The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

November 12, 2009

Defense Authorization Act calls on Sentencing Commission to examine the impact of mandatory minimums

U.S. Commission to Assess Mandatory Sentences
By GARY FIELDS
Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Congress has ordered the panel that advises judges on prison terms to conduct a review of mandatory-minimum sentences, a move that could lead to a dramatic rethinking of how the U.S. incarcerates its criminals.

The review is a little-noticed element of the National Defense Authorization Act signed into law last month by President Barack Obama. The defense-spending bill calls on the commission to perform several tasks, including an examination of the impact of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws and alternatives to the practice.

Congress in the 1980s began passing mandatory-minimum laws, which dictate the minimum sentence a judge must hand out for a particular crime. Among the results were longer sentences, increased prison populations and ballooning budgets.

Amid cost concerns in recent years, states have tried to reverse the trend. At least 26 states have cut corrections spending recently and at least 17 are closing prisons or reducing their inmate populations, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit that studies sentencing and criminal-justice policies.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which advises judges on all other sentences, has now been charged with issuing recommendations on mandatory minimums. Any final change in sentencing law would have to come from Congress.

"It's going to be a massive undertaking," said the new chairman of the Sentencing Commission, William Sessions III.

Mr. Sessions, who is also the chief federal judge in Vermont, said the review would include everything from determining the effects of minimums on the size of the prison population, to spending and the social impact of the policies. "In my view," he said, "it's a very open-ended request."

The inmate population in federal prisons has risen from 24,000 in 1980 to 209,000 as of Nov. 5. Over the same period, the federal Bureau of Prisons staff has grown from 10,000 to about 36,000 employees.

The commission has pushed for changes in mandatory minimums, such as ending the disparity in sentencing for crimes involving crack-cocaine and powder cocaine. Several proposals are pending in Congress to address the crack-cocaine issue. But the commission has not done a full-scale examination of federal sentencing laws since 1991. At the time, there were only 60 mandatory-minimum laws on the books. Now there are about 170.

According to a limited review released by the commission in July, most mandatory-minimum cases in 2008 concerned drugs or weapons crimes. The review found that 21,023 offenders were convicted of crimes that could have triggered the mandatory-minimum sentence. Many got more lenient sentences for a variety of reasons, including cooperation with authorities.

The commission will examine the effects of mandatory minimums on plea agreements. Critics of the system say the threat of such sentences is used to coerce plea bargains.

Members of the commission have been traveling the country to meet with judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys. Many have pressed the commission to provide alternatives to imprisonment for nonviolent, low-level drug defendants.

James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest law-enforcement labor organization, said officers believed it was appropriate to review the system. But he said it shouldn't happen "in a way that will result in criminals not being held accountable."

Mary Price, vice president and general counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said it was too early to tell where the review might lead.

"Certainly from FAMM's perspective, as much information as the commission can provide on the operation and impact of mandatory minimums can only help us better understand and advocate for their elimination."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125798793160144461.html

Posted by lois at 03:06 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 29, 2009

3 part NPR series on CA three-strikes including interview with Sue Reams, time-line and graphs, etc.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114277240

Posted by lois at 06:34 PM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2009

A sentence too cruel for kids By Alan K. Simpson

opinion
A sentence too cruel for kids
By Alan K. Simpson
Special to The Washington Post
Posted: 10/24/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

Rather than serving in the U.S. Senate for almost 20 years, or having so many other wonderful life experiences, I could have served a longer sentence in prison for some of the stupid, reckless things I did as a teenager. I am grateful to have gotten a second chance — and I believe our society should make a sustained investment in offering second chances to our youth.

When I was a teen, we rode aimlessly around town, shot things up, started fires and generally raised hell. It was only dumb luck that we never really hurt anyone. At 17, I was caught destroying federal property and was put on probation. For two years, my probation officer visited me and my friends at home, in the pool hall, at school and on the basketball court. He was a wonderful guy who listened and really cared. I did pretty well on probation. At 21, though, I got into a fight in a tough part of town and ended up in jail for hitting a police officer.

I spent only one night in jail, but that was enough. I remember thinking, "I don't need too much more of this."

I had a chance to turn my life around, and I took it. This term, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether other young people get that same chance.

On Nov. 9, the court will hold oral argument in Sullivan vs. Florida and Graham vs. Florida, two cases that will determine whether it is constitutional to sentence a teenager to life in prison without parole for a crime that did not involve the taking of a life. There is a simple reason the criminal justice system should treat juveniles and adults differently: Kids are a helluva lot dumber than adults. They do stupid things — as I did — and some even commit serious crimes, but youths don't really ever think through the consequences. It's for this reason that every state restricts children from such consequential actions as voting, serving on juries, purchasing alcohol or marrying without parental consent.

The Supreme Court recognized the differences between teenagers and adults when it held a few years ago, in Roper vs. Simmons, that it was unconstitutional to impose the death penalty on defendants younger than 18. Locking up a youth for the rest of his life, with no hope for parole, is surely unconstitutional for the same reasons. The person you are at 13 or 17 is not the person you are at 30.

Everyone old enough to look back on his or her teenage years knows this.

Peer pressure is a huge part of youth behavior, whether one grows up in Washington, D.C., or Cody, Wyo. The guys will say, "Go get the gun. We'll pick up just enough money for tonight." And almost unthinkingly, you'll do it. There is simply no way to know at the time of sentencing whether a young person will turn out "good" or "bad." The only option is to bring him or her before a parole board — after some number of years — and give the person the chance to declare, "I'm a different person today" — and then prove it.

Parole boards can examine how youth offenders spent their time in prison. Did they read books or work in the library? Did they make furniture? Get a college degree? Those are critical questions for review.

We all know youths who have changed for the better. When I was a lawyer in Cody, the court sometimes appointed me to represent juvenile offenders, and parents who knew of my history often asked for help with their children. I once helped an 18-year-old who stole a car and drove it to Seattle. I later hired him as chief of staff for my Senate office.

I was lucky that the bullets I stole from a hardware store as a teenager and fired from my .22-caliber rifle never struck anyone. I was fortunate that the fires I set never hurt anyone. I heard my wake-up call and listened — and I went on to have many opportunities to serve my country and my community.

When a young person is sent "up the river," we need to remember that all rivers can change course.

Alan K. Simpson, a Republican, was a U.S. senator from Wyoming from 1977 to 1996.
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_13629190?source=email

Posted by lois at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2009

New Crack-Cocaine Sentencing Reform Bill Leaves Thousands Behind Bars

New Crack-Cocaine Sentencing Reform Bill Leaves Thousands Behind Bars
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, New America Media
Posted on October 22, 2009, Printed on October 23, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143428/

New America Media Editor's Note: During the 1980s crack epidemic, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., then a House member, voted to impose harsh sentencing for crack cocaine. Now he says he “made a mistake 20 years ago,” and is introducing legislation to remove the disparity between crack and powdered cocaine possession. But the fact that his bill does not make the sentencing change retroactive -- Durbin has said he hopes to leave that debate to the Sentencing Commission – means that his Fairness in Sentencing Act 2009 is anything but fair, writes commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

WASHINGTON — Illinois Senator Dick Durbin’s Fairness in Sentencing Act 2009 is anything but fair to the thousands of inmates serving time for drug crimes in federal prisons. The Durbin bill, and the companion bill the House Judiciary Committee passed in July, will scrap the blatant racially biased sentencing for first time crack cocaine possession. The law currently requires that judges slap a minimum mandatory sentence of five years on anyone caught with crack cocaine. More than 80 percent of those sentenced for crack use are poor, ill-educated blacks. Those caught with the same amount of powdered cocaine, mostly whites, often middle-class and suburban, get probation and referrals to drug diversion programs.

The problem is that Durbin’s bill and the House bill are not retroactive. The legislation doesn’t require judges to take a second look at any of the sentences of those currently incarcerated for crack possession. This is not fair and it’s not justice. The reason Durbin and the House committee took action on ending the sentencing disparities in the first place was because of the legions of terrible, heart-wrenching stories of mostly young, poor blacks who have been warehoused in America’s jails in the past two decades for possessing crack.

Despite studies confirming that illicit drug use by African Americans is no greater than that of whites, black offenders are less likely to be offered a chance to plea bargain and more likely to fall under the federal or state mandatory minimum sentencing law. The escalation in black incarceration is the single major reason for the massive bulge in the number of inmates in federal prisons. The number has jumped four-fold since the late 1980s. More than half of them are there for drug crimes or other petty offenses.

When Congress enacted the dual drug sentencing law in 1986, the idea was to use tougher drug sentencing to rid the streets of violent drug kingpins. At the time, drug and gun violence tore up many poor black neighborhoods. Police and terrified residents demanded a crackdown. But the law, which hammered poor blacks, had almost no effect on the drug lords and gave white drug users a relatively free legal pass.

The law has wreaked havoc beyond the prison system. It has debilitated many black communities and families. Women convicted of felony drug offenses are barred for life from receiving welfare benefits. This puts thousands of women and their children at dire social risk and increases the likelihood that they will commit more crimes. The high black imprisonment rate also drastically increases health risks and costs in black communities, since many prisoners are released with chronic medical afflictions, particularly HIV and AIDS.




Every effort to modify the blatantly unfair mandatory minimum sentencing law for illicit drug abusers has failed. Former President Bill Clinton made a half-hearted effort in the mid-1990s to change the disparity in sentencing in Congress. Congress said no. President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress flatly ruled out any move to change the law.

However, lawmakers did take note of the loud protests in 2005 from many federal judges who said that it was time to change the sentencing law. The judges were moved to protest in part out of outrage over the patently unfair disparity in sentencing drug offenders for virtually the same crime, and in even greater part out of deep resentment that the law hamstrung their discretion to impose sentences. Mandatory minimums were clearly a slap at their judicial power. In several judicial districts, judges quietly rebelled, bent the rules, and lightened sentences for some first time offenders.

Supreme Court Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Anthony M. Kennedy, and the late William Rehnquist publicly called for repealing or at least modifying, the law. The judges’ outspoken advocacy in support of changing the laws drew a loud rebuke from then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. There were open threats to retaliate against the dissenting judges. The issue momentarily died down, and other than an occasional call from some members of the Congressional Black Caucus for hearings on the sentencing disparities, little more was said about changing the law in Congress during the remainder of Bush’s second term.

President Obama’s election re-opened the door on efforts to do away with the disparities. Obama has taken a guarded stance in support of changing the law. While he has not made it a priority of his administration, many in Congress have. But sadly, they have got it only partly right. In making no provision to offer relief to those who are already languishing in federal prisons under the racially skewed laws, Congress continues to mock the concept of equal protection under the law.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).
© 2009 New America Media All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143428/

Posted by lois at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2009

“Criminalizing” Poverty, How Public Policies Result in the Over-Incarceration of Low-Income Communities in America"

“Criminalizing” Poverty, How Public Policies Result in the Over-Incarceration of Low-Income Communities in America"
By Tracy Velázquez, Executive Director, Justice Policy Institute
October 13, 2009:

One of the early lessons in school civics is that “justice is blind”—that is, all citizens get equal treatment in the eyes of the law. Unfortunately, this ideal has become an American myth. First, people living in poverty get swept into the criminal justice system more often than their better-off counterparts. Once there, they are at a real disadvantage in a court system where money can buy freedom through quality representation. And after they are incarcerated, they are relegated to poverty once again because of the punitive barriers society has set up to prevent their success.

This system is not only unfair, it’s counterproductive to our country’s overall well-being. Unless we as a nation take ownership of this flaw in our current system, we will continue to be the world’s biggest jailor, with the social and economic costs that accompany that shameful moniker.

Policing the poor

Recently, I was visiting my friend Rachel, who lives and teaches in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. Having started as a Teach for America participant who chose to stay on after her two-year stint, she is well connected with her predominantly Dominican neighborhood’s assets and challenges. In commenting on her experience taking classes at Columbia’s Teachers College on the Upper West Side, Rachel said, “You know, I finally get why people in this neighborhood end up in trouble more. Compared to down by Columbia, the cops are everywhere here in the Heights, all the time. And judging by the warnings I get from campus, it doesn’t look like there’s any more crime up where I live.”

Rachel had, on her own, come to see what those who advocate for low-income communities have known for a long time: America over-polices the poor. It makes sense that places with more crime would have a stronger police presence than communities with less. However, more policing in low-income areas results in more arrests and incarceration for offenses that would likely be handled informally or not at all in another neighborhood. For example, someone smoking a marijuana joint on a bench or their front porch in a more affluent neighborhood is unlikely to be observed by a police officer who would arrest them. More police can also mean more encounters with police – what some might consider “hassling” – which also can result in arrests that just wouldn’t occur otherwise.

Many have asserted that a significant component of over-policing is race. For instance, between January 2006 and September 2007, “random” frisks by New York City police included 453,042 blacks and only 94,530 whites. However, with race and income so closely intertwined, it is often difficult to separate the two. And the result is still that low-income individuals are more often the target of police attention, which means more are arrested and move deeper into the criminal justice system.

“When the lawyer you choose matters most”

The above phrase shocked me as I listened to public radio on my way to work recently. It was the tagline for a law firm that was underwriting the program, and it was impossible for me not to think about it in terms of what it means for people in poverty that have been arrested.

In this day and age of complex proceedings, a multitude of laws, and serious and lasting consequences of a criminal record, the idea of not having a lawyer represent you in court seems almost unfathomable. In fact, in 1963’s Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court stated that “reason and reflection require us to recognize that, in our adversary system of justice, any person hauled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him.” However, individuals of lower income generally don’t choose their lawyer; one is assigned by the court. Or one should be, anyway; unfortunately, over one in four people in jail charged with misdemeanor offenses reported not having been represented by counsel.

The vast majority of public defenders are qualified, dedicated attorneys, but many work in conditions they describe as “assembly line justice.” Small budgets – which are now shrinking during this economic downturn – mean many public defenders have barely met their client before they have to go into court and defend them. Of people in prison with court-appointed counsel, only 37 percent in state facilities and 54 percent in federal facilities spoke with their attorneys within the first week after arrest. In contrast, of people with hired counsel, three in five in state facilities and three-fourths in federal facilities had been in contact with their attorneys about their charges within a week of arrest. In an effort to manage their caseloads, public defenders are under pressure to resolve cases quickly, with little time to investigate leads that might have resulted in the case being dismissed or the charges lessened.

What is the result? State defendants with a public defender are sentenced to prison or jail more often than those with private attorneys. People who can afford a private attorney are less likely to go to state prison.

In addition, about half of individuals using a public defender or assigned counsel were released from jail prior to trial, compared to over three in four with a private attorney. Part of this may be a result of differences in representation; it is likely also because people who use public defenders are generally the same people who can’t afford to post bond. With courts demanding higher bail amounts, fewer and fewer people are able to post bond and be released from jail while awaiting trial. Currently, more than 60 percent of people in jails across the country have not been convicted of any offense. The inability to post bond not only makes it harder for people accused of crimes to meet with their lawyer and talk to people who might be able to aid in their defense, it also makes it harder to hold down their job and maintain custody of their children—even though they are still considered innocent.

Substituting corrections for treatment

Adult and juvenile correctional facilities are now among the country’s largest providers of mental health care: this is true both in large, urban areas (the Los Angeles County Jail is now the largest mental health facility in the country) and smaller, more rural ones (the largest provider of mental health care in Alabama is the prison). A key driver of this is lack of access to community mental health services. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, over a third of the poor and 30 percent of the near-poor (incomes ranging from the poverty line to twice the poverty line) lack health coverage. And according to the National Survey of Drug Use and Mental Health, 42 percent of those who needed mental health treatment but didn’t get it said the primary reason was that they couldn’t afford it. Underinsurance is also a problem: 34 percent of insured people who had unmet mental health needs indicated that cost was a barrier to seeking treatment.

The manifestations of untreated mental illness often lead to behaviors that draw the attention of police—public order offenses that often accompany homelessness, crises that cause law enforcement to intervene, and “self-medicating” with alcohol and illegal drugs. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, nearly a quarter of the people in state prisons experienced mental health issues in the year preceding incarceration, and nearly two-thirds of people in jails live with mental illness. Some parents of children with serious emotional disturbances who are uninsured or underinsured turn their own children over to the police, in an effort to get at least minimum treatment through the juvenile justice system.

People with no access to health care are also likely to return to prison after being released. In a visit I made to a state prison, an individual with a serious mental illness told me that earlier that year he had been released from prison with 10 days worth of medicine and $100 in cash. He was left on his own to figure out how to manage his illness. He relied on a local clinic for pharmaceutical “samples” for a time, but ended up homeless and self-medicating with alcohol and other drugs. This eventually led to his being re-incarcerated.

A large percentage of incarcerated people also have a substance abuse disorder. Over half of people in state prisons meet the criteria for drug dependence or abuse. Once again, low-income people with a substance abuse addiction are disproportionately incarcerated as they cannot access treatment. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health indicated that 37.4 percent of people who sought substance abuse treatment indicated they didn’t receive it because they had no health coverage and couldn’t afford the cost of treatment. This lack of access, combined with the criminalization of addiction, mean thousands of people end up in prison or jail for drug possession or distribution or other offenses that would support an addiction.

Continuing barriers to opportunity

Currently, one in 31 people in the United States is under correctional supervision—whether in prison or jail, or on parole or probation. And millions more have a felony record that will never be erased, creating hardships for those trying to regain their lives and be a productive member of their community.

Adding to these difficulties is the fact that the correctional population is already largely made up of lower-income people. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2002, eighty-three percent of people in jail reported income of less than $2,000 in the month prior to arrest, one-third lower than the average monthly wage of the general public.

Many people who have been incarcerated face obstacles when attempting to find a job and housing. In a report for the Brookings Institution, Richard Freedman found that jail time reduced the probability of employment by between 15 and 30 percentage points. In addition, people leaving prison, regardless of their pre-incarceration status, are especially vulnerable to homelessness, often banned from federal housing, face challenges reconnecting with family and friends, and lack the funds to afford available housing. Often, the obligations of parole fees and years of child support that went unpaid during their period of incarceration make it almost impossible to become economically successful.

Conclusion

The impact of the criminal justice system on low-income communities can’t be ignored. At every stage of the process – from who is arrested to who is convicted and who eventually loses out on their rights – the poor are disproportionately affected. Policymakers continue to incarcerate millions of people, most of whom would not be in the system if there were more adequate resources in their communities. How can this situation be addressed, so that poverty and prison aren’t inevitably intertwined?

The U.S. should provide meaningful access – regardless of ability to pay -- to community-based treatment that would ensure that people get the mental health and substance abuse treatment they need before they collide with the justice system; this would improve both public safety and individual life outcomes. A healthcare “safety net” that will cover formerly incarcerated individuals also will save states millions in reduced rates of recidivism and re-incarceration.

Instead of overfunding incarceration and policing, we should make investments in resources for low-income communities that are already at a disadvantage due to their socioeconomic status. This means better schools, more job development, and more programs that can help people – and particularly youth – succeed. These types of investments will create healthier, safer communities and reduce the use of prisons as an answer to poverty and other social problems.

Tracy Velázquez is Executive Director of the Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit working to promote effective solutions to social problems and dedicated to ending society’s reliance on incarceration

http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/ExclusiveCommentary.aspx?id=5f13e0fe-a47d-4ce4-a945-187fc331e81d

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

October 19, 2009

Boston Globe: The Long Shadow of Willie Horton. More than two decades ago, a governor showed a prisoner leniency, with horrifying results. Our justice system hasn’t been the same since.

"That safety valve (of commutations), however, has all but vanished in Massachusetts, even while other states have been going in the opposite direction to trim costs. States like California, Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon, Michigan, and Texas are either considering proposals to free more inmates or have already taken steps to increase early releases."

On commutations: "The practice is common in many states, and Donovan, eligible to be considered for the first time, was planning to file his petition this month. In Massachusetts, however, there hasn’t been a single commutation approved by a governor since 1997 -- and there were only seven in the previous 10 years (four for murderers). Over the past 22 years, more than 650 petitions have been denied. In that same period, Delaware has approved hundreds, 12 for convicted murderers. Michigan’s Democratic governor has approved 23 in the past five years; in the prior 12 years, her Republican predecessor approved 34. And from 2003 to 2007, Maryland’s Republican governor granted 15 commutations, including five for life sentences for murder."

"Currently, 900 inmates in the state (17 percent of the total) are serving life without parole. That percentage is exceeded in only three states: Alabama, California, and New York."

Boston Globe Sunday Magazine

The Long Shadow of Willie Horton
More than two decades ago, a governor showed a prisoner leniency, with horrifying results. Our justice system hasn’t been the same since.

By Michael Blanding
October 18, 2009

Joe Donovan is not an innocent man. That much is clear from the events of September 18, 1992, the night he threw the punch that forever changed his life. It was three weeks past his 17th birthday, and Donovan was prowling the streets of East Cambridge with two guys he knew from the neighborhood: 18-year-old Alfredo Velez and a scrawny 15-year-old named Shon McHugh. They were looking to make their way to the Mass. Ave. bridge to cross into Boston and score some beer. Walking along Memorial Drive, Donovan bumped shoulders with a Norwegian MIT student named Yngve Raustein, who was with a fellow student. An argument ensued, and thinking Raustein was making fun of him, Donovan punched him in the face, so hard it dropped Raustein to the ground and broke Donovan’s hand.

As Donovan doubled over in pain, Velez confronted Raustein’s friend, demanding his wallet. But McHugh had other plans. As Raustein tried to get up, McHugh unfolded a 7-inch hunting knife and stabbed Raustein, repeatedly and fatally, in the chest. Mere seconds after Donovan’s punch, all three teens fled over the bridge into Boston. It was only then, says Donovan, that he saw the knife and realized that McHugh had stabbed the man. By then it was too late. The three were arrested and tried under the “joint venture theory,” a law holding all accomplices responsible for a murder committed during the course of a felony such as armed robbery. McHugh was tried as a juvenile and served almost 11 years in prison. Velez cut a deal to testify and was out in eight. Alone among the three, Donovan was convicted of first-degree murder and received the mandatory sentence of life without parole.

Seventeen years later, he is still in prison, long after the actual murderer has gone free. At a meeting in the visitors’ lounge of Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Donovan is tall and thickset, with an oval face and pale green eyes. He twists his big hands as he tries to explain why he threw that punch. “I don’t even know what the hell I was thinking,” he says, speaking so quietly it’s hard to hear him. “I was just a dumb kid.” On the other hand, he can’t wrap his head around the discrepancy between his sentence and McHugh’s. “He murdered a kid and they think he can be rehabilitated, and I am a year or two older and I didn’t kill anyone, but I can’t be? That makes no sense.”

The judge, at least one juror in the case, and even Raustein’s family now support Donovan’s release. But his chances of seeing daylight are near zero, because his only hope is commutation, a power held by the governor (and influenced by the state’s parole board) to reduce prison sentences. The practice is common in many states, and Donovan, eligible to be considered for the first time, was planning to file his petition this month. In Massachusetts, however, there hasn’t been a single commutation approved by a governor since 1997 -- and there were only seven in the previous 10 years (four for murderers). Over the past 22 years, more than 650 petitions have been denied. In that same period, Delaware has approved hundreds, 12 for convicted murderers. Michigan’s Democratic governor has approved 23 in the past five years; in the prior 12 years, her Republican predecessor approved 34. And from 2003 to 2007, Maryland’s Republican governor granted 15 commutations, including five for life sentences for murder.

It’s no secret why Massachusetts has lagged behind: the memory of Willie Horton, the convicted murderer who terrorized a couple, raping the woman, in 1987 after escaping while on a weekend furlough allowed by then governor Michael Dukakis. The act pretty much torpedoed Dukakis’s presidential campaign a year later when ads showing Horton’s picture and images of inmates going through a revolving door hit the airwaves. Even years later, it lays bare the thorny political calculus of letting a felon out of jail. There is almost nothing for a governor to gain and everything for him to lose should the criminal commit another crime. “Ever since what Willie Horton did to Mike Dukakis, governors are going to think not twice but 10 times before they ever commute anyone,” says retired judge Robert Barton, who presided over the Donovan case. Tufts University political science professor Jeffrey Berry agrees. “If I was a governor’s adviser,” he says, “I would recommend he be very cautious.”

So far, Governor Deval Patrick has been exactly that, turning down the one recommendation for commutation he has received, from a 40-year lifer who has received the support of some of Boston’s most prominent civic leaders. He’s watched his parole board deny hearings for dozens more, including a murderer who, it turns out, was abused as a child by notorious Catholic priest the Rev. John Geoghan. These cases, like Joe Donovan’s, are far from simple. But the overwhelming number of rejections continues, even as states across the country increasingly consider early releases and other measures to reduce prison populations. On this issue, there are two competing visions of justice: Is it a system that allows for redemption and reevaluation over time, or is it strictly a system for retribution, where the judge and jury forever have the last word? The numbers in Massachusetts have squarely pointed in only one direction.

Commutation, a power that on the federal level is vested in the president in the Constitution, has been used regularly by states for some 200 years to reward good behavior and right mistakes made in sentencing. (Unlike pardons, which forgive the underlying offense upon release, commutations shorten the sentence but allow the conviction to stand.) Massachusetts approved anywhere between one and 16 commutations every year between 1945 and 1983. An uptick in violence in the 1980s, however, led to a “get tough on crime” movement that resulted in mandatory minimum prison sentences and a national decline in both pardons and commutations.

Then came Willie Horton. Sentenced to life for fatally stabbing a gas station attendant in Lawrence, he was released on a weekend furlough in 1986 and never returned. A year later, he stabbed and bound a man and raped the man’s fiancee in Maryland, where he is now imprisoned. In the 1988 presidential campaign, George H.W. Bush’s team used the incident to relentlessly hammer Dukakis as soft on crime. A few years later, a similar case of a criminal whose sentence was commuted in Pennsylvania and who then committed rape and murder sunk the gubernatorial aspirations of then lieutenant governor Mark Singel.

After that, “more than a few states . . . basically shut down the pardon process, which also includes commutation,” says Margaret Love, a US pardon attorney under the first President Bush and under President Clinton. The risks simply outweighed the benefits. “We all talk about second chances, but we don’t want to give anyone a second chance in this country because it’s too damn risky.” Although there hasn’t been a state-by-state study of commutations, Love has researched the use of pardons, which have been severely curtailed in all but 13 states.

In others, a more flexible sentencing policy or parole system has made lack of commutation less of an issue. Massachusetts, however, has some of the nation’s strictest sentencing laws. Mandatory minimums for drug trafficking range from three to 15 years. Second-degree (unpremeditated) murder means a mandatory minimum of 15 years before parole eligibility; first-degree (premeditated) murder is automatically punished with life without parole. Currently, 900 inmates in the state (17 percent of the total) are serving life without parole. That percentage is exceeded in only three states: Alabama, California, and New York.

As a result, the discretion on what charges to bring and what deals to cut has shifted more power to the hands of prosecutors and away from the bench. “Judges have seen a lot of their ability to make distinctions in circumstances stripped away,” says Gavi Wolfe, staff attorney for the ACLU of Massachusetts, who recently wrote a law-journal paper arguing for the revival of clemency. While commutation should never be routine, says Wolfe, it exists as an important “safety valve” to acknowledge changing circumstances. “In some ways, it is a more powerful concept than pardons,” he says. It’s not wiping away the crime, but “it allows for the possibility of change and growth on the part of either the individual or the criminal justice system.”
That safety valve, however, has all but vanished in Massachusetts, even while other states have been going in the opposite direction to trim costs. States like California, Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon, Michigan, and Texas are either considering proposals to free more inmates or have already taken steps to increase early releases.

When Dukakis first took office, his staff put together a three-tier process for commutations, whereby applicants go first before the Massachusetts Parole Board, a state agency, which issues a recommendation to the governor to be approved or denied. The governor then reviews the cases and decides. (It’s possible, but highly unlikely, for a governor to overrule a negative recommendation. Dukakis says he never did.) Finally, the Governor’s Council, an elected panel that also reviews the governor’s judicial nominees, must sign off. Despite the bureaucracy, Dukakis approved 48 commutations (and more than 500 pardons) during his first term, from 1975 to 1979. He admits to being more cautious during his second stint, 1983 to 1991, but still approved 10 commutations (and nearly 300 pardons).

The number fell, however, with Republican governor William Weld, who approved seven commutations and some 50 pardons during the next six and a half years. The last commutation in the state was under Weld in 1997, when Joseph Salvati was found to be framed for murder by rogue agents of the Boston FBI office; he was let out after nearly 30 years. Since then, Republican governors have proved even more sparing. Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift approved several pardons but no commutations; Mitt Romney boasted of not approving any in either category.

Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s former press secretary and current adviser, says Romney didn’t have a blanket policy against clemency. “It was [his] view that it would take an extraordinary set of circumstances for him to set aside a criminal sentence and substitute his judgment for the judgment of a judge or jury,” he says, calling the cases of Horton and freed inmates who go on to commit crimes “cautionary tales that suggest a more conservative approach, which is what we adopted.” He specifically points to the case of Joseph Yandle, whose life sentence for his role in a 1972 murder was commuted by Weld in 1995 but who was later found to have lied about his Vietnam War record and sent back to prison. “Clearly a mistake was made there, and I think it did have a chilling effect on subsequent governors.”

That approach has its share of advocates. Massachusetts-based victims rights group Community VOICES, for example, doesn’t support commutations, except possibly in cases where a victim’s family favors it. “To commute a sentence is just another slap in the face for them,” says the group’s president, Laurie Myers. The fact that a commutation doesn’t forgive the offense doesn’t matter to her. “You can say [prisoners] are not being forgiven, but if they are allowed to leave prison regardless of the sentence, that is a kind of forgiveness.”

When Deval Patrick took office in 2007, prisoner advocates hoped his experiences as a defense attorney and civil rights attorney in Bill Clinton’s Justice Department would lead him to visit the issue with fresh eyes. Indeed, the new guidelines he issued for commutation when he took office spelled out several instances where it would be warranted. Among them: a prisoner who had made “exceptional strides in self-development”; one who had previously suffered abuse at the hands of the victim; and one who was given a sentence deemed unfair in relation to “equally culpable and similarly situated defendants.” More than two years later, however, he’s yet to find anyone worthy of those strictures, including one very high-profile case that crossed his desk.

rnold King was flying high on booze and weed when he shot a young political worker named John Labanara at point-blank range during a botched robbery in downtown Boston in 1971. Despite the brutality of his crime, many say King, sentenced to life without parole, has clearly changed over his nearly 38 years in prison. He completed at least 25 furloughs (the state no longer grants those) and has earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, written numerous newspaper articles, and counseled youths.

Appearing before the pardon advisory board, which is also the parole board, for the fourth time in October 2007 (it was the sixth time he was applying overall), he made a passionate case for his rehabilitation. He was supported by two Boston city councilors and several state representatives, as well as Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree and Boston Foundation chairman the Rev. Ray Hammond.

Lynne Labanara, the sister-in-law of the victim, disagreed. “I don’t feel that Mr. King has changed but is working to change his image to the public,” she said. Nevertheless, the advisory board unanimously recommended that the governor commute his sentence. About a year later, Patrick denied the request, lauding King for helping young people but describing his disciplinary record as “far from exemplary.”

In the hearing, King was criticized for two minor violations of prison rules: sending a birthday card and a letter to the home address of a teacher in a prison program. King’s supporters were flummoxed. “If Arnie King can’t be released, it’s hard to imagine anyone would reasonably meet the guidelines,” Ogletree says. Though disappointed by the decision, Ogletree hopes Patrick will change over time. “At some point you have to take risks,” he says, “to show your independence to be unbought and unbossed.”

Kimberly Haberlin, Patrick’s deputy press secretary, says in a statement that the guidelines the governor has established “are comprehensive and rigorous and ensure that decisions are made based on the facts and merits -- not the politics -- surrounding each case.”

Despite the focus on the governor’s role in these cases, most petitions never even reach his office; they are denied without a hearing by the parole board, which has for years been dominated by law enforcement and corrections officials. During the 1970s and ’80s, the board was more diverse, containing social workers, psychologists, and ministers, says Patty Garin, a Boston attorney who deals frequently with the board. In her view, these were people who had the ability to accurately predict when offenders had gotten beyond their crimes. “This parole board looks at its job as finding reasons to keep people locked up,” she says. “They rely on behavior that happened 30 years ago, as opposed to what happened in the last 10 years.”

Patrick has done little to change the composition of the seven-seat board; his first appointment was Mark Conrad, a former police officer who served as his driver during his gubernatorial campaign. (Conrad, now chairman of the board, declined to be interviewed.) After outrage from social workers and several state legislators, Patrick’s next appointee was a psychologist, Leticia Munoz. However, Patrick has allowed two members, both former probation officers appointed by Romney, to continue to serve despite the expiration of their terms and has neglected to fill a vacancy on the board for nearly two years. (A second vacancy occurred late last month.) Another Romney appointee, a former deputy county sheriff and probation officer, fills out the current panel.

Meanwhile, in the last five years, the board has denied more than 200 petitions without a single hearing other than those for King. One of those turned down was that of James Costello, now 43, who is serving life without parole for a home-invasion robbery and murder of an elderly neighbor when he was 15. Costello was tried as an adult and found guilty of first-degree murder when his two older accomplices testified against him. Not known at the time, however, was that Costello had been molested for years by John Geoghan, the defrocked priest. Costello’s lawyer, Helen Holcomb, argues that had that information been known at the time, Costello would have been tried as a juvenile and likely be free now. But Costello has been denied even a hearing by the parole board, which noted his strides in self-development are “remarkable” but do not rise to the level of “exceptional.”

Costello is hardly the only inmate in Massachusetts serving life for crimes committed as a juvenile. The state has been more aggressive than its neighbors in sentencing juveniles to life without parole. According to Lia Monahon, a lawyer and a former fellow at the Children’s Law Center in Lynn, there are 57 now in prison in Massachusetts compared with nine in Connecticut, three in New Hampshire, two in Rhode Island, and zero in New York, New Jersey, Maine, and Vermont. In the early 1980s,

Massachusetts’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled that life imprisonment was not “cruel or unusual” punishment for juveniles, since commutation was always possible. “I doubt seriously that the court would assert that” at this point, says Monahon. Yet, she says, adolescent psychologists and neuroscientists alike have attested to the capacity that young people have for change -- the exact criterion for commutation. They are simply not done developing when these juvenile offenses occur, says Monahon. “You can’t decide when someone is 14 or 15 or 16 or, in Donovan’s case, 17, that they are irredeemable.”

In Donovan’s case, he has hardly been a model prisoner. His record lists 30 disciplinary tickets, including several for fights with inmates and one for possessing a crude weapon. In addition, he has done two stints in solitary for violent behavior. Donovan defends his record by saying it’s impossible to stay out of trouble at MCI-Cedar Junction in Walpole -- the state’s maximum security prison, where he was assigned his first 10 years. His first stint in solitary, for two years, was for participating in a vicious, racially motivated brawl in which he says he was forced to defend himself from attack. His second -- for four years -- was for assaulting a guard, an act for which Donovan was later cleared by a Norfolk County jury, after arguing he acted in self-defense.

On the other hand, Donovan has earned a reputation for defusing tension. One family friend says that when she came to visit him, a corrections officer jokingly referred to him by his prison nickname, “Joe Jesus,” for his penchant for talking friends out of violence. In one incident, he tried to talk down a violent inmate drunk on contraband liquor, holding him against the bars while a guard escaped from the cell, according to reports from two guards.

Whatever his record in prison, it’s the disparity in sentencing for his crime that presents the most compelling case for commutation -- even to the victim’s family. In an e-mail to a Donovan supporter, Dan-Jarle Raustein, the victim’s brother, wrote, “I am and have believed from the beginning, that the ‘life without parole’ sentence was way too harsh. I am in favor of a release if [Joe] can show that he is ready to face the community.” After Donovan wrote the family, Yngve Raustein’s mother, Inghild, wrote to that same supporter, saying, “I fully agree . . . he now should be given a new chance.”

Retired judge Robert Barton also says the punishment was excessive. “I haven’t stayed up nights worrying about Joseph Donovan and that trial,” says Barton, a 22-year veteran of murder trials in Superior Court. But, he says, “seeing what has happened over the past 15 years, it seems unfair and inequitable that someone should have to spend his life in jail when you look at what happened to his colleagues.”

Carolyn Butterworth, a Newton resident who served as a juror in the trial, believes the wrong sentence was delivered. For her, the sticking point was the felony murder rule -- if the jury found Donovan guilty of armed robbery, they had to convict him of first-degree murder as well. There was some doubt at the trial, however, about how much Donovan actually participated in the robbery, and that doubt has only grown over time.

At the trial, codefendant Alfredo Velez testified that Shon McHugh (who’s currently on trial in Virginia on drug trafficking charges) showed Donovan the knife before the three teens met the MIT students and that afterward Donovan was waving around $30 in cash, the amount held in Raustein’s wallet. The two assertions were enough to establish that Donovan participated in and benefited from a premeditated armed robbery. Velez’s original statement to police, however, contained neither piece of information.

Now working as a residential remodeler in Texas, Velez clearly remembers specific details about the night, but he says he doesn’t recall whether Donovan saw the knife before the robbery or whether he had the cash afterward. “I don’t remember anyone waving money in the air,” he says. “I really don’t.” Despite the questions about the crime, Donovan’s lawyer, Ingrid Martin, is emphatic that the commutation request isn’t a retrial of the case but that the central issue is the severity of the sentence.

When Donovan talks about the crime itself, his soft voice gets even softer. “I was the guy who made the first bad decision,” he says. “Maybe Shon would have killed someone else, maybe he wouldn’t have.” Regardless, “I’ll always feel responsibility for the choice I made.” Realistically, he doesn’t think he has much chance of succeeding in his commutation appeal, but he says that if he ever does get out, he won’t return. “I’ll flip burgers, I’ll sweep streets.”

The decision to release Donovan, or any prisoner, especially one convicted of murder, is a risky one. But at the core of any deliberation is a question much bigger than any single case: Does a society that often celebrates second chances benefit overall from taking that risk?

Ultimately, the answers rest in the lap of the governor. “You are never going to get the politics out of it,” Dukakis says. “There are safeguards out there, but someone has to make the decision, whether you like it or not.

“Governors have this authority,” he says, “and they’ve got to decide . . . where and when it ought to be used.”

Michael Blanding is a frequent contributor to the Globe Magazine. Send comments to magazine@globe.com
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/10/18/the_long_shadow_of_willie_horton/

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

October 12, 2009

The High Cost of Empty Prisons by Robert Gangi

Op-Ed Contributor: The High Cost of Empty Prisons
By ROBERT GANGI
New York Times: October 11, 2009

LAST Wednesday, changes to New York’s notorious Rockefeller drug laws went into effect, allowing judges to shorten the prison terms of some nonviolent offenders. This measure will further reduce New York’s prison population, which has already declined, in the past 10 years, from about 71,600 in 1999 to about 59,300 today. (The state’s crime rate also dropped substantially during that time.)

Nevertheless, mainly because of opposition from the correction officers’ union and politicians from the upstate areas where most of our correctional facilities are, the state has been slow to close prisons. It was not until earlier this year that policymakers in Albany, confronted with fiscal crisis, mustered the will to shut three prison camps and seven prison annexes — a total of about 2,250 prison beds — in a move that is expected to save $52 million over the next two years.

But the state could go further. The prison system still has more than 5,000 empty beds in 69 prisons. What’s more, there are other ways to lower the prison population. For starters, state lawmakers could repeal the Rockefeller mandatory sentencing provisions that remain on the books. They could also increase the number of participants on work release. In 1994, more than 27,000 people were in this time-tested program that helps them manage the transition back to their communities. Today, about 2,500 are enrolled.

In addition, the state could reduce the number of people — last year, more than 9,000 — who are returned to prison for technical parole violations like missing a meeting with an officer or breaking curfew. Most experts agree that for about half of these people it would be safer and smarter to enroll them in re-entry programs or provide more supervision. Also, more prisoners with good institutional records could be given parole. And eligibility for so-called merit time, which reduces prison terms for inmates who complete educational and other programs, could be expanded to people convicted of violent offenses many years ago.

Taken together, these actions could cut the state’s prison rolls by 5,000 to 10,000 more, enabling the governor and the legislature to close at least four prisons the size of Attica, which holds 2,100 inmates, or a greater number of smaller facilities.

After New York passed the Rockefeller drug laws in 1973, a mandatory sentencing movement swept the country, raising the nationwide prison population to nearly 2.4 million, from 300,000. This experiment in mass incarceration was a failure. There is no conclusive evidence that it enhanced public safety, and some research suggests that time in prison makes people more prone to violence. It wasted billions of dollars a year. And it has devastated the low-income minority communities where most of our prisoners come from.

New York can now help point criminal justice in a more sensible and constructive direction — and show other states how to save money — by downsizing its prison system.

Robert Gangi is the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a nonprofit organization that monitors prison conditions.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 12, 2009, on page A23 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/opinion/12gangi.html

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

October 01, 2009

MA: uvenile life-without-parole sentence too harsh, reports says Advocates seek Mass. law change

Juvenile life-without-parole sentence too harsh, reports says
Advocates seek Mass. law change
By Jonathan Saltzman
Globe Staff / September 30, 2009

Despite its liberal reputation, Massachusetts has one of the harshest laws in the country for sentencing murderers as young as 14 to life in prison without parole, and many of the 57 people serving such mandatory sentences are first-time offenders, according to an advocacy group that wants them to become eligible for parole.

The Children’s Law Center of Massachusetts, in what it said was the first comprehensive study of the 1996 law that resulted in such sentences for first-degree murder, found that a disproportionate percentage of the children locked up for the rest of their lives are black. Many of the offenders were convicted with adult codefendants, some of whom got milder sentences and have been freed.

The report, which is scheduled to be released today, followed a two-year review of most of the cases in which children ages 14, 15, and 16 were tried in adult court and sentenced to life. The study says that penalties for juvenile murderers were inadequate in the 1980s but that the Legislature went too far when it passed the current law in response to what the center describes as overblown fears of young super predators.

The group wants Governor Deval Patrick and the Legislature to change the law to at least make juveniles convicted of first-degree murder eligible for parole after 15 years, as is true for people convicted of second-degree murder.

“Life-without-parole sentences may be an appropriate response to some adult crimes, especially in a state like Massachusetts that does not impose the death penalty,’’ the 33-page report said. “But the current law treats youths as young as 14 exactly like adults, regardless of their age, past conduct, level of participation in the crime, personal background, and potential for rehabilitation.’’

Geline W. Williams, executive director of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said yesterday she could not comment on the report until she reads it. But, “There’s no question that there are some juveniles who commit absolutely horrific crimes and have absolutely horrific records before they commit the ultimate crime of murder,’’ she said.

The two state lawmakers who chair the joint Committee on the Judiciary, Representative Eugene L. O’Flaherty and Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, said they were willing to reexamine the 1996 law.

O’Flaherty said a few notorious crimes can often result in “legislative overreaction, and usually it takes a few years to see the unforeseen consequences of getting too tough, too quickly, and not being smart about getting tough.’’

Massachusetts is one of at least 39 states with youths serving sentences of life without parole; about 2,500 inmates around the country serve such sentences. But only Massachusetts and Connecticut give adult courts exclusive jurisdiction over murder cases against children as young as 14 and then impose a mandatory life-without-parole sentence for all first-degree murder convictions, regardless of the circumstances, the report said.

Several states are considering changing their laws to give youth offenders an opportunity to earn parole, in part because scientific research into the difference between the adolescent and adult brain shows that teenagers often cannot appreciate the consequences of their actions.

Last year, after citing similar neuroscientific evidence, Human Rights Watch called sentences of life without parole for juveniles “cruel, unfair, and unnecessary.’’

Massachusetts enacted the current law, partly in response to insufficient juvenile court sentences in the 1980s, when the harshest punishment for a juvenile who was not transferred to an adult court - even for murder - was incarceration until 21.

In the 1990s, a number of widely publicized juvenile murder cases prompted the Legislature to mandate that all juveniles charged with first- or second-degree murder be tried in adult court and that conviction for first-degree murder result in an automatic sentence of life without parole.

One of those cases involved Edward S. O’Brien, the 15-year-old who stabbed his best friend’s mother 98 times across the street from his Somerville home in 1995. After two years of hearings and intervention by the state’s highest court, O’Brien was tried as an adult and sentenced to life without parole.

The Children’s Law Center contends that crime rates do not justify such harsh sentences. Homicide rates for Massachusetts youth under 18 peaked in 1992.

Since 1998, the homicide rate among adolescents has been lower than it was 30 years ago.

The center, which reviewed in detail 46 of the 57 juvenile murderers serving life sentences without parole, said 41 percent had no prior record. Forty percent of the offenders had been convicted along with adult defendants, but many of the adults got lighter sentences.

“Frequently, the adults who are actually the primary actors [in the murders] and are in possession of the knowledge that matters are in a better position to offer information in exchange for better treatment from prosecutors,’’ said Lia Monahon, the lawyer for the center who wrote the report.

Blacks make up 47 percent of the juveniles sentenced to life without parole but account for less than 7 percent of children under 18 in Massachusetts, said the report. Monahon said the disparity could reflect bias in the criminal justice system.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/30/juvenile_life_without_parole_sentence_too_harsh_reports_says/?page=full
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

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

September 28, 2009

Supreme Court to consider life without parole for juveniles sentenced for non-murder convictions?

Supreme Court to consider juvenile 'lifers'
Does life without parole for minors who didn't kill constitute cruel and unusual punishment?
By David G. Savage
September 28, 2009

Reporting from Washington - Joe Sullivan was 13 years old when he and two older boys broke into a home, where they robbed and raped an elderly woman. After a one-day trial in 1989, Sullivan was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole.

Terrance Graham was 16 when he and two others robbed a restaurant. When he was arrested again a year later for a home break-in, a Florida judge said he was incorrigible. In 2005, Graham received a life term with no parole.

The two young convicts represent an American phenomenon, one the Supreme Court is set to reconsider in the fall term that opens Oct. 5. At issue is whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to imprison a minor until he or she dies when the crime does not involve murder.

According to Amnesty International, "The United States is the only country in the world that does not comply with the norm against imposing life-without-parole sentences on juveniles."

Nearly all of the estimated 2,500 U.S. prisoners serving life terms for juvenile crimes, the group said, were guilty either of murder or of participating in a crime that led to a homicide. But 109 inmates are serving life sentences for other crimes committed when they were younger than 18.

Sullivan's and Graham's lawyers do not claim the young men deserve to go free.

"We are not asking for Mr. Graham to be released any time soon," attorney Bryan Gowdy said. "We are asking the court to declare unconstitutional a sentence of life without parole for these crimes. It would be entirely different if Mr. Graham had a meaningful opportunity for parole."

The question will be an early test of whether Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a former prosecutor, will align herself with the court's tough-on-crime conservatives or join with its liberals to strike down prison policies perceived as going too far.

Sullivan’s and Graham’s cases will be heard in November. Many lawyers and prosecutors said that until the Supreme Court agreed this year to take up the issue, they were unaware of juveniles receiving such sentences.

Sullivan, now 33, has been in prison for 20 years. The Florida appeals court and the state Supreme Court refused to review his sentence. When his case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Florida Atty. Gen. Bill McCollum said the appeal should be dismissed on the grounds that it was too late to raise the issue of cruel and unusual punishment.

A lawyer for Graham has called his client's life sentence freakish and unfair. A second youth who participated in the restaurant robbery hit an employee with a club. He was later arrested for robbing a gas station and sentenced to three years in prison. He has since been released.

Florida leads the nation in sending teenagers to prison for life with no possible parole for crimes such as burglary, assault or rape. It has at least 77 such inmates. California and six other states also have at least one.

"This is a hidden group. They don't get a lot of attention because there was no homicide," said Paolo Annino, a law professor at Florida State University who has compiled national data on these prisoners.

California officials said they were unaware of having four such inmates until they checked their database at Annino's request. Two years ago, California joined many other states in prohibiting the sentencing of young offenders to life in prison.

But that measure did not affect inmates who had already been sentenced.

Annino and others point to two trends in the 1980s that led to juveniles serving life terms. First was the national move to abolish parole, reflecting fears that violent criminals could not be safely released. Second was the increased prosecution of young criminals as adults.

In defense of its life-in-prison policy, Florida's lawyers have pointed to several deadly attacks on European visitors carried out by young criminals.

These violent incidents were "threatening the state's bedrock tourism industry," Florida's lawyers said in the opening paragraph of their brief to the Supreme Court in the Graham case.

Pie chart on states imprisoning juveniles for crimes other than murder:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-preview28-2009sep28,0,1454652.story

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

September 12, 2009

Prison Comix by Jim Ridgeway

Prison Comix
September 5, 2009

With more and more older people going to prison there is a growing demand for educational materials to keep their minds alive and well amid the deadening atmosphere of the American correctional system—created in large part by government and supervised and informed by the judiciary. Not to mention the thousands upon thousands of young and middle-aged people whose “rehabilitation” has been cut short by the cruel sentencing laws.

There are all sorts of projects afoot in this area, but one is of special interest. It is called the Real Cost of Prisons, and is run by Lois Ahrens of Northampton, Mass., on a shoestring. You can get a feel for her work by obtaining the Real Cost of Prisons Comix book which includes three comics: Prison Town about the financing and placement of prisons and their effect on rural communities; Prisoners of the war on Drugs, a history of the war on drugs; and Prisoners of a hard Life,which includes stories of women trapped by mandatory sentencing. To me, this last book is the most telling. PM Press publishes the book at $12.95 a copy.

Ahrens got the idea of doing comic books,partly because she wanted to find a way of communicating with prisoners in a simple,direct way providing them especially up to date information and new research. She hit on the idea,in part from years of going to Mexico, and watching women engrossed in photo novellas while tending market stalls or sitting on park benches. Then trade unionists from South Africa gave her publications chock full of graphics, pictures and text that they were using to educate people in their campaign to stop privatization and in the fight against globalization. She also got ideas from “A Field Guide to the US Economy” by James Heintz and Nancy Foibre which also uses graphs, cartoons and ordinary language to explain the economy.

Because prisoners can’t ordinarily take advantage of the information that currently proliferates on the internet, comic books which speak to their lives and needs, are available and free, she says.

Comic books have been received by prisoners in every state prison system,every federal prison and numerous jails. Thousands more have been sent to prisoners through 13 Books through Bars organizations. We know that comic books are passed hand to hand by prisoners,since as soon as a set is sent to one prisoner,not a week passes before we begin receiving requests from other prisoners at that prison..One prisoner wrotethat he found one on a pew in the prison

Ahrens web site is an up to date resource on prison news.

http://unsilentgeneration.com/category/prisons-criminal-justice/

Posted by lois at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)

September 09, 2009

CA: Audit Faults CDC with Huge Systemic Problems Including the Cost of 3 Strikes

"Aside from the questions of inefficiency and fattened paychecks, the auditor noted that California's "three strikes" sentencing law adds billions to the state's corrections costs.
Because that law imposes longer-than-usual sentences on inmates who commit a third felony after two serious or violent prior offenses, the state must house and care for those inmates for years longer than would otherwise be the case.
Currently, a quarter of California's 150,000 inmates are serving "three strikes" sentences. The auditor found that if those inmates did not serve the longer-than-usual sentence, the state would save some $19.2 billion in future years."

Audit faults California prison system for failing to develop system to track rising costs
By Denis C. Theriault

09/08/2009
San Jose Mercury News
SACRAMENTO — As the debate grinds on in the Legislature about how best to slice $1.2 billion from California's crowded prison system, a scathing new audit faults the Corrections Department for its skyrocketing costs and for not doing enough to track the money it spends.

According to the report, released Tuesday, spending by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation jumped by nearly 32 percent from 2005 through 2008 — to almost $10 billion, a tenth of the state's operating fund — even though the inmate population actually decreased by several hundred inmates during that span.

"Corrections fails to track, maintain and use data that would allow it to more effectively monitor and manage its operations," State Auditor Elaine Howle wrote to lawmakers and the governor's office. She said that "lack of information" has prevented officials from keeping some costs in check.

It was unclear Tuesday how the report would affect the Legislature's ongoing efforts to trim the prisons budget. Cutting the budget, largely by releasing thousands of inmates, was a key piece of the weeks-long discussions that closed the state's $24 billion deficit this summer.

Efforts to send a reform package to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk have languished amid a dispute between the Senate and the Assembly over how many inmates to release. Neither side commented Tuesday on the auditor's findings.

In examining the cost increases, prison officials point to several factors, from sharp increases in pay and benefits for corrections officers to court-mandated spending on inmate health care.

But the report found several figures that were particularly eye-popping.

In 2007-08 alone, the department spent $431 million on overtime costs — which was still a cheaper alternative than hiring and training additional corrections officers to reduce the need for overtime.

Moreover, the report blasts the department for failing to employ a computer system that collects and tracks how factors like overtime and health care costs individually contribute to rising costs.

The report also found that the department was unable to track the $208 million it spent last year on job-skills and academic programs designed to keep inmates from returning to prison after their sentences are complete.

Aside from the questions of inefficiency and fattened paychecks, the auditor noted that California's "three strikes" sentencing law adds billions to the state's corrections costs.

Because that law imposes longer-than-usual sentences on inmates who commit a third felony after two serious or violent prior offenses, the state must house and care for those inmates for years longer than would otherwise be the case.

Currently, a quarter of California's 150,000 inmates are serving "three strikes" sentences. The auditor found that if those inmates did not serve the longer-than-usual sentence, the state would save some $19.2 billion in future years.

Corrections officials said they took the auditor's remarks "very seriously" and that two new computer systems are due to go online at all 33 of the department's prisons, camps and institutions over the next two years.

But officials also said that some of the costs — related to benefits for corrections officers and "three strikes" sentencing — are outside the department's control.

Voters have resisted efforts to soften the three- strikes law since it was enacted in 1994. And much of the increase in benefits stems from a labor agreement that then-Gov?. Gray Davis signed with the politically powerful California Correctional Peace Officers Association in 2001.

"We're not just sitting still," said David Lewis, the department's deputy director of fiscal services. Noting efforts to bring the department's computer systems "into the 21st century," he said, "these are things we've been working on for a long time."

Schwarzenegger's office on Tuesday praised the department's efforts to "address the inefficiencies pointed out in this audit, and we support their efforts to streamline functions and be more cost-effective."

The Senate last month approved an ambitious plan, backed by Schwarzenegger, that would have released 27,000 inmates this year, in part by offering home monitoring for inmates with less than a year to serve and providing for the supervised release of medically incapacitated inmates.

But the Assembly last week narrowly approved a scaled-back version of the plan that would release only 17,000 inmates next year.

Senate and Assembly leaders have been discussing how to bridge those differences before the current legislative session ends Friday, although the effort has taken a back seat to other issues.

That legislative dispute comes amid the backdrop of a federal court ruling last month that ordered the state to remove 40,000 inmates from its rolls because of chronic overcrowding and concerns about the quality of inmates' health care.

The Schwarzenegger administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay that ruling. But if that bid fails, the state has only until the end of next week to submit a plan that outlines the cuts.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_13294963

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

PA: Tyrone Werts and William Fultz First to Go Before Board of Parole After Federal Judge Ruling But Now Must Wait Again

This was sent to me Gale Muhammad of Women Who Never Give Up!.
Please send letters in support of Werts and Fultz can be sent to the Pennsylvania Board of pardons 333 Market St. 15th floor, Harrisburg PA 17126-0333. Below is the story in the Philadelphia Inquirer. A bio for Tyrone Werts is attached.
Thank you.

Lifers' commutation bids stalled Two Graterford inmates must wait until an appeal of a June ruling is decided.

By Michael Rubinkam
September 5, 2009
Associated Press
HARRISBURG - Two Graterford Prison inmates who have won plaudits for their decades-long efforts to reduce prison violence and counsel troubled youths will have to wait to hear whether their life sentences will be commuted.

The inmates, convicted Philadelphia murderers Tyrone Werts and William Fultz, were the first lifers to go before the state Board of Pardons since a federal judge decided that thousands of Pennsylvania inmates sentenced to life should have an easier path toward clemency.

U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo issued the ruling June 11 in a lawsuit seeking to overturn a 1997 state constitutional amendment that toughened commutation standards for lifers. The pardons board has appealed the ruling, leading to yesterday's vote to delay a clemency decision for Werts and Fultz until the appeal is decided.

The inmates' supporters, who had anticipated that the board would vote to recommend commutation to the governor, said they were stunned and disappointed.

"This is heartbreaking. This is rough. I can't believe it," said the Rev. Paul Werts, who presented his brother's case.

The 1997 amendment requires that inmates sentenced to life must receive a unanimous vote of the five-member pardons board before the governor may consider their commutation request. Before then, only a majority vote was needed.

Caputo ruled that the pardons board may not apply the tougher 1997 standard to inmates who committed their crimes before 1997. The decision - the latest ruling in the Pennsylvania Prison Society's 12-year-old lawsuit - could affect more than 3,000 of the state's 4,868 lifers.

The pardons board has asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to overturn the lower court ruling. The board asked Caputo to stay his decision while the appeal is heard, but Caputo did not act on the request in time for the hearing.

Lt. Gov. Joe Scarnati, the pardon board's chairman, said yesterday that the board had little choice but to delay decisions on Werts and Fultz.

"We're not clear if we need three votes or a unanimous vote in order to pardon these two lifers. And to take a vote that may conflict with a court ruling weeks down the road, I think, would be inappropriate," he said.

Supporters of the amendment say the murderers who make up Pennsylvania's lifer population should face a high hurdle to freedom. Michael Piecuch, executive director of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, said clemency is "not a right. It's not an entitlement."

Werts, 57, was convicted of second-degree murder in 1975 for his role in a slaying during a robbery at a speakeasy. Fultz, also 57, was convicted of first-degree murder in 1975 in the fatal shooting of a teenager. Neither was the triggerman, and both rejected plea deals that would have gotten them out of prison decades ago.

Werts and Fultz are considered model inmates at Graterford, where they have counseled at-risk teenagers and led efforts to reduce recidivism rates. Werts once prevented the rape of a prison teacher, while Fultz risked his life to deliver medicine to a prison staffer during a 1981 hostage crisis at Graterford.

Calling Werts and Fultz "two remarkable men," board member Russell A. Walsh nevertheless recommended that the board postpone its decision.

The vote was unanimous.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/57182477.html

Posted by lois at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)

September 04, 2009

VA: Some prisoners elibible for parole held longer than guidelines suggest

Some inmates eligible for parole held longer than guidelines suggest
By Frank Green
September 3, 2009
Richmond Times Dispatch

Some 706 parole-eligible inmates are being been held longer in Virginia prisons, at $24,332 each per year, than recommended under the current no-parole sentencing guidelines.

In a report to the General Assembly on Tuesday, the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission also found that as of the end of last year, there were 575 prison inmates eligible for geriatric release.

However, the report also found that of the parole-eligible inmates still in prison, 88 percent were convicted of violent crimes and nearly 80 percent have not yet served longer than stipulated under the sentencing guidelines.

Inmates who committed crimes before Jan. 1, 1995, are eligible for parole. Those who committed crimes on or after that date are not -- they are sentenced under guidelines based, in part, on the terms actually served by inmates under the old parole system.

Inmates and advocates have complained that because of low parole grant rates, many parole-eligible inmates are being held in prison longer than if they had been sentenced under what are widely perceived to be the tougher, nonparole guidelines.

Jean Auldridge, president of Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants-Virginia, said the report "gives us hard data that shows a significant number of prisoners have served longer than the recommendations in the sentencing guidelines."

She said her group had suspected as much and had been urging such a study.

But Helen Fahey, the parole board chairwoman, assisted in the study and said the findings were not surprising.

She said judges sentence within the guidelines in 80 percent of all cases, but when judges impose sentences tougher than recommended by the guidelines, the reasons they give are similar to the concerns of the parole board when it considers releases, she said.

State Del. David B. Albo, R-Fairfax, a lawyer, said that when an attorney reached a plea deal with prosecutors under the old parole law, everyone had an idea of how long someone actually would serve for a given sentence. Ten years might really mean three, he said.

But, he added, when parole ended for new crimes and the parole board's grant rate remained low, there was some concern some of the "old law" inmates "were serving a lot more time than anybody ever intended."

"What the study was looking at was how many people were serving more had they pled under the sentencing guidelines," said Albo, vice chairman of the Virginia State Crime Commission.

State Sen. Janet D. Howell, D-Fairfax and co-chair of the Virginia State Crime Commission, said a primary reason for seeking the study is "to save every dime we can, consistent with public safety." The state's budget crisis has had officials consider, among other things, the early release of some nonviolent offenders.

Howell said yesterday that she only has skimmed the report and said it will be studied closely by lawmakers.

The study found 3,735 inmates among the state's roughly 38,000 prisoners who are serving time only for parole-eligible crimes (some are in prison under both oldand new-law sentences). The commission was able to assign sentencing-guideline scores to 3,341 of them.

However, the commission report said that not all of the relevant factors could be taken into account. "For offenders serving an unusually long period of time in prison, there may be one or more aggravating circumstances not addressed by the guidelines," the report says.

For example, of the 80 parole-eligible drug offenders serving longer terms than would be required now, three out of four already had been revoked from parole at least once, and one-third had two or more parole revocations.

Other factors that could not be considered in the study included inmate behavior behind bars, victim input, or other crimes for which there are no sentencing guidelines.

Of the 706 parole-eligible inmates held longer than recommended under current guidelines, 58 were given life sentences; seven had two or more life sentences; 10 were sentenced to at least 100 years; and 10 have not reached their earliest parole eligibility date and so cannot yet be considered for parole.

Almost 300 of the 706 had served less than five years longer than guideline-recommended sentences; 246 had served five to 10 years; 125 more than 10 years; and 12 more than 20 years.

The geriatric-release provision was enacted as part of the 1994 reforms that included the end of parole and the creation of the guidelines. An inmate convicted of a noncapital felony who is at least 60 and has served 10 years; or 65, having served five years; is eligible.

However, Fahey said, "they are almost all violent criminals -- they're predominantly murderers and sex offenders. . . . They're not in there for stealing cars or writing bad checks."
http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/state_regional/article/PARO03_20090902-215805/290305/

Posted by lois at 07:17 PM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2009

ColorLines Review: The Real Cost of Prisons Comix: Vivid comics show the impacts of mass incarceration on communities of color

Issue #52, Sept/Oct 2009
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
By Jenna M. Lloyd
Vivid comics show the impacts of mass incarceration on communities of color.

September 2, 2009

Locking 2.3 million people behind bars is a vast social project. It takes work to hide the equivalent of a large US city in plain sight. The explanations served up on the nightly news and by tough-on-crime politicians graphically focus on violent crime, despite its decline. More prisons, they say, will create safe and drug free communities.

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix (PM Press), winner of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency’s PASS Award, asks whether the billions of dollars invested annually in mass incarceration delivers on these promises.

Hidden behind these fear-provoking images, the book documents the steep human costs exacted on individual health and freedom, family unity, and community well being. What else could be done with the social wealth and creativity now trapped into cycles of cage-building and neighborhood abandonment?

Through powerful graphics and a wealth of grim statistics The Real Cost of Prisons Comix depicts how the past 30 years of unprecedented prison growth have reshaped the landscape of our urban and rural communities. By showing the concrete work that goes into building and maintaining the prison-industrial complex—from the peddlers of fear to the parole officer—the book serves as a smart, accessible primer on the politics and economics driving prison expansion. Prisons are filled with people who have dreams, raise children, and belong to communities most will rejoin.

The RCPC shows visceral narratives of their lives and the collision of racism, poverty, sexism to trace the systematic ways in which mass incarceration builds on and exacerbates these powerful inequities. Most importantly, it suggests concrete alternatives that can help rebuild safe, healthy communities.

Shrinking the system becomes as important a harm reduction strategy as needle exchange and drug treatment.

Three accomplished comic artists collaborate with long time activists and draw on the work of dozens of researchers imprisoned people, and advocates, to examine one dimension of mass incarceration. Kevin Pyle’s "Prison Town: Paying the Price" shows how millions of dollars poured into moving people hours away from their homes fails to generate promised economic growth for struggling rural communities.

In "Prisoners and the War on Drugs," Sabrina Jones takes on racial disparities in drug laws and policing practices that result in African American and Latino people comprising 93% of those incarcerated in New York, and that lock up more drug users than dealers.

Susan Willmarth’s "Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children" examines how women are the fastest growing group of people being imprisoned. Most women are imprisoned for non-violent crimes, half of them drug offenses. But lifetime bans on welfare, public housing, and student loans for felony drug convictions only exacerbate already serious problems of poverty, racism, abuse, and drugs women face in their daily lives.

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix grew out of a popular education project Lois Ahrens began in 2000. Since the first printing in 2005, over 115,000 copies have been distributed free of charge, and project’s website receives over 30,000 page views each month. One of the great things about this book as an organizing tool is that it includes letters from readers of the comic books—imprisoned people, political organizers, policy makers, teachers, social service providers—which give us a sense of how resonant these comics have been, and all of the ways they have been put to work on the ground.


The economic depression and fiscal crises facing so many states make the alternatives to mass incarceration the book outlines all the more timely. But it’s also a time when the government is pouring even more money into locking up immigrants. Doing away with prisons isn’t just an issue of pure economics, but will also require confronting the racism, economic inequalities, and sexism that work to fuel the futureless future that they represent.

Larson, a man who is imprisoned in Sing Sing, reminds us: “Anyone planning a prison they’re not going to build for ten or fifteen years is planning for a child, planning prison for somebody who’s a child right now.” What dreams are never realized when billions go to jails and prisons instead of to rebuilding our decimated cities? The Real Cost of Prisons Comix gives us a solid place to begin building the healthy, safe, and free futures we want.

Jenna M. Loyd is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York. She is also co-editing a collection, Beyond Walls and Cages, that analyzes the connections between US migration policy and mass incarceration, and activist efforts to the brutalities of both systems. She can be reached at jloyd@gc.cuny.edu.
http://colorlines.com/article.php?ID=598

Posted by lois at 03:42 PM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2009

Coalition for Prisoners' Rights Newsletter now can be found on the Real Cost of Prisons website

As many of you know, the C.P.R. newsletter was published for 34 years. In June 2009, they mailed an announcement to their 9,100 subscribers ... almost all of whom are prisoners saying the could no longer afford to keep printing and sending the newsletter. The Real Cost of Prisons believes in the work of the C.P.R. To reach out to families, friends, allies of prisoners, we will post the C.P.R. Newsletters in PDF format beginning with July, 2009. Each month, we will post a new newsletter. The Newsletter is now 2 pages. We encourage you to download the newsletter and send it to prisoners so that they will continue to receive this important source of information and inspiration for organizing that the Newsletter provides.
http://www.realcostofprisons.org/coalition.html

Posted by lois at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)

August 27, 2009

Editorial NY Times: California Is Failing the Prison Test

Editorial
California Is Failing the Prison Test
Published: August 26, 2009- NY Times

The California Legislature has failed several times to change backward sentencing and parole policies that keep the state’s prisons dangerously overcrowded with too many minor offenders sent to jail for too long. These failures, which have driven up corrections costs by about 50 percent in less than a decade, came home to roost earlier this month, when a federal court ordered the state to cut the prison population significantly. Days later, an ominous riot broke out in the men’s prison in Chino.

The time for ducking this issue has clearly passed, but a reform plan approved by the State Senate after being championed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in danger of being gutted in the Assembly. Democratic lawmakers who should know better are running scared of the prison guards’ union and of being labeled “soft on crime.”

The heart of the problem is California’s poorly designed parole system. A vast majority of states use parole to supervise serious offenders who require close monitoring. California has historically put just about everyone on parole. According to a federally backed study released last year, more people are sent to prison in California by parole officers than by the courts, and nearly half of those people go back on technical violations like missed appointments and failed drug tests.

The reform package that passed in the Senate would allow the state to focus parole efforts on serious offenders and end the costly practice of cycling people back to jail for technical violations. Under another provision, low-risk offenders like the elderly and the infirm could be removed from costly medical care in prison and sent to alternative custody nursing homes, where they would be monitored with electronic ankle bracelets. Low-risk inmates who completed college degrees or vocational programs would earn credits shortening their sentences.

This bill should have easily passed in the Assembly, which has a Democratic majority supposedly in favor of reform. But the Democrats, many of whom are running for other offices, are clearly fearful of even taking a vote that would allow a sick, 80-year-old inmate to spend what remains of his life in a nursing home wearing an ankle bracelet.

This is a low moment for Democrats in California. Those who put their parochial career interests ahead of the public good deserve to be called to account for it.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 27, 2009, on page A30 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/opinion/27thu2.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 02:11 PM | Comments (0)

August 26, 2009

Fed court says excluding people convicted of violent crimes from early release programs not valid

Exclusion policy on early prison release ruled invalid
An appeals panel says the Federal Bureau of Prisons has not adequately explained why inmates who have committed murder, rape and other violent crimes can't participate in the program.
By Carol J. Williams- LA Times
August 26, 2009
A Federal Bureau of Prisons policy excluding murderers, rapists and others with violent crimes on their record from an early-release program is invalid because authorities have failed to explain why those inmates are ineligible, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the prison administration to reconsider the application for sentence reduction from Jerry Crickon, a federal prisoner in a Long Beach halfway house due for release in six months.

Crickon, convicted of drug offenses in 2000, was offered a drug rehabilitation program two years ago but was told that, because of a 1970 voluntary manslaughter conviction, he wasn't eligible for the one-year sentence reduction other inmates could get.

Lawyers for prisoners and the federal government were still analyzing Tuesday's decision and couldn't immediately say how broadly it might affect early-release program eligibility for the federal incarceration network holding about 207,000 prisoners nationwide.

In addition to the federal inmates, California alone imprisons 170,000 people in facilities crammed with twice their designed capacity. Earlier this month a three-judge federal court panel ordered the state to cut its inmate population about 25% over the next two years.

"We think with prison overcrowding being what it is, the Bureau of Prisons should be allowing the maximum statutory ability for people to obtain small sentence reductions for successful completion of an excellent rehabilitative program," said Stephen R. Sady, the chief deputy federal public defender who represented Crickon in the case.

Sandra Hijar, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons' Western region, said legal authorities were still reviewing the ruling.

Bureau of Prison rules for sentence-reduction incentive programs categorically exclude inmates with prior convictions for homicide, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

The 9th Circuit panel didn't say the bureau couldn't make such exclusions, just that the bureau hadn't adequately explained its rationale for doing so. Under the federal Administrative Procedures Act, government agencies are required to justify their rules and procedures, then offer the public an opportunity to comment or make proposals.

The 9th Circuit panel included two appointees of President Clinton, Circuit Judges Richard A. Paez and Johnnie B. Rawlinson, and visiting U.S. District Judge Bruce S. Jenkins, named to the federal bench in Utah by President Carter.

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prisoner26-2009aug26,0,6023579.story

Posted by lois at 08:09 PM | Comments (0)

August 21, 2009

"The Unforgiven"

The Unforgiven
By Curtis Cartier
Santa Cruz News
Aug 20, 2009

It’s a sweltering day in Tracy. July behind bars at Deuel Vocational Institution smells like sweat, bleach and old orange peels. Clifford Bair, a white-haired, goateed first-degree murderer—a lifer—perches under a barred window’s light and talks about the day 25 years ago in Bodega Bay when he tied up Theresa Aiken and Rose Fomasi with electrical wire and left them to die.

“I’d been up for three days drinking and doing speed,” says the 64-year-old convict. “After I tied her up, I couldn’t believe it but I found her keys in a bowl by the door. I took her car and I left. All I had wanted was to take her car. I remember the detective telling me Miss Aiken had died in the night. I wanted to die too. I still do.”

To hear him tell it, many decisions and circumstances led his younger self—strung-out, self-loathing and addicted to meth—to the front door of the 86-year-old Aiken, the “Mother of Bodega Bay,” that day in 1984. And since then, many more decisions have been made by Inmate Bair and by the state institutions charged with “correcting and rehabilitating” him.

Bair, according to DVI spokesman Lt. Gilbert Valenzuela, is like a majority of lifers over 40 years old: “one of the good ones.” Enrolled in classes, active in a prison-based job, he’s padded his résumé for 25 years in hopes of wresting freedom from California’s Board of Parole Hearings. Yet despite his efforts at rehabilitation, he has little chance of becoming a free man.

That’s because the Board grants parole to fewer than 1 percent of lifers who are eligible, and those that are paroled are usually denied later by the governor.

Denying parole to an eligible inmate without proving that they’ve shown continued signs of criminal behavior, however, is a direct violation of state law. And at a time when 2.3 million American adults are incarcerated and California is leading the way with 170,000 of them, the state’s prison system is at a breaking point and many, including some here on the Central Coast, are pushing for major reforms to the parole process that’s keeping lifers doing life.

The Rising Tide

In America, one in 10 prison inmates are serving a life sentence. In California, it’s one in five. They’ve come for a handful of different reasons: they’ve killed, kidnapped or raped. They’ve committed treason or sponsored terrorism. They’ve robbed or dealt drugs three times and copped a “three strikes” life sentence. They’ve even racked up additional charges while incarcerated. They are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American—though in California, blacks and Latinos make up 68 percent of lifers. They’re 90 years old or 14—adolescents tried as adults.

Though many are hardened criminals, for some the difference between a cell door and a white picket fence is nothing more than an angry moment and a weapon.

Santa Cruz County District Attorney Bob Lee has sought life sentences for dozens of criminals. He, like many law enforcement officials, believes “life is life,” and that murderers like Bair should not be judged on their decisions in prison but on the ones that got them there.

“Crimes like murder are the most antisocial acts a person can commit,” Lee says. “People shouldn’t be thinking about the criminals who kill and kidnap, but about the victims that will never come back, and their families who have to live without their loved ones forever.”

Lee is far from alone. Californians typically vote in favor of almost every proposed law that imposes tougher sentences for convicts. Just last year, voters passed Proposition 9, which allows the BPH to extend the time a lifer can go between hearings from one year to as many as 15 years. Many a politician has launched a career campaigning from a “tough on crime” platform. Many others have lost it when the public sensed softness.

Former California Gov. Gray Davis famously said that the only way a murderer would leave prison on his watch was “in a pine box.” He allowed parole for a mere eight convicts during his four years in office. Gov. Schwarzenegger tried to reverse this policy and in his first year released 72 lifers. After a vicious backlash from victims rights groups, however, he scaled back the releases to about 30 per year.

Today, with California’s prisons operating at 200 percent capacity and a broken health care system killing an inmate a week, the state is facing orders from a federal panel of judges to cut down its inmate population by 43,000 prisoners in the next two years. The panel went so far as to label the prisons “unconstitutional” due to negligent health care that made conditions “cruel and unusual.”

An excerpt from the Aug. 4 ruling reads: “The massive 750 percent increase in the California prison population since the mid-1970s is the result of political decisions made over three decades, including the shift to inflexible determinate sentencing and the passage of harsh mandatory minimum and three-strikes laws, as well as the state’s counterproductive parole system.”

It will be low-level violent, nonviolent and drug offenders who will likely benefit most from the orders to cut prison populations. Yet with California’s nation-topping 70 percent recidivism rate, most, before long, will end up right back in prison. In contrast, recidivism rate for lifers who are paroled drops to about 20 percent.

Government orders and statistics alone, however, won’t fix the state’s broken system. And there are few people, and very few important people, who are willing to go to bat for a convicted criminal—much less a lifer.

The Few in Their Corner

Some, however, do stand up for lifers. Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez is one of them. A short, soft-spoken Hispanic man, usually seen in his trademark dark beret and “locs” style sunglasses, he’s best known for founding the Santa Cruz–based Latino community outreach group Barrios Unidos. Born to a migrant farmworker family and drafted by the Army to fight in the Vietnam War, Alejandrez came back from combat in 1971 hooked on heroin and to a family deeply entrenched in gangs, drugs and violence. Yet even as he weaned himself from drugs, he began to speak out for peace—both on the streets and in the prisons. And since BU launched in 1977, he’s been on hand for some of the most important moments in California’s Latino story. Now, along with reaching out to troubled youth, he’s made the plight of the lifers of DVI, Solano, Vacaville, Soledad, Pleasant Valley and Jamestown one of his causes.

“I just want people to see [lifers] as people. People who made mistakes, but people who can change as well,” says Alejandrez. “So many of them have done everything they can to help themselves and rehabilitate. But none of that seems to matter, because the parole boards just say, ‘Great work, but your crime was too severe.’”

On this blistering day at DVI, he joins John Brown Childs, Eric Cummins, Angela Irvine and Jessica Roa, a team of professors, activists, authors and social workers, for a class on “transcommunal cooperation” and an organized debate among inmates on the parole priorities of nonviolent drug offenders versus parole-eligible lifers.

“When the governor was given the power to review decisions made by the parole board, you can see that parole approvals essentially stopped,” says inmate Michael DeVries, who, like many long-term inmates, has become a legal expert on issues surrounding his case. “This is a case of ex post facto, which means laws were passed after the fact that I, and a lot of other people I see in this room, committed their crimes. I liken it to a sports analogy of moving the goal post.”

The debate continues inside the DVI community room for another hour. The lifers, most sporting reading glasses, hold handwritten notes in their gnarled hands and speak in the slow, measured cadence of men in their 50s and 60s. The crude tattoos of Virgin Marys, tear drops and number 13’s that adorn some of their exposed forearms have faded over time into cloudy blotches of black and navy blue. The researchers jot endlessly in their notebooks, attention rapt on the real life social experiment playing out before them. The discourse is civil, and no one interrupts or speaks out of turn. Time, as one lifer explains, is something each has in abundance, and patience, he says, “is something you can’t help but learn on a life sentence.”

Elsewhere in prison, younger inmates with sharper and more colorful tattoos don’t typically share the same serenity. Curses ring out from scattered cells as the seemingly ever-shirtless offenders notice a camera-wielding visitor and either offer menacing stares to the lens or swear and retreat out of view. The bleach and orange peel smell extends to almost every corner of the prison, and where walls aren’t coated in layers of drab gray paint so thick they’re soft to the touch, they’re painted in screaming orange paint with messages like “no warning shots fired in this area.”

Back in the community room, the debating inmates, having been broken up into mixed groups of whites, Hispanics and blacks, are finishing their debate. The class, nearing the end of its second year, was not an idea hatched in social academia, but by the inmates themselves—a fact that astounds many of the researchers, given the hardened racial lines that exist in every prison in America. As the class ends, however, any thoughts of freedom are dashed as the inmates are herded off, strip-searched and sent back to their cells.

“Single file,” a guard says sternly. “You know the drill.”

Lest We Forget

Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak knows a thing or two about the prospect of paroling lifers. Like DA Bob Lee, he believes a crime like murder warrants a lifetime behind bars, and he routinely sends letters to the BPH opposing parole for lifers originally charged in Santa Cruz County.

“I think that if we entertain the idea of paroling folks that have committed murder, then we are discounting any feeling or compassion for the victims of the crime and their families,” he says.

“I realize the prisons are overcrowded, I just don’t think that the solution to our incarceration issues and budget woes is to look at these lifers and release them from custody.”

A single murder creates a network of grieving relatives and friends, much like a stone’s ripple effect when it’s thrown into a lake. Gene Cervantes lost two close cousins in 2005 in what Fresno authorities called the “Tarpey Village murders.” For him, the thought that good behavior and efforts at rehabilitation could free his cousin’s killers is too much to bear.
“It was a cold-blooded murder, and I hope the men responsible never see the light of day,” says Cervantes, who’s still waiting to see the two men who’ve been arrested and charged with the murders have their day in court. “All these lefties looking to take pity on these prisoners need to face the facts.”

Cervantes spent 29 years working as a classification staff representative with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. There, he says, he saw firsthand the inability of the modern criminal to rehabilitate and live in society. Inmates, he says, will say anything to be released. They will apologize, take classes, write letters and kick drugs only when they think it will give them a shot at freedom.

“When I read about the federal judges telling the CDCR to come up with a plan to release inmates, I just thought, ‘What a joke,” he says. “They make these decisions from their stupid ivory towers and they have no idea what’s actually going on in the prisons. I’ve been there. Yes, there are problems; the health care is as useless as a three-dollar bill. But letting prisoners go is a terrible idea.”

Wowak agrees that early releases in any fashion are a bad policy. He warns that without extra transitional support structures for released inmates, communities all over the state could see a spike in crime.

“I know that releasing anyone without a good form of rehab program is very risky,” says the sheriff. “This will be a stop-gap response that may save some money for the state, but local counties like Santa Cruz County will likely see an influx of people in the jails when these inmates reoffend.”

Then and Now

Nixon was president, disco was the new rage and gas was 40 cents a gallon when Paul Hyde came to prison in 1973. Having killed a shoe store owner with a stray bullet during a gang-related gunfight in Los Angeles, he was handed a life sentence for first-degree murder. Hyde became eligible for parole in 1980. Since then, despite a relatively clean discipline record and an extensive rehabilitation resume, he’s been denied parole 22 times.

“I was 19 years old when they told me I was going to prison for life,” says Hyde, a 55-year-old, tall, clean-cut black man with a shaky voice and watery eyes. “I’ll never get over taking someone’s life, and the man I killed will never come back. That’s something I can’t change. Now I have 14 trades, I have my [high school] diploma, I have 83 college units. I’ve put myself in every possible program I can, but every time, they just tell me, ‘Sorry, but your crime was too bad.’”

Denying a parole applicant solely on the basis of the original crime, however, is illegal under California law. As mandated by the Dannenberg California Supreme Court Decision of 2005, aspects of rehabilitation must weigh into a parole board’s decision. Though not limited to them, the five major factors involved in a parole decision are listed by the BPH as: “counseling reports, behavior in prison, vocational and educational accomplishments, involvement in self help therapy, and parole plans.” The 2005 ruling also says that any lifer who is denied parole based on his or her original crime must be proven to have “aggravated facts” beyond the crime that makes him or her a continuing threat to society.

Evidence suggests that the stingy approval rates handed down by the BPH are no accident. During Hyde’s early days in the ’70s, parole boards were made up of not only prison and law enforcement officials but teachers, doctors and others representing the “community at large.” Then, almost every felon received an indeterminate sentence and was released when the parole board deemed they were ready. Now, California’s 12-person BPH boasts a membership made up entirely of current and former law enforcement officials. All are registered Republicans.

“It’s a fixed game,” says Hyde. “I get told I’m doing all the right things, so why am I not suitable for parole?”

Hyde, like nearly every lifer interviewed by Santa Cruz Weekly, says he gets by on one thing: hope. Hope that his classes and in-prison work efforts will catch the eye of BPH commissioners. Hope that, if he’s released, someone will give him a job. And hope that both he and the family of the man he killed will find resolution in the price he’s paid behind bars.

But the hope that their parole hearings will end in any other way than a flat denial seems far-fetched. For lifers like Hyde, no matter how many steps they take toward rehabilitation, the heinousness of their original crime is always the bottom line in their denial reports.

Life Row

Documents provided by inmates and by the CDCR show that lifers are often denied parole with none of the “aggravated facts” required under the Dannenberg legal precedent.

In Bair’s case, one parole decision transcript thanks him for “a number of self help programming ... substance abuse, alternatives to violence, AA, anger management (classes) ... and a plumbing (and welding) vocational work programs,” before it goes on to deny him because “the prisoner committed the offense in an especially cruel manner.”

Hyde’s case is similar. Documents show dozens of classes taken, certificates earned and jobs maintained. Getting caught with a dagger 20 years ago is a stain on his in-custody record, but he hopes the board will overlook it on account of his two decades of good behavior and make his upcoming hearing lucky number 23.

“When I came to prison I had a third-grade education. I couldn’t even run a carwash,” says Hyde. “Now I run millions of dollars’ worth of machinery every day in the electrostatic powder coating shop. I’m totally employable. I’m a changed man and I think I deserve a chance to show it.”

A month after the organized debate at DVI over who deserves parole, the lifer class is together once again on a slightly cooler day—this time for a graduation celebration. Chuckles fill the air, smiles abound and hugs are the preferred greeting as the aging inmates receive certificates of completion and feast on cake and shrimp cocktail brought in by Alejandrez and other volunteers. For class teachers like John Brown Childs, an author and lecturer of sociology at UC–Santa Cruz, the completion of the course is a “living example of positive human potential.”

“I liken what I see in these men to a Zen riddle,” says Childs. “It says, ‘I saw a slave, but then I realized it was actually a person held in slavery.’ It means you can look at someone and think you know exactly what they represent, but you have to look at them from a different point of view to really understand who they are and what’s in their hearts.”
Whether Californians consciously care about what’s in the hearts of their convicts or not, there is no question that they are heavily invested in just that. With $9.8 billion in state funds set aside for the CDCR in the next year, prison spending makes up 10 percent of California’s budget, even after $1.2 billion in emergency cuts mandated in this year’s slashed state budget.

The mood inside DVI suggests that the inmates feel the change coming as well. Most of them chatter about rumors that friends may be going home or that appeals may be accepted. Alejandrez feels it too. While agreeing with inmates that things may be looking up, he cautions them to stay vigilant.

“The state has got to do something,” he says. “They’ve finally dug themselves so far down that they have to start climbing back out. I just hope they take a look at guys like these lifers—people who have earned a right to a second chance.”

As the graduation ceremony ends and eager inmates dutifully collect the frosting dotted paper plates and soda cans into trash bags, prison spokesman Valenzuela takes the microphone to offer a test to the men.

“I have a challenge for you,” says the career guard. “I want to see you take the lessons you learned about working together and use them out in the yard.”

Most of the inmates agree that race relations in the prison yard will likely stay as segregated as they are now. Instead, each hopes they can use the skills in a more exotic location: outside the prison walls.

http://news.santacruz.com/2009/08/20/the_unforgiven

Posted by lois at 04:42 PM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2009

Nicholas Kristoff: Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?

Op-Ed Columnist : Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/opinion/20kristof.html?_r=1
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: August 19, 2009- NY Times

At a time when we Americans may abandon health care reform because it supposedly is “too expensive,” how is it that we can afford to imprison people like Curtis Wilkerson?

Mr. Wilkerson is serving a life sentence in California — for stealing a $2.50 pair of socks. As The Economist noted recently, he already had two offenses on his record (both for abetting robbery at age 19), and so the “three strikes” law resulted in a life sentence.

This is unjust, of course. But considering that California spends almost $49,000 annually per prison inmate, it’s also an extraordinary waste of money.

Astonishingly, many politicians seem to think that we should lead the world in prisons, not in health care or education. The United States is anomalous among industrialized countries in the high proportion of people we incarcerate; likewise, we stand out in the high proportion of people who have no medical care — and partly as a result, our health care outcomes such as life expectancy and infant mortality are unusually poor.

It’s time for a fundamental re-evaluation of the criminal justice system, as legislation sponsored by Senator Jim Webb has called for, so that we’re no longer squandering money that would be far better spent on education or health. Consider a few facts:

¶The United States incarcerates people at nearly five times the world average. Of those sentenced to state prisons, 82 percent were convicted of nonviolent crimes, according to one study.

¶California spends $216,000 annually on each inmate in the juvenile justice system. In contrast, it spends only $8,000 on each child attending the troubled Oakland public school system, according to the Urban Strategies Council.

¶For most of American history, we had incarceration rates similar to those in other countries. Then with the “war on drugs” and the focus on law and order in the 1970s, incarceration rates soared.

¶One in 10 black men ages 25 to 29 were imprisoned last year, partly because possession of crack cocaine (disproportionately used in black communities) draws sentences equivalent to having 100 times as much powder cocaine. Black men in the United States have a 32 percent chance of serving time in prison at some point in their lives, according to the Sentencing Project.

Look, there’s no doubt that many people in prison are cold-blooded monsters who deserve to be there. But over all, in a time of limited resources, we’re overinvesting in prisons and underinvesting in schools.

Indeed, education spending may reduce the need for incarceration. The evidence on this isn’t conclusive, but it’s noteworthy that graduates of the Perry Preschool program in Michigan, an intensive effort for disadvantaged children in the 1960s, were some 40 percent less likely to be arrested than those in a control group.

Above all, it’s time for a rethink of our drug policy. The point is not to surrender to narcotics, but to learn from our approach to both tobacco and alcohol. Over time, we have developed public health strategies that have been quite successful in reducing the harm from smoking and drinking.

If we want to try a public health approach to drugs, we could learn from Portugal. In 2001, it decriminalized the possession of all drugs for personal use. Ordinary drug users can still be required to participate in a treatment program, but they are no longer dispatched to jail.

“Decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal,” notes a report this year from the Cato Institute. It notes that drug use appears to be lower in Portugal than in most other European countries, and that Portuguese public opinion is strongly behind this approach.

A new United Nations study, World Drug Report 2009, commends the Portuguese experiment and urges countries to continue to pursue traffickers while largely avoiding imprisoning users. Instead, it suggests that users, particularly addicts, should get treatment.

Senator Webb has introduced legislation that would create a national commission to investigate criminal justice issues — for such a commission may be the best way to depoliticize the issue and give feckless politicians the cover they need to institute changes.

“There are only two possibilities here,” Mr. Webb said in introducing his bill, noting that America imprisons so many more people than other countries. “Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice.”

Opponents of universal health care and early childhood education say we can’t afford them. Granted, deficits are a real constraint and we can’t do everything, and prison reform won’t come near to fully financing health care reform. Still, would we rather use scarce resources to educate children and heal the sick, or to imprison people because they used drugs or stole a pair of socks?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/opinion/20kristof.html?_r=1

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

August 11, 2009

IL: Cook county Commissioners pass ordinance to decriminalize 10 grams of marijuana

Posted in the Unshackle List serve by:
Catherine Christeller
Executive Director
Chicago Women's AIDS Project

Here is some good news about changes in the marijuana policy in Cook County, Illinois. Evidently this was inspired by a drug policy conference...so let's keep talking.

---------------------------------------------
August 7, 2009

Dear Friends:

Two weeks ago, the Cook County Board of Commissioners, with little fanfare, passed an ordinance decriminalizing low levels (10 grams or less) of marijuana possession in the non-incorporated areas of the County.

Offenders will receive a $200 fine rather than a criminal charge that could haunt them for the rest of their lives.

This action was a direct result of the PCG conference "New Directions in Drug Policy for Illinois" that PCG organized at Roosevelt University on June 12. Commissioner Earlean Collins (D-1st) sponsored the ordinance. A member of her staff had attended the conference, heard that Chicago Heights had taken a similar step, returned to her office and said "We've got to do
this."

At first glance, the new ordinance might not seem very important. The number of arrests for marijuana possession in the area affected by the ordinance is small. But this change is already being noticed by other municipalities around the state. From as far south as Decatur, one of the attendees of our conference called to say that he is leading a group of ministers to push for a similar ordinance there.

And the ordinance is important for deeper reasons. By drawing attention, it is prompting the public to think about whether existing drug laws and their enforcement make moral and economic sense.

Our country has become a prison nation. One in every 100 adults is
incarcerated in the United States, with the rapid increase since the early 1970's due to tougher, more punitive drug laws.

The racial disparity underlying these figures is shameful. About 9% of Whites use drugs in our society, and the figure is about the same for Non-whites. Why is it, then, that 86% of those in prison for drug offenses are Non-white?

Equal protection under law is a fundamental tenet of our faith. In Illinois, we are failing miserably by this standard. A Human Rights Watch Report in 2000 stated that Illinois leads the nation in the racial disparity of those in prison for drug offenses.

Much of this disparity, of course, has to do with unequal enforcement. Street drug trafficking is much more visible to police in poor urban than in wealthier, mostly white suburbs. In Chicago, spaces around schools, parks, and other special areas are designated as mandatory "enforcement zones." This now covers 80% of the entire City.

Commissioner Collins' ordinance decriminalizes an offense that has burdened offenders with a life-long criminal record. Indirectly, it prompts us to consider the possibility that regarding drug offenses as primarily a public health problem is a better response than prohibition - a more effective use of public resources and more likely to produce productive citizens.

Surely even those who argue that drug use should be met with severe
punishment would agree on the following: it is wrong to stigmatize for the rest of their lives those who have committed only minor offenses, and that those who need treatment to overcome the disease of addiction should have a chance to receive it.

At our conference, Rep. Lou Lang (D-16th) described his efforts to get a medical marijuana bill passed in Illinois. (We are close; this may happen next year). He was asked why a conference focusing on drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration should include a discussion of marijuana decriminalization and medical marijuana. His answer was compelling: "It is because we have to learn to think differently about drugs, and drug policy in our society. Starting with marijuana helps us to do this."

In the year ahead, PCG will be seeking to build a statewide network that focuses on local drug laws, including marijuana. We will use these opportunities to bring forward the questions of drug policy more broadly. It is wrong that we have become a prison nation; it is backward thinking to view prohibition and punishment as the central answers to drug problems in this country.

Sincerely,

Rev. Alexander Sharp,
Executive Director
Protestants for the Common Good

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

August 07, 2009

Video: Children Given One Strike: A Lifetime Without Redemption

Link to a documentary about Juvenile Life Without Parole produced by a group of University of Pennsylvania Law Students which featured interviews with Anita Colon and Bradley Bridges from the Defender's Association.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsZ1gpPZEIU

Posted by lois at 05:57 PM | Comments (0)

Time Magazine: Reforming Crack-Cocaine Laws, but Leaving Injustice Intact?

Reforming Crack-Cocaine Laws, but Leaving Injustice Intact?
By Theo Emery / Washington Friday, Aug. 07, 2009

In early 2006, a young man named DeJarion Echols stood in a federal courtroom in Waco, Texas, and pleaded for leniency. After police found about 40 grams of crack cocaine, cash and an assault rifle in his bedroom, the promising athlete and father pleaded guilty to crack distribution and gun charges. "I made a bad choice" by dealing crack to pay for college, Echols, then 23, told U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. According to a court transcript, the judge declared in apparent frustration, "This is one of those situations where I'd like to see a congressman sitting before me." Then he did what federal law required: Smith sentenced Echols to two back-to-back 10-year prison sentences, one for each charge. Unless he gets a commutation, Echols will not go free till around 2026.

As Echols serves his 20 years, reformers of drug sentencing laws are closing in on a goal that was unthinkable even a few years ago: scrapping the federal sentencing structure established in 1986 that gives far harsher penalties for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, resulting in prisons packed with low-level, predominantly African American offenders. The mechanism is known as the "100-to-1 drug ratio," which gives crack cocaine 100 times the weight of powder cocaine. Under the ratio, a person convicted of selling five grams of crack — about the weight of a teaspoon of salt — triggers the same five-year mandatory minimum sentence as a person convicted of selling 500 grams of powder cocaine, roughly the weight of a loaf of bread.

Even if that ratio is abolished, as appears increasingly likely, it's not clear that it will benefit offenders like Echols, who are already behind bars. The fates of tens of thousands of prisoners serving long sentences could hang in the balance as policymakers and politicians grapple with whether changes to the nation's crack laws should be applied retroactively.

The issue of crack sentencing goes to the heart of the credibility and fairness of the federal judicial system. The Department of Justice has launched a top-to-bottom review of sentencing and corrections policy, and crack-cocaine policy is a "vitally important" part of that, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer told TIME, so much so that the Administration fast-tracked its position on cocaine parity. "The criminal-justice system must be fair, and it must be perceived as being fair," Breuer says. "The 100-to-1 ratio between crack and powder is perhaps the single worst symbol of unfairness in the system. There really is no longer any basis for it."

But the Department of Justice has not taken a position on retroactivity, and Breuer says the issue is "being looked at hard." The working group expects to make recommendations to Attorney General Eric Holder within several months.

Reform advocates who have fought for an end to the 1980s crack sentencing laws are delighted that the stars have aligned for crack sentencing reform. At the same time, though, they say it would be a bitter disappointment if changes weren't retroactive. "It would be cruelly ironic not to make that change available to the very people whose cases led our lawmakers to make this decision," says Mary Price, vice president and general counsel of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which has advocated on Echols' behalf.

The 100-to-1 rule is enshrined in the get-tough Anti–Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which was intended to bring down drug kingpins and choke off the flow of crack. Research since has shown that many assumptions underlying the laws were flawed, such as the belief that crack is more dangerous than powder cocaine, making its users more violent. And they have had unintended consequences: putting away low-level street dealers rather than the big-time traffickers, with startling racial disparities. (Read "Can Amphetamines Help Cure Cocaine Addiction?")

About 77,000 people have been sentenced for crack-related federal crimes since 1992, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets federal sentencing guidelines. In 2008, over 80% of offenders sentenced that year were black and 10% were white. Among powder-cocaine offenders, over 52% were Hispanic, about 30% were black and about 16% were white. Crack-cocaine offenders receive longer sentences: 115 months on average in 2008, compared to 91 months for powder-cocaine offenders.

President Obama pledged in his campaign to abolish the disparity between penalties for powder and crack cocaine. Attorney General Holder called it "simply wrong" in a speech in Memphis last month. In April, Ricardo H. Hinojosa, the Sentencing Commission's acting chair, said there is "no justification for the current statutory penalty scheme" for cocaine, a position the commission first took in 1995. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress now agree that crack sentencing rules need to be fixed; and this may be the year that Congress finally heeds the commission. A bill creating parity between crack and powder cleared a House subcommittee last week, and the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to release a bipartisan parity bill after the August recess.

The issue of retroactivity, though, is anyone's guess. It would require an act of Congress to apply the crack-powder parity to mandatory minimums retroactively. The House bill is silent on that issue, and the Senate bill is expected to be as well. That would mean another fight from advocates for a retroactivity amendment. Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based reform group, asks: "If we've been doing something that's unfair for 23 years now, don't we have an obligation to address that unfairness?"
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1915131,00.html

Posted by lois at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

August 05, 2009

TX: After 15 years, waiting list ends for prison drug treatment programs

After 15 years, waiting list ends for prison drug treatment programs
New facilities helped curtail backlog.
By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, August 05, 2009

For the first time since the Texas prison system's substance-abuse treatment programs began nearly 15 years ago, amid controversy over their cost and effectiveness, programs have no waiting list, prison officials said Tuesday.

In years past, thousands of drug- and alcohol-addicted convicts had to wait for months — in some cases years — for space to open up in the treatment programs, filling prisons with felons who could have been paroled, and confounding a smooth transition of convicts from prisons to programs to parole.

But officials said that because the Legislature voted two years to ago greatly expand the treatment programs, the chronic backlog that had plagued them since their inception, at the behest of then-Gov. Ann Richards, is now gone. At the same time, the prison population has decreased slightly in recent months, part of a national trend.

"It shows all the parts of our criminal justice system are working together right now ... and that's the first time in 16 years that I've been able to say that," said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, a Democrat from Houston who helped Richards push the treatment programs through the Legislature in the early 1990s.

"This will go down as a very important day in the history of our system," he said. "What it will mean for most Texans is it will enhance public safety. If inmates can get the treatment they need, when they need it, they will come out a better person than when they came in."

It was not clear how long the absence of a waiting list would last.

Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the waiting lists had dwindled until Friday, when all major prison substance-abuse treatment programs caught up with demand — thanks in part to the recent opening of a 400-bed contract treatment center in Burnet.

Another treatment center with 550 bunks is slated to open soon in the East Texas city of Henderson, she said.

"There are a few inmates with special needs that may be waiting for a day or so, but the backlog is gone for now," said Stuart Jenkins, the state's parole director whose division of the prison system oversees 78,000 ex-convicts on parole. "It's good news, definitely."

Rissie Owens, chairwoman of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, said the agency in past years had approved thousands of convicts for parole on the condition that they complete a treatment program, only to see them sit in prison for months — even years — because no space was available.

"We can actually vote them into a program now and have them get in," she said. "That's great."

Billed as the biggest shift for Texas corrections policy in years, the 2007 expansion of treatment programs by lawmakers greatly expanded the capacity of in-prison drug- and alcohol-treatment programs, opened transition treatment centers to help convicts succeed once they got out, expanded counseling and specialized drug-treatment programs, and opened lockups designed especially for habitual drunken drivers. The cost was more than $227 million.

In 2007, Gov. Rick Perry proposed building two medium-security prisons, but legislative leaders opted for expanding the treatment programs instead, despite some concern about whether the initiative would work.

More controversial was the expansion of prison treatment programs in the early 1990s by Richards, who touted her experience as a recovering alcoholic. But owing to wary legislators and a tight budget, many of the proposed 12,000 beds were never built — and many of those that were built were used to house regular convicts, not those in treatment.

Budget red ink in 2003 cut those programs further.

State Rep. Jerry Madden, a Republican from Richardson who co-authored the 2007 legislation with Whitmire, said that having treatment beds available for convicts will mean that they can complete therapy programs before they are released from prison, giving them a better chance of success upon release. "This is exactly what we had in mind, where we wanted to be someday — even though I'm somewhat surprised we got here so quickly," Madden said. "We know the history of the programs shows they work if they're done right."

"I always thought I'd be a really old man before I saw this day come, and I'm surprised it didn't take that long," said Whitmire, who turns 60 on Aug. 13.
http://www.news-journal.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/2009/08/05/0805drugrehab.html

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

August 02, 2009

CA: Editorial- No more options in state prisons' future

Editorial- No more options in state prisons' future
San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, August 2, 2009

When it comes to California's broken prison system, the budget crisis may have finally left us with no option other than to do the right thing.

Sacramento has known what the right thing is for years. We must avoid sending so many people to prison, through a combination of rehabilitation, parole reform and changes in our draconian sentencing laws.

For decades, the corrections budget has swallowed more and more of the state's general fund, starving priorities like higher education. But the political ramifications of looking "soft on crime" cowed legislators and governors alike. So we built prison after prison and stuffed them all to overcapacity.

Now, in a desperate gambit to close the state's $26.3 billion budget gap, legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agreed to cut $1.2 billion from the prison budget. Furious Republicans in the Legislature immediately threatened to torpedo the whole thing, claiming that "early releases" could put public safety at risk.

In fact, the governor's plan would simply push forward important reforms to keep people from going into prison in the first place. These are simple reforms that prison experts have been asking the state to make for years.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation used the 2007 recommendations of the Expert Panel on Adult Offender Reentry Recidivism Reduction, along with recommendations from the 2004 Deukmejian Commission, to craft a package of smart, sensible reforms. Some of them are technical. The dollar-value threshold for grand theft, a felony, will be raised from $400 to $2,500. The dollar-value threshold has not been raised since 1982, and the corrections department estimates that raising these thresholds can keep 5,600 low-level property criminals out of state prison. This is an easy fix that.

But the bulk of the reductions center on our overburdened, ineffective parole system. This is the ideal place for reform - with around 70,000 prisoners returning to prison every year, California has one of the highest recidivism rates in the nation. The corrections department would lower that rate using "alternative custody" for "low-risk" offenders (nonviolent, non-sex offenders) and certain elderly or infirm prisoners. Rather than having these prisoners take up space in prison, where they can cost the state more than $100,000 every year, they'd be placed on house arrest or in a medical facility - with a Global Positioning System device.

The same would apply for parolees who commit certain low-level parole violations (like missing a meeting with a parole officer). Rather than sending them back to prison, to cool their heels at taxpayer cost of $48,000 a year, they'd get a GPS device. Local police would also be allowed to perform search-and-seizure operations on these parolees without a warrant.

This is one of the reforms that has Republicans crying foul, claiming that it's "easy" on crime. Thanks for the input, but the California Police Chiefs Association disagrees, and we're going to stick with their assessment.

"There's a recognition that the population of the state prison systems does need to be reduced, for a variety of reasons," said association President Bernard Melekian. "This is a dramatic step in the right direction. I think there's a number of things in this plan that will allow them to do this without jeopardizing public safety."

It's sad that it took a financial crisis for California to make these crucial changes to its crumbling prison system. Judges have called our system unconstitutional and ordered us to change it, public education officials have decried the diversion of funds for years - and yet it took an unprecedented financial crisis to get Sacramento to even consider it.

This article appeared on page E - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/01/EDH7190F20.DTL#ixzz0N2JExG9E

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

July 26, 2009

Watch Ryan King on CSPAN discuss “No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America.”

Ryan King, The Sentencing Project, Policy Analyst-Saturday, July
25n on CSPAN. Mr. King talked about the Sentencing Project's new
study “No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America.”
According to the Sentencing Project, the study shows the
disproportionate amount of non-white inmates serving life sentences.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/07/25/HP/A/21354/Ryan+King+The+Sentencing+Project+Policy+Analyst.aspx

Posted by lois at 11:48 AM | Comments (0)

Prisons Becoming Warehouses for the Old

Prisons Becoming Warehouses for the Old
By James Ridgeway
July 25, 2009
Prisons Becoming Warehouses for the Old
July 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment

AGING BEHIND BARS SERIES

I have written hefore about the aging population in American prisons and jails, due in large part to the draconian sentencing policies of the courts, federal, state, and local. As a result these places seem destined to become nursing homes surrounded by razor wire.

Angola prison in Louisiana, for instance, boasts that some 90 percent of its population will die there. The prison has managed to equip itself with a hospice, and trained inmates to attend to a convict’s last days. Burl Cain, the warden, is backed up by a phalanx of Christian fundamentalist preachers who freely roam the 18,000 acre former slave plantation recruiting inmates to be preachers. The clergy instruct prisoners their only way out is through redemption made possible by the acceptance of Jesus Christ. When an elderly inmate, knowing his end was near, sought to be win release so as to die in the so-called “free world,” the parole board refused. The procedure is to go to your death in the Christian way–from cell to hospice to a prison cemetery where your grave will be dug by the inmates who will mark your bruial with gospel hymns

The travesty at Angola is held up as a model for the nation and Cain celebrated by the media as a new corrections messiah. Elsewhere,old,sick people,piled into these living tombs by the courts, stand in line for hours to get an aspirin; arthritic old women are made to climb into upper bunk beds.Parapalegic men are denied canes, which are ruled to be weapons, and instead must crawl to the toilets.People are locked in solitary for years. Mentally ill convicts who act out in the general population are put into solitary because they howl and scream in public. Locked down, they go truly mad. Old sex offenders can be released into the hands of friends or family. but often noone wants them, so they are released to the county jail, reindicted, and sent back to prison.

The American public is up in arms about CIA jails in far away places. But it could care less about American prisons. Now a new report by the Sentencing Project in Washington adds to the growing body of information about prisons here at home. No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America contains, among other things, the first nationwide collection of life sentence data documenting race, ethnicity and gender, and reveals “overwhelming racial and ethnic disparities in the allocation of life sentences”: 66% of all persons sentenced to life are non-white, and 77% of juveniles serving life sentences are non-white.

The the report’s key findings:

140,610 individuals are serving life sentences, representing one of every 11 people (9.5%) in prison. Twenty-nine percent (41,095) of the individuals serving life sentences have no possibility of parole.

The number of individuals serving life without parole sentences increased by22% from 33,633 to 41,095 between 2003 and 2008. This is nearly four times the rate of growth of the parole-eligible life sentenced population.

In five states—Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York—at least 1 in 6 people in prison are serving a life sentence.

The highest proportion of life sentences relative to the prison population is in California, where 20% of the prison population is serving a life sentence, up from 18.1% in 2003. Among these 34,164 life sentences, 10.8% are life without parole.

Racial and ethnic minorities serve a disproportionate share of life sentences. Two-thirds of people with life sentences (66.4%) are nonwhite, reaching as high as 83.7% of the life sentenced population in the state of New York.

There are 6,807 juveniles serving life sentences; 1,755, or 25.8%, of whom are serving sentences of life without parole.

Seventy-seven percent of juveniles sentenced to life are youth of color.

There are 4,694 women and girls serving life sentences, 28.4% of females sentenced to life do not have the possibility of parole.

http://unsilentgeneration.com/2009/07/25/prisons-to-become-warehouses-for-the-old/

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

July 23, 2009

Number of Life Terms Hits Record

Number of Life Terms Hits Record
California has the largest prison system in the United States, with 170,000 inmates and the most serving life terms, 34,164.
By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: July 22, 2009
NY Times

CORONA, Calif. — Mary Thompson, an inmate at the California Institution for Women here, was convicted of two felonies for a robbery spree in which she threatened victims with a knife. Her third felony under California’s three-strikes law was the theft of three tracksuits to pay for her crack cocaine habit in 1982.

Mary Thompson at the California Institution for Women: life term after three felony convictions.

Like one out of five prisoners in California, and nearly 10 percent of all prisoners nationally in 2008, Ms. Thompson is serving a life sentence. She will be eligible for parole by 2020.

More prisoners today are serving life terms than ever before — 140,610 out of 2.3 million inmates being held in jails and prisons across the country — under tough mandatory minimum-sentencing laws and the declining use of parole for eligible convicts, according to a report released Wednesday by the Sentencing Project, a group that calls for the elimination of life sentences without parole. The report tracks the increase in life sentences from 1984, when the number of inmates serving life terms was 34,000.

Two-thirds of prisoners serving life sentences are Latino or black, the report found. In New York State, for example, 16.3 percent of prisoners serving life terms are white.

Although most people serving life terms were convicted of violent crimes, sentencing experts say there are many exceptions, like Norman Williams, 46, who served 13 years of a life sentence for stealing a floor jack out of a tow truck, a crime that was his third strike. He was released from Folsom State Prison in California in April after appealing his conviction on the grounds of insufficient counsel.

The rising number of inmates serving life terms is straining corrections budgets at a time when financially strapped states are struggling to cut costs. California’s prison system, the nation’s largest, with 170,000 inmates, also had the highest number of prisoners with life sentences, 34,164, or triple the number in 1992, the report found.

In four other states — Alabama, Massachusetts, Nevada and New York — at least one in six prisoners is serving a life term, according to the report.

The California prison system is in federal receivership for overcrowding and failing to provide adequate medical care to prisoners, many of whom are elderly and serving life terms.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week repeated his proposal to reduce the inmate population through a combination of early releases for nonviolent offenders, home monitoring for some parole violators and more lenient sentencing for some felonies. But there are no credible plans to increase the rate at which prisoners serving life sentences are granted parole.

“When California courts sentence somebody to life with parole, it turns out that’s not possible after all,” said Joan Petersilia, a Stanford law professor and an expert on parole policy. “Board of parole hearings almost never grant releases, and that’s the reason that California’s lifer population has grown out of proportion to other states.”

Margo Johnson, 48, also an inmate at the women’s prison here, has served 24 years of a life sentence for a 1984 murder. She has been recommended for release four times by the state parole board, but she said that Mr. Schwarzenegger had rejected the board’s recommendation each time.

“Sometimes I wonder, is it just a game they’re playing with me?” Ms. Johnson said.

Seven prison systems — Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and the federal penitentiary system — do not offer the possibility of parole to prisoners serving life terms.

That policy also extends to juveniles in Illinois, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. A total of 6,807 juveniles were serving life terms in 2008, 1,755 without the possibility of parole. California again led the nation in the number of juveniles serving life terms, with 2,623.

“The expansion of life sentences suggests that we’re rapidly losing faith in the rehabilitation model,” said Ashley Nellis, the report’s main author.

De Angelo McVay, 42, is serving a life term with no possibility of parole at the maximum security state prison in Lancaster, Calif., for his role in the kidnapping and torture of a man.

He said in an interview Wednesday that he had used his 10 years in prison to reform himself, taking ministry classes, participating in the prison chapel program, becoming vice chairman of his prison yard and avoiding behavioral demerits.

“I’m remorseful for what I did,” he said. “But I got no chance at parole, and I know guys who have committed killings and they have parole.”

Supporters of longer sentences for criminals, including victims rights organizations, prosecutors and police associations, often cite public safety, the deterrent effect of punishment and the need to remove criminals from society.

But the number of aging inmates serving life sentences has risen sharply as the sluggish economy has shrunk state budgets. By 2004, the number of inmates over 50 had nearly doubled from a decade earlier, to more than 20 percent, according to the report. Older inmates cost more because they have more health needs. California, for example, spends $98,000 to $138,000 a year on each prisoner over 50, compared with the national average of about $35,000 a year.

But Professor Petersilia said she was skeptical that economic arguments alone would persuade voters to treat inmates serving life terms — most of whom have committed violent felonies like murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery — with more leniency.

“All the public opinion polls say that everybody will reconsider sentencing for nonviolent offenders or drug offenders, but they’re not willing to do anything different for violent offenders,” Professor Petersilia. In fact, she added, polls show support for even harsher sentences for sex offenses and other violent crimes.

Burk Foster, a criminal justice professor at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan and an expert on the Louisiana penitentiary system, said the expansion of life sentences started at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, the nation’s largest maximum penitentiary, in the early 1970s, when most people sentenced to life terms were paroled after they had been deemed fit to re-enter society.

“Angola was a prototype of a lifer’s prison,” said Professor Foster. “In 1973, Louisiana changed its life sentencing law so that lifers would no longer be parole eligible, and they applied that law more broadly over time to include murder, rape, kidnapping, distribution of narcotics and habitual offenders.”

Professor Foster said sentencing more prisoners to life sentences was an abandonment of the “corrective” function of prisons.

“Rehabilitation is not an issue at Angola,” he said. “They’re just practicing lifetime isolation and incapacitation.”
Graphs and other information at this URL- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/us/23sentence.html?_r=1&hp

Posted by lois at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2009

New Report: --"No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America "

A new report released by The Sentencing Project finds a record 140,610 individuals are now serving life sentences in state and federal prisons, 6,807 of whom were juveniles at the time of the crime. In addition, 29% of persons serving a life sentence (41,095) have no possibility of parole, and 1,755 were juveniles at the time of the crime.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_noexit.pdf

No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America represents the first nationwide collection of life sentence data documenting race, ethnicity and gender. The report's findings reveal overwhelming racial and ethnic disparities in the allocation of life sentences: 66% of all persons sentenced to life are non-white, and 77% of juveniles serving life sentences are non-white.

Other findings in the report include:

* In five states - Alabama, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, and New York -at least 1 in 6 prisoners is serving a life sentence.
* Five states - California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - each have more than 3,000 people serving life without parole. Pennsylvania leads the nation with 345 juveniles serving sentences of life without parole.
* In six states - Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota - and the federal government, all life sentences are imposed without the possibility of parole.
* The dramatic growth in life sentences is not primarily a result of higher crime rates, but of policy changes that have imposed harsher punishments and restricted parole consideration.

The authors of the report, Ashley Nellis, Ph.D., research analyst and Ryan S. King, policy analyst of The Sentencing Project, state that persons serving life sentences "include those who present a serious threat to public safety, but also include those for whom the length of sentence is questionable." One such case documented is that of Ali Foroutan, currently serving a sentence of 25 years to life for possession of 0.03 grams of methamphetamine under California's "three strikes" law.

The Sentencing Project calls for the elimination of sentences of life without parole, and restoring discretion to parole boards to determine suitability for release. The report also recommends that individuals serving parole-eligible life sentences be properly prepared for reentry back into the community.

-The Sentencing Project

Posted by lois at 05:33 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2009

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Attorney General Eric Holder at the Vera Institute of Justice’s Third Annual Justice Address

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by Attorney General Eric Holder at the Vera Institute of Justice’s Third Annual Justice Address
Thursday, July 9, 2009

Laurie, thank you for that wonderful introduction. When I asked Laurie to come back to the Justice Department to lead our Office of Justice Programs, I was keenly aware of how much she would have to give up to join us. Not only did she take leave from the University of Pennsylvania, but she also had to give up her Chair of Vera’s Board of Trustees. I know that the polite thing to do would be to apologize for taking her from you – but the truth is, your loss is our gain. We hope that Laurie stays at the Department for a long time.

It is a privilege to join you this evening as your keynote speaker. Your past speakers have been Nicholas Katzenbach and James Comey, who reflected on the law after their government service. Perhaps one day I might have that kind of conversation with you as a former Attorney General. For now, I stand before you in a different posture, to share some ideas about how I think the American people can best be served by the Department of Justice going forward.

The Vera Institute of Justice has been an extraordinary partner to government in the administration of justice. I thank you in particular for your work with the federal government across a range of issues – from your contributions to the national commission to eliminate prison rape to the administration of Legal Orientation Programs for non-citizens in immigration proceedings. Your practical, rational, data-driven, results-oriented approach can best be described as post-partisan. In the five months that I have served as Attorney General, I have tried to take that same approach, and that is what I would like to talk about this evening: how we can move past politics and ideology in order to get smart on crime.

Getting smart on crime requires talking honestly about which policies have worked and which have not, without fear of being labeled as too hard or, more likely, as too soft on crime. Getting smart on crime means moving beyond useless labels and instead embracing science and data, and relying on them to shape policy. And it means thinking about crime in context – not just reacting to the criminal act, but developing the government’s ability to enhance public safety before the crime is committed and after the former offender is returned to society.

It is imperative that we get smart on crime now, for much has changed since some of our basic, governing assumptions about criminal law enforcement were developed. In the middle years of the twentieth century, America went through an historic increase in crime and illegal drug use. In the 1960s and 70s, the overall crime rate increased more than five-fold. Violent crime nearly quadrupled. The murder rate doubled. And heroin, cocaine and other illegal drug use surged.

Many lawmakers in the 1980s responded by declaring, in rhetoric and in legislation, that we needed to get tough on crime. States passed truth-in-sentencing and three strikes and you’re out laws. Some state parole boards became more cautious, while other states eliminated discretionary parole altogether. The federal government adopted severe mandatory minimum sentencing laws, eliminated parole, and developed the federal sentencing guidelines.

The federal government and states spent billions of dollars in new prison construction. The result was dramatic: the number of inmates in American prisons has increased seven-fold since 1970. Today, one out of every 100 adults in America is incarcerated – the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Few would dispute that public safety requires incarceration, and that imprisonment is at least partially responsible for the dramatic drop in crime rates nationwide in recent decades. By 2007, the nation’s violent crime rate had dropped by almost 40% from its peak in 1991. But just as everyone should concede that incarceration is part of the answer, everyone should also concede that it is not the whole answer. Simply stated, imprisonment is not a complete strategy for criminal law enforcement.

To begin with, high rates of incarceration have tremendous social costs. And, of course, there also is the matter of simple dollars and cents, and the principle of diminishing marginal returns. Every state in the union is trying to trim budgets. States and localities are laying off teachers and canceling sanitation department shifts, but in almost all cases, spending on prisons continues to increase. Not only is this unsustainable economically, but it is also not proving to be effective at fighting crime. For while prison building and prison spending continue to increase, public safety is not improving. Since 2003, spending on incarceration has continued to rise, but crime rates have flattened. Indeed, crime rates appear to have reached a plateau, and no longer respond to increases in incarceration.

So what can we do to lower the crime rate further, to make American communities safer, to get smarter on crime? We need new tools – and one way to develop new tools is to look several steps past getting people into prison, and to consider what happens to people after they leave prison and reenter society.

We know that offenders who have participated in the federal Bureau of Prisons’ residential drug abuse treatment program are 16% less likely to be re-arrested, have their supervision revoked, and be returned to prison, than similar inmates who did not receive such treatment before their reentry into society. They are also less likely to use drugs once released. We also know that inmates who work in prison industries are 24% less likely to commit crimes again, compared to inmates who have not participated in such programs – which, incidentally, operate at no cost to the taxpayer. The Bureau of Prisons’ educational programs designed to address educational deficiencies – ranging from Adult Basic Education to high school level classes – are also effective in reducing recidivism: inmates who participate in these programs are 16% less likely to commit crime again as compared to their non-participating peers. And inmates who are released through halfway houses are more likely to be gainfully employed, and therefore less likely to commit crime again, as compared to inmates who are released from prison directly to the community.

That recitation of statistics might not sound exciting, but what we do with it is. We rely upon evidence-based methods to innovate in agriculture, transportation, environmental safety, and public health – and it is my belief, that the Department of Justice likewise should embrace modern, evidence-based methods for developing policy.

In particular, it is critical that we work to develop policies – rooted in data – to address what happens after incarceration. For the statistics I cited are even more compelling when coupled with another fact: most crimes in America are committed by persons who have committed crime before. About 67% of former state prisoners and 40% of former federal prisoners are rearrested within three years. Logically, if we reduce the recidivism rate, we will directly lower the crime rate. Even a modest reduction in recidivism rates would prevent thousands of crimes and save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. In other words, being smart on crime means understanding that our work does not end when prison time begins.

Smart risk assessments can identify which offenders can safely remain in their communities and which require continued detention and more intensive supervision. Data analysis can determine which offenders pose a higher recidivism risk based on the type of crime the offender was charged with and the offender’s prior record. For example, risk assessments might determine that removing a 16-year-old, non-violent, first-time offender from his family and school and placing him in a juvenile detention facility is a bad idea because it would actually increase the risk of recidivism, and waste taxpayer dollars besides.

One specific area where I think we can do a much better job by looking beyond incarceration is in the way we deal with non-violent drug offenses. We know that people convicted of drug possession or the sales of small amounts of drugs comprise a significant portion of the prison population. Indeed, in my thirty years in law enforcement, I have seen far too many young people lose their claim to a future by committing non-violent drug crimes.

One promising, viable solution to the devastating effect of drugs on the criminal justice system and on American communities is the implementation of more drug treatment courts. Drug court programs provide an alternative to incarceration for non-violent offenders by focusing on treatment of their underlying addiction. Program participants are placed in treatment and routinely tested for drug use – with the imposition of immediate sanctions for positive tests balanced with suitable incentives to encourage abstinence from drug use. These programs give no one a free pass. They are strict and can be extraordinarily difficult to get through. But for those who succeed, there is the real prospect of a productive future.

New York has been a leader in this area, diverting some non-violent offenders into drug court programs and away from prison, and extending early release to other non-violent offenders who participate in treatment programs. And while national prison populations have consistently increased, in New York the state prison population has dropped steadily and has 12,000 fewer inmates now than it did in 1999. And since 1999, the overall crime rate in New York has dropped 27%. Other states have followed New York’s example. And most importantly, studies show significant reductions in re-arrests, from about 15 to 30 percentage points, for drug-court participants as compared to criminals simply incarcerated.

Furthermore, smart criminal justice policies are not, of course, exclusively reactive – we can also use data and evidence-based methods to prevent crime before it occurs. We have models, for example, in New York’s CompStat program: it uses data to map where crime is most likely to occur, deploy police to those areas to disrupt criminal activity, and evaluate the effectiveness of the enforcement strategies. We can also extrapolate from available data to identify youth that are highly at-risk to commit crimes in the future. For example, it seems that children who are exposed to domestic violence at home are more at-risk. Once we have identified at-risk youth, we can intervene with targeted programs, and I have asked the Department to make a priority of focusing on the issue of children exposed to violence. There is much work to be done in this area, but the underlying premise is already clear: we need to understand crime in context in order to prevent it – and with better understanding and more information, we can develop new approaches to old and seemingly intractable problems.

Although this Administration is still young, we have already started to put into practice what I believe is a data-driven, non-ideological, post-partisan approach to crime. For example, I have asked attorneys throughout the Department to conduct a comprehensive, evidence-based review of federal sentencing and corrections policy. Specifically, the group is examining the federal sentencing guidelines, the Department’s charging and sentencing advocacy practices, mandatory minimums, crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparities, and other racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing. The group is also studying alternatives to incarceration and strategies that help reduce recidivism when former offenders reenter society. We intend to use the group’s findings as a springboard for recommending new legislation that will reform the structure of federal sentencing.

I have also called upon the Department to focus on another part of the criminal justice system: the very difficult issue of indigent defense. Putting politics aside, we must address the fact that, simply put, there is a crisis in indigent defense in this country. Resources for public defender programs lag far behind other justice system programs, constituting only about 3 percent of all criminal justice expenditures in our nation’s largest counties. In many cases, contract attorneys and assigned lawyers receive compensation that does not even cover their overhead. We know that defenders in many jurisdictions carry huge caseloads that make it difficult for them to fulfill their legal and ethical responsibilities to their clients. We hear of lawyers who cannot interview their clients properly, file appropriate motions, conduct fact investigations, or do many of the other things an attorney should be able to do as a matter of course.

This growing crisis is troubling not just because of the government’s constitutional duty to ensure the right to counsel. When defendants fail to receive competent legal representation, their cases are vulnerable to costly mistakes that can take a long time to correct. Lawyers on both sides can spend years dealing with appeals arising from technical infractions and procedural errors. When that happens, no one wins. Addressing the American Council of Chief Defenders last month, I committed to several steps to help improve the indigent defense system, including hosting a national conference with the goal of developing a set of best practices and practical solutions.

I have also made it clear that this Department of Justice will use the available data to improve our handling of the forensics sciences – such as fingerprints, trace evidence, firearms matching. We are studying a recent report from the National Academies of Science that diagnosed problems in the use of forensics sciences and suggested ways forward, and we are working with our partners in the Executive Branch and Congress to act on the report’s insights and recommendations. Our goal is to ensure that forensic science is practiced at the highest level possible, and always in the pursuit of truth. Because we put a premium on truth-seeking – because, indeed, this Administration is committed to using the best science possible whenever possible, including in criminal justice – I also believe that defendants should have access to DNA evidence in a range of circumstances. DNA testing has an unparalleled ability to exonerate the wrongfully convicted as well as to identify the guilty. Federal law already guarantees access to DNA evidence held by the federal government under specific conditions, and I hope that all states will follow the federal government’s lead on this issue.

Many of the things I have mentioned in these remarks are still in early stages or under review. There are numerous areas I have not even mentioned – for example, the prevention and detection of economic crimes and on-line crimes – where we can similarly get smarter with a research-driven approach. I am already certain, however, that change is both necessary and it is possible – if we are willing to make it. Challenges have changed with time: Prison populations are at an all-time high and still climbing, yet the crime rate is no longer declining. States are in serious financial distress. But opportunities have changed too. We are able to compare the cost and suitability of different criminal justice strategies. We no longer must choose between more crime and more prisons: we can reduce crime rates and reduce our dependence on incarceration, and at the same time increase the integrity of our criminal justice system. We can harness science and data to tackle emerging problems and also to preserve our foundational principles. The more we know, the better we can do, the more sophisticated we can be. With the help of the scholars and experts in this room, state and local law enforcement, corrections officials across the country, judges, victims of crime, and always with the fine work of attorneys at the Department of Justice, there is no question that a smarter and better criminal justice system is within our grasp.

Thank you very much.

Posted by lois at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)

July 10, 2009

Once Again, Guilty of Having HIV

Once Again, Guilty of Having HIV
posted 2009-07-09
by Cynthia Fernandez
CHLP Intern

Last week, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported a case of a young woman arrested for prostitution in Knoxville, Tennessee, who faces a three-to-fifteen-year prison term for “aggravated prostitution” solely because she is HIV-positive. While individuals convicted of prostitution in Tennessee who do not have HIV face misdemeanor charges that usually amount to a fine and probation, those living with HIV face a felony charge and an additional three to fifteen years due to their health status. Because the woman is a repeat offender, she will also have to register as a sex offender and will face the same restrictions as child molesters and rapists.

State officials cite public health and safety as the rationale for the aggravated prostitution law, but their efforts are severely misguided. Not only is the law discriminatory, it also has shown no deterrent effect. The woman has been arrested at least eight times for prostitution, and this recent arrest was her third arrest for aggravated prostitution. Furthermore, the law further stigmatizes HIV infection and women who rely on consensual sex in exchange for money to make a living. A more effective way to treat this woman, who dropped out of high school in the ninth grade due to drug addiction and has been a sex worker since age 19, would be to offer her drug rehabilitation and access to medical care and educational services to at least increase the odds that she has alternatives to sex work in order to survive. Instead, in their infinite wisdom, Tennessee legislators and prosecutors, by making her a registered sex offender, have effectively ensured that she will not have access to many residential drug treatment programs available to other addicts because she will not be allowed to live anywhere that houses juveniles. She faces these severe restrictions even though she has no history of committing any kind of sexual assault. Incarcerating and then branding someone like this woman a sex offender will only serve to further marginalize her and prevent her from receiving the care she needs.

Adding insult to injury, Knoxville Police Department Sgt. Chris Baldwin defended the law in the article and expressed concern for the male customers’ “moral and physical well-being.” Why should society place more value on the well-being of the man who solicits sex for money than on the woman who provides it? Baldwin’s statements and selective concern show the ignorance, the sexist double standard, and the misguided policy choices that serve as rationales for criminalizing HIV status. He is quoted as saying, “when a customer is exposed, then everybody he comes into contact with are at risk as well.” Yes, HIV can be transmitted through condomless sex, but this would place at further risk only those who in turn have condomless sex with that person who has become infected. Casual transmission to household members is a scientific impossibility and it is dangerous, if depressingly predictable, that someone in a position of power could be so ill-informed about basic modes of HIV transmission.

The Knoxville News Sentinel article reporting on the case also uses incredibly derogatory language, referring to the woman as a “hooker” and discussing her “turning tricks” for a living. The article also published several mug shots of the woman; for effect, I suppose? Her eyes are glazed over in every shot and if anything, they elicit a feeling of deep sympathy, which I am assuming was not the effect the article’s author intended.

While this law is intended to prevent those with HIV from acting as sex workers, in reality it does nothing to remedy the public health problem. Its enforcement prevents those most in need from receiving services and only exacerbates their marginalization by incarcerating and then branding them sexual predators. The continued prosecution of consensual sex, particularly while looking the other way at the man soliciting the service, is hateful and wrongheaded, and the sensational reporting that accompanies the criminalization of HIV further fuels HIV-related stigma and contributes to the perception that society needs to be protected from those living with HIV.
http://hivlawandpolicy.org/posts/view/43
This and other outrageous but true news about women and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Posted by lois at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)

Review of The Real Cost of Prisons Comix in Feminist Review

Thursday, July 9, 2009
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix
Edited by Lois Ahrens
PM Press

As activists know all too well, crafting a political message and effectively mobilizing an audience is an elusive task. In The Real Cost Of Prisons, Lois Ahrens and her contributors beautifully stage a difficult dialogue—about mass incarceration, mandatory sentencing, and the “war on drugs”—with comics. Comics are an accessible, popular form of education, and most importantly, addictive, and hence become a subversive way to raise awareness. The Real Cost of Prisons Project has distributed 115,000 comics to the incarcerated, affected families, and social justice organizations free of charge. Comics are just one part of the organization’s mission to end mass incarceration; since Lois Ahrens founded organization in 2000 a coalition of artists, activists, and researchers has produced and distributed educational materials about the costs—material and affective—of the prison industrial complex and it’s devastating impact on family preservation, women’s reproductive rights, rural economies, and much more.

“What does it cost to lock up 2.3 million people each day in the world’s biggest prison system?” ask Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore in the introduction to The Real Cost Of Prisons. In addition to the staggering economic costs (the U.S. spends $60 billion per year on prisons) that could otherwise be directed at health care, public education, and other social services, the human costs are immeasurable. In the comic “Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children,” illustrated by Susan Willmarth, we learn about the cost of incarceration for women and their children:

*One out of every 109 women in American is incarcerated, on parole, or on probation.
*Half of all women in prison are incarcerated more than 100 miles from their families.
*Seven million children have a parent in prison, on probation, or on parole.
*Seventy-nine percent of all women in New York State’s prisons are Black or Hispanic.

The Real Cost Of Prisons documents the vital efforts of the movement to end mass incarceration, and is an exceptional resource for all activists seeking creative ways to build and sustain a political movement.

Review by Jeanne Vaccaro

Posted by lois at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)

July 09, 2009

MA: Letters to the Editor of the Boston Globe on jail "riot"

OVERCROWDED INMATES
Middlesex Jail prisoners reached a breaking point
July 9, 2009

RE “PRISONERS force evacuation of jail: Vandalism was cause of flooding, sheriff reports’’ (Metro, July 6): The conditions under which we hold prisoners awaiting trial at Cambridge’s Middlesex Jail - prisoners who supposedly are presumed innocent until proven guilty - are scandalous. Instead of the legally guaranteed speedy trial, those awaiting trial can be held for months under confinement more severe than even the miserable conditions in our state prisons. Now we find out in the Globe that the jail held two and a half times more prisoners than the facility was intended to.

We blame the prisoners for the destruction of property that took place after nine detainees damaged a fire-suppression system. And in America we tend to hate anyone arrested for crimes, whether they are guilty or not. But at some point any of us would snap under such conditions and insist that we must be treated as human beings.
Paul Shannon
Somerville

OVERCROWDED INMATES
Facilities shrouded in secrecy
July 9, 2009

IF MASSACHUSETTS jails and prisons were not so shrouded in secrecy, perhaps the detainees at the Middlesex Jail would have found an alternative to vandalism to expose their conditions of confinement (“Prisoners force evacuation of jail’’). Massachusetts legislators need to bring back uncensored and unchaperoned media access to prisons and jails, and reestablish an independent oversight commission that would create transparency and accountability in the prison system. The public could then understand the real reasons for prison overcrowding and support solutions other than endless expansion.
Nancy W. Ahmadifar
Boston

7-9-09
FAMM's response to jail "riot" in Middlesex County MA
To the Editor:

Leslie Walker, director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, and others are right on target when they connect prison overcrowding – and resulting disturbances such as occurred at the Middlesex County jail – to mandatory drug sentences ("Prisoner crowding is cited after riot," July 7). Indeed, in recent weeks the sheriffs in Norfolk, Worcester and Suffolk counties have spoken out about the need for sentencing reform. At the state level, Correction Commission Harold Clarke has made the same argument about overcrowded state prisons.

Unfortunately, Berkshire County District Attorney David Capeless oversimplifies the issue when he claims that mandatory drug sentences aren’t a problem because they represent a relatively low percentage of those incarcerated each year. It’s not just a question how many people go into prison in a given year; it’s also a matter of how long they stay. The 949 defendants who were sentenced to mandatory drug sentences in 2008 join the 943 sentenced in 2007, the 929 sentenced in 2006 and so on. Given that drug offenders routinely receive state prison sentences of 10, 15 or more years – often longer than for crimes of violence – the cumulative affect is great. The harm to devastated families and the taxpayers who foot the bill is even greater.

At least 10 bills have been filed to reform some aspect of current drug sentencing laws, including the Governor’s proposal for parole eligibility. These bills give the Legislature many options for rewriting our ineffective, costly and outdated drug policies.
Barbara J. Dougan
Massachusetts Project Director
Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM)

Posted by lois at 06:27 PM | Comments (0)

July 07, 2009

Middlesex Jail in Cambridge MA: Prisoner crowding is cited after riot. Population is up fivefold since 1980

Prisoner crowding is cited after riot
Population is up fivefold since 1980

By Jonathan Saltzman
The Boston Globe / July 7, 2009

The weekend riot at the Middlesex Jail in Cambridge has put a spotlight on overcrowding at Massachusetts jails, where the total population has soared more than 500 percent since 1980 and has pushed many institutions well beyond their capacity.

The Middlesex Jail, which occupies the 17th through 20th floors of the otherwise vacant 22-story former courthouse on Thorndike Street, was built for 161 people but has long exceeded that population. Last September it held 415 detainees, nearly 2 1/2 times its capacity, according to the state Department of Correction’s most recent quarterly report on overcrowding at prisons and jails.

“The fact of the matter is the jails are brutally overcrowded in Middlesex County,’’ said David W. White Jr., a Boston lawyer who chaired a Massachusetts Bar Association task force that released a study in April on overcrowding.

While the cause of Sunday’s riot appeared to stem from detainees’ concerns about a possible swine flu outbreak, prisoner advocates and jail officials said severe overcrowding is also creating tremendous stress in detention centers across the state, making violence more likely.

“We have a facility that was built for 160, and yesterday we had 403,’’ Scott Brazis, superintendent of the jail, said yesterday. “When you have a place that is just so overpopulated . . . [disturbances] can happen at any facility at any time across the country, and this facility is no different.’’

Other county facilities whose populations last September were well beyond capacity included the Bristol County jail in Dartmouth, the Essex County jail in Middleton, and the Nashua Street jail in Suffolk County, according to the state’s quarterly report.

Bristol was at nearly four times its capacity, with 1,173 inmates; Essex was more than 2 1/2 times its capacity, with 1,355 inmates; and Nashua Street was more than 1 1/2 times its capacity, with 756 detainees, according to the report.

“It’s obviously reached crisis proportions,’’ said Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, which provides legal services to people in jail and prisons. She is among several critics of the situation who contend that overcrowding stems from state laws that impose mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug-related crimes.

The number of pretrial detainees at county facilities and convicted inmates at county houses of correction rose 522 percent from 1980 to 2008, according to the April study. The state prisons are also grappling with overcrowding, with their population rising by 368 percent in the same period.

All told, more than 25,000 people are incarcerated in Massachusetts jails and prisons.

State Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, a Newton Democrat, has filed a bill for the third time that would seek to relieve overcrowding in houses of correction and prisons by relaxing mandatory minimum sentences of five to 10 years for people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.

Under her bill, such inmates would be eligible to apply for supervised parole once they completed two-thirds of their sentences. The Massachusetts Sheriffs’ Association has endorsed the bill in the past, she said.

But the bill has garnered a mixed reaction from district attorneys. Berkshire District Attorney David F. Capeless, president of the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association, said it would do little to relieve overcrowding.

He said statistics he recently saw from the state prison system showed that only 3 percent of the convicted criminals sent to prisons and houses of correction in 2007 had received mandatory minimum drug sentences. Instead, he said, overcrowding stems from rising crime in general. A more effective remedy, he said, would be to provide more treatment for people with substance abuse problems who are responsible for many crimes.

“I don’t think the reaction to overcrowding is to let out people who have been properly sentenced to incarceration,’’ Capeless said. “They’re there for a reason.’’

The riot at the Middlesex Jail on Sunday, say top officials there, appeared to stem from concerns about swine flu.

On June 30, a detainee was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital complaining of flulike symptoms. The detainee was treated and told in discharge papers that he most probably had H1N1 influenza, or swine flu. On his return to the jail, he was quarantined and given Tamiflu and over-the-counter medicine.

Ten more detainees showed flulike symptoms Saturday and were moved to a quarantine unit and treated with Tamiflu. Two correction officers have also been diagnosed with flu. But none of the 13 cases was confirmed as swine flu, said jail officials.

On Sunday, nine detainees apparently upset about the flu outbreak “started acting out, throwing paper and trash,’’ and then tore down sprinkler heads and pipes on the 18th floor, Middlesex Sheriff James V. DiPaola said. Water flooded several floors of the jail and cascaded through elevator shafts to the basement.

Last spring, during a tour of the jail - which at the time housed 427 people - DiPaola called overcrowding a “consistent issue’’ that has plagued his 12-year tenure as sheriff. Prisoners are not only packed tightly into cells but also sleep in corridors, a recreation center, and a chapel. He has lobbied the state unsuccessfully to build a new jail.

As a result of the flooding on Sunday, 193 of the most dangerous detainees were evacuated and bused to the Middlesex House of Correction in Billerica and to jails in Essex, Norfolk, Plymouth and Suffolk counties, said Michael Hartigan, a spokesman for the sheriff. About 200 detainees remained at the jail yesterday.

Authorities turned off the electricity at the jail Sunday because of the flood. They restored power yesterday but were still repairing water damage. The flood knocked down ceiling tiles and disabled elevators.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/07/detainee_overcrowding_is_cited_after_cambridge_jail_riot/?page=full

Posted by lois at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)

PA: No parole for people convicted of violent offences...not so fast critics warn.

No parole for repeat violent offenders? Not so fast, critics warn

By DANA DiFILIPPO
Philadelphia Daily News

WITH EVERY violent crime committed by a repeat offender, get-tough politicians and police bemoan crime's incalculable cost to society - the lost victims, the rising public-safety fears, the ruined reputation of a thug-choked city.

Now there's a preliminary price tag on a plan that would stiffen sentences and end parole for repeat violent offenders in Pennsylvania: $55.8 million.

The Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing estimates that State Rep. Brendan Boyle's bill - introduced this spring - could dump an additional 1,685 inmates into the state's 50,653-inmate system, at a projected 30-year cost of $55.8 million.

In this violence-weary city and state, Boyle's bill quickly got a high-five from the governor and other bigwigs, and is getting fast-tracked through the state House.

"These are the people we have to use our resources for," Seth Williams, the Democratic nominee for Philadelphia district attorney, said at a recent news conference to rally support for the bill.

But as policymakers ponder how to shrink ballooning correctional costs in a state that spends $1.6 billion on prisons yearly, the staggering sum has some folks questioning whether the plan is worth it.

Critics complain that the bill is a knee-jerk reaction to the recent police slayings and will only make things worse.

Eliminating parole removes the incentive for inmates to behave behind bars, said Bill DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society.

The projected cost also virtually ensures that the state will have to build another prison to lock up the baddies who'll be affected, DiMascio added. Plans to build four new prisons already are under way in a state that now has 27, state Department of Corrections Spokeswoman Susan McNaughton said.

Pennsylvania already has a three-strikes law that allows prosecutors to request mandatory 10-to-20- year sentences for second-strike felons and 30-to-50-year sentences for third-strikers.

But convicts often are able to dodge that law, in large part due to the prevalence of plea bargains, lawmakers and experts agree. The average minimum sentence now served by the sort of second-strike felon that Boyle's bill targets is about eight years, data show.

Under Boyle's bill, persistent perpetrators automatically would be charged under the three-strikes law, eluding mandatory sentencing only if prosecutors ask for an exemption. And the bill will boost the mandatory minimum penalty for second-strikers to 15 to 30 years, essentially doubling the punishment they typically now face.

Advocates for juvenile offenders already vow to challenge the bill, which would allow courts to count juvenile convictions when tallying a person's strikes.

"Kids at juvenile court don't get jury trials, unlike their peers who did not get decertified, as well as adults," said Marsha Levick, deputy director and chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center. "So, there's a due-process violation."

But Boyle, in insisting that juvenile convictions should be included, cited studies showing that the younger that offenders are when they first commit crimes, the likelier they are to commit more.

He also defended his bill's cost as a long-term savings, saying that removing problem predators from communities should drive down crime rates. The $55.8 million cost averages less than $2 million a year, a tiny fraction of the prisons system's annual budget, he added.

The cost projection is a guideline, said Mark H. Bergstrom, executive director of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing. The bill's actual cost will depend on everything from its final wording to unforeseen trends, Bergstrom added.

"Keeping repeat violent offenders in prison longer obviously will add to the cost to run our prisons," said Boyle, a Democrat whose district in Northeast Philadelphia and Montgomery County is where many of the slain Philadelphia officers either worked or lived.

"But it is an incomplete analysis to only look at prison costs," Boyle said. "Violent crime in America has a cost one way or another: We either pay it in prisons or we let them out on the streets and pay the cost in loss of life, medical costs, lost jobs. If lives are saved through this legislation, then it is worth any cost to pay."
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/50004072.html?cmpid=15585797

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

July 06, 2009

Jim Webb’s attack on American Gulag

Jim Webb’s attack on American Gulag
By Alexander Cockburn
Published: Monday, July 6, 2009

Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia introduced his bill to set up a bipartisan National Criminal Justice Commission. "We find ourselves as a nation," Webb declared, "in the midst of a profound, deeply corrosive crisis," vis., "the national disgrace of our present criminal justice system" and "the disintegration of this system, day by day and year by year." This "is dramatically affecting millions of lives, draining billions of dollars from our economy, destroying notions of neighborhood and family in hundreds of communities across the country, and — most importantly — it is not making our country a safer or a fairer place."

True words.

The goal of Webb's legislation? To establish a national commission to examine and reshape America's entire criminal justice system, the first such effort in more than 40 years. Its aims as outlined by Webb are to refocus incarceration policies on criminal activities that threaten public safety; to lower the incarceration rate; to decrease prison violence; to improve prison administration; to establish meaningful re-entry programs for former offenders; to reform drug laws; to improve treatment of the mentally ill; and to improve responses to international and domestic criminal activity by gangs and cartels.

Webb compared the implications of his bleak data to the financial meltdown that has already eaten a trillion dollars of public funds and the "War on Terror" that has eaten another trillion, plus tens of thousands of lives.

America has 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's known prison population; 7.3 million incarcerated, on probation or on parole; 2.38 million are in prison — five times the world's average rate. Imprisoned drug offenders are up from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 by 2008, a significant percentage of them with no history of violence or high-level drug activity. There is extreme disproportion in the drug sentencing — blacks have roughly the same drug-use rate as whites but are seven times more likely to go to prison where there's hopeless overcrowding with all hope abandoned and extremely high recidivism rates. Four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals, roughly 350,000 compared to 80,000.

One very important omission from Webb's profile of crisis was the crisis in prison medical (non)care, now so dreadful in California as to be taken out of California hands and managed by a court-appointed federal judge. This is clearly a contentious issue since Jerry Brown plans to run for governor on a platform that denounces medical care for prisoners as a frivolous expense.

Gov. "Moonbeam" Brown has learned his lesson and become No-Nonsense Jerry, who rejects prison medicine as "holistic" silliness. Considering the ever-growing number of three-strike lifers vegetating in their own organic manure who have Alzheimer's and can't remember their names let alone their crimes, the cynicism of Jerry Brown — whose family has lived off the people in every possible "job" they could "run" for (after) for over 50 years — is unfathomable.

What hope of reform? For 30 years, the political economy of the American gulag has had irresistible allurements: the "tough on crime" Seal of Approval for political candidates from police chiefs, prison guard unions and the victims' lobby. What governor, given the fate of Dukakis of Massachusetts or Ryan of Illinois, dares to pardon or even parole? In my recollection, only Mike Huckabee, governor of Arkansas, released substantial numbers from prison.

"Reform of the justice system" is now on lips that would otherwise disdain those words because of economic crisis, which has enabled reform of New York's terrible Rockefeller drug laws: The prisons housing the swelling flood of convicts become the darling of upstate New York. What legislator would vote to kill all those rural jobs, however counterproductive? Before the fiscal meltdown, hardly any; since the fiscal meltdown, a solid majority. New York State cannot now afford the huge workfare program that developed in the upstate counties around Rockefeller's prison-packing program. The money just isn't there. So, soon thousands of those convicts who shouldn't have been there in the first place won't be there either.

Aside from the spur of fiscal crisis in every state, the only apparent opening political wedge discernible in Webb's opening statement is the issue of organized Mexican gangs that supposedly exist in "hundreds" of American cities. "There are an estimated 1 million gang members in the United States, many of them foreign-based," Webb declared. "Every American neighborhood is vulnerable. Gangs commit 80 percent of the crime in some locations. Mexican cartels, which are military-capable, have operations in 230-plus U.S. cities. U.S. gangs are involved in cross-border criminal activity, working in partnership with these cartels."

Yet the organized gangs of prison guards and cement contractors who control all the state legislatures are far more powerful.

Webb's stark recitation of the grim facts was all the more dramatic since it was devoid of editorial comment. It reminds one of Machiavelli's little theorem: the more difficult the diagnosis, the easier the cure; the easier the diagnosis, the harder the cure. When it is obvious to all, there is no cure.

Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the new book "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils," available through www.counterpunch.com.

http://www.atmoreadvance.com/articles/2009/07/06/opinion/columns/column2.txt

Posted by lois at 09:06 PM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2009

Ruling could aid Pennsylvania prison lifers seeking release

The big word in the headline is COULD.
Lois

Posted on Fri, Jun. 26, 2009
Ruling could aid Pa. prison lifers seeking release
PETER JACKSON
The Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A federal judge has reaffirmed a ruling that could make it easier for inmates serving life sentences in Pennsylvania prisons to get commutation requests considered by the governor.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo in Scranton could affect hundreds of lifers who committed their crimes before voters amended the state constitution in November 1997 to toughen the standards for clemency requests from lifers.

The amendment, part of an anti-crime package advocated by then-Gov. Tom Ridge, requires the unanimous approval of the state Pardons Board before a commutation is recommended to the governor , allowing a single board member to block a commutation. Before that, only a majority vote by the five-member board was needed.

In the latest ruling on a lawsuit filed by the Pennsylvania Prison Society, Caputo reiterated that applying the stricter rules to inmates convicted of crimes committed before the 1997 referendum amounted to unconstitutional, ex post facto punishment.

Caputo initially decided the case in 2006. The state appealed, and the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case to Caputo in 2007 to determine whether several inmates, citizens and groups that had joined the case as plaintiffs had sustained a legal injury that entitled them to participate.

In his June 11 ruling, Caputo dismissed all plaintiffs except for the prison society.

He also reaffirmed his conclusion about the disparate treatment of lifers seeking commutations, although lawyers in the case said the circuit court has not scrutinized that issue.

Only three life sentences have been commuted in the 12 years since the referendum, according to Bill DiMascio, executive director of the prison society, the nation's oldest prisoner advocacy group. In the three preceding decades, he said, such commutations were granted, on average, 10 times a year.

Members of the prison board "are hearing very few cases and very few of them are getting a majority vote," so complying with the ruling would not result in the "wholesale release" of murderers, he said.

Gov. Ed Rendell and state Attorney General Tom Corbett are among the state officials discussing whether to appeal Caputo's decision, their spokesmen said.

DiMascio said he was disappointed that Caputo did not order the pardons board to forward commutation requests from two lifers whose crimes were committed before 1997 , Jackie Lee Thompson and Keith O. Smith , and whose requests were denied even though they were approved by 4-1 votes of the board several years ago.

John Heaton, secretary of the pardons board, said any action on the requests would be premature because the 30-day appeal period is pending.

Members of the board are Corbett, Lt. Gov. Joe Scarnati, psychologist Russell A. Walsh, victim representative Louise B. Williams and corrections expert John E. Wetzel.
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/20090626_ap_rulingcouldaidpaprisonlifersseekingrelease.html

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

June 25, 2009

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

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

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
Miami Herald
06.24.09

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BREAKING CYCLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PREVENTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 22, 2009

CO: Independent Ideas: Prison spending still shackles state budget Until sentencing laws change, not much can be done

Independent Ideas: Prison spending still shackles state budget
Until sentencing laws change, not much can be done

By By Mike Krause, For the Colorado Daily

Sunday, June 21, 2009

On June 3, Gov. Bill Ritter signed Senate Bill 228, repealing the statutory spending limitation (the Bird-Arveschoug Act) that held the annual increase in general fund spending in Colorado to 6 percent.

But before anyone gets all teary-eyed -- whether from joy or sorrow -- because the majority Democrats in the Legislature finally will have the budgetary flexibility to spend as they see fit, take a breath.

Recent history shows that prison spending in Colorado, and the sentencing polices that drive that spending, has been constraining state spending for decades, and will continue to do so into the near future.

In 1985, the Legislature doubled the maximum penalties in Colorado's presumptive sentencing range for all levels of felony crimes. The average sentence length quickly increased by two-thirds, and Colorado's inmate population more than doubled in the next five years.

It has more than doubled again since.

In an effort to keep pace with the capacity demands of such unprecedented growth in the prison population, successive legislatures and governors have taken Colorado taxpayers on an extreme prison spending spree that has pushed corrections spending from less than 3 percent to nearly 9 percent of general fund spending.

It is a simple formula, but a dramatic increase in spending for one item as a percentage of the state's general fund (prisons) necessarily means that other spending items (such as health care and higher education) have had to decrease as a percentage of general fund appropriation.

This year's Joint Budget Committee budget briefing notes that in the 16 years since Colorado lawmakers implemented the 6 percent spending limit, prison spending has grown "at a compound annual rate of 9.5 percent." If prison spending had actually been held to the 6 percent growth, then last year's Department of Corrections operating budget would have been around $430 million; instead it was nearly $677 million.

So the current opportunity cost of Colorado's extreme prison spending spree is a quarter billion dollars that could have been spent on health care and higher education.

This year's budget increased prison spending by around 3 percent, and while this is considerably less than the more than 9 percent increase originally requested by, it is likely not nearly enough to allow the Department of Corrections to keep pace with the ever growing prison population. Despite a recent slowing trend, projections still estimate thousands more inmates by 2012, which in turn demands many more millions in new prison spending.

Spending doesn't drive the prison population, rather the prison population drives state spending. So regardless of what lawmakers do with the prison budget next session, inmates will keep showing up at the door. The Legislature's ability to affect prison spending lies in its prerogative to write sentencing law and policy

The fact that the Democrat majority had to take the axe to general fund spending items such as higher education and health care this year had little to do with the 6-percent spending limitation and everything to do with fiscally irresponsible prison spending.

And until such time as Colorado lawmakers find the will to make meaningful sentencing law reforms, this will continue to be the case.

Mike Krause directs the Justice Policy Initiative at the Independence Institute.
http://www.coloradodaily.com/news/2009/jun/21/prison-spending-still-shackles-state-budget/

Posted by lois at 09:36 AM | Comments (0)

June 19, 2009

MA Bar Association Drug Policy Task Force report on The Failure of the War on Drugs"

Massachusetts Bar Association's Drug Policy Task Force issued a major report, "The Failure of the War on Drugs: Charting a New Course for the Commonwealth." The report urges the Legislature to reform the state's approach to drug prevention, treatment and punishment. "Changing policies from emphasis on incarceration to more encouragement for treatment would allow us to save money, reduce crime, and rebuild families and communities."
Recommendations for reform. The Task Force's recommendations to reform mandatory minimum sentences are the same ones that FAMM supports: allowing drug offenders to apply for parole, work release and earned "good time" deductions, reducing "school zones" to 100 feet, eliminating mandatory sentences for school zone offenders (who will still be punished for the underlying offense) and allowing school zone sentences to be served concurrently with another sentence.
http://www.massbar.org/media/520275/drug%20policy%20task%20force%20final%20report.pdf

Posted by lois at 05:52 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 04, 2009

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

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

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

June 02, 2009

New Poll Shows the Public Largely in Favor of Alternatives to Prison and Jail as a Response to Nonserious Offenses

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE- The National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD)
Oakland, CA, June 2, 2009
New Poll Shows the Public Largely in Favor of Alternatives to Prison and Jail as a Response to Nonserious Offenses

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) has just released the results of a public opinion poll on attitudes toward nonserious, nonviolent, nonsexual crime and the appropriate sanctions in such cases. Across most demographic groups, the public feels that alternatives to prison and jail benefit society rather than hurt it.

Some of the key poll results are as follows:

* Eight in ten (77%) adults believe the most appropriate sentence for nonviolent, nonserious offenders is supervised probation, restitution, community service, and/or rehabilitative services; if an offender fails in these alternatives, then prison or jail may be appropriate.
* Over three-quarters (77%) believe alternatives to incarceration do not decrease public safety.
* More than half (55%) believe alternatives to prison or jail decrease costs to state and local governments.
* US adults more often think alternatives to incarceration are more effective than prison or jail time at reducing recidivism (45% vs. 38%).
* Respondents cited a variety of reasons they believe justify sending fewer people to prison or jail, including expense, overcrowding (danger to guards, danger to inmates), the ability of proven alternatives to reduce crime, and the fairness of the punishment relative to the crime.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International in April, 2009. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percentage points.

This report is available on NCCD’s website at: http://www.nccd-crc.org/nccd/pubs/2009_focus_nonserious_offenders.pdf

Posted by lois at 07:16 PM | Comments (0)

May 29, 2009

Interfaith group seeks second chance for youths sentenced to life The coalition delivers a message of redemption in sermons at some 200 California churches, synagogues and mosques.

Interfaith group seeks second chance for youths sentenced to life
The coalition delivers a message of redemption in sermons at some 200 California churches, synagogues and mosques.
By Dana Parsons
May 25, 2009
The major faith traditions teach that the young are special in the eyes of the Almighty. So what does God do when one of them commits a horrible crime and is consigned to a life in prison?

He cries.

That was the message delivered over Memorial Day weekend at some 200 churches, synagogues and mosques around the state by an interfaith coalition trying to change people's attitudes about long sentences for juveniles -- especially those facing life without the possibility of parole.

"When children commit certain actions, we stop thinking of them as children," Javier Stauring, director of Faith Communities for Families and Children, told a group of about 90 people Sunday at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. "We start fearing them, we start demonizing them."

The Bible virtually sanctifies children. That doesn't change, Stauring suggested, when the legal system tries a young teenager as an adult. While not condoning their crimes, Stauring said a society with redemption in mind would not foreclose a second chance to someone so young.

"It's a lot easier to lock up a problem and throw away the key and not have to think about it, and to think that's going to make us safer," he said. What will make society safer from young criminals, Stauring said, is going after the "layers of woundedness" that often afflict them -- wounds that may stem from violence or abuse.

In an interview before he spoke Sunday, the 47-year-old Stauring said he met his first juvenile inmate 18 years ago while volunteering through his church. Now a lay chaplain, Stauring said he wasn't particularly religious when he volunteered.

"I now consider that a blessing," he said of the experience. "I formed my vision of God. We find him in the fringes. That's where, if we look at Jesus as a model, that's who he hung around with."

Stauring shared the microphone Sunday with Elias Elizondo, who took a plea bargain 16 years ago on a murder charge that got him a sentence of 15 years to life instead of life without parole. Now 32 and living in Sun Valley, Elizondo was paroled four months ago and said he's a different person than he was at 16.

"I don't justify my actions," he said, without explaining the details of the crime. He told the group that he not only deserved prison but that, at the time, he wasn't sure he ever should be released. Only when he matured, he said, did he realize that he could change course. Instead of blaming other people or his education, which stopped at sixth grade, he set out to improve himself.

"I started thinking, 'Is it possible I could turn my life around?' "

The answer, Elizondo said, was yes. "The parole board gave me a chance when it didn't have to," he said. "I was redeemable."

Elizondo is the kind of person Stauring's group wants to reach. The coalition is advocating for state Senate Bill 399, which would permit anyone under 18 sentenced to life without parole to ask for resentencing after serving 10 years. If the inmate met certain conditions, he or she could be eligible for a new sentence of 25 years to life.

Even that seemingly small window, Stauring said, would give hope to the still-young person.

The coalition's efforts are aligned with Human Rights Watch, an international organization that has called on Congress to end life-without-parole sentencing for young offenders. "Sentencing juveniles to die in prison is cruel, costly and unnecessary," the organization's U.S. program director said this month.

The group reported that at least 2,574 inmates in the United States were sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed before the age of 18. California has 250 of them. The United States is the only country that imposes such harsh sentences on juveniles.

Stauring knows the statistics but said the holy books of Christianity, Judaism and Islam are his references on the subject.

"This comes from our faith convictions," he said, "that we should never ever give up on a child -- children are always changing -- and that we should not look at them and declare that the worst thing they did as a child is how we're going to label them for the rest of their lives."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-juvenile-justice25-2009may25,0,7391881.story

Posted by lois at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2009

Congressional Black Caucus Justice and Civil Rights Taskforce and Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School presents Rethinking Federal Sentencing Policy: 25th Anniversary of the Sentencing Reform Act.

Congressional Black Caucus Justice and Civil Rights Taskforce and Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School presents Rethinking Federal Sentencing Policy: 25th Anniversary of the Sentencing Reform Act.
Start: 2009/06/24 - 4:00pm
End: 2009/06/24 - 7:00pm
Schedule:

Welcome and Opening remarks by
Rep. Danny Davis (5 minutes)
Rep. Charles Rangel (5 minutes)

Welcome and Introduction of A.G. by CBC Justice & Civil Rights Task Force, Rep. John Conyers (5-10 minutes)

Remarks by Eric Holder, Attorney General (15 minutes), U.S. Department of Justice

Introduction of Justice O’Connor by Sen. Patrick Leahy, Charles Hamilton Houston, Institute for Race & Justice (5 minutes)

Remarks by Hon. Sandra Day O’Connor (15 minutes), Supreme Court of the United States

Mandatory Minimums
Panel One: Rep Maxine Waters (CA) History of Mandatory Minimums

Hon. Terry Hatter, Judge, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
Hon. J. Spencer Letts, Senior Judge, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California
Eric Sterling, President, Criminal Justice Policy Foundation
Charles E. Black, formerly Incarcerated

Panel Two: Rep. Bobby Scott (VA) the need for repeal and how to repeal, including legislative update

Hon. Ann Williams, Circuit Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit
A.J. Kramer, Federal Defender, Federal Public Defender of the District of Columbia
Julie Stewart, President, Families Against Mandatory Minimums

Disparity between Crack and Powder Cocaine
Panel Three: Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX)

Hon. Reggie B. Walton, Judge, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
Hon. William Sessions, Vice Chairman, U.S. Sentencing Commission
Brace Nicholson, Legislative Counsel, American Bar Association
David Kirby, Former United States Attorney for the District of Vermont

Good Time

Panel Four: Rep. Danny K. Davis (IL)

Hon. Consuelo B. Marshall, Senior Judge, U.S. District Court for Central District of California
Nancy Gertner, Judge, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts
Marc Mauer, Executive Director, Sentencing Project
Harley G. Lappin, Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons (Discuss overcrowding)
U.S. House of Representatives -- Committee on Ways and Means
1100 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC
United States

Posted by lois at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2009

Life Sentence for Juveniles?

May 12, 2009
Letter to the Editor, NY Times
Life Sentence for Juveniles?

To the Editor:

Re “Justices Agree to Take Up Life-Without-Parole Sentences for Young Offenders” (news article, May 5):

There are currently almost 2,500 people serving sentences of life without parole for crimes committed before age 18. Fifty-nine percent received their sentences for their first-ever criminal conviction. Sixteen percent were between 13 and 15 when they committed their crimes, and 26 percent were sentenced under a felony murder charge where their offenses did not involve carrying a weapon or pulling a trigger.

Our society recognizes that juveniles differ from adults in their thinking, reasoning and decision-making capacities. Research also demonstrates that adolescents actually use their brains in fundamentally different ways from adults. As a result, they are more likely to act on impulse, without fully considering the consequences of their actions.

This fall, the Supreme Court will decide if juvenile offenders should be eligible for life without parole. One hopes they will concur with the growing public sentiment that it’s time to stop sentencing young people to die in jail.

David Fassler
Burlington, Vt., May 5, 2009

The writer is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/opinio/l12juvenile.html?ref=opinion

Posted by lois at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)

NY: AFTER 'ROCK' REFORM: WHAT HAPPENS TO REHAB?

AFTER 'ROCK' REFORM: WHAT HAPPENS TO REHAB?
Expanded drug courts and holistic re-entry planning are under discussion, along with up to 3,000 more slots for addiction treatment.
By Casey Samulski
City Limits WEEKLY #686
May 11, 2009

Now that New York state's Rockefeller drug laws have been reformed, mandatory prison sentences no longer come with convictions for any but the highest level of non-violent offenders found guilty of drug possession. Now judges can send drug addicts who would have gone to prison to treatment programs instead. Viewing addiction more often as an affliction rather than a crime – better treated through rehabilitation than confinement – will mean a stream of new clients at drug rehab centers, which are planning for the influx.

Under the reforms, an additional 1,000 to 2,000 offenders per year could be diverted from prison to drug treatment, raising questions around the state about how to handle the increased caseload. Gov. Paterson recently announced the creation of a group called ACTION – the Addictions Collaborative to Improve Outcomes for New York – a council of commissioners from 20 state agencies as well as the nonprofit and private sectors. Its mandate is to identify “ways in which statutes, regulations, rules and policies may be revised in order to promote addiction prevention, treatment and recovery efforts.”

Accompanying the planning group is an additional $50 million appropriation for treatment to be disbursed through the state Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS,) which regulates and certifies all operating drug treatment centers in the state. Over 1,500 certified treatment centers work with an estimated 110,000 New Yorkers every day. The state currently spends close to $2 billion annually – across a number of agencies – on substance abuse, treatment, and recovery, and the new funding is an addition to OASAS’ current $713 million budget. The $50 million will be distributed over the next three years to help build and improve residential and outpatient capacity, to help treatment networks to meet the increased demand that's anticipated.

OASAS Commissioner Karen Carpenter-Palumbo praised the changes to the Rockefeller laws, congratulating the governor in an interview for “leading the country,” calling the changes a “landmark reform.” Carpenter-Palumbo expressed confidence that the additional funding would cover increased use of the treatment system, saying, “I’m confident we have the resources we need to make it real.”

While recidivism for those who successfully finish a course of treatment is on average far lower than for those who have been imprisoned, the commissioner called addiction “a chronic illness.”

“There is no magic bullet,” she said. “Some people do relapse.”

It is organizations like Phoenix House that will be recipients of the additional funding. Phoenix House is a network of treatment centers spread across nine states, including New York. It runs more than 120 programs for drug and alcohol treatment and prevention and serves about 7,000 individuals every day, treating everyone from adolescents to the homeless; in New York alone it serves 2,400 individuals per day.

Norwig Debye-Saxinger, vice president and director of public policy and government relations at the New York office, said it's too early to tell what effect the changed policies will have on his organization. Of the increased funding, he said, "Percentage-wise it’s not a big increase, but it’s hard to tell how many additional people will be diverted.” Debye-Saxinger has heard estimates ranging from as few as 600 to as many as 3,000 additional offenders entering treatment.

As rehab facilities acclimate, OASAS may be urged to consider temporarily waiving space regulations to help increase capacity faster. “The only regulations that might need tweaking are the physical plant standards that require a certain square footage per client,” he said, suggesting that returning to the lower standard from before 2002 would help build additional treatment space faster.

Working in an advisory capacity to ACTION will be the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, who help in the training, startup, and organization of drug courts across the country. Judge John Schwartz, founder of New York’s first drug court in Rochester and former chairman of the drug court association's board, reached out to the governor to be a part of the council in helping with ACTION. Schwartz says that while New York has a drug court for every county – one of the largest systems in the country – he anticipated that his group would be advocating to improve and expand the drug court system. “Everyone who fits the criteria should be given the opportunity” to be assessed for treatment, he said.

Drug courts function as the intermediary between the criminal justice system and the drug treatment network, strategizing side by side with treatment professionals to determine the best course of action for those diverted from prison. “It’s not the normal courtroom that one thinks of,” Schwartz said. “It’s really a treatment court. Treatment services are provided right through the court system.”

Schwartz said increasing the capacity of the drug court system, making more courts, making them larger, and thus making them able to divert more people from prison would actually save the state money. “It costs about $6,000 for a drug court placement compared to $30,000 for staying in prison,” he explained.

Dr. David Deitch, senior vice president and chief clinical officer of Phoenix House, explained his concerns for those in need of treatment but already imprisoned. He called the Rockefeller reforms “enlightened legislation” but warned that the effort could be “tossed on its rear end if indeed people are released and commit crimes simply because they are returning to a lifestyle of drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior.”

Deitch was adamant that a part of preventing this sort of cycle would be treatment options for those nearing the end of their sentence. He said, “Providers like Phoenix ought to be given the opportunity to case manage those who are due for release" – thus helping an individual re-enter society and deal with issues like welfare, mental health, employment, housing, and family reunification.

This is the sort of cooperation with the prison system that Deitch and others would like to see expanded even further by the ACTION council, particularly for those individuals who may achieve retroactive release if their crimes fall under the guidelines for a diversionary treatment program. The transition of taking people out of prison and into treatment can be a difficult one, he said. “Most offenders after years in prison are not interested in being committed to a mental health program.”

Deitch is not the only one thinking long-term. When discussing aftercare and case management, Commissioner Carpenter-Palumbo made it clear that effective drug treatment was a long and involved process. “The science tells us that after any treatment involvement, the person has to maintain contact [with the program] for at least one year, many even longer. The reason they say 'one day at a time' is that it is truly one day at a time.”

- Casey Samulski

Posted by lois at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2009

MA: Editorial: Reform sentencing to save money, reduce crime

Editorial: Reform sentencing to save money, reduce crime
GateHouse News Service
Posted May 08, 2009

The case for reforming criminal sentencing in Massachusetts has been evident for years. Mandatory minimum sentences handcuff judges, denying them the flexibility they need to ensure justice and protect public safety in light of the specific case at hand. They pack the prisons with people who come out more dangerous than they went in. And they deny courts and prosecutors the most effective tools for keeping released prisoners from offending again.

Those serving mandatory minimum sentences, most of them drug offenders, aren't eligible for work release programs, "good conduct" credits or parole. As a result, nearly a thousand inmates a year are released back into the community with none of the post-release supervision proven to keep ex-offenders from committing crimes again.

The state's Criminal Offender Record Information system suffers from similar unintended consequences. Designed to protect the innocent by giving prospective employers access to criminal records, CORI too often denies those who have served their sentences the jobs they need to keep away from crime.

But the case for reforming sentencing and CORI has been lost on the risk-averse state Legislature. Mandatory minimums aren't as politically popular as they were 20 years ago, but convicted criminals don't vote, and those who like policies that look "tough on crime" do - even if those policies don't actually work.

Gov. Deval Patrick is challenging legislators to choose effective crime-control strategies over outdated political assumptions. Patrick is introducing bills to modify mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders, allowing them to apply for parole after serving two-thirds of their sentences and making post-release supervision mandatory. Drug offenders serving mandatory minimums would be eligible for work release and community corrections programs.

Patrick calls for CORI reforms that would tighten administration and give offenders the opportunity to contest CORI decisions and respond to those reviewing their records.

These reforms are a good first step, but only that. The state should be creating options for drug treatment instead of incarceration for some drug offenders. Community corrections and post-release supervision should be expanded, as should drug treatment programs in the prisons.

In the past, the Legislature has too often ignored the governor's reform initiatives. His response, in this and other areas, has been to offer more modest reforms, which the Legislature dilutes further, so that they hardly qualify as reforms at all.

In this case, the Legislature should make Patrick's reforms even stronger. If the research into preventing recidivism isn't convincing enough, lawmakers should consider the cost of "lock-em-up-and-forget-about-them" policies. It costs about $47,000 a year to house each inmate in Massachusetts' overcrowded prisons. With the state facing its worst ever fiscal crisis, taxpayers can no longer afford politically popular policies that do little to reduce crime.

The MetroWest Daily News
http://www.enterprisenews.com/opinions/x2133277840/Editorial-Reform-sentencing-to-save-money-reduce-crime?view=print

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

May 07, 2009

MA: Boston Globe Editorial: Better sense in sentencing

Better sense in sentencing
May 7, 2009
Boston Globe Editorial

MANDATORY MINIMUM sentences for nonviolent drug crimes don't prompt offenders to clean up their acts. But they do pick the pockets of taxpayers, who cover the $47,000 annual cost of holding an inmate in state prison. Today, the Patrick administration is taking a sensible step to address this imbalance in the criminal justice system.

Part of the governor's new crime prevention bill would allow parole for drug offenders after serving two-thirds of their mandatory minimum sentences. Parole eligibility would provide offenders with access to addiction treatment and work release programs, which are now foolishly barred to them. The offer of parole, however, would be decided case-by-case by the Parole Board. That check adds an important layer of protection for the public.

Legal experts ranging from the US Justice Department to the Massachusetts Bar Association have been pointing out flaws in drug sentencing structures that do little to reintegrate offenders and fall disproportionately on minorities in crowded cities. A prime example is the two-year mandatory minimum sentence for selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school zone. It can apply to adults involved in drug deals regardless of whether school is in session.

The public needs to pay attention when Kevin Burke, the state secretary of public safety, says that "some people are doing too much time for nonviolent offenses." District attorneys, including Middlesex DA Gerry Leone, are also embracing the effort because it gets at the root of recidivism. The bill wisely requires that all offenders, not just drug offenders, remain under mandatory supervision by the Parole Board for a period equal to 25 percent of their sentence. That requirement, says Leone, makes the bill a sound approach to crime prevention. He warns, however, that lawmakers must be willing to fund prevention and reentry programs for offenders.

Mandatory minimum sentences were the reaction to a frightening outbreak of drug-fueled gang violence in the 1980s. More than 20 years later, the sentences are ensnaring low-level drug users who pose minimal safety risks. Patrick's bill reflects the best current thinking in criminal justice circles.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2009/05/07/better_sense_in_sentencing/

Posted by lois at 10:06 AM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2009

Justices Agree to Take Up Life Without Parole for Youth

Justices Agree to Take Up Sentencing for Young Offenders
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: May 4, 2009- NY Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider whether the reasoning that led it to strike down the death penalty for juvenile offenders four years ago should also apply to sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

The court accepted two cases on the issue, both from Florida and neither involving a killing. In one, Joe Sullivan was sentenced to life without the possibility of release for raping a 72-year-old woman in 1989, when he was 13. In the other, Terrance Graham received the same sentence for participating in a home invasion robbery in 2004, when he was 17 and on probation for other crimes.

In the majority opinion in the death penalty case, Roper v. Simmons, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote that teenagers were immature, unformed, irresponsible and susceptible to negative influences, including peer pressure.

“Even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile,” Justice Kennedy concluded, is not “evidence of irretrievably depraved character.”

Outside the context of the death penalty, however, the Supreme Court has not shown much interest in cases from prisoners claiming that the sentences they received were too harsh. But Douglas A. Berman, an authority on sentencing law at Ohio State University, said the factors cited by Justice Kennedy concerning juveniles might well apply in noncapital cases.

“The principles driving Roper,” Professor Berman said, “would seem to suggest that its impact does not stop at the execution chamber.”

The United States is alone in the world in making routine use of life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders. Human rights groups say more than 2,000 prisoners in the United States are serving such sentences for crimes they committed when they were 17 or younger. A vast majority of those crimes involved a killing by the defendant or an accomplice.

At the argument of the Roper case in 2004, Justice Antonin Scalia said the rationales offered against the juvenile death penalty applied just as forcefully to sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

“I don’t see where there’s a logical line,” said Justice Scalia, who voted in dissent to retain the juvenile death penalty.

But Justice Kennedy wrote that life sentences would continue to deter young criminals after the death penalty became unavailable.

“The punishment of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “is itself a severe sanction, in particular for a young person.”

Lawyers for the two Florida inmates cited international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits sentences of life without parole for juveniles. Justice Kennedy’s invoking foreign and international law in the Roper decision was controversial, and the new cases will reopen the question of how much attention the Supreme Court should pay to international law.

Bryan S. Gowdy, a lawyer for Mr. Graham, said in an interview that his client had never been convicted of the robbery that sent him to prison for the rest of his life. Though evidence was presented concerning the robbery, the trial judge found only that Mr. Graham had violated the terms of his probation after an earlier conviction for armed burglary and attempted armed robbery when he was 16.

“When our children make mistakes, are we going to lock them up and throw away the key for life?” Mr. Gowdy said. “If you follow the rationale of Roper, that’s not appropriate.”

In rejecting a challenge to Mr. Graham’s sentence last year, a Florida appeals court acknowledged that “a true life sentence is typically reserved for juveniles guilty of more heinous crimes such as homicide.” But the court added that Mr. Graham “rejected his second chance” in violating the terms of his probation “and chose to continue committing crimes at an escalating pace.”

A ruling in favor of the prisoners in the two cases — Graham v. Florida, No. 08-7412, and Sullivan v. Florida, No. 08-7621 — could be quite narrow. The Supreme Court may leave for another day, for instance, the question of how murders committed by juveniles may be punished.

Last year, drawing a similar distinction, the court said in Kennedy v. Louisiana that crimes against individuals that do not involve killing, including the rape of a child by an adult, cannot be punished by death.
A version of this article appeared in print on May 5, 2009, on page A16 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/us/05scotus.html?scp=1&sq=Justices%20Agree%20to%20Take%20Up%20Life-Without%20Parole&st=cse

Posted by lois at 06:54 PM | Comments (0)

April 29, 2009

Obama Administration Calls for End to Crack-Powder Sentencing Disparity

Obama Administration Calls for End to Crack-Powder Sentencing Disparity
by Jasmine Tyler, Anthony Papa
Huffington Post
April 29, 2009

On President Obama's 100th day in office the White House asked Congress to address the issue of disparity in penalties for the use of powder/crack cocaine. This historic request follows a national lobby day held yesterday that was co-sponsored by a dozen advocacy groups.

The day brought together voters from Utah, California, Oklahoma, New Jersey, South Carolina and other states to pressure key members of Congress to eliminate the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences.

The groups held a breakfast briefing with members of congress and victims of the federal disparity on Tuesday morning. Chocolate bars weighing fifty grams, the equivalent weight that would trigger a 10 year mandatory minimum sentence for crack cocaine, were on hand to demonstrate to members of Congress just how small that quantity is compared to the 5000 grams -- five kilos -- of powered cocaine that garners the same penalty.

The 1986 and 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Acts created a disparity in sentencing between two forms of cocaine, crack cocaine and powder, at the federal level even though scientific evidence, including a major study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has proven that crack and powder cocaine have similar physiological and psychoactive effects on the human body. It takes only five grams of crack cocaine (the equivalent of the contents of two sugar packets) to receive a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, while it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to receive the same sentence.

As a presidential candidate, then-Senator Obama said the "war on drugs is an utter failure" and that he believes in "shifting the paradigm, shifting the model, so that we focus more on a public health approach." He also called for eliminating the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity, repealing the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs to reduce HIV/AIDS, and stopping the U.S. Justice Department from undermining state medical marijuana laws. Within 24 hours of taking office, the White House website made clear that Obama's campaign commitments to eliminate both the crack/powder disparity and the ban on syringe exchange funding were now official administration policy.

The Obama Administration has articulated the need to address this issue by completely eliminating the disparity. Current penalties for crack cocaine are excessively harsh and have little to do with an individual's actual culpability and more to do with the color of their skin. It's not fair and it's not working. While two-thirds of crack cocaine users are white or Latino according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than 80 percent of those convicted in federal court for crack cocaine offenses in 2006 were African American.

Last year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission moderately reduced sentences for crack cocaine offenses and the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled that judges have the right to sentence people below the guidelines in Kimbrough v. the United States. However, judicial discretion is still undermined by the statutory mandatory minimum sentences that Congress enacted over 20 years ago, and those mandatory minimums are the source of the crack/powder disparity.

Thus far, two legislative proposals have been re-introduced in the House -- one by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-TX, and one by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-VA. Both would end the disparity between powder and crack cocaine sentences. The Senate Crime and Drugs subcommittee will hold a hearing to discuss crack cocaine sentencing on Wednesday, April 29. The House Crime, Terror and Homeland Security committee also will hold a hearing on this issue on May 21.

The stars are aligning to ensure Americans will no longer be subjected to the same draconian policy set in the late 80s, which flies in the face of scientific and legal research. Congress and the administration have an obligation to fix this and show the country that our criminal justice practices will be fair and sentences proportional to the offense. We can no longer prioritize precious federal resources solely on the incarceration of individuals who are low-level, nonviolent drug users and sellers nor permit any racial group to continue to be unjustly targeted.

Jasmine L. Tyler is the Deputy Director of National Affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. Anthony Papa is the author 15 to Life.

* http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jasmine-tyler/obama-administration-call_b_193028.html

And....
Justice Dept. Seeks Equity in Sentences for Cocaine

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Published: April 29, 2009

A senior Justice Department official urged Congress on Wednesday to lower the mandatory minimum prison sentence for the sale and possession of crack cocaine to match the punishment for powder cocaine, eliminating arbitrary sentencing disparities that have resulted in many more African-Americans’ being jailed for longer terms.

It was the first time such a high-level law enforcement official has endorsed legislation to eliminate inequities in cocaine sentencing. Barack Obama, while campaigning for the White House, had called for an end to the disparity.

“Most in the law enforcement community now recognize the need to re-evaluate current federal cocaine sentencing policy and the disparities the policy creates,” the official, Lanny A. Breuer, the chief of the Criminal Division in the Justice Department, testified before the Crime and Drugs Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Under current federal laws, conviction for the sale and possession of 50 grams of crack cocaine is punishable by a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison; it takes 5,000 grams of powder cocaine to trigger the same punishment under the guidelines.

Mr. Breuer said that as of 2006, 82 percent of people convicted of federal crack cocaine offenses were African-American, and 9 percent were white. In that same year, 14 percent of federal powder cocaine offenders were white, 27 percent were African-American and 58 percent were Hispanic.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the subcommittee chairman, said he was a proponent of the two-tiered sentencing structure when it was adopted in 1986 during an epidemic of crack cocaine use. But Mr. Durbin said that he and other early supporters, including Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is now vice president, changed their minds as they learned more about the drug.

“Each of the myths upon which we based the disparity has since been dispelled or altered,” Mr. Durbin said. “Crack-related violence has decreased significantly since the 1980s, and today 94 percent of crack cocaine cases don’t involve violence at all.”

Mr. Breuer and other witnesses testified that the sentencing disparities eroded trust in the justice system, overstressed the prison system, and diverted federal law enforcement resources from prosecutions of organized crime and other priorities.

In 2007, the United States Sentencing Commission, a panel that advises federal courts on appropriate prison terms based on legislation, reduced the average sentence for crack cocaine possession to 8 years, 10 months from 10 years, 1 month.

That change was expected to reduce the federal prison population by about 3,800 inmates over 15 years.

So far, 19,239 offenders who were sentenced under the earlier guidelines have applied to have their terms reduced. About 70 percent of those motions have been granted.

Further sentencing reductions would require Congress to pass new legislation. Mr. Breuer said he was leading a working group at the Justice Department that was looking at how to reduce the sentencing disparity while preserving public safety.

Although many law enforcement groups have generally sided with reducing disparities in cocaine sentences, they disagree with the administration about how that might be achieved.

James Pasco, a lobbyist for the Fraternal Order of Police, suggested that prison sentences for powder cocaine should be raised to the level of crack sentences.

“The Obama administration just says they want the disparity addressed,” Mr. Pasco said. “So somewhere between our position for raising sentences for powder, and their position for doing away with disparities there’s room for discussion.”

Jasmine Tyler, of the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group supporting the reduction of drug crime sentences, said increasing penalties for powder cocaine would further burden the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is 140 percent beyond its capacity.

“I would be shocked if that were ever vetted as a real possibility,” Ms. Tyler said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/us/30cocaine.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 04:52 PM | Comments (0)

April 25, 2009

CA: State prisons chief proposes $400 million in cuts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 23, 2009

Prison population, corrections budget spike during truth in sentencing

"If a crime policy is gauged by its ability to lower crime rates and rehabilitate inmates to prevent return trips to prison, then truth in sentencing has failed."

Prison population, corrections budget spike during truth in sentencing
Jessica VanEgeren
April 21, 2009
Capital Times- Madison, WI

When the tough-on-crime mantra was all the rage in the 1990s, Wisconsin, like the rest of the nation, got caught up in the movement.

Michael Lew got caught up in it, too. As one of eight assistant chiefs of probation and parole for the state Department of Corrections, Lew was tapped to research the financial impact of a new sentencing policy being debated at the Capitol.

Known as truth in sentencing, the policy -- which had the blessing of then-Attorney General Jim Doyle -- took effect Dec. 31, 1999. It replaced the possibility of early release for good behavior, or parole, with a system where a 10-year sentence meant 10 years served. Time behind bars was followed by years out of prison under extended state supervision.

Because inmates under the then-existing parole system were only serving, on average, about 50 percent of their sentences, Lew and about a dozen colleagues estimated the truth in sentencing program would contribute to a Department of Corrections budget increase of $50 million to $70 million a year. Their estimates hit the mark.

Between 1999 and 2009, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections' budget grew 71 percent, from $700 million to $1.2 billion, or an average of $50 million a year, according to information released earlier this month by the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a national organization funded in part through the U.S. Department of Justice.

"Truth in sentencing is one of the reasons we have so many people in prison right now," said Lew, a 36-year veteran of the state corrections system who retired in 2006. "We are bankrupting ourselves."

The national organization further found that statewide between 2000 and 2007, the number of reported violent crimes increased by 28 percent, from 12,700 incidents to 16,296, and the prison population grew 14 percent, from 20,508 to 23,476. A majority of inmates are incarcerated because they re-offend or violate the terms of their release. In 2007, 55 percent of prison inmates had violated terms of their parole, probation or extended supervision or were re-offenders who had committed a new crime.

If a crime policy is gauged by its ability to lower crime rates and rehabilitate inmates to prevent return trips to prison, then truth in sentencing has failed. Costs are also up, threatening to become even more of a burden on an already cash-strapped state. These facts are not lost on state policy makers, who reached out last year to a national organization for policy assistance. While that group is delivering its recommendations to the Legislature this week, Governor Doyle has already put forward changes in his 2009-2011 budget, which is attempting to close a $5.2 billion deficit. The governor's plan proposes new ways for inmates who exhibit good behavior to get out of prison early. Parole, though not referred to as such, would make a comeback. Under these guidelines, roughly 1,000 inmates immediately would be ready for early release. More would be eligible in the months and years ahead.

Not surprisingly, the plan has critics, including state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, victim's rights advocates and the Wisconsin Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs Association.

At a press conference earlier this month, Van Hollen argued that undoing truth in sentencing by "opening up prison doors is indefensible." He said the state should instead spend money on alternatives to incarceration in appropriate cases.

But Department of Corrections Secretary Rick Raemisch, who worked with Doyle on the proposals, says they are a step in the right direction.

"Inmates can go back one of two ways ... treated, with a positive attitude and a job skill, or they can go back angry," Raemisch said. "Under truth in sentencing there was no incentive for inmates to improve themselves behind bars. What's being proposed is the start of a major movement toward sentencing reform in Wisconsin."

Positive reinforcement

Joe Gunter, a 40-year-old Madison resident, has spent nine of the last 18 years behind bars. His offense: driving under the influence. His drinking problem began when his stint in the Army ended in 1990. Over the next two years, he was caught and sentenced four times. His drinking has cost him everything, he says, including his marriage and the ability to see his three children. On July 15 he was released from a minimum security prison after serving a two-year sentence for his ninth drunken driving offense.

Employed in the construction business, Gunter says he would have liked to have taken a vocational training course in prison, but the programs were full. He did attend a month-long alcohol treatment program during his most recent prison term, the first substance abuse help he received after multiple incarcerations. The help he received worked. He has been sober ever since.

"I don't disagree with the law for putting me in prison," Gunter said. "But I would have benefited from treatment sooner."

He said limited space in programs and general overcrowding is making the prison environment more hostile. "Guys were testy," he said. "There were more fights this time around."

The governor's budget policy recommendations, if approved by the Legislature, aim to ease some of the strain on the system due to swelling prison ranks. The objective is to entice inmates like Gunter to improve themselves by rewarding good behavior with a shot at early release.

Specifically, non-violent felons could get out of prison early through a beefed-up version of the "earned release program." The program began in 2004, but was only available to an extremely narrow subset of inmates that included non-violent felony offenders who needed alcohol or drug treatment. For a number of reasons, what now is being proposed is drastically different.

First, all but the most violent felons could earn release not only by participating in drug or alcohol treatment but by taking advantage of educational, employment readiness and vocational training opportunities while in prison. Upon completing a program, the inmate would need approval from the Earned Release Review Commission, the new name for the Parole Commission, before being released into the community and onto extended supervision.

The state estimates roughly 1,000 felons would be immediately eligible for early release. Sex offenders and the top two categories of the most violent felons would never be eligible for early release.

Second, the proposals would be retroactive to Dec. 31, 1999, the date truth in sentencing took effect, making sentences handed down during the past 10 years up for change.

The retroactive nature is the most troubling part of what is being proposed, said Karen Rengert, president of the Wisconsin Victim/Witness Professionals Association. Although violent offenders would not be eligible for release, non-violent offenders, such as burglars, thieves or embezzlers, can make a victim feel as violated as does a person who suffers a physical attack, she said.

"Since 1999, we've been able to say to victims, if somebody is sentenced for five years, five years means five years," Rengert said. "We feel we are breaking our promises to all the victims we told this to over the years."

She said she is also concerned that victims will learn of an assailant's early release by running into them in public.

"I can appreciate the fact that we have too many people in prisons," Rengert said. "But this isn't the answer."

The governor's recommendations follow several bipartisan moves designed to address the state's escalating prison population and associated costs.

Last year, Doyle, along with Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, and then-Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch, R-West Salem, sought assistance from the Council of State Governments Justice Center to help develop a policy that would reduce spending on corrections and increase public safety.

In January, the Wisconsin Legislative Council established the Special Committee on Justice Reinvestment Oversight, a bipartisan advisory group, to assist the national organization in its data analyses and development of policy options.

The organization will present state officials with its policy recommendations at 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 22, in Room 412 East at the Capitol.

Criminally inclined?

In his final days as chancellor of UW-Madison, John Wiley let loose on a number of issues facing Wisconsin in a sharply worded piece in the September 2008 issue of Madison Magazine.

Wiley not only blasted some legislators for their hostile stance toward the University of Wisconsin System, he also asked why Minnesota, a state with a population similar to Wisconsin's, had roughly 14,000 fewer people behind bars, 8,757 compared to Wisconsin's 22,966 inmates.

"Are Wisconsin citizens that much more criminally inclined?" he asked.

Or is Minnesota more selective about who it sends to prison?

"Minnesota reserves its prison beds for the most violent offenders," said Shari Burt, communications director for the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

In 2007, the most recent year data was available, 16,168 Minnesota residents were convicted of felonies, according to Suzanne Alliegro, executive director of the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission. Of those, 3,760 went to prison. The remaining 12,408 offenders were punished through a three-tier system that includes time in a county jail, probation or a combination of jail and probation time.

Burt said the state pays a subsidy to counties for jail space and reimburses a percentage of the salaries of county-level probation officers.

This process, in contrast to Wisconsin's system, adds up to big savings. For the 2009 fiscal year, Minnesota's Department of Corrections' budget is $472 million. Wisconsin's is $1.2 billion.

Because sentencing guidelines were not changed in 1999 to accompany the new truth in sentencing policy, prison costs rose as the state's sentencing system skewed toward longer confinements.

Prior to truth in sentencing, someone convicted of a burglary, for example, could have been sentenced to 10 years in prison. After serving 25 percent of their time, they were eligible for parole. If denied parole, they had to be released for good behavior after serving 66 percent of their sentence, or just over six years in prison. Upon release, the burglar was put on parole. In other words, 10 years never meant 10 years behind bars. Ten years meant anywhere from two to six years behind bars.

Under truth in sentencing, if that same burglar was sentenced to 10 years in prison, there is no chance to get out early. The same crime now holds the offender in prison for four to eight years longer. At a price of $30,000 a year, the costs to incarcerate offenders for longer sentences compound quickly.

"The major failing of the truth-in-sentencing model is that by getting rid of parole you are asking judges to predict too far into the future on how suited someone will be for release," said Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard. "No matter how smart any given judge is, I don't think that's logical. If prison is about correction, then we should care how they are doing in prison. The parole system was able to capture that."

Lew, who now teaches online criminal justice classes for the University of Phoenix, said communities will be safer if inmates are no longer incarcerated without any incentives for self-improvement. Truth in sentencing, he says, has run its course.

"The policy failed," said Lew, "Besides costing a lot of money, I don't know what else it accomplished."
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/447944

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

April 20, 2009

MN: Senate bill aims to cut prison sentences to save state funds

Senate bill aims to cut prison sentences to save state funds
by Tom Scheck, Minnesota Public Radio
April 16, 2009

A bill introduced in the Minnesota Senate this week would cut prison sentences across the board and lower penalties for specific crimes. The bill's author said she's proposing the changes to help balance the state's budget. But some public safety advocates say the changes go too far and the savings could be found elsewhere.

St. Paul, Minn. — The bill proposed by DFL Senator Linda Higgins would cut $78 million from the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Corrections. The bulk of the cuts, $66 million, would come from the Corrections Department.

Because most of the department's expenses come from housing inmates, Higgins said the only way to save money is by reducing the number of inmates walking into prisons and the amount of time they stay there. Her plan accomplishes that by eliminating mandatory minimum sentences for some offenses.

"In the last 10 or 15 years, legislators have imposed all of these mandatory minimums and taken away any discretion that judges have on certain things," Higgins said. "And all of the research that's been going around the country on prison systems have found that it has really been a driver in an explosion of costs in a prison system."

Higgins wants to repeal required minimum sentences for felony drunk drivers, for some drug offenses and for predatory offenders who fail to register with authorities. She said judges should decide the length of sentences.

"They're the ones who know the circumstances. They know the person," Higgins said. "They're more intimately involved in a case rather than the those of us who sit this building and decide that we should be deciding a certain person's sentences. It's really not an appropriate thing for us to be doing. I think it should be people in that other branch of government."

The bill also reduces the length of time all inmates would serve in prison. Currently, offenders have to serve at least two-thirds of their sentence in prison or jail. The bill would shorten it to 60 percent. In other words, a person with a thirty year sentence would see their length of time in prison reduced from twenty years to eighteen years. Higgins said lawmakers have to make changes in light of a tough budget deficit.

That doesn't appease county attorneys who say the bill takes a step backward.

"In my experience going back to the '80s, I've never seen a rush at the last moment to attempt to save lots of money by making radical changes to the criminal justice system," said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.

Freeman said eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and prison time is a mistake. Even though the bill would apply only to inmates who are sentenced after July 1, Freeman said nearly every inmate already in prison would apply for the reduction. He said courts would force the state to make the change retroactive, meaning further reductions for inmates.

"It doesn't save any money," he said. "By the time we're done in the next two or three years litigating everyone's sentence again, it's going to be very expensive and there's no money in this bill for it."

Freeman said there are other ways for the state to save money. Among his suggestions is a study commission to determine which sentences should be reduced or extended. An official with the Minnesota County Attorneys Association said his organization has long supported a hike in the liquor tax to pay for public safety and corrections programs.

The Senate bill has other critics. Officials with Mothers Against Drunk Driving said repealing the mandatory minimum for felony DWIs will make the roads less safe. Lynn Goughler, with MADD Minnesota, said the felony DWI laws are working.

"I think that the laws in Minnesota for DWI have to be looked at very carefully and we can't just be changing DWI laws for the convenience of a state budget," Goughler said.

Goughler said she believes the state could save money by passing a law that requires drunk drivers to install a system that checks their blood alcohol level before they can start their cars. The engine won't start if the driver has been drinking.

The Public Safety Finance Committee debated and approved the bill on a divided voice vote. A full Senate vote is expected early next week. A companion bill in the Minnesota House cuts less to Corrections and Public Safety. It would rely on a cut in the daily amount spent on prisoners, freeze nonessential hiring and reduce sentences for low level drug offenses.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/04/15/prisonsentences_bill/

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

CO: Governor Runs From Issue He Ran On

Greene: Ritter runs from issue he ran on
By Susan Greene
Denver Post Columnist
04/19/2009

You should be scared, very scared.

That's what DAs hope as the legislature contemplates a bill to reform sentencing laws.

Notably silent, at least publicly, is Gov. Bill Ritter, who served 12 years as Denver's chief prosecutor yet ran on a promise to fix what's broken in a state that has built nearly a prison a year.

Behind the scenes, he's pushing lawmakers to abandon reform to one of his many commissions and urging his appointees to stall even further.

Ritter no doubt is trying, at least in his first term, to avoid a Willie Horton scenario or appearing soft on crime. But some say the man once credited as less of a demagogue than most DAs has hoodwinked voters into expecting reforms.

"For those of us who voted for Bill Ritter, it's disheartening that years into his term we've not begun to take a hard look at sentencing and the changes we need," says Maureen Cain of the Criminal Defense Bar.

"He's a problem identifier, not a problem solver," adds state Public Defender Doug Wilson.

If there was ever a time to reform our Reagan-era sentencing laws, this is it.

Facing the biggest shortfall in a generation, Colorado spends $755 million — 8.8 percent — of our budget on corrections, more than we fund for higher ed. Penal programs will get a $22 million increase while state workers face furloughs.

That money pays for the one in 29 adults here under correctional control, says the Pew Center. And for every dollar we spend on prisons, we pay only 15 cents helping parolees and probationers disentangle from the system.

Our policies aren't working. Reformers argue for investing in the community corrections system to reduce recidivism among lower-risk inmates and ultimately lower the budget.

"We cannot build our way to public safety," Pew reports.

Reform isn't partisan.

Faced with his own budget woes, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is cutting prison terms in California. Red states like Texas are following suit. Even the Independence Institute, the free-market think tank led by Jon Caldara, embraces changes.

Ritter seemed on board as a candidate. And shortly after taking office, he created the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice to tackle the issue.

But doubts set in when he failed to fund the board or hire a director. They grew when he nixed bills to give a modicum of mercy to kids behind bars.

This year, his public-safety chief told commissioners to hold off on sentencing reform. Frustrated, Sen. John Morse and Rep. Claire Levy nevertheless proposed a bill.

The DA's Council is fighting rabidly, warning that wife beaters and sex offenders would be let loose. They and Ritter want to deflect the issue to the commission despite Ritter's lack of funding, direction or urgency.

"The task is daunting and cannot be done quickly. . .," he wrote two commissioners. "Like any policymaker, I cannot responsibly promise uncritical endorsement of an entire set of recommendations without my own careful consideration."

That's political-speak for "You guys deal with this, s-l-o-w-l-y. And, by the way, don't count on my support."

Ritter has a rep for deferring tough policy calls to committees, then taking little action.

It's one thing for a DA with no background in natural resources to count on 19 months of work by oil and gas commissioners to rewrite drilling rules. But it's another for a man who spent his career in criminal justice to punt on his own issues.

Ritter understands sentencing and well knows the need for reform. In these lean times, we hardly need more fear-mongering and stall tactics to embrace its complexities.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_12174697

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let Freedom Ring

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

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

Abolition Now!

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

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

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

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

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

Prisons Are Everywhere

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

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

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

April 18, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CT: Raise the Age supporters cheer Democrats' alternative budget

Raise the Age supporters cheer Democrats' alternative budget
Hour Staff Writer

Supporters of the Raise the Age campaign and other youth-focused legislation announced their support of the Democrats alternative proposed budget Monday, saying it preserves Connecticut's "commitments to children and families while being fiscally responsible."

The "Raise the Age" legislation, signed into law in 2007 by Gov. M. Jodi Rell, changes the default mechanism in Connecticut that automatically sends youthful offenders to adult court at the age of 16 and, instead, allow 16- and 17-year-olds to go through the juvenile court system.

Earlier this year as part of Gov. M. Jodi Rell's response to the budget crisis the governor said the state would delay the implementation of Raise the Age to 2012 -- the original implementation was supposed to be 2010.

Connecticut is only one of three states that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to be processed in adult court.

As part of their proposal, the Democrats are proposing allowing the 16-year-olds to system as intended in 2010, delaying only the 17-year-olds.

Abby Anderson, executive director of the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance, said the Democrats' proposal showed that including 16-year-olds in the juvenile justice system can be done with minimal impact on the state's budget.

"We're thrilled the Democrats understand the importance of continuing these efforts instead of not doing anything and then having to do a more costly intervention down the line," Anderson said. "We'd love to have both the 16- and 17-year- olds out of the adult system because the longer we wait, the more kids we lose to the system, but at least we might get part of what we were promised, so we're thrilled for that."

In addition to Raise the Age, the Dems budget also supports Family Support Centers which deliver preventive services to struggling families. Anderson said the centers are very successful at helping youth before they need more costly interventions or become involved in the juvenile justice system.

Anderson said she thinks the Democrats' proposed legislation has a fair amount of support behind it.

"It does have a good amount of support because I feel that legislators feel it's important to do something to move forward in a positive way and do what was promised," she said.

State Sen. Bob Duff, D-25, a big supporter of the Raise the Age campaign, and said he continues to support its implementation.

"While I didn't vote for the spending plan, I do support Raise the Age as a long-term investment for our state to cut down on the rate of recidivism among our youth," Duff said.
http://www.thehour.com/story/467880

Posted by lois at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2009

A Racial Shift in Drug-Crime Prisoners Fewer Blacks and More Whites, Says Sentencing Project

A Racial Shift in Drug-Crime Prisoners
Fewer Blacks and More Whites, Says Sentencing Project
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 15, 2009; Page A04

For the first time since crack cocaine sparked a war on drugs 20 years ago, the number of black Americans in state prisons for drug offenses has fallen sharply, while the number of white prisoners convicted for drug crimes has increased, according to a report released yesterday.

The D.C.-based Sentencing Project reported that the number of black inmates in state prisons for drug offenses had fallen from 145,000 in 1999 to 113,500 in 2005, a 22 percent decline. In that period, the number of white drug offenders rose steadily, from about 50,000 to more than 72,000, a 43 percent increase. The number of Latino drug offenders was virtually unchanged at about 51,000.

The findings represent a significant shift in the racial makeup of those incarcerated for drug crimes and could signal a gradual change in the demographics of the nation's prison population of 2 million, which has been disproportionately black for decades. Drug offenders make up about a quarter of the prison population.

The Sentencing Project report and other experts said the numbers could reflect several factors, including an increased reliance by prosecutors and judges on prison alternatives such as drug courts and a shift in police focus to methamphetamines, which are used and distributed mostly by white Americans. In addition, the report said, crack use and arrests have declined steadily since the 1990s.

The report relied heavily on data compiled by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and covered six years, ending in 2005, the last year the bureau broke down the state prison population by race and drug offense.

Maryland and Virginia authorities said the racial breakdown of prisoners incarcerated in their states for drug offenses was not available. But the racial makeup of their overall prison populations had not changed significantly over that period, they said.

African American drug offenders, who have been convicted most often for dealing and possessing crack cocaine, still made up a disproportionate share of drug offenders in state prisons, 45 percent in 2005. That was down from nearly 58 percent in 1999. Black Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population.
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The number of white drug offenders in state prisons rose from 20 percent to 29 percent, and Latino prisoners made up 20 percent of such inmates.

"I have no doubt that crystal meth explains some of the white increase, but I'm not ready to say it's the reason for all of the white increase," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which opposes stiff penalties for nonviolent drug crimes. "It's also hard to imagine that [drug courts] are not having some effect. Most drug courts are in urban areas where African Americans live."

Twenty percent of white inmates used methamphetamines in the month before they were arrested, compared with 1 percent of black inmates, according to interviews conducted in the nation's 14,500 state prisons and 3,700 federal prisons.

Drug courts offer nonviolent offenders the option of undergoing rigorous substance-abuse treatment and criminal rehabilitation or going to jail. There are more than 2,000 such courts in operation, mostly in cities with large black communities ravaged by violence associated with crack cocaine. White offenders also are increasingly winding up in drug courts for abusing methamphetamines.

Mauer also hypothesized that drug dealers might have shifted from open-air crack cocaine markets to dealing indoors, making them harder for police to catch. And he speculated that because so many African American men have been incarcerated, there are fewer on the street to be arrested.

But James E. Felman, co-chairman of the Sentencing Committee for the American Bar Association, said that in Tampa, where he practices law, black suspects are still being regularly arrested on crack cocaine charges and being handed out long sentences.

"I can't second-guess their study, but I haven't seen a change," Felman said. "Maybe we're getting smarter on crime in some states. That could be part of it."

David B. Muhlhausen, a senior policy analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said stronger police enforcement of methamphetamine trafficking and use, coupled with treatment options mostly for urban crack cocaine offenders, probably caused the shift. "There is some data out there that suggests that drug courts and drug treatments reduce recidivism," he said. "If you take the less serious offenders and put them into programs other than prison it would be a benefit to society."

The war on drugs began in 1986, when Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act to combat violence associated with the crack cocaine trade. Lawmakers were prompted by the death of University of Maryland basketball player Len Bias, who they mistakenly thought had died from ingesting crack. Bias overdosed on powder cocaine.

Last year, then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) joined several of his colleagues in saying that his support for the legislation was a mistake. The law contributed to the incarceration of more than a half-million people in state and federal prisons for drug offenses, compared with the 40,000 jailed for the same offenses in 1980.

According to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics last year, 7.2 million people are under prison supervision, as inmates, parolees and probationers, at a cost of about $45 billion per year.

California, which has one of the nation's largest prison populations, farmed out 170,000 inmates to private prisons in as far away as Tennessee in 2006 to relieve costs and has relaxed its penal code to relieve prison overcrowding.

Jeffrey L. Sedgwick, a former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said the record incarceration might be worth the cost. "As the number of people under correctional supervision goes up, crime goes down," he said. Conservative estimates put the annual cost of violent crime at about $17 billion, Sedgwick said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/14/AR2009041401775.html
Report on-line: http://sentencingproject.org/Admin%5CDocuments%5Cpublications%5Cdp_raceanddrugs.pdf

Posted by lois at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

April 14, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 12, 2009

Twenty Years of Drug Courts -- Results and Misgivings from Drug War Chronicle

Feature: Twenty Years of Drug Courts -- Results and Misgivings
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #580, 4/10/09

The drug court phenomenon celebrates its 20th birthday this year. The first drug court, designed to find a more effective way for the criminal justice system to deal with drug offenders, was born in Miami in 1989 under the guidance of then local prosecutor Janet Reno. Since then, drug courts have expanded dramatically, with their number exceeding 2000 today, including at least one in every state.

According to Urban Institute estimates, some 55,000 people are currently in drug court programs. The group found that another 1.5 million arrestees would probably meet the criteria for drug dependence and would thus be good candidates for drug courts.

The notion behind drug courts is that providing drug treatment to some defendants would lead to better outcomes for them and their communities. Unlike typical criminal proceedings, drug courts are intended to be collaborative, with judges, prosecutors, social workers, and defense attorneys working together to decide what would be best for the defendant and the community.

Drug courts can operate either by diverting offenders into treatment before sentencing or by sentencing offenders to prison terms and suspending the sentences providing they comply with treatment demands. They also vary in their criteria for eligibility: Some may accept only nonviolent, first-time offenders considered to be addicted, while others may have broader criteria.

Such courts rely on sanctions and rewards for their clients, with continuing adherence to treatment demands met with a loosening of restrictions and relapsing into drug use subjected to ever harsher punishments, typically beginning with a weekend in jail and graduating from there. People who fail drug court completely are then either diverted back into the criminal justice system for prosecution or, if they have already been convicted, sent to prison.

Drug courts operate in a strange and contradictory realm that embraces the model of addiction as a disease needing treatment, yet punishes failure to respond as if it were a moral failing. No other disease is confronted in such a manner. There are no diabetes courts, for example, where one is placed under the control of the criminal justice system for being sick and subject to "flash incarceration" for eating forbidden foods.

Conceptual dilemmas notwithstanding, drug courts have been extensively studied, and the general conclusion is that, within the parameters of the therapeutic/criminal justice model, they are successful. A recently released report from the Sentencing Project is the latest addition to the literature, or, more accurately, review of the literature.

In the report, Drug Courts: A Review of the Evidence, the group concluded that:

* Drug courts have generally been demonstrated to have positive benefits in reducing recidivism.
* Evaluations of the cost-effectiveness of drug courts have generally found benefits through reduced costs of crime or incarceration.
* Concern remains regarding potential "net-widening" effects of drug courts by drawing in defendants who might not otherwise have been subject to arrest and prosecution.

"What you have with drug courts is a program that the research has shown time and time again works," said Chris Deutsch, associate director of communications for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals in suburban Washington, DC. "We all know the problems facing the criminal justice system with drug offenders and imprisonment. We have established incentives and sanctions as an important part of the drug court model because they work," he said. "One of the reasons drug courts are expanding so rapidly," said Deutsch, "is that we don't move away from what the research shows works. This is a scientifically validated model."

"There is evidence that in certain models there is success in reducing recidivism, but there is not a single model that works," said Ryan King, coauthor of the Sentencing Project report. "We wanted to highlight common factors in success, such as having judges with multiple turns in drug court and who understand addiction, and building on graduated sanctions, but also to get people to understand the weaknesses."

"Drug courts are definitely better than going to prison," said Theshia Naidoo, a staff attorney for the Drug Policy Alliance, which has championed a less coercive treatment-not-jail program in California's Proposition 36, "but they are not the be-all and end-all of addressing drug abuse. They may be a step forward in our current prohibitionist system, but when you look at their everyday operations, it's pretty much criminal justice as usual."

That was one of the nicest things said about drug courts by harm reductionists and drug policy reformers contacted this week by the Chronicle. While drug courts can claim success as measured by the metrics embraced by the therapeutic-criminal justice complex, they appear deeply perverse and wrongheaded to people who do not embrace that model.

Remarks by Kevin Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy hit many of the common themes. "If drug courts result in more people being caught up in the criminal justice system, I do not see them as a good thing," he said. "The US has one out of 31 people in prison on probation or on parole, and that's a national embarrassment more appropriate for a police state than the land of the free. If drug courts are adding to that problem, they are part of the national embarrassment, not the solution."

But Zeese was equally disturbed by the therapeutic-criminal justice model itself. "Forcing drug treatment on people who happen to get caught is a very strange way to offer health care," he observed. "We would see a greater impact if treatment on request were the national policy and sufficient funds were provided to treatment services so that people who wanted treatment could get it quickly. And, the treatment industry would be a stronger industry if they were not dependent on police and courts to be sending them 'clients' -- by force -- and if instead they had to offer services that people wanted."

For Zeese, the bottom line was: "The disease model has no place in the courts. Courts don't treat disease, doctors and health professionals do."

In addition to such conceptual and public policy concerns, others cited more specific problems with drug court operations. "In Connecticut, the success of drug courts depends on educated judges," said Robert Heimer of the Yale University School of Public Health. "For example, in some parts of the state, judges refused to send defendants with opioid addiction to methadone programs. This dramatically reduced the success of the drug courts in these parts of the state compared to parts of the state where judges referred people to the one proven medically effective form of treatment for their addiction."

Heimer's complaint about the rejection of methadone maintenance therapy was echoed on the other side of the Hudson River by upstate New York drug reformer Nicolas Eyle of Reconsider: Forum on Drug Policy. "Most, if not all, drug courts in New York abhor methadone and maintenance treatment in general," he noted. "This is troubling because the state's recent Rockefeller law reforms have a major focus on treatment in lieu of prison, suggesting that more and more hapless people will be forced to enter treatment they may not need or want. Then the judge decides what type of treatment they must have, and when they don't achieve the therapeutic goals set for them they'll be hauled off to serve their time."

Still, said Heimer, "Such courts can work if appropriate treatment options are available, but if the treatment programs are bad, then it is unlikely that courts will work. In such cases, if the only alternative is then incarceration, there is little reason for drug courts. If drug court personnel think their program is valuable, they should be consistently lobbying for better drug treatment in their community. If they are not doing this, then they are contributing to the circumstances of their own failure, and again, the drug user becomes the victim if the drug court personnel are not doing this."

Even within the coerced treatment model, there are more effective approaches than drug courts, said Naidoo. "Drug courts basically have a zero tolerance policy, and many judges just don't understand addiction as a chronic relapsing condition, so if there is a failed drug test, the court comes in with a hammer imposing a whole series of sanctions. A more effective model would be to look at the overall context," she argued. "If the guy has a dirty urine, but has found a job, has gotten housing, and is reunited with his family, maybe he shouldn't be punished for the relapse. The drug court would punish him."

Other harm reductionists were just plain cynical about drug courts. "I guess they work in reducing the drug-related harm of going to prison by keeping people out of prison -- except when they're sending people to prison," said Delaney Ellison, a veteran Michigan harm reductionist and activist. "And that's exactly what drug courts do if you're resistant to treatment or broke. Poor, minority people can't afford to complete a time-consuming drug court regime. If a participant finds he can't pay the fines, go to four hours a day of outpatient treatment, and pay rent and buy food while trapped in the system, he finds a way to prioritize and abandons the drug court."

An adequate health care system that provided treatment on demand is what is needed, Ellison said. "And most importantly, when are we going to stop letting cops and lawyers -- and this includes judges -- regulate drugs?" he asked. "These people don't know anything about pharmacology. When do we lobby to let doctors and pharmacists regulate drugs?"

Drug courts are also under attack on the grounds they deny due process rights to defendants. In Maryland, the state's public defender last week argued that drug courts were unconstitutional, complaining that judges should not be allowed to send someone to jail repeatedly without a full judicial hearing.

"There is no due process in drug treatment court," Public Defender Nancy Foster told the Maryland Court of Appeals in a case that is yet to be decided.

Foster's argument aroused some interest from the appeals court judges. One of them, Judge Joseph Murphy, noted that a judge talking to one party in a case without the other party being present, which sometimes happens in drug courts, has raised due process concerns in other criminal proceedings. "Can you do that without violating the defendant's rights?" he asked.

A leading advocate of the position that drug courts interfere with due process rights is Williams College sociologist James Nolan. In an interview last year, Nolan summarized his problem with drug courts. "My concern is that if we make the law so concerned with being therapeutic, you forget about notions of justice such as proportionality of punishment, due process and the protection of individual rights," Nolan said. "Even though problem-solving advocates wouldn't want to do away with these things, they tend to fade into the background in terms of importance."

In that interview, Nolan cited a Miami-Dade County drug court participant forced to remain in the program for seven years. "So here, the goal is not about justice," he said. "The goal is to make someone well, and the consequences can be unjust because they are getting more of a punishment than they deserve."

Deutsch said he was "hesitant" to comment on criticisms of the drug court model, "but the fact of the matter is that when it comes to keeping drug addicted offenders out of the criminal justice system and in treatment, drug courts are the best option available."

For the Sentencing Project's King, drug courts are a step up from the depths of the punitive prohibitionist approach, but not much of one. "With the drug courts, we're in a better place now than we were 20 years ago, but it's not the place we want to be 20 years from now," he said. "The idea that somebody needs to enter the criminal justice system to access public drug treatment is a real tragedy."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/580/drug_courts_at_20_years

Posted by lois at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2009

WA: Closing prisons, slashing sentences eyed to balance budget

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6% of states' budgets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some urge caution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's desperate times"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company

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

April 05, 2009

NY: Rockefeller Drug Laws: A Welcome Change But Not Far Enough Say NY Activists and Organizers

"The new law eliminates the mandatory minimum of a year in prison for first offenders charged with Class B felonies (sale of up to 1/2 ounce of cocaine or heroin, or possession with intent to sell) and first or second offenders charged with lesser felonies (such as possession of 1/2 gram of cocaine). It also expands drug treatment and other alternatives to incarceration. Second offenders charged with B felonies, who now face an automatic 4 1/2 to 9 years, might be able to get treatment instead of prison if they can prove they're drug-dependent.On the other hand, the bill retains the mandatory-minimum sentences for all other accused dealers, and only about one-eighth of the state's 13,400 drug prisoners will be able to apply for reduced sentences."

New York Lightens Up on Some of the Harshest Drug Laws in the Country
Steven Wishnia
AlterNet
Fri, 03 Apr 2009

New York State is about to enact major changes in its Rockefeller drug laws, which contain some of the harshest mandatory-minimum sentences in the nation. The activists who've been trying to repeal those laws for years say it's a very welcome move but doesn't go far enough.

"I think it's a really positive step forward. It is not the end of the Rockefeller drug laws, but hopefully, it's the beginning of the end," says Caitlin Dunklee of the Drop the Rock campaign, an umbrella group campaigning to repeal the laws.

The bill "breaches the mandatory-sentencing wall," adds Robert Gangi of the Correctional Association of New York, the prison-reform group behind Drop the Rock. It might divert half the state's convicted drug felons from prison, the group estimates.

The bill came about as part of a deal among the "three men in a room" who control New York's government: Gov. David Paterson, state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, all Democrats. They agreed to include it in the state's budget, so it would not be voted on separately. After several days of delay, the state Senate approved the bill on a 32-30 party-line vote on Thursday, April 2. Paterson has promised to sign it.

The new law eliminates the mandatory minimum of a year in prison for first offenders charged with Class B felonies (sale of up to 1/2 ounce of cocaine or heroin, or possession with intent to sell) and first or second offenders charged with lesser felonies (such as possession of 1/2 gram of cocaine). It also expands drug treatment and other alternatives to incarceration. Second offenders charged with B felonies, who now face an automatic 4 1/2 to 9 years, might be able to get treatment instead of prison if they can prove they're drug-dependent.

On the other hand, the bill retains the mandatory-minimum sentences for all other accused dealers, and only about one-eighth of the state's 13,400 drug prisoners will be able to apply for reduced sentences.

The old law, Silver said in a statement, "has not impacted crime or reduced addiction, but, rather, has led to a massive increase in New York's prison population."

Drug offenders make up one-fifth of the state's male inmates and one-third of the female inmates. More than 90 percent of them are black or Latino, and about 40 percent are incarcerated for possession charges.

Paterson was arrested at a civil-disobedience protest against the Rockefeller laws in 2002, when he was a state senator representing Harlem, but he has taken a more cautious stance since he succeeded Eliot Spitzer as governor last year. He objected to several provisions in a drug-law bill passed by the Assembly in March.

Gangi credits activist pressure for getting him to compromise. The deal was reached on the night of March 25, a few hours after about 250 people demonstrated outside the governor's Manhattan offices.

"We heard that Paterson's staffers were asking, 'Can we make a deal before the rally?' " Gangi says.

According to Paterson spokeswoman Marissa Shorenstein, the governor agreed to end mandatory minimums for second offenders charged with felonies below Class B, and to allow drug prisoners to apply for resentencing.

But he insisted that accused drug offenders who wanted treatment instead of prison would have to plead guilty first, on the grounds that the threat of prison would make drug users more likely to stick with treatment. The governor's philosophy is "treat, don't punish, but treat to be effective," Shorenstein explains.

The bill also revives the Rockefeller law's original 15-years-to-life sentences, this time for "kingpins" convicted of selling more than $75,000 worth of drugs.

The state's prosecutors largely oppose easing the law. And the New York Daily News editorial page, long a loud voice for the "fry 'em" approach to crime, called the proposed changes the "Drug Dealer Protection Act" and said they would unleash a crime wave.

New York's current drug laws date from 1973, when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller was facing two problems. First, heroin-related crime was exploding, with dope fiends funding their habits with muggings and burglaries and dealers killing each other in business disputes.

Second, Rockefeller, the erstwhile standard-bearer of the Republicans' shrinking liberal wing, was contemplating another run for the party's presidential nomination, and he needed to prove that he was adequately "tough on crime."

The result was a law that mandated 15 years to life for sale of 2 ounces or more of heroin or cocaine or for possession of 4 ounces.

(Crime in New York continued to rise until the early 1990s, and New York City neighborhoods like Washington Heights and the Lower East Side -- low-income areas easily accessible to white buyers -- became open-air drug markets.)

Critics of the Rockefeller laws' harshness charge that they are "unjust and racially targeted," Linda Dechabert, head of Exponents, a harm-reduction group working with drug addicts, ex-prisoners and people with AIDS, said at the March 25 rally.

The racial disparities most likely stem from the ecology of the drug trade -- ghetto street dealers are more visible and violent than discreet white-collar dealers -- and the cumulative effects of racism in who gets stopped, who gets prosecuted and who gets imprisoned.

"It's easy to arrest blacks and Latinos, because they're in a confined area," notes Carl Dukes, 64, an ex-prisoner who attended the rally.

Another criticism is that penalties are determined by the weight of the drugs seized rather than by the defendant's role in the deal.

The most notorious case of that was Elaine Bartlett, a Harlem single mother who in 1983 was set up by an Albany cocaine dealer, who paid her $2,500 to deliver 4 ounces to him. Bartlett got 20 years to life, serving 16 years before she won clemency. Police allowed the dealer who hired her to continue operating in exchange for the information.

The state enacted mild reforms in 2004 and 2005. They reduced the 15-to-life sentences to 8 to 20 years, but did not affect the 90 percent of the state's drug prisoners convicted of lesser charges.

Activists developed four "pillars" for further-reaching reforms: restoring judicial discretion, expanding treatment and alternatives to prison, reducing sentences and retroactivity -- letting prisoners apply for the sentences they would have gotten under the revised laws.

By those standards, the proposed new law would do well on treatment. It's expected to provide an extra $50 million to $80 million for drug-treatment and alternatives-to-incarceration programs, such as the one run by the Brooklyn district attorney's office.

New York has a harm-reduction system well positioned to take advantage of this, notes Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance, as there are well-established programs for drug rehab, needle exchange, methadone maintenance and overdose prevention.

Most activists agree, however, that the bill falls short on judicial discretion and retroactivity. For example, someone found guilty of selling drugs would still get an automatic 4 1/2-year minimum if they had been convicted of a violent felony in the past 10 years, says Gangi. Such a person might be dangerous -- or might have calmed down considerably since their previous crime.

"We're not saying people should not go to prison," he explains. "We're saying the judge should decide."

"It's unfair. You're caught with a little amount of drugs, and you serve a long, long term in prison," says Ashley O'Donoghue, a tall, thin man with "God's Son" tattooed on his neck. "It should be retroactive so the people who are still there can get a sentence that's more suitable for what they did."

O'Donoghue, 26, was arrested in 2003 when two white college students he'd been dealing cocaine to were nabbed and set him up for a 2 1/2-ounce sale, well above his usual range. Facing 15 to life, he pleaded guilty to a B felony and served five years of a 7-to-21-year sentence.

Comedian Randy Credico, a longtime drug-law activist who attended the March 25 rally dressed as Diogenes, "looking for an honest politician," says any changes in the law would be inadequate unless retroactive resentencing is "automatic." Less than half the 1,000 prisoners eligible to apply for shorter sentences under the 2004 law actually got them.

Nicholas Eyle of Reconsider, a Syracuse anti-prohibition group, is also not enthusiastic. "I don't want to sound like I don't support the change, but I'm not that excited," he says. "I'm not a fan of mandatory treatment."

Although rehab is preferable to prison, he says, most people arrested on drug charges are not addicts, and if they tell counselors that, they'll be told they're "in denial."

What the state really needs, he believes, is a "paradigm shift. If you want to save money and reduce crime, end prohibition. If you question the fundamentals, you have to conclude that prohibition doesn't work."

Many New Yorkers find it surprising that the state government could accomplish anything on such a controversial issue. The New York legislature is often called the most dysfunctional in the nation. Virtually all major legislation is crafted by secret negotiations among the "three men in a room": the governor, the state Senate majority leader and the Assembly speaker.

Democrats have long held a majority approaching 2-1 in the Assembly, the legislature's lower house. However, state Senate districts have been gerrymandered to aid the Republicans, who controlled it from 1965 to 2008.

Over the last 15 years of that era, the Senate's GOP leader, Joseph Bruno, was able to block all but token Rockefeller-law reform. He also gutted the state's rent-control laws and refused to let the Senate consider legalizing same-sex marriage.

Bruno resigned last summer, several months before he was indicted on federal corruption charges, and in November, the Democrats won a 32-30 majority in the Senate. That immediately revved up hopes among the state's progressive activists.

However, the ballots had scarcely been counted when three Senate Democrats threatened to ally with the Republicans unless they were given power and concessions.

Nicknamed the Gang of Three, they are Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx, a rent-control foe with a long history of campaign-finance violations; Carl Kruger, a Brooklyn death-penalty advocate; and the fiercely anti-gay Ruben Diaz Sr. of the Bronx.

The Democrats' majority was further threatened when Hiram Monserrate, a Queens liberal, was indicted for slashing his girlfriend. This has jeopardized Senate passage of several bills to strengthen rent control and is widely believed to have scotched any hope of it considering same-sex marriage.

Many activists also believe that upstate Republicans oppose reducing drug sentences because prisons are one of the few sources of steady jobs in the region, whose economy has been slumping since the 1970s. In 1973, when the Rockefeller laws passed, New York had 18 prisons. From 1973 to 1999, it built 51 new ones.

Nicholas Eyle disputes that notion, saying he doesn't believe that the dozen or so legislators from rural districts where prisons are prominent are a strong enough lobby to preserve the drug laws. Sayegh advocates replacing the 30,000 prison jobs with green jobs.

Still, economic issues may well have played a role. The state has been slammed with a $15 billion budget deficit. At $45,000 per inmate, the Silver statement emphasized, it costs New York more than $500 million a year to imprison drug offenders. The minimal changes enacted in 2004 have saved the state $100 million, it added.

"My Assembly colleagues and I continue in our pledge not to give up our fight for greater reform of New York state's ineffective and imprudent drug laws," Assembly Corrections Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, a longtime advocate of repealing the Rockefeller laws, said in a statement after the deal was announced. "While today's agreement brings us closer to our goal, we recognize the need to do more."
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/180895-New-York-Lightens-Up-on-Some-of-the-Harshest-Drug-Laws-in-the-Country

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

April 03, 2009

Prisons, Drugs in America: A Turning Point?

Prisons, Drugs in America: A Turning Point?
Neal Peirce / Apr 02 2009
For Release Sunday, April 5, 2009
© 2009 Washington Post Writers Group

An historic turning point in criminal justice and drug policy in America?

The fourth week of March was arguably just that:

On the way to Mexico City, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the first senior U.S. official to accept co-responsibility for the cartel-driven drug violence now ravaging Mexico. Clinton acknowledged that “our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” and that our three-decade long war on drugs has simply “not worked.”

In Albany, New York Gov. David Paterson and the Democratic legislative majority announced they’d reached agreement to roll back the punitive “Rockefeller drug laws” of the 1970s, starting with then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s insistence on mandatory minimum prison sentences for first-time, non-violent drug offenders.

But the biggest breakthrough of all may have come in the U.S. Senate, where Virginia’s Jim Webb (D), joined by two Republican and 13 Democratic colleagues, sponsored legislation for a high-level “National Criminal Justice Commission.”

This could be the official eye-opener, the crucial reexamination of America’s penal and drug policies that the nation has so sorely needed for years.

Why?

First, its chair would be appointed by the president–and President Obama has called Webb twice to commend his effort. A commission-endorsed reform agenda would provide Obama cover for major changes in this politically charged area.

Second, the Senate Democratic leadership is enthusiastically in favor and there’s smaller but significant Republican cosponsorship–Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, ranking GOP member of the Judiciary Committee, and South Carolina’s Lindsay Graham, ranking member on the Crime and Drugs subcommittee.

A third positive: Jim Webb–highly decorated Marine combat veteran, Navy Secretary under President Reagan–can hardly be labeled a “softie” on crime. He and his staff have spent two years researching the prison and drug issues, hearing from prosecutors, judges, crime victims, former offenders, inmates and police. “It was like tapping a nerve,” Webb declares– “all are saying we have a real mess on our hands.”

Webb defines the base problem: with just 5 percent of world population, the U.S. has 2.3 million people behind bars–25 percent of all prisoners worldwide. “Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong.”

Webb contends that our prisons, many seriously overcrowded, have become “places of violence, physical abuse and hate,” costing federal, state and local governments a tough-to-justify $68 billion a year.

We’re “warehousing” the mentally ill in our prisons where, the senator notes, they get scant professional treatment. Then he focuses on “the elephant in the bedroom” –the rise in drug incarcerations. In 1980, the U.S. incarcerated 41,000 drug offenders; today the figure tops 500,000–a 1,200 percent increase.

The commission, says Webb, would have to wrestle with the fact that more than half of Americans age 12 and over have at some time used an illegal drug. “In talking of legality and illegality, what does that do to the fiber of our society? I saw more drug use at Georgetown Law School than anywhere else I’ve been. A lot of those people went on to be judges.”

Yet what’s the answer? Should we be arresting people for recreational drug use–or, Webb asks, for addiction?

Then there’s race: African-Americans, he observes, comprise 12 percent of our population, use drugs at close to the national average, but represent 37 percent of drug arrests and 74 percent of drug offenders sentenced to prison. How’s that to be explained?

Conversely, Webb underscores how seriously gangs are impacting American society. Some, though not all, ride on the back of the drug trade. Mexican drug cartels, the most violent and visible, are operating in 230 American cities, not simply along the border. MS-13 gangs, notorious for drug smuggling, gun running and hits for hire, have spread across the U.S., even recruiting 2,000, Webb notes, in Northern Virginia across the Potomac from Washington.

Then there’s the problem of rural towns, hard hit by globalization, actively seeking prisons as a source for jobs.

Many American guards receive only brief on-the-job training. Webb contrasts this with Japan, where guards have a year’s preparation and inmates legitimately regard them but “mentors, disciplinarians, and friends.”

Bottom line: Webb’s commission, if Congress approves it, will have a massive, complex agenda. Yet its findings could prove a vital turning point, not only for the federal government (which holds just 10 percent of prisoners) but state and local governments nationwide. Many might be inspired to create their own commissions.

Some say Webb, representing historically conservative Virginia, is threatening his own political future. But if Webb can get us off the dime, thinking and acting afresh on critical prison and drug issues, he’ll be serving America as vitally as the bravest of his erstwhile Marine colleagues.
http://citiwire.net/post/831/

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

April 01, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 30, 2009

Real Cost of Prisons Comix wins National Council on Crime and Delinquency PASS Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Announces
The 2008 PASS Award Winners
Oakland, CA, March 20, 2009

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency is pleased to announce the 2008 Winners of its respected PASS Awards (Prevention for a Safer Society). NCCD honors the media’s success and vital role in illuminating the people and programs that uncover the root causes of crime and those that promise to protect our most precious resource—our youth—against involvement in crime.

A critical link in successful policies related to youth and justice is the education of the public. The media is uniquely positioned to be this link, and we gratefully acknowledge their efforts to fulfill that responsibility. Each year the PASS Awards honor media professionals in the fields of print, literature, broadcast media, television, and film in recognition of thoughtful and factual coverage of the issues. Special consideration is given to those stories that highlight solutions to criminal and juvenile justice and child welfare problems.

NCCD is the nation's oldest private organization working to attain responsive and effective criminal justice, juvenile justice, and child welfare systems. For over 100 years, NCCD has been committed to promoting criminal justice strategies that are fair, humane, cost-effective, and uncompromising in public safety. The issues that have defined NCCD since its inception are the need for a separate and humane justice system for children, alternatives to incarceration, and the fundamental connection between social justice and public safety.

For more information on NCCD, please visit our website at www.nccd-crc.org

FILM
Ice T Presents “25 to Life” Deloss Pickett, Michael Dallum
“At the Death House Door” Steve James, Peter Gilbert

LITERATURE
American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment by Sasha Abramsky

Chasing Justice by Kerry Max Cook, Sandra Kaye Pressey, Kerry Justice Cook, Peter Hubbard

From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King by Robert Hillary King and Andrea Gibbons

I’ll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison by Walley Lamb

Letters From the Dhamma Brothers by Jenny Phillips, Pariyatti Press, Ron Cavanaugh

Maximum Security: The True Meaning of Freedom by Alan Gompers

Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration by Paul Wright, Tara Herivel and Dianne Wachtel

Stanley Tookie Williams Street Peace Series by Stanley Tookie Williams and Barbara Becnel

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix by Lois Ahrens, Kevin Pyle, Sabrina Jones, Susan Willmarth, Ellen Miller-Mack and Craig Gilmore

MAGAZINE
San Jose Mercury News
“A Painful Choice for Moms in Prison” Edwin Garcia, Karen Borchers, Miller-McCune
“Is This the Future of the War on Drugs?” by Vince Beiser,John Mecklin

NEWSPAPER
East Valley Tribune “Reasonable Doubt” by Ryan Gabrielson, Paul Giblin, Patti Epler
Long Beach Press-Telegram “Lots of Answers, but No Easy Fixes” byWendy Thomas Russell andTracy Manzer
Seattle Weekly “Neverminded” by Laura Onstot and Mike Seely
The Daily Review “Educate to Break Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline” by Tammerlin Drummond
The Sacramento Bee “Unprotected” Marjie Lundstrom, Sam Stanton, Autumn Cruz, Mitchell Brooks
The Village Voice “Teen Murders at Rikers Jail” by Graham Rayman, Tony Ortega
The Washington Post “Rehabilitating Juvenile Offenders” by Robert Pierre, Carol Morello Westword
“Stand and Deliver” byAdam Cayton-Holland, Patricia Calhoun, Anthony Camera

RADIO
American Radioworks -“Gangster Confidential" Michael Montgomery and Catherine Winter
KALW Radio “Prisons in Crisis: A State of Emergency in California” JoAnn Mar, Alyne Ellis
KQED/Forum “Prisoner Health” by Scott Shafer, Nick Vidinsky andDan Zoll

TELEVISION/ VIDEO
HBO - “The Wire, Season 5” by David Simon, Nina Kostroff Noble, Ed Burns, Joe Chappelle.Karen L.Thorson
SoCal Connected/KCET -“Inside Locke High” Angela Shelley andAlexandria Gales, Brett Wood, Michael Bloecher,Bret Marcus
NBC/Wolf Films “Law and Order: SVU - Confession” Dick Wolf, Neal Baer, Ted Kotcheff, Peter Jankowski, Arthur Forney, Judith McCreary

WEB
AlterNet -“Meet Gus Puryear” by Silja J.A. Talvi and Jan Frel
City Limits -“A Ballot’s Breadth Away from Rejoining Society” by Karen Loew, Curtis Stephen, Rosie McCobb
City Limits “Debating How to Police a Challenging Population” Karen Loew, Tram Whitehurst

Posted by lois at 09:30 PM | Comments (0)

March 29, 2009

MA: Freedom watch: Jailhouse bloc The real reason law-and-order types love mandatory-minimum sentencing? It's money in their pockets.

News Features, The Boston Phoenix
Freedom watch: Jailhouse bloc
The real reason law-and-order types love mandatory-minimum sentencing? It's money in their pockets.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE AND KYLE SMEALLIE | December 9, 2008

With aromatic puffs of change, Bay State stoners rejoiced on Election Day. But even the haziest of revelers may have missed the full significance of Question 2, a statewide ballot initiative to decriminalize marijuana possession in small amounts. Not only will this bring more humane and responsible marijuana laws, it will also suppress — however slightly — an insidious, contemporary offshoot of what President Dwight Eisenhower famously referred to as the "military-industrial complex": the idea that if private industry and government joined in promoting ever-increasing defense spending, war as well as national bankruptcy were more likely.

Almost a half-century later, that mindset has extended to both the local and federal law-and-order sectors, which have argued for, and experienced, virtually unabated growth. Today, law-enforcement groups regularly lobby against criminal-punishment reforms, and for the creation of new criminal statutes and overly harsh prison sentences. While these efforts are cloaked as calls for public safety, they are essentially creating more business for themselves.

The problem has become so widespread that some private correctional corporations — companies that subcontract services, and even privately owned jails and prisons, to all levels of government — have even lobbied the government to enact and maintain ever broader criminal laws and higher sentences. Those private prisons are now rolling in the profit, and taking on more prisoners every day as federal and state prisons run out of room to house their inmates.

But these lobbyists' success — and that of various law-enforcement groups — has given rise to a veritable "prison-industrial complex" that not only uses fear to suppress these groups' true intentions — it leaves taxpayers footing the bill.

Bleak house of detention
It was with these self-aggrandizing interests in mind that the Massachusetts Districts Attorneys' Association (MDAA) and other tough-on-crime groups fiercelyopposedthe marijuana-decriminalization referendum.

After all, if the penalties for minor marijuana possession were to remain on the statute books, more police, prosecutors, prison guards, and parole officers — and their lucrative overtime — would also be retained.

To their dismay, however, Question 2 passed by an overwhelming 65 to 35 percent voter margin, and will be implemented 30 days after election results are certified. As a result, many law-enforcement officials may soon be without an important source of job security and additional revenue — namely, the $30 million a year (as one study by a Harvard economics professor estimated) spent enforcing the soon-to-be-history current marijuana-possession laws.

Never mind that the forthcoming statutory reform is, from even a moderate law-and-order perspective, relatively benign. According to Question 2, anyone caught with less than one ounce will forfeit the substance and pay a $100 fine, while minors will additionally have to complete a drug-awareness program (including group sessions and community service). Current penalties for growing and trafficking in marijuana, as well as the prohibition against driving while high, will remain exactly as they are.

These facts were conveniently left out of the MDAA's efforts to "inform" voters.The group could not legally make direct contributions to ballot campaigns — publicly funded groups are unable to do so, thanks to a 1978 Supreme Judicial Court decision — yet in opposing Question 2, it still managed to fuel a whisper campaign and add misleading info to its Web site (hosted, by the way, on the state's ".gov" domain).

Thus, these law-enforcement officials were able to avoid any technical wrongdoing while lobbying for an increased legislative arsenal — feathering their own nests at the expense of liberty and sensible public policy.

Bear in mind, though, that our First Amendment protects not only speech, but also "the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." So state and local law-enforcement personnel, like other citizens, do have the right to lobby voters and even members of the legislature to promote more expansive criminal laws and stricter penalties. But self-serving lobbying and public-relations offensives, disguised as seeking protections for society, should be treated with exceptional scrutiny and skepticism.

Though disheartening, their actions are an age-old fact of life best described by Charles Dickens in his classic 1853 novel Bleak House: "The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself."

Coke vs. crack
A similar battle waged in Massachusetts last summer, when law-enforcement groups sought once again to thwart criminal-justice reform. At the time, a legislative effort to help nonviolent offenders find employment opportunities by changing Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) laws was brought before the State House of Representatives — and, thanks to the efforts of state Attorney General Martha Coakley and other law-enforcement officials, essentially squashed.

The proposed bill would have restricted the type of personal information that some employers receive, thereby assisting the many individuals saddled with CORI records who struggle to find employment and end up back behind bars.

Massachusetts's recidivism rates are nearly 40 percent, according to a study by the Urban Institute Justice Policy Center. And the CORI law's branding of even the most innocuous offender is, by all accounts, partly responsible for this dismal situation. So advocates of the bill asserted that changing CORI could ease the massive overcrowding at the state's prison system, which the Department of Corrections recently estimated to be operating at "144 percent of capacity." (Currently, there are 12,000 inmates imprisoned — a disgraceful state record.)

Another aspect of that same failed bill would have reduced mandatory-minimum sentences for certain drug offenses, which advocates said also contribute to overcrowding.

As the law stands, anyone convicted of selling drugs within 1000 feet of a school zone automatically receives a two-year prison term — leaving no room for judicial discretion. That means a first-time offender with no record could receive more prison time than, say, an armed robber. And the mandatory nature of these sentences eliminates the possibility of parole.

Because of the numerous schools in dense urban areas, poor, black, and Hispanic populations are at a greater risk of facing the mandatory-minimum measures, according to a recent Prison Policy Initiative study.

Yet despite the clear inequalities in the current law, as well as the benefits that reform holds out to both taxpayers and public safety — not to mention liberty — the legislative term ended in July with no action taken on the reform legislation.

This problem with drug sentencing is nothing new. For more than two decades, prison-reform supporters have condemned the federal sentencing disparities for the mostly middle and upper-class defendants caught using cocaine, and the mostly lower-class, inner-city habitants caught with cheaper crack cocaine.

Part of the now-infamous war on crime, a 100-to-1 ratio was implemented in sentencing for crack cocaine. So, a person caught selling five grams of crack received the same prison sentence as someone dealing 500 grams of powder cocaine.

The mandatory-minimums were harsh, too. That same person caught selling five grams of crack received a five-year minimum sentence; 50 grams or more and the minimum was 10 years.

Despite clear racial, economic, and cultural disparities, cries from constituents fell on deaf ears while law-enforcement lobbyists successfully cajoled and frightened congressional leaders.

US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, for one, strongly opposed reducing the crack-cocaine minimums. The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a 325,000 member national organization that bills itself as "the voice of our nations' law-enforcement officers," also spent $550,000 lobbying Congress over the past three years. Among their interests: stopping the Powder-Crack Cocaine Penalty Equalization Act, along with promoting a litany of other Draconian measures.

Prison business
To be fair, government employees weren't the only ones to lobby against crack-cocaine sentence equalization. A little-recognized subset of this vast prison-industrial complex lobbying community is composed of private correctional corporations, which sign lucrative contracts with governments to house inmates for profit, often shipping them to facilities out of state.

It is, of course, in these private prisons' economic interests to see more people in prison serving longer sentences. And with current facilities bursting at the seams, times for this burgeoning industry are good. The country's largest private prison provider, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), spent more than $2.7 million from 2006 through September 2008 on lobbying for stricter laws. Last year alone, the company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, generated $133 million in net income.

For the past 25 years, the CCA has built itself into a corrections powerhouse — it operates nearly 70 facilities housing more than 75,000 detainees. As it does for, say, contractors in Iraq, though, privatization comes with an inevitable lack of oversight. The CCA has been involved in numerous wrongful-death lawsuits, and it has been a constant target of prison-reform groups who claim the private facilities are understaffed and their detainees abused.

Yet another private prison provider, the GEO Group, which has annual revenue topping $1 billion, has come under intense scrutiny for dozens — if not hundreds — of inmate deaths in the past decade. One such prisoner death led to the recent indictment of Vice-President Dick Cheney on November 18, in which a rather ornery Texas state prosecutor claimed that Cheney's substantial investments in the GEO Group made him partly responsible for prisoner abuse — a dubious prosecutorial theory (in fact, it was dismissed this Monday), but with a grain of practical truth.

Nonetheless, states facing prison overcrowding turn to these corporations to outsource inmates. California, for example, has commissioned the CCA to ship convicts as far away as Tennessee (where financially strapped relatives and friends frequently cannot visit). The CCA has exported nearly 4000 California prisoners to states across the country under a $115 million contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Over the next three years, 8000 more are planned to be shipped out of the Golden State.

The societal costs — both human and financial — of these policies and practices are enormous, and growing. California — which carried a $15.2 billion deficit into this fiscal year — spends $10 billion per year on more than 170,000 inmates. Like the Bay State, California also faces high recidivism rates; state records show that more than two-thirds of released inmates return to prison within three years. In this context, a ballot battle — possibly more contentious than Massachusetts's Question 2 scuffle — raged this past election season. Two separate initiatives, each from vastly different perspectives, concerned the state's approach to criminal justice.

The first, Proposition 5, would have expanded treatment programs for those convicted of drug-related and nonviolent crimes. While the costs for more rehabilitation were estimated at $1 billion a year, analysts said $2.5 billion would have been saved from the reduction in prison costs. But, much like what transpired in Massachusetts, the California District Attorney's Association, along with other law-enforcement agencies, vehemently opposed the initiative. These agencies raised nearly $400,000 and, through the Web site of their umbrella group, People Against Proposition 5, issued "facts" such as "Proposition 5 creates an 'Express Lane' for drug dealers to get back on the streets and peddling dope to our kids."

Conversely, nearly $1 billion would have been added to the cops' coffers under Proposition 6, which proposed new laws for prosecutors to fight gang activity. Many of the same law-enforcement agencies that opposed Prop 5 supported Prop 6, joined by some "tough-on-crime" lawmakers who slashed $3 billion in education from the state's 2008 budget. Included among the Prop 6 supporters was — you guessed it — the CCA.

The CCA's lobbying efforts, as well as those of publicly funded law-enforcement agents, wasn't enough to convince Californians, as nearly 70 percent of voters opposed Prop 6. Yet similarly high numbers opted against Prop 5.

Maybe the cops' Prop 6 push for more crime-fighting money and power were too transparent for voters. Interestingly, though, their appeals to public safety in opposing Prop 5 seemed to work. California voters were quite possibly unaware that, by maintaining strict criminal laws and closing off alternatives to incarceration, law-enforcement agencies maintained their strength.

The 1 percent solution?
From Niccolò Machiavelli to Rudy Giuliani, fear has been the foundation of ever-expanding political power (and, for some, job status and security). And it continues to drive the prison-industrial complex.

Just as the United States Department of Justice was able to pressure Congress to enact the infamous USA-Patriot Act in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, here in the Bay State, an appeal to fear ("protect the children") prevailed in stampeding the legislature. In late July, Governor Deval Patrick signed into law "An Act Further Protecting Children," a bill providing stricter mandatory-minimum sentences for sex offenders who target children.

The way this legislation was presented made opposition appear callous and irresponsible. Who, after all, wouldn't want to keep child predators off the streets?

Yet tucked away in this bill are provisions that do far more than simply protect the young. The proposal enables prosecutors to obtain private records from Internet and telephone providers by issuing an "administrative subpoena." Prosecutors, having only to assert that records are "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation," were granted ever-expanding access into otherwise personal data. The telecoms, in turn, were granted blanket immunity from claims of privacy violation. There was no mass protest from the customers.

But at least one person did object. Newton's Democratic state senator Cynthia Creem voiced skepticism in a July 29 Newton TAB op-ed. Mindful that the most egregious provisions of the Patriot Act have been used to target not just terrorists but journalists, activists, and Muslim charities, she wrote: "I cannot support this attack on privacy rights when less-invasive and equally effective means are available. Our liberties should never be sacrificed in the name of prosecutorial convenience." A few other scattered voices in the State Senate echoed Creem. But perhaps Creem's reference to "convenience" missed the point — prosecutorial power appears to have been the more likely goal.

When the bill was passed by the Massachusetts House and presented to the Senate, Coakley, having learned that other politicians were questioning the bill's scope, lobbied hard so that no language would be changed (which would have required passage again through the House). With robust MDAA support, as well as the backing of key legislative leaders, 11 different role-call votes for amending provisions of the bill were voted down. Less than two weeks after this truncated debate, the bill became law. Experienced observers of the legislative process marveled at the ability of Coakley and her allies to forestall changes to the legislation.

The United States — "land of the free" — has five percent of the world's population, but it also, thanks to the lobbyists and officiants behind the prison-industrial complex, shamefully holds 25 percent of the world's incarcerated. It has a higher rate of imprisonment than the planet's most notorious despotisms. One in 100 Americans is in jail.

These citizens are not only unproductive, they cost the public $45 billion a year, according to a June report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. And yet they also keep a small army of officers and other law-enforcement support personnel on the job. The monumental taxpayer's tab that would be unnecessary with saner criminal-justice laws is virtually incalculable.

It is long past the time to re-think how much credence we should give to those who claim to be experts in law enforcement, but who, in reality, have simply discovered a steady and ever-increasing source of job security.

Their First Amendment right to lobby for endless new criminal laws and ever-tougher prison sentences is indeed constitutionally protected, but this does not mean that these law-enforcement officials' criminal "expertise" should endow them with a free pass from critical scrutiny. Legislators and the public need not sit by idly as their fellow citizens are unjustly arrested, prosecuted, and often incarcerated for increasingly lengthy periods of time as the law-enforcement industry's wallet grows fat. The next time prison-industrial-complex adherents tell us we need tougher laws and sentences for our own good, we should point out precisely whose good is being served.

Harvey Silverglate is a criminal defense and civil-liberties lawyer and writer. Kyle Smeallie, former associate editor of the Boston College Heights, is Silverglate's research assistant and paralegal. Silverglate's next book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, is forthcoming next year from Encounter Books.
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/73092-Freedom-watch-Jailhouse-bloc/
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Posted by lois at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2009

NY: Press Release from Gov. Paterson on Major Changes to Rockefeller Drug Laws!!

(Scroll down for specific reforms.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
March 27, 2009

GOVERNOR PATERSON AND LEGISLATIVE LEADERS ANNOUNCE THREE-WAY AGREEMENT TO REFORM NEW YORK STATE’S ROCKEFELLER DRUG LAWS

Sweeping Reform Ends Harsh Sentences for Non-violent Addicts

Focuses on Treatment Rather than Punishment to End the Cycle of Addiction

Governor David A. Paterson, Senate Majority Leader Malcolm A. Smith and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver today announced a three-way agreement calling for sweeping reform of the State’s Rockefeller Drug Laws. The agreement eliminates the harsh sentences that the Rockefeller Drug Laws mandated by giving judges total authority to divert non-violent addicts to treatment and greatly expanding drug treatment programs. The agreement strikes a careful and appropriate balance to ensure that non-violent addicted offenders get the treatment they need while predatory kingpins get the punishment they deserve.

“I have been fighting to overhaul the drug laws and restore judicial discretion in narcotics cases since I began my career in public service as a State Senator nearly a quarter-century ago,” Governor Paterson said. “As a resident and representative of Harlem, I saw first-hand the devastating effect that drugs have on our communities, and the devastating effect that ill-considered drug laws and drug policies have had on individuals, families and neighborhoods.”

The Governor added: “I have seen too many lives destroyed by outrageously harsh and ineffective mandatory sentencing laws, and I have also seen too many lives ruined by despicable dealers who prey on the vulnerabilities and addictions of others. I believe this agreement strikes the right balance, and I urge the Legislature to enact it immediately, before more lives and communities are needlessly destroyed.”

Senate Majority Leader Smith said: “Today marks the beginning of a new era for New York’s sentencing laws. Rockefeller Drug Law reform will reverse years of ineffective criminal laws, protect communities and save taxpayers millions of dollars that were wasted on the current policy. With more money going toward treatment instead of costly imprisonment, our State will finally have a smarter policy, giving families a fighting chance in the war on drugs.”

Assembly Speaker Silver said: “Long before we had partners in either the Executive or in the Senate, the Assembly Majority was fighting for real reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. With this legislation, we have taken, at long last, a giant leap in establishing a more just, a more humane and a more effective drug policy in the State of New York. No longer will drug use and addiction be considered solely a criminal matter in this State, but a public health matter as well. This legislation recognizes that drug addiction is a disease which calls out for treatment rather than incarceration. I commend the tenacity and the dedication of my colleagues and the leadership of Assemblymembers Aubry, Lentol and Weinstein for their unyielding commitment to this issue.”

Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson said: “Today, the Governor and the Legislature have agreed on a major change in public policy. We have created a balanced approach to drug addiction and crime. Our ability to reduce the flow of drugs in our communities is dependent on our ability to reduce the demand. We are now shifting resources to treat drug addiction as a medical problem. By diverting addicts to drug treatment courts, we believe we can get people off drugs and thereby reduce the demand for them. Study after study shows that our policies will make our communities safer and save the taxpayers millions of dollars. Today, we begin anew, offering offenders an opportunity to receive treatment, while maintaining that the safety and security of our neighborhoods, cities, and State remains paramount.”

Senator John L. Sampson said: “This is a promise made, and a promise kept. The Rockefeller Drug Laws have decimated communities and destroyed lives. Our Democratic conference said that once in the Majority we would be instrumental in making changes that positively impact all people across our State. Taking on this issue in our first year as the Majority shows the people that the Senate is serious and will not back down from the big issues. Reforms we made in 2004 were just a down payment, we’ve now paid off the mortgage. So I congratulate the Governor and members of the Assembly. I also congratulate my colleagues, Senators Schneiderman and Hassell-Thompson, who along with myself, were at the table and the forefront of the push to reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws.”

Senator Eric T. Schneiderman said: “This legislation delivers a big dose of sanity to our State’s sentencing practices. It will make our communities safer, save money and, most importantly, save lives. Thousands of people from every corner of this State will benefit from these reforms. Today NewYork chooses treatment over incarceration—30 years is enough.”

Assemblyman Jeffrion L. Aubry said: “My Assembly colleagues and I continue in our pledge not to give up our fight for greater reform of New York State’s ineffective and imprudent drug laws. While today’s agreement brings us closer to our goal, we recognize the need to do more. We will continue to work with our partners to completely reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws.”

Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol said: “Thirty-six years ago I voted against the enactment of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. It was clear to me that simply locking drug offenders away without treatment would not be effective. I am pleased that we are finally towards turning this travesty around and judges will once again have more of the discretion they need.”

Assemblywoman Helene E. Weinstein said: “Judicial discretion has always been one of the core principles for which the Assembly has fought. With the expansion of drug courts and other options to treat addicts, we are moving toward dealing with the underlying problems of drug offenders – giving them the opportunity to get treatment and reduce recidivism in New York.”

The agreement will give judges the discretion to divert non-violent drug addicted individuals to treatment alternatives that are shown to be far more successful than prison in ending the cycle of addiction. Crucially, it also commits tens of millions of dollars to existing and new treatment programs.

“It makes no sense to give judges the authority to place non-violent addicted offenders into treatment if there is nowhere to treat them,” Governor Paterson said. “We must not only overhaul the drug laws, but also provide an infrastructure to ensure that we successfully rehabilitate those who are addicted.”

There are three significant pieces of the agreement. First, it creates a drug treatment program to be administered by drug court judges.

+ Under this program, judges will have discretion to place addicted first and second-time drug offenders into judicially-approved alcohol and substance abuse treatment – over the objectionsof prosecutors.

+ This agreement also recognizes that drug-addicted persons often commit other crimes, such as property and theft offenses. This agreement will make treatment available to these non-violent addicted offenders who commit these offenses.
+ The agreement maximizes an addicted offender’s chance of success in overcoming addiction, by relying on New York’s highly successful drug courts to administer the new treatment model. Drug courts use specially-trained judges who build relationships with offenders, closely monitor their progress and reward their successes. They are also staffed with case managers and vocational and employment specialists to assist offenders in obtaining education and jobs.

+ For the first time, the agreement gives judges the authority to dismiss all charges or seal the arrest and conviction records of offenders who successfully complete a judicially-sanctioned treatment program. It also gives judges complete discretion to determine an appropriate penalty for those offenders who are unable to succeed in the treatment program.
+ The agreement recognizes that relapses are often part of recovery from long-term drug addiction. It would require judges to consider whether a non-incarceratory remedy, such as heightened supervision or more frequent testing and treatment, could effectively be used if an offender under court supervision suffers a relapse.
+ The agreement vastly expands the availability of drug treatment programs and commits tens of millions of dollars to inpatient treatment programs, outpatient treatment programs and community residential facilities.

+ Recognizing that some offenders may require more supervision than can be provided through community-based drug treatment programs, the agreement expands the use of programs such as the “shock” incarceration program and the Willard drug treatment program, to give judges additional sentencing options for these offenders.
+ The agreement also permits the State Division of Parole to discharge early from continued parole supervision those drug offenders who have demonstrated success and rehabilitation while serving a term of post-release supervision.

Second, the agreement relieves new offenders from some of the old Rockefeller Drug Law’s mandatory sentencing provisions and provides additional relief to offenders who remain incarcerated under the old laws.

+ The agreement eliminates mandatory State prison sentences for first-time class B felony drug offenders and second-time non-violent class C, D and E drug offenders, making them eligible for a term of probation that could also include drug treatment, or a local jail sentence.

+ The agreement permits class B drug felons who meet eligibility criteria and who are currently serving Rockefeller Drug Law sentences to enter the six-month shock incarceration program when they are within three years of release. If successful, they would be entitled to early release from prison.
+ The agreement also requires the Board of Parole to consider current, lower sentencing ranges when deciding whether to release a class B drug offender to parole supervision.

Third, the agreement ensures that offenders who are not addicted, but who profit from the addictions of others, are appropriately sentenced to State prison.

+ The Governor believes that law enforcement should target drug kingpins instead of low-level drug users and his agreement creates a new drug “kingpin” offense that targets organized drug traffickers who profit from and prey on drug users.
+ The agreement also creates new crimes to ensure that adults who sell drugs to children are appropriately required to serve time in State prison.

+ Finally, the agreement retains mandatory prison sentences for class B predicate drug offenders, but allows judges to impose lower prison terms that are similar to those in other states.

Posted by lois at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

GENDER EQUITY

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

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

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

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

COMMON REFRAIN

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 26, 2009

The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009- will undertake a top-to bottom review of our entire criminal justice system and offer recommendations for reform"

Senator Jim Webb of VA has introduced The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009 today.

I encourage you to take a few minutes and read the full-bill http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/CriminalJusticeReform_Legislation.pdf

Here is a fact sheet on the Bill (http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/FactSheeti.pdf), which according to Senator Webb will be "undertake a top-to-bottom review of our entire criminal justice system" and to offer recommendations for reform."

Please encourage your Senators and Congresspeople to support passage of the Act.

Here is part of Webb's statement:

The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009 that I introduced in the Senate on March 26, 2009 will create a blue-ribbon commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom. I believe that it is time to bring together the best minds in America to confer, report, and make concrete recommendations about how we can reform the process.

Why We Urgently Need this Legislation:
With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses 25% of the world's reported prisoners.
Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980.
Four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals.
Approximately 1 million gang members reside in the U.S., many of them foreign-based; and Mexican cartels operate in 230+ communities across the country.
Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard and often nonexistent, undermining public safety and making it extremely difficult for ex-offenders to become full, contributing members of society.

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration.

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

March 25, 2009

"Resistance Behind Bars- The Struggles of Incercerated Women" by Vikki Law

I just finished reading "Resistance Behind Bars" written by Vikki Law. In case you don't know about it or haven't had the chance to I recommend you buy a copy and read it.
I will quote a little from the introduction in which Vikki writes about her response to the comment: "Women (in prison) don't organize."
"I began to search for stories---and women--who would disprove this assertion. I found mentions of lawsuits, and using various state department of corrections' websites looked up their address addresses and wrote them letters asking if they would share their experiences with me." And "To ensure that I was representing their struggles accurately and to give them the opportunity to add, update or delete any of the tales they do not want to share with the public, I sent each woman draft after draft of the chapters her voice and experience(s) appeared in. "
The voices of women form form the majority of the book which took 8 years to complete. The chapters reflect the concerns of the women with whom Vikki corresponded and include Barriers to Basic Care, Mothers and Children, Sexual Abuse,Education, Women's Work, Grievances, lawsuits and the Power of the Media. Other chapters focus on Breaking the Silence, Resistance Among Women in Immigrant Detention and an Historical Background.
The book is written in plain English. It frames resistance by women very differently than the kinds of resistance by men prisoners which has come to define "resistance."
The book is published by PM Press and you can order a copy on-line (https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=91) or I am sure your local bookstore can order it for you.

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

KS: Johnson County’s prison avoidance operation could lose more than $868,500 from the state

Johnson County’s prison avoidance operation could lose more than $868,500 from the state
Posted:03/21/2009

Mark Winton’s handshake was firm and his voice strong when he said he was a former drug addict on his last chance to stay out of prison.

“I know I can make it,” the Olathe man pledged.

Supporting him is one of the largest prison avoidance operations in Kansas. He’s among about 245 residents at a sprawling site at New Century AirCenter — a $12.8 million-a-year operation funded by Johnson County, the state, grants and user fees.

Most offenders there leave to work and make money. Governments save money.

These kinds of community alternatives are far cheaper than prisons. A recent Pew Center on the States report urged states to use them more and praised Kansas for helping fund the programs.

But when budgets are stressed, money for alternatives tends to shrink. The proposed state budget in Kansas now calls for cutting about $2 million that helps pay for the residential offender programs in Johnson and Sedgwick counties.

Johnson County stands to lose more than $868,500 from the state, and with its own tight budget, the county might have to reduce the $6.1 million it pays, said Betsy Gillespie, director of county corrections.

All that would boost other costs, Gillespie said, when offenders go to jail or prison instead.

It also would be a step back for a Johnson County operation that began with one building and 33 beds in the 1980s and gradually grew to four buildings, hundreds of beds and many operations.

Drunken drivers

Society and governments struggle with what to do with a constant flow of repeat drunken drivers, and the New Century complex provides one option.

Under Kansas law, a felony drunken driver can go to a county jail for up to one year but not to prison. This saves the state money on prisons but throws the cost onto the counties.

Two years ago, Johnson County started a work-release program for those with four drunken-driving convictions or more. The 60-bed unit generally runs near capacity, and 134 people were admitted last year. More than eight in 10 successfully served their time.

Repeat drunken drivers actually have more going for them than many other criminals, said Antonio Booker, a director at the county corrections center.

They tend to be older and have stable jobs, he said.

Michael Sesto, 47, of Shawnee, said last week that he was due for release in two days.

“This was a needed program for me,” the carpenter said, and it allowed him to keep working and keep his house. He got in trouble because he kept trying to meet the right woman in nightclubs, he said, and now he’s part of a church singles group.

For the DUI offenders, he said, alcohol treatment begins when they leave the program and start parole.

“That’s where the rubber meets the pavement,” he said, and more challenges are ahead.

‘Legal side of the law’

Don Womack, 34, breezed down a hallway waving a certificate of completion, which he got after serving 96 days for possessing cocaine.

He was among 155 criminals in another program, which allows them to work while attending self-improvement programs. They stay two to four months.

More than 500 people were admitted to that operation last year. More than three of four graduate successfully, according to past studies.

Here, as in the rest of the complex, residents can be seen by a nurse or mental health worker. Throughout the New Century complex, about 65 percent of residents get medicine for mental illnesses.

Womack, who came to the center from prison, stopped at the credit union on site, where people can deposit or cash checks and save money. Many can’t get a bank account on the outside or have never had one.

Womack found a good job at a Lenexa manufacturing company while serving time at New Century program and saved money toward a car.

“It gave me a chance to live on the legal side of the law,” he said. “I was at a point in my life when I was ready.”

Another building in the complex houses the therapeutic community, which is six months of substance abuse treatment and self-improvement work. It holds 40. Addicted clients can’t leave until they finish the six months. Many then move to work release.

Winton, 37, recently graduated from the treatment community into work release, where he hopes to learn to be an electrician.

He’s a cocaine addict who has been in and out of the system for more than 15 years, he said, including three stints in prison. He said the long drug treatment and improvement work got him past personal problems that fed anger, resentment and bad behavior.

“I came here with low self-esteem,” he said.

Winton said he intended to go straight and be a better father to his nine children by six women. He’ll really do it this time, he said.

He said he got to this point after using drugs while on probation. A judge sent him to New Century as a last chance to avoid prison.

Winton said he would make good on that chance.

So far, Booker said, “he’s done an excellent job.”

If Winton finally stops breaking the law, he’ll save the state the cost of locking him up. The Pew Center study puts the national average at $29,000 a year.

Every little bit helps.

In fiscal year 2008, the study reported, Kansas spent $341 million on corrections, or 5.6 percent of its general fund.
http://m.kansascity.com/kcstar/db_10893/contentdetail.htm;jsessionid=A7A42481212D882B1F56AE46E8669453?contentguid=XKtKydiX&storycount=19&detailindex=1&full=true#display

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

March 21, 2009

MA Bar Association: MBA-backed criminal reform legislation returns for 2009-10 session

Lawyers Journal
MBA-backed criminal reform legislation returns for 2009-10 session
By Kelsey Sadoff
March 20, 2009

Criminal reform bills that failed to make it through last year’s legislative session are being reintroduced for the 2009-10 session with high expectations for their passage, which would usher in significant changes to the state’s criminal policies.

Last year, the Massachusetts Bar Association championed reforms to both sentencing guidelines and the Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) law, but the legislation was released from committee too late to advance before the end of the 2008-09 session. Immediate Past President David W. White Jr. made sentencing and CORI reform a priority for his term, and 2008-09 President Edward W. McIntyre has continued the push for reform.

The MBA is supporting a CORI bill that the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute and a coalition of groups, under the name of Massachusetts Alliance to Reform CORI (MARC), are focused on having addressed by the Legislature. The MBA has proposed recommendations for the CORI bill, which includes addressing access (law enforcement access versus non-law enforcement entities), accuracy and sealing old records.

The MBA’s Drug Policy Task Force is also set to issue a report this year that will include comprehensive data and facts that will strongly support arguments for sentencing reform in Massachusetts.

“This new legislative session holds much promise in the advancement of criminal sentencing and CORI reform legislative measures,” said MBA General Counsel and Acting Executive Director Martin W. Healy. “Criminal justice reforms have been identified as a priority area of interest by a number of legislators. We are in the second half of the (Gov. Deval) Patrick administration and the governor is considered a veteran on the Hill. We are hopeful that Patrick will push hard on these greatly needed reforms.”

More than 20 years ago, mandatory minimum sentencing reforms for drug offenders were enacted in Massachusetts to deal with crimes including trafficking, possession with intent to distribute, distribution in a school zone and distribution to a minor. The mandatory minimum sentences effectively ended an offender’s opportunity for parole if incarcerated.

Speaking against the current mandatory minimum sentencing policy at the Jan. 15 MBA House of Delegates meeting, the Drug Policy Task Force received HOD endorsement on two pieces of drug and treatment legislation that the MBA will support during the 2009-10 legislative session.

HOD unanimously voted in favor of the proposed legislation, which would revise the drug sentencing structure by eliminating mandatory minimums for most drug dealing crimes and expand parole and work release opportunities for incarcerated drug offenders, while also enhancing the existing system of diversion of drug offenders to drug treatment programs as an alternative to incarceration.

“The MBA is taking a position because current drug policies have failed; because they are expensive (Department of Correction’s inmate cost is more than $47,000; county jail is $39,000) and growing exponentially,” said MBA President Edward W. McIntyre.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Correction, the state prison population increased by 384 percent from 1980 to 2008 and the number of drug offenders increased 2,394 percent, from 109 in 1980 to 2,610 in 2008. Since the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing reforms, drug offenders have made up more than 25 percent of the state prison population, as opposed to the 4 percent of drug offenders making up the state prison population in 1980.

“Essentially, the MBA’s position is about deploying a public health approach rather than a failed criminal justices paradigm to drug offenders,” said McIntyre. “It’s about treatment rather than incarceration; about accelerated reintegration into the family unit, the community’s social structure and workforce. Studies from across the country and around the world demonstrate that intelligent policies that move away from the incarceration model to a treatment, accelerated assimilation program, reduce the rate of crime and the staggering cost of incarceration — which is the second most rapidly growing budget item next to health care.”

“Parole is really a function of getting a person in a productive relationship with society and their community,” said MBA immediate Past President David W. White Jr. and founding member of the Drug Policy Task Force. “Offering parole allows prisons to make room for more dangerous criminals, reducing the rate of crime overall by restoring families, neighborhoods and communities by making ex-offenders better citizens, and saves the taxpayers money.”

In the November 2008 general election, Massachusetts citizens voted to decriminalize marijuana. Legislators, who for years have been focused on discussion revolving around the belief that constituents want stronger punishments for low-level drug offenders, now have proof that the public actually wants to reduce the resources designated to punishment of low-level drug offenses. White believes the “commonwealth, now in severe economic crisis, can handle the drug sentencing issues in a way to save millions and millions of dollars.”

Furthermore, current mandatory minimum drug sentences have disproportionately impacted cities and their minority populations. Current school zone laws, which increase punishment drug offenses within 1,000 feet of a school with mandatory sentences — regardless of prior knowledge if school is in session, intent to distribute, time of day or awareness of proximity to a school — have created a situation where almost an entire city can be considered a school zone.

“The result is an impact on minorities,” said White. “The bill didn’t have that intent when it was enacted, but it has discriminatory consequences. We would like the statute changed to 100 feet.” White pointed out that approximately 300 people are sentenced for school zone offenses each year.

“In the commonwealth, we spend more money on jails and prisons then on higher education,” White said. “It is time for more sensible priorities.”
ttp://www.massbar.org/for-attorneys/publications/lawyers-journal/2009/march/mba-backed-criminal-reform-legislation

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

March 20, 2009

MI: Juvenile lifer bills in Senate “The greatest hope I have had in 33 years.”

Juvenile lifer bills in Senate
“The greatest hope I have had in 33 years.”

By Diane Bukowski
The Michigan Citizen

DETROIT — Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged a 17-year-old with assault with intent to commit murder, felonious assault, assault with a dangerous weapon on school grounds, carrying a concealed weapon and felony firearm after he wounded another 17-year-old in the stomach inside Central High School Feb. 18.

The two were gambling in the halls, a practice that has being going on since at least the 70s, according to one Central High alumni. The 17-year-old faces up to life in prison. Days later, police raided CHS and carried away teens as young as 14 on police buses to face loitering charges, whether or not they were students.

“Until they improve the conditions in our schools, there will be more trouble,” said Steve Conn, a high school teacher for 22 years with the Detroit Public Schools. “Despair runs so deep among our young people, who are treated like their lives don’t matter.”

A 16-year-old Detroiter was ordered to stand trial on first-degree murder charges Feb. 5 in connection with the shooting death of an Oak Park police officer, under unclear circumstances. Numerous suburbanites wrote in to daily news message boards calling for his execution, or at least life without parole, although he has not yet been tried or convicted.

These children, and numerous others in Detroit and communities across Michigan, have 400 counterparts already in the system, children who were sentenced at the age of 17 or below to life in prison without parole, and at least 1,000 others serving lengthy jail terms. The number of juvenile non-parolable lifers is up substantially from slightly over 300 a year ago, indicating that more juveniles are newly entering the system, condemned to death behind bars.

But there is hope on the horizon.

“The Juvenile Life Without Parole bills that were passed last year in the House of Representatives represent the greatest hope I have had in 33 years,” wrote Edward Sanders. “These bills must be voted on in the Senate now, to give the second chance we pray for.”

Sanders, who is currently incarcerated at the Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskegon, was 17 when he was convicted in a drive-by shooting in 1976, although he was not the shooter.

He is awaiting word from the Michigan parole board regarding his request for commutation. Before Michigan prisons ceased providing college courses, he obtained his bachelor’s degree and now helps other prisoners as a “jail-house” lawyer and spiritual advisor.

Sanders was referring to Senate Bills 0171 through 0176, sponsored by State Sens. Liz Brater (D-Ann Arbor), Martha Scott (D-Highland Park) and Michael Switalski (D-Roseville). Co-sponsors include Glenn Anderson, (D-Westland), Michael Prusi (D-Ishpeming), Samuel “Buzz” Thomas (D-Detroit), Hansen Clarke (D-Detroit), and Gilda Jackson (D-Huntington Woods).

House versions were passed Dec. 4 by an overwhelming margin of 83-22. The current Senate bills, however, will have to go back to the House again for approval before they can be forwarded to Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm.

“The idea of sending a person whose brain is not fully developed to prison for life has been determined to be inhumane,” said Brater. “The U.S. is one of only two countries in the world, and Michigan is one of few states in the U.S. with this practice. Many of these youth were sentenced along with an adult defendant who got a lesser sentence and many were victims of abuse or neglect or are people with a mental illness or disability.”

The series of bills therefore addresses alternatives to incarceration for mentally ill individuals and diversion from jail under other circumstances as well as the central life without parole question.

S.B. 0173 says, “An individual who was less than 18 years of age when he or she committed a crime for which he or she was sentenced to serve a minimum term of imprisonment of 10 years or more, or who was sentenced to imprisonment for life, including imprisonment for life without parole eligibility, who has served 10 years of his or her sentence is subject to the jurisdiction of the parole board and may be released on parole.”

The bill specifies several aspects of the prisoner’s individual situation for the parole board to consider.

All six bills, introduced Jan. 29, are now in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by State Sen. Alan Cropsey (R-Dewitt). Cropsey has expressed reluctance to let the bills out of committee.

Brater said that although the Senate is predominantly Republican, efforts are constantly being made to reach out to that side of the aisle. A particular consideration is the huge cost of such incarcerations. Both the Greater Detroit and Michigan Chambers of Commerce have passed resolutions calling for a reduction in Michigan’s prison population, along with numerous other organizations and even major media.

Felicia Tyson, part of a group of family members of juvenile lifers, said that they are continuing to organize and lobby Senators as well as Representatives, in the same fashion that won passage of the House bills last year.

“We are asking people to write, phone and email their legislators, and are planning a mass visit to the House in April,” said Tyson. Over 200 family members and even victims turned out for a lobbying effort last year.

The website for the group can be found at www.secondchanceforyouth.com.

The group’s address is P.O. Box 251941, West Bloomfield, MI 48325-1941 and phone 248-738-2111. An online petition to legislators is available at petition@secondchanceforyouth.com.

http://www.michigancitizen.com/default.asp?sourceid=&smenu=1&twindow=&mad=&sdetail=7116&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=&ccat=&ccatm=&restate=&restatus=&reoption=&retype=&repmin=&repmax=&rebed=&rebath=&subname=&pform=&sc=1070&hn=michigancitizen&he=.com

Posted by lois at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2009

Real Cost of Prisons Comix (the book)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Buzz:

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

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

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

March 10, 2009

New look at sentencing guidelines for cocaine

"The U.S. Sentencing Commission tallied all 4,262 crack cases for 2006. It calculated a median drug quantity of 1.8 ounces."

New look at sentencing guidelines for cocaine
Claire Cooper
Sunday, March 8, 2009
SF Chronicle

Willie Mays Aikens has returned to Kansas City, where he's still a star. He's worked in construction and hopes to land a job with Major League Baseball, maybe as a counselor, he says, "talking to people about what drugs can do to a person."

People in Kansas City still talk about Aikens' four home runs for the Royals in the 1980 World Series. They seem ready to forgive the crack cocaine bust that earned him a 16-year prison term.

"It takes a big man to step back into the limelight after such a dark path," wrote one blogger.

Aikens' path was dark indeed, but not because his crime was large. The drug sale that sent him to prison was 64 grams, about a quarter cup. The federal cocaine sentencing statutes treat that much crack the same as a bucket of cocaine powder, the material from which crack is produced.

Aikens' case exemplifies all that's gone wrong because of these federal sentencing laws: The focus on petty crimes. The distortion of priorities in the war on drugs. The lopsided impact on African Americans - the 83 percent of federal crack defendants who are black, though a federal health survey found most crack users are white.

The problems have been documented for years. Now it's time for a change.

Finally, key congressional members seem to be in a negotiating mood, and the Obama administration wants the crack/powder disparity eliminated. In the last session of Congress, then-Sen. Barack Obama co-sponsored a bill introduced by then-Sen. Joe Biden to do just that.

The same bill is on the table again. HR 265, introduced in the House by Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, would increase federal penalties for big-time trafficking while reducing them for possession or dealing in trivial quantities of crack - offenses that should be left to state prosecutors or public health officials.

Cracking down on kingpins was the idea all along. When Congress established the crack sentences in 1986 and 1988, it expected to lock away major drug traffickers who were rumored to be preying on African American neighborhoods and creating an epidemic of crack-fed violence.

Support for the legislation crossed every line - left, right, black, white. In signing the 1986 bill, President Reagan named Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem as one of its "real champions," along with Strom Thurmond and the president's wife, Nancy.

But Congress got it wrong in every way. As the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in 1995, "the stereotype of a drug-crazed addict committing heinous crimes" was simply fiction. And the crack laws shifted the focus to drug quantities that a neighborhood pusher might carry, not a national or international trafficker.

Commission records show that more than half of all crack offenders in the federal courts are street-level distributors, with crack weighing less than an ounce. The average crack case is less than 2 ounces. In the San Francisco-based judicial district, it's even smaller, according to the latest 2006 statistics.

So irrational are these laws that a crack retailer like Aikens could be punished more severely than his powder cocaine wholesaler, as the commission has pointed out.

The undercover agent who busted Aikens understood that. Aikens had offered her cocaine powder, not crack. According to the court's pre-sentence report, she told him "she thought he was going to get crack cocaine." So he made some for her. Crack is produced at the neighborhood level by cooking cocaine powder with baking soda and water.

Federal law enforcement has focused on neighborhood dealers, says Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Police Foundation, because "it's easy for U.S. attorneys to try cases against low-level offenders" but hard to find informants to testify against "genuine high-level traffickers."

Sterling, who was counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime when the crack/powder sentencing formula was established, says Congress "blundered completely." It failed to understand how much crack would signify major trafficking.

The mistake has been widely acknowledged in Washington, but reform has been stymied by congressional disagreements over the best way to correct it. Recently, the U.S. Sentencing Commission took matters into its own hands.

For two decades, the commission's guidelines reflected a decision by Congress that a crack sentence should equal a sentence for 100 times as much powder cocaine. But then in November 2007, the commission ratcheted down its crack guidelines by 20 percent. It made the change retroactive, allowing judges to review the sentences of many defendants already serving time.

As of six weeks ago, 12,723 inmates had been re-sentenced - and many of those have been released.

But the reforms by the Sentencing Commission are restricted by mandatory minimum terms set by Congress - five years for possession or sale of five grams of crack and 10 years for sale of 50 grams. Eighty-two percent of federal crack defendants are serving those mandatory minimum terms, which only Congress can change.

It's time to do so. As Clyde Cahill, a St. Louis federal judge, said in a 1994 crack case, "If young white males were being incarcerated at the same rate as young black males, the statutes would have been amended long ago."

Or, from the more personal perspective of Stacey Candler: "We're talking about somebody's life here. It doesn't take 10 years for you to teach that person a lesson."

Candler served more than 10 years for the crack that her boyfriend kept in their Fresno home. She was released from the federal women's prison in Victorville (San Bernardino County) a year ago, in the first wave of inmates to have their sentences re-evaluated under the Sentencing Commission's revised guidelines.

Originally, Candler was sentenced to almost 16 years for 2 kilograms of crack. She knew the crack was in the house, she says. She didn't expect to be held criminally responsible for it. Her boyfriend got 25 years to life.

She was 22, a nursing student and hospital aide living a modest lifestyle. She had no criminal record.

"I was just a young girl looking for love," she says. She hoped that her boyfriend, six years older, would follow her good example, "but, of course, it didn't turn out that way."

Candler is back in Fresno. She's working and going to college, now majoring in social work. She's confident about her future. "I have the family support and I have friends," she says. "I don't have kids, thank God."

The inmates who do have kids are Candler's saddest prison memory. She recalls the Children's Days that she would help organize once a year, how the kids would get to see their mothers' prison cubicles: "This is where Mommy eats and sleeps now."

As for Aikens, he got out of prison last June, five years early. At 54, he's getting his feet on the ground, he says.

He visited with his older daughter for the first time in eight years - she was 5 when he went to prison for selling a couple of ounces of crack cocaine. His younger daughter, 4, when he went away, won't see him yet. He's trying to build a relationship with her.

He blames only himself for getting in trouble. "All of us make a decision," he says. But he also knows that the stiff crack sentencing laws make no sense. As he puts it, "The ones who have control of this have it wrong."

Busts by the numbers

Median drug weights for federal crack cocaine cases

Nationwide 51 grams (1.8 oz.) 4,262 cases
Los Angeles 120 grams 27 cases
Sacramento 86.5 grams 35 cases
Chicago 76.3 grams 79 cases
New York 56.3 grams 78 cases
Seattle 45.7 grams 30 cases
San Francisco 30.2 grams 18 cases
Miami 30.2 grams 104 cases

Note: San Diego was not included because there was only one case (33 grams)

Source: U.S. Sentencing Commission, based on 2006 data
Local districts strict on crack quantities

Federal prosecutions target petty crack cocaine cases throughout the nation, destroying the lives of many small-time offenders and squandering resources in the war on drugs.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission tallied all 4,262 crack cases for 2006. It calculated a median drug quantity of 1.8 ounces.

Surprisingly, among the strictest jurisdictions was the Northern California district based in San Francisco. A single ounce of crack was involved in the median case here, enough to cover the bottom of a teacup.

In fact, crack quantities in Northern California prosecutions were the lowest in the state - and 17th lowest among the 94 federal judicial districts in the country.

The smallest cases were in Idaho and the largest in Wyoming.

Claire Cooper is an East Bay freelance writer. Her reporting was supported by the Justice and Journalism Fund, established by USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism with Ford Foundation funding.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/08/INM5165QMP.DTL

Posted by lois at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2009

New book: Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women
By Vikki Law
PM Press
Now available

In 1974, women imprisoned at New York’s maximum-security prison at
Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion. Protesting the brutal beating of a fellow prisoner, the women fought off guards, holding seven of them hostage, and took over sections of the prison.

Why do activists know about Attica but not the August Rebellion?
Resistance Behind Bars documents collective organizing and individual
resistance among women incarcerated in the U.S. and challenges the reader to question why these instances and efforts have been ignored and why many assume that women do not organize to demand change. It fills the gap in the existing literature, which has focused mostly on the causes, conditions and effects of female imprisonment.

Women have significantly disrupted the daily operations of their prison to protest injustices and demand change. More often, however, they have employed less visible means such as forming peer education groups, clandestinely organizing ways for children to visit mothers in distant prisons and raising public awareness about their conditions.

By emphasizing women's agency in resisting individually as well as organizing collectively against their conditions of confinement, Resistance will spark further discussion and research on
incarcerated women's actions and also galvanize much-needed outside support for their struggle.

About the Author:
Victoria Law is a writer, mother, and photographer. She is also the co-founder of Books Through Bars—NYC and publisher of the zine Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison. Her new book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press, 2009), is the culmination of 8 years of research, writing and listening to the stories of incarcerated women.

Product Details:
Published by PM Press
ISBN: 978-1-60486-018-4
Pub Date: February 2009
Format: Paperback
Page count: 260
Size: 6 by 9
Subjects: Women’s Studies, Penology, Prisons, Prison Abolition
Ordering information: https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=91/

For more about the book and upcoming events: http://resistancebehindbars.org

"Written in regular English, rather than academese, yet full of fire, this is an impressive work of research and reportage. I hope you're able to get this to a greater audience, and that it sparks
awareness and resistance. Well done!" –Mumia Abu-Jamal

"There are too few books written about womyn in prison. Many focus on these womyn as victims only. But this book is different. Its focus is on the herstorical resistance of womyn prisoners! This is necessary information for all of us to have in our consciousness, especially our abolitionist consciousness." --Bo (r.d.brown), former political prisoner, founding mother of Out of Control: Lesbian Committee to Support Women Political Prisoners and volunteer with the
Prison Activist Resource Center

“Excellently researched and well documented, Resistance Behind Bars is a long needed and much awaited look at the struggles, protests and resistance waged by women prisoners. Highly
recommended for anyone interested in the modern American gulag.” --Paul Wright, former
prisoner, founder/publisher of Prison Legal News and editor of Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America’s Poor and Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration

“Victoria Law's eight years of research and writing, inspired by her unflinching commitment to listen to and support women prisoners, have resulted in an illuminating effort to document the
dynamic resistance of incarcerated women in the United States.” --Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,
historian, feminist, indigenous rights activist, author, most recently of Roots of Resistance: History of Land Tenure in New Mexico

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

Tennessee: State eyes cost-effective alternatives to prison

Commissioner George Little: “We can figure out how to better manage those populations,” he said. “What I think it opens up is a discussion of who we are locking up, how long they are being locked up and do we have the right people in our prisons and jails.”

Tennessee: State eyes cost-effective alternatives to prison
Monday, March 9, 2009
By: Lauren Gregory
Chattanooga Times Free Press

Housing a prisoner costs about $60 a day in Tennessee, so locking someone up for not paying $45 a month in probation fees doesn’t make sense, according to Tennessee’s corrections commissioner.

Allowing nonviolent inmates approved for parole to sit behind bars for days or weeks, racking up costs the state could cut in half if they immediately were placed in halfway houses also is counterproductive, Commissioner George Little said.

“We can figure out how to better manage those populations,” he said. “What I think it opens up is a discussion of who we are locking up, how long they are being locked up and do we have the right people in our prisons and jails.”

With the state’s budget crisis forcing $42 million in cuts to a corrections program that will receive almost no federal stimulus money, Mr. Little is championing an increased emphasis on community corrections programs such as halfway houses.

He asked Gov. Phil Bredesen to include money for the facilities, which help paroled offenders transition into society by providing housing, structure and assistance finding employment, in his 2010 budget.

The governor’s budget should be complete later this month, spokeswoman Lydia Lenker said.

State Rep. G.A. Hardaway, D-Memphis, introduced legislation that would establish a pilot halfway house program for the state with that money.

The pilot program would increase state expenditures by $410,900, according to documents, and for that reason faces an uphill battle, said Rep. Gerald McCormick, R-Chattanooga.

PAY NOW OR PAY LATER

Rep. McCormick is a member of the House’s State and Local Government Committee, which has the bill. He said he doesn’t anticipate the legislation surviving if Gov. Bredesen doesn’t approve money for it.

“If it’s not already included in the governor’s budget, there is a very, very, very little chance it will pass,” Rep. McCormick said. “I’d have to vote against it. It’s not that it’s not a good cause, but there are a lot of good causes out there and, in this environment, it would be unfair to put that one at the top.”

Committee Chairman Rep. Curry Todd, R-Collierville, agreed.

“I don’t think it’s going anywhere,” he said.

Rep. Hardaway did not return calls or an e-mail seeking comment.

State Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, said he will be disappointed if his colleagues focus on a program’s upfront costs without considering ultimate savings.

“In state government, we need to continue to look for ways to save money in the long run, and that means ensuring that money we spend today will save us money in the future,” Sen. Berke said.

Supporters of halfway houses say there is good reason to view community corrections that way. A small initial investment in halfway houses will save billions of dollars in prison construction costs down the road, said Tim Dempsey, chief executive officer of Chattanooga Endeavors, a nonprofit organization that helps ex-prisoners find employment.

“On the one hand, you say, ‘How can we afford to take on anything new?’” Mr. Dempsey said. “But on the other hand, this is an extremely cost-effective way to keep people out of prison and keep them from returning in the long term.”

The Washington, D.C.-based Pew Center on the States released a report last week that concluded Tennessee, along with all other states, would benefit from that type of thinking.

“New community supervision strategies and technologies need to be strengthened and expanded, not scaled back,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project, which generated the report.

“Cutting them may appear to save a few dollars, but it doesn’t,” Mr. Gelb said. “It will fuel the cycle of more crime, more victims, more arrests, more prosecutions and still more imprisonment.”

potential impact

Calvin Figgures, director of prison ministry at Shady Grove Baptist Church in Chickamauga, Ga., has recognized a local need and doesn’t want to wait for state funding. He hopes to be able to secure a grant through the federal Second Chance Act, which former President George W. Bush signed into law last year to provide support services to ex-prisoners, to open several halfway houses in Chattanooga.

An ex-offender himself, Mr. Figgures spent eight years in prison on drug charges. He says a halfway house was behind his successful turnaround.

“It’s like a family,” he said. “It’s loving, and it gives a person a sense of self. And not only that, it helps give you a solid foundation. In prison, they tell you what to do, when to shower, when to go to bed. In a halfway house setting, they give you a sense of responsibility again but with monitoring.”

Mr. Little said that ultimately makes the entire community safer.

“The argument (for creating more halfway houses) is fiscal, but the long-term benefit is going to be quality of life and public safety,” he said.
BY THE NUMBERS

* $645 million: Department of Correction budget last year

* $60: Cost to house an inmate for a day

* $25: Cost to keep someone in a halfway house for a day

* 40: Percentage of all inmates incarcerated for technical violations of probation or parole

* $100,000: Prison building cost, per bed

* $50 million: Annual operating cost for recently expanded Morgan County Correctional Complex

* $1 billion: Cost to operate the 2,400-bed Morgan County facility over the next 20 years

HALFWAY HOUSES

* Nashville — 55

* Knoxville — 10

* Memphis — 9

* Chattanooga — 1

Source: Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole

Source: Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner George Little
http://timesfreepress.com/news/2009/mar/09/tennessee-state-eyes-cost-effective-alternatives-p/?local

Posted by lois at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)

March 05, 2009

Video and 2 articles on today's (3-5-09) developments on the Rockefeller Drugs Laws

Tony Papa interview in today's video section of the NY Times......
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/ny-region/1194811622241/index.html#1194838345272

http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2009/03/04/assembly-to-pass-drug-reform/

Gotham Gazette
The Wonkster Blog
Assembly to Pass Drug Reform
March 4th, 2009

Today the Assembly is expected to pass drug law reform.

The bill would eliminate most mandatory minimum sentencing while giving judges more sentencing options.

Sponsored by Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, the bill represents a new fervor shown by Assembly Majority Leader Sheldon Silver for drug law reform.

Earlier this year, Silver released a position paper calling for an overhaul of the drug laws and for New York to address drug addiction as a health problem instead of a criminal matter.

Law makers say the reforms will restore justice to the legal system and save the state money by committing fewer offenders to prison.

“More than 35 years after the Rockefeller Drug Laws were enacted, it is clear that these laws mandating imprisonment for even lower-level offenders have failed to effectively combat drug abuse or reduce the incidence of violent crime,” said Silver in a prepared statement.

“This legislation restores humanity to drug policy here in New York. It expands the sentencing options available to judges, without endangering the public. Judges are in the best position to know who is deserving of prison and who is not. State prison and mandatory prison sentences are not the magic bullets to address drug abuse and its attendant problems; restoring judicial discretion is the solution.”

The Assembly has passed similar legislation in the past only to see it die in the Republican controlled Senate. Now that the Democrats are in control of the Senate it is not clear if they have a large enough majority to get the legislation passed.

However, the sponsor of drug law reform in the Senate, Sen. Eric Schneiderman, is reportedly trying to access whether he has enough votes to move the bill. The Senate will at least discuss their version of the bill today.

Advocates fear that if action is not taken in both houses in the next few weeks their issue will be put aside during heated budget discussions.

Here is an overview of the Assembly bill provided by Silver’s office:

Amends the Penal Law to make all non-violent first and second felony drug offenders (other than class A felony offenders) eligible for probation (5 years), a local jail sentence (up to one year) or a split sentence (jail plus probation) upon a plea of guilty or upon conviction —- the judge could always sentence the offender to the existing terms of state imprisonment.

Excepts from the benefits of this sentencing reform the following exclusion crimes, some of which are newly created, as well as other crimes arising out of the sale of drugs on school grounds and day care facilities:

Drug sale while in physical possession of a loaded gun;

Adult (age 21 or older) sale to a minor (under age 18);

Kingpin (multiple class B felony and above transactions).

Judges continue to have discretion to sentence offenders to the maximum terms available under current law, i.e., judges will still be able to sentence first time class B felony offenders to up to 9 years in prison and second time class B felony offenders without a violent predicate felony offense to up to 12 years in prison.

CREATES new sentencing options for judges without disrupting those options available under current law.

Judges can continue to divert offenders away from prison with district attorney consent (e.g., DTAP, STEPS); current law requires the same judicial consent which this reform continues.

Judges can order, upon application of defendant or district attorney alcohol or substance abuse assessment of defendant.

Subject to appropriation, requires that one court in each county be designated as a drug court with appropriate training provided for all participants.

Judges may specify candidates to be enrolled in DOCS shock incarceration programs (subject to DOCS safety considerations), including second-time, class B felony offenders (subject to exclusions).

Judges may order early entry to ASAT and CASAT (substance abuse treatment programs designed for offenders in DOCS custody).

Judges can directly sentence offenders to “parole supervision” (90 days incarcerated at the DOCS Willard drug treatment program followed by supervision and treatment in the community: CPL 410.91) by:

eliminating DA veto on class D felony crimes; and restoring to judges the discretion to order such a “parole supervision” sentence for specified class C and B drug felony crimes.

REFORMS technical aspects of the drug laws to make them more responsive and fairer.

Eliminates a plea restriction so that certain drug offenders may plead guilty to a reduced charge with DA consent (class A felony to a class B felony). Clarifies procedure for making motions to dismiss “in the furtherance of justice” by adding a new subdivision to CPL 170.40 and 210.40 to authorize dismissal, where a defendant charged with a non-exclusionary, drug crime has successfully complied with the terms of a judicial diversion order.

Increases the weight thresholds for certain class A felony level offenses following up the reforms made in 2004.

Revises the so-called “automobile/room” presumptions by converting the “presumption” into a “permissible inference” and ensures that the inference does not apply when the defendant was neither the owner nor the operator of the vehicle and the controlled substance was outside the area in which the defendant could readily grab it.

EXTENDS the benefits of drug law reform to those under sentence.

Permits class B felony drug offenders in prison (previously excluded from taking advantage of the 2004 drug law reforms) to seek courtresentencing to a determinate term under the new sentences;

Allows defendant appeals from denial of re-sentence and re-sentence orders.

INCREASES chances for drug offenders under sentence and after completing sentence to successfully reintegrate into society.

Mandates that DOCS assess drug treatment need for every inmate admitted to custody.

Requires that youths placed in or committed to OCFS facilities be assessed for alcohol and substance abuse.

Mandates substance abuse treatment as part of probation where appropriate.

Allows DOCS to enroll class B drug felons (on entry to DOCS or thereafter) into the Shock Incarceration Program, consistent with the Governor’s Article VII bill.

Requires OASAS certification for all persons performing drug abuse assessment and treatment and all programs providing such services for the Department of Correctional Services.

Enacts a sealing law authorizing judges, on motion so that the district attorney can respond, to conditionally seal a limited category of first-time, drug felony and misdemeanor convictions, upon application, if the defendant has remained crime-free for a specified period or has completed a court-ordered treatment program; existing statutory requirements barring individuals convicted of such crimes from being licensed for certain purposes would not be amended.

Provides transitional services to offenders leaving DOCS custody to better help them find housing, employment and apply for government benefits so that they do not relapse and continue moving through the revolving door.

QUANTIFIES the savings of reforming the drug laws.

Requires the State Comptroller to certify each year the number of days and number of persons diverted from state prison as a result of the bill and, to the greatest extent possible, quantify the savings generated as a result.

Requires that such amount certified by the Comptroller be segregated annually in a dedicated fund to be used exclusively for drug and alcohol treatment and related alternative to incarceration programs.

PLACES a premium on knowledge and information to effectuate reform.

Requires use of a community justice crime information mapping system to target efforts to further provide drug abuse treatment and reduce drug-related crime in different communities around the state.

Syracuse Post-Standard
No Rockefeller drug law reform in New York would be a real crime

By Anthony Papa and Gabriel Sayegh
March 05, 2009

New York's draconian Rockefeller drug laws represent a misguided and ineffective regime for addressing drug use and addiction -- health issues, not criminal issues. With legislation passing this week by the state Assembly, New York may be ready to shift toward a more reasonable -- and affordable -- approach guided by public health and safety.

Enacted in 1973, the Rockefeller laws mandate extremely harsh prison terms for the possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs. Supposedly intended to target major dealers, most of the people incarcerated under these laws are convicted of low-level, nonviolent offenses; many have no prior criminal record.

Approximately 12,000 people are locked up for drug offenses in New York state prisons -- nearly 21 percent of the prison population. Over 4,000 are serving long terms for simple possession. Nearly 90 percent of the people incarcerated are black or Latino, though whites use and sell illegal drugs at equal or higher rates.

As New York reels from the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, Gov. David Paterson and the Legislature are scrambling to close ever-expanding deficits. It costs New Yorkers $45,000 a year to keep someone locked up, while treatment costs a fraction of that.

Does it make sense to spend over $500 million every year on laws we know don't work? These laws did not stop the crack epidemic of the 1980s. They are completely incapable of stemming the accidental drug overdose epidemic hitting New York City and Long Island today. And they have turned the Department of Corrections into the state's largest, most costly and ineffective treatment provider.

The Assembly's bill would finally reform the failed Rockefeller laws. Sponsored by Corrections Committee Chairman -- and drug treatment counselor -- Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, Speaker Sheldon Silver and a host of others, the bill contains the four key elements: restoration of judicial discretion in drug cases, so judges can place appropriate people in treatment; expansion of alternative-to-incarceration programs and community-based drug treatment; fair sentencing reform; and retroactive sentencing relief for eligible people serving unjust sentences under the Rockefeller laws.

The Assembly's proposal would not allow people who commit violence to be resentenced.

The Assembly could have done even more, such as including full repeal of the second felony offender law. Even so, the bill represents a significant step forward. Modest reforms of 2004 and 2005 continue to deny people the right to apply for shorter terms, and do not increase judicial discretion. After 2004, more people went to prison under Rockefeller drug laws than before.

The need for reform is no longer in debate. The question is, what kind of reform will we see in New York? The Assembly has proposed real reform, advancing a public health and safety approach to drug use and addiction. This is the direction we need to go. Drug addiction shouldn't be a crime -- the real crime would be if reform was stymied yet again.

Anthony Papa, author of "15 to Life," served 12 years in prison under the Rockefeller drug laws.
Gabriel Sayegh is project director for the New York City-based Drug Policy Alliance.

Proposed drug law reforms

Assembly Bill A6085, introduced last week and expected to pass this week, includes the following provisions which balance safety and justice:

Ö Return discretion to sentencing judges to tailor the penalty to the facts and circumstances of each drug offense.

Ö Allow a sentence of probation and treatment where appropriate.

Ö Strengthen in-prison treatment and re-entry services.

Ö Expand the use of alternatives to incarceration, including community-based treatment, where appropriate.

Ö Allow certain eligible individuals incarcerated for low-level drug offenses to apply for resentencing; individuals convicted of violent crimes are not eligible.

Ö Expand use of drug courts throughout New York.

Ö Increase penalties for sale of a controlled substance to a child.

Ö Establish a new "kingpin" crime for organized drug-trafficking.

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

March 02, 2009

MA: From Cell Block to City Block Hearing Report 11-18-08

From Cell Block to City Block Hearing Report
Summary of Testimony for 11/18/08 Public Hearing: “From Cell Block to City Block: Strategies for a Successful Re-entry”
Synopsis

The purpose of this report is to capture the themes and recommendations from oral testimony and to give voice to prisoners’ written testimony that was not read at the hearing because of time constraints. A full transcript of oral testimony is available at www.endtheodds.org. Copies of written testimony not read at the hearing are available upon request.

The report briefly summarizes what is--or was--working, with respect to preparation for a successful reentry and what is impeding successful reentry now. The remainder of the report outlines wide ranging recommendations for successful reentry outcomes. At the heart of the recommendations you will hear a cry for dignity, meaningful activity, civic engagement, and hope. Not programs alone, but policies, practices, and the very culture and structure of the prisons are critical to successful reentry and reintegration.

1. Background

The End the Odds Coalition is a small group of Boston area people—formerly incarcerated and not yet incarcerated—who came together in January 2008 to brainstorm strategies for “ending the odds” against those in prison and those coming back out into the community. After holding two meetings with the Commissioner of Correction and his staff we decided to hold a public hearing. “From Cell Block to City Block: Strategies for a Successful Re-entry” became the theme of the hearing as we believe that what happens inside prison directly impacts the health and safety of our community. We wanted legislators and the DOC authorities to hear not only concerns, but also solutions from the experts—people inside prison, people who have returned to the community, and people who provide direct services to prisoners returning to the community.

We invited people inside to provide written testimony and we invited formerly incarcerated people and agency representatives to speak. We targeted specific legislators who chaired judiciary, public safety, mental health, and health care committees. We invited the Governor, the DOC Commissioner and any staff he chose to accompany him. We sent invitational emails to a broad range of people we knew had an interest in these issues. While we anticipated that time would not allow everyone to speak, we expected those who did speak would represent a wide range of sentiments, issues, and solutions.

Well over 100 people attended the two hour hearing, including formerly incarcerated people and family members. The Commissioner and several staff were present. One Senator-elect attended, but no incumbent legislators. Aides from two legislators’ office attended. Approximately 25 people spoke or had their written testimony read. The Commissioner spoke twice during the hearing, once to rebut some of the testimony and the other time to broadly outline his reentry plan.

2. What is, or was, working?

Although most people spoke to the lack of adequate programming for reentry, prisoners cited a few programs and policies that are currently working to help prepare for reintegration. They credited volunteer programs, religious groups, and recovery groups with providing tools for successful reintegration by building self-respect through interaction with members of society.

Others identified a number of programs and policies that worked in the past to prepare people for reentry. Broadly speaking the valued programs included furloughs, college education, work release, substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, employment and coping skills, help with family dynamics, and community building. Opportunities to earn and save money while in prison eased the transition to the community.

3. What is impeding successful reentry now?

The impediments to reentry seem to far outweigh any positive measures. Not only are programs in short supply, but philosophy, policies, and practices stand in the way of a successful reentry. For example, the “breaking rocks” attitude of the 1980’s is still deeply rooted in much of the current leadership and staff. Retribution and punishment seem more operative than rehabilitation and treatment.

The new classification system was supposed to address the problem of arbitrary assignments and “over” classification. Despite some improvements in the process, far too many people are overclassified, necessitating higher security beds. Subjectivity still pervades. The classification system has few incentives for “good” behavior, but many negative consequences for alleged disciplinary problems. Even if the overclassification problem were addressed, opportunities for “step-down” would be limited. Between 1990 and 2005 approximately 1500 minimum and pre-release beds were eliminated, resulting in reduced capacity for step-down opportunities. Too many people are being released from walled facilities.

Violation of basic human rights impedes physical, mental, and emotional readiness for reentry. Many people provided testimony citing the lack of accessible, adequate, and empathic medical and mental health. Others spoke of being subjected to verbal and physical abuse from staff and to disrespect of their personal property. The resultant anger and resentment stand in the way of successful reintegration. In particular, use of solitary confinement, where prisoners are kept hungry, cold, and miserable, risks making people angry and dangerous upon release.

Resources for programs and reentry preparation are grossly inadequate. They are only a small percentage of the DOC budget. The lack of meaningful programs was cited over and over--especially skills training programs. There is also a lack of opportunities for meaningful avocations, such as lack of art supplies for arts and crafts. Some people testified that some programs are offered just for show. When inspections are over, the program disappears. Instead of spending time in programs, prisoners spend time in lockdown. A large percentage of prisoners are prescribed mood altering pills.

Assignment to programs is also problematic. Sentencing for certain types of crimes restricts eligibility for programs and work opportunities. Fairness in assignment to programs was also raised. For example, confidential informants are purportedly given preferential assignment to programs and jobs. And while there are regulations on the books outlining procedures for preparing prisoners for reentry, they are not consistently enforced.

Work opportunities are sorely lacking relative to the number of people who want jobs. Wages for prisoners are not commensurate with the cost of daily toiletries, other canteen items, and other fees and charges, such as telephone service.

The commutation process should be another avenue to reentry for those sentenced to life without parole. However, Massachusetts has not commuted the sentence of a single prisoner for over 12 years. The lack of possibility of reentry for a significant number of the prison population contributes to an atmosphere of hopelessness and despair.

4. Recommendations for change

The concrete and positive recommendations for change that came out of the testimony are far reaching and numerous. However, at the core of all these recommendations is a cry for dignity, meaningful activity, civic engagement, and hope.

There is a need for structural and personnel changes:

* Return the Department of Corrections to the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
* Change the entrenched personnel in top leadership positions and bring in those with a rehabilitative philosophy
* Hire and train staff to have attitudes and behaviors that respect the dignity of prisoners and promote rehabilitation by modeling appropriate behavior
* Promote collaboration between the DOC and the Parole Board so that the DOC will act upon downward movement decisions of the Parole Board.
* Promote collaboration between the DOC and the Massachusetts business community to include additional job site locations within medium and minimum security facilities
* Develop collaboration between the DOC and Parole Board to establish a “volunteer” Offender Relocation Program

Guarantee basic human rights; change the culture from retribution to transformative justice

* Provide health care that meets the standards of health care in the community
* Make the grievance procedure more objective and fair

Modify policy and practices

* Re-allocate funding within the DOC budget to programs and re-entry
* Revamp the classification system to reduce the number of people held in high security; build in more positive incentives
* Increase the total number of available minimum security and pre-release beds and close one maximum security facility (abandon the double celling proposal at the maximum security facility; allow some choice of cellmate where double celling is the norm)
* Suspend the classification and policy restrictions that prohibit the placement of 1st and 2nd degree “lifers” from placements at minimum security facilities
* Adhere to the current regulatory guidelines for reentry preparation for health care coverage, housing, and other benefits as needed; start the reentry process at the beginning of the sentence
* Provide more opportunities for earning “good time”

Provide opportunities for meaningful activities and fair allocation of programs:

* Provide more job training, with certificates, for jobs in demand;
* Provide more educational opportunities, including computer literacy, more GED programs; expand the Inside-Out (Amherst College) initiative
* Provide more opportunities for gainful employment while incarcerated, including avocation shops e.g. woodworking; consideration of programs like the Prison Industries
* Enhancement Certification Program (PIE), which allows prisoners to work for private employers while earning prevailing wages
* Pay at least minimum wage for prison jobs
* Provide parenting programs to help prisoners maintain their role as parents
* Provide more opportunities for prisoners to provide peer teaching, tutoring, and mentoring
* Provide more opportunities for civic engagement, including reinstatement of Lifers programs, e.g. Reading for the Blind, Toys for Tots
* End restrictions on programming for people in maximum security facilities
* Consider offering a Certificate of Rehabilitation

Re-define relations with the community

* Enable program volunteers and program employees to submit testimony and attend commutation and parole hearings
* Expand the number and kinds of volunteer-run programs; bring more people from the community into the prisons
* Provide help for grieving family loss
* Establish visitor-friendly policies and procedures to promote more and better quality visitation
* Provide information on service providers in the community who can help with medical needs, housing, jobs, food stamps, financial aid, religious affiliation, AA and NA groups; offer this information in a timely fashion and in different languages
* Place community members and survivors on the Prison Rape Elimination Act committee; these people can compile and create resources for prisoners as they reenter the community
* Offer mediation program to prevent animosities formed inside from traveling into the community upon reentry
* Develop programs on the outside for men and women who have successfully returned to the community to go back inside to help prepare others for reentry

Make changes outside the DOC domain (requiring legislation in most cases)

* Reform mandatory minimum legislation (thus ending restrictions on access to programs and other reentry activities, and providing eligibility for parole)
* Reform CORI to enable people with CORI’s to obtain jobs, housing, and other services
* Create an independent commission to have oversight over all aspects of DOC functions; the panel must include representatives of the impacted communities
* Amend the life without parole law, with measures such as a 25/50 option (the possibility of parole for those 50 and over who have served 25 years) and the possibility of parole for Youth Offenders who currently are sentenced with life without parole; revisit the joint venture (felony murder) law
* Implement a compassionate medical release policy for chronically ill or terminally ill prisoners (e.g. hospice care, release to families)
* Provide special reentry programs, such as, COSA (Circles of Support and Accountability) for people designated as sex offenders to enable re-integration without harassment and isolation
* Amend restrictions on media access for prisoners
* Bring back Pell Grants for prisoners

5. Next steps

The following next steps are suggested:

* Distribute and use the report, inside and outside, to expand the dialogue and to create a constituency and the political will to change the odds
* Request a written copy of the Commissioner’s reentry proposal for review
* Create mechanisms for holding the DOC accountable for its responsibility to provide a humane environment and to prepare people for reentry into the community
* Support/modify current legislative bills on Beacon Hill and in Congress that address Cell Block to City Block concerns and increase the odds of successful reentry
* Formulate and submit new legislation where there are gaps
copies of the full report contact: info@endtheodds.org).

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

February 28, 2009

WI: News Republic Editorial: Time to cut state prison population?

Baraboo News Republic (WI)
Sauk County's Daily Newspaper
Saturday, February 28, 2009

News Republic Editorial: Time to cut state prison population?

With our national, state and local economies circling the bowl, legislators at all levels of government are looking to repair the damage and put us back on the road to prosperity.

Nationally, of course, there is President Barack Obama's much-scrutinized $787 billion stimulus plan.

Obama and his Democratic majority in Congress believe their venture is a bold, brilliant, can-do, must-do vehicle that will move people back to work and drive us out of the recession before it morphs into The Great Depression, Part II.

In our state of Wisconsin we have a man with his own budget and some novel ideas tucked between the numbers.

And one of Gov. Jim Doyle's proposals — targeting Wisconsin's prison system — has the big dogs in the state's GOP barking that our state leader is soft on crime. Here's why:

Felons could earn earlier extended supervision, probation for minor crimes would be eliminated and real-time tracking for some sex offenders could end under Doyle's broad-brush changes to Wisconsin's prison policy.

Heard over the roar of Republican carping, Rick Raemisch, the state's corrections secretary, said these moves should ease the crowding in our prisons and better prepare convicts for life after incarceration.

Raemisch said the moves should generate substantial savings for the state, which faces a $5.7 billion shortfall by mid-2011.

States have been pondering alternatives to incarceration for 10 years. At least a half dozen, including California and New York, are considering early release to lessen costs.

Raemisch, of course, was appointed by Doyle so no one should be surprised that he supports the boss's agenda.

"We have a saying — never waste a crisis," Raemisch said. "Some things people wouldn't look at before, they'll take a hard look at now. ... The days of locking people up and forgetting they're in prison are over."

Republicans, the loyal opposition, called Doyle's deal soft on crime.

"It's a let 'em loose early plan," said state Rep. Scott Suder, R-Abbotsford. "To sacrifice public safety to save a few bucks, I find appalling."

Suder has a point if, indeed, early release of inmates puts the public in peril.

But when you compare our inmate numbers to the State of Minnesota, you have to wonder if we have too many people behind bars.

Wisconsin's prison population stands at more than 22,000. Minnesota has about 7,000 inmates. Is it because the Gopher State produces a better class of people? Of course not. (After all, let's not forget most of them are Vikings fans).

Or could it be, simply, that Minnesota's prison policy reflects the model Doyle is trying to duplicate.

Certainly, there is money to be saved. Our state prison system has more than 18 institutions and costs more than $1 billion per year. And we've been struggling with overcrowding for years.

According to Raemisch, each inmate costs the state about $29,000 a year to keep caged.

A report released in January found Wisconsin's facilities are in decay. It recommended more than $1.2 billion in upgrades over the next decade, including nearly 9,000 new beds to cope with the crowd of convicts.

But Doyle's budget would reduce the inmate population and also the need for upgrades.

Under the Doyle deal:

* Prisoners could earn "positive adjustment" days for good behavior, and become eligible for extended supervision earlier. Inmates convicted of serious felonies, such as homicide and child sexual assault, wouldn't be eligible for the program.

* Inmates on extended supervision would be able to earn good behavior days, allowing them to finish their sentences sooner. That could mean an estimated 3,000 inmates, according to Raemisch.

* Probation for nonviolent offenders convicted of misdemeanors would be eliminated. Raemisch said about 7,000 offenders could qualify.

* Corrections would decide whether serious sex offenders need real-time GPS tracking after a year or if checking their movements once a day would be appropriate. State law requires real-time monitoring for the worst sex offenders.He said the plan would make work safer for guards by giving them fewer inmates to supervise, allowing them to focus on the most dangerous.

Raemisch said the initiatives would help offenders readjust to society by teaching them how to behave and follow the rules.

"This shouldn't, by any means, be considered opening up the back doors to the institutions or letting people that are violent back out on the streets," Raemisch said. "If I didn't think we could do this safely, I wouldn't be talking to the governor about it."

To be sure, saving money is not a valid reason to release dangerous criminals back into our communities. But if done carefully, as Raemisch promises, this might be a smarter option than long-term incarceration, which some believe fails to rehabilitate and often refines and refocuses the criminal inclination.

After all, if Minnesota can do this without putting its citizens in jeopardy, why can't we?
http://www.wiscnews.com/bnr/opinion/440872

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

February 26, 2009

MA: Mandatory Minimums in Action: A Berkshire County case highlights the controversies in school-zone sentencing.

Mandatory Minimums in Action: A Berkshire County case highlights the controversies in school-zone sentencing.
February 26, 2009
By Maureen Turner, Valley Advocate (Northampton, MA)

On a June morning in 2004, 17-year-old Mitchell Lawrence rode his bicycle from his home in Otis to Great Barrington, where he met up with friends in a parking lot outside a movie theater. Lawrence, who would start his senior year in high school that fall, went to the parking lot several times a week, where a group of teens regularly met up to pass the time, playing hackey sack and smoking pot.

A few weeks earlier, a new person had begun joining the group. Mitchell knew the new guy as “José”; what he didn’t know was that José was an undercover detective, working as part of a wide-scale Berkshire County drug task force operation that eventually would yield 19 drug-related arrests—and generate a considerable amount of controversy. Among the controversial issues: whether prosecutors were too eager to apply the school drug zone law, under which some defendants, including Lawrence, faced much more stringent penalties than they would have received had they simply been convicted for the underlying offense.

That day in the parking lot, Lawrence got high with some friends, then chatted with José for about an hour, according to court records. José asked Lawrence “if [he] had any smoke,” which the teenager later said he interpreted as an invitation to smoke together.

Lawrence agreed, although he was confused, he later said in court, when José led him not to the area behind the theater where the kids typically smoked, but in the opposite direction, near a Congregational church. He was also confused, he said, when José handed him a $20 bill, since he thought the two were simply going to share his pot.

Lawrence took the money and went off to buy a burrito. Two and a half months later, he was arrested. In 2006, Lawrence was convicted by a jury of possession and distribution of a class D substance. A first-time offender with a relatively small amount of pot, Lawrence did not face lengthy jail time for those convictions; Judge John A. Agostini sentenced the teen to just one day for the distribution charge, and 10 days for possession.

Unfortunately for Lawrence, however, he was also convicted of committing a drug offense within a “school zone” (triggered by the fact that a preschool was located within the Congregational church), which earned him an automatic minimum sentence of two years in the Berkshire House of Correction.

Lawrence appealed his conviction but did not prevail. But while the appeals court upheld the conviction, at least one justice took the opportunity to question the logic behind the “school-zone” law that landed Lawrence, a first-time offender arrested for a $20 pot sale, behind bars for two years.
In an opinion attached to the case, Justice Frederick Brown wrote that Detective Felix Aguirre—the real name of the man known as “José” to Lawrence and his friends in the parking lot—had known from his weeks of observation where the kids typically went to smoke, and had deliberately led Lawrence to another site, within a designated school zone.

“I believe that an enlightened prosecutor should not have sought a conviction for the school zone offense,” Brown wrote. “A government official (i.e., police officer) induced the defendant to enter a danger zone that exposed him to an enhanced penalty. This conduct is particularly outrageous because the young man went along with an experienced police officer, who undoubtedly was aware of the consequences of drug activities in a school zone.”

Brown continued: “This case is made all the more troubling by the fact that because of the government’s actions, a teenage defendant with no known involvement in drug sales other than this isolated incident, and for whom there is no indication of drug use other than marijuana, was subjected to a greatly enhanced penalty, including incarceration for two years, due to his conviction under [the school-zone law].”

The Great Barrington drug busts set off a furor of controversy in Berkshire County, in part because of the prosecutors’ use of the school-zone law. Of the 19 people arrested as part of the operation, seven, including Lawrence, had no prior records and were arrested for selling small amounts of drugs, according to reporting in the Berkshire Eagle at the time.

Berkshire District Attorney David Capeless, who has built a reputation as a tough-on-drugs prosecutor, has maintained the investigation was a valid response to public concerns about drug dealing in the area, including specific complaints about the Great Barrington parking lot where Lawrence was arrested.

During the trial, Capeless maintained that Lawrence was not arrested over a single cigarette, but, in fact, had more than a gram of marijuana prepackaged for sale. Lawrence went to jail “due to some poor decisions on his part,” Capeless told the Eagle.

Posted by lois at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2009

Missouri senator proposes bill to lengthen prison stays

Missouri senator proposes bill to lengthen prison stays
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Missourian
BY Michael Bushnell

JEFFERSON CITY – Before he even was sworn in as a state senator for his first term, Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, filed a bill to require criminals to serve prison terms closer to their actual sentences than is current practice.

Currently, the average convicted felon serves less than one half of the actual sentence before release, according to the Missouri Corrections Department.

But Sen. Schaefer proposes requiring a minimum of 85 percent of a sentence be served before release. He acknowledged he has found it difficult to promote a bill perceived as increasing prison populations and the costs associated with them, while the state grapples with a more than $250 million budget shortfall.

Schaefer said his main goal is not to incarcerate large numbers of people for a much longer time, but to create more truthful sentencing. He said judges are currently sentencing felons to exorbitant prison terms, knowing they will only serve a fraction of the time.

"Right now judges are getting pre-sentencing reports for what length prison terms they can give," Schaefer said. "So you'll get a judge giving a twenty-year sentence because they believe the person needs to spend at least four years in prison. If the judge knew, and the victim knew for certain that the defendant would serve 85 percent of whatever sentence was given, you would see sentences reflecting that."

The state Corrections Department reports there are 30,377 felons serving time in state prison at a daily cost of $45.02 per inmate. That amounts to a taxpayer cost of $1.37 million every day to house Missouri inmates. According to the department, felons currently in state are projected to serve 47.5 percent of their sentence before release. Legislative staff report the average sentence of those released in 2008 was slightly greater than 38 percent of the original sentence.

Schaefer said he is trying to get Missouri in line with the federal government and a majority of the states, many of which enacted truth in sentencing bills in the mid-1990s. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the federal government requires those convicted of federal crimes to serve a "substantial portion" of their sentences, which in the vast majority of cases is at least 85 percent.

A federal "truth-in-sentencing" law passed in 1994 committed federal funds to states that require felons to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. The Department of Justice reports that 27 states plus the District of Columbia meet that requirement.

Democrats have expressed concern about the bill, in no small part because of the estimated cost. The analysis of the bill estimated a minimum cost of nearly $40 million in the 2011 fiscal year, something that Sen. Jeff Smith, D-St. Louis, said makes the legislation unpalatable.

"In a time of such lean budgets, when we're facing the crisis we face, the last thing we need is a bill with a huge fiscal note that's going to cost corrections millions of dollars," said Smith, who, like Schaefer, serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee where the bill is assigned.

Smith also said it is inaccurate to think judges will immediately start issuing shorter sentences to reflect the mandatory sentencing.

"It takes years for changes to run through a system," he said. "It would take years for judges to start issuing shorter sentences that were 'true.' That would be millions of dollars in increased costs to prisons, and that's where we don't need to be budget-wise."

Schaefer countered by saying that the Corrections Department took the worst-case scenario in determining the cost and that judges would immediately change their sentencing formulas.

"I will tell you that