The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

September 02, 2010

AZ: "Marcia Powell's Death Unavenged: County Attorney Passes on Prosecuting Prison Staff" with comments from Donna Hamm and Peggy Plews

Marcia Powell's Death Unavenged: County Attorney Passes on Prosecuting Prison Staff
By Stephen Lemons, Wed., Sep. 1 2010 @ 8:09AM
Feathered Bastard

Sadly, Marcia Powell may never get justice

The Maricopa County Attorney's Office has chosen not to prosecute Arizona Department of Corrections staff in the death of inmate Marcia Powell.

Powell, 48, died May 20, 2009, after being kept in a human cage in Goodyear's Perryville Prison for at least four hours in the blazing Arizona sun. This, despite a prison policy limiting such outside confinement to a maximum of two hours.

The county medical examiner found the cause of death to be due to complications from heat exposure. Her core body temperature upon examination was 108 degrees Fahrenheit. She suffered burns and blisters all over her body.

Witnesses say she was repeatedly denied water by corrections officers, though the c.o.'s deny this. The weather the day she collapsed from the heat (May 19 -- she died in the early morning hours of May 20) arched just above a 107 degree high.

According to a 3,000 page report released by the ADC, she pleaded to be taken back inside, but was ignored. Similarly, she was not allowed to use the restroom. When she was found unconscious, her body was covered with excrement from soiling herself.
Powell, who was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution, actually expired after being transported to West Valley Hospital, where acting ADC Director Charles Ryan made the decision to have her life support suspended.

ADC conducted its own criminal investigation into Powell's agonizing demise. The information I have indicates that ADC submitted its conclusions to the county attorney earlier this year. (Please see update below.) ADC was seeking charges of negligent homicide against at least seven c.o.'s, as well as related charges against other prison staff.

Why didn't the county attorney's office pursue those charges? Apparently, they didn't think they could prevail in court.

County attorney spokesman Bill Fitzgerald issued the following terse statement.

"There is insufficient evidence to go forward with a prosecution against any of the named individuals," he e-mailed me, declining to elaborate further.

Donna Hamm of the advocacy group Middle Ground Prison Reform wasn't buying it.

"Having read the bulk of those 3,000 pages of reports," she told me, "if someone in a prosecutorial position can't find a crime in those pages, they have absolutely no credibility in my opinion."

Hamm noted that guards passed Powell several times throughout her stay in the cage, and that some mocked her pleas for water. As for c.o. claims that Powell was given water, Hamm countered that Powell's eyes "were as dry as parchment," and that the autopsy results show there was no sign of hydration.

Hamm was incredulous that the county attorney couldn't find enough evidence to bring charges.

"It's just beyond comprehension," she stated. "This is the same office that has prosecuted mothers who left their babies in a couple of inches of water to go outside and take a cell phone call or look in the mail."

She also cited the case of "Buffalo Soldier" Charles Long, who was prosecuted by the MCAO for negligent homicide in the 2001 death of a kid who had enrolled in his program for troubled teens and died after being exposed to the heat and put in a bath, where he inhaled water.

The ADC did make some reforms in the wake of Powell's death. It was discovered that the cages were being used to control unruly prisoners, and the ADC claims this practice has stopped. However, Hamm says she has uncovered a case of a man in a Tucson facility who, earlier this year, was held all day and overnight in an outside cage.

Some 16 prison employees were sanctioned in one way or another as a result of the Powell incident, and some were fired. But Hamm says she believes some of those sanctioned have been reinstated.

The outdoor cages are still in use, but have been retrofitted to provide shade, misters, water stations, and benches, which, ironically, Hamm says are metal, and would thus soak up the heat. She's toured ADC facilities to see the redone cages, and admits that changes are positive, but too late to save Powell's life, obviously.

"All the retrofitting in the world is worthless if the staff doesn't follow the policy," she insisted.

Powell had been diagnosed as mentally ill, and was on more than one psychotropic drug, drugs that increased her sensitivity to heat, sunlight and lack of water. All the more reason, according to Hamm, that prison staff should be held accountable.

The only next of kin that was located for Powell was an aged, adoptive mother in California, who had not had contact with Powell for years, and did not want to take possession of the remains.

So, with the help of Hamm and others, Powell's ashes were interred last year at Phoenix's Shadow Rock Church of Christ.

Brophy College Preparatory School also dedicated a plaque to Powell on school grounds this year.

But with no one with standing to bring a federal lawsuit (Hamm says the deadline for a state lawsuit has expired), and with the MCAO unwilling to bring a case against those responsible for Powell's well-being, there looks to be no justice for the schizophrenic deceased woman.

I asked Hamm what this means for the case.

"It means they've gotten away with the most colossal example of brutality I have seen against a female prisoner in the history of the Arizona Department of Corrections," remarked Hamm, adding, "And they got off scot-free."

Update, 9/1/10 2:29 PM: ADC spokesman Barrett Marson told me today that the ADC submitted its criminal investigation to the MCAO back on August 20, 2009. He said he did not know if the ADC asked for charges on certain employees.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bastard/2010/09/marcia_powells_death_unavenged.php#comment-74090815

Some comments:
Donna Leone Hamm [Moderator]
Thanks to Stephen Lemons and other professional journalists like him, the sad story of Marcia Powell continues to be told. But thanks to the politics and other unknown reasons within the Maricopa County Attorney's Office, there will be no justice for Marcia Powell. ANYONE who takes the time to read the investigative reports can readily see that multiple crimes were committed by staff of the ADOC. They should have been charged with Negligent Homicide or Manslaughter -- all the key elements of those crimes are present. Even the DOC sought prosecution of its own staff. The failure to prosecute sends a chilling message to staff and to inmates that communicates to staff that they can act with impunit and suffer few consequences. Middle Ground Prison Reform doesn't inten to allow this matter to settle here. We will contact the U.S. Department of Justice. Someone has to stand up for Marcia Powell.

Peggy Plews [Moderator] 13 hours ago
So, the county attorney can put a mentally ill, incapacitated woman in prison for 27 months for a blow job, but can't even come up with a single misdemeanor out of the 16 people who killed her?

The women out at Perryville are still getting neglected and abused as if nothing ever happened - and some of those staff got their fucking jobs back. Here's the people responsible for those appeals - Marcia's life was worth less than this woman's job security, apparently. I think we should all converge on the next meeting these people have - if they'd post it. They just had one yesterday and the minutes or next meeting aren't up, so here's their phone # (602) 542-3888.

From the AZ State Personnel Board, June 15, 2010:

The Arizona State Personnel Board meeting was called to order by Chair Jim Thompson at 1:36 p.m. The meeting was held at 1400 West Washington Street, Suite 280, Phoenix, Arizona. Board members present were Jim Thompson, Stella Galaviz, Patrick Quinn, and Joseph Smith. Board member Mark Ziska was present telephonically. Staff members in attendance were Jeff Bernick, Counsel for the Board; Judy Henkel, Executive Director for the Board; and Laurie Barcelona, Administrative Assistant for the Board.

Mr. Thompson called for public comments. There being no comments, the board proceeded to consider the approval of the minutes from the May 19, 2010 open public meeting. Patrick Quinn moved the minutes be adopted as written. Mark Ziska and Joseph Smith simultaneously seconded the motion which carried unanimously.

The board next considered the dismissal appeal of Electra Allen versus Department of Corrections.

Martin Bihn, Attorney at Law representing Electra Allen, stated the hearing officer recommended the dismissal be reduced to an 80 hour suspension without pay. He stated there were three contacts for which Ms. Allen was allegedly dismissed. Mr. Bihn stated the first contact was when Ms. Allen was told by a CO III that Inmate Powell was on medication and should not be in the sun. He stated the hearing officer found the CO III was the responsible officer who should have taken some action. Mr. Bihn stated the second issue was when Inmate Powell yelled she wanted to talk to Dr. Kaz, Ms. Allen asked the inmate why, Inmate Powell stated she wanted to know when she was going to be transferred, Ms. Allen called on her radio, found out the transfer would occur shortly, and that was the end of the conversation. He stated the hearing officer found Ms. Allen’s version of events to be accurate and the allegation was not a basis for discipline. Mr. Bihn stated the third basis for discipline was that Ms. Allen just prior to shift change stopped by and saw Inmate Powell had defecated on herself. He stated instead of staying overtime, Ms. Allen informed the oncoming shift of what had occurred and she left for the day. Mr. Bihn stated the hearing officer felt that action warranted discipline but not termination. He stated there were many players involved in the death of the inmate, but Electra Allen was not directly responsible as the agency was attempting to make her out to be. Mr. Bihn urged the board to adopt the Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law and sustain the hearing officer’s recommendation of an 80 hour suspension without pay.

Dennis Carpenter, Assistant Attorney General representing the Department of Corrections, stated Electra Allen had three opportunities to intervene in Inmate Powell’s situation and possibly save her life. He stated at approximately 12:00 p.m. Ms. Allen was told by the counselor that Inmate Powell was on medication and should not be left out in the sun, yet Ms. Allen did nothing with that information. Mr. Carpenter stated a short time later Inmate Powell asked Ms. Allen if she could speak with Dr. Kaz but Ms. Allen just told Inmate Powell that she would be moved soon. Ms. Allen did not notify medical that there had been a request for the doctor to speak with the inmate. He stated at 1:50 p.m. Ms. Allen went to an area near the enclosure where Inmate Powell was being held and she noticed that Inmate Powell had defecated on herself. Mr. Carpenter stated Ms. Allen just left for the day, did nothing to clean up Inmate Powell, nor did she tell anyone Inmate Powell needed to be cleaned up. He stated the hearing officer found this action did not lead directly to the inmate’s death but the agency disagrees. Mr. Carpenter stated if Ms. Allen had at 1:50 p.m. taken Inmate Powell into the bathroom and cleaned her up, Inmate Powell probably would not have collapsed 40 minutes later and died. He stated the agency believed Ms. Allen’s actions led directly to the death of Inmate Powell and warranted termination.

There being no discussion, Joseph Smith proposed the following motion:

"I would move that we adopt the hearing officer’s Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law as our own. I would then move that the appellant’s appeal be upheld to the extent the agency action of dismissal be modified to a suspension of 160 hours without pay, and that all back pay and benefits be restored to her save and except those during the above suspension, those equal to any unemployment benefits received since dismissal, and those received at the time of dismissal. I would further move that the appellant be returned to the same exact position she held prior to her dismissal, including the same work location, duties, job title, salary, and benefits if said position is currently available. In the event the appellant’s former position is not available, the agency shall return the appellant to substantially equivalent a position as is currently available with equivalent benefits, pay, and other terms and conditions of employment.”

The motion was seconded by Patrick Quinn and carried with aye votes from Joseph Smith, Patrick Quinn, and Jim Thompson. Mark Ziska and Stella Galaviz voted nay.

Posted by lois at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)

August 22, 2010

NY Republican Candidate Proposes Turning Prisons into Dormitories for People Receiving Welfare

Still another example of no disgusting thought left unsaid.....
"Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we'll teach people how to earn their check. We'll teach them personal hygiene ... the personal things they don't get when they come from dysfunctional homes," Paladino said.

NY candidate: Prison dorms for welfare recipients

By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Sat Aug 21, 2010

NEW YORK – Republican candidate for governor Carl Paladino said he would transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in "personal hygiene."

Paladino, a wealthy Buffalo real estate developer popular with many tea party activists, isn't saying the state should jail poor people: The program would be voluntary.

But the suggestion that poor families would be better off in remote institutions, rather than among friends and family in their own neighborhoods, struck some anti-poverty activists as insulting.

Paladino is competing for the Republican nomination with former U.S. Rep. Rick Lazio. The primary is Sept. 14.

Paladino first described the idea in June at a meeting of The Journal News of White Plains and spoke about it again this week with The Associated Press.

Throughout his campaign, Paladino has criticized New York's rich menu of social service benefits, which he says encourages illegal immigrants and needy people to live in the state. He has promised a 20 percent reduction in the state budget and a 10 percent income tax cut if elected.

Asked at the meeting how he would achieve those savings, Paladino laid out several plans that included converting underused state prisons into centers that would house welfare recipients. There, they would do work for the state — "military service, in some cases park service, in other cases public works service," he said — while prison guards would be retrained to work as counselors.

"Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we'll teach people how to earn their check. We'll teach them personal hygiene ... the personal things they don't get when they come from dysfunctional homes," Paladino said.

New York, like other states, receives a federal block grant to provide cash and other forms of welfare to very low-income residents. Federal law already requires welfare recipients to do some form of work to receive benefits.

New York's welfare rolls have grown slightly during the recession, while food stamp eligibility has almost doubled, according to the state.

Paladino told The Associated Press the dormitory living would be voluntary, not mandatory, and would give welfare recipients an opportunity to take public, state-sponsored jobs far from home.

"These are beautiful properties with basketball courts, bathroom facilities, toilet facilities. Many young people would love to get the hell out of cities," Paladino he said.

He also defended his hygiene remarks, saying he had trained inner-city troops in the Army and knows their needs.

"You have to teach them basic things — taking care of themselves, physical fitness. In their dysfunctional environment, they never learned these things," he said.

Ketny Jean-Francois, a former welfare recipient and a New York City advocate for low-income people, said Paladino's idea shocked her.

"Being poor is not a crime," she said. "People are on welfare for many reasons ... Is he saying people are poor because they don't have any hygiene or any skills?"

A Lazio spokesman didn't immediately return a message.

Paladino said he based his ideas on the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal program that paid young unemployed men during the Great Depression to plant trees, build roads and develop parks.

Paladino said he would open the program both to long-term welfare recipients and to people who had lost their jobs during the recession. He said that he didn't know how he would pay for it but that prisons could be consolidated to make room.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_paladino_welfare
___

Associated Press writer Marc Beja contributed to this report.

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

August 20, 2010

IN: Take the money and . . . ? Despite law, schools get little of assets seized from crime suspects

Take the money and . . . ?
Despite law, schools get little of assets seized from crime suspects

Tim Evans and Heather Gillers
Star Watch Investigation- Indystar.com
August 17, 2010

In Indiana, when police seize cash, luxury cars and other assets from criminal suspects, any proceeds that exceed law enforcements costs are supposed to go to the state's schools.

But in 87 of Indiana's 92 counties -- including Marion and its surrounding counties -- that is not happening, an Indianapolis Star investigation found.

Critics say a vague section of Indiana law dealing with how law enforcement costs are calculated allows police and prosecutors to keep virtually all the money that is forfeited -- a windfall some contend comes at the expense of Hoosier schoolchildren.

Experts conservatively estimate that millions of dollars in cash, cars, jewelry, homes and other assets are seized every year in Indiana. But only a fraction of that winds up in the Common School Fund, which provides low-interest loans to schools for technology and construction projects.

The grand total put into the school fund since Jan. 1, 2008: $99,490, according to records provided by the state treasurer's office. Only five counties submitted any money during that time.

It is not known how many of the millions of dollars in assets seized every year should be directed to the school fund. But an attorney who has worked on forfeiture issues said schools have likely missed out on more than $1 million since 2008.

"Certainly, schools would benefit from having more money in the fund," said John Ellis, executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents. "It can really be a saving grace for poorer districts."

The issue is particularly crucial now, with property tax caps and budget cuts taking a heavy toll on school funding sources.

The Star's investigation found troubling issues with how seized assets are handled:

The lack of clear guidelines for calculating law enforcement costs allows some prosecutors to skirt -- at least the intent, if not the letter of -- Indiana's forfeiture law.

Police and prosecutors are not required to justify their expense claims, and judges rarely question them.

Asset seizure cases are seldom challenged by the defendants or state officials with a vested interest in the Common School Fund.

"There is very little oversight and reporting, so it should be no surprise that abuse is rampant," said Darpana Sheth, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based civil liberties law firm that fights questionable forfeiture laws and practices.

Sheth, who has monitored forfeiture cases in Indiana, said she is shocked by the small amount forwarded to the fund.

"It should be a lot more than that," Sheth said.

Indianapolis defense attorney Paul Ogden called the system an invitation to "police for profits."

"That's what's going on now," he said. "They're profiting off policing with this forfeiture law."

Emptying the till

No state agency tracks asset seizures in Indiana, The Star found, nor is there any comprehensive list of forfeitures.

But in Marion County alone, the Department of Public Safety said nearly $1.5 million in criminal assets forfeited through civil court proceedings was deposited in a local law enforcement fund in 2009. The money is split up among the Metro Drug Task Force, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, the Marion County prosecutor's office and the Department of Public Safety.

But state records reveal there was nothing left over for the school fund.

And, The Star found, that appears to be the case across most of the state.

Why?

There is no clear definition in state law of what can or should be counted as law enforcement expenses, said Joel Schumm, a professor at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis.

"If those (forfeiture) petitions don't have to explain how expenses are calculated and the defendant isn't there to challenge it, which is often the case," he said, "most judges are just going to go along with the request."

Marion Superior Court Judge Cynthia Ayers, who hears civil cases, including forfeiture cases, agreed. She said judges tend to defer to the prosecutor's assessment of how much the seizure cost.

"We don't have any part of that -- to look over their (prosecutors') shoulder and say, 'In this particular case, it cost you $50 to do the seizure, and you seized $1,000, so $950 ought to go to the Common School Fund,' " she said.

"There's no way for us to know really how much that seizure cost. That information is just not generally available to the civil court."

Schumm said he thinks the attorney general, as the state's lawyer, would be the likely advocate to ensure the fund gets its share from forfeitures.

"If the attorney general is not going to be the one who insists that the law is followed," he said, "I don't know who it would be."

Attorney General Greg Zoeller's office doesn't see it that way.

"The 92 county prosecutors are the attorney general's clients, and we provide them legal advice upon request," spokesman Bryan Corbin said. "We do not serve as the accountant for other units of government."

And, apparently, it's not the role of the state Department of Education, either.

"To my knowledge, we have no grounds to challenge the money," DOE spokeswoman Lauren Auld said.

In five counties, at least, prosecutors have turned over money without a fight.

Two of those counties -- Wayne and Putnam -- accounted for the majority of the money paid into the school fund over the past 2 1/2 years. The only other counties sending money to the fund were Dubois, Montgomery and Vigo.

Putnam County's contribution came in a single payment of $36,609, based on the forfeiture of $325,612 and a pickup truck valued at more than $13,000.

Wayne County, in contrast, made 19 payments totaling $43,512. Law enforcement expenses in those cases were much lower, typically running from $500 to $1,000 per case.

Wayne County Prosecutor Michael Shipman did not return calls seeking comment about how he accounted for law enforcement costs and turned over more money to the fund than any other prosecutor in the state.

Deputy Marion County Prosecutor Larry Brodeur, who works on forfeitures for the office, did not return calls from The Star, and an office spokeswoman could not provide anyone Friday to answer questions about how the agency deals with those cases.

Change may be coming

The way police and prosecutors in Indiana handle forfeitures could change.

Both candidates running in the November election for the District 86 seat in the state House, which covers parts of Marion and Hamilton counties, said that if elected they would propose changes to increase accountability and transparency in the process.

Kurt Webber, the Republican candidate, said he wants to introduce legislation on the issue. Under the bill Webber hopes to introduce, law enforcement would no longer be able to claim part or all of the seizure money to cover its costs. Instead, the funds would pass through an existing local fiscal body -- such as a county council -- that could review police costs and, if it thought it was merited, use some of that money to reimburse law enforcement costs.

"When you create a financial incentive for a police officer to benefit his own department, I think that's a problem," Webber said, "because this money was supposed to go from drug dealers to schoolkids in hope that we have better educated kids and less drug dealers."

Webber first encountered the issue when representing the Knox County Council. A former county sheriff there had used forfeiture money to buy police cars without the consent of the council. When Webber looked at the seizures bringing in that money, however, he was not so sure the sheriff should have been allowed to keep it in the first place.

"I got concerned," Webber said, "because I started seeing orders that said often that the law enforcement expenses exceeded the value of the property and because, in this process, there really are not two adversaries going at it."

Webber said the current system can reward law enforcement and prosecutors who "fudge" on their case costs.

"I'm not saying all law enforcement fudge, I'm not saying all prosecutors fudge, but your numbers will tell us," he said. "There is no way in a given county that if they have drug forfeiture cases that the amount remitted to the schoolkids should be zero."

When told of Webber's plan, incumbent Ed DeLaney, a Democrat, said he agrees with his political rival.

"This is a very important issue, and I join Mr. Webber in being concerned about accountability," DeLaney said. "This is something worth looking at, and if I defeat Mr. Webber, it is something I will pick up and move forward on."

Call Star reporter Tim Evans at (317) 444-6204.

__________________________

Star Watch Investigation

The issue: Indiana law requires that any assets seized by police that exceed the cost of law enforcement should be turned over to the state's schools.

What we found: Since Jan. 1 2008, only five of 92 counties have turned any money over to the fund; state law is vague in how police should account for its costs; judges typically defer to prosecutors because often there is no one to contest their requests; it's impossible to know how much school funding is being lost because no state agency tracks asset seizures.

Online: Read other Star Watch investigations at IndyStar.com/starwatch.

What the law says

"If the court enters judgment in favor of the state . . . any excess in value of the proceeds or the money over the law enforcement costs (shall) be forfeited and transferred to the treasurer of state for deposit in the Common School Fund."

Posted by lois at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

August 14, 2010

Calif. borrows from budget to build new death row

Calif. borrows from budget to build new death row
By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Sacramento, Calif. (AP) --

Despite California's $19 billion budget deficit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration said Wednesday it will borrow nearly $65 million from the state's cash-strapped general fund to begin building a new 1,152-bed death row at San Quentin State Prison.

Borrowing now will save money in the long run by reducing interest payments and taking advantage of the favorable construction climate, said Department of Finance spokesman H. D. Palmer.

Legislators and social services organizations have stalled the bonds that would usually pay for construction by suing Schwarzenegger over several of his budget vetoes last year. Palmer said the administration is confident the governor's veto authority will be upheld by the California Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear arguments Sept. 8.

Legal debate aside, opponents of the death row expansion said it is foolish to take money from the general fund, which pays for ongoing state operations, when the state hasn't decided how to deal with its budget deficit.

Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, called it "stunningly hypocritical" that the governor is borrowing from the general fund at the same time he is attempting to furlough state employees three days each month to avoid a looming cash crisis. The state could soon again begin issuing IOUs because it is out of money, Huffman said in a statement.

He and Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, also criticized the projected cost overruns for a project that originally was expected to cost $220 million.

The administration put the total price tag at $356 million for 768 new cells, a 24-bed medical treatment center and other support buildings. The new cells will contain 1,152 beds, because many of the inmates will be housed two to a cell.

The $64.7 million borrowed from the general fund will go to pay first-year costs, Palmer said. The money could be repaid from bonds issued as early as next spring, after Schwarzenegger has left office, assuming the state's high court rules in the administration's favor this fall.

"We're extremely confident that we're going to prevail," he said. Palmer noted the project was originally approved by lawmakers in 2003 but has been stalled ever since.

Bids are going out Thursday, with construction set to start in November. The entire complex is scheduled to be finished in February 2013.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/08/11/state/n165642D49.DTL

Posted by lois at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)

August 08, 2010

"Epidemic" of Suicides in Massachusetts Prisons

"Epidemic" of Suicides in Massachusetts Prisons
Jean Casella and James Ridgeway | August 6, 2010
From Solitary Watch
URL: http://wp.me/pKbGK-w1

On July 15, an inmate hanged himself in his cell at the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, bringing the number of suicides in Massachusetts state prisons this year to eight. The rate of suicides, which so far averages one a month, is four times the national average.

According to the Boston Globe, prisoner advocates' "calls for an urgent response from state officials" have spurred the administration of Governor Duval Patrick to hire a suicide prevention specialist. Yet Massachusetts prisons have been ignoring many of the recommendations made by the same specialist three years ago, especially when it comes to placing suicidal prisoners in isolation. In addition, the state has shelved plans to build a special treatment facility for mentally ill prisoners, who account for a majority of the suicides.

The inmate who committed suicide on July 15 was a 51-year-old man had a long history of mental illness and had attempted suicide several times before. His aunt told the Globe's Jonathan Saltzman that he "mutilated himself in prison and ate batteries." She also said that prison officials "knew of his history with mental issues...He was on their watch, and this happened.’’

Massachusetts had another rash of suicides in 2006--seven in all. In response, the state hired Lindsay M. Hayes, the same suicide prevention specialist it has now retained once again. According to the Globe:

In February 2007, following seven suicides the previous year, Hayes issued a 63-page report that found serious shortcomings in the state’s handling of inmates at risk for suicide. The state immediately pledged to comply with all 29 recommendations in his report, and suicides fell.

But advocates question whether the state has lived up to its promise. Inmates who spent time on suicide watches in the past two years, [Leslie] Walker [executive director of Boston-based Prisoners’ Legal Services] said, told her that officials placed them in barren cells, made them change from regular prison garb into gowns, revoked routine privileges such as family visits, and deprived them of belongings, including books, mail, family photographs, and toiletries.

Hayes’s 2007 report had urged that such practices be avoided because they exacerbate a sense of isolation and discourage some inmates from reporting suicidal feelings, but Walker said they persist.

“There’s a lack of vigilance and compliance with Hayes’s recommendations,’’ said Walker, who added that she planned to write Commissioner Harold W. Clarke about what she called “an epidemic, a crisis’’ within the state prison system. In response, the Correction Department’s [Diane] Wiffin said suicide prevention is a top priority and “we have made significant investments to protect the prisoners in our care.’’

But the state of Massachusetts has in fact reneged what is perhaps on the most "significant investment" it could have made to protect the prisoners in its care and keep them from taking their own lives. According to an earlier article by Saltzman in the Boston Globe:

The nonprofit Disability Law Center sued the state in March 2007, alleging that hundreds of mentally ill prisoners were kept in closet-size solitary confinement cells in response to unruly behavior. The conditions had led to self-mutilation, the swallowing of razor blades, and numerous suicides, said the center.

A Globe Spotlight Team series in December 2007 reported 15 suicides in the prisons from 2005 through 2007, most by those in solitary confinement with histories of mental illness or drug addiction. There had also been more than 3,200 suicide attempts and self-inflicted injuries in the prior decade, the Globe found.

The suit, which resembled legal challenges that led to changes in other states, said Massachusetts ignored repeated calls from its mental health providers and consultants to provide high-security treatment units for violent, mentally disturbed inmates.

A tentative agreement was reached, but in November 2009 the state backed out, citing the fiscal crisis. The state has no plans to build a new mental health facility, and the suit will go to trial at some point in the future.

The relationship between mental illness, solitary confinement, and suicide in Massachusetts prisons seems abundantly clear. Yet the Correction Department's Diane Wiffin told Saltzman, following the July suicide: “While privacy concerns prevent us from commenting about specific cases, our initial reviews have found no common trends.’’

Posted by lois at 03:04 PM | Comments (0)

July 24, 2010

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill and Gets a Tax Break of $2,400 For Every Prisoner for Doing It

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle
Abe Louise Young
July 21, 2010
The Nation

In the first few days after BP's Deepwater Horizon wellhead exploded, spewing crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, cleanup workers could be seen on Louisiana beaches wearing scarlet pants and white t-shirts with the words "Inmate Labor" printed in large red block letters. Coastal residents, many of whom had just seen their livelihoods disappear, expressed outrage at community meetings; why should BP be using cheap or free prison labor when so many people were desperate for work? The outfits disappeared overnight.

Work crews in Grand Isle, Louisiana, still stand out. In a region where nine out of ten residents are white, the cleanup workers are almost exclusively African-American men. The racialized nature of the cleanup is so conspicuous that Ben Jealous, the president of the NAACP, sent a public letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward on July 9, demanding to know why black people were over-represented in "the most physically difficult, lowest paying jobs, with the most significant exposure to toxins."

Hiring prison labor is more than a way for BP to save money while cleaning up the biggest oil spill in history. By tapping into the inmate workforce, the company and its subcontractors get workers who are not only cheap but easily silenced—and they get lucrative tax write-offs in the process.

Known to some as "the inmate state," Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration of any other state in the country. Seventy percent of its 39,000 inmates are African-American men. The Louisiana Department of Corrections (DOC) only has beds for half that many prisoners, so 20,000 inmates live in parish jails, privately run contract facilities and for-profit work release centers. Prisons and parish jails provide free daily labor to the state and private companies like BP, while also operating their own factories and farms, where inmates earn between zero and forty cents an hour. Obedient inmates, or "trustees," become eligible for work release in the last three years of their sentences. This means they can be a part of a market-rate, daily labor force that works for private companies outside the prison gates. The advantage for trustees is that they get to keep a portion of their earnings, redeemable upon release. The advantage for private companies is that trustees are covered under Work Opportunity Tax Credit, a holdover from Bush's Welfare to Work legislation that rewards private-sector employers for hiring risky "target groups." Businesses earn a tax credit of $2,400 for every work release inmate they hire. On top of that, they can earn back up to 40 percent of the wages they pay annually to "target group workers."

If BP's use of prison labor remains an open secret on the Gulf Coast, no one in an official capacity is saying so. At the Grand Isle base camp in early June, I called BP's Public Information line, and visited representatives for the Coast Guard Public Relations team, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Louisiana Fisheries and Wildlife Department. They were all stumped. Were inmates doing shore protection or oil cleanup work? They had no idea. In fact, they said, they'd like to know—would I call them if I found out?

I got an answer one evening earlier this month, when I drove up the gravel driveway of the Lafourche Parish Work Release Center jail, just off Highway 90, halfway between New Orleans and Houma. Men were returning from a long day of shoveling oil-soaked sand into black trash bags in the sweltering heat. Wearing BP shirts, jeans and rubber boots (nothing identifying them as inmates), they arrived back at the jail in unmarked white vans, looking dog tired.

Beach cleanup is a Sisyphean task. Shorelines cleaned during the day become newly soaked with oil and dispersant overnight, so crews shovel up the same beaches again and again. Workers wear protective chin-to-boot coveralls (made out of high-density polyethylene and manufactured by Dupont), taped to steel-toed boots covered in yellow plastic. They work twenty minutes on, forty minutes off, as per Occupational Safety and Health Administration safety rules. The limited physical schedule allows workers to recover from the blazing sun and the oppressive heat that builds up inside their impermeable suits.

During their breaks, workers unzip the coveralls for ventilation, drink ice water from gallon thermoses and sit under white fabric tents. They start at 6 AM, take a half-hour lunch and end the day at 6PM, adding up three to four hours of hard physical labor in twenty-minute increments. They are forbidden to speak to the public or the media by BP's now-notorious gag rule. At the end of the day, coveralls are stripped off and thrown in dumpsters, alongside oil-soaked booms and trash bags full of contaminated sand. The dumpsters are emptied into local HazMat landfills, free employees go home and the inmates are returned to work release centers.

Work release inmates are required to work for up to twelve hours a day, six days a week, sometimes averaging seventy-two hours per week. These are long hours for performing what may arguably be the most toxic job in America. Although the dangers of mixed oil and dispersant exposure are largely unknown, the chemicals in crude oil can damage every system in the body, as well as cell structures and DNA.

Inmates can't pick and choose their work assignments and they face considerable repercussions for rejecting any job, including loss of earned "good time." The warden of the Terrebonne Parish Work Release Center in Houma explains: "If they say no to a job, they get that time that was taken off their sentence put right back on, and get sent right back to the lockup they came out of." This means that work release inmates who would rather protect their health than participate in the non-stop toxic cleanup run the risk of staying in prison longer.

Prisoners are already subject to well-documented health care deprivations while incarcerated, and are unlikely to have health insurance after release. Work release positions are covered by Worker's Compensation insurance, but pursuing claims long after exposure could be a Kafkaesque task. Besides, there is currently no system for tracking the medical impact of oil and dispersant exposure in cleanup workers or affected communities.

"They're not getting paid, it's part of their sentence"

To learn how many of the 20,000 prisoners housed outside of state prisons are involved in spill-related labor, I called the DOC Public Relations officer, Pam LaBorde, who ultimately discouraged me from seeking such information. ("Frankly, I do not know where your story is going, but it does not sound positive," she said on our third phone call.)

Going to prison officials directly didn't help. The warden of a South Louisiana jail refused to discuss the matter, exclaiming, "You want me to lose my job?" A different warden, of a privately-owned center admitted, on condition of anonymity, that inmates from his facility had been employed in oil cleanup, but declined to answer further questions. Jefferson Parish President Steve Theriot and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, and Grand Isle Police Chief Euris DuBois declined interview requests.

Transparency problems are longstanding with the Louisiana DOC. There is also scant oversight of private prison facilities. Following Hurricane Katrina, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a 140-page report that documented abuses and botched prison evacuations, as well as the numerous times its requests for official information were rejected. "It appears that you are standing in the shoes of prisoners, and therefore DOC is exempted from providing any information which it might otherwise have to under public records law," DOC lawyers told the ACLU National Prisons Project.

Some officials have been more forthcoming. A lieutenant in the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office told me that three crews of inmates were sandbagging in Buras, Louisiana in case oil hit there. "They're not getting paid, it's part of their sentence," she said. "They'll work as long as they're needed. It's a hard job because of the heat, but they're not refusing to work." In early May, Governor Bobby Jindal's office sent out a press release heralding the training of eighty inmates from Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in "cleaning of oil-impacted wildlife recovered from coastal areas." DOC Spokesperson Pam LaBorde subsequently denied that any inmates participated in wildlife cleaning efforts.

Offering an exception to this policy of secrecy is Lafourche Parish Work Release Center, the only one in the state that is accredited by the American Correctional Association. It is audited regularly and abides by national standards of safety and accountability, which is perhaps why I was able to simply walk in on a Thursday afternoon and chat with the warden.

Captain Milfred Zeringue is a retired Louisiana state police officer with a jaunty smile, powerful torso, and silver hair. His small, gray office is adorned with photos of many generations of his Louisiana family and a Norman Rockwell print picturing a policeman and a small runaway boy sharing a meaningful look at a soda fountain counter. A brass plaque confers the "Blood and Guts Award" upon Zeringue. Of 184 men living under the Captain's charge, 18 are currently assigned to oil spill work. The numbers change daily and are charted on white boards that stretch down the hallway.

Captain Zeringue says that inmates are glad for any opportunity they can get, and see work release jobs as a step up, a headstart on re-entry. "Our work release inmates are shipped to centers around the state according to employer demand," he explains, describing the different types of skilled and unskilled labor. "I have carpenters, guys riding on the back of the trash trucks, guys working offshore on the oil rigs, doing welding, cooking. Employers like them because they are guaranteed a worker who's on time, drug-free, and sober."

"And," he adds, "because they do get a tax break."

Inside the center, men sit around long plastic tables watching TV, or nap on thin mattresses under grey wool covers. The windowless dormitories hold twenty to thirty men each in blue metal bunk beds. Hard hats hang off of lockers, ceiling fans circle slowly, and each bunk has a white mesh bag of laundry strung from one rung. An air of dejection and fatigue permeates the atmosphere, but the facility looks safe and clean. It's surrounded by chain link fence and staffed by former police officers. One long shelf stacked with donated romance and adventure novels serves as a library. GED classes and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings gather weekly. Individuals are free to walk around the halls, use pay phones, shoot pool, or sit and watch cars pass on the highway from a small outdoor yard. A doctor visits once a week. Inmates greet the captain as we walk and jump to hold doors open for us.

Zeringue exudes a certain affection for the workers in his center. "To me, I'm kind of like Dad here. The inmates come to me and talk about their problems. They get antsy and nervous when they're close to getting out—how am I going to survive, how's my family gonna be with me?"

Like all Gulf Coast residents, inmates have good reason to feel anxious about the future. BP has received almost 80,000 claims for lost revenue in the wake of the spill. Scores of people are out of work, the offshore drilling industry is in limbo and the age-old fishing and shrimping professions are looking death in the face. In the towns and bayous of the gulf, anxiety and post-traumatic stress are taking hold.

In some places, the desperation is palpable. I met Randy Adams, a construction contractor from Grand Isle, on the sidewalk outside of a local bar. "This BP spill is turning me into an alcoholic, because I don't have anything to do," he says. "That, that, thing—that thing they did—" He points to the beach. He's unable to say "spill" or label it in any way. He points to the water again and again. "That thing has taken everything away from me. I have a gun under the front seat of my truck, and every day I decide, do I want to put a bullet in my skull? Live or die, that's my choice here, every day. My life is gone, do you understand?"

Scott Rojas of the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission suggests that for all the work to be done, finding local labor to do oil-spill cleanup jobs is trickier than it would seem. "These are really hard, and really low-paid jobs—I know agencies have put effort into finding locals to do the work. But they may not always have an easy time of it. As for reports of inmates being hired, I can't confirm or deny. The people down in Grand Isle swear to it, but you're going to have to talk to them."

The Louisiana Workforce Commission, the state unemployment agency, is advertising hazardous waste removal oil spill cleanup positions as "green jobs." They pay $10 per hour, so these jobs might seem like an attractive opportunity. But Paul Perkins, a retired Angola Prison deputy warden who owns and operates five for-profit inmate work release centers, says that even as the agency is "overflowing with applications for oil spill jobs," the work force is inconsistent. "They might hire 400 people on Monday, and after one day of work, only 200 will come back on Tuesday."

Hiring prison labor might prove more reliable, but it evokes understandable rage among Gulf Coast residents. According to Perkins, the Louisiana Secretary of Corrections, James LeBlanc, met with disaster contractors in early June and asked them to stop using inmate labor until all unemployed residents found work. But as the spill has so dramatically demonstrated, in this new environment, the government seems only able to make polite requests. BP calls the shots, and its private contractors, like ES&H, are the sole clean-up operators. From there, subcontractors, such as Able Body Labor, decide whom to employ.

Working for BP: "This isn't what I would like to be doing."

Anna Keller relocated to Grand Isle in May to work with Gulf Recovery LLC, to help develop community-based responses to the oil disaster. Also a member of Critical Resistance New Orleans, Keller says, it is "common knowledge" that prisoners are doing cleanup. "If you talk to anyone working on the beach they'll tell you, yes, prisoners are working here." She describes a shipping container that sits at the turn-off for the Venice Boat Harbor, advertising "Jails to Go." Such containers work as contract labor housing for work release prisoners, with bunks inside, bars on the windows, and deadbolts on the doors.

According to Keller, the use of inmate labor takes recovery one step further away from those people who are most intimate with the ecology, culture and landscapes of the area. In her view, they should be hired first, and not just for the grunt jobs. "Community members should be hired in the planning stages, and paid for their expertise. The local people are the true experts here."

Up the road at A-Bear's Restaurant in Houma, an elderly man in overalls describes his son's financial dilemmas to the room of locals over dinner. The son is 40, married with children, and was laid off from an oyster shucking factory shortly after the BP leak began. He's now walking door-to-door with a lawnmower, looking for grass to cut. The man holds his head in both arthritic hands. The waitress hands him a paper napkin to blot his eyes. I ask him if his son would work for BP in the cleanup and he grimaces. "Maybe, no, I don't think so," he says. "That would be hard for his pride, you know? For that little money? No."

Beach cleanup workers do make the lowest wages in the recovery effort. Others on the BP payroll have it slightly better, but the jobs they are doing are a daily reminder of what they have lost. Chris Griffin is a French-speaking Cajun shrimper whose father and grandfather also captained shrimp boats. After oil contamination closed the gulf waters, Griffin was hired to captain airboat tours of oil-impacted marshlands for BP. Three times a day he steers a slim four-seat boat with a deafening engine into the waters he's known all his life, while Coast Guard officials give media tours and answer the same grim questions again and again.

"This isn't what I would like to be doing," Griffin says, "but I'm glad I have a job so I can take care of my family. I'm not worrying about the money. Not everybody has that. Me, I'm worrying about the years in the future here. Will we keep cleaning it up? Will they take care of everybody?
http://www.thenation.com/article/37828/bp-hires-prison-labor-clean-spill-while-coastal-residents-struggle?page=full

Posted by lois at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2010

THE SENTENCING OF LYNNE STEWART

THE SENTENCING OF LYNNE STEWART
By Michael Steven Smith

“At all times throughout history the ideology of the ruling class is the ruling ideology.”
Karl Marx

Lynne Stewart is a friend. She used to practice law in New York City. I still do. I was in the courtroom with my wife Debby the afternoon of July l9th for her re-sentencing. The Judge John Koetl buried her alive. We should have seen it coming when he told her to take all the time she needed at the start when she spoke before the sentence was read. It didn’t matter what she said. He had already written his decision, which he read out loud for to a courtroom packed with supporters. It was well crafted. Bullet proof on appeal. He is smart and cautious. After about an hour into his pronouncement he came to the buried alive part. He prefaced it byciting the unprecedented 400 letters of support people had sent him, all of which he said he read. He noted Lynne’s three decades of service to the poor and the outcast. He stressed that she is a seventy year old breast cancer survivor with high blood pressure and other serious health problems. And then he laid it on her: l20 months.

Everyone in the courthouse divided l20 by l2. He had given her a death sentence we all thought. She’ll never get out. He almost quadrupled the 28 month sentence he hadoriginally pronounced. She had told him that 28 months was a horizon, that she had hope. But no more. Lynne’s granddaughter gasped. Then started sobbing. She kept crying even as Judge John Koetl kept reading. And reading. And reading. It was awful. The sentence was pitiless and cruel. How to understand it?

Lynne’s lawyer Jill Shellow Levine rose after the Judge finished. She asked him why. He was candid. He was told to do it by his supervisors, the judges on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. This court is an institution of the elite. It is considered the second highest court in America next to the Supreme Court because it presides over the financial center of the empire, not its capital, that is in D.C., but its real capital. This court makes policy and Lynne Stewart was to be made an example of in “the war against terrorism” just as a half a century before, in the same court, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were condemned to death in the war against communism, told that they had caused the deaths of 50,000 U.S. soldiers in the Korean War, and found guilty of the ridiculous charge of “stealing the secret” of the atomic bomb, when there was no secret, it was only a matter of technology. The sentencing Judge Kaufman knew they would leave behind two orphan children, Robert and Michael, ages six and three.

In l947 George Kennan, the ideological father of the cold war, wrote that the United States had but six per cent of the world’s population and fifty per cent of its wealth. The problem was to keep it. Anti-communism served as the ideological cover the U.S. ruling classes used. But communism ceased to exist after capitalism was restored in the Soviet Union in l99l. A new ideological cover has been constructed in the wake of the September llth criminal attack on the World Tread Center and the Pentagon: The War Against Terror. Nationalist opposition to U.S. economic and foreign policy in parts of the Arab world is no longer led by communists but by fundamentalist Muslims.

Lynne Stewart represented one of them, Sheik Abdel Rahman, who was the leading oppositionist to the U.S. sponsored Murabak dictatorship in Egypt, which gets more money from America than any other country in the world except Israel. In l993, at the behest of the Egyptian government, Sheik Rahman was criminally indicted and later convicted of the crime of “sedition” for suggesting to government informer that rather than blow up New York City landmarks he choose “a military target.” It was on the occasion of a post-conviction prison visit that Lynne helped her client. She released his statement to Reuters press service announcing his withdrawal of support for a cease fire between his group and the Egyptian government. This was in violation of a Special Administrative Measure (SAMs) that Lynne had agreed to with the U.S. Government. She wasn’t supposed to be a medium for commincation between her client and the outside world. She should have challenged the constitutionality of the SAMs, she now realizes, and not just have violated them.

She wasn’t prosecuted for what she did, not under the Clinton administration, nor during the first years of George W. Bush. Then came 9.ll. Bush’s Attorney General John Ashcroft flew into New York City in 2003 and announced Lynne’s indictment on the David Letterman show. The crime? A novel one. Conspiracy to provide material aid to a terrorist organization. What was the material aid? Her client. When Ashcroft did that, as the nation’s highest law enforcement officer, he committed an ethical violation for which any other attorney would have been sanctioned. He made sure that from the very beginning of her ordeal Lynne Stewart never had a chance. Not with the level of fear the government was able to generate and the scare they put into her jury. In 2006 she was convicted and sentenced. The maximum was 30 years, but thanks to the superb legal work of National Lawyers Guild attorneys Elizabeth Fink and Sarah Kunstler and the outpouring of public support Judge Koetl gave her 28 months. The government appealed the sentence to their U.S. Court of Appeals. Game over. The selective prosecution of Lynne Stewart was accomplished.

Judge John Walker, George W. Bush’s first cousin, sits on that court. His family made their fortune selling munitions during WWI. He wrote that the 28 months was “shockingly low.” Judge Koetl was given his orders. The seemingly kindly boyish looking jurist about whom it was said that he walks to work and looks after an elderly mother - not exactly a sadistic old lady killer - then reversed himself and on the same evidence nearly quadruped the sentence, putting a seventy year old grandmother on chemotherapy away for ten years and two years probation after that for good measure. This is much more than meanness. It is ideology.

Michael Steven Smith is the co-host of the WBAI radio show Law and Disorder and sits on the Board of The Center for Constitutional Rights.

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

July 20, 2010

MA: With 8th suicide, appeals for change in prison system

With 8th suicide, appeals for change in prison system
State brings in a specialist
By Jonathan Saltzman
Globe Staff / July 16, 2010

Suicides in Massachusetts state prisons are occurring at a rate more than four times the national average this year, prompting advocates and inmates’ relatives to call for an urgent response from state officials — and spurring the Patrick administration yesterday to hire a suicide prevention specialist.

With the discovery of an eighth inmate found hanging in his cell at Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater yesterday morning, Massachusetts prisons have reached a suicide rate of about 71 per 100,000 inmates so far this year, more than quadruple the average annual national rate of 16 per 100,000 inmates reported by the US Bureau for Justice Statistics.

Even if no additional inmates commit suicide this year, the eight deaths to date match the highest annual total in the past 14 years, according to Department of Correction statistics.

“To hear that so many people have committed suicide, it just boggles my mind,’’ said Antonia Chasse, of Westfield, whose brother, Ramon DeJesus, a 58-year-old convicted murderer, was found hanging in his cell on June 2 at MCI-Norfolk. “This is a place where individuals are being watched 24 hours a day.’’

Alarmed by the surge in suicides, Leslie Walker, executive director of Boston-based Prisoners’ Legal Services, said in a phone interview Wednesday that the state should rehire the suicide prevention specialist, Lindsay M. Hayes, of Mansfield, who worked on a plan for the Correction Department in 2007.

Late yesterday afternoon, Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the prison system, said the department had indeed rehired Hayes, project director for the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, and asked him to examine each recent suicide.

In February 2007, following seven suicides the previous year, Hayes issued a 63-page report that found serious shortcomings in the state’s handling of inmates at risk for suicide. The state immediately pledged to comply with all 29 recommendations in his report, and suicides fell.

But advocates question whether the state has lived up to its promise. Inmates who spent time on suicide watches in the past two years, Walker said, told her that officials placed them in barren cells, made them change from regular prison garb into gowns, revoked routine privileges such as family visits, and deprived them of belongings, including books, mail, family photographs, and toiletries.

Hayes’s 2007 report had urged that such practices be avoided because they exacerbate a sense of isolation and discourage some inmates from reporting suicidal feelings, but Walker said they persist.

“There’s a lack of vigilance and compliance with Hayes’s recommendations,’’ said Walker, who added that she planned to write Commissioner Harold W. Clarke about what she called “an epidemic, a crisis’’ within the state prison system. In response, the Correction Department’s Wiffin said suicide prevention is a top priority and “we have made significant investments to protect the prisoners in our care.’’

The department has opened several relatively small treatment and behavior modification units for mentally ill prisoners and made cells more resistant to suicide, she said. All new prison employees undergo eight hours of suicide prevention training. Prison officials, she said, consult mental health professionals about appropriate possessions and privileges that inmates on suicide watches can have.

“Despite these efforts, eight prisoners, including one this morning, have tragically ended their lives,’’ she said. “While privacy concerns prevent us from commenting about specific cases, our initial reviews have found no common trends.’’

The state’s prison system has more than 11,000 inmates.

The inmate who officials said committed suicide yesterday was John Pappageris, a 51-year-old former Waltham man serving three to four years for breaking and entering and a concurrent one-year sentence for assault and battery on a public servant, Wiffin said.

He was found hanging in his cell at 5:15 a.m. by a correction officer and taken to Morton Hospital and Medical Center in Taunton, where he was pronounced dead at 6:27 a.m., Wiffin said. Prison officials notified the Plymouth County district attorney’s office, as is routine with such deaths.

Pappageris was a client of Prisoners’ Legal Services, had a lengthy history of mental illness, and had attempted suicide several times before, according to Walker.

His aunt, Lucille Mahakian, of Watertown, said last night that Pappageris had never gotten over the suicide of his mother in 1971. He mutilated himself in prison and ate batteries, she said.

“They knew of his history with mental issues,’’ she said of prison officials. “He was on their watch, and this happened.’’

A Globe Spotlight Team series in December 2007 revealed deepening mental illness and misery behind the walls of the state’s prisons and identified numerous problems, including botched background screenings on suicidal inmates, missing mental health records, and skipped security rounds by correction officers.

Some advocates for inmates say this year’s increase in suicides tells only part of the story.

“The number of completed suicides is always the tip of the iceberg,’’ said Rick Glassman, litigation director of the Disability Law Center of Massachusetts, a nonprofit group that advocates for people with disabilities, including mental illness. “What lies beneath it is the number of suicide attempts and self-injurious behavior.’’

In March 2007, the center sued the state in federal court, alleging that hundreds of mentally ill prisoners were kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day, leading to suicides and self-mutilation. The suit called on the state to build large special treatment units similar to those constructed in other states as a result of federal lawsuits.

In November 2008, Clarke told the Globe he expected the suit would be settled out of court shortly with the announcement of plans to build maximum-security residential treatment units. But a year later, lawyers for the prison system disclosed that the Patrick administration had shelved the plans because of the state’s fiscal crisis. The suit is pending.

In addition to wanting the state to bring Hayes back to study the latest surge in suicides, Walker and other advocates for prisoners want the Legislature to pass a bill to appoint a permanent panel to review problems in the prisons and recommend improvements.

State Representative Kay Khan, Democrat of Newton and a psychiatric nurse, has sponsored the bill in every session over the past 15 years but said it has gotten nowhere, largely because of opposition from the union that represents correction officers.

Khan said she believes top prison officials are doing the best they can but face daunting challenges: The vast majority of inmates have mental health or substance abuse problems, the state has cut prison budgets, and few lawmakers are interested in what happens in prisons.

Hayes, the suicide prevention specialist, could not be reached yesterday but in an interview Wednesday cautioned about reading too much into any annual total for prison suicides. He prefers to examine suicide trends over 10-year periods, he said, because annual totals can vary sharply.

Nonetheless, he said that this year’s surge is discouraging and that he would gladly study its causes.

“I think it would be very accurate to say that the trend is upward, and I would hope that the department is very concerned about that and that they’re looking at it,’’ he said.

Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/07/16/with_8th_suicide_appeals_for_change_in_prison_system/

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

July 12, 2010

Stop, Question and Frisk in New York Neighborhoods

Published: July 11, 2010--NY Times
Stop, Question and Frisk in New York Neighborhoods

New York City’s police force, in its fight against crime, has increasingly used a strategy known as “stop, question and frisk,” which allows officers to stop someone based on a reasonable suspicion of crime. One expert has estimated New Yorkers are stopped at twice the national rate. The impact on crime is much debated, and critics contend disproportionate stopping of minorities is a result of racial profiling, which police officials dispute.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/07/11/nyregion/20100711-stop-and-frisk.html?ref=nyregion

and ....http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/nyregion/12frisk.html?_r=1
"A Few Blocks, 4 Years, 52,000 Police Stops"

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

June 25, 2010

NY: "Triumphant, grateful and humble best describes the atmosphere at the Ogdensburg Correctional Fac.

Prison Task Force Thanks Public
By JIMMY LAWTON
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 2010

Triumphant, grateful and humble best describes the atmosphere at the Ogdensburg Correctional Facility Task Force meeting where members thanked everyone who worked to keep the facility open.

"As far as I know we are golden," task force chairman Charles W. Kelly said of the Ogdensburg prison's future.

"It's a sure thing. It's signed, sealed and delivered," said Mike Mortimer, community liaison for Sen. Darrel J. Aubertine.

Members of the task force went full circle offering their thanks to the community, legislators and volunteers, who came together over the past several months to lobby against Governor David A. Paterson's proposed closure of Ogdensburg Correctional Facility.

Just like years before when the community came together to bring the prisons into the community, the task force worked to rally community and legislative support to make sure they remained. Mr. Kelly said he was impressed with the success of the task force. He said there was an abundance of nay-sayers when the group first formed, but the community kept faith despite having the odds stacked against them.

"I'd sure like to get a dollar for everyone who told us we were wasting our time with this. There were a lot of people who didn't believe we could change Albany's mind," he said. "But everyone came together and that's why it worked."

Ogdensburg City Councilor Michael P. Powers agreed. He said he has fought to help keep prisons in other areas open in the past, but has never seen such an effort from the grassroots level.

"We definitely had a lot of people who thought this wouldn't happen. But this community believed. They didn't give up," he said.

Ogdensburg local sector chief for the New York State Correctional Officers Police Benevolent Association (NYSCOPBA) Chad J. Stickney said he was impressed with the community as well. He said many areas failed to support their local prisons when they were on the chopping block, but credited the community for all of its support.

"There was a lot of different banter about this across the state. Some people love prisons and some people hate them. But it's obvious this community understands the importance of our prisons," he said. "It was the entire community from the tax paying citizens to the mom and pop stores that stepped up and said 'not here.'"

The Daivid versus Goliath like story is one the community should remember, according to task force member Wesley L. Stitt. It is a prime example of the true power of organized, unified and non-partisan efforts.

"It shows the power of the people and the power of the press. It shows that battles can be won from the bottom up and not just the top down. It's a real credit to our community. It's a great story of what we can do when we work together," said Mr. Stitt.

Task force member Patrick J. Kelly agreed that the entire process was a great civics lesson for everyone involved. His 13-year-old daughter Laken Kelly, who spoke in front of more than 2,000 people during a task force rally in front of city hall, backed up her father's statement.

"I'm really amazed that a little city like ours can make such a big difference in a big place like Albany," she said.

The impact on the community would have been far greater than many realize, according to task force member Timothy Richards. Although the effect on the economy helped demonstrate on paper the significance of the prison to a small community, Mr. Richards said the families that would have been forced to move would have had been impacted beyond any dollar amount.

"A lot of people who would have been impacted by this don't even realize it yet and that is the youth in our community. This would have impacted everything from the little league teams kids play on to the people who put out fires. It would have been devastating to the youth," he said.

Bonnie E. Dishaw, on the other hand was more shocked with the support the task force garnered from Albany.

"I'm very surprised. It's such great news. I am very impressed this whole thing worked. I really don't have much faith in the government. I love my country, but I don't have much faith in the government and this really shows that you can make a difference," Ms.Dishaw said.

As a representative to Sen. Aubertine, Mr. Mortimer recognized the resentment that has grown against the state legislature, but said this was an example of the good side of politics. He reminded people that they can play a much bigger role in government aside from voting and the battle to keep a prison open is proof that people have the power to impact the state legislature.

"People today think politics are dirty, that the system is broken, but this story proves them wrong," he said. "There was a time when community out-pouring wasn't only during times of crisis. I think that's something we need. We need people contacting their representatives and have frank conversations."

Although the prison is saved, the task force will not yet dissolve. It is unclear what the future holds for the taks force or what will be on the next agenda. However, members agreed to hold a community event and invite the entire community, labor groups, volunteers, legislators and officials to celebrate the group's victory.

No time, date or place has been established for the event.

Mr. Kelly said no money raised to help save the prison would be used to pay for the event.

Although the list of people to thank stretches from neighbor to union head to senator, members of the task force plan to send thank you cards to everyone who helped along the way.

"We want them to remember us in Albany," Mr. Kelly said.

In the course of the meeting, members of the task force and public expressed their gratitude to the greater Ogdensburg community, its local businesses, membership organizations and other institutions and the rest of the communities throughout the region who supported the efforts of the Task Force. Additionally, a number of state and other officials were singled out for praise, including Sen. Aubertine and his staff, Assemblywoman Addie J. Russell, Senator Joseph A. Griffo, Assemblywomen Dierdre K. "Dede" Scozzafava , Governor David Paterson, DOC Commissioner Brian Fischer, Northern Region Vice President of NYSCOPBA Randy Page, and numerous other correctional, union, and New York State elected officials who helped save the facility.
http://www.mpcourier.com/article/20100623/DCO01/306239876

Posted by lois at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2010

VA: Another death at Wallens Ridge

Prisoners are being double celled who should not be leading to tragic consequences which of course, the DOC can predict and prevent if they wanted to.

Va. inmate: 'Only way to stop me' is death row
* AP foreign, Sunday June 13 2010

DENA POTTER

Associated Press Writer= POUND, Va. (AP) — For seven days, Robert Gleason Jr. begged correctional officers and counselors at Wallens Ridge State Prison to move his new cellmate. The constant singing, screaming and obnoxious behavior were too much, and Gleason knew he was ready to snap.

On the eighth day — May 8, 2009 — correctional officers found 63-year-old Harvey Gray Watson Jr. bound, gagged, beaten and strangled. His death went unnoticed for 15 hours because correctional officers had falsified inmate counts at the high-security prison in southwestern Virginia.

Now, Gleason says he'll kill again if he isn't put to death for killing Watson, who had a history of mental illness. And he says his next victim won't be an inmate.

"I murdered that man cold-bloodedly. I planned it, and I'm gonna do it again," the 40-year-old Gleason told The Associated Press. "Someone needs to stop it. The only way to stop me is put me on death row."

Gleason already is serving a life sentence for killing another man. He fired his lawyers last month — they were trying to work out a deal to keep him from getting the death penalty — so he could plead guilty to capital murder. He's vowed not to appeal his sentence if the judge sentences him to death Aug. 31.

"I did this. I deserve it," he said. "That man, he didn't deserve to die."

Watson was serving a 100-year sentence for killing a man and wounding two others in 1983 when he shot into his neighbor's house in Lynchburg with a 10-gauge shotgun. According to prison records, Watson suffered from "mild" mental impairment and was frequently cited for his disruptive and combative behavior.

Watson was sent to Wallens Ridge on April 23, 2009, a day after he set fire to his cell at Sussex II State Prison. Gleason and Watson became cellmates on May 1, 2009.

In the days the two spent locked in an 8-by-10-foot cell, Watson would talk about how he had "drowned" two television sets because they "had voodoo in them," Gleason said.

He would also belt out "I wish I was in the land of cotton" from the song "Dixie" and other songs at all hours, scream profanities and masturbate. In the chow hall and in the recreation yard, Watson would get inmates to give him cigarettes for drinking his urine and clabbered milk.

"You can't be upset with someone like that," Gleason said. "He needed help."

Gleason said his requests to separate the two were met with mockery and indifference by correctional officers and prison counselors. He said he knew what he'd do once officials refused to put Watson in protective custody.

"That day I knew I was going to kill him," he said. "Wallens Ridge forced my hand."

It was after midnight when Gleason used slivers of bed sheets to tie Watson's hands and arms to his body and fashioned a gag out of two socks. He later removed the gag and gave Watson a cigarette, telling him it would be his last. Gleason said Watson spit in his face when he went to take the cigarette out of Watson's mouth, so he jumped on his cellmate's back and beat and strangled the man.

He then covered Watson's body with a bed sheet to make it look like he was sleeping.

Gleason kept Watson's death a secret through two mandatory standing counts and two meals. Officers only discovered the body when Watson's psychiatrist came to see him at 4:40 p.m. and found him dead, according to court documents.

Prison employees involved in the case denied repeated requests for comment from the AP. Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor also declined to discuss the situation, but said that two officers were disciplined and two others were fired. One of the fired officers was reinstated upon appeal.

Gleason has since been transferred to the "supermax" Red Onion State Prison.

Watson's sister, Barbara McLeod of Longmont, Colo., said Gleason should be forced to spend the rest of his life in prison with no privileges.

"He doesn't deserve to be able to control his own destiny at this point. He doesn't deserve to have his death on the conscience of the state of Virginia," she said.

McLeod said her brother had a history of mental problems that grew worse during his last decade of incarceration. McLeod said she's upset that her brother was housed with such a violent prisoner — and angry that it took so long for guards to realize he was dead.

"Supposedly they are monitoring these prisoners," she said. "I guess not."

During a hearing a week before his June 1 trial was to start, Gleason warned Wise County Commonwealth's Attorney Ron Elkins that he would kill again if Elkins didn't seek the death penalty.

Elkins had offered to let Gleason plead to second-degree murder. He also offered to drop the capital murder charges and come back with a charge that didn't carry a death sentence. Elkins wouldn't say why he made those offers.

However, capital murder cases are typically lengthy and expensive, especially as appeals wind through the courts. Even though Gleason confessed, Elkins said he proceeded cautiously to ensure the case couldn't be overturned on appeal.

Court records show that Gleason told Elkins he had no remorse for killing Watson. He said he learned from his father to own up to his mistakes, and that he needed to prove to his loved ones that actions have consequences.

"There's nothing you guys can do to me to hurt me. Nothing," he told the prosecutor. "But there's something you guys can do to prevent someone else from getting hurt." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9124611/print

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

June 11, 2010

NY: Juvenile Prison stays open with 155 workers and 6 young men and a NY Times Editorial: "Real Justice for Juveniles"

June 8, 2010
155 Workers, 6 Young Men, 1 Fiscal Mess
By JIM DWYER
NY Times
Every day brings dreadful news of some worthy cause that is going to be cut because government budgets are being hit with cannonballs.

Today, for a change, we present some causes worthy of being cut.

Take, for instance, a place called the Tryon Residential Center, run by the state agency in charge of juvenile justice. It is a place for children who get into trouble.

State records show that 155 public employees are assigned to the boys section at Tryon. They oversee a total of six young men, lodged in a place that few people believe should exist anymore, and that is scheduled to be shut down by the end of the year.

Yet Tryon will remain completely staffed because the state is tied in a knot: two governors ago, the state promised public employee unions that it would give one year’s notice before shutting down juvenile detention centers or adult prisons.

So as of Tuesday, with six young people living there, here are some of the jobs still budgeted at Tryon: 11 cooks, 1 food manager, 6 keyboard specialists, 5 nurses, 1 motor mechanic, 7 teachers, 1 teaching assistant, 4 vocational instructors, 3 recreation specialists, 81 youth division aides and 2 calculations clerks.

Also, one “principal accounting clerk.”

“You would think common sense would say you don’t need this facility, so close it,” said Gladys Carrion, commissioner of the state’s Office of Children and Family Services. “I’m faced with the reality of having four or six kids in a facility and a full complement of staff. I have similar situations in other facilities. These beds cost $240,000 a year.”

New York could change the state seal to an empty bed. One of the great successes of modern times has been the decline in crime, but in upstate New York, the prison economy depends on a steady supply of criminals.

Although thousands of adult cells are empty, it is hard to know if the state will be able to shut even the single medium-security prison that the Department of Correctional Services has said it no longer needs.

That prison, at Ogdensburg, has 287 employees on its roster, and 419 inmates, all of whom could be dispatched to empty cells elsewhere. But the number that weighs heaviest is not how many people are in the prison: it is how many people work there. And this prison is in a district represented by a Democratic senator, who naturally sees despair, locusts and Republicans overrunning the land should it be closed. There are 32 Democrats in the Senate, and 32 votes are needed to pass any legislation there. Every last one of them can be king or queen.

Both the State Senate and the Assembly have stated they want Ogdensburg to stay open, even though the governor says it should be closed in January.

“With all the state’s fiscal problems,” said Robert Gangi, the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, “this extraordinary waste should not be tolerated because of the usual reasons — that these are important jobs in these communities, and because of the political pushback.”

THAT pushback has taken grotesque forms. The juvenile detention system is run not by the corrections department, but by Commissioner Carrion’s agency. She has been closing places like Tryon, which was cited last year for its brutality by the United States Justice Department.

In response, the unions representing workers in the detention centers, and various Republican legislators, have called for the commissioner to be fired. One senator accused her of permitting a near-orgy at a detention center in Goshen. Yet the evidence suggests that she has solid grounds for saying that such places are beyond reform.

In the Goshen case, four young men were permitted to invite four women to a social event at the center, a reward for having met goals. These eight young people were supervised by seven adults. Nevertheless, video footage shows that they were permitted to engage in intimate contact, according to a senior state official.

Gov. David A. Paterson has proposed legislation that would revamp how the state treats young people who get into trouble. For decades, they have been shipped far from home, into detention centers that often became a passageway to adult criminal life. A task force appointed by the governor said that under the existing system, the state was “harming its children, wasting money and endangering its public.”

“This,” the task force said, perhaps optimistically, “cannot continue.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/nyregion/09about.html

NY Times Editorial
Real Justice for Juveniles
Published: June 10, 2010

Gov. David Paterson of New York has sent the Legislature a juvenile justice bill that would achieve two urgently important goals. It would improve the quality of the leadership and care in the state’s often dangerous and inhumane juvenile facilities. And it would ensure that only children who need to be institutionalized — because they present a risk to the public — end up in the facilities.

Albany’s lawmakers must finally stand up to unions that are more interested in preserving jobs than in doing what is best for children.

The argument for closing down the worst facilities and treating low-risk children in their home communities is irrefutable. In a report last year, the Justice Department found that young people in state detention facilities were frequently hit and abused; emotionally disturbed children rarely got the help they needed. Governor Paterson’s juvenile justice task force found that more than half the children sent to these facilities were guilty of minor, nonviolent infractions.

In addition to the emotional toll on young people, the cost of institutionalization is prohibitive: as much as $200,000 per child, per year. That is more than 10 times the cost of successful local programs that provide monitoring, guidance and help to troubled families.

Governor Paterson’s bill seeks to fix this broken system. It would create an independent office to investigate the state’s facilities and recommend ways to improve residential care. It would allow the state to seek out and hire the best qualified directors for juvenile facilities. Current law requires that they be chosen from the ranks of people who already work within the system.

Perhaps most important, it would seek to limit the number of children who are sent away. It would bar family court judges from placing young people in state facilities unless they have been convicted of violent felonies, sex offenses or are found to present a public safety risk.

Gladys Carrión, Governor Paterson’s, commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, is rightly committed to closing empty, unneeded facilities and is a strong advocate of community-based programs. More than a dozen have been closed in the last three years, for an estimated savings of about $30 million. There are still another 26 facilities that hold about 730 young people. They employ around 1,900 people at an estimated annual cost of about $190 million.

By rights, the state should have used the $30 million it has already saved by closing facilities to help finance new community-based programs. It passed on only about $5 million, while the rest went into the general fund. It will have to put a lot more money into community programs for this new system to work.

The unions are already fighting the Carrión effort and will fight this bill, too. Governor Paterson and legislative leaders will need to push back even harder. New York cannot keep paying for a juvenile justice system that is so clearly failing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11fri3.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)

June 06, 2010

Review- The Real Cost of Prisons Comix in Culture Magazine-So. Cal's Medical Marijuana Lifesytyle Magazine

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
Thu, Jun 3, 2010

Entertainment Reviews, Reviews
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix

The Real Cost of Prisons Project (RCPP) director Lois Ahrens created the organization in 2000 to shine a spotlight on the more than 2 million people currently incarcerated in the U.S. Ahrens and her team are not interested in relieving convicts of personal responsibility, but instead focus on why so many people in our country are currently locked up—or mass-incarcerated. One of her goals was to create educational materials that could communicate complex ideas in real terms and make them interesting to people who had little use for data sheets and political talk. That led to 2008’s The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, a three-chapter graphic book illustrated by a host of talented artists and writers and filled with easy-to-understand histories of who really pays for the prison system, the “builders of the drug prison boom,” and the cycle of incarceration via government agencies such as multiple foster homes, low-paying jobs and the shame of circumstances. The book has been hailed by a dozen social activists, A People’s History of the United States author Howard Zinn among them. An innovative book, RCPP’s book is a harsh reality check for anyone who thinks every broken law deserves the maximum penalty, and should be a welcome resource for government agencies and drug law reformation advocates alike. The book retails for $12.95. For more information, visit www.realcostofprisons.org. (Stacy Davies)

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

June 04, 2010

Doing time on their own dime: More states charge inmates for stays in jail, prison

Doing time on their own dime: More states charge inmates for stays in jail, prison

FACING SOUTH - Online Magazine of the Institute for Southern Studies
As the economic downturn worsens and states grapple with large budget deficits, many inmates may find themselves paying for their crimes beyond just doing standard jail time.

Due to massive state budget cuts, across the country state prison facilities are beginning to charge inmates in order to garner the funds to maintain detention services. This week The Christian Science Monitor reported that a growing number of jails and sheriffs departments are also charging inmates and raising costs for a number of items -- from snacks to room and board -- a move authorities say is necessary to counter rising costs and budget cutbacks.

Charging inmates for their own incarceration - also known as "pay-to-stay" fees - is a trend that began about 20 years ago in Alabama, and soared in popularity around the country under the "tough-on-crime" policies of the Reagan and Clinton eras. By 2004 about one-third of the county jails in the United States had policies charging inmates for their own incarceration. During that same time period more than 50% of state correctional systems also had pay-to-stay fees. Some of these fees were collected through the inmate's bank account during incarceration and others through civil litigation aimed at a prisoner's estate or properties once they were released.

The trend, while not new, is quickly gaining popularity again around the country as the recession deepens. Some counties want to charge inmates the actual cost of care per day - as much as $45 - $60 in some places. That means a year behind bars could cost an inmate more than $16,000. Besides charging inmates for room, board, clothing and other related costs, some prisons - including ones in North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida - charge inmates every time they get written up for breaking the rules. Several states in the South also charge probationers monthly fees for seeing a probation officer.

It's already been a big year for pay-to-stay programs over all. This month lawmakers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania introduced legislation that would charge daily fees of about $10 to $15 for incarceration and electronic monitoring services. During this legislative session, Georgia lawmakers debated a measure that would have allowed state officials to collect a per diem of up to $40 from "financially capable" prisoners. One of the nation's highest prisoner tariffs, $60-a-night, was recently approved in Springfield, Oregon. Earlier this year, Maricopa County, Ariz., began charging inmates $1.25 a day for meals in the county jail. And last month in Richmond, Va., the city jail started charging inmates $1 a day to help cover the costs of their stay behind bars.

In a more controversial policy, several states also charge inmates for their medical and dental needs. In Georgia last month, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed a measure into law giving state prisons more power to charge inmates for their medical costs while behind bars. This is a fee that state and county corrections officials can deduct from inmates' accounts. While several prisons around the country charge co-pays for medical procedures, prison rights advocates have argued that this is a dangerous trend. They point out that these policies not only create a system where only privileged inmates have access to care, but it also runs the risk of allowing the spread of illnesses like Hepatitis C among inmates because they are discouraged from seeking treatment.

Keeping the poor impoverished

Critics of pay-to-stay programs and prison fees say these policies place an unfair burden on the poor.

As the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights explains on their Web site:

To pay for the ever-increasing size of the criminal justice system, we are seeing more and more fees being levied against people who cannot afford them: fees for medical services, anger management classes, drug tests, police officers' funds, crime victims' funds, clerk fees, attorneys' fees, probation fees, and jail fees. A new trend is "room and board" fees in prisons and jails.

Prison rights groups underscore that it's the relatives of the inmates that end up shouldering this high financial burden. These families - often disproportionately women - are typically already impoverished and struggling to make ends meet. Critics of the pay-to-stay system argue that in essence the government is seizing the assets of some of the poorest families in the country.

As The Christian Science Monitor reported:

"It's like we're a private ATM for the corrections department and they know there's nothing we can do about it," says the wife of one inmate serving a life sentence at Florida's Martin County Correctional Institute.

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous because she feared repercussions for her husband, said she can't afford to send him more than $40 a week. But that, she claims, is quickly swallowed up by the new higher rates on essential items such as sunscreen for when he works outside tending the prison grounds.

Prison rights advocates also point out that these fees make it more difficult for prisoner's to reintegrate into society once they are free.

When asked why his county rejected the pay-to-stay policies, Deputy Tom Erickson, the sheriff's spokesman in Johnson County, Kansas, told the Christian Science Monitor: "[I]f somebody doesn't pay, what do you do? Do you issue a warrant for them, have them arrested again, put them back in jail? You've created a debtors' prison, and that's neither wanted nor needed. For us, it wasn't the right thing to do."

Kansas Rep. Pat Colloton also sees the downside in pay-to-stay policies, pointing out that these indigent inmates could end up with massive bills to pay when they leave the lockup. "Many of these individuals have a difficult time re-entering society anyway," Colloton told the The Kansas City Star. "We don't want them so burdened with debt that any legitimate attempt at re-entry is impossible and they turn back to crime to pay the fees you just imposed on them."

Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons?

Human rights and civil liberties groups are troubled by the resurgence in the popularity of pay-to-stay fees. As a result, groups have been raising questions about the legality of charging inmates for room and board.

The Southern Center for Human Rights has been following the issue closely here in the South, where some of the policies are even stranger and more convoluted. According to the SCHR, courts across the South routinely impose substantial costs on already poor people who are struggling to get by, then incarcerate them for being too poor to pay. In some parts of the region people have even been jailed for not being able to pay their court fines. One example is in Gulfport, Miss., where the municipal court started a "fine collection task force" to crack down on people who owed fees for misdemeanors.

As the SCHR reports on their Web site:

The task force trolled through predominantly African American neighborhoods, rounding up people who had outstanding court fines. After arresting and jailing them, the City of Gulfport processed these people through a court proceeding at which no defense attorney was present or even offered.

Many people were jailed for months after hearings lasting just seconds. While the city collected money, it also packed the jail with hundreds of people who couldn't pay, including people who were sick, physically disabled and/or limited by mental disabilities.

According to SCHR's 2008 report entitled "Profiting from the Poor," charging people for misdemeanors has also become an industry in Georgia:

In courts around Georgia, people who are charged with misdemeanors and cannot pay their fines that day in court are placed on probation under the supervision of private, for-profit companies until they pay off their fines. On probation, they must pay these companies substantial monthly "supervision fees" that may double or triple the amount that a person of means would pay for the same offense.

In some cases, jails in the South have charged people room and board fees even before inmates were convicted of any crime. For more than 15 years the Clinch County Jail in Homerville, Ga. charged those in its custody a daily room and board fee. Since many people were too poor to pay the fees upon their release, the county sheriff would require them to sign notes promising to pay the fees in installments, or return to jail. Following a lawsuit by the SCHR in 2006, the county was forced to repay money to several inmates who had been made to pay a $18 per-day fee for their time in custody before their conviction. One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit - Willie Williams Jr. - had been charged a $4,608 "room and board" bill for his time behind bars even though he had not yet been convicted.

In 2006, the SCHR also filed a petition on behalf of Georgia resident Ora Lee Hurley. A court had ordered Hurley incarcerated until she paid a $705 fine for a 15-year-old drug conviction. But Hurley couldn't pay the fine because she had to pay the Georgia Department of Corrections $600 a month for room and board. Hurley spent nearly a year in prison - from a 120-day sentence -- due to her inability to pay the fine before the SCHR was able to get her released.
http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/05/doing-time-on-their-own-dime-more-states-charging-inmates-for-stays-in-jail-prison.html

Posted by lois at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)

May 25, 2010

MA: Article on the proposed budget amendment to charge prisoners in jail $5 a day.

Robert Garvey, Hampshire County Sheriff: "I think it's very shallow thinking to think that the people who are here, number one, can afford [the fees]," Garvey told the Advocate. "Most of the people that I encounter in this facility usually come from the very lowest part of our socioeconomic climate." Even more important, he added, the fees would really be a burden on inmates' families. "It's going to be taking away from them, and they are already in a poverty situation," he said.

"It's easy for legislators to pass this law who have not been witness to what goes on in these facilities," Garvey added. "Obviously, in this political climate, it's easy to be hard on anyone—'lock them up and throw away the key.' Nobody has told the Legislature that the population we're dealing with doesn't have any money [or] they wouldn't be here.

"People who have money don't go to jail," Garvey added; they have the money to make bail and hire attorneys. "We might read a lot about their crimes, but they don't actually spend any time locked up."

Making Them Pay- Valley sheriffs buck their colleagues over a proposal to charge inmates for their room and board.

Thursday, May 27, 2010
Maureen Turner
Valley Advocate- Northampton, MA

In 2002, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson instituted what was, from his perspective at least, a successful new policy: he began charging inmates under his authority a daily fee of $5 to help cover the cost of their incarceration.

The policy—called the "Inmate Financial Responsibility Program"—also included fees for specific services: $5 for medical visits, $3 for prescription medicines, $5 for haircuts, $12.50 to take a GED test. The money came from prisoners' "canteen accounts," individual accounts used to buy incidentals like snacks and typically stocked by their families or significant others. Prisoners who qualified as indigent were exempt, and those who owed fees upon release would have their unpaid fees forgiven after two years—if they stayed out of jail during that time.

Hodgson described the program as a way to instill responsibility in prisoners. "Look, having inmates come to prison and telling them that you don't need to worry about the costs associated with running the prison is, I don't think, a good message for them," Hodgson told the Boston Globe earlier this year.

Hodgson's program collected about $750,000 in fees before it was halted in 2004, when a Superior Court judge, in response to a lawsuit filed by inmates, found that the sheriff lacked the legal authority to institute the policy.

Hodgson appealed the decision, and in January of this year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld the lower court's ruling, saying that it was the Legislature's role, not the sheriff's, to create such a policy.

Undaunted, Hodgson vowed that he would appeal to lawmakers to grant that authority to the sheriffs. Late last month, in the last-minute scramble of its budget process, the state House of Representatives passed a budget amendment that would allow the state's 14 sheriffs to charge inmates a "daily custodial fee" of $5, as well as fees for certain medical and other services. A similar amendment is now pending in the Senate's version of the budget; at deadline, the Senate had not yet voted on the measure. The fee system would also need the approval of the governor.

The House amendment passed with strong bipartisan support, by a vote of 93 to 62. To some supporters, the appeal lies in Hodgson's notions of inmate responsibility; for others, it's a more practical desire to raise funds for the state wherever possible. But critics predict that the policy will backfire, saddling inmates with debt that would make it that much harder to make a successful re-entry to society after their release. They also warn that prisoners' families would end up footing the bill, adding an additional financial burden to families already under extreme stress.

Interestingly, it's not just prison reform advocates who are critical of the bill. While a number of sheriffs from the eastern part of the state embrace the fee idea, it's met with opposition from Valley sheriffs, including Hampshire County's Robert Garvey, who described it as a "a terrible, terrible idea" that would, in fact, work against what he and other sheriffs are supposed to be accomplishing in their work with inmates.

*

The House amendment was sponsored by Rep. Betty Poirier, a North Attleboro Republican whose district includes Hodgson's Bristol County, who described it as a way to save money for taxpayers.

The amendment allows sheriffs to charge inmates fees, including a daily room-and-board fee of no more than $5, plus $5 fees for medical and dental visits, $3 for prescriptions and $5 for eyeglasses. Exemptions are made for medical exams upon admission, emergency care, hospitalization, prenatal care for pregnant women, and treatment for contagious or chronic diseases. Inmates could not be denied medical care for lack of funds.

As in the system Hodgson had established in Bristol, prisoners who owe money upon their release would carry a debt that would be forgiven if they are not reincarcerated for two years after release. The law also calls for a process that would allow inmates to appeal fees. In addition, sheriffs who want to institute a fee system would need to prepare a report, to be approved by the Secretary of Public Safety, demonstrating its "financial feasibility."

The Senate version of the bill, which was introduced by Sen. Steven Baddour (D-Methuen), calls for a similar fee schedule and includes the appeals and debt forgiveness provisions and a guarantee that inmates would not be denied health care for lack of money. In addition, it calls for a financial feasibility report, as well as annual reports to the Legislature detailing the program's statistics.

Some backers of the bill are, no doubt, motivated by the notion that hard-working, law-abiding taxpayers are underwriting the plush lives of spoiled inmates—a notion Hodgson fed into in a 2009 interview with the Globe, where he disputed the idea that most prisoners are poor.

"In fact, we have some that leave our facilities in limousines," the sheriff said. "If they have money to buy candy and cookies and higher grade sneakers . . . it is my belief they certainly have enough money to first pay for the cost of their care."

Even stripped of such rather inflammatory images, public debate over a prisoner-fee system relies on a financial argument. Indeed, Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker has included it as one of his "Baker's Dozen" list of reforms that he says would save the commonwealth $1 billion. Baker calls for charging "a nominal daily room and board fee" to inmates both in state and county facilities (the House amendment applies only to the county facilities run by the sheriffs). Baker also proposes that "inmates [who] are unable to pay should have their bills forgiven for good behavior after they are released."

Baker's campaign materials claim his idea would generate $10 million to $40 million but don't specify how that wide-ranging figure was reached.

*

Across the country, struggling governments are turning to the criminal justice system as a source of potential revenue. "There is a trend in the states to add more categories of fees, and to raise the amounts of existing fees," Rebekah Diller, a deputy director at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, told the Advocate. Often, she added, these policies, much like the amendment passed by the Massachusetts House, come about as a quickly hatched effort to save some cash, with little if any thought about what she called the "hidden costs" of imposing these fees of a population that's already overwhelmingly poor.

This summer, the Brennan Institute will release a report looking at the national trend toward increasing fees in court and prison systems. The institute has already looked at policies in individual states, including a March study, authored by Diller, on court "user fees" in Florida. That state, the report notes, "relies so heavily on fees to fund its courts that observers have coined a term for it—'cash register justice.'"

In Florida, which provides no exemption for the indigent, the fees are often uncollectible, according to the report. Those who fail to pay the fees also face more penalties, including added fines or a suspension of their drivers' licenses, which makes it harder for them to find or keep a job.

"At their worst, collection practices can lead to a new variation of 'debtors' prison' when individuals are arrested and incarcerated for failing to appear in court to explain missed payments," Diller's report found.

The purported financial benefits of these kinds of fee systems can be undercut by administrative costs, Diller told the Advocate. "You end up spending a lot of money just to collect these fees," she said.

You also end up creating one more weight around the neck of a newly released prisoner trying to re-acclimate to life outside, she added. "When you burden someone with debt coming out of prison, it's yet another barrier to successful re-entry, and yet another factor that can contribute to recidivism. Very often you create a debt that won't be paid but stays with the person and has consequences."

*

In Massachusetts, prisoners'-rights advocates are braced to fight a new prisoner-fee system. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has a number of objections, said communications director Chris Ott, including constitutional concerns about applying it to current inmates who've never had to pay the fees in the past. "It would essentially amount to a second punishment," Ott said.

In addition, he said, since most prisoners would end up paying the fees from accounts funded by their families, "it amounts to a sort of back-door tax on those families."

Lois Ahrens, director of the Northampton-based Real Cost of Prison Project, calls the House budget amendment "bad in every way."

Most people locked up in county jails, Ahrens noted, are categorized as "presentenced"; they're awaiting their day in court there because they couldn't make bail. "They're there because they're poor. If they weren't so poor, they wouldn't be there," she said. "And then to top it off, they could end up with $150 a month they're being assessed."

The budget amendment, Ahrens said, was a rush job; it includes no provision for how debts owed by inmates upon release would be collected, and it's not backed by any documentation supporting the purported financial benefits.

Activists have spent years pushing reforms aimed at making it easier for released inmates to find a stable, productive path after prison, such as efforts to reform the criminal record system, commonly known as CORI. What small advances have been made would be dramatically undercut if the House budget amendment becomes law, Ahrens said. "These things are not separate issues," she said. "It will hurt people and then slow down any tiny, tiny progress."

Ahrens compared the amendment—with its quick passage and absence of debate about its larger consequences—to mandatory minimum sentencing laws that passed decades ago on a wave of tough-on-crime sentiment and that have since been widely recognized as failed policies.

"This is a perfect example of one of these horrible, bad, punitive ideas that end up causing negative consequences forever, that could happen overnight with no one knowing about it, and then it takes 30 years for us to undo it," she said.

*

If the inmate-fee system does become law, it will be thanks, in part, to the hard-line sentiment that once buoyed the mandatory sentencing laws. In a recent article in the Quincy Patriot-Ledger, Hodgson, the Bristol sheriff, described arguments that the fees were unfair to inmates as "red herrings."

"Nobody ever says, 'What about the poor taxpayer who's being victimized and didn't do anything?'" Hodgson told the newspaper.

In the same article, Norfolk County Sheriff Michael Bellotti—who's president of the Massachusetts Sheriffs' Association, and who supports the fee system—said the proposal has the support of a "vast majority" of the commonwealth's 14 sheriffs. But that majority does not include Hampshire County Sheriff Robert Garvey, who described the policy as "very shallow thinking."

"I think it's very shallow thinking to think that the people who are here, number one, can afford [the fees]," Garvey told the Advocate. "Most of the people that I encounter in this facility usually come from the very lowest part of our socioeconomic climate."

Even more important, he added, the fees would really be a burden on inmates' families. "It's going to be taking away from them, and they are already in a poverty situation," he said.

"It's easy for legislators to pass this law who have not been witness to what goes on in these facilities," Garvey added. "Obviously, in this political climate, it's easy to be hard on anyone—'lock them up and throw away the key.' Nobody has told the Legislature that the population we're dealing with doesn't have any money [or] they wouldn't be here.

"People who have money don't go to jail," Garvey added; they have the money to make bail and hire attorneys. "We might read a lot about their crimes, but they don't actually spend any time locked up."

Legislators may be out of touch, but what about his fellow sheriffs who support the idea of inmate fees?

"I think it's based on philosophy, to be honest with you," Garvey said. "I think people are sent to us as punishment, not for [further] punishment. ... Their penalty, obviously, is the loss of their freedom coming here. This [fee system] is double jeopardy to me."

Garvey sees his role as preparing inmates for a productive life after their release.

"People don't like to hear me say this, but there are an awful lot of people incarcerated here who are already victims of our society," he said. "We have to provide an environment where change can take place, to provide opportunities to change so when we release someone they're in better shape than when they came [here]. ... That philosophy is not shared by all the sheriffs in the commonwealth."

It is shared by Hampden County Sheriff Mike Ashe, who also opposes the fee proposal. "We really see it as an impediment to successful community re-entry," said Rich McCarthy, spokesman for Ashe's department. "With everything else that works against an individual as he's trying to re-enter society successfully, if he's got this other debt, it's a tremendous financial challenge. For someone to return to their family and try to be self-sustaining and support their family, to add this on just makes it that much more difficult."

Inmates already have jobs, working in areas like food service, maintenance and the jail laundry, McCarthy added. Through that work, he said, "they are accomplishing the very things this bill would want to accomplish. They are paying for their room and board by providing work, very needed work. ... That's accomplished without loading on this extra debt."

In addition, inmates who hold community-based jobs through the prelease program already pay 15 percent of their wages toward their expenses.

McCarthy also questioned the creation of fees for medical appointments, which would create a disincentive for inmates to get care. (According to the Globe, when Hodgson began charging fees in Bristol, inmate medical visits dropped from 350 a month to 100 a month.)

Many people who end up behind bars have not had proper health care, McCarthy said; for them, the corrections system represents an opportunity to finally deal with long-neglected medical issues. "Incarceration actually becomes a chance to save a lot of health difficulties for these people, and resulting health costs in the community," he said.

The Hampden Sheriff's Department, McCarthy said, might have a reputation as progressive, "but we don't have our heads in the clouds. ... If we thought it was going to be an effective, sensible measure, then we'd support it." But the department already looked into the idea of charging fees years ago, he said, and concluded it would be counterproductive. "It's not practical, it's not effective, it's not going to produce the results people would hope it would. ...

"There's nothing sinister about this bill," continued McCarthy. "The goal of everyone is that offenders become productive citizens of society—contributing, productive, paying, if you will, citizens of society. ... But examined under the light of whether it would be effective or not, the real fiscal truth of it, then you see that it is not going to contribute to inmates being paying, positive, productive members of society."

Diller, of the Brennan Center, agrees. "These budget gimmicks are very appealing on the surface, and when states are cash-strapped it can be very hard to fight them," she said. "But when people think it through, think about the limited money that it could raise and the problems down the road, they start to reconsider."
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=11816

Posted by lois at 08:57 PM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2010

MA: Senate passes budget amendment that would allow for jails to charge prisoners $5 a day.

I just learned from Jason Lydon that the budget amendment pasted below has now been introduced in the Senate. This is not the same exact language as the House budget amendment that has already passed, but it is very close which means IF it passes in the Senate it can be easily reconciled with the House amendment ----unless we stop it.

We had hoped this would not happen, but here it is. Please call your senator and tell them you do not support this budget amendment and that when it comes up for a vote that they need to vote NO! This is harmful to prisoners who will incur debt that in all likelihood they will not be able to repay, harmful to their families who will attempt to find the money to pay the $5 a day fee and will impeded the process of coming home after jail and finding work and housing. Also, it is likely that the cost to create the bureaucratic machinery needed to collect the money and enforce whatever penalties they devise for fees not paid, will be more than they will be able to collect. It is still another example of harmful and punitive legislation that passes without debate and then will take years to undo.

Please act today. Once you have called please forward to others, post on list serves, etc.
(If you do not know who your senator is, go to this link: http://www.mass.gov/legis/city_town.htm)

Thank you.
Lois Ahrens

EPS 445

INMATE FEES

Mr. Baddour moved that the bill be amended by inserting after section 62 the following section:-

“SECTION 62A. Chapter 127 of the General Laws is hereby amended by inserting after section 48A the following section:–

Section 48B. The commissioner of correction and the sheriffs shall institute a schedule of fees and assess those fees to inmates in their custody as follows: (i) a daily cost of custodial care fee not to exceed $5; (ii) a medical sick call visit fee not to exceed $5; provided, however, that the sick call visit shall not be related to a condition that was pre-existing at the time the inmate began his term of incarceration; (iii) a dental sick call visit fee not to exceed $5; (iv) a prescription eyeglasses fee not to exceed $5 per pair; and (v) a pharmacy prescription fee not to exceed $3 per prescription; provided, however, that no fees shall be assessed against an inmate for admission health screening, 14-day health assessment, emergency health care, hospitalization or infirmary care, prenatal care, laboratory and diagnostic care, follow-up visits approved by health services, contagious disease care and chronic disease care. No inmate shall be denied access to medical or dental services because of an inability to pay an assessed fee. Fees assessed to indigent inmates shall be debited against the inmate’s money account which, if not paid during the inmate’s term of incarceration, shall remain due and payable as a charge to the inmate after release from custody. If an indigent inmate against whom an assessment is made is not re-incarcerated within the 2 years immediate following his release from custody, the debt shall be forgiven. Penal facilities shall establish a procedure for inmates to appeal assessments under this section. This section shall not apply to federal inmates, detainees or regional lockup inmates.

Annually, not later than December 31, the executive office of public safety and security shall submit a report of the inmate fee program annually to the clerks of the senate and house of representatives, the house and senate committees on ways and means and the joint committee on public safety and homeland security. The report shall delineate, by facility and county, the total revenue collected for each fee implemented, the number of inmates who have appealed a fee assessment, the number of inmates exempt from fees due to indigency, the number of inmates exiting the facility with a balance due and the number of debts forgiven after release.”

And by inserting after section 155 the following section:-

“SECTION 155A. Within 90 days after the effective date of this act, the commissioner of correction and the sheriffs shall adopt rules and regulations for the implementation of section 48B of chapter 127 of the General Laws, but no fee shall be imposed pursuant to said section 48B of said chapter 127 until the commissioner and the sheriffs prepare a report indicating financial feasibility of the fee assessment and the secretary of public safety verifies those findings in writing to the commissioner and the sheriffs.”

Posted by lois at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2010

IN: Scathing Report Details Abuse At Juvenile Prison Report: Female Inmates Assaulted By Guards, Living In Filth

Scathing Report Details Abuse At Juvenile Prison
Report: Female Inmates Assaulted By Guards, Living In Filth
POSTED: 10:10 am EDT May 17, 2010
UPDATED: 7:44 pm EDT May 17, 2010

INDIANAPOLIS -- Federal authorities are calling on Indiana to address
abuses within its juvenile correction facilities after reports of
young inmates sexually assaulted by guards and living in filth.
A Jan. 29 letter and report from U.S. Assistant Attorney General
Thomas Perez to Gov. Mitch Daniels details troubles within the former
Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility, including a mentally ill
inmate left dirty and pulling out her hair and male guards having sex
with and performing strip searches on young female inmates, 6News'
Joanna Massee reported.

"The sexualized environment at the facility appears rampant," the letter read.

The letter follows a civil rights investigation launched by the U.S.
Department of Justice in 2008 that documented inadequate abuse
investigations, excessive use of force and isolation, inadequate
mental health care and inadequate special education services.
In January, a study commissioned by the department found that 36
percent of inmates at the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility
reported being sexually abused, while 23 percent of inmates at the
Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility said they had been the
victim of sexual abuse.

Two former Department of Correction employees who taught at the
Indianapolis Juvenile Facility during the Department of Justice's 2008 site visits spoke to 6News on a condition of anonymity about what they witnessed.
"(There were) vermin everywhere, cockroaches. The girls made pets of
the mice," one former teacher said. "They would talk about that, and I have been in the cottages and seen mice."

Another teacher, who called the system broken, said that in addition
to having sexual contact with guards, girls appeared to have sexual
contact with each other.

"That was part of the culture of this facility, that they accepted
homosexual relationships between the girls as normal," the teacher
said.

Both teachers left the facility in August of 2009 and are now involved in legal proceedings against the facility.
Gail Eckert's 15-year-old daughter was locked up at the Indianapolis
Juvenile Correctional Facility, where she was sexually assaulted by a
guard, Jon Furman, who was later convicted of sexual misconduct with a minor. Eckert said she tried to warn officials about Furman's inappropriate behavior with young female inmates but got nowhere.
"That's what makes me so mad, because I tried to help my daughter, and it just went in deaf ears," she said. "It's just a mother's worst
nightmare."

The Indianapolis Juvenile Facility has since been closed and relocated to Madison, Ind.

More: Share your experiences with the state's juvenile justice system
The Department of Justice started investigating Indiana's juvenile
centers six years ago.
Daniels subsequently volunteered to make improvements at all the
facilities and to provide reports resulting from a partnership with
the Indiana Juvenile Justice Task Force, an agency charged with
monitoring the expected improvements.

Task force director William Glick said members of his organization
found improvements at the Indianapolis Juvenile Correctional Facility
after the feds went in.

"That's a long, difficult process of change," he told Massee.
The Department of Correction said in a statement that officials found
fewer incidents of sexual abuse than what federal authorities
recorded, and pointed out that the Indianapolis Juvenile Facility has
been closed.

"The IDOC sincerely regrets that any juvenile entrusted to our care
was subjected to sexual victimization or mistreatment by employees who violated their public trust, or by other offenders, and we have
re-doubled our efforts to provide a safe and effective rehabilitative
environment for the youth in our custody," the statement read.
6News was not allowed inside the new facility in Madison.
Both Daniels and Correction Commissioner Edwin Buss declined to be interviewed.
http://www.theindychannel.com/news/23577752/detail.html

Posted by lois at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)

OK: For profit "Christian" prison proposed!

Ministry's prison plan still on hold

By BILL SHERMAN World Religion Writer
Published: 5/17/2010

A private firm proposing a prison in Wakita with all born-again Christian staff and programming does not yet have the commitments for prisoners it needs to begin construction.

Bill Robinson, the founder of Corrections Concepts Inc., a Dallas nonprofit prison ministry that is leading the proposal, said the bonding company that is financing the project will not release funds to begin construction until states or other jurisdictions have agreed to send 285 prisoners to the 624-bed facility.

"We're still working to get the adult facility done," Robinson said.

He said California has expressed an interest in sending adult inmates to Wakita, and he is in discussion with Kansas about it. Talks with Oklahoma are "in limbo."

The project has the support of city leaders in Wakita, a town near the Kansas border, and some civic leaders in the area.

"We'd be very supportive of it," said John Criner, the mayor of Enid, the largest nearby city. "We can't put any money into it, but I'd be more than happy to get him a resolution supporting the project."

Criner said Enid, which is 30 miles south of Wakita, was close enough to reap indirect economic benefit from the proposed prison.

Mayor Arden Chaffee of nearby Alva said the prison would have a positive effect on the area economy.

"It sounds like a great idea. I just don't know if they can finance something like that, which is a Christian concept, with public money," he said.

The concept of an all-Christian private prison has drawn the attention of a Washington, D.C., civil liberties group.

The group, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, sent a letter to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections asking it not to send prisoners to the proposed prison.

Alex Luchenitser, the group's senior litigation counsel, said its chief concern is that public funds would be used for religious worship and instruction. "We think this would be clearly unconstitutional," he said.

The organization also is concerned about possible civil-rights violations of prisoners, and public subsidy of an organization that hires only Christians, he said.

Robinson countered that the prison would be constitutional because inmates would go there voluntarily. He said he has legal opinions that say the prison, as a religious organization, can legally hire only people of like faith.

If constitutional challenges arise, he said, the American Center for Law and Justice, a major Christian law firm in Washington, has agreed to represent the ministry without charge.

Meanwhile, things are looking better for another part of the project, Robinson said.

The full plan calls for the adult male unit, a 600-inmate adult female unit, a 600-inmate juvenile unit and a 540-inmate geriatric unit, all in separate buildings on the Wakita campus.

Robinson said the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs has expressed interest in the juvenile detention project.

Robert E. "Gene" Christian, the agency's executive director, said that with the cuts at the L.E. Rader Center in Sand Springs, the state will need additional juvenile facilities and will be looking at several options.

Once a state budget is set, his office will put out requests for proposals, and he anticipates the Wakita juvenile prison proposal will be among those, he said.

"There are some concerns, because it is Christian-based," he said. "Participation would be voluntary. We could not order them to go."

He said he was concerned that young prisoners could say they want in, and then, at any time, say they want out of the program.

Robinson's concept is to put inmates into a Christian environment where they can learn, work and grow spiritually during the last year or so of their incarceration.

They would work at businesses that are set up in the prison, where they would learn a marketable skill and earn money for their families, for restitution to their victims, and for a nest egg when they are released.

"We want to turn criminals into citizens," he said.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20100517_18_A1_Apriva551140

Posted by lois at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2010

Doing time on their own dime: More states charge inmates for stays in jail, prison

Doing time on their own dime: More states charge inmates for stays in jail, prison
Institute of South Studies

As the economic downturn worsens and states grapple with large budget deficits, many inmates may find themselves paying for their crimes beyond just doing standard jail time.

Due to massive state budget cuts, across the country state prison facilities are beginning to charge inmates in order to garner the funds to maintain detention services. This week The Christian Science Monitor reported that a growing number of jails and sheriffs departments are also charging inmates and raising costs for a number of items -- from snacks to room and board -- a move authorities say is necessary to counter rising costs and budget cutbacks.

Charging inmates for their own incarceration - also known as "pay-to-stay" fees - is a trend that began about 20 years ago in Alabama, and soared in popularity around the country under the "tough-on-crime" policies of the Reagan and Clinton eras. By 2004 about one-third of the county jails in the United States had policies charging inmates for their own incarceration. During that same time period more than 50% of state correctional systems also had pay-to-stay fees. Some of these fees were collected through the inmate's bank account during incarceration and others through civil litigation aimed at a prisoner's estate or properties once they were released.

The trend, while not new, is quickly gaining popularity again around the country as the recession deepens. Some counties want to charge inmates the actual cost of care per day - as much as $45 - $60 in some places. That means a year behind bars could cost an inmate more than $16,000. Besides charging inmates for room, board, clothing and other related costs, some prisons - including ones in North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida - charge inmates every time they get written up for breaking the rules. Several states in the South also charge probationers monthly fees for seeing a probation officer.

It's already been a big year for pay-to-stay programs over all. This month lawmakers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania introduced legislation that would charge daily fees of about $10 to $15 for incarceration and electronic monitoring services. During this legislative session, Georgia lawmakers debated a measure that would have allowed state officials to collect a per diem of up to $40 from "financially capable" prisoners. One of the nation's highest prisoner tariffs, $60-a-night, was recently approved in Springfield, Oregon. Earlier this year, Maricopa County, Ariz., began charging inmates $1.25 a day for meals in the county jail. And last month in Richmond, Va., the city jail started charging inmates $1 a day to help cover the costs of their stay behind bars.

In a more controversial policy, several states also charge inmates for their medical and dental needs. In Georgia last month, Gov. Sonny Perdue signed a measure into law giving state prisons more power to charge inmates for their medical costs while behind bars. This is a fee that state and county corrections officials can deduct from inmates' accounts. While several prisons around the country charge co-pays for medical procedures, prison rights advocates have argued that this is a dangerous trend. They point out that these policies not only create a system where only privileged inmates have access to care, but it also runs the risk of allowing the spread of illnesses like Hepatitis C among inmates because they are discouraged from seeking treatment.

Keeping the poor impoverished

Critics of pay-to-stay programs and prison fees say these policies place an unfair burden on the poor.

As the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights explains on their Web site:

To pay for the ever-increasing size of the criminal justice system, we are seeing more and more fees being levied against people who cannot afford them: fees for medical services, anger management classes, drug tests, police officers' funds, crime victims' funds, clerk fees, attorneys' fees, probation fees, and jail fees. A new trend is "room and board" fees in prisons and jails.

Prison rights groups underscore that it's the relatives of the inmates that end up shouldering this high financial burden. These families - often disproportionately women - are typically already impoverished and struggling to make ends meet. Critics of the pay-to-stay system argue that in essence the government is seizing the assets of some of the poorest families in the country.

As The Christian Science Monitor reported:

"It's like we're a private ATM for the corrections department and they know there's nothing we can do about it," says the wife of one inmate serving a life sentence at Florida's Martin County Correctional Institute.

The woman, who asked to remain anonymous because she feared repercussions for her husband, said she can't afford to send him more than $40 a week. But that, she claims, is quickly swallowed up by the new higher rates on essential items such as sunscreen for when he works outside tending the prison grounds.

Prison rights advocates also point out that these fees make it more difficult for prisoner's to reintegrate into society once they are free.

When asked why his county rejected the pay-to-stay policies, Deputy Tom Erickson, the sheriff's spokesman in Johnson County, Kansas, told the Christian Science Monitor: "[I]f somebody doesn't pay, what do you do? Do you issue a warrant for them, have them arrested again, put them back in jail? You've created a debtors' prison, and that's neither wanted nor needed. For us, it wasn't the right thing to do."

Kansas Rep. Pat Colloton also sees the downside in pay-to-stay policies, pointing out that these indigent inmates could end up with massive bills to pay when they leave the lockup. "Many of these individuals have a difficult time re-entering society anyway," Colloton told the The Kansas City Star. "We don't want them so burdened with debt that any legitimate attempt at re-entry is impossible and they turn back to crime to pay the fees you just imposed on them."

Modern-Day Debtors' Prisons?

Human rights and civil liberties groups are troubled by the resurgence in the popularity of pay-to-stay fees. As a result, groups have been raising questions about the legality of charging inmates for room and board.

The Southern Center for Human Rights has been following the issue closely here in the South, where some of the policies are even stranger and more convoluted. According to the SCHR, courts across the South routinely impose substantial costs on already poor people who are struggling to get by, then incarcerate them for being too poor to pay. In some parts of the region people have even been jailed for not being able to pay their court fines. One example is in Gulfport, Miss., where the municipal court started a "fine collection task force" to crack down on people who owed fees for misdemeanors.

As the SCHR reports on their Web site:

The task force trolled through predominantly African American neighborhoods, rounding up people who had outstanding court fines. After arresting and jailing them, the City of Gulfport processed these people through a court proceeding at which no defense attorney was present or even offered.

Many people were jailed for months after hearings lasting just seconds. While the city collected money, it also packed the jail with hundreds of people who couldn't pay, including people who were sick, physically disabled and/or limited by mental disabilities.

According to SCHR's 2008 report entitled "Profiting from the Poor," charging people for misdemeanors has also become an industry in Georgia:

In courts around Georgia, people who are charged with misdemeanors and cannot pay their fines that day in court are placed on probation under the supervision of private, for-profit companies until they pay off their fines. On probation, they must pay these companies substantial monthly "supervision fees" that may double or triple the amount that a person of means would pay for the same offense.

In some cases, jails in the South have charged people room and board fees even before inmates were convicted of any crime. For more than 15 years the Clinch County Jail in Homerville, Ga. charged those in its custody a daily room and board fee. Since many people were too poor to pay the fees upon their release, the county sheriff would require them to sign notes promising to pay the fees in installments, or return to jail. Following a lawsuit by the SCHR in 2006, the county was forced to repay money to several inmates who had been made to pay a $18 per-day fee for their time in custody before their conviction. One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit - Willie Williams Jr. - had been charged a $4,608 "room and board" bill for his time behind bars even though he had not yet been convicted.

In 2006, the SCHR also filed a petition on behalf of Georgia resident Ora Lee Hurley. A court had ordered Hurley incarcerated until she paid a $705 fine for a 15-year-old drug conviction. But Hurley couldn't pay the fine because she had to pay the Georgia Department of Corrections $600 a month for room and board. Hurley spent nearly a year in prison - from a 120-day sentence -- due to her inability to pay the fine before the SCHR was able to get her released.
http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/05/doing-time-on-their-own-dime-more-states-charging-inmates-for-stays-in-jail-prison.html

Posted by lois at 06:13 PM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2010

MA: Imprisoned by mandates

Imprisoned by mandates
By Yvonne Abraham
Globe Columnist / May 13, 2010

A lot of legislators are skittish these days, worried voters will dump them now that Massachusetts is a state Sarah Palin would visit — however briefly.

Maybe that’s why House members recently approved a measure allowing sheriffs to charge inmates daily fees for their incarceration. There’s no easier way to earn (Scott) Brownie points than by punishing criminals twice for the same offense, especially if it raises money during a fiscal crisis.

Now the same legislators who brought you the inmate charges are wrestling with an overhaul of the state’s criminal justice system.

Yikes.

The overhaul is a big priority for Governor Deval Patrick, and it has been pushed along by Senate President Therese Murray, whose leadership here has been stellar.

Her package includes a proposal to allow drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences to apply for parole two-thirds of the way into their terms. Sadly, that measure’s prospects in the House don’t look good.

This state, like a lot of others, put mandatory minimums in place a generation ago during the big war on drugs. Under them, dealers are sentenced solely on how much they’re selling, and where. No judicial discretion. No parole. Three and a half ounces of painkillers will get you 10 to 20 — the same penalty as for armed rape. Selling them within 1,000 feet of a school — just about everywhere in some cities — adds two to 15.

Michelle Collette got seven years, including a five-year mandatory minimum, in 2004, after a raid turned up 600 Percocet in the home she shared with her former husband. She was a small fish — drug addicted, never in trouble with the law before. After her arrest, she stopped using and got her life together.

But Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein couldn’t take any of that into account.

“I don’t think this is fair,’’ he said, when he sentenced Collette. “It’s going to cost upwards of $50,000 a year to have you in state prison. Had I the authority, I would send you to jail for no more than one year . . . and a program after that.’’

Collette, now 34, believes she deserved prison. “But seven years? I was in there with a woman who molested kids, and she did less time than I did,’’ she said.

A bunch of states have moved to soften mandatory minimums, agreeing with mountains of research suggesting they clog up prisons with nonviolent offenders and make it harder for former inmates to transition to productive lives. And these aren’t namby-pamby liberal states: We’re talking South Carolina, Nevada, Alabama.

Here, the Department of Correction, the parole board, and some sheriffs support similar moves. District attorneys are opposed.

Mandatory minimums are applied to “dealers, not users,’’ said Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett. “They’re predators, ruining the lives of many people, for profit.’’

But that doesn’t describe Collette. And those pushing for a sentencing overhaul say it doesn’t describe many others like her.

Besides, the change proposed here is no get-of-jail-free card: It merely gives inmates serving mandatory minimums for drug offenses a chance to come before parole boards, like thousands of other offenders, including violent ones. It’s a baby step.

Our prison system is dangerously stretched right now, as are our state finances. If the 2,000 inmates serving mandatory minimums for drug offenses were paroled at the same rate as other offenders, the state could save almost $18 million annually, according to a Massachusetts Bar Association study. If even some of them return to tax-paying, child-rearing lives, we save that much more.

Maybe you have no sympathy for Collette and the others. Maybe you think we should lock them up and forget about them.

The problem is, we can’t afford to.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/05/13/imprisoned_by_mandates/

Posted by lois at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2010

Mass. fails in commitment to juvenile justice

May 5, 2010
The Boston Globe
RE “JURY convicts Odgren of murder’’ (Page A1, April 30): In the murder conviction of a youth who happens to be diagnosed with all sorts of mental disabilities, the real crime is that states like Massachusetts no longer consider the fact that adolescents are not adults. For certain crimes, juvenile status is all too simply ignored. It is ignored because of the politically inspired belief that juveniles are just as competent as adults. We know that they are not. A modern, civilized society such as ours requires proof of age-graded responsibilities in all sorts of spheres of life, from marriage to employment.

Massachusetts once was a leader in recognizing adolescence as a distinct period of life by creating its separate system of juvenile justice, which became a model for many states. But today many states including Massachusetts bypass juvenile justice in favor of adult criminal justice. States all too often assume that the unfortunate loss of one life requires the life of another no matter how young the offender may be. But a life sentence for a juvenile, when contrasted with that for an adult, means that a larger proportion of a juvenile’s life will be wasted away in prison.

The constitutionality of this kind of state-sponsored cruelty is being considered by the US Supreme Court. Massachusetts should begin to recognize the injustice of punishing its juveniles as if they are adults, and once more become the leader that it once was in creating an age-appropriate system of juvenile justice.

Simon I. Singer
Brookline
The writer is a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2010/05/05/mass_fails_in_commitment_to_juvenile_justice/

Posted by lois at 08:26 PM | Comments (0)

May 02, 2010

MA: Bill passed in House on charging prisons up to $5 a day in Jails

Barbara Dougan of MA FAMM writes that the bill passed is for jails only NOT prisons and jails....maybe half as bad as reported in the press. Call your Senators and tell them NO!

Amendment 26, AS PASSED:
Representative Poirier of North Attleboro, Mr. Jones of North Reading, Mr. Peterson of Grafton, Mr. Hill of Ipswich, and Mr. deMacedo of Plymouth move to amend the bill by inserting, after section 27 (as printed), the following section: “SECTION XX. Chapter 127 of the General Laws, as appearing in the 2008 Official Edition, is hereby amended by inserting, after section 48A, the following section:- Section 48B. The sheriffs for the various counties may institute a schedule of fees and assess said fees to inmates in their custody as follows:- A daily cost of custodial care fee not to exceed $5; A medical sick call visit fee not related to a condition pre-existing at the time of incarceration not to exceed $5; A dental sick call visit fee not to exceed $5; A pair of prescription eyeglasses fee not to exceed$5; A pharmacy prescription fee not to exceed $3 per prescription. Any penal facility assessing fees shall establish a procedure for inmates to appeal any such assessment. Notwithstanding the above, the following services shall be exempt from fee assessment: admission health screening, 14 day health assessment, emergency health care, hospitalization or infirmary care, prenatal care, lab and diagnostic care, follow-up visits approved by health services, contagious disease care and chronic disease care. No inmate shall be denied access to medical or dental care because of an inability to pay any fee. Indigent inmates shall have the above fees and costs assessed and debited against the inmate’s money account which, if not paid, shall remain due and payable as a charge to the inmate after his release from custody. If the inmate is not incarcerated within 2 years of his release from custody, this debt shall be forgiven. This section shall not apply to federal inmates, detainees or regional lock-up inmates. The commissioner and the sheriffs of the various counties shall promulgate rules and regulations for the implementation of this section.”.
However this section shall not take effect until the sheriff prepares a report indicating financial feasibility of said fee and the secretary of public safety verifies said finding in writing to the sheriff.

Posted by lois at 12:48 PM | Comments (0)

May 01, 2010

MA: House passes bill allowing jails and prisons to chrarge prisoners up to $5 a day!

Prisoners could pay up to $5 a day
May 1, 2010
The Massachusetts House has adopted a controversial fee for prison inmates that the courts had earlier blocked Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson from imposing at county jails.

The courts had ruled that only the Legislature has the authority to impose the fees, so the House voted Thursday and Friday to authorize a charge of up to $5 a day on inmates in prisons and jails.

The measure was proposed by state Rep. Betty Poirier, R-North Attleboro, as an amendment to the state budget.

It still needs the approval of the Senate and the governor to become law.

Poirier said the fee is like charging inmates for room and board. She said it's a way to ease the burden on taxpayers.

The fee would be deducted from inmate "canteen accounts," which are used to purchase snacks and personal items.

The fee has become an issue in Hodgson's re-election campaign, with Democratic opponent Rep. John Quinn accusing the sheriff of going a public relations trip to California, where he championed the issue, rather than going to Boston to work with lawmakers to get the measure passed in Massachusetts.

Quinn, D-Dartmouth, is a supporter of the fee and said he helped gain Democratic support for it.

Hodgson said the legislation is a long time in coming and will save lawabiding taxpayers some of the cost of supporting criminals in jail.

"This is a great day for the people of this county and for the people of Massachusetts," he said.

The budget amendment was actually adopted late Thursday, but was reconsidered Friday after some legislators said it should be studied more.

Reconsideration passed by a wide margin and the fee is now part of the House version of the budget.

Hodgson charged inmates the $5 fee from 2002 to 2004 before a suit by inmates got it stopped.

In the two years the fee was intact, Hodgson said he raised $700,000.
http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2010/05/01/news/7326736.txt

The new fee was quickly pushed through on a 106-51 vote by House lawmakers late Thursday during their ongoing budget debate.

The House decided to take up the issue again on Friday. After a lengthy debate, lawmakers again voted in favor of the fee by a 93-62 margin.

Posted by lois at 03:55 PM | Comments (0)

MI: Jail to Go With Post Card Only Mail

Isabella jail to go with post card only mail
Published: Tuesday, April 27, 2010

By SUSAN FIELD
Clare Managing Editor

Citing the time consuming process of sorting mail and the contraband sometimes found in envelopes, Isabella County Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski is following the lead of other Michigan jails and implementing a post card only mail system.

Once the jail's supply of envelopes is used, inmates will be able to purchase stamped post cards from Keefe Commissary, the sheriff said.

As of May 1, all outgoing and incoming mail, with the exception of legal or judicial correspondence, will be restricted to post cards.

Inmate to inmate mail will no longer be processed, the sheriff said.

Several factors led to the decision, including an effort to streamline corrections officers' duties to focus on inmate care and security at the jail, Lt. Tom Recker said.

With the jail having a capacity of 198 inmates, opening and searching mail is a very time consuming process for corrections officers, and over the years, mail has contained items that are not allowed in the jail, Recker said.

Those include matches hidden between photographs, tobacco and notes that are sexual in nature that also could pose health issues, Recker said.

Corrections officers have found other contraband items hidden in envelope lips as well, the sheriff said.

"We've found all kinds of things in them," Mioduszewski said.

Another problem is inmate to inmate mail that causes internal issues, Recker said.

Ingham County limited inmate mail to post cards about two years ago, Recker said.

While initially the move was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU later did not object when jail officials said that judicial and legal correspondence was not included in the limit, Recker said.

Another reason for the switch is that jail officials are having to do more with less, and not having to sort through envelopes gives corrections officers less ancillary functions, Recker said.
http://www.themorningsun.com/articles/2010/04/27/news/srv0000008133257.txt

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

April 21, 2010

Crime Prediction Software Is Here and It's a Very Bad Idea- FL Dept of Juvenile Justice will use software to predict crime by youth involved in the juv. justice system

Crime Prediction Software Is Here and It's a Very Bad Idea
Gizmodo
Crime Prediction Software Is Here and It's a Very Bad IdeaThere are no naked pre-cogs inside glowing jacuzzis yet, but the Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice will use analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents, putting potential offenders under specific prevention and education programs. Goodbye, human rights!

They will use this software on juvenile delinquents, using a series of variables to determine the potential for these people to commit another crime. Depending on this probability, they will put them under specific re-education programs. Deepak Advani—vice president of predictive analytics at IBM—says the system gives "reliable projections" so governments can take "action in real time" to "prevent criminal activities?"

Really? "Reliable projections"? "Action in real time"? "Preventing criminal activities"? I don't know about how reliable your system is, IBM, but have you ever heard of the 5th, the 6th, and the 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution? What about article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? No? Let's make this easy then: Didn't you watch that scientology nutcase in Minority Report?

Sure. Some will argue that these juvenile delinquents were already convicted for other crimes, so hey, there's no harm. This software will help prevent further crimes. It will make all of us safer? But would it? Where's the guarantee of that? Why does the state have to assume that criminal behavior is a given? And why should the government decide who goes to an specific prevention program or who doesn't based on what a computer says? The fact is that, even if the software was 99.99% accurate, there will be always an innocent person who will be fucked. And that is exactly why we have something called due process and the presumption of innocence. That's why those things are not only in the United States Constitution, but in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights too.

Other people will say that government officials already makes these decisions based on reports and their own judgement. True. It seems that a computer program may be fairer than a human, right? Maybe. But at the end the interpretation of the data is always in the hands of humans (and the program itself is written by humans).

But what really worries me is that this is a first big step towards something larger and darker. Actually, it's the second: IBM says that the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom—which has an impeccable record on not pre-judging its citizens—already uses this system to prevent criminal activities. Actually, it may be the third big step, because there's already software in place to blacklist people as potential terrorist, although most probably not as sophisticated as this.

IBM clearly wants this to go big. They have spent a whooping $12 billion beefing up its analytics division. Again, here's the full quote from Deepak Advani:

Predictive analytics gives government organizations worldwide a highly-sophisticated and intelligent source to create safer communities by identifying, predicting, responding to and preventing criminal activities. It gives the criminal justice system the ability to draw upon the wealth of data available to detect patterns, make reliable projections and then take the appropriate action in real time to combat crime and protect citizens.

If that sounds scary to you, that's because it is. First it's the convicted-but-potentially-recidivistic criminals. Then it's the potential terrorists. Then it's everyone of us, in a big database, getting flagged because some combination of factors—travel patterns, credit card activity, relationships, messaging, social activity and everything else—indicate that we may be thinking about doing something against the law. Potentially, a crime prediction system can avoid murder, robbery, or a terrorist act.

It actually sounds like a good idea. For example, there are certain patterns that can identify psychopaths and potential killers or child abusers or wife beaters. It only makes sense to put a future system in place that can prevent identify potential criminals, then put them under surveillance.

The reality is that it's not such a good idea: While everything may seem driven by the desire to achieve better security, one single false positive would make the whole system unfair. And that's not even getting into the potential abuse of such a system. Like the last time IBM got into a vaguely similar business for a good cause, during the 1930s. They shipped a lot of cataloguing machines to certain government in Europe, to put together an advanced census. That was good. Census can improve societies by identifying needs and problems that the government can solve. At the end, however, that didn't end well for more than 11 million people.

And yes, this comparison is an extreme exaggeration. But one thing is clear: No matter how you look at it, cataloguing people—any kind of people—based on statistical predictive software, and then taking pre-empetive actions against them based on the results, is the wrong way to improve our society. Agreeing with this course of action will inevitably take us into a potentially fatal path. [Yahoo!]
http://gizmodo.com/5517231/crime-prediction-software-is-here-and-its-a-very-bad-idea

Here's the announcement from IBM
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Florida-Department-of-bw-1587995596.html?x=0&.v=1

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SPSS, an IBM (NYSE: IBM) Company, today announced that the Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice selected IBM predictive analytics software to reduce recidivism by determining which juveniles are likely to reoffend. Identified at-risk youth can then be placed in programs specific to the best course of treatment to ensure offenders do not re-enter the juvenile justice system.

IBM recently also announced that the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom uses predictive analytics to assess the likelihood
of prisoners reoffending upon their release to help improve public safety. With predictive technology from IBM, the Ministry of Justice is analyzing hidden trends and patterns within the data. IBM SPSS predictive analytics has helped identify whether offenders with specific problems such as drug and alcohol misuse are more likely to reoffend than other prisoners.
...
Deepak Advani, vice president of predictive analytics at IBM, said, Predictive analytics gives government organizations worldwide a highly-sophisticated and intelligent source to create safer communities by identifying, predicting, responding to and preventing criminal activities. It gives the criminal justice system the ability to draw upon the wealth of data available to detect patterns, make reliable projections and then take the appropriate action in real time to combat crime and protect citizens.

Posted by lois at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)

NY Times Editorial: Criminal Record Checks Making Census Workers Ineligible

Editorial- NY Times
4-21-10
We Can’t Tell You Why

The Census Bureau is hiring a million or more people to assist with the 2010 count. It is temporary work, but it pays well. With national unemployment at nearly 10 percent, it looks like an excellent opportunity. That is unless you are one of the nearly 50 million Americans with any arrest or conviction on record.

A new class-action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of applicants who say they were unfairly turned down for census jobs based on an opaque screening policy that relies on F.B.I. checks for any criminal histories. Those checks are notoriously unreliable. A 2006 federal report found that half of them were inaccurate or out of date.

The Census Bureau is vague about what makes someone ineligible. In Congressional testimony, it suggested that it is excluding people who have been convicted of crimes involving violence and dishonesty. The bureau’s Web site seems to say that applicants whose background checks turn up any arrest — no matter how trivial, distant in time, irrelevant to the job — receive a letter advising them that they can remain eligible only if they produce “official court documentation” bearing on the case within 30 days. Incredibly, the letter does not identify the alleged criminal activity. Applicants must prove eligibility, even if they don’t know why they were flagged.

Official court records are often unobtainable for the millions of people whose convictions have been sealed or expunged or for people who have been arrested and released because of lack of evidence or mistaken arrest. This problem falls heaviest on black and Hispanic communities where stop-and-frisk policies and indiscriminate arrests are common.

The hiring problem is not limited to the Census Bureau. After 9/11, Congress required port workers to undergo F.B.I. background checks to keep their jobs. Last year, a study by the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for workers, found that the government had mistakenly denied credentials to tens of thousands of those workers.

States and cities are wisely revising employment policies. The federal government needs to develop a fair and transparent screening system for job applicants and a more effective appeals process. Congress must also require the F.B.I. to verify the criminal records — and find missing data before issuing background checks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/opinion/21wed2.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2010

1,600 PA Prisoners Sent to VA and Michigan While 4 New Prisons Get Built

1,600 Pa. inmates jailed in Va., Mich.
Inmates expected to be held out of state until 4 new state prisons built, official says.
Monday, April 19, 2010
By Edward Lewis
Staff Writer

Convicted killer Henry Stubbs is among the 1,600 state inmates being housed in Michigan and Virginia prisons to alleviate overcrowding in Pennsylvania correctional institutions, prison officials said.

Sue Bensinger, deputy press secretary for the state Department of Corrections, said housing of state inmates in Michigan and Virginia began in February. She estimated Pennsylvania inmates will be jailed out of state for about three years or until four new correctional institutions are built.

It is costing Pennsylvania $62 a day per inmate, said DOC press secretary Sue McNaughton. Pennsylvania inmates are being housed at the Muskegon Correctional Facility in Muskegon, Mich. and Green Rock Correctional Center in Virginia.

Bensinger said those two facilities were selected because they are similar in operation to Pennsylvania correctional institutions and reasonably priced.

McNaughton said in an e-mail that 115 inmates from the State Correctional Institution at Dallas are housed at the Virginian facility. No inmates from SCI-Retreat, the other institution in Luzerne County, are being held out of state.

It is the first time in DOC’s history that state inmates are housed outside Pennsylvania, Bensinger said. According to the DOC monthly population report of March 31, there were 51,457 inmates under jurisdictional custody by the state. There were 2,112 inmates at SCI-Dallas, which has a bed capacity of 1,750, and 1,140 inmates at SCI-Retreat has a bed capacity of 1,111.

Stubbs, 45, a former resident of Newark, N.J., was convicted by a Luzerne County jury in May 2003 in the murders of Elena Herring, 33, and her 6-year-old daughter, Viktoria Ivanova, inside a Stark Street, Wilkes-Barre, home in December 2001.

Stubbs was sentenced to life in prison when he was convicted of two counts of first-degree homicide, rape and other charges. He has been incarcerated for much of his sentence at SCI-Huntingdon, Huntingdon County in south-central Pennsylvania.

Last week, Stubbs filed a petition by mail in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania seeking a new trial after he exhausted all his state appeals. He mailed the petition from the Muskegon Correctional Facility in Michigan, where he is currently housed.
http://www.timesleader.com/news/1_600_Pa__inmates_jailed_in_Va___Mich__04-18-2010.html

Posted by lois at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2010

WV Editorial Lauds Moutaintop mining which makes way for "recession proof" prison jobs

"These jobs would not be available in that area had it not been possible, through the use of timbering and the mining of incidental coal, to create the flat land needed."

Editorials- Charleston Daily Mail
Tuesday April 13, 2010
Prisons do provide recession-proof jobs
Creating a nice flat place helped clear the way for McDowell facility

AFTER more than a decade of planning, a new federal prison at the Indian Ridge Industrial Park near the McDowell County-Wyoming County line is nearing completion.

The prison for men will house 1,152 medium-security and 128 minimum-security criminals, and it will have a staff of 320. The $249 million construction project is 99 percent complete.

When opened this fall, the prison will push the state's prison population above 17,000 people, with more than 10,000 of those inmates sitting in federal prisons.

The McDowell prison is important for a county where the unemployment rate stood at 13.4 percent in February. Roughly one in three people in McDowell County live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

This will be the third federal prison added to the state in the last decade. The Federal Bureau of Prisons also operates facilities in the Morgantown, Glenville, Alderson and Beckley areas.

Preston County officials say that when additions are completed at its Hazelton site, which opened in 2006, the federal facility will supplant the county school system as the largest employer in that county.

In McDowell County, one of the nation's poorest, the median household income was $20,486 a year in 2008.

In 2004, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor

Statistics, the median annual earning for federal correctional officers was $33,600.

Not surprisingly, 45 percent of the job openings at the McDowell prison have been filled. The facility will have an annual economic impact of $38 million.

These jobs would not be available in that area had it not been possible, through the use of timbering and the mining of incidental coal, to create the flat land needed.

Those who oppose all mountaintop mining might want to explain how they would reduce unemployment and poverty in Southern West Virginia.
http://dailymail.com/Opinion/Editorials/201004120820

Posted by lois at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2010

Solitary Watch Watches National Geographic's Experiment in Solitary Confinement

Solitary Watch Watches National Geographic's Experiment in Solitary Confinement
Jean Casella and James Ridgeway | April 2, 2010
From Solitary Watch
As we wrote earlier, it's hard to say whether the National Geographic Channel's treatment of solitary confinement will do more harm than good. In addition to an upcoming episode of "Explorer" on the subject, the NG Channel is hosting an "experiment" that promises to provide a "live window into the solitary experience," in which three subjects spend a week in faux lockdown cells
(unless they want to leave earlier), with cameras streaming live video to the public and the "prisoners" providing updates on Twitter. (link to the show http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/explorer/4819/Overview#ixzz0jubCdsqU)

The potential good comes from the evidence of psychological damage that will probably surface even in the fresh-faced young volunteers who spend a mere week in the pristine "cells." (And to its credit, the NG Channel's site makes an effort to put their experience in broader context.) The potential harm comes from the audience thinking what they watch on the live video stream bears any resemblance to the actual experience of prisoners in solitary confinement--which is far worse, in ways too numerous to count. After observing the NG experiment for a week, viewers could easily conclude that solitary confinement is extremely unpleasant, but falls short of constituting cruel and unusual punishment--and is far from the torture some critics say it is. If so, they would be basing their conclusions on faulty evidence.

First of all, hardly anyone spends just a week in solitary. Used for "disciplinary" purposes, spells in solitary can last anywhere from several weeks to several years. Many of the inmates who end up in solitary are mentally ill; others (including many children) are there for their own "protection," but nonetheless endure the same cruel conditions. In addition, some 25,000 American prisoners live in long-term or permanent lockdown, which often stretches to decades: Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, of the Angola 3, have spent most of the past 37 years in solitary; Tommy Silverstein has spent an uninterrupted 27 years in solitary under a "no human contact" order; Syed Fahad Hashmi, who is accused of offering material support (in the form of clothing) to terrorists, has spent nearly three years in ultra-isolation under "Special Administrative Measures," though he has yet to be convicted of a crime.

Second, a glance at the faux cells where the three National Geographic volunteers are living, though cramped, look cleaner, homier, and less dehumanizing than most solitary confinement cells. The furnishings--bed, shelves, chair, lamp--are recognizably from IKEA, whereas in many supermax cells everything is made of poured concrete, with the exception of stainless steel sink and toilet. Compare the rooms where NG volunteers James, Laura, and Rich are living to Laura Sullivan's photos from Pelican Bay, which accompanied her excellent 2006 NPR series on solitary confinement in the United States, or to drawing by prisoners Herman Wallace and Tommy Silverstein--all of them appearing at the end of this post.

More significantly, there are realities that cannot be captured visually (or on Twitter)--some of which are described in a comment on our previous post by Alan, who also has first-hand knowledge of life in the hole:

Without experiencing the most disturbing elements of solitary confinement, notably:

1) Being surrounded by other mentally ill inmates howling and banging on doors and walls, resulting in sleep deprivation.

2) Viewing or rather listening to the brutality of prison guards reacting to these outbursts.

3) The uncertainty of when, or if, you will ever be released and the hopelessness that this feeling of loss of control over your own destiny instills.

the true horror of the solitary experience is lost.

Finally, of course, there's the profound fact that the NG "prisoners" are volunteers who can decide to leave at any time. They are in their "cells" by choice, presumably because they think the "experiment" serves a larger purpose. In this sense, they are truly in control of their own destinies.

In addition, the volunteers can communicate with the outside world; they can Tweet at will, and they know hundreds of people will be watching them. While that communication is one-way (they are not receiving any messages), their experience is being witnessed, thought about, and talked about. This alone sets them apart from the tens of thousands of prisoners who, on any given day, languish in solitary confinement in the United States--because for the most part, nobody notice them at all.
Images, links and other posts can be found at:
http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/solitary-watch-watches-solitary-experiment-from-national-geographic/

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

April 05, 2010

KS: model parole program collapses with state budget cuts

Kansas' model parole program collapses with state budget cuts
By RICK MONTGOMERY
The Kansas City Star
Sat, Apr. 03, 2010
Lewis was babbling.

“I can see things. … There are signs out there coming from The Beast.” One of his arms moved randomly above the black bandanna around his head, as if to swipe away cobwebs.

The man rocking in his seat before parole officer Chris Jorgensen in the drab, tiny Department of Corrections office in Kansas City, Kan., was one of 6,000 released convicts whom the state budget is doing less to help.

Treatment and support services for Lewis, who did time on a theft charge, and other inmates re-entering society cost $12.6 million two years ago. That was when mental health care, job training and community residential programs for people on parole helped make Kansas a national model for success.

Now the model has been dismantled. For the fiscal year beginning July, the corrections department will get about $5.3 million to fund those programs under Gov. Mark Parkinson’s budget recommendations.

To the taxpayer and government officials desperately trying to balance the state’s books, the short-term savings are hard to resist.

But experts know that a convict ill-prepared for “re-entry” — especially in this job market — may mean only rising crime in the coming years.

Should Lewis violate his parole and be taken off the street, it will cost about $25,000 each year to incarcerate him.

With burgeoning state budget crises affecting life as Kansans and Missourians know it, officer Jorgensen saw a more immediate crisis sitting in front of his desk.

“What is it you need, Lewis?” he said calmly, sensing a meltdown. “Tell me what you need. Do you feel the medicine is helping you?”

“I feel I need a witness, like it says in the Bible. … I believe I’m the Christ of all people.”

Jorgensen heard nothing coherent. He made a note to drive his schizophrenic client back to the mental health center as soon as his case load allowed.

It was then that Lewis, who is living with relatives, made a comment so striking in its clarity, so truthful, it seemed to crackle down the hall: “I don’t know where I’d be without you.”

He broke into sobs and asked that his full name not appear in this story. The two hugged — a trembling, disheveled man and his parole officer — before the next parolee sat down.

A crown jewel fades

The Kansas method of preparing inmates for re-entering society was considered the crown jewel of correctional systems worldwide. Congress in 2008 established “Second Chance” grants to help other states create the kinds of programs launched in Kansas — for drug rehabilitation, education, family reintegration and transitional housing.

Recidivism rates — the percent of ex-convicts committing new crimes — had in 2007 plunged statewide to 2.2 percent, less than half the recidivism of the early part of the decade.

The number of parolees re-convicted for felonies fell 36 percent. The total prison population and new admissions also were on the decline, enabling the Department of Corrections to project that Kansas needn’t worry about expanding its prison capacity for 10 years.

The recession and consecutive budget blowouts have thrown that momentum into reverse.

“Just like that — the national model we created no longer exists,” said state Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican who leads the House Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice. “We were written up in The Wall Street Journal. I was invited to the White House,” when then-President George W. Bush signed legislation directing $54 million in federal grants to help duplicate Kansas’ success around the country.

“The fact that our programs had gotten it right — and we had the data to prove it — didn’t keep us from destroying that model,” she said.

Now, her state must line up at the federal trough for Second Chance grants it once didn’t need.

While other states are stepping up prisoner releases to meet budget, officials say Kansas sentencing laws prevent them from springing inmates at will.

It is too early to know how program cuts, both inside and outside prison walls, may affect future recidivism rates, or even overall public safety, corrections officials say. But they already face a new penal landscape, as about $25 million has been chopped from the corrections budget since 2008.

Last year, four minimum-security units were shut down, many inmates were routed to tighter quarters, and treatment and education programs lost more than half their funding.

“For Joe, the parolee,” said state Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz, “it means no longer having access to substance-abuse treatment through the Department of Corrections. Joe is going to be lining up and competing for the same treatment slots as any law-abiding Kansan needing the help” but unable to afford it.

“It’s going to be harder for him, harder for everybody, to get that treatment slot.”

Gone from most Kansas communities are the structured group-living arrangements that provided offenders a bed, counseling and supervision while they sought full-time work or fought off addictions.

The department last year discontinued such residential programs in Topeka, Wichita and Kansas City, Kan. A treatment program for sex offenders at the Norton Correctional Facility ended.

In Jorgensen’s office, the parolees said they wanted to make it on the outside.

“It’s easy to get back in — to just lie down in your cell and let the state take care of you,” said Mike Buie, paroled in 2008 after a five-year stint for robbery and attempted battery. “What’s hard is to make it out here. …

“I understand if people do feel safe in their homes, safe going shopping, with criminals locked away. But to really feel safe, you’re going to have to focus on the people getting out.”

Buie has spent 18 of his 44 years behind bars. For him, being out and avoiding trouble for the last two is an achievement. But state budget cuts have limited his eligibility for MediKan insurance benefits to 18 months, and the medication Buie needs to control his bipolar disorder is running out.

“Leaves me high and dry” until he can collect disability benefits next year, Buie said: “I’m waiting for the grass to finish growing so I can mow some neighbors’ lawns.”

Scarce resources

Frederick Releford sat down. He was sprung from the Lansing Correctional Facility in February, and already he is facing homelessness.

The halfway house where Releford is sleeping and getting help for alcoholism requires that he make a co-payment of $5 a day. But before Releford, 46, can land a driver’s license and steady work, he needs to track down his Arkansas birth certificate and Social Security card from relatives who are nowhere to be found.

Until last year, the Department of Corrections had a residential safety net for him — the Salvation Army Shield of Service House in Kansas City, Kan. Dropping it and other residential beds for parolees allowed the state to save $640,000.

Parole officer Jorgensen: “Frederick, if you get behind two, three months on your rent, and they discharge you for not paying, we’re back to square one, and you’re homeless.”

Releford, head down: “I don’t want to go that route.”

He wants to finish up his GED. He wants to volunteer for Metropolitan Lutheran Ministries. He wants to work in roofing or landscaping. But he knows hardly anybody in Kansas City, Kan., except the corrections staff.

“What are we going to do with Frederick?” Jorgensen asked himself after the parolee stepped back into hall.

A short time later, Valori Sanders bounded into the hall with a grin.

“I’ve got good news,” said Sanders, of the nonprofit Kansas Housing Resources Corp. “I just found a landlord willing to give us first dibs on two units! She was pretty tough, but we worked it out.”

This is how the parole business makes do: By negotiating with private providers, tapping churches and publicly paid welfare options, by reworking agency contracts, corrections officials will try to find a way.

“At the end of the day,” said Jorgensen, “we’re going to find the resources to help these people be successful.”

Each of the state’s 125 parole officers will do it juggling caseloads ranging from about 30 to 300 parolees.

“I don’t know many parole officers who make over $40,000 a year, and almost all are college graduates,” said Sean McCauley, a lawyer for Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 64 of parole officers. “They may start out hoping to help people, like a social worker, but eventually they feel like they’re emptying an ocean with a thimble.”

In Topeka, lawmakers of both parties widely agree that corrections and parole services need healthy funding — it reduces crime and cuts penal costs in the long run.

Still, McCauley said the state has not hiked parole officers’ wages in 10 years, save for a couple of cost-of-living adjustments.

Jorgensen, 31, chucked plans of being a criminologist for the threadbare office in which he works: green file folders stacked on the floor, dull green carpet and dull green walls, no window, black-metal desk and black file cabinets — a 1970s flashback.

The rewards?

A few say thanks when their parole is done. But normally they just disappear into society, where no news is good news.

“In our world,” he said, “if we don’t hear from or see these people again? Then they’re probably doing great.”
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/03/v-print/1855064/kansas-model-parole-program-collapses.html

Posted by lois at 02:29 PM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2010

MA: Another suicide by a prisoner

Each suicide by a prisoner gets treated as if it were aberrant act, not as a result of the prison culture of humiliation and hopelessness. In this instance, Leslie Walker blames the suicide of Michael Caputo on a cut-back of DOC "mental health" workers, as if they might be hired to make a difference in the life of someone with a life sentence. True, there are many more people locked in inhumane conditions who have serious mental illness, but it is the system as a whole---every aspect of it---that creates the conditions for suicide.
Lois

Inmate suicide brings criticism about health services -
Advocacy group points to recent state cutbacks
By John M. Guilfoil
Globe Staff / March 31,

A prisoners advocacy group voiced concerns yesterday over reductions in mental health services after a second inmate in less than two weeks took his own life at a Massachusetts prison.

Michael Caputo, 59, was found on the floor of his cell with a plastic bag over his head on Monday at around 1 a.m. in the medium security portion of the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, officials said. He was pronounced dead at 5:15 p.m. at Morton Hospital and Medical Center in Taunton.

Diane Wiffin, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Correction, said Caputo was found by a guard making rounds that morning. The Plymouth district attorney’s office is investigating Caputo’s death.

Caputo had been serving life without parole since 1991 for first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of his estranged wife and her mother in Jamaica Plain. He was being housed in the general population in an individual cell, Wiffin said.

“The story in my mind is the recent reductions in mental health staff. The department is not equipped to deal with the influx of mentally ill prisoners,’’ said Leslie Walker, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services, which advocates on behalf of inmates for better medical and mental health care. “For one, Michael was a human being, and second, there is no death penalty in Massachusetts, so he was sentenced to prison for his natural life.’’
The rate of inmate suicide in Massachusetts is more than three times higher than the national average, Walker said. There were three inmate suicides last year, and there have been four so far in 2010, she said.

“Each incident is specific to the individual,’’ Wiffin said about the suicide rate. “You can’t eliminate risk, but you try and manage the risk.’’

A 2007 Globe Spotlight Team report highlighted a story of deepening mental illness and misery behind the walls of the state’s prisons, as part of a prison culture that included botched background screenings, missing mental health records, and skipped security rounds.

After a review of suicide prevention and mental health care efforts, the number of inmate suicides dropped from seven in 2007 to zero in 2008, but Walker said the decision to lay off 40 mental health staff last spring contributed to the increase in inmate deaths.
In another recent case, on the morning of March 20, Steven Carey, 62, a Chicopee man who had been in prison since 1976 for murdering a real estate agent, was found hanged in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.
John M. Guilfoil can be reached at jguilfoil@globe.com

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

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

April 02, 2010

Idaho: Private Prison For Prisoners Addicted to Drugs and Alcohol to Open

Idaho drug prison to open in July
Idaho Stateman
By JOHN MILLER - Associated Press Writer
Published: 03/15/10

BOISE, Idaho ‹ Idaho lawmakers and Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter now aim to staff a new $50 million, 432-bed drug treatment prison starting July 1, despite budget woes that had threatened to push the opening back to September.

Department of Correction Director Brent Reinke met separately with Otter aides, as well as Rep. Maxine Bell and Sen. Dean Cameron, on Friday. Bell, R-Jerome, and Cameron, R-Rupert, head the Joint Finance-Appropriations budget writing committee.

They agreed Reinke should open the Correctional Alternative Placement
Prison, or CAPP, at the start of fiscal year 2011, rather than Sept. 15.

David Hensley, Otter's staff attorney, told The Associated Press on Monday that Reinke will try to take advantage of a flexible budget to open the prison now, in hopes of realizing savings later in the year as more inmates are released following treatment - rather than winding up in the state's other, more-expensive medium- and minimum-security prisons.

"There's a lot of hope riding on CAPP," Hensley said. "The sooner you can start getting prisoners moving through that facility, the sooner you can start recognizing those savings."

Earlier this month, when legislative budget writers set nearly $169 million budget for Reinke's agency, they said the drug treatment prison would likely be delayed because of a shortage of funds.

The facility had originally slated to open in May and was then pushed back until mid-June, before the announcement on March 5 that it might not open its doors to offenders for another four months.

Reinke says he needs those treatment beds provided by the Correctional Alternative Placement Prison to accommodate more than 800 drug- and alcohol-addicted inmates who are now being held in county jails across Idaho awaiting entry into one of the state's prison treatment programs.

He expects to find enough money to run the facility, about $1.5 million, by managing his cash flow and finding savings across the prison system.

Management & Training Corp., a Centerville, Utah-based prison management company, built and will operate the prison, with Idaho making payments over 20 years as part of a lease-purchase contract. Reinke and Hensley both acknowledged the prison agency may be back in front of the 2011 Legislature in January to ask for extra cash to cover at least a portion of the new treatment prison's operational costs through July 1, 2011.

"It's possible," Reinke said. "We're on a razor's edge. But the reality is,we don't control the front door or the back door."
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/03/15/1118542/idaho-drug-prison-to-open-in-july.html

Posted by lois at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2010

NY: City Reaches $33 Million Settlement Over Illegal Strip Searches for the 3rd Time in Ten Years!

City Reaches $33 Million Settlement Over Strip Searches
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Published: March 22, 2010- NY Times

For the third time in a decade, New York City has agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle a lawsuit stemming from the illegal strip searches of thousands of nonviolent prisoners.

The settlement, which was announced on Monday, provides $33 million to the roughly 100,000 people who were strip-searched after being charged with misdemeanors and taken to Rikers Island and other city correction facilities.

Under the Giuliani administration, in 2001, the city settled a similar case filed on behalf of more than 50,000 people who were strip-searched as they waited to be arraigned, spending about $40 million. In 2005, the city once again agreed to pay several million dollars, this time to settle the claims of thousands of people who were illegally strip-searched in at least six New York detention centers, including Rikers Island, between 1999 and 2002.

The most recent settlement stemmed from a lawsuit filed in 2005 by the law firm of Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady, and covered 100,000 people from 1999 to 2007.

Two years after the suit was filed, the city acknowledged wrongdoing and agreed to install outside monitors to ensure that the practice had stopped. Yet the settlement covers 19 additional claimants who said they had been illegally strip-searched after 2007.

Richard Emery, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said it had been settled law since 1986 that it was unconstitutional to require people accused of minor crimes to strip naked.

“The city knew this was illegal in 1986, they said it was illegal and they stopped in 2002, and they continued to pursue this illegal practice without justification,” Mr. Emery said. “We hope the settlement constitutes some semblance of justice.”

A lawyer for the New York City Law Department said in a written statement that the Department of Correction and the city “have worked diligently to ensure that both safety and privacy are given high consideration during intake search procedures.”

The lawyer, Genevieve Nelson, said, “The settlement reached today is the final step in a process during which D.O.C.’s intake search procedures were modified in 2007.”

An outside administrator was appointed on Monday by the judge in the case, John G. Koeltl of Federal District Court, to oversee the payments. The lawyers for the prisoners and the city expect about 15 percent of those who were illegally strip-searched to file claims. If that projection is correct, prisoners who receive money can expect to get roughly $2,000. About $3 million of the settlement will go to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

As part of the agreement, the city said it would pay two women, who said they were forced to undergo gynecological exams without their consent, $20,000 each.

Mr. Emery said many of those who were strip-searched had been accused of misdemeanors like trespassing, shoplifting, jumping turnstiles or failing to pay child support.

“There was no reason to believe they were concealing drugs or anything else,” he said.

David Sanchez, 39, of the Bronx, said he was arrested by police officers in November 2006 for having a small amount of marijuana in his pocket after they stopped him on the street outside of his friend’s apartment. He said the officers searched him twice after he was arrested but did not make him take off his clothes.

But after he was arraigned and taken to Rikers Island, he said correction officers demanded that he take off his clothes and submit to another search.

“I was put into a cage and told to take off my clothes,” he said Monday in a conference room at the law firm, describing how he had to squat and spread his buttocks. “It was horrifying, being a grown man. I was humiliated.”

Mr. Emery said prisoners often had to undress fully in front of other prisoners and guards.

Those being searched had to lift their genitals or breasts, spread their buttocks and allow guards to inspect their body cavities.

Woman who were menstruating were not excluded from this practice, Mr. Emery said.

“I don’t know why it was done,” he said, “but it seems like it was a punishment, a way of showing the inmates who is in charge.”

Daniel C. Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and former federal prosecutor, said that “given the financial constraints the city is facing, there must have been very bad facts for them to settle for this amount.”

In January, a federal judge ordered the city to remedy years of discriminatory hiring practices by the Fire Department by giving black and Latino applicants jobs in the department, as well as offering retroactive pay and other damages.

The city plans to appeal that decision.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 23, 2010, on page A22 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/nyregion/23strip.html?scp=1&sq=strip%20searches%20at%20Rikers%20Island&st=cse

Posted by lois at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2010

Brookyn NY: "Jail Playground" !

http://blackandbrownnews.com/front/568028906_story.php
To see the Jail Playground...go to the URL above.
Original Story (3.21.10) There is no kind, gentle, diplomatic way to describe the offense against a community by this ‘Jail Playground’ on a New York City Housing Authority property, located at Tompkins Houses (Park Avenue between Tompkins and Throop) in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where Black and Latino children live and play. (Disproportionately, Black and Latinos enter the criminal justice system. Encouraging young Black and Latino children to first play in Jail until they may actually get to jail or prison is playing loosey-goosey with their young, impressionable psyche and something no community should stand for or be subjected to).

Mr. Mayor Bloomberg, whether or not the word “Jail” was painted on after the City erected the apparatus or it came manufactured with “Jail” written on it, this egregious offense still falls on the City to take corrective action immediately.

Because of the nature of the offense we ask that the City of New York respond with the same urgency and expediency it would for residents - including children - who live and play in city owned-operated parks on the Upper West Side (below Washington Heights), the Upper Eastside (below Harlem), Battery Park City and definitely Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope – both in Brooklyn. We ask that the City disassemble and replace the ‘Jail Playground’ with suitable, appropriate, safe (body and mind) recreational apparatus within 24 hours (no need to drag the feet of bureaucracy on this one).

We encourage the City to review all recreational apparatus on city owned-operated housing developments and parks in neighborhoods where these offenses are more likely to occur. And, we encourage residents in and around Tompkins Houses to contact the Mayor’s Office, New York City Housing Authority and the Community Board representing the area.

BBN can’t thank enough photographer Monifa Bandele for being observant, taking the photograph and permitting us to post it.

City of New York Government Numbers

-- Mayor’s Office 212.788.3000 (may route you to 3-1-1)
-- NYC Housing Authority 212.306.3000

Posted by lois at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2010

PA prison population up despite national decline

Pa. prison population up despite national decline
The Associated Press
3-22-10
HARRISBURG, Pa. - Even as the number of people in state prisons across the country has fallen for the first time in almost four decades, Pennsylvania's prison population is on the increase.

Pennsylvania had a 4.3 percent rise in the number of prisoners last year, the Pew Center on the States said in a study issued last week. Across the country, state prisons nationwide held roughly 1.4 million inmates at the beginning of the year, 0.4 percent fewer than there were at the end of 2008 , the first year-to-year drop since 1972, the study said.

The center attributed the decline in part to states adopting guidelines reflecting research that low-level offenders and those who have committed technical parole violations are more effectively handled in community programs.

"We are starting to see a triumph of science over sound bites," said Adam Gelb, director of the center's Public Safety Performance project. "State leaders are reaching across the aisle and coming up with research-based corrections strategies for nonviolent offenders that can protect public safety at far less cost than a prison cell."

In Pennsylvania, the inmate population has increased from 8,243 to 51,326 over the past three decades, according to the state Department of Corrections. Adding to the increase was Gov. Rendell's 2008 moratorium on paroles after a paroled felon killed a Philadelphia police officer.

Due to prison overcrowding, the commonwealth last month began sending inmates to prisons in Virginia and Michigan and plans to place 2,000 prisoners in other states by the end of next month. Corrections Secretary Jeffrey A. Beard has said that if the population keeps growing, the four prisons under construction will be at capacity when they open.

In Philadelphia, the county prison population decreased from 9,854 in January 2009 to 8,369, according to Everett Gillison, deputy mayor for public safety. The drop was attributed to the falling crime rate, the commonwealth agreeing to take 250 state prisoners held in county jails, a program that consolidates hearings for defendants who have probation and parole violations and a change that has judges no longer retaining old cases when they move from criminal to civil courts.
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/88769867.html

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

March 19, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 17, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 16, 2010

Prison agency: Throwing away books was mistake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 11, 2010

MA: Patient’s death at Bridgewater is ruled homicide

Patient’s death after scuffle is ruled homicide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 09, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 07, 2010

Woman charged in breast milk assault on jailer

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

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

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

March 06, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

(3) protect students from—

(A) physical or mental abuse;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 05, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cruel and Unusual Health Care

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unpardonable Offenses

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

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

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

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

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

Jamie and Gladys Scott

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 04, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 15, 2010

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

The corrections Rendell's budget needs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 05, 2010

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

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

By Laura Nichols Email
Penn State Collegian Staff Writer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 02, 2010

NY: Jim Crow Policing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 01, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 30, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pregnant and Shackled: Hard Labor for Arizona's Immigrants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unequal Justice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Shackling Cases

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Advocates are hoping to include Arizona on the list.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Humanitarian Release

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 27, 2010

WI: Dungeons & Dragons Prison Ban Upheld

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 21, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

January 20, 2010

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

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

January 13, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 15, 2010

Editorial: Sentenced to Abuse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 10, 2010

Officials Hid Truth of Immigrant Deaths in Jail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 08, 2010

Justice Department Study: Youths Sexually Abused in Juvenile Prisons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 07, 2010

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

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

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

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

That’s 27 felons bearing power tools.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 29, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 15, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compared to other state departments, the prisons stood out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suicide watch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Effects on patient care

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Official Hopes Prison Crisis May Spur Change

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ms. Carrión acknowledged that she needed to do better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 14, 2009

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

New York Finds Extreme Crisis in Youth Prisons

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: December 13, 2009
NY Times

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 13, 2009

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics

Poor Children Likelier to Get Antipsychotics

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

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

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

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

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

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

They plan to publish a report early next year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 11, 2009

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

The Graying of America’s Prisons: Part Two

By James Ridgeway
Thursday, December 10th, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Low Recidivism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 06, 2009

MA: Woman serving shoplifting sentence dies at Framingham

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 04, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 30, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sheriff is painting the entire jail bright pink.

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

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

But why so much pink?

The Sheriff says there are plenty of reasons.

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

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

It can also help keep the inmates behind bars.

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

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

And the girls?

They get bright lime green.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 25, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 24, 2009

OR: Marion Co Jail To Allow Postcards Only

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 23, 2009

Prison Treatment Cuts Could Feed Recidivism in Calif.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-then send copies to:

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

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

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

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

Human Rights Coalition thanks you for your solidarity and support!

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

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

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

November 21, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the Republican chairman of the state Senate corrections and criminal subcommittee said he can see few benefits in such a drastic change.

"We should treat our inmate population like human beings," said Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel. "Denying food or cutting back on meals is beneath the dignity of the state of Indiana and is not in sync with our Hoosier values. It is my hope that the corrections officials will come before us and reassure us that they are treating the prisoners in a humane way."

State Rep. Bill Crawford, D-Indianapolis, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he doubts that the prisoners are still getting their recommended calories.

"I'd like to see an accounting of that," Crawford said.

A review of four weeks of menus reveals that the prisoners are getting shortchanged a main-course item each Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

For example, during the first week of the pilot program, the four lunch main courses were goulash, bologna, taco meat and sloppy Joes. At weekend brunch, they were bologna, peanut butter, and oatmeal and sausage. Dinners remained generally the same -- one main course.

Mulroony acknowledged that traditional lunch offerings such as chicken quarters and meat with macaroni and cheese were missing at brunch. But he said the heavier foods aren't included because they are served just as early as breakfast.

"You try to serve more breakfast-type items because the offenders are still eating at 6 in the morning," he said.

Although prison officials said they were not trying to cut expenses when they made the move, the private contractor that handles food service for prisons has had trouble staying within its promised budget since landing the $258 million, 10-year deal in 2005.

At the time, Aramark boasted that it would save the state $11 million and cut the average cost of a meal from $1.41 to 99 cents. But since then, it has exceeded its projected annual budget increase of 6 percent.

The company told the committee that rising gas prices had driven up the cost of food and that the rising prison population was increasing its expenses.

The DOC's food service allocation jumped from $28.9 million for 2009 to $36 million for 2010 and to $40 million for 2011, according to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Aramark was provided a list of written questions by The Indianapolis Star but referred all inquiries about the program to the DOC.

Whatever the reason for cutting meals, advocates for inmates' rights think it is dangerous to tinker with a prisoner's food.

Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project, said cutting lunch creates "a tremendous gap between meals."

"Making prisoners go hungry for long periods is not the way to solve anything," she said. "Food is not the place to make cuts, especially since it is such a small percentage of a prison's budget."

Food service accounts for about 5 percent of DOC's $726 million budget in 2010.

Skipping meals can be dangerous for certain inmates, such as those with diabetes and hepatitis. But Mulroony said 33 inmates with special needs still receive regular lunches on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

He said there have been few complaints from the 1,600 inmates about the change.

Gil Holmes, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, said the organization was aware of the change but had not received any complaints from prisoners.

Until it does, the ACLU of Indiana probably won't take any action, Holmes said.

The DOC said the pilot program would last an indefinite length of time and is being reviewed to determine other prisons where it might work. Eventually, all 30 prisons in the system could switch to the new eating schedule, Garrison said.

And, DOC officials said, inmates can always get chips, cookies and Ramen noodles in the commissary to tide them over between meals. Prisoners have to pay for those.

"You'd be amazed at what prisoners can do with a bag of Ramen," Mulroony said. "It's good as anything served in a restaurant."

State Rep. Bill Crawford, D-Indianapolis, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he doubts that the prisoners are still getting their recommended calories.

"I'd like to see an accounting of that," Crawford said.

A review of four weeks of menus reveals that the prisoners are getting shortchanged a main-course item each Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

For example, during the first week of the pilot program, the four lunch main courses were goulash, bologna, taco meat and sloppy Joes. At weekend brunch, they were bologna, peanut butter, and oatmeal and sausage. Dinners remained generally the same -- one main course.

Mulroony acknowledged that traditional lunch offerings such as chicken quarters and meat with macaroni and cheese were missing at brunch. But he said the heavier foods aren't included because they are served just as early as breakfast.

"You try to serve more breakfast-type items because the offenders are still eating at 6 in the morning," he said.

Although prison officials said they were not trying to cut expenses when they made the move, the private contractor that handles food service for prisons has had trouble staying within its promised budget since landing the $258 million, 10-year deal in 2005.

At the time, Aramark boasted that it would save the state $11 million and cut the average cost of a meal from $1.41 to 99 cents. But since then, it has exceeded its projected annual budget increase of 6 percent.

The company told the committee that rising gas prices had driven up the cost of food and that the rising prison population was increasing its expenses.

The DOC's food service allocation jumped from $28.9 million for 2009 to $36 million for 2010 and to $40 million for 2011, according to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Aramark was provided a list of written questions by The Indianapolis Star but referred all inquiries about the program to the DOC.

Whatever the reason for cutting meals, advocates for inmates' rights think it is dangerous to tinker with a prisoner's food.

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009911200392

Posted by lois at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

NC: Women Prisoners File Class Action Suit Against DOC for Extensive Sexual Violence

Prisoners allege sex abuse
NC News and Observor
Nov. 20, 2009
BY MANDY LOCKE - Staff Writer
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/crime_safety/story/201215.html
RALEIGH -- Four female inmates have filed a federal class-action lawsuit accusing North Carolina prison officials of subjecting female prisoners to extensive sexual violence and harassment amounting to cruel and unusual punishment.

The lawsuit claims that the women were raped, groped, threatened and sexually humiliated. The women, represented by N.C. Prisoner Legal Services, demand that state prison officials pay them for their distress and "end a pattern of sexual misconduct in all women's prisons operated by [the state Department of Correction]." The women, who agreed to be named in the lawsuit, are asking to speak on behalf of the state's roughly 2,900 female prisoners in their fight against officials.

The claim comes on the heels of at least seven separate sexual assaults on female inmates for which the state has offered payouts to avoid legal action. Those awards were also won at the behest of Prisoner Legal Services, a nonprofit group that addresses legal concerns of inmates.

The lawsuit targets top administrators at the state Department of Correction and seven former and current staff members accused of assaulting and harassing the prisoners or protecting employees who did.

Correction Department officials declined to comment Thursday, saying they had just received the suit and had not had time to review it.

State law forbids prison staff from engaging in sexual intercourse with inmates, regardless of consent. The four women suing say they were targeted against their will.

Sandra Etters said she was repeatedly handcuffed, then raped by a male guard who stalked her in the laundry facility during her overnight shift at Women's Prison while the correctional officer assigned to supervise her was sleeping.

Ronda Singletary said that a male correctional officer who is not fully named in the suit exposed himself to her in the canteen. When she reported the incident, other guards told her they would need to witness it and encouraged her to lure the officer into another interaction. They only intervened when the officer put his penis in her hand.

Deven Deal said that a male nurse, who is not fully named, pushed her into a janitor's closet, fondled her and ordered her to expose herself. While she was at Southern Correctional, another women's prison, Deal said she was forced to change clothes in front of another male employee.

Louretha King, a prisoner at Women's Prison, said that a female correctional officer verbally propositioned and stalked her. After she reported it to supervisors, King said the officer pointed a rifle at her.

Each of the women had exhausted the prisons' grievance procedure, which allows inmates to file complaints about treatment. In two of the instances, prison officials said the complaints couldn't be substantiated. In another, they said the matter was closed after an inmate declined to be transferred into segregated isolation at another prison for her safety. In one claim, they said the matter was closed when the targeted employee resigned.

Rape in prison became a national focus in 2003, when Congress passed a sweeping law that obligated prison officials to adopt policies that blocked sexual violence. Congress also required that independent consultants study the prevalence of sexual assaults in state and federal prisons.

A sample of randomly selected inmates showed that North Carolina prisons fared better than most states for occurrences of sexual assaults. Of the five prisons selected for review in North Carolina, none reported more than 4.7 percent of inmates saying they were victimized in nonconsensual acts.

None of the prisons selected for study in North Carolina, though, housed women. Experts say female inmates are far more susceptible to abuse than men.

James Aiken, a correctional expert on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, a board formed to enforce the federal law, said in an affidavit filed with the lawsuit that North Carolina prisons are failing women, indicated by their previous settlements with inmates who were sexually violated.

Aiken said the frequent payouts reveal a "defective correctional culture and indicate that staff are not performing the basic security delivery expected in an inmate population."

This and other news about women and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Posted by lois at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2009

PA: Donna Pfender, Pres., Fight for Lifers West. Senate Judiciary Cmte Hearing on Prison Overcrowding and Sending Prisoners to MI

Senate Judiciary Committee Public Hearing on
Prison Overcrowding
November 16, 2009
Harrisburg, PA

Donna Pfender, President – Fight For Lifers West

Good afternoon to the Chairman, Senator Greenleaf; to the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee; to Senator Greenleaf’s aide, Gregg Warner; Ladies and Gentlemen.
I wish to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to testify today about the impact that transferring inmates to other states will have, not only on the inmates themselves, but on their family members and loved ones.
When I first heard that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections was in negotiations with other states to transfer inmates in a bid to alleviate overcrowding, my first reaction was one of disbelief. I couldn’t believe that human beings were being treated as commodities to be bought, sold or bartered for any reason. I knew about the Interstate Compact Act, but this was on a whole new level. I wondered why this wasn’t considered as an Eighth Amendment violation for “deliberate indifference” as well as an “objectively serious deprivation?” I felt not only that inmates were being dehumanized but that their family structures would fall apart.

I told myself that this couldn’t happen in the land of the free. After all, inmates’ family members are not incarcerated, but affected directly. I told myself that surely people will stand up and protest when they realize the inhumanity of such a proposal and that there would be a public outcry to stop such alienation and separation of Pennsylvania families. Then it hit me that it could happen to my own daughter; to our family! She is serving life without parole sentence in Pennsylvania and has been incarcerated for over 25 years. I asked myself, “Will they move lifers?” A short while later I got an e-mail from another PA inmate support group stating that 300 lifers were to be moved from SCI, Graterford to Michigan if they had not had a visit in the past 4 years. In addition, programs such as G.E.D.s would no longer be offered to lifers. E-mails and phone calls were generated across Pennsylvania and across the United States. Everybody had questions. Everyone appeared to be in disbelief. There were even people from other countries who contacted us to see if it was true.
Shortly thereafter, we had our regular monthly meeting on October 17, 2009 and the issue of moving inmates to other states was a hot topic on our agenda. Before the meeting began, Ruby, a small, frail, African American woman walked up to me and was visibly shaken and upset. She told me that her nephew was a lifer at Graterford and she had received a letter from him that he would be transferred to California in January. I told her that surely that couldn’t be true because California is known to have the most overcrowded prison population in the country.

I told her I would see what I could find out. When the topic came up on the agenda, I asked her to tell the other members what she had told me. Ruby rarely speaks in meetings but she courageously told the others what she had learned. You could have heard a pin drop. As I looked around the room, I could see the incredulous faces of those in attendance who had not yet heard about the transfers or thought that it couldn’t be possible. At that time, nothing had been confirmed. I later spoke with prison advocates in California who told me that they were also shipping in prisoners from the state of Oregon. Later that week, we were to learn that even more states were being considered to ship Pennsylvania prisoners to and that inmates had already been informed that they would be moving out of state. We were all in shock!
We all understand that the problem of overcrowding leads to dangerous conditions not only for the prison staff, but for the inmate population, visitors, outside vendors and society in general. Overcrowding can contribute to outbreaks of physical aggression, disease, medical neglect, abuse, extensive isolation, suicides, suspicious deaths, chronic mental and physical problems, insufficient or no education and a population not ready for re-entry back into society. Every time a human being is locked away in a facility where they are warehoused and treated as non-human, they become a further threat to society and more victims will likely result. While prison costs keep escalating, funding is taken from outside education and social programs to build yet more institutions and the prison system continues to burst at the seams.
Not only have I heard reports from California, about shipping prisoners either in or out of state, but also from other associates throughout the United States. This is not a problem confined to Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania seems to be doing it on a grander scale. It seems prisoners are being shuffled around from state to state to appease overcrowding laws and court orders, while the public is unaware of the increased burden in taxes that are being levied on them in order to accomplish this.
As a member of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee to the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole in Pittsburgh, I asked District Director, Larry Ludwig, if inmates could be paroled if the institution didn’t give a recommendation and he told me no. I had countless letters from inmates who said they were still sitting in prison even after they had complied with all of their program requirements. They said that often, they were told they needed to have additional, newly adopted, programs and that the waiting lists to get on them were very long. So, they continued to sit in prison. I question why such programs couldn’t be handled upon release? Wouldn’t it create jobs and relieve overcrowding? I had reports that inmates due for parole had been told that their records had been lost. At the State Correctional Institution at Cambridge Springs, 300 such records were found and a guard was reported by another officer who had located them months later.
One woman, housed at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy, sent me a copy of a court order from a Judge remanding her into the community, but she was still in Muncy nine (9) months later. It made me question if there were people still in prison who should have been sent home or to other facilities? I also learned that inmates with drug or alcohol records were held back when their parole minimum dates came up, even though they had no history of violent crime. Why couldn’t they have been given further treatment outside of prison walls? They too, remained in prison, padding the institutional profiles.
I also question how inmate advocacy groups can keep track of prisoners who were sentenced in Pennsylvania, but will now be housed elsewhere? What will happen with the “Right to Know Act?” Will it cross state lines? How can prison advocacy groups serve our fellow Pennsylvanians when we don’t know where they are located? Will this information be made readily available? Will families and loved ones be informed? Will the families survive? Questions, unanswered questions.
And then, we worry about the high cost of exorbitant phone bills that will only increase if a loved one is moved even farther away. We worry about higher traveling expenses to visit them and if we will ever be able to see them again? Under the Department of Corrections Handbook for Visitors (DC-ADM 812, p.20, enclosed), it states that, “Visitation by relatives and friends are encouraged by the Department. Visitation helps to keep the inmate’s family together. A child needs to know that his/her mother or father is still a part of his/her life and that he/she will be able to see his/her parent. A husband and wife need to be able to share his/her daily struggles and joys with each other. Visitation is also important to the morale of the inmate. Research has shown that an inmate who receives regular visits readjusts much better once he/she is released from prison.”
Those who don’t have loved ones on the inside may reason that some inmates don’t receive visitors because their families don’t care. I have spoken to many family members that, for a variety of reasons, are unable to visit although they would like to. For example, many offenders are housed at opposite ends of Pennsylvania from where their families live. Family members often don’t have the resources to visit so far away, or get days off from work that match the days when visits are allowed. (See: DC-ADM, p. 47, Family Finances, enclosed)
Sometimes, loved ones travel far distances of up to 10 hours with small children or elderly relatives, only to be turned away. Days to visit have been scaled down and there are numerous reports of prison officials treating visitors with distain and disrespect. Some family members need to work more than one job just to support their families on the outside and then there is the added cost of helping their loved ones on the inside with the high commissary costs. Inmates are employed at slave wages making anywhere from nineteen (19) to forty five (45) cents/hr. and the food budgets for the institutions keep being cut.
Not only are families paying taxes at work to support their loved one on the inside, but they typically also help them with commissary and medical co-pays so they can maintain some manner of human dignity and health.
I have heard many times, that families will save for months or even years to make a costly trip to visit a loved one on the inside. Work schedules, school schedules, institution visiting days and the weather are other factors that impact families that must travel long distances. Imagine if they were in another state?
We worry about ever increasing commissary costs, phone fees and no choice in vendors. We worry about “out of sight, out of mind” and what will happen to those on the inside that we love. If they report problems, we won’t be able to visit them to assure ourselves that they are alright. Will there be groups in other states such as the Pennsylvania Prison Society’s Official Visitors that will be able to visit our loved ones and intervene if necessary? Will the PA Official Visitors be allowed to visit out of state institutions?
Secretary Beard is quoted in the 10/15/2009 edition of the Philadelphia Enquirer “that the other states would not require any special programming, only basic religious, recreational and similar perfunctory programs.” Nothing is mentioned about education or preparing them for re-entry. Nothing is mentioned of how much it will cost Pennsylvania tax payers for each inmate transferred.
On 11/13/2009 there was a report by Andy Sheehan on KDKA news about the high cost of housing elderly lifers. It stated that housing inmates convicted of serious crimes are elderly, infirm and expensive and that their risk of committing a new crime is negligible. Rep. Frank Dermody argues that the state should more aggressively pursue alternative sentencing for many of the elderly inmates to make room for younger, violent criminals currently being housed out of state.
In the 11/04/2009 edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Bill Dimascio wrote an excellent article titled “Bizarro” (enclosed) about the state ignoring solutions to costly prison overcrowding. I recommend that everyone here read it.
In closing, I would just like to ask this panel to think about how they would feel if someone in their family was arrested for a crime and sentenced to prison in Pennsylvania? What if later they were told that their loved one would be moved to a far away state? Of course, no one ever thinks that one of their loved ones will ever wind up in prison. I didn’t either. Thank you.

Posted by lois at 04:46 PM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2009

Bill would limit needle exchanges to 1000 feet of school, park, library, college, video arcade or any place children might gather

“Clearly the intent of this rule is to nullify the lifting of the ban.”

Bill Would Limit Needle Exchanges
By KATIE ZEZIMA - NY Times
Published: November 8, 2009

BANGOR, Me. — For years, the location of this city’s needle exchange program, in a nondescript strip mall close to highways and bus lines, was seen as a major asset.

A heroin addict picking up a clean needle as part of a program run by the Down East AIDS Network in Ellsworth, Me.

But now, AIDS activists say, that very location could undermine what happens inside the exchange.

A bill working its way through Congress would lift a ban of more than 20 years on using federal money for needle exchange programs. But the bill would also ban federally financed exchanges from being within 1,000 feet of a school, park, library, college, video arcade or any place children might gather — a provision that would apply to a majority of the country’s approximately 200 exchanges.

“This 1,000-foot rule is simply instituting the ban in a different form,” said Rebecca Haag, executive director of the AIDS Action Council, an advocacy group based in Washington. “Clearly the intent of this rule is to nullify the lifting of the ban.”

Under a separate bill, all exchanges in Washington within the 1,000-foot perimeter would be barred from receiving city money as well as federal money.

“Let’s protect these kids,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, who introduced the Washington bill. “They don’t need to be playing kickball in the playground and seeing people lined up for needle exchange.”

Both bills have passed the House and a Senate subcommittee and await Senate action.

Advocates and organizations including the N.A.A.C.P. are lobbying Congress to kill the 1,000-foot provisions. The promise of federal money could not come at a better time, these officials say, as states are cutting their health and human services budgets and private donations are dropping precipitously. At least four needle exchanges have closed this year because of a lack of financing.

Many exchanges are run by organizations that provide broad-based health services like testing for the AIDS virus and hepatitis C, mental health counseling, medical referrals and condom distribution. Advocates worry that if needle exchanges disappear, drug users will lose access to those other services.

The rule “is going to kill us,” said Ellis Poole, executive director of the Harm Reduction Center of Southern Oregon, which is 997 feet from a high school in Roseburg. The center runs a needle exchange and offers antidrug programs to high schools in the area. With donations plummeting, it has a $374,000 budget deficit for 2009. Mr. Poole said he worried that the center’s programs would be threatened if the bill passed.

“We could move a few feet down, but the building is more expensive at the other end,” Mr. Poole said. “I have to beg for money for computers. I have to ask people to come clean the carpet at no charge.”

Officials at exchanges in cities like Chicago, New York and Washington say there are few, if any, places that could house a needle exchange under the rule.

“I was thinking, ‘A thousand feet, how much is that?’ ” said Raquel Algarin, executive director of the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center in Manhattan. “And then I found myself thinking, ‘We’d probably be doing syringe exchange in the middle of the East River, and any exchange on the West Side would be in the Hudson River.’ How do you work that out?”

Many advocates also worry that smaller, rural exchanges, which lack the fund-raising abilities and infrastructure of many larger, urban exchanges, will be affected by the 1,000-foot rule.

In Maine, which officials say has one of the highest rates of prescription drug abuse per capita in the country and is grappling with a recent influx of heroin, AIDS activists worry that they will receive less money just as their client base is growing. The state’s four exchanges — in Augusta, Bangor, Ellsworth and Portland — would be ineligible for federal money.

“The federal funding would be key for us,” said Patricia A. Murphy, executive director of the Eastern Maine AIDS Network in downtown Bangor.

Upon entering the office, squeezed between a veterans center and a music store, drug users are escorted into a small room, where a trained staff member checks them in, using only first names and case numbers, and carefully counts their needles.

Under Maine law, drug users may receive one clean needle for every dirty one they turn in. The exchange offers users a variety of needle sizes, along with tourniquets, antiseptic ointment, condoms and information on safe needle use, and helps refer clients to clinics and treatment centers that deal with sexually transmitted diseases. The center also has a food bank, which clients are urged to use.

Those who have built a level of trust with Ms. Murphy and her staff send fellow drug users to the office. The number of users enrolled in the needle exchange here has doubled in the past year, while funding fell by about 15 percent.

The federal money, Ms. Murphy said, would allow the exchange to grow with the number of clients, many of whom come from rural northern and eastern Maine, and set up mobile needle exchange units in communities more than 100 miles from Bangor.

“This is a critical piece of harm reduction,” Ms. Murphy said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, intravenous drug use directly or indirectly accounts for about one-fifth of the nation’s 1.1 million H.I.V. cases, and needle exchanges are an effective way to stem the spread of infection. The World Health Organization said in a 2004 report that there was “compelling evidence” that increasing needle exchanges reduced H.I.V. transmission. It cited studies showing that the rate of infection dropped up to 18 percent in cities with an exchange.

Luke, a 30-year-old Bangor resident who did not want to give his last name, said he exchanged his needles, and sometimes those of his friends, about once a week. He said he had become addicted to Suboxone, a drug intended to treat opiate addiction that officials say more people are starting to abuse.

In a black hooded sweatshirt and red sneakers, Luke said he often also picked up condoms and guides on how to inject drugs more safely. He said he came to the facility because its location made it discreet and few people knew what it was.

A 23-year-old man who is addicted to heroin and exchanges needles at the Down East AIDS Network in Ellsworth called the 1,000-foot limit “ridiculous.” The man, who did not want to give his name because of his addiction, said he started using heroin eight years ago and exchanging needles four years ago. He said he often picked up needles he saw on the ground and brought them in for safe disposal.

“It’s a dangerous thing to do,” the man said of his heroin use, “but it’s best to take every precaution you can. If you’re going to do this stuff, you should do it right.”
A version of this article appeared in print on November 9, 2009, on page A9 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/health/policy/09needle.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Needle%20Exchange&st=cse

Posted by lois at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

UK: Christian charity plans to open private prison in Cornwall

Christian charity plans to open private prison in Cornwall
Monday, November 09, 2009, 11:27

CORNWALL could get a brand new prison run by the county's Christian community, according to ambitious plans revealed today.

The newly-formed Carpenters House project wants to build the site as soon as 2012 as it aims to provide the county with what would be its only prison.

Those behind the plans claim they can cut re-offending rates and help the Government provide much-needed space for prisoners.

The Ministry of Justice says it needs another 12,000 spaces by 2014, while many of the 700 or so offenders from the region are locked up miles away from home, often in areas difficult for family members to reach.

Former Caradon District Councillor Mike Critchley, the project's chairman, said the idea had already won the support of Cornish Christian groups.

He said: "It is an ambitious project but the need is massive.

"We've talked to a lot of people and our consultant has been the Governor of five prisons.

"What we're talking about is not a Bible college.

"It's all about giving guys the ability to respect themselves.

"Once they've got that it gets you to respect other people."

The project is being spearheaded by the Kainos Community, a faith-based charity that has operated its Challenge to Change programme in prisons for 12 years.

They say they have slashed re-offending rates among inmates they have worked with to 13 per cent – way below the national average of 60 per cent within two years of release.

Mr Critchley added: "Prisoners are not beaten over the head with a bible.

"The organisation has got a fantastic track record.

"As a councillor, re-offending was one of the things I took an interest in because the rates are just alarming.

"There is a huge and urgent need for this – that's the bottom line."

Bosses are now trying to raise cash to provide the Government with a feasibility study, then formally lodge its proposals by next year.

A HM Prison Service spokesman confirmed the National Offender Management Service, which runs prisons in England and Wales for the Ministry of Justice, was aware of the Carpenters House project, but said it had "no current plans" to build faith-specific prisons.
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Christian-charity-plans-open-private-prison-Cornwall/article-1494736-detail/article.html

Posted by lois at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)

November 02, 2009

NYC: Varick Street jail for detained immigrants run by Alaska Native Corporation bills ICE $227.68 for each prisoner

Immigrant Jail Tests U.S. View of Legal Access
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: November 1, 2009- NY Times

A startling petition arrived at the New York City Bar Association in October 2008, signed by 100 men, all locked up without criminal charges in the middle of Manhattan.

Daniel I. Miller, a former detainee at the Varick Street center, complained of abuses there. “These people have no rules,” he said.

In vivid if flawed English, it described cramped, filthy quarters where dire medical needs were ignored and hungry prisoners were put to work for $1 a day.

The petitioners were among 250 detainees imprisoned in an immigration jail that few New Yorkers know exists. Above a post office, on the fourth floor of a federal office building in Greenwich Village, the Varick Street Detention Facility takes in 11,000 men a year, most of them longtime New Yorkers facing deportation without a lawyer.

Galvanized by the petition, the bar association sent volunteers into the jail to offer legal counsel to detainees — a strategy the Obama administration has embraced as it tries to fix the entire detention system.

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement considers the access to legal services at Varick Street as a good model,” said Sean Smith, a spokesman for Janet Napolitano, secretary of homeland security, who oversees immigration enforcement.

But the lawyers doing the work have reached a different conclusion, after finding that most detainees with a legal claim to stay in the United States are routinely transferred to more remote jails before they can be helped. The lawyers say their effort has laid bare the fundamental unfairness of a system where immigrant detainees, unlike criminal defendants, can be held without legal representation and moved from state to state without notice.

In a report to be issued on Monday, the association’s City Bar Justice Center is calling for all immigrant detainees to be provided with counsel. And an article to be published this month in The Fordham Law Review treats the Varick jail as a case study in the systemic barriers to legal representation.

The new focus on Varick highlights the conflict between two forces: the administration’s plans to revamp detention, and current policies that feed the flow of detainees through the system as it is now. A disjointed mix of county jails and privately run prisons, where mistreatment and medical neglect have been widely documented, the detention network churns roughly 400,000 detainees through 32,000 beds each year.

“Any attempt to get support or services for them is stymied because you don’t know where they’re going to end up,” said Lynn M. Kelly, the director of the Justice Center.

When she asked that the lawyers’ letters of legal advice be forwarded to detainees who had been transferred from Varick, she said the warden balked, saying he had to consider the financial interests of his private shareholders: 1,200 members of a central Alaskan tribe whose dividends are linked to Varick’s profits under a $79 million, three-year federal contract.

Federal officials would not discuss their transfer policies, but asked for patience as they try to make the detention system more humane and cost-effective.

“We inherited an inadequate detention system from the previous administration that does not meet ICE’s current priorities or needs,” said Matthew Chandler, a Homeland Security spokesman. Officials say they are committed to a complete overhaul, including less-penal detention centers with better access to lawyers.

The volunteer lawyers and the petition’s author, an ailing refugee from torture in Romania who spent eight months inside Varick, say many problems persist there, though the added scrutiny has led to improvements. Detainees who want a Gideon Bible no longer have to pay the commissary $7. Immigration officials are more responsive when a lawyer complains that a detainee in pain is not getting treatment.

But most detainees do not have a lawyer, and the few who do include men who have fallen prey to incompetent or fraudulent practitioners. Recurrent complaints include frigid temperatures, mildew and meals that leave detainees hungry and willing to clean for $1 a day to pay for commissary food. That wage is specified in the contract with the Alaskan company, which budgeted 23,000 days of such work the first year, and collects a daily rate of $227.68 for each detainee.

The Alaska connection is one of the stranger twists in the jail’s fitful history. Opened as a federal immigration detention center in 1984, Varick became chronically overcrowded after 1998, when new laws mandated the detention of all noncitizens who had ever committed a crime on a list of deportable offenses, expanded to include misdemeanors like drug possession.

A Dominican man there died of untreated pneumonia in 1999 — the first reported death in the nationwide detention system, which now counts 106 since October 2003.

The Varick facility, which is on the corner of Houston Street, fell short of national detention standards adopted in 2000, because it lacks any outdoor recreation space. But under a grandfather clause, it was allowed to remain open until 9/11, when the terror attack, blocks away, forced its evacuation. For years, it was shuttered. It quietly reopened in February 2008, operated by Ahtna Technical Services Inc., a subsidiary of Ahtna Inc. — still with no access to fresh air.

As an Alaska Native corporation, Ahtna has won numerous federal contracts without having to compete with other companies; last year it paid its tribal shareholders about $500 each in dividends. It hires a Texas subcontractor to supply guards and transportation, along with the shackles and belly chains routinely used on detainees being moved in or out.

Varick’s population includes illegal immigrants, asylum-seekers and legal immigrants who face deportation because they have past criminal convictions. Almost half of those screened by the volunteer lawyers have already been in detention for four to six months, according to the bar association report, and nearly 40 percent have legal grounds to contest deportation.

A few, the report says, have a possible claim to citizenship, which would make their detention unlawful. But the volunteers, including lawyers from 16 corporate firms, say they can offer only rudimentary legal triage to a handful of detainees a week.

The Department of Justice is asking Congress for money to expand the law project, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement invites Washington officials to visit the weekly triage sessions. The agency allowed a reporter to observe a session, but not to tour the jail. On a recent Thursday, only 11 of 35 detainees who had signed up made it into one of five glassed-in booths where they could consult with pairs of legal volunteers.

One, a 25-year-old Mexican, had been delivering food for an Italian restaurant on Madison Avenue until his detention. After a week in Varick, the government had not served him with a “notice to appear” telling why he was detained and setting the date and place where he would be heard by an immigration judge.

Volunteers were researching his case a week later when he was transferred to Atlanta. It could just as easily have been Louisiana or Texas, far from any free legal help, said Maria Navarro, a Legal Aid lawyer who supervises the volunteers. Even in cities, she said, lawyers are reluctant to represent detainees who may be suddenly moved far away.

Another 25-year-old, who had come to New York as a legal immigrant from Belize at age 2, told lawyers he had worked at Kentucky Fried Chicken to support his 5-year-old daughter, a citizen, when his sickle-cell anemia permitted. After a standing huddle, the lawyers told him that because his notice listed old convictions for possession of marijuana, he was ineligible for release on bond or with an electronic monitoring bracelet.

A Haitian, who had served time for at least one drug-related offense, had a lawyer but wanted a second opinion after being held in Varick for 16 months. He described himself as a barber, interpreter and legal resident of Brooklyn for 23 years.

“It is double jeopardy,” he protested, nursing a swollen jaw with teeth missing. “I become a diabetic here, because of anxiety, stress and suicidal conditions.”

Yet a detainee from the former Soviet Union praised the jail. “Varick is heaven” compared with some county jails in New Jersey (Bergen and Monmouth) and Florida, he said, citing abuse by anti-immigrant guards.

A century-long line of Supreme Court decisions holds that immigration detention is not a punishment or deprivation of liberty, and does not require legal counsel for fundamental fairness.

But Daniel I. Miller, 39, the Romanian whose petition reached the bar association, said his own case showed how high the stakes can be. Mr. Miller, a chef, fled his native land in 1994 after the secret police mutilated him for advocating gay rights. In New York, he had already been paroled for a criminal conviction — for signing his partner’s name on a contract — when immigration authorities detained him.

To no avail, records show, his lawyer and an outraged doctor at St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan urged his release from Varick for treatment of tumors on his liver. Instead, he was transferred in April to the Orange County Jail in Goshen, N.Y., where he said he also circulated a petition. The authorities there accused him of trying to start a riot and sent him to segregation with a murder defendant.

“These people have no rules, that’s the main problem,” Mr. Miller said, speaking from the Midtown office where he is starting an organic catering business. He credits his lawyer, Howard Brill, for that turnaround: On Sept. 2, after almost a year in custody, an immigration judge granted him the right to stay in the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/nyregion/02detain.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion

Posted by lois at 09:01 PM | Comments (0)

November 01, 2009

Peter Shellem, Investigative Reporter Who Wrote About Wrongful Convictions, Dies at 49

Peter Shellem, Investigative Reporter Who Wrote About Wrongful Convictions, Dies at 49

By DENNIS HEVESI
Published: October 31, 2009
New York Times

Peter Shellem, whose relentless digging into dusty court records, erroneous crime-lab reports and coerced confessions during his 23 years as a reporter for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., led to the release of five wrongly convicted prisoners, died Oct. 24 at his home in Gardners, Pa. He was 49.

In one case, a man who was a teenager when he was convicted of killing a neighbor was released after 28 years in prison. In another, DNA evidence that Mr. Shellem recovered from a professor’s refrigerator in Leipzig, Germany, exonerated a retarded man of rape and murder.

Mr. Shellem committed suicide, his son Philip said, but the Cumberland County coroner, Michael Norris, would not confirm the cause of death.

Although Mr. Shellem’s investigative work was not widely known outside of central Pennsylvania, Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York, called him “a rare, one-man journalism innocence project.”

“He got into the nitty-gritty details of cases, and when he began to believe that somebody was wrongfully convicted he wouldn’t stop until he got justice,” Mr. Scheck said Monday. “Justice from the Fourth Estate has always been a great safety valve of our legal system, and Pete Shellem was that safety valve in Pennsylvania.”

In a profile in 2007, American Journalism Review wrote of Mr. Shellem, “No one keeps records on such things, but experts on journalism and the wrongly convicted cannot think of a present-day reporter who by himself has compiled a résumé of freed prisoners as thick as Shellem’s.”

Among them is Steven Crawford, who was arrested in 1970, when he was 14, after a friend was bludgeoned to death with a hammer. In 2001, Mr. Shellem learned that an old briefcase had been found in the attic of a deceased detective who had worked on the case. Notes in the briefcase suggested that a state police chemist had altered laboratory results to help convict Mr. Crawford. The Dauphin County District Attorney’s Office supported Mr. Crawford’s release after 28 years in prison.

In 1988, Barry Laughman, a man with an IQ of about 70, was sentenced to life in prison for the rape and murder of a distant relative, Edna Laughman. Fifteen years later, Mr. Shellem’s series in The Patriot-News pointed to flaws in the case, including a confession that appeared to have been coerced. He also tracked down microscope slides of semen recovered from the victim’s body that had been taken to Germany by a professor who had tried, but failed, to identify the DNA. DNA techniques that had improved since the trial showed that Mr. Laughman was not the killer. He was freed in 2003.

“In the Laughman case, Pete was beating his head against the wall for years and no one would listen to him,” Bill Moushey, director of the Innocence Institute of Point Park University in Pittsburgh, said Monday. “Some law enforcement people brought personal attacks against him, trying to debunk his work, but he stood strong and eventually that retarded kid walked out of prison.”

Among the other prisoners freed by Mr. Shellem’s investigations is David Gladden, who was convicted in 1995 of killing a 67-year-old woman, Geneva Long, and burning the body. Ten years later, Mr. Shellem discovered that a convicted serial killer had lived next door to Ms. Long; he had killed his known victims in the same way.

Mr. Shellem interviewed a witness who had testified that he was with Mr. Gladden at the time of the crime. The witness recanted, saying he had been coerced into confessing a role in the crime. Mr. Gladden walked out of prison on Feb. 16, 2007.

“I don’t start writing until I’m sure I’m right,” Mr. Shellem told The American Journalism Review, “and if people need to be embarrassed into doing the right thing, I’m happy to oblige them.”

Peter Joseph Shellem was born in Philadelphia on Oct. 6, 1960, one of five children of Harry and Josephine Shellem. Besides his son Philip, he is survived by his wife of 24 years, the former Joyce Elser; another son, Alek; a brother, Paul; and a sister, Karen Cain.

Mr. Shellem graduated from Temple University with a degree in journalism in 1983. While in college, he worked at The Delaware County Times. He was a reporter for The Mercury, in Pottstown, Pa., before being hired by The Patriot-News in 1986.

A bearded, barrel-chested man, Mr. Shellem could have been cast as a B-movie reporter. He knew the first names of many bartenders in Harrisburg. He would sit in a bar poring over court transcripts and interviewing sources.

“I don’t want to lead anyone to believe I go to bars only to get stories,” he once said, “although it would be nice if my editors did.”
A version of this article appeared in print on November 1, 2009, on page A37 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2009

Navajo Reservation: LA Times Story Celebrating Building New Jails with Federal Stimulus Money

Navajo hope stimulus cash closes a revolving prison door

Criminals at Navajo holding facilities like this one in Kayenta, Ariz., are usually released within a day of being booked. Kayenta and two other towns will get new jails next year, thanks to a grant from the Justice Department.

October 31, 2009-- LA Times

Reporting from Tuba City, Ariz. - More than 50,000 people are arrested across the Navajo reservation each year -- yet there are only 59 jail beds here.

Officials say the lack of jail space has led to a revolving door for criminals, most of whom are released within a day of being booked, and few of whom serve out an entire sentence.

"It's been a horrendous situation," said Hope MacDonald-Lonetree, a Navajo council delegate. "You can't assure the safety of the police and judges and the prosecutors when you have the perpetrators running around. And it affects the courts because people aren't willing to be witnesses."

Tribal leaders are hoping that may change soon, thanks to a $224-million Justice Department stimulus grant that has been set aside to build and repair jails on Indian land. The Navajo Nation, the country's largest tribe, received the biggest share of the money -- more than $74 million for the construction of three new jails.

The jails will add 144 beds to the Navajo reservation and will house alcohol counseling programs to help curb the high rate of repeat alcohol-related arrests, which corrections officials say is the main cause of overcrowding.

The money comes after years of unsuccessful Navajo lobbying for more federal help with law and order.

The federal government is required to fund jails on reservations as part of its trust responsibility to the nation's tribes. The Bureau of Indian Affairs pays to run jails on Indian land, and the Justice Department pays to build them.

But the BIA has a bad track record with tribal jails -- a 2004 Interior Department Inspector General report of Indian detention facilities found that some "were egregiously unsafe, unsanitary, and a hazard to both inmates and staff alike."

The Justice Department has for the last several years had an annual budget of less than $10 million to construct facilities and fund repairs for the 80 or so existing jails on reservations across the country.

Indian advocates say overcrowded and underfunded tribal jails have contributed to disproportionately high rates of crime in Indian country. According to a Justice Department survey, Indians experience almost twice as much violence as the rest of America.

On the Navajo reservation, which straddles 27,000 square miles of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, tribal officials say gang activity is at an all-time high, and chronic alcoholism and substance abuse have helped make domestic violence and drunk driving common.

There have been no jail facilities constructed here since a juvenile facility was built in the 1980s.

Two years ago, two of the tribe's main jails were condemned and closed, leaving just three jails, in the towns of Shiprock, Window Rock and Crownpoint. Those facilities -- cinder-block structures built in the 1950s and 1960s -- are barely habitable, corrections officials say, and are so overcrowded that jail workers are frequently forced to release prisoners early to make room for new ones.

"We're always playing musical chairs -- or musical jail beds," said Delores Greyeyes, who heads the Navajo Nation Department of Corrections. "We just pump [prisoners] through."

Navajo courts are responsible for prosecuting only misdemeanor crimes -- such as burglary, battery and drunk driving -- and the maximum punishment for a conviction is one year in jail and a $5,000 fine. Inmates accused of committing felonies are transferred to prisons off the reservation and are prosecuted federally.

Peterson Wilson, the prosecutor for the Tuba City District, one of nine judicial districts on the Navajo Nation, said, "A lot of crimes go unreported because there's an impression that we won't hold the criminal." And prosecutors and judges are disinclined to push for harsh sentences when they know there's no place to house criminals, he said.

He hopes the new jails, which will be built next year in Tuba City; Kayenta, Ariz.; and Ramah, N.M., will help fix that.

Tuba City, the biggest town on the reservation, received the largest single Justice Department grant -- $38 million for a 62-bed jail. It will offer inmates mental health and alcohol rehabilitation counseling.

Although alcohol is illegal on the Navajo Nation, alcoholism is widespread, and the vast majority of inmates are booked for public intoxication. Jails have become a catch-all for people who need help, McDonald-Lonetree said. She hopes the rehab programs will help stop that.

"We don't want to have to build another 100-bed facility in the future. We don't want to go into the business of warehousing individuals like the rest of America does," she said. "We want to rehabilitate people."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-navajo-jails31-2009oct31,0,7038957.story

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Posted by lois at 10:58 AM | Comments (0)

October 30, 2009

PA Supreme Court Overturns Thousands Convictions By Judge Who Received $2.6 million in Kickbacks Who Sent Teenagers to Private Youth Jails

Pennsylvania Overturns Many Youths’ Convictions
By IAN URBINA - NY Times
Published: October 29, 2009

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday overturned thousands of juvenile-offender convictions handed down by a judge now charged in a corruption scandal.

The judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas, and Michael T. Conahan, a fellow judge who for a time was the chief of that court, are charged with taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks from the owner of two privately run youth detention centers in exchange for their sending teenagers there.

The Supreme Court said the conviction of any juvenile who appeared before Judge Ciavarella after Jan. 1, 2003, was invalid. The justices barred the retrial of all but an estimated 100 of those cases.

The decision followed advice the court received from Arthur Grim, a Berks County judge whom it appointed in February to review juvenile cases involving Judges Ciavarella and Conahan.

Judge Ciavarella, who along with Judge Conahan awaits federal trial on charges of income-tax and wire fraud, routinely held juvenile hearings that lasted just minutes, failing to ask the youths before him whether they understood the consequences of waiving their right to a lawyer and pleading guilty.

“We concluded,” the justices wrote Thursday, “that the record supports Judge Grim’s determination that Ciavarella knew he was violating both the law and the procedural rules promulgated by this court applicable when adjudicating the merits of juvenile cases without the knowing, intelligent and voluntary waiver of counsel by the juveniles.”

Under the justices’ ruling, the only cases that will be eligible for retrial are those in which youths are still under court supervision. The district attorney’s office has been directed to notify Judge Grim of those cases it wishes to prosecute again. He will then make a determination on each case.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 30, 2009, on page A18 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/us/30judges.html?_r=1&ref=us

Posted by lois at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2009

The California Fix: As 40% of money for rehab programs are cut, prisons do less to keep prisoners from returning

THE CALIFORNIA FIX
As rehab programs are cut, prisons do less to keep inmates from returning
By Michael Rothfeld
October 17, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento - Gina Tatum spends her days in a compound surrounded by electrified fence in the sun-baked heart of the Central Valley, hoping to change her life.

She will soon turn 50, and after two decades in and out of prison, she says she is tired of victimizing others, tired of stealing, tired of doing drugs.

"I can't afford any more years up here -- I've lost too many," said Tatum, who is serving a four-year stint for forgery at the Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla. "I'm trying to learn things to change my thinking, change everything about me, so I can go home. It's so easy to get caught up here and never leave. I don't want to die in prison."

But because of cuts in the state budget, Tatum and thousands of other inmates and parolees in California are about to lose access to many of the programs the prison system has offered to help them turn their lives around.

Officials plan to chop $250 million a year from rehabilitation services, more than 40% of what the state now devotes to them and a quarter of the $1 billion it is slicing from its prison system.

The cuts occur four years after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger persuaded lawmakers to change the name of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

"We don't want to just put the name on it," he said in 2007, proposing to expand rehabilitation services for prisoners. "We have to heal them. We have to get them ready to go out so they can get a job, connect with society and never commit a crime again."

Federal pressure

The rehabilitation services are being slashed at the moment when they may be most needed: The state is under pressure from federal courts to reduce overcrowding driven by the high rate at which inmates return to prison after they are released.

Substance-abuse treatment, vocational training and educational programs, all scheduled to be cut back, were designed to give offenders skills to help them hold jobs and make other changes. They are taught to handle anger, build self-esteem and search for the roots of their decisions to commit crimes, the better to avoid repeating them.

At eight prisons, substance-abuse programs will close; scaled-down versions will remain at only 12 of the state's 33 lockups and one of its privately run prisons. Up to 900 instructors and staff, many of whom provide academic and vocational education, could be laid off. Arts programs will no longer be available.

State officials say they will attempt to use their reduced resources more efficiently, by cycling inmates through programs for shorter periods.

"We're very much targeting the resources on those who most need it," said Elizabeth Siggins, who is in charge of rehabilitation for the state prison system.

But advocates for rehabilitation and program providers contend that the cuts mean a return to an old way of thinking, in which prisons were intended to punish but not improve those society sends there. And they say the changes could have an effect on safety in California streets and within its prisons.

Kathy Jett, formerly Schwarzenegger's top aide for prisoner rehabilitation, said gangs may attempt to fill the void created by the absence of programs.

"I think you'll start to see a shift back to lots of violence," she said. "These are pretty draconian, pretty severe cuts. . . . The wardens really are not going to have many tools to manage those inmates."

The changes could also subvert the state's recent moves to lower incarceration costs and ease crowding.

The governor and state lawmakers last month agreed to reduce supervision of parolees so fewer would be returned to prison for failing drug tests and other low-level violations. At the same time, the state is eliminating 45% of the seats in its substance-abuse programs for parolees, which experts say increases the likelihood that they will commit new crimes and go back to prison anyway.

And the state may undermine another recently enacted measure that gives inmates more time off their sentences for participating in such programs: Prisoners cannot earn the credit without access to the programs.

At Valley State, two nonprofit groups hired by the state provide rehabilitation to 756 women four hours a day, five days a week. The state has canceled a contract with one of the groups, Phoenix House, as of this month and will end a contract with Walden House as early as December. After that, officials plan to award a new contract for only 175 women to receive services.

At Walden House's program one recent day, about 125 women arrived at a building that resembles a small civic center. They sat quietly for "accountability time," arms folded, feet tapping, while attendance was checked. When the session began, women stepped to the center to perform a previously assigned task intended to teach responsibility.

One read a poem. Another recounted the day's news from television reports. A third offered inspirational proverbs. The women sang a boisterous "Happy Birthday to you -- Woooo" for one inmate.

The goal, counselors said, is to get inmates, some of whom are required to attend against their will, to connect with others and learn trust. The program is for women who have used drugs or committed drug-related crimes, but the curriculum extends beyond controlling addiction to maintaining relationships, parenting and anger management.

'The tears start'

"We ask them, 'Why are you here? What has happened in your life that brought you to prison?' " said Charmaine Hoggatt, a program director for Walden House.

"We get them to try to be honest about some of the choices they made. That's when the tears start to come, the confusion starts to come, and the guilt and the shame."

Mary Rubio, in the 23rd year of a life term for a crime she would not discuss, completed the program in 2005 and is a paid mentor to others.

"This program saved my life," said Rubio, 54. In "the jungle" of the prison dorms and yards, she said, she never could have reflected on her life, on how self-destructive she had been. In prison, "it's, you know, eat or be eaten," Rubio said. "So when I came into this program, it gave me a safe place . . . to look at my behaviors and the reason for them."

Not all inmates engage. Informed about the cutbacks, some applauded, Hoggatt said. As several women sat talking about the coming changes, they said that though they had initially resisted participating in the program, encouragement from fellow inmates and counselors helped them believe that they could make the future better than the past.

Tatum, shedding tears and brushing back hair streaked with gray, called the program "one of the best things I've ever done in my life." It could also be her last chance to save herself, she said, because with two strikes on her record, even a fight after her release