The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

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 07, 2009

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)

July 04, 2009

Methland The Death and Life of an American Small Town

Wasted Land
Methland
The Death and Life of an American Small Town
By Nick Reding
255 pp. Bloomsbury. $25
Reviewed By WALTER KIRN
Published: NY Times Book Review July 1, 2009

Think globally, suffer locally. This could be the moral of “Methland,” Nick Reding’s unnerving investigative account of two gruesome years in the life of Oelwein, Iowa, a railroad and meatpacking town of several thousand whipped by a methamphetamine-laced panic whose origins lie outside the place itself, in forces almost too great to comprehend and too pitiless to bear. The ravages of meth, or “crank,” on Oelwein and countless forsaken locales much like it are shown to be merely superficial symptoms of a vaster social dementia caused by, among other things, the iron dominion of corporate agriculture and the slow melting of villages and families into the worldwide financial stew.

The book, wrought from old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting of a type that’s disappearing faster than nonfranchised lunch counters on Main Street, isn’t chiefly a tale of drugs and crime, of dysfunction and despair, but a recession-era tragedy scaled for an “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder stage and seemingly based on a script by William S. Burroughs. The madness stalking tiny, defenseless Oelwein may eventually come for all of us, we learn, and once again, as happens in America whenever our collective attention wanders from the gray struggles of the little guy to the purple capers of the big wheels, attention must be paid. Right now. Or else.

“Methland” begins quietly and solemnly, with a ballad of cultural invisibility. Reding, a loyal native of the Midwest who’s frankly sentimental about its past and starkly lucid about its likely future, invites his rushing readers to gaze down at the “flyover country” of America and see not a grid of farms and county roads but a patchwork of failed institutions and aspirations. There’s the hospital, groaning under a load of uninsured patients with ­minimum-wage jobs and maxed-out household budgets. There’s the school, imperiled by dwindling tax receipts and students with ever more grown-up problems. And there, on a street in a district of drab houses not far from the faltering central business district, is a passel of latter-day Tom Sawyers on bikes, riding along not for the summertime heck of it but to shake up batches of low-grade speed contained in plastic soda jugs lashed to their back fenders.

It’s magnificently potent stuff, this meth, whose crudest versions are concocted from a mash of over-the-counter cold pills and flesh-eating bulk industrial chemicals. Just a few grains of it, snorted through scarred nostrils and allowed to saturate stressed synapses, can keep a person awake and going for days. And that’s not an entirely bad thing here, where survival means working harder for less each year, from late shift to day shift, until perception blurs.

Soon, Reding brings us even farther in, introducing a cast of local characters whose trust it must have been a feat to gain, so wobbly and troubled are their lives. Nathan Lein, the crusading county prosecutor, is the 28-year-old son of pious farmers who’s come back to Oelwein to help clean up the meth mess after obtaining degrees in philosophy, law and environmental science. Lein, a big guy, but not quite big enough given the monstrous foes confronting him, is afflicted by a nervous “habit of slowly raising his hand to his face and then rubbing the tip of his nose in one quick motion, as if to remove a stain that only he can perceive.”

Manning another fortress against the siege is Dr. Clay Hallberg, Oelwein’s leading physician and a chain-smoking, trembling alcoholic who likes to swill cheap canned beer in his garage. Oddly, like Lein, he’s an amateur philosopher, given to quoting Kant and reading Chomsky and trying to fit his hometown’s woes — ghoulish orgies of domestic violence, toxic explosions of backyard crank labs, psychotic episodes at Do Drop Inn — into overarching historical patterns. He and Lein share a longing, perhaps even a mania, to achieve an enlightened perspective on decline, if only because it lifts them temporarily out of their harsh grass-roots struggle with its effects.

The effects themselves are hardly abstract. In the tradition of James ­Agee’s writings on Depression-era share-­croppers, Reding displays the faces of the damned in broken-capillary close-ups. In the grisliest passage of “Methland,” which deserves to be quoted at some length so as to convey its hellish momentum, he invites us to share in the torments of Roland Jarvis, a paranoid small-time meth cook, in the Dante-like interlude after the combustion of his improvised home lab (just one of hundreds in the area). “Jarvis looked down and saw what he thought was egg white on his bare arms. It was not egg white; it was the viscous state of his skin now that the water had boiled out of it. Jarvis flung it off himself, and then he saw that where the egg white had been he could now see roasting muscle. His skin was dripping off his body in sheets. . . . He’d have pulled the melting skeins of skin from himself in bigger, more efficient sections but for the fact that his fingers had burned off of his hands. His nose was all but gone now, too, and he ran back and forth among the gathered neighbors, unable to scream, for his esophagus and his voice box had cooked inside his throat.”

Too many scenes of sulfurous agony might chase away the most calloused, ambitious reader, so Reding recounts these nightmares sparingly, surrounding them with stretches of patient journalism tracing the convergence of social vectors that made the meth plague nearly inevitable and its eradication well-nigh impossible. He details, with blunt statistics and apt anecdotes, the vanishing of educated young males from rural Iowa, as well as the butchering of middle-class jobs at the local packing plant.

The agricultural conglomerates that have gobbled up Oelwein and similar farm towns may feed the world, but they starve the folks who work for them, breeding a craving for synthetic stimulants that conveniently sap the appetite while enlarging the body’s capacity for toil. These offal-streaked Dickensian mills are also magnets for desperate immigrant laborers who, in some cases, blaze the smuggling trails that run up into the Corn Belt from Mexico, home to the gang lords who own the superlabs that, increasingly, dominate the meth trade.

“Vicious cycle” is not an adequate term. As Reding painstakingly presents it, the production, distribution and consumption of methamphetamine is a self-catalyzing catastrophe of Chernobylish dimensions. The rich, with their far-off, insulated lives, get richer and more detached, while the poor get high and, finally, wasted. In the meanwhile, the traffickers fatten in their dens, expanding their arsenals and their private armies, some of whose troops are recruited from the ranks of the pale zombies their business spawns.

A photon of cheer at the end of this grim tunnel emerges toward the end of “Methland” when, thanks to tireless efforts by a new mayor, a shaky economic revitalization succeeds in sprucing up the town and brightening its prospects. At the same time, the embattled Lein and Hallberg manage to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps just as they’re about to plunge over sheer emotional cliffs.

How all are faring in the current downturn isn’t revealed, and perhaps that’s for the good, because readers who’ve followed Reding into the underworld deserve a measure of hope for their devotion. What’s clear is that the golden rolling heartland that Americans used to think symbolized stability beats fitfully and irregularly still and almost certainly remains inclined to seek out sources of chemical optimism. And no one, least of all Reding, who knows what’s what on an intimate, human level as well as on the astral plane of globalism, can tell us where it will all end — only that, all things being equal in an increasingly unequal land, it doesn’t have far or very long to go.

Walter Kirn, a frequent contributor to the Book Review, is the author of “Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever.”
A version of this article appeared in print on July 5, 2009, on page BR1 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/books/review/Kirn-t.html?_r=1&ref=books

Posted by lois at 03:53 PM | Comments (0)

July 02, 2009

"Racism's Hidden Toll"

Racism's Hidden Toll
by: Ryan Blitstein
Does the stress of living in a white-dominated society make African Americans get sick and die younger than their white counterparts? Apparently, yes.
more at....
http://www.miller-mccune.com/health/racisms-hidden-toll-1268

Posted by lois at 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

April 20, 2009

Three book reviews: Abolishing The Prison Industrial Complex and Freeing All Political Prisoners

Abolishing The Prison Industrial Complex and Freeing All Political Prisoners
Sunday, April 19 2009
By Hans Bennett
Prisons Above all, these three highly-recommended books (available online at www.akpress.org) argue that prison-related issues are inseparable from racism, classism, sexism, and all oppression, so the more we know about prisons, the better informed multi-issue activist strategies will be. They conclude that in working to abolish all oppression, we must also work to abolish the PIC and free all political prisoners.
Abolishing The Prison Industrial Complex and Freeing All Political Prisoners
A Book review of:

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, edited by Lois Ahrens, PM Press, 2008.

Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners, edited by Matt Meyer, PM Press, 2008.

Abolition Now! Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against The Prison Industrial Complex, edited by the CR10 Publications Collective, AK Press, 2008.

2008 marked the ten-year anniversaries of both the prison abolitionist Critical Resistance (CR) conference in Oakland, CA that coined the phrase "prison industrial complex" (PIC) and the National Jericho Movement’s march in Washington DC that demanded the release of all US political prisoners and prisoners of war. To commemorate the 1998 events, the CR10 conference was held in Oakland in September, and Jericho organized a march to the United Nations in October.

These two important events in 1998 successfully re-energized the prison-activist and political prisoner support movements rooted in the 1960s and 1970s. However, while recognizing this accomplishment, three new books document how the prison industrial complex has actually grown bigger and stronger since 1998, while the post-911 climate has further escalated political repression. While recognizing this frustrating reality, these new books look honestly at both the accomplishments and shortcomings of the last ten years.

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix

The new book The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, reprints three comic books published as part of the Real Costs of Prisons Project (RCPP), which began in 2000. So far, 125,000 comic books have been printed, with over 100,000 distributed for free to community groups and college classes alike. Featuring artwork by Kevin Pyle, Sabrina Jones and Susan Willmarth, all three comic books can be freely downloaded at www.realcostofprisons.org.

Prison abolitionists Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore write in the book’s introduction that the RCPP’s value "has been to show us how the system of mass incarceration permeates our lives, who is paying the costs of that system and the many ways the system is vulnerable to people who put their thought and effort into organizing to shrink it." Significantly, the RCPP’s comics "demonstrate that the ideas we need to change the world can be explained simply enough and packaged attractively enough to be used by all kinds of readers." Prisoners and their families can "understand material usually circulated only among academics and those who focus on policy."

Editor Lois Ahrens writes that "a central goal of the comic books is to politicize, not pathologize." She argues that the "deregulation and globalization" of the last 30 years has "resulted in impoverishing urban economies, limiting opportunities for meaningful work and slashing funding for quality education, marginalizing the poor, and creating more inequality. The comic books place individual experience in this context and challenge a central message of neo-liberal ideology: the myth that people can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. In this paradigm, racism, sexism, classism, and economic inequality are not part of the picture. Most people now believe that change happens through personal transformation rather than political struggle and change."

The recent growth of the PIC and mass incarceration is staggering. Ahrens writes that "every year from 1947 through the beginning of the 1970s, approximately 200,000 people were incarcerated in the US. Today, there are more than 2.3 million men and women incarcerated, with more than 5 million more on parole and probation."

The 'Prison Town' comic book debunks the myth that building a new prison actually helps to revitalize a town with an ailing economy, and instead illustrates the many negative costs that a new prison can impose. Importantly, Prison Town also documents how many towns learned by example and cited the prisons’ negative impact in successful campaigns to stop prison construction in their community.

'Prisoners of the War on Drugs' is a heart-wrenching look at the victims of the so-called "war on drugs." At least according to its official purpose, the "war on drugs" has been a total failure, resulting in the mass incarceration of non-violent drug offenders at a huge, inefficient expense to tax-payers. Prisoners emphasizes "harm reduction" and treatment as a better solution, stating that the "war on drugs locks up more users than dealers. Most want to quit, but can’t. A year of treatment costs much less than a year of incarceration, plus: the person can work, pay taxes & take part in family life." While drug laws may seem insane, they appear to have unofficial motives that are highly rational. For example, they have served to accelerate mass imprisonment, the criminalization of poverty, and the erosion of civil-liberties.

'Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women & Their Children' concludes the three-comic book series. The stories presented here are mostly fictional, but are based on the writers’ research and personal experience working with women prisoners. Therefore, Ahrens explains that the stories "represent the lives of hundreds of thousands of people suffering as a result of the war on drugs." Perhaps most outrageous is the true story of Regina McKnight, the first woman in the US to be convicted of murder because of behavior while pregnant. When McKnight’s baby was delivered stillborn and an autopsy found traces of cocaine in the fetus she was arrested and convicted of murder with a 20-year sentence. In 2008, following several appeals and eight years in prison, the South Carolina Supreme Court unanimously reversed her conviction, after concluding that there is no medical evidence of cocaine causing stillbirths.

Let Freedom Ring

Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free US Political Prisoners, is an epic 877-page compilation of both pre-existing documents and original articles. Explaining the context of its release, editor Matt Meyer cites the recent persecution of the San Francisco Eight, who are former Black Panther Party (BPP) members being charged with a 30-year old crime. Beginning with the 2006 grand jury, "the state threw down a gauntlet. When it became clear that the investigations were reopening cases based on evidence obtained primarily through torture, the message was unmistakable: Be afraid, be very afraid, and don’t even think of fighting back. When these same men stood strong, firm on the principle that they would not take part in a new, government sponsored witch-hunt, they sent a counter-message on behalf of us all: we will not allow our communities, our struggles, our communities, our very lives to be criminalized by a corrupt and racist criminal justice system." This spirit of resistance to state repression flows throughout Let Freedom Ring.

The book’s many sections focus on a wide range of US political prisoners, featuring both facts about their case, and actual writing from the prisoners themselves. One particularly interesting section is titled Resisting Repression: Out and Proud, which includes the classic 1991 interview "Dykes and Fags Want to Know: Interview with Lesbian Political Prisoners," featuring Laura Whitehorn (released in 1999), a well as Linda Evans and Susan Rosenberg, who were both pardoned by President Clinton in 2001. Also notable is a 1991 speech given by former BPP political prisoner Dhoruba Bin-Wahad, who was released after 19 years. Considered a groundbreaking speech from a Black Muslim revolutionary, Bin-Wahad declared that "we can not build a new society if we premise that society on the oppression of other people." Continuing the legacy of BPP co-founder Huey P. Newton, he argued that fighting the oppression of women and GLBTs is inseparable from the fight against capitalism, racism, and all oppression. Also featured is a tribute to the late Kuwasi Balagoon, who died in prison of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1986. In the words of poet Walidah Imarisha, Balagoon "was an anarchist in a Black nationalist movement, he was queer in a straight dominated movement, he was a guerrilla fighter after it was ‘chic,’ and he...demanded to be seen not as a revolutionary icon, but as a person, beautiful and flawed."

Abolition Now!

Abolition Now! was published to coincide with the CR10 conference. The introduction explains that Critical Resistance (CR) is not only "struggling to tear down the cages" of the prison industrial complex (PIC), but "also to abolish the actions of policing, surveillance, and imprisonment that give the PIC its power. We are also reminded that abolition is the creation of possibilities for our dreams and demands for health and happiness—for what we want, not what we think we can get."

The book features reflections and constructive criticism from a variety of CR organizers and activists. For example, Mills College professor Julia Sudbury emphasizes the "need for healing as an abolitionist practice. Many of us come to this work with our own wounds," and while "many of us draw energy and inspiration from these wounds," we are "also drained by these traumas...As a result our movement can be very ‘head’ oriented—talking, planning, thinking, writing—and not body and emotion oriented." Sudbury concludes that a "movement against a violent and violating phenomenon like the PIC cannot hope to be successful if we don’t directly address and heal the effects of that violence."

Former political prisoner Bo Brown argues that the movement should have more "street awareness" and not be limited to "legislative" goals and actions. "You have to do both. I think you can get lost in that and you can stay there and consider yourself a good person and never really get your hands dirty in a human kind of way...I’d like to see us come up with some kind of support group for families with prisoners that’s real. We need to figure out how to support the prisoners when they’re coming home. We need to understand post-traumatic shock on an ongoing, day-to-day basis."

Andrea Smith, co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence argues that "the criminalization approach proffered in the mainstream anti-violence movement doesn’t work. And, also, this criminalization approach obfuscates the role of the state in perpetrating gender violence. At the same time, we have to deal with the practical concerns for safety for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Thus, we are working on developing community accountability strategies that do not rely on the state, and also do not depend on a romanticized version of ‘community’...This intersects with work in indigenous rights movements, which have concepts of indigenous nationhood that are not based on nation-state forms of governance that rule through violence, domination, and control."

Abolition Now! also spotlights examples of organizations putting abolitionist strategy into practice, like with the LEAD Project’s group of transition homes for women returning from imprisonment in the Watts District of Los Angeles, called "A New Way of Life." Also, the UBUNTU Coalition in Durham, NC, works at responding to violence without reinforcing the PIC.

Prisons Are Everywhere

Above all, these three highly-recommended books (available online at www.akpress.org) argue that prison-related issues are inseparable from racism, classism, sexism, and all oppression, so the more we know about prisons, the better informed multi-issue activist strategies will be. They conclude that in working to abolish all oppression, we must also work to abolish the PIC and free all political prisoners.

--Based out of the SF Bay Area, Hans Bennett is an independent multi-media journalist (www.insubordination.blogspot.com) and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia (www.abu-jamal-news.com).

Posted by lois at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2009

A Racial Shift in Drug-Crime Prisoners Fewer Blacks and More Whites, Says Sentencing Project

A Racial Shift in Drug-Crime Prisoners
Fewer Blacks and More Whites, Says Sentencing Project
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 15, 2009; Page A04

For the first time since crack cocaine sparked a war on drugs 20 years ago, the number of black Americans in state prisons for drug offenses has fallen sharply, while the number of white prisoners convicted for drug crimes has increased, according to a report released yesterday.

The D.C.-based Sentencing Project reported that the number of black inmates in state prisons for drug offenses had fallen from 145,000 in 1999 to 113,500 in 2005, a 22 percent decline. In that period, the number of white drug offenders rose steadily, from about 50,000 to more than 72,000, a 43 percent increase. The number of Latino drug offenders was virtually unchanged at about 51,000.

The findings represent a significant shift in the racial makeup of those incarcerated for drug crimes and could signal a gradual change in the demographics of the nation's prison population of 2 million, which has been disproportionately black for decades. Drug offenders make up about a quarter of the prison population.

The Sentencing Project report and other experts said the numbers could reflect several factors, including an increased reliance by prosecutors and judges on prison alternatives such as drug courts and a shift in police focus to methamphetamines, which are used and distributed mostly by white Americans. In addition, the report said, crack use and arrests have declined steadily since the 1990s.

The report relied heavily on data compiled by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and covered six years, ending in 2005, the last year the bureau broke down the state prison population by race and drug offense.

Maryland and Virginia authorities said the racial breakdown of prisoners incarcerated in their states for drug offenses was not available. But the racial makeup of their overall prison populations had not changed significantly over that period, they said.

African American drug offenders, who have been convicted most often for dealing and possessing crack cocaine, still made up a disproportionate share of drug offenders in state prisons, 45 percent in 2005. That was down from nearly 58 percent in 1999. Black Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population.
ad_icon

The number of white drug offenders in state prisons rose from 20 percent to 29 percent, and Latino prisoners made up 20 percent of such inmates.

"I have no doubt that crystal meth explains some of the white increase, but I'm not ready to say it's the reason for all of the white increase," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which opposes stiff penalties for nonviolent drug crimes. "It's also hard to imagine that [drug courts] are not having some effect. Most drug courts are in urban areas where African Americans live."

Twenty percent of white inmates used methamphetamines in the month before they were arrested, compared with 1 percent of black inmates, according to interviews conducted in the nation's 14,500 state prisons and 3,700 federal prisons.

Drug courts offer nonviolent offenders the option of undergoing rigorous substance-abuse treatment and criminal rehabilitation or going to jail. There are more than 2,000 such courts in operation, mostly in cities with large black communities ravaged by violence associated with crack cocaine. White offenders also are increasingly winding up in drug courts for abusing methamphetamines.

Mauer also hypothesized that drug dealers might have shifted from open-air crack cocaine markets to dealing indoors, making them harder for police to catch. And he speculated that because so many African American men have been incarcerated, there are fewer on the street to be arrested.

But James E. Felman, co-chairman of the Sentencing Committee for the American Bar Association, said that in Tampa, where he practices law, black suspects are still being regularly arrested on crack cocaine charges and being handed out long sentences.

"I can't second-guess their study, but I haven't seen a change," Felman said. "Maybe we're getting smarter on crime in some states. That could be part of it."

David B. Muhlhausen, a senior policy analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, said stronger police enforcement of methamphetamine trafficking and use, coupled with treatment options mostly for urban crack cocaine offenders, probably caused the shift. "There is some data out there that suggests that drug courts and drug treatments reduce recidivism," he said. "If you take the less serious offenders and put them into programs other than prison it would be a benefit to society."

The war on drugs began in 1986, when Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act to combat violence associated with the crack cocaine trade. Lawmakers were prompted by the death of University of Maryland basketball player Len Bias, who they mistakenly thought had died from ingesting crack. Bias overdosed on powder cocaine.

Last year, then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) joined several of his colleagues in saying that his support for the legislation was a mistake. The law contributed to the incarceration of more than a half-million people in state and federal prisons for drug offenses, compared with the 40,000 jailed for the same offenses in 1980.

According to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics last year, 7.2 million people are under prison supervision, as inmates, parolees and probationers, at a cost of about $45 billion per year.

California, which has one of the nation's largest prison populations, farmed out 170,000 inmates to private prisons in as far away as Tennessee in 2006 to relieve costs and has relaxed its penal code to relieve prison overcrowding.

Jeffrey L. Sedgwick, a former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said the record incarceration might be worth the cost. "As the number of people under correctional supervision goes up, crime goes down," he said. Conservative estimates put the annual cost of violent crime at about $17 billion, Sedgwick said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/14/AR2009041401775.html
Report on-line: http://sentencingproject.org/Admin%5CDocuments%5Cpublications%5Cdp_raceanddrugs.pdf

Posted by lois at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

March 30, 2009

Real Cost of Prisons Comix wins National Council on Crime and Delinquency PASS Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Announces
The 2008 PASS Award Winners
Oakland, CA, March 20, 2009

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency is pleased to announce the 2008 Winners of its respected PASS Awards (Prevention for a Safer Society). NCCD honors the media’s success and vital role in illuminating the people and programs that uncover the root causes of crime and those that promise to protect our most precious resource—our youth—against involvement in crime.

A critical link in successful policies related to youth and justice is the education of the public. The media is uniquely positioned to be this link, and we gratefully acknowledge their efforts to fulfill that responsibility. Each year the PASS Awards honor media professionals in the fields of print, literature, broadcast media, television, and film in recognition of thoughtful and factual coverage of the issues. Special consideration is given to those stories that highlight solutions to criminal and juvenile justice and child welfare problems.

NCCD is the nation's oldest private organization working to attain responsive and effective criminal justice, juvenile justice, and child welfare systems. For over 100 years, NCCD has been committed to promoting criminal justice strategies that are fair, humane, cost-effective, and uncompromising in public safety. The issues that have defined NCCD since its inception are the need for a separate and humane justice system for children, alternatives to incarceration, and the fundamental connection between social justice and public safety.

For more information on NCCD, please visit our website at www.nccd-crc.org

FILM
Ice T Presents “25 to Life” Deloss Pickett, Michael Dallum
“At the Death House Door” Steve James, Peter Gilbert

LITERATURE
American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment by Sasha Abramsky

Chasing Justice by Kerry Max Cook, Sandra Kaye Pressey, Kerry Justice Cook, Peter Hubbard

From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King by Robert Hillary King and Andrea Gibbons

I’ll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison by Walley Lamb

Letters From the Dhamma Brothers by Jenny Phillips, Pariyatti Press, Ron Cavanaugh

Maximum Security: The True Meaning of Freedom by Alan Gompers

Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration by Paul Wright, Tara Herivel and Dianne Wachtel

Stanley Tookie Williams Street Peace Series by Stanley Tookie Williams and Barbara Becnel

The Real Cost of Prisons Comix by Lois Ahrens, Kevin Pyle, Sabrina Jones, Susan Willmarth, Ellen Miller-Mack and Craig Gilmore

MAGAZINE
San Jose Mercury News
“A Painful Choice for Moms in Prison” Edwin Garcia, Karen Borchers, Miller-McCune
“Is This the Future of the War on Drugs?” by Vince Beiser,John Mecklin

NEWSPAPER
East Valley Tribune “Reasonable Doubt” by Ryan Gabrielson, Paul Giblin, Patti Epler
Long Beach Press-Telegram “Lots of Answers, but No Easy Fixes” byWendy Thomas Russell andTracy Manzer
Seattle Weekly “Neverminded” by Laura Onstot and Mike Seely
The Daily Review “Educate to Break Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline” by Tammerlin Drummond
The Sacramento Bee “Unprotected” Marjie Lundstrom, Sam Stanton, Autumn Cruz, Mitchell Brooks
The Village Voice “Teen Murders at Rikers Jail” by Graham Rayman, Tony Ortega
The Washington Post “Rehabilitating Juvenile Offenders” by Robert Pierre, Carol Morello Westword
“Stand and Deliver” byAdam Cayton-Holland, Patricia Calhoun, Anthony Camera

RADIO
American Radioworks -“Gangster Confidential" Michael Montgomery and Catherine Winter
KALW Radio “Prisons in Crisis: A State of Emergency in California” JoAnn Mar, Alyne Ellis
KQED/Forum “Prisoner Health” by Scott Shafer, Nick Vidinsky andDan Zoll

TELEVISION/ VIDEO
HBO - “The Wire, Season 5” by David Simon, Nina Kostroff Noble, Ed Burns, Joe Chappelle.Karen L.Thorson
SoCal Connected/KCET -“Inside Locke High” Angela Shelley andAlexandria Gales, Brett Wood, Michael Bloecher,Bret Marcus
NBC/Wolf Films “Law and Order: SVU - Confession” Dick Wolf, Neal Baer, Ted Kotcheff, Peter Jankowski, Arthur Forney, Judith McCreary

WEB
AlterNet -“Meet Gus Puryear” by Silja J.A. Talvi and Jan Frel
City Limits -“A Ballot’s Breadth Away from Rejoining Society” by Karen Loew, Curtis Stephen, Rosie McCobb
City Limits “Debating How to Police a Challenging Population” Karen Loew, Tram Whitehurst

Posted by lois at 09:30 PM | Comments (0)

March 25, 2009

"Resistance Behind Bars- The Struggles of Incercerated Women" by Vikki Law

I just finished reading "Resistance Behind Bars" written by Vikki Law. In case you don't know about it or haven't had the chance to I recommend you buy a copy and read it.
I will quote a little from the introduction in which Vikki writes about her response to the comment: "Women (in prison) don't organize."
"I began to search for stories---and women--who would disprove this assertion. I found mentions of lawsuits, and using various state department of corrections' websites looked up their address addresses and wrote them letters asking if they would share their experiences with me." And "To ensure that I was representing their struggles accurately and to give them the opportunity to add, update or delete any of the tales they do not want to share with the public, I sent each woman draft after draft of the chapters her voice and experience(s) appeared in. "
The voices of women form form the majority of the book which took 8 years to complete. The chapters reflect the concerns of the women with whom Vikki corresponded and include Barriers to Basic Care, Mothers and Children, Sexual Abuse,Education, Women's Work, Grievances, lawsuits and the Power of the Media. Other chapters focus on Breaking the Silence, Resistance Among Women in Immigrant Detention and an Historical Background.
The book is written in plain English. It frames resistance by women very differently than the kinds of resistance by men prisoners which has come to define "resistance."
The book is published by PM Press and you can order a copy on-line (https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=91) or I am sure your local bookstore can order it for you.

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

March 19, 2009

$1 Spent on Prevention Saves $10, Study Says

$1 Spent on Prevention Saves $10, Study Says
March 16, 2009

ISU report to United Nations conference says drug prevention programs help the economy

AMES, Iowa -- Two Iowa State University researchers have given communities worldwide good reason to implement substance abuse prevention programs. They're economically beneficial, with a nearly $10 return for every dollar invested in prevention.

Richard Spoth, director of the Partnerships in Prevention Science Institute (PPSI) at Iowa State, and Max Guyll, ISU assistant professor of psychology, presented that message last month to substance abuse experts representing approximately 100 countries at a conference in Vienna, Austria, co-sponsored by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Health Organization.

"The primary objective of the conference was to present the state of the art on translating evidence-based prevention and treatment into practice -- to suggest effective strategies for demand reduction (in substance abuse)," Spoth said.

"We showed how prevention can be particularly economically beneficial," he said. "The presentation began by reviewing the evidence on the cost effectiveness and the return on the investment -- or cost benefits -- of prevention programs. I also did a second presentation on the scientific advances and positive outcomes of family-focused prevention, illustrated by our own research."
Applying national, local data in cost analysis

The ISU researchers applied their own and national data to calculate both the cost effectiveness and cost benefit for two of PPSI's intervention programs -- Iowa Strengthening Families Program (ISFP), which works on the family level to prevent substance abuse; and the Life Skills Training Program (LST), which was designed for school-based implementation. Spoth defines cost effectiveness as the cost to achieve a particular outcome -- such as the prevention of an alcohol use disorder -- while the cost benefit assesses whether savings generated by prevention are greater than costs spent on prevention.

The longitudinal "Project Family" study recruited 667 families through 33 Iowa school districts. The researchers calculated that the ISFP intervention cost $12,459 per disorder prevented, but resulted in a $119,633 benefit to communities per alcohol disorder prevented -- a $9.60 return on each dollar invested. The "Capable Families and Youth" trial recruited 679 families through 36 Iowa school districts. Researchers found that life skills training intervention cost $4,921 per methamphetamine use case prevented, but produced a $130,013 employer benefit per methamphetamine user prevented -- a $9.98 return on each dollar invested.

"Effective and efficient prevention promises to save possibly billions of dollars per year, provided we can learn how to effectively implement it on a larger scale," Spoth told the conference.

Iowa State was the only American university that had a presenter invited to speak on the topic of prevention. Spoth, who received a commendation from the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism last year for his prevention work, was also the only expert asked to present twice at the conference.

"I spoke with people there who were very interested in doing family-focused prevention programming, which is evidence-based, in their countries," Spoth said. "Some of them are developing these vast infrastructures, devoting extensive resources. I received a number of requests where they wanted me to get involved in some way with a group that was working on a large scale implementation of prevention programming in their country."
Conference appearance generates international interest

Spoth reports that his conference appearance generated requests from Chile, India, Indonesia, Senegal and a number of other countries for consulting assistance as they implement intervention programs -- possibly modeled after the ones he's successfully implemented through PPSI.

He's also been asked to participate in the meetings by the International Narcotics Control Board, located in Vienna, to work with them to produce their annual report.

"They evaluate international substance issues in depth," Spoth said. "What they would want me to address is the state of the art in effective prevention worldwide."

The complete ISU reports "Prevention's Cost Effectiveness -- Illustrative Economic Benefits of General Population Interventions," and "Prevention of Substance-related Problems: Effectiveness of Family-focused Prevention" are available online at: http://www.ppsi.iastate.edu/press/vienna.htm.

Posted by lois at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)

March 14, 2009

Real Cost of Prisons Comix (the book)

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Buzz:

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

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

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

November 16, 2008

MA: Prisoners to be double bunked due to sentencing/war on drugs

Prison to double-bunk inmates
Sentencing changes urged to ease overcrowding in system
Boston Globe
By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff | November 16, 2008

MILFORD - The number of inmates in Massachusetts prisons is projected to reach about 12,000 next year for the first time, prompting the head of the prison system to call for sentencing changes that ease overcrowding and to proceed with a controversial plan to double-bunk inmates at a maximum-security facility.

About two weeks short of his one-year anniversary as commissioner of the Department of Correction, Harold W. Clarke said last week that he hopes Governor Deval Patrick reintroduces legislation to reform "mandatory minimum" sentences, which Clarke said have led to a surge in inmates, many with no history of violence.

"We've been really concerned with mandatory sentencing laws," Clarke, 57, said at the department's headquarters here. "We don't want people backed up in prison that are not posing a risk to the community at large."

On Nov. 3, the state's 18 prisons held 11,380 inmates, putting them at 44 percent above capacity, Clarke said. The number is projected to grow by 5 to 7 percent next year, which would put the population at between 11,949 and 12,176.

The prison population declined steadily from 10,990 in 1999 to 9,825 in 2005, but it has surged since then, according to department statistics. The totals include convicted offenders, people awaiting trial, and individuals committed involuntarily - even though they have finished their sentences - because they still pose a danger, such as some sex offenders.

With crime rates remaining relatively stable, Clarke said, the main reason for the surge is mandatory-minimum sentences passed by Massachusetts since the 1980s. Many of the laws were approved as part of a harsh nationwide crackdown on drug offenses, but a growing number of judges, defense lawyers, prison administrators, and advocates for prisoners say they often do more harm than good.

As of Sept. 22, about 1,917 inmates were serving a mandatory minimum sentence for a drug offense, said Diane Wiffin, a prison system spokeswoman. Those inmates are ineligible for parole and are forbidden from participating in work-release programs or halfway houses that could ease overcrowding.

Patrick filed legislation last year that would have let drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences participate in work-release programs, but the bill did not win passage. He has refiled it for the new legislative session. The Patrick administration is also scheduled to complete a master plan in December that will discuss construction projects that could relieve overcrowding, said a spokesman for the governor.

In the meantime, Clarke is moving forward with a plan to double-bunk some inmates at a maximum-security prison. As early as year's end, he said, he plans to move 400 inmates from maximum-security MCI-Cedar Junction at Walpole to Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.

Each of the 400 inmates would share a cell with another prisoner at Souza-Baranowski, which has 1,028 inmates. Cedar Junction would become a medium-security prison that takes in new inmates until they are classified, a role currently played by MCI-Concord. And Old Colony Correctional Center, a medium- and minimum-security prison in Bridgewater, would mostly house inmates with diagnoses of mental illness.

The plan to put two inmates in a cell at the 10-year-old Souza-Baranowski has drawn fire from prisoner rights activists and the union that represents correction officers.

Leslie Walker, executive director of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said that double-bunking at Souza-Baranowski - where prisoners spend scant time outside their cells - would probably lead to violence.

"You're taking two prisoners that the department has deemed of maximum-security dangerousness and you're locking them together in a cell for over 20 hours a day," she said. "I think it's a very risky measure that should be taken only in desperation."

Her comments reflect a rare agreement with Steve Kenneway, the president of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union. He told the Globe last month that putting two inmates in the same cell would provoke fights, stabbings, and killings.

"There are some inmates out there who are going to make a choice whether to accept a roommate or kill their roommate," he said. "That's not an exaggeration."

But Clarke, who headed the prison systems of Nebraska and then Washington State before Patrick appointed him last November, said prisoners already share cells or dorms in the state's 16 medium- and minimum-security prisons. He said many other states double-bunk prisoners, as does the federal Bureau of Prisons. And Souza-Baranowski cells were originally designed to house two inmates, he said.

"We don't have many options - one, releasing offenders, and two, building more capacity - and I'm not sure that either of those are now palatable," he said.

In another matter, Clarke and Walker said in separate interviews that they hoped a federal suit filed last year by the Disability Law Center against the Department of Correction over treatment of mentally ill inmates will be settled soon.

The center, a nonprofit advocacy group that provides legal help for the disabled, alleged in a March 2007 suit that hundreds of seriously mentally ill prisoners were held in cells 23 hours a day in inhumane conditions, leading to self-mutilation, the swallowing of razor blades, and at least seven suicides since November 2004. The group, which has been assisted by Walker's organization, urged the creation of special treatment units similar to those in at least six other states.

Clarke said last week that settlement talks have been under way for a year and that soon "we're hoping to be able to say, 'We don't have to go to court, we can avoid litigation,' which I'm certain will serve all parties best," he said.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/11/16/prison_to_double_bunk_inmates?mode=PF

Posted by lois at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)

October 22, 2008

Activists publish comics exposé on 'real cost of prisons': A Q&A

Activists publish comics exposé on 'real cost of prisons': A Q&A
By Larry Parnass
10/22/2008 - 13:57

NORTHAMPTON - All this decade, Lois Ahrens of Northampton has been working to reveal the social, emotional and plain old dollar cost the country faces by jailing 2.3 million people.

Tonight at 7 p.m., she and Ellen Miller-Mack will talk about their "Real Cost of Prisons Comix" project at Broadside Bookshop, at 247 Main St. in Northampton.

Three comic books they and other writers and artists created over the past several years - works that explore the consequences of the nation's policies on incarceration - have been gathered in a single volume by PM Press of Oakland, Calif., with a new preface, introduction and reader statements.

Without taking any pay for her labors, Ahrens has mailed 100,000 copies of the three earlier comic books to readers around the country - a place that jails seven times as many people per capita as Canada.

Ahrens spoke about her ongoing work.

QUESTION: Will collecting the comics into a single paperback book enable this work to reach a wider audience?

LOIS AHRENS: I'm hoping that the book will allow the comics and the materials that go with them to reach a different audience. My big hope is that places like public libraries buy it and that it will be used in college classes. That it will be sold to the public in a way the comics never were, since they were given away. It will reach maybe not a wider audience, but a different audience.

QUESTION: How do you overcome the belief, held by some, that prisons make everyone outside safer?

LOIS AHRENS: It's an ill-informed belief. Criminologists have never been able to prove that there is a correlation between incarceration and the rise and fall of the crime rate. Incarceration has been going steadily up. From the end of WWII to 1970, there were 200,000 people in prison in the U.S. From then to now, it has grown to 2.3 million people - and the crime rate has not really changed. There are all of these studies now that show that when you have the kind of intense incarceration that goes on in cities, the crime rate goes up, because whole neighborhoods become eviscerated. It doesn't cause less crime, it causes more crime.

QUESTION: Now that a massive prison-industrial complex is built, what realistic hope is there of dismantling it?

LOIS AHRENS: The hope is that it hasn't existed for centuries, it's been built over the last 30 years. It's been built because people have been willing to pay for it. It could be that people are starting to see they haven't gotten much for their money. In Massachusetts, the budget has more for prisons than for higher education. Maybe people would rather pay for higher education than for prisons. Maybe the days of pure punitive policy are not something people still want to pay for, especially now. It's going to take people saying they think this is a bad idea - and they're tired of paying for it.
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2008 All rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2008/10/22/activists-publish-comics-expos%C3%A9-039real-cost-prisons039-qampa

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

October 04, 2008

Two and a Half Hours a Week. An Inside/Out Class at the Hampshire County (MA) Jail

Two and a Half Hours a Week
An Inside/Out Class at the Hampshire County (MA) Jail
By Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne '01

Greg was flipping through pages of class readings. He was looking for a specific example to support his point about changing gender roles among Cambodian refugees fleeing the Pol Pot regime. He flipped one page, then another and another.

“I can’t find it right now,” he told a classmate. “I don’t have a highlighter.... I’d like to have one, a couple different highlighters, so I could...” His voice trailed off as he mimed the act of marking up the passages by topic.

Greg had pored over the readings; every page bore the penciled-in marginalia of a determined student. But he isn’t just any Amherst student, and the giveaway was that he had only a pencil at his disposal. The Hampshire Jail and House of Corrections has strict rules, and as long as Greg was imprisoned there, he had to follow them, even during the two and a half hours each Wednesday that he spent taking Regulating Citizenship, an Amherst political science course taught by Kristin Bumiller, a professor of political science and women’s and gender studies.

Most of the cinderblock visiting room at the jail is painted an institutional cream color that might well be called “bleak” in the Benjamin Moore catalog. One wall, though, showcases a colorful mural with a number of scenes that are meant to be uplifting: a man in a graduation cap and gown, family crowded around in pride; a multicultural group of men and women holding hands around the earth; what looks like a camel wearing an orange robe, a city of skyscrapers on his back, his angel wings poised for flight. Crooked posters of the beach at sunset hang on the other walls, extolling such gems as “Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” This is made-to-order inspiration, with none of the real thing. Posters and paint cannot hide the red line taped in front of the door that leads out of the jail, the red line that no resident of the facility can put even a toe across. Luckily for the students in Bumiller’s class, inspiration was dependent not upon the decorations but upon the conversation occurring within the room.

For 13 weeks last semester, 10 students serving terms in the Hampshire Jail and 11 Amherst students met in this room for Bumiller’s course. They read and discussed Foucault, Locke, Thoreau, Arendt and Kafka, among others, as they examined what citizenship means and how the state can take it away.

Is it possible for an educational system to be conducted by a national state and yet the full social ends of the educative process not be restricted, constrained and corrupted?
—John Dewey, Democracy and Education, from the course readings

Today, there are few educational opportunities in U.S. prisons, and the ones that do exist focus mostly on secondary education. Programs for college credit are scarce, despite research by the U.S. Department of Justice showing that convicts with some college education are less likely to end up in jail again. In 1994, Congress ruled that prisoners are ineligible for Pell grants for higher education, a decision that proved disastrous for college-level education in prisons. In 1983, 41 state prison systems offered post-secondary education courses, enrolling nearly 5 percent of the total prison population, according to a 2005 Ford Foundation report. By 1997, only 21 states offered such programs, and less than 2 percent of the prison population was enrolled. In 2005, enrollment was back near 5 percent, but the educational focus had shifted: two-thirds of the offerings were vocational programs as opposed to courses that count towards a bachelor’s or graduate degree.

One of the most important of these programs, and the one that got Bumiller into the Hampshire facility, is the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which is run by Lori Pompa, a professor at Temple University. In 1997, Pompa took one of her Temple classes to a Pennsylvania state prison. When the students talked with several prisoners, a man serving a life sentence suggested that Pompa ought to turn these conversations into a semester-long class. Pompa agreed, and Inside-Out was born. For seven years, the program existed only at Temple, but Pompa realized that others might be interested in a similar partnership. In 2004, she began to offer training for professors to take the program back to their own colleges and universities. Today, the program has trained 130 professors from 33 states and has enrolled more than 5,000 students.

When Bumiller first heard about Inside-Out, she was intrigued. She had long wanted to teach inside a prison: much of her research has to do with discrimination, power and social justice, and a prison seemed a natural place to examine how all those social influences come together. Pompa’s program held special appeal. “I think what drew me to this was that the inside students and the outside students learn as equals,” says Bumiller. “That’s what is so exciting about this: having groups of people that interact with each other in ways that they wouldn’t without this program.”

Last spring was Bumiller’s third time teaching the course. She began the semester with the question “What is a citizen?,” and went on to ask students to consider how we theoretically imagine a citizen; how democratic societies exclude people from the rights of citizenship; and what impact poverty, consumerism, education and war—and imprisonment—have on a society’s definition of itself. Bumiller wants her students to understand how a democratic society decides who belongs and who does not. “I’m deliberately creating a class that is focusing back on prisons in the United States,” she says, “by getting people to imagine and learn more about other contexts where people are living in highly restrictive conditions.”

The jail itself can function almost as a text. Once, Bumiller remembers, she led a discussion on the bureaucratic authority behind a uniform and how the uniform itself becomes a symbol of power. As she spoke, a prison guard, dressed in uniform, came into the room and stood behind her to take the first of the afternoon’s two head counts. The class laughed. “I thought it was one of those perfect learning moments,” Bumiller says. “It’s one of those things that create clarity by concrete example. Sometimes, the situation or the scene itself becomes an opportunity to learn something about how power operates, without putting the inside students on the spot and having them tell their story.”
Professor Kristin Bumiller and students on
the last day of the semester.

Bumiller’s emotional investment in the course and the students is apparent. That commitment comes partly from her belief that most of her students shouldn’t be incarcerated in the first place. One in 100 Americans is currently in jail, according to the Pew Center on the States, and this fact strikes Bumiller as evidence of American society’s failure to provide for its citizens equally. If it were up to her, only those who pose a violent threat would be in prison. The rest would benefit from social support systems such as job training and job provision, education and mental health and addiction services. “They need to have employment, they need to have social connections, and they need to have mental and physical health,” Bumiller says. “That’s my ultimate goal: not just ‘get everyone out of prison’ but ‘create a system that is going to encourage people’s success in society.’”

But she is not in charge of that system. Her response, then, is to provide access to the best education she can within the limits of the prison system. For the traditional Amherst students, she is unabashedly political in her goals. “I want them to leave with a sense of the real tragedy of the incarceration rate in the United States,” she says. The course costs the college about $5,000 per semester, an amount that covers course packets, transportation for the outside students and entertainment, such as pizza on the last day of class. Amherst’s Office of the Dean of the Faculty paid the first two years; last year, the college’s Center for Community Engagement footed the bill.

Students have to follow a number of special rules. A dress code, much of it set by the Hampshire Jail, is laid out in a contract that the entire class must sign. The students cannot wear clothing that resembles staff uniforms or prison clothes; they cannot wear sleeveless shirts, spaghetti straps or anything else “that reveals the skin inappropriately”; they cannot wear jewelry, underwire bras “or other items sensitive to metal detectors.” Also forbidden are hooded sweatshirts, tank tops, white T-shirts, bandanas, hair ties, colored shoelaces, baseball caps, coats and open-toed shoes. Bumiller recalls with a laugh that on the first day she taught in the facility, an Amherst student showed up for the van in a Che Guevara T-shirt. She had to send him home to change. “Amherst is okay—but not Che Guevara,” she said.

The rules go well beyond a dress code. In class, the traditional Amherst students are called “outside students,” the others “inside students.” Bumiller wants them to see one another as equals. According to the contract, outside students are not in the class “to study the inside students, to ‘help’ the inside students, to find out why the inside students are incarcerated, or for the inside group of students or outside group to ‘teach’ the other group.”

Students know each other by first name only. (To maintain that sense of privacy, Bumiller asked Amherst magazine to use only their first names.) Students are not allowed to exchange contact information. After the end of the semester, they can never communicate again. The regulation is in place as a security measure. “I certainly never felt any kind of danger, threat or trepidation about any of the students in the course,” says Martha Saxton, an associate professor of history and women’s and gender studies who, after learning about Regulating Citizenship, taught a history course at the jail last year. “On the other hand, since all systems are imperfect, it’s possible you could get someone in the course who isn’t completely reliable and who might, when [the course is over], do something foolish.”

Of course, for the students to even have weekly access to one another is far from a given. Not every jail is willing to have a professor come in and teach about civil disobedience, as Bumiller does every year. The Hampshire Jail, which is roughly 10 miles southwest of the Amherst campus, has, for some of its prisoners, a focus on rehabilitation and education, with classes on everything from Spanish to GED preparation. There is a classroom, called “the school,” in the main building that has computers (without Internet access), books and movies. Several inside students describe the Hampshire Jail as “a jail, but not really” because of the focus on rehabilitation and education. Robert, one of the inside students, speaks of Sheriff Robert Garvey as someone who genuinely believes in “helping you address the issues that need to be addressed, making sure that when you are released, you can be a part of society, living in it rather than surviving it.” Robert adds, “He doesn’t want us treated like inmates. He wants us treated like people. When you have a sheriff that will give you a two-liter of soda and pizza for the jail passing inspection, that says a lot about a facility.”

The perception is so strong that a popular name for the jail is “Camp Hamp.” Still, when the bulletproof-glass doors clank shut in “the trap,” a holding pen near the facility’s entrance, where only one door can open at any time and only with the approval of an unseen guard in a booth, there is no denying that this is a place that functions upon the denial of freedoms.

I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.
—Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” from the course readings

The inside and outside students last semester studied the same readings, dressed in similar clothes and were, in most cases, about the same age, but it was hard not to hear echoes of their vastly different lives. Once they began talking, it was easier to distinguish between the two groups in the room. It was not an intelligence difference—the inside students brought as much intelligence and arguably more passion to the course. It was more the way each group had of speaking.

The Amherst students tended to pad their comments with academic jargon, dropping in words such as “acculturation” and “assimilation.” The inside students’ comments came from a less lofty place, and perhaps a less showy place, but they were just as insightful. In a small-group conversation on how Cambodians received refugee status after fleeing the Pol Pot regime, I heard the following exchange:

Marcella: And then also there was this whole movement to not allow any communists in, that the biggest goal was to screen out all communists, so any sort of little implication that they may have had some sort of communist leanings would automatically disqualify them. But because there [were] so many people, [the decision about communist leanings] was based on hearsay and people just talking bad about other people—

Greg: Or somebody else trying to get you to not come....

Marcella: ...Based on these totally arbitrary facts—

Greg: Throwing you under the bus gives me a better chance to get in than you.

In 15 words, Greg had just summed up the point of the questions that Bumiller had raised during the class session.

Bumiller acknowledges that the inside and outside students leave class having learned different things. For the inside students, she says, it’s about opening a door. She aims to give them the chance to talk about their points of view with people who want to listen. “They are getting a sense that they are confident in their own abilities to learn,” she says, “and that they can take full advantage of the situation, just like any Amherst student.”

Some of the inside students described the class as an escape. “It’s been really great to have you guys come here,” said Geremie, an inside student, at the last session. “After our second class, I was really upset it was over, like, ‘Wow, we have to go back to jail now.’ Our time here was really like we weren’t even in jail. So thanks, everyone, for embracing us like we weren’t inmates.”

For the purposes of Bumiller’s class, they were not inmates. The inside students get Amherst credit for the course, meaning that if they go on to college, they will be a few credits ahead. Bumiller describes herself as a tough grader. She won’t publicly discuss her grading for the course, except to say that, so far, everyone has passed. At least one of Bumiller’s students has written to her to say he’s gone on to a university. (The national Inside-Out Program does not keep official numbers on what happens to its students after release from prison, but Pompa, the founder, says the program has transformed many lives.)

The Hampshire Jail selects eligible students from residents of a unit in which men live in dorm-like rooms and spend the bulk of their days in various classes and programs. Bumiller then interviews each potential student individually. She is interested, she says, in students for whom the course could be a springboard to community college or beyond. “I saw this as an opportunity,” says Robert, one of the inside students. Tony Jack ’07, who took Regulating Citizenship his senior year, saw such commitment in his fellow students. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t gone to Head Start,” Jack says, referring to the early education program for at-risk children. “This could be their head start.”

Every outside student I spoke with used the word “experience” when asked why he or she had taken the course. They wanted to experience a jail in so far as they could. (One student admitted that she really had no idea what the topic of “regulating citizenship” would be about.) “If you haven’t committed a crime,” said an outside student named Chris, who’s in the Class of ’10, “if the state hasn’t stepped in and started to change your life yet, it’s easy to not even think about the ways that the state can come in and change lives.”

Robert wanted the outside students to see people like him in a new light. “I just hope that they realize,” he says, “that even though we’re here, we’re still citizens. Eventually we’re going to be part of society again, so don’t cast us off. Even though we’ve made mistakes, that doesn’t mean we can’t change, that we can’t be good people.”

Beyond making them think in new ways, the class also made the outside students behave in new ways. “I think Amherst students regularly go to class without doing the reading,” Bumiller says. “If they come to this class without doing the reading, and they’re sitting next to an inside student who has read it three times, has markings all through it, has five pages of notes, I think they feel pretty embarrassed.” For an Amherst ’08 named Marina, doing hours of homework was more about a sense of responsibility she felt to the inside students. “We can’t be disrespectful and not put in the effort, because we’re part of this class and we’re making the experience for these people. We knew that for them it was a privilege.”

Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.
—Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism, from the course readings

The second-to-last class was about prison abuses. “Jails are predicated on violence,” argued guest speaker Phil Scraton, a penal abolitionist from Northern Ireland. It was as if Scraton had turned on a faucet. Stories came pouring out; stories that were worse than the outside students could have imagined, stories that the inside students had come to accept as normal.

Robert told the class he’d spent 19 months in solitary at another prison where, he alleged, he was beaten severely. He believes he was in solitary due to a case of mistaken identity. “Eventually, I just stopped asking questions,” he told me later. “I stopped asking what was going on. ... I stopped asking for the phone, I stopped asking for the showers.” (He said he got a shower about every three days.) “And I stopped asking for my food to be hot, because my food was coming cold. Eventually, I just gave up.” For Robert, totalitarianism is reaching the point where you stop asking, “Why am I here?” Totalitarianism is policing yourself so well that the existence of an actual prison becomes almost irrelevant.

Robert’s story continued to resonate after the class had ended. “To know him well,” Marina says, “and to know that he was just forgotten about by the system for such a long time, is really upsetting. He’s really kind and thoughtful. There is no place for that in solitary.”

There’s something compelling about reading scholarly work about prison abuse and then hearing from those who live inside the system. “There is something about the visceral,” Marina says, “about hearing the clang of the trap, about holding your badge up to the person you can’t see and saying, ‘Now, I’m subject to you’—that was pretty powerful.”

Chris ’10, who describes himself as a political centrist and as the most conservative member of the class, says that Regulating Citizenship fundamentally changed his views on the prison system. “I was unaware of how horrific it was and how unjustifiable the abuse and conditions really are,” he says. “That was something that I had not thought about before.”

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. ... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.
—Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, from the course readings

Marcella was pissed. Robert was resigned.

“What?!” she exclaimed.

“He came to this building when he wasn’t supposed to.”

“Why’d he come down here?”

“To work on his project.”

“But it’s the last day!”

Robert shrugged.

Marcella had just been told that one of their classmates, a baby-faced inside student named Mike, showed up at the prison “school” a half hour earlier than he was supposed to the day before, and because of that, even though he was in the school and with the prison-employed teachers, he was punished. (Jail officials confirm that Mike was kept from the last class for showing up at the classroom early the day before. However, they add that Mike had told the guards he was going elsewhere, and that this was his third disciplinary offense, which automatically results in a suspension from programming activities.)

How do you punish a man who is learning? Take away the opportunity to learn. The guards would not let him come to class that day, the last day of the semester and his last chance to see the outside students.

The students were angry, none more than Marcella. When her small group took its place at the head table to give a presentation on prison monopolies of the phone and commissary systems, she opened by saying, “Mike is also in our group, but he is not here today, apparently because he was working a little too hard on this project. So I am going to read Mike’s portion of the paper. I’m not really going to summarize it, because I don’t feel right speaking for him, so I’m just going to read his words.”

Later, when each student was presented with a certificate for completing the course, Bumiller took Mike’s certificate and said, “I will make sure Mike gets this, and that he passes the course.” Marcella came away thinking that, even in prisons with a rehabilitative focus, “the power struggle will always take precedence,” she says. “I understood the prison in a new light.”

At the end of class, the students gathered in a double circle, the inner circle facing the outer. Bumiller asked a series of questions: Name one thing you’ll remember from this course. What is fugitive democracy? Imagine where you’ll be in 10 years. “Out of jail,” Greg responded to that last question. “Hopefully I’ll have a good job.”

The students milled around, wistfully enjoying their last few moments together. The Amherst students left first, crowding into the trap, dutifully showing their badges to the guard in the booth. For Marcella, as well as for some others, this was her very last Amherst class. Senior Week in Cape Cod with eight friends beckoned, as did graduation, a month of kayaking and then, of course, real life.

The inside students watched the outside students leave. They put away the chairs and tables the class had used and ate the last of the pizza. They waited in the classroom until they absolutely had to leave. The only thing awaiting them on the other side was the long walk back down the prison’s bleak hallways to their unit. They were back in jail—their regularly scheduled date with freedom had just walked out the door.
https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/issues/2008_summer/prison

Posted by lois at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2008

States launch new war on poverty

States launch new war on poverty
By Daily Hampshire Gazette
08/18/2008
Neal Peirce

In a rare burst of positive news for America's hard-put poor families, 15 states have set up bipartisan commissions to see how to narrow the yawning income gaps that leave so many Americans in destitution.

The advent of the commissions and serious studies - ordered up in states from Maine to Washington, Alabama to Colorado -- is good news. It's true, legislatures have struggled with welfare and Medicaid issues for years. But not gladly.

In the meantime, the nationwide poverty rate has stalled around 11 percent or 12 percent for years - and that's for a family of four with income under the federally set line, now $21,200 a year. (Try living on that - a reasonable minimum for food, shelter and clothing needs would be closer to $30,000.)

Poverty places a huge drag on the economic output and productivity of states and communities. Poor health, substandard housing, mental stress, employment crises, teenage pregnancy, low literacy and the added likelihood of arrest and imprisonment all appear to be part of a misery package that hits poor populations far more heavily than the rest of us.

The results for children are especially alarming. A recent study shows that those who spend their first five years in poverty will (compared to a middle-class child) face daunting odds - first lagging school performance and then, as adults, less income, poorer health and higher psychological stress. Girls growing up poor are five times more likely to be a teen parent; boys are more than twice as likely, after reaching adulthood, to be arrested.

Small wonder that by some estimates, childhood poverty is draining a massive $500 billion a year out of the U.S. economy. State and local governments can hardly not care: They're then saddled with vastly increased welfare, health, social services, criminal justice costs - plus incredible amounts of lost income.

So what's to be done? What should the 15 state commissions (and how about the other 35) recommend?

First and most obvious, get more money into the pockets of the poor. Even with full-time minimum wage employment, many of our poor subsist "on the edge." Often, rent costs more than half their income. A single illness, an unexpected car repair or rent increase can throw them into full-scale crisis.

Tax relief for the poor is crucial. Nearly half the 42 states that levy income taxes have thresholds set below the federal poverty level. Sales taxes take a much bigger and more painful bite out of poor people's budgets. Alabama even has a sales tax on food. Any significant taxes hitting the poor are a bad idea - arguably counterproductive for states' long-term budgets.

Instead, states should supplement the federal earned-income tax credit for low-income working families with a parallel state credit. Twenty-two states are doing that, so why aren't the other 28 states?

Next, curb the exploitive debt cycle for poor families by cracking down on such abusive practices as payday lending, predatory mortgages and excessive fees for cashing paychecks. North Carolina and Illinois are among the few states so far willing to buck the loan-sharking lobbies to enact reforms. And banks (which have often fled low-income neighborhoods) can help by returning with special local outlets that offer check-cashing, money orders and savings accounts.

There's no shortage of other steps the new state commissions on poverty reduction can recommend - from financial literacy counseling to better schools to expanded work-force training, increased housing subsidies to local health clinics.

But there's a critical measure missing from most of the state commission agendas - reforming the state criminal justice policies that have turned the United States into the world's biggest incarcerator. A child's life can be torn apart by a parent - especially a mother - going to prison. Some children even land in foster care, making parental incarceration, some reformers assert, a "death sentence" for families.

But even as 400,000 parents a year get released from prison or jail sentences, laws and customs make it terribly hard for them to re-create normal family life. Many employers shun ex-convicts. Without income, finding stable housing can be terribly difficult. Cumulatively, the consequences of having a criminal record can be devastating and continue for years, with children among the most-wounded victims.

We can do better by our poor families and the children growing up in them. The state commissions are a good start. But eventually it will take vision, and political courage, by governors and legislators to make real change happen.
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2008 All rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2008/08/18/states-launch-new-war-poverty

Posted by lois at 04:52 PM | Comments (0)

August 14, 2008

U.S. Department of Justice Report Concludes that Transfer Laws Substantially Increase Recidivism

U.S. Department of Justice Report Concludes that Transfer Laws
Substantially Increase Recidivism
August 13, 2008

Today, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), at the U.S. Department of Justice, released a bulletin on transfer laws and concluded that they have little or no deterrent effect on juvenile crime. The report, Juvenile Transfer Laws: An Effective Deterrent to Delinquency?", also mentions that recidivism rates have increased, because of the transfer laws.

"Too many youth are being prosecuted as adults, with harmful results," said Liz Ryan, President and CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ). "We are calling on federal and state policy makers to reverse these punitive laws in light of this new research."

Key findings from OJJDP report:

Laws to make it easier to transfer youth to the adult criminal court system have little or no general deterrent effect, meaning they do not prevent youth from engaging in criminal behavior;

Youth transferred to the adult system are more likely to be rearrested and to reoffend than youth who committed similar crimes, but were retained in the juvenile justice system;

Higher recidivism rates are due to a number of factors including the youth's:

-- Stigmatization/negative labeling effects of being labeled as a convicted felon;

-- Sense of resentment and injustice about being tried as an adult;

-- Learning of criminal mores and behavior while incarcerated with adults;

-- Decreased access to rehabilitation and family support in the adult system;

-- Decreased employment and community integration opportunities due to a felony conviction.

The full report can be accessed at http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/220595.pdf

Posted by lois at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2008

"Real Cost of Prisons Comix' book events in the SF Bay Area September 24th through September 29th, 2008

Wednesday September 24th - Lois Ahrens, editor of the ‘Real Cost Of Prisons Comix’ at The Green Arcade 7pm.
Book launch for the ‘Real Cost Of Prisons Comix’, edited by Lois Ahrens and published by PM Press.
“One out of every hundred adults in the U.S. is in prison. This book provides a crash course in what drives mass incarceration, the human and community costs, and how to stop the numbers from going even higher.”
Through the comics, and associated campaigning, hundreds of thousands of prisoners, their allies, and activists, have had the grisly facts and consequences of mass incarceration and its devastating effects on communities, families and the poor, made accessible. Each comic includes alternatives to the costly and inhumane system we have now. More than 30 organizers in and out of prison write about how they use the comix in their work. Long-time activist and organizer, Lois Ahrens discusses The Real Cost of Prisons Project and introductory essay by Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore frames the comix within a political context.

Join the editor speaking about the book, and the wider project, together with the following activists who will talk on how they’ve used the comic books, and their work:
Marlon Altan is a social studies teacher with 5 Keys Charter School. 5 Keys charter school is a high school that works out of the San Francisco County Jail.
Amie Dowling is an Assistant Professor in the Performing Arts Dept at the University of San Francisco and through Community Works leads theater/writing workshops in the San Francisco jails.
Debbie Reyes, OSI Fellow, Central Valley Coordinator California Prison Moratorium Project, Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, Fresno, California.
Karen Shain is Co-Director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, a San Francisco-based 30-year-old prisoners' rights organization that advocates for the rights of incarcerated women, their families and communities.
Mara Taub from Santa Fe, NM, is the coordinator/editor ‘Coalition for Prisoners' Rights Newsletter’. Since 1976, the Coalition for Prisoners' Rights has worked to gather and disseminate information and analysis for those imprisoned, formerly imprisoned and their allies. Their short, free, monthly ‘Newsletter’ features news from/for prisoners nationwide; offers a variety of resource lists; and emphasizes analysis of the U.S. punishment system.
Part of the ‘Great Rehearsal’ Week of ’68 Events.
The Green Arcade
1680 Market Street (at Gough.)
San Francisco CA 94102
www.thegreenarcade.com
info@thegreenarcade.com

Thursday September 25th – ‘Incarceration, Resistance, Costs And Consequences: A Discussion with Authors, Activists And Former Political Prisoners’. At the First Congregational Church in Oakland 7pm. $10 (no-one turned away).
Co-sponsored with KPFA. A benefit for the Angola 3 Defense Fund.
A lively discussion on the rising costs, and consequences of incarceration. And of those that are resisting the Prison Industrial Complex.
Panelists include:
Robert Hillary King, author of the new autobiography ‘From The Bottom Of The Heap: The Autobiography Of Black Panther Robert Hillary King’ (PM Press). Robert Hillary King is better known as one of the Angola 3, who served over 31 years in Louisiana’s ‘slave plantation’ at Angola, 29 of them in solitary confinement. He, together with his Angola 3 comrades, Herman Bell and Albert Woodfox, organized within the prison the first (and only) Black Panther chapter behind the walls. The state reacted (unsurprisingly) accordingly.
Lois Ahrens, editor of the ‘Real Cost Of Prisons Comix’ (PM Press). Through the comics, and associated campaigning, hundreds of thousands of prisoners, their allies, and activists, have had the grisly facts and consequences of mass incarceration and its devastating effects on communities, families and the poor, made accessible. Each comic includes alternatives to the costly and inhumane system we have now.
Victoria Law, author of ‘Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women’ (PM Press), and longtime prison activist. About the forthcoming book: In 1974, women imprisoned at New York's maximum-security prison at Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion. Protesting the brutal beating of a fellow prisoner, the women fought off guards, holding seven of them hostage, and took over sections of the prison. While many have heard of the 1971 Attica prison uprising, the August Rebellion remains relatively unknown even in activist circles. ‘Resistance Behind Bars’ is determined to challenge and change such oversights. As it examines daily struggles against appalling prison conditions and injustices, ‘Resistance’ documents both collective organizing and individual resistance among women incarcerated in the U.S. Emphasizing women's agency in resisting the conditions of their confinement through forming peer education groups, clandestinely arranging ways for children to visit mothers in distant prisons and raising public awareness about their lives, ‘Resistance’ seeks to spark further discussion and research into the lives of incarcerated women and galvanize much-needed outside support for their struggles.
Matt Meyer, editor of the monumental (all 912 pages!) ‘Let Freedom Ring’ (PM Press/Kersplebedeb), and activist with Resistance In Brooklyn:
‘Let Freedom Ring’ presents a two-decade sweep of essays, analyses, histories, interviews, resolutions, People’s Tribunals verdicts and poems by and about the scores of U.S. political prisoners and the campaigns to safeguard their rights and to secure their freedom. Represented here are the radical movements that have most challenged the U.S. empire from within: Black Panthers and other Black liberation fighters (several still held after 30+ years), Puerto Rican independentistas, Indigenous sovereignty activists, Chicano/Mexicano freedom strugglers, white anti-imperialists, environmental and animal rights militants, and others. This invaluable resource guide details the diabolical methods--from isolation to sensory deprivation to parole denial--used to suppress these freedom fighters, as well as the creative--and sometimes winning--strategies to bring them home.
Ashanti Alston, former Black Panther, Black Liberation Army political prisoner, and longtime activist, and a contributor to ‘Let Freedom Ring.’
Rita ‘Bo’ Brown, former member of the George Jackson Brigade, political prisoner, and longtime prisoner and queer activist, and a contributor to ‘Let Freedom Ring’
Moderated by KPFA host to be announced.
First Congregational Church of Oakland
www.firstoakland.org
2501 Harrison St
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 444-8511

Friday 26th September thru Sunday 28th September is the Critical Resistance 10th Anniversary Conference in Oakland.
Vikki Law and Matt Meyer are doing workshops. Robert Hillary King and Lois Ahrens will be in attendance. The PM films ‘The Angola 3’, ‘Jena 6’ and ‘Black & Gold’ are all being shown during the conference as part of the Critical Resistance Film Festival
www.criticalresistance.org

Monday 29th September - Book launch for ‘Real Cost Of Prisons Comix’ and ‘Let Freedom Ring’ anthology, at Modern Times 7pm.
Last of the month long series of events as part of PM Press as ‘Publisher Of The Month’ at Modern Times. Featuring ‘Real Cost Of Prisons Comix’, editor and activist and organizer Lois Ahrens:
“One out of every hundred adults in the U.S. is in prison. This book provides a crash course in what drives mass incarceration, the human and community costs, and how to stop the numbers from going even higher.”
Through the comics, and associated campaigning, hundreds of thousands of prisoners, their allies, and activists, have had the grisly facts and consequences of mass incarceration and its devastating effects on communities, families and the poor, made accessible. Each comic includes alternatives to the costly and inhumane system we have now. More than 30 organizers in and out of prison write about how they use the comix in their work. Long-time activist and organizer, Lois Ahrens discusses The Real Cost of Prisons Project and introductory essay by Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore frames the comix within a political context.
‘Let Freedom Ring’ editor Matt Meyer:
Let Freedom Ring’ presents a two-decade sweep of essays, analyses, histories, interviews, resolutions, People’s Tribunals verdicts and poems by and about the scores of U.S. political prisoners and the campaigns to safeguard their rights and to secure their freedom. Represented here are the radical movements that have most challenged the U.S. empire from within: Black Panthers and other Black liberation fighters (several still held after 30+ years), Puerto Rican independentistas, Indigenous sovereignty activists, Chicano/Mexicano freedom strugglers, white anti-imperialists, environmental and animal rights militants, and others. This invaluable resource guide details the diabolical methods--from isolation to sensory deprivation to parole denial--used to suppress these freedom fighters, as well as the creative--and sometimes winning--strategies to bring them home.
Ashanti Alston, former Black Panther, Black Liberation Army political prisoner, longtime activist, and a contributor to ‘Let Freedom Ring’.
Rita ‘Bo’ Brown, former member of the George Jackson Brigade, political prisoner, longtime prisoner and queer activist, and a contributor to ‘Let Freedom Ring’.
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of ‘Golden Gulag’ and co-author (with Craig Gilmore) of a new introduction to the ‘Real Cost Of Prisons Comix’.
Modern Times
www.mtbs.com
888 Valencia St
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 282-9246

Posted by lois at 04:40 PM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2008

U.S. Blacks, if a Nation, Would Rank 16th in the world of people living with AIDS

July 30, 2008, NY Times
U.S. Blacks, if a Nation, Would Rank High on AIDS
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

If black America were a country, it would rank 16th in the world in the number of people living with the AIDS virus, the Black AIDS Institute, an advocacy group, reported Tuesday.

The report, financed in part by the Ford Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, provides a startling new perspective on an epidemic that was first recognized in 1981.

Nearly 600,000 African-Americans are living with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and up to 30,000 are becoming infected each year. When adjusted for age, their death rate is two and a half times that of infected whites, the report said. Partly as a result, the hypothetical nation of black America would rank below 104 other countries in life expectancy.

J

Those and other disparities are “staggering,” said Dr. Kevin A. Fenton, who directs H.I.V. prevention efforts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency responsible for tracking the epidemic in the United States.

“It is a crisis that needs a new look at prevention,” Dr. Fenton said.

In a separate report on Tuesday, the United Nations painted a somewhat more optimistic picture of the worldwide AIDS epidemic, noting that fewer people are dying of the disease since its peak in the late 1990s and that more people are receiving antiretroviral drugs.

Nevertheless, the report found that progress remained uneven and that the future of the epidemic was uncertain. The report was issued in advance of the 17th International AIDS Conference, which begins this weekend in Mexico City.

The gains are partly from the Bush administration’s program to deliver drugs and preventive measures to people in countries highly affected by H.I.V.

The Black AIDS Institute took note of that program in criticizing the administration’s efforts at home. The group said that more black Americans were living with the AIDS virus than the infected populations in Botswana, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Namibia, Rwanda or Vietnam — 7 of the 15 countries that receive support from the administration’s anti-AIDS program.

The international effort is guided by a strategic plan, clear benchmarks like the prevention of seven million H.I.V. infections by 2010 and annual progress reports to Congress, the group said. By contrast, it went on, “America itself has no strategic plan to combat its own epidemic.”

In a telephone interview, Dr. Fenton said, “We recognize this is a crisis, and clearly more can be done.”

The institute, based in Los Angeles, describes itself as the only national H.I.V./AIDS study group focused exclusively on black people. Phill Wilson, the group’s chief executive and an author of the report, said his group supported the government’s international anti-AIDS program. But Mr. Wilson’s report also said that “American policy makers behave as if AIDS exists ‘elsewhere’ — as if the AIDS problem has been effectively solved” in this country.

The group also chided the government for not reporting H.I.V. statistics to the United Nations for inclusion in its biannual report.

Dr. Fenton said the C.D.C. had ensured that its data were forwarded to officials in the Department of Health and Human Services and was investigating why the data were not in the United Nations report.

Others speaking for the agency said the answer would have to come from the State Department, which did not respond to an inquiry.

Dr. Helene Gayle, president of CARE and a former director of H.I.V. prevention efforts at the disease control centers, told reporters on Tuesday that the United States needed to devote more resources to care for people with sexually transmitted diseases. Such infections can increase the risk of H.I.V. infection.

The federal government and communities needed to promote more testing among all people, particularly blacks, to detect H.I.V. infection in its earliest stages when treatment is more effective, Dr. Gayle said.

Also, she said, more needed to be done to promote needle exchange programs, which have proved effective in preventing H.I.V. infection among injecting drug users but that are illegal in many places.

The United Nations report said that in Rwanda and Zimbabwe, changes in sexual behavior had led to declines in the number of new H.I.V. infections.

Condom use is increasing among young people with multiple partners in many countries and more young people are postponing their initial sexual intercourse before age 15.

The percentage of pregnant women receiving antiretroviral drugs to prevent transmission of H.I.V. to their infants increased to 33 percent in 2007 from 14 percent in 2005. During the same period, the number of new infections among children fell to 370,000 from 410,000.

The United Nations report affirmed treatment gains in Namibia, which increased treatment to 88 percent of the estimated need in 2007, from 1 percent in 2003; and in Cambodia, where the percentage rose to 67 in 2007 from 14 percent in 2004. Other countries with high treatment rates are Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba and Laos.

In most areas of the world, more women than men are receiving antiretroviral therapy, the report said.

Despite inadequate monitoring systems in many countries, data suggest that most of the H.I.V. epidemics in the Caribbean appear to have stabilized. A few have declined in urban areas in the Dominican Republic and Haiti which have had the largest epidemics in the region.

Increased treatment was partly responsible for a decline in AIDS-related deaths to an estimated 2 million in 2007 from 2.2 million in 2005.

The AIDS epidemic has had less overall economic effect than earlier feared, the report said, but is having profound negative effects in industries and agriculture in high-prevalence countries.

The United Nations has set 2015 as the year by which it hopes to reverse the epidemic. But even if the world achieved that goal, the report said, “the epidemic would remain an overriding global challenge for decades.”

To underscore the point, the United Nations said that for every two people who received treatment, five people became newly infected.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/30/health/research/30aids.html?scp=1&sq=AIDS%20and%20African%20Americans&st=cse

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

April 01, 2008

JPI: New report: Jail populations exploding; massive growth devastating local communities

Justice Policy Institute: New report: Jail populations exploding; massive growth devastating local communities
http://www.justicepolicy.org/content.php?hmID=1811&smID=1581&ssmID=73

Jails bulging with people with mental illnesses, the homeless and people detained for immigration offenses; costing counties billions

Washington, D.C.—Communities are bearing the cost of a massive explosion in the jail population which has nearly doubled in less than two decades, according to a new report released today by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI). The research found that jails are now warehousing more people--who have not been found guilty of any crime--for longer periods of time than ever before. The research shows that in part due to the rising costs of bail, people arrested today are much more likely to serve jail time before trial than they would have been twenty years ago, even though crime rates are nearly at the lowest levels in thirty years.

“Crime rates are down, but you’re more likely to serve time in jail today than you would have been twenty years ago,” said the report’s co-author Amanda Petteruti. “Jail bonds have skyrocketed, so that means if you’re poor, you do time. People are being punished before they’re found guilty—justice is undermined.”

The report, Jailing Communities: The Impact of Jail Expansion and Effective Public Safety Strategies, found jail population growth (22 percent), is having serious consequences for communities that are now paying tens of billions yearly to sustain jails. Jails are filled with people with drug addictions, the homeless and people charged with immigration offenses. The report concludes that jails have become the “new asylums,” with six out of 10 people in jail living with a mental illness.

The impact of increased jail imprisonment is not borne equally by all members of a community. New data reveal that Latinos are most likely to have to pay bail, have the highest bail amounts, are least likely to be able to pay and, by far, the least likely to be released prior to trial. African Americans are nearly five times as likely to be incarcerated in jails as whites and almost three times as likely as Latinos. Further exacerbating jail crowding problems is the increase in the number of people being held in jails for immigration violations—up 500 percent in the last decade.

In 2004, local governments spent a staggering $97 billion on criminal justice, including police, the courts and jails. Over $19 billion of county money went to financing jails alone. By way of comparison, during the same time period, local governments spent just $8.7 billion on libraries and only $28 billion on higher education.

“These counties just cannot afford to invest the bulk of their local public safety budget in jails, and we are beginning to see why--the more a community relies on jails, the less it has to invest in education, employment and proven public safety strategies,” says Nastassia Walsh, co-author of the report.

Research shows that places that increased their jail populations did not necessarily see a drop in violent crimes. Falling jail incarceration rates are associated with declining violent crime rates in some of the country’s largest counties and cities, like New York City.

“The investment in building more jail beds is not making communities safer,” says Derrick Johnson, NAACP National Board member. “Instead these investments serve only to unfairly target communities of color and waste taxpayer dollars.”

The report recommends that communities take action to reduce their jail populations and increase public safety by:

• Improving release procedures for pretrial and sentenced populations. Implementing pretrial release programs that release people from jail before trial can help alleviate jail populations. Reforming bail guidelines would allow a greater number of people to post bail, leaving space open in jails for people who may pose a greater threat to public safety.

• Developing and implementing alternatives to incarceration. Alternatives such as community-based corrections would permit people to be removed from the jail, allowing them to continue to work, stay with their families, and be part of the community, while under supervision.

• Re-examining policies that lock up individuals for nonviolent crimes. Reducing the number of people in jail for nonviolent offenses leaves resources and space available for people who may need to be detained for a public safety reason.

• Diverting people with mental health and drug treatment needs to the public health system and community-based treatment. People who suffer from mental health or substance abuse problems are better served by receiving treatment in their community. Treatment is more cost-effective than incarceration and promotes a positive public safety agenda.

• Diverting spending on jail construction to agencies that work on community supervision and make community supervision effective. Reallocating funding to probation services will allow people to be placed in appropriate treatment or other social services and is a less costly investment in public safety.

• Providing more funding for front-end services such as education, employment, and housing. Research has shown that education, employment, drug treatment, health care, and the availability of affordable housing coincide with lower crime rate.

###

The Justice Policy Institute is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank dedicated to ending society’s reliance on incarceration and promoting effective and just solutions to social problems. For more information, visit www.justicepolicy.org.

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

March 04, 2008

VT: House Bill Begins Corrections' Transformation

The Senate Institutions Committee will include money in the proposed capital budget to pay for renovations needed if the department reorganizes how it used some prison space. A plan under consideration would move women out of the Dale Women's Facility in Waterbury and close it because it is the most expensive prison in the system. Women would be housed at the Northwest Regional Correctional Facility in St. Albans Town. The Southeast Correctional Facility in Windsor, which along with Dale houses female inmates, would become a large work camp."

House bill begins corrections' transformation
Burlington Free Press
Published: Saturday, March 1, 2008
By Nancy Remsen
Free Press Staff Writer

MONTPELIER -- The House sent the Senate a bill Friday that's intended to spark a transformation in the way the state treats non-violent offenders, many of whom abuse drugs and alcohol.

The need for change is apparent in the findings the House included in the legislation:

Spending for correctional services is on track to have increased by $30 million in five years.

People found guilty of property and drug offenses are the fastest growing segment of the prison population.

Three-quarters of those sentenced for property and drug offenses have a drug or alcohol disorder.

The bill takes aim at the causes for the mushrooming prison population and high recidivism -- both of which have led to Vermont's spending more on corrections than higher education. The bill sets new expectations that the Department of Corrections will identify substance-abuse problems early, will expand treatment options especially in the community and will develop housing to help inmates transition from prison to life on the outside.

"We want to make offenders much more likely to succeed," said House Institutions Chairwoman Alice Emmons, D-Springfield. "We will have offenders who will be productive members of the community, who give back to the community instead of being a drain on the community."

This bill, which passed the House on Friday without any dissenting voices after clearing a few procedural and political hurdles, is part of a package of reforms lawmakers are assembling this year.

The House already passed a bill that requires inmates up to age 26 who don't have high school diplomas to attend class to earn that diploma. Education is one of the factors that help offenders succeed rather than return, yet Rep. Jason Lorber, D-Burlington, noted that 90 percent of the youngest inmates never finished high school.

The Senate will take up another facet of correction reform when the Legislature returns from its town meeting break -- a bill that would change probation policies concerning alcohol to focus on treatment rather than punishment. Unless an offender's crime involved substance abuse, probation conditions would no longer include bans on drinking.

Also, public drunks would no longer be put in jail for their safety if they hadn't committed a crime.

The bill also authorized statewide use of electronic monitoring equipment -- another alternative to help alleviate the need to imprison so many people.

The Senate Institutions Committee will include money in the proposed capital budget to pay for renovations needed if the department reorganizes how it used some prison space. A plan under consideration would move women out of the Dale Women's Facility in Waterbury and close it because it is the most expensive prison in the system. Women would be housed at the Northwest Regional Correctional Facility in St. Albans Town. The Southeast Correctional Facility in Windsor, which along with Dale houses female inmates, would become a large work camp.

Many of these correction reform ideas grew from research and a report provided by the Council of State Governments. The House and Senate have divided up the suggestions.

"Once all the parts come together," said Senate Democratic Leader John Campbell, D-Windsor, "we believe very strongly we will have ground-breaking legislation."

The Douglas administration has been working closely with legislators as they develop the package. Jason Gibbs, spokesman for Gov. Jim Douglas, said the work looks good.

Emmons noted that lawmakers are sketching the big picture, but will only fund a small portion. The Department of Corrections must find $600,000 within its $130 million budget to take an array of small steps to enhance identification and treatment of drug and alcohol abuse among offenders.

Lawmakers are banking that these small steps will produce better, less expensive outcomes, resulting in financial savings. The plan is to plow savings into more treatment and transitional housing.

This strategy could save the state $54 million over 10 years, lawmakers say.

"It's a multi-year process," Emmons said. "This is an investment to better people's lives and make our communities safer."

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080301/NEWS0
2/803010326/1007/NEWS02

The DOC website is http://doc.vermont.gov and the report can be found at http://doc.vermont.gov/cost-reduction-plan-is-completed.

Posted by lois at 09:48 AM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2008

1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, Pew Study Says

February 28, 2008
1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says
By ADAM LIPTAK, NY Times

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.

The report’s methodology differed from that used by the Justice Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using the department’s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.

Either way, said Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director, “we aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration.”

But Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge, said the Pew report considered only half of the cost-benefit equation and overlooked the “very tangible benefits — lower crime rates.”

In the past 20 years, according the Federal Bureau of Investigation, violent crime rates fell by 25 percent, to 464 for every 100,000 people in 2007 from 612.5 in 1987.

“While we certainly want to be smart about who we put into prisons,” Professor Cassell said, “it would be a mistake to think that we can release any significant number of prisoners without increasing crime rates. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense.”

Ms. Urahn said the nation cannot afford the incarceration rate documented in the report. “We tend to be a country in which incarceration is an easy response to crime,” she said. “Being tough on crime is an easy position to take, particularly if you have the money. And we did have the money in the ‘80s and ‘90s.”

Now, with fewer resources available, the report said, “prison costs are blowing a hole in state budgets.” On average, states spend almost 7 percent on their budgets on corrections, trailing only healthcare, education and transportation.

In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once adjusted for inflation. With money from bonds and the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.

It cost an average of $23,876 dollars to imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which data were available. But state spending varies widely, from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana.

The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, and will accelerate as the prison population ages.

About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006.

The number of prisoners in California dropped by 4,000 last year, making Texas’s prison system the nation’s largest, at about 172,000. But the Texas legislature last year approved broad changes to the corrections system there, including expansions of drug treatment programs and drug courts and revisions to parole practices.

“Our violent offenders, we lock them up for a very long time — rapists, murderers, child molestors,” said John Whitmire, a Democratic state senator from Houston and the chairman of the state senate’s criminal justice committee. “The problem was that we weren’t smart about nonviolent offenders. The legislature finally caught up with the public.”

He gave an example.

“We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” he said, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. “They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”

The Pew report recommended diverting nonviolent offenders away from prison and using punishments short of reincarceration for minor or technical violations of probation or parole. It also urged states to consider earlier release of some prisoners.

Before the recent changes in Texas, Mr. Whitmire said, “we were recycling nonviolent offenders.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html U.S. map at this URL
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/One%20in%20100.pdf PDF of the Pew Report at this URL

Posted by lois at 06:18 PM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2008

Immigrants far less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes

February 26, 2008
National Briefing | West
California: Study of Immigrants and Crime
By JULIA PRESTON, NY Times

Immigrants in the state, about 35 percent of adults, are far less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes, according to a study by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research group. Among men ages 18 to 40, the group most likely to commit crimes, native-born Americans were 10 times more likely than immigrants to be incarcerated for crimes in California prisons and jails. The study included both legal and illegal immigrants, without focusing separately on illegal immigrants. But it found that native-born American men ages 18 to 40 were at least eight times more likely to be imprisoned for crimes than Mexican immigrants in that age range who were not naturalized citizens — a group likely to have a high percentage of illegal immigrants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/us/26brfs-STUDYOFIMMIG_BRF.html?sq=California%20Crime%20and%20Immigration&st=nyt&scp=1&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 07:30 PM | Comments (0)

February 09, 2008

Bush's 2009 Budget Cust $198 million from SAMSHA and other Substance Abuse Programs

“Drug-prevention advocates and others are raising the alarm over President Bush's FY2009 budget plan, which slashed $198 million from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and calls for elimination of the Recovery Community Support Programs and the STOP Underage Drinking program.”

Bush's 2009 Budget Cuts $198 Million from SAMHSA
February 8, 2008

Drug-prevention advocates and others are raising the alarm over President Bush's FY2009 budget plan, which slashed $198 million from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and calls for elimination of the Recovery Community Support Programs and the STOP Underage Drinking program.

The budget also calls for spending $10 million less on the Drug Free Communities program, a major funding source for many community anti-drug coalitions. "The majority of programs that our field advocates for were recommended for severe cuts," noted Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America in an action alert calling for supporters to contact lawmakers to oppose the cuts. "Only a very small handful of programs were recommended for increases."

Overall, the budget plans calls for increasing defense spending by at least $32 billion, foreign operations by $5.4 billion, and law enforcement and prosecution efforts by $497 million. "The budget invests substantial and needed resources to maintain high levels of military readiness and to continue the transformation of our military to meet the new threats of the 21st Century," Bush said in his budget message to Congress.

But Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, charged Bush with "robbing Peter to pay Paul -- taking critical funds from essential domestic programs to fund the president's pet projects and the president's disastrous war and nation-building adventure in Iraq."

$2.2 Billion Reduction in Discretionary Spending at HHS

Discretionary spending at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would be reduced $2.2 billion under the president's plan, even as the overall budget rises $29 billion due to Medicare, Medicaid, and other mandatory spending. "There are those who will be unhappy with this budget, but given the Medicare system we have, putting off solving the problem is no longer acceptable," said HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt.

In its budget summary, HHS justifies the $198-million decrease in SAMHSA funding by stating, "The budget makes targeted reductions in areas where grantees have not demonstrated improved health outcomes, grant periods are ending, activities can be supported through other funding streams, or efficiencies can be realized."

Major SAMHSA programs slated for cuts or elimination under the president's FY09 budget plan for HHS include its Programs of Regional and National Significance: cut by $250 million, to $639 million. The Center for Substance Abuse Treatment's budget would fall by $63 million, while the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention would have $36 million less to spend next year if Bush's plan were approved. The Center for Mental Health Services would be slashed by $126 million.

On the other hand, Bush is calling for level funding of $98 million for his Access to Recovery program, which allows faith-based groups to compete with traditional treatment providers for voucher-driven funding for treatment services; a $40-million increase for treatment drug courts; and $27 million more for screening and brief interventions.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) would receive $1.002 billion, just $1 million more than in FY 2008, while the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) would receive $436.68 million, up $0.4 million relative to FY08. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would face a $412 million budget cut, including the elimination of the $97 million Preventive Health and Human Services Block Grant.

"PART" of the Problem

In many instances, the administration justified its cuts by pointing to its Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART), used to rate the effectiveness of federal programs. In the budget message for HHS, the administration singled out the Recovery Community Support Program for criticism, saying the program was being eliminated "because services provided, such as manicures and other nontraditional therapies, are not based on evidence-based practices for recovery and grantees have not consistently met all performance measures."

Major programs tabbed as "not performing" by PART also are on Bush's chopping block, including the Social Services Block Grant (a proposed $500 million cut) and the Community Services Block Grant ($1 billion in proposed reductions). However, Bush is calling for a modest $20 million increase in the $1.8 billion Substance Abuse Block Prevention and Treatment Grant, even tough PART called the program "ineffective" because of a lack of independent evaluation and a failure to match formula-based funding to substance-abuse prevalence.

The Legal Action Center reported that the $20 million increase would be used to support "supplemental performance awards" for Block Grant recipients that "demonstrate superior performance in preventing and treatment substance abuse." The National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors noted, "The proposed increase for the SAPT Block Grant can be considered unique in an otherwise very difficult budget year."

As with the block grant, the Office of National Drug Control Policy's Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign was blacklisted by PART, noting that "an independent, long-term evaluation found no connection between the campaign advertisements and youth drug use behavior." Yet the administration is calling for $100 million in funding for the program, up from the $60 million appropriated for the ad campaign in 2008.

Elsewhere beyond HHS, the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities state grants program was once again targeted for reduction, with Bush calling for cutting the school-based prevention program from $295 million in 2008 to $100 million in 2009. "The structure of the program is flawed," according to PART. "It spreads funding too broadly to support quality interventions and fails to target schools and communities in greatest need of assistance."

Bush's budget plan also targets the Department of Education's $32 million Alcohol Abuse Reduction grants program for elimination. SDFSC's national programs budget would increase from $137.7 million in 2008 to $282 million in FY09 under the plan, including $10 million for research-based drug prevention or school safety programs, $77.8 million for grants to school districts for comprehensive, community-wide "Safe Schools/Healthy Students" drug and violence prevention projects, $30 million for school emergency preparedness initiatives, $5 million for initiatives in emergency preparedness for institutions of higher education (IHEs), $11.8 million for school-based drug testing for students, $23.8 million for character education programs in elementary and secondary schools, and $5 million to provide emergency response services to LEAs and IHEs under Project SERV (School Emergency Response to Violence).

At the Justice Department, funding at the Office of Justice Programs -- which supports Weed & Seed projects as well as some addiction treatment and prevention services -- would be cut steeply, with the Bush budget calling for a 65 percent reduction in state and local criminal-justice programs.

http://www.jointogether.org/news/features/2008/bushs-2009-budget-cuts-198.html?log-event=sp2f-view-item&nid=35836088

Posted by lois at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2008

Justice Policy Institute: The Substance Abuse Treatment and Public Safety Brief

Justice Policy Institute (JPI).
The Substance Abuse Treatment and Public Safety Brief: http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/upload/08_01_REP_DrugTx_AC-PS.pdf found that the sooner substance abuse is treated, the bigger the long-term cost savings and increases in public safety.
The policy brief found that:
Increases in admissions to substance abuse treatment are associated with reductions in crime rates.
Admissions to drug treatment increased 37.4 percent and federal spending on drug treatment increased 14.6 percent from 1995 to 2005. During the same period, violent crime fell 31.5 percent. In California, where Proposition 36 diverted thousands of people from prison and jail to treatment, violent crime fell at a rate that exceeded the national average.
In Maryland, where policymakers have been working to implement various approaches to diverting prison-bound people to treatment, the counties that relied on drug treatment were more likely to achieve significant crime rate reductions than those that relied on drug imprisonment.
Increased admissions to drug treatment are associated with reduced incarceration rates.
Substance abuse treatment prior to contact with the justice system yields public safety benefits early on.
Substance abuse treatment helps individuals transition successfully from the criminal justice system to the community. Community-based drug treatment programs reduce the chance that a person will become involved in the criminal justice system after release from prison.
Substance abuse treatment is more cost-effective than prison or other punitive measures. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) found that community-based drug treatment is extremely beneficial in terms of cost, especially compared to prison. Every dollar spent on drug treatment in the community is estimated to return $18.52 in benefits to society in terms of reduced incarceration rates and associated crime costs to taxpayers.

Posted by lois at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2008

“Racial Impact Statements as a Means of Reducing Unwarranted Sentencing Disparities”

http://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/rd_racialimpactstatements.pdf

An article by Marc Mauer, Director of the Sentencing Project, in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law that proposes the development of "Racial Impact Statements" as a means of assessing the impact of proposed sentencing policies.
In “Racial Impact Statements as a Means of Reducing Unwarranted Sentencing Disparities”, he suggests that these statements have much in common with fiscal and environmental impact statements that have become commonplace at many levels of government. The goal of a racial impact statement would be to assess the projected impact of new sentencing legislation on racial and ethnic minorities prior to enactment of the policy. If the statement indicates that unwarranted sentencing disparities might be produced, legislators would have the opportunity of considering alternative means of achieving public safety goals that would not exacerbate existing disparities.

Posted by lois at 01:47 PM | Comments (0)

January 03, 2008

NY Times Editorial: Comic Books in the Classroom

January 3, 2008
Editorial, NY Times
Comic Books in the Classroom

Generations of children grew up reading comic books on the sly, hiding out from parents and teachers who saw them as a waste of time and a hazard to young minds. Comics are now gaining a new respectability at school. That is thanks to an increasingly popular and creative program, often aimed at struggling readers, that encourages children to plot, write and draw comic books, in many cases using themes from their own lives.

The Comic Book Project was started in 2001 by Michael Bitz at an elementary school in Queens. Mr. Bitz now serves as the director of the project, which is run out of Teachers College at Columbia University. Since its creation, the program, which is mainly conducted after school, has spread to more than 850 urban and rural schools across the country. It has gotten a big push from the current craze among adolescents for comic book clubs and for manga, a wildly popular variety of comic originating in Japan.

The point is not to drop a comic book on a child’s desk and say: “read this.” Rather, the workshops give groups of students the opportunity to collaborate on often complex stories and characters that they then revise, publish and share with others in their communities.

Teachers are finding it easier to teach writing, grammar and punctuation with material that students are fully invested in. And it turns out that comic books have other built-in advantages. The pairing of visual and written plotlines that they rely on appear to be especially helpful to struggling readers. No one is suggesting that comic books should substitute for traditional books or for standard reading and composition lessons. Teachers who would once have dismissed comics out of hand are learning to exploit a genre that clearly has a powerful hold on young minds. They are using what works.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/opinion/03thu4.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)

December 30, 2007

Forgotten Step Toward Freedom: the 200th anniversary of Jan. 1, 1808, when the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited.

December 30, 2007, NY Times
Op-Ed Contributor
Forgotten Step Toward Freedom
By ERIC FONER

WE Americans live in a society awash in historical celebrations. The last few years have witnessed commemorations of the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase (2003) and the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II (2005). Looming on the horizon are the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth (2009) and the sesquicentennial of the outbreak of the Civil War (2011). But one significant milestone has gone strangely unnoticed: the 200th anniversary of Jan. 1, 1808, when the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited.

This neglect stands in striking contrast to the many scholarly and public events in Britain that marked the 2007 bicentennial of that country’s banning of the slave trade. There were historical conferences, museum exhibits, even a high-budget film, “Amazing Grace,” about William Wilberforce, the leader of the parliamentary crusade that resulted in abolition.

What explains this divergence? Throughout the 1780s, the horrors of the Middle Passage were widely publicized on both sides of the Atlantic and by 1792 the British Parliament stood on the verge of banning the trade. But when war broke out with revolutionary France, the idea was shelved. Final prohibition came in 1807 and it proved a major step toward the abolition of slavery in the empire.

The British campaign against the African slave trade not only launched the modern concern for human rights as an international principle, but today offers a usable past for a society increasingly aware of its multiracial character. It remains a historic chapter of which Britons of all origins can be proud.

In the United States, however, slavery not only survived the end of the African trade but embarked on an era of unprecedented expansion. Americans have had to look elsewhere for memories that ameliorate our racial discontents, which helps explain our recent focus on the 19th-century Underground Railroad as an example (widely commemorated and often exaggerated) of blacks and whites working together in a common cause.

Nonetheless, the abolition of the slave trade to the United States is well worth remembering. Only a small fraction (perhaps 5 percent) of the estimated 11 million Africans brought to the New World in the four centuries of the slave trade were destined for the area that became the United States. But in the Colonial era, Southern planters regularly purchased imported slaves, and merchants in New York and New England profited handsomely from the trade.

The American Revolution threw the slave trade and slavery itself into crisis. In the run-up to war, Congress banned the importation of slaves as part of a broader nonimportation policy. During the War of Independence, tens of thousands of slaves escaped to British lines. Many accompanied the British out of the country when peace arrived.

Inspired by the ideals of the Revolution, most of the newly independent American states banned the slave trade. But importation resumed to South Carolina and Georgia, which had been occupied by the British during the war and lost the largest number of slaves.

The slave trade was a major source of disagreement at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. South Carolina’s delegates were determined to protect slavery, and they had a powerful impact on the final document. They originated the three-fifths clause (giving the South extra representation in Congress by counting part of its slave population) and threatened disunion if the slave trade were banned, as other states demanded.

The result was a compromise barring Congress from prohibiting the importation of slaves until 1808. Some Anti-Federalists, as opponents of ratification were called, cited the slave trade clause as a reason why the Constitution should be rejected, claiming it brought shame upon the new nation.

The outbreak of the slave revolution in Haiti in the early 1790s sent shock waves of fear throughout the American South and led to new state laws barring the importation of slaves. But in 1803, as cotton cultivation spread, South Carolina reopened the trade. The Legislature of the newly acquired Louisiana Territory also allowed the importation of slaves. From 1803 to 1808, between 75,000 and 100,000 Africans entered the United States.

By this time, the international slave trade was widely recognized as a crime against humanity. In 1807, Congress prohibited the importation of slaves from abroad, to take effect the next New Year’s Day, the first date allowed by the Constitution.

For years thereafter, free African-Americans celebrated Jan. 1 as an alternative to July 4, when, in their view, patriotic orators hypocritically proclaimed the slave-owning United States a land of liberty.

It is easy to understand, however, why the trade’s abolition appears so anticlimactic. Banning American participation in the slave trade did not end the shipment of Africans to the Western Hemisphere. Some three million more slaves were brought to Brazil and Spanish America before the trade finally ended. With Southerners dominating the federal government for most of the period before the Civil War, enforcement was lax and the smuggling of slaves into the United States continued.

Those who hoped that ending American participation in the slave trade would weaken or destroy slavery were acutely disappointed. In the United States, unlike the West Indies, the slave population grew by natural increase. This was not because American owners were especially humane, but because most of the South lies outside the tropical environment where diseases like yellow fever and malaria exacted a huge toll on whites and blacks alike.

As slavery expanded into the Deep South, a flourishing internal slave trade replaced importation from Africa. Between 1808 and 1860, the economies of older states like Virginia came increasingly to rely on the sale of slaves to the cotton fields of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. But demand far outstripped supply, and the price of slaves rose inexorably, placing ownership outside the reach of poorer Southerners.

Let us imagine that the African slave trade had continued in a legal and open manner well into the 19th century. It is plausible to assume that hundreds of thousands if not millions of Africans would have been brought into the country.

This most likely would have resulted in the “democratization” of slavery as prices fell and more and more whites could afford to purchase slaves, along with a further increase in Southern political power thanks to the Constitution’s three-fifths clause. These were the very reasons advanced by South Carolina’s political leaders when they tried, unsuccessfully, to reopen the African slave trade in the 1850s.

More slaves would also have meant heightened fear of revolt and ever more stringent controls on the slave population. It would have reinforced Southerners’ demands to annex to the United States areas suitable for plantation slavery in the Caribbean and Central America. Had the importation of slaves continued unchecked, the United States could well have become the hemispheric slave-based empire of which many Southerners dreamed.

Jan. 1, 1808, is worth commemorating not only for what it directly accomplished, but for helping to save the United States from a history even more terrible than the Civil War that eventually rid our country of slavery.

Eric Foner is a professor of history at Columbia University.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/opinion/30foner.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Posted by lois at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)

December 26, 2007

Superman Finds New Fans Among Reading Instructors

Hopefully not only Disney comic books!

December 26, 2007, NY Times
Superman Finds New Fans Among Reading Instructors
By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Some parents and teachers regard comics, with their sentences jammed into bubbles and their low word-to-picture ratio, as part of the problem when it comes to low reading scores and the much-lamented decline in reading for pleasure. But a growing cadre of educators is looking to comics as part of the solution.
In Maryland, the State Education Department is expanding a new comics-based literacy curriculum, after a small pilot program yielded promising results. In New York City, a group of educators applied to open a new small high school that would be based around a comics theme and named after the creators of Superman; their application was rejected but they plan to try again next year. And the Comic Book Project, a program run out of Teachers College at Columbia University that has children create their own comic strips as an “alternative pathway to literacy,” is catching on. Six years after it started in one Queens elementary school, it has expanded to 860 schools across the country.

“It’s very much a teacher-led kind of movement in that teachers are looking for ways to engage their children, and they’re finding some of that in comic books,” said Michael Bitz, who founded the Comic Book Project as a graduate student and is now its director. “For kids who may be struggling and for kids who may be new to the English language, that visual sequence is a very powerful tool.”
The recent interest in comics as a literacy tool comes as graphic novels have cemented their status as sophisticated works of literature, and as teachers nationwide are struggling to boost reading scores. Proponents of comics in the classroom say that they can lure struggling readers who may be intimidated by pages crammed with text. They also say that comics, with their visual cues and panel-by-panel sequencing, are uniquely situated to reinforce key elements of literacy, like story structure and tone.
Still, skeptics fret that in the wrong hands, comics could become simply a vehicle for watering down lessons.

“If you’re going to use comics in the classroom at all, which I have serious doubts about, it should be only as a motivational tool,” said Diane Ravitch, an education professor at New York University. “What teachers have to recognize is that this is only a first step.”
Lisa Von Drasek, the children’s librarian at the Bank Street College of Education, said that “not a semester goes by that not a parent or a teacher expresses a concern about a comic-format book that their child has taken out or is using for their reading time.” Usually, she said, the critics come around. “What we say is, ‘Whatever works.’”
Nancy S. Grasmick, Maryland’s schools superintendent, said that years ago, she noticed teachers’ discomfort when their children were spotted with comics.

“They tried to justify it by saying to me, ‘Well, this student or this group of students, they hate reading, and we’re just trying everything,’” she said. “We’re trying to open the eyes of teachers and educators to this as a possibility, this as something that might really help children and is good education.”

In the 2005-6 school year, teachers at eight Maryland schools taught lessons based on old Disney cartoons as part of a Comics in the Classroom pilot program. Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, were commissioned to evaluate the program. They did not try to gauge how much students learned, but found that teachers and students had positive perceptions of the program.

“There were some teachers at first who thought: ‘Oh, my God, comics? What’s next?’” said Susan Sonnenschein, an associate professor of psychology at the university, who was one of the evaluators. “I think the teachers changed their impression.”
The state, working with Diamond Comic Distributors and Disney Publishing Worldwide, has since refined the curriculum and invited 200 teachers to take part on the condition that they provide additional feedback. It is also planning to introduce teachers to a new series of original comic books for early readers, to be released starting this spring by Françoise Mouly, art editor of The New Yorker, and her husband, Art Spiegelman, who revolutionized comics with his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Maus.”

Ms. Mouly said that she believed her books had “enormous” potential to turn children on to reading. She cited the experience of her own son, now 16, who learned to read through French comics like Astérix.“The one thing that retained my son’s interest night after night was the comics,” she said. “Whatever that light bulb is went on.”

At Public School 59 in the Bronx one recent afternoon, students clustered around tables, plotting out their own comic strips at one of the Comic Book Project’s after-school programs. At one table, Jamie Collazo’s and his friends’ faces lit up when asked about their favorite activity: video games like Ultimate Spider-Man, Super Smash Bros. and Wolverine’s Revenge.
“I’m a game freak,” exclaimed Jamie, 11, saying that this was “when you collect a lot of games and you can’t stop playing them.” Reading, he said, “is kind of boring to me.”

But there he was, brainstorming a tale of three powerful gods who land on Nerainis, a planet between Neptune and Uranus.
Gabriel Cid, 10, agreed that “reading is kind of boring,” but said comics were different. “Superheroes, comics, that’s when it gets interesting because you get to see all the cool stuff,” he said. “We get to do our own design, and we get to color whatever we want — create our own characters and stuff.” By the end of the hourlong session, there were comics about islands populated by Native Americans, and about aliens who communicated in Morse code. There were plenty of misspellings (“to be countind you,” one child wrote in lieu of “to be continued”), but there were also instances in which students asked one another how to spell words like “mysterious.”

Amid the sketching, coloring and debating over the best way to split four panels into eight, Dr. Bitz of the Comic Book Project saw glimmers of learning: children composing, revising and organizing their thoughts into linear narratives.
“Because it’s their story,” he said, “they want to make it right.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/26/education/26comics.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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

December 13, 2007

Deep Divisions, Shared Destiny - A Poll of Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans on Race Relations

Deep Divisions, Shared Destiny - A Poll of Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans on Race Relations

New America Media, Poll, Posted: Dec 12, 2007

PDF of the entire report, summary, etc are at this URL
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=28501933d0e5c5344b21f9640dc13754

NEWS CONFERENCE WITH ETHNIC MEDIA AND CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS

Washington, D.C. – Sergio Bendixen, of Bendixen & Associates and Sandy Close, Executive Director of New America Media will be joined by Richard Rodriguez, Author, NAM Editor and TV Commentator at a press conference -- Wednesday, December 12, at 10:00am at The National Press Club - Zenger Room - 529 14th Street NW Washington, D.C.-- to release the results of the nation’s first multilingual poll, which examines how the nation’s largest ethnic groups feel towards each other, as well as their attitudes on key elements of American society.

Also joining in the press conference:

- Dereje Desta, Editor/Publisher, Zethiopia Newspaper
- Joshua Lee, Reporter, Korea Times

METHODOLOGY OF POLL

The poll of 1,105 African American, Asian American and Hispanic adults was conducted by telephone during the months of August and September 2007. The sample was designed to be representative of the adult population of the three major racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. Hispanic respondents were interviewed in English or Spanish, and Asian American respondents were interviewed in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese or Tagalog. RDD (Random Digit Dialing) methodology was employed in areas of the country that have significant (10 percent or more) African American, Asian American and Hispanic populations.

The study was designed and conducted by Bendixen & Associates, a public opinion research firm in Coral Gables, Florida. It was sponsored by New America Media. The poll was funded through the generous support of The Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, The James Irvine Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Open Society Institute, The San Francisco Foundation, The California Endowment and The California Wellness Foundation.

MAJOR FINDING

The nation’s first multilingual poll of Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans has uncovered serious tensions among these ethnic groups, including mistrust and significant stereotyping, but a majority of each group also said they should put aside differences and work together to better their communities.

The poll, which was released today during a news conference at the National Press Club, was sponsored by New America Media (NAM) and nine ethnic media outlets who are founding members of the organization.

“This extraordinary poll reveals some unflattering realities that exist in America today,” said Sandy Close, Executive Editor and Director of NAM, the nation’s first and largest collaboration of ethnic news media. “The sponsors of the poll strongly believe the best way to move forward is by identifying the problems and initiating a dialogue that can bring ethnic groups closer together in their fight for equality and against discrimination.”

Broadly, the poll of 1,105 African-American, Asian-American and Hispanic adults found that the predominantly immigrant populations - Hispanics and Asians - expressed far greater optimism about their lives in America, concluding that hard work is rewarded in this society. By contrast, more than 60% of the African Americans polled do not believe the American Dream works for them. Blacks also described themselves as more segregated from the rest of America than the other groups.

The poll found that friction between ethnic and racial groups, which at times has erupted into highly-publicized incidents around the country, is clearly rooted in the mistrust that the groups harbor towards each other, as well as the sentiment that other groups are mistreating them or are detrimental to their own future. For instance, 44% of Hispanics and 47% of Asians are “generally afraid of African Americans because they are responsible for most of the crime.” Meanwhile, 46% of Hispanics and 52% of African Americans believe “most Asian business owners do not treat them with respect.” And half of African Americans feel threatened by Latin American immigrants because “they are taking jobs, housing and political power away from the Black community.”

Moreover, the three groups seem more trusting of whites than of each other. The poll found that 61% of Hispanics, 54% of Asians and 47% of African Americans would rather do business with whites than members of the other two groups.

“The poll reaffirms that while race relations between ethnic groups and whites grab the headlines, there are also serious racial problems between minority groups in America,” said Sergio Bendixen, who is an expert on Hispanic and multilingual polling. “Blacks feel they are left out of the American Dream and are being displaced by newcomers, and each group buys into the negative stereotypes about the other two. What’s clear is the need to dissolve this friction. The poll results show that the overwhelming majority of ethnic Americans want that positive outcome.”

Specifically, the poll also found that:

* A majority of Hispanics and a significant percentage of Asians believe in the concept that every American has an equal opportunity to succeed. By contrast, the majority of Black respondents – 66 percent – disagreed with that notion.

* Blacks overwhelmingly believe the criminal justice system favors the rich and powerful; most Hispanics and an even larger majority of Asians disagree.

* A large majority of each group believes that they should put aside their differences and work together on issues affecting their communities; they also say the country would be better if more from all three groups were inpositions of authority at universities, businesses, media and government.

* All three groups are optimistic about the future. Strong majorities of each group believe that racial tensions will ease over the next 10 years.

Further, Ms. Close said the poll found “a shared appreciation” for each group’s cultural and political contributions. “Hispanics and Asians recognize that African Americans led the fight for civil rights and against discrimination, forging a better future for the other groups,” she said. “Asian Americans and African Americans say Hispanic culture has enriched the quality of their lives. African Americans and Hispanics perceive Asian Americans as role models when it comes to family and educational values.”

Poll respondents sent mixed messages to the ethnic media, which many depend on for news about their community. While criticizing the ethnic media’s coverage of race relations, particularly other groups outside their own community, all three groups maintained that the ethnic media must play a vital role by strengthening inter-group communication and helping to break negative stereotypes.

The ethnic media is embracing their challenge to do better. “The poll is part of our campaign to address mutual misunderstandings, of which there are many,” said Sok Jeong, editor of the Korea Times. “The poll is a call to action for ethnic media to expand coverage of our mutual communities and help our readers gain a better understanding of the other ethnic groups.”

Posted by lois at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)

November 20, 2007

“Unlocking America: Why and How to Reduce America’s Prison Population”

http://www.jfa-associates.com/publications/srs/UnlockingAmerica.pdf
“Unlocking America: Why and How to Reduce America’s Prison Population”
The JFA Institute, November 2007. Includes “Crime Rates and Incarceration”, “Three Key Myths About Crime and Incarceration”, “Decarceration, Cost Savings and Public Safety.”
A very interesting report.

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

October 01, 2007

Justice Policy Institute Brief: Increased employment and wages are associated with positive public safety outcomes.

Latest Brief in a Series of Policy Briefs on Public Safety: Increased employment and wages are associated with positive public safety outcomes.

The Justice Policy Institute today launches the second in a series of research briefs that examine the impact of positive social investments on public safety. "Employment, Wages and Public Safety," one of four briefs, finds that increased employment rates and wages are associated with public safety benefits. The release of this brief
corresponds with concerns about U.S. job losses and the small uptick in the national crime rate.

Key findings from "Employment, Wages and Public Safety" include:

Increased employment is associated with positive public safety outcomes. Researchers have found that from 1992 to 1997, a time when the unemployment rate dropped 33 percent, "slightly more than 40 percent of the decline [in overall property crime rate] can be attributed to the decline in unemployment."

Increased wages are also associated with public safety benefits. Researchers have found that a 10 percent increase in wages would reduce the number of hours young men spent participating in criminal activity by 1.4 percent.

States that had higher levels of employment also had crime rates lower than the national average. Eight of the 10 states that had lower unemployment rates in the United States also had violent crime rates that were lower than the national average. In comparison, half of the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates had higher violent crime rates than the national average in 2005.

The risks of incarceration, higher violent crime rates, high unemployment rates and low wages are concentrated among communities of color. Communities of color and African Americans, specifically, experience more unemployment and lower average wages than their white counterparts. At the same time, communities of color are more likely to experience higher rates of violence than are white communities,
and African Americans are more likely to be incarcerated than are whites.

A previous brief examined the impact of investments in education on public safety outcomes. Upcoming briefs will examine the intersection of policies on housing and drug treatment with safety and crime rates. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To read the complete brief, see other materials on crime and public safety, or learn more about the Justice Policy Institute, visit: www.justicepolicy.org

Posted by lois at 06:04 PM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2007

Children's Defense Fund: Cradle to Prison Pipeline Initiative

Cradle to Prison Pipeline Initiative

Cradle to Prison Pipeline Fact sheets for every state: poverty, education, early childhood education, child welfare, education, juvenile justice and incarceration and community violence.

Children's Defense Fund

http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/PageServer?pagename=c2pp_factsheets

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

September 25, 2007

Life Sentence

Life sentence

It's a government program whose impact rivals the New Deal. It pushes whole communities out of society's mainstream. It costs tens of billions of dollars a year. Scholars are just beginning to understand how prison is reshaping the country.

By Christopher Shea, Boston Globe | September 23, 2007

WHAT if America launched a new New Deal and no one noticed? And what if, instead of lifting the unemployed out of poverty, this multibillion-dollar project steadily drove poor communities further and further out of the American mainstream?

That's how America should think about its growing prison system, some leading social scientists are saying, in research that suggests prisons have a far deeper impact on the nation than simply punishing criminals.

Fueled by the war on drugs, "three-strike" laws, and mandatory minimum sentences, America's prisons and jails now house some 2.2 million inmates - roughly seven times the figure of the early 1970s. And Americans are investing vast resources to keep the system running: The cost to maintain American correctional institutions is some $60 billion a year.

For years sociologists saw prisons - with their disproportionately poor, black, and uneducated populations - partly as mirrors of the social and economic disparities that cleave American life. Now, however, a new crop of books and articles are looking at the penal system not just as a reflection of society, but a force that shapes it.

In this view, the system takes men with limited education and job skills and stigmatizes them in a way that makes it hard for them to find jobs, slashes their wages when they do find them, and brands them as bad future spouses. The effects of imprisonment ripple out from prisoners, breaking up families and further impoverishing neighborhoods, creating the conditions for more crime down the road. Prisons have grown into potent "engines of inequality," in the words of sociologist Bruce Western; the penal system, he and other scholars suggest, actively widens the gap between the poor - especially poor black men - and everyone else.

"This is a historic transformation of the character of American society," says Glenn Loury, a Brown University economist who has begun to write on this topic, most recently in the Boston Review. "We are managing the losers by confinement."

The shift isn't just academic. In national politics, concern about the people who actually go to prison has been drowned out by tough-on-crime rhetoric, but today the issue is getting a hearing from some politicians, and not just hard-left liberals. On Oct. 4, Congress's Joint Economic Committee will hear testimony from Western, Loury, and others on the economic and social costs of the prison boom. The session will be chaired by Jim Webb, the gruff, moderate Democratic Senator from Virginia. Cities including Boston and San Francisco are changing their hiring practices to destigmatize prisoners, and there is detectable momentum in Congress toward reducing the extraordinarily harsh minimum sentences for possession of crack cocaine, which disproportionately affect poor black Americans.

The issue has arrived on the public agenda in part because of the work done by a handful of leading sociologists. Western's 2006 book "Punishment and Inequality in America" is a key work in this new scholarly movement. Devah Pager, a Princeton sociologist, has been making headlines since her dissertation, completed in 2002 at the University of Wisconsin, demonstrated how a criminal record - even for nonviolent drug offenses - made it nearly impossible for black ex-convicts in Milwaukee to land a job. This month, a book based on that work, "Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration," appears in bookstores. And the sociologist Lawrence Bobo, who left Harvard for Stanford two years ago but is returning in January, has been investigating how the growing black prison population is eroding African-Americans' confidence in the rule of law.

For years, the penal system was a marginal topic among sociologists, catching the interest chiefly of professors with an interest in hard-core criminology. But in the past decade, discussion of incarceration has moved to the center of the field, in the work of respected scholars at top institutions who are interested in a broad understanding of American inequality.

"My sense of it is just that the sheer mass, the weight of the reality of what's happening, has sunk in," says Loury.

With black men in their early 30s more likely to have been in prison than to have graduated from college, and with 700,000 ex-prisoners reentering society each year, the trends cannot be ignored. The current US rate of some 750 prisoners per 100,000 citizens is several times higher than rates in Europe - higher, even, than the rates in formerly repressive states like Russia or South Africa.

In "Punishment and Inequality in America," Western documented the degree to which poor black communities across America live in a penitentiary shadow. Of black males born in the late 1960s who did not attend college, 30 percent have served time in prison, he pointed out. For high-school dropouts, the figure is a startling 59 percent. "I don't think the really deep penetration of the criminal justice system into poor and minority communities has been fully understood by people outside these communities," says Western.

Mass incarceration, Western argues, also renders invisible a substantial portion of American poverty. At the height of the tech boom in 2000, he points out, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts weren't working. Government statistics, however, said the unemployment level of this group was 33 percent, because government surveys exclude prisoners.

At the root of prison's broader social impact lies its lingering effect on individual lives. In an ideal penal system, prisoners might exit the system having paid their debt to society and be more or less restored to their previous status as free men and women. But Pager's book demonstrates just how detached from reality that view is. She had four college students, two black and two white, pose as applicants for low-level jobs in Milwaukee (excluding jobs where a criminal record would have disqualified them).

They used résumés that were nearly identical - high school degrees, steady progress from entry-level work to a supervisory position - except that in some cases the applicant had a drug conviction in his past (possession with intent to distribute) for which he served an 18-month sentence and then behaved perfectly on parole.

In surveys conducted by Pager, 62 percent of Milwaukee employers said they'd consider hiring an applicant with a nonviolent drug offense in his past. But in her field study, Pager found that her black applicants with criminal records got called for an interview - or to interview on the spot, as they applied in person - a mere 5 percent of the time. That compared with 14 percent for the black applicants without a criminal record. Meanwhile, the white applicants with a record were called back 17 percent of the time, compared with 34 percent for the white men lacking the blotch on their résumé. "Two strikes" - blackness and a record - "and you're out" is how Pager summarizes her findings. (Pager has replicated this study in New York City, with similar results.)

Job prospects for black ex-prisoners in Milwaukee may be even worse in the future, Pager argues in "Marked," because while the vast majority of job growth is in the suburbs, the gap between employers' receptiveness to black and white ex-convicts is even wider there.

Western explores the same set of post-prison issues on a broader statistical canvas. He found that whites, Hispanics, and blacks all face a hit in their wages of about a third, relative to their peers, when they emerge from prison, and also work fewer weeks per year. Their peers will see significant raises from ages 25 to 35, but the ex-prisoners won't, widening the gap. Former prisoners, too, are far less likely ever to marry, but no less likely to have kids, meaning that prisons contribute to the epidemic of female-headed, single-parent households. (Some 9 percent of all black children now have a father in jail.)

Sociologists and a few politicians are not the only ones aware of these trends, argues Lawrence Bobo. Black Americans interpret them as evidence of stark racism, according to surveys he's done. Seventy-nine percent of white Americans, for example, think drug laws are enforced fairly, compared with 34 percent of black Americans.

Black Americans' concerns about the justice system burst to the fore in Jena, La., last week when thousands protested prosecutors' tough treatment of six black teenagers after an assault on a white student. When Bobo looks broadly at black attitudes about the justice system, he doesn't find them irrational.

"We as a society," Bobo wrote last year, "have normalized and, for the time being, depoliticized a remarkable set of social conditions."

Policy makers are slowly beginning to reckon with some aspects of these developments. In 2004, President Bush, in his State of the Union address, acknowledged some of the challenges caused by mass incarceration, Pager points out, describing the hundreds of thousands exiting prisons annually as a "group of Americans in need of help." And this year liberals like Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and conservatives like Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) have cosponsored the so-called Second Chance Act. It would provide $192 million for drug counseling, family counseling, housing, and mentorship for ex-offenders to assist their reentry into their communities.

A handful of cities, including Boston, no longer ask applicants for city jobs whether they have a criminal record, although their backgrounds can still be checked later. A growing "Ban the Box" movement - referring to the check-off box on an application, signaling a conviction - is designed to reduce the kind of upfront discrimination Pager identifies. San Francisco and St. Paul have also signed off on the idea, while Los Angeles is pondering it.

To these ideas, Pager would add a policy modeled on how we treat debtors: After a certain amount of time, records of most convictions, especially for nonviolent offenses, would be expunged. Stigma would have a deadline.

Such proposals would do nothing to roll back prison populations, but bills introduced by Senators Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), and Biden to raise the amount of crack cocaine that triggers automatic five- and ten-year sentences might do so. (The possession of crack - typically a drug of the poor, and specifically the black poor - is penalized far more harshly than the powdered cocaine preferred by middle- and upper-class drug users.) Bruce Western advocates ending mandatory minimum sentences for drug conviction, and adds some further thoughts about reducing prison populations: "We could be spending money and social services to reduce the risks that make people likely to go to prison in the first place - on drug addiction, on mental-health services, on housing."

In a campaign year, the prison issue is a tough one - such arguments don't have the easy pull on voters that "tough on crime" policies do. Yet with Congress calling prison experts to testify about their research, and coverage in the mainstream media of the protests in Jena, "I do sense there is a public conversation beginning," Western says.

Christopher Shea's column appears regularly in Ideas. E-mail criticalfaculties@verizon.net.

Posted by lois at 07:40 PM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2007

Real Cost of Prisons Project Website Reminder

The Real Cost of Prisons Project website (www.realcostofprisons.org) is constantly updated with new research and papers focused on providing ideas and information to strengthen the work of organizers, family members, students, policy makers and others. PDFs of our three comic book are on line in addition to individual comic book pages which can be downloaded free and used for flyers, tabling, newsletters. There also links to hundreds of organizations. Two of our newest sections: "Comix from Inside" and "Writing from Prison" include political and analytical writing and artwork by men and women who are incarcerated.

Posted by lois at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

July 15, 2007

Public Defenders Who Are Salaried Do Better at R epresentation than Those Who Bill by the Hour

July 14, 2007
Public Defenders Get Better Marks on Salary
By ADAM LIPTAK, NY Times

Some poor people accused of federal crimes are represented by full-time federal public defenders who earn salaries, others by court-appointed lawyers who bill by the hour. A new study from an economist at Harvard says there is a surprisingly wide gap in how well the two groups perform.

Both kinds of lawyers are paid by the government, and they were long thought to perform about equally. But the study concludes that lawyers paid by the hour are less qualified and let cases drag on and achieveworse results for their clients, including sentences that average eight months longer.

Appointed lawyers also cost taxpayers $61 million a year more than salaried public defenders would have cost.

There are many possible reasons for the differences in performance. Salaried public defenders generally handle more cases and have more interactions with prosecutors, so they may have a better sense of what they can negotiate for their clients. Salaried lawyers also tend to have superior credentials and more legal experience, the study found.

The study will add a new layer to the debate over the nation’s indigent defense systems. In 1963, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that poor people accused of serious crimes were entitled to legal representation paid for by the government.

The federal system handles about 5 percent of all criminal prosecutions and is relatively well financed. The implications of the new study for the states may therefore be limited.

But more than half the states use a combination of public defenders and appointed lawyers, and most indigent defendants are not represented by staff public defenders at the trial level.

In the federal courts, roughly three-quarters of all defendants rely on lawyers paid for by the government, about evenly divided between salaried public defenders and appointed lawyers paid by the hour. Most of the rest hire their own lawyers, with about 2 percent representing themselves.

Before the new study, the debate over how best to provide poor defendants with adequate representation had largely concerned whether lawyers for indigent defendants were paid enough to ensure a fair fight with prosecutors. The debate did not much consider how the lawyers were paid, and whether that made a difference.

The new study looked at federal prosecutions from 1997 to 2001. It was performed by Radha Iyengar, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard, and presented as a working paper of the National Bureau of Economic Research last month.

Judge Morris B. Hoffman, a Colorado district court judge and a co-author of a 2005 study on the representation of indigent defendants, said the new study’s innovation was in its noticing that public defenders and appointed lawyers were assigned randomly in many federal judicial districts.

That meant, Ms. Iyengar wrote, that the two sorts of lawyers had “the same underlying distribution of guilt in the cases they represent and thus are equally likely to lose at trial.”

Court-appointed lawyers — known in federal judicial jargon as Criminal Justice Act panel lawyers — are needed when public defenders’ offices have conflicts of interest in cases involving multiple defendants. They can also fill in as the volume of prosecutions requires.

The vast majority of federal prosecutions end in plea bargains, and only about 5 percent of them reach trial. Ms. Iyengar found that court-appointed lawyers were slightly more likely to take cases to trial and slightly more likely to lose.

But her most important finding, given all the plea bargains, was that defendants represented by court-appointed lawyers received substantially longer sentences. That suggests that appointed lawyers are less adept at assessing which cases to pursue through trial and at negotiating with prosecutors.

Over all, defendants represented by court-appointed lawyers received sentences averaging about eight months longer. People convicted of violent crimes were given five more months, while those convicted on
weapons charges received nearly a year and half more. But those convicted of immigration offenses received sentences that averaged 2.5 months less if represented by appointed lawyers.

Appointed lawyers took longer to resolve cases through plea bargains — 20 days on average, a 10 percent difference.

“These results appear consistent with the hourly wage structure,” Ms. Iyengar wrote, as that structure creates incentives for appointed lawyers to take longer to resolve cases.

She concluded that appointed lawyers impose an additional $5,800 in costs to the system for every case they handle.

Analyzing data from California and Arizona, the study found that appointed lawyers were less experienced and had less impressive credentials.

“The court-appointed lawyers tend to be quite young, tend to be from small practices and also they tend to be from lower-ranked law schools,” Ms. Iyengar said in an interview. “They have a smaller client base and fewer interactions with prosecutors.”

Judge Hoffman said a number of the study’s conclusions were unsurprising given that finding. However they represent their clients, less experienced lawyers tend to do less well in plea negotiations, in deciding which cases to take to trial and in trial outcomes, he said.

Jon M. Sands, the federal public defender in Arizona, said he did not recognize the picture painted in the study. Court-appointed lawyers, Mr. Sands said, “are seasoned and committed, and their sentences on the whole don’t vary that much from those obtained by public defenders.”

David Carroll, the research director for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, said the study’s most important point was economic. “There is,” Mr. Carroll said, “a cost savings in establishing staff public defender offices.”

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

May 31, 2007

Know Your Rights: A Guide to Young People's Rights in Juvenile Delinquency Court.

Know Your Rights: A Guide to Young People's Rights in Juvenile Delinquency Court. (May 2007) The booklet is designed to teach young people their basic constitutional rights as it applies to the law.
According to the Know Your Rights booklet in 2003:
2.2 million arrests were made of persons under the age of 18;
136,500 of these arrests were for violating curfew and loitering laws;
Black youth account for 27% of all juvenile arrests, even though they only make up 16% of the youth population; and
Girls account for 29% of all juvenile arrests, which represents a 45% increase in arrests of girls over a period of approximately twenty years
Additionally, the booklet cites in recent years, reports of abuse and mistreatment in youth correctional facilities have increased. For example, in 2004 there were 2,821 reports of sexual violence against youth and 26 deaths of youth in facilities.
http://www.gaultat40.info/pdfs/kyr_booklet.pdf

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

February 28, 2007

LA Times: Immigrants Boost Pay, Not Prison Populations, New Studies Show

LA TIMES, 02-28-07
Immigrants boost pay, not prison populations, new studies show
Immigrants are less likely to go to prison than U.S.-born residents of the same ethnic group and they boost pay for natives, research says.

By Teresa Watanabe, Times Staff Writer
February 28, 2007

Two new studies by California researchers counter negative perceptions that immigrants increase crime and job competition, showing that they are incarcerated at far lower rates than native-born citizens and actually help boost their wages.

A study released Tuesday by the Public Policy Institute of California found that immigrants who arrived in the state between 1990 and 2004 increased wages for native workers by an average 4%.

UC Davis economist Giovanni Peri, who conducted the study, said the benefits were shared by all native-born workers, from high school dropouts to college graduates, because immigrants generally perform complementary rather than competitive work.

As immigrants filled lower-skilled jobs, they pushed natives up the economic ladder into employment that required more English or know-how of the U.S. system, he said.

"The big message is that there is no big loss from immigration," Peri said. "There are gains, and these are enjoyed by a much bigger share of the population than is commonly believed."

Another study released Monday by the Washington-based Immigration Policy Center showed that immigrant men ages 18 to 39 had an incarceration rate five times lower than native-born citizens in every ethnic group examined. Among men of Mexican descent, for instance, 0.7% of those foreign-born were incarcerated compared to 5.9% of native-born, according to the study, co-written by UC Irvine sociologist Ruben G. Rumbaut.

Both studies are based on U.S. census data, which includes both legal and illegal immigrants. They were released just days before the U.S. Congress is to restart debate on major immigration reform legislation and as numerous states, including Texas, consider harsh measures against illegal migrants.

The authors say their work shows that immigrants clearly benefit U.S. residents and are being unfairly scapegoated for problems they do not cause.

"There are grossly distorted perceptions between what people think about immigrants and the reality," Rumbaut said. "The old bromide that education is the way to reduce prejudice comes into play here."

Immigration hawks, however, took issue with both studies.

Steven Camarota of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies said the wage study, by examining immigrants only in California, failed to consider their effect on the rest of the country. Immigrants working for lower wages in a California factory, for instance, could keep wages down in a competing enterprise staffed by native-born citizens in another state, he said.

Immigrants, who make up one-third of California's labor force, could also be discouraging natives from moving to the state and taking advantage of higher-paying job opportunities, Camarota said.

And, by examining only wage effects, the study failed to address the declining percentage of native-born adults working in California, Camarota said. Their share of the workforce declined from 65% in 2000 to 62% in 2005, one of the lowest in the country, which could be caused by competition from immigrants, he said.

"The idea that immigrants compete only with other immigrants is absurd on its face," he said, adding that no industry in America employs only immigrants.

Peri said, however, that his study's more detailed analysis of California's employment trends showed no displacement of native-born workers. Other studies have shown that immigration has had a negative effect on African American high school dropouts. But those conclusions were rooted in different assessments of whether blacks performed the same work as immigrants, he said.

Of the crime study, Camarota said the U.S. government had failed to systematically collect 2000 Census data on immigration status from prisons and other institutions. The study's foundational data are therefore flawed, he argued.

But Rumbaut defended his study, saying the results were consistent with other research stretching back a century. They include national immigration studies conducted in 1911 and 1994, work by two Princeton economists examining 1980 and 1990 census data and more recent analyses of homicide rates in three border cities.

The co-author of the crime study was Walter A. Ewing, a research associate at the Immigration Policy Center. Among other findings, the study showed that the gap in incarceration rates between native-born and foreign-born men was wider in California. Incarceration rates, which rose the longer an immigrant was in the country, were highest among high school dropouts. Those of Asian descent generally showed lower incarceration rates and higher educational levels than Latinos.

Despite the data, Rumbaut said, many continue to perpetuate images of crime-prone immigrants.

Last year, the study says, President Bush blamed illegal immigrants for bringing crime to their communities, as did the city of Hazleton, Pa., in passing an ordinance barring them from renting homes or working.
The problem of crime in American society today is overwhelmingly a problem of natives, not immigrants," Rumbaut said.

In the wage study, Peri examined immigration flows and wages of California workers between 1960 and 2004 using U.S. Census data.

It found that immigrants did not worsen the job opportunities of natives with similar education and experience during the entire period.

The benefit for native-born workers ranged from a 0.2% wage increase for high school dropouts to 6.7% for those with some college, the study showed.

However, the study found that other immigrants suffered wage declines by as much as 20%.

"The findings would seem to defuse one of the most inflammatory issues for those who advocate measures aimed at 'protecting the livelihood of American citizens,' " the study said.

*
graphs at this url:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-me-immigstudy28feb28,1,4004926.story?page=2&cset=true&ctrack=1

Posted by lois at 04:01 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2007

PA: Area prisons open up to methadone

Allentown, PA- The Morning Call
January 23, 2007
Area prisons open up to methadone
Advocates say continuing treatment for short-term inmates cuts recidivism.

By Ann Wlazelek Of The Morning Call

With critics long holding that methadone is nothing more than a legal replacement for an illegal heroin addiction, few prisoners nationwide have received the bitter medicine in jail unless they were pregnant and at risk of losing an unborn child to withdrawal.

But that is changing. Lehigh County Prison has agreed to join Northampton and Berks county prisons in taking the next controversial step: continuing methadone treatment for short-term inmates who had been taking the medicine before incarceration.

''It's effective immediately,'' Lehigh County Director of Corrections Edward G. Sweeney said about providing methadone maintenance in the prison. Spurred by proponents who say treatment helps addicts resist heroin and avoid returning to jail, Sweeney said, ''It's a growin trend.''

Not to be confused with the illegal stimulant methamphetamine, methadone is a legally prescribed and controlled drug that quells the cravings for heroin but does not produce the highs. Administered daily at government-regulated clinics, methadone helps long-time, heavy-use heroin addicts abide by the law, hold jobs, raise families.
Yet for years, a Rikers Island jail in New York was the first and only correctional facility in the country providing methadone treatment to more than pregnant inmates.

Regulations and costs associated with establishing a methadone clinic and a mindset that prisoners ''deserve to suffer'' have kept the treatment a rarity in most county jails and state prisons.

''Jails weren't methadone centers,'' explained Todd Haskins, vice president of operations for PrimeCare Medical, the Harrisburg company providing medical services to 27 county prisons in Pennsylvania, including Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Monroe and Schuylkill.
''It was illegal for them to prescribe it,'' he said. And few jails have had enough money or heroin addicts to start their own.

Also, questions have lingered about who should receive the controlled medicine and for how long, especially among drug treatment officials who believe all addicts, even those on methadone maintenance, deserve a shot at drug-free alternatives.

''If you are legitimately on methadone, I would stand in favor of that continuing at the prison level, but an assessment should be done by a neutral party, not the methadone provider,'' which could benefit from continued business, said Robert Csandl, executive director of Treatment Trends, which offers a variety of residential, partial day programs and outpatient drug rehabilitation programs in Allentown.

If maintenance works so well, he adds, ''How does that person on methadone wind up in Lehigh County Prison?''
But local and national authorities say resistance is falling in the face of positive results from treatment studies and experiences at the small number of prisons that have taken the plunge.

''Methadone maintenance isn't a right of a prisoner unless he or she is in withdrawal and a life is at risk. It was not something prisons had to provide, but we certainly believe more jails and prisons should provide it,'' said Jody Kent, public policy coordinator for the national Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

She called methadone maintenance ''a beneficial treatment.''

Kent pointed to a Federal Bureau of Prisons survey of prisoners who underwent drug abuse treatment, including methadone, before being released in 1995. The survey found that 3.3 percent were likely to be rearrested in the first six months after release compared to 12 percent of inmates who did not receive treatment.''It's a good opportunity to reduce recidivism and increase public safety,'' Kent said.

Maintaining methadone treatment in prisons also has the support of federal health officials, such as former White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey, private foundations and state drug and alcohol agencies. And authorities say it could be argued that the Supreme Court's recent rulings against withholding prior medical care to prisoners could apply to methadone as well.

'People don't understand that heroin is a lasting addiction, a chronic condition like diabetes,'' said R. Scott Chavez, administrative vice president for the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, which accredits prison methadone programs. ''You wouldn't think of not giving diabetics insulin,'' he said.

''Studies have pretty much shown that the heroin addict must consider some replacement therapy or he will go back into heroin-seeking behavior.''

A handful of jails and prisons in Connecticut, Chicago, California and New York have started their own methadone clinics within the correctional facilities, Chavez said. More, though, have gone the route of local jails — working with community methadone programs to bring the service inside.

In this area, Berks County Prison led the way 11/2 years ago, when prisons and PrimeCare officials agreed to give continued methadone maintenance a try. Northampton County Prison followed suit six months ago.

The concept came largely at the suggestion of Glen J. Cooper, a former Bethlehem health director who 10 years ago became executive director of New Directions Treatment Services, a multi-service organization that provides methadone, drug testing and counseling, mental health and HIV and hepatitis education at clinics in Bethlehem and West Reading.

Cooper's clinics provide daily doses of methadone to 665 people who had been addicted to opiates such as heroin, morphine and oxycodone. Some have been free from illegal drugs for 30 years by coming to the clinic, he said, but the average length of treatment is 31/2 years.

In prison, however, only those held for six months or less are considered, Cooper said. No ''lifers.'' Also, the methadone clinic confirms by phone call that the prisoner had been a client before treatment begins.
Appropriate doses for the week are delivered to the jail for the medical staff to administer to prisoners each day. And a clinic staffer goes to the prison to provide counseling.

Cooper sent the protocol to all 41 methadone clinics in Pennsylvania, emphasizing that studies show methadone maintenance reduces the demand for heroin inside the prison and reduces the transmission of HIV and hepatitis, which can be spread by sharing drug-injecting needles.

''We are very proud of this,'' he said.

At the Berks County Prison, Warden George Wagner said ''a couple dozen'' inmates have received methadone for an average of 31/2 months in the last year and a half.

That's not a lot, he said, considering the prison houses 1,250 men and women on any given day and incarcerates 8,500 to 10,000 in a year. Although Wagner could not provide statistics on recidivism or other impacts of the new program, he said he believes it was the right thing to do.

''I'm a fairly conservative person,'' Wagner said of his initial ambivalence about offering inmates methadone. ''But in the jail setting, an inmate could be here as little as an hour. We don't know if he or she will be bailed out in an hour, five days or a week. And just about the time the prisoner gets through detoxification, he's released, will go get a heroin fix and start all over.

''We could do more harm than good'' by not continuing methadone maintenance, he said.

Northampton County Prison Director Todd Buskirk sees methadone maintenance as an extension of the service provided to pregnant inmates for years.

The numbers so far are small: In the Northampton jail, which houses about 815 inmates on a given day, three inmates were on methadone maintenance last week, Buskirk said.

''It appears to be working well,'' he said. ''At least, I've not received any complaints.'' PrimeCare's Haskins said the service works well in counties that have a methadone treatment center like New Directions.

''It doesn't cost more,'' he said. ''It actually saves the prison money because instead of transporting patients to the clinic for the medicine and counseling, the clinic provides the service at the jail.''

The problems come in counties that have no methadone clinics, Haskins said. ''In some places, we need to drive across two or three counties'' to transport inmates to methadone treatment centers, he said. Security guards or someone from the sheriff's department must go along.

Cost may not be a problem now, acknowledged Cooper, because New Directions is supported by a five-year, $500,000 federal grant. But when that grant runs out, he said, counties will most likely be asked for additional money. In Berks, for example, methadone maintenance and counseling cost New Directions about $9,800 last year, Cooper said.

Lehigh County's Sweeney does not expect a community backlash to the plan to provide continued medicines to about 20 of the 7,000 prisoners who come through the jail each year.

''Methadone is becoming more accepted and mainstream,'' he said, noting support from county drug and alcohol officials and training sessions offered at the Pennsylvania County Corrections Association, of which he is first vice president.

Methadone maintenance is not yet a standard of care, required for accreditation, Sweeney said. ''But my expectation is next time they put standards out, it will be recommended.''

BITTER MEDICINE What is methadone?

A legally prescribed and controlled drug that quells the cravings for heroin but does not produce the highs.

What's the controversy?
Critics say methadone is nothing more than a legal replacement for an illegal heroin addiction.

What's new?
Lehigh County Prison will join Northampton and Berks county prisons in continuing methadone treatment for short-term inmates who had been taking the medicine before incarceration.

What do proponents say?
The treatment helps addicts resist heroin and avoid returning to jail.

Copyright © 2007, The Allentown PA Morning Call

Posted by lois at 11:27 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2007

NY Times: Op-Ed " The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars"

January 15, 2007, NY Times
Op-Ed Contributor
The Mentally Ill, Behind Bars
By BERNARD E. HARCOURT

Chicago

LAST August, a prison inmate in Jackson, Mich. — someone the authorities described as “floridly psychotic” — died in his segregation cell, naked, shackled to a concrete slab, lying in his own urine, scheduled for a mental health transfer that never happened. Last month in Florida, the head of the state’s social services department resigned abruptly after having been fined $80,000 and is facing criminal contempt charges for failing to transfer severely mentally ill jail inmates to state hospitals.

Ten days ago, the Supreme Court agreed to determine when mentally ill death row inmates should be considered so deranged that their execution would be constitutionally impermissible. The case involves a 48-year-old Navy veteran who is a diagnosed schizophrenic. In the decade leading up to the crime he was hospitalized 14 times for severe mental illness.

According to a study released by the Justice Department in September, 56 percent of jail inmates in state prisons and 64 percent of inmates across the country reported mental health problems within the past year.

Though troubling, none of this should come as a surprise. Over the past 40 years, the United States dismantled a colossal mental health complex and rebuilt — bed by bed — an enormous prison. During the 20th century we exhibited a schizophrenic relationship to deviance.

After more than 50 years of stability, federal and state prison populations skyrocketed from under 200,000 persons in 1970 to more than 1.3 million in 2002. That year, our imprisonment rate rose above 600 inmates per 100,000 adults. With the inclusion of an additional 700,000 inmates in jail, we now incarcerate more than two million people — resulting in the highest incarceration number and rate in the world, five times that of Britain and 12 times that of Japan.

What few people realize, though, is that in the 1940s and ’50s we institutionalized people at even higher rates — only it was in mental hospitals and asylums. Simply put, when the data on state and county mental hospitalization rates are combined with the data on prison rates for 1928 through 2000, the imprisonment revolution of the late 20th century barely reaches the level we experienced at mid-century. Our current culture of control is by no means new.

The graph on the left — based on statistics from the federal Census Bureau, Department of Health and Human Services and Bureau of Justice Statistics — shows the aggregate rate of institutionalization per 100,000 adults in the United States from 1928 to 2000, as well as the disaggregated trend lines for mental hospitalization on the one hand and state and federal prisons on the other.

The numbers include only state and county mental hospitals. There were many more kinds of mental institutions at mid-century, ones for “mental defectives and epileptics” and the mentally retarded, psychiatric wards in veterans hospitals, as well as “psychopathic” and private mental hospitals. If we include residents of those facilities, from 1935 to 1963 the United States consistently institutionalized at rates well above 700 per 100,000 adults — with highs of 778 in 1939 and 786 in 1955. It should be clear why there is such a large proportion of mentally ill persons in our prisons: individuals who used to be tracked for mental health treatment are now getting a one-way ticket to jail.

Of course, there are important demographic differences between the two populations. In 1937, women represented 48 percent of residents in state mental hospitals. In contrast, new prison admissions have consistently been 95 percent male. Also, the mental health patients from the 1930s to the 1960s were older and whiter than prison inmates of the 1990s.

But the graph poses a number of troubling questions: Why did we diagnose deviance in such radically different ways over the course of the 20th century? Do we need to be imprisoning at such high rates, or were we right, 50 years ago, to hospitalize instead? Why were so many women hospitalized? Why have they been replaced by young black men? Have both prisons and mental hospitals included large numbers of unnecessarily incarcerated individuals?

Whatever the answers, the pendulum has swung too far — possibly off its hinges.

It would be naïve, today, to address any of these questions without also considering the impact of imprisonment on crime. One of the most reliable studies estimates that the increased prison population over the 1990s accounted for about a third of the overall drop in crime that decade.

However, prisons are not the only institutions that seem to have this effect. In a recent study, I demonstrated that the rate of institutionalization — including mental hospitals — was a far better predictor of serious violent crime from 1926 to 2000 than just prison populations. The data reveal a robust negative relationship between overall institutionalization (prisons and asylums) and homicide. Preliminary findings based on state-level panel data confirm these results.

The effect on crime may not depend on whether the institution is a mental hospital or a prison. Even from a crime-fighting perspective, then, it is time to rethink our prison and mental health policies. A lot more work must be done before proposing answers to those troubling questions. But the first step is to realize that we have been wildly erratic in our approach to deviance, mental health and the prison.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/opinion/15harcourt.html graph is at this url

Bernard E. Harcourt, a professor of law and criminology at the University of Chicago, is the author of “Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing and Punishing in an Actuarial Age.”

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

November 26, 2006

Paper Abstracts for Nov 30-Dec 1, 2006 Conference: Punishment: The U.S. Record

http://www.newschool.edu/centers/socres/punishment/
Punishment: The U.S. Record
A Social Research Conference at The New School on Thursday, November 30 and Friday, December 1, 2006
PAPER SUMMARIES

SESSION I: WHY WE PUNISH: THE FOUNDATION OF OUR CONCEPTS OF PUNISHMENT

Historical and Comparative Perspectives on Punishment Practices, James Q. Whitman

In the early nineteenth century, the American approach to criminal punishment was regarded as the most advanced and humane in the western world, and numerous European visitors made the voyage across the Atlantic to learn from it. Today matters are different. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Our punishment practices are far harsher than those of countries like France and Germany. Rather than looking to us for moral leadership, Europeans view us with distaste and apprehension. What happened? How did the great American republican experiment end up yielding a system notable for its harshness, and sometimes brutality? In order to answer this troubling question, we must dig deep into American history, and we must recognize the inherent dangers in certain aspects of the American political tradition. American anti-statism has, paradoxically, contributed mightily to the making of our uncommonly harsh system of criminal punishment. So has the American tradition of egalitarianism, which has tended to undermine any program that might guarantee dignity in punishment. In the early nineteenth century, observers like Tocqueville were confident that American republicanism would always go hand in hand with mildness in punishment. The last two centuries of our history make it hard indeed to feel that kind of confidence any longer.

The Legacy of Theology (Transgression, redemption, atonement, retribution and forgiveness), Moshe Halbertal

The purpose and justification of punishment is usually defined through three main goals: deterrence, retribution and reform. Each of these goals has its inner logic, and it implies in turn different economies of punishment that conflict with one another. I will investigate an earlier and more fundamental conception of punishment as atonement, and its deep connection to sacrificial rituals that still resonate within practices of punishment. Atonement is based upon substitution, in which a harsher punishment is replaced by its symbolic substitute (hence the connection to sacrifice). If punishment is atonement, in each case of punishment there is therefore some element of forgiveness, which makes the ritual of punishment highly ambiguous. This ambiguity is based on the complex relationship of the sovereign (God) and the victim, which include among them the bond of creaturely love. I will investigate this structure through the study of Biblical and religious conception of punishment, and in particular the attitude Rabbinic and Christian attitudes towards crucifixion.

Punishment and the Spirit of Democracy, George Kateb

This paper will deal with the idea that the most democratically suitable defense of punishment is deterrence of the wrongdoer and others. Retribution is, in my judgment, wholly alien to the spirit of democracy. Furthermore, punishment must be inflicted with reluctance. The spirit of democracy is attuned to what I call magnanimity towards wrongdoers. Magnanimity consists of two principal elements: fairness, which is exemplified by the counter-intuitive provisions of due process of law; and by leniency, which means such things as presumption of innocence and mildness of punishment. The history of democracy in Athens begins with an act of leniency: Solon's policy on the indebtedness of the lower classes. Fairness and leniency belong intrinsically to democracy, even though the US and other democracies practice an anti-democratic severity and often rationalize it by reference to the Old Testament or to Kant's theory of punishment as necessary to respect for the personhood of the wrongdoer.

Beyond the Cultural Turn: 21st Century Meditations on Punishment, Bernard Harcourt

Since the modern era, the discourse of punishment has cycled through three sets of questions. The first, born of the Enlightenment itself, asked: On what ground does the sovereign have the right to punish? Nietzsche most forcefully, but others as well, argued that the question itself begged its own answer. The right to punish, they suggested, is what defines sovereignty, and as such, can never serve to limit sovereign power. With the birth of the social sciences, this skepticism gave rise to a second set of
questions: What then is the true function of punishment? What is it that we do when we punish? From Durkheim to the Frankfurt School to Michel Foucault, 20th century moderns explored social organization, economic production, political legitimacy, and the construction of the self‹turning punishment practices upside down, dissecting not only their repressive functions but more importantly their role in constructing society and the contemporary subject. A series of further critiques‹of functionalism, of scientific objectivity, of metanarratives‹softened this second line of inquiry and helped shape a third set of questions: What does punishment tell us about ourselves and our culture? What is the cultural meaning of our punishment practices? These three sets of questions set the contours of our modern discourse on crime and punishment. But what happens now, though, now that we are beyond the cultural turn? What today is the right question to ask of our punishment practices? And how can we relate tomorrow¹s inquiry back to the central idea that has always and still today motivates the very questioning itself‹the idea of just punishment?

SESSION II: WHAT AND HOW WE PUNISH: LAW, JUSTICE AND PUNISHMENT

Changes in the Law: From the Present to the Past, to the Present, Michael Tonry

One way to describe the history of American punishment practices is in terms of a normative pendulum swinging slowly back and forth between opposed normative ideas about personal responsibility and social need. Another is to untangle the functions that punishment has served in maintaining changing patterns of economic, class, and race relations. Thinking about punishment tends to lag decades behind changes in practices and social norms. Our time is an extreme instance. Current prevailing punishment ideas that focus on responsibility, retribution, and proportionality like so many flies in amber reflect and respond to perceived policy problems and normative concerns of the 1970s and have little helpful to say about the 21st century.

Economic Models of Crime and Punishment, John J. Donohue III

Gary Becker launched the economic analysis of law, which has been influential in changing the course of American criminal justice policy. Some of that analysis has been successful in that at the time that Becker wrote his seminal piece there was a rejection of the notion of incarceration as a tool to decrease crime, and the U.S. experience has shown that increases in incarceration have indeed had a dampening impact on crime. But some of Becker's lessons about the need to evaluate costs and benefits of criminal justice policies have not been heeded, and indeed the level of incarceration has been pushed beyond the optimal level in that the costs of incarcerating the last 200-300,000 prisoners in all likelihood has exceeded the benefits in reduced crime. Moreover, while Becker's disciples have played a major role in the perpetuation and expansion of capital punishment in the US, there is a puzzling lack of rigor in the evaluation of the deterrent impact of the death penalty. Becker now concedes that the empirical evidence in support of the deterrent effect of capital punishment is "murky," yet the strong priors that the economic model has generated -- specifically that since demand curves slop downward, the death penalty must deter murders -- has been taken to trump the empirical evidence. The paper discusses whether the theoretical model is powerful enough to guide policy even in the absence of empirical validation.

Retribution: Does the Punishment Fit the Crime? Andrew von Hirsch

My presentation will address Retributivism in penal theory. Its focus will be on 'deserts' theory, a contemporary liberal version of retributivism that favors proportionate sentences and moderate penalty levels. The theory emphasizes punishment's role as providing a public valuation of conduct, rather than 'paying back' offenders for their wrongs. The theory has been influential in a number of jurisdictions, including Minnesota and Oregon in the US, and Sweden, Finland, England and Wales, and South Africa. The presentation will sketch the theory briefly, address a number of unresolved problems with it, and then evaluate its prospects for continued influence.

The Forms and Functions of American Capital Punishment, David Garland

Today's American system of capital punishment - defined as the whole set of discursive and non-discursive practices through which capital punishment is enacted, evoked and experienced - has a peculiar institutional form. This paper argues that an analysis of that distinctive form, and the processes that have produced it, can help explain the retention of this institution in a context of widespread abolitionism and provide important clues to the real functions of today's death penalty.

SESSION III: SPECIAL EVENT

Richard Gere and others: A Reading of Prison Writings

SESSION IV: WHO WE PUNISH: THE CARCERAL STATE

The Rise of the Carceral State, Jonathan Simon

The reconstruction of American political institutions since the 1960s around the problematic of crime, and forging of mass imprisonment as a preferred policy option in the succeeding three decades is now being recognized (Beckett 1997; Garland 2001; Simon forthcoming 2006). It deserves to be seen as one of the great changes in our political and constitutional development, up there with Reconstruction and the New Deal (Fraser & Gerstle 1989). But like those earlier profound transformations, the most enduring changes take place below the threshold of the major political institutions, at the capillary levels where power is exercised not just up and down, but laterally. At this level we can observe that the carceral state is anchored in everyday struggles for power where the ability to name certain identities, claim certain rights, and blame certain responsible parties determines outcomes. In this paper I argue that the ³carceral state² by this measure is far more powerfully rooted than the ³welfare state² it is often contrasted to. Concurrently, I suggest that any effort to move American society beyond mass imprisonment will require a vigorous contestation with these identities, rights, and responsibilities whose history we must attend to.

Inequality and Punishment, Bruce Western

Over the last thirty years, the prison population of the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over two million people, including large numbers of young black men with little schooling. By the early 1990s, almost 60 percent of black male high school drop-outs in their early thirties had spent time in prison. Record incarceration rates significantly influence social inequality.

Institutionalizing large numbers of disadvantaged young men creates "invisible inequality" in which standard measures of labor force status provide an optimistic picture of economic well-being at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Mass imprisonment also deepens inequality, by diminishing the economic opportunities of ex-prisoners after they are released from prison. The U.S. penal system in the first years of the twenty-first century is thus significant not chiefly for its effects on crime but for its contribution to a novel, and distinctively American, system of social stratification.

When is Imprisonment Not a Punishment?: Immigrants and Immigration, Mark Dow

Imagine that you are being held in a prison or jail although you are not doing time for any crime. You¹re dressed in an orange prison uniform and permitted to hug your wife briefly at the beginning and end of her visits. You might be taken in front of a judge and confronted by a prosecuting attorney, but you have no right to an attorney yourself. Or you¹re sympathetic enough that a legal advocacy group has taken up your case, but you are moved from jail to jail, from state to state, in the middle of the night, without warning, so the lawyer you once had can¹t find you anymore. Imagine you¹ve been incarcerated like this for a week, or a month, or several months, or several years. And imagine that the law says you are not being punished. All of this is possible when you are a non-citizen ³detainee,² held in ³administrative detention² by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Department of Homeland Security. Mark Dow will discuss the largely invisible immigration prison system that holds some 23,000 ³detainees² each day ­ a number that might soon be doubled, depending on the outcome of current legislation.

Supermax as a Technology of Punishment, Lorna A. Rhodes

Supermax prisons are a technology of control specifically designed to separate prisoners from the general prison population and to isolate them from one another. Subsumed within the larger architectural and management strategies of supermax are a number of associated technologies such as electric shields, taser guns, special door designs, and computerized operation and surveillance programs. These technologies of punishment achieve near-complete domination over prisoners¹ daily lives, producing an extreme form of exclusion that represents an extension and intensification of mass incarceration. This paper examines some of the elements shaping supermax technologies, such as the influence of behaviorism, correctional industry marketing, and a penal ideology of individualism and ³choice.² It concludes with a discussion of the harmful effects on prisoners, and raises questions about the larger consequences of the drive toward total control.

SESSION V: CONSEQUENCES OF A CARCERAL STATE

The Social Effects of Imprisonment: A Labor Market Perspective, David Weiman

Criminologists have clearly shown the centrality of the labor market for ex-offenders returning to and reentering their families and communities. The pathway from crime and future prison spells, what criminologists call desistance, depends on employment, specifically finding and holding a good job. By contrast, the probability of recidivism‹cycling out of and back into prison‹varies inversely with an individual¹s labor market opportunities, measured by both employment and real earnings.

Drawing on published and ongoing research, I examine the critical question of how released prisoners have fared in the labor market with a focus on how a prison record affects their labor market opportunities. Where appropriate, I present evidence testing the hypothesis that a criminal justice record reinforces the steepening barriers to employment at least in formal labor markets for those on the socioeconomic margin. Although the results may not be definitive (for reasons briefly discussed), they suggest that less educated, skilled individuals with a criminal record will experience lower employment rates and/or earnings than their ³clean² peers. Given the employment-crime link, the evidence implies that ex-offenders face significant risks of recidivism and hence future prison spells, notably when they are released into weaker labor markets. In other words, they are more likely to fall into a vicious cycle, a revolving door of prison release-crime-incarceration.

This labor market perspective does not discount the public safety benefits from an expanded criminal justice system, but instead warrants a fuller accounting of its costs and so net returns. Standard benefit-cost analyses focus on the benefits side of the equation ‹ the reductions in crime rates because of incapacitation and deterrent effects of tougher criminal sanctions. They measure the costs simply in terms of the fiscal expenditures on building and operating more prisons as opposed to other public goods. If mass incarceration yields significant, unintended individual and social costs, as current and research suggests, then the standard accounting is biased in favor of imprisonment as opposed to alternative sanctions.

The Impacts of Incarceration on Public Safety, Todd Clear

This paper will explore the evidence for the proposition: "high levels of incarceration, concentrated in poor communities, causes crime to increase." It will present and explain a model of the incarceration-crime relationship that includes the negative impact of incarceration on crime (incapacitation,
primarily) balanced against the positive impact, through the way incarceration destabilizes private and parochial forms of social control. It will conclude with a series of recommendations about how to deal with the problem.

Punishment Once Removed: How Prisons Punish Families, Elizabeth Gaynes

Elizabeth Gaynes will discuss the impact of incarceration on the family, including minor children. The current carceral state represents the greatest separation of families since the end of chattel slavery. More than 10 million American children have experienced the impact of parental arrest and incarceration. Children and families experience trauma, stigma, shame, guilt and fear when a loved one goes to prison, yet they are rarely considered in policies regarding punishment or incarceration. Considering the evidence that family ties and pro-social networks have a significant impact on success following release, the interruption of social networks and family relationships is clearly counter-productive, yet the desire to punish far exceeds the desire to transform those whom we punish. The American system of punishment, including building prisons far from people's homes and severely restricting contact with children and families, suggests a willingness to have families pay the price for an individual's crime. In this presentation, I will discuss what the price is, why issues related to race, ethnicity and religion are profoundly implicated, and - of course - another way of thinking about families and children as the access to a new paradigm.

Incarceration and Reentry Reforms in an Era of Robust Democracy, Jeremy Travis

A critical dimension in the changes in American criminal justice policy over the past generation has been the increased influence of the legislative branch, at the expense of the judicial and executive branches of government. This new reality helps explain the current level of imprisonment in America, which continues to increase despite record low levels of crime. In thinking about future penal policies, the new reality of legislative dominance also limits the potential reach of those reforms. Ironically, because of the emergence of a new "reentry movement" that has developed broad political support, this new reality might simultaneously open other avenues for justice reform advocacy.

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

September 20, 2006

Conference: NY: Punishment: The U.S. Record Nov. 30 & Dec. 1, 2006

SOCIAL RESEARCH CONFERENCE AT THE NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

PUNISHMENT: THE U.S. RECORD

NOVEMBER 30 and DECEMBER 1, 2006

A conference on who, what, why and how we punish.

Our nation's prison population has soared by more than 600% since the 1970s, despite a drop in crime rates. As of 2005, over two million people were imprisoned in this country: almost one in every 136 U.S. residents. Black men, who make up 6% of the U.S. population, comprise over 40% of our prison population. A black male born today has a 32% chance of spending time in prison. Eleven states do not allow formerly incarcerated people to vote. Nearly 2,800,000 American children have at least one parent in prison or jail.

What does this mean for our democracy? Where do our concepts of punishment come from? What is the effect on our families, communities and the economy of our staggeringly high incarceration rate?

Join us as we examine the foundations of our ideas of punishment, explore the social effects of current practices and search for viable alternatives to our carceral state.

For more information and to register, please visit www.socres.org/punishment

This conference is supported by The Open Society Institute's U.S. Justice Fund, Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Foundation and The J.M. Kaplan Fund and is also Cosponsored by the ACLU.

Posted by lois at 04:48 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2006

Beyond Prisons: New Book Offers Comprehensive Analysis of Failed Prison System

Beyond Prisons: New Book Offers Comprehensive Analysis of Failed Prison System

9/14/2006 8:00:00 AM

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker social justice organization and co-recipient of the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize, announces "Beyond Prisons: A New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System," a comprehensive analysis and a strong indictment of our penal system undertaken by two respected experts.

Bound to stir debate and reflection, Beyond Prisons traces the history and offers strong ethical and moral assessments of our penal system. The book lays out a new paradigm based on restorative justice - a system of remediation and reconciliation rather than retributive incarceration - and puts forward a 12- point plan for immediate changes. It also examines the ways that race and poverty drive public policy and law enforcement.

"The current system isn't working to provide justice or public safety. We need to start saying so, loudly and clearly," says co- author, Laura Magnani, assistant director for justice of AFSC Oakland, Calif. and a respected expert in the field of criminal justice. Magnani is also author of "America's First Penitentiary: A 200-Year-Old Failure."

"Too often we see the term restorative justice applied to extra punishment added onto existing sentences - such as restitution added to a prisoner's sentence so that he or she has a financial debt to pay upon release," says co-author, Harmon Wray, a minister and director of Restorative Justice Ministries, a project of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, based in Nashville, Tenn. Wray wrote a book the subject for the United Methodists in 2002.

"Beyond Prisons" opens a long-needed national dialogue on our responsibilities as citizens.

Because prisons are a closed system, operating in secrecy, the extreme forms of abuse, violence, and racism practiced daily behind bars go largely unseen by the public. Racial disparities become more and more pronounced as a person moves through the system, from arrest, to conviction, to sentencing.

Beyond Prisons (ISBN/Product No.: 0800638328, $13 US) is published by Fortress Press, a world-recognized leader in biblical studies. Copies are available by dialing 1-888-588-AFSC (2372). Visa and Mastercard accepted.

Backed by more than 40 years of working with prisoners, parolees, and victims of crime, the American Friends Services Committee Criminal Justice Program challenges the morality and effectiveness of a "tough on crime" mentality. Additional information can be found at http://www.afsc.org

The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

-0-

Posted by lois at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2006

MA: "Two Years in Jail for a Joint?"

Two Years in Jail for a Joint?
By Anthony Papa, AlterNet. Posted April 14, 2006.

The drug war, and the hard-nosed zealots who wage it, have reached new lows in Massachusetts.
On June 30, 2004, detective Felix Aguirre, employed by the Drug Task Force, was assigned the duty of going undercover to buy drugs from kids who hung out in a parking lot in Berkshire County in Massachusetts. Merchants had complained to police about the kids. Mitchell Lawrence was there with his pipe and a few buds of marijuana. He had no idea the parking lot was less than 1,000 feet from a preschool located in the basement of a church, nor did he know this parking lot was the site of a police sting operation.

Aguirre approached Mitchell and asked him if he had any weed. Mitchell pulled out a small bag of marijuana. The cop offered him $20. Mitchell hesitated; Aguirre insisted. Mitchell, who had seen Aguirre hanging out with other kids, motioned the cop to follow him up the street where he intended to smoke with him. Aguirre waved the $20 in his face. Mitchell, who was broke at the time, took the money, the first time he had ever accepted money in exchange for marijuana.
In the months that followed, Aguirre approached Mitchell again for marijuana. This time, however, Mitchell refused. Weeks later, a crew of undercover cops stormed Mitchell's home and placed him under arrest. Mitchell was found guilty of distribution of marijuana, committing a drug violation within a drug-free school zone and possession.
On March 22, 2006, Mitchell Lawrence was sentenced to two years in prison.
While this outrageous case happened in a sleepy burg in Massachusetts, the case of Mitchell Lawrence is one of countless tales of drug war madness that takes place on America's streets daily.
Mitchell Lawrence's story was eerily familiar to me. In 1985, I was the subject of a police sting operation after passing an envelope containing four ounces of cocaine to undercover officers in Mount Vernon, New York. I was set up by someone who offered me $500 to transport the package. The individual who introduced me to the cop was an informant facing life in prison. He was offered a deal -- the more people he helped ensnare, the less time he would serve. I received a sentence of 15 years to life under New York's draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws.
Mitchell Lawrence's disproportionate sentence was handed down one day before the release of a national report by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) titled, "Disparity by Design: How Drug-free Zone Laws Impact Racial Disparity and Fail to Protect Youth," which includes research from Massachusetts.
The JPI study, commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance, found that drug-free zone laws do not serve their intended purpose of protecting youth from drug activity. The Massachusetts data on drug enforcement in three cities found that less than one percent of the drug-free zone cases actually involved sales to youth. Additionally, Massachusetts researchers found that nonwhites were more likely to be charged with an offense that carries drug-free zone enhancement than whites engaged in similar conduct. Blacks and Hispanics account for just 20 percent of Massachusetts residents, but 80 percent of drug-free zone cases.
"School zone laws have remained unchanged in Massachusetts because the legislature has been promised that prosecutors use discretion," said Whitney A. Taylor, executive director of the Drug Policy Forum of Massachusetts. "Unfortunately, the life of a young man has been sacrificed, proving that discretion is not being used, and that the law must be changed."
Mitchell Lawrence was not the only person arrested in an undercover drug operation in the summer of 2004. There were a total of 18 others, including five young people who are still awaiting trial for alleged sales that took place at the same Great Barrington parking lot.
District Attorney David F. Capeless is the man behind Berkshire County enforcement and entrapment. Capeless is a hard-nosed drug war zealot, who insists that these laws are effective in combating drug use -- even if it means ruining a young man's life in the process.
Mitchell Lawrence was set to graduate from high school this spring. Instead, he will watch his fellow classmates graduate from his prison cell.
The common thread between my case, Mitchell's case and drug-free school zones nationally is the abuse of power from the prosecutors through the application of mandatory minimums. These laws handcuff judges and force them to impose harsh sentences.
Mitchell Lawrence's conviction inspired a group of concerned Berkshire County residents to seek Capeless' ouster in the upcoming district attorney race. Defense attorney Judith Knight answered the call to fill this role. Knight, a former assistant district attorney for Middlesex County, said Mitchell Lawrence's conviction was "the tipping point" for her decision to run against Capeless in the upcoming Democratic primary election in September.
"A tough prosecutor is tough on crime and also has the ability to demonstrate compassion and insight when the case calls for it," Knight says. She hopes to follow in the footsteps of David Soares, who ran for district attorney and defeated Paul Clyne in Albany, New York, in 2004. Soares ran a race primarily on the platform of Rockefeller Drug Law reform. He easily defeated the sitting district attorney, who refused to change his views on the draconian drug law legislation of New York.
It is heartening that communities like Berkshire County are fighting back and attempting to hand reckless district attorneys and other politicians the pink slip. Choosing to destroy lives and indiscriminately apply laws does more harm than good, ultimately, and it doesn't make our streets any safer.
Anthony Papa is the author of "15 To Life: How I Painted My Way To Freedom" (Feral House).

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

June 19, 2006

Cost of Incarceration and Superivsed Release

Cost calculations were made by the Bureau of Prisons and by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

Costs of Incarceration and Supervised Release

June 6, 2006 — In fiscal year 2005, it cost $23,431.92 to keep someone incarcerated in a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility and $20,843.78 to keep a federal inmate incarcerated in a community correction center.

For the same 12-month period ending September 30, 2005, it cost $3,450 for a federal offender to be supervised by probation officers.

Those figures translate into daily costs of $64.19 for a Bureau of Prisons facility, $57.10 for a community correction center, and $9.45 for supervised release.

http://www.uscourts.gov/newsroom/prisoncost.html

Posted by lois at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)

June 14, 2006

The Next Big Thing-Sentencing Project Report on Meth "epidemic"

The Sentencing Project has released a major new study disproving the popular belief that there exists a growing methamphetamine “epidemic” within the United States.

To the contrary, The Next Big Thing? Methamphetamine in the United States, reveals that methamphetamine is actually one of the rarest of illegal drugs used, with its use declining among youth, stabilizing among adults and demonstrating no increase in first-time users.

The Next Big Thing? documents the sensationalist coverage of “meth” by most media sources that have distorted national trends of the drug’s actual prevalence, growth, dangers and treatment.
Important findings of the report include:

Methamphetamine is among the least commonly used drugs.
Methamphetamine remains a rare occurrence throughout most of the country and is not indicative of a nationwide problem.
Methamphetamine use is declining among our nation's youth.
Drug treatment programs are effective in combating methamphetamine addictions.

The Full Report, complete with recommendations for a more appropriate and evidence-based approach to methamphetamine is available on The Sentencing Project website.

web: http://www.sentencingproject.org

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

Natural Disasters in Black and White

How Racial Cues Influenced Public Response to Hurricane Katrina

By Shanto Iyengar and Richard Morin
Thursday, June 8, 2006; 6:05 PM

Natural disasters are typically occasions for political unity rather than controversy. In the aftermath of large-scale death and destruction, Americans reach for their wallets rather than engage in rancorous debates over fixing responsibility and blame.

Hurricane Katrina proved an exception. In the first place, it was quickly apparent that government officials at all levels were utterly unprepared for the scope and severity of the disaster. Thousands of people were left cooped up in the Superdome for days in the most primitive of conditions. The feeble relief efforts provoked a firestorm of criticism leading eventually to the resignation of FEMA Director Michael Brown.

Not only did Katrina raise questions about the government's ability to deal with large-scale flooding, it also rekindled longstanding issues concerning the standing of African-Americans. The people who remained left behind in New Orleans to suffer the brunt of the hurricane's consequences were disproportionately black. Post-hurricane publicity, although sympathetic to victims, was criticized as seeming to be racially biased at times. The media publicized instances of looting by blacks while characterizing similar activity on the part of whites as "looking for food." Other reports alleged that gangs of armed blacks had attempted to shoot down rescue helicopters. Quite unexpectedly, Katrina became a metaphor for the state of race relations in America.

We designed this experiment to investigate how racial cues conveyed in news coverage conditioned Americans' response to Katrina. We wanted to explore whether public outrage over the governmental response was mitigated by frank coverage of the demographics of the victims, their perceived inability to help themselves and in some cases their lack of compliance with rescue efforts.

Racial cues can be conveyed within two distinct genres of news coverage. "Thematic" news reports cover events in general terms providing information about background and context. In contrast, "episodic" news personalizes events by focusing on the experiences of specific individuals. We presented participants with two different thematic frames for Katrina; one, completely lacking in race-related references, focused on the scope of the flooding and destruction in different areas of New Orleans. The second added implicit racial cues to the coverage by focusing on the breakdown of law and order in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. We anticipated that people who read the former news report would favor more energetic government relief efforts than those exposed to the report on lawlessness. In fact, this is exactly what we found.

Our manipulation of race was more explicit in the case of episodic news coverage. We presented study participants (those who were not assigned to either of the two thematic reports) with a typical story about a displaced Katrina victim. By varying the victim's ethnicity we could observe whether the audience responded differently to efforts to help the entire class of Katrina victims when they were presented with a specific case of an African-American, Hispanic, Asian, or white victim. Here our results suggest that the race-ethnicity of the person showcased by the news report was relevant: participants responded more generously (in the sense of recommending higher levels of government assistance to hurricane victims) when they encountered a victim who was white.

The study design was as follows. All participants first read one of the three news reports. Some participants were assigned to the two thematic conditions, but the majority encountered an episodic report featuring a particular individual left homeless by the hurricane. We embedded several manipulations of the victim's personal attributes into this episodic report. The victim's name was either Terry Miller or Terry Medina. Terry was either a mother or father of two children, married or single, and said to be either a school custodian, factory worker, or real estate agent. We also inserted a small headshot photo of Terry into the report; depending on the condition, the photograph showed a white, African-American, Hispanic, or Asian person (see Table 1 for an example of the episodic report). We selected a total of 18 different photographs (9 men and 9 women) from a national database all showing people from the shoulders up with a neutral (non-smiling) expression. We then edited each photograph so as to alter the subject's skin complexion. In effect, for each of the 18 selected faces, we created dark and light-skinned versions of our fictional Terry. (Examples of the skin color manipulation are provided in Table 2.) We then had Stanford undergraduates view all 36 photographs and identify the ethnicity of the person. (They were asked to classify each face as white, African-American, Hispanic, Asian, or ambiguous.) A majority of the undergraduates were able to identify each face as either white, African-American, Hispanic, or Asian.

Approximately 2,300 people completed the experiment. As in our past studies, the sample was skewed heavily in the direction of Democrats and liberals -- only 12 percent of the participants identified as Republican. Eighty-six percent were critical of President Bush's handling of Katrina. The sample was also highly educated -- 84% had completed at least a bachelor's degree. These features of the sample are especially important in light of the results we describe below.

Our principal interest was to trace the connections between different forms of news coverage and participants' willingness to support government assistance to hurricane victims. We asked participants to indicate how much money hurricane victims should be awarded in the form of assistance for housing and general living expenses. For each type of assistance, they could check a box that ranged from $200 per month to $1200 per month. Participants also indicated for how long (from a minimum of three to a maximum of eighteen months) victims should receive government assistance. Based on these responses, we created separate measures of the total amount of recommended assistance and the average length of time for which victims could receive this assistance. (The average total amount of assistance was nearly $1,500 and the average length of assistance was twelve months.) These measures reflect some mix of beliefs about the moral obligation of the government to assist victims of natural disasters on the one hand, and beliefs about how deserving were Katrina's victims on the other.

We began by examining the effects of the different genres of Katrina news on the amount and duration of recommended financial assistance for hurricane victims. Our analysis includes participants of all ethnicities although the vast majority (86 percent) were white. We expected that beliefs about the appropriate level of assistance would vary with the presence or absence of racial cues in the news. As shown in Figure 1, the looting news frame had significant effects. Participants were least generous in their recommendations after reading the report on looting. Episodic framing of the disaster -- presenting readers with an actual flesh and blood victim attempting to restart his or her life -- and impersonal descriptions of the scope of destruction both elicited higher levels of recommended assistance. The data does not permit us to assess whether the significant reduction in the amount and length of financial assistance in the looting condition is attributable to racial cues per se, but many previous studies have documented the existence of a close connection between references to violent crime and implicit racial stereotypes. We suspect that exposure to the news story on looting "primed" people to associate hurricane victims with crime, thus making them scale back on what they considered the appropriate level of assistance.

We can test for the effects of racial cues more directly within the various episodic coverage conditions where participants either encountered a white, African-American, Hispanic, or Asian family uprooted by Katrina. The appropriate comparisons (see Figure 2) demonstrate that beliefs about the appropriate amount of assistance did not vary substantially by the race of the person depicted in the news. However, participants recommended different periods of assistance depending on the ethnicity of the victim they encountered. Those who saw the African-American version of Terry Miller (Medina) awarded a significantly reduced period of assistance. (On average, the difference between the African-American condition and the remaining episodic conditions was nearly one month.) Conversely, participants awarded a significantly longer period of assistance after reading about the same Terry Miller, but who now appeared to be white.

We do not mean to suggest that participants were sensitive only to the race of the person featured in the new story. In fact, they were also affected -- and significantly so -- by gender and occupation. Participants recommended considerably higher levels of assistance after reading about Terry Miller the mother and Terry Miller the real estate agent. Occupation is clearly a proxy for earnings potential, and we suspect that people saw fit to award more generous levels of assistance when they encountered a case of a victim with significant lost earnings. Interestingly, neither marital status nor surname made any difference at all to the level of recommended support.

Finally, we turn to the question of skin color. For each of the episodic news conditions we created a lighter and darker complexion image of the person in question. We anticipated that the impact of skin color would be especially influential when the person in question was non-white. That is, we expected that darker skin color would prompt people to consider race only when they believed the person in question to be non-white. In fact, the impact of the skin color manipulation on the level of recommended financial assistance was striking. (We have plotted the difference in the level and length of disaster relief between the dark and light conditions in Figure 3.) When the hurricane victim in the news was a dark-complexion white, the amount of assistance for hurricane victims actually increased. Perhaps well tanned whites are perceived as vigorous, fit and attractive, thus putting our respondents in a more favorable state of mind concerning hurricane victims in general. But for every other ethnic group -- blacks, Hispanics and Asians -- the effect of skin color ran in the opposite direction. When people saw a dark-skinned black, Hispanic, or Asian, they recommended lower levels of financial assistance. This divergence in the effects of skin color for whites and non-whites was statistically significant. A similar, but weaker pattern emerged for duration of assistance. Here the effects of darkened skin color were to increase the duration of assistance in the white and Asian conditions, but to decrease it in the case of the African-American and Hispanic conditions.

These results suggest that news media coverage of natural disasters can shape the audience's response. Framing the disaster in ways that evoke racial stereotypes can make people less supportive of large-scale relief efforts. News reports about flooding evoke one set of apparently positive images in the reader's mind; reports about lawlessness evoke quite another.

The effects of the racial identity of individual hurricane victims on the prescribed level of government assistance for all victims are suggestive of what psychologists call the "automaticity" of stereotyping. People cannot help stereotyping on the basis of ethnicity despite their best efforts to act unbiased and egalitarian. As we noted at the outset, this particular sample of participants consisted of highly educated individuals who located themselves toward the liberal end of the political spectrum. Many of them live in and around the nation's capital, one of the more racially diverse and cosmopolitan areas of America. We suspect that this group would score at or very near the top of most measures of support for civil rights and racial equality. Yet their responses to Katrina were influenced by the mere inclusion of racial cues in news media coverage. The fact that this group awarded lower levels of hurricane assistance after reading about looting or after encountering an African-American family displaced by the hurricane is testimony to the persistent and primordial power of racial imagery in American life.

Shanto Iyengar is Professor of Communication and director of the Political Communication Lab at Stanford University. Richard Morin is director of Washington Post polling and a staff writer.

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

May 22, 2006

Free Jailhouse Lawyer's Handbook

CCR Pamphlets

Jailhouse Lawyer’s Handbook (PDF) - The Center for Constitutional Rights, in alliance with the National Lawyers Guild, has just released “The Jailhouse Lawyer’s Handbook: How to Bring a Federal Lawsuit to Challenge Violations of Your Rights in Prison.” The handbook is a free resource for prisoners and their family members who wish to learn about legal options to challenge mistreatment in prison. It can be downloaded, or you can request a copy by writing to us at the following address:
Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook
c/o The Center for Constitutional Rights
666 Broadway, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10012

Jail House Lawyers Handbook Women's Appendix (PDF) - The JHL Appendix for women is a free resource geared specifically to women prisoners and their family members who wish to learn about legal options to challenge mistreatment in prison.

http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/legal/justice/docs/jailhouselawyershandbook.pdf
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/pub_resources/pub_resources_contents.asp#books_pham

Posted by lois at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)

May 21, 2006

A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual- 7th edition

JLM has published its 7th edition, and the price has changed. The JLM is now one volume only and costs $25.00. We also publish the Immigration and Consular Access Supplement for $5.00. Please see http://www.columbia.edu/cu/hrlr/ and click on "Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual" for pricing and ordering information.

A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual (JLM) is a handbook of legal rights and procedures designed for use by people in prison. Prisoners are often indigent and therefore lack access to legal counsel while in prison. The JLM informs prisoners of their legal rights, shows them how to secure these rights through the judicial process, and guides them through the complex array of procedures and legal vocabulary which make up this system. The JLM also instructs prisoners in techniques of legal research and explains the need to take note of important legal developments. With the JLM, prisoners can learn to use effectively the resources available in prison law libraries. Since publication of the first edition in 1978, A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual has been used by tens of thousands of prisoners in institutions across the country. Prisoners have used the book to become informed of their rights and to address specific problems related to their treatment in prison or their convictions.

To date, more than two hundred correctional facilities across the United States have ordered the JLM, in large part due to the Supreme Court's decision in Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817 (1977). Bounds requires states to provide inmates with meaningful access to the judicial system, either through legal assistance programs or adequate law libraries. This influential opinion, written by Justice Marshall, and cited in over three hundred opinions in thirty-three states and eleven federal circuits, has had a dramatic impact on the ability of inmates to pursue their legal rights while in prison. Prison administrators have ordered the JLM as part of their efforts to build adequate law libraries. They have discovered that inmates find the book easy to use and relevant to issues that concern them.

The Sixth Edition of the JLM, published in March of 2005, contains chapters on the following areas: the Prison Litigation Reform Act, legal research, legal documents, discovery, freedom of information, right to learn the law, rights of pretrial detainees, appeals, article 440 of the New York Criminal Procedure Law, federal habeas corpus, New York habeas corpus, relief from violations of inmates’ rights under Sections 1983 and 1331, state’s duty to protect inmates, challenges to administrative decisions through Article 78 of the New York Civil Practice Law, New York grievance program, inmates’ rights to adequate medical care, AIDS in Prison, right to be free from assault, sexual abuse and sexual harassment, rights of incarcerated parents, prison marriage and divorce, special issues of female prisoners, inmates’ right to communicate with the outside world, religious freedom in prison, immigration consequences to criminal activity, rights at prison disciplinary proceedings, temporary release programs, conditional and early release, parole, search for a lawyer, and directory of legal and social services for prisoners.

With the needs of prisoners across the country in mind, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review has endeavored, to the extent feasible, to make the Sixth Edition of the JLM useful to all prisoners without regard to where they are incarcerated. The information on federal actions will be helpful to an inmate in a federal prison, or pursuing federal claims, no matter where the inmate is located. The law, procedures and forms relating to state actions vary from state to state, however. Where possible, we have provided information that is generally applicable, although we have used New York forms and procedures as specific illustrations. We regret that the size and scope of the book prevent us from providing forms and specific procedural information for all states. Nevertheless, prisoners outside New York will find the JLM a valuable research tool.

In the past few years, the United States Congress has created more obstacles to keep prisoners out of the courthouse. These new laws include the Prison Litigation Reform Act, which severely restricts prisoners’ ability to bring civil lawsuits, as well as their ability to be represented by an attorney. Similarly, the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act sharply limits the availability of the writ of habeas corpus, used by prisoners for centuries to challenge unlawful confinement. Finally, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act denied judicial review in many circumstances to immigrants that are ordered deported because of past criminal activity. The Sixth Edition responds to these developments with up-to-date information about changes in the law.

In addition to the English language JLM, a Spanish-language JLM is now available to provide an accessible resource for those prisoners who speak only Spanish.

An important part of managing and revising the JLM is responding to the heavy volume of mail we receive from prisoners. We thank the many jailhouse lawyers whose helpful comments have contributed to the improvements that may be found in both books. The process of improving the JLM never stops, and we ask that readers of the manual continue to share with us their ideas and comments.

In short, we hope the books will help you to protect your rights under the law. Although the current political climate is discouraging for inmates seeking justice, jailhouse lawyers should not abandon hope. We urge you to keep standing up for your rights and enforcing your humanity against those who would try to deny it. Remember—we will be standing behind you.

JLM Pricing

For prisoners: The JLM Sixth Edition is $25 per volume, or $45 for both volumes purchased together. We highly recommend that both books be used together. However, because inmates’ finances may be limited, you may purchase them separately. Standard shipping is included in the price. If you would like your books faster, include $5 per book for first class shipping, or $10 for both volumes.

The Spanish JLM is $15. Standard shipping is included in the price; however, you may include $5 for first class shipping.

See the pricing chart on the JLM order form. Prices and availability may be subject to change.

For non-prisoners, organizations, or institutions: The JLM Sixth Edition is $90 for a two volume set. Institutions may not purchase volumes separately. The Spanish JLM is $30. Standard shipping is included in the price; however, you may include $5 per volume for first class shipping.

If you are ordering for a prisoner, follow the instructions for prisoner pricing. See the pricing chart on the JLM order form. Prices and availability may be subject to change.

To Place an Order for the JLM

Complete and send the order form (link to JLM and SJLM Order Form) (formulario para su orden) with a check or money order, payable to Columbia Human Rights Law Review to:

Columbia Human Rights Law Review

Attn: JLM Order

435 W. 116th St.

New York , NY 10027

If you send a money order, keep the receipt in case there is a problem with your order. We do not accept postage stamps as payment and also do not accept credit cards. Due to the nature of the institutional mail systems, we request that you allow up to eight weeks from the date of your order. Because our office is student run, your order may not be processed as quickly over school breaks. Orders to be sent to facilities in Michigan must be sent first class. Also, please inform us on this form of any restrictions on incoming mail that your facility may have (for example, no padded envelopes or first class mail only).

*Please note - these prices are valid as of December 2005. If this form is more than two years old, prices have probably changed. Please contact A Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual for updated pricing.

Last updated January 2006

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

May 02, 2006

Policy makers forget recent history in new war on immigrants

ttp://www.timberjay.com/current.php?article=2285

Tuesday, May 02, 2001906 Volume 17, Issue 17
By Marshall Helmberger

Sometimes it seems that America¹s policymakers never learn. For more than 20 years, this country has engaged in a so-called war on drugs that has focused almost exclusively, and unsuccessfully, on the supply side, without addressing the reasons behind the growing demand for drugs in the U.S. Now, our policymakers want to apply this same failed model to the issue of illegal immigration.

Just think about this. Over the past two decades, the U.S. has poured hundreds of billions of dollars attempting to enforce drug laws that apply stiff criminal penalities to illicit traffickers. The primary effect of those efforts has been to swell the U.S. prison population, from about 350,000 in 1973 to more than 2.1 million today. Every year, our nation pours more than $7 billion into building new prisons and more than $35 billion into housing our massive prison population. Our drug laws are so Draconian that we now imprison almost 750 Americans for every 100,000 population. That¹s about 25 percent of the entire world¹s prison population, and it¹s despite the fact that the U.S. is home to just five percent of the world¹s population.

h
And the end result of this unprecedented effort to crack down on illicit drugs? According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the use, the purity and availability of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and other illegal drugs is as high as its ever been.

The war on drugs, by any measure, has been a failure. Waging a similar war on immigrants will be no different. It will result in greater prison populations, greater human suffering, greater expense, and little if any decline in the flow of illegal immigrants.

Just as our drug war has failed because we refuse to address the demand side of the problem, our war on immigrants will meet a similar fate if we do not honestly address the reasons that so many illegals head north. While U.S. policymakers touted NAFTA as a way to help stem the tide of illegal immigrants from Mexico, its passage in 1993 had exactly the opposite effect. According the Pew Hispanic Center, the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico, which had actually been declining in the early 1990s, surged 61 percent in the wake of NAFTA.

While there are a number of factors behind that surge, one of the most significant is the breakdown in the rural Mexican farm economy caused by cheap, susidized U.S. farm products, which suddenly flooded the Mexican market as a result of NAFTA. The trade pact forced an estimated 1.7 million Mexican farmers off the land as they could not possibly compete against the Cargills of the world.

The devastation to Mexico¹s rural economy was cited as a major concern by US Catholic Bishops last year in responding to legislation to extend similar trade provisions to Central America. The so-called CAFTA agreement was narrowly approved in Congress last year, to predictions that it would further add to the stream of poor Hispanics looking for an alternative to grinding poverty.

What these people seek is an opportunity to better their lives and the lives of their families. In many cases, its a matter of basic survival.

To think that we can isolate ourselves from the reality of Third World poverty on our doorstep through the building of walls and prisons is an illusion. Criminalization has failed in the war on drugs and it will fail in our new, unfortunate war on immigrants. As long as our trade policies work against the interests of average workers in Latin America, immigrants will continue to find their way here. The question is, do we find a way to make room for them and reap the rewards to our economy, or do we punish them for hoping for a better life in America?

Posted by lois at 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

May 01, 2006

Treatment No Panacea for Nation's Drug Problems, Researchers Say

Treatment No Panacea for Nation's Drug Problems, Researchers Say
April 28, 2006

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/features/2006/treatment-no-panacea-for.html
By Bob Curley

"We can't arrest our way out of our drug problems" has become a familiar mantra in recent years among advocates for more spending on addiction treatment and prevention, including some progressive law-enforcement officials. In a new report, however, noted drug-policy researcher Peter Reuter and colleague Harold Pollack offer a sobering counterpoint: the U.S. can't just treat its way to a drug-free society, either.

"Even with a well-funded treatment sector, a nation will still face chronic problems of disease, addiction, crime and disorder associated with illicit drugs," wrote Reuter and Pollack in the March 2006 issue of the journal Addiction.

"There does seem to be a population prevalence of the disease [of addiction], similar to population prevalence of other diseases. Treatment alone does not make that prevalence disappear," agreed David Rosenbloom, director of Join Together. "Since we have never had a comprehensive treatment strategy in the country, we don't know what the population prevalence really is."

Reuter, director of the program on economics of crime and justice policy at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, and Pollack, an associated professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, are quick to note that "the argument for treatment expansion is strong." Reuter told Join Together that although the risk exists that someone outside the addiction field might conclude from the paper that treatment doesn't work, "a little skepticism for the faithful is just fine."

Broad But Limited Effect

Not only can addiction treatment reduce individual drug use, crime, and incarceration costs, Reuter and Pollack say, but there is evidence that treating dealers who also are addicts may also reduce drug supply. "If broad treatment provision appreciably shrinks the pool of users willing to work in the drug trade, it is possible that treatment can have substantial supply-side side-effects, without the larger personal and social costs that come with incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders," write Reuter and Pollack.

However, research from several countries that -- unlike the U.S. -- have offered treatment more-or-less on demand has shown that treatment alone cannot solve the problems of addiction to drugs like heroin or cocaine. "No democratic nation with a major opiate problem has managed to cut the number of regular users sharply within a decade, even when a large proportion of the eligible individuals are served by treatment services," the paper notes.

In the 1990s, for instance, the Netherlands provided treatment to about 50 percent of its heroin-dependent population, but failed to put a dent in the number of heroin users, a 2001 study found. Reuter and Pollack note that the stubbornly high number of Dutch heroin users could not be explained by new users taking the place of those who quit using the drug. Rather, they said, many treatment clients simply continued to use heroin, albeit often at a reduced rate.

"Treatment is generally acknowledged to be useful, frail, and incomplete," the authors wrote. "Viewed at the population level, treatment is cost-effective and perhaps cost-saving. Viewed at the client level, treatment reduces but rarely fully halts problem alcohol use or the use of illicit drugs."

Prevention, Enforcement Outcome Data Lacking

For all of its limitations, however, treatment has a stronger research base and proven track record of effectiveness than other anti-drug strategies, namely prevention and law enforcement and interdiction.

"For primary prevention, the research base is scientifically impressive but programmatically barren," write Reuter and Pollack. "Surprisingly little is known about the effectiveness of prevention programs as implemented ... Research has been dominated by school-based programs, which are studied more readily than those in less-controlled settings. The gap between best-practice and typical interventions is large; many school-based prevention interventions are poorly implemented."

The research landscape on supply reduction is even more bleak, with the authors citing a "near-total absence of impact or outcome evaluation and a near-total absence of public or policymaker demands that such evaluations be performed."

"There is, at present, no empirical basis for estimating how much any of these enforcement efforts contribute to reductions in drug use and related problems, let alone a basis to evaluate the broad costs and benefits of competing enforcement approaches for society," Reuter and Pollack write. "... Prevention and treatment have been studied much more carefully, in part because policymakers and clinicians have demanded that these evaluations be performed to justify program funding."

Call for Harm Reduction, Support for Coerced Treatment

The authors' recommendations for improving the U.S. approach to the drug problem is an interesting mixed bag: an endorsement of coerced treatment via drug courts on the one hand, and a call for pragmatic harm-reduction strategies on the other.

Reuter and Pollack note that interdiction does help keep drugs like heroin and cocaine more expensive; they point out that while Federal Express could ship a kilo of cocaine from Bogota to Miami for about $100, it currently costs smugglers about $15,000 to avoid law enforcement and deliver the same amount of drugs.

Street-level law enforcement, they add, can make dealers more discreet, hinder new users from getting drugs, and (potentially) sweeping addicts into treatment programs. When Swiss officials cracked down on an open heroin scene in Zurich in the 1990s, for example, demand for methadone maintenance programs rose. The authors stressed the need for better coordination between law enforcement and the treatment system to reduce drug use among criminal offenders.

"Treatment may be frail, but it is likely to work more effectively if providers have many opportunities to treat the same person," write Reuter and Pollack. "Existing evidence suggests that treatment episodes motivated by criminal-justice pressure are no less successful than those with other motivations."

If primary prevention is not fully capable of deterring drug use, and relapse is an acknowledged part of addiction treatment and recovery, more attention needs to be paid to secondary and tertiary prevention aimed at users both in and out of treatment, argue Reuter and Pollack. "For this reason, harm reduction -- by which we mean interventions to help people to more safely consume drugs if and when they continue to use -- becomes an integral part of any prevention program," they write, even while acknowledging that "abstinence is the right ultimate goal."

Reuter told Join Together that harm reduction is best construed as a framework for examining the harms caused by drug policy itself, not as a definition of individual interventions. In this sense, he said, even drug courts can be considered a form of harm reduction. "Drug courts are willing to take a risk that people who are drug-court clients may use more drugs, but the overall harm to individuals and society will be reduced," he said.

A "drug-free America" is an impossible goal, Reuter and Pollack conclude, and the U.S. should feel no shame in failing to eliminate its drug problems. However, they said, the nation's failure to contain the social harms related to drug use -- such as more than 193,000 AIDS cases among injection drug users, many of which could have prevented via clean-needle programs -- "deserves greater condemnation."

"The problem is not that the United States has failed to achieve the impossible, but that it has failed to achieve things that could readily be achieved," write Reuter and Pollack. "... Harm reduction remains essential because, despite our best use-reduction efforts, drug misuse will remain prevalent and socially costly."

Reuter said that despite the advent of drug courts and innovations like Proposition 36 in California, he remains pessimistic that U.S. political leaders are ready for fundamental drug-policy reform. Few politicians think well of the drug war, he said, but "because there's so little interest, nobody sees the benefits of taking the risk of making significant changes."

Posted by lois at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)

New Report: BJS: Justice Expenditure & Employment in Corrections, Police, Courts 1982-2003

This is a new report looking at spending & employment for police, courts, departments of corrections from 1982 to 2003. It is filled with very interesting information.

Justice Expenditure and Employment in the United States, 2003

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/jeeus03.htm

Highlights include the following:

* The total number of justice employees grew 86% between 1982 and 2003
with the Federal Government having the largest percentage increase - 168%.
* Total per capita expenditure for each justice function increased more
than 300% between 1982 and 2003, with corrections having the largest per capita increase - 436%.
* The total direct justice expenditure for all levels of governments grew
from $3.6 billion in 1982 to $185 billion in 2003, a 418% increase.

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

April 24, 2006

Removing America's Blinders by Howard Zinn

Removing America's Blinders
By Howard Zinn, The Progressive
Posted on April 24, 2006, Printed on April 24, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/34984/
Now that most Americans no longer believe in the war, now that they no longer trust Bush and his Administration, now that the evidence of deception has become overwhelming (so overwhelming that even the major media, always late, have begun to register indignation), we might ask: How come so many people were so easily fooled?

The question is important because it might help us understand why Americans -- members of the media as well as the ordinary citizen -- rushed to declare their support as the President was sending troops halfway around the world to Iraq.

A small example of the innocence (or obsequiousness, to be more exact) of the press is the way it reacted to Colin Powell's presentation in February 2003 to the Security Council, a month before the invasion, a speech which may have set a record for the number of falsehoods told in one talk. In it, Powell confidently rattled off his "evidence": satellite photographs, audio records, reports from informants, with precise statistics on how many gallons of this and that existed for chemical warfare. The New York Times was breathless with admiration. The Washington Post editorial was titled "Irrefutable" and declared that after Powell's talk "it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction."

It seems to me there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture, and which help explain the vulnerability of the press and of the citizenry to outrageous lies whose consequences bring death to tens of thousands of people. If we can understand those reasons, we can guard ourselves better against being deceived.

One is in the dimension of time, that is, an absence of historical perspective. The other is in the dimension of space, that is, an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.

If we don't know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. I am not speaking of the history we learned in school, a history subservient to our political leaders, from the much-admired Founding Fathers to the Presidents of recent years. I mean a history which is honest about the past. If we don't know that history, then any President can stand up to the battery of microphones, declare that we must go to war, and we will have no basis for challenging him. He will say that the nation is in danger, that democracy and liberty are at stake, and that we must therefore send ships and planes to destroy our new enemy, and we will have no reason to disbelieve him.

But if we know some history, if we know how many times Presidents have made similar declarations to the country, and how they turned out to be lies, we will not be fooled. Although some of us may pride ourselves that we were never fooled, we still might accept as our civic duty the responsibility to buttress our fellow citizens against the mendacity of our high officials.

We would remind whoever we can that President Polk lied to the nation about the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn't that Mexico "shed American blood upon the American soil," but that Polk, and the slave-owning aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico.

We would point out that President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but the truth is that we really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to "civilize" the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that.

President Woodrow Wilson -- so often characterized in our history books as an "idealist" -- lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it was a war to "make the world safe for democracy," when it was really a war to make the world safe for the Western imperial powers.

Harry Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because it was "a military target."

Everyone lied about Vietnam -- Kennedy about the extent of our involvement, Johnson about the Gulf of Tonkin, Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia, all of them claiming it was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but really wanting to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the Asian continent.

Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a threat to the United States.

The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of thousands of ordinary citizens in that country.

And he lied again about the reason for attacking Iraq in 1991-- hardly to defend the integrity of Kuwait (can one imagine Bush heartstricken over Iraq's taking of Kuwait?), rather to assert U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East.

Given the overwhelming record of lies told to justify wars, how could anyone listening to the younger Bush believe him as he laid out the reasons for invading Iraq? Would we not instinctively rebel against the sacrifice of lives for oil?

A careful reading of history might give us another safeguard against being deceived. It would make clear that there has always been, and is today, a profound conflict of interest between the government and the people of the United States. This thought startles most people, because it goes against everything we have been taught.

We have been led to believe that, from the beginning, as our Founding Fathers put it in the Preamble to the Constitution, it was "we the people" who established the new government after the Revolution. When the eminent historian Charles Beard suggested, a hundred years ago, that the Constitution represented not the working people, not the slaves, but the slaveholders, the merchants, the bondholders, he became the object of an indignant editorial in The New York Times.

Our culture demands, in its very language, that we accept a commonality of interest binding all of us to one another. We mustn't talk about classes. Only Marxists do that, although James Madison, "Father of the Constitution," said, 30 years before Marx was born that there was an inevitable conflict in society between those who had property and those who did not.

Our present leaders are not so candid. They bombard us with phrases like "national interest," "national security," and "national defense" as if all of these concepts applied equally to all of us, colored or white, rich or poor, as if General Motors and Halliburton have the same interests as the rest of us, as if George Bush has the same interest as the young man or woman he sends to war.

Surely, in the history of lies told to the population, this is the biggest lie. In the history of secrets, withheld from the American people, this is the biggest secret: that there are classes with different interests in this country. To ignore that -- not to know that the history of our country is a history of slaveowner against slave, landlord against tenant, corporation against worker, rich against poor -- is to render us helpless before all the lesser lies told to us by people in power.

If we as citizens start out with an understanding that these people up there -- the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, all those institutions pretending to be "checks and balances" -- do not have our interests at heart, we are on a course towards the truth. Not to know that is to make us helpless before determined liars.

The deeply ingrained belief -- no, not from birth but from the educational system and from our culture in general -- that the United States is an especially virtuous nation makes us especially vulnerable to government deception. It starts early, in the first grade, when we are compelled to "pledge allegiance" (before we even know what that means), forced to proclaim that we are a nation with "liberty and justice for all."

And then come the countless ceremonies, whether at the ballpark or elsewhere, where we are expected to stand and bow our heads during the singing of the "Star-Spangled Banner," announcing that we are "the land of the free and the home of the brave." There is also the unofficial national anthem "God Bless America," and you are looked on with suspicion if you ask why we would expect God to single out this one nation -- just five percent of the world's population -- for his or her blessing.

If your starting point for evaluating the world around you is the firm belief that this nation is somehow endowed by Providence with unique qualities that make it morally superior to every other nation on Earth, then you are not likely to question the President when he says we are sending our troops here or there, or bombing this or that, in order to spread our values -- democracy, liberty, and let's not forget free enterprise -- to some God-forsaken (literally) place in the world.

It becomes necessary then, if we are going to protect ourselves and our fellow citizens against policies that will be disastrous not only for other people but for Americans too, that we face some facts that disturb the idea of a uniquely virtuous nation.

These facts are embarrassing, but must be faced if we are to be honest. We must face our long history of ethnic cleansing, in which millions of Indians were driven off their land by means of massacres and forced evacuations. And our long history, still not behind us, of slavery, segregation, and racism. We must face our record of imperial conquest, in the Caribbean and in the Pacific, our shameful wars against small countries a tenth our size: Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq. And the lingering memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not a history of which we can be proud.

Our leaders have taken it for granted, and planted that belief in the minds of many people, that we are entitled, because of our moral superiority, to dominate the world. At the end of World War II, Henry Luce, with an arrogance appropriate to the owner of Time, Life, and Fortune, pronounced this "the American century," saying that victory in the war gave the United States the right "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit."

Both the Republican and Democratic parties have embraced this notion. George Bush, in his Inaugural Address on January 20, 2005, said that spreading liberty around the world was "the calling of our time." Years before that, in 1993, President Bill Clinton, speaking at a West Point commencement, declared: "The values you learned here ... will be able to spread throughout this country and throughout the world and give other people the opportunity to live as you have lived, to fulfill your God-given capacities."

What is the idea of our moral superiority based on? Surely not on our behavior toward people in other parts of the world. Is it based on how well people in the United States live? The World Health Organization in 2000 ranked countries in terms of overall health performance, and the United States was thirty-seventh on the list, though it spends more per capita for health care than any other nation. One of five children in this, the richest country in the world, is born in poverty. There are more than 40 countries that have better records on infant mortality. Cuba does better. And there is a sure sign of sickness in society when we lead the world in the number of people in prison -- more than two million.

A more honest estimate of ourselves as a nation would prepare us all for the next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our power on some other part of the world. It might also inspire us to create a different history for ourselves, by taking our country away from the liars and killers who govern it, and by rejecting nationalist arrogance, so that we can join the rest of the human race in the common cause of peace and justice.

Howard Zinn is the co-author, with Anthony Arnove, of “Voices of a People’s History of the United States.”

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/34984

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

April 19, 2006

NY Times: Study Fuels a Growing Debate Over Police Lineups

April 19, 2006

By KATE ZERNIKE
The police lineup is a time-honored staple of crime solving, not to mention of countless cop movies and television shows like "Law and Order." Each year, experts estimate, 77,000 people nationwide are put on trial because witnesses picked them out of one.

In recent years many states and cities have moved to overhaul lineups, as DNA evidence has exposed nearly 200 wrongful convictions, three-quarters of them resulting primarily from bad eyewitness identification.

In the new method, the police show witnesses one person at a time, instead of several at once, and the lineup is overseen by someone not connected to the case, to avoid anything that could steer the witness to the suspect the police believe is guilty.

But now, the long-awaited results of an experiment in Illinois have raised serious questions about the changes. The study, the first to do a real-life comparison of the old and new methods, found that the new lineups made witnesses less likely to choose anyone. When they did pick a suspect, they were more likely to choose an innocent person.

Witnesses in traditional lineups, by contrast, were more likely to identify a suspect and less likely to choose a face put in the lineup as filler.

Advocates of the new method said the Illinois study, conducted by the Chicago Police Department, was flawed, because officers supervised the traditional lineups and could have swayed witnesses.

But the results have empowered many critics who had worried that states and cities were caving in to advocacy groups in adopting the new lineups without solid evidence that they improved on the old ones.

"There are people who'd say it's better to let 10 guilty persons free to protect against one innocent person being wrongfully convicted," said Roy S. Malpass, a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso and an analyst for the Illinois study, who served on a research group on eyewitness identification for the National Institute of Justice in 1999.

"I'm fine with that when we're dealing with juvenile shoplifters," Dr. Malpass said. "I'm not fine with that for terrorists. We haven't figured out the risk there."

The new lineups lack some of the drama of the old. In some places, witnesses view lineups on laptop computers to make them completely "blind" to influence from someone administering the process.

Psychologists who favor these so-called sequential double-blind lineups say that showing witnesses people one at a time makes lineups more difficult for the witness, and therefore better. Witnesses have to compare the person in front of them against their memory of the crime, rather than simply against the other faces in the lineup.

"It turns a lineup into a much more objective, science-based procedure," said Gary L. Wells, a professor of psychology at Iowa State University and a prominent proponent of blind sequential lineups. "The double-blind is a staple of science; it makes as much sense to do it in a lineup as it does in an experiment or drug trial."

In classroom studies by Dr. Wells and others, the sequential method was found to reduce the number of times witnesses chose an innocent person, without reducing the number of times they chose the right one.

The movement to change lineups took off in the 1990's after a growing number of DNA exonerations. New Jersey was the first state to adopt the sequential method, in 2001. The Wisconsin Legislature recently recommended the same approach, as did commissions in North Carolina, Virginia and, last week, California. Boston and Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis, use sequential lineups, and Washington, D.C., is studying them in one district.

Still, lineup methods remain an open debate: law enforcement officials in California and New York have resisted changes, arguing that the evidence in favor of the sequential approach is not firm.

A guide for prosecutors produced in 1999 by the National Institute of Justice study group said "there is not a consensus" and declined to recommend sequential lineups as a "preferred" method.

But before the Illinois study, released last month, no one had compared the two methods in the field.

The experiment was part of an overhaul package recommended in 2002 by the Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment, set up by former Gov. George Ryan of Illinois after DNA evidence exonerated several death row inmates. It tested the two methods for a year in three dissimilar cities; half the lineups were conducted sequentially and half were done simultaneously.

"Surprisingly," the study said, the sequential lineups proved less reliable than the simultaneous ones.

Out of 700 lineups, witnesses in those using the simultaneous method chose the correct suspect 60 percent of the time, compared with 45 percent of the time for the sequential lineups. Witnesses in the sequential lineups were more likely to pick the wrong person — someone brought in as filler — choosing incorrectly 9 percent of the time, versus just 3 percent in the simultaneous lineups.

And witnesses declined to make a pick in 47 percent of the sequential lineups, compared with 38 percent of the simultaneous ones. (Percentages were rounded.)

"If you are going to take officers outside their comfort zone, you have to be able to sell them on the reasons you are doing it," said Sheri Mecklenburg, general counsel to the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department and director of the experiment. "Based on this study, I think we'd have a difficult time having them believe this is a way to get more reliable eyewitness identifications."

Prosecutors elsewhere say the results make them less inclined to move to sequential lineups.

"This is very powerful because it's real," said Patricia Bailey, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan who has considered lineup changes for New York City. "This isn't a classroom study where people are watching a 30-second video of a crime that happened to someone else."

Paul A. Logli, president of the National District Attorneys Association, said that his group would discuss lineups at its convention this fall, but that many prosecutors were doubters.

"I think many prosecutors think doing it sequentially runs contrary to human nature," Mr. Logli said. "Human nature tells me that having the ability to compare is more helpful than destructive. Doing it sequentially is almost like this is a trick question."

Dr. Wells of Iowa State said the Illinois study had not validly compared the two lineup methods because simultaneous lineups had not been done "blind."

But Dr. Malpass of the University of Texas and Ms. Mecklenberg said the point was to study the new method against the status quo.

The new study will be the focus of a conference Friday at the Loyola University Chicago School of Law. Thomas P. Sullivan, a former United States attorney in Chicago and the co-chairman of the governor's commission that recommended the study, said that already, the results had "changed the debate."

"It has put a cloud over the sequential system," Mr. Sullivan said. "I think it will retard the system throughout the country until this gets sorted out."

But others say changes to lineups should focus on other elements that studies have shown produce more reliable picks: reducing pressure on witnesses by advising them that they do not have to pick someone; making sure that "fillers" strongly resemble the suspect; and recording what the witness says upon choosing a suspect, so juries can hear how certain they were about a pick.

"I don't understand why the rest of these reforms shouldn't be adopted immediately," said Barry C. Scheck, a co-director of the Innocence Project, a legal clinic that uses DNA evidence to try to overturn wrongful convictions. "The controversy over sequential blind has obscured the fact that all the other reforms are not in dispute."

Ms. Mecklenburg, in Chicago, said, "There are no sides in this debate."

"We all want the same thing," she said. "Whether you are a prosecutor or police or defense counsel, we all want reliable eyewitness identifications."

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

April 17, 2006

CA: Saving money and aiding drug users

San Diego Tribune.
By Jason Ziedenberg and Rose Braz
April 17, 2006

New research on Proposition 36 shows that the initiative is successfully diverting people from prison to treatment – and is saving Californians money.

Enacted by 61 percent of voters in 2000, Proposition
36 allows people convicted of first-and second-time
drug possession the opportunity to receive substance
abuse treatment instead of incarceration. Since the
initiative went into effect in 2001, $120 million has
been spent every year to fund treatment for thousands
of people who would otherwise be incarcerated for drug possession.

A new report out by UCLA shows California taxpayers
are saving nearly $2.50 for every dollar invested in
the program. Of people who successfully completed
their drug treatment, nearly $4 was saved for each
dollar spent. In the first year alone, Proposition 36
saved state and local government $173 million –
translating into hundreds of millions of dollars in
savings over the last five years.

As was echoed in a second report released last week by
the Justice Policy Institute, the key to the savings
was that fewer people are in jail or prison due to
Proposition 36. The JPI report shows that, five years
since the initiative passed, there are 8,700 fewer
people in prison for a drug offense. By doubling what
the state spent on drug treatment, Proposition 36 is successfully moving drug addiction out of the prison system and into the public health system, where it belongs. All of this has contributed to the state being able to bring the number of people in prison for drug offenses more in line with other large state prison systems.

Sadly, some in Sacramento want to reverse this
success: Some are proposing “jail sanctions” be
attached to Proposition 36, as a way of putting people
with drug problems in jail during their recovery.
While the proponents of jail sanctions say this will
force people to complete treatment, according to the
California Society of Addiction Medicine, there is no
evidence that jailing people aids recovery. The UCLA
report found, “The benefits of flash incarceration are
not yet consistently confirmed in the research
literature.” With state prison officials' newfound
dedication to what it calls “evidence based research,”
it is ironic that they would consider a sanction as
severe as “flash incarceration” without evidence to
support it.

Most concerning is the serious impact of the growing
reliance on imprisonment on individuals, families and communities.

County spending on jails and corrections has grown to
$3 billion a year. And swollen jail spending means
there is less money for essential county services. San
Diego County, for instance, already spends upward of
$150 million a year on jails – more than it spends on
roads or public health.

Additionally, Harvard and Princeton University
researchers have shown that jail and detention
significantly reduces future employment, further
burdening communities.

Jails also make people sick. According to the National Association of Counties, jail incarceration “traumatizes persons with mental illnesses and makes them worse” – something that seriously impacts people with co-occurring mental health and drug treatment needs. Justice Department researchers have shown that the suicide rate in jail is almost three times the rate in the general population. The National Commission on Correctional Health Care recognized that jails significantly increase contact with infectious diseases. One study found that the infection rate for tuberculosis in jails was 17 times higher than the rate in the community.

Jailing people also affects the larger community,
particularly families and children. The California
Research Bureau has reported that 97,000 children have
parents who are detained in jail. When the related
expenses of placing children in foster care is
considered, the cost of imprisonment more than
doubles. In contrast, thanks to Proposition 36, fewer
people were in jail for a drug offenses. Those people
are, instead, paying taxes, being parents and
contributing to their families and communities.

In a state that has failed to enact proven solutions
such as sentencing reform, parole reform, or to join a
growing number of states with falling prison
populations, Proposition 36 stands out as a rare
success in reducing prison populations and saving
taxpayer money. Rather than throw that success away by
throwing more people in jail, we must increase funding
for this initiative and expand it to reach more
people. Expanding Proposition 36 will save the state
more money, reduce incarceration and give all
Californians a chance at full recovery.

Braz is director of Critical Resistance. Ziedenberg
is executive director of the Justice Policy Institute.
Both organizations work to end society reliance on incarceration as a solution to social problems.

Posted by lois at 05:26 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2006

NH: Op-Ed: No Mandatory Minimums for Child Molesters

Linda Griebsch: No mandatory minimums for child molesters

By LINDA GRIEBSCH,

NH Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence
Monday, Mar. 20, 2006, Manhchester Union Leader, NH

REGARDING YOUR March 8 editorial "A heinous crime," referencing the House bill regarding child sexual assault, Rep. David Welch is a man of remarkable integrity and is respected on both sides of the aisle. He has provided support for his committee, Criminal Justice and Public Safety, as it continues to put a great deal of work and energy into this bill. These representatives, with varied backgrounds in law enforcement, child and family law and education, have met day after day to craft the most effective sexual assault prevention bill possible.

No one involved in the work sessions is soft on crime, nor is there any wish to protect dangerous sexual offenders from punishment or incarceration, even lifetime confinement when appropriate. Everyone is working hard to craft a bill without unintended consequences.

Last August, when Bill O'Reilly attacked our state, the Union Leader wrote an editorial reasoning that a law that works in one state is not necessarily good for any other state. The editorial stated that care should be taken, study was required and we should look to see what was needed specifically to improve New Hampshire statutes.

Therefore, we should not limit our legislators to focus on mandatory minimum sentences, especially 25 years for a first offense. No basis for pursuing the mandatory minimum is prescribed in the bill, no mention of risk assessment or classification, nor any objective data-driven tool.

A mandatory minimum 25 year sentence requires large amounts of money for the lengthy incarceration.

Valuable limited public resources will be used for every offender regardless of the risk presented to the community. Not every offender is at the same risk level or is likely to recidivate or is incurable. With proper early intervention, many juvenile offenders are amenable to treatment and can go on to live productive, crime-free lives. Among adult offenders, only through careful and frequent risk assessment can we be sure we are adequately addressing correction, prevention and reintegration. In this way we will know we are using taxpayer dollars effectively.

The board of directors of the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence has drafted a policy statement pertaining to lengthy mandatory minimum sentences. They speak to the need for consideration of the impact on the victim and the victim's family.

"Long mandatory minimum sentences can have a number of negative consequences that serve to decrease, rather than increase, public safety. For example, lengthy mandatory minimum sentences sometimes result in prosecutors not filing charges or filing charges for a lesser crime than a sex offense, as well as increased plea bargains down to a lesser crime. Similarly, judges or juries may be less inclined to convict a defendant on a sex offense because of the mandatory minimum sentence. Long mandatory minimum sentences can also keep victims who were assaulted by someone they know from reporting the crime."

In addition to the above objections, a mandatory 25-year minimum will force defendants to request jury trials more frequently. Trials will last longer and extreme pressure will be placed on the child victims. This is not child-friendly or victim-centered thinking. In the end there will be less reporting, fewer prosecutions and far fewer convictions, the very opposite of the intended result of creating safer communities.

One last question about this approach. What kind of treatment is effective for someone with a 25 year sentence? Currently the DOC offers a one-year treatment program. Nothing in this bill increases the time or resources for the program offered or alternative treatment.

Due to a long history in this field, I am aware of the many complicated emotions that individual victims experience in response to this crime. In more than 90 percent of cases the perpetrator is a family friend or relative. We don't need a simple knee-jerk reaction or slick politics. This is an opportunity to craft a well thought out legislative response, which takes into account all the available knowledge and research. And that's how representatives truly protect our children.

Linda Griebsch is the public policy director of the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?articleId=37b9599b-5202-4c30-927f-60
7697600452

Posted by lois at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)

March 23, 2006

Disparity by Design--New National Report on Drug Free Zones

New national report shows that drug-free zone laws fail to protect youth from drug sales, worsen racial disparity in prison. Laws that heighten penalties for drug activity near schools, public housing and other designated locations fail to protect youth, according to a new report from the Justice Policy Institute (JPI). While not achieving the intended goals, these laws contribute to unacceptably high levels of racial disparity in the use of incarceration and subject people of color to stiffer punishment than whites engaged in similar conduct. Several states are considering proposals to either eliminate or narrow the scope of the drug-free zone laws, in order to enhance public safety and minimize unintended consequences.

The JPI report, authored by Judith Greene, Kevin Pranis and Jason Ziedenberg, was commissioned by the Drug Policy Alliance, and is available at www.justicepolicy.org

Drug-Free School Zone Laws Questioned

By DAVID CRARY,, Washington Post

The Associated Press

Thursday, March 23, 2006; 1:30 AM

NEW YORK -- In reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, laws creating drug-free zones around schools spread nationwide. Now, hard questions are being raised _ by legislators, activists, even law enforcement officials _ about the fairness and effectiveness of those laws.

In New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington state, bills have been proposed to sharply reduce the size of the zones. A former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts reviewed hundreds of drug-free-zone cases, and found that less than 1 percent involved drug sales to youths.

Citing such developments, the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute is issuing a report Thursday that contends such laws, which generally carry extra-stiff mandatory penalties, have done little to safeguard young people and are enforced disproportionately on blacks and Hispanics.

"For two decades, policy-makers have mistakenly assumed that these statutes shield children from drug activity," said report co-author Judith Greene, a New York-based researcher. "We found no evidence that drug-free zone laws protect children, but ample evidence that the laws hurt communities of color and contribute to mounting correctional costs."

New Jersey's sentencing review commission reached similar conclusions in December, when the panel _ made up of state officials and criminal justice experts _ found that students were involved in only 2 percent of the cases it examined. It said drug-free zones around schools, parks and housing projects cover virtually all of some cities, and 96 percent of offenders jailed for zone violations were black or Hispanic.

Instead of declining, drug arrests in the zones have risen steadily since the law took effect in 1987, the commission found.

A bill based on the panel's recommendation has been introduced that would reduce the zones to 200 feet from the present size of 1,000 feet around schools and 500 feet around parks and public housing. Drug dealers in the smaller zones would face five to 10 years in prison, compared to three to five years under current law _ but judges would have more discretion in sentencing.

"When the overlap of zones in densely populated areas covers the entire city, the idea of special protection loses its meaning _ people don't know they're in a school zone," said Ben Barlyn, a deputy attorney general and executive director of the sentencing review panel. "It would be as if we made the entire New Jersey Turnpike a reduced speed zone."

Barlyn said New Jersey prosecutors and police chiefs had no objection to shrinking the zones.

In Washington, state Sen. Adam Kline has proposed reducing drug-free school zones from 1,000 feet to 200 feet, and limiting the law's application to regular school hours. In Connecticut, a hearing is scheduled Friday on a bill that would reduce school zones from 1,500 feet to 200 feet.

At recent meetings, activists with Connecticut's A Better Way Foundation _ which supports the bill _ have displayed maps of major cities showing huge sections designated as drug-free zones. A map of New Haven indicated that Yale University's golf course was the only large part of the city not encompassed in one of the overlapping zones.

Most states have drug-free-zone laws; they often entail mandatory prison terms that preclude such options as probation or treatment.

Lolita Buckner Inniss, a Cleveland State University law professor, is a vocal critic of the laws. Her research found that drug dealers in inner cities and compact rural towns were disproportionately likely to incur the extra penalties, in contrast to dealers in suburbs where zones covered relatively small portions of the communities. That urban-suburban split has the effect of making minorities more likely to bear the brunt of tougher sentencing rules, she said.

"I've been dissatisfied by how the public mutely accepts these laws," she said.

Though intended to deter drug sales to youths, the laws have been applied mostly to adult-to-adult transactions, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a private research group advocating alternatives to prison.

It cited a study by William Brownsberger, a former Massachusetts assistant attorney general who reviewed 443 drug cases in three cities. He found that 80 percent of the cases occurred in drug-free school zones, but only 1 percent involved sales to minors.

"The laws have an undeniable appeal _ nobody wants drugs near schools," Brownsberger said in a telephone interview. "But the evidence suggests they're not effective in moving drug dealing away from schools. If every place is a stay-away zone, no place is a stay-away zone."
-----------
A link to this paper can also be found at www.realcostofprisons.org under Papers, Workshop Materials, and Other Documents which has links to current research useful to organizers.

Posted by lois at 10:52 AM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2006

Springfield MA: Studies Show Uphill Fight For More Black Men Today

Studies show uphill fight for more black men today
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
By PATRICIA NORRIS
SPRINGFIELD - Something alarming is happening to black men.

Their plight in this country and locally is far more dire than previously portrayed in employment and education statistics, according to studies by researchers at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions.

While there are many success stories in cities such as Springfield, statistics show that young black and Latino men here are also more likely to get caught up in a web of urban violence even as their education suffers.

There were 18 homicides in Springfield in 2005, a 12-year high. Most of the victims and suspected perpetrators are black and Hispanic males. The slayings fit a national pattern in which homicide is a leading cause of death for young black men.

The persistent negative statistics are rooted in everything from institutional racism to barriers to success and a culture of low expectations, all fueled by poverty, many agree.

"It comes down to a question of humanity. How much value today do you place on black life and black youth?" asked Henry M. Thomas III, president and chief executive officer of the Urban League of Springfield Inc.

Thomas said the question is both aimed at the black community and the rest of society.

"There has to be a tipping point where the community and institutions realize the gravity of the problem and correct it on a priority basis with the institutions that have the most impact," said Thomas.

His organization has devised a parent empowerment program to help strengthen familial bonds, a move he believes will aid the community's overall health and help turn the problems around.

A community coalition also is planning a May 6 summit at the High School of Commerce to connect Springfield parents with the resources needed to help ensure a successful future for their sons and daughters. Denise Jordan, co-chairwoman of the city's Youth Commission, is chairwoman of the City of Hope Summit Committee, which soon will be making pre-registration material available.

The summit, called "City of Hope: Empowering Parents," is co-sponsored by The Republican. It is expected to include an appearance by entertainer Bill Cosby as well as eight workshops featuring panelists ranging from college to vocational counselors to experts on communicating with teens.

Such efforts couldn't come at a more critical time.

Among some of the disturbing trends university scholars uncovered:

The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990s. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20s were jobless - that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white dropouts and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts.

Incarceration rates reached historic highs in the last few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20s who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30s, six in 10 black men who have dropped out of school have spent time in prison.

In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

In Springfield and statewide there are more similarities. Blacks have the second highest dropout rate in the city at 7 percent, while black men over 18 are the majority population in the state's correctional system.

Latinos have the highest dropout rate in the city at nearly 11 percent and reflect the largest population in county jail, at 46 percent of inmates in 2005, compared with 31 percent white and 23 percent black. Critics of mandatory drug sentencing laws say they fuel the high rates of incarceration with more severe penalties for crack cocaine and drug sales near schools, both of which are more prevalent in densely populated urban centers.

Cosby said the new studies regarding black men in America should come as nothing new to anyone who is watching society and the political world.

Cosby, who lives in Shelburne but has cemented ties with Springfield after sponsoring the college education of several young city men, said the black man's plight leaves him feeling very angry and very sad.

Young black men in particular get the wrong messages from commercial interests, he said.

"What do they buy, what kind of music do they listen to, and what's the value of the things they're being taught? These things are driven by someone," he said.

In response to the worsening situation for young black men, a growing number of programs are placing as much importance on teaching life skills - like parenting, conflict resolution and character building - as teaching job skills.

But leaders here say that reaching young people, whether it is through education or the importance of preventive health care, requires challenging the status quo.

Darryl Moss, outreach coordinator for U-turn Street Workers at the Mason Square Community Center, said in order to make education, religion and other things valuable to young people, you need to make them relevant to their lives and futures.

"This might be unpopular but I believe in neighborhood-based schooling and residency rules. It is hard for someone coming from suburbia to teach in an impoverished school district. There is a cultural clash and people take that for granted," Moss said. "If you don't speak my language, understand how I talk, walk and dress, how can you teach me?"

Part of the Caring Health Center's success in connecting with black male patients is reaching out to them in the not-so-usual places.

"It is the way you present information that determines whether they are going to listen," said Michael Wallace, director of the men's health outreach and education coordinator at the city clinic.

For Wallace, that sometimes requires him to go to work in a sweat suit and to take his health-care information on the road and into places like bars and basketball tournaments.

"They are not going to talk to this guy in a suit. They are going to think what does this guy want from me, not what can this guy do for me," he said.

Material from The New York Times and staff writer Mary Ellen Lowney was used in this report.

Posted by lois at 05:42 PM | Comments (0)

March 20, 2006

NY Times: Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn

March 20, 2006
Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn
By ERIK ECKHOLM, NY Times Page 1
BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom and a welfare overhaul have brought gains to black women and other groups.

Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men.

Especially in the country's inner cities, the studies show, finishing high school is the exception, legal work is scarcer than ever and prison is almost routine, with incarceration rates climbing for blacks even as urban crime rates have declined.

Although the problems afflicting poor black men have been known for decades, the new data paint a more extensive and sobering picture of the challenges they face.

"There's something very different happening with young black men, and it's something we can no longer ignore," said Ronald B. Mincy, professor of social work at Columbia University and editor of "Black Males Left Behind" (Urban Institute Press, 2006).

"Over the last two decades, the economy did great," Mr. Mincy said, "and low-skilled women, helped by public policy, latched onto it. But young black men were falling farther back."

Many of the new studies go beyond the traditional approaches to looking at the plight of black men, especially when it comes to determining the scope of joblessness. For example, official unemployment rates can be misleading because they do not include those not seeking work or incarcerated.

"If you look at the numbers, the 1990's was a bad decade for young black men, even though it had the best labor market in 30 years," said Harry J. Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and co-author, with Peter Edelman and Paul Offner, of "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men" (Urban Institute Press, 2006).

In response to the worsening situation for young black men, a growing number of programs are placing as much importance on teaching life skills — like parenting, conflict resolution and character building — as they are on teaching job skills.

These were among the recent findings:

¶The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990's. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20's were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000.

¶Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990's and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20's who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30's, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison.

¶In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

None of the litany of problems that young black men face was news to a group of men from the airless neighborhoods of Baltimore who recently described their experiences.

One of them, Curtis E. Brannon, told a story so commonplace it hardly bears notice here. He quit school in 10th grade to sell drugs, fathered four children with three mothers, and spent several stretches in jail for drug possession, parole violations and other crimes.

"I was with the street life, but now I feel like I've got to get myself together," Mr. Brannon said recently in the row-house flat he shares with his girlfriend and four children. "You get tired of incarceration."

Mr. Brannon, 28, said he planned to look for work, perhaps as a mover, and he noted optimistically that he had not been locked up in six months.

A group of men, including Mr. Brannon, gathered at the Center for Fathers, Families and Workforce Development, one of several private agencies trying to help men build character along with workplace skills.

The clients readily admit to their own bad choices but say they also fight a pervasive sense of hopelessness.

"It hurts to get that boot in the face all the time," said Steve Diggs, 34. "I've had a lot of charges but only a few convictions," he said of his criminal record.

Mr. Diggs is now trying to strike out on his own, developing a party space for rentals, but he needs help with business skills.

"I don't understand," said William Baker, 47. "If a man wants to change, why won't society give him a chance to prove he's a changed person?" Mr. Baker has a lot of record to overcome, he admits, not least his recent 15-year stay in the state penitentiary for armed robbery.

Mr. Baker led a visitor down the Pennsylvania Avenue strip he wants to escape — past idlers, addicts and hustlers, storefront churches and fortresslike liquor stores — and described a life that seemed inevitable.

He sold marijuana for his parents, he said, left school in the sixth grade and later dealt heroin and cocaine. He was for decades addicted to heroin, he said, easily keeping the habit during three terms in prison. But during his last long stay, he also studied hard to get a G.E.D. and an associate's degree.

Now out for 18 months, Mr. Baker is living in a home for recovering drug addicts. He is working a $10-an-hour warehouse job while he ponders how to make a living from his real passion, drawing and graphic arts.

"I don't want to be a criminal at 50," Mr. Baker said.

According to census data, there are about five million black men ages 20 to 39 in the United States.

Terrible schools, absent parents, racism, the decline in blue collar jobs and a subculture that glorifies swagger over work have all been cited as causes of the deepening ruin of black youths. Scholars — and the young men themselves — agree that all of these issues must be addressed.

Joseph T. Jones, director of the fatherhood and work skills center here, puts the breakdown of families at the core.

"Many of these men grew up fatherless, and they never had good role models," said Mr. Jones, who overcame addiction and prison time. "No one around them knows how to navigate the mainstream society."

All the negative trends are associated with poor schooling, studies have shown, and progress has been slight in recent years. Federal data tend to understate dropout rates among the poor, in part because imprisoned youths are not counted.

Closer studies reveal that in inner cities across the country, more than half of all black men still do not finish high school, said Gary Orfield, an education expert at Harvard and editor of "Dropouts in America" (Harvard Education Press, 2004).

"We're pumping out boys with no honest alternative," Mr. Orfield said in an interview, "and of course their neighborhoods offer many other alternatives."

Dropout rates for Hispanic youths are as bad or worse but are not associated with nearly as much unemployment or crime, the data show.

With the shift from factory jobs, unskilled workers of all races have lost ground, but none more so than blacks. By 2004, 50 percent of black men in their 20's who lacked a college education were jobless, as were 72 percent of high school dropouts, according to data compiled by Bruce Western, a sociologist at Princeton and author of the forthcoming book "Punishment and Inequality in America" (Russell Sage Press). These are more than double the rates for white and Hispanic men.

Mr. Holzer of Georgetown and his co-authors cite two factors that have curbed black employment in particular.

First, the high rate of incarceration and attendant flood of former offenders into neighborhoods have become major impediments. Men with criminal records tend to be shunned by employers, and young blacks with clean records suffer by association, studies have found.

Arrests of black men climbed steeply during the crack epidemic of the 1980's, but since then the political shift toward harsher punishments, more than any trends in crime, has accounted for the continued growth in the prison population, Mr. Western said.

By their mid-30's, 30 percent of black men with no more than a high school education have served time in prison, and 60 percent of dropouts have, Mr. Western said.

Among black dropouts in their late 20's, more are in prison on a given day — 34 percent — than are working — 30 percent — according to an analysis of 2000 census data by Steven Raphael of the University of California, Berkeley.

The second special factor is related to an otherwise successful policy: the stricter enforcement of child support. Improved collection of money from absent fathers has been a pillar of welfare overhaul. But the system can leave young men feeling overwhelmed with debt and deter them from seeking legal work, since a large share of any earnings could be seized.

About half of all black men in their late 20's and early 30's who did not go to college are noncustodial fathers, according to Mr. Holzer. From the fathers' viewpoint, support obligations "amount to a tax on earnings," he said.

Some fathers give up, while others find casual work. "The work is sporadic, not the kind that leads to advancement or provides unemployment insurance," Mr. Holzer said. "It's nothing like having a real job."

The recent studies identified a range of government programs and experiments, especially education and training efforts like the Job Corps, that had shown success and could be scaled up.

Scholars call for intensive new efforts to give children a better start, including support for parents and extra schooling for children.

They call for teaching skills to prisoners and helping them re-enter society more productively, and for less automatic incarceration of minor offenders.

In a society where higher education is vital to economic success, Mr. Mincy of Columbia said, programs to help more men enter and succeed in college may hold promise. But he lamented the dearth of policies and resources to aid single men.

"We spent $50 billion in efforts that produced the turnaround for poor women," Mr. Mincy said. "We are not even beginning to think about the men's problem on similar orders of magnitude."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/national/20blackmen.html?incamp=article_po
pular&pagewanted=all

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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

March 12, 2006

Voices from Inside Releases Poetry Anthology

VOICES FROM INSIDE ANNOUNCES THE RELEASE OF OUR FIRST ANTHOLOGY

(Northampton, MA- March 11, 2006) Voices from Inside has published its first anthology, Women Writing in Prison, edited by Jacqueline Sheehan. VFI is a group in Western Massachusetts which facilitates writing workshops with incarcerated women, encouraging them to write their stories in their own unique voices. The anthology offers a selection of raw poetry and prose written by ninety-five women prisoners. This new volume reaches out to the larger community, promoting a deeper understanding of the human costs of incarceration.

“I was profoundly struck by the variety of the women’s backgrounds, the courage and humanity of their stories, and the dignity and power of their voices. They need to be heard---and we on the outside need to hear them,” says Ellen Dore Watson, director of the Poetry Center at Smith College.

Billy Collins, New York State Poet Laureate, former U.S. Poet Laureate also applauds Voices From Inside’s first anthology. “If courage is grace under pressure, then these poems are graceful expressions under the real pressures of confinement. Poetry’s acclaimed power to liberate is vividly exemplified in Women Writing in Prison; each poem is at once a private act of escape and confrontation.”

All profits from the sale of Women Writing in Prison support Voices from Inside’s writing groups for incarcerated women.

Books can be purchased for $17.00 each, plus $3.00 for shipping and handling. For information and order forms, contact Carolyn Benson at carbenco@rcn.com.

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

March 02, 2006

NY Times: Prisons Often Shackle Women in Labor

March 2, 2006
Prisons Often Shackle Pregnant Inmates in Labor
By ADAM LIPTAK
Shawanna Nelson, a prisoner at the McPherson Unit in Newport, Ark., had been in labor for more than 12 hours when she arrived at Newport Hospital on Sept. 20, 2003. Ms. Nelson, whose legs were shackled together and who had been given nothing stronger than Tylenol all day, begged, according to court papers, to have the shackles removed.

Though her doctor and two nurses joined in the request, her lawsuit says, the guard in charge of her refused.

"She was shackled all through labor," said Ms. Nelson's lawyer, Cathleen V. Compton. "The doctor who was delivering the baby made them remove the shackles for the actual delivery at the very end."

Despite sporadic complaints and occasional lawsuits, the practice of shackling prisoners in labor continues to be relatively common, state legislators and a human rights group said. Only two states, California and Illinois, have laws forbidding the practice.

The New York Legislature is considering a similar bill. Ms. Nelson's suit, which seeks to ban the use of restraints on Arkansas prisoners during labor and delivery, is to be tried in Little Rock this spring.

The California law, which came into force in January, was prompted by widespread problems, said Sally J. Lieber, a Democratic assemblywoman from Mountain View.

"We found this was going on in some institutions in California and all over the United States," Ms. Lieber said. "It presents risks not only for the inmate giving birth, but also for the infant."

Corrections officials say they must strike a balance between security and the well-being of the pregnant woman and her child.

"Though these are pregnant women," said Dina Tyler, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, "they are still convicted felons, and sometimes violent in nature. There have been instances when we've had a female inmate try to hurt hospital staff during delivery."

Dee Ann Newell, who has taught classes in prenatal care and parenting for female prisoners in Arkansas for 15 years, said she found the practice of shackling women in labor appalling.

"If you have ever seen a woman have a baby," Ms. Newell said, "you know we squirm. We move around."

Twenty-three state corrections departments, along with the federal Bureau of Prisons, have policies that expressly allow restraints during labor, according to a report by Amnesty International U.S.A. on Wednesday.

The corrections departments of five states, including Connecticut, and the District of Columbia, the report found, prohibit the practice. The remaining states do not have laws or formal policies, although some corrections departments told the group that they did not use restraints as a matter of informal practice.

Many states justify restraints because the prisoners remain escape risks, though there have apparently been no instances of escape attempts by women in labor.

"You can't convince me that it's ever really happened," Ms. Newell said. "You certainly wouldn't get far."

About 5 percent of female prisoners arrive pregnant, according to a 1999 report by the Justice Department. The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group, estimates that 40,000 women are admitted to the nation's prisons each year, suggesting that 2,000 babies are born to American prisoners annually.

Illinois enacted the first law forbidding some restraints during labor, in 2000. "Under no circumstances," it says, "may leg irons or shackles or waist shackles be used on any pregnant female prisoner who is in labor."

Before that, said Gail T. Smith, the executive director of Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers, the standard practice was to chain the prisoner to a hospital bed. "What was common," Ms. Smith said, "was one wrist and one ankle."

The California law prohibits shackling prisoners by the wrists or ankles during labor, delivery and recovery. Until recently, prisoners from the Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, Calif., were routinely shackled to their beds after giving birth at the nearby Madera Community Hospital.

"These women are mostly in for minor crimes and don't pose a flight risk," said Ms. Lieber, who met with 120 pregnant women at the prison in August. "Madera Community Hospital is in one of the most remote parts of California. It's hard to walk to a filling station, much less a bus stop."

Washington State has also forbidden the use of shackles during labor, though as a matter of corrections department policy rather than law. Pamela Simpson, a California nurse, described in an e-mail message to Ms. Lieber the practice in Washington before the policy was changed.

"Here this young woman was in active labor," Ms. Simpson wrote, "handcuffed to the armed guard, wearing shackles, in her orange outfit that was dripping wet with amniotic fluid. Her age: 15!"

Arkansas has resisted an outright ban on restraints, though Ms. Nelson's case may change that.

Ms. Nelson was serving time for identity fraud and writing bad checks when she gave birth at age 30. She weighed a little more than 100 pounds, and her baby, it turned out, weighed nine and a half pounds.

The experience of giving birth without anesthesia while largely immobilized has left her with lasting back pain and damage to her sciatic nerve, according to her lawsuit against prison officials and a private company, Correctional Medical Services.

Ms. Nelson, now known as Shawanna Lumsey, and lawyers for the defendants did not respond to requests for comment. In court papers, the defendants denied that they had caused any harm to Ms. Nelson.

Partly as a consequence of Ms. Nelson's suit, Arkansas has started using softer, more flexible nylon restraints for prisoners deemed to be security risks. They are removed, Ms. Tyler said, during the actual delivery.

Ms. Newell considers that slight progress for the approximately 50 women in Arkansas prisons and jails who give birth each year.

"Childbirth should be a sacred event," said Ms. Newell, a senior justice fellow at the Soros Foundation. "Just because they're prisoners doesn't mean they shouldn't get the usual care."

Dawn H., an Arkansas prisoner who delivered a baby in custody in 2002, said her guard wanted to shackle her to the bed.

"Fortunately," she said, "I had a very wonderful nurse who told the guard I was in her care. I was her patient. And no one was going to shackle me." (She asked that her full name not be used because her employer did not know about her imprisonment for passing bad checks.)

The Wisconsin Corrections Department has also recently changed its approach, after a state newspaper, The Post-Crescent of Appleton, reported on the issue in January. The department said it would end the use of restraints during labor, delivery and recovery.

Merica Erato, serving time for negligent homicide after a car accident, went through labor with chains around her ankles in Fond du Lac, Wis., in May, her husband, Steve, said in an interview.

"It is unbelievable that in this day and age a child is born to a woman in shackles," Mr. Erato said. "It sounds like something from slavery 200 years ago."

In most cases, people who have studied the issue said, women are shackled because prison rules are unthinkingly exported to a hospital setting.

"This is the perfect example of rule-following at the expense of common sense," said William F. Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A. "It's almost as stupid as shackling someone in a coma."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/national/02shackles.html?hp&ex=1141362000&en=6f6390e020cbb341&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

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

February 26, 2006

Prison Economics: Crime and Punishment

Publication: Fortune Magazine http://fortune.com
Date: April 30, 2001
Title: PRISON ECONOMICS Crime and Punishment
Author: Cait Murphy
Print URL: http://www.fortune.com/indext.jhtml?channel=print_article.jhtml&doc_id=20182
0

PRISON ECONOMICS Crime and Punishment
Think that stuffing prisons with lawbreakers makes sense?
You clearly haven't run the numbers.
Here are some better ways to buy safety. FORTUNE
Monday, April 30, 2001
By Cait Murphy

America is an exceptional country. Compared with citizens of other nations, Americans tend to be more religious and more entrepreneurial. We send more people to university, have more millionaires, and enjoy more living space. We are the world leaders in obesity and Nobel Prizes.

And we send people to prison at a rate that is almost unheard of. Right now, almost two million Americans are either in prison (after conviction) or jail (waiting for trial). Of every 100,000 Americans, 481 are in prison. By comparison, the incarceration rate for Britain is 125 per 100,000, for Canada 129, and for Japan 40. Only Russia, at 685, is quicker to lock 'em up.

America was not always so exceptional in this regard. For the 50 years prior to 1975, the U.S. incarceration rate averaged about 110, right around rich-world norms. But then, in the 1970s, the great prison buildup began.

This was a bipartisan movement. Democrats like Jerry Brown of California and Ann Richards of Texas, for example, presided over prison population booms, as did Republican governors like John Ashcroft of Missouri and Michael Castle of Delaware. Bill Clinton worried in public about rising prison populations but signed legislation, much of it Republican sponsored, that kept the figures rising. No surprise, then, that spending on incarceration has ballooned from less than $7 billion in 1980 to about $45 billion today.

Just because the U.S. is different doesn't mean it is wrong. But prison is a serious matter in a way that, say, America's inexplicable affection for tractor pulls is not. Accordingly, a number of people--social scientists, prison professionals, even a few politicians--have begun to examine how and why the U.S. sends people to prison. What they are finding, in broad terms, is that there is a substantial minority of prisoners for whom incarceration is inappropriate--and much too expensive.

Who deserves to be imprisoned is, of course, partly a question of moral values. Prison keeps criminals off the streets; it punishes transgressors and deters people from committing crimes. But it is also a question of economic values. Everyone agrees that caging, say, John Wayne Gacy is worth whatever it costs, but that locking up a granny caught shoplifting makes no sense. The question to consider, then, is not "Does prison work?" but "When does prison work?" Economics can help draw the line.

On one level, it makes sense that America imprisons more people than its peers. The U.S. has historically been more violent than Europe, Japan, or Canada--in particular, our homicide rate is well above world norms--and the public wants violent people punished while freeing society from their presence. "We are a culture that believes change is possible, that human beings can be saved," says Francis Cullen of the University of Cincinnati, who specializes in public attitudes toward crime and rehabilitation. "The dividing line is violence. That's where people start becoming unwilling to take risks."

Fundamentally, America's prison population grew because people got sick of feeling scared and elected politicians who promised to deliver freedom from that fear. Moreover, it could be argued that America had some catching up to do: From the early 1960s to the early 1970s, the violent-crime rate rose sharply while the incarceration rate actually fell. Those trends probably helped spawn the "tough on crime" mentality that has reigned since. In the 1980s lawmakers delivered mandatory minimums--statutory requirements for harsh sentences for certain offenses, mostly gun- and drug-related. In the 1990s came "three-strikes" laws, designed to target repeat felons; truth-in-sentencing legislation; and the abolition of parole in many states. All those policies filled prisons, but not necessarily with the hardened thugs people thought they were putting away. Though there are now 400,000 more violent offenders behind bars than there were in 1980, the proportion of violent offenders in the prison population has actually fallen.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the percentage of violent offenders in state prisons has dropped from almost 60% in 1980 to 48% at the end of 1999; 21% were in prison in 1999 for property crimes, 21% for drug crimes, and the rest for public-order offenses, such as immigration, vice, or weapons violations. In the federal system, home to about 145,000 offenders, 58% are in for drug offenses (compared with 25% in 1980) and only 12% for violent crimes--down from 17% in 1990. Of the six crimes that account for the great majority of prisoners (murder, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, drugs, and sexual assault), drug offenders made up 45% of the growth from 1980 to 1996, figures Allan Beck of the BJS. Every year from 1990 through 1997, more people were sentenced to prison for drug offenses than for violent crimes.
 
 

(INCARCERATION RATE TABLE IN ARTICLE)
 
 

Because imprisonment went up in the 1990s and crime went down, you might conclude that locking up so many criminals bought us less crime. Up to a point that's true. Steven Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, has cleverly provided an empirical foundation to prove the link between incarceration and crime reduction. In 1996 he studied what happened after the courts ordered 12 states to reduce overcrowding in their prison systems. By looking at how the states responded, either by releasing convicts or by building new prisons, he estimated that the effect of imprisoning one additional lawbreaker for a year was to prevent two fewer violent crimes and about a dozen fewer property crimes. The social costs of these crimes Levitt estimated at $53,900 (a figure derived from published estimates commonly used by social scientists). That's well above the $25,000 or so it costs to keep a prisoner behind bars for a year. But that doesn't prove that every prison cell built in America's 25-year construction spree was worth it. There could be ways to deliver just as much public safety for less money. 

Take Canada. Like the U.S., Canada saw a sharp decline in violent crime in the 1990s--but while America's prison population almost doubled, Canada's rose only slightly. Or take next-door neighbors New Hampshire and Maine. In the first half of the 1990s, both saw similar declines in crime, but New Hampshire sharply increased the number of people it imprisoned, while Maine did not. Ditto for Kansas and Missouri; the latter built lots more new prisons, but the crime rates in the two states remained similar. In short, building prisons is not the only way to fight crime--and often not a cost-effective way to do so. In economic terms, this is because not every prison cell delivers equal returns, in terms of havoc unwreaked. As more and more people are imprisoned, the nastiness of the inmate population diminishes, so the crime control delivered per convict drops. 

Consider the research of John DiIulio, the new director of President Bush's office of faith-based programs; Bert Useem, director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of New Mexico; and Anne Morrison Piehl, a professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. In 1999 the trio surveyed male inmates in Arizona, New Mexico, and New York about their criminal pasts. Then they multiplied each crime by its social cost, using National Institute of Justice numbers. (The cost of a rape, for example, is estimated at $98,327; of a burglary, $1,271.) They found that the social cost of the crimes committed by the median inmate in New York--that is, one whose crimes rank 50 on a scale of 100 in terms of seriousness--was $31,866; in New Mexico, $26,486; and in Arizona, $25,472. That's slightly more than the $25,000 cost of incarceration. For the 40th percentile, though, that figure dropped to less than $14,000 in all three states, and for the 20th, less than $7,000. At the 80th percentile, the monetary value of crime caused was almost $240,000 for New York and $163,311 for New Mexico--marking the perpetrator as the type of person for whom prison is clearly an appropriate solution. 

The major dividing line between cost-effective and non-cost-effective incarceration? 
That turns out to be fairly easy to figure. As a general rule, those who were imprisoned for property or violent crimes caused damage to society that cost more than their incarceration; those convicted solely of drug offenses did not. Drug dealing is not harmless, of course. Having an open-air crack market on the corner kills commerce and devastates neighborhoods. But the authors became convinced that the incarceration of so many drug-only offenders--28% in New York and 18% in Arizona--made no economic sense, because one drug seller sent to prison just created a job opening for another seller. 

Consider the example of a Milwaukee street corner. In 1996 a Wisconsin task force  noted that although the police had made 94 drug-related arrests in three months at the corner of 9th and Concordia, most of them leading to prison sentences, the drug market continued and public safety did not improve. And the price was substantial: It costs about $23 million to jail 94 people for a year. 

In short, the authors found that for drug offenders, "the crime averted by incarceration is low," says Piehl. "We need to come up with sanctions that are graduated so that our only options are not nothing, or prison, or probation." What made that conclusion particularly noteworthy was that Piehl and DiIulio had argued for years in favor of more prisons. But by last year DiIulio, who is no one's idea of a bleeding-heart liberal, was writing an article for the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal titled "Two Million Prisoners Is Enough." Are there better, less costly alternatives to prison for drug offenders? 

Lisa Roberson offers one answer to that question. 
She is a resident at the Phoenix Career Academy in Brooklyn, N.Y., 
which offers residents--many of them repeat offenders who
would otherwise be in prison--intensive drug treatment, vocational training, and after-care assistance. Roberson, 31, who started selling drugs at 17 and using them at 21, spent four years at Clinton State in New Jersey for selling drugs to an undercover cop. "All I did there is learn how to jail," she says. 

When she was arrested again in 2000, the court gave
her a choice: prison or two years at Phoenix. This is no country club. Residents sleep ten to a room. Just about every minute of their day, starting with a 6 A.M. wake-up call, is plotted for them. If Roberson makes it through the program--and about 60% do--she will be drug-free and will have completed training as a drug counselor. Phoenix will help her find a job, an apartment, and child care for her 4-year-old son. Yes, Roberson may regress--of those who complete the course, about a third eventually go back to drugs--but clearly she has a much better shot at establishing a real life than if she had spent several more years "learning how to jail." The cost of her treatment, funded mostly by state and local governments: $17,000 to $18,000 a year.

Many successful drug-treatment programs are run out of prisons too--such as Amity Righturn, a program in a medium-security facility in San Diego that provides more than a year of assessment and counseling, plus further treatment after the inmates have left prison. A 1999 study found that three years after release, 27% of inmates who completed all three parts of the program had returned to prison; among those who got no treatment, 75% did.

On the subject of drug treatment, cost-benefit analysis has something to
say: It works. Numerous studies have concluded that well-run drug-treatment programs, particularly long-term residential ones with follow-up care, can pay for themselves just by reducing crime. Add in the value of incarceration avoided and taxes paid by the freed, and it adds up. Given this context, it's little short of tragic that drug-treatment programs in prison are not keeping pace with the need for them. In 1991 about a third of the inmates who reported drug use in the month prior to their arrest were getting treatment; by 1999 that was down to less than 15%, according to the Department of Justice, and much of that was of the nonintensive variety that has little long-term effect. Treatment is no panacea: Lots of people will drop out or go back to their bad habits. 

The point is simply that treatment works often enough for the benefits to outweigh the costs--the exact opposite of the economics of prison for drug offenders.

What about other prison programs? Social scientists have applied cost-benefit analysis to those too. They have found that busy inmates--those given the chance to learn to read, to finish high school, to learn basic job skills--are significantly less likely than idle ones to return to prison. In Maryland, for example, a follow-up analysis published last October of 1,000 former inmates found a 19% lower recidivism rate for those who had taken education programs in prison than for those who hadn't. Extrapolating that 19% figure for the state as a whole suggests that Maryland could save $23.2 million a year in reduced incarceration--double what it spends on prison education programs. 

More evidence that educational programs save money: 
In 1999 analysts from the state of Washington surveyed
studies dating back to the mid-1970s on what works and what fails in reducing crime. The researchers concluded that for every dollar spent on basic adult education in prison, there was $1.71 in reduced crime; for every dollar on vocational education, $3.23. If you think such data have prompted more educational programs in prisons, think again. Congress passed "get tough" legislation in the 1990s that eliminated Pell grants to prisoners for college courses; it also reduced the requirements for basic and vocational education for prisoners. Many states have therefore taken the opportunity to cut back. Prisoners have a limited constituency, after all, and nixing programs for them is a politically painless way to cut budgets. Ironically, surveys show that the public strongly supports prisoner-rehabilitation programs. So do many who run the prisons. 

Tommy Douberley, warden of Florida's Moore Haven Correctional Facility, is convinced that no-frills prisons are a mistake. "These people are going to be returned to society," he says. "We need to make some provision for them that when they get out they are better than when they went in."

Politicians, however, seem to have interpreted the public's clear desire for greater safety as a mandate for more and harsher prisons. And they are not the same thing at all. There are signs that America is beginning to recognize the limits of prison. Drug offenders are less likely to be sentenced to prison today than they were in 1992 (though still more than three times as likely as in 1980), in part because of the emergence of drug courts in many states, which force defendants into treatment on pain of prison. But past policies continue to exert expansionary pressure. From June 1999 to June 2000, the last 12-month period for which figures are available, the incarcerated population rose 3%. Though the smallest rise in decades, that still meant that 31,000 more Americans were behind bars. To house them means building a prison every ten days or so--an expensive hobby, considering that a medium-security facility for 1,000 inmates can cost $50 million.

Make no mistake: A large proportion of inmates thoroughly deserve to be exactly where they are. Incarceration is an effective way to isolate really awful people. But too many prisons stuffed with nonviolent, idle inmates is simply wasteful, of both people and money. We would do better to learn from several states that have lowered the crime rate without substantially raising prison populations--as New York did at least in part by aggressively funneling drug offenders into treatment, for example. Instead of being exceptional for its willingness to jail its citizens, the goal for America should be to become exceptional in the application of wisdom to its criminal population. At the moment, it is not even close.

©Copyright 2001 Time Inc.

Posted by lois at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2006

New Movie: Turning A Corner about people involved in the sex trade

February 6, 2006
Premiere Screening, Turning a Corner

Turning a Corner tells the stories of people involved in the sex trade in Chicago and their efforts to raise public awareness of systemic injustice and promote needed reforms. Created in a media activism workshop with over a dozen PART members, this groundbreaking film recounts their survival and triumph over homelessness, violence and discrimination, and gives rare insights into Chicago's sex trade industry.

FREE Chicago Premiere:
Monday, February 6, 2006, 5:30 - 8pm (screening 6-7pm)
Northwestern University Thorne Auditorium
375 E. Chicago Ave.
Reception, Art Exhibition by Urban Art Retreat, Panel Discussion
For Information and RSVP: Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (www.chicagohomeless.org) 312-435-4548 or
Beyondmedia (www.beyondmedia.org) 773-973-2280

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

December 24, 2005

Comic Books from the Real Cost of Prisons Project

Comic Books from the Real Cost of Prisons Project

These comic books are being created loosely based on each of the Real Cost of Prisons workshops. The stories and statistical information in each comic book are thoroughly researched and the research is cited.

Comic books will be sent free of charge to organizations who submit a one page email or letter explaining how you will use the comic books in your organizing, community education and outreach work.

Your letter should include contact name, mailing address, phone number,email address and brief description of your organization or program. Please specify how many comic books you can use. Organizations/groups can receive up to 300 copies of each comic book depending on your needs. Due to demand, we cannot guarantee you will receive the number you request but we will try to meet your request.

Each comic book is 16 pages with a four color cover and black and white interior pages.

Send your letter to: Real Cost of Prisons Project, 5 Warfield Place,
Northampton, MA 01060

Or email: info@realcostofprisons.org .

For those interested in copies of the Real Cost of Prisons comics for their personal use, they can be purchased through AK Press at akpress.org

Prison Town: Paying the Price by Kevin Pyle and Craig Gilmore. The comic book tells the story the ways in which the financing and siting of prisons and jails effects the people of rural communities in which prison are built. It also tells the story of the how mass incarceration effects the people of urban communities where the majority of people who are incarcerated come from. Included in the comic book are alternatives to the current system.

As an extension of our comic book series, we have developed a number of the one page handouts that feature pages from the comics. Please feel free to print them out and use them in your work.
From Prison Town: Paying the Price by Kevin Pyle and Craig Gilmore

How Prisons Are Paid For (and who really pays)
"Map" of the U.S. on prison building and siting
The Cost of a Cage

Prisoners of the War on Drugs by Sabrina Jones, Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens. The comic book includes: the history of the war on drugs, mandatory minimums and how racism creates harsher sentences for people of color; stories on how the war on drugs works against women, three strikes, obstacles to coming home after incarceration; how mass incarceration destabilizes neighborhoods. Alternatives to the present system.

From Prisoners of the War on Drugs by Sabrina Jones, Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens

Consider These Alternatives
Meet the Builders of the Drug Prison Boom
Cycles of Exile
Free at Last (available in spanish Libra Al Fin)
Three Strikes and You Are Out

Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children by Susan Willmarth, Ellen Miller-Mack, and Lois Ahrens. The comic book includes stories about: women trapped by mandatory sentencing and the War on Drugs, the "costs" of
incarceration for women and their families. A two page story details the trial and sentencing of Regina McKnight. Also included are "Change is Possible" alternatives to the present system, a glossary and footnotes. 20 pages with a four color cover.

From Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children by Susan Willmarth, Ellen Miller-Mack, and Lois Ahrens .

1 Out of Every 109 Women In America
The Story of Regina McKnight (poster size)
The Story of Regina McKnight (consecutive pages)
Change is Possible
Glossary

Posted by lois at 07:35 PM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2005

New Report: "No Turning Back: Promising Approaches to Recduding Racial and Ethnic Disparities for Youth of Color in the Jusitce System"

The Building Blocks for Youth initiative has released its final report, "No Turning Back: Promising Approaches to Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities Affecting Youth of Color in the Justice System." The report discusses the Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, the W. Haywood Burns Institute, and campaigns in 12 cities, counties, and states to reduce disproportionate youth of color contact within the justice system.

Resources: The report is available online at: http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/noturningback/ntb_fullreport.pdf.

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

October 13, 2005

Thousands of Children Sentenced to Life Without Parole

Thousands of Children Sentenced to Life without Parole
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International
http://hrw.org/reports/2005/us1005/
Wednesday 12 October 2005
There are at least 2,225 child offenders serving life without parole (LWOP) sentences in US prisons for crimes committed before they were age 18, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a new joint report published today.

While many of the child offenders are now adults, 16 percent were
between 13 and 15 years old at the time they committed their crimes. An estimated 59 percent were sentenced to life without parole for their first-ever criminal conviction. Forty-two states currently have laws allowing children to receive life without parole sentences.

The 157-page report, The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States, is the first national study examining the practice of trying children as adults and sentencing them to life in adult prisons without the possibility of parole. The report is based on two years of research and on an analysis of previously uncollected federal and state corrections data. The data allowed the organizations to track state and national trends in LWOP sentencing through mid-2004 and to analyze the race, history and crimes of young offenders.

"Kids who commit serious crimes shouldn't go scot-free," said Alison
Parker, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, who authored the report for both organizations. "But if they are too young to vote or buy cigarettes, they are too young to spend the rest of their lives behind bars."

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are releasing The Rest of Their Lives at a critical time: while fewer youth are committing serious crimes such as murder, states are increasingly sentencing them to life without parole. In 1990, for example, 2,234 children were convicted of murder and 2.9 percent sentenced to life without parole. By 2000, the conviction rate had dropped by nearly 55 percent (1,006), yet the percentage of children receiving LWOP sentences rose by 216 percent (to nine percent).

"Untie the hands of state and federal judges and prosecutors," said Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). "Give them options other than turning the courts into assembly lines that mass produce mandatory life without parole sentences for children, that ignore their enormous potential for change and rob them of all hopes for redemption."

In 26 states, the sentence of life without parole is mandatory for anyone who is found guilty of committing first-degree murder, regardless of age. According to the report, 93 percent of youth offenders serving life without parole were convicted of murder. But Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that an estimated 26 percent were convicted of "felony murder," which holds that anyone involved in the commission of a serious crime during which someone is killed is also guilty of murder, even if he or she did not personally or directly cause the death.

For example, 15-year-old Peter A. was sentenced to life without parole for felony murder. Peter had joined two acquaintances of his older brother to commit a robbery. He was waiting outside in a van when one of the acquaintances botched the robbery and murdered two victims. Peter said,

"Although I was present at the scene, I never shot or killed anyone."
Nevertheless, Peter was held accountable for the double murder because it was established during the trial that he had stolen the van used to drive to the victims' house.

The human rights organizations also said that widespread and unfounded fears of adolescent "super-predators" - violent teenagers with long criminal histories who prey on society - prompted states to increasingly try children as adults. Ten states set no minimum age for sentencing children to life without parole, and there are at least six children currently serving the sentence who were age 13 when they committed their crimes. Once convicted, these children are sent to adult prisons and must live among adult gangs, sexual predators and in harsh conditions. For more state-by-state statistics
please see the State-by-State Summary (available online at:
http://hrw.org/us/us100605.pdf).

According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there is no correlation between the use of the LWOP sentence and youth crime rates. There is no evidence it deters youth crime or is otherwise helpful in reducing juvenile crime rates. For example, Georgia rarely sentences children to life without parole but it has youth crime rates lower than Missouri, which imposes the sentence on child offenders far more frequently.

"Public safety can be protected without subjecting youth to the harshest prison sentence possible," said Parker.

Nationwide, black youth receive life without parole sentences at a rate estimated to be ten times greater than that of white youth (6.6 versus 0.6). In some states the ratio is far greater: in California, for example, black youth are 22.5 times more likely to receive a life without parole sentence than white youth. In Pennsylvania, Hispanic youth are ten times more likely to receive the sentence than whites (13.2 versus 1.3).

The United States is one of only a few countries in the world that
permit children to be sentenced to LWOP. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by every country in the world except the United States and Somalia, forbids this practice, and at least 132 countries have rejected the sentence altogether. Thirteen other countries have laws permitting the child LWOP sentence, but, outside of the United States, there are only about 12 young offenders currently serving life sentences with no possibility of parole.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also challenged the
presumption that the youth offenders are irredeemable, which is implicit in the sentence they have received."Children who commit serious crimes still have the ability to change their lives for the better," said David Berger, attorney with the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers and Amnesty International's researcher for this report. "It is now time for state and federal officials to take positive steps by
enacting policies that seek to redeem children, instead of throwing them in prison for the rest of their lives."

The organizations called on the United States to end the practice of
sentencing child offenders to life without parole. For those already serving life sentences, immediate efforts should be made to grant them access to parole procedures.

Posted by lois at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

September 28, 2005

U.S. Crime Rate Holds at 30 year low.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's crime rate was unchanged last year, holding at the lowest levels since the government began surveying crime victims in 1973, the Justice Department reported Sunday.
Since 1993, violent crime as measured by victim surveys has fallen by 57% and property crime by 50%. That has included a 9% drop in violent crime from 2001-2002 to 2003-2004.

The 2004 violent crime rate — assault, sexual assault and armed robbery — was 21.4 victims for every 1,000 people age 12 and older. That amounts to about one violent crime victim for every 47 U.S. residents.

By comparison, there were 22.6 violent crime victims per 1,000 people in 2003. The Bureau of Justice Statistics said the difference between the rates in 2003 and 2004 was statistically insignificant.

Murder is not counted because the bureau's study is based on statements by crime victims. In a separate report based on preliminary police data, the FBI found a 3.6% drop between 2003 and 2004 — from 16,500 to 15,910. Chicago was largely responsible for the decrease.

The survey put the rate for property crimes of burglary, theft and motor vehicle theft in 2004 at 161 for every 1,000 people, compared with 163 the year before.

Many explanations have been advanced for decline in violent crime, including the record prison population of more than 2 million people, the addition of 100,000 police officers since the mid-1990s and even a deterrent effect that terrorism might have had on street crime.

"Success has 1,000 fathers," said Mark A.R. Kleiman, an expert on crime control policy who teaches at UCLA.

Kleiman said the victim survey probably does not take sufficient account of a growing problem with gang violence that has been widely reported across the country. The leveling off of the crime rate also should be viewed as disappointing, he said.

"My sense is that complacency is not justified. This rate means we're down to about twice the level of crime when I was growing up in the 1950s," he said.

The Justice Policy Institute, which advocates alternatives to incarceration, said the report offered good news and further reason to "begin investing in community-based policing and local organizations that succeed in increasing public safety."

The National Crime Victimization Survey is based on annual interviews by Census Bureau personnel with about 150,000 people at least 12 years old. The FBI does a separate crime study based on reports it receives from thousands of law enforcement agencies nationwide.

Other highlights of the Justice Department report:

•Blacks, men (except in cases of sexual assaults) and young people were victimized most often.

•Nearly two-thirds of women knew their attackers, while men were just as likely to be attacked by strangers.

•In 2004, just under one-quarter of all violent crimes were committed by an offender armed with a gun, knife or other weapon.

•The rates of rapes and robberies have dropped by nearly two-thirds since 1993.

•The West had the highest property crime rate in 2004 (204 crimes per 1,000 households), while renters were victims more often than homeowners (201 crimes vs. 143 crimes per 1,000). City-dwellers were far more likely to be victims of property crimes (215 crimes per 1,000) than suburban or rural residents (143 and 134 per 1,000, respectively).

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

Posted by lois at 06:00 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2005

University of Pennsylvania- Criminal History Does Not Rule Out a Job

Criminal history does not rule out a Penn job
Following arrest of unscreened U. City worker, importance of background checks in dispute
By Andrew Whitney
September 12, 2005
A checkered past won't bar you from holding a job ---- at least not in some Penn departments.

As a result of relatively decentralized hiring practices, University policy only requires that new hires in some divisions undergo a criminal background check as a prerequisite for employment.

The issue has came to the fore in recent weeks after an employee of the University City District -- the non-profit organization charged with cleaning the neighborhood and reducing crime -- was arrested while on the job.

Crew Warrenton was connected with at least three burglaries that occurred over the summer near campus. It turns out that the suspect, had an extensive criminal history -- including a burglary conviction that resulted in a sentence of five to 20 years in prison.
After his Aug. 28 arrest, UCD amended its policies so that all new workers are subject to background checks.

The situation has raised the question of whether employees near college campuses such as Penn's are examined carefully enough.

Several years ago, Penn implemented pre-employment criminal-history checks for certain positions within the University.

Vice President for Human Resources Jack Heuer said he is pleased with the current policies -- which were created in January 2001 in a more limited form.

Heuer said that Penn conducts background checks for all employees in divisions reporting to Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli. These divisions include the Office of Audit and Compliance, the Office of Budget and Management Analysis, Business Services, the Office of the Vice President for Finance, the Office of Investments, the Division of Human Resources, the Division of Public Safety and Information Systems and Computing.

"A negative finding does not [necessarily] preclude employment," Heuer said. "There has to be a job relationship."

If an employee were going to work in a dormitory, for instance, Human Resources would be particularly concerned with theft- or assault-related convictions.

In the event that a check uncovers a conviction, Heuer said, Human Resources, the general counsel and the Office of Audit and Compliance convene to consider the case. There is no blanket rule.

There is only one exception. The job application asks about prior convictions, and if an applicant is found via a background check to have falsified his or her answer, the person will not receive employment.

Human Resources performs hundreds of checks each year, Heuer said -- usually between 350 and 500.

Yet despite the number of checks performed, "We have [never] denied employment based on an adverse finding."

Heuer has a theory as to why this is so: The knowledge that there will be a background check, he believes, dissuades many with checkered pasts from applying in the first place.

Background checks raise some contentious ethical issues, however.
"If somebody has paid their debt to society and there has been a successful period of reentry," Director of the Master's in Criminology Program Laurie Robinson said, "we can't allow this to be a permanent black mark."

At the same time, she acknowledged, data demonstrate that a person who has previously been convicted of a crime is more likely to commit that offense than a person without such a history.

It is a balancing act, she believes, between ensuring student safety and allowing convicts to move on with their lives.

This story was printed from DailyPennsylvanian.com.

Site URL: http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com.

Posted by lois at 07:01 PM | Comments (0)

The Disaster at Attica- September 13, 1971

Tuesday September 13, 2005
The Disaster at Attica

In 1971, over half the town of Attica¹s nearly 2,800 residents worked at the facility, with white rural guards watching over a largely black and Latino urban population. The symbiotic relationship was an incubator of resentment and fear. ³You have Harlem and the South Bronx and Bed-Stuy inside the walls, and they¹re guarded by farmers who are scared as hell of them,² said one observer. The inmates had long complained of physical and psychological torture and abhorrent conditions. A state representative who had toured the prison had called it a ³seething cauldron of discontentment that was about the erupt.²

The eruption happened on the morning of September 9, when a group of prisoners resisted returning to their cells and badly beat three guards, stealing their keys. The violence quickly spread as prisoners flooded ³Times Square,² where the four corridors leading to the separate cell bocks intersected. They started freeing other prisoners, beating more guards, and taking hostages.

By early afternoon, all but cellblock D, where the hostages were held, was back under control of the prison authorities. In Cellblock D, a group of Black Muslims swiftly organized themselves to protect the hostages and stop the chaos. Russell George Oswald, the state¹s commissioner of correctional services, showed up and was led into the prison¹s yard by heavily armed prisoners. There he found a semi-functioning social order, and the hostages appeared to be in good condition, though badly shaken. He had been appointed as a reformer after riots in other New York prisons and work stoppages at Attica, but now more than a thousand prisoners regarded him suspiciously from under football helmets, their faces masked in sheets, weapons in their arms.

Over the next four days what unfolded was an exercise in incompetence and miscalculation. Negotiations stalled, brokered by an ever-changing ad hoc mediation team of more than 30 people formed in response to the prisoners¹ demands. A macabre crowd formed around the jail‹hysterical relatives, pushy reporters, and rowdy protesters. Oswald shuttled back and forth, harangued on all sides by those who thought he was compromising too little and those who thought he was compromising too much.

The prisoners¹ main demand was full amnesty for their actions during the takeover. On September 10, William Quinn, one of the beaten officers, who had been ferried to safety during the riot, died. Both sides in the negotiations dug in their heels. Twenty-eight of the prisoners¹ demands were granted, but they had been promised better conditions before. What they feared most was reprisals at the hands of their guards.

At the core of the situation was race. Oswald and the mediators simply couldn¹t get the prisoners to believe they would be safe with their white guards. ³If they¹re shooting white college students, they certainly weren¹t going to spare a group of black convicts,² one inmate said, referring to the gunfire at Kent State University the year before and summing up the racial arithmetic they all lived by.

Observers frantically pled with Oswald for more time, but on the morning of September 13 the hostages appeared on a catwalk with knives at their throats. Without warning, Oswald ordered an attack. Just after 9:30 a.m., a helicopter dropped tear gas, and a barrage of bullets rained on the yard. In less than ten minutes, over two thousand rounds had been fired, and thirty-nine people were dead. One hostage ran out shouting, ³White power!²

The revenge the prisoners feared was meted out over the next four hours as the guards retook the prison, forcing inmates to strip, beating them, and threatening to castrate them. Only a few wounded prisoners were allowed out; the others were treated in an eight-by-ten-foot cell soaked in blood. ³It was the worst thing I¹ve ever seen,² the doctor told the press.

³There¹s always time to die. I don¹t know what the rush was,² a disappointed member of the negotiation team said. Like most of his colleagues, he believed the bloodshed could have been prevented by patience. It was announced that the ten hostages who died had all had their throats cut, but the autopsies revealed only gunshot wounds. They had been killed by their rescuers, who seemed to have fired indiscriminately. The coroner said, ³It was like a turkey shoot.²

³I don¹t know any other employer who could murder their employees and get away with it, except the government,² a former hostage remarked. In 2005, he and his co-workers were awarded $1.3 million in damages.

The immediate result of Attica was a deluge of reform bills and an additional 12 million dollars for the state¹s Department of Correctional Services. But have America¹s prisons really improved since then? With more than 2 million people behind bars, the United States has the world¹s largest prison population. Its rural landscape is dotted with jails, mini-civilizations of largely black and Latino urban populations under the watch of mostly white guards. Inmates have more time outside their cells, better food, and improved sanitary conditions, but underlying tensions remain strong.

One thing can be said for certain: At least there has never yet been another Attica.

Elizabeth D. Hoover is a former editor at American Heritage magazine.
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/web/20050913-attica-prison-hostages
-new_york.shtml>

Posted by lois at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)

August 29, 2005

"Incarceration as a Failed Policy" by Alvin Bronstein

Incarceration as a Failed Policy

Alvin J. Bronstein*
August 26, 2005

Jim Gondles has invited me to write a guest editorial on “why US policies on incarceration are ineffective in terms of crime control, costly and counter productive,” something I had said to him in an email in another context. I was glad to receive this invitation and I should point out at the outset that my criticisms would apply to almost any country’s policies on incarceration and not just the United States. This is not intended as an attack on United States’ prisons but rather prisons generally. There are better, less damaging prisons than those in the United States, for example in the Scandinavian countries. And there are far more that are far worse than the United States. I have been in prisons in some countries, Russia and Brazil, that make ours really look like country clubs. The point is not how new or modern or well equipped prisons are but rather the fact of incarceration itself that is, in my opinion, a complete failure.

In his marvelous 1974 book, The Future of Imprisonment, Norval Morris, the distinguished criminologist and long-time consultant to the Federal Bureau of Prisons wrote:

The criminal law’s reach has been extended in this country far beyond its competence, invading the spheres of private morality and social welfare proving ineffective, corruptive and criminogenic. This overreach of the criminal law has made hypocrites of us all and has cluttered the courts and filled the jails and prisons, the detention centers and reformatories, with people who should not be there.

When that was written, we had about 350,000 men, women and children in our nation’s jails and prisons. Today we have over 2,200,000 and prisons here and throughout most of the world are still ineffective, corruptive and criminogenic.

It is widely recognized that we have locked up too many social nuisances who are not real threats, too many petty offenders and minor thieves, severing such few social ties as they have and pushing them further toward more serious criminal behavior. In the US, we inappropriately incarcerate the mentally ill and the alcohol and drug addicted. Prisons generally make people worse.

The 1973 national commission, The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, recommended that “the institution should be the last resort for correctional problems.” They gave their reasons – failure to reduce crime, success in punishing but not in deterring, providing only a temporary protection to the community, changing the offender but mostly for the worst – and concluded that “the prison has persisted partly because a civilized nation could neither turn back to the barbarism of an earlier time nor find a satisfactory alternative.” Today, over 30 years later, we have a new national commission that is looking at the abuses in and the problems of prisons in America.

Again, nothing has changed except that there are many more people in prison, our prisons are now larger and more destructive of the human personality with fewer programs and harsher regimes. Many years of studies have revealed that only three possible changes in the life of the prisoner during his or her incarceration are correlated with later conformity to the conditions of release and with the avoidance of new criminal behavior – the availability of a family or other supportive group to join on release, the availability of a reasonably supportive job, and the process and duration of aging itself. Getting a job and preserving or creating social relationships are exactly what prison most interferes with although time for aging it does provide. We cage people, it is clear, not to treat them but for a variety of other reasons. Increasingly prisons are places of punishment and have nothing to do with rehabilitation.

One of the great prison reformers in the world, Baroness Vivien Stern, Secretary General of Penal Reform International, in her 1998 book A Sin Against the Future: Imprisonment in the World, wrote:

It is a great strength of the reform movement that the people in the system know that what is going on is wrong. They say so through the associations to which they belong. They need to be reinforced in their conviction that whilst they are contracted to carry out their instructions and follow their rule book, they have a higher loyalty to a set of values and principles. It will not be an excuse for the perpetrator of a clear human rights abuse to say, “I was just obeying orders”. Prison staff need to be given the confidence and courage to keep on pointing out what is wrong. Perhaps they should require that the international norms and instruments governing the treatment of prisoners should be written not just into prisoners’ rights, but into their rights too, as staff. There are rules governing how prisoners should be treated. So also should there be equivalent rules governing what prison staff can be asked to do, and making it clear what they cannot be asked to do.

As Nelson Mandela once said, “Prison not only robs you of your freedom, it attempts to take away your identity. Everyone wears a uniform, eats the same food, follows the same schedule. It is by definition a purely authoritarian state that tolerates no independence and individuality.”

In 1999, a large group of criminal justice professionals, academics and officials from 50 different countries in all five continents met for five days in Egham, England, to consider “a new approach for penal reform in a new century.” At the end of the five day meeting they drafted without any dissents an agenda for that new approach which included among them the following:

The understanding that penal reform is an essential part of good governance.The awareness that penal reform cannot proceed without changes to the criminal justice system as a whole and that crime prevention in and by civil society is essential to the success of penal reform.The determination to make sure that everyone, especially the poor and marginalized, has equal access to the justice system.
The recognition that drug abuse is usually better dealt with inside the health or social welfare care system rather than the criminal justice system, especially when there is no violence involved.
The need to enrich the formal judicial system with informal, locally based, dispute resolution mechanisms which meet human rights standards.

During the past 40 years I have visited hundreds of prisons and jails in the United States and many prisons in Asia, Latin America and Eastern and Western Europe. The best, least destructive, prison that I have ever been to was a maximum security prison in the city of Ringe, in Denmark, which I visited on a number of occasions.

This was a small maximum security prison which housed men and women prisoners together, all of them recidivists, in which every prisoner worked at a productive job every day, where correctional officers wore no uniforms and worked side-by-side with the prisoners and had many other marvelous features. Every time I left the prison and walked out through the main entry way I was accompanied by the prison governor, Eric Andersen. Each time I left, I would say, “Eric, this really is a marvelous prison.” And his answer each time was, “But remember, Al, all prisons damage people.”

* Alvin J. Bronstein is Director-Emeritus of The National Prison Project of the ACLU; US Board Member, Penal Reform International (London). This editorial originally appeared in the August 2005 edition of Corrections Today magazine.

Posted by lois at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2005

LA: Bayou Betterment--a New Juvenile Justice System is Emerging

Bayou Betterment
T@P In Louisiana, a new juvenile justice system is emerging, with the governor's strong support. If reform can happen here, it can succeed anywhere.
By Katy Reckdahl
Issue Date: 09.10.05

The former correctional officer mops sweat off his brow as he plays two-on-one basketball against kids he would have once called offenders. Michael Gaines gestures toward the man who's trying to block a layup by one of the kids. "In the old days, he would have just stood here in his uniform and watched while the kids played ball with each other," says Gaines. In those "old days" -- about six months ago -- Gaines was a deputy warden, overseeing a staff of lieutenants, captains, and officers. Today he's called deputy director, and his staffers, called youth-care workers, are newly trained at managing adolescent behavior. Their charges are the 70 delinquent children, ages 13 to 20, who reside at the crown jewel of Louisiana's juvenile-justice-reform program, the Bridge City Center for Youth.

Gaines and his boss, director (and former warden) John Anderson, point out signs of reform as they walk among the mossy live oaks that create a canopy over the yards of this onetime Catholic orphanage, a cluster of red-brick buildings across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. This summer, the state pulled back the razor wire surrounding the former Bridge City Correctional Center for Youth, plucked the word "correctional" from its name, and relaxed the staff dress code from blue uniforms to polo shirts and khakis. The goal? To remake Bridge City into a model, "Missouri-style" facility that will serve juveniles from the New Orleans region.

Currently, only about 40 percent of Bridge City's kids hail from the New Orleans metropolitan area. The state's pilot program is also still small; by the end of August, about 24 young men will be living in three Missouri-style dorm areas, remodeled at about $8,000 a pop. In place of military-style bunks and blankets, metal footlockers, concrete floors, and open group showers, the new areas offer a softer, homier environment. That means carpeted floors, windows hung with curtains and fronted with houseplants, and showers divided by bright curtains (they'll soon have permanent individual stalls). In the living area, unlocked wooden wardrobes stand next to wooden bunk beds, covered with colorful quilts. Across the room is a group of comfy couches arranged around an end table. It's here, on these couches, that a lot of the dorm's work is accomplished -- through peer-group meetings called "circles."

"When we wake up, we check in, call a circle," says Joe, a young man from New Orleans who lives in the first remodeled Bridge City dorm, called Ujima after the Kwanzaa principle for collective work and responsibility. The group also holds routine circles after lunch and at the end of the day, and as necessary, to discuss concerns or complaints with the other kids and the dorm's manager, youth-care worker, and counselor. Additional, impromptu circles are conducted standing together outside or wherever they're needed.

The difference between this dorm and those at other Louisiana juvenile facilities is most apparent during free time. At Bridge City, the young men giggle and joke, work on art projects, write in journals, put an arm on another youth's shoulder when helping him with homework. Gone are the tough poses, the tense jostling, the strictly enforced personal-safety distances.

Getting to this point took some adjustment. Eight teenagers moved into this dorm in June. But by late July, three of those residents had transferred out and been replaced by three other kids, all of them new to the juvenile system. "[Circles] weren't being called consistently. The group was at a standstill," explains dorm manager Patrick Riley. Bo, one of the original eight residents, nods his head. "It was the same thing everyday," he says. "[The circles] were dragging us down more than bringing us up." Eventually, participating in the process will be mandatory for everyone. "We wouldn't do this as a rule," says Gaines. But in this pilot stage, the young men are allowed to opt out, which one teen did, saying "it wasn't for him." The other two were asked to leave because they were verbally aggressive.

In July, the state officially opened Ujima with a press conference and a visit from Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. During the 2003 governor's race, Blanco, a former schoolteacher and the sitting lieutenant governor, was the first gubernatorial contender to sign on to a juvenile-justice-reform platform. The young men in Ujima say that she spent a long time talking with them, about circles, their dorm's new look, their faith, and their families. "You can tell she's a mom," says Joe. "She talked that mother talk."

The governor laughs at the assessment. "I did ask them what they hoped to do when they were released," she says.

* * *
"You've got some things going for you in Louisiana," says Molly Armstrong of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, who's spent the last year in Louisiana and the last decade working with a wide range of governments and their juvenile systems. For instance, she says, in Louisiana, juvenile-justice reform has an unusually high profile. "I think it's amazing you get the level of attention to the issue [here]," she says, crediting advocates for pushing it into the public forum and keeping it there. To Armstrong, the state's biggest advantage is Blanco. "The governor actually cares about juvenile-justice issues," she says. "That's unbelievably rare."

In 2003, while Blanco was still running for office, the Louisiana Legislature passed the Juvenile Justice Reform Act, prodded by exposés, litigation, and the death of a child at the hands of a Bridge City guard. The statute, Act 1225, specifically condemns large correctional facilities and "declares it to be the policy of the state of Louisiana to assist in the development and establishment of a community-based, school-based, and regionally based system."

Blanco won election later that year and took office in January 2004. Soon afterward, she took reform a step forward by signing an executive order separating the juvenile system from the adult corrections system and bringing in consultants from the Casey Foundation and from the highly successful Missouri juvenile system. "Juvenile justice has a new face in Louisiana," she declared, "and a strong advocate in the governor's office."

"We have a duty to the children," said Blanco in an interview, explaining why she had kept her eye on the state's juvenile recidivism even while she was lieutenant governor. In Louisiana, the governor and the lieutenant governor are elected separately, and at the time, Blanco, a Democrat, sat underneath a Republican governor. Her power to act was thus fairly limited, but she did have access to data and expert personnel, and so she simply gathered information and waited until she could follow through.

This was not a new interest. In prior years, Blanco had served in the state Legislature and had toured juvenile lockups during that time. "I remember the first time I entered the local detention center," she says. "It felt rough to me, and I was going in there as an adult." She resolved to change that.

Mark Steward, now one of Governor Blanco's key advisers on reform, sees a strong link between Blanco's interest in juvenile justice and her sense of compassion and understanding of loss. (In 1997, her youngest son, Ben, then 19, was crushed beneath a weight from an industrial crane and died instantly.) When asked about it, Blanco gets quiet for a moment. "You can lose children in a number of different ways," she says. "Some die, some are lost to the streets, and others are lost to the state's prison system. And families really suffer, no matter how their kids are lost."

This summer, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation selected Louisiana as one of three states to participate in its program "Models for Change: Systems Reform in Juvenile Justice." With the grant comes more outside expertise and up to $1.5 million annually for the next five years. Steward believes that Blanco's staunch support of the issue is responsible not only for the MacArthur Foundation award but for the momentum of reform in general. "To change one of the worst juvenile systems in the nation, you have to have the leadership at the top and all the way down," he explains.

Blanco, in turn, praises Steward, her advisers from the Casey Foundation, and Simon Gonsoulin, head of the Office of Youth Development, which runs the state's juvenile system. "Right now, Louisiana has the best minds in the country working on this issue," she says.

* * *
The recent history of juvenile-justice reform in Louisiana begins with the Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth, by common agreement one of the most notorious children's prisons in America. Tallulah opened in 1994, on the edge of a sleepy northeastern Louisiana delta town.

Before 16-year-old Christopher Simms was sent there in the summer of 2002, neighborhood friends in New Orleans warned him: He'd be raped for sure, he was told, unless he fought his way to respect. "So I wouldn't back down," says Simms. "If you show a sign of weakness, they are going to take advantage of that. You'll be a punk." Fellow New Orleans inmates taught him other essential skills: how to blackmail officers, have sex with young female guards, and keep a hidden stash of Camel straights in a world where half a cigarette was worth four bars of soap or four bags of potato chips.

Even the guards scrapped, says Simms: "Any time a guard can come out of his uniform and fight, we loved that. We respected that." Other times guards put a "hit" on a kid and paid the aggressor in cigarettes, lighters, fast food, or weed. Once, during a suspected hit, a group of kids broke Simms' upper and lower jaw. "I was lying in a big ol' puddle of blood, half of my body in blood," he recalls. "I blacked out."

Tallulah was "cutthroat," concludes Simms, who was released in 2003. "That's why the kids called it Little Angola." Cecile Guin, who directs social-service research at Louisiana State University, was the first person to study recidivism within the state's juvenile population. Because Tallulah was so violent, she says, many of its inmates left to commit worse crimes and wound up in adult prisons, like the state's infamous prison farm at Angola. While the state's official statistics show that 45 percent of its released juveniles are re-convicted within five years, Guin estimates that statistics for Tallulah alone would be much more grim -- more in the 90-percent range, she says.

For a decade, says juvenile-justice reformer and state Senator Donald Cravins, a Democrat from the Lafayette area, "Nothing stood out clearer than the atrocities at the facility in Tallulah." Not that the state's other juvenile prisons weren't awful. Mark Soler, president of the Washington, D.C.–based Youth Law Center, recalls touring them in the late 1990s. "Conditions in Louisiana's facilities were really horrible, as bad as any I've seen in 27 years of looking at juvenile facilities," he says.

"In this state," says defense attorney Tom Lorenzi, "when you get involved in a capital case, your client has almost always been through Louisiana's juvenile-prison system." Still, he can't recall one defendant helped by that system. "It made their lives living hells," he says. "They were brutalized and brutalized and brutalized." Seeing this, in case after case, motivated Lorenzi to work for juvenile-system reform as president of the board for the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL). It's no coincidence, he says, that the JJPL's founders -- Shannon Wight, Gabriella Celeste, and David Utter -- all did death-penalty work before forming the group in 1997.

Utter made his first trip to Tallulah in April 1998. As a defense attorney and as a prisons litigator for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, he had toured bleak prisons and jails for years. But, he says, "I had never seen anything like this. It had never occurred to me that we would see young people treated this way. The most shocking thing was the black eyes, broken jaws, hands in casts, bruises, and cuts. On some trips, half of my clients would be injured."

Within a few months, the JJPL filed a civil-rights lawsuit on behalf of 12 youths imprisoned in Tallulah. The U.S. Department of Justice also brought suit under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, making Louisiana the first state it had sued over conditions in juvenile facilities. Around the same time, New York Times reporter Fox Butterfield visited and wrote a front-page story referring to Tallulah as a place "so rife with brutality that many legal experts say it is the worst in the nation."

Still, Tallulah remained open for six more years. But in June 2004, parents, former Tallulah inmates, and key legislators celebrated its last day. Reform leaders made speeches and sang hymns on a lawn across the street from the facility, which provided a backdrop of gleaming razor wire. There, the townspeople of Tallulah unveiled a model of the learning center they'd been working toward for more than a year, which they hope to build on the prison's grounds. If they succeed, it will be the first prison in the United States replaced by a school.

"It was one of the greatest moments of my life," says Cravins, the state senator. "To me, it symbolized that our state was closing an ugly chapter in its history."

* * *
One morning in early June, Robin Brunker pulled on a red T-shirt bearing a logo for FFLIC (Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children) and joined a caravan of other red-shirted parents, grandparents, and children headed toward Louisiana's Capitol in Baton Rouge. There, they testified on behalf of a state Senate bill that they had dubbed one of two "Bring Our Children Home Acts of 2005." The proposed statutes would have closed the state's two large correctional-style facilities for juveniles and shifted their funding to community-based programs.

Brunker told state senators how her 17-year-old son had lost four of his teeth after a guard at the Swanson Correctional Center for Youth in northern Louisiana shoved him into a locker room with another kid and then stood outside the door. Other FFLIC members testified about brutal rapes, attacks, and suicide attempts, all at the two big facilities, all within the previous several months. The bill failed to make it out of committee.

In May, the JJPL had issued a report showing that the facilities' violence was on the rise. At Swanson, the group's monitors found that, on average, two young men per day were hurt due to self-inflicted injuries, fights, and assaults. As a result, some juvenile judges are reluctant to order incarceration. But often there are few alternatives. "Judges' hands are tied," says Utter. "If they have a kid who's a threat to public safety, the only place they can put him is going to hurt him more than help."

Agreed, says Simon Gonsoulin. A former special-education teacher and high-school principal, Gonsoulin landed his first job in the juvenile system courtesy of a federal settlement agreement (he oversaw the state's compliance with the education portion of that agreement). Since taking this job in early 2004, he has met with judges on a regular basis and has heard their concerns -- the same ones that Utter voices -- "constantly and continuously." Gonsoulin promises that many of these issues will be addressed in the Office of Youth Development's five-year strategic plan, which is currently in an information-gathering stage. For most of the summer, Gonsoulin and other juvenile-system administrators have been driving around the state, asking audiences gathered in school gyms and city halls for input on that plan, which will be finalized in October.

In the meantime, the department is addressing concerns one by one through its new family ombudsman, Prince Gray, who was hired in mid-June and immediately given an 800 number of his own. "We want parents and family members to know that their voices are being heard, and we want to make it easier for them to communicate with us," says Gonsoulin.

So far, Gray, a former principal at schools for at-risk kids, has devoted time to every complaint lodged by family or youth. He has, for instance, investigated a few accusations about "children treated roughly" and has ironed out smaller disputes between staff and youth. FFLIC members also met with Gray about a list of specific reforms, including a less stringent visiting-day dress code that won't bar parents from seeing their children if mothers are wearing, for instance, open-toed shoes or sleeveless blouses. Gray says that he found that request and others "reasonable," and that he is currently working to change department policy.

* * *
More than anything else, says Mark Steward, the success of this reform depends on well-trained personnel. He appreciates all the nice furnishings -- the carpet, the wooden furniture, the curtains, and the pillows -- that are rejuvenating the new dorms at Bridge City. But day-to-day decisions will be the real test, he says, "Because a pillow with a mean staff is going to be a weapon."

This past summer, Bridge City's staff went through intensive "human-dignity training." Coaches imported from Missouri spent time at the facility, Steward says, observing staff members at work and asking key questions -- questions such as: "Why did you do that? How could you have handled it differently? Was that treating with dignity and respect or was that punitive?" The intensive work continues until one group is fully trained, because only then can the pilot program expand "group by group by group," says Steward, who learned by trial and error that retraining an entire campus at once doesn't work.

Bridge City was always slotted as the first pilot. But at first, Gonsoulin had talked about closing the two big facilities, Swanson and the Jetson Center for Youth near Baton Rouge, which currently house about 175 kids apiece. Somehow, that plan changed. This summer, Gonsoulin announced that Swanson and Jetson would stay open but be "transformed."

To advocates, that decision defied the tenets of the Juvenile Justice Reform Act, flew in the face of the JJPL's violence tallies, and deviated from the well-documented Missouri model, which relies upon many small-scale, regional facilities. "Big facilities are inherently dangerous and are going to lead to abuses and cannot possibly provide an appropriate atmosphere for children who are locked up," says the Youth Law Center's Mark Soler. The state plans to divide each facility into a day-treatment area and groupings of small cottages, but that won't change a big prison's essential nature, he says. "You can dress it up and put nice paint on it and make it look a little bit different," says Soler. "But a pig is a pig is a pig."

State Senator Cravins says that, without a doubt, he would like to see reform move at a faster pace. But Cravins, the man who for a decade has been the chief legislative critic of Louisiana's juvenile system, confesses that he now finds himself "somewhat optimistic." That's largely because he trusts the people who head up the state's efforts. He calls Gonsoulin "a good guy" and says he has "a tremendous amount of confidence in" Steward.

Steward is also hopeful, although he admits that revamping the two big juvenile prisons is not ideal, especially because those facilities' histories include what he calls "decades of punitive, horrible treatment." But decisions have to be made, he says. "There's the perfect world and there's the realistic world," he explains, "and Louisiana has to figure out what it can afford, how small it can go, and how and when it will regionalize." Transitional steps -- like utilizing the facilities at hand -- are necessary when revamping a system this large. "You cannot flip a switch," says Steward. "It cannot happen overnight." tap

Katy Reckdahl is a news reporter for the New Orleans alternative weekly Gambit. She has been writing about Louisiana's juvenile-justice system since 2001.

Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Katy Reckdahl, "Bayou Betterment", The American Prospect Online, Aug 15, 2005. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

Posted by lois at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2005

Prisoners Share Insights on Ending Street Violence

By KATHY MATHESON
The Associated Press GRATERFORD, Pa. - Describing themselves as having once been part of the problem, a group of prisoners told participants in a crime conference Tuesday that they can now be part of the solution to ending the violence that plagues many urban neighborhoods.

The inmates, many of whom are serving life sentences at the state prison here, said they owe it to their communities to repair the damage they did while living there. They also want to make the streets safer for their families, who still live in areas where they are likely to be crime targets.

About 70 prisoners and 150 visitors - including international criminologists, students and professors - participated in "Ending the Culture of Street Crime," a daylong conference sponsored by Temple University, the Pennsylvania Prison Society and an inmates' group known as Lifers Inc. It was held in conjunction with the 14th World Congress on Criminology, which is meeting at the University of Pennsylvania through Thursday.

The prisoners shared their insights during a presentation and a panel discussion, and in small meeting groups, a skit and even a rap song. They explained the difference between street culture and mainstream values, and spoke about the need for released convicts to steer young people toward the latter.

State corrections officials would not allow the media to fully identify the prisoners, citing sensitivity to victims' families.

Conference participant Liz Elliott, co-director of the Centre for Restorative Justice at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, said the Canadian justice system is much more forgiving than that of the United States.

Being sentenced to life without parole is not something that happens in Canada, Elliott said.

"I can't imagine what that would do to people," she said.

So it's noteworthy that Lifers Inc. is reaching out to the public, Elliott said.

"I appreciate their sharing," she said.

Graterford, the state's largest maximum-security penitentiary, houses more than 3,400 inmates about 35 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Nearly 770 are serving life terms, corrections officials said.

Prison superintendent David DiGuglielmo asked participants to do more than just talk about ending street crime.

"Take whatever you learn back home," he said, "and do something positive with it."

DiGuglielmo noted that when he began working at Graterford in 1974, the state had eight prisons. Now, he said, there are 26.

He added that while he is amazed by the number of people who volunteer to work with inmates at the jail, he is frustrated by the lack of aid once the prisoners are released back into the community.

"It's hard to find people to help them," said DiGuglielmo.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-08092005-525545.html

August 9, 2005 4:50 PM

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

August 03, 2005

Meth Science Not Stigma: Opeoon Letter to the Media

Meth Science Not Stigma: Open Letter to the Media
http://www.jointogether.org/sa/files/pdf/Meth_Letter.pdf
”As medical and psychological researchers, with many years of experience studying prenatal exposure to psychoactive substances, and as medical researchers, treatment providers and specialists with many years of experience studying addictions and addiction treatment, we are writing to request that policies addressing prenatal exposure to methamphetamines and media coverage of this issue be based on science, not presumption or prejudice.”

Posted by lois at 02:56 PM | Comments (0)

June 04, 2005

Using Art to Build Pride; project for adolescent girls

June 1, 2005
Using Art to Build Pride
By HILARIE M. SHEETS, NY Times
MIAMI - On a recent evening at the Village, a drug rehabilitation center for adolescent girls here, a work by the artist Lorna Simpson was projected on a cinderblock wall in the dining room. Side-by-side photographs on a wooden accordion screen depicted a girl with a toy boat on her lap and the same girl with clasped hands, along with the words, "Marie said she was from Montreal/ although/ she was from Haiti."

Like every other piece that had been projected in the previous hour, the artwork, "Screen No. 1" (1986), elicited a burst of responses from the 12 girls in the room.

"A lot of times when you come to a different country you are ashamed of the way people observe you and talk about you - so you say you're from somewhere else," a girl named Ashley commented.

"Why Montreal instead of Haiti?" asked the instructor, Jillian Hernandez, an educator from the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami.

"Montreal and Haiti are both based on the French language, and maybe Montreal seemed more high-class," offered another girl, Brittany.

"How does the imagery go along with the text?" Ms. Hernandez asked. "Why is there a boat in that picture?"

"They actually call Haitians 'boats,' " Ashley reported.

"I didn't know that - there you go!" Ms. Hernandez said. "I know that some kids who come for MOCA's after-school programs don't say they're Haitian because they get teased in school. So here the artist is talking about the shame that some people have about their own heritage and how they lie to protect themselves."

That a Lorna Simpson work dealing with complex issues of personal identity might be immediately accessible to girls from difficult backgrounds makes perfect sense to Ms. Hernandez. It was her idea to use contemporary artists who are women as therapeutic examples for such girls in such workshops, which got under way in Miami-Dade County last year.

The outreach program, called Women on the Rise!, has been introduced by the Museum of Contemporary Art at six centers for teenage girls coping with juvenile detention, drug abuse, sexual and physical violence or emotional disorders.

Among the artists covered are Louise Bourgeois, Ellen Gallagher, Ana Mendieta, Shirin Neshat and Carrie Mae Weems, whose art explores the emotional terrain of female sexuality, body image and ethnicity that these teenagers negotiate every day.

"A lot of girls I work with are into the segment of hip-hop culture that's very misogynist and violent," Ms. Hernandez said. "You have more girls in gangs, which I think gives them a false sense of empowerment."

Reflecting a nationwide trend, the number of girls entering Florida's juvenile justice system for committing violent crimes rose by 24 percent between 1993 and 2003 - compared with a 2 percent increase for boys in the same period, according to the state's Department of Juvenile Justice.

"When they learn about these women artists, who have had blows dealt to them and have struggled just to be able to practice art, it provides them with unexpected role models," Ms. Hernandez said.

"They identify heavily with Ana Mendieta, for instance, who was told by her high school art teacher she was no good and yet she continued on." (Ms. Mendieta was exiled from Cuba to the United States without her parents in 1961, at age 12.)

"A lot of them have been through the foster care system," Ms. Hernandez said of the workshop participants. "A lot of them have immigrant families. They understand the difficulty of coming to the United States and not knowing the language."

When educators at the Museum of Contemporary Art first contacted juvenile centers to gauge interest, they found that nothing remotely like the program existed. If the centers had any art programs at all, they were of the craft variety - quilting, knitting, making macaroni necklaces.

So Adrienne von Lates, the museum's curator of education, and Ms. Hernandez put together a curriculum of four two-hour workshops that could easily be offered at each center. To date, the program has served some 400 girls.

Appearing scarcely older than a teenager herself, Ms. Hernandez, 25, is quick to establish a rapport with each group, a relationship somewhere between mentor and big sister. The first hour is like a college-level art history class: she gives an overview of the artists being discussed, shows slides and opens the room to discussion. The language in the reading material on the artists is sophisticated; as the girls read it aloud, and Ms. Hernandez reviews any words or ideas that are difficult.

"A lot of these girls suffer from low expectations," she said. "I really come at them expecting a lot, and very often they will meet me at that level."

In the second hour, the teenagers work on an art project inspired by an artist they have just studied and that usually involves photography or collage. At the Village, one of the Lorna Simpson pieces, "Stereo Styles" (1988), consisted of 10 photographs of African-American women depicted from behind in identical dress, with only the hair styled differently. Running along the bottom of the serially mounted photos was the text: "Daring, Sensible, Severe, Long & Silky, Boyish, Ageless, Silly, Magnetic, Country Fresh, Sweet."

The girls then each found a partner so they could photograph each other's hair from behind. "It's this idea of what hair says about you," Ms. Hernandez told the girls, many of whom had been playing with each other's hair before the workshop began and greeted the project with enthusiasm.

One girl was concerned that her hair fell under the "boyish" category. "I think Lorna Simpson's talking about labels, and I think she's criticizing those labels," Ms. Hernandez said. Another chose to focus on the wildly curly tips of her subject's brown hair; another zoomed in so closely on a bun it seemed abstract.

A popular art project in the program is based on a series of collages in which the Kenya-born artist Wangechi Mutu cobbled together pieces of advertisements from beauty magazines and assembled them to create disfigured women as a way of questioning cultural ideals of perfection.

As part of "Women on the Rise!," all the groups except those at the Miami-Dade Juvenile Detention center visit the Museum of Contemporary Art. For most of them, it is the first time they have ever been to a museum.

This spring, groups took in shows by Ms. Gallagher and Ms. Bourgeois, whom they had previously studied in workshops. "I wasn't sure that they would relate to someone who was so different from them in terms of background, but they loved Louise Bourgeois," Ms. Hernandez said. (Many works by Ms. Bourgeois, now 93, who was born into an upper-middle class family in Paris, were inspired by her troubled relationship with her father.)

"One of her sculptures is of a woman's body that looks like it could be pregnant and there's a knife hovering over it," Ms. Hernandez said. "The girls suggested all these stories like, 'Maybe this woman's pregnant and she doesn't want the baby.' Or, 'Maybe this woman was raped or maybe this woman wants to kill herself.' They can deal with something that may have to do with them personally but without making themselves vulnerable."

When Ms. Hernandez leads the workshop on Ms. Mendieta, she always has the girls read this quotation from the artist: "I know if I had not discovered art, I would have been a criminal."

"I ask them what they think about that," she said. "They may say, 'I can see how if I'm feeling really angry about something, maybe I can write in a journal or draw instead of acting on something that may hurt me later.' "

"That's the lesson that gets through," she continued. "I don't know if it will change anything they do, but at least they have tools to come at it differently."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2005

Corrections Statistics by State

Corrections Statistics by State
This interactive Web application provides state-level corrections statistics and charts showing national rankings. The site provides detailed statistics covering crime, population, incarceration, and community corrections. See how your state compares to other states and the national average. (NIC) For more information, visit: http://www.nicic.org/WebTopic_346.htm
A very handy site.

Posted by lois at 05:26 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2005

Report: Thousands wrongly convicted each year

USA Today 2-11-05
WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of suspects unable to afford lawyers are wrongly convicted each year because they are pressured to accept guilty pleas or have incompetent attorneys, the American Bar Association says in a report.
The study by a committee of the nation's largest lawyers' group says that legal representation of indigents is in "a state of crisis." These defendants are at constant risk of wrongful conviction and unjust punishment, including the death penalty, according to the study being released Friday.

"The fundamental right to a lawyer that Americans assume apply to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the United States," the study states. "All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights."

The ABA committee wants Congress and local governments to spend more money and create oversight groups to guard against shoddy legal representation. Judges also are asked to be more vigilant in ensuring defendants have competent counsel.

It has been more than 40 years since the Supreme Court ruled the government must provide legal counsel to indigent defendants who are charged with serious crimes.

The report comes one week after President Bush called for more training for lawyers who represent accused killers and greater use of DNA testing. That proposal is not on the agenda at the ABA winter meeting in Salt Lake City, which runs through Tuesday.

The ABA study points to people like Brandon Moon of Kansas City, Mo., who served nearly 17 years for the rape of an El Paso, woman before DNA tests determined he was not responsible; and Ryan Matthews, a Louisiana man who sat on death row for five years before he was exonerated.

More than 150 people who were convicted in 31 states and the District of Columbia served a total of 1,800 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. All were exonerated due to DNA evidence.

"The challenge is coming up with politically viable ways to fix the problem," said Douglas Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University who tracks death penalty cases. "The long-term costs of underfunding defense counsel are hard to see when a state is facing budget crises.

"Needless to say, criminals or accused criminals are not a very powerful lobby or a group that particularly draws sympathy for more dollars and cents," Berman said.

The report also pointed to negligent or otherwise unprepared lawyers, leading to faulty convictions or more serious punishment. No formal training existed for lawyers for the indigent in Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, which puts more people to death than any other state.

In the majority of states surveyed, money for prosecutors outpaced public defenders. For example, California allocates defense counsel an average of $60.90 for every $100 the prosecution receives.

In the South, the report cited a problem of "meet 'em and plead 'em lawyers" where lawyers in states such as Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia often negotiate a plea agreement the first day they meet their clients.

In Texas, Rhode Island and elsewhere, legal experts reported incdances where indigent clients languished in jail for months without access to a lawyer or were improperly urged by prosecutors to accept plea deals without a lawyer present.

The report recommends that:

_states provide money for public defenders that is on par with prosecutors.

_states establish oversight organizations to police potential abuses such as forced plea agreements or otherwise negligent or inadequate counsel.

_lawyers refuse new cases if workloads are so excessive that id would substantially impair their defense preparation.

_judges report prosecutors who seek to obtain waivers of counsel and guilty pleas that are not voluntary and on the record.

The study was based on research and testimony gathered from 22 states. The states are: Alabama, California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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

February 08, 2005

National Priorities Project: Breakdown of Bush's Budget

National Priorities Project Bulletin
*****************************************************************
On Monday, February 7, 2005, the Bush Administration sent to Congress its budget request for Fiscal Year 2006. In total, discretionary federal grants to state and local governments would be cut by almost 9 percent after taking inflation into account, including cuts to: vocational and adult education, community development programs, environmental protection agency grants, low-income home energy assistance, disease control, substance abuse, OSHA and public safety.

At the same time, the President's budget proposes a 3 percent or $19 billion increase in Pentagon spending, not including funding for the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

NPP has produced a breakdown of the budget's impact on each state for: the total of all discretionary federal grants to state and local governments; Low-Income Home and Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP); community and economic development funds, the No Child Left Behind Act; and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. These state numbers, along with other budget information, can be found at: www.nationalpriorities.org/budget.

By the end of this week, NPP will also produce its 2-page publication for each state, including the state impact numbers alongside a broad analysis of the President's budget proposal. We will let you know when it is available on our website.

Posted by lois at 06:24 PM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2005

Violence & Change in Baltimore Neighborhoods

Urban Geography has published an article, abstract and link to download below.

Harries studies neighborhoods in Baltimore in which the population of males aged 18-40 or so dropped dramatically between 1990 and 2000. Most models of crime prevention argue that having fewer males of that age should reduce crime, but in these Baltimore neighborhoods, violent crime (homicides and aggravated assaults) increased at rates greater than in other Baltimore neighborhoods. His rather understated conclusion seems to fit nicely with the work of Rose & Clear -- the removal of too many people (to prison, to the military) from a neighborhood actually increases the likelihood of violent crime.

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bell/urban/2004/00000025/00000001/art00002

Violence Change and Cohort Trajectories: Baltimore Neighborhoods, 1990-2000

Author: Harries K.

Source: Urban Geography, 1 January 2004, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 14-30(17)

Abstract:
: Whereas the relationship between poverty and violence is incontrovertible in the American city, demographic relationships at the neighborhood level are relatively poorly understood. Patterns of violence and population change are examined at the census tract level in Baltimore, Maryland across the decade from 1990 to 2000. Aggravated assault and homicide are combined and used as a composite indicator of serious violence. Population data are examined for selected tracts representative of anomalous outliers experiencing population decline but increased violence. The data are broken down into five-year cohorts represented graphically at their beginning
(1990) and end (2000) points. The analysis indicates that some neighborhoods have experienced collapse of youthful cohorts. Normally, a decline in youthful population would predict a reduction in crime, but this analysis suggests that at the neighborhood scale criminogenic processes may affect neighborhoods somewhat independently of their demographic attributes. Most notably, population decline at the neighborhood level may be accompanied by crime increase, contrary to macrolevel theoretical expectation.

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

February 01, 2005

Calculating Million Dollar Blocks

Criminal Justice and Health and Human Services: An Exploration of Overlapping Needs, Resources, and Interests in Brooklyn Neighborhoods
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/410633_CriminalJustice.pdf

Posted by lois at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2005

Prisoners of the Census: Incarceration is concentrated in particular Brooklyn Neighborhoods

From Prisoners of the Census

ERIC CADORA SHOWS HOW INCARCERATION IS CONCENTRATED IN PARTICULAR BROOKLYN NEIGHBORHOODS

[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-24-1-2005.shtml
Website version contains links to more information and larger versions of the attached maps.]

The Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York report was able to quantify the population loss to New York City from the Census Bureau practice of assigning prisoners residence to the prison location rather than their homes, and the report was able to determine how this benefits up-state prison districts. In 2000, New York City had 43,740 of its residents credited to the communities that contain prisons. As much as 7% of one upstate district's population is prisoners. Counting prisoners as prison-town residents reduces the number of actual residents in these districts, enhancing the weight of a vote in those prison districts. By extension, this vote enhancement dilutes the votes of residents elsewhere in the state.

Dear Colleague,

Welcome to this week's PrisonersoftheCensus-News, bringing you news of new research, analysis and opinion about the impact of the U.S. Census counting incarcerated people as residents not of their homes but of the prison towns. This week's column discusses some innovative research on prisoner origin in New York City.

* * *
We know that compared to the state as a whole, New York City disproportionately sends people to prison, but what about specific neighborhoods in the city? The Importing Constituents report talks of the potential impact on the assumption that prisoners are evenly distributed in the city. Even with that assumption, there was a clear problem in need of a fix. But when the report was written, nobody knew exactly where in the city prisoners came from. The Census Bureau doesn't collect this information, and the Department of Correctional Services does not publish this information in any more detail than the number of prisoners that come from New York City as a whole. As the Importing Constituents report said, prisoners are very likely concentrated in particular communities. This concentration would mean that specific districts suffer a measurable vote dilution beyond not receiving the same vote enhancement existing in the prison districts.

One recent analysis of prisoner origin in Brooklyn does suggest that prisoners are highly concentrated in origin. As part of a study looking to see where the state spends its criminal justice resources, Eric Cadora used judicial records to map the homes of prisoners from the Brooklyn borough sent to state prison in 2003. He found 35 blocks where more than $1million in state funds were spent to take people out of that community in 2003. The left portion of the attached map is a map of Mr. Cadora's research as published in the Village Voice. As Cadora used the figure of $30,000 per year to incarcerate someone, each of those 35 blocks would have at least 33 people sent to prison that year. The one "$5 million dollar block" would translate into 167 people that should have been credited by the legislature's map makers
to a single block in Brooklyn. This map isn't directly translatable
to a redistricting analysis, but it does make the very strong case that prisoners are highly concentrated in origin. The clear message is that some communities in Brooklyn lose far more population to prison -- and the Census counts of prisoners -- than others.

Eric Cadora's research and map also allows some additional analysis to be made of the communities that see large numbers of people go to prison. The right portion of the attached map is of the Black population in Brooklyn. Comparing the two maps, we see that what Eric Cadora identified as the blocks that send large numbers of people to prison are also the same blocks with large Black populations.

The Importing Constituents report showed that the Census Bureau's method of counting prisoners disadvantages the city of New York to the benefit of predominantly white rural areas. Eric Cadora's research provides more evidence for what many have long suspected -- that incarceration impacts certain disadvantaged communities much more severely than other communities. If we want to accurately count these communities and give them their fair share of political power in the legislatures, then the population of these communities needs to be counted in those communities.

Note: See also Eric Cadora's earlier analysis Criminal Justice
and Health and Human Services: An Exploration of Overlapping
Needs, Resources, and Interests in Brooklyn Neighborhoods,
(http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/410633_CriminalJustice.pdf )
[PDF] Urban Institute. January, 2002. That report only goes down
to the tract level and includes jail populations as well, but it
also creates extremely useful comparison maps of singe parent
households, youth concentrations, and people on various public
assistance programs. These are largely all co-incident
populations.

* * *

I welcome your feedback on the issue, the website, and this message. And as always, if you prefer to not receive these messages, just let me know.

Best wishes,
Peter Wagner

--
Peter Wagner http://www.PrisonersoftheCensus.org
pwagner@prisonpolicy.org http://www.prisonpolicy.org
Prison Policy Initiative PO Box 127 Northampton, MA 01061

Posted by lois at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2005

New: Sentencing Project: Racial Disparity in Sentencing

Friends,

I'm writing to call your attention to a new publication of The Sentencing Project, Racial Disparity in Sentencing: A Review of the Literature. This review examines the research findings of major studies of racial disparity at both the state and federal level and finds that "while racial dynamics have changed over time, race still exerts an undeniable presence in the sentencing process." The publication can be found at http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/disparity.pdf

I hope you find this information useful in your work. Please feel free to share any comments or reactions.

Regards,
Marc Mauer

Marc Mauer
Assistant Director
The Sentencing Project
514 10th St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20004
mauer@sentencingproject.org
(202) 628-0871

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

January 08, 2005

The cost of skyrocketing jail populations to counties

State must do more to defray costs of operating county jails

By BOB ARNOLD
Executive Director/CEO
Kentucky Association of Counties

Media reports have recently explored the skyrocketing growth in the population of the Commonwealth's prisons and the impact of that growth on the state's budget in recent years. Those reports conclude that the growth in the state's prison population "is threatening to bankrupt" the state's correction system. However, the local impact to county governments and their constituents of similar increases in the populations of county jails and the costs of operating those jails have gone ignored.

The media focuses its attention on the issue of who should and should not be incarcerated, noting that tougher penalties passed by the legislature for crimes such as DUI, minor drug offenses, violations of child support orders and domestic crimes have contributed to the growth in prison populations. On one side, respected University of Kentucky law professor and criminal law scholar Robert Lawson concludes that Kentucky's "lock them up and throw away the key" model has gone too far. While others such as Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Larson, an equally respected Fayette County prosecutor, predict rise in crime if we alter the stringent incarceration policies Kentucky now follows.

Both arguments warrant consideration over the course of the coming years. The decision of who should be incarcerated and for what length of time must be addressed and both arguments must be weighed. In the meantime, something must be done now to address the financial crisis that counties face as a result of bearing the soaring cost of operating county jails. As with the population of the state's prisons, the number of inmates being held in county jails has also exploded over the last two decades. Since the mid-1980s, county jail populations have increased tenfold.

However, the press and the public have yet to recognize the critical impact that the cost associated with housing prisoners in county jails has on county budgets across the Commonwealth. Just as the cost of housing prisoners in the state's penitentiaries has skyrocketed, so has the cost that county governments contribute to the operation of county jails.

Counties' financial future threatened by "unfunded mandate"

Counties are threatened by the possibility of bankruptcy as a result of the "unfunded mandate" of absorbing soaring jail costs. A study by the Kentucky County Judge-Executive Association shows that jails will cost the counties across the Commonwealth approximately $200 million during the 2005 fiscal year. More than $100 million of that cost will come directly from the counties' general funds. That is money that would otherwise be spent to enhance the quality of life of county residents on things that residents have the right to expect and demand from their county governments such as roads, bridges, parks, waterlines, sewers, emergency medical services and senior centers. In short, with some counties spending more than 50 percent of their total general fund budget on their jails, skyrocketing jail expenses are lowering the quality of life for county residents. For example, Union County, which has a total general fund budget of $1.5 million this year, expects to spend approximately $1 million of those funds on its jail. Just think of the services that Union County could provide to its residents if it were not forced to shoulder the burden of absorbing this cost.

Despite the explosion in the number of inmates in county jails and the cost associated with housing them, the money the state government contributes to counties for this has not increased since 1984. In fact, state contributions to the cost of operating county jails have actually decreased during the last 20 years while jail costs continue to escalate.

During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, state officials encouraged counties to expand old jails and build new ones, promising to contract with the counties to house state inmates that would otherwise be incarcerated in state prisons. Counties across the Commonwealth respected the pleas of state officials and added jail beds believing, like Kevin Costner's character in the 1989 movie, "Field of Dreams," that "If you build it, they will come." And come they did, with the county jails across the Commonwealth now housing approximately 6,000 state inmates on any given day, but the money that the state pays counties for housing state inmates does not even cover the counties' cost of doing so, further exasperating the jail funding problem. Today, the state pays a county $26.51, including $1.91 for medical cost, per day to house a state inmate. At the same time, it pays private prisons between $30.49 and $44.19 per day, with a built-in 3 percent annual increase, while the state remains responsible for the cost of the inmate's medical care.

It is not the place of the county officials that I represent to decide between the arguments advanced by Professor Lawson and prosecutor Larson. Tougher sentences may make the state safer, but on the other hand, how many Kentuckians do we want to have in jail? Regardless of the ultimate conclusion reached by the policy makers responsible for that decision, something must be done before long to address the county jail funding crisis, before we reach the point where county government in the Commonwealth exists solely to operate the county jail. The law-abiding citizens of Kentucky's counties deserve more.

I understand that these are difficult fiscal times for state government in Kentucky and that other important issues such as Medicaid, public employee health insurance and education are all competing for the state's limited financial resources. Nevertheless, it is time for the Commonwealth to stop shirking its constitutional obligation to be financially responsible for inmates convicted of state crimes. The state must direct additional funds to help counties defray the cost of operating county jails and housing the state's inmates.

http://www.amnews.com/public_html/?module=displaystory&story_id=11067&format
=html

Wednesday January 5, 2005

Copyright The Advocate-Messenger 2004

Posted by lois at 01:18 PM | Comments (0)

December 30, 2004

The Economic Consequences of the 1960's Race Riots Come Into View

"The riots not only destroyed many homes and businesses, resulting in about $50 million in property damage in Detroit alone, but far more significantly, they also depressed inner-city incomes and property values for decades."

December 30, 2004
ECONOMIC SCENE
The Consequences of the 1960's Race Riots Come Into View
By VIRGINIA POSTREL

As an economic historian, Robert A. Margo has long wanted to study the 1960's. But, he says, "for the longest time people would say, 'That's too close to the present.' "

Not so anymore. The 1960's are as distant from today as the Great Depression was from the 1960's, and economic historians, including Professor Margo, of Vanderbilt University, are examining the decade's long-term effects.

Consider the wave of race riots that swept the nation's cities. From 1964 to 1971, there were more than 750 riots, killing 228 people and injuring 12,741 others. After more than 15,000 separate incidents of arson, many black urban neighborhoods were in ruins.

As soon as the riots occurred, social scientists began collecting data and analyzing the possible causes. Until recently, however, few scholars looked at the riots' long-term economic consequences.

In two recent papers, Professor Margo and his Vanderbilt colleague, William J. Collins, do just that by estimating the impact on incomes and employment and on property values.

The riots not only destroyed many homes and businesses, resulting in about $50 million in property damage in Detroit alone, but far more significantly, they also depressed inner-city incomes and property values for decades.

(The papers, "The Labor Market Effects of the 1960's Riots" and "The Economic Aftermath of the 1960's Riots: Evidence from Property Values," are available at www.vanderbilt.edu/Econ/wparchive/working03.html and www.vanderbilt.edu/Econ/wparchive/working04.html.)

The economists start with sociologists' findings on the riots' causes: whether a city had a riot was essentially unpredictable, assuming the city was outside the South (where few riots occurred) and had a substantial African-American population. The sociologists' research, Professor Margo says, suggests that "there was so much racial tension in the air in the 1960's that a riot could happen almost anywhere, anytime."

That unpredictability is bad news for sociologists looking for causes but good news for economists analyzing consequences. It creates a natural experiment, dividing otherwise similar places into those that had riots and those that did not.

In cities with major riots, the economists find that the median black family income dropped by about 9 percent from 1960 to 1970, compared with similar cities without severe riots. This impact on the labor market may have actually been more severe in the long run.

From 1960 to 1980, male employment in cities with severe riots dropped four to seven percentage points, compared with otherwise similar cities.

The impact on property values is even more striking. In cities with severe riots, Professors Collins and Margo found, the median value of black-owned homes dropped 14 percent to 20 percent, compared with cities that experienced little or no rioting, from 1960 to 1970. The median value of all central-city homes, regardless of owner, dropped 6 percent, to 10 percent.

The racial difference is not surprising, because both riot damage and the perceived risk of future riots were concentrated in predominately black neighborhoods.

Again, these numbers reflect not just immediate property damage but long-term declines. If it is more expensive or less desirable to live or work in a particular neighborhood, property prices will drop.

"This effect," the economists write, "could work through any number of the channels that feed into the net benefit stream: personal and property risk might seem higher; insurance premiums might rise; taxes for redistribution or more police and fire protection might increase, and municipal bonds may be more difficult to place; retail outlets might close; businesses and employment opportunities might relocate; friends and family might move away; burned-out buildings might be an eyesore; and so on."

In a second statistical test, Professors Collins and Margo identify two factors that separate cities with riots from those without riots: whether the local government used a city manager (which lessened the chances of a riot) and how much rain fell in April 1968, the month that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

"If you have a lot of rain, people don't go out in the streets and riot," Professor Margo notes. So the same national event had different effects in cities that were otherwise similar. Here, too, the two economists find that cities without riots did significantly better economically over the long run.

These results help address an important economic puzzle. Since World War II, the incomes of black and white Americans have begun to converge. But racial differences in wealth, or net worth, have remained enormous, even for people with similar incomes and family configurations.

In 1998, the median income for African-American households was $20,000, or 54 percent of the median white household income of $37,000, according to calculations by Edward N. Wolff of the Jerome Levy Economics Institute. But the median net worth of black families was only $10,000, a mere 12 percent of the median white net worth of $81,700.

Wealth reflects history as well as current economics. And while there are many reasons for the wealth gap, it certainly does not help that the 1960's riots destroyed much of the accumulated wealth of many of the most prosperous African-Americans, those who had left the South for the greater economic opportunity of industrial cities.

A home is the most important asset for most American families, and home ownership is even more significant for African-Americans, who historically have had held little wealth in financial securities or business equity.

In 1940, black-owned homes were worth only 37 percent as much as white-owned homes, as against 62 percent in 1970 - still a significant gap, but a much smaller one. From then on, however, the gap barely budges, with the ratio reaching only 65 percent by 1990.

The riots help explain why. These numbers include all houses nationwide. In inner cities, the trend actually reversed, and the gap in home value began to widen instead of narrow.

From 1940 to 1970, the value of homes owned and occupied by blacks in central cities jumped to 69 percent of the value of urban homes owned and occupied by whites, from 51 percent. (Home values were rising over this period as well.) By 1990, however, the ratio was down to a mere 53 percent, nearly as low as in 1940.

"That's a really startling number," Professor Margo says.

Virginia Postrel (www.dynamist.com) is the author of"The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture and Consciousness," just published in paperback by Perennial.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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

December 27, 2004

Why Some Politicians Need Their Prisons to Stay Full

By Brent Staples, New York Times, December 27, 2004

"An eye-opening analysis by Prison Policy Initiative's Peter Wagner found seven upstate New York Senate districts that meet minimal population requirements only because prison inmates are included in the count. New York is not alone. The group's researchers have found 21 counties nationally where at least 21 percent of the ''residents'' were inmates."

The mandatory sentencing fad that swept the United States beginning in the 1970's has had dramatic consequences -- most of them bad. The prison population was driven up tenfold, creating a large and growing felon class-- now 13 million strong -- that remains locked out of the mainstream and prone to recidivism. Trailing behind the legions of felons are children who grow up visiting their parents behind bars and thinking prison life is perfectly normal. Meanwhile, the cost of building and running prisons has pushed many states close to bankruptcy -- and forced them to choose between building jails and schools.

Seldom has a public policy done so much damage so quickly. But changes in the draconian sentencing laws have come very slowly. That is partly because the public thinks keeping a large chunk of the population behind bars is responsible for the reduced crime rates of recent years. Studies cast doubt on that theory, since they show drops in crime almost everywhere -- even in states that did not embrace mandatory minimum sentences or mass imprisonment. In addition, these damaging policies have done nothing to curb the drug trade.

Changing prison policy, however, is no longer a simple matter. The business of building and running the jailhouse has become a mammoth industry with powerful constituencies that favor the status quo. Prison-based money and political power have distorted the legislative landscape in ways that will be difficult to undo.

These problems are on vivid display in New York, which started mass imprisonment when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller persuaded the Legislature to pass the toughest drug laws in the nation at the start of an ill-starred ''war on drugs'' 30 years ago. The Rockefeller laws introduced the country to mandatory sentencing policies that barred judges from deciding who goes to jail and for how long. Instead, the laws required lengthy sentences -- 15 years to life -- for nonviolent, first-time offenders, many of whom would have received brief sentences, drug treatment or community service under previous laws.

Nearly all of the prisoners ended up in upstate New York, where failing farms and hollowed-out cities offered a lot of room for building. Politicians in these sparsely populated districts caught on quickly and began to lobby to have the new prisons located in their communities. As a result, nearly 30 percent of the people who were counted as moving into upstate New York during the 1990's were prison inmates.

The influx of inmates has brought desperately needed jobs to the region and resulted in districts whose economies revolve around prison payrolls and whose politics are dominated by the union that represents corrections officers. The inmates also helped to save political careers in areas where legislative districts were in danger of having to be merged because of shrinking populations. Inmates, as it turned out, were magically transformed into ''residents,'' thanks to a quirk in the census rules that counts them as living at their prisons. Although people sentenced under the drug laws frequently serve long sentences, many prisoners remain behind bars only briefly before returning to homes that are often hundreds of miles away.

Felons are barred from voting in 48 of 50 states -- including New York. Yet in New York, as in the rest of the country, disenfranchised prisoners are included in the population counts that become the basis for drawing legislative districts.

An eye-opening analysis by Prison Policy Initiative's Peter Wagner found seven upstate New York Senate districts that meet minimal population requirements only because prison inmates are included in the count. New York is not alone. The group's researchers have found 21 counties nationally where at least 21 percent of the ''residents'' were inmates.

The New York Republican Party uses its majority in the State Senate to maintain political power through fat years and lean. The Senate Republicans, in turn, rely on their large upstate delegation to keep that majority. Whether those legislators have consciously made the connection or not, it's hard to escape the fact that bulging prisons are good for their districts. The advantages extend beyond jobs and political gerrymandering. By counting unemployed inmates as residents, the prison counties lower their per capita incomes -- and increase the portion they get of federal funds for the poor. This results in a transfer of federal cash from places that can't afford to lose it to places that don't deserve it.

Lately, polls have shown growing support for drug law reform. In November, prominent New York Republicans ran into trouble when they faced candidates who made Rockefeller reform an issue. In response, the State Senate endorsed a plan that cut sentences for drug possession crimes, which was the easy part. But it stonewalled on the crucial change, which would have returned to judges the discretion to sentence at least some offenders to drug treatment instead of prison.

While other political forces support the mandatory sentences -- most notably the powerful local prosecutors -- prison rights advocates have recently begun to argue that prison district politicians are more concerned about keeping the prisons full than about crime. The idea of counting inmates as voters in the counties that imprison them is particularly repulsive given that inmates are nearly always stripped of the right to vote. The practice recalls the early United States under slavery, when slaves were barred from voting but counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning representation in Congress.

[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-27-12-2004.shtml ]

Posted by lois at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2004

Illinois: Treatment on Demand Soars to Victory

"An unprecedented recovery-advocacy campaign led to resounding approval of an Illinois ballot initiative calling for addiction treatment on demand."

December 17, 2004

News Feature By Bob Curley

A whopping 76 percent of voters in Cook County, Ill. (home to Chicago and surrounding Chicagoland communities) voted "yes" on the ballot question, "Shall the state government provide adequate funding for comprehensive and appropriate substance-abuse treatment for any Illinois state resident requesting services from a licensed provider, community-based organization, or medical-care facility in the state?" The 1.2 million votes cast in favor of treatment on demand were more than Cook County voters cast to successfully return Rod Blagojevich to the governor's mansion and Sen. Dick Durban (R-Ill.) to Congress.

Although non-binding and limited to just one county (albeit the state's largest by far), the ballot question is widely expected to prompt state lawmakers to quickly take steps toward increasing treatment availability in Illinois. "I'm 100-percent confident that this will be translated into some sort of policy," said Brad Olson, Ph.D., an addiction researcher at DePaul University and chair of Citizens Activated to Change Healthcare (CATCH), which spearheaded the campaign to get the question on the ballot. "The extent that we can get true treatment on demand will be a challenge, but that will come over time."

Dogged supporters of treatment and recovery actually snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. The original idea was to get the question on the statewide ballot, but despite the work of more than 700 volunteer petition gatherers -- who got 118,000 Illinois residents to sign -- the drive fell short of the 282,000 signatures needed to get the measure on the state ballot. Next, organizers tried to convince state lawmakers to pass a law enabling the question to be added to the ballot; the House approved the plan, but it stalled in committee in the state Senate.

Organizers didn't give up: instead, they went to the Cook County Board of Commissioners, which had unanimously endorsed the goals of the petition drive. The board met and agreed to place the question on the county ballot for November 2004.

Tremendous Momentum

Tumia Romero, director of public policy and programs for Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.), told Join Together that the overwhelming support for addiction services demonstrated by voters in Illinois' most populous and influential county -- which includes many affluent suburbs as well as the urban core of Chicago -- will be almost as influential on policymakers as a statewide question would have been. Romero, who oversees a broad range of community advocacy groups established by Davis' office, including one on addiction, said the election results have generated "tremendous momentum" for improving treatment services.

"I think policymakers can agree that substance abuse is a major issue in the state of Illinois, and we have to find ways to fix it," said Romero. "We're on the verge in Illinois of not just having policymakers looking at treatment on demand, but having people in the system working on it. They feel empowered."

Indeed, Romero and Olson credit grassroots recovery advocates, local religious leaders, and supporters of addiction-related issues (such as advocates for the homeless and people with AIDS) for laying the groundwork for the campaign's success. "It was most impactful to see people who were so proud because they had asked their whole family to sign the petition, and their family was so proud of them for doing something so positive in their lives," said Romero.

In addition to Rep. Davis and the Cook County Commission, a number of prominent local political leaders lent their support to the treatment on demand campaign, including the Chicago City Council, Mayor Richard Daley, and Senator-elect Barack Obama. However, noted CATCH's Olson, "We're trying to get the average person to think differently about recovery. When you talk to people on the streets of Chicago, they almost immediately recognize this is something that needs to be done. In the suburbs, there's a lot of support but also a lot of questions about cost."

In a report issued in support of the ballot question, CATCH argued that Illinois would save $18 for every $1 invested in treatment on demand. Romero acknowledges that the costs of full treatment on demand would be significant -- perhaps $2,500 for each of the one million in state residents believed to need treatment services. But, she adds, the per-person cost is far less than the $35-40,000 needed annually to keep someone in jail.

Treatment-on-demand advocates plan to meet with Gov. Blagojevich soon, and a Jan. 11 Chicago town hall meeting convened by Davis will give the public a chance to weigh in on the issue.

"We don't want a quick shot of money for treatment providers," stressed Olson. "Some of them are suffering, but the key is to focus on more systemic changes. We want more people served."

GET NEWS HEADLINES BY EMAIL: http://www.jointogether.org/jtodirect

VISIT THIS PAGE ONLINE for accompanying web links and resources: http://www.jointogether.org/y/0,2521,575445,00.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Visit http://www.jointogether.org for complete news and funding coverage, resource links and advocacy tools supporting community-based efforts to reduce and prevent substance abuse and gun violence.

Join Together is a project of the Boston University School of Public Health. This information may be freely reproduced and distributed, provided that attribution is made to Join Together Online (www.jointogether.org). (Mail ID: 315548)

Posted by lois at 04:21 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2004

"Non-Reform" Reform ---opinions from various NY newspapers

'Non-reform' reform of NY's Rockefeller drug laws. Different views from the Christian Science monitor, op-ed by Robert Gangi in Newsday, Newsday editorial, and an article form the NY Times. (These were compiled by Tracy Huling)

Christian Science Monitor

USA > Justice
from the December 10, 2004 edition

More states roll back mandatory drug sentences
The move this week by New York, the pioneer of tough laws, reflects concern about prison overcrowding and 'fairness.'

By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK - New York's dramatic move this week to roll back its mandatory drug laws is symbolic of a growing movement in dozens of states to rethink how they deal with nonviolent drug offenders.

From California to New Jersey, lawmakers either are considering or have already taken steps to reduce sentences, replace prison time with drug treatment, and return some discretion to judges.

The movement is being driven by the desire to ease overcrowding in prisons and concern about the fairness of mandatory sentences. While not everyone agrees with the tilt, even some conservatives have joined the reformers, arguing that more needs to be done than just being tough on crime.

The New York move may be the most important, both for substantive and symbolic reasons. It was the first state in the nation to usher in tough mandatory-minimum drug laws more than 30 years ago.

It was also one of the first where reformers started working to overturn them, arguing the laws designed to net drug kingpins were instead snaring low-level offenders and locking them away, sometimes for life. Critics faulted them for bloating prison populations and unfairly targeting blacks and Hispanics. Conservatives countered that the get-tough laws helped bring down crime rates.

After a heated 12-year battle, the state legislature voted this week to roll back some of those mandatory sentences. In doing so, it became the 22nd state in recent years to reassess or change its drug laws. Some, like Michigan, did away with mandatory life-without-parole sentences for certain felons. Others, like New Jersey, have set up a commission to study changes.

The move by New York lawmakers is "very good news," says Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, an advocacy group in Washington. "They have been one of the most recalcitrant of states, and their penalties are some of the harshest. The states are the real laboratories on this issue, and they seem to be moving far ahead of the federal government."

Currently, a first-time class-A felony in New York - defined as possession of four ounces or more of a hard drug - would get an offender 15 years to life. Under the new law, a person would have to possess eight ounces or more to be categorized as a class-A felon, and the mandatory sentence was reduced to eight to 20 years.

Supporters of drug reform see the New York move as a turning point in the battle to replace mandatory minimums nationwide. But some think New York lawmakers did not go far enough in either reducing the length of mandatory sentences or in

returning discretion to judges. "It's a small but encouraging step," says Alan Rothstein of the New York bar association. "But we're also hopeful the legislature will turn to this issue again in the next session and make even more substantive changes."

Many conservatives still support mandatory minimums as key deterrents to drug crime. They also see them as a way to ensure uniformity in sentencing, avoiding having some judges hand out stiff jail terms and others lenient ones. But some also now support elements of the reform movement.

"My sense is that the country is coming to the conclusion that the levels of penalty are about right, and maybe even a little too harsh," says Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation in Washington. "I don't see people abandoning the deterrent, but trimming, assessing, and figuring out whether the marginal value of an additional three years in jail is worth it, or whether that money could be spent in more cost-effective ways."



Newsday Opinion
DOING TIME
Drug laws are still too harsh
Real reform remains elusive as prosecutors still have the power to stack the decks against the small fry

Robert Gangi is the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York.

December 9, 2004

Despite the fanfare, the Rockefeller Drug Law modifications approved this week in Albany do not amount to real reform. The amendments reduce sentences for drug offenses but leave intact the harshest aspects of these statutes and don't address the most serious problems caused by these laws.

The mandatory sentencing provisions remain on the books, meaning that judges still cannot consider significant mitigating factors - such as an individual's role in the drug transaction or history of addiction - and fashion appropriate penalties to suit the offenses before them. Mandatory sentencing schemes like the Rockefeller Drug Laws do not eliminate discretion; they remove it from the judge's hands and place it in the prosecutor's offices. Under the new system - as under the old one
- the district attorneys will maintain power to control the outcome of drug cases, and the old imbalance associated with the drug laws will persist. The deck will still be stacked.

Prison terms, especially for the highest categories of drug offenses, remain excessive. For example, under the new system, instead of 15 years to life, the most serious provision of the drug laws carries a sentence of eight to 20 years - still far too long.

Many other drug offenders, most of whom have no history of violent or predatory behavior, will still be incarcerated for inordinate periods of time, and New York's taxpayers will still foot the bill. It costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars annually to lock up people convicted of minor drug crimes.

The main criterion for guilt remains the amount of drugs in a person's possession, not the person's actual role in the drug transaction. Drug kingpins are rarely foolish enough to carry narcotics; they employ other people, often in dire economic circumstances, who agree to do it. Couriers are the ones who get caught literally holding the bag and face long prison sentences. As a main weapon in the "war on drugs," this statute will continue to result in law enforcement agencies concentrating on minor offenders - mainly from poor communities of color
- who are most easily arrested, prosecuted and penalized, rather than on
middle- and high-level criminals who are the drug trade's true masterminds.

Another problem is that the legislature did not include any additional resources for drug treatment and other alternatives to incarceration. Drug treatment is a well-documented success. Fully funded rehabilitation programs not only cost less than imprisonment, they are also much more effective in helping individuals recover from addiction and in reducing the crime associated with the drug trade.

The prevailing wisdom is that Albany was finally willing to move on this issue because of political considerations: an insurgent candidate who ran on a platform promoting drug-law repeal recently defeated the sitting district attorney in Albany County, representing the first time any elected official has been voted from office because of his support for the drug laws. The Republicans in the State Senate - often seen, fairly or not, as obstacles to meaningful change - lost three seats in November, with another hanging in the balance. All observers assume, rightly or wrongly, that New York's next governor will be the progressive Democrat Eliot Spitzer, who will most probably be a strong proponent of real reform. Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno likely saw an advantage in supporting this measure: He could at least claim that he and his colleagues took some action.

So, the concerns here are not only substantive; they are also political. If this legislation turns out to be the first small step on the path toward meaningful reform, then it will have been a positive measure. If, in fact, these modifications wind up undercutting the momentum for real change that has been building, then it will be viewed mostly in a negative light. The final history on this issue has yet to be written, and all of us will help shape the ultimate outcome. Copyright C 2004, Newsday, Inc. __________________________________________________________
Newsday Opinion
THEY CALL THIS REFORM?
Albany leaves itself more work to do after tweaking outdated drug laws


December 9, 2004

Given the history of paralysis in Albany, the impulse is to cheer anytime the legislature rouses itself into action, including this week when it approved changes in the antiquated Rockefeller drug laws.

Give credit where credit is due: Ratcheting back the worst excesses in sentences for drug crimes is progress. But reform it's not. Albany danced around the margin, leaving the hard heart of the wasteful Rockefeller drug laws intact.

Even after Gov. George Pataki signs this week's changes into law, prison will still be mandatory for non-violent drug offenders. Judges will still have no authority to sentence anyone to drug treatment as an alternative to incarceration and almost no discretion to tailor appropriate punishments for individual offenders and circumstances.

Albany has much to do before it can lay claim to real reform. Obstructionists will insist that it's mission accomplished after this week's action, a position that should not be allowed to blunt the momentum for further change.

The state's inflexible grid of mandatory drug sentences may have appeared to make sense 30 years ago when the state and fearful citizens were in the grip of an epidemic of drug abuse and violent crime. Since then it has become clear that drug treatment is less costly than long-term imprisonment and often more effective in moving non-violent drug abusers away from a life of crime, which protects the public.

The legislature responded to at least a portion of that reality this week. It voted to shorten mandatory sentences for drug crimes, increase the weight of drugs needed to trigger the law's automatic penalties and to allow some inmates quicker entry into drug treatment programs operated behind bars. The bill that both the Senate and Assembly approved will also allow about 400 offenders doing the most time under the Rockefeller laws to apply for resentencing in line with the bill's reduced penalties.

Prison sentences will still be stiff: 8 to 20 years for the worst, first offenses, for instance, instead of the current 15 years to life. The legislature provided no new money for drug treatment. But it ensured that non-violent drug offenders will no longer face the prospect of life behind bars.

Albany took a step this week toward more rational sentencing for drug crimes, and every journey begins with one step. Copyright C 2004, Newsday, Inc.

____________________________________________
The New York Times
December 9, 2004
Changes Made to Drug Laws Don't Satisfy Advocates
By LESLIE EATON and AL BAKER
By finally tackling New York State's three-decades-old drug sentencing laws - considered among the most severe in the nation - the State Legislature has raised a lot of hopes and plenty of questions among prisoners, their families, and their lawyers. It has also raised fears among advocates for prison reform, who contend that the changes enacted to the Rockefeller drug laws on Tuesday are relatively modest, but may nevertheless reduce public pressure for a more comprehensive overhaul in the way New York treats drug offenders. Indeed, to some advocates, the new bill is not even half a loaf, but more like a heel of bread, which will leave many prisoners and their families with dashed hopes.

"The important message to get out is that the laws are virtually as harsh as ever," said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison watchdog group. For example, he noted, judges must still sentence drug offenders to prison, rather than to alternatives like drug treatment. But if New York still has some of the longest mandatory drug sentences in the country, "I think they should be," said Senator Dale M. Volker, a Republican from western New York who was in office in 1973 when Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller pushed for laws to fight a growing heroin scourge. Chauncey G. Parker, director of criminal justice services for the state, said that people arrested for felony level drug offenses have an average of three previous felony arrests and four prior misdemeanor arrests.

The new legislation, which Gov. George E. Pataki has pledged to sign, will reduce minimum sentences for drug offenses. For example, first-time offenders convicted of a Class A-1 drug felony, who under current law must receive a minimum sentence of 15 years to life in prison, would instead generally face terms of less than eight years. In cases of drug possession, rather than sales, the new law also doubles the amount of heroin, cocaine and some narcotics that automatically turn cases into top-level felonies.

But the most heralded change will affect prisoners who were sentenced to especially long sentences, as much as 25 years behind bars, and will now be able to petition the courts to have their lengthy sentences reduced to the new, lower levels. According to data from the New York State Department of Correctional Services, that change could affect 446 prisoners. That is only a sliver of the 15,600 felons imprisoned on drug charges. So many families who were cheering the Legislature's efforts are now deeply disappointed, said Randy Credico, director of the Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice and an organizer of the group Mothers of the New York Disappeared. He is faced with calling many of the group's members, he said, and tell them their children "are not coming home." One of those mothers is Cheri O'Donoghue, who said that her son, Ashley, 21, pleaded guilty to a lesser drug charge upstate to avoid a possible life term in prison under the old law; in March, he was sentenced to serve 7 to 21 years and is now in Clinton Correctional Facility near the Canadian border and far from his home in Manhattan. He is not eligible for the new reduction program. "If you are going to reform the laws after all this time, and they are so harsh to begin with, then why not really reform them and reform them in a way that makes sense for someone like Ashley's situation, which is a lot of people?" she asked. "He is young and he really wants to come home and he is in shock." Many families do not know whether their child or spouse or parent qualifies for the sentencing reduction program.

But they hope. In the Bronx, Jane L. Gooden has been waiting more than seven years for her youngest son, Timothy Merritt, to be released from prison. She said he was living with friends upstate when drugs were found in the apartment where he was staying; according to court records, in 1997 he pleaded guilty to one count of criminal possession of a controlled substance in Columbia County. It is hard for her to travel to Ulster County to visit him at the Eastern Correctional Facility, said Ms. Gooden, who is 61. "I've been sick since he's been gone," she said, adding that her husband died recently. "So I lost one - but I'm gaining one."

Public defenders, who are likely to handle the vast majority of the resentencing efforts, are still trying to figure out how the process will work. While some cases will be straightforward, in others "a lot of advocacy will be involved," said Alfred A. O'Conner, a lawyer with the New York State Defenders Association. The Legislature promised the prisoners lawyers, but did not authorize any money for the effort, he noted. Still, he added, "it's a chore that we welcome." Ronald L. Kuby, the defense lawyer who has a daily radio program on WABC with Curtis Sliwa, said that his phones had already started ringing with inquiries from clients, ex-clients and family members. "They want to know how does this affect them, what can we do?" he said. "I assume my experience is being duplicated and replicated" in lawyers' offices across the state. So far, he added, he does have one likely candidate, Roberto Oms, a Miami construction worker with no criminal record who came to New York with some friends who were drug dealers - and four kilos of heroin. Indicted in 1999, he went to trial, arguing that he was "just along for the ride," Mr. Kuby said. The judge disagreed and sentenced him to 15 years to life. But the judge, Rosalind Richter, noted that she had adjourned the sentencing "a number of times to see if the Legislature had any willingness, along with the governor, to come to some thoughts about reducing the mandatory sentences under what is known as the Rockefeller drug laws." And if they did so, she was willing to hear from Mr. Oms's lawyers, she said, according to a transcript Mr. Kuby supplied.

Many judges have long pressed for a change in the Rockefeller drug laws, including Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye of the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, who has been advocating for a rethinking of the laws since 1999. "We do feel it is a major step forward," said Jonathan Lippman, chief administrative judge of the courts. But, he added, "We hope they continue to look at the whole issue of the Rockefeller drug laws." Some defense lawyers wish the new law had gone further, but prefer to focus on the hundreds of people who could be freed soon, or at least sooner. One is Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, who said she had one client in his 60's who has already spent 19 years in prison. "Instead of having his old age in jail," she said, "he's got a chance to come home."

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

December 09, 2004

Revisions to the Rockefeller Drug Laws Embrace the Status Quo

Changes Represent Reform in Name Only, ACLU Charges

http://www.aclu.org/DrugPolicy/DrugPolicy.cfm?ID=17169&c=19

Revisions to New York Rockefeller Drug Laws Embrace the Status Quo

December 8, 2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@aclu.org

NEW YORK--The New York Civil Liberties Union today charged that legislation passed in Albany, while reducing the most severe mandatory sentences for drug offenses, leaves in place a sentencing scheme that is inherently unfair and unjust. Even with the proposed revisions, New York still has the harshest drug-sentencing laws in the country.

"Absent structural changes to the Rockefeller Drug Laws - which requires restoring to judges the authority to order treatment as an alternative to sentencing - we will not have meaningful reform," said Donna Lieberman, the NYCLU¹s Executive Director.

The legislation, which Governor George Pataki says he will sign, reduces the current sentence of 15-years-to-life for persons charged with severe drug felonies and permits those serving time for these offenses to apply for a reduced sentence. However, the NYCLU said that the sentencing "grid" for these offenses is still harsh and inflexible.

The new law will leave in place a sentencing procedure that gives prosecutors authority to charge and sentence. Prosecutors can demand a sentence of ten years for an addict with no criminal record who is induced by a dealer to deliver four ounces of a drug to a buyer. A judge who believes justice -- and the public interest -- would be best served by ordering the defendant to treatment rather than prison is prevented from doing so.

"The concern is that a small first step will be characterized as meaningful reform; that the legislation will give political cover to apologists for the status quo," said Robert Perry, the NYCLU¹s Legislative Director. "The fight for real reform begins on the first day of the 2005 legislative session."

The new law will also do little or nothing to reform the harsh sentences imposed on "B" felons, those charged with lesser drug offenses, the NYCLU said. For example, an individual who is caught with a gram of a controlled substance, but has a prior offense for illegal use of food stamps, faces 3 to 12 years in prison. The majority of drug offenders serving time in New York prisons are non-violent B felons.

Posted by lois at 06:14 PM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2004

40,000 new "beds" voted in Intelligence Reform bill

Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Intelligence Reform Bill (9-11 Commission Leg) Passes House

Extremely brief update regarding the intelligence reform legislation (also known as the legislation to implement the 9-11 commission report):

The conference committee has agreed on a single version of the bill. The House is planning to vote on the bill today, Tuesday, Dec. 7. The Senate is planning to vote on the bill tomorrow, Wednesday, Dec. 8. Both houses of Congress must approve before the bill goes to the President for his signature in order for the bill to become law.
Most of the anti-immigrant provisions of Title III of HR 10 were NOT included. However the following provisions ARE in the compromise bill:

increase in the number of Border Patrol agents by 2,000 agents a year for each of the next five years

increase in the number of Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) agents by 800 a year for each of the next five years

increase in the number of beds available for immigration detainees by 40,000!!!!!

The Department of Homeland Security will be required to establish "minimum standards" for birth certificates and driver's licenses -- some have called this the first step toward a national ID card.

Posted by lois at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)

December 01, 2004

A Changing Country Needs a Changing Census

Dear Colleague,

Welcome to this week's PrisonersoftheCensus-News, bringing you news of new research, analysis and opinion about the impact of the U.S. Census counting incarcerated people as residents not of their homes but of the prison town. This week's column looks at how incarceration patterns and uses of census data have evolved since 1880.
-------------------
Check out Peter Wagner's website: www.prisonersofcensus.org for great maps and other useful information.

[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-29-11-2004.shtml]

When the Census Bureau began counting Americans in 1790, it really didn't matter that they decided to count prisoners as residents of the prison. The data was only used for one purpose: to gauge the relative populations of each state to determine how many seats in Congress each received. It didn't matter where in a state prisoners were counted because legislative redistricting didn't yet exist. Until 1900, most federal prisoners were kept in state prisons, so even these miniscule numbers were not crossing state lines. For more than a century, the impact on the distribution of political power from the Census Bureau's decision on where to count prisoners appears to have been: zero.

In 1880, there was only one federal prison and 61 state prisons. At that time, the United States had only 61 people in prison for every 100,000 people in the population. That's just above one-twentieth of one percent. It's a tiny figure that reflects just how rare incarceration was.

By 1923, the federal prison system had grown to 3 prisons, but the state system had the same number of facilities. The prison population had grown but it was growing only ever so slightly faster than the overall population in the period. In 1923, the incarceration rate in the United States was, by Census Bureau figures, 74 per 100,000.

Drawing state legislative districts somewhat on the basis of population became more prevalent around this time, but there was not a clear federal requirement that states must regularly redistrict on the basis of strict population equality until a series of court cases beginning in 1963. Prison populations were, at worst, very minimal blips in the data.

Until the 1990 Census, when the incarceration rate shot to 292, there was very little change in the portion of Americans that were confi