The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

August 10, 2010

MA: New Law Signed on August 6, 2010 A Good Step in the Right Direction on Ending Mandatory Minimum Drug Sentences

Families Against Mandatory Minimums On August 6, 2010, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed into law limited but promising reform of the state’s harsh mandatory minimum sentencing laws for drug offenses. Drug offenders who are serving mandatory minimum sentences at county Houses of Correction will be eligible for parole after they serve one-half of their sentences -- the same as other county prisoners who are eligible for parole -- unless one of three “aggravating factors” apply. The Legislature passed this measure on July 31 as part of the CORI (criminal records) reform bill. This is the first time that the Legislature has moved to ease rigid drug sentencing laws since the laws were first enacted nearly 30 years ago.

FAMM’s Massachusetts project director Barbara J. Dougan, who spoke at the press conference, stated:

“FAMM and its members are gratified to see Massachusetts take this first step toward meaningful sentencing reform. Over the years the studies have amassed, showing that mandatory minimum sentences do not reduce either drug offenses or drug dependency and addiction. Instead, too often they result in nonviolent or low level offenders being punished with the same lengthy sentences intended for drug kingpins. The Legislature showed courage in its willingness to acknowledge that when laws do not work as intended, change is needed. And today, by signing the bill into law, Gov. Patrick continues his strong leadership on this issue. This is part of a nationwide trend, as at least 15 other states have reform their drug sentencing laws in recent years.”

The new law applies to those who are currently incarcerated, as well as to those sentenced in the future. Drug offenders serving county sentences will be eligible for parole only if they did not use violence or guns when committing the drug offense, direct the drug activities of others, or sell drugs to minors or use minors in drug transactions.

The new law does not include two reforms previously endorsed by the Senate: allowing drug offenders in state prisons the same access to parole, and allowing all drug offenders to be eligible for work release programs. Under current state law, drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences are barred from either parole eligibility or work release programs, even if such restrictions force them to leave prison without supervision or job skills. FAMM will continue to work for those reforms in the coming legislative session.

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

August 06, 2010

The Economist: "Rough Justice in America: Too many laws, too many prisoners"

Rough justice in America
Too many laws, too many prisoners
Never in the civilised world have so many been locked up for so little
The Economist
Jul 22nd 2010 | Spring, Texas

THREE pickup trucks pulled up outside George Norris’s home in Spring, Texas. Six armed police in flak jackets jumped out. Thinking they must have come to the wrong place, Mr Norris opened his front door, and was startled to be shoved against a wall and frisked for weapons. He was forced into a chair for four hours while officers ransacked his house. They pulled out drawers, rifled through papers, dumped things on the floor and eventually loaded 37 boxes of Mr Norris’s possessions onto their pickups. They refused to tell him what he had done wrong. “It wasn’t fun, I can tell you that,” he recalls.

Mr Norris was 65 years old at the time, and a collector of orchids. He eventually discovered that he was suspected of smuggling the flowers into America, an offence under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. This came as a shock. He did indeed import flowers and sell them to other orchid-lovers. And it was true that his suppliers in Latin America were sometimes sloppy about their paperwork. In a shipment of many similar-looking plants, it was rare for each permit to match each orchid precisely.

In March 2004, five months after the raid, Mr Norris was indicted, handcuffed and thrown into a cell with a suspected murderer and two suspected drug-dealers. When told why he was there, “they thought it hilarious.” One asked: “What do you do with these things? Smoke ’em?”

Prosecutors described Mr Norris as the “kingpin” of an international smuggling ring. He was dumbfounded: his annual profits were never more than about $20,000. When prosecutors suggested that he should inform on other smugglers in return for a lighter sentence, he refused, insisting he knew nothing beyond hearsay.

He pleaded innocent. But an undercover federal agent had ordered some orchids from him, a few of which arrived without the correct papers. For this, he was charged with making a false statement to a government official, a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison. Since he had communicated with his suppliers, he was charged with conspiracy, which also carries a potential five-year term.

As his legal bills exploded, Mr Norris reluctantly changed his plea to guilty, though he still protests his innocence. He was sentenced to 17 months in prison. After some time, he was released while his appeal was heard, but then put back inside. His health suffered: he has Parkinson’s disease, which was not helped by the strain of imprisonment. For bringing some prescription sleeping pills into prison, he was put in solitary confinement for 71 days. The prison was so crowded, however, that even in solitary he had two room-mates.

A long love affair with lock and key

Justice is harsher in America than in any other rich country. Between 2.3m and 2.4m Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. If those on parole or probation are included, one adult in 31 is under “correctional” supervision. As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan. Overcrowding is the norm. Federal prisons house 60% more inmates than they were designed for. State lock-ups are only slightly less stuffed.

The system has three big flaws, say criminologists. First, it puts too many people away for too long. Second, it criminalises acts that need not be criminalised. Third, it is unpredictable. Many laws, especially federal ones, are so vaguely written that people cannot easily tell whether they have broken them.

In 1970 the proportion of Americans behind bars was below one in 400, compared with today’s one in 100. Since then, the voters, alarmed at a surge in violent crime, have demanded fiercer sentences. Politicians have obliged. New laws have removed from judges much of their discretion to set a sentence that takes full account of the circumstances of the offence. Since no politician wants to be tarred as soft on crime, such laws, mandating minimum sentences, are seldom softened. On the contrary, they tend to get harder.

Some criminals belong behind bars. When a habitual rapist is locked up, the streets are safer. But the same is not necessarily true of petty drug-dealers, whose incarceration creates a vacancy for someone else to fill, argues Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University. The number of drug offenders in federal and state lock-ups has increased 13-fold since 1980. Some are scary thugs; many are not.

Michelle Collette of Hanover, Massachusetts, sold Percocet, a prescription painkiller. “I was planning to do it just once,” she says, “but the money was so easy. And I thought: it’s not heroin.” Then she became addicted to her own wares. She was unhappy with her boyfriend, she explains, but did not want to split up with him, because she did not want their child to grow up fatherless, as she had. So she popped pills to numb the misery. Before long, she was taking 20-30 a day.

When Ms Collette and her boyfriend, who also sold drugs, were arrested in a dawn raid, the police found 607 pills and $901 in cash. The boyfriend fought the charges and got 15 years in prison. In a plea bargain Ms Collette was sentenced to seven years, of which she served six.

“I don’t think this is fair,” said the judge. “I don’t think this is what our laws are meant to do. It’s going to cost upwards of $50,000 a year to have you in state prison. Had I the authority, I would send you to jail for no more than one year…and a [treatment] programme after that.” But mandatory sentencing laws gave him no choice.

Massachusetts is a liberal state, but its drug laws are anything but. It treats opium-derived painkillers such as Percocet like hard drugs, if illicitly sold. Possession of a tiny amount (14-28 grams, or ½-1 ounce) yields a minimum sentence of three years. For 200 grams, it is 15 years, more than the minimum for armed rape. And the weight of the other substances with which a dealer mixes his drugs is included in the total, so 10 grams of opiates mixed with 190 grams of flour gets you 15 years.

Ms Collette underwent drug treatment before being locked up, and is now clean. But in prison she found she was pregnant. After going through labour shackled to a hospital bed, she was allowed only 48 hours to bond with her newborn son. She was released in March, found a job in a shop, and is hoping that her son will get used to having her around.

Rigid sentencing laws shift power from judges to prosecutors, complains Barbara Dougan of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a pressure-group. Even the smallest dealer often has enough to trigger a colossal sentence. Prosecutors may charge him with selling a smaller amount if he agrees to “reel some other poor slob in”, as Ms Dougan puts it. He is told to persuade another dealer to sell him just enough drugs to trigger a 15-year sentence, and perhaps to do the deal near a school, which adds another two years.

Severe drug laws have unintended consequences. Less than half of American cancer patients receive adequate painkillers, according to the American Pain Foundation, another pressure-group. One reason is that doctors are terrified of being accused of drug-trafficking if they over-prescribe. In 2004 William Hurwitz, a doctor specialising in the control of pain, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for prescribing pills that a few patients then resold on the black market. Virginia’s board of medicine ruled that he had acted in good faith, but he still served nearly four years.

Half the states have laws that lock up habitual offenders for life. In some states this applies only to violent criminals, but in others it applies even to petty ones. Some 3,700 people who committed neither violent nor serious crimes are serving life sentences under California’s “three strikes and you’re out” law. In Alabama a petty thief called Jerald Sanders was given a life term for pinching a bicycle. Alabama’s judges are elected, as are those in 32 other states. This makes them mindful of public opinion: some appear in campaign advertisements waving guns and bragging about how tough they are.
Watching hairs go white, and lifetimes ebb away

Many Americans assume that white-collar criminals get off lightly, but many do not. Granted, they may be hard to catch and can often afford good lawyers. But federal prosecutors can file many charges for what is essentially one offence. For example, they can count each e-mail sent by a white-collar criminal in the course of his criminal activity as a separate case of wire fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. The decades soon add up. Sentences depend partly on the size of the loss and the number of people affected, so if you work for a big, publicly traded company, you break a rule and the share-price drops, watch out.

Eternal punishment

Jim Felman, a defence lawyer in Tampa, Florida, says America is conducting “an experiment in imprisoning first-time non-violent offenders for periods of time previously reserved only for those who had killed someone”. One of Mr Felman’s clients, a fraudster called Sholam Weiss, was sentenced to 845 years. “I got it reduced to 835,” sighs Mr Felman. Faced with such penalties, he says, the incentive to co-operate, which means to say things that are helpful to the prosecution, is overwhelming. And this, he believes, “warps the truth-seeking function” of justice.

Innocent defendants may plead guilty in return for a shorter sentence to avoid the risk of a much longer one. A prosecutor can credibly threaten a middle-aged man that he will die in a cell unless he gives evidence against his boss. This is unfair, complains Harvey Silverglate, the author of “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent”. If a defence lawyer offers a witness money to testify that his client is innocent, that is bribery. But a prosecutor can legally offer something of far greater value—his freedom—to a witness who says the opposite. The potential for wrongful convictions is obvious.

Badly drafted laws create traps for the unwary. In 2006 Georgia Thompson, a civil servant in Wisconsin, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for depriving the public of “the intangible right of honest services”. Her crime was to award a contract (for travel services) to the best bidder. A firm called Adelman Travel scored the most points (on an official scale) for price and quality, so Ms Thompson picked it. She ignored a rule that required her to penalise Adelman for a slapdash presentation when bidding. For this act of common sense, she served four months. (An appeals court freed her.)

The “honest services” statute, if taken seriously, “would seemingly cover a salaried employee’s phoning in sick to go to a ball game,” fumes Antonin Scalia, a Supreme Court justice. The Supreme Court ruled recently that the statute was so vague as to be unconstitutional. It did not strike it down completely, but said it should be applied only in cases involving bribery or kickbacks. The challenge was brought by Enron’s former boss, Jeff Skilling, who will not go free despite his victory, and Conrad Black, a media magnate released this week on bail pending an appeal, who may.

There are over 4,000 federal crimes, and many times that number of regulations that carry criminal penalties. When analysts at the Congressional Research Service tried to count the number of separate offences on the books, they were forced to give up, exhausted. Rules concerning corporate governance or the environment are often impossible to understand, yet breaking them can land you in prison. In many criminal cases, the common-law requirement that a defendant must have a mens rea (ie, he must or should know that he is doing wrong) has been weakened or erased.

“The founders viewed the criminal sanction as a last resort, reserved for serious offences, clearly defined, so ordinary citizens would know whether they were violating the law. Yet over the last 40 years, an unholy alliance of big-business-hating liberals and tough-on-crime conservatives has made criminalisation the first line of attack—a way to demonstrate seriousness about the social problem of the month, whether it’s corporate scandals or e-mail spam,” writes Gene Healy, a libertarian scholar. “You can serve federal time for interstate transport of water hyacinths, trafficking in unlicensed dentures, or misappropriating the likeness of Woodsy Owl.”

“You’re (probably) a federal criminal,” declares Alex Kozinski, an appeals-court judge, in a provocative essay of that title. Making a false statement to a federal official is an offence. So is lying to someone who then repeats your lie to a federal official. Failing to prevent your employees from breaking regulations you have never heard of can be a crime. A boss got six months in prison because one of his workers accidentally broke a pipe, causing oil to spill into a river. “It didn’t matter that he had no reason to learn about the [Clean Water Act’s] labyrinth of regulations, since he was merely a railroad-construction supervisor,” laments Judge Kozinski.
Society wants retribution

Such cases account for only a tiny share of the Americans behind bars, but they still matter. When so many people are technically breaking the law, it is up to prosecutors to decide whom to pursue. No doubt most prosecutors choose wisely. But members of unpopular groups may not find that reassuring. Ms Thompson, for example, was prosecuted just before an election, at a time when allegations of public corruption in Wisconsin were in the news. Some prosecutors, such as Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced ex-governor of New York, have built political careers by nailing people whom voters don’t like, such as financiers.

Prison deters? Not much, not the worst

Some people argue that the system works: that crime has fallen in the past two decades because the bad guys are either in prison or scared of being sent there. Caged thugs cannot break into your home. Bernie Madoff’s 150-year sentence for running a Ponzi scam should deter imitators. And indeed the crime rate continues to drop, despite the recession, as Michael Rushford of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, an advocacy group, points out. This, he says, is because habitual criminals face serious consequences. Some research supports him: after raking through decades of historical data, John Donohue of Yale Law School estimates that a 10% increase in imprisonment brings a 2% reduction in crime.

Others disagree. Using more recent data, Bert Useem of Purdue University and Anne Piehl of Rutgers University estimate that a 10% increase in the number of people behind bars would reduce crime by only 0.5%. In the states that currently lock up the most people, imprisoning more would actually increase crime, they believe. Some inmates emerge from prison as more accomplished criminals. And raising the incarceration rate means locking up people who are, on average, less dangerous than the ones already behind bars. A recent study found that, over the past 13 years, the proportion of new prisoners in Florida who had committed violent crimes fell by 28%, whereas those inside for “other” crimes shot up by 189%. These “other” crimes were non-violent ones involving neither drugs nor theft, such as driving with a suspended licence.

And now the reckoning, in dollars

Crime is a young man’s game. Muggers over 30 are rare. Ex-cons who go straight for a few years generally stay that way: a study of 88,000 criminals by Mr Blumstein found that if someone was arrested for aggravated assault at the age of 18 but then managed to stay out of trouble until the age of 22, the risk of his offending was no greater than that for the general population. Yet America’s prisons are crammed with old folk. Nearly 200,000 prisoners are over 50. Most would pose little threat if released. And since people age faster in prison than outside, their medical costs are vast. Human Rights Watch, a lobby-group, talks of “nursing homes with razor wire”.

Jail is expensive. Spending per prisoner ranges from $18,000 a year in Mississippi to about $50,000 in California, where the cost per pupil is but a seventh of that. “[W]e are well past the point of diminishing returns,” says a report by the Pew Center on the States. In Washington state, for example, each dollar invested in new prison places in 1980 averted more than nine dollars of criminal harm (using a somewhat arbitrary scale to assign a value to not being beaten up). By 2001, as the emphasis shifted from violent criminals to drug-dealers and thieves, the cost-benefit ratio reversed. Each new dollar spent on prisons averted only 37 cents’ worth of harm.

Since the recession threw their budgets into turmoil, many states have decided to imprison fewer people, largely to save money. Mississippi has reduced the proportion of their sentences that non-violent offenders are required to serve from 85% to 25%. Texas is making greater use of non-custodial penalties. New York has repealed most mandatory minimum terms for drug offences. In all, the number of prisoners in state lock-ups fell by 0.3% in 2009, the first fall since 1972. But the total number of Americans behind bars still rose slightly, because the number of federal prisoners climbed by 3.4%.

A less punitive system could work better, argues Mark Kleiman of the University of California, Los Angeles. Swift and certain penalties deter more than harsh ones. Money spent on prisons cannot be spent on more cost-effective methods of crime-prevention, such as better policing, drug treatment or probation. The pain that punishment inflicts on criminals themselves, on their families and on their communities should also be taken into account.

“Just by making effective use of things we already know how to do, we could reasonably expect to have half as much crime and half as many people behind bars ten years from now,” says Mr Kleiman. “There are a thousand excuses for failing to make that effort, but not one good reason.”
http://www.economist.com/node/16636027?story_id=16636027&fsrc=rss

Posted by lois at 01:54 PM | Comments (0)

August 05, 2010

Obama signs law targeting disparities in crack and powede cocaine cases

Obama signs law targeting disparities in cocaine cases
August 3, 2010
USA Today
President Obama signed a law today designed to change the way that crack and powder cocaine are handled in court

The Fair Sentencing Act is "a bipartisan bill to help right a longstanding wrong by narrowing sentencing disparities between those convicted of crack cocaine and powder cocaine," Obama said last week in a speech to the National Urban League. "It's the right thing to do."

The law targets what the Drug Policy Alliance calls the problem of the 100-to-1 ratio.

Previously, a person caught with 5 grams of crack cocaine would receive a mandatory sentence of five years -- that same person would have to possess at least 500 grams of powder cocaine to earn the same sentence. This discrepancy tended to fall harder on African Americans, who are charged more often with crimes involving crack cocaine.

"By signing this reform into law President Obama will save taxpayer money, reduce racial disparities, and better prioritize federal law enforcement towards major crime syndicates instead of low-level offender," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.

The disparity is not totally eliminated, however, as the Drug Policy Alliance explained in a statement:

Advocates pushed to totally eliminate the disparity but ultimately a compromise was struck between Democrats and Republicans to reduce the 100-to-1 disparity to 18-to-1. The compromise also eliminated the five year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of five grams of cocaine (about two sugar packets worth). The repeal of that mandatory minimum is the first repeal of a mandatory minimum drug sentence since the 1970s. Overall, the compromise bill is expected to reduce the federal prison population by thousands of offenders and save an estimated $42 million in criminal justice spending over the first five years.

Back in April, our colleague Mimi Hall wrote about a man seeking clemency for a life sentence related to crack cocaine.

A bipartisan congressional delegation watched Obama sign the new bill.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/08/obama-signs-law-targeting-disparities-in-cocaine-cases/1

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

July 28, 2010

Congress Lowers Penalties for Crack Cocaine- A change moving in the right direction

Now the 5 year mandatory minimum sentence for crack is 5 grams. After the Bill becomes law, it is raised to 28 grams.
After the Bill is signed into law 50 grams of crack is raised to 280 grams for a 10 year mandatory minimum sentence.

Now a 5 year mandatory minimum sentence for powder cocaine is 500 grams ---this stays the same.
Now a 10 year mandatory minimum sentence for powder cocaine is 5 kilograms---this stays the same.

The quantity disparity between crack and powder cocaine would move from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1.
The law is NOT retroactive.

Edited from a Sentencing Project Press Release
July 28, 2010
HISTORIC REFORM: Congress Lowers Penalties for Crack Cocaine
* House approves Senate compromise on suspension calendar
* 3,000 defendants would benefit from sentencing changes each year

After decades of debate, research and recommendations, the United States Congress has approved legislation to increase fairness in sentences for crack cocaine offenses. The House of Representatives today passed, under a suspension of the rules, a bill passed by the Senate in March which would reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. The bill now awaits the President's signature.

The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 would raise the minimum quantity of crack cocaine that triggers a 5-year mandatory minimum from 5 grams to 28 grams, and from 50 grams to 280 grams to trigger a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence. The amount of powder cocaine required to trigger the 5 and 10-year mandatory minimums remains the same, at 500 grams and 5 kilograms respectively. The legislation also eliminates the mandatory minimum for simple possession of crack cocaine. The quantity disparity between crack and powder cocaine would move from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1.

Currently, 80% of crack cocaine defendants are African American, and possession of as little as 5 grams of crack cocaine subject defendants to a mandatory five-year prison term. For decades the controversial cocaine sentencing law has exemplified the disparate treatment felt in communities of color and the harshness of mandatory minimum sentences.

According to estimates from the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the approved changes to the current penalties for crack cocaine offenses could impact nearly 3,000 defendants a year by reducing their average sentence 27 months. The Commission projects that 10 years after enactment the changes could produce a prison population reduction of about 3,800.

For people currently serving time for low-level crack cocaine offenses, the bill's passage will not impact their fate. The Sentencing Project urges Congress, the U.S. Sentencing Commission and the President to apply the sentencing adjustments mandated in the Fair Sentencing Act retroactively.

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

June 23, 2010

Canada: Sentencing act to cost billions: report. Cost of new prisons estimated to be $1.8 billion over 5 years

Sentencing act to cost billions: report
Public safety minister disputes findings on cost of Truth in Sentencing Act
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#ixzz0rgqYxVbR

New legislation limiting the credit given to prisoners for time served in custody before and during their trials will cost taxpayers $1 billion to implement and billions more to maintain, the parliamentary budget officer said Tuesday.

The construction of new correctional facilities alone will cost about $1.8 billion over five years, parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page said in a report quantifying the implications of the Truth in Sentencing Act.

A further $618 million will be needed annually for capital appropriations and operations and maintenance costs.
Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page, seen here in 2008, released a report into the projected costs of incarceration at a press conference on Tuesday.Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page, seen here in 2008, released a report into the projected costs of incarceration at a press conference on Tuesday. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)

"I knew incarceration was expensive," Page told reporters Tuesday morning. "When we do the simple math in terms of longer stays, which means higher head counts and we know how expensive … incarceration is, you get to big numbers in a hurry."

Page and his team used figures from 2007-2008 to derive their rough estimates because the federal government was unwilling to provide specific data, the report said.

"Undertaking the type of costing exercise without rigorous bottom-up data from the department [and] absent any discussion with [Correctional Service Canada] poses significant risks," authors Ashutosh Rajekar and Ramnarayanan Mathilakath wrote.

As a result, their report, The Funding Requirement and Impact of the Truth in Sentencing Act on the Correctional System in Canada, relied on historical trends, intuition and probability, the authors said. The report "is limited to a high-level estimation" of the costs, Rajekar and Mathilakath said.

That estimation, however, suggests the costs of implementing and maintaining the new sentencing rules will be far greater than the $2 billion over five years the Conservatives cited on April 28.
Public Safety Minister Toews disagrees

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews quickly dismissed Page's report, saying he didn't "know where [Page] is getting his information from."

"If you indicate that he wasn't getting any information from Correctional Service Canada, he must be making this up," Toews said.

The act, which went into effect on Feb. 23, limits the credit judges can give prisoners for time served before sentencing.

Such limits have three major consequences, Page's report concluded:

* Inmates will spend more time in custody.
* Convicts whose credit might have kept them in provincial facilities will have to be transferred to federal prisons.
* Those convicted of lighter sentences who might have been directly released into community supervision will instead be sent to correctional facilities.

The act is expected to increase the number of inmates from 8,618 in fiscal year 2007-08 to 17,058, including 9,021 in community supervision, the report said.
Would need more prisons, report says

But Canada lacks sufficient space for so many inmates, requiring construction of 13 new federal and provincial facilities at a cost of $1.8 billion, or $363 million per year for five years, the report said.

The additional facilities would include:

* Two low-security facilities with 250 cells each.
* Six medium-security facilities with 600 cells each.
* Four high-security facilities with 400 cells each.
* One multi-level security facility with 400 cells.

The new facilities would increase the annual cost of caring for inmates — including operation and maintenance expenses as well as capital appropriations — by about $618 million a year, from the current $2.2 billion to roughly $2.8 billion, the report said.

The report was unable to project the financial impacts of the Truth in Sentencing Act for the provinces and territories because of a lack of current data.

However, using a simulation, it projected that annual costs of correctional services would more than double by 2015-16, from $4.4 billion to $9.5 billion, and responsibility for funding the majority of this would shift from the federal government to the provinces and territories.

Liberal public safety critic Mark Holland criticized the Conservatives for "a lack of co-operation and disclosure."

"The costs cannot be dumped on taxpayers and the provinces," Holland said. "The Conservatives must sit down with the provinces and territories to address their very legitimate concerns about how these initiatives are going to be funded."
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/06/22/truth-in-reconciliation-pbo-report.html#ixzz0rgqTzmkU

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

June 18, 2010

Case Study -Will the Supreme Court Keep Prisons Overcrowded?

Case Study
Will the Supreme Court Keep Prisons Overcrowded?
By Adam Cohen, June 17, 2010
Time Magazine

California is often on the cutting edge of national trends — and so it is now with the "ugly bed." That is prison lingo for double and triple bunks that are jammed into gymnasiums and dayrooms because there is nowhere else to put the inmates. It is an inhumane and dangerous way to house prisoners, but it is one that has become all too common in California's jam-packed correctional facilities.

It has been nearly four years since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a "Prison Overcrowding State of Emergency," warning that conditions in the state's 33 adult prisons posed a serious risk to inmates and staff. But the overcrowding has continued.

And while California's legislature has dithered, the federal courts have stepped in, ordering the state to bring down its prison population. On Monday, however, the Supreme Court accepted an appeal in this California prisons-condition case. It is an ominous development, one that could make prisons far worse in all 50 states.

California's correctional facilities are among the nation's most overcrowded. The driving force has been the state's harsh and at times bizarre criminal laws and parole practices. Under the state's notorious three-strikes-and-you're-out law, criminals can be sent away for life for even minor, non-violent crimes — including shoplifting. Not surprisingly, then, the prison population has soared over the past few decades, from about 20,000 in the early 1970s to past 160,000 in recent years.

The results have been disastrous, with Schwarzenegger's state-of-emergency declaration painting a grim picture. Because of the overcrowding, it was difficult for the guards to monitor prisoners and to prevent violence from breaking out. There were frequent power outages. And the sewage systems were overtaxed, creating a risk of disease. "Immediate action is necessary," the governor warned, "to prevent death and harm."

That action never came — at least not on the scale that was needed — but the death and harm did. Prisoners have been dying and suffering injuries at alarming rates. Last summer, 250 inmates were injured in a riot at a state prison in Chino. The facility was built to hold 3,160 inmates, but roughly twice that number had been crammed into it.

Last summer, a special three-judge federal court intervened. It ruled that California's prison medical system — which a judge had declared to be responsible for one inmate death a week — violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.The court ordered the state to cap its prison population at 137% of capacity, and to release about 40,000 inmates — roughly a quarter of the total population — over two years.

It was a good and important ruling, which promised to begin making California's increasingly barbaric prisons safer and more civilized. But the Supreme Court's decision this week throws that potential bit of progress into doubt, and not just for California.

The United States is a country that likes to put people behind bars. It has less than 5% of the world's population, but almost one-quarter of the world's prisoners. One in every 100 American adults is behind bars, the highest incarceration rate in the world; between 1972 and 2008, the number of state prisoners soared by 708%. Making matters worse, this rush to incarcerate has not been matched by an equal commitment to funding.

The Supreme Court, which is likely to schedule arguments in the case during its next term, starting in the fall, could end up upholding the lower-court ruling from California, but there is good reason to think it might not. The court's conservative majority has taken an unduly narrow view of the Eighth Amendment in recent years. And it could use the case to rewrite prison conditions law and to make it extremely difficult for judges to bring down prison populations, even when they reach dangerous levels.

That would be unfortunate. Overincarceration is not only inhumane — it is terrible correctional policy. Crowded prisons are more likely to have riots and inmate-on-inmate violence, including sexual assaults. Inmates in jam-packed prisons also have less opportunity to improve themselves, and are more likely to come out of prison unrehabilitated and hardened. That is bad news for law-abiding citizens, since most prisoners are eventually released back into society.

Some people argue that governors and legislatures are the branches of government that should decide how prisons are run — and for the most part, they are right. But when those branches repeatedly fail to ensure that prisons are run in a minimally adequate way, judges have to have the authority to step in and enforce the Constitution.

Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1997219,00.html#ixzz0rD4bS48r

Posted by lois at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2010

The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration

The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration
Center for Economic and Policy Research
June 2010, John Schmitt, Kris Warner, and Sarika Gupta

The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. We calculate that a reduction in incarceration rates just to the level we had in 1993 (which was already high by historical standards) would lower correctional expenditures by $16.3 billion per year, with the large majority of these savings accruing to financially squeezed state and local governments. As a group, state governments could save $7.6 billion, while local governments could save $7.2 billion.

These cost savings could be realized through a reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate of exclusively non-violent offenders, who now make up over 60 percent of the prison and jail population.

A review of the extensive research on incarceration and crime suggests that these savings could be achieved without any appreciable deterioration in public safety.

For graphs and a link to the report go to:

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/the-high-budgetary-cost-of-incarceration/

Posted by lois at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)

Justices Approve Bureau of Prisons' Calculations for 'Good Time Credit'

"...in a strongly worded dissent Justice Anthony Kennedy said the ruling will add "tens of thousands of years" collectively to time served, at a "cost to taxpayers of untold millions of dollars." In human terms, Kennedy added, the ruling will be "devastating to the prisoners who have behaved the best."

Justices Approve Bureau of Prisons' Calculations for 'Good Time Credit'
Tony Mauro
The National Law Journal
June 08, 2010

In a decision that affects the prison terms of nearly 200,000 inmates in federal prisons, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday adopted a formula for calculating "good time credit" for good behavior that results in more time served.

The Court by a 6-3 vote endorsed a long-standing Bureau of Prisons method of calculating good time credit based on the length of time actually served, not the length of the term imposed by the sentencing judge. As Justice Stephen Breyer described it in his majority opinion in the case, Barber v. Thomas, the formula preferred by the Court would result in 470 days of credit for a well-behaved prisoner serving a 10-year sentence, while the method urged by defendants would result in 540 days of credit.

That may not sound like much, but in a strongly worded dissent Justice Anthony Kennedy said the ruling will add "tens of thousands of years" collectively to time served, at a "cost to taxpayers of untold millions of dollars." In human terms, Kennedy added, the ruling will be "devastating to the prisoners who have behaved the best."

Kennedy has long argued in speeches off the bench that American prison terms are too long and punishments are too severe.

Joining Kennedy in dissent were justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who emphasized during confirmation hearings last year that she disagreed with President Barack Obama's "empathy standard" for new justices, voted with the majority against defendants in the case.

Mary Price, vice president and general counsel of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said the ruling "is a huge deal for so many prisoners." As a result, she said, "we will continue to overincarcerate many, many people." She said bills have been introduced in Congress to clarify the formula and give prisoners up to 54 days of credit for each year of a sentence, as she says the law requires.

But in announcing the opinion, Breyer said his reading of the statute is "the most natural." Breyer's ruling was a blend of statutory interpretation and Algebra 101, and he said the "mathematically inclined" might like reading it. The method allowing 54 days of credit for each year of a sentence, he said, would improperly give a well-behaved prisoner credit for both time served and time that was not served, but was offset by past good behavior.

The case was brought by Oregon federal prisoners challenging the calculation method, but they lost at both the district court in Oregon and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Kennedy said that, "to a prisoner, time behind bars is not something theoretical or a mathematical concept. It is something real, even terrifying." Kennedy added, "we should not embrace this harsh result where Congress itself has not done so in clear terms."
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202461112769&Justices_Approve_Bureau_of_Prisons_Calculations_for_Good_Time_Credit

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

June 06, 2010

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

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

Entertainment Reviews, Reviews
The Real Cost of Prisons Comix

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

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

June 04, 2010

MA: Partial Progress on Justice Reform

Partial Progress on Justice Reform
Thursday, June 03, 2010
By Maureen Turner

Last week's passage of a crime reform bill by the Massachusetts House is being seen by activists as an important, but not complete, step toward the reforms that need to take place.

Activists have been pushing for years to change the Criminal Offender Record Information system—best known as CORI—which they contend works against ex-convicts' successful re-entry into society. Among their concerns: that arrests and convictions remain on people's records for too long, making it difficult for them to find jobs and housing long after their offenses.

That issue was addressed in the legislation passed by the House on May 26: under the bill, felony convictions would be sealed after 10 years, instead of the current 15 years, while misdemeanors would be sealed after five years, down from the current 10. Certain convictions, including murder, manslaughter and sexual offenses, would never be sealed.

In addition, the bill would prohibit employers from asking about convictions on job applications, although they could still ask about them during interviews with potential hires.

Last week's House vote was cheered by some reformers. "By passing this bill, the House has chosen a 'smart on crime' approach," Wilnelia Rivera, director of the Commonwealth CORI Coalition, said in a press release after the vote. "The measure will allow the Commonwealth to tackle crime in a meaningful way by increasing employment opportunities for ex-offenders and reducing recidivism rates. CORI reform will stop the revolving door of recidivism (of new crimes with new crime victims), strengthen families, and cut costs to taxpayers in the process."

But to others, the bill stops far short of what's needed. In a statement last week, Barbara Dougan, Massachusetts project director for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, expressed disappointment in the House bill, which failed to include a number of provisions that were in a reform bill passed by the Senate late last year, including changes to sentencing laws and measures that would make it easier for drug offenders to apply for parole and to take part in work-release programs.

"We are disappointed that the House missed the opportunity to save taxpayers millions while enhancing public safety," Dougan said. "The reforms we seek would allow nonviolent drug offenders the chance to become legitimate wage earners. Eligibility for parole and work release are common-sense reforms supported by the state's top law enforcement officials and the majority of voters. We simply cannot afford either the financial or social costs of forcing low-level, nonviolent drug offenders to languish in prison."

The House bill also failed to address the controversial issue of "drug-free school zones," which create mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes that happen within 1,000 feet of schools and day care centers. Those "school-zone" penalties come on top of the penalties for the underlying crime, such as drug dealing or possession.

A 2009 report by Easthampton's Prison Policy Initiative found the zones are ineffective at achieving their purported goal—to reduce drug activity near schools—because they are drawn too widely. The report also found that the laws unfairly subject residents of urban areas—who are more likely to be poor, or to be members of minority groups—to harsher penalties than rural and suburban residents. (See "Urban Penalty," Feb. 26, 2009, www.valleyadvocate.com.)

A legislative conference committee will hash out the differences between the House and Senate bills; the full Legislature will then vote on the compromise bill.
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=11872

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

SC: New Law Changes Criminal Sentencing

New law changes criminal sentencing
By Yvonne Wenger
The Post and Courier
Thursday, June 3, 2010

COLUMBIA -- South Carolina has a new way of dealing with criminals that judges, victims' advocates, crime and justice experts and Republicans and Democrats all have signed off on.

The comprehensive new law is intended to save money while diverting nonviolent offenders from prison to community-based programs so space is available in prison for violent criminals. Gov. Mark Sanford signed it into law Wednesday.

The new law was one year in the making. It is intended to:

--Make sure there is space for high-risk, violent offenders in prison while saving the state an estimated $350 million, the cost of building a new prison.

--Help inmates transition from prison life back to society and increase supervision of former inmates in the community.

--Provide incentives for probationers and parolees to stay drug- and crime-free in order to go from being tax burdens to taxpayers.

The lengthy new law also redefines 22 crimes as violent, providing longer sentences for some offenders. The new sentences would apply to people who commit crimes beginning on Wednesday.

It would not alter the sentences of people already serving time or those awaiting a trial, although it will allow for the early release of geriatric, terminally ill and physically disabled inmates.

Other parts of the new law will become effective over time. For example, the new standards for future probation and parole assessments will begin in January.

Lily Lenderman of Spartanburg said she has fought for some of the changes contained in the new law for seven years, after her 27-year-old grandsonwas killed in an accident involving a habitual offender.

The offender was sentenced to seven months, served four months and was arrested again for another crime 18 days after he was released from prison, Lenderman said.

"From a grandmother's heart, I couldn't understand that," she said. "My cause was to get justice for my grandson and to bring something good from his death, and through this I feel like my journey has been worth it."

The new law also increases maximum penalties for several crimes, such as harboring a fugitive.

It restructures sentences such as requiring a mandatory 30-year sentence for death caused by arson, creating a crime of attempted murder to help charge people appropriately, increasing the amount of victim restitution, and updating fines for theft for the first time in 20 years so values are more in line with present-day costs.

Other odds and ends in the bill include removing the disparity in sentencing between possession of crack cocaine and powder cocaine, establishing an oversight committee to follow the process of the bill's implementation and measure progress, and allowing people on probation and parole to earn good-time credit.

Overtime savings in the Department of Corrections will be shifted to the probation and parole system, which is currently overwhelmed with large and increasing case loads.

Sanford said the law was "smart on crime," a sentiment echoed by many Wednesday. The governor said it strikes the right balance and it's good for the taxpayers. Experts from the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States helped the state develop the new law.

The prison population 25 years ago stood at about 9,000 inmates and is today at 24,000. As the population grew, so did the cost of running the Corrections Department.

In the mid-1980s the prisons ran on $63 million a year. Today it costs $394 million, Sanford said. In another five years the cost is projected to increase by another $141 million, as the prison population grows by another 3,200 inmates.

"For the taxpayers, there is something fundamentally wrong with that system," Sanford said. "Unless we're going to build a bunch more jails, you have got to look at alternatives. This bill does that. I think it strikes the right balance and in the process saves the taxpayers over 400 million bucks."

South Carolina already spends less than $40 per day on each inmate, the second-lowest rate in the nation, Sanford said.

Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Isle of Palms, called the legislation a massive undertaking. He was part of the group that spent the last year coming up with solutions to South Carolina's haphazard criminal justice system.

"We really made a difference with this bill," Campsen said. "It is going to change people's lives. It will help offenders get back on their feet and make sure victims get compensated."
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/jun/03/new-law-changes-criminal-sentencing/

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

May 29, 2010

IN: Twelve And Fifteen-Year-Old Charged With Murder As Adults

Twelve And Fifteen-Year-Old Charged With Murder As Adults
(for a photo of the two boys entering the courtroom in prison stripes go the URL below)
WARSAW, Ind. (Indiana’s NewsCenter) - The 15 and 12-year-old Kosciusko County boys charged with murder appeared in adult court for the first time, Thursday morning.

Police say the boys murdered Lundy’s stepfather, 49-year-old Phillip Danner, last month while their 12-year-old friend stood watch outside.

The prosecutor wants to try 15-year-old Colt Lundy and 12-year-old Paul Gingerich together. But their attorneys are arguing to separate the cases.

“I represent the step-son,” Colt Lundy’s attorney David Kolbe said. “He was a very unique situation in that home. We have a substantial amount of evidence that will come as to what that home life was like. I know nothing about Paul Gingerich's home life, I suppose I'll learn about it, but his life is going to be very different than Lundy's. To pack those two boys before the same jury deprives them of a fair trial."

Kolbe says combining the cases would take away their constitutional right to a fair trial.

But the prosecutor showed there is a precedent allowing two murder defendants to be tried together.

Thursday each boy's attorney argued they should be tried separately, saying the 12- and 15-year olds have different mental capacities, and that since each boy had a different relationship with the victim, their cases should not be combined.

The judge is expected to rule on that issue next month.

Twelve-year-old Chase Williams who stood watch outside for Lundy and Gingerich allegedly is the only boy legally considered a juvenile.

The judge for Williams ruled he spend the next six-years in a juvenile detention center and to be released when he's 18.

The judge is expected to rule on separating the cases of Lundy and Gingerich on June 3rd. Until then they will remain in custody at the Kosciosko County Jail and could face up to 65-years in prison.

http://www.indianasnewscenter.com/news/local/95024504.html

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

May 25, 2010

Georgia: Atlanta Journal Constitution investigation: Georgia leads nation in criminal punishment

A billion-dollar burden or justice?
AJC investigation: Georgia leads nation in criminal punishment

By Carrie Teegardin and Bill Rankin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
May 23, 2010

Georgia taxpayers spend $1 billion a year locking up so many criminal offenders that the state has the fourth-highest incarceration rate in the nation. When it comes to overall criminal punishment, no state outdoes Georgia.

Hard-nosed measures approved with wide public support forced a five-fold increase in corrections spending since 1985.

A monumental prison construction campaign that quadrupled space over the last four decades seemed like money well spent as record crime rates in the 1990s left Georgians fearful of becoming the next victims of violence.

But today, many public figures with strong anti-crime credentials are asking if that expenditure is smart, or even if it’s making Georgians safer. The debate about crime and punishment, once clearly divided along party lines, is now a debate in which conservatives often lead the charge for change.

As Georgia’s dire budget outlook required lawmakers to make painful cuts to virtually every state program, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigated whether the state’s gigantic corrections budget offered opportunities for savings.

Many states, including tough-on-crime Texas, have concluded they can spend less and keep the public safer by sentencing some offenders to proven treatment and supervision programs outside of prison.

Texas spends more than $3 billion a year on prisons. In 2007, facing the need to spend $540 million to construct three new prisons expected to cost another $1.5 billion to run, the state looked for alternatives. Instead, Texas spends a fraction of that on new probation and parole programs, halfway houses and specialty courts for drug offenders, veterans, drunk drivers and the mentally ill.

“There are some in the prison system who are costing you a lot of money who are probably no longer a threat and no longer someone you’d be afraid of,” said Jerry Madden, a Republican Texas legislator who headed the state’s corrections committee. “You’re far better off with having them be taxpayers, not tax burdens.”

Many Georgians, including elected officials, believe firmly that if you do the crime you should do the time.

But others on the front lines of Georgia’s criminal justice system say the Legislature should take a page from the Texas playbook, or face a tax burden for incarceration that will force even further cuts in education, economic development, health care and other programs.

“We have proven that we can be tough on crime and that we can spend $1.2 billion a year doing it,” said Brian Owens, the silver-haired former parole officer who now runs Georgia’s prison system. “But I think it might be time to transition to being smart on crime.”

Longer prison stays

One in 13 Georgians is behind bars, on probation or on parole, according to the Pew Center on the States. That’s the highest rate of correctional control in the nation and more than the double the national average: 1 in 31.

By far the most costly segment of corrections is locking someone up. About 1 in 70 Georgians is behind bars, according to the Pew study.

“It makes no intuitive sense that Georgia is the ninth-most populous state with about 9.5 million citizens but has a prison population the same as New York state with 19.5 million citizens,” Owens said. “It’s not because we’re committing more crime in Georgia.’’

Rather, it’s because the state’s laws and policies keep offenders behind bars longer than ever. Among inmates released last year, the average time in prison was 3.4 years, up from 1.6 years in 1990. At today’s price tag of $49 a day, the cost to house the average offender jumped from about $28,800 to more than $61,000.

The trend held even among nonviolent offenders: the average inmate released last year on a drug possession charge spent 21 months locked up, compared with 10 months in 1990.

Even small changes in sentences have a gigantic financial impact when multiplied across the prison population. Simply shaving a month or two off a typical inmate’s stay could allow a 1,000-bed cut in prison capacity. The result: a savings of $17.9 million a year.

If judges sentenced offenders to an average of 55 months instead of 60 months, the state would save in the neighborhood of $90 million a year.

Offenders are in prison longer largely because Georgia is much less likely now to shave significant time off of sentences through parole, even though the state runs one of the most highly-regarded parole supervision operations in the nation.

The increased time, along with a jump in prison admissions, explains why corrections spending in Georgia has increased five-fold since 1985.

“I think there is room to right-size a little bit and still make public safety the focus of what we’re doing,” Owens said.

Mark Earley, a Republican former attorney general in Virginia who is chief executive of the nonprofit Prison Fellowship, agreed.

“When you have in Georgia 1 in every 70 adults [incarcerated] and 1 in every 13 is in some form of correctional control, that’s big government with a big big G, ” he said.

Georgia legislators avoided any serious debate about changes to the state’s sentencing system this year. They relied on staffing cuts, more efficient new prison wings and federal stimulus dollars to cover $1.1 billion in costs.

But they will have to take on the issue next year, when $85 million in federal money is no longer there to fill the gap.

Owens, a details man who is all about efficiency and data, is eliminating 2,000 positions from the department, down to 13,000. And he has told lawmakers there aren’t many more places to cut if the state wants to reduce the corrections budget.

“There have to be changes in sentencing in this state or parole is going to have to open up the doors,” Owens said.

Most Georgia legislators are wary of even discussing changes that would lead to shorter sentences, either because they believe in long prison terms or because they are fearful of a soft-on-crime image. And some in districts with lots of prison jobs fret that fewer inmates in the system will make local correctional facilities vulnerable.

But Georgia House Speaker David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge) said a public discussion of Georgia’s approach to criminal sentencing makes sense.

“I don’t think we ought to let public safety depend on getting a bargain basement price, but I think we do have to be conscious of the cost of incarceration,” Ralston said. “I think the dialogue has already started.”

Ralston, an attorney, said he is a strong supporter of Georgia’s drug courts, an approach to handling substance abusers that is managed by a judge but offers alternatives to incarceration. And he said that even the most tough-minded in the criminal justice system – cops and prosecutors – tell him Georgia needs more discretion in the courtroom and more alternatives to prison.

“From time to time we need to step back and ask ourselves ‘Is it working?’ ” Ralston said.

How we got here

As governor, Zell Miller addressed Georgians’ fears about violent crime when he won approval in 1994 of his “Seven Deadly Sins” and “Two Strikes and You’re Out” legislation.

The law prescribes minimum sentences of 10 years, with no parole, for violent offenses ranging from armed robbery to murder. A second conviction of one of the seven offenses requires life without parole.

Miller’s high-profile legislation wasn’t the only shift toward more time behind bars.

In 1984, Georgia eliminated its “earned time” policy that allowed inmates to shave a day off their sentences for every day they were well-behaved.

The state Board of Pardons and Paroles still can award early release to most inmates not convicted of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. But the board also became more conservative, requiring most offenders to serve longer portions of their sentences before being considered for parole supervision.

Many working in the criminal justice system say it is time to study policies and legislation for effectiveness in achieving the original goal: making the streets safer.

Consider the case of Felicia Holland.

In September 2008, a clerk at a Rite Aid in Fayetteville saw a suspicious couple with a large bag, pushing a cart with cans of expensive baby formula. The couple walked out with the bag bulging and drove away.

Police soon apprehended Daunte and Felicia Holland and charged them with shoplifting $258 worth of baby formula and shirts. Because Felicia Holland had three prior shoplifting convictions, prosecutors charged her as a recidivist.

In January, a jury acquitted Holland’s husband but convicted her. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison and will not be eligible for parole. It will cost at least $180,000, in today’s dollars, to keep her locked up.

“Is this a good deal for the taxpayers?” asked Holland’s trial attorney, Steven Harris. “Hell no. Were there other alternatives for her punishment? Of course.”

Forty percent of Georgia inmates are serving time for nonviolent crimes. Most are drug and property offenders.

Armed robbery

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Doris L. Downs has tough-on-crime credentials. For 13 years, she was a high-profile prosecutor.

But today, she doesn’t like a lot of what the law prescribes.

She sees mentally ill, homeless addicts sentenced to yearlong prison terms for a series of small thefts: things like socks, food, and deodorant. To punish the theft of less than $10 worth of goods, she said, taxpayers will pay $18,000 for a year of incarceration.

“That happens every day in this state,” said Downs, a judge since 1996. “That’s our justice system. This is our money.”

An offender like that could be handled in the community, with a mental health program and help getting a disability check and a spot in a personal care home.

“For 75 percent of the criminal population, forced treatment and support with life skills is the way to go,” said Downs, who runs Fulton County’s drug court program.

Prisons should be reserved for those who are truly dangerous, Downs said, and the system should work hard to change them while they are there.

Downs and many others find especially troubling Georgia’s approach to those who get long sentences and are not eligible for parole — including armed robbery offenders.

At the end of their sentences, which must be at least 10 years, most walk out with $25 and a bus ticket. They have no parole officers making sure they’re living in stable environments, demanding random drug tests and making sure they have jobs.

“The knee-jerk reaction is to lock the guy up and throw away the key,” Downs said. “But that doesn’t make your community safer. It’s the most expensive way to make your community less safe.”

Today, 30 percent of inmates can never be considered for parole, according to parole board statistics, up from just 2 percent in 1989.

More than 3,500 inmates convicted of armed robbery are currently serving sentences of between 10 and 20 years without parole.

“After 10 years of just holding them, we’re just dumping them back into society,” said Downs. “What do you expect you’re going to get on the other end when they re-enter the community?”

Judges and attorneys said mandatory minimums take discretion from those who know the most about a case: the people in the courtroom.

“The mandatory minimums require us to treat a 14-year-old with a cap pistol in an armed robbery the same as someone with a loaded 9 mm,” said Chief Superior Court Judge Walter Matthews in Rome.

Keeping offenders in prison for so long also creates another problem, Matthews said.

“They go in as teenagers and come out as hardened criminals,” Matthews said. “They’re not getting what they need for their reintroduction to society. We’re going to pay a price for all these guys.”

Parole board members say lawmakers should consider allowing them to review the case files of some offenders who are now banned from parole — not just to save money but to allow for orderly transition from many years spent behind bars.

“There are some folks incarcerated that are not eligible for parole,” said Gale Buckner, parole board chair and a former GBI agent. “It would probably would be in the best interest of the state to be able to review their cases.”

“I think the timing is good to revisit some of these issues with the state budget being what it is and it being so costly to keep people incarcerated,” she added.

A day in prison costs taxpayers $49; parole costs $4.43.

Owens, the corrections chief, agrees.

He said the Legislature should tweak the law that bans parole for armed robbery, allowing a chance for early release for model inmates. “Yeah, they need to go to prison because they did the armed robbery, no debating that at all,” Owens said.

But many of those offenders, Owens said, are young men in their late teens and early 20s who face at least a decade behind bars — usually more.

“What incentive does this young man have, who has probably been raised on the streets in a difficult environment, to do anything while he is in the institution?” Owens said.

If every armed robber currently imprisoned served the final year on parole, that alone could save Georgians $50 million in today’s dollars: enough to pay the annual salaries of about 1,000 Georgia teachers.

But some counsel caution: Before changing Georgia’s approach to sentencing, Floyd County District Attorney Leigh Patterson said, state officials should factor in the cost of crime to society.

Consider the cost of having your home broken into, a rape victim’s medical bills. “How do you measure a human life?” Patterson asked, referring to a murder victim.

“Once you lock these violent people up, they can’t commit another crime because they’re no longer around,” she said.

Patterson said the system should not be more lenient with younger offenders.

“If you’re going to play like a man, you need to pay like a man,” the DA said. “People deserve to be protected from predators like that. Once they start down a path of violence they don’t stop.”

New approaches sought

Newt Gingrich, the influential Republican and former Georgia congressman who served as the nation’s speaker of the House, is among those rallying for new approaches.

Gingrich said the decision to crack down on offenders in the 1990s made sense, given the high crime rate of those times.

“What we’re suggesting is that the next stage in our effective, tough-minded approach in dealing with crime is to have programs that fundamentally change people’s behavior,” Gingrich said.

He said Texas, Hawaii and other states have proven new programs can reduce recidivism. Treatment programs for nonviolent offenders show solid success rates, he said. The effectiveness of the new approaches should attract lawmakers of every political persuasion, he said.

“If I can be safer and it’s less expensive and we have citizens who are now dedicated, productive taxpaying citizens — which part of that is bad?” asked Gingrich.

The evidence is so convincing that many states are giving it a try, even some of the most conservative in the South.

Madden, the Republican legislator from Plano, Texas, decided to find a way around spending to build and staff 17,300 new prison beds that Texas projections said were needed. Madden’s committee had been looking into alternative sentencing options.

“If you build it, they will come,” he said of new prisons.

Instead of letting Texas taxpayers spend $2 billion for new prisons, Madden’s committee proposed $241 million for alternatives, including stepped-up probation and parole and courts for people with drug problems and mental illnesses that focus on diversion.

He advised Georgia to follow Texas’s lead.

“If you can change the lives of nonviolent offenders so they don’t take the next step and become dangerous felons, you’re going to save a lot of money,” Madden said. “This is a message about the wise use of your taxpayer dollars.”
http://www.ajc.com/news/government-waste/a-billion-dollar-burden-532578.html

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

May 23, 2010

CA: Small group of ill prisoners and those sentenced under 3 strikes cost the state plenty

Small group of ill inmates costs state plenty
By Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, May 19, 2010

As California struggles to pay for social services for its poorest residents, it spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on health care for a small group of sick inmates - in one case $1 million during a dying inmate's final year, according to a state audit released Tuesday.

The state also spends billions of extra dollars on the longer sentences handed down under the state's "three strikes" law in part because those inmates age in prison and need health care, the report by State Auditor Elaine Howle found.

Roughly one-quarter of the $2.1 billion spent on prison health care in 2007-08 paid for specialty health care, or services beyond primary care. Specialty care is provided by contractors, and typically involves inpatient acute medical and surgical care.

About 59,000 of the state's 170,000 inmates received specialty care, with only 1,175 inmates accounting for a large portion of specialty health care spending: $185 million a year.

"In contrast, a large majority of the population of inmates incarcerated during 2007 and 2008 did not have any specialty health care costs," Howle wrote.

Find cost-savings

She said the state, and the federal receiver overseeing health care in California's prisons, should continue to explore cost-saving measures, including an early release program for terminally ill or incapacitated inmates.

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, has introduced a bill with the backing of the federal receiver that would allow inmates, who do not pose a public safety threat and are incapacitated, to be "medically" paroled. The measure, SB1399, could be taken up for a vote on the Senate floor as soon as Thursday.

Leno said the audit illustrates the need for medical parole, noting that the state now spends more than 10 percent of its general fund on state prisons - a portion that has more than doubled since 2003. He also said he was struck by Howle's finding that the state spends about $132 million a year on overtime for prison guards who transport and guard ill inmates, many of whom are nonambulatory, because the state does not plan ahead for those costs.

"We can't afford to squander taxpayer dollars the way we currently are," Leno said. "There's a better way to do business - 36 other states are doing (medical parole), Texas is leading the way. ... This audit makes a strong case that our system can be run more efficiently."

Leno has said that if California inmates are released, the cost of their care would largely be borne by the federal government through programs such as Medi-Cal and Social Security.

Audit 'helpful'
The state's prison health care system is under the control of a federal receiver and has been since 2006, when a judge ruled that substandard treatment was killing about one inmate a week and violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The receiver, J. Clark Kelso, said Tuesday that the audit is "helpful" and addresses many of the issues he has attempted to tackle, including containing costs.

Kelso said the report lends credence to another proposal, AB1817, that would make permanent a process for the state to evaluate the necessity of certain health procedures in prisons and treatments based on established criteria.

Three strikes' impact
Howle's report also found significant costs associated with the state's three strikes law, a voter initiative approved in 1994 that requires a minimum sentence of 25 years to life for three-time repeat offenders with multiple prior serious or violent felony convictions.

As of April 2009, Howle wrote, 25 percent of prisoners were incarcerated under three strikes, and their sentences are on average nine years longer because of the law. She estimated that the additional years imposed by the law are costing California $19.2 billion over the duration of those inmates' incarceration.

Howle noted that the two issues - the costs of three strikes and medical care - coincide because the older the inmate, the more the state is likely to spend on medical care. Specialty health care for inmates over 60, for example, averaged $42,000 a year. Howle determined that specialty health care provided to inmates incarcerated under the three strikes law costs 13 percent more than for inmates who were not sentenced under that law.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/1/MN7E1DGKPK.DTL

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

Arguing Three Strikes

Arguing Three Strikes
By EMILY BAZELON
NY Times Magazine, Sunday May 23, 2010
One day last fall, Norman Williams sat drinking hot chocolate with his lawyer, Michael Romano, at a Peet’s coffee in Palo Alto, Calif. At an outdoor table, Williams began to talk about how he’d gone from serving a life sentence at Folsom State Prison to sitting there in the sun. “After being shut down for so many years. I didn’t believe it,” he said of the judge’s decision to release him in April 2009.

Williams, who is 46, was a homeless drug addict in 1997 when he was convicted of petty theft, for stealing a floor jack from a tow truck. It was the last step on his path to serving life. In 1982, Williams burglarized an apartment that was being fumigated: he was hapless enough to be robbed at gunpoint on his way out, and later he helped the police recover the stolen property. In 1992, he stole two hand drills and some other tools from an art studio attached to a house; the owner confronted him, and he dropped everything and fled. Still, for the theft of the floor jack, Williams was sentenced to life in prison under California’s repeat-offender law: three strikes and you’re out.

In 2000, three years after Williams went to prison, Steve Cooley became the district attorney for Los Angeles County. Cooley is a Republican career prosecutor, but he campaigned against the excesses of three strikes. “Fix it or lose it,” he says of the law. In 2005, Cooley ordered a review of cases, to identify three-strikes inmates who had not committed violent crimes and whose life sentences a judge might deem worthy of second looks. His staff came up with a list of more than 60 names, including Norman Williams’s.

Romano saw Cooley’s list as an opportunity. After working as a criminal-defense lawyer at a San Francisco firm, he started a clinic at Stanford Law School in 2006 to appeal the life sentences of some three-strikes convicts. In search of clients at the outset, Romano and his students wrote to Williams at Folsom about the possibility of appealing his conviction. Most prisoners quickly follow up when the clinic offers free legal help. But Williams didn’t write back. At Peet’s, Williams said he’d been too nervous. “I didn’t want to use the wrong words,” he said.

“You were lucky you were at Folsom,” Romano said. “It’s only a couple of hours’ drive from here. So we decided to come up and see you.”

“Yeah, if not, I’d still be there, staring at the walls,” Williams said. “Never had visitors before you came. I didn’t know what the visiting room looked like.”

IN 1994, the three-strikes ballot measure in California passed with 72 percent of the vote, after the searing murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, who was kidnapped from her slumber party and murdered while her mother slept down the hall. When the killer turned out to be a violent offender recently granted parole, support surged for the three-strikes ballot initiative, which promised to keep “career criminals who rape women, molest children and commit murder behind bars where they belong.”

The complete text of the bill swept far more broadly. Under California’s version of three strikes, first and second strikes must be either violent or serious. These include crimes like murder, attempted murder, rape, child molestation and armed robbery. But in California, “serious” is a term of art that can also include crimes like Norman Williams’s nonconfrontational burglaries. And after a second-strike conviction for such an offense, almost any infraction beyond jaywalking can trigger a third strike and the life sentence that goes with it. One of Romano’s clients was sentenced to life for stealing a dollar in change from the coin box of a parked car.

California’s repeat-offender law is unique in this stringency. Twenty-five other states have passed three-strikes laws, but only California punishes minor crimes with the penalty of a life sentence. About 3,700 prisoners in the state are serving life for a third strike that was neither violent nor serious, according to the legal definition. That’s more than 40 percent of the total third-strike population of about 8,500. Technically, these offenders are eligible for parole after 20 years, but at the moment, the state parole board rarely releases any prisoner early.

In 2004, reformers put an initiative on the ballot, Proposition 66, that would have reduced the number of people going to prison for life by removing nonviolent property and drug offenses from the list of three-strikes crimes. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger attacked the ballot measure. He credited three strikes for a major drop in crime — to the frustration of most experts, who point out that California’s dip began in 1991, well before three strikes passed, and ended in 2000. “The great weight of empirical studies discounts the role of three strikes in reducing crime,” states a 2004 report signed by six criminal-law professors, including Franklin Zimring at U.C. Berkeley. Still, Prop 66 fell short, with 47 percent of the vote.

Now California is in the midst of fiscal calamity. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who had been a judge in California, recently bemoaned state sentencing and spending on prisons. In an address at Pepperdine University, he said that “the three-strikes law sponsor is the correctional officers’ union, and that is sick!” And yet Schwarzenegger has vowed not to touch the law. Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, the leading Republican and Democratic contenders to succeed him in November, are just as unbending.

IF THERE’S A WAY to reform three strikes, it may follow Norman Williams’s route out of prison. Michael Romano, who is 38, got his client released without opposition from the L.A. district attorney by forging a working relationship with Cooley’s office. The 63-year-old Republican prosecutor seems an unlikely ally for a young defense lawyer. He joined the D.A.’s office straight out of law school. His office notched more death sentences last year than the state of Texas, and his lunchmates include Pete Wilson, the former governor who signed three strikes into law. Yet despite his conservative bona fides, Cooley shares the conviction that some number of third-strike offenders like Norman Williams don’t belong in prison for life.

After three strikes became law, Cooley watched one of his colleagues in the D.A.’s office prosecute Gregory Taylor, a homeless man who at dawn one morning in 1997 went to a church where he’d often gotten meals and pried open the door to its food pantry. The priest later testified on his behalf. Taylor’s first crime was a purse-snatching; his second was attempting to steal a wallet. He didn’t hurt anyone. Taylor was sentenced to life. “It was almost one-upmanship, almost a game — bye-bye for life,” Cooley says, remembering the attitude in the office.

Three years later, Cooley ran for D.A. on a platform of restrained three-strikes enforcement, calling the law “a necessary weapon, one that must be used with precision and not in a scatter-gun fashion.” In office, he turned his critique into policy. The L.A. district attorney’s office no longer seeks life sentences for offenders like Norman Williams or Gregory Taylor. The presumption is that prosecutors ask for a life sentence only if a third-strike crime is violent or serious. Petty thieves and most drug offenders are presumed to merit a double sentence, the penalty for a second strike, unless their previous record includes a hard-core crime like murder, armed robbery, sexual assault or possession of large quantities of drugs. During Cooley’s first year in office, three-strikes convictions in Los Angeles County triggering life sentences dropped 39 percent. No other prosecutor’s office in California has a written policy like Cooley’s, though a couple of D.A.’s informally exercise similar discretion.

It’s a mistake, though, to cast Cooley as a full-tilt reformer. He opposed Prop 66 for ignoring a defendant’s criminal history. Instead, in 2006, he offered up his own bill, which tracked his policy as D.A., taking minor drug crimes and petty theft off the list of three-strikes offenses unless one of the first two strikes involved a crime that Cooley considers hard-core. For staking out even this middle ground, Cooley became prosecutor non grata among his fellow D.A.’s. No district attorney, not even the most liberal, supported his bill, and it died in Senate committee.

Cooley could once again pay a price for his three-strikes record. This spring, he announced his candidacy for California attorney general. His Republican rivals have hammered him for his moderate stance. “He’s acting as an enabler for habitual offenders,” State Senator Tom Harman told me. “I think that’s wrong. I want to put them in prison.” The race has developed into a litmus test: for 15 years, no serious candidate for major statewide office has dared to criticize three strikes. If Cooley makes it through his party’s primary on June 8 — and especially if he goes on to win in November — the law will no longer seem untouchable. If he loses, three strikes will be all the more difficult to dislodge.

MICHAEL ROMANO has another, complementary strategy for changing the law. He has won victories for 13 three-strikes lifers in two years, 5 of them with the help of Cooley’s office, and he sees that small number of victories as making a case for larger reform. (He was on a panel I moderated at Yale Law School last month.) While that may sound far-fetched, the tactic has worked before. Romano’s boss, Lawrence Marshall, helped prove the innocence of 13 death-row inmates in Illinois in the late 1990s. His work set in motion a reassessment of the death penalty. A result was a statewide moratorium on executions that has held for a decade. “The hardest step is to get people’s attention,” says Marshall, associate dean for clinical education at Stanford. “And you can only get it with sympathetic cases.”

Romano started thinking about three strikes when he clerked for Judge Richard Tallman on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2004. One afternoon, Romano watched his boss and two other judges quickly dispense with routine matters. One of them was a three-strikes appeal. “This guy, Willie Joseph, was doing life for aiding and abetting a $5 sale of crack cocaine,” Romano remembers. Legally speaking, his case for release was so weak that it took the judges “less than a few minutes” to reject the appeal.

And yet Willie Joseph’s life sentence was effectively the same as the punishment imposed on the most vicious killers in California. While 694 convicted murderers sit on the state’s death row, only 13 have been executed since the Supreme Court allowed for reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. The 3,700 nonviolent, nonserious three-strikers serving life in California outnumber the 3,263 death-row inmates nationwide.

By working with three-strikers, Romano is trying to highlight the plight of criminals he sees as more pathetic than heinous. “I think about explaining to my kids what I do, and I see no moral ambiguity,” Romano says about his work. Capital defendants, of course, deserve representation, he explains. “But there are other lives to be saved, of people who haven’t done horrible things, who haven’t actually hurt anyone.”

In practical terms, Romano points out, the difference between being convicted of capital murder and a small-time third strike is this: a murderer is entitled to a far greater share of legal resources. California spends at least $300,000 on the defense side of a capital murder trial. The courts give extra scrutiny to each capital appeal that comes before them. And it’s only in death-penalty cases that the state pays lawyers to file a writ of habeas corpus, the route to challenging a conviction once direct appeal has been exhausted.

A three-strikes case, by contrast, is just one more file in the stack on a public defender’s desk and a judge’s docket. Romano has a client whose appellate lawyer cut and pasted into her brief for him the more serious criminal history of another man — incorrectly telling the judges that her client was far more violent when he actually was.

In court, Romano and his students don’t simply argue that their clients are minor offenders who don’t deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison. That route to release is mostly blocked by the Supreme Court’s twin rulings on three strikes. In 2003, the justices voted 5-4 to reject the argument that three strikes violates the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel-and-unusual punishment. Because of criminal histories, the high court let stand the life sentences for Leandro Andrade, convicted of a third strike when he shoplifted videotapes from two Kmarts, and Gary Ewing, who walked out of a store with three golf clubs in a leg of his pants.

But the California Supreme Court has left open a different route to appeal. In 1998, the court told trial judges who were weighing a bid for leniency at sentencing after a three-strikes conviction that they could consider whether a defendant’s “background, character and prospects” place him outside the “spirit” of three strikes.

Romano argues that, as in capital cases, his clients deserve to ask for lesser sentences based on “mitigating evidence” — often of child abuse, mental illness or mental retardation. Romano’s students track down clients’ old files, ask about their childhoods and pry confirmation out of family members. From Norman Williams’s juvenile files and probation reports, Romano’s students pieced together a story of unbroken woe. The 8th of 12 children, Williams grew up with a mother who was a binge drinker. She pimped out Williams and his brothers to men she knew. A social worker wrote, “These men paid the boys money to perform anal intercourse on the boys and they . . . gave the money to their mother for wine.” As an adult, Williams became a cocaine addict and lived on the streets of Long Beach.

Romano’s students laid out this mitigating evidence, which hadn’t been introduced at trial, in a 56-page habeas brief before the state court in Long Beach last year. They got back a one-sentence order denying their claim.

Frustrated, Romano took the habeas petition to one of Cooley’s deputies, Brentford Ferreira. Would he agree that after 12 years in prison, Williams had done enough time? Would he say so to the judge?

Ferreira, a 24-year veteran prosecutor, fired back with questions of his own. “I said, O.K., what you’ve really shown me is that all this guy knows how to do is steal,” he remembers. “So why should I let him out? What are you going to do for him?” Romano knew that Ferreira was right. If just one of his clients got out and hurt someone the whole project would look menacing rather than crusading. Defense lawyers don’t usually act like social workers, but it was vital for Romano and his students to come up with a plan and a home for Williams, from the moment he walked out of Folsom.

Romano’s efforts to help Williams succeed on the outside led him to Eileen Richardson. Once the C.E.O. of Napster, she now runs a $500,000 program, the Downtown Streets Team, which contracts with the city of Palo Alto and local nonprofits to provide janitorial services. The work is done by former offenders and homeless people. Richardson pays them in rent subsidies and Safeway and Wal-Mart gift cards. They attend a weekly support meeting and wear different colored T-shirts as they move up a “ladder of success.”

With Richardson’s promise to give Williams a try, Romano persuaded Ferreira to go with him to see the judge in Long Beach. The prosecutor’s support made the difference: Williams was resentenced to time served. Shortly after he left Folsom a year ago, he started on the Streets Team mopping and waxing the floors of a local shelter. Richardson says Williams hasn’t missed a day of work since.

IF STEVE COOLEY wins the Republican primary for attorney general, on almost every issue — most visibly the death penalty — he’ll run to the right of his probable Democratic opponent, the San Francisco district attorney Kamala Harris. But on three strikes, Cooley will run to Harris’s left. (She didn’t support his 2006 proposal, though she is one of the prosecutors who, on a case-by-case basis, refrains from seeking a life sentence for some nonviolent three-strikers.) It’s a reminder of how far the prosecution of Gregory Taylor, the homeless man who broke into the church, has taken Cooley from the expected comfort zone of a prosecutor.

Cooley is couching his support for amending three strikes statewide more carefully during campaign season. “Any changes to the three-strikes law will have to be in the context of overall prison reform,” he told me in March. At the same time, Romano and Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes, the group that fought for Proposition 66, are increasingly interested in using Cooley’s Los Angeles policy as the basis for a new statewide reform effort in 2012, because it suggests a way to reserve life sentences for the three-strikers who have committed crimes of violence.

Between 2001 and 2008, the Los Angeles D.A.’s office automatically sought life sentences for about 5,400 repeat offenders whose third strike was violent or serious. The office also screened 13,900 cases in which the third strike crime was neither violent nor serious, to find out whether the defendant had a past record of hard-core crimes. During these years, prosecutors asked for life in only 25 percent of these cases. The other 75 percent are the nonviolent three-strikers whom the law could safely be amended to spare, Romano argues. “Those are the folks who shouldn’t be doing life,” he says. If Cooley becomes attorney general, he’d have more clout to put behind a 2012 reform initiative, if he chose to.

Norman Williams will soon move into his own apartment in Palo Alto. None of the other clients for whom the Stanford clinic has won release have gotten in trouble. And Romano and his students recently started representing Gregory Taylor, who is still serving life in San Luis Obispo prison.

Emily Bazelon, a contributing writer, is a senior editor at Slate and the Truman Capote law-and-media fellow at Yale Law School.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/magazine/23strikes-t.html?ref=magazine

Posted by lois at 07:58 PM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2010

CA: Financial Impact of Health Care for Prisoners Who Are Ill and Three Strikes

Small group of ill inmates costs state plenty
Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau
San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, May 19, 2010

As California struggles to pay for social services for its poorest residents, it spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on health care for a small group of sick inmates - in one case $1 million during a dying inmate's final year, according to a state audit released Tuesday.

The state also spends billions of extra dollars on the longer sentences handed down under the state's "three strikes" law in part because those inmates age in prison and need health care, the report by State Auditor Elaine Howle found.

Roughly one-quarter of the $2.1 billion spent on prison health care in 2007-08 paid for specialty health care, or services beyond primary care. Specialty care is provided by contractors, and typically involves inpatient acute medical and surgical care.

About 59,000 of the state's 170,000 inmates received specialty care, with only 1,175 inmates accounting for a large portion of specialty health care spending: $185 million a year.

"In contrast, a large majority of the population of inmates incarcerated during 2007 and 2008 did not have any specialty health care costs," Howle wrote.

Find cost-savings

She said the state, and the federal receiver overseeing health care in California's prisons, should continue to explore cost-saving measures, including an early release program for terminally ill or incapacitated inmates.

State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, has introduced a bill with the backing of the federal receiver that would allow inmates, who do not pose a public safety threat and are incapacitated, to be "medically" paroled. The measure, SB1399, could be taken up for a vote on the Senate floor as soon as Thursday.

Leno said the audit illustrates the need for medical parole, noting that the state now spends more than 10 percent of its general fund on state prisons - a portion that has more than doubled since 2003. He also said he was struck by Howle's finding that the state spends about $132 million a year on overtime for prison guards who transport and guard ill inmates, many of whom are nonambulatory, because the state does not plan ahead for those costs.

"We can't afford to squander taxpayer dollars the way we currently are," Leno said. "There's a better way to do business - 36 other states are doing (medical parole), Texas is leading the way. ... This audit makes a strong case that our system can be run more efficiently."

Leno has said that if California inmates are released, the cost of their care would largely be borne by the federal government through programs such as Medi-Cal and Social Security.
Audit 'helpful'

The state's prison health care system is under the control of a federal receiver and has been since 2006, when a judge ruled that substandard treatment was killing about one inmate a week and violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The receiver, J. Clark Kelso, said Tuesday that the audit is "helpful" and addresses many of the issues he has attempted to tackle, including containing costs.

Kelso said the report lends credence to another proposal, AB1817, that would make permanent a process for the state to evaluate the necessity of certain health procedures in prisons and treatments based on established criteria.

Three strikes' impact

Howle's report also found significant costs associated with the state's three strikes law, a voter initiative approved in 1994 that requires a minimum sentence of 25 years to life for three-time repeat offenders with multiple prior serious or violent felony convictions.

As of April 2009, Howle wrote, 25 percent of prisoners were incarcerated under three strikes, and their sentences are on average nine years longer because of the law. She estimated that the additional years imposed by the law are costing California $19.2 billion over the duration of those inmates' incarceration.

Howle noted that the two issues - the costs of three strikes and medical care - coincide because the older the inmate, the more the state is likely to spend on medical care. Specialty health care for inmates over 60, for example, averaged $42,000 a year. Howle determined that specialty health care provided to inmates incarcerated under the three strikes law costs 13 percent more than for inmates who were not sentenced under that law.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/19/MN7E1DGKPK.DTL

Posted by lois at 05:17 PM | Comments (0)

May 19, 2010

Philadelphia: Pew report: City prison population can be reduced, safely

Pew report: City prison population can be reduced, safely
By JULIE SHAW
Philadelphia Daily New

Philadelphia's prison population can be reduced without jeopardizing public safety if policymakers find ways to keep low-level offenders awaiting trial out of jail and continue to streamline the criminal-justice process, a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts says.

In its study, "Philadelphia's Crowded, Costly Jails: The Search for Safe Solutions," released today, Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative found that the rise in county inmate numbers from 1999 to 2008 was driven largely by the number of inmates awaiting trial - and not by convicted criminals.

Without steps to trim the size of the city's jail population, the "gains the city has made in controlling the jail population may be hard to maintain," said Larry Eichel, project director of the Philadelphia Research Initiative, who edited the report.

The report notes that leaders in Philadelphia's criminal-justice system, under the auspices of the city's Criminal Justice Advisory Board, already have been collaborating to cut the inmate population with some success.

The Criminal Justice Advisory Board, formed in 2008, has members from across the criminal-justice spectrum - including top-level judges, court administrators, and leaders in the District Attorney's Office, the Defender Association of Philadelphia and the city administration.

The number of inmates in the Philadelphia Prison System reached an all-time average monthly high of 9,787 in January 2009, according to Bob Eskind, prison spokesman. Since then, the number has dropped to 8,306 as of Thursday, he said.

The reduction was due largely to a state law enacted in 2008 that prohibited inmates from serving sentences of between two and five years in local prisons. Before the law, judges had the discretion to send such inmates to county or state prison. After the law was implemented, such inmates had to go to state prison. This resulted in the transfer of several hundred inmates from county to state prisons.

According to federal statistics as of 2008, the latest numbers available, Philadelphia had the fourth-highest jail population per capita of the jurisdictions with the nation's 50 largest jail populations, including more than three times higher per capita than New York City or Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, Pew researchers found.

In looking at what other jurisdictions around the nation have done to reduce their county jail populations, Pew researchers found that what proved to be beneficial and could be done in Philadelphia include:

* Expanding options for diverting low-level offenders into settings other than jail where they can have their addictions or mental-health problems addressed;

* Adopting bail guidelines that allow defendants accused of relatively minor crimes to stay out of jail pending trial.

The researchers noted that Philadelphia already has taken steps to divert low-level offenders. For instance, the court system is expanding the use of "crash court," an expedited-plea process designed for people accused of low-level misdemeanors who are held pretrial to reduce the time they spend in jail.

City officials also are looking into opening day-reporting centers as an alternative to jail for some offenders.

Common Pleas President Judge Pamela Pryor Dembe and Municipal Court President Judge Marsha Neifield both said the report is helpful.

Neifield noted that Municipal Court more than two years ago undertook an initiative to focus on defendants in need of mental-health treatment.

"Hundreds of defendants have benefited from mental health treatment, which is closely monitored by the judge," she said by e-mail. "This was one of the first collaborative efforts of the District Attorney's Office and the Defender Association to find common ground that benefited the defendants."

The Pew report also suggested that more inmates in Philadelphia could be released without bail while awaiting trial and said that magistrates here follow bail guidelines in only about half the cases.

Neifield said that magistrates ignore guidelines "in cases where you as a member of the public would expect them to exercise their discretion."

She said the guidelines are not perfect. For instance, some offenses are not part of the guidelines and there are other offenses for which the guidelines would call for someone to be released without bail for an offense such as possession of multiple guns.

She also noted that a magistrate's bail decision can be appealed by a lawyer to a Municipal Court judge.

The Pew report can be found on the Internet beginning today at: www.pewtrusts.org/philaresearch.

The study will be the focus of a panel discussion, open to the public, at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, 34th and Chestnut streets. Registration information is available at www.pewtrusts.org/events.aspx.

Mayor Nutter is to give introductory remarks. Scheduled speakers include: D.A. Seth Williams; Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Everett Gillison; the Rev. Ernest McNear; and Michael Jacobson, director of the Vera Institute of Justice in New York.

Read more: http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20100517_Pew_report__City_prison_population_can_be_reduced__safely.html#ixzz0oO6ym0ME

Link to the Pew Report: http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Philadelphia_Research_Initiative/Philadelphias%20Crowded%20Costly%20Jails.pdf

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

NH: Justice system overhaul: Bill's goal is to save money, reduce prison recidivism

"Some of these violations are a new crime entirely, but many are technical in nature," he said. "We've never had the flexibility of having intermediate sentences for parole violations, it's been easy to do it the old way, without thinking about the cost."
Another harsh reality that needed to be acknowledged is that many parolees reoffend because they have some sort of substance abuse or mental problem and can't get the proper treatment in prison because of a lack of resources, according to Broderick.
Of the 160 women incarcerated at the women's prison in Goffstown, 70 percent have some sort of mental health or substance abuse problem, he said.
"It's not a coincidence that people with these issues are behind bars," he said. "We had to ask ourselves how can we ensure them better success when they leave prison? We can pretend there's no problem or pretend that being incarcerated would solve all their mental health or substance abuse problems, or we can do something about it." ---New Hampshire Chief Justice John Broderick

Justice system overhaul: Bill's goal is to save money, reduce prison recidivism

By Aaron Sanborn
asanborn@fosters.com
Sunday, May 16, 2010

DOVER — Budget restraints and a growing prison population have led lawmakers to take a closer look at the parole system and consider alternatives to incarceration.

Officials are hoping Senate Bill 500, a bill on the way to Gov. John Lynch's office, will address both issues and then some.

Lynch supports and is expected to sign the measure, according to spokesman Colin Manning. The legislation focuses on preventing repeat offenders from going back to jail by increasing the availability of substance abuse and mental health treatment as well as increasing supervision for high-concern individuals who are most likely to reoffend.

It also calls for the release of all nonviolent offenders after they have served 120 percent of their minimum prison sentences, a move geared toward freeing up the courts from holding unnecessary parole hearings. Other stipulations include a 90-day prison sentence spent in special programming for parole violators, instead of making violators serve their remaining maximum sentence.

Finally, all prisoners who haven't been previously paroled would be released nine months before their maximum sentences expire.

The logic behind the bill is to reduce the prison population and costs to the state.

Lawmakers say New Hampshire has been one of the safest states in the nation for the last 10 years, but despite that, the state prison population has increased by 31 percent in that period, resulting in the corrections budget doubling from $52 million to $104 million.

The main causes are probation and parole revocations, which account for 57 percent of admissions to state prison, according to lawmakers.

Senate President Sylvia Larsen, D-Concord, is the primary sponsor of SB500 and said it has the potential to reduce recidivism by promoting community-based programming.

"It has both good implications for improving better public safety outcomes and reducing state spending, making wiser investments with our state dollars," she said.

New Hampshire Chief Justice John Broderick said focusing on community-based programming and adjusting parole is the only way to get the corrections budget down, which at $104 million far surpasses the court system's budget of $76.2 million.

Broderick, Attorney General Michael Delaney and several others were on a state task force assigned to examine ways to control the corrections budget. The group developed SB500 with the help of the Council of the State Governments' Justice Center, which helps states create policies based on research.

"Corrections is something we looked at extensively and we noticed it was becoming increasingly expensive and the failure rate was growing," Broderick said.

He said parole violations really stuck out to him and it became immediately apparent that something needed to be done about minor probation violations.

For example, a person could violate their probation by drinking a beer, and while it's still a violation, it doesn't make fiscal sense to make that person go back to prison and serve their maximum sentence.

"Some of these violations are a new crime entirely, but many are technical in nature," he said. "We've never had the flexibility of having intermediate sentences for parole violations, it's been easy to do it the old way, without thinking about the cost."

Another harsh reality that needed to be acknowledged is that many parolees reoffend because they have some sort of substance abuse or mental problem and can't get the proper treatment in prison because of a lack of resources, according to Broderick.

Of the 160 women incarcerated at the women's prison in Goffstown, 70 percent have some sort of mental health or substance abuse problem, he said.

"It's not a coincidence that people with these issues are behind bars," he said. "We had to ask ourselves how can we ensure them better success when they leave prison? We can pretend there's no problem or pretend that being incarcerated would solve all their mental health or substance abuse problems, or we can do something about it."

The state is hoping to reinvest whatever savings comes from SB500 back into community-based programming dealing with mental health and substance abuse, according to Broderick.

Some, including the state Parole Board, have criticized the bill for being too soft on crime, but Broderick says something needs to change because "failure is expensive."

"If we don't change anything, nothing will change other than we'll incarcerate more people," he said.

Programs similar to SB500 are being tried in Kansas and Texas, he added.

The state Department of Corrections is in favor of bill, according to department spokesman Jeff Lyons.

He said the state now relies on county-level programs but is limited itself, outside of traditional probation, electronic monitoring and administrative home confinement.

"We're supporting the bill because we feel strongly it will go quite a ways to making offenders successful in the community," he said. "There's more emphasis on community-based treatment in an effort to keep them from returning."

The DOC estimates the bill will decrease state general fund expenditures by $22,862 in fiscal year 2011 and could result in a savings of $3,210,247 by 2014. Most of the initial savings would come from marginal savings, such as costs for medical, food, clothing and inmate pay.

By 2013, the state would start to see more savings from staff and the elimination of contracts they have with county facilities to house overflow inmates.

Lyons said he's optimistic about a portion of the bill that calls for the early release of inmates nearing the end of their maximum sentence.

"We have over 200 prisoners a year that max out of their sentences, and once they're done, they're done, and we have no authority over them whatsoever," he said.

Being released into society without any structure often leads to these prisoners reoffending and ending up back in prison, Lyons said.

"If we can get them out nine months early and get them some treatment, at least we can help them make an attempt of getting back on track," he said.

The DOC also has taken its own steps to reduce recidivism by expanding its division of community corrections. It was expanded through a federal grant and by using leftover funds from a discontinued academy program.

Lyons said the academy program was limited to only first-time offenders and involved multiple treatment programs. He said the state's focus now is to open up treatment programs to a wider range of prisoners.

The state also is looking to hire case counselors to help develop treatment programs for inmates, a job that now falls to the parole officers, Lyons said.

"This would allow for the parole officers to focus more on law enforcement, while councilors can focus on counseling," he said.

Community-based programming and alternative sentencing programs have been successful on the jail population at the county level.

Strafford County has numerous community programs and alternative sentencing options available, including a drug court and drug academy, mental health court, therapeutic communities within the jail, community work programs and traditional pre- and post-trial monitoring.

County Administrator Ray Bower said the county has a less than 10 percent failure rate in its programs, which save the county more than $6 million annually.

"Based on our success from early release and monitoring, as long as the state is committed to helping these early release inmates be successful, I have no doubt it will be successful," he said.

However, he did caution there are sometimes differences between a jail inmate and prison inmate, based on seriousness of crime, and notes the state needs to be cautious about how they apply some of the new policies.

SB500 does call for a risk assessment of all parolees to determine their risk of reoffending.

Other bills geared toward reducing the recidivism rate include:

— House Bill 621: Establishes earlier time frames for conducting a pretrial examination by a psychiatrist or psychologist, requires the establishment of mental illness screening procedures and establishes new procedures for the appointment of counsel for a person with a mental illness. This bill has a Senate hearing set for May 26.

— HB1177: Establishes a committee to study educational and career development programs for youths and young adults in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. That bill has passed both the House and Senate.
http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100516/GJNEWS_01/705169872/-1/fosnews

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

May 17, 2010

Supreme Court rules out some life sentences for juveniles---now to ending JLWOP for juveniles convicted of homicide!

Supreme Court rules out some life sentences for juveniles

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 17, 2010; 11:55 AM

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that juveniles may not be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole unless guilty of homicide, declaring unconstitutional a sentencing practice that has been adopted by some states but, the court said, was "rejected the world over."

The court ruled 5 to 4 that locking up forever those under 18 who have not killed violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The decision follows the court's 2005 decision that juveniles may not be executed, and expands upon its decision that the Eighth Amendment must be interpreted in light of the country's "evolving standards of decency."

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said states must provide juveniles who receive lengthy sentences a "meaningful" chance to eventually show they should be released.

"By denying the defendant the right to reenter the community, the state makes an irrevocable judgment about that person's value and place in society," Kennedy wrote. "This judgment is not appropriate in light of a juvenile nonhomicide offender's capacity for change and limited moral culpability."

The case at hand involved Terrance Jamar Graham, who was convicted of robbery in Jacksonville, Fl. when he was 16. He received probation, but was arrested again at 17 for taking part in a home invasion. The judge in the case then sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Kennedy said there were 129 juvenile nonhomicide offenders serving sentences of life without parole in 11 states, including Virginia. The vast majority of them -- 77 -- are in Florida.

Kennedy was joined by the court's liberal wing: Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined them in rejecting the outcome of Graham's case, saying the sentence was harsh given the crime. But he did not join the opinion that the sentence of life without parole is always unconstitutional.

"Some crimes are so heinous, and some juvenile offenders so highly culpable, that a sentence of life without parole may be entirely justified under the Constitution," Roberts wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a stinging dissent, saying the majority's interpretation of the Eighth Amendment is "entirely the court's creation."

"The court is quite willing to accept that a 17-year-old who pulls the trigger on a firearm can demonstrate sufficient depravity and irredeemability to be denied reentry into society, but insists that a 17-year-old who rapes an 8-year-old and leaves her for dead does not," Thomas wrote. "The question of what acts are 'deserving' of what punishments is bound so tightly with questions of morality and social conditions as to make it, almost by definition, a question for legislative resolution."

His dissent was joined in full by Justice Antonin Scalia and in part by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

"This is a significant victory for children. The Court recognized that it is cruel to pass a final judgment on children, who have an enormous capacity for change and rehabilitation compared to adults," said Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative "I am very encouraged by the Court's ruling. It's an important win not only for kids who have been condemned to die in prison but for all children who need additional protection and recognition in the criminal justice system."

Stevenson had represented another Florida youth, Joe Sullivan, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a rape committed at the age of 13.

The court heard the Sullivan case, but dismissed it Monday because of procedural problems. Sullivan likely will be able to challenge his sentence, however, because of the ruling in Graham v. Florida.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/17/AR2010051701355_pf.html

Posted by lois at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2010

MA: Imprisoned by mandates

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

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

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

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

Yikes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The problem is, we can’t afford to.

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

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

May 11, 2010

Okla. prisons struggle to be tough, cheap

Okla. prisons struggle to be tough, cheap
05/10/10
SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writer
Alva Review/Courier

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Facing severe budget problems, Oklahoma is one of many states trying to cut its spending on corrections. But Oklahoma legislators also have another priority: they want add more crimes to the statute books and lengthen sentences for others.

The imperative to be both cheaper and tougher is bearing down on prisons in a state with the nation's fourth highest incarceration rate.

"We're primed for something major," prisons director Justin Jones warned lawmakers recently, saying the prisons are full and 1,500 convicts are waiting in county jails to be transferred in. With wardens now filling exercise rooms and dining halls with inmate beds, "If there is a recipe for disaster, we have all the ingredients cooking right now."

In this legislative session, lawmakers have introduced 26 bills to create new felony crimes and 19 to increase criminal penalties for others. The measures would increase sentences for a wide range of offenses, from assaulting police officers to violating election laws. One would quadruple to 20 years the sentence for sex offenders who violate registration requirements. Another would mandate up to seven years for offenders who escape from a juvenile facility.

Many of the measures are expected to pass. A few bills providing for reduced sentences or alternatives to incarceration were derailed.

Meanwhile, confronting a $1.2 billion state budget shortfall, legislative leaders have suggested cutting corrections costs by 7.5 percent.

Jones said such reductions would require laying off about 15 percent of the prison work force and furloughing guards and staff members for three weeks. Prisons are now operating at 75 percent of authorized strength. Negotiations with Gov. Brad Henry on a budget reduction plan are expected to conclude within a few weeks.

Although corrections budgets are being squeezed nationwide, the challenge to find savings is proving especially difficult in states with strongly conservative legislatures determined to demonstrate a commitment to being tough on crime. This spring, the Oklahoma Legislature's struggle with the corrections dilemma comes as many members are running for reelection.

"They're so concerned about getting re-elected that they're losing sight of what really needs to happen in Oklahoma as far as sentencing," complained state Sen. Richard Lerblance, a Democrat from McAlester, home to the state's 1908-vintage Oklahoma State Penitentiary. "This is Democrats as well as Republicans."

However, Republican Senate President Pro Tem Glenn Coffee, a self-described "law-and-order" lawmaker, said the issue of locking up criminals in Oklahoma is not one that should be intertwined with the budget situation.

"It's not a dollars and cents issue with me. It's a public safety issue, and it's the first priority of government," said Coffee, of Oklahoma City. Republicans control both houses of the state legislature.

Oklahoma's prison population has grown 10 percent in the last 10 years, and now numbers 25,700. Fifty-three percent of the inmates were convicted of nonviolent crimes; the top two crimes are drug possession and drug distribution.

Unlike other states, Oklahoma has not eased minimum sentencing policies or embraced alternatives to incarceration. Inmates sentenced to a few months are shipped to prison rather than placed in the county work-release programs that are common elsewhere.

Oklahoma has few resources for drug and alcohol treatment. "I think the key in Oklahoma is that we don't pay for a lot of preventive services that will save you on prison costs later on," Jones said.

Jones says he doesn't know what he'll do with more prisoners. "When I take them and start putting them on the floors and I start triple-celling, someone is going to lose their life that works for me," he said.

Space used for classrooms and workshops has already been converted to inmate housing, officials say. The career-tech building at the correctional center in Alva, where inmates had learned trade skills before being released, was filled with beds recently. Several medium security institutions have been on lock-down status for months.

Prison guards "feel the world is caving in on them," said Lerblance, who meets regularly with prison workers in his district. Seven inmates were killed in prison violence last year.

This session, in addition to designating new crimes, legislators have proposed adding to the list of crimes for which inmates must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. The list, which was dubbed the "11 deadly sins" when it was created a decade ago, has now blossomed to nearly two dozen crimes.

Even some of the most conservative legislators are worried. "What keeps me up at night is the possibility that we could have some staff that would be seriously injured," said state Rep. Randy Terrill, a Republican from Moore.

While acknowledging there can be options for certain offenders, Coffee said Oklahoma's prisons are filled with criminals who need to be there.

"This argument that we have prisons full of first-time dope smokers is a myth," Coffee said. "You have to work very hard to get into prison."
http://news.mywebpal.com/news_tool_v2.cfm?show=localnews&pnpID=348&NewsID=979877&CategoryID=20365&on=1

Posted by lois at 09:42 AM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2010

Mass. fails in commitment to juvenile justice

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

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

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

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

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

May 05, 2010

Families Rally for Emancipation and Empowerment: Family Survivial Guide

FREE Family Survival Guide

FREE! is a grassroots collective of people impacted by the hardships resulting from a loved one‘s imprisonment. Our mission is to support, strengthen and empower impacted families through peer-to-peer support –“each one teach one,” self-advocacy and self-development through trainings, public education and community dialogue, waging and supporting grassroots and policy campaigns (such as the NY Campaign for Telephone Justice) and creating and promoting media products that reflect the voices and experiences of those most impacted by a culture of mass incarceration.

This publication was written by family members of people who are incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. This resource guide was created in the spirit of unity, and as a companion for understanding, navigating and healing.
This guide is focused on NY but is a great model for other states.

Each chapter of the survival guide contains answers to common questions as well as personal stories from our members who have experienced what you are going through now or may come to face in the future. These personal stories and resources can help guide you in your decision-making and action processes. The Appendix contains a list of resources that members of FREE have engaged to continue this work.
To get a copy of this 100 page guide contact:
Families Rally for Emancipation and Empowerment
PO Box 90, Syracuse, NY 13201
Email: freefamiliesinc@gmail.com
http://www.freefamilies.us/

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

April 24, 2010

Overcrowding is a Symptom, Not the Sickness for Prisons in Pennsylvania

Overcrowding is a Symptom, Not the Sickness for Prisons in Pennsylvania

April 23, 2010

Pennsylvania prisons are overcrowded. The state's prison population continues to increase even as the national trend shows a decline. Recidivism rates remain high despite recent measures to lower them. These are the serious symptoms of an ailing criminal and correctional system that is in need of an immediate and substantial overhaul.

While there are many factors that worked together to create the prison population problems in Pennsylvania, there are some main contributors. Pennsylvania criminal law judges impose the incarceration terms, but they must follow statutory mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. In addition, they do not have the discretion to send criminals to prison alternatives, such as drug rehabilitation facilities, halfway houses or house arrest. Pennsylvania lawmakers now must simultaneously treat the symptoms and heal the system.

Prison Overcrowding

According to The Pew Center on the States, the population of state prisons across the nation has fallen for the first time in almost 40 years. During the course of 2009, the number of prisoners dropped by 0.3 percent. Even though the general trend showed a decline in 26 states, the other 24 posted a growth in their incarceration levels. Pennsylvania was among the top five states for both their percentage of growth during the year, which was 4.3 percent, and their increase in the number of prisoners, which was 2,122.

The detailed statistics of Pennsylvania's rising prison population are staggering. According to the Department of Corrections (DOC), between 1971 and 2009, the number of inmates grew from 5,284 to 52,000. The budget to incarcerate these criminals also expanded from $33 million to $1.8 billion. The DOC is continuing to add facilities and beds to the prison system, while also transferring thousands of inmates to other states to avoid further overcrowding. This cycle will continue to cost Pennsylvania and its citizens, who lose the funds for preventive and other social service programs, until the state legislature wakes up.

RRRI and its Impact

The Pennsylvania legislature responded to the overcrowding phenomenon in 2008 by enacting legislation to allow inmates to become eligible for parole earlier. The purpose of the Recidivism Risk Reduction Incentive (RRRI) act was to help reduce the habitual relapse to commit crimes by providing opportunities for inmates convicted of non-violent offenses to engage in evaluative programming. Upon successful completion, prisoners receive reduced minimum sentences that they must serve before being released.

A judge determines if criminals are qualified for participation under RRRI, which means that they meet the eligibility criteria under the statute. If inmates do not fulfill their RRRI program requirements while in prison, they serve their full mandatory minimum sentences. The RRRI act is still new, so its true impact on recidivism remains to be seen. However, it did not address the underlying causes of overcrowding, nor did it present judges with alternatives to imposing mandatory prison sentences. In essence, the legislature, through the RRRI act, did not address the root of the criminal and penal system's problems.

Contributing Factors and Prison Alternatives

When states are tough on crime, there are benefits, but there are also repercussions. Statutory laws that force judges to assign mandatory minimum sentences may lock many dangerous criminals behind bars for long periods of time. However, these restrictions for sentencing non-violent drug offenders, for example, show that sometimes the punishment does not fit the crime. Instead of occupying expensive prison beds and adding to the already overcrowded facilities, they could be saving the state time and money by serving sentences elsewhere.

For low-level drug users and other non-violent criminals, prison time does not address the source of their problems, which is usually an addiction to drugs or other mental or behavioral problems. Alternative places like drug rehabilitation facilities or halfway houses could be more helpful to them and less expensive to the state. In addition, using electronic monitoring devices to hold teenagers or minor crime offenders with short sentences under house arrest could save prison space and state funds for use in more proactive measures to stop crime. State lawmakers must look to these options to help the immediate symptoms of overcrowding and to begin to resolve issues with the corrections efforts in general.

Review, Revise and Reduce

Pennsylvania should take cues from other states, such as New Jersey, New York, Michigan and Kansas, which have all shrunk their prison populations over the last decade by better controlling the laws that dictate who goes to prison and how long they stay there. In addition, attacking the issues of substance abuse among those convicted of drug crimes and helping inmates experience a smoother transition out of prison and into parole has helped these states reduce their recidivism rates. Pennsylvania must reduce its increasing numbers of prison inmates.

The Pennsylvania legislature should review existing criminal laws and revise them in a way that allows judges to consider alternatives to the statutory prison terms. Reforming the sentencing laws by which judges must comply will leave them with the discretion to place those with minor criminal convictions in cheaper, and potentially more effective, institutions. Pennsylvania's criminal and corrections system is not beyond hope, so if the legislature can work on relieving the state of its symptoms of overcrowding in prisons and high recidivism rates, they will put the healing process in motion.
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/overcrowding-is-a-symptom-not-the-sickness-for-prisons-in-pennsylvania-147748.php

Article provided by GOVER PERRY & SHORE

Press release service and press release distribution provided by http://www.24-7pressrelease.com

Posted by lois at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 16, 2010

Defendants Fresh From War Find Service Counts in Court

Defendants Fresh From War Find Service Counts in Court
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: March 15, 2010- NY Times

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — When Judge Robert C. Chambers handed down Timothy Oldani’s federal sentence for selling stolen military equipment on eBay, he gave the former Marine a break.

Timothy Oldani of Scott Depot, W.Va., served in Iraq and suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome. He is among veterans whose service has been considered in criminal sentences.

In Iraq, Mr. Oldani had performed the jangling work of detonating improvised explosive devices and had seen six of his fellow Marines burned alive in an armored vehicle. He left the service with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress syndrome that, the judge concluded, had clouded his judgment. Under federal sentencing guidelines, the prison term could have been nearly five years; Judge Chambers decided on just five months, with three years of supervised release and treatment.

Many veterans like Mr. Oldani have returned from Afghanistan and Iraq burdened by post-traumatic stress, drug dependency and other problems. As veterans find themselves skirmishing with the law, judges are increasingly finding ways to provide them with a measure of leniency.

“More and more courts are noticing and asserting, in a variety of ways, that there seems to be some relevance to military service, or history of wartime service, to our country,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University and an expert on sentencing.

At the federal level, judges are bucking guidelines that focus more on the nature of the crime than on the qualities of the person who committed it. States, too, are forming special courts to ensure that veterans in court receive the treatment their service entitles them to.

While veterans are not considered to be more likely to be arrested than the rest of the population, estimates released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2008 found 229,000 veterans in local jails and state and federal prisons, with 400,000 on probation and 75,000 on parole.

There are about 1 million veterans of the two current wars in the Veterans Affairs system so far, said Jim McGuire, a health care administrator at the agency. He cited statistics suggesting that 27 percent of active-duty veterans returning to civilian life “were at risk for mental health problems” including post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Judges have recognized that many of those returning from war are carrying a heavy burden of damage that might not be physically visible. As one federal district judge in Denver, John L. Kane, wrote in an order giving a defendant probation instead of a prison sentence, the soldier “returned from the war, but never really came home.”

The judges’ decisions are part of a broader fight over sentencing, and over once-rigid federal guidelines that tend to punish the crime while giving little weight to the specific circumstances of the defendant. The guidelines explicitly state that “good works” like military service “are not ordinarily relevant” in determining whether to give sentences below the recommended range.

The Supreme Court, however, in a series of cases, has declared that the federal sentencing guidelines are advisory, not mandatory. The United States Sentencing Commission is considering proposals that would allow military service or other evidence of “prior good works” to be considered as mitigating factors in sentencing decisions.

The Supreme Court seemed to signal greater consideration for military service in a decision in November throwing out the death penalty for a Korean War veteran who was convicted in 1987 of murdering his former girlfriend and her boyfriend. Calling for a new sentencing hearing, the justices wrote that lawyers for the defendant, George Porter Jr., should have presented evidence of “the intense stress and emotional toll that combat took” on Mr. Porter, who suffered from “dreadful nightmares and would attempt to climb his bedroom walls with knives at night.”

In Mr. Oldani’s case, his lawyer, Christian M. Capece, an assistant federal public defender in Charleston, said something about Mr. Oldani struck him at their first meeting. When Mr. Capece mentioned that he, too, had served in the Marines, he expected the usual warm response: Where did you serve? Did you see combat? Instead, Mr. Capece said, “there was nothing from him.”

Mr. Oldani spoke with what clinicians call flat affect — an absence of emotion or change in tone — and to Mr. Capece, it seemed clear that “this kid was really messed up by his experiences out there.”

Mr. Oldani, 25, pleaded guilty last year to selling night vision equipment stolen from a base in Georgia by his brother, and prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum that he “committed a serious crime and he merits serious punishment.” Judge Chambers, however, citing the evidence of the effects of the war on Mr. Oldani, concluded that “the personal characteristics of the defendant warrant a sentence lower than the guideline range.”

Judge Kane faced a similar choice when he opted for the sentence of probation for John Brownfield Jr., a former Air Force firefighter from Cañon City, Colo., who admitted accepting a bribe for smuggling tobacco into a prison while working as a corrections officer. In a 30-page sentencing memorandum, the judge cited Mr. Brownfield’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, which included dealing with gravely wounded soldiers and civilians, and wrote that with so many members of the military returning with serious mental health issues, “we are now, in a manner of speaking, charting unknown waters.”

At the state level, special courts to deal with the problems of veterans are being formed across the nation, modeled on the special courts to deal with drug and mental health issues. Twenty-one veterans courts are in operation, said West Huddleston, the chief executive officer of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

The first such court, in Buffalo, has handled about 130 cases, said Judge Robert T. Russell Jr., who created it in 2008.

New York kicked off a statewide program last year; Judge Judy Harris Kluger, chief of policy and planning for the state court system, said veterans “may have a unique set of issues that we try to help them with.”

Mr. Huddleston praised court programs that connect veterans with treatment, but added, “We should not be mitigating an offender’s case or disposition just because they are a veteran,” which he suggested “doesn’t make sense from a constitutional perspective.”

Professor Berman agreed that automatic deference to veterans could raise issues of equal protection, but “nobody is yet really talking about military service as a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

In fact, some of the new court programs have been carefully devised to avoid the appearance of blanket leniency. “People were concerned veterans were going to get an unfair advantage,” said Jack B. Zimmermann, a military law specialist who helped Texas shape a new pilot program. Defendants enter the Texas program, Mr. Zimmermann noted, only if the judge and prosecutor agree.

“These men and women have served their country and have been injured,” he said. “We as a society have an obligation to treat them.”
A version of this article appeared in print on March 16, 2010, on page A14 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/us/16soldiers.html?hpw

Posted by lois at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)

March 04, 2010

NY Times Editorial: Federal sentencing bill on crack vs. powder cocaine faces up hill battle

Editorial: Bad Science and Bad Policy
NY Times
Published: March 2, 2010

The federal law that mandates harsher prison terms for people arrested with crack cocaine than for those caught with cocaine powder is scientifically and morally indefensible. Bills to end the disparity are pending in both the House and Senate. Democrats who worry about being pegged as “soft on crime” will have to find their backbones and push the legislation through.

Congress passed the law during the crack hysteria of the 1980s when it was widely and wrongly believed that crack — cocaine cooked in baking soda — was more addictive and led to more drug violence than the chemically identical powdered form. These myths were soon disproved. But by then, Congress had locked the courts into a policy under which minority drug addicts arrested with small amounts of crack were being sent to prison for far longer terms than white drug users caught with a satchel full of powder.

The United States Sentencing Commission, which sets guidelines for the federal courts, found several years ago that more than 80 percent of those imprisoned for crack offenses were black.

The tough sentencing guidelines also drive drug policy in the wrong direction — imprisoning addicts for years when they could be more cheaply and effectively treated in community-based programs. An analysis by Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois, estimates that ending the sentencing disparity could save the country more than a half-a-billion dollars in prison costs over the next 15 years.

In the House, a bill that ends the disparity has been voted out of committee but has yet to go to the floor. The Senate bill is having trouble attracting support, including from Democrats. It is time to finally put aside crack myths and hysteria. This isn’t a question of being soft on crime. It is an issue of fairness and sound public policy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/opinion/03wed3.html?scp=1&sq=Bad%20Science%20and%20Bad%20Policy&st=cse

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

JUVENILE JUSTICE IN MICHIGAN

JUVENILE JUSTICE IN MICHIGAN
2nd chance for killer kids?
Feb. 28, 2010
BY L.L. BRASIER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Dontez Tillman and Thomas McCloud were 14-year-old middle schoolers in Pontiac in the summer of 2008.

Neither was old enough to drive, drink, nor apply for a video store membership.

Today, Tillman and McCloud are serving mandatory life in a Lapeer prison, convicted as adults of first-degree murder in November for the beating deaths of two homeless men over three days with older teens.

“I screwed up my life,” McCloud told the Free Press in a prison interview. “I wish I could take it all back, that I never left the house that day.”

Their case brings into focus Michigan’s position in a national debate over how to handle young killers. The state has 352 prisoners serving mandatory life sentences for crimes committed while they were juveniles — the second-highest number in the world, behind Pennsylvania at 444.

Legislators and the U.S. Supreme Court are rethinking the idea of sending teens away to prison forever. Michigan is among 12 states where legislation has been introduced that would ban the practice, or at least give judges some discretion. Texas and Colorado in recent years have banned mandatory life for juveniles.

But Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper, whose office tried Tillman and McCloud, said the boys are exactly where they belong. “These are gut-wrenching, soul-searching determinations,” she said.

As the debate continues, Tillman, now 15, and McCloud, now 16, spend their days in a juvenile unit at the Thumb Correctional Facility, an adult prison in Lapeer. At age 21, they will be transferred to the state’s adult prison population to spend the rest of their lives.

Some say teens don't know better

Tillman and McCloud were not listening to their lawyers in the months leading up to their 2009 first-degree murder trial.

Prosecutors were offering the two middle-schoolers a deal: Tell us who helped you stomp and beat to death two homeless men, and we'll let you plead to second-degree murder. They could walk free in 15 years.

Take the deal, their attorneys urged.

Instead, the two listened to their mothers, who said no. A jury then convicted both boys as adults for first-degree murder in November.

Tillman and McCloud are among Michigan's total 45,000 inmates. Their days are spent doing chores, watching television or walking in the exercise yard. They will likely never walk free.

Their story paints a terrible irony, some defense experts argue. They are boys old enough to be charged as adults under Michigan's stringent get-tough-on-juveniles laws. Yet they are children who deferred to their mothers for the most important decision in their young lives -- a decision that put them behind bars for life.

But those who have lost loved ones because of violent teens say some youths belong in prison forever.

"You take a life, you give your life," said Terry Bingham, 36, of Shelby Township. His brother, David Bingham, 39, was robbed at a gas station in Pontiac in July 2005 by Christopher Jackson, then 17. As Bingham stood inside the gas station convenience store calling 911, Jackson returned and fatally shot him. Jackson, who taunted Bingham's family at his sentencing, is serving life in prison without parole. "He should never see the sunlight again," Terry Bingham said.

Second chances

Critics cite the Tillman and McCloud case as an example of everything that is wrong with Michigan's laws, which allow a child of any age to be tried and sentenced as an adult to life without parole.

"Kids are stupid. Their brains aren't fully formed. We can't treat them like adults," said Deborah Labelle, an Ann Arbor attorney who helped draft "Second Chances," a 2006 report to the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan about children serving life sentences in the state's prisons. Some members of the state defense bar, including Robyn Frankel, a Birmingham defense attorney who represents young offenders seeking appeals, said they believe courts should start appointing guardians ad litem -- attorneys who would represent the best interests of young juveniles facing serious charges.

"There is a serious glitch in the law, and it's appalling," Frankel said. "Parents don't have the objectivity that is needed in cases like this."

Prosecutors, in deciding to charge Tillman and McCloud as adults, took into consideration the brutality of the crimes and the vulnerability of the victims. Wilford (Frenchie) Hamilton, 61, wore a bright red beret and was a common sight on Pontiac streets. He was found bloody and unconscious behind a Pontiac hospital and died later.

Lee Hoffman, 65, once studied law, but years of alcoholism took its toll, and he, too, lived in Pontiac's streets and alleyways. He was found beaten and comatose in a small park off Saginaw. Like Hamilton, he died later in a hospital without ever regaining consciousness.

Tillman has, from the beginning, denied involvement in the killings, but admits that he was one of a group of teens who savagely beat Anthony Pace, a warehouse manager at the Salvation Army in Pontiac. Pace, who suffered broken ribs, head injuries and a broken nose, testified at trial that he was certain the teens intended to kill him.

Police speculate the attacks were fueled by machismo, marijuana and alcohol.

"I don't know why we did it," Tillman told the Free Press. "I didn't want anybody to think I was weak. I wanted to fit in."
'Man, I messed up'

In prison interviews last month, neither Tillman nor McCloud seemed able to comprehend that their futures hold little but gray concrete walls and high fences.

"Man, I messed up. I didn't even get to see high school," Tillman said in a small conference room at the Thumb Correctional Facility.

In the two months since he's been in prison, he's gotten a job sweeping floors for 84 cents a day. He is on a waiting list to start classes for his GED. The tough-guy bravado of the streets is gone. He is studying Islam, attending prayer sessions and steering clear of other inmates.

Tillman said his good days are when his mother, Darlena Tillman, sends him a letter, or he gets to talk to one of his sisters on the phone. "I think about them all the time," he said.

McCloud, now 16, is stocky and speaks slowly, possibly because of medication he is on for depression and mood swings. He has the remnants of a black eye from a brawl with fellow inmates. Like Tillman, he is trying to grasp that life, as he knew it, has ended.

"I think, like, man, no prom, no driver's license, no going out on dates," McCloud said. He has had no visitors. His mother, Kim Hazard, a single mother with seven children, said she is overwhelmed. His father has been in prison since 2000 on a rape charge.

Hazard said she regrets urging her son to decline the second-degree murder plea. "It's a bitter pill," she said.
Horrific youth crimes

The Tillman and McCloud case underscores a national debate taking place in courts and state capitals, including Lansing: how best to handle youths as young as 14 when they commit horrific crimes. For most of the 20th Century, laws held children to a different standard than adults, recognizing that they are influenced by peers and don't always fathom the consequences of their actions. At the crux of the debate is weighing rehabilitation against the need to protect public safety.

Michigan currently allows children of any age to be charged as adults at the discretion of the prosecutor.

"It is a terrible waste to send 14-year-olds to prison for life," said visiting Oakland County Circuit Judge Steven Andrews, who presided over the Tillman and McCloud trial. He said he reluctantly sent both boys to mandatory life in prison as he was required to by law. Both boys turned down the plea agreements offered by prosecutors.

"It is a tragedy any way you look at it," the judge said.

When convicting McCloud and Tillman in November, some jurors wept, including one who was crying so hard the judge had to halt the process for a moment.

In jury selection last week for the third trial of Jerome Hamilton, who was 15 when he was arrested for first-degree murder in the shooting death of a Rib Rack restaraunt manager, some jurors were dismissed because they said they could not, in good conscience, convict a teen as an adult.

But some experts say some kids are just too dangerous to ever walk free.

"It is our position that for some juveniles, a life sentence is appropriate," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a Sacramento, Calif., crime victims' advocacy group.

Lawmakers around the U.S. are rethinking mandatory life sentences for juveniles.

Up until the late 1980s, almost all convicted defendants 17 and younger in the U.S. were sentenced to juvenile facilities that emphasized rehabilitation. But by the early 1990s, states were passing get-tough-on-young-offenders legislation as a reaction to an increase in teen crime.

Between 1992 and 1995, 40 states passed laws that made it easier to send juvenile offenders to prison for life. Michigan, with its 1988 law already in place, toughened it even more in 1996, requiring all juveniles 14 and older to be sentenced as adults if convicted as adults.

Critics of that law note that, in the years since, crime rates among young offenders have declined. They also point out that a lmost half of all teen offenders serving time for first-degree murder accompanied adults who did the actual killing.

Michigan Sen. Liz Brater, D-Ann Arbor, introduced a package of bills in 2009 that would prohibit sentencing juveniles to life without parole. A similar package passed the state House in 2008 but was never voted on by the Senate. The current proposal is now being reviewed by committee. Brater wants Michigan lawmakers to take into account the impulsiveness of young teens and their susceptibility to peer pressure.

"It's just bad public policy for a lot of different reasons," she said.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100228/NEWS03/2280457/1318/Should-we-lock-up-kids-who-kill-forever-or-give-them-a-second-chance&template=fullarticle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 25, 2010

CO: Prison or counseling? Lawmakers introduce bill to reform sentences for drug users

Prison or counseling?
Lawmakers introduce bill to reform sentences for drug users
Peter Marcus, Denver Daily News Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Lawmakers are again questioning whether to either treat drug users with community-based counseling, or send them to prison for long sentences.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers yesterday unveiled House Bill 1352, which would reduce the charge for simple possession for most drugs from a class 6 felony to a class 1 misdemeanor. Simple possession would be defined as four grams, instead of one gram in all cases except for with methamphetamine. In the case of meth, simple possession would be defined as two grams or less.

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs, could potentially lower simple possession sentences for those who are sent to prison from as many as six years in prison to 18 months, Waller said at an afternoon news conference yesterday attended by Republican Attorney General John Suthers, as well as members of the law enforcement and drug treatment communities.

Some supporters believe the bill would save the state money on prison costs citing the statistic that it costs the state $30,000 per year per prisoner Ń and that the saved money could be used for community-based drug treatment programs. Lawmakers, however, did not have a cost-saving figure yesterday, stating that they are waiting for the fiscal note on the bill.

“It’s time to switch our focus from framing the debate as being ‘tough on crime’ to being ‘smart on crime,’ said Waller. “Sending non-violent drug offenders to prison is not the best use of our public safety dollars. That money could be used more effectively by providing treatment and stopping the revolving door we have on our prisons.”

The bill would also stiffen mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers who sell drugs to children.

The legislation stems from recommendations made by the Colorado Commission on Criminal & Juvenile Justice. A more comprehensive sentencing reform bill sponsored by Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, was passed last year. Levy said yesterday that while last year’s bill was not as focused, it did help the CCJJ to make its recommendations for crafting HB 1352.

“We’re seeing the beginning of a whole new approach in Colorado to try to use our resources more effectively to save those $30,000-a-year prison beds for the offenders who we need to lock up and keep away from society, and use the less expensive community-based alternatives for those who can be handled in the community,” said Levy.

Unlike sentencing reform bills of years past, HB 1352 has a broad spectrum of support, including the attorney general, prosecutors, defense attorneys, Republicans and Democrats. Lawmakers are optimistic that the wide support will lead to the bill’s passage.

Suthers expressed doubt that the bill would actually save the state much money, but said he supports the intention of the legislation.

“I’m not so sure how much money this bill is going to save there aren’t a whole lot of first-time drug users or possessors in the Colorado Department of Corrections,” he said. “I’m here in support because the message is correct that our emphasis with drug users and possessors should be treatment.”

http://www.thedenverdailynews.com/article.php?aID=7408

Posted by lois at 03:40 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2010

Justice Policy Institute: Fact Sheet on The Obama Administration’s 2011 Budget: More Policing, Prisons, and Punitive Policies

Fact Sheet on The Obama Administration’s 2011 Budget: More Policing, Prisons, and Punitive Policies

02-17-10
Author(s): Justice Policy Institute
Topic(s): Public Safety, Juvenile Justice, Adult Corrections, Books vs. Bars, Drug Policy

The President’s proposed FY2011 Department of Justice (DOJ) budget asks for $29.2 billion. This is on top of $4 billion provided to DOJ through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), much of which will continue to fund activities through 2011 and beyond. Although the budget has some specific allocations for juvenile justice that it had removed last year, it still reduces spending on juvenile justice programs, while allocating hundreds of millions to hire or retain police officers through the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants or Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and increasing federal prison spending.

This continued funding pattern will likely result in increased costs to states for incarceration that will outweigh the increased revenue for law enforcement, with marginal public safety benefits. While “re-entry” programs such as the Second Chance Act will help reduce recidivism, too little funding is targeted towards “no-entry” programs that keep people from ending up in the criminal justice system in the first place. As states struggle with tough economic times and burgeoning prison populations, research shows that the most cost-effective ways to increase public safety, reduce prison populations, and save money are to invest in community-based programs and policies that positively impact youth and more substance use and mental health treatment services in the community.
The 8 page report breaks down where the money requested will go and its consequences.
http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/10-02_FAC_FY2011Budget_PS-JJ-AC-BB-DP.pdf

Posted by lois at 09:49 AM | Comments (0)

February 21, 2010

MA: "Death of clerk should not mean the end of paroles, pardons"

February 5, 2010
Jamaica Plain Gazette

The senseless murder of Surendra Dangol, a 39-year-old Nepalese store clerk, in Monument Square in Jamaica Plain (JP Gazette, Jan. 8 and 22) was a tragedy of immeasurable proportions for his family and for the community.

If the suspect in the case, parolee Edward Corliss, is indeed the perpetrator, that, too, is a tragedy. A person who has a second chance and cruelly squanders it shakes to the core our belief in mercy and compassion.

Unfortunately, paroles and pardons do not come with “100-percent-no-repeat-offense” guarantees. Yet, to deny second chances would be a tragedy of immeasurable proportions, too. Many people who have violated the social fabric have learned from their mistakes and have become law-abiding, productive citizens. As a society we have a responsibility to provide people with the tools and opportunities to change and maximize everyone’s potential for doing good. Evidence and compassion, not fear and retribution, must guide our policies and judgments. The death of compassion would be the worst tragedy of all.

Nancy W. Ahmadifar
Mission Hill

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

February 15, 2010

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

The corrections Rendell's budget needs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

February 05, 2010

Speaking to L.A. lawyers, Justice Kennedy blasts the prison guard union calling its influence in passing three strikes "sick"

Justice Kennedy laments the state of prisons in California, U.S.
Speaking to L.A. lawyers, the Supreme Court jurist blasts the prison guard union's influence, calling it 'sick' but sidesteps questions about the ruling he wrote last month on campaign spending.

By Carol J. Williams

February 4, 2010

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy criticized California sentencing policies and crowded prisons Wednesday night, calling the influence that unionized prison guards had in passing the three-strikes law "sick."

In an otherwise courtly and humorous address to the Los Angeles legal community, Kennedy expressed obvious dismay over the state of corrections and rehabilitation in the country. He said U.S. sentences are eight times longer than those issued by European courts.

"California now has 185,000 people in prison at $32,500 a year" each, he said. He then urged voters and officials to compare that expense to what taxpayers spend per pupil in elementary schools.

"The three-strikes law sponsor is the correctional officers' union and that is sick!" Kennedy said of the measure mandating life sentences for third-time criminal offenders.

Kennedy wrote the high court's controversial Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling last month and was bombarded with written questions on the 5-4 vote that fundamentally changed campaign spending laws.

But he sidestepped the audience's efforts to draw him out on that decision, which frees corporations -- and presumably unions -- to spend as they wish on campaigns and candidates that were once limited to accepting individual voter contributions.

Kennedy would say only that it was "important to have robust, principled debate after opinions," and suggested that was best left to the legal community.

One questioner asked: "Does Justice Kennedy feel scolded?" It was an apparent reference to President Obama's warning that the ruling opens the door to Big Business drowning out the voices of the electorate with lavish and targeted campaign spending.

"He doesn't," Kennedy said cryptically, spurring laughter throughout the packed auditorium at Pepperdine University's School of Law.
latimes.com/news/local/la-me-kennedy4-2010feb04,0,1430237.story
This and other news about sentencing and mass incarceration can be found at www.realcostofprisons.org/blog/

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

Posted by lois at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2010

NH: Prison population could shrink by 20% in 5 years if state paid for mental health treatment, housing and jobs to cut recidivism limit prison time for people with nonviolent convictions

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Study on prison populations draws praise
By KEVIN LANDRIGAN

CONCORD – The State Prison population would shrink nearly 20 percent in five years if the state paid for mental health treatment and more intense supervision of high-risk offenders while letting nonviolent offenders get out of jail earlier and face shorter supervision than they do now, a state report finds.

Judges, prosecutors, key state legislators and correction professionals overseeing a three-year study on prison recidivism Monday praised the findings of the Council of State Governments Justice Center’s report.

“These options would change how we think about the size of prison we need to build for offenders in this state,” said Senate President Sylvia Larsen, D-Concord.

The group will meet early next month to review the estimated costs and savings from these reforms and decide whether to urge the Legislature to adopt them.

To save money on prison spending long term requires spending it now, the authors concede.

For example, it would cost $2.4 million a year to give mental health treatment and rapid drug testing for all high- and medium-risk offenders in the community who need it, the report said.

Serving the high-risk offenders alone would cost $1.3 million, the study said.

Dr. Fred Osher is CSG director of health policy and said community treatment has a more lasting effect on keeping offenders from coming back.

“That’s where the action is,” Osher said.

The report urges that lawmakers spend 50 percent of the millions they would save on additional treatment in the community for offenders with alcohol and drug abuse problems, mental health illnesses or both at the same time.

National studies find that while counseling in prison cuts recidivism by 6 percent, combining that with treatment after release curbs it by 12 percent.

With the state already facing a significant revenue shortfall, some members of the panel asked the authors to list changes that won’t cost any money.

“There is a major cash flow problem we are facing, not just in this biennium but in the next biennium as well,” said state Rep. Neal Kurk, R-Weare.

Attorney General Michael Delaney urged quick action on one item after the report found that after serving maximum prison terms, more than 220 inmates each year were released into the community with no supervision.

Every offender should get at least nine months in the community with a tiered length of supervision depending on the severity of their crime, the study urged.

“These are law enforcement improvements that are long overdue and will make a big difference on the streets in the cities and towns of New Hampshire,” Delaney said.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick said community supports for inmates beyond mental health treatment need to be in place such as housing and available jobs.

“If somebody told me tomorrow I would have no home and no job, how would I do?” Broderick asked rhetorically.

Since 2000, the prison population has grown by 31 percent, but only 3 percent of that growth has come from new offenders committing crimes, said Marshall Clement, project director.

Within three years, more than half (51 percent) of those sent to State Prison return and that rate is above the national average.

Without change, the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies estimates that by 2015, the State Prison population will grow 6 percent to 3,029.

The Department of Corrections says inmate ranks will grow 4 percent over the same time, in part because it set up with legislative support last year a Community Corrections Division to focus more intense supervision on high-risk offenders.

If these recommendations are adopted, the authors claim inmate population will ‘’gradually flatten out’’ and drop 18 percent to 2,340 inmates in 2015.

The report states lawmakers should set a limit on how long nonviolent offenders must remain in prison. The proposed cap would be no more than 120 percent of their minimum mandatory sentence, it said.

Superior Court Chief Justice Robert Lynn said he would prefer Corrections Commissioner William Wrenn be able to override and ignore any such limit in dealing with difficult, nonviolent offenders.

“I tend to think that might go too far and wonder if it would make more sense to enact legislation that gives the commissioner more flexibility on that,” Lynn told the group.

Report at a glance

The state prison population grew 31 percent from 2000-09 but only 3 percent represented new criminal offenders. The following are the six recommendations that the Council of State Governments Justice Center has urged New Hampshire policy makers take to reduce the rate of recidivism.

Set Revised Maximum Sentence for Non-Violent Offenders: Require eligible offenders serve 100 percent of minimum sentence but get released upon serving 120 percent of that minimum. This would apply to those who commit nonviolent, property or drug offenses.

Require post-release supervision for all: Require anyone get at least nine months supervision in the community before reaching the end of their maximum sentence and being released. At present, 16 percent (224 inmates) of all those released from State Prison last year had served their maximum punishment and went into the community with no supervision.

Upon Release Focus on High-Risk Offenders: Dropping the period to actively supervise parolees to no more than nine months for low- and medium-risk offenders, 12 months for felony probation for 18 months for prison parolees.

Use Swift Sanctions for Probation Violators: Allow a judge to place a violator for up to five days in jail unless probationer requests a hearing to end long waits in jail for someone before that violation is taken up in court.

Intermediate Sanction: Use halfway houses or a new secure housing unit for those whose parole is revoked to prevent prison from being jam-packed with parole and probation violators.

Rapid Treatment and Drug Testing for High Risk: Spend up to $2.4 million a year to give rapid drug testing and mental/substance abuse treatment to high-risk and high-need offenders on probation or parole.

Source: Justice Reinvestment in New Hampshire Report, Council of State Governments Justice Center
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/560653-196/study-on-prison-populations-draws-praise.html

Posted by lois at 08:42 PM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2010

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

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

January 13, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 17, 2010

MA: Setting compassionate release back.... Boston Globe article on Edward Corliss

This one article will certainly be used to thwart the movement toward compassionate release.
Lois
The Boston Globe
In 2006 parole bid, a plea for leniency
Tape of suspect projects suffering | Years after release; man held in shooting

By Jonathan Saltzman and Maria Cramer, Globe Staff | January 16, 2010

Standing before the parole board in 2006, Edward Corliss presented himself as a frail, meek man who had battled cancer, hepatitis, and alcoholism and overcome the anger and bitterness that led him to kill a store clerk in Salisbury decades before.

“I’m definitely a changed man from what I was back then,’’ Corliss said in a high, raspy voice, according to a tape of the roughly hourlong hearing obtained by the Globe last night. “I know now life is something you can’t give back, and I’ll always regret that.’’

But one board member was not convinced and asked him whether he was really remorseful since two years before the hearing he had sought the help of the Innocence Project, the nonprofit group that uses DNA evidence to clear the wrongly convicted.

He replied: “I know I ain’t going to do no harm to anybody. I just want to get out and try to start a good life.’’

Two months later, on July 18, the board voted 5-1 to release him from prison, despite a record that included two prison escapes, a parole violation, and a charge for possession of explosives while in prison.

Last month, less than four years after his release, police said, Corliss robbed and fatally shot Surendra Dangol, a 39-year-old clerk who was working behind the counter at Tedeschi Food Shop in Jamaica Plain.

Daniel M. Dewey, a member of the panel that freed Corliss, said he could not remember how he voted but was horrified to learn of Corliss’s arrest.

“It’s just terrible,’’ Dewey said in a telephone interview from his home. “You let out so many [prisoners on parole], that something’s going to happen sooner or later. It’s not like we just let out one person. It’s tragic. You try not to have any mistakes, but you’re not dealing with a population that’s too dependable.’’

The board’s ruling was made over the objections of Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett.

Essex prosecutors successfully argued four times before, as recently as 2004, that Corliss had not accepted responsibility for killing an unarmed store clerk in Salisbury in 1971 and presented “a risk to commit further crimes’’ if paroled, according to a letter to the state Parole Board made public yesterday.

The board’s 2006 ruling, which was released Thursday, identified members who participated in the decision but not how each voted, because that information is confidential. At the time, the board majority ruled that Corliss finally understood the depths of his substance abuse problems.

The panel, Dewey said, sometimes held as many as 60 hearings a day for inmates at state prisons and county jails. Some hearings lasted only a few minutes.

“I literally saw a couple of thousand guys a year,’’ said Dewey, 66, a retired state probation officer appointed to the board by Governor William F. Weld and reappointed by governors Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift. He served from 1993 to 2007.

Four of the six Parole Board members who participated in the decision were appointed by former governor Mitt Romney. None of them could be reached for comment.

Romney’s political action committee, Free and Strong America PAC, issued a statement yesterday saying that Romney “didn’t have a vote on the matter, but if he did, he would have voted to keep this man behind bars.’’

John Hayes, who was appointed Corliss’s lawyer, said he plans to meet Corliss for the first time today at MCI-Cedar Junction at Walpole, where his client is being held.

Corliss will be arraigned Tuesday in West Roxbury District Court.

Hayes questioned one of the reasons police tied Corliss to the crime: Corliss’s parole officer told investigators he had a parolee whose features resembled the man caught in a surveillance video of the shooting. In the video, the gunman’s face is partially concealed by a scarf and most of his head is obscured by a black cap and a long wig.

“Was [Corliss] arrested because there was a similar crime in his past, and that’s where they’re starting at without any real hard evidence?’’ Hayes said.

Corliss was convicted in 1972 of fatally shooting 61-year-old store clerk George Oakes after trying to steal $15 from his cash register.

In a brief phone interview, Oakes’s stepson, Frank Ellis, said it was still painful to talk about Corliss. “He didn’t stay in jail long enough,’’ Ellis said, his voice rising. “I loved my stepfather.’’

Corliss filed a series of unsuccessful post-conviction motions, trying to pin the murder on his brother-in-law.

Essex prosecutors urged the board to reject his many parole requests based on Corliss’s long criminal history and his checkered record as an inmate.

“The record thus shows not only contempt for the criminal justice system, but that Mr. Corliss has the propensity to commit crimes while on parole or escape from confinement,’’ prosecutors wrote.

Around 1971, Corliss escaped from a Rhode Island prison camp where he was serving a four- to seven-year sentence for breaking and entering. Corliss shot Oakes while he was a fugitive.

In 1980, when he was serving his life sentence at MCI-Norfolk for the murder, he walked away from a prison detail on a February afternoon.

In May of that year, State Police found him in Ball Square in Somerville in a car with another man and a woman. Inside the car, was a .38-caliber pistol, a set of license plates, a wig, gloves and dark glasses, according to Globe reports at the time.

Seven years later, while he was in custody at a minimum-security prison, he was charged with possession of an explosive device. He was later transferred to a higher-security prison, according to parole records.

In 1991, the parole board voted to release him but he was back in prison three months later after he got into a car accident in Newton and left the scene.

After that, each time he requested parole the board rejected his pleas based on his past, his record in prison, and his addiction to alcohol.

In July 2006, the board majority decided to release him as long as he followed several conditions, including getting substance abuse treatment.

Sometime after his release, Corliss moved into a studio apartment in Roxbury in a sprawling cream-colored building of 36 units for older and disabled people.

He lived there about two years and moved out last summer, according to several of Corliss’s former neighbors, who described Corliss as affable and polite.

“Eddie was a good guy,’’ said Alan Jones, 64. “We all liked him.’’

His nickname was “Fast Eddie,’’ because he liked to walk around all day. “He was always on the loose,’’ Jones said.

Julian Prevost said that Corliss volunteered for a local church and often kept Prevost’s 89-year-old father company, playing dominoes with him and cooking him chicken.

“This man loved my father so much,’’ Prevost said.

Corliss rarely talked about his criminal past, he said, except to say he was once jailed for fraud.

“I can’t believe it,’’ he said. “This is sad because Eddie is such a nice person.’’

At the 2006 parole board meeting, a longtime female friend of Corliss and his brother, Bill, attested to changes they had observed in Corliss and implored the board to release him.

“I mean, he’s done two lifetimes. I think terrorists get off easier than he does,’’ said his brother. “He knows he done wrong. . . . Give him a chance.’’

Maureen Walsh, chairwoman of the board, said the Essex district attorney’s office was not properly notified of the hearing and therefore could not attend. But she said prosecutors could return to make arguments at a follow-up hearing or submit a letter.

Prosecutors later submitted a letter of opposition.

No one from the Oakes family attended the hearing, and no one testified against Corliss.
© Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/01/16/in_2006_parole_bid_a_plea_for_leniency/

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

January 14, 2010

Drug Policy Alliance on Legal Aid Society Report Finding that 2004 and 2005 Rockefeller Drug Reforms a Huge Success

Sections of the press release from DPA. A link to the Legal Aid Society report is at the bottom of this email.

January14,2009
New Legal Aid Society Report Finds that 2004 and 2005 Rockefeller Drug Law Reforms Huge Success: Tens of Millions of Dollars Saved with Low Levels of Recidivism by Individuals Released from Prison
New York Prosecutors Lose Credibility as Report Counters Past and Current Misleading Claims

New York— A new report released today by the Legal Aid Society of New York shows that the changes to the Rockefeller Drug Laws in ‘04 and ‘05 have been a huge success with tens of millions of dollars being saved and remarkably low levels of recidivism of people who have been re-sentenced and released from prison. On average, people who were re-sentenced and released early from prison as a result of the 2004 and 2005 drug law reforms have an overall recidivism rate of 8.5 percent, while the overall rate of recidivism rate for people released in the same period is nearly 40 percent.

The report analyzes data related to the 2004 and 2005 reforms to the Rockefeller Drug Laws, where over 1,000 incarcerated people became eligible for resentencing and release. The findings illustrate that New York’s judges are exercising their discretion on a case by case basis and proving to be an effective screen that protects the community from new crime. The recidivism rate for those people who were re-sentenced and have been out of prison for three years is about three times better than that produced by the highly praised DOCS Shock program. The report also finds by resentencing and releasing eligible people under drug law reform, the state saved over $40 million.

“The process by which judges exercise discretion who should be resentenced has shown to be effective,” said William Gibney, an attorney and co-author of the report. “The majority of those re-sentenced and released under the drug law reform have not committed new crimes. Despite the claims of dangerous consequences by District Attorneys in opposing re-sentencing petitions, the people released so far under the drug law re-sentencing provisions have proven to pose a low risk to the community.”

Building on the limited reforms of 2004 and 2005, Governor Paterson enacted real reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws in 2009, which included expanding treatment instead of incarceration for low level drug offenses and allowing for over 1,000 people incarcerated on low-level nonviolent drug offenses to petition the court for resentencing. During every step of the process, some district attorneys worked to block the reforms and their implementation, promising that real reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws would result in chaos on the streets.

http://www.legal-aid.org/media/127984/drug-law-reform-paper-2009.pdf

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

January 08, 2010

NY Times Editorial: Spineless in California

"The only real way for California to cut prison costs is to reverse sentencing policies that have filled its prisons to bursting and have driven up costs by about 50 percent over the last decade alone. Among other things, too many minor offenders are sent to jail for too long."

Editorial
Spineless in California
Published: January 7, 2010- NY Times

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California was on the mark when he said this week that the state needed to change policies that spend more money on prisons than on the state’s once-vaunted higher education systems, which are being bled to death in budget cuts. But Mr. Schwarzenegger was way off the mark when he suggested that the answer was to privatize prison services or to pass yet another constitutional amendment, this time to limit prison spending.

States that privatize prisons sometimes save money, but they can also buy trouble by ceding control to companies that put profit first and inmate welfare a distant second. That would be disastrous for the California prison system. It is already under pressure from scores of court orders that require it to reduce its growing prison count and provide adequate mental, medical and dental services, as well as better care for the disabled.

It would generally be impossible for the state to unilaterally lower prison spending without first cutting the prison population dramatically. And because so much prison spending is nondiscretionary, a constitutional amendment that reduced spending — without cutting the prison population — would be doomed to failure. It would also draw the ire of judges who have rightly run out of patience with the state’s long list of failures in this area.

The only real way for California to cut prison costs is to reverse sentencing policies that have filled its prisons to bursting and have driven up costs by about 50 percent over the last decade alone. Among other things, too many minor offenders are sent to jail for too long.

The Legislature tinkered at the margins of this problem last year. But real sentencing reform has proved impossible in the State Assembly, where lawmakers live in fear of the politically powerful corrections officers’ union lobby, which enforces the status quo by labeling reformers as soft on crime.

Sleight of hand will not cut prison costs in California. To do that, lawmakers will need to find their spines.
A version of this article appeared in print on January 8, 2010, on page A26 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/opinion/08fri3.html

Posted by lois at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2010

NY Times Editorial: Prisons and Budgets

Editorial: Prisons and Budgets
NY Times
Published: January 3, 2010

The United States, which has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has about one-quarter of its prisoners. But the relentless rise in the nation’s prison population has suddenly slowed as many states discover that it is simply too expensive to overincarcerate.

Between 1987 and 2007 the prison population nearly tripled, from 585,000 to almost 1.6 million. Much of that increase occurred in states — many with falling crime rates — that had adopted overly harsh punishment policies, such as the “three strikes and you’re out” rule and drug laws requiring that nonviolent drug offenders be locked away.

These policies have been hugely costly. According to the Pew Center on the States, state spending from general funds on corrections increased from $10.6 billion in 1987 to more than $44 billion in 2007, a 127 percent increase in inflation-adjusted dollars. In the same period, adjusted spending on higher education increased only 21 percent.

In 2008, the explosion of the prison population ground to a near halt, according to data released last month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. About 739,000 inmates were admitted to federal and state facilities, only about 3,500 more than were released.

One factor seems to be tight budgets as states decide to release nonviolent offenders early. This can not only save money. If done correctly, it can also be very sound social policy. Many nonviolent offenders can be dealt with more effectively and more cheaply through treatment and jobs programs.

Michigan, which has been hard hit by the recession, has done a particularly good job of releasing people who do not need to be in prison. As the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project details in a new report, Michigan reduced its prison population by about 8 percent between March 2007 and November 2009 by taking smart steps, notably doing more to get nonviolent drug offenders out, while helping in their transition to a productive, and crime-free, life.

Not every state has gotten the message. Florida, for example, has a state law mandating that all prisoners serve a high percentage of their sentence, which is both dubious corrections policy and terrible fiscal policy.

For many years, driving up prison populations has been an easy thing for elected officials to do, popular with voters and powerful corrections officer unions. The new incarceration figures suggest, however, that in the current hard economic times, strapped states are beginning to realize that they do not have the money to keep people in prison who do not need to be there.
A version of this article appeared in print on January 4, 2010, on page A20 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/opinion/04mon3.html

Michigan Report:
http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/michigan-breaks-political-logjam-new-model-reducing-prison-populations

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

December 01, 2009

Killings in WA state may set-back any "progress" on clemency, parole and JLWOP

Old Clemency May Be Issue for Huckabee

By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: November 30, 2009
NY Times

When Mike Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist minister then serving as governor of Arkansas, granted clemency to Maurice Clemmons nine years ago, he cited his age: Mr. Clemmons was 16 when he began the crime spree for which he was sentenced to more than 100 years in prison.

Now, Mr. Clemmons is being sought as the suspect in the killing of four uniformed police officers, execution-style, on Sunday as they sat in a coffee shop near Tacoma, Wash., writing reports.

Mr. Huckabee, now a Fox News talk-show host, has been leading the pack of possible Republican contenders for president in 2012. But the killings of the police officers are focusing renewed attention on his long-contentious record of pardoning convicts or commuting their sentences.

In a decade as governor beginning in 1996, Mr. Huckabee did so twice as many times as his three predecessors combined. He typically gave little explanation for individual pardons. But he spoke often of his belief in redemption, based on a strong religious belief that even criminals are capable of changing their lives and often deserve a second chance. He also raised concerns about the fairness of the Arkansas justice system.

The commutation of Mr. Clemmons’s sentence was routine enough that it failed to make a list of Mr. Huckabee’s 10 “most publicized” prison commutations compiled by an Arkansas newspaper in August 2004. And if it turns out to be a case in which a parole had gone bad, it will be difficult to pin responsibility solely on Mr. Huckabee, because many others made decisions that kept Mr. Clemmons out of prison.

Mr. Clemmons had been convicted for a series of burglaries and robberies that began in 1989, and would not have been eligible for parole until 2021. He applied for clemency in 2000, writing in a petition to Mr. Huckabee that he had simply fallen in with a bad crowd in a bad neighborhood as a teenager, and that he “had learned through the ‘school of hard knocks’ to appreciate and respect the rights of others.”

Mr. Huckabee commuted his sentence, making him eligible for immediate parole. Within six months, Mr. Clemmons violated the conditions of his parole, returning to prison in July 2001 for aggravated robbery. When he was paroled again by the state in 2004, the police in Little Rock served a warrant on him related to a 2001 robbery. But a lawyer for Mr. Clemmons argued that too much time had elapsed since the warrant was issued, and prosecutors dropped the charges.

Mr. Huckabee, who rode a brand of prairie populism to finish second in the Republican presidential primaries in 2008, granted more than 1,000 pardons or clemency requests as governor. As his reputation for granting clemency spread, more convicts applied. Aides said he read each file personally.

In most cases, he followed the recommendation of the parole board, but in several cases he overrode the objections of prosecutors, judges and victims’ families. And in several, he followed recommendations for clemency from Baptist preachers who had been longtime supporters.

Prosecutors told him he was ignoring his responsibility to explain to citizens why he was setting free convicted murderers and rapists. His response, some of them say, was to blame others and strike out against his critics — an off-note from a man they consider a gifted politician.

“Victims groups were pretty well ignored, along with boots-on-the-streets law enforcement and good citizens who sit on these juries,” said Larry Jegley, who objected to Mr. Clemmons’s clemency request as the prosecuting attorney for Pulaski County, where he was convicted.

Robert Herzfeld, then the prosecuting attorney of Saline County, wrote a letter to Governor Huckabee in January 2004, saying his policy on clemency was “fatally flawed” and suggesting that he should announce specific reasons for granting clemency. Mr. Huckabee’s chief aide on clemency wrote back: “The governor read your letter and laughed out loud. He wanted me to respond to you. I wish you success as you cut down on your caffeine consumption.”

“It was all a very personal issue for him,” said Mr. Herzfeld, who later sued successfully to overturn one of Mr. Huckabee’s clemency decisions, which would have set free a man convicted in a bludgeoning death. “It was always about how I was trying to get him or another prosecutor was trying to get him, not about how to do it right. He’s brilliant politically and very likable, but it seems like there’s a blind spot on this issue.”

With Mr. Clemmons, political consultants say Mr. Huckabee may have hit his Willie Horton moment

“As a front-runner, obviously with circumstances like this, it’s out there as a big issue,” said Ed Rollins, the manager of Mr. Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign.

Mr. Huckabee survived a similar moment before, during the Iowa caucuses, when former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts criticized his judgment in the case of Wayne DuMond, a convicted rapist who raped and killed a woman 11 months after being paroled in Arkansas.

Mr. Huckabee said that he had opposed clemency, and that it had been his predecessor, Jim Guy Tucker, who had made Mr. DuMond eligible for parole by reducing his sentence. “If anyone needs to get a Willie Horton out of it, it’s Jim Guy Tucker and the Democrat Party and it ain’t me,” he said to reporters at the time.

But Mr. Huckabee had come into office saying he intended to commute Mr. DuMond’s sentence. He later denied the request only as the state’s board granted Mr. DuMond parole. Members of the board later said they had been pressured by the governor.

Mr. Clemmons’s case packs more potency: the facts of Mr. Huckabee’s involvement in the clemency decision are less in dispute, and the crime has played over and over on national television.

“It’s the same issue yet again,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. “The difference this time is that Governor Huckabee would start with greater visibility and higher in the polls, which always enhances and exacerbates any possible criticisms.”

Should he run, there are many prosecutors and victims’ advocates in Arkansas who say they are ready to argue to the national news media that this is just one of the cases where Mr. Huckabee used poor judgment and ignored an inmate’s history of criminal behavior in deciding for clemency. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Huckabee declined requests for an interview, but a statement from the “press team” on the Web site of his political action committee said that should Mr. Clemmons be found responsible for the shootings, “it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State.”

“He was recommended for and received commutation of his original sentence from 1990,” the statement said. “This commutation made him parole-eligible and he was then paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time.”

On Sunday, before the shooting, Mr. Huckabee sounded ambivalent on Fox News about running for president, saying he liked his role at the network and wanted to be sure that, unlike in 2008, he would receive support from the Republican establishment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/us/politics/01huckabee.html?_r=1&hpw

A version of this article appeared in print on December 1, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)

November 29, 2009

NJ: School zone law could be reformed with re-sentencing possilbe & additional changes could result in more judicial descretion

N.J. bill would give judges more discretion
Nov. 29, 2009
By Adrienne Lu
Philadelphia Inquirer Trenton Bureau

New Jersey's drug-free school-zone law, conceived to protect schoolchildren, could be amended to give judges more discretion in sentencing offenders under a bill the Legislature is considering.

Passed in 1987, the law requires judges to incarcerate for up to three years all offenders convicted of selling drugs, or possessing drugs with the intent to sell them, within 1,000 feet of school property. The law was later changed to strengthen sentences for certain drug offenses within 500 feet of public parks, public housing, and other public buildings.

More than 20 years later, some argue it has done little to protect schoolchildren while it has disproportionately affected cities and minorities. Others cite statistics indicating that treatment for drug addiction is more effective - and less costly - than prison.

The latest bill, which the Senate Judiciary Committee cleared last week, 8-5, and is headed to the full Senate, would allow judges to favor treatment over jail time and place offenders on probation in certain cases. The Assembly approved a previous version of the bill.

An amendment that would allow those now in prison for drug-free school-zone violations to apply for resentencing means that if the Senate approves the bill, it must return to the Assembly for a second vote.

The legislation calls for judges to consider factors such as a defendant's criminal record, the proximity of the school property, the likelihood of exposing children to drug-related activity, whether school was in session, and whether children were near.

Under the bill, imprisonment would still be mandated for certain drug offenses, including those on school property or a school bus and those in which the defendant used or threatened violence or that involved a firearm.

"The bill gives a judge an opportunity to sentence them to start treatment rather than prison, which is a much more effective," said Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D., Union), a sponsor.

Critics said changes would send the wrong message.

"We must remember why we established mandatory minimums in the first place," said Sen. Gerald Cardinale (R., Bergen), a Judiciary Committee member. "Leaving sentencing solely to the discretion of judges often meant that serial offenders were back on the street terrorizing our neighborhoods."

Among complaints about the existing law is that it unfairly - if unintentionally - targets minorities.

"We've heard so often that justice is blind, but in New Jersey, when it comes to drug crimes, too many offenders are unfairly penalized based on where they live and not on what crime they committed," said Sen. Sandra Cunningham (D., Hudson), also a sponsor of the bill. "This bill upholds the original intention of New Jersey's drug-free school zone and continues to impose hard penalties on violent offenses but gives judges greater authority to dictate sentences for nonviolent offenders."

Large swaths of New Jersey's most urban communities - where minorities are concentrated - fall within school zones. For example, 52 percent of Camden, 54 percent of Jersey City, and 76 percent of Newark (excluding the airport) are in drug-free school zones.

According to the New Jersey Commission to Review Criminal Sentencing, which studied the law and its effect, 96 percent of offenders convicted and incarcerated for such offenses in New Jersey are black or Hispanic.

"When this was constructed, all you had to do was look at a map in an urban area and you could therefore extrapolate that it would have a disproportionate impact on the people in those communities that are most densely populated," Sen. Nia Gill (D., Essex) said during the Judiciary Committee debate on the bill Monday.

People representing many sides of the criminal-justice system - including prosecutors, corrections officials, probation officers, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Drug Policy Alliance - have registered support of the bill.

Barnett E. Hoffman, chairman of the criminal sentencing review commission, which is no longer active, said that while the legislation did not follow all of the recommendations of the commission, it was a very good bill.

"The present law doesn't work," he said at the committee hearing. "It doesn't deter anything."

In 1987, Hoffman said, 11 percent of the inmates in state prisons were there for drug offenses. By 1996, more than a third were incarcerated for drug offenses.

Drug courts have been proved to reduce recidivism by 24 percent, Hoffman said, and are generally far less expensive than imprisonment.

Among those who argue that the law affects minorities disproportionately is New Jersey Public Defender Yvonne Smith Segars.

The law, she said at the hearing, "effectively created a double standard: one for urban communities, one for suburban communities."

As recently as 2007, Segars said, New Jersey was one of the top three states in the disparity between incarcerating African Americans and whites. African Americans are incarcerated at 12 times the rate of whites, she said. And while African Americans make up only 13 percent of the state's population, they constitute 70 percent of its jail population, she said.

Members of the Judiciary Committee voted mostly along party lines, with Democrats in favor and Republicans against. Chairman Paul Sarlo, a Bergen County Democrat, and Sen. Jennifer Beck, a Monmouth County Republican, crossed party lines on the vote.

Senate President Richard J. Codey (D., Essex), who has the power to decide whether bills are posted for a full Senate vote, opposed a previous version of the bill but, after changes, supports it.

"Now it's a bill that's fair and gives equal justice for everyone," Codey said.

Gov. Corzine also supports the bill, according to spokesman Robert Corrales.

Gov.-elect Christopher J. Christie's office did not return calls for comment on the bill.

"Mandatory minimum criminal sentences may give the state Legislature the peace of mind of looking tough on crime, but they do little in terms of creating justice," said Lesniak, who said he had spent more time thinking about the criminal-justice system since two crack-cocaine addicts robbed him at his Elizabeth home in April. The two men have, with Lesniak's support, agreed to drug treatment instead of imprisonment.

"New Jersey's drug-free school-zone law simply doesn't work, and it's time we establish a fairer legal system for drug crimes in the Garden State," he said.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/nj/20091129_N_J__bill_would_give_judges_more_discretion.html

Posted by lois at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Editorial: Smarter sentencing saves money

Editorial: Smarter sentencing saves money
The MetroWest Daily News
Posted Nov 29, 2009

If there's a bright side to a financial emergency, it's the opportunity a crisis brings to stop spending money on things that aren't working.

Consider the money government spends on substance abuse and prevention. Researchers and therapists understand that addiction is an illness, but because of its association with property crime, the political system's primary response has been through police and prisons.

Massachusetts, like most other states, escalated this battle in recent decades. The state's prison population grew by 368 percent between 1980 and 2008, according to the Mass. Bar Association's Drug Policy Task Force, while the population of county jails jumped by 522 percent.

That comes at a price: Massachusetts last year spent $1.4 billion incarcerating people. That's more than the Legislature spent on public higher education.

Are we getting our money's worth? In a word, no. The crime rate and the rate of drug abuse have held pretty steady despite putting more people behind bars.

The rise in prison population and its increased cost are fueled by a sharp increase in nonviolent drug offenders carrying longer sentences under the state's mandatory minimum and "truth in sentencing" laws enacted in the 1990s. Getting "tough on crime" seemed like a good idea at the time. But in practice, it has meant drug addicts get little or no post-release supervision. Their addictions go untreated; they are ineligible for work release programs that help them get a fresh, legal start on the rest of their lives. They finish their sentences and are dropped back into the same neighborhoods they left - and too often fall into the same old patterns of crime and substance abuse.

There are alternatives. Drug treatment and education programs in the Middlesex County Jail have been proven to reduce recidivism, Sheriff James DiPaola told a Framingham conference this month. Drug courts, in which nonviolent drug offenders can receive treatment and training under the direct supervision of a judge empowered to put them behind bars if they flunk a drug test or miss a mandatory meeting, have a proven record of success.

Put aside the fact that substance abuse treatment saves the lives of people plagued by chronic addiction. The savings to taxpayers ought to be enough to force a reconsideration of policies that haven't worked: It costs $48,000 a year to keep an addict in prison, compared to $4,000 to $5,000 for outpatient treatment.

That math has convinced lawmakers in at least a half-dozen states to reform their sentencing practices since the recession brought a steep drop in state revenue. Just as the Massachusetts Legislature was wrapping up its formal sessions for the year, it brought a big step forward on Beacon Hill: The state Senate approved a bill granting parole eligibility for non-violent drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences.

Unfortunately, the House recessed before taking up the Senate bill, and there is no indication when, if ever, its members will get the chance to vote on a similar measure. During the recess, voters should let them know they must not miss this opportunity to adopt policies that save money and save lives. You can reach them by e-mail through the Legislature's Web site: www.mass.gov/legis.
http://www.dailynewstribune.com/editorials/x1297505053/Editorial-Smarter-sentencing-saves-money?view=print

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

MI: MICHAEL TIMMIS AND PAT NOLAN: Revise laws to lower prison costs, keep everyone safer

Revise laws to lower prison costs, keep everyone safer
Commentary
BY MICHAEL TIMMIS AND PAT NOLAN
Detroit Free Press
Nov. 28, 2009

Michigan has more than an economic crisis -- we have a crime crisis, too. And we won't be able to solve the overall budget shortfall without making significant cuts in the corrections budget. Our current criminal justice system is costing us over a billion dollars a year, far more than our neighboring states are spending. Yet despite this huge expense for corrections, our communities are still plagued by crime.

Here are a few troubling facts:

• Michigan's violent crime rate is higher than all other states in the Great Lakes region.

• Corrections is the third most expensive item in Michigan's budget, with only health care and education costing more.

• The Michigan Department of Corrections employs one out of every three state workers.

The current budget crisis requires us to examine every facet of state spending to find ways to make it more efficient. The Department of Corrections is no exception. Nearly half of the 14,000 inmates released this year are expected to return to prison within two years. If the Legislature doesn't adopt smart reforms that reduce this failure rate, corrections costs will continue to devour larger and larger portions of the budget. We can no longer afford to continue the revolving door of prisons.

But we have good news. There are proven ways to cut the high cost of Michigan's prisons without increasing the risk to the public.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm and her excellent team at the Department of Corrections have developed the Michigan Reentry Initiative, which helps offenders make a successful transition from prison to the community. But executive authority is limited. Some of the reforms require legislation to allow the policy changes.

A bipartisan team of legislators has been working with the Council of State Governments, the Pew Center on the States, Detroit Renaissance and the Detroit Regional Chamber as well as prosecutors, law enforcement leaders and faith groups to adopt programs that have proven effective at keeping the public safe while saving tax dollars. The new legislation promises to make Michigan safer by investing the dollars saved from corrections spending into crime prevention. The working group's recommendations have been introduced in the Legislature by Sen. Alan Cropsey, R-DeWitt, and Rep. Andrew Kandrevas, D-Southgate.

Cropsey has introduced SB 827, which will reform our parole system to:

• Reserve prison space for offenders who truly pose a threat to society.

• Base decisions for parole on an offender's risk to the public.

• Require offenders applying for parole to complete programs proven to increase their chances of succeeding in the community.

• Supervise all released offenders in their communities for at least nine months.

• Ensure that all prisoners serve at least 100% of the minimum sentence imposed by their judge.

Kandrevas has introduced HB 4977, which will:

• Form local community corrections boards so that local factors and needs can be taken into account in placing offenders in community programs.

• Use proven tools to assess the risk of offenders assigned to community corrections.

• Allow only offenders who do not pose a likely threat to public safety in these programs.

A coalition of community leaders, businessmen and pastors is rallying to support these reforms. We need your help to keep up the momentum. Will you join us?

Tell your neighbors why it is so important to pass these reforms. Talk to your service club, pastor, Bible study or other groups you belong to. These reforms are key to improving public safety as well as balancing the state budget.

With your help, Michigan can have fewer offenders returning to prison, and that means budget savings, safer neighborhoods and fewer victims. And that is good news for all of us.

Michael Timmis is a Detroit lawyer and serves as chairman of the Board of Prison Fellowship Ministries. Pat Nolan leads Prison Fellowship's criminal justice reform arm, Justice Fellowship. For more information, go to www.justicefellowship.org or www.pfjustice4MI.org.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091128/OPINION05/911280320/1336/OPINION/Revise-laws-to-lower-prison-costs-keep-everyone-safer&template=fullarticle

Posted by lois at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

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 in