever money is left over after they feed their prisoners. The money allotted by the state is little enough — $1.75 a day per prisoner — but the incentive to skimp is obvious.

That is what the sheriff did, Judge Clemon found. As Mr. Bartlett’s wallet got fatter, according to testimony, the prisoners got thinner and thinner. One testified to losing 30 pounds in the brick jail by the railroad tracks in this quiet courthouse town of clean and empty streets near the Tennessee border.

The judge expressed no regret about sending Mr. Bartlett to jail. The Alabama law is “almost an invitation to criminality,” he said in the interview. Sheriffs, he said, “have a direct pecuniary interest in not feeding inmates.”

The practice is thought to go on in other counties, though it is difficult to be certain, as sheriffs in Alabama are notoriously unforthcoming about their finances.

“The sheriff has a responsibility to feed his inmates, but he’s also got an incentive to line his own pocket,” said Ms. Velez, the human rights center lawyer. She said, “We were shocked to learn that the sheriff had pocketed over $100,000.”

The inmates’ complaints came to light because the jail, which holds about 300, was already under a federal consent decree governing conditions there.

“Given the testimony about the fairly blatant violations of the consent decree, I knew of no more efficient means of impressing on the sheriff the seriousness of the matter than by placing him in jail until he indicated a willingness to comply,” the judge said.

Sheriff Bartlett was released from jail on Thursday afternoon, after he submitted a plan that satisfied the judge. He will now spend all the food money solely on food and will “no longer keep any funds for his personal use,” Judge Clemon said.

After his release, Mr. Bartlett did not appear at his offices and could not be reached for comment. His lawyer did not return phone calls.

With precision and some wonder, Judge Clemon, who is retiring shortly, recounted a typical inmate lunch here: “Two peanut butter sandwiches, with small amounts of peanut butter, chips, and flavored water.” Hunger pains were not uncommon.

One inmate interviewed from the jail, William Draper, said he had lost 15 pounds since his incarceration on marijuana trafficking charges in October. “Yeah, you stay hungry,” Mr. Draper said. “Hunger is something you live with.”

Inmates were forced to supplement the meager meals with purchases at the high-priced jail store, he said. “We have clients who are indigent who are very, very thin,” said Ms. Velez. Some spend as much as $100 a week at the store, a severe burden for their often impoverished families.

“If you can’t catch store, you’ll starve to death,” Mr. Draper said. Complaints, he said, were met with cold stares from the guards: “They look at you like, ‘you’ve got to deal with it,’ ” he said.

Mr. Draper said he was glad that someone in authority had finally listened to his and others’ complaints. “If I’m going to be held accountable for breaking the law, other people should be too,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/us/09sheriff.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2009

AZ: Arpaio Gets A TV Series on FOX

"Maricopa County has many times more federal prison condition lawsuits than New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston combined. In September of last year, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care revoked its accreditation of the jails
Sheriff Arpaio runs on the grounds of failure to provide adequate health care for inmates."

January 5, 2009
The Media Equation
A Star Turn for a Sheriff on Fox TV
By DAVID CARR

With his reputation for being tough on crime and his way with a good quote, Joseph M. Arpaio, the sheriff and jailer of Maricopa County in Arizona would seem to be a reality show waiting to happen.

The wait is over. In the last two weeks, the Fox Reality Channel has broadcast “Smile ...You’re Under Arrest,” a prank-fueled effort to bring nonviolent offenders with outstanding warrants in or near Phoenix to justice.

Television producers, with Mr. Arpaio’s enthusiastic assent, sent out notices to scofflaws suggesting that they had won a contest and need only show up to claim a $300 prize. Once there, they are hoodwinked into participating in fake fashion shows or movie shoots before uniformed deputies come out from behind the curtain and slap bracelets on them.

“I don’t care how you do it,” Mr. Arpaio, who likes to be known as “America’s toughest sheriff,” says on camera in the first episode. “I just want to put these guys in jail.”

The alliance between law enforcement and reality television is a durable one, with “Cops” serving as a long-running proof that law-abiding citizens love watching nonlaw-abiding citizens being brought to justice. And if they are drunk and shirtless, well, so much the better.

“It’s ‘Punk’d’ meets ‘Cops’,” says Scott Satin, who conceived “Smile...You’re Under Arrest” and serves as its executive producer. “There have been a lot of hidden camera shows, but we wanted to take it one step further.”

Entertaining? Sure, but it’s worth looking at who’s doing the punking.

Even though this is his first crack at a reality show, Mr. Arpaio is already a staple of television in Arizona. Among other stunts, he set up tent cities as jails, organized immigration sweeps of Hispanic neighborhoods, staged training operations in Honduras and last year, his office arrested journalists who had written negatively about his tenure.

He has also been at war with various municipalities in his jurisdiction, but has been re-elected five times by a wide margin since 1993. And while many of the people of Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix, clearly love him, they have paid a very dear price.

According to a report issued on Dec. 2 by the Goldwater Institute — which, as the name implies, is hardly a hotbed of liberal mollycoddling — the county has paid out over $30 million in the last five years to settle legal claims from prisoners.

Some of the payouts have gone to families of prisoners who died in custody, including three of the biggest settlements, which involved complaints of excessive force on behalf of inmates who had not been convicted of anything at the time of their deaths.

Maricopa County has many times more federal prison condition lawsuits than New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston combined. In September of last year, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care revoked its accreditation of the jails Sheriff Arpaio runs on the grounds of failure to provide adequate health care for inmates.

In October, a federal judge ruled that Sheriff Arpaio’s department had violated the Constitution by depriving inmates of medical care, fed them unhealthy food and housed them in unsanitary conditions.

The Goldwater report suggested that the picture beyond corrections was equally grim, citing the department’s tendency to “clear” cases without any resolution or arrest, and suggested that resources were being diverted to efforts to find illegal immigrants through sweeps that other departments characterized as dangerous.

As a result of the raids, Phoenix’s mayor, Phil Gordon, wrote a letter to the United States Department of Justice accusing Mr. Arpaio of “a pattern and practice of conduct that includes discriminatory harassment, improper stops, searches and arrests.”

This guy is hilarious, no?

Somebody thinks so. “Smile... You’re Under Arrest” was initially conceived as a pilot for Fox Broadcasting. Executives took a pass and Fox Reality, an offshoot of the network, picked up the pilot. Three episodes are being broadcast with an option for more if they’re successful.

The first installment focuses on a hapless guy who is warmed up by a busty hostess before the ostensible designer of Average Guy Clothing talks him into working as a model of prison garb on the catwalk, which is actually a plank that leads to his arrest.

The setup is incredibly elaborate and silly, with an entire nightclub taken over as a set and then decorated with actors and off-duty deputies in plain clothes. Mr. Satin said that everyone taken in by the ruse had willingly signed a release to be part of the show.

“Sheriff Arpaio has been wonderful to work with and totally open with everything we wanted to do,” said Mr. Satin. “He said, ‘If you want to help me catch some of these people, be my guest’. He let us do our thing.”

The Goldwater report suggests that the trade-off for the letting the sheriff do his thing may not benefit his constituents. Although his department was “adept at self-promotion and is an unquestionably ‘tough’ law-enforcement agency, under its watch violent crime rates recently have soared, both in absolute terms and relative to other jurisdictions.”

Homicides in the county were up 167 percent in the three-year period ending in 2007 and the report stated that the budget for the department, excluding corrections, had doubled since 2001.

“We have 40,000 unserved felony warrants — murderers and rapists — and instead of serving those warrants, we have this buffoon who spends his time popping out from behind curtains for a reality television show,” said Michael C. Manning, a Phoenix lawyer who has sued the department on behalf of clients repeatedly and successfully in wrongful death suits. “He continues to demean our community by chasing publicity and acting the buffoon.”

One might assume that with the change in administration in Washington, Sheriff Arpaio’s record might come in for some scrutiny, but Arizona’s governor, Janet Napolitano, an official who has backed Mr. Arpaio in the past, is Barack Obama’s choice to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Back in 1997, according to reporting done by Phoenix New Times, United States Attorney General Janet Reno lodged a complaint against the sheriff over the conditions in his jails, and a settlement was reached. Sheriff Arpaio spun it as a victory, and Ms. Napolitano, who was about to run for Arizona’s attorney general, joined Mr. Arpaio at his press conference and offered support, suggesting that the agreement was based on “technicalities.”

Both The Arizona Republic and The Phoenix New Times newspapers have traced the improbable arc of Mr. Arpaio’s tenure, but The New Times has been in conflict with the sheriff from the first day he was elected. That grudge match took a breathtaking turn in 2007 when its two founders, James Larkin and Michael Lacey, were arrested in the dead of night and accused of revealing the secrets of a grand jury. After an uproar, the men were released and the charges were dropped.

Bob Boden, senior vice president at the Fox Reality Channel, said the controversy and charges that have dogged Sheriff Arpaio’s tenure are not the network’s concern.

“He is not the face of our network nor do we necessarily support anything and everything he believes in terms of law enforcement,” he said. “This is an entertainment vehicle and we take no position on any of the politics involving the sheriff.”

Of course the show is entertainment, but these televised goofing-on-bad-guys stunts have gone wrong before. On NBC’s “Dateline,” in the series of reports called “To Catch a Predator,” a suspect who had not been convicted of anything missed the joke and killed himself.

The disregard for the rights of people who are accused of something illegal is all too common. Mr. Arpaio’s jails are full of people awaiting trail who cannot make bail; by his own accounting, 117 people have died in his custody, including many with serious mental health problems.

But the Tasers and pepper spray that are very much a part of the toolbelt of “America’s toughest sheriff” don’t get a lot of airtime on “Smile.”

“Joe Arpaio is passionate about locking people up who are wanted criminals. He adds a terrific style and a sense of humor to the show,” said Mr. Boden.

Given the decertification of his correctional facilities and the charges in the Goldwater report and press accounts, Mr. Arpaio would seem to have his hands full, but he seemed fully engaged in his star turn on Fox Reality.

“Take ’em down! Take ’em down!” he says into a microphone backstage at the nightclub.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/business/media/05carr.html?_r=1&sq=David%20Carr&st=cse&scp=5&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2008

CA: Arsenic levels too high in Kern Valley State Prison's drinking water

Later, the agency developed plans to add a filtration plant. It obtained $2.5 million from lawmakers for that purpose in 2006.
But planners abandoned the idea, electing instead to incorporate the project into an overall prison expansion approved by lawmakers. Flaws in the legislation have postponed the expansion indefinitely.

Arsenic levels too high in Kern Valley State Prison's drinking water

Three years past deadline, California has no solid plan to reduce the arsenic, which has been linked to cancer. Officials spent money to design a filtration plant and then decided not to build it.
By Michael Rothfeld

December 29, 2008

Reporting from Delano - Beside a field of rolling tumbleweed in this remote Central Valley town, the state opened its newest prison in 2005 with a modern design, cutting-edge security features and a serious environmental problem.

The drinking water pumped from two wells at Kern Valley State Prison contained arsenic, a known cause of cancer, in amounts far higher than a federal safety standard soon to take effect.

Yet today, nearly three years after missing the government's deadline to reduce the arsenic levels, the state has no concrete plans or funding to do so. Officials spent $629,000 to design a filtration system and then decided not to build it, while neglecting to inform staff and inmates that they were consuming contaminated water.

After the prison finally posted notices last April on orders from the state Department of Public Health, the inmates continued drinking the water, under protest.

"We have no choice," said Larry Tillman, 38, who was serving time for burglary. "We should at the very least receive bottled water, or truck in water from another city."

Most correctional officers at Kern Valley State Prison take bottled water to work -- some say they prefer it anyway -- but administrators created a form letter to reject requests for alternative water from some of the 4,800 inmates. The administrators say the health hazard from arsenic, a chemical used in industry and farming, is insignificant, and they promise to filter the water some time in the next few years.

"It's not that major of an issue," said Kelly Harrington, the prison's new warden.

But long-term exposure to arsenic, common in Central Valley communities, has been linked to cancer of the lungs, skin, kidneys, liver and bladder and to other maladies.

The situation, critics say, is emblematic of the short-sighted planning and creeping pace of the mammoth prison bureaucracy as it struggles to house 170,000 of California's most undesired residents.

The state has placed many of its lockups far from major cities, in rural areas with nothing as far as the eye can see, where they are embraced by residents desperate for jobs and commerce. But officials have sometimes ignored health threats endemic to these regions.

Between 1987 and 1994, the state built four prisons in a part of the Central Valley known as a hotbed of valley fever, a sometimes severe infection that usually affects the lungs. Health experts estimate that the state has spent millions to treat inmates for the disease, spawned by a fungus in desert soil.

In 2007, the year after five inmates died from valley fever, the state proposed expanding five prisons in the Central Valley but later backed off on two of the sites. One proposed expansion site, Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, had an outbreak that sickened 520 prisoners in 2006. A Fresno County grand jury concluded last year that the prison, built in 1994, should not have been put there.

At the California Institution for Women in Chino, the state has been buying bottled water for prisoners for five years -- at a current annual cost of $480,000 -- because of nitrate levels that violate federal standards in the water supply to the facility and to the nearby California Institution for Men. Nitrates, which are chemical compounds that often get into soil from fertilizer and manure, can cause a blood disorder in fetuses and infants.

Chino-area municipalities have built systems to filter their own water, and the state hopes to complete a similar project a year from now for both the women's and men's prisons. But Chino Mayor Dennis Yates, who says sewage from the men's prison has long polluted the Santa Ana River, is skeptical of state officials' competence.

"Even if you do give them money, they don't do anything," Yates said. "It's just a huge, bloated bureaucracy."

In 2001, four years before Kern Valley prison opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered a reduction in the maximum level of arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion to 10. Water suppliers had until Jan. 23, 2006, to meet the new standard. Recent testing has shown the arsenic level in one prison well at 23 parts per billion and the other at 15.

One day this month, in a low-slung white building with blue doors known as Facility C, prisoners bunking in a crowded gymnasium drank from the water fountain and used water from the sinks to make their soup. Some newcomers said they had not been told about the contamination upon arrival at the prison.

"I just came from an institution where the water was just atrocious, definitely foul," said Ramon Diaz, 25, who had three years remaining on a sentence for drug dealing. "This to me is like spring water here, and you come to find out that it's not the way it should be, either."
Corrections Department officials said they could not explain why a filtration system was not included in the prison's design because most of the employees who worked on it had since left. Later, the agency developed plans to add a filtration plant. It obtained $2.5 million from lawmakers for that purpose in 2006.
But planners abandoned the idea, electing instead to incorporate the project into an overall prison expansion approved by lawmakers. Flaws in the legislation have postponed the expansion indefinitely.

State project manager Gary Lewis said the filtration plant is in the "conceptual study phase."

This year the EPA has ordered 11 California water systems to reduce excessive arsenic levels. One was the city of Delano, which serves the North Kern State Prison, a few miles from Kern Valley prison. On Dec. 12, after inquiries by The Times, the state public health department ordered Kern Valley State Prison to come up with a plan by February to comply with the arsenic law.

The prison's chief medical officer, Dr. Sherry Lopez, said there was no immediate danger from the lockup's water, based on an e-mail she received in April from a poison-control expert who said arsenic is "much more a regulatory problem than a public health problem."

"It kind of reassured me and everybody else here that everything is OK," Lopez said.

But Dr. Gina Solomon, a scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, said that the law is important and that disempowered populations, such as prisoners and poor rural workers, often suffer because of lax enforcement.

"The standard was set for a reason, and the reason is that arsenic is known to cause cancer in humans," she said. "So the clock is ticking. The longer that people are drinking the water, the higher the risk."

Many of Kern Valley's prisoners are serving life terms, but even those with shorter stints are worried.

"It's definitely a concern for us if there's an abundance of arsenic in the water and we're ingesting that," said Dylan Littlefield, 36, an inmate from Hollywood with five years remaining for attempted robbery and drug dealing. "Who knows if we're going to be treated properly?"

The healthcare system in the state's prisons has been turned over to a federal receiver by a judge who said substandard treatment has caused many needless deaths behind bars. The receiver, J. Clark Kelso, was not alerted to the arsenic problem by the state, his top aide said.

"We're concerned about the potential health risks and we have to look into it," said John Hagar, the receiver's chief of staff. "Constructing facilities that are inadequate from the beginning is unfortunately part of a long-standing trend with the Department of Corrections, so I'm not surprised."

michael.rothfeld@latimes.com
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times

latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-arsenic29-2008dec29,0,6539747.story
From the Los Angeles Times

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

December 27, 2008

Leaning on Jail, City of Immigrants Fills Cells With Its Own

Maps
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/12/26/us/1227_DETAIN.html
http://www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/dwnmap

December 27, 2008
Leaning on Jail, City of Immigrants Fills Cells With Its Own
By NINA BERNSTEIN- NY Times

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — Few in this threadbare little mill town gave much thought to the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility, the maximum-security jail beside the public ball fields at the edge of town. Even when it expanded and added barbed wire, Wyatt was just the backdrop for Little League games, its name stitched on the caps of the team it sponsored.

Then people began to disappear: the leader of a prayer group at St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church; the father of a second grader at the public charter school; a woman who mopped floors in a Providence courthouse.

After days of searching, their families found them locked up inside Wyatt — only blocks from home, but in a separate world.

In this mostly Latino city, hardly anyone had realized that in addition to detaining the accused drug dealers and mobsters everyone heard about, the jail held hundreds of people charged with no crime — people caught in the nation’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Fewer still knew that Wyatt was a portal into an expanding network of other jails, bigger and more remote, all propelling detainees toward deportation with little chance to protest.

If anything, the people of Central Falls saw Wyatt as the economic engine that city fathers had promised, a steady source of jobs and federal money to pay for services like police and fire protection. Even that, it turns out, was an illusion.

Wyatt offers a rare look into the fastest-growing, least-examined type of incarceration in America, an industry that detains half a million people a year, up from a few thousand just 15 years ago. The system operates without the rules that protect criminal suspects, and has grown up with little oversight, often in the backyards of communities desperate for any source of money and work.

Last spring, The New York Times set out to examine this small city of 19,000 and its big detention center as a microcosm of the nation’s new relationship with immigration detention, which is now sweeping up not just recent border-jumpers and convicted felons but foreign-born residents with strong ties to places like Central Falls. Wyatt, nationally accredited, clean and modern, seemed like one of the better jails in the system, a patchwork of county lockups, private prisons and federal detention centers where government investigations and the news media have recently documented substandard, sometimes lethal, conditions.

But last summer, a detainee died in Wyatt’s custody. Immigration authorities investigating the death removed all immigration detainees this month — along with the $101.76 a day the federal government paid the jail for each one. In Central Falls, where many families have members without papers, a state campaign against illegal immigrants spread fear that also took a toll: People went into hiding and businesses lost Latino customers in droves. Slowly, the city awoke to its role in the detention system, and to the pitfalls of the bargain it had struck.

In a sinking economy, immigration detention is a rare growth industry. Congress has doubled annual spending on it in the last four years, to $2.4 billion approved in October as part of $5.9 billion allotted for immigration enforcement through next September — even more than the Bush administration had requested.

Seeking a slice of that bounty, communities like Farmville, Va., and Pahrump, Nev., are signing up with developers of new detention centers. Jails from New England to New Mexico have already made the crackdown pay off — for the private companies that dominate the industry, for some investors and, at least in theory, for places like Central Falls, a city so strapped that the state pays for its schools.

Here, a specially created municipal corporation built the jail in the early 1990s to hold federal inmates, and last year more than doubled its size. As the City Council president, William Benson Jr., put it, “The more inmates they have, the more money we get.”

Yet in a community whose 1.3 square miles are said to be too small for secrets — “If you sneeze on Washington Street, someone on Pine Street says, ‘Gesundheit,’ ” Mr. Benson said — city officials, overwhelmingly non-Latino, seemed uninformed about who those inmates were. “Nobody knows exactly who’s down there,” he said. “I hear some are Arab terrorists.”

The mystery is in some ways understandable. Though immigration detainees made up one-third of the daily population and a majority of the 4,200 men and women who moved through Wyatt’s 722 beds in a year, most were from other states, and those from Rhode Island did not remain long: Immigration and Customs Enforcement typically transferred them within a week.

Some were legal immigrants who had served time for serious crimes. But increasingly they were the kind of people who in the past would not have been arrested — people without papers, similar to some of the people who play, cheer and live in Wyatt’s shadow. Sometimes the same people.

Anthony Ventetuolo Jr., one of Wyatt’s developers and now the jail’s chief executive, said that who the inmates were made no difference to the jail, which was run like a business, under strict standards. “I’m not interested in getting involved in the politics of immigration,” he said. “All we do is detain people that our clients tell us to detain.”

Swallowed by the System

Over 10 years, Maynor Canté, 26, hardly glanced at the jail he passed as he hurried between home, two jobs and St. Matthew’s Church, where he led a prayer group.

He was 15 when he left Guatemala in 1997, sneaking across the Mexican border to join seven older siblings, legal residents who had spent years scraping new lives out of the industrial ruins of Rhode Island’s Blackstone Valley. Caught in Texas, the teenager was quickly let go pending a hearing, like so many arrested under the “catch and release” policy that prevailed while the nation’s boom times demanded cheap immigrant labor. When he failed to show up in court, a deportation order was issued.

A decade later, Mr. Canté spoke near-fluent English, and had spent thousands of dollars trying to legalize his status. Mornings, he cleaned a factory for $8 an hour. Evenings, he worked at his nephew’s new clothing shop on Dexter Street, one of several Latino businesses that had revived a bleak stretch of vacant storefronts.

Then, early one morning in October 2007 when he headed out the door for his cleaning job, five immigration agents hustled him into a van. That night, as frightened relatives tried to find him, he was delivered to Wyatt in chains.

Inside, a plaque declares that the detention center’s mission is “to protect the public from people who pose a threat to society.” One corridor, waxed to an immaculate shine, leads to a darkened control room where correction officers watch a dozen video monitors fed by 200 cameras. A guard can scan an entire unit housing 72 detainees in two- to four-man cells; zooming in on a card game, he can see that one player is holding hearts.

The jail was built for inmates awaiting trial on federal charges — drug possession, child pornography, political corruption. But to help pay off $106 million borrowed for its recent expansion and refinancing, Wyatt was now counting on prisoners like Mr. Canté: administrative detainees not charged with a crime, but held while the government tries to deport them.

Now he found himself slated for deportation without a hearing — or even any way to make a phone call.

“I was scared,” he said, recalling how he prayed the rosary and stared out the tiny window of his cell to watch a freight train pass at 6 a.m.

Outside, his sister Emma, 33, was distraught. Since their mother’s death in 2006, she had felt more responsible for protecting Mr. Canté, a big-shouldered man who was still her little brother. “Three days passed and we didn’t know where he was,” she said.

On the fourth day, after calls to many jails, a high school friend located Mr. Canté, and members of his prayer circle flocked to Wyatt. His priest, the Rev. Otoniel J. Gomez, had never visited the jail in the eight years since he was sent to Central Falls from Colombia. He spoke to his weeping parishioner through a thick plexiglass barrier.

“I thought, ‘This is like a horror movie, talking with a criminal,’ ” he said.

Yet the priest soon realized that Mr. Canté was lucky. “Most of these people didn’t have any relatives or friends near them,” Father Gomez said, “not even a lawyer.”

The official list of free legal help was largely a dead end. Wyatt’s expensive inmate telephone service was often useless, because it took days to set up an account, and it could not be used to call cellphones. Desperate, other detainees passed Mr. Canté phone numbers on scraps of paper, begging him to ask his visitors to call and tell where they were.

Out of Sight, Out of Reach

Plucked from communities from Maine to New York, some had already been transferred through several jails; many would soon be moved again, as the federal immigration agency improvised to make space for detainees from new roundups.

“It’s like having a room with five bathtubs and water coming in and out of each one to maintain an equilibrium,” explained Todd Thurlow, acting deputy director of the Boston field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which contracts for about 1,000 beds in dozens of jails across New England.

Wyatt had a reputation as one of the most professionally run. But for newcomers without help, it could be rough.

One complaint, echoed by former jail employees, was that detainees in pain from illness or injury often went without adequate treatment. Other detainees spoke of going hungry, like Edgar Bocce, 25, a Guatemalan cleaner who said two muscular inmates took away his first dinner tray — rice, beans and spaghetti — while guards did nothing. Spartan meals could be supplemented with food from the jail’s commissary, but only if relatives sent money, or detainees stayed long enough to earn some; on the cleaning crew that kept the jail so spotless, starting pay was 40 cents a day.

Though officials said detainees were housed according to their history of violence, only one unit was dedicated to immigration detainees, and the rest were mixed in with criminal suspects and convicts.

Perhaps the greatest frustration, inmates said, was their inability to make sense of what was happening to them.

“Why am I here in jail?” asked one, a Central Falls mechanic who had been seized at immigration headquarters in Providence when he went to check why his green card application was taking so long. Wyatt guards had no answers. “They tell me, ‘Sorry, guys, but we’re not Immigration.’ ”

Mr. Canté’s sisters borrowed money and hired him a lawyer. But a day after the lawyer’s first visit, their brother was gone — transferred to a Boston jail. That week, he was shackled and bused with 60 other men to detention in York, Pa., then put on a government plane with 300 chained immigrants.

He ended up one of 2,000 detainees packed into a windowless tent city that had sprung up only a year earlier in Raymondville, Tex. — the nation’s largest immigration prison camp, run for profit and still growing.

For weeks after his lawyer reopened his case for a hearing in Boston, she could not locate him. He was on the verge of deportation by the time she managed to persuade the government to fly him back from Texas, two days before last Christmas.

Mr. Canté finally appeared before an immigration judge on Jan. 2, after three months in the detention maze. Because his case fell under the more lenient laws in force before 1997, he not only was released on bond, but allowed to work until his immigration hearing in December 2009. He is now trying to pay back thousands of dollars in loans and legal fees.

A Market for Inmates

Mr. Canté, whose time in detention cost federal taxpayers about $10,000, was part of what many call an “immigrant gold rush” that turned the private prison industry from bust to boom.

Across the country, starting in Texas in the 1980s, prison companies built jail cells on speculation as they rushed to cash in on the war on drugs. They overbuilt; abuse scandals and escapes soured many states on private prisons, and by the late 1990s, as competition for inmates increased, the companies’ stock was suffering.

Yet given the lure of easy financing and big fees for constructing deals, developers of prison space did not hold back on growth. Instead, big companies like the Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) and the Cornell Companies added more beds and lobbied harder at the source of the most lucrative inmates, the federal government.

The payoff came after 9/11 in an accelerating stream of new detainees: foreigners swept up by the nation’s rising furor over illegal immigration.

Central Falls was similar, in its poverty, to more remote communities that had hitched their hopes to jails. Set in the river valley where America’s industrial revolution was born, its textile mills had hired large immigrant families — French Canadians and Poles, followed by Syrians and Portuguese — and squeezed them into triple-decker tenements. Even after the work moved away, the mills’ cheap housing continued to draw immigrants, mostly from Latin America.

The city was nearly bankrupt in 1990 when developers made a proposition: Build a profit-making jail for two or three hundred nonviolent federal detainees, and guarantee a steady stream of money and jobs for Central Falls.

But the deal that emerged, like many elsewhere, proved better at paying private investors than generating public revenue. The municipal corporation borrowed $30 million through a state bond issue to build Wyatt, and hired the Cornell company to run it. Six years later, the municipal body borrowed $38 million to refinance, buying back most of the bonds at a premium that gave the original bondholders a lump-sum return of 28.5 percent on their investment in addition to 9 percent annual interest.

And from its opening party in November 1993, Wyatt ran into the same problem as its competitors: finding enough inmates. For a time it imported murderers and rapists by the busload from North Carolina’s crowded prisons. When city residents objected, they learned that Central Falls had no control over who was housed at Wyatt and would get no money unless it was full.

At best, Wyatt paid Central Falls $2 to $3 a day for each detainee — less than $400,000 in the good years — to offset its use of city services. At times when the flow of inmates faltered, payments slowed to a trickle. Yet, following the strange logic of prison growth, Cornell and Wyatt officials were soon pushing to refinance yet again and expand.

Thomas Lazieh, the mayor who had championed the deal that built Wyatt, defended it as the best the city could get. His successor, Lee Matthews, took a darker view and sued to stop the expansion. “The city was sold a bill of goods,” he said.

Wyatt doubled in size anyway, with the backing of the current mayor, Charles D. Moreau. Convinced that it could wrest more revenue from the jail as immigration enforcement boomed, the municipal corporation took full control in August 2007. The budget it approved late that year included $6,000 a month for a Washington lobbyist to seek more detainees at higher rates.

A Recession, and Raids

By then, as in many parts of the country, people in Rhode Island were looking at Latino immigrants as prime suspects in a dismal economy. A polarizing immigration debate had converged with a huge state budget deficit and high unemployment. As this year began, resentment flared.

The catalyst was an ordinary New Year’s feature in The Providence Journal about the first baby born in Rhode Island in 2008. Mother and newborn were still in the hospital when federal agents, spurred by the publicity, raided their apartment in Providence and took away the father on immigration violations. Afterward, the police said, the mother discovered that a roommate from Guatemala had hanged himself behind his locked bedroom door, apparently during the raid.

The baby’s father, initially held in secret at Wyatt, was eventually deported. A Guatemalan landscaper with two misdemeanor convictions, he had been ordered to leave the country in August 2007, but stayed, his lawyer said, because his fiancée, a United States citizen, was pregnant with their second child.

To some, the case illustrated how illegal immigrants, who make up less than 4 percent of Rhode Island’s population, drained public services.

“Rhode Island taxpayers are the real victims!” declared Alice Losasso of West Warwick, in a letter to The Journal. “I’m tired of paying for interpreters so that immigrants can take their driver’s test in whatever language they speak. I’m tired of finding that their girlfriends and children are on welfare.”

Her words echoed a major theme of the governor, Donald L. Carcieri, a Republican. In March, he issued an executive order directing the State Police to help federal authorities round up illegal immigrants, saying that they depressed wages and strained services.

Public approval for that order reached 75 percent in one poll after an illegal immigrant from Guatemala was charged with carjacking and raping a woman outside a mall. He had been arrested twice before by the Providence police, and already had an outstanding order of deportation. The governor appeared on the Bill O’Reilly program to accuse the Providence mayor of sheltering criminals.

In Central Falls, the crackdown sowed panic. At the public charter school two blocks from Wyatt, parents, already afraid to be photographed at school events, were now reluctant to drive to meetings, said Sarah Friedman, a founder of the school.

An 8-year-old girl, one of the school’s high-scoring students, stopped speaking in class when her father disappeared into detention, the girl’s mother said. Without his income, mother and daughter, United States citizens, were almost evicted from their apartment.

At Central Falls High School, some students stopped coming to class because their families had gone into hiding, said Margie Cruz, a school-home liaison: “The child was born here, the child is legal. But the family has to hide because the father will be deported.

“I’ve seen students stopped for a traffic violation and the whole family got deported,” she added. “Children that were here for years. I watched them grow up.”

One longtime Little League mother said she used to worry that child molesters could be watching from the jail windows. Now, she said, she worried that her sister’s children would end up inside — the niece who had just graduated from high school with no path to legal status; the nephew who had been taught that local Quakers hid fugitive slaves, and asked his aunt to hide him if his parents were detained.

They were part of a generation of Central Falls teenagers born abroad who were coming of age as outlaws in their own town. Some had already lost relatives, like the 14-year-old whose older brother had made a left turn on red and ended up in a detention odyssey that led to deportation.

“My mother’s afraid the same thing that happened to my brother could happen to me, because I play soccer, I’m out there,” he said.

A few blocks from Wyatt, Police Chief Joseph P. Moran III praised the jail as “a great neighbor — it keeps things under control.” But he went on to tell about the difficulty of investigating the killing of a Dominican cabdriver, because witnesses had not come forward for fear of deportation. He talked of the blurring line between police work and immigration enforcement.

One domestic violence call by a husband illustrated the new reality. After a routine computer check, both he and his wife were taken into police custody, and her 8-month-old baby was handed to a friend. The man had an outstanding bench warrant; his wife had a deportation warrant issued by immigration authorities — something not included in the police database a few years ago.

“We work hand in hand with ICE,” Chief Moran said. At the same time, he added: “I have friends from Honduras, Ecuador. My kids went to school here. It makes it very, very difficult.”

Profit and Loss

For defenders of the jail, the bottom line has always been the bottom line: Wyatt’s growth meant more federal money for the city.

“They’re going to detain them somewhere,” said the manager of Mr. Williams True Styles Barbershop, on the struggling Dexter Street commercial strip. “It’s a billion-dollar business. Unless we’re going to free them, what difference does it make?”

But at least in Central Falls, the incarceration economy was not delivering on its promise.

In late June, Mayor Moreau, a big man with a florid face and a police siren in his car, offered up a budget that laid off firefighters — and told angry city employees to get used to it.

“We’re at the end of the financial rope for Central Falls,” he told the City Council, citing more than 200 boarded-up homes, foreclosures at the rate of 25 a week, and cuts in state and federal aid that required a 4 percent property tax increase and an 8 percent spending cut in the new $17.4 million budget.

Outside, past the defunct factory where Hasbro once made G. I. Joe, beyond the rusty hulk of the downsized Sylvania plant, the summer twilight gleamed on Wyatt’s new facade.

What had happened to the windfall of money and jobs it had offered?

The jail’s annual revenue had almost doubled in a year, to $21 million, mainly from increasing immigration detention. But the city budget projected revenue of only $525,000 from Wyatt, which is exempt from taxes.

That was not even enough to cover its share of city services, according to an estimate by the city’s finance department. It was certainly nothing like the $2 million a year that Mr. Benson, the City Council president, had mentioned to a reporter in April. The mayor, he said, predicted the city would get that much in profits formerly reaped by the Cornell Companies, now that the local board had taken over. Neither the mayor nor the board members, unpaid mayoral appointees, would talk about Wyatt.

As for jobs, only 10 of about 200 Wyatt employees lived in Central Falls. The jail’s board was even declining to make the $1,500 donations to local groups it once supported, like a scholarship fund and youth football.

Mr. Ventetuolo, the Wyatt chief executive, would not say how much had been saved by dispensing with Cornell’s for-profit services, maintaining that it had all gone toward keeping prices low for the federal government. Wyatt was still in transition, he said, striving to fill new beds to meet soaring payments to bondholders, now up to $8.4 million yearly from $2.7 million under the terms of the latest refinancing.

Yet Mr. Ventetuolo’s consulting company had won a raise, to $230,000 from $156,000. And as the number of detainees increased, so did revenue from surcharges on their collect calls to relatives, under a contract with Global Tel Link that gave Wyatt a cut of about $564,000 a year. That arrangement had survived a state ban on phone surcharges at prisons, thanks to lobbying that gave Wyatt a loophole.

Other large fees went to lawyers and financiers, as Mr. Matthews, the former mayor, pointed out. “There just happens to be a lot of money made by folks other than the people of the City of Central Falls,” he said.

Out in the Open

City officials in Central Falls — mostly descendants of earlier immigrants — were mindful that they presided over a community at least 60 percent Latino, where fear of the immigration crackdown was widespread.

At the same time, the city had built its hopes for economic stability on a jail that was helping to make that crackdown possible. The combination created a local immigration politics that sometimes verged on denial.

But last summer, Wyatt itself was suddenly caught in the glare of the state’s crackdown.

On the evening of July 15, a dozen State Police officers and 50 immigration agents swept into six courthouses across the state. They arrested 31 cleaners on suspicion of immigration violations, people paid $7.40 an hour to vacuum floors and scrub toilets in Rhode Island’s halls of justice. All worked for two large state contractors, one owned by the brother of a state legislator allied with Governor Carcieri.

In the uproar that followed, experiences that had been private in cases like Mr. Canté’s were put on public display: the difficulty of locating those in custody; the distress of relatives, many of them legal residents or citizens; the absence of basic legal protections familiar to anyone who watches “Law & Order.” Advocates eventually located most of the cleaners. Four were at Wyatt, including a 29-year-old single mother detained in its new women’s unit.

Two days after the raids, as city officials raised the Colombian flag over City Hall to honor that nation’s Independence Day, Mayor Moreau criticized the roundup, and chided Governor Carcieri for spending law enforcement resources on it.

“We have better things to do,” he said, “than chasing the lady that cleans the attorney general’s office.”

A reporter asked how he squared that criticism with Wyatt’s role in holding illegal immigrants, including the cleaning woman locked up there.

“One has nothing to do with the other,” he retorted. “It has nothing to do with the City of Central Falls.”

Soon, a case that drew national attention made that distinction harder to maintain.

On Aug. 6, Hiu Lui Ng, 34, a Chinese computer engineer from New York who had overstayed a visa, died in Wyatt’s custody after a year in various detention centers and months in pain.

The Times reported a week later that despite his repeated pleas for help, his fractured spine and extensive cancer had gone undiagnosed until shortly before his death. Officials at Wyatt, where he spent his last month, said he had received plenty of medical attention, and immigration authorities started an internal investigation. But local pastors and Latino advocacy groups gathered outside Wyatt on Aug. 15 to demand an independent inquiry.

A guard who watched the demonstration, who asked that his name not be published for fear of losing his job, voiced the ambivalence toward Wyatt that seems to shape the attitudes of many in Central Falls.

He spoke with sympathy of “good, hard-working people” detained there, and with distaste of the rookie guards — a result of low pay and high turnover — “who talk to people with no respect, like they’re dogs.”

But he added: “Immigration and all that, that has nothing to do with us. We’re just the prison.”

Even in the Latino population, the new awareness of Wyatt stirred little resistance.

“If the Spanish were all registered to vote they could take the city in one election,” observed Councilman Benson. “A lot of them don’t vote because they don’t trust the government, and a lot of them are illegal, so they can’t.”

In contrast, Mr. Canté, who finally had proper papers, said he felt like part of Central Falls for the first time.

“In all these years I’ve been here illegally, everywhere I went, everything I used to do, I used to feel like a reject,” he said. “Now I feel like I’ve been accepted for the community. I don’t feel afraid anymore. I feel, like, free.”

Just how closely Central Falls was entwined in the business of locking up people like Mr. Canté became more obvious this month, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, citing their continuing investigation into Mr. Ng’s death, abruptly removed all immigration detainees from Wyatt, scattering them to other jails in New England, Texas and Louisiana.

With Wyatt’s solvency, if not its survival, uncertain, the mayor lobbied the state’s Congressional delegation to get back a share of the growing market in immigration detainees. Meanwhile, jail officials hunted for deals like the one they narrowly lost last spring, to house 80 Vermont inmates judged criminally insane for crimes like murder and rape.

Mr. Lazieh, the former mayor who first championed Wyatt, called the government’s immigration policies immoral, arguing that “the system has gone overboard — we’ve turned to criminalizing all immigrants.”

But he had no regrets about his city’s part. “If it’s not in Central Falls,” he said, “then this facility would be someplace else.”

more links at this URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27detain.html?_r=1&hp

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December 26, 2008

Christmas Day in a Louisiana Dungeon: Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace Sent Back to Solitary

Ira Glasser
Former Executive Director, ACLU
Posted December 25, 2008

Christmas Day in a Louisiana Dungeon

This is a story about a double crucifixion happening on the very day that hundreds of millions of Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. It happened yesterday, too, and it will happen tomorrow, unless people of good will and moral decency rise up and stand against it.

The story begins nearly 40 years ago. At that time, it was unthinkable, literally, to imagine a day when a black man might be elected president. Indeed, in some parts of the country, it was still dangerous for a black man to vote, or organize against the oppressive system of racial subjugation that still prevailed despite the recent legal victories of the civil rights movement. And in 1968, both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.

In the states of the Deep South, it was not uncommon for invented criminal charges to be brought against civil rights advocates during the civil rights movement as a way of suppressing their political activities. And in the North, the emergence of the Black Panthers, an organization of aggressive tactics and militant language, frightened many whites. Brandishing guns and the rhetoric of violence, they provided an easy excuse for law enforcement to go after them.

No civil rights advocates defended actual crimes that may have been committed. But in many cases, evidence was manufactured and guns planted by law enforcement officials anxious to break the back of this increasingly militant movement. In Chicago, the FBI broke into a Black Panther apartment and slaughtered its occupants. And in New York, Black Panthers were brought to trial upon evidence that ultimately could not survive scrutiny. In one case, a black man was shot down by cops and then, as he lay dying, charged with attempted murder of the police who shot him, on the basis of a gun in his coat pocket that later was proved to have been planted by the police officer.

In this context, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were arrested in Louisiana, convicted of separate crimes and sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, an 18,000 acre former slave plantation known as Angola. In those days, most Southern prisons were racially segregated, and many were unspeakably brutal. During the early 1970s, when Wallace and Woodfox first were sentenced to Angola, it was known-- even according to the Louisiana State Department of Corrections official history--as the "bloodiest prison in the south."

It is hard to imagine today what Angola was like then, but it is important to understand the circumstances that led to what happened to Wallace and Woodfox, and to what I have called their crucifixion unto this day.

Angola was awash in violence and over-run by inmate gangs, encouraged and enabled by prison officials as a way of maintaining control. A gruesome system of sexual slavery prevailed, where new prisoners were openly bought and sold into submission; this system was sanctioned and facilitated by guards, as Warden C. Murray Henderson admitted in his book. Favored inmates were given state-issued weapons, and ordered to enforce this system of sexual slavery. Between 1972-75 alone, this armed inmate guard system claimed the lives of 40 prisoners and seriously maimed 350 more. For those who survived, there was a 96 hour work week, harvesting crops of soybeans, cotton, corn and wheat at a minimum wage of 2 cents an hour. This was the prison Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox came to in the early seventies.

Inspired by the civil rights movement, Wallace and Woodfox began a Black Panther chapter in the prison. They couldn't do much except talk, but talk they did, to as many of the inmates as they could, about human dignity and self-respect, and the need to work to protect vulnerable inmates from being pressed into sexual servitude. This did not endear them to the administration-- free speech had not yet come to prisons--nor to the guards and the inmates who functioned as enforcers. But they persisted, and their talk became a thorn in the side of the men who ran the prison.

Then, on April 17, 1972, a young prison guard, Brent Miller, was found stabbed to death in a prison dormitory. He was 23, and his widow was 17.

Wallace and Woodfox were immediately put into solitary confinement, little more than a 6 x 9 cage, despite no evidence connecting them to the crime. They would remain there for the next 36 years, and they are there now, as this is written-- in an even smaller cell, 23 hours a day, no yard time, no telephone calls (except to their lawyers) and no contact visits.

No physical evidence ever connected them to the crime. A bloody fingerprint found at the murder scene did not match either man, and both men had multiple alibi witnesses, who were ignored. Moreover, prison officials refused to check those fingerprints against the fingerprint database, and they have continued to refuse to this day. Somebody made that bloody fingerprint, but it wasn't Woodfox or Wallace. Yet they were charged with the crime.

Other prisoners who testified against them later recanted, and said they were coerced by prison officials to lie under oath.

The only evidence left against them is the unreliable testimony of a convicted serial rapist named Hezekiah Brown, who had previously been on death row, and who was subsequent to his testimony given a variety of special privileges, and later pardoned by the Governor, after the Warden had personally lobbied for his release. Although this was not revealed at the time, Warden Henderson years later testified, at Woodfox's re-trial, that he had made an agreement with Brown: he would help obtain a pardon if Brown would help "crack the case."

Before the pardon, Brown was granted special privileges: as Warden Frank Blackburn wrote in a letter to the Secretary of Corrections, "...This, I feel, would partially fulfill commitments made to [Brown] in the past with respect to his testimony in the state's behalf in the Brent Miller murder case." The Secretary of Corrections replied: "I concur. Warden Henderson made the original agreement with Brown... I think we should honor the agreement."

It is pretty clear that, as often happened in those days to vulnerable black activists, Wallace and Woodfox were pilloried and punished for their political activities in behalf of prison reform, and railroaded into a cage for the next 36 years.

About ten years ago, a small group came together to try to overturn this injustice. Their numbers have grown, and progress has been made, as the facts have slowly but systematically been brought before independent courts.

In 2006, a state magistrate, after an extensive review of Herman Wallace's case, recommended that his conviction be overturned. But by a 2-1 vote, the state appeals court decided to keep the conviction in place. That decision is now pending appeal in the Louisiana State Supreme Court.

In Albert Woodfox's case, a federal magistrate reviewed the evidence thoroughly and recommended his release. A federal district court judge, James Brady, upheld her recommendation, overturned the conviction and granted bail pending the state's decision about whether to appeal or re-try him. The state appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed the grant of bail pending appeal.

So the court cases grind slowly, as court cases do.

But the brutality that long ago ignited this injustice continues in Louisiana, to a nearly unimaginable degree. When Woodfox was initially granted bail, a niece of his and her family agreed to take him in. The Louisiana Attorney General, Buddy Caldwell, then embarked upon a public scare campaign reminiscent of the kind of inflammatory hysteria that once was used to provoke lynch mobs. He called Woodfox a dangerous rapist, even though he had never been charged, let alone convicted, of rape; he sent emails to neighbors calling Woodfox a convicted murderer and violent rapist; and neighbors were urged to sign petitions opposing his release. In the end, his niece and family were sufficiently frightened and threatened that Woodfox rejected the plan to live with them while on bail. All of this took place while the appeals court was considering the state's appeal of the grant of bail.

Angola Warden Burl Cain was even more revealing. During the bail hearing, he testified as to why Woodfox should not be granted bail, and why he needed to be kept in a cage, and away from other inmates. Here are a few excerpts:

"The thing about him is he wants to demonstrate. He wants to organize.... A hunger strike is really, really bad, because you could see he admitted that he was organizing a peaceful demonstration.... 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...."

For Attorney General Caldwell and Warden Cain, it is still forty years ago, and they can only respond to aspirations for justice by putting its advocates in the hole. Evidence is irrelevant, or to be manufactured to achieve the ends of repression.

Perhaps more surprising, and for that reason even more reprehensible, is the immorality of Governor Bobby Jindal. Elected on a platform of reform, and widely touted as the kind of fresh face for the Republicans nationally that Obama has been for the Democrats, Jindal could stop these crude injustices. But he continues to back them, staining himself and his state with his defense of the indefensible.

By now, anyone who has looked fairly and independently at the evidence in this case has concluded that the convictions were unsupportable. Even Brent Miller's widow now believes Wallace and Woodfox were wrongly convicted, and she would like the state to find out who killed her husband that April day in 1972.

But the habits of the old South die hard, and the courts move slowly. A black man will be inaugurated on January 20. But Albert Woodfox is 61 and Herman Wallace 67. They will not see that inauguration, nor benefit from it. It is Christmas Day, and they are about to begin their 37th year in the dungeon of the old slave plantation. A crucifixion.

Where is the public outrage that will resurrect them?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-glasser/christmas-day-in-a-louisi_b_153350.html?view=print

Posted by lois at 11:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2008

The Angola 3: "Reform," Bobby Jindal Style

James Rucker
Posted December 17, 2008 |
"Reform," Bobby Jindal Style
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-rucker/reform-bobby-jindal-style_b_151737.html

We may be on the brink of inaugurating a Black president, but the miscarriage of justice unfolding in Louisiana with the case of the Angola 3 tells a different story about race, power and accountability in our criminal justice system. At the top of the food chain is self-styled reformer and the GOP's supposed answer to Obama, Governor Bobby Jindal.

Albert Woodfox has spent the last 36 years in solitary confinement -- 23 out of 24 hours each day in a 6×9 cell -- for the murder of a white prison guard, a crime he didn't commit.

Despite increasing evidence of Woodfox's innocence, the State of Louisiana is digging in its heels. They've pushed back against a federal judge who has overturned Woodfox's conviction and ordered his release. The reason is becoming crystal clear: It's not because they believe that Woodfox or the other two people referred to as the "Angola 3" murdered anyone. It's because the three men were organizing within the prison for better conditions, an end to sexual abuses, and the fair treatment of inmates. Apparently, in Louisiana, seeking justice means you deserve to be framed for murder and locked away forever.

James "Buddy" Caldwell, the state's Attorney General, has led the state's fight and Burl Cain, the warden at Angola, is acting as Caldwell's henchman. Ultimately, it's Governor Bobby Jindal who is giving them cover despite being presented with all the facts and being asked repeatedly to intervene. So much for the promise of Jindal and his self-description as a "reformer."

A look at recent proceedings shows that the desire to keep Woodfox behind bars has nothing to do with whether Woodfox is guilty or innocent. Cain has made it clear that he doesn't care. Cain wants him behind bars for no reason other than the fact that Woodfox has been a force for reform from within the prison walls. Says Cain, "The thing about him is that he wants to demonstrate. He wants to organize. He wants to be defiant." Cain has said that even if he knew Woodfox hadn't killed the guard, he would still want the man isolated. "I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates," Cain said. It's not that Woodfox is dangerous. It's that he is unrepentant in organizing inmates to achieve a basic sense of decency and livable conditions.

Several months before Judge James Brady overturned Woodfox's conviction, more than 25,000 ColorOfChange.org members appealed to Governor Jindal to get involved. The head of the state legislature's judiciary committee, Cedric Richmond, delivered the petitions to Governor Jindal and requested he intervene. Around the same time, Congressman John Conyers, chair of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, met with both Woodfox and Herman Wallace (one of the other Angola 3) and has publicly called for intervention. Jindal's response has been utter silence.

In recent weeks, as pressure has mounted for Woodfox to be released, Caldwell, the Attorney General, has gone deeper in attempting to demonize Woodfox. He has taken to publicly referring to Woodfox as a "serial rapist," a completely unsubstantiated claim. Once bail was ordered and it was expected that Woodfox would be released, Caldwell's office clandestinely contacted members of the gated community where Woodfox was supposed to live, telling them that a murderer would soon be living among them. Woodfox had been planning to live with his niece. She and her family have now been subject to harassment, and the option of Woodfox living with her has been made virtually impossible.

We've seen unequal and unfair justice before in Louisiana. We can just look back at the case of the Jena 6 a year and a half ago. In that case, six black boys were charged with attempted murder at the hands of a District Attorney who threatened that he could "take away [the students'] lives with a stroke of [his] pen." The threat followed black students protesting the hanging of a noose above a "white tree" at their school, with the charges coming after a racially-charged fight characterized by some as a school-yard fight, where the victim was white.

In the case of the Jena 6, there was an outcry from across the country, culminating in a march of more than 20,000 in the town of Jena. While leaders across the country decried the injustice in Jena, surprisingly, Jindal called those protesting "outside agitators" -- a phrase that echoed racist Southerners' response to Civil Rights-era organizing efforts.

While Governor Jindal claims to be a reformer and has his eyes on the White House, his silence in the Angola 3 case and his language around the case of the Jena 6 tell a different story. His idea of "reform" seems more like an empty slogan and catchy rhetoric than something he's willing to put into practice. Perhaps it's time to confront Jindal and ask him what his idea of reform looks like.

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

December 13, 2008

Report Blames Rumsfeld for Prisoner Abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo

December 12, 2008, NY Times
Report Blames Rumsfeld for Detainee Abuses
By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON — A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee said top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers.

The report was issued jointly by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the panel, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican. It represents the most thorough review by Congress to date of the origins of the abuse of prisoners in American military custody, and it explicitly rejects the Bush administration’s contention that tough interrogation methods have helped keep the country and its troops safe.

The report also rejected previous claims by Mr. Rumsfeld and others that Defense Department policies played no role in the harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 and in other episodes of abuse.

The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the report says, “was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own” but grew out of interrogation policies approved by Mr. Rumsfeld and other top officials, who “conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees.”

By the time of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, Mr. Rumsfeld had formally withdrawn approval for use of the harshest techniques, which he authorized in December 2002 and then ruled out a month later. But the report said that those methods, including the use of stress positions and forced nudity, continued to spread through the military detention system, and that their use “damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”

Most of the report, the product of an 18-month inquiry and interviews with more than 70 people by committee staff members, remains classified. But the 29-page summary offers the clearest timeline to date linking the acts of Mr. Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials to abusive treatment in the field.

A spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld, Keith Urbahn, said a dozen earlier investigations had found no such connection, and he dismissed the report as “unfounded allegations against those who have served our nation.”

“Because of irresponsible charges by a few individuals in positions of responsibility in Congress, millions of people around the world have been led to believe that the United States condones torture,” Mr. Urbahn said.

Committee staff members said the report was approved by a voice vote without dissent, but only 17 of the committee’s 25 members were present for the vote. Mr. McCain, who was tortured while he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, has been an outspoken opponent of harsh interrogation tactics, but some other Republicans have defended such methods as legal and necessary.

Many of the particulars in the summary were made public at hearings the committee held in June and September, including the fact that members of President Bush’s cabinet discussed specific interrogation methods in White House meetings.

The report documents how the military training program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, became a crucial source for interrogations as the Bush administration looked for tougher methods after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The SERE training was devised decades ago to give American military personnel a taste of the treatment they might face if taken prisoner by China, the Soviet Union or other cold war adversaries. “The techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in U.S. custody,” Mr. Levin said in a statement.

In his statement on Thursday, Mr. McCain called the adoption of SERE methods “inexcusable.”

The report found that senior Defense Department officials inquired about SERE techniques for prisoner interrogations as early as December 2001, when the war in Afghanistan was weeks old and American troops were just beginning to capture people suspected of being members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

In September, the committee released a December 2001 letter from the head of the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which runs the SERE program, to a deputy of William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon’s general counsel, saying the agency’s officials “stand ready to assist” Pentagon efforts at prisoner “exploitation.”

The committee’s report says little about the Central Intelligence Agency, except to note that that agency also drew on the SERE program for harsh methods it used in secret overseas jails for Qaeda suspects. The C.I.A. has said it used waterboarding, a method of near-drowning previously used in the Navy’s SERE program, on three captured terrorism suspects in 2002 and 2003.

Unlike the military, the C.I.A. is still permitted to use some coercive methods, though the precise rules are classified. The agency has said that it no longer uses waterboarding.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/washington/12detainee.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Donald%20Rumsfeld&st=cse
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2008/Detainees.121108.pdf

Posted by lois at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2008

PA: Sign of the Times: City workers transferred from libraries to prisons

Philadelphia Library Closings, News, the budget crisis
City workers transferred from libraries to prisons
City Paper
Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
posted by Isaiah Thompson

Here's the good news: most of the municipa Free Library guards working at doomed branch libraries will be able to retain employment with the city, which has placed them in open positions.

Here's the depressing news: Half of those positions are in the prison system.

According to data provided by the Mayor's Press Office, nine municipal guards have been placed elsewhere in the city; of those nine, five will become correctional officers in the prisons department.

The pay range for these officers' new jobs will be slightly higher: a maximum of $38,000 guarding prisons, up from $34,000 guarding libraries.

Still, there might be drawbacks. According to the job description, the correctional officers' work "involves regular exposure to unpredictable conditions and occasionally requires the expenditure of physical effort in the restraining and subduing of prisoners."

I'd rather guard a library myself.
http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2008/12/08/city-workers-transferred-from-libraries-to-prisons/

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

December 01, 2008

Nick Montos Oldest Prisoner in MA dies without receiving a commutation

Dear Boston Globe Editor:

Nick Montos, purportedly the oldest prisoner in Massachusetts, died yesterday (11/30/08) at the age of 92. He was incarcerated at MCI Norfolk. Since the summer of '08 fellow prisoners at Norfolk had been waging a "free Nick Montos campaign" to assist him in his petition for commutation of sentence so that he could live out his final days with his sister in Florida. Several hundred people from throughout Massachusetts signed petitions in support of Mr. Montos' bid for mercy in light of his failing health. The State failed to act soon enough to the formal request he filed in October 2008.
Although Mr. Montos did not achieve his goal of freedom to live and die with his family, he engendered lots of care and support from people on both sides of the wall. Further, his campaign may pave the way for much needed policy to enable frail and elderly prisoners who are not a danger to society to live out their final days in peace.

Nancy W. Ahmadifar, Ph.D.
Boston, MA 02114

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

November 23, 2008

Inspiring Rikers Teacher Runs Afoul of Jail's Rules

Inspiring Rikers Teacher Runs Afoul of Jail's Rules

By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: January 25, 2006

JEFF KAUFMAN, a teacher at the Rikers Island jail, has a reputation as a good educator who cares about his student inmates. In 2004, without the aid of computers, his students finished first in a citywide stock market game competition against more than 50 high schools.

Jeff Kaufman taught at Island Academy, the Rikers Island jail school, for eight years. After a complaint from the principal, he was removed from Rikers and reassigned despite praise from peers and inmates.

Elizabeth Lesher, who oversees the competition, said that at most schools, "students gather around computers, research stocks via Web sites such as Yahoo Finance, Market Watch or Nasdaq and enter their transactions online."

"The classroom environment at Rikers was very sparse," said Ms. Lesher, a director for the Foundation for Investor Education. "No attractive bulletin boards, no computers with Internet access and no industry specialists visited the classroom to provide investment ideas." Mr. Kaufman's students relied on the newspaper and his class lessons. That, she said, "speaks volumes about the teacher. Obviously I was very impressed."

In 2003, Mr. Kaufman's students won a citywide playwriting competition. In 2000 and 2001, he arranged for the student chorus at Louis Armstrong Middle School in Queens to visit Rikers at Christmas and perform for his students.

Don Murphy, a fellow teacher, said Mr. Kaufman became so popular during his eight years at the jail that in 2004 he was unopposed in the election for union representative at Island Academy, the Rikers school, which serves about 1,000 teenage inmates.

David Lee, an inmate serving time for assault, who earned a General Educational Development diploma with one of the highest scores ever at Rikers, said no teacher worked harder. Mr. Kaufman made special arrangements for Mr. Lee to take college correspondence courses, spent his lunch hours tutoring him and then proctored each of the three-hour exams from Excelsior College.

In July 2003, Mr. Kaufman was off for the summer, but made special trips to Rikers so Mr. Lee could take his next college exam. "All the teachers were on vacation and school didn't begin until September," Mr. Lee wrote in a letter sent to this reporter from Rikers. "But Kaufman comes here to Rikers not once, but twice just so that he could give me the test on a hot summer day. He didn't have to come; he could have stayed home with his wife and kids."

"Mr. Kaufman wasn't only a teacher or test proctor," said Mr. Lee. "He inspired me to aim higher in life."

But on Friday, Mr. Kaufman received notice from his principal that he was no longer permitted to teach at Rikers.

His crime? "Undue familiarity."

Mr. Kaufman had given Mr. Lee his home address so the two could correspond by mail and try to arrange for Mr. Lee to take another of those Excelsior College exams while the inmate was in solitary confinement in the summer of 2004.

There is no allegation of anything improper about the content of those letters. Copies of 20 letters provided to a reporter by Mr. Kaufman and Mr. Lee mainly talked about learning. In one, the inmate thanked the teacher for sending books to him in solitary ("the Bing") and wrote that he was spending so much time reading, up to 12 hours a day, that he was getting headaches. "I don't mind being here at the Bing but I want to be able to take the test," wrote Mr. Lee.

Mr. Kaufman wrote back urging patience, saying that he was trying to work out arrangements with correction officials. "If your head begins to hurt from reading, stop. Your body is telling you it's enough."

How did school and correction officials know that Mr. Kaufman had given out his home address? Mr. Kaufman told them.

On Sept. 12, 2005, the Rikers principal, Frank Dody, sent out a security memo, in which he spelled out in writing, for the first time, what was meant by the prohibition against undue familiarity: "All contact with current/former students outside of the school area (home, upstate facilities) in the form of letters or phone calls must be authorized by the principal."

Mr. Kaufman read the memo, requested authorization and showed the principal a recent letter from Mr. Lee. Within days Mr. Kaufman was yanked from Rikers and placed in a holding room in Brooklyn for teachers under investigation.

Mr. Kaufman says he thinks the real reason he was investigated was that he had testified at a City Council hearing in December 2004 about how bad the Rikers school's services were for inmates being released. "That really upset Frank Dody," Mr. Kaufman says. "He wouldn't talk to me for months. He's using this incident to get me."

Mr. Dody said he was upset, but that's not why there was an investigation. He said that even though he had been principal six years and had only recently spelled out the rules in writing, anyone who had been at Rikers as long as Mr. Kaufman knew you weren't supposed to give out your address. "Teachers here have to live by the corrections rules," Mr. Dody said. "While the rules don't always make sense, even to me, they're in place for a reason, to keep everyone safe."

Mr. Dody acknowledged that the letter Mr. Kaufman showed him had nothing compromising in it. "From my reading of it, I didn't really see anything of any nature that would raise my eyebrows," Mr. Dody said.

Thomas Antenten, a corrections spokesman, said that once the principal made the decision to refer the case, officials had to investigate. "We take undue familiarity very seriously," he said. "Giving an inmate a personal address could lead to deadly consequences."

Inmates like Mr. Lee say Rikers has lost a rare, good teacher. "It was a wrong decision to demote Kaufman," Mr. Lee said. "I'm the one who initiated contact in order to see what options I had in seeking a better education."

David Lee was a 16-year-old junior with a B+ average at Francis Lewis High in Queens in January 2002. He says he got mixed up with the wrong people, and was at a Flushing apartment when a fight broke out and a man was stabbed to death. Mr. Lee pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in return for an eight-year sentence and is being held at Rikers pending the trial of a co-defendant charged with murder.

Within four months at Rikers, Mr. Lee took the G.E.D. In the middle of the test, he says, a brawl broke out and someone threw a chair at him, bruising a rib. Still, he comes from a family of good students, and even bruised, he finished with a top score. His younger sister, Sonia, is an A student in her sophomore year at George Washington University, and travels from Washington every other week to visit her brother in jail, bringing books he requests.

At the Rikers school, Mr. Lee became a favorite. He showed Mr. Murphy, the computer teacher, how to use several desktop publishing programs. He was given a job doing janitorial work. With Mr. Kaufman's help, he took three college business courses and got A's. Neither he nor Mr. Kaufman knew what material was going to be on the tests and which chapters to focus on, so Mr. Lee read everything. "I would read 450, 500 pages of a textbook from cover to cover three to four times so I would truly understand," he said.

AS Mr. Lee was about to take his fourth college exam, in May 2004, he was caught with 17 packs of Newports. Smoking was banned at Rikers in 2003; cigarettes are considered contraband. Mr. Lee said he was offered a "slap on the wrist" if he'd give up his supplier but did not. For each pack of Newports, he was given 15 days in solitary, 9 months altogether in a 6-by-9-foot cell.

Mr. Antenten, the corrections spokesman, said he did not know the details of the case but added that Rikers makes no distinction between cigarettes and heroin when it comes to contraband. "It can lead to disputes between inmates that have bloody consequences," he said.

Mr. Lee said the teacher's letters helped keep him sane those nine months. "Not only did Kaufman help me pursue educational studies, but he offered moral support through the letters," he said.

The illegal letters sent to Mr. Kaufman's home are often quite moving. A July 28, 2004, letter begins with Mr. Lee thanking the teacher for the latest package of books. "You want to know what's funny," wrote Mr. Lee. "Before I was incarcerated, I never used to really read. I could honestly tell you that I read less than 10 books during my life outside and it was during my elementary school years. I wouldn't even bother to look at the cover of a book if I came across one.

"Now that I'm incarcerated, I treasure them. I'm not just talking about novels which enhance your vocabulary and reading comprehension but also self-help books. What I like about self-help books is that from reading just one significant quote which catches your eye, it could change your whole perception of life itself. From reading books you tap into the most brilliant minds of the present and past. In here they're like my most trusted friends."

At times, in the letters, Mr. Kaufman sounds like a stern father. Referring to the cigarette infraction that got Mr. Lee removed from the school and landed him in the Bing, Mr. Kaufman wrote, "We were all upset at your sudden leaving, but we have talked about consequences."

Mr. Kaufman, 50, said his background - he is a Cornell grad, a former police officer and lawyer for the indigent - makes him well-suited for teaching inmates. He will appeal the decision. "It's a place I feel I can be of most use to my students," he said.

In December, after spending more than two months in the Brooklyn holding room, Mr. Kaufman was sent to Queens Academy, where he is mentoring three new teachers. An Education Department spokesman, David Cantor, said Mr. Kaufman would soon be given a job teaching at an alternative high school.

Mr. Dody, the principal, said Mr. Kaufman's removal was solely a Correction Department decision.

But a November 2005 memo by the department's investigator, Capt. Matthew Boyd, indicates that the principal had a significant role. "Dr. Dody reports that he has determined that Mr. Kaufman's actions violate undue familiarity and I concur," the memo says.

Mr. Dody says he's not a doctor and the corrections memo is wrong.

Mr. Lee's younger sister, Sonia, wrote about his jail experiences in a term paper at George Washington that won a top a prize and was featured at a student lecture series. The paper includes the hardships her brother knew growing up, including the suicide of their mother, who suffered from manic depression. Sonia Lee plans to get a master's degree in public policy specializing in the prison system. Her prize paper calls for prisons that devote more resources to rehabilitation and education.

(http://www.ice-uft.org/newsNYT01-25-06.htm)

Posted by lois at 05:32 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2008

2 articles on closoing Pontiac IL prison-- Mistakes of black youth keep Pontiac prison in business Union fights closing, wants more paroles revoked

Mistakes of black youth keep Pontiac prison in business
Union fights closing, wants more paroles revoked
November 20, 2008 Chicago Sun Times
BY MARY MITCHELL marym@suntimes.com

Pardon me while I make this real plain. If you have worn your knees out trying to pray a hard-head off the corner, or if you suspect that the baggy pants and puffy jacket he is wearing are hiding a gun, maybe what I'm about to say will get through to him.

Pontiac prison in Downstate Illinois is eager to welcome him.

So much so, the union representing prison employees has been fighting every step of the way the state's plan to close the facility.

On Monday, Scott McCoy, Pontiac's mayor, went on record with a local reporter, blasting Gov. Blagojevich and Roger Walker, director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, for Chicago's alarming murder rates.

"What it comes down to for me is the state is releasing people when they violate their paroles, the state is not re-violating them, bringing them back into the system," McCoy told a local TV reporter.

McCoy pointed to the case involving William Balfour, a suspect in the murders of three members of Jennifer Hudson's family, as an example of the state's negligence.

"This person should have been behind bars. He was arrested this summer, and he should be behind bars, and that family would be alive today if it turns out he actually committed that crime," McCoy said.

Balfour has been questioned but has not been charged with the murders.

But he is in prison awaiting charges on a parole violation. Balfour served seven years in prison for a 1999 conviction for attempted murder and vehicular hijacking.

Allegedly, Balfour failed to meet his anger-management requirements stemming from that decade-old conviction.

On June 19, Balfour was arrested for possession of one gram of cocaine. A judge dismissed the drug charge. Balfour was given a break instead of a trip back Downstate.

So McCoy has a point.

But the debate over closing Pontiac has little to do with keeping felons like Balfour off the street.

This debate is really about this prison town keeping its jobs.

It doesn't matter that there are open beds at other facilities, and that there is a near-empty $140 million, seven-year-old prison in Downstate Thomson.

That's why three lawsuits have been filed by AFSCME, the union representing Pontiac's workers, in an attempt to stop Pontiac's closing.

On Tuesday, a judge in southern Illinois issued a temporary restraining order barring the state from transferring any more prisoners out of Pontiac.

These prisoners weren't being released into the street to wreak havoc. They were being transferred to other prisons with open beds so the state could close Pontiac -- one of the oldest prisons in the Department of Corrections.

Pontiac is slated to be closed Dec. 31, and about 500 employees will be moved to other prisons.

Trina Keller, wife of a correctional officer, told ABC-owned WLS-Channel 7 reporter Paul Meincke how difficult she expected things to get.

"[E]very day I ask how are we gonna handle this? Am I gonna have to declare bankruptcy?" she said.

Bereft of industry, Livingston County, where Pontiac is located, has depended on Chicago sending it its criminals for the last 137 years.

Think about that.

Generations in that area of the state have paid for their homes, sent their children to college and retired on the backs of criminals.

And let's face it.

Many of those criminals, too many in fact, are young black men from the South and West sides.

So if Downstate communities are desperate to keep the prison industry going, where is the real incentive for legislators to reduce recidivism?

The fight the union is putting up to keep Pontiac open (and before that Stateville) tells me there isn't any.

That would be like the liquor industry urging its patrons to stop drinking.

Even when Blagojevich argues that "statewide reforms have led to historic reductions in crimes by former offenders,'' and that is a savings for taxpayers, he is fighting a whirlwind.

Given the recent heinous crimes, it isn't difficult for prison towns to convince the public that the state has accomplished its goal by ignoring parole violators.

Young black men who fall into the prison trap are indeed fools.

They should have figured out by now that their poor choices have become the stuff that builds other people's dreams.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/mitchell/1290133,CST-NWS-mitch20.article
*********************************************************

Adams: Hudson 'link' a red herring in prison saga
By PAM ADAMS
Journal Star
Posted Nov 19, 2008 @ 11:48 PM

Prisons don't die easy.

Pontiac Mayor Scott McCoy has made the strongest accusations yet against a state prison system and a governor accustomed to strong accusations. The horrible situation in Pontiac goes much farther than the state's plan to close the century-old prison there.

Basically, according to Mayor McCoy, the murders of Jennifer Hudson's mother, brother and nephew are partly the governor's fault. Basically, according to the mayor, the Hudson family deaths could have been avoided. Basically, he said, state officials are deliberately allowing dangerous parole violators free to roam the streets, rather then returning them to prison, in a cynical scheme to make the governor's prison-reduction programs look successful.

According to the mayor, the person of interest in the Hudson family tragedy is one of those dangerous parole violators, thus some of the blame for their deaths should land at the governor's doorstep. But the governor was too concerned about his public face to consider the public's safety. With the prison population down, the state not only saves money but state officials can use the alleged reductions as the logic for closing a prison.

Bottom line, Mayor McCoy explained during a much-hyped press conference earlier this week, no one is safe.

The situation, he suggested, is what put the Hudson family in harm's way and, as he told reporters, is "putting my family and every one of your families in harm's way."

The implication is, of course, that if Pontiac prison remains open we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Pontiac residents and their supporters rallied again this week in Springfield. The mayor is scheduled to speak at a House committee hearing today. Though a Johnson County judge has temporarily halted the transfer of Pontiac inmates prior to the scheduled closing later this year, a few other judges have yet to weigh in on lawsuits filed to save the prison.

You can't blame a town for fighting to save its second-largest employer. You can't blame Pontiac for being suspicious of the Department of Corrections' logic for closing Pontiac Correctional Center, coming as suddenly as it did after the change of mind about closing Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet.

The mayor is right when he says closing Pontiac prison is a lot bigger than Pontiac. There may be cause for concern regarding the record-setting reductions in the number of Cook County parole violators returned to prison since 2002. But his data should have undergone a lot more scrutiny before he threw in the Hudson family as a trump card in a desperate bid to keep Pontiac open.

William Balfour, the parole violator who piqued the mayor's interest, remains only a "person of interest," not a suspect in the Hudson deaths. The mayor's numbers on parole violations in Cook County don't separate violent offenders from the non-violent ones who contributed to the bulk of the incarceration boom, nor do they offer firm evidence that parole violators are responsible for Chicago's rising murder rate. Nor do they make mention of the judicial role in revoking parole.

Coincidentally, a day after the mayor's press conference, Illinois State Police reported crime, from murder to theft, dropped statewide again last year, continuing a 13-year slide.

Mayor McCoy admitted he didn't know much about recidivism rates - that is, the number of felons who return to prison within a year of their release. "And if it wasn't for the Hudson case, I probably wouldn't have looked at this as much as I'm doing."

If he keeps looking, he'll realize Pontiac's rural pain is Chicago's inner-city misery. Inner cities and rural communities share similar problems - high unemployment rates, as well as poor access to decent, affordable housing, health care, transportation and grocery stores.

The jobs and the families McCoy is trying to protect are intimately linked to the jobs and the families who weren't helped when a confluence of interests conflated incarceration into economic growth beginning 30 years ago, not to the tragic deaths of a celebrity's relatives.

Pam Adams is a columnist with the Journal Star.
http://www.pjstar.com/opinions/x2067099653/Adams-Hudson-link-a-red-herring-i
n-prison-saga

Posted by lois at 09:44 PM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2008

More children going hungry in U.S.

More children going hungry in U.S.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Staff Writer

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

WASHINGTON - Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year's sharp economic downturn, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department's annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than 50 percent above the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who didn't have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.

Almost a third of those, 11.9 million adults and children, went hungry at some point. That figure has grown by more than 40 percent since 2000. The government says these people suffered a substantial disruption in their food supply at some point and classifies them as having "very low food security." Until the government rewrote its definitions two years ago, this group was described as having "food insecurity with hunger."

The findings should increase pressure to meet President-elect Barack Obama's campaign pledge to expand food aid and end childhood hunger by 2015, said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

He predicted the 2008 numbers will show even more hunger because of the sharp economic downturn this year.

"There's every reason to think the increases in the number of hungry people will be very, very large based on the increased demand we're seeing this year at food stamp agencies, emergency kitchens, Women, Infants and Children clinics, really across the entire social service support structure," said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

Weill said the figures show that economic growth during the first seven years of the Bush administration didn't reach the poorest and hungriest people. "The people in the deepest poverty are suffering the most," Weill said.

The number of adults and children with "low food security" - those who avoided substantial food disruptions but still struggled to eat - fell slightly since 2000, from 24.7 million to 24.3 million. The government said these people have several ways of coping - eating less varied diets, obtaining food from emergency kitchens or community food charities, or participating in federal aid programs.

like food stamps, the school lunch program or the Women, Infants and Children program.

Among other findings:

-The families with the highest rates of food insecurity were headed by single mothers (30.2 percent), black households (22.2 percent), Hispanic households (20.1 percent), and households with incomes below the official poverty line (37.7 percent).

-States with families reporting the highest prevalence of food insecurity during 2005-2007 were Mississippi (17.4 percent), New Mexico (15 percent), Texas (14.8 percent) and Arkansas (14.4 percent).

-The highest growth in food insecurity over the last 9 years came in Alaska and Iowa, both of which saw a 3.7 percent increase in families who struggled to eat adequately or had substantial food disruptions.

---

On the Net:

Report: http://ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR66/ERR66.pdf

Posted by lois at 10:45 AM | Comments (0)

MS: Southern Poverty Law Center Calls for Closing Mississippi Youth Prison

11/17/2008
SPLC Calls for Closing of Mississippi Youth Prison

The Southern Poverty Law Center today called for the state of Mississippi to abandon the use of large youth prisons following a report showing that after almost four years, the state's Oakley Training School has made virtually no progress in ensuring that children held at the prison are safe and receiving effective suicide prevention and mental health treatment.

"It is time for Mississippi to face the facts — large training schools that warehouse children do not work," said Bear Atwood, director of the SPLC's Mississippi Youth Justice Project. "They are an expensive and ineffective relic of the past. We must stop wasting the taxpayers' money and actually start helping these youths."

The state spends $300 a day per child at Oakley, where approximately 76 percent of the children are non-violent offenders. A substantial number of these children could safely go home and receive treatment in their community at a cost of about $23 a day — a more efficient use of tax dollars during the current economic downturn. The remaining youths at Oakley could go to smaller, regional facilities, Atwood said.

"Mississippi's youth court judges should be aware that children are not getting the help they desperately need when they are sent to Oakley," Atwood said.

Nearly four years ago, Mississippi agreed to stop the abuse and neglect of children detained at its youth prisons. The latest report by court monitors was filed Nov. 12. They inspected Oakley to determine if the state is meeting the conditions of a consent decree with the Department of Justice.

The report found the state is in "substantial compliance" with only 16 percent of the consent decree's provisions almost four years after the agreement. This is a 1 percent increase since March 2008. It also found the prison has been stagnant on 69 percent of the provisions — showing neither progress nor decline.

The report noted that Oakley still does not have adequate staff to monitor and supervise its residents. The report noted the staff is "creating an unsafe environment, and encourages a culture in which youth become afraid and instinctively resort to violence."

Oakley is in compliance with only 22 percent of the suicide prevention provisions. It found that "youth are not being appropriately identified at risk of suicide" and that treatment plans for suicidal youths are not being developed. The report also noted it is unacceptable that the director of program services described the daily assessments of suicidal youths as a "work in progress."

Oakley is in compliance with only 4 percent of the provisions for mental health care and rehabilitative services. The monitor said that the mental health staff is not aware of what occurs in psychiatric treatment, and individual behavior modification plans are not being written. Also, not all of the youths requiring individual therapy are receiving it.

Only 70 percent of the youths referred to substance abuse groups are receiving treatment, the report found.

Four months after the last inspection of Oakley, it remains in a state of disrepair. The report found that the "cottages are in such disrepair that if they cannot be repaired to proper specifications, they should be demolished."

The monitors toured the facility during the last week of September and into early October. Their previous visit was in early June. This was the first monitors' report since the closing of the Columbia Training School, which came in response to a lawsuit filed by the SPLC.

The consent decree with the Department of Justice lawsuit came after a 2003 department study that found shockingly inhumane conditions at Oakley. In addition to being hog-tied and left for days in pitch-black cells, children ages 10 to 17 were sometimes sprayed with chemicals during mandatory exercises and forced to eat their own vomit. Others were forced to run with automobile tires around their necks or mattresses on their backs.
http://www.splcenter.org/legal/news/article.jsp?site_area=1&aid=347

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

November 12, 2008

NY Cuts Funding for Treatment Programs Aimed at People Who Have Been Incarcerated

N.Y. Cuts Funding for Treatment Programs Aimed at Ex-Offenders
November 10, 2008

Massive state budget cuts are leaving some New York ex-convicts without addiction treatment, the New York Times reported Nov. 7.

The state Division of Parole will be ending its drug-treatment programs at the end of November. In addition, the Department of Corrections did not renew an annual contract with prominent drug-treatment facility, Stay'n Out that aids ex-convicts in their transition from prison to communities. A total of $8.6 million in contracts has been cut.

A spokesperson said that the corrections department will continue funding a drug-treatment program inside prisons, which serves 11,000 inmates, costing the state $20 million a year – the more "cost effective" alternative, according to Kriss.

"It is a panicky response," said Harry K. Wexler, who conducts research for the National Development and Research Institutes, a New York-based nonprofit. "They are cutting their nose off to spite their face." Wexler's research suggests that community drug-treatment programs halve re-arrest and re-incarceration rates over five years.

The state's Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services will receive an additional $2 million for parolees to offset the cuts, said Matt Anderson, a spokesman for the state's Division of the Budget. "With the state facing record budget deficits, the unfortunate reality is that there will be many worthy programs with laudable goals that will experience reductions in funding," he said.

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2008/ny-cuts-funding-for.html?log-event=sp2f-view-item&nid=46318312&print=t

Posted by lois at 10:15 AM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2008

Bureau of Prisons Institutes Revised Policy on Shackling Pregnant Women

Feminist Daily News Wire
October 27, 2008
Bureau of Prisons Institutes Revised Policy on Pregnant Inmates

The Bureau of Prisons recently announced a policy change that bans shackling of pregnant federal prison inmates except in extreme circumstances. According to the ACLU's Blog of Rights. Past policy allowed for shackling pregnant women during labor and delivery, a practice that poses significant health risks to pregnant inmates.

The new policy applies only to federal prisons. Forty-seven states currently do not prohibit shackling pregnant women and US Immigrant and Customs Enforcement refuses to prohibit putting restraints on the pregnant immigrant women they detain, according to the ACLU. A 2006 New York Times article that focused on state prison policies noted that 23 state corrections departments expressly allow pregnant women to be restrained during labor. (See articles below)

Media Resources: ACLU Blog of Rights 10/20/2008, The New York Times 3/2/2008
Bureau of Prisons Revises Policy on Shackling of Pregnant Inmates
(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)
posted 10-20-08
The ACLU welcomes the Bureau of Prisons’ recent policy change barring the shackling of pregnant inmates in federal prisons in all but the most extreme circumstances.

This new policy represents a sea change in the United States, where the shackling of pregnant women during transport, labor, and even delivery has long been routine in jails and prisons. Currently, only California, Illinois, and Vermont have enacted state laws restricting the practice of shackling pregnant women. By contrast, international human rights bodies have repeatedly expressed concern about policies that permit shackling of pregnant women.

Such reform is long overdue: As the stories from Amnesty International’s 1999 report, “Not Part of My Sentence”: Violations of the Human Rights of Women in Custody” make clear, shackling is not only dangerous and inhumane, but also poses serious and unnecessary risks to the wellbeing of the mother as well as her child. Warnice Robinson, who was imprisoned for shoplifting, explains,

“Because I was shackled to the bed, they couldn’t remove the lower part of the bed for the delivery, and they couldn’t put my feet in the stirrups. My feet were still shackled together, and I couldn’t get my legs apart. The doctor called for the officer, but the officer had gone down the hall. No one else could unlock the shackles, and my baby was coming but I couldn’t open my legs.”

Maria Jones, who was incarcerated for violating drug laws, tells the story of having labor induced two weeks prior to her due date, but being “kept in shackles, leaving 18 inches between her ankles, and told to pace the hallway for several hours. ‘It was so humiliating. My ankles were raw,’ she said. ‘I had shackles on up until the baby was coming out and then they took them off for me to push…It was unbelievable. Like I was going to go anywhere.’”

Of course, shackling is just one of the many dangerous and inhumane practices that pregnant women face in prison. Far too many women lack access to adequate prenatal care or even adequate drinking water, and in nearly all facilities throughout the country newborns are almost instantly separated from their mothers — a practice that experts stress denies children crucial bonding time with their mothers.

The new policy represents a huge victory for the thousands of women incarcerated in federal prisons throughout the country — a victory hard won by groups like The Rebecca Project for Human Rights and other organizations that have advocated for this change.

But this is only the beginning. In 47 states there is no legislation to restrict the practice of shackling pregnant women; state and local prisons are not subject to the new federal policy. And the U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which increasingly detains immigrant women who have never committed a crime, has refused to specifically end the use of restraints on pregnant women.

In the U.S., where one in 100 people is behind bars and where women represent the fastest growing segment of the incarcerated population (their numbers have increased at nearly double the rate of men since 1985), shackling continues to affect thousands of women each year.

The ACLU has responded to The Rebecca Project’s call for the formation of an Anti-Shackling Coalition to work together to end the practice of shackling incarcerated mothers during transport, labor, delivery and post-delivery in state prisons and jails and all immigration facilities. Stay tuned and prepare to call your representatives.

For key findings from Amnesty International’s 2005 follow-up report regarding the use of restraints on pregnant women in custody, click here; the full report appears here.

Amy Fettig, ACLU National Prison Project, Diana Kasdan, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, Lenora Lapidus, ACLU Women’s Rights Project, Vania Leveille, ACLU Washington Legislative Office
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http://blog.aclu.org/2008/10/20/bureau-of-prisons-revises-policy-on-shackling-of-pregnant-inmates/
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March 2, 2006
Prisons Often Shackle Pregnant Inmates in Labor
By ADAM LIPTAK

Shawanna Nelson, a prisoner at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Ark., had been in labor for more than 12 hours when she arrived at Newport Hospital on Sept. 20, 2003. Ms. Nelson, whose legs were shackled together and who had been given nothing stronger than Tylenol all day, begged, according to court papers, to have the shackles removed.

Though her doctor and two nurses joined in the request, her lawsuit says, the guard in charge of her refused.

"She was shackled all through labor," said Ms. Nelson's lawyer, Cathleen V. Compton. "The doctor who was delivering the baby made them remove the shackles for the actual delivery at the very end."

Despite sporadic complaints and occasional lawsuits, the practice of shackling prisoners in labor continues to be relatively common, state legislators and a human rights group said. Only two states, California and Illinois, have laws forbidding the practice.

The New York Legislature is considering a similar bill. Ms. Nelson's suit, which seeks to ban the use of restraints on Arkansas prisoners during labor and delivery, is to be tried in Little Rock this spring.

The California law, which came into force in January, was prompted by widespread problems, said Sally J. Lieber, a Democratic assemblywoman from Mountain View.

"We found this was going on in some institutions in California and all over the United States," Ms. Lieber said. "It presents risks not only for the inmate giving birth, but also for the infant."

Corrections officials say they must strike a balance between security and the well-being of the pregnant woman and her child.

"Though these are pregnant women," said Dina Tyler, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, "they are still convicted felons, and sometimes violent in nature. There have been instances when we've had a female inmate try to hurt hospital staff during delivery."

Dee Ann Newell, who has taught classes in prenatal care and parenting for female prisoners in Arkansas for 15 years, said she found the practice of shackling women in labor appalling.

"If you have ever seen a woman have a baby," Ms. Newell said, "you know we squirm. We move around."

Twenty-three state corrections departments, along with the federal Bureau of Prisons, have policies that expressly allow restraints during labor, according to a report by Amnesty International U.S.A. on Wednesday.

The corrections departments of five states, including Connecticut, and the District of Columbia, the report found, prohibit the practice. The remaining states do not have laws or formal policies, although some corrections departments told the group that they did not use restraints as a matter of informal practice.

Many states justify restraints because the prisoners remain escape risks, though there have apparently been no instances of escape attempts by women in labor.

"You can't convince me that it's ever really happened," Ms. Newell said. "You certainly wouldn't get far."

About 5 percent of female prisoners arrive pregnant, according to a 1999 report by the Justice Department. The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group, estimates that 40,000 women are admitted to the nation's prisons each year, suggesting that 2,000 babies are born to American prisoners annually.

Illinois enacted the first law forbidding some restraints during labor, in 2000. "Under no circumstances," it says, "may leg irons or shackles or waist shackles be used on any pregnant female prisoner who is in labor."

Before that, said Gail T. Smith, the executive director of Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers, the standard practice was to chain the prisoner to a hospital bed. "What was common," Ms. Smith said, "was one wrist and one ankle."

The California law prohibits shackling prisoners by the wrists or ankles during labor, delivery and recovery. Until recently, prisoners from the Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, Calif., were routinely shackled to their beds after giving birth at the nearby Madera Community Hospital.

"These women are mostly in for minor crimes and don't pose a flight risk," said Ms. Lieber, who met with 120 pregnant women at the prison in August. "Madera Community Hospital is in one of the most remote parts of California. It's hard to walk to a filling station, much less a bus stop."

Washington State has also forbidden the use of shackles during labor, though as a matter of corrections department policy rather than law. Pamela Simpson, a California nurse, described in an e-mail message to Ms. Lieber the practice in Washington before the policy was changed.

"Here this young woman was in active labor," Ms. Simpson wrote, "handcuffed to the armed guard, wearing shackles, in her orange outfit that was dripping wet with amniotic fluid. Her age: 15!"

Arkansas has resisted an outright ban on restraints, though Ms. Nelson's case may change that.

Ms. Nelson was serving time for identity fraud and writing bad checks when she gave birth at age 30. She weighed a little more than 100 pounds, and her baby, it turned out, weighed nine and a half pounds.

The experience of giving birth without anesthesia while largely immobilized has left her with lasting back pain and damage to her sciatic nerve, according to her lawsuit against prison officials and a private company, Correctional Medical Services.

Ms. Nelson, now known as Shawanna Lumsey, and lawyers for the defendants did not respond to requests for comment. In court papers, the defendants denied that they had caused any harm to Ms. Nelson.

Partly as a consequence of Ms. Nelson's suit, Arkansas has started using softer, more flexible nylon restraints for prisoners deemed to be security risks. They are removed, Ms. Tyler said, during the actual delivery.

Ms. Newell considers that slight progress for the approximately 50 women in Arkansas prisons and jails who give birth each year.

"Childbirth should be a sacred event," said Ms. Newell, a senior justice fellow at the Soros Foundation. "Just because they're prisoners doesn't mean they shouldn't get the usual care."

Dawn H., an Arkansas prisoner who delivered a baby in custody in 2002, said her guard wanted to shackle her to the bed.

"Fortunately," she said, "I had a very wonderful nurse who told the guard I was in her care. I was her patient. And no one was going to shackle me." (She asked that her full name not be used because her employer did not know about her imprisonment for passing bad checks.)

The Wisconsin Corrections Department has also recently changed its approach, after a state newspaper, The Post-Crescent of Appleton, reported on the issue in January. The department said it would end the use of restraints during labor, delivery and recovery.

Merica Erato, serving time for negligent homicide after a car accident, went through labor with chains around her ankles in Fond du Lac, Wis., in May, her husband, Steve, said in an interview.

"It is unbelievable that in this day and age a child is born to a woman in shackles," Mr. Erato said. "It sounds like something from slavery 200 years ago."

In most cases, people who have studied the issue said, women are shackled because prison rules are unthinkingly exported to a hospital setting.

"This is the perfect example of rule-following at the expense of common sense," said William F. Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A. "It's almost as stupid as shackling someone in a coma."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/national/02shackles.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

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

October 25, 2008

NY youth center staffed at $1.7M cost, but no kids

NY youth center staffed at $1.7M cost, but no kids
Associated Press - October 24, 2008 1:05 PM ET

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) - New York, buffeted by the economic meltdown and facing billions in deficits, is spending $1.7 million in taxpayer money to keep open and staff a western New York juvenile detention facility that has no residents.

The Great Valley Residential Center in Cattaraugus County was chosen for closure by the Office of Children and Family Services in January of this year, but was saved by state lawmakers during budget negotiations in April.

OCFS officials say there are fewer youth now in the state system - nearly 500 empty beds - as the agency moves from a residential model toward a more community-based approach. An OCFS official described the situation at Great Valley as "absurd," blaming lawmakers and union leaders for the incredulous circumstances.

"In these trying times, with the state faced with its budget issues, it's absolutely crazy to have to keep open a facility that is empty," said Edward Borges, an OCFS spokesman.

Meanwhile, lawmakers and union leaders pin the fault on OCFS, accusing Commissioner Gladys Carrion of charging ahead with her conversion plans even as a Gov. David Paterson's Task Force on Transforming New York's Juvenile Justice System plots how to develop an overall plan to change the system.

"We agree there are some youths who can succeed in community programs but you don't do a blanket emptying of these facilities so you can shut them down as a cost savings," said Darcy Wells, director of public affairs for the Public Employees Federation, a union that represents 58,000 state workers, including OCFS teachers, instructors and counselors. "We think she is doing a disservice to the youth and she's not allowing our members to do their jobs."

"It is a case of blatant mismanagement on the part of the agency," said state Sen. Catharine Young, a Republican who led the effort to protect Great Valley, which is in her district.

"OCFS has deliberately and systematically stripped these kids from the Great Valley facility to fulfill its anti-upstate New York agenda," Young said. "Right now, there are at least 17 youth from the Western New York region who are being shipped around the state. They could be receiving services near their homes in Cattaraugus County."

A report in 2007 showed that under the present residential system, 80% of the children entering the state's juvenile justice system return or go to prison within three years of their release. As a result, OCFS has been moving aggressively toward more community-based alternatives and keeping youth closer to their homes and families, more than 70% of which it says are from the New York City area.

Missouri, which has become a national model for the community-based approach, has cut its recidivism rate to 30%. But that doesn't mean the same strategy will work in New York, Young said.

"Evidence is needed in order to determine the best programs. These kids deserve to receive treatment based on fact, not fiction," Young said.

In January, OCFS announced it would close six underused residential youth facilities across the state by January 2009 as part of its restructuring, a move that also would save the state $16 million a year.

Besides Great Valley, targeted for closing were the Adirondack Wilderness Challenge in Clinton County; Auburn Residential Center in Cayuga County; Brace Residential Center in Delaware County; Gloversville Group Home in Fulton County; and the Pyramid Reception Center in The Bronx.

Backed by PEF, legislators kept open the Bronx reception center, the state's primary processing point for male residents. Auburn and Gloversville have closed and their staff was transferred to other OCFS facilities or state agencies, Borges said.

The Adirondack Challenge program - a four-month residential and outdoor experiential education program - was taken over by the Adirondack Residential Center. However, the 11 staffers assigned to the program are now working at the Adirondack center and have thus far declined voluntary reassignment, Borges said.

The situation is the same at Brace, empty but with 15 staffers still holding out and filling their time doing inventory, cleaning and winter preparations, Borges said.

Borges said state law required OCFS to give workers 12 months notice before shuttering a facility. That deadline is up Jan. 11, 2009. Borges said the agency will soon be sending out letters to workers reminding them that after that date OCFS will reassign them.

Borges said Great Valley, which has 25 beds, is empty because of the success of the community-based approach. The facility has a staff of 31.

"Everyone keeps saying we are hiding the kids," he said. "We don't have the kids to hide. We aren't getting them."

As of Oct. 20, there were 1,003 youth in the state system, leaving 493 empty beds, Borges said. OCFS has reduced its size by nearly 600 beds since 2002. OCFS estimates that each empty bed costs taxpayers around $200,000 per year. Young, however, said the actual cost is about one-fifth of that figure.

"If the state truly is looking to save money, they would keep Great Valley open. Because it is a 25-bed or less facility, it qualifies for federal funding, which pays half the cost of treatment. It would cut our expenses dramatically," Young said.

Assemblyman Joe Giglio, R-Gowanda, also has defended the decision to keep Great Valley open. The state has invested heavily in recent years in sewer and water projects and other upgrades at the facility. Additionally, it is 1 of only two facilities serving the eight-country Region 1 area, he said.
http://www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=9234140&ClientType=Printable

Posted by lois at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)

NY Times Editorial: The California Prison Disaster

October 25, 2008
The California Prison Disaster
Editorial NY Times

The mass imprisonment philosophy that has packed prisons and sent corrections costs through the roof around the country has hit especially hard in California, which has the largest prison population, the highest recidivism rate and a prison budget raging out of control.

According to a new federally backed study conducted at the University of California, Irvine, the state’s corrections costs have grown by about 50 percent in less than a decade and now account for about 10 percent of state spending — nearly the same amount as higher education. The costs could rise substantially given that a federal lawsuit may require the state to spend $8 billion to bring the prison system’s woefully inadequate medical services up to constitutional standards.

The solution for California is to shrink its vastly overcrowded prison system. To do so, it would need to move away from mandatory sentencing laws that have proved to be disastrous across the country — locking up more people than protecting public safety requires.

In addition, the state also has perhaps the most counterproductive and ill-conceived parole system in the United States. More people are sent to prison in California by parole officers than by the courts. In addition, about 66 percent of California’s parolees land back in prison after three years, compared with about 40 percent nationally. Four in 10 are sent back for technical violations like missed appointments or failed drug tests.

Later this year, the state is expected to begin testing a new system that redirects the lowest-risk drug addicts to treatment. But that will only work if the state and the counties dramatically expand treatment slots.

The heart of the problem is that California’s parole system is simply too big. Most states keep dangerous people behind bars or reserve parole supervision for the most serious offenders. California puts virtually everyone on parole, typically for three years.

Under this setup, about 80 percent of the parolees have fewer than two 15-minute meetings with a parole officer per month. That might be adequate for low-risk offenders, but it’s clearly too little time for serious offenders who present a risk to public safety.

A good first step would be to place fewer people on parole. The second step would be to reserve the most intensive supervision for offenders who present the greatest risk.

State lawmakers, some of whom are fearful of being seen as soft on crime, have failed to make perfectly reasonable sentencing modifications and other changes that the prisons desperately need. Unless they muster some courage soon, Californians will find themselves swamped by prison costs and unable to afford just about anything else.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/opinion/25sat1.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2008

LAPD officers more likely to stop, search and arrest minorities than whites, report says

LAPD officers more likely to stop, search and arrest minorities than whites, report says
The report by a Yale professor also found that LAPD officers were less likely to find weapons or drugs on blacks or Latinos than whites when they frisked them or subjected them to consensual searches.
By Andrew Blankstein
From the Los Angeles Times
October 21, 2008

Los Angeles police officers are far more likely to stop, search and arrest minorities than they are whites -- even after statistics were adjusted for high- and low-crime areas -- according to a nongovernmental report released Monday.

The report by Yale Law School professor Ian Ayres for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California found that once stopped, African Americans were 29% more likely to be arrested than whites. Latinos were 32% more likely to be arrested in an identical category.

The percentages were far higher when minorities were stopped on the street or ordered out of their vehicles (blacks 166% and Latinos 132% more often than whites), frisked (blacks 127% and Latinos 43% more often than whites) or subject to nonconsensual searches (blacks 81% and Latinos 77% more often than whites).

At the same time, the report found that LAPD officers were less likely to find weapons or drugs on blacks or Latinos than whites when they frisked them or subjected them to consensual searches.

Police Chief William J. Bratton said he strongly disagreed with the report's findings. Among other criticisms, Bratton said the study was flawed because it used data collected four years ago and did not reflect the department's current practices.

Tim Sands, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, also took issue with the report, calling it a misguided attempt to read the minds of all officers during traffic stops.

"Dr. Ayres' conclusions completely misread situations that are not nearly as black and white as he would want them to be," Sands said. "It's an exercise that might work on a spreadsheet at Yale but doesn't work on the streets of Los Angeles."

Union officials noted that the LAPD is a "majority minority" department, mirroring the demographic trends of Los Angeles, and that most officers work in pairs that represent more than one race.

They also pointed out that traffic stops often start at a distance, where race "is unknown to the officers."

But the LAPD acknowledged it needed to adjust its policies after it was reported in The Times that the department found that none of the 320 complaints of racial profiling against its officers had merit. That marked six consecutive years that all allegations of racial profiling against LAPD officers had been dismissed.

The Los Angeles Police Commission voted in August to approve changes to training that would allow officers to be more sensitive to the issue and to more rigorously investigate complaints.

Commissioners also sought to redefine racial profiling to include claims based on race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

In the report, Ayres recommended that the inspector general be given oversight of investigations into racial profiling complaints. It also urged the LAPD to further overhaul the complaint process, as well as the implementation of an early-warning system to determine if officers were engaging in racial profiling.

The report found that complaints of racial profiling should trigger mandatory analysis of the patterns of the officer, unit or station so that supervisors could determine if extra training was necessary.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-aclu21-2008oct21,0,4850652.story

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

October 20, 2008

MS: Assistant DA hleps to reduce jail overcrowding

ADA helps Rankin jail reduce crowding
Clarion-Ledger
October 20, 2008
BRANDON — The number of inmates at Rankin County's jail last week hit 380 - 71 inmates above the jail's suggested 309 capacity.

But that number could have been higher if not for the county's new assistant district attorney, Dan Duggan, who so far this year has shifted 125 of the county's oldest cases into plea bargains or verdicts. That's 125 fewer people filling the jail at taxpayers' expense.

And it's good news to county officials who worry the jail's $7 million, 96-bed expansion - which will be completed early next year - won't be empty long.

"It'll probably be full the first 10 minutes it opens," quipped District 2 Supervisor Wood Brown.

The criminal histories of the 125 inmates run the gamut, but what they have in common is their lengthy stays - 400 days, 600 days, 800 days and even 1,300 days - in what should be short-term lockup.

One is sex offender Devin Groover, who, after nearly four years of delays, pleaded guilty in April. A requested mental evaluation took two years to come through.

Groover was sentenced to 15 years in prison with 10 years suspended and five to serve. Since the 21-year-old had been in the county jail so long, he is serving only one year inside the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility. He will be released in June 2009.

Groover's case was one of the first Duggan addressed. He is now a poster child of sorts in Duggan's mind, representing the kind of inmate that shouldn't be taking up space in the county jail.

"We've moved these guys through the system by speeding up mental evaluations, reducing bonds and IDing those we can plea bargain with," said Duggan, a 54-year-old former public defender and Houston police officer.

Added Duggan: "We've also prioritized who we want in jail."

The jail should not be for first-time offenders or those caught using drugs, he said. It's meant as a temporary holding space for hardened, violent offenders before they are turned over to the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

In recent years, however, the jail has morphed into an extended-stay facility, which puts pressure on jail personnel to find space to squeeze in an ever-growing inmate population that waits on backlogged courts.

"You get inmates in here who are stressed and wondering about their situation, and the longer they are here the bolder they get," Jail Administrator Capt. Eddie Thompson said. "It's a safety issue more than anything else."

One of the things Rankin-Madison District Attorney Michael Guest first saw bogging down the system was the waiting list for Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield, which performs all of the state's mental evaluations.

"What we discovered is that there was an 18-month waiting period," Guest said. "So, we met with the judges and told them the current system wasn't working."

Guest brokered a deal to have a Flowood psychologist - already contracted by the state to perform mental evaluations - to take on Madison and Rankin counties' evaluations. Now, mental evaluations take two weeks at most.

Rankin County Circuit Court judges William Chapman and Samac Richardson could not be reached for comment.

Besides problems with crowding, too many inmates at the jail also drive up the county's medical costs.

"When you house some of these guys in excess of 400 days, some of them are going to get sick," Rankin County Sheriff Ronnie Pennington said. "And that means we have to drive them to the hospital. Sometimes it can last three to four days. It costs money, and there is nothing we can do about it."

Pennington said some inmates face serious illnesses like cancer, hepatitis C and diabetes.

"To house a healthy inmate is costly enough, but to take care of an inmate's cancer treatments, for example, is very costly," Duggan said. "The county has to take on those payments until we move them over to MDOC, for example. Then it becomes the state's problem. That's our goal."

Duggan is paid $80,000 and is one of nine ADAs in the district attorney's office.

Rankin County public defender Aafram Sellers said he appreciates what the DA's office is doing.

"I've had cases low on the docket, and they've called to see if we could work it out with a plea or a bond reduction," he said. "It's great for both sides. There's no point holding some of these guys for months on end when we can reduce a bond or work out a plea agreement and let them rehabilitate on the outside."

In Hinds County, the district attorney's office constantly battles inmate populations at the county's 594-capacity jail. But District Attorney Robert Schuler Smith does not have an attorney assigned to do what Duggan does.

"I think all assistant district attorneys should do what he does and mine do," Smith said. He points out that his office in the last year has shifted exponentially more inmates than Rankin's 125.

The latest U.S. Bureau statistics put Hinds County's population at about 250,000. Rankin County is hovering around 138,000 people - and growing.

The growing population is why Rankin will never be able to fully eradicate the situation. Duggan and Guest can only tamp it down, but Brown said he has a long-term solution for convicted criminals.

"Why not start a penal farm like the one in Hinds County?" Brown said. "There's plenty of work to be done in the county with painting and litter. We have the land available to do it too. Let's put these inmates to work."

Although Pennington has said he is on board with the farm, the idea has gained little traction. In the meantime, inmates awaiting sentencing have become admirers of Duggan's work.

"I get letters from them now asking for us to look at their case," he said. "The ones that are eligible we review, but there are plenty of serious offenders we have to ignore. But it's really something. These guys don't want to be in there any longer than they have to. Neither do we."
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20081020/NEWS/810200339/1001/news

Posted by lois at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

October 19, 2008

CA: Phone Companies Rip Off Prisoners Families

Phone Companies Rip Off Inmate Families
Phone Rates from Inside Jail Are Unregulated

By Charles Montaldo, About.com

An Investigation by the Associated Press in California has found that telephone companies and county governments have been bilking millions of dollars from the families of jail and prison inmates by charging high rates for collect calls home.

Those who are incarcerated in jail or prison in California cannot make direct calls outside, but must make collect calls. Rates for these calls are not regulated, therefore telephone companies can charge whatever rates they want.

According to the AP investigation, collect calls made from California jails are charged an average of seven times as much as the same call would be charged if made from a public pay phone. These charges total about $120 million a year on the phone bills of families and friends of county jail inmates.

The contracts for providing telephone services from county jails is so lucrative that telephone companies offer counties huge signing bonuses to let become their provider. Los Angeles County was paid $17 million in signing bonuses, the AP report said.

'Obscene' Telephone Rates
The counties get about half of the revenue from the calls, while the telephone companies keep the rest. The Associated Press investigation found that California counties received more than $303 million over the past five years in revenues from collect calls, calling cards and signing bonuses.

The higher charges are necessary, telephone companies claim, because jail telephone systems require specialized equipment and security features such as call blocking and monitoring.

"It's a gouging of family members, those who have never committed a crime," said Charles Carbone, a lawyer with Prison Focus, a prisoner rights group in San Francisco.

"It's obscene. It's a tax on a population that can't afford it," said Kay Perry, coordinator of the Equitable Telephone Campaign, which is lobbying to reduce phone rates in state prison systems.
http://crime.about.com/od/prison_families/a/inmate_calls.htm

Posted by lois at 09:27 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2008

Supreme Court Rejects Troy Davis' Execution Appeal

October 15, 2008
Supreme Court Rejects Execution Appeal
By ROBBIE BROWN

ATLANTA — Three weeks after temporarily sparing a Georgia inmate from the death penalty, the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear his appeal, a decision that will probably lead to a quick execution.

The inmate, Troy A. Davis, 40, was convicted in 1991 of murdering Mark A. MacPhail, a Savannah police officer. The court’s decision, made without comment or explanation, allows Georgia officials to obtain a new death warrant and schedule the execution, probably in the next few days or weeks.

The case has led to an outpouring of support for Mr. Davis, largely because seven of nine witnesses against him have recanted their testimony, with two claiming that the police had pressured them to testify against him. Prosecutors presented no physical evidence and no murder weapon, and three witnesses have said another man admitted to the murder.

World leaders including former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Pope Benedict XVI have challenged the fairness of Mr. Davis’s conviction.

“Georgia is willing to risk the credibility of its whole death penalty system in carrying out this one very questionable execution,” said Steven B. Bright, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. “The death penalty should really only be enforced in cases where there is no question about guilt, and that just cannot be said about this case.”

Prosecutors have rejected the claims of the witnesses who recanted, and both the Georgia Supreme Court and the State Board of Paroles and Pardons have denied Mr. Davis’s requests for new trials and clemency.

Members of the family of the slain police officer expressed relief at the Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday.

“My son will always be missed in our hearts,” said Anneliese MacPhail, the mother of Officer MacPhail. “But at least we can relax now and don’t have to worry about whether justice will be served.”

The Supreme Court granted a stay of execution last month, two hours before Mr. Davis was scheduled to die by lethal injection. A judge is expected to set a new time frame for the execution by next week, said Spencer Lawton Jr., the district attorney in Chatham County, Ga., where the case originated.

Mr. Davis’s lawyers had asked the court to determine whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment bars the execution of the innocent. They wrote in a petition in July that the case “allows this court an opportunity to determine what it has only before assumed: that the execution of an innocent man is constitutionally abhorrent.”

Martina Correia, Mr. Davis’s sister, said his lawyers were planning another request to the state parole board for a new hearing. “We have to keep on battling,” Ms. Correia said. “But my brother told me, ‘Even if they succeed in killing me, it will dismantle the death penalty system in Georgia because people are tired of injustice.’ ”

Jared Feuer, the Southern regional director for Amnesty International, said he was “shocked and saddened” by the court’s action on Tuesday.

“This decision shows how flawed and immoral the death penalty is,” Mr. Feuer said. “The court had been asked to rule on the basic question of guilt and innocence and the constitutional right of an individual to not be executed when there is doubt of his guilt. The court ducked its obligation.”

Mr. Lawton, the district attorney, said Mr. Davis received a fair trial and benefited from “an international firestorm of public relations campaigning” on his behalf. He pointed out that Mr. Davis’s conviction had been upheld by “29 judges in seven different types of reviews, over the course of 17 years, before today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Officer MacPhail was shot and killed early on the morning of Aug. 19, 1989, as he tried to break up a fight between two men in a Burger King parking lot. Several witnesses testified that they had heard one of the two men, Sylvester Coles, threaten the other and then begin pistol whipping him over the head.

Officer MacPhail, who was moonlighting as a security guard, interrupted the fight and was shot before he could remove his gun. Mr. Davis testified that he had been at a nearby pool hall but had left before Officer MacPhail arrived.

Ms. MacPhail said, however, that she was confident Mr. Davis had committed the murder. “He didn’t give my son a chance,” she said. “He just shot him down in cold blood.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/washington/15execute.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin.

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

October 09, 2008

Curbing the Right to Vote

October 9, 2008
States’ Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal
By IAN URBINA
NY Times
Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.

Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.

Some states allow such voters to cast provisional ballots. But they are often not counted because they require added verification.

Although much attention this year has been focused on the millions of new voters being added to the rolls by the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama, there has been far less notice given to the number of voters being dropped from those same rolls.

States have been trying to follow the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and remove the names of voters who should no longer be listed; but for every voter added to the rolls in the past two months in some states, election officials have removed two, a review of the records shows.

The six swing states seem to be in violation of federal law in two ways. Michigan and Colorado are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio seem to be improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters.

In addition to the six swing states, three more states appear to be violating federal law. Alabama and Georgia seem to be improperly using Social Security information to screen registration applications from new voters. And Louisiana appears to have removed thousands of voters after the federal deadline for taking such action.

Under federal law, election officials are supposed to use the Social Security database to check a registration application only as a last resort, if no record of the applicant is found on state databases, like those for driver’s licenses or identification cards.

The requirement exists because using the federal database is less reliable than the state lists, and is more likely to incorrectly flag applications as invalid. Many state officials seem to be using the Social Security lists first.

In the year ending Sept. 30, election officials in Nevada, for example, used the Social Security database more than 740,000 times to check voter files or registration applications and found more than 715,000 nonmatches, federal records show. Election officials in Georgia ran more than 1.9 million checks on voter files or voter registration applications and found more than 260,000 nonmatches.

Officials of the Social Security Administration, presented with those numbers, said they were far too high to be cases where names were not in state databases. They said the data seem to represent a violation of federal law and the contract the states signed with the agency to use the database.

Last week, after the inquiry by The Times, Michael J. Astrue, the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, alerted the Justice Department to the problem and sent letters to election officials in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio. The letters ask the officials to ensure that they are complying with federal law.

“It is absolutely essential that people entitled to register to vote are allowed to do so,” Mr. Astrue said in a press release.

In three states — Colorado, Louisiana and Michigan — the number of people purged from the election rolls since Aug. 1 far exceeds the number who may have died or relocated during that period.

States may be improperly removing voters who have moved within the state, election experts said, or who are considered inactive because they have failed to vote in two consecutive federal elections. For example, major voter registration drives have been held this year in Colorado, which has also had a significant population increase since the last presidential election, but the state has recorded a net loss of nearly 100,000 voters from its rolls since 2004.

Asked about the appearance of voter law violations, Rosemary E. Rodriguez, the chairwoman of the federal Election Assistance Commission, which oversees elections, said they could present “extremely serious problems.”

“The law is pretty clear about how states can use Social Security information to screen registrations and when states can purge their rolls,” Ms. Rodriguez said.

Nevada officials said the large number of Social Security checks had resulted from county clerks entering Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers in the wrong fields before records were sent to the state. They could not estimate how many records might have been affected by the problem, but they said it was corrected several weeks ago.

Other states described similar problems in entering data.

Under the Help America Vote Act, all states were required to build statewide electronic voter registration lists to standardize and centralize voter records that had been kept on the local level. To prevent ineligible voters from casting a ballot, states were also required to clear the electronic lists of duplicates, people who had died or moved out of state, or who had become ineligible for other reasons.

Voting rights groups and federal election officials have raised concerns that the methods used to add or remove names vary by state and are conducted with little oversight or transparency. Many states are purging their lists for the first time and appear to be unfamiliar with the 2002 federal law.

“Just as voting machines were the major issue that came out of the 2000 presidential election and provisional ballots were the big issue from 2004, voter registration and these statewide lists will be the top concern this year,” said Daniel P. Tokaji, a law professor at Ohio State University.

Voting rights groups have urged voters to check their registrations with local officials.

In Michigan, some 33,000 voters were removed from the rolls in August, a figure that is far higher than the number of deaths in the state during the same period — about 7,100 — or the number of people who moved out of the state — about 4,400, according to data from the Postal Service.

In Colorado, some 37,000 people were removed from the rolls in the three weeks after July 21. During that time, about 5,100 people moved out of the state and about 2,400 died, according to postal data and death records.

In Louisiana, at least 18,000 people were dropped from the rolls in the five weeks after July 23. Over the same period, at least 1,600 people moved out of state and at least 3,300 died.

The secretaries of state in Michigan and Colorado did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Louisiana secretary of state said that about half of the numbers of the voters removed from the rolls were people who moved within the state or who died. The remaining 11,000 or so people seem to have been removed by local officials for other reasons that were not clear, the spokesman said.

The purge estimates were calculated using data from state election officials, who produce a snapshot every month or so of the voter rolls with details about each registered voter on record, making it possible to determine how many have been removed.

The Times’s methodology for calculating the purge estimates was reviewed by two voting experts, Kimball Brace, the director of Election Data Services, a Washington consulting firm that tracks voting trends, and R. Michael Alvarez, a political science professor at the California Institute of Technology.

By using the Social Security database so extensively, states are flagging extra registrations and creating extra work for local officials who are already struggling to process all the registration applications by Election Day.

“I simply don’t have the staff to keep up,” said Ann McFall, the supervisor of elections in Volusia County, Fla.

It takes 10 minutes to process a normal registration and up to a week to deal with a flagged one, said Ms. McFall, a Republican, adding that she was receiving 100 or so flagged registrations a week.

Usually, when state election officials check a registration and find that it does not match a database entry, they alert local election officials to contact the voter and request further proof of identification. If that is not possible, most states flag the voter file and require identification from the voter at the polling place.

In Florida, Iowa, Louisiana and South Dakota, the problem is more serious because voters are not added to the rolls until the states remove the flags.

Ms. McFall said she was angry to learn from the state recently that it was her responsibility to contact each flagged voter to clear up the discrepancies before Election Day. “This situation with voter registrations is going to land us in court,” she said.

In fact, it already has.

In Michigan and Florida, rights groups are suing state officials, accusing them of being too aggressive in purging voter rolls and of preventing people from registering.

In Georgia, the Justice Department is considering legal action against the state because officials in Cobb and Cherokee Counties sent letters to hundreds of voters stating that their voter registrations had been flagged and telling them they cannot vote until they clear up the discrepancy.

On Monday, the Ohio Republican Party filed a motion in federal court against the secretary of state to get the list of all names that have been flagged by the Social Security database since Jan. 1. The motion seeks to require that any voter who does not clear up a discrepancy be required to vote using a provisional ballot.

Republicans said in the motion that it is central to American democracy that nonqualified voters be forbidden from voting.

The Ohio secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, said in court papers that she believes the Republicans are seeking grounds to challenge voters and get them removed from the rolls.

Considering that in the past year the state received nearly 290,000 nonmatches, such a plan could have significant impact at the polls.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html?ei=5070&pagewanted=print

-----------------------
October 9, 2008
Letter
Protecting Voting Rights
To the Editor:

I applaud your editorial highlighting the potential damage the mounting foreclosure crisis may inflict on the nation’s voting system (“Foreclosures and the Right to Vote,” Oct. 5). Indeed, the cooldown in the housing market puts millions at risk of being frozen out at the polls.

As the editorial notes, voter registration is “based on people’s residences.” But more than 7,000 Americans each day are losing their homes — many in pivotal battleground states. These voters become subject to partisan political challenges and contravention at the polls.

This raises a disturbing specter: could the election turn on the number of eligible voters who are turned away?

So, when a Republican Party county chairman in Michigan pledged to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters, we in Congress went to work. My colleagues and I crafted legislation to prohibit such challenges and uphold voters’ rights.

Despite our attempts, the measure was not included in the multibillion-dollar emergency financial rescue package.

It would be a national scandal if more than a million people who have lost their homes also wound up losing their votes. When Congress resumes work, members from both parties must come together and do more to prevent foreclosures and to protect the franchise.
(Rep.) Jesse L. Jackson Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/opinion/l09foreclosure.html?sq=voting%20and%20foreclosures&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print
Chicago, Oct. 8, 2008
--------------------------------
October 5, 2008
Editorial
Foreclosures and the Right to Vote

The foreclosure crisis could do considerable damage to the nation’s voting system. More than a million people have lost their homes in the past two years. And because voter registration is based on people’s residences, they could face politically motivated challenges at the polls.

The problem may be especially acute in the presidential battleground states. In Ohio, more than 5 percent of home mortgages are seriously delinquent or in the foreclosure process, and there were more than 67,000 foreclosure actions in the first half of 2008. Michigan and Florida have also been hard hit.

There are a large number of advocacy groups and other programs that work to ensure that minorities, the disabled and students are able to cast ballots. Because the foreclosure crisis is so recent, not much work has been done to ensure that people who lose their homes do not also lose their chance to vote.

Many of the hardest-hit neighborhoods are low- income and minority areas, which tend to vote Democratic. That means officials have to be extra vigilant to ensure that Republicans do not use foreclosure lists to challenge voters. There was a dust-up recently in Michigan, after a progressive Web site quoted the Republican chairman of Macomb County as saying that his party planned to do just that. He and the party insist there are no such plans, but the Barack Obama campaign has filed suit to block foreclosure-based challenges.

Whatever happens in Macomb County, where nearly one in every 100 households is in foreclosure, it is likely that in at least some parts of the country there will be challenges to voters who have lost their homes. There is also a real danger that voters who are in foreclosure will be misled or intimidated into not casting ballots.

It is important that state and local elections officials do everything they can to help people caught up in foreclosure to cast ballots. They should make clear that in many circumstances, people in foreclosure still have the right to vote where they have been living. The rules vary by state. They should also widely advertise how people who leave their homes can change their registration, to vote from their new addresses.

Election officials should also ensure that there are enough poll workers to handle the disputes and confusion that could arise — and that they are properly instructed in the law.

Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s secretary of state, is doing a good job. She has sent an advisory out to local boards of election reminding them that the fact that a voter is involved in a foreclosure is not, by itself, sufficient basis for challenging his or her right to vote.

It has been a long time since there were property requirements for voting. Election officials must not impose them now, by disenfranchising people because they have lost, or are losing, their homes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05sun2.html?sq=voting%20and%20foreclosures&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 09:01 PM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2008

NY : Two Decades in Solitary

U.S. torture machine.

September 23, 2008
Two Decades in Solitary
By JOHN ELIGON
New YOrk Times

He is one of New York’s most isolated prisoners, spending 23 hours a day for the past two decades in a 9-by-6-foot cell. The only trimmings are a cot and a sink-toilet combination. His visitors — few as they are — must wedge into a nook outside his cell and speak to him through a 1-by-3-foot window of foggy plexiglass and iron bars.

In this static existence, Willie Bosket, 45, seems to have gone from defiant menace to subdued and empty inmate.

It was 30 years ago this month that a state law took effect allowing juveniles to be tried as adults, largely in response to Mr. Bosket’s slaying of two people on a New York subway when he was 15. He served only five years in jail for that crime because he was a juvenile, sparking public outrage. But shortly after completing his sentence, Mr. Bosket was arrested for assaulting a 72-year-old man.

He once claimed to be at “war” with prison officials. He said he laughed at the system and claimed to have committed more than 2,000 crimes as a child. He set fire to his cell and attacked guards. Mr. Bosket was sentenced to 25 years to life for stabbing a guard in the visitors’ room in 1988, along with other offenses, leading prison authorities to make him virtually the most restricted inmate in the state.

Now Mr. Bosket, who has gone 14 years without a disciplinary violation, does mainly three things: read, sleep and think.

“Just blank” is how Mr. Bosket described his existence during a recent interview at Woodbourne Correctional Facility, about 75 miles north of Manhattan. “Everything is the same every day. This is hell. Always has been.”

He is scheduled to remain isolated from the general prison population until 2046.

Mr. Bosket’s seclusion is part of a bigger debate over the confinement of troublesome inmates and the role of the prison system. Some say that Mr. Bosket’s level of seclusion is draconian, that he should be given an opportunity to rejoin the general population.

“He is a very dangerous person; he’s killed people,” said Jo Allison Henn, a lawyer who helped represent Mr. Bosket roughly 20 years ago when he fought unsuccessfully to have some of his restrictions removed. “I’m not saying he should be released from custody entirely, just the custody that he is in. It is beyond inhumane. I don’t think that too many civilized countries do that.”

But proponents of Mr. Bosket’s restrictions say he has proved to be something of an incorrigible danger to prison guards and other inmates and cannot be trusted in the general population. He is evaluated periodically, meaning he could rejoin the general prison population before 2046, said Erik Criss, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections.

“This guy was violent or threatening violence practically every day,” Mr. Criss said. “Granted, it has been a while, but there are consequences for being violent in prison. We have zero tolerance for that.”

From 1985 to 1994, Mr. Bosket was written up nearly 250 times for disciplinary violations that included spitting on guards, throwing food and swallowing the handle of a spoon, according to prison reports.

Few, if any, of the state’s current inmates have been in disciplinary housing longer than Mr. Bosket, said Linda Foglia, a spokeswoman for the corrections department.

Mr. Bosket says he wakes up at 7:15 every morning and gets a visit from a counselor at 8. At 9, he gets his first of three doses of medication for asthma and high cholesterol, he said. Lunch comes at 11:30, followed by more medication at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.

He is entitled to three showers a week. Other than one hour of recreation a day, also solitary, he may leave his cell only for medical visits and haircuts. The recreation area measures 34 feet by 17 feet, surrounded by nearly 9-foot-high walls with bars on the top. Mr. Bosket said he was chained to a door during his recreation time and could not walk more than six feet, but corrections officials disputed that account, saying he was allowed to roam freely during his hour like other inmates.

And while other prisoners in isolation are escorted to a visiting room when they have guests, he must stay in his cell, speaking through the plexiglass.

Most of his waking hours, he said, are spent reading books, magazines, newspapers and anything else he can get his hands on. His favorite magazine, he said, was Elle.

“It’s very colorful,” he said. “It keeps me up to date on technology and the world.”

Mr. Bosket has long been known as a paradox, a man of charm and extraordinary intelligence but also of inexplicable fits of rage.

“It was like a terrifying metamorphosis when this spark within him went off, and you could see the rage in him building,” said Robert Silbering, a former prosecutor who tried Mr. Bosket for the subway murders. “I never have seen anything like that before or afterward.”

The killings led Gov. Hugh L. Carey to sign a law allowing people as young as 13 to be tried as adults for murder. Mr. Bosket said he saw it as something of an honor that he could drastically change a justice system that he said made him a “monster.”

“If I’m the perfect example, then I’ve been taught well,” he said.

At the sight of a recent visitor, Mr. Bosket cheerfully nodded and, revealing a small gap between his front teeth, gave a friendly, “Hi, how’s it going?”

He spoke with the aura of a professor, using deliberate gestures and emphasizing the ends of many words. He often spoke in metaphors and used stories and quotations to explain his philosophies.

As he contemplated his words, Mr. Bosket often folded his right arm across his bulging stomach and lay the fingers of his left hand across his mouth and nose. He sometimes rocked in his chair.

Despite his bleak situation, Mr. Bosket refused to concede defeat: “I’m not broken down and never will be.”

His life has always been empty, he said.

“I grew up with nothing,” he said. “I was born with nothing. I still have nothing. I will never have nothing. Forty-five years of living the way I have lived, I like ‘nothing.’ No one can take ‘nothing’ from you.”

Mr. Bosket, who has spent all but two years in some form of lockup since he was 9, also said he had formed a “breastplate” from a lifetime of incarceration.

“I’ve become so callous to the poking of the sword that, literally, instead of bleeding to death, the blood was drained and I became absent of concern, void of emotions, cold — plain cold to the degree that not much affects me anymore,” he said.

Yet Mr. Bosket did hint at something of a life of suffering.

“If somebody came to me with a lethal injection, I’d take it,” he said. “I’d rather be dead.”

His change from vicious to quiescent, Mr. Bosket said, was a calculated move. Growing up in Harlem, Mr. Bosket said, his heroes were revolutionaries like Huey Newton and Assata Shakur. He said he believed blacks needed to use violence to survive in the 1970s and ’80s.

But in 1994, he said, he sensed a change in society. “Blacks don’t need to go and attack to get their message across,” he recalled thinking.

He said that he also wanted young people to see positive in his life, and that continued violence could be counterproductive.

“I don’t believe at this point it’s strategic for me to be aggressive or violent,” he said. “I’ve made my point.”

“I’m not proud of a lot of the things I’ve done,” he added.

Mr. Bosket’s sister, Cheryl Stewart, 51, said her brother had expressed remorse in letters.

“What was done was wrong, and if he could redo it, he wouldn’t do it again,” she said. “He knows what was done was wrong and is just sorry for what all has went down.”

Though she corresponds with her brother, Ms. Stewart said she had not visited him in 23 years because it was difficult to see him so confined. Mr. Bosket is lucky to receive more than two visits a year.

Adam Mesinger, a television and movie producer, said he had visited Mr. Bosket seven times over the past four years and is shopping a script for a movie about Mr. Bosket’s life. He said that Mr. Bosket had always been warm and open with him and that he would consider him a friend.

“I have no fear of him,” Mr. Mesinger said. “I don’t think he would ever harm me. I don’t think he ever really wants to harm anybody.”

But not even Mr. Bosket would say that his days of violence are behind him.

“When you’re in hell,” he said, “you can’t predict the future.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/nyregion/23inmate.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=nyregion&adxnnlx=1222180005-i7AWCYLvpfVktjHtF/H7ow&pagewanted=print

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

September 20, 2008

GOP Intimidation Halts Historic Drive to Register Voters in Alabama

GOP Intimidation Halts Historic Drive to Register Voters in Alabama
State Law Allows Certain People to Vote Even While Incarcerated

Alabama Department of Corrections Caves to Republican Pressure, Tells Advocates: You Can No Longer Register Voters Inside Alabama Prisons

DOTHAN—Alabama-based The Ordinary People's Society and their national partner the Drug Policy Alliance began a historic voter registration drive this week in prisons across Alabama. The drive was prepared with the full support of the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC). However, after Alabama newspapers reported on the registration drive, the state GOP voiced their opposition to the effort and pressured the DOC to end it. Yesterday, the DOC reversed their position and has barred advocates from registering eligible voters in Alabama correctional facilities.

"Voter registration drives are an essential part of our democracy, and this action by the GOP and the Department of Corrections smacks of voter intimidation," said Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, founder and executive director of The Ordinary People's Society, the group leading the registration drive. "Our focus isn't politics, it's restoration. We're just doing what the Bible says, visiting people in prison and ministering to them. The chairman of the Republican Party and the chairman of the Democratic Party can go into prisons with us and monitor the registration process to make sure it's nonpartisan, if that's a concern."

In Alabama, nearly 250,000 people have been stripped their voting rights due to a felony conviction. But in a 2006 court ruling in Alabama, a judge found that only those convicted of felonies of "moral turpitude" lose their right to vote. The judge found that certain felonies—such as drug possession—do not constitute crimes of moral turpitude, and therefore individuals convicted of those crimes do not lose their right to vote, even during incarceration. Alabama's Attorney General, Troy King, concurred with the ruling. This change could have an impact on nearly 70,000 Alabamians, including nearly 10,000 currently incarcerated in state prisons on drug charges alone.

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed the Second Chance Act, which supports the process of people with felony convictions re-entering society by funding programs inside and outside prisons to increase civic participation upon their release. Bush, the country's top Republican, also has expressed support for the restoration of voting rights to people with felony convictions.

"Alabama state law makes it clear that people incarcerated for simple drug possession never lose their right to vote, even while incarcerated," said Glasgow. "The GOP and the Alabama Department of Corrections cannot decide on their own which constituencies are going to have access to the vote, and which will be barred from it. We live in a democracy, after all."

###

Associated Press
GOP opposes letting prisoners register to vote
9/19/2008
By JAY REEVES

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The Alabama Republican Party opposes a drive to register inmates to vote so they can cast absentee ballots from inside state prisons, with the state GOP chief saying Thursday there needs to be safeguards against voter fraud.

State Rep. Mike Hubbard, chairman of the party, told Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen in a letter delivered by e-mail that the party supports the idea of registering more people to vote, but not when it comes to prisoners.

"Furthermore, I have concerns about potential issues with how this effort is being monitored to ensure no form of voter fraud occurs," Hubbard wrote. He asked Allen to outline the prison system's plans for preventing fraud.

Prison spokesman Brian Corbett said the commissioner was working on a response and declined further comment.

Hubbard's letter came two days after The Associated Press reported that a coalition of groups led by a community activist, the Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, began registering inmates to vote in state lockups this week. Nearly 80 filled out registration forms in two days.

Glasgow, a Democrat from Dothan who served time for robbery and drug convictions, said no one with the state has told him to stop registering inmates. He plans to continue the effort with other members of the coalition, which he said includes Republicans and Democrats.

"I think they're more worried about me being a Democrat than anything," said Glasgow. "The chairman of the Republican Party and the chairman of the Democratic Party can go in there with me and monitor it to make sure it's nonpartisan."

Glasgow, a pastor, intends to turn in the registration forms and return to the lockups later to make sure inmates mail in absentee forms. He said the project is about human rights and preparing prisoners to return to society, not politics.

"We're just doing what the Bible says, visiting people in prison and ministering to them," he said.

About 3,000 people could be eligible to vote from inside Alabama prisons, Glasgow said, and he plans to register as many as possible in coming weeks.

Alabama law prohibits felons convicted of "crimes of moral turpitude" from voting unless they have had their rights restored. State law doesn't define such crimes, but court opinions have said they include major offenses like murder, robbery and rape plus some lesser offenses, like taking a stolen car across state lines.

Glasgow's drive is concentrating on registering prisoners who have been convicted only of drug possession, which an attorney general's opinion issued in 2005 did not define as a crime of moral turpitude.

Confusion over which crimes involve "moral turpitude" has led to litigation seeking the restoration of prisoners' voting rights. The most recent was filed in July by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three ex-inmates.

Associated Press
State inmates register to vote in prison
By Jay Reeves
September 17, 2008

BIRMINGHAM -- Alabama inmates are registering to vote from prison in a precedent-set­ting effort organized by activist groups with the blessing of state corrections officials.

Nearly 80 prisoners had filled out registration forms during drives at two lockups, and organizers plan to help them and hundreds more obtain absentee ballots in time to vote in the presidential election on Nov. 4.

Laura Schley, 34, has eight months left on a four-year sen­tence for illegal possession of prescription drugs. She had a hard time believing she was reg­istering Tuesday at the Bir­mingham Work Release Center.

"It just blew my mind," said Schley, who was wearing prison whites. "My voting rights are very important to me and have been ever since I was 18."

The state attorney general's office issued an opinion seven years ago that inmates could vote from inside prison using absentee ballots. But confusion and lawsuits followed over which felons had that right be­cause of a murky phrase in state law.

Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said no one previ­ously had registered prisoners to vote in Alabama.

"It's something that we sup­port and authorized for them to do," said Corbett.

The drive is led by Kenneth Glasgow of Dothan, who served 14 years on robbery and drug charges and is now a pastor. Glasgow said restoring voting rights is essential to returning felons to society.

"What we're interested in is not so much the politics but the restoration of people's lives," Glasgow said.

Glasgow is state coordinator of a coalition that includes the Drug Policy Alliance, which ad­vocates reforms including a move toward treatment rather than prison time for drug users.

Angela Wright, in the work-release center for cocaine pos­session, said she has to study be­fore casting her vote for either Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama for president.

"I haven't really even been paying attention because I fig­ured it was a lost cause," Wright said after filling out a registra­tion form.

Studies have estimated that more than 250,000 Alabama resi­dents are barred from voting be­cause of criminal records.

State law says those con­victed of crimes of "moral turpi­tude" can't vote unless they have their rights restored by the state. The law does not state ex­actly which crimes are bad enough to make that list. Turpi­tude is defined as "baseness, vil­eness, depravity."

The state attorney general's office has said those offenses in­clude murder, rape, multiple sex and obscenity offenses, bur­glary, robbery, forgery, conspir­acy to commit fraud, aggravated assault, drug sales, bigamy, im­peachment, treason and trans­porting stolen vehicles out of state.

Others convicted of lesser crimes such as possession of small amounts of drugs, battery or attempted burglary are eligi­ble to vote, even from inside prison.

Glasgow, who coordinates a coalition of eight prisoners' rights groups, is registering in­mates convicted only of drug possession. He previously regis­tered hundreds in county jails across the state.

Many convicted on drug charges also were sentenced for other crimes. Prison system sta­tistics don't indicate how many inmates are behind bars only for drug possession.

Glasgow believes about 3,000 people could be eligible to vote from inside Alabama prisons, and he plans to register as many as possible in coming weeks.

Completed voter registration forms will be sent to the secre­tary of state's office and volun­teers will return to state lockups to make sure prisoners cast their absentee ballots.

A Jefferson County judge in 2006 ordered the state to let all convicted felons vote because the law failed to define offenses or moral turpitude, but the Ala­bama Supreme Court over­turned the decision.

Posted by lois at 08:53 PM | Comments (0)

TX: County rejects prisons but welcomes toxic waste dump

Struggling Andrews County sees value, not risk, in nuclear site
By Enrique Rangel | A-J AUSTIN BUREAU

Saturday, September 20, 2008
Story last updated at 9/20/2008 - 3:05 am

AUSTIN - Like many rural counties in West Texas and across the nation, over the years Andrews County has experienced hard economic times and even lost some population.

"In 1989, during the oil bust, we had one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation," said Russell Shannon, president and CEO of the National Bank of Andrews, which is located in the county's namesake city and county seat. "Things are better now because we put together a community strategic plan."

The plan basically called for the diversification of the local economy, which was heavily dependent on oil and gas production, Shannon said. So, two years later civic and business leaders in the county and the city of Andrews became receptive to a proposal to allow a hazardous and nuclear waste disposal site to be built in the unpopulated western portion of the county of nearly 13,000 residents.

The rest is history. Barring an unexpected snag, after 17 years of planning, next year Waste Control Specialists, a Dallas-based company, will start burying low-level radioactive waste in western Andrews County near the Texas-New Mexico border.

"We're ready for it," Andrews

Mayor Bob Zap told reporters in May when the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality authorized Waste Control Specialists to dispose of the waste. "We're all satisfied that this is not dangerous, and besides it will create jobs and bring revenue to our community."

If to residents of other struggling rural counties Zap's comments sound familiar, they are.

Whether it is a nuclear waste disposal site, a prison for violent criminals or other projects that most communities would outright reject, some financially struggling rural counties actually welcome them.

In Snelling, S.C., for example, which is about 70 miles south of Columbia, the state capital, the town and Barnwell County, the county it belongs to, have even welcomed with open arms a similar nuclear waste burial site.

"The (South Carolina) Legislature needs to understand that it's not just a money issue, it's not a hazard issue," Keith Sloan, chairman of the Barnwell County Council said in a televised interview that can be seen on YouTube.

"It's a service that we can provide as a state to the other states to ensure that waste is handled safely," Sloan said. "At the same time we can generate significant revenue for South Carolina and Barnwell County with no real impact on our environment."

Snelling Mayor Tim Moore agreed.

We understand it; we know what it means," Moore said in the same report. "The word nuclear' doesn't frighten people."

Moore, who could not be reached for comment, even told the New York Times in 2004, "We hear the word nuclear' and it's a good thing. We're happy to have the stuff."

However, the nuclear waste site has not been an economic boon for Snelling, a community of about 250 residents, because it generates less than $500,000 a year.

Moreover, in "Big Prisons, Small Towns: Prison Economics in Rural America," authors Ryan S. King, Marc Mauer and Tracy Huling show that a growing number of rural communities are welcoming prisons for violent criminals, even when such facilities don't necessarily boost the local economies.

The city of Andrews considered the possibility of bidding for a state prison, but residents rejected it because they didn't think it would be appropriate for the community, Shannon said;

Economic impact

For the town, which has about 85 percent of the county's population, the nuclear disposal site that Waste Control Specialists will operate will create 75 jobs at first and eventually more than 100. The initial impact will be about $7.5 million and about $11.5 million when the second of two disposal operations is under way, said company President Rodney A. Baltzer.

As he has done repeatedly, Baltzer has assured not only Andrews residents but TCEQ officials and others that the disposal and the storage of the waste will be safe.

"Our personnel are highly experienced in the safe, permanent disposal of hazardous and toxic waste," Baltzer said. "We will be very protective of the environment and public health."

Like other town and county residents, state Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, whose Senate District 31 includes Andrews County, said he also supports the project "because it's based on pure science."

The county has no underground water that would be in danger of being contaminated, and geological studies, as well as other soil analyses oil producers have done in the area, have convinced him that the area will be a safe storage for the radioactive waste, Seliger said.

Asked if he would live near the nuclear burial site, Seliger replied "absolutely, that's how safe I think it is."

But environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and some residents of Eunice, N.M., which is actually closer to the disposal site than the town of Andrews, see it differently.

"This has the potential of being an environmental disaster," said Cyrus Reed, spokesman for the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club in Austin. "It's beyond me why a community would accept this kind of project in exchange for a few dozen jobs and a few million dollars.

"It's not worth the risk," Reed said. "That's why we're fighting it."

The environmental group and some residents of Eunice have tried to block the development at the TCEQ and in the courts.

"If they bury all that waste we're all going to be in trouble," Rose Gardner, a Eunice flower shop owner, said when she traveled to Austin to voice her opposition to the project. "They assure us that there won't be any contamination, but we have heard and seen evidence to the contrary. That's why we're worried."

But despite what the critics say, Andrews residents such as former City Manager Len Wilson said the community did the right thing in welcoming the waste disposal site.

"It's not just about jobs and the money the project will generate," Wilson said. "It's about being good citizens.

"There is a lot of low radioactive waste all over the United States, and this is a good location to store it," he said. "We have done geological studies that indicate there is no danger of contamination because we don't have any underground water.

"Most of us were either born here or have lived here for a long time," added the Amarillo native who was Andrews' city manager for 33 years until he retired in 2001.

"We have raised our families here," Wilson said. "We wouldn't want this project if we thought it was unsafe."
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/092008/loc_334490227.shtml

Posted by lois at 06:38 PM | Comments (0)

NY Times Op-Ed: Blocking Care for Women

September 19, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Blocking Care for Women
By HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON and CECILE RICHARDS

LAST month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women’s rights and women’s health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing — whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government — certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.

Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.

Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.

The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.

The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified “other medical procedures” that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.

Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.” Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription?

The Bush administration argues that the rule is designed to protect a provider’s conscience. But where are the protections for patients?

The 30-day comment period on the proposed rule runs until Sept. 25. Everyone who believes that women should have full access to medical care should make their voices heard. Basic, quality care for millions of women is at stake.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic senator from New York. Cecile Richards is the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/opinion/19clinton.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Hillary%20Clinton&st=cse&oref=slogin

Posted by lois at 06:15 PM | Comments (0)

September 08, 2008

Voter Registration by Students Raises Cloud of Consequences

September 8, 2008
Voter Registration by Students Raises Cloud of Consequences
By TAMAR LEWIN

The widespread practice of students’ registering to vote at their college address has set off a fracas in Virginia, a battleground state in the presidential election.

Late last month, as a voter-registration drive by supporters of Senator Barack Obama was signing up thousands of students at Virginia Tech, the local registrar of elections issued two releases incorrectly suggesting a range of dire possibilities for students who registered to vote at their college.

The releases warned that such students could no longer be claimed as dependents on their parents’ tax returns, a statement the Internal Revenue Service says is incorrect, and could lose scholarships or coverage under their parents’ car and health insurance.

After some inquiries from students and parents, and more pointed questions from civil rights lawyers, the state board of elections said Friday that it was “modifying and clarifying” the state guidelines on which the county registrar had based his releases.

Student-registration controversies have been a recurring problem since 1971, when the 26st Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 from 21, and despite a 1979 ruling by the United States Supreme Court that students have the right to register at their college address.

Virginia is not the only state with murky guidelines. South Carolina’s voter-registration site, for example, says students who want to register to vote at their college address must demonstrate “a present intention to remain in the community.”

“There’s no issue for snowbirds who live in Iowa but fly to Florida for the winter,” said Sujatha Jahagirdar, program director of the Student Public Interest Research Group’s New Voters Project. “One demographic group, like students, shouldn’t have to overcome a special hurdle to vote. We impose all the responsibilities of citizenship on students, and we have to provide them with the privileges of citizenship, too.”

Ms. Jahagirdar said Virginia’s warnings were profoundly misleading. “We have been registering young voters for 25 years,” she said. “We registered 500,000 young voters in 2004, the majority on college campuses, and we’ve never heard of a single one who lost health insurance, scholarship or tax status because of where they registered to vote.”

In Virginia, the county registrar first issued an alarming release on Aug. 25, and two days later a slightly toned-down version using language taken directly from the state Board of Elections’ Web site.

That site says students can determine their legal residence, but advises them to consider certain questions. “Are you claimed as a dependent on your parents’ income tax return?” the site asks. “If you are, then their address is probably your legal residence.”

The site also tells students to check whether their coverage under their parents’ health or automobile insurance, or their scholarship, will be affected by changing their residence.

Civil rights lawyers say these guidelines are problematic and could infringe on students’ rights.

“What the state Board of Elections has on its Web site, to me, sounds like it is discouraging students from registering at their school address,” said Jon Greenbaum, director of the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Indeed, the Montgomery County registrar, E. Randall Wertz, said several students had canceled their local registration over their worry about the possible consequences. Mr. Wertz said he had issued the release to try to dispel confusion and explain what he believed to be the consequences of choosing a college address as a primary residence.

“My understanding of state law has been that by declaring you’re voting here, you’re saying this is your primary residence, your domicile, and that while you can have many abodes or residences, you can only have one domicile,” Mr. Wertz said. “And if this is your primary residence, you have to register your vehicle here, charge your driver’s license to here and so on. That’s been the interpretation at state training sessions.”

Kevin Griffis, the Obama campaign’s Virginia spokesman, said the release appeared to be a good-faith effort to convey state guidelines, not a politically motivated effort to stop voting by students.

Mr. Wertz said the initial release had been written by an intern whom he asked to summarize the guidelines. Although the second release used the state’s precise language, he said, it still left room for confusion. In other counties, registrars have refused to accept dormitory addresses as residences. But so far, the state has not set clear standards.

“Different registrars around the state interpret it differently,” he said. “We’ve asked for more guidance from the state legislature, but they haven’t wanted to deal with it.”

Mr. Greenbaum’s Voting Rights Project has been involved in other student-registration cases. Last fall, in Statesboro, Ga., in a hotly contested city council race, there were challenges to the registration of about 1,000 Georgia Southern University students who had used dormitory addresses. “We threatened suit, but the issue went away when they figured out that the challenges weren’t going to affect the results of the election,” Mr. Greenbaum said.

In 2003, in Waller County, Tex., the district attorney wrote a column in a local newspaper threatening to prosecute students at Prairie View A&M, a historically black university, for illegal voting. The project sued, and the district attorney backed down.

In the 1970s, that same county required Prairie View students who wanted to register to fill out a questionnaire asking, among other things, whether they owned property in the county, had an automobile registered there or belonged to any church, club or organization unrelated to the college. A challenge to that practice led the Supreme Court to uphold students’ rights to vote at their college address.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/08/education/08students.html?ei=5070&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2008

Slavery Haunts America’s Plantation Prisons--Angola Prison

Slavery Haunts America’s Plantation Prisons
Wednesday, 03 September 2008
Black Agenda Report
by Maya Schenwar

Angola Prison

Angola Prison isn't "even really a metaphor for slavery. Slavery is what's going on." The plantation prisons of Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas are the closest approximation to America's peculiar institution - places where involuntary servitude is legal under the 13th Amendment. And like slaves, most Angola prisoners will die on the plantation, "due to some of the harshest sentencing practices in the country." Angola prisoners are paid anywhere from four to twenty cents per hour...and only get to keep half of that." The rest is put away for after their release - a day that most will never see.

by Maya Schenwar
This article originally appeared in Truthout.org.

"The basic system of Angola and its environs have remained static since the days of slavery."

On an expanse of 18,000 acres of farmland, 59 miles northwest of Baton Rouge, long rows of men, mostly African-American, till the fields under the hot Louisiana sun. The men pick cotton, wheat, soybeans and corn. They work for pennies, literally. Armed guards, mostly white, ride up and down the rows on horseback, keeping watch. At the end of a long workweek, a bad disciplinary report from a guard - whether true or false - could mean a weekend toiling in the fields. The farm is called Angola, after the homeland of the slaves who first worked its soil.

This scene is not a glimpse of plantation days long gone by. It's the present-day reality of thousands of prisoners at the maximum security Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola. The block of land on which the prison sits is a composite of several slave plantations, bought up in the decades following the Civil War. Acre-wise, it is the largest prison in the United States. Eighty percent of its prisoners are African-American.

"Angola is disturbing every time I go there," Tory Pegram, who coordinates the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, told Truthout. "It's not even really a metaphor for slavery. Slavery is what's going on."

Mwalimu Johnson, who spent 15 years as a prisoner at the penitentiary and now works as executive secretary of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana, concurred.

"I would truthfully say that Angola prison is a sophisticated plantation," Johnson told Truthout. "'Cotton is King' still applies when it come to Angola."

Angola is not alone. Sixteen percent of Louisiana prisoners are compelled to perform farm labor, as are 17 percent of Texas prisoners and a full 40 percent of Arkansas prisoners, according to the 2002 Corrections Yearbook, compiled by the Criminal Justice Institute. They are paid little to nothing for planting and picking the same crops harvested by slaves 150 years ago.

"It's not even really a metaphor for slavery. Slavery is what's going on."

Many prison farms, Angola included, have gruesome post-bellum histories. In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, Angola made news with a host of assaults - and killings - of inmates by guards. In 1952, a group of Angola prisoners found their work conditions so oppressive that they resorted to cutting their Achilles' tendons in protest. At Mississippi's Parchman Farm, another plantation-to-prison convert, prisoners were routinely subjected to near-death whippings and even shootings for the first half of the 20th century. Cummins Farm, in Arkansas, sported a "prison hospital" that doubled as a torture chamber until a federal investigation exposed it in 1970. And Texas's Jester State Prison Farm, formerly Harlem Prison Farm, garnered its claim to fame from eight prisoners who suffocated to death after being sealed into a tiny cell and abandoned by guards.

Since a wave of activism forced prison farm brutalities into the spotlight in the 1970s, some reforms have taken place: At Angola, for example, prison violence has been significantly reduced. But to a large extent, the official stories have been repackaged. State correctional departments now portray prison farm labor as educational or vocational opportunities, as opposed to involuntary servitude. The Alabama Department of Corrections web site, for example, states that its "Agriculture Program" "allows inmates to be trained in work habits and allows them to develop marketable skills in the areas of: Farming, Animal Husbandry, Vegetable, meat, and milk processing."

According to Angola's web site, "massive reform" has transformed the prison into a "stable, safe and constitutional" environment. A host of new faith-based programs at Angola have gotten a lot of media play, including features in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor.

Cathy Fontenot, Angola's assistant warden, told Truthout that the penitentiary is now widely known as an "innovative and progressive prison."

"The warden says it takes good food, good medicine, good prayin' and good playin' to have a good prison," Fontenot said, referring to the head warden, Burl Cain. "Angola has all these."

However, the makeover has been markedly incomplete, according to prisoners and their advocates.

"Most of the changes are cosmetic," said Johnson, who was released from Angola in 1992 and, in his new capacity as a prison rights advocate, stays in contact with Angola prisoners. "In the conventional plantations, slaves were given just enough food, clothing and shelter to be a financial asset to the owner. The same is true for the Louisiana prison system."

"Cummins Farm, in Arkansas, sported a ‘prison hospital' that doubled as a torture chamber until a federal investigation exposed it in 1970."

Wages for agricultural and industrial prison labor are still almost nonexistent compared with the federal minimum wage. Angola prisoners are paid anywhere from four to twenty cents per hour, according to Fontenot. Agricultural laborers fall on the lowest end of the pay scale.

What's more, prisoners may keep only half the money they make, according to Johnson, who notes that the other half is placed in an account for prisoners to use to "set themselves up" after they're released.

Besides the fact that two cents an hour may not accumulate much of a start-up fund, there is one glaring peculiarity about this arrangement: due to some of the harshest sentencing practices in the country, most Angola prisoners are never released. Ninety-seven percent will die in prison, according to Fontenot.

(Ironically, the "progressive" label may well apply to Angola, relative to some locations: In Texas, Arkansas and Georgia, most prison farms pay nothing at all.)

Angola prisoners technically work eight-hour days. However, since extra work can be mandated as a punishment for "bad behavior," hours may pile up well over that limit, former prisoner Robert King told Truthout.

"Prisoners worked out in the field, sometimes 17 hours straight, rain or shine," remembered King, who spent 29 years in solitary confinement at Angola, until he was released in 2001 after proving his innocence of the crime for which he was incarcerated.

"Most Angola prisoners are never released. Ninety-seven percent will die in prison."

It's common for Angola prisoners to work 65 hours a week after disciplinary reports have been filed, according to Johnson. Yet, those reports don't necessarily indicate that a prisoner has violated any rules. Johnson describes guards writing out reports well before the weekend, fabricating incident citations, then filling in prisoners' names on Friday, sometimes at random. Those prisoners would then spend their weekend in the cotton fields.

Although mechanical cotton pickers are almost universally used on modern-day farms, Angola prisoners must harvest by hand, echoing the exact ritual that characterized the plantation before emancipation.

According to King, these practices are undergirded by entrenched notions of race-based authority.

"Guards talked to prisoners like slaves," King told Truthout. "They'd tell you the officer was always right, no matter what."

During the 1970s, prisoners were routinely beaten or "dungeonized" without cause, King said. Now, guards' power abuses are more expertly concealed, but they persist, fed by racist assumptions, according to King.

Johnson described some of the white guards burning crosses on prison lawns.

Much of this overt racism stems from the way the basic system - and even the basic population - of Angola and its environs have remained static since the days of slavery, according to Pegram. After the plantation was converted to a prison, former plantation overseers and their descendants kept their general roles, becoming prison officials and guards. This white overseer community, called B-Line, is located on the farm's grounds, both close to the prisoners and completely separate from them. In addition to their prison labor, Angola's inmates do free work for B-Line residents, from cutting their grass to trimming their hair to cleaning up Prison View Golf Course, the only course in the country where players can watch prisoners laboring as they golf.

"Angola prisoners are paid anywhere from four to twenty cents per hour."

Another landmark of the town, the Angola Prison Museum, is also run by multi-generation Angola residents. The museum exhibits "Old Sparky," the solid oak electric chair used for executions at Angola until 1991. Visitors can purchase shirts that read, "Angola: A Gated Community."

Despite its antebellum MO, Angola's labor system does not break the law. In fact, it is explicitly authorized by the Constitution. The 13th Amendment, which prohibits forced labor, contains a caveat. It reads, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States."

That clause has a history of being manipulated, according to Fordham Law Professor Robert Kaczorowski, who has written extensively on civil rights and the Constitution. Directly after the 13th Amendment was enacted, it began to be utilized to justify slavery-like practices, according to Kaczorowski. Throughout the South, former slaves were arrested for trivial crimes (vagrancy, for example), fined, and imprisoned when they could not pay their fines. Then, landowners could supply the fine in exchange for the prisoner's labor, essentially perpetuating slavery.

Although such close reproductions of private enslavement were phased out, the 13th Amendment still permits involuntary servitude.

"Prisoners can be forced to work for the government against their will, and this is true in every state," Kaczorowski told Truthout.

In recent years, activists have begun to focus on the 13th Amendment's exception for prisoners, according to Pegram. African-Americans are disproportionately incarcerated; one in three black men has been in prison at some point in his life. Therefore, African-Americans are much more likely to be subject to involuntary servitude.

"I would have more faith in that amendment if it weren't so clear that our criminal justice system is racially biased in a really obvious way," Pegram said.

Prison activists like Johnson believe that ultimately, permanently changing the status quo at places like Angola may mean changing the Constitution - amending the 13th Amendment to abolish involuntary servitude for all.

"I don't have any illusions that this is a simple process," Johnson said. "Many people are apathetic about what happens in prisons. It would be very difficult, but I would not suggest it would be impossible."

"The 13th Amendment still permits involuntary servitude."

Even without a constitutional overhaul, some states have done away with prison farms of their own accord. In Connecticut, where the farms were prevalent before the 1970s, the farms have been phased out, partially due to the perceived slavery connection. "Many black inmates viewed farm work under these circumstances as too close to slavery to want to participate," according to a 1995 report to the Connecticut General Assembly.

For now, though, the prison farm is alive and well in Louisiana. And at Angola, many prisoners can expect to be buried on the land they till. Two cemeteries, Point Lookout 1 and 2, lie on the prison grounds. No one knows exactly how many prisoners are interred in the former, since, after a flood washed away the first Angola cemetery in 1927, the bodies were reburied in a large common grave.

Point Lookout 1 is now full, and with the vast majority of Angola's prisoners destined to die in prison, Point Lookout 2 is well on its way, according to King.

"Angola is pretty huge," King said. "They've got a lot of land to bury a lot of prisoners."

Maya Schenwar can be reached at Truthout.org.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=768&Itemid=1

Posted by lois at 12:02 AM | Comments (0)

August 30, 2008

NV: Judge: No typewriters for prisoners

Judge: No typewriters for prisoners
By BRENDAN RILEY Associated Press Writer
08/28/2008

CARSON CITY, Nev.—A ban on personal typewriters for Nevada prison inmates, who have used them for decades to prepare appeals of their sentences, has been upheld by a federal court judge.

U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks of Reno ruled that the state Department of Corrections ban on typewriters for inmates was constitutional and didn't block inmates from access to the courts.

"The ban on typewriters occurred because prison officials determined that possession of typewriters aid the ability of inmates to breach safety and security," Hicks said in his ruling Wednesday, adding, "It cannot be disputed that the state has a legitimate interest in maintaining security and order in its prisons."

Prison officials confiscated hundreds of portable typewriters, starting at the maximum-security Ely State Prison in March 2007 and then extending the ban to other state prisons. They cited two incidents of violence in changing the policy—one when an inmate died and another when a guard was threatened.

Inmates filed numerous lawsuits protesting the new rule, saying officials were using the security argument as an excuse to try to slow their legal complaints about overcrowded prisons and difficult living conditions.

The inmates were supported by the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, which said typewriters are vital for convicts who represent themselves in appealing their sentences.

The state attorney general's office asked the federal court to make clear the department was within its legal rights in confiscating typewriters that can be taken apart to make weapons that can be used to stab or club people.

Hicks' ruling was praised Thursday by Deputy Attorney General Alicia Lerud, who said the judge concluded "safety and security are of primary importance" in Nevada prisons. Lerud has said more than a dozen actions had been filed by inmates in federal and state courts over the typewriter issue.

Incidents that triggered the typewriter ban included the December 2006 death of inmate Anthony Beltran, hit by another inmate with a roller pin taken from a typewriter; and a March 2007 attempt by an inmate to stab a guard with a part from another typewriter.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_10327231

Posted by lois at 03:14 PM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2008

Why Did Darryl Die?

August 28, 2008
New York Times Editorial
Why Did Darryl Die?

Two years after a child died there, the Justice Department is conducting a much-needed investigation of New York’s Tryon Boys Residential Center, a juvenile facility in upstate Fulton County. The investigation could take a year or more to complete. But it has already shined a klieg light on disastrous juvenile justice policies, not just in New York, but all across the country.

All too often, juvenile justice facilities are operated by workers who have not been trained to handle the mentally ill children who make up much of the caseload. Facilities also overuse dangerous restraint and disciplinary practices in which children are handcuffed, hog tied, bound to chairs or wrestled to the floor and held down.

According to grand jury testimony, staff members at the Tryon Boys facility used the so-called prone restraint strategy against Darryl Thompson, an emotionally disturbed 15-year-old. He is said by the medical examiner to have died of arrhythmia.

The two large-framed men who forced Darryl onto the floor and held him there with their bodies say that they had no choice because the child was agitated and flailing about. There is no excuse for their failure to begin cardiopulmonary resuscitation immediately after Darryl’s heart stopped. According to state officials, all three staff members who were present had been trained in C.P.R. and were required to administer it. None did.

The medical examiner labeled the death a homicide, but the grand jury declined to indict the two workers.

The Justice Department will not say why it is now investigating Tryon, but the problems there clearly have not ended. This summer, according to state officials, a staff member was caught on videotape punching a handcuffed child in the face.

Gladys Carrión, the reform-minded commissioner of New York’s Office of Children and Family Services, took office soon after Darryl’s death. She has been struggling ever since to move New York away from a prison-style juvenile justice system that relies mainly on force toward one that focuses on rehabilitation. Like reformers elsewhere, she is encountering stiff resistance from the unions that represent the facilities’ staff.

To remake the system, New York State will need to downsize some facilities. It will need to hire more mental health professionals and retrain current staff members, some of whom have been doing business the bad-old way for 25 years or more. The state needs to help cities and towns develop community-based treatment programs. New York City is sensibly moving in that direction. New York and all states have a responsibility to protect children, including those who have committed crimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/opinion/28thu2.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2008

Wondering how McCain did so well at the Saddleback Church?

August 18, 2008
Despite Assurances, McCain Wasn’t in a ‘Cone of Silence’
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

ORLANDO, Fla. — Senator John McCain was not in a “cone of silence” on Saturday night while his rival, Senator Barack Obama, was being interviewed at the Saddleback Church in California.

Members of the McCain campaign staff, who flew here Sunday from California, said Mr. McCain was in his motorcade on the way to the church as Mr. Obama was being interviewed by the Rev. Rick Warren, the author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life.”

The matter is of interest because Mr. McCain, who followed Mr. Obama’s hourlong appearance in the forum, was asked virtually the same questions as Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain’s performance was well received, raising speculation among some viewers, especially supporters of Mr. Obama, that he was not as isolated during the Obama interview as Mr. Warren implied.

Nicolle Wallace, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, said on Sunday night that Mr. McCain had not heard the broadcast of the event while in his motorcade and heard none of the questions.

“The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.

Before an audience of more than 2,000 people at the church, the candidates answered questions about policy and social issues.

Mr. Warren, the pastor of Saddleback, had assured the audience while he was interviewing Mr. Obama that “we have safely placed Senator McCain in a cone of silence” and that he could not hear the questions.

After Mr. Obama’s interview, he was joined briefly by Mr. McCain, and the candidates shook hands and embraced.

Mr. Warren started by asking Mr. McCain, “Now, my first question: Was the cone of silence comfortable that you were in just now?”

Mr. McCain deadpanned, “I was trying to hear through the wall.”

Interviewed Sunday on CNN, Mr. Warren seemed surprised to learn that Mr. McCain was not in the building during the Obama interview.

Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting.

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

August 14, 2008

Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands

August 13, 2008
Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands
By NINA BERNSTEIN
NY Times

He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.

In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.

On Tuesday, with an autopsy by the Rhode Island medical examiner under way, his lawyers demanded a criminal investigation in a letter to federal and state prosecutors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the detention system.

Mr. Ng’s death follows a succession of cases that have drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations and a lack of oversight in immigration detention, a rapidly growing network of publicly and privately run jails where the government held more than 300,000 people in the last year while deciding whether to deport them.

In federal court affidavits, Mr. Ng’s lawyers contend that when he complained of severe pain that did not respond to analgesics, and grew too weak to walk or even stand to call his family from a detention pay phone, officials accused him of faking his condition. They denied him a wheelchair and refused pleas for an independent medical evaluation.

Instead, the affidavits say, guards at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., dragged him from his bed on July 30, carried him in shackles to a car, bruising his arms and legs, and drove him two hours to a federal lockup in Hartford, where an immigration officer pressured him to withdraw all pending appeals of his case and accept deportation.

“For this desperately sick, vulnerable person, this was torture,” said Theodore N. Cox, one of Mr. Ng’s lawyers, adding that they want to see a videotape of the transport made by guards.

Immigration and detention officials would not discuss the case, saying the matter was under internal investigation. But in response to a relative of Mr. Ng’s who had begged that he be checked for a spinal injury or fractures, the Wyatt detention center’s director of nursing, Ben Candelaria, replied in a July 16 e-mail