The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

November 09, 2009

Bill would limit needle exchanges to 1000 feet of school, park, library, college, video arcade or any place children might gather

“Clearly the intent of this rule is to nullify the lifting of the ban.”

Bill Would Limit Needle Exchanges
By KATIE ZEZIMA - NY Times
Published: November 8, 2009

BANGOR, Me. — For years, the location of this city’s needle exchange program, in a nondescript strip mall close to highways and bus lines, was seen as a major asset.

A heroin addict picking up a clean needle as part of a program run by the Down East AIDS Network in Ellsworth, Me.

But now, AIDS activists say, that very location could undermine what happens inside the exchange.

A bill working its way through Congress would lift a ban of more than 20 years on using federal money for needle exchange programs. But the bill would also ban federally financed exchanges from being within 1,000 feet of a school, park, library, college, video arcade or any place children might gather — a provision that would apply to a majority of the country’s approximately 200 exchanges.

“This 1,000-foot rule is simply instituting the ban in a different form,” said Rebecca Haag, executive director of the AIDS Action Council, an advocacy group based in Washington. “Clearly the intent of this rule is to nullify the lifting of the ban.”

Under a separate bill, all exchanges in Washington within the 1,000-foot perimeter would be barred from receiving city money as well as federal money.

“Let’s protect these kids,” said Representative Jack Kingston, Republican of Georgia, who introduced the Washington bill. “They don’t need to be playing kickball in the playground and seeing people lined up for needle exchange.”

Both bills have passed the House and a Senate subcommittee and await Senate action.

Advocates and organizations including the N.A.A.C.P. are lobbying Congress to kill the 1,000-foot provisions. The promise of federal money could not come at a better time, these officials say, as states are cutting their health and human services budgets and private donations are dropping precipitously. At least four needle exchanges have closed this year because of a lack of financing.

Many exchanges are run by organizations that provide broad-based health services like testing for the AIDS virus and hepatitis C, mental health counseling, medical referrals and condom distribution. Advocates worry that if needle exchanges disappear, drug users will lose access to those other services.

The rule “is going to kill us,” said Ellis Poole, executive director of the Harm Reduction Center of Southern Oregon, which is 997 feet from a high school in Roseburg. The center runs a needle exchange and offers antidrug programs to high schools in the area. With donations plummeting, it has a $374,000 budget deficit for 2009. Mr. Poole said he worried that the center’s programs would be threatened if the bill passed.

“We could move a few feet down, but the building is more expensive at the other end,” Mr. Poole said. “I have to beg for money for computers. I have to ask people to come clean the carpet at no charge.”

Officials at exchanges in cities like Chicago, New York and Washington say there are few, if any, places that could house a needle exchange under the rule.

“I was thinking, ‘A thousand feet, how much is that?’ ” said Raquel Algarin, executive director of the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center in Manhattan. “And then I found myself thinking, ‘We’d probably be doing syringe exchange in the middle of the East River, and any exchange on the West Side would be in the Hudson River.’ How do you work that out?”

Many advocates also worry that smaller, rural exchanges, which lack the fund-raising abilities and infrastructure of many larger, urban exchanges, will be affected by the 1,000-foot rule.

In Maine, which officials say has one of the highest rates of prescription drug abuse per capita in the country and is grappling with a recent influx of heroin, AIDS activists worry that they will receive less money just as their client base is growing. The state’s four exchanges — in Augusta, Bangor, Ellsworth and Portland — would be ineligible for federal money.

“The federal funding would be key for us,” said Patricia A. Murphy, executive director of the Eastern Maine AIDS Network in downtown Bangor.

Upon entering the office, squeezed between a veterans center and a music store, drug users are escorted into a small room, where a trained staff member checks them in, using only first names and case numbers, and carefully counts their needles.

Under Maine law, drug users may receive one clean needle for every dirty one they turn in. The exchange offers users a variety of needle sizes, along with tourniquets, antiseptic ointment, condoms and information on safe needle use, and helps refer clients to clinics and treatment centers that deal with sexually transmitted diseases. The center also has a food bank, which clients are urged to use.

Those who have built a level of trust with Ms. Murphy and her staff send fellow drug users to the office. The number of users enrolled in the needle exchange here has doubled in the past year, while funding fell by about 15 percent.

The federal money, Ms. Murphy said, would allow the exchange to grow with the number of clients, many of whom come from rural northern and eastern Maine, and set up mobile needle exchange units in communities more than 100 miles from Bangor.

“This is a critical piece of harm reduction,” Ms. Murphy said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, intravenous drug use directly or indirectly accounts for about one-fifth of the nation’s 1.1 million H.I.V. cases, and needle exchanges are an effective way to stem the spread of infection. The World Health Organization said in a 2004 report that there was “compelling evidence” that increasing needle exchanges reduced H.I.V. transmission. It cited studies showing that the rate of infection dropped up to 18 percent in cities with an exchange.

Luke, a 30-year-old Bangor resident who did not want to give his last name, said he exchanged his needles, and sometimes those of his friends, about once a week. He said he had become addicted to Suboxone, a drug intended to treat opiate addiction that officials say more people are starting to abuse.

In a black hooded sweatshirt and red sneakers, Luke said he often also picked up condoms and guides on how to inject drugs more safely. He said he came to the facility because its location made it discreet and few people knew what it was.

A 23-year-old man who is addicted to heroin and exchanges needles at the Down East AIDS Network in Ellsworth called the 1,000-foot limit “ridiculous.” The man, who did not want to give his name because of his addiction, said he started using heroin eight years ago and exchanging needles four years ago. He said he often picked up needles he saw on the ground and brought them in for safe disposal.

“It’s a dangerous thing to do,” the man said of his heroin use, “but it’s best to take every precaution you can. If you’re going to do this stuff, you should do it right.”
A version of this article appeared in print on November 9, 2009, on page A9 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/health/policy/09needle.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Needle%20Exchange&st=cse

Posted by lois at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2009

New Crack-Cocaine Sentencing Reform Bill Leaves Thousands Behind Bars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

October 20, 2009

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

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

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

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

Policing the poor

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

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

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

“When the lawyer you choose matters most”

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

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

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

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

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

Substituting corrections for treatment

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

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

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

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

Continuing barriers to opportunity

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 12, 2009

The High Cost of Empty Prisons by Robert Gangi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 12, 2009

Prison Comix by Jim Ridgeway

Prison Comix
September 5, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 09, 2009

Study Finds Only Half of All Federal and State Prisons offer Methadone and Buprenorphine and Only In Very Limited Circumstances

Study finds US prison system falls short in treating drug addiction

PROVIDENCE, RI – Almost a quarter of a million individuals addicted to heroin are incarcerated in the United States each year. However, many prison systems across the country still do not offer medical treatment for heroin and opiate addiction, despite the demonstrated social, medical and economic benefits of opiate replacement therapy (ORT).

According to new research from The Miriam Hospital, Brown University and their affiliated Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, just half of all federal and state prison systems offer ORT with the medications methadone and buprenorphine, and only in very limited circumstances. Similarly, only twenty-three states provide referrals for some inmates to treatment upon release from prison. These policies are counter to guidelines issued by both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which say prisoners should be offered ORT for treatment of opiate dependence.

The study's findings are published online by Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

"Pharmacological treatment of opiate dependence is a proven intervention, is cost-effective and reduces drug-related disease and reincarceration rates, yet it remains underutilized in U.S. prison systems," said Amy Nunn, ScD, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of medicine (research) at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. "Improving correctional policies for addiction treatment could dramatically improve prisoner and community health as well as reduce both taxpayer burden and reincarceration rates."

"Opiate addiction, like all forms of addiction, causes long-term changes to the structure and functioning of the brain, which is why it is classified as a disease. Addiction requires treatment just as other chronic diseases, like diabetes and cancer, do. Unfortunately, there is a large gap between the number of prisoners who require addiction treatment and those who actually receive it," added senior author Josiah Rich, MD, MPH, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at The Miriam Hospital and Alpert Medical School.

The U.S. has the world's highest incarceration rate, with approximately 10 million individuals incarcerated each year. More than half of inmates have a history of substance use and more than 200,000 people with heroin addiction are incarcerated annually. Inmates face disproportionately higher burdens of mental illness, substance use and infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS. Meanwhile, their transition back to their communities is often associated with increased sexual health and drug-related risks, and more than half will relapse within one month of their release.

For the past four decades, methadone has been the treatment of choice for opiate dependence. It prevents withdrawal symptoms and drug cravings, blocks the euphoric effects of other opiates, and reduces the risk of relapse, infectious disease transmission and overdose death. The drug buprenorphine is a newer treatment for opiate replacement that has less likelihood of overdose and is associated with less social stigma. Like methadone, it prevents withdrawal symptoms when an individual stops taking opioid drugs by producing similar effects. Both methadone and buprenorphine are included in WHO's "Essential Medicines" list of drugs that should be made available at all times by health systems to patients.

The Miriam/Brown research team surveyed the medical directors at the 50 state departments of corrections, along with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the District of Columbia prison, about their facilities' ORT prescribing policies and referral programs for inmates leaving prison. They received a total of 51 of 52 responses.

Although it appears methadone is offered more frequently that buprenorphine, only 28 facilities (55 percent) offer it under any circumstances, although more than half of these provide it only to pregnant women or for chronic pain management. Approximately 45 percent of facilities provided some community linkage to methadone treatment post-release. Meanwhile, only seven prison systems (14 percent) offer buprenorphine in some circumstances, while 15 facilities (29 percent) offer referrals for some inmates to community buprenorphine providers upon release.

When asked why these treatments are not available in their prison system, the majority of facilities indicated they prefer drug-free detoxification over ORT. A number of prison systems also cited security concerns about providing methadone and buprenorphine to inmates. Interestingly, 27 percent of medical directors said they did not know how beneficial methadone is for treating inmates with opiate addiction, while half were unaware of the benefits of buprenorphine.

A major barrier to providing ORT after incarceration appears to be the lack of partnerships with community ORT providers. Many providers also cited their focus on inmate health during incarceration, rather than upon release, as another reason for not linking inmates to ORT after they've been released.

"In spite of overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrating that pharmacological treatment for addiction has greater health and social benefits than abstinence-only policies, many prison directors are philosophically opposed to treating substance use. Most prisons also do not provide referrals for substance use treatment for prisoners upon release," said Nunn. "These trends contribute to high reincarceration rates and have detrimental impacts on community health. Our interviews with prison medical directors suggest that changing these policies may require an enormous cultural shift within correctional systems."

###

The study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Health's National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA/NIH) and Center for AIDS Research (CFAR); and the Tufts Nutrition Collaborative. In addition to Nunn and Rich, co-authors include Nickolas Zeller and Ank Nijhawan from both The Miriam Hospital and Alpert Medical School; Samuel Dickman from Brown University; and Catherine Trimbur from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry.

The Miriam Hospital, established in 1926 in Providence, RI, is a private, not-for-profit hospital affiliated with The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a founding member of the Lifespan health system. For more information about The Miriam Hospital, please visit www.miriamhospital.org

The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University is Rhode Island's only school of medicine. Since granting its first MD degrees in 1975, Alpert Medical School has become a national leader in medical education and biomedical research.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-09/l-sfu090809.php

Posted by lois at 09:17 AM | Comments (0)

September 02, 2009

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

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

September 2, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

August 29, 2009

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

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

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

August 22, 2009

Study Backs Heroin to Treat Some Addicted to Heroin

Study Backs Heroin to Treat Addiction
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: August 19, 2009
New York Times

The safest and most effective treatment for hard-core heroin addicts who fail to control their habit using methadone or other treatments may be their drug of choice, in prescription form, researchers are reporting after the first rigorous test of the approach performed in North America.

For years, European countries like Switzerland and the Netherlands have allowed doctors to provide some addicts with prescription heroin as an alternative to buying drugs on the street. The treatment is safe and keeps addicts out of trouble, studies have found, but it is controversial — not only because the drug is illegal but also because policy makers worry that treating with heroin may exacerbate the habit.

The study, appearing in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, may put some of those concerns to rest.

“It showed that heroin works better than methadone in this population of users, and patients will be more willing to take it,” said Dr. Joshua Boverman, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.

Perhaps the biggest weakness of methadone treatment, Dr. Boverman said, is that “many patients don’t want to take it; they just don’t like it.”

In the study, researchers in Canada enrolled 226 addicts with longstanding habits who had failed to improve using other methods, including methadone maintenance therapy. Doctors consider methadone, a chemical cousin to heroin that prevents withdrawal but does not induce the same high, to be the best treatment for narcotic addiction. A newer drug, buprenorphine, is also effective.

The Canadian researchers randomly assigned about half of the addicts to receive methadone and the other half to receive daily injections of diacetylmorphine, the active ingredient in heroin. After a year, 88 percent of those receiving the heroin compound were still in the study, and two-thirds of them had significantly curtailed their illicit activities, including the use of street drugs. In the methadone group, 54 percent were still in the study and 48 percent had curbed illicit activities.

“The main finding is that, for this group that is generally written off, both methadone and prescription heroin can provide real benefits,” said the senior author, Martin T. Schechter, a professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia.

Those taking the heroin injections did suffer more side effects; there were 10 overdoses and six seizures. But Dr. Schechter said there was no evidence of abuse. The average dosage the subjects took was 450 milligrams, well below the 1,000-milligram maximum level.

About 663,000 Americans are regular users of heroin, according to government estimates. The researchers said 15 percent to 25 percent of them were heavy users and could benefit from prescription heroin. That is, if they ever were to get the chance. Heroin is an illegal, Schedule 1 substance, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and serves no legitimate medical purpose. That designation is unlikely to change soon, researchers suspect.

In an editorial with the article, Virginia Berridge of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine concluded, “The rise and fall of methods of treatment in this controversial area owe their rationale to evidence, but they also often owe more to the politics of the situation.”

A version of this article appeared in print on August 20, 2009, on page A19 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/health/research/20heroin.html?scp=2&sq=heroin%20for%20addicts&st=cse

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

August 20, 2009

Nicholas Kristoff: Priority Test: Health Care or Prisons?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 18, 2009

California might act to jail more drug offenders A move to increase funding to anti-drug units could result in increasing the state's prison population at a time when it's under order to reduce overcrowding.

California might act to jail more drug offenders
A move to increase funding to anti-drug units could result in increasing the state's prison population at a time when it's under order to reduce overcrowding.
By Eric Bailey
August 18, 2009

Reporting from Sacramento - Two weeks after federal judges ordered California to reduce its prison population, an arm of the Schwarzenegger administration is set to vote on increased funding to police anti-drug units, potentially putting even more offenders behind bars.

An advisory board for the California Emergency Management Agency is expected to decide today whether to channel $33 million in federal money to narcotics task forces around the state that have proved particularly adept at apprehending drug criminals.

Critics of government drug policies say that money should instead be directed to drug-treatment programs whose funding has been sliced amid California's budget woes.

"While one side of the government is addressing prison overcrowding, another side seems to be acting directly counter to that goal," said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director of the nonprofit Drug Policy Alliance.

The bulk of the money is slated to help multi-jurisdictional task forces in all 58 California counties that investigate and apprehend narcotics offenders.

Money also would go to marijuana-suppression efforts around the state and the California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, which coordinates with federal agents on border drug trafficking.

John Lovell, a spokesman for the California Narcotics Officers' Assn., called the Drug Policy Alliance opposition "predictable" but wrong at a time when Mexican drug cartels are boosting methamphetamine production and operating marijuana plantations in state forests, including the one blamed for starting a wildfire Aug. 8 in Santa Barbara County.

He said the spending on anti-drug task force efforts is "not only appropriate, it's too bad the amount isn't larger."

Dooley-Sammuli believes the bulk of the money would go toward generating more arrests of street-level offenders, not on cracking down on high-level drug criminals.

"We're not getting the best bang for our buck," she said.

As now envisioned, the state's anti-drug-abuse enforcement program could have its funding boosted substantially over last year, in part because of nearly $20 million in federal stimulus money allocated in July.

The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that the increase could yield 13,000 arrests during the coming year, resulting in prison time for nearly a quarter of those apprehended, at a cost of $160 million.

Funding for drug treatment programs was slashed roughly in half from $120 million two years ago.

Meanwhile, the state is grappling with pressure to reduce prison crowding.

This month, a three-judge panel ordered the state to shrink its prison population by more than 40,000 in the next two years.

Last month, legislators approved a $1.2-billion reduction in prison spending.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-drug-police18-2009aug18,0,5428041.story

Posted by lois at 09:25 PM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2009

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

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

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

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

Dear Friends:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

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

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

August 07, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 05, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Budget red ink in 2003 cut those programs further.

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

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

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

July 13, 2009

Barbara Margolis, Prisoners’ Advocate, Dies at 79

Barbara Margolis, Prisoners’ Advocate, Dies at 79
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: July 12, 2009
NY Times

Barbara Margolis, a longtime volunteer in New York City jails who 20 years ago founded Fresh Start, a widely praised training program that brings the city’s finest chefs to Rikers Island to train inmates in culinary arts, and then helps those inmates find restaurant jobs upon release, died on July 3 in Manhattan.

She was 79 and had homes on the Upper East Side; in Quogue, N.Y.; and in Tourrettes-sur-Loup, in the south of France.

Mrs. Margolis’s death, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, was from complications of cancer, her daughter, Nancy Margolis King, said.

Long active in civic affairs, Mrs. Margolis was the New York City commissioner of protocol under Mayor Edward I. Koch. In that capacity, she was the city’s official greeter, welcoming visiting dignitaries like Pope John Paul II and Diana, Princess of Wales, for an annual salary of $1. (On New Year’s Eve 1977, Mayor Koch was sworn in for his first term at the home of Mrs. Margolis and her husband, David I. Margolis, who became one of the mayor’s close advisers.)

All the while, Mrs. Margolis was deeply involved in prison reform. Besides founding Fresh Start, she directed or helped create programs at Rikers in horticulture, journalism and athletics. Several are still going, including three educational, therapeutic and vocational programs run by the Horticultural Society of New York, of which Mrs. Margolis was chairwoman of the board at her death.

A fourth program, developed under Mrs. Margolis’s supervision and also run by the Horticultural Society, is scheduled to start today. It will teach Rikers’s adolescent inmates — 16- and 17-year-old boys — how to turn a large field on the island into a community garden.

None of Mrs. Margolis’s associates interviewed last week could recall what first prompted her to volunteer in the city’s jails in the early 1960s. Even her daughter was not completely certain. To those who knew her, Mrs. Margolis was so utterly at home at Rikers that it seemed simply as if she had always been on the island, which is home to one of the largest penal complexes in the world.

Mrs. Margolis worked mostly in the Eric M. Taylor Center, which houses male prisoners. In 1980, she helped revive The Rikers Review, a magazine of literature, journalism and advice written and produced by inmates.

In 1989, she founded Fresh Start, which she ran until 1997. (Since then, Fresh Start has been administered by the Osborne Association, a nonprofit organization that assists prisoners and their families.)

Mrs. Margolis conceived Fresh Start as a means of placing newly released inmates in entry-level jobs, which restaurants had in abundance.

Each year the program trains about 60 carefully screened men in all aspects of restaurant work, from food and pastry preparation to table service and dishwasher repair. The inmates attend classes eight hours a day for 10 weeks and are sometimes taught by volunteer guest instructors from restaurants in Manhattan.

Because alcohol is not allowed in the jail, inmates are trained in wine tasting using different varieties of grape juice. They are also taught knife skills, a highly unusual course in a penal institution. This has never caused a problem, Elizabeth Gaynes, the executive director of the Osborne Association, said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

When Mrs. Margolis began Fresh Start, few training programs paid attention to inmates once they were released, Jennifer Wynn, the author of “Inside Rikers” (St. Martin’s, 2001), said in an interview on Friday.

Under Mrs. Margolis’s stewardship, efforts to prevent recidivism came not only in official form (Fresh Start offered participants therapy and drug counseling in prison and lifetime support on their release) but also in her own unofficial brand of attention to alumni.

“She would call them, three weeks out, six weeks out, six months out,” said Ms. Wynn, who was the director of Fresh Start from 2004 to 2007. “She would take phone calls from graduates at 10 o’clock at night. She would go to their weddings. If they needed a tie for an interview, she would get them a tie.”

About 25 percent of Fresh Start graduates return to jail within a year of their release, according to the Osborne Association. The recidivism figure for other city jail inmates within a year of release is about 46 percent, according to the New York City Department of Correction.

Barbara Ann Schneider, familiarly known as Bobbie, was born on Oct. 4, 1929, in Malden, Mass. Her father, Eli, owned a drugstore and soda fountain; her mother, the former Shirley Selsky, was a homemaker.

Mrs. Margolis earned a bachelor’s degree in retailing from Simmons College in Boston. After an earlier marriage ended in divorce, she married Mr. Margolis in 1958.

Mr. Margolis, the retired president and chairman of Colt Industries (later Coltec), a maker of firearms, aerospace equipment and other machinery, died in December.

Besides her daughter, Nancy, Mrs. Margolis is survived by three sons, Brian, Robert and Peter; a sister, Arline Guefen; and five grandchildren.

A past member of the New York City Board of Correction, Mrs. Margolis served on the boards of many organizations, among them the Vera Institute of Justice and the New York City Criminal Justice Agency.

Perhaps the greatest sign of the esteem in which Mrs. Margolis was held came from the prisoners themselves. Frank Guzman, a Fresh Start alumnus who now earns his living as a trucker, recalled on Friday that inmates once stole her car from the Rikers parking lot. When they found out whose it was, they returned it at once.
A version of this article appeared in print on July 13, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.

Posted by lois at 12:09 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2009

NY Times: About New York: Giving Life, Wearing Shackles and Chains,SEEKING CHANGE A protest in Manhattan over shackling of women in labor.

Congratulations to Tina Reynolds and Stacey Thompson and all of the other women on their excellent organizing work.
Remember to call Gov. Paterson's office to say you want him to sign the bill!
Lois

About New York: Giving Life, Wearing Shackles and Chains
SEEKING CHANGE A protest in Manhattan over shackling of inmates in labor.
excellent picture at the URL at the bottom of this article.
By JIM DWYER-NY Times
Published: Sunday, July 10, 2009

One day last November, the first shudders of childbirth woke Venita Pinckney before dawn. She was well into her ninth month of pregnancy. She was also incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a state prison.

Before she left for the hospital, Ms. Pinckney said, a corrections officer wrapped a chain twice around her waist and handcuffed her to it. Then he covered the handcuffs with a locked black box to further limit her range of motion. Finally, her ankles were shackled.

“You can’t walk like a normal human being,” said Ms. Pinckney, 37. “When you’re pregnant, you have a hard time keeping your balance to begin with.”

At least once a week, somewhere in one of New York’s prisons or jails, a pregnant women goes into labor. Nearly all of them, including Ms. Pinckney, are behind bars for drug offenses. Even so, they are often as severely restrained in the final hours of pregnancy as the most nimble and dangerous of criminals. While their bodies heave toward childbirth, they become walking, clanking jail cells.

“I told the officer he’s not supposed to shackle me,” Ms. Pinckney said last week. “He said he was just following procedure.”

From just about every wing of state government, there is agreement that such restraints are needless and risky. The state department of corrections formally limited their use nine years ago.

Yet the practice has persisted, a triumph of prison procedure and custom over the safety, comfort and dignity of the pregnant woman and of the child who is about to be born. “You’ve just got to put your legs up to push,” said Erica Knox, 42, who was brought to Elmhurst Hospital Center from Rikers Island when she went into labor. Her legs were not restrained as she delivered her son.

“But right after I pushed him out, the guard shackled me to the bed rail,” Ms. Knox said. “I had to push the placenta out with the shackles on. That was the worst.”

On May 20, both houses of the Legislature — with broad support from Democrats and Republicans — passed a bill that would bar the shackling of women during labor. It would permit the use of handcuffs in “extraordinary circumstances” to protect the woman or others around her. The bill was sponsored in the Senate by Velmanette Montgomery and in the Assembly by N. Nick Perry, both Brooklyn Democrats. It is now being reviewed by the governor’s office, a spokesman for Gov. David A. Paterson said on Friday.

Last week, Ms. Pinckney and other former prisoners stood outside the governor’s office on Third Avenue in Manhattan, chanting for him to sign the bill.

The new legislation would cover not only state prisons, but jails that serve all 62 counties of New York. Those county jails are not subject to the state’s existing policy that discourages the use of shackles and waist chains on women in labor.

Melissa DeFort, 23, who was in Bedford Hills earlier this year for violating parole in a drug case, said it was absurd to think that heavily pregnant women, dressed in prison scrubs, would try to escape. “What am I going to do, open the door of the car and run out?” Ms. DeFort said. “You have on the greens and heavy boots.”

On one hospital visit, she said, she remained shackled in an examining room while a doctor and nurse pleaded with the guards to unlock her. “They were saying, she’s on the fifth floor of a hospital, she’s seven months pregnant, and you guys are standing out there with guns,” Ms. DeFort said. “Finally, the officers radioed Bedford and asked what they should do, and they were told to do what the doctors asked.”

In 2002, Jeanna M. Graves, early in a three-year term on a drug conviction and pregnant with twins while in Bedford Hills , needed an emergency Caesarean section. Ms. Graves said that in the hospital, she was cuffed to the gurney by the corrections officers. The doctors gave her an epidural anesthetic, which blocks sensation in the abdomen and around the pelvis.

“I was cuffed through the entire C-section,” Ms. Graves said.

Tina Reynolds, 50, gave birth 15 years ago while she was serving time at Bedford Hills, shackled, she said, at an arm and a leg. Now the director of Women on the Rise Telling Herstory, an organization of formerly incarcerated women, Ms. Reynolds helped organized the rally last week with the Women in Prison Project of the Correctional Association of New York.

“All children want to find about the day they were born,” Ms. Reynolds said. “You want it to be an expression of love, not of prohibition and trauma and restraint. The child didn’t do anything.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/nyregion/12about.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

July 11, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you very much.

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

July 10, 2009

Review of The Real Cost of Prisons Comix in Feminist Review

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

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

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

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

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

Review by Jeanne Vaccaro

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

July 09, 2009

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

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

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

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

OVERCROWDED INMATES
Facilities shrouded in secrecy
July 9, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 07, 2009

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

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

By Jonathan Saltzman
The Boston Globe / July 7, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

July 06, 2009

Jim Webb’s attack on American Gulag

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

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

True words.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

June 25, 2009

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

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

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
Miami Herald
06.24.09

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BREAKING CYCLE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PREVENTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 21, 2009

The War Against the 'War on Drugs'---by Sasha Abramky

"America isn't about to abandon all of its "tough on crime" tenets. Nor should it in all instances. The three-strikes law will likely remain in place for violent offenders, as will the growing body of laws limiting where sex offenders may live. Violent crimes will probably continue to trigger longer sentences than they did before the get-tough movement. And while some inmates will qualify for early release, many sentenced to long terms at the height of the tough-on-crime years will stay in prison. But out of economic necessity and because of shifting mores, the country will likely get more selective, and smarter, about how it uses incarceration and whom it targets for long spells behind bars."

"The state with the toughest three-strikes law in the land and a prison population of more than 150,000 is facing the real possibility of having to release tens of thousands of inmates early in order to pare its $10 billion annual correctional budget. At the same time, an increasing number of the state's political figures are challenging the basic tenets of the "war on drugs," the culprit most responsible for the spike in prison populations over the past thirty years; they argue that the country's harsh drug policies are not financially viable and no longer command majority support among the voting public.

Similar stories are unfolding around the country; in Washington, federal officials are talking about drug-policy reform and, more generally, sentencing reform in a way that has not been heard in the halls of power for more than a generation."

The War Against the 'War on Drugs'
6/17/09|The Nation| by Sasha Abramsky

As California goes, so goes the nation.

If that old adage still holds true, then the nation may soon see a gradual backpedaling from the criminal justice policies that have led to wholesale incarceration in recent decades. For the most populous state in the union is on the verge of insolvency--partly because it didn't set aside a rainy-day fund during the boom years; partly because its voters recently rejected a series of initiatives that would have allowed a combination of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing to help stabilize the state's finances during the downturn; partly because it has spent the past quarter-century funneling tens of billions of dollars into an out-of-control correctional system. Now, as California's politicians contemplate emergency cuts to deal with a $24 billion hole in the state budget, old certainties are crumbling.

The state with the toughest three-strikes law in the land and a prison population of more than 150,000 is facing the real possibility of having to release tens of thousands of inmates early in order to pare its $10 billion annual correctional budget. At the same time, an increasing number of the state's political figures are challenging the basic tenets of the "war on drugs," the culprit most responsible for the spike in prison populations over the past thirty years; they argue that the country's harsh drug policies are not financially viable and no longer command majority support among the voting public.

Similar stories are unfolding around the country; in Washington, federal officials are talking about drug-policy reform and, more generally, sentencing reform in a way that has not been heard in the halls of power for more than a generation.

For old-time politicians, who have spent the past three-plus decades navigating the country's roiling tough-on-crime waters, the changes are almost unfathomable. Onetime California governor and current gubernatorial hopeful Jerry Brown, for example, has spent decades trying to erase the public's memory of his liberal tenure in the 1970s, when California's prison population shrank to well below 30,000. As a part of that remodeling, he has assiduously courted the California Correctional Peace Officers' Association, the trade union representing the state's prison guards. Now, with his war chest flush with CCPOA funds, Brown won't do anything to challenge tough-on-crime orthodoxies.

Yet many newer political faces view the current moment as something of an opportunity. For Betty Yee, chair of California's Board of Equalization--the office responsible for collecting sales tax in the Golden State--the changes, especially around drug-law enforcement, can't come soon enough.

Sitting at her conference table high up in one of downtown Sacramento's few sky-rises, Yee has marijuana on her mind. Specifically, she has become an outspoken advocate for legalizing pot for residents older than 21. Her friend Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a former San Francisco city councilman, is pushing just such a bill in the State Legislature. Yee wants to levy fees on business owners applying for marijuana licenses, impose an excise tax on sellers and charge buyers a sales tax. Do it properly, and the state could reap about $1.3 billion a year, she has estimated. "Marijuana is so easily available. Why not regulate it like alcohol and tobacco?" she says, and gain additional tax revenue into the bargain?

Not so many years back, any public figure who dared to advocate such reforms would have been shunned by much of the establishment. It's a measure of how much things have changed that Yee and Ammiano's proposal is being taken seriously across the board. In fact, shortly after I met with Yee, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger--whose office declined my request for an interview for this article--announced that the state should at least consider the merits of pot legalization. He wasn't advocating it, he was careful to stress, but he did think the time was ripe to debate the issue.

"The budget is so bad now, the populism of the issue is beginning to work here in the Legislature," Ammiano says as he paces back and forth in his office, toward the bookshelves with the four martini glasses and Golden Gate Bridge bookends and then away again. On the wall near the receptionist's desk hangs a huge poster from the movie Milk. "Everyone thinks it's Cheech and Chong," he says with a laugh, describing the marijuana legalization bill. "But there's a lot of policy wonks" supporting it. "There's very conservative support from the oddest sources and locations." The GOP chair in the state, as well as Tom Campbell, a Republican gubernatorial hopeful, have indicated their support for his bill, Ammiano declares. "When it starts to cost more money than it's worth even in the eyes of the pooh-bahs, then you can accomplish something."

Over the past three decades, California has tripled the number of prisons it operates, has more than quintupled its prison population and has gone from spending $5 on higher education for every dollar it spent on corrections to a virtual dead-heat in spending. That puts it in the same boat as Michigan, Vermont, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware--all of which, according to estimates by the Pew Charitable Trust, spend as much or more on prisons than on colleges. California is also under federal court order to implement costly improvements in the delivery of medical and mental healthcare services in prisons and to release close to a third of the prison population--about 55,000 inmates--to improve conditions for those remaining behind bars.

Schwarzenegger adamantly opposed that ruling by a three-judge panel. Now, though, in the face of fiscal calamity, he is proposing cutting the prison population by tens of thousands. Of course, he is doing that not out of concern for inmates' well-being, or out of a sense that many sentences are disproportionate to the crime, but simply because the state can no longer pay its bills. Schwarzenegger believes he can save several hundred million dollars by releasing some categories of inmates, in particular nonviolent offenders who are in the country illegally and stand to be deported upon early release.

To save money, he's also talking about firing hard-working guards (a far better, but costlier, option would be to scale back the prison system and to retrain surplus guards to work in other venues), and he's asking for close to $1 billion in cuts to vital prison drug-treatment, education and job-training services. At the same time, since this is all about shaving dollars off budgets rather than intelligent criminal justice system reform, there's no talk of investing in crucial re-entry infrastructure.

In short, it looks like California will go about a necessary scaling back of the correctional system exactly the wrong way. But however grudgingly state officials are approaching the issue, at least they recognize that the magnitude of prison spending is a problem. Down the road, when Californians start thinking beyond the crisis moment, that new understanding will shape policy responses for years to come. It will both feed off and help create a new national sentiment that being "tough on crime" isn't necessarily being smart on crime.

Tough-on-crime rhetoric, and the policies and institutions that grow from it, emerged from Nixon's Silent Majority tactics, from his recasting of politics as a series of debates around "values" rather than bread-and-butter issues. And in the same way the 2008 presidential election ended that peculiar chapter in American history, so too did it end the monotone cry that we could incarcerate our way out of deep-rooted social and economic problems. Despite a few halfhearted GOP attempts to accuse Democrats of being weak on drugs and public safety--Obama had, after all, written about his drug use during his teenage and early adult years, which, according to the old calculus, should have made him an easy target for scaremongers--neither presidential candidate played the tough-on-crime card. It was a nonissue for most voters and thus for the candidates. In fact, recent Zogby polling commissioned by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency suggests that close to eight in ten Americans favor alternatives to incarceration for low-level nonviolent offenders. Another Zogby poll, from last fall, found that just more than three-quarters of Americans felt the "war on drugs" was a failure. The sea change in public opinion holds in California too. In late March the Los Angeles Times ran a column asking readers their opinion on marijuana legalization. So far 4,927 people have replied, and 94 percent of them favor legalization. A Field Poll in April found that 56 percent of Californians favor legalizing and taxing pot.

The new atmosphere is most apparent vis-à-vis the Obama administration's move away from "war on drugs" rhetoric and toward a harm-reduction strategy. Gil Kerlikowske, the new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has made it clear that he prefers treatment over punishment for drug users, a preference he brings from his time as a reform-oriented police chief in Seattle. Putting money where its mouth is, the new team has increased funding for the Bush-era Second Chance Act, intended to connect released inmates with community services such as housing, family counseling and addiction treatment. Support is also growing for the creation of more drug and mental health courts across the country. Finally, there are the promises being made by drug policy leaders in Washington that state medical marijuana laws will be respected rather than trampled, as they have been for more than a decade.

A related issue involves the infamous discrepancy in sentences for crack- versus powder-cocaine crimes. Vice President Biden was one of the architects of these laws--which is why his repudiation of them in recent years has been so significant. The day after Obama's inauguration, the president's website mentioned the importance of eliminating these discrepancies--as well as of promoting needle-exchange programs and expanding the nation's embryonic network of drug courts. The House recently held hearings on the sentencing discrepancy issue.

For Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director of the Drug Policy Alliance in Southern California, sacrosanct legislative underpinnings of the "war on drugs" are starting to look like the Berlin Wall, "up one day and down the next"--seemingly impregnable; in reality, utterly fragile. Over the past few years, an increasing number of localities have dabbled in ways to simply walk away from the "war on drugs." Initiatives in several states and cities, including Denver; Missoula, Montana; Albany County, Oregon; and Seattle have mandated that law enforcement agencies deprioritize marijuana arrests. Several cities have begun needle-exchange programs. And states like California have passed citizens' initiatives mandating that first-time drug offenders be channeled into treatment programs in lieu of prisons.

Then there's Virginia Senator Jim Webb's legislation creating a blue-ribbon commission on criminal justice reform, with a mandate to put all questions on the table during its eighteen-month tenure--from drug law reform to the restoration of judicial discretion in sentencing, from parole reforms to different approaches to gangs, border patrol, prison architecture and the like. Webb has been pushing for systemic criminal justice reform for years; in 2009, he believes, it will acquire legs. During a telephone interview for this article, Webb said that President Obama "has personally called me on this, and he's very supportive of the idea of moving forward." Across the aisle many Republican senators, including senior figures like Lindsey Graham, have also expressed support for the idea.

The bipartisan backing for Webb's commission is partly a response to the escalating drug-and-gang crisis south of the border. There's a growing recognition in US policy and law enforcement circles that government dysfunction, phenomenal levels of street violence and the rising power of drug cartels are threatening to move from being a Latin American problem to one that destroys the integrity of the Mexican state and risks spilling over more heavily into the American Southwest. Nobody, no matter their political stripe, wants the Tijuana-ization or Juárez-ization of Phoenix or Los Angeles, of San Diego or El Paso.

"It really is a serious problem in this country," Webb argues. "The transnational gangs or syndicates are bringing a tremendous amount of drugs into this country."

To get a handle on that problem involves thinking of ways to neutralize these gangs, which inevitably leads to a discussion of partial drug decriminalization or legalization. Why? Because once the drug market is no longer confined to the shadows--once it is regulated and taxed, as alcohol was after Prohibition ended in 1933--the violence that accompanies struggles for control of that illicit market will disappear. After years of denying this truth and assuming that the country could incarcerate its way out of the drug-abuse epidemic, a number of American politicians, Webb included, are touting that seemingly paradoxical fact. Want to get really tough on crime? Well, do the smart thing: start working out ways to neutralize the drug cartels, start talking about at least limited forms of decriminalization or legalization.

For an administration like Obama's that prides itself on thinking outside the box, systemic drug policy reform is an intriguing prospect. An increasing number of law enforcement people and judges have also decided that this is an idea worth running with.

"I've never seen so much interest," says retired Orange County superior court judge James Gray, who has been advocating marijuana legalization since the early 1990s. "My phone is ringing much more than it ever has before."

"We need to ask, Is there a more sensible approach?" argues Norm Stamper, who, like Kerlikowske, is a former chief of police of Seattle who believes the criminal justice system is broken. "And the answer is prevention and education and treatment."

After decades of being on the defensive, progressive criminal justice reformers suddenly have a receptive audience. New York, which has closed some of its prisons in the past decade, has spent the last few years unraveling the tangled web created by the 1970s-era Rockefeller drug laws. Michigan, Louisiana and several other states have also scaled back their harshest mandatory drug sentences. The State of Washington is looking at how to redefine low-end drug and property crimes as misdemeanors rather than felonies. And in Michigan, which allows a $100 theft to trigger a four-year prison sentence, legislators are pushing to make the threshold $1,000 instead, so as to reduce the number of low-end offenders pushed into long-term incarceration and hobbled for life by felony convictions.

Meanwhile, correctional system administrators in Georgia, Illinois and Arkansas have started the long, hard task of reforming their systems from within even without a new consensus emerging on the issue.

Howard Wooldridge, a retired police detective from Bath, Michigan, who advocates in DC for criminal justice system reform, says the moment is ripe for change. "I've been doing this for twelve years, and this is by far the most perfect storm."

America isn't about to abandon all of its "tough on crime" tenets. Nor should it in all instances. The three-strikes law will likely remain in place for violent offenders, as will the growing body of laws limiting where sex offenders may live. Violent crimes will probably continue to trigger longer sentences than they did before the get-tough movement. And while some inmates will qualify for early release, many sentenced to long terms at the height of the tough-on-crime years will stay in prison. But out of economic necessity and because of shifting mores, the country will likely get more selective, and smarter, about how it uses incarceration and whom it targets for long spells behind bars.

This will be especially true for drug policy--the multi-tentacled beast that's sucking most people into jails and prisons. There, profound changes are likely to develop over the next few years. And when it comes to the mentally ill, momentum continues to build around mental health courts designed to get people medical and counseling help rather than simply to shunt them off to prison. States like Pennsylvania are starting to develop parallel institutions to deal with mentally ill people who run afoul of the law. Many other states will likely follow suit in the near future. Forty years after deinstitutionalization, a new consensus is emerging that prisons became an accidental, de facto alternative to mental hospitals, and that very little good has come from that development.

"I believe that we have a compelling national interest," explains Senator Webb, referring to systemic criminal justice reform. "That's a term that is carefully chosen. This is a national commission, but it should not be limited to looking at the federal prison system. You have to look at the whole picture and then boil it down into resolvable issues."

http://www.marijuana.com/drug-war-headline-news/124304-usa-war-against-war-drugs.html

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

June 19, 2009

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

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

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

June 04, 2009

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

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

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

May 29, 2009

What addiction really costs your state: detailed state by state expenditures

A message from Join Together at CASA*
====================================
May 28, 2009
Dear Colleague,

According to a report CASA issued this morning, federal, state and local governments spend almost half a trillion dollars every
year -- almost 11 percent of their total budgets -- as a result of alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse and addiction. The
worst part is that, for federal and state spending, about 95% of that money is spent "Shoveling Up" the mess created by a failure
to provide enough money for prevention and treatment.

That's right. Out of every dollar federal and state governments spent on substance misuse in 2005 (the latest data available),
95 cents paid for the enormous burden of this problem on health care, criminal justice, child welfare, education, and other
programs. And only 2 cents were invested in prevention and treatment programs that could reduce many of these costs -- and
save lives.

1. See detailed expenses for your state and download the report:
http://www.jointogether.org/NO

Our researchers studied all federal, state and local budgets for 2005 using careful, conservative methods to determine how much
of each major budget category was directly linked to substance misuse. For example, they determined how much of each state's Medicaid and other health care expenses were due to one of over 70 medical diagnoses that are caused or made worse by alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse and addiction. They did the same for criminal justice, welfare and other key government budgets. They also identified all government spending on prevention, treatment and research, regulation of alcohol and tobacco
products and drug interdiction.

When the numbers are added up, the total is really shocking: 467.7 billion dollars. Spending less than 2% of the federal and state costs for prevention and treatment, and more than 95% shoveling up the mess, is upside down public policy that wastes
billions in taxpayer dollars at a time when resources are scarce, and results in untold human suffering.

David L. Rosenbloom
President and CEO
The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University

*The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University is neither affiliated with, nor sponsored by, the National Court Appointed Special Advocate Association (also known as "CASA") or any of its member organizations with
the name of "CASA."

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

May 28, 2009

NY: Prosecutors fight rule in new state drug laws that lets records be sealed

Prosecutors fight rule in new state drug laws that lets records be sealed
By Joseph Spector • Albany Bureau • May 28, 2009

District attorneys across New York are criticizing a little-known provision in the state's new drug laws that lets judges seal the records of drug offenders from potential employers.

Prosecutors said the provision of the law, which takes effect June 8, could hide the past of offenders from employers, including for jobs such as school bus drivers, day-care workers or bank tellers.

"If you look at the list of jobs and licenses that you are going to be able to get without having your criminal drug activity revealed to a potential employer, [it's] remarkable," said Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan, who heads the state's district attorneys association.

Sen. Eric Schneiderman, D-Manhattan, who sponsored the changes to the state's so-called Rockefeller-era drug laws, indicated yesterday that he will seek to delay the implementation of the provision so it can be reviewed further.

"Just administratively it was too aggressive a time frame," he said.

Schneiderman's original bill included exemptions from the sealed-records provision for employers who are legally required to do criminal background checks. But most of the exemptions were not included in the final bill, which was approved as part of the state budget last month.

Schneiderman, however, defended the law, saying prosecutors already had the right to petition a judge to expunge or seal a drug offender's record. Now a judge will have that authority to do so after an offender completes a treatment program, he explained. "A defendant should be able to go to a judge and say 'the prosecutor wouldn't do this for me,' " he said. "Now the judge can overrule the prosecutor."

But district attorneys said the new law lets judges seal not only the record of a current case, including a non-violent felony offense, but also records of three previous misdemeanor convictions.

Also, the judge's record-sealing discretion can apply to cases not related to drugs, prosecutors said.

Putnam County District Attorney Adam Levy said the "state Legislature has seen fit to enact a law with no real public debate." Letting convicted drug dealers' criminal records be sealed, he said, allows "drug dealers to work in day-care centers, caring for our children, and in senior centers, caring for our parents and grandparents."

"The state Legislature's main responsibility should be to protect its citizens," Levy said. "This law fails to protect our community."

Lawmakers "in their zeal to give people in court-ordered treatment a fresh start in life have gone way too far," said Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugibe. "You can't pretend these convictions never happened or people weren't addicts. Many addicts go back, and employers who hire them are unaware of their history."

Zugibe said that realistically, bus companies likely won't hire former addicts as drivers, while schools won't hire them as teachers and families won't hire them as nannies.

"Many employment opportunities will be lost, and they should be," Zugibe said.

Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore's office declined to comment yesterday.

Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, D-Mount Vernon, chairwoman of the Senate Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee, said in a statement that the criticism "is an alarmist attitude of a few who refuse to accept the notion that many of these former addicts have served their time and proven themselves worthy of a second chance."

The provision is part of sweeping changes to the drug laws that the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Gov. David Paterson agreed to last month.

The new measures strip the remaining pieces of drug laws imposed in 1973 under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to give mandatory sentences for many drug crimes.

The changes repeal mandatory minimum prison sentences for people convicted of low-level drug felonies and let judges send some offenders to treatment facilities instead of prison.

It also shortens prison sentences for some who are incarcerated. Republicans in the state Senate, who had blocked similar bills when they were in the majority, this week proposed repealing the record-sealing provision, but the bill has not been advanced.

Democrats won the majority in the Senate in January.

Putnam County District Attorney Adam Levy said the "state Legislature has seen fit to enact a law with no real public debate." Letting convicted drug dealers' criminal records be sealed, he said, allows "drug dealers to work in day-care centers, caring for our children, and in senior centers, caring for our parents and grandparents."

"The state Legislature's main responsibility should be to protect its citizens," Levy said. "This law fails to protect our community."

Lawmakers "in their zeal to give people in court-ordered treatment a fresh start in life have gone way too far," said Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugibe. "You can't pretend these convictions never happened or people weren't addicts. Many addicts go back, and employers who hire them are unaware of their history."

Zugibe said that realistically, bus companies likely won't hire former addicts as drivers, while schools won't hire them as teachers and families won't hire them as nannies.

"Many employment opportunities will be lost, and they should be," Zugibe said.

Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore's office declined to comment yesterday.

Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, D-Mount Vernon, chairwoman of the Senate Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee, said in a statement that the criticism "is an alarmist attitude of a few who refuse to accept the notion that many of these former addicts have served their time and proven themselves worthy of a second chance."

The provision is part of sweeping changes to the drug laws that the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Gov. David Paterson agreed to last month.

The new measures strip the remaining pieces of drug laws imposed in 1973 under Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to give mandatory sentences for many drug crimes.

The changes repeal mandatory minimum prison sentences for people convicted of low-level drug felonies and let judges send some offenders to treatment facilities instead of prison.

It also shortens prison sentences for some who are incarcerated. Republicans in the state Senate, who had blocked similar bills when they were in the majority, this week proposed repealing the record-sealing provision, but the bill has not been advanced.

Democrats won the majority in the Senate in January.

http://lohud.com/article/20090528/NEWS05/905280393/-1/newsfront

Posted by lois at 11:53 PM | Comments (0)

May 16, 2009

My Return to Prison: Views on the Failed Drug War from Inside Sing Sing

May 15, 2009
My Return to Prison: Views on the Failed Drug War from Inside Sing Sing
By Wayne Kramer
Huffington Post

On Saturday, May 2nd 2009, I returned to prison. Again.

Tom Morello, Jerry Cantrell, Billy Bragg, Perry Farrell & Etty Lau Farrell, Gilby Clarke, Boots Riley, Carl Restivo, Dave Gibbs, Don Was, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Eric Gardner and the Road Recovery staff went with me. The prison was the infamous Sing Sing maximum-security facility in Ossining, New York. I talked with the prisoners and we played music for them.

And we went in with the blessing of the New York State Department of Corrections to inaugurate a new program focusing on inmate rehabilitation. To tell you the truth, I didn't think it would happen. I could not have been more wrong. We had all played a concert the night before in Manhattan for Road Recovery, a non-profit organization that works with at-risk kids. The show was sold out with the help of my comrade Iggy Pop and it was a resounding success.

The Sing Sing show was a bonus. To say it was memorable would be a massive understatement. As would be understating the importance of reaching out to the people on the receiving end of the greatest failure of social policy in America's domestic history

You would have to be living on the moon to not know what a disaster the "War On Drugs" has been. Twenty billion dollars a year for the last 30 years, two million Americans in prison -- 60% of them non-violent drug offenders -- and you can go out on any American street corner and buy cheaper, higher quality heroin and cocaine than you could anywhere in America 30 years ago. The political expediency of "get tough on crime" along with the sure-fire vote getting "lock them up and throw away the key" mentality has successfully created the highly profitable Prison Industrial Complex.

On Saturday, I asked a corrections officer at Sing Sing what the prisoner population in New York State is right now. "Just over 50,000," she replied. Then, it occurred to me: When I was imprisoned for drug offenses in the 1970s, the entire Federal Prison population totaled just over 50,000 inmates. Then the C.O. added that, when she started her career in corrections 20 years ago, there were 23 prisons in New York State. As I write this today, there are over 60!

Crime stats have stayed consistent over the last 30 years, but incarceration rates have more than quadrupled. It's the human cost that has been the most damaging. I'm talking about non-violent drug offenders. Countless families broken up, the marriages destroyed, three generations of kids with fathers (and mothers) in and out of the system. These are mostly brown and black people. People from America's cities who, as screenwriter David Simon describes them, "Leftover people. People who were necessary in an industrial America but who are of no use to the economy today." Non-violent drug offenders who are locked up are people who are pawns in urban political gamesmanship. Nobody talks about them. There's no political will to look at it. There's no political capital in it. It's a no-winner. But, there's certainly money in prison building and guard hiring.

Out here in California, the prison guards union is one of the most powerful political lobbies in the state. I don't have any naive ideas about this changing anytime soon. Make no mistake, though, this situation is a crime against humanity. Government should be helping, but it's not. Instead, it has created a self-fulfilling monster that eats humans whose judgment has been, at one time in their lives, critically flawed and then the monster shits out profit and political gain.

What I can do as an artist is the same thing you can do as a friend and neighbor -- stand up. Speak out. Get involved.

At Sing Sing, I talked to men who had been locked up for eight, 10, 17, 30 years but had somehow managed to hold on to hope. Men who sang along with Billy Bragg on Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" still had hopes and dreams. Their spirit was strong. I doubt any of them ever heard of the MC5 or Jane's Addiction or Audioslave, but it didn't matter one bit. They all connected with the music. What mattered was they knew, by our simple presence, that not everyone has thrown them away. I certainly haven't. Neither have all the musicians who went with me to this historic visit. Not everyone in this country believes in the Draconian approach to drug enforcement that has been the status quo for the last 30 years.

Kudos to Gov. Paterson and the NY Dept. of Corrections for inviting us in. Maybe other governors will start to wake up to the economic and human disaster that is their failed policy. Maybe Barack Obama can step up and bring justice and reason to one of our nation's greatest failures.

Handsome Dick wrote to me the following day, "Seeing those prisoners slowly shuffle back through that door, and go back to jail, got to me. Can't stop thinking about it. And me being free... and... how much I appreciate everything I have." Tru dat, Richard.

Yesterday's HuffPost ran the headline "White House Czar Calls For End to War On Drugs." Sounds good. Now let's see who steps up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wayne-kramer/my-return-to-prison-views_b_204077.html?view=print

Posted by lois at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Time

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

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

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

May 12, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Casey Samulski

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

May 10, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 07, 2009

MA: Boston Globe Editorial: Better sense in sentencing

Better sense in sentencing
May 7, 2009
Boston Globe Editorial

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 29, 2009

Obama Administration Calls for End to Crack-Powder Sentencing Disparity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By SOLOMON MOORE
Published: April 29, 2009

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

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

“Most in the law enforcement community now recognize the need to re-evaluate current federal cocaine sentencing policy and the disparities the policy creates,” the official, Lanny A. Breuer, the chief of the Criminal Division in the Justice Department, testified before the Crime and Drugs Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Under current federal laws, conviction for the sale and possession of 50 grams of crack cocaine is punishable by a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison; it takes 5,000 grams of powder cocaine to trigger the same punishment under the guidelines.

Mr. Breuer said that as of 2006, 82 percent of people convicted of federal crack cocaine offenses were African-American, and 9 percent were white. In that same year, 14 percent of federal powder cocaine offenders were white, 27 percent were African-American and 58 percent were Hispanic.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the subcommittee chairman, said he was a proponent of the two-tiered sentencing structure when it was adopted in 1986 during an epidemic of crack cocaine use. But Mr. Durbin said that he and other early supporters, including Joseph R. Biden Jr., who is now vice president, changed their minds as they learned more about the drug.

“Each of the myths upon which we based the disparity has since been dispelled or altered,” Mr. Durbin said. “Crack-related violence has decreased significantly since the 1980s, and today 94 percent of crack cocaine cases don’t involve violence at all.”

Mr. Breuer and other witnesses testified that the sentencing disparities eroded trust in the justice system, overstressed the prison system, and diverted federal law enforcement resources from prosecutions of organized crime and other priorities.

In 2007, the United States Sentencing Commission, a panel that advises federal courts on appropriate prison terms based on legislation, reduced the average sentence for crack cocaine possession to 8 years, 10 months from 10 years, 1 month.

That change was expected to reduce the federal prison population by about 3,800 inmates over 15 years.

So far, 19,239 offenders who were sentenced under the earlier guidelines have applied to have their terms reduced. About 70 percent of those motions have been granted.

Further sentencing reductions would require Congress to pass new legislation. Mr. Breuer said he was leading a working group at the Justice Department that was looking at how to reduce the sentencing disparity while preserving public safety.

Although many law enforcement groups have generally sided with reducing disparities in cocaine sentences, they disagree with the administration about how that might be achieved.

James Pasco, a lobbyist for the Fraternal Order of Police, suggested that prison sentences for powder cocaine should be raised to the level of crack sentences.

“The Obama administration just says they want the disparity addressed,” Mr. Pasco said. “So somewhere between our position for raising sentences for powder, and their position for doing away with disparities there’s room for discussion.”

Jasmine Tyler, of the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group supporting the reduction of drug crime sentences, said increasing penalties for powder cocaine would further burden the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is 140 percent beyond its capacity.

“I would be shocked if that were ever vetted as a real possibility,” Ms. Tyler said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/us/30cocaine.html?_r=1

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

April 27, 2009

Time to decriminalize drugs? The Portuguese experiment

"...the Portuguese government decided to create a high-level commission, dominated by health care professionals, to recommend a solution. The commission's surprise recommendation: Don't officially legalize all drugs. Instead, decriminalize them, take away all criminal penalties."

Time to decriminalize drugs?
By By Neil Peirce, syndicated columnist
By Daily Hampshire Gazette
Created 04/27/2009

The criminal factor is being lifted from marijuana use in California. The other 12 states where marijuana is permitted for medical use can't be far behind.

And if 13 states now, then all 50 in the next years?

That's the future some see flowing from a decision announced Feb. 25 by Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. The federal Drug Enforcement Agency, Holder announced, would stop its raids on marijuana dispensaries in states where marijuana is legal for medicinal purposes.

The order spells a refreshing respect for states' rights. In California, where hundreds of new dispensaries are springing up to meet demand, customers need only produce a physician's recommendation in order to buy marijuana. California law allows pot to be dispensed for "any illness for which marijuana provides a relief." Back pain, anxiety, sleeplessness, glaucoma, virtually any condition can now be claimed.

Perhaps no line can be drawn between serious conditions for which marijuana is a godsend, relieving many patients suffering excruciating pain, and simple recreational use.

And then there's the sheer numbers issue. Surveys show 100 million Americans at some point in their lives have smoked pot. It's time to ask: What's government doing prohibiting marijuana in the first place?

In California alone, the marijuana market is already estimated to total $14 billion a year. Legislation pending in Sacramento would regulate the trade and yield the state $1.3 billion in revenues. In an America whose revenue-hungry state governments have already gone hog-wild legalizing another practice once thought evil, gambling, what's so different about marijuana?

And there's a parallel. At the height of the Great Depression, state governments drowning in red ink seized the opportunity to repeal prohibition of alcohol as a way to institute legal taxes and fill their empty coffers.

The myth we need to break is that the use of mind-altering drugs is really different from a whole range of activities, sometimes sheer fun, sometimes dangerous, that humans have engaged in since the dawn of time.

I'd put gambling on that list, but even more deeply entrenched are alcohol, drugs and sexual practices. All have legitimate roles; each, depending on its form and application, can be seriously abused. A mature society warns of problems but holds back on prohibition ## and sensibly, because rules of total denial will be broken anyway.

What's missing on the marijuana front, suggests Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, is any fair, open debate about its use. How serious is it, for example, if a high school student gets "stoned"? Is "binge drinking" really less serious? Would a successful prevention model aim mostly at abstinence or some safer, moderate form of use?

We've been so preoccupied with a total prohibition model for drugs, says Sterling, that we've not had the sane conversation we need.

Hopefully, California and the other medical-marijuana states will now oblige us to open up a fuller debate.

By good fortune, a fascinating new European study has become available to us. In the late 1990s, Portugal was faced by seemingly runaway drug usage, together with record arrest levels and imprisonments. (Sound familiar?)

So the Portuguese government decided to create a high-level commission, dominated by health care professionals, to recommend a solution. The commission's surprise recommendation: Don't officially legalize all drugs. Instead, decriminalize them, take away all criminal penalties.

"I think it's bizarrely underappreciated what's been done in Portugal," says analyst Glenn Greenwald, author of a just-published study on the Portuguese experiment for the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank.

The Portuguese parliament didn't "go soft" on drug traffickers, they're still liable to arrest and criminal prosecution. Police can still issue citations to drug users. But under the new law, in effect since 2001, the worst fate an apprehended drug user can expect is mandatory appearance before a "dissuasion commission", which in turn is most likely to suggest a course of treatment.

The crucial advantage of decriminalization, says Greenwald, is that it removes citizens' fear of government punishment. So they feel free to seek out help for treatment or stopping drug use altogether. The money formerly spent on "putting drug users into cages," as he puts it, is going for counselors and psychologists conducting quality treatment programs.

America's "drug war" myth has been that anything short of severe criminal penalties leads to massive drug abuse, escalating crime and worse. But in Portugal, none of the predicted parade of horrors has occurred. Drug use among youth has actually declined, and surveys show use of marijuana, cocaine and dangerous substances like heroin are all well below Europe-wide averages.

Decriminalization rather than legalization, could this be the sane middle ground we need here too?

Neal Peirce's email address is nrp@citistates.com.
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2008 All rights reserved
Source URL: http://www.gazettenet.com/2009/04/27/time-decriminalize-drugs

Posted by lois at 05:15 PM | Comments (0)

April 24, 2009

Another War America Cannot Afford

Another War America Cannot Afford
By Bill Haney
Huffington Post
April 23, 2009

Senator Obama swept into national prominence with his prescient view that an American war in Iraq was one we should not start and could not win. By 2007, years of carnage in Iraq had taught many Americans how foolish the Bush Administration's promises of a simple and flower-strewn victory were. Now President Obama has honored his campaign pledge, committing to a substantial withdrawal of American troops from Iraq within 18 months. But there is another drawn-out war America is embroiled in -- a war that was launched with rosy expectations; a war that has led to unacceptable burdens for our country. It is well past time to withdraw from this war as well.

When President Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971, American prisons held fewer than 200,000 people and the prison population was declining.

Back then, prison was seen as a last resort: mandatory minimums had been repealed, prisons were not-for-profit and less than 1 in every 1000 American adults was behind bars, few for drug crimes. This wasn't because drugs didn't exist, of course, or because Presidents like Eisenhower and Truman were soft on crime, but rather because the threat of non-violent marijuana smokers to American security was deemed unworthy of a "War".

Today, every 17 seconds an American is arrested for a drug-related crime. That's about as long as it will take you to read this sentence.

There are now more than 2.3 million Americans in jail or prison. In fact, the United States now has the world's largest prison population.

China is second, with only 1.5 million people in jail. That's right, although the American population is roughly 300 million and China's is over 1.3 billion, we have nearly 50% more people in prison than China.

Since the early days of Nixon, we have gone from having less than one adult in prison per thousand to having roughly one adult in prison per hundred, more than 500% of the global median. Who says we don't lead the world in anything anymore?

Not all of the folks in prison are there for drug offenses, of course, but more than half of federal prisoners are locked up in connection with nonviolent drug offenses, frequently for mere possession. With profits from drug crime high enough to destabilize important democracies like Mexico and fuel terrorist groups like Afghanistan's Taliban, it will surprise no one that many non-drug crimes are themselves fueled by the profits of the drug business. Despite these labeling challenges, the Federal Bureau of Prisons lists more than 50% of its convicts as drug violators. Sweeping up explosives, arson, and weapons violations into a single category makes up the next-largest Bureau of Prisons grouping, at 15% of convicts. There can be no doubt that the War on Drugs consumes an outlandish percentage of federal and state law enforcement resources.

The expense of this almost 40-year war is horrendous any way you measure it. Millions upon millions of American adults have been convicted as felons. Millions of American children have been left in single parent destitution as their fathers, and increasingly mothers, are locked up. Studies suggest as many as 70% of these children are destined to become prisoners themselves.

Thirteen million Americans live among us as convicted felons right now, and federal and state restrictions on their housing, medical, education and voting rights have greatly diminished their job prospects and their standing in civil society. As convicted felons, their ability to legally earn a living is greatly reduced, and so is their ability to pay taxes.

Not only is this a tremendous burden on their families, it is a burden on all American taxpayers.

It's difficult to measure the full economic costs of the War on Drugs, as it has been for the War in Iraq, but even a simple accounting suggests that they are staggering. The costs of hiring, training, equipping, paying and providing facilities and pensions for an appropriate portion of police and drug task force officers must be added to the costs of doing the same for corrections officers and management -- as well as the federally funded DEA. The costs of supporting struggling democracies like those in Columbia, Mexico and Afghanistan would surely be less if they weren't battling narco-fueled violence. The costs of the full drug war infrastructure run well north of $40 billion a year, with expenditures on corrections now outstripping spending on higher education in some states. Is there any wonder that cries to legalize and tax marijuana are now beginning to come from state legislators, and even law enforcement officers?

Decriminalization of all drugs is not the answer. We all know that drugs can be a scourge, as we know that other addictive substances wreak havoc in our society. Still, 76% of Americans polled by Zogby in September 2008 believe that the War on Drugs is a costly failure, and most believe that policies of narrowly targeted illegality, education and treatment should replace it.

Prohibition was repealed during the Depression of the 1930s, as the costs of enforcing draconian anti-alcohol laws became too expensive for society to bear. Today we have laws limiting alcohol use, tax revenues that result from its legal sale and a virtual elimination of violence resulting from its black-market distribution. With our economy staggering and the social, financial and strategic costs of our failed drug policies mounting, it is time for President Obama to bring an end to this ill-conceived "War". The active search for peace with principle must begin.

Bill Haney is the writer and producer of American Violet, a film based on the true story of an innocent woman arrested in a drug raid. Samuel Goldwyn Films will release the film across the country this month.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-haney/another-war-america-canno_b_190726.html

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

April 22, 2009

Western MA: Rep. Neal's Opposition to Needle Exchange Continues including no support for lifting HR 179 lifting bad on suport for federal needle exchange funds

New Hope for Needle Exchange
A new bill may lift a 1988 ban on using federal funds to support needle exchange programs.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
By Maureen Turner
Valley Advocate

Tim Purington got some bad news last week: the needle exchange program he runs for Tapestry Health in Northampton saw its state funding cut by $12,500 for the remainder of the fiscal year. And given the sorry state of the commonwealth's finances, he wouldn't be surprised to see more cuts come next year.

The program—which allows IV-drug users to trade used syringes for clean ones, with the goal of stemming the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other blood-borne diseases by users sharing needles—gets all of its $200,000 annual budget from state funds, said Purington, the program director. Given the dramatic fluctuations that can take place in the state budget from one year to the next, that means the needle exchange program—and countless other state-funded projects—live with a degree of uncertainty, never sure what their budgets will look like in the future.

That could change, though, if a bill now sitting in Congress becomes law. The bill—HR 179, the Community AIDS and Hepatitis Prevention Act—would lift a 1988 ban on using federal funds to support needle exchange programs like Northampton's. "One of the nice things about federal funding is it's much more stable," said Purington, noting that federal funds tend to come in multi-year grants. "You don't have all the peaks and valleys you do in state funding."

The bill, which was introduced by U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.), is currently before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce (whose members include Democrats Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Peter Welch of Vermont). The bill already has 62 co-sponsors, all Democrats, including Massachusetts Reps. John Olver, James McGovern, Barney Frank, William Delahunt and Michael Capuano.

Conspicuous by his absence from that list is Rep. Richard Neal, whose district includes Northampton. (While state law allows up to 10 programs in Massachusetts, only four communities—Boston, Cambridge, Provincetown, in addition to Northampton—have them. According to the Harm Reduction Coalition, a national advocacy group with offices in New York and California, there are now almost 200 exchange programs in 38 states, Puerto Rico and Washington. D.C.)

The Harm Reduction Coalition is urging constituents to contact Neal's district office, at 413-785-0325, to ask him to sign on as a co-sponsor. "His office could use some calls and educating—why has he not taken a stand to remove the barrier to [these] programs being allowed to receive funding from the largest source of HIV prevention money in the U.S.?" the group wrote in an email to supporters. According to the HRC, one-third of Americans with HIV got it through contaminated needles. Each year, HRC says, 8,000 more people contract HIV that way, and 15,000 people contact hepatitis C through shared needles.

Neal wasn't available for comment at deadline.

There's hope in the field that the bill will pass, Purington said. "I know people are pretty optimistic this year, based on the fact that the president has signaled he supports needle exchange programs," he said.

While federal funding would provide a significant boost to needle exchange programs, it wouldn't do anything to create new programs, Purington noted. Tapestry could apply for federal funds for its Northampton program, "but it wouldn't magically allow us to implement [exchanges] in Springfield and Holyoke," he said. "We would love to do that."

By state law, a needle exchange program can only be established with local approval. That local approval hasn't come in Springfield, Holyoke and other cities with high rates of both drug use and HIV. Purington, who serves as a city councilor in Holyoke, said "there's no political will" in his city to allow a program. In Springfield, meanwhile, the City Council has consistently opposed needle exchange—although, Purington noted, when the Council adds ward representatives this fall, that could change.
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=9580

Posted by lois at 12:17 PM | 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 18, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 15, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

African American drug offenders, who have been convicted most often for dealing and possessing crack cocaine, still made up a disproportionate share of drug offenders in state prisons, 45 percent in 2005. That was down from nearly 58 percent in 1999. Black Americans make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population.
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The number of white drug offenders in state prisons rose from 20 percent to 29 percent, and Latino prisoners made up 20 percent of such inmates.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 14, 2009

NV: "Centers" proposed for parole violaters and people with drug & alcohol convictions

Centers proposed for low-risk offenders
By RACHELLE GINES Associated Press Writer
04/13/2009

CARSON CITY, Nev.—The Nevada Senate's top Democrat told lawmakers Monday that a new program for low-risk parole violators and drug and alcohol offenders would reduce the state's prison population and save millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, told Finance Committee members that SB398 would create a two-year pilot program of "intermediate sanction" centers for low-risk probation violators as well as people whose crimes are linked to alcohol or drug addictions.

Life skill and rehabilitative programs would be offered to about 400 participants a year, who would stay an average of six months.

Centers proposed for low-risk offenders
By RACHELLE GINES Associated Press Writer
04/13/2009

CARSON CITY, Nev.—The Nevada Senate's top Democrat told lawmakers Monday that a new program for low-risk parole violators and drug and alcohol offenders would reduce the state's prison population and save millions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas, told Finance Committee members that SB398 would create a two-year pilot program of "intermediate sanction" centers for low-risk probation violators as well as people whose crimes are linked to alcohol or drug addictions.

Life skill and rehabilitative programs would be offered to about 400 participants a year, who would stay an average of six months.

Horsford said the program could save the state more than $34 million over the next five years. He noted that it costs the state about $22,000 a year to incarcerate a prisoner, and a quarter of the new arrivals at Nevada prisons every year are parole violators returning to custody.

"Clearly there is a new and more innovative approach we can take that would ensure public safety and require the offender to go through their sentence, but also do it in a way that doesn't cost the state what we're spending now," Horsford said.

The program would use existing facilities and wouldn't require new beds. Horsford added that program participants wouldn't mix with other inmates and that a little more than half of the beds would be concentrated in southern Nevada.

Drug and alcohol treatment programs for
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the centers would be provided through the Department of Health and Human Services, who would work with community service providers, DHH director Mike Willden said.

Willden told lawmakers an additional $2.2 million per year would be required to provide such programs, at a ratio of one staff person for every 27 inmates.

Bernie Curtis, chief of the Division of Parole and Probation, spoke in support of the bill, saying, "It's not going to cost us anything in parole and probation, frankly, to use these intermediate sanctions. We think it's a good start for a program that is needed in this state."

Maurice Lee, senior vice president of the WestCare Foundation, also favored the bill and said he has enjoyed success as an ex-offender who participated in a similar program. WestCare is a nonprofit organization that currently provides programs similar to those touted in SB398 both in Nevada and other states.

"I offer myself as an example personally. I have been incarcerated and went through a similar system of care that has helped me turn my life around," Lee said. "I now have 20 years outside of the system and I live in a state where I pay taxes, tithes in church and take care of six kids."

Lee told lawmakers, "Your investment goes a lot further than what is being stated here on paper." He said later that the prison population is expected to keep growing.

"Other states have learned quickly that they cannot build their way out of their criminal justice situation. There is no way to build enough prisons to continue housing people," Lee said.

Sen. Bill Raggio, R-Reno, praised the program, but said it's important to know all program costs before starting it.

"I question the cost. We don't want to find out in the haste to get it approved we haven't funded it properly," Raggio said.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12133087

Posted by lois at 08:37 AM | Comments (0)

April 13, 2009

NY Times Editorial: Addiction Behind Bars

NY Times Editorial
Addiction Behind Bars

Published: April 12, 2009

The United States must do more to curb the spread of diseases like AIDS and hepatitis C in prison, where infection rates are high and inmates can easily spread disease through unprotected sex or by sharing needles.

Drug treatment in prison is clearly part of the solution. But by some estimates, fewer than one in five inmates who need formal treatment are actually getting it. That’s alarming, given that about half the prison population suffers from drug abuse or dependency problems.

Addicted prisoners cause problems outside the walls. After they’re freed, addicts with H.I.V. or AIDS can infect spouses and lovers. They feed their addictions by returning to crime, which lands them back in prison and starts the terrible cycle over again.

The most effective programs provide inmates with high-quality treatment in prison and continue that treatment when prisoners return to their communities. Such programs have been shown to reduce both drug use and recidivism.

But good programs are rare, according to a report earlier this year in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Prisons typically rely on the abstinence-only model, which fails miserably with heroin addicts. Moreover, prison officials are notoriously hostile to methadone maintenance and other chemically based therapies that have long been a standard for people addicted to opiates.

Prison treatment is particularly disastrous in New York, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch. Imprisoned addicts, the authors say, are typically shut out of treatment until their sentences are nearly over because of ill-conceived policies that give priority to those who are about to be released.

New rules created earlier this month should help address these problems. The rules give oversight responsibility for prison treatment programs to the State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services, an agency that develops treatment programs and licenses treatment providers.

The agency will be required to make sure that prison drug treatments are tailored to inmates’ needs. It will also monitor the programs, filing annual reports to the governor and Legislature. Drug-policy advocates hope that the new arrangement will improve treatment and provide timely help for addicted inmates. That would be good for public health. It could reduce crime, too.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 13, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/opinion/13mon3.html?_r=1

Posted by lois at 06:37 PM | Comments (0)

April 12, 2009

Twenty Years of Drug Courts -- Results and Misgivings from Drug War Chronicle

Feature: Twenty Years of Drug Courts -- Results and Misgivings
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #580, 4/10/09

The drug court phenomenon celebrates its 20th birthday this year. The first drug court, designed to find a more effective way for the criminal justice system to deal with drug offenders, was born in Miami in 1989 under the guidance of then local prosecutor Janet Reno. Since then, drug courts have expanded dramatically, with their number exceeding 2000 today, including at least one in every state.

According to Urban Institute estimates, some 55,000 people are currently in drug court programs. The group found that another 1.5 million arrestees would probably meet the criteria for drug dependence and would thus be good candidates for drug courts.

The notion behind drug courts is that providing drug treatment to some defendants would lead to better outcomes for them and their communities. Unlike typical criminal proceedings, drug courts are intended to be collaborative, with judges, prosecutors, social workers, and defense attorneys working together to decide what would be best for the defendant and the community.

Drug courts can operate either by diverting offenders into treatment before sentencing or by sentencing offenders to prison terms and suspending the sentences providing they comply with treatment demands. They also vary in their criteria for eligibility: Some may accept only nonviolent, first-time offenders considered to be addicted, while others may have broader criteria.

Such courts rely on sanctions and rewards for their clients, with continuing adherence to treatment demands met with a loosening of restrictions and relapsing into drug use subjected to ever harsher punishments, typically beginning with a weekend in jail and graduating from there. People who fail drug court completely are then either diverted back into the criminal justice system for prosecution or, if they have already been convicted, sent to prison.

Drug courts operate in a strange and contradictory realm that embraces the model of addiction as a disease needing treatment, yet punishes failure to respond as if it were a moral failing. No other disease is confronted in such a manner. There are no diabetes courts, for example, where one is placed under the control of the criminal justice system for being sick and subject to "flash incarceration" for eating forbidden foods.

Conceptual dilemmas notwithstanding, drug courts have been extensively studied, and the general conclusion is that, within the parameters of the therapeutic/criminal justice model, they are successful. A recently released report from the Sentencing Project is the latest addition to the literature, or, more accurately, review of the literature.

In the report, Drug Courts: A Review of the Evidence, the group concluded that:

* Drug courts have generally been demonstrated to have positive benefits in reducing recidivism.
* Evaluations of the cost-effectiveness of drug courts have generally found benefits through reduced costs of crime or incarceration.
* Concern remains regarding potential "net-widening" effects of drug courts by drawing in defendants who might not otherwise have been subject to arrest and prosecution.

"What you have with drug courts is a program that the research has shown time and time again works," said Chris Deutsch, associate director of communications for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals in suburban Washington, DC. "We all know the problems facing the criminal justice system with drug offenders and imprisonment. We have established incentives and sanctions as an important part of the drug court model because they work," he said. "One of the reasons drug courts are expanding so rapidly," said Deutsch, "is that we don't move away from what the research shows works. This is a scientifically validated model."

"There is evidence that in certain models there is success in reducing recidivism, but there is not a single model that works," said Ryan King, coauthor of the Sentencing Project report. "We wanted to highlight common factors in success, such as having judges with multiple turns in drug court and who understand addiction, and building on graduated sanctions, but also to get people to understand the weaknesses."

"Drug courts are definitely better than going to prison," said Theshia Naidoo, a staff attorney for the Drug Policy Alliance, which has championed a less coercive treatment-not-jail program in California's Proposition 36, "but they are not the be-all and end-all of addressing drug abuse. They may be a step forward in our current prohibitionist system, but when you look at their everyday operations, it's pretty much criminal justice as usual."

That was one of the nicest things said about drug courts by harm reductionists and drug policy reformers contacted this week by the Chronicle. While drug courts can claim success as measured by the metrics embraced by the therapeutic-criminal justice complex, they appear deeply perverse and wrongheaded to people who do not embrace that model.

Remarks by Kevin Zeese of Common Sense for Drug Policy hit many of the common themes. "If drug courts result in more people being caught up in the criminal justice system, I do not see them as a good thing," he said. "The US has one out of 31 people in prison on probation or on parole, and that's a national embarrassment more appropriate for a police state than the land of the free. If drug courts are adding to that problem, they are part of the national embarrassment, not the solution."

But Zeese was equally disturbed by the therapeutic-criminal justice model itself. "Forcing drug treatment on people who happen to get caught is a very strange way to offer health care," he observed. "We would see a greater impact if treatment on request were the national policy and sufficient funds were provided to treatment services so that people who wanted treatment could get it quickly. And, the treatment industry would be a stronger industry if they were not dependent on police and courts to be sending them 'clients' -- by force -- and if instead they had to offer services that people wanted."

For Zeese, the bottom line was: "The disease model has no place in the courts. Courts don't treat disease, doctors and health professionals do."

In addition to such conceptual and public policy concerns, others cited more specific problems with drug court operations. "In Connecticut, the success of drug courts depends on educated judges," said Robert Heimer of the Yale University School of Public Health. "For example, in some parts of the state, judges refused to send defendants with opioid addiction to methadone programs. This dramatically reduced the success of the drug courts in these parts of the state compared to parts of the state where judges referred people to the one proven medically effective form of treatment for their addiction."

Heimer's complaint about the rejection of methadone maintenance therapy was echoed on the other side of the Hudson River by upstate New York drug reformer Nicolas Eyle of Reconsider: Forum on Drug Policy. "Most, if not all, drug courts in New York abhor methadone and maintenance treatment in general," he noted. "This is troubling because the state's recent Rockefeller law reforms have a major focus on treatment in lieu of prison, suggesting that more and more hapless people will be forced to enter treatment they may not need or want. Then the judge decides what type of treatment they must have, and when they don't achieve the therapeutic goals set for them they'll be hauled off to serve their time."

Still, said Heimer, "Such courts can work if appropriate treatment options are available, but if the treatment programs are bad, then it is unlikely that courts will work. In such cases, if the only alternative is then incarceration, there is little reason for drug courts. If drug court personnel think their program is valuable, they should be consistently lobbying for better drug treatment in their community. If they are not doing this, then they are contributing to the circumstances of their own failure, and again, the drug user becomes the victim if the drug court personnel are not doing this."

Even within the coerced treatment model, there are more effective approaches than drug courts, said Naidoo. "Drug courts basically have a zero tolerance policy, and many judges just don't understand addiction as a chronic relapsing condition, so if there is a failed drug test, the court comes in with a hammer imposing a whole series of sanctions. A more effective model would be to look at the overall context," she argued. "If the guy has a dirty urine, but has found a job, has gotten housing, and is reunited with his family, maybe he shouldn't be punished for the relapse. The drug court would punish him."

Other harm reductionists were just plain cynical about drug courts. "I guess they work in reducing the drug-related harm of going to prison by keeping people out of prison -- except when they're sending people to prison," said Delaney Ellison, a veteran Michigan harm reductionist and activist. "And that's exactly what drug courts do if you're resistant to treatment or broke. Poor, minority people can't afford to complete a time-consuming drug court regime. If a participant finds he can't pay the fines, go to four hours a day of outpatient treatment, and pay rent and buy food while trapped in the system, he finds a way to prioritize and abandons the drug court."

An adequate health care system that provided treatment on demand is what is needed, Ellison said. "And most importantly, when are we going to stop letting cops and lawyers -- and this includes judges -- regulate drugs?" he asked. "These people don't know anything about pharmacology. When do we lobby to let doctors and pharmacists regulate drugs?"

Drug courts are also under attack on the grounds they deny due process rights to defendants. In Maryland, the state's public defender last week argued that drug courts were unconstitutional, complaining that judges should not be allowed to send someone to jail repeatedly without a full judicial hearing.

"There is no due process in drug treatment court," Public Defender Nancy Foster told the Maryland Court of Appeals in a case that is yet to be decided.

Foster's argument aroused some interest from the appeals court judges. One of them, Judge Joseph Murphy, noted that a judge talking to one party in a case without the other party being present, which sometimes happens in drug courts, has raised due process concerns in other criminal proceedings. "Can you do that without violating the defendant's rights?" he asked.

A leading advocate of the position that drug courts interfere with due process rights is Williams College sociologist James Nolan. In an interview last year, Nolan summarized his problem with drug courts. "My concern is that if we make the law so concerned with being therapeutic, you forget about notions of justice such as proportionality of punishment, due process and the protection of individual rights," Nolan said. "Even though problem-solving advocates wouldn't want to do away with these things, they tend to fade into the background in terms of importance."

In that interview, Nolan cited a Miami-Dade County drug court participant forced to remain in the program for seven years. "So here, the goal is not about justice," he said. "The goal is to make someone well, and the consequences can be unjust because they are getting more of a punishment than they deserve."

Deutsch said he was "hesitant" to comment on criticisms of the drug court model, "but the fact of the matter is that when it comes to keeping drug addicted offenders out of the criminal justice system and in treatment, drug courts are the best option available."

For the Sentencing Project's King, drug courts are a step up from the depths of the punitive prohibitionist approach, but not much of one. "With the drug courts, we're in a better place now than we were 20 years ago, but it's not the place we want to be 20 years from now," he said. "The idea that somebody needs to enter the criminal justice system to access public drug treatment is a real tragedy."
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/580/drug_courts_at_20_years

Posted by lois at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2009

NY: Rockefeller Drug Laws: A Welcome Change But Not Far Enough Say NY Activists and Organizers

"The new law eliminates the mandatory minimum of a year in prison for first offenders charged with Class B felonies (sale of up to 1/2 ounce of cocaine or heroin, or possession with intent to sell) and first or second offenders charged with lesser felonies (such as possession of 1/2 gram of cocaine). It also expands drug treatment and other alternatives to incarceration. Second offenders charged with B felonies, who now face an automatic 4 1/2 to 9 years, might be able to get treatment instead of prison if they can prove they're drug-dependent.On the other hand, the bill retains the mandatory-minimum sentences for all other accused dealers, and only about one-eighth of the state's 13,400 drug prisoners will be able to apply for reduced sentences."

New York Lightens Up on Some of the Harshest Drug Laws in the Country
Steven Wishnia
AlterNet
Fri, 03 Apr 2009

New York State is about to enact major changes in its Rockefeller drug laws, which contain some of the harshest mandatory-minimum sentences in the nation. The activists who've been trying to repeal those laws for years say it's a very welcome move but doesn't go far enough.

"I think it's a really positive step forward. It is not the end of the Rockefeller drug laws, but hopefully, it's the beginning of the end," says Caitlin Dunklee of the Drop the Rock campaign, an umbrella group campaigning to repeal the laws.

The bill "breaches the mandatory-sentencing wall," adds Robert Gangi of the Correctional Association of New York, the prison-reform group behind Drop the Rock. It might divert half the state's convicted drug felons from prison, the group estimates.

The bill came about as part of a deal among the "three men in a room" who control New York's government: Gov. David Paterson, state Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, all Democrats. They agreed to include it in the state's budget, so it would not be voted on separately. After several days of delay, the state Senate approved the bill on a 32-30 party-line vote on Thursday, April 2. Paterson has promised to sign it.

The new law eliminates the mandatory minimum of a year in prison for first offenders charged with Class B felonies (sale of up to 1/2 ounce of cocaine or heroin, or possession with intent to sell) and first or second offenders charged with lesser felonies (such as possession of 1/2 gram of cocaine). It also expands drug treatment and other alternatives to incarceration. Second offenders charged with B felonies, who now face an automatic 4 1/2 to 9 years, might be able to get treatment instead of prison if they can prove they're drug-dependent.

On the other hand, the bill retains the mandatory-minimum sentences for all other accused dealers, and only about one-eighth of the state's 13,400 drug prisoners will be able to apply for reduced sentences.

The old law, Silver said in a statement, "has not impacted crime or reduced addiction, but, rather, has led to a massive increase in New York's prison population."

Drug offenders make up one-fifth of the state's male inmates and one-third of the female inmates. More than 90 percent of them are black or Latino, and about 40 percent are incarcerated for possession charges.

Paterson was arrested at a civil-disobedience protest against the Rockefeller laws in 2002, when he was a state senator representing Harlem, but he has taken a more cautious stance since he succeeded Eliot Spitzer as governor last year. He objected to several provisions in a drug-law bill passed by the Assembly in March.

Gangi credits activist pressure for getting him to compromise. The deal was reached on the night of March 25, a few hours after about 250 people demonstrated outside the governor's Manhattan offices.

"We heard that Paterson's staffers were asking, 'Can we make a deal before the rally?' " Gangi says.

According to Paterson spokeswoman Marissa Shorenstein, the governor agreed to end mandatory minimums for second offenders charged with felonies below Class B, and to allow drug prisoners to apply for resentencing.

But he insisted that accused drug offenders who wanted treatment instead of prison would have to plead guilty first, on the grounds that the threat of prison would make drug users more likely to stick with treatment. The governor's philosophy is "treat, don't punish, but treat to be effective," Shorenstein explains.

The bill also revives the Rockefeller law's original 15-years-to-life sentences, this time for "kingpins" convicted of selling more than $75,000 worth of drugs.

The state's prosecutors largely oppose easing the law. And the New York Daily News editorial page, long a loud voice for the "fry 'em" approach to crime, called the proposed changes the "Drug Dealer Protection Act" and said they would unleash a crime wave.

New York's current drug laws date from 1973, when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller was facing two problems. First, heroin-related crime was exploding, with dope fiends funding their habits with muggings and burglaries and dealers killing each other in business disputes.

Second, Rockefeller, the erstwhile standard-bearer of the Republicans' shrinking liberal wing, was contemplating another run for the party's presidential nomination, and he needed to prove that he was adequately "tough on crime."

The result was a law that mandated 15 years to life for sale of 2 ounces or more of heroin or cocaine or for possession of 4 ounces.

(Crime in New York continued to rise until the early 1990s, and New York City neighborhoods like Washington Heights and the Lower East Side -- low-income areas easily accessible to white buyers -- became open-air drug markets.)

Critics of the Rockefeller laws' harshness charge that they are "unjust and racially targeted," Linda Dechabert, head of Exponents, a harm-reduction group working with drug addicts, ex-prisoners and people with AIDS, said at the March 25 rally.

The racial disparities most likely stem from the ecology of the drug trade -- ghetto street dealers are more visible and violent than discreet white-collar dealers -- and the cumulative effects of racism in who gets stopped, who gets prosecuted and who gets imprisoned.

"It's easy to arrest blacks and Latinos, because they're in a confined area," notes Carl Dukes, 64, an ex-prisoner who attended the rally.

Another criticism is that penalties are determined by the weight of the drugs seized rather than by the defendant's role in the deal.

The most notorious case of that was Elaine Bartlett, a Harlem single mother who in 1983 was set up by an Albany cocaine dealer, who paid her $2,500 to deliver 4 ounces to him. Bartlett got 20 years to life, serving 16 years before she won clemency. Police allowed the dealer who hired her to continue operating in exchange for the information.

The state enacted mild reforms in 2004 and 2005. They reduced the 15-to-life sentences to 8 to 20 years, but did not affect the 90 percent of the state's drug prisoners convicted of lesser charges.

Activists developed four "pillars" for further-reaching reforms: restoring judicial discretion, expanding treatment and alternatives to prison, reducing sentences and retroactivity -- letting prisoners apply for the sentences they would have gotten under the revised laws.

By those standards, the proposed new law would do well on treatment. It's expected to provide an extra $50 million to $80 million for drug-treatment and alternatives-to-incarceration programs, such as the one run by the Brooklyn district attorney's office.

New York has a harm-reduction system well positioned to take advantage of this, notes Gabriel Sayegh of the Drug Policy Alliance, as there are well-established programs for drug rehab, needle exchange, methadone maintenance and overdose prevention.

Most activists agree, however, that the bill falls short on judicial discretion and retroactivity. For example, someone found guilty of selling drugs would still get an automatic 4 1/2-year minimum if they had been convicted of a violent felony in the past 10 years, says Gangi. Such a person might be dangerous -- or might have calmed down considerably since their previous crime.

"We're not saying people should not go to prison," he explains. "We're saying the judge should decide."

"It's unfair. You're caught with a little amount of drugs, and you serve a long, long term in prison," says Ashley O'Donoghue, a tall, thin man with "God's Son" tattooed on his neck. "It should be retroactive so the people who are still there can get a sentence that's more suitable for what they did."

O'Donoghue, 26, was arrested in 2003 when two white college students he'd been dealing cocaine to were nabbed and set him up for a 2 1/2-ounce sale, well above his usual range. Facing 15 to life, he pleaded guilty to a B felony and served five years of a 7-to-21-year sentence.

Comedian Randy Credico, a longtime drug-law activist who attended the March 25 rally dressed as Diogenes, "looking for an honest politician," says any changes in the law would be inadequate unless retroactive resentencing is "automatic." Less than half the 1,000 prisoners eligible to apply for shorter sentences under the 2004 law actually got them.

Nicholas Eyle of Reconsider, a Syracuse anti-prohibition group, is also not enthusiastic. "I don't want to sound like I don't support the change, but I'm not that excited," he says. "I'm not a fan of mandatory treatment."

Although rehab is preferable to prison, he says, most people arrested on drug charges are not addicts, and if they tell counselors that, they'll be told they're "in denial."

What the state really needs, he believes, is a "paradigm shift. If you want to save money and reduce crime, end prohibition. If you question the fundamentals, you have to conclude that prohibition doesn't work."

Many New Yorkers find it surprising that the state government could accomplish anything on such a controversial issue. The New York legislature is often called the most dysfunctional in the nation. Virtually all major legislation is crafted by secret negotiations among the "three men in a room": the governor, the state Senate majority leader and the Assembly speaker.

Democrats have long held a majority approaching 2-1 in the Assembly, the legislature's lower house. However, state Senate districts have been gerrymandered to aid the Republicans, who controlled it from 1965 to 2008.

Over the last 15 years of that era, the Senate's GOP leader, Joseph Bruno, was able to block all but token Rockefeller-law reform. He also gutted the state's rent-control laws and refused to let the Senate consider legalizing same-sex marriage.

Bruno resigned last summer, several months before he was indicted on federal corruption charges, and in November, the Democrats won a 32-30 majority in the Senate. That immediately revved up hopes among the state's progressive activists.

However, the ballots had scarcely been counted when three Senate Democrats threatened to ally with the Republicans unless they were given power and concessions.

Nicknamed the Gang of Three, they are Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx, a rent-control foe with a long history of campaign-finance violations; Carl Kruger, a Brooklyn death-penalty advocate; and the fiercely anti-gay Ruben Diaz Sr. of the Bronx.

The Democrats' majority was further threatened when Hiram Monserrate, a Queens liberal, was indicted for slashing his girlfriend. This has jeopardized Senate passage of several bills to strengthen rent control and is widely believed to have scotched any hope of it considering same-sex marriage.

Many activists also believe that upstate Republicans oppose reducing drug sentences because prisons are one of the few sources of steady jobs in the region, whose economy has been slumping since the 1970s. In 1973, when the Rockefeller laws passed, New York had 18 prisons. From 1973 to 1999, it built 51 new ones.

Nicholas Eyle disputes that notion, saying he doesn't believe that the dozen or so legislators from rural districts where prisons are prominent are a strong enough lobby to preserve the drug laws. Sayegh advocates replacing the 30,000 prison jobs with green jobs.

Still, economic issues may well have played a role. The state has been slammed with a $15 billion budget deficit. At $45,000 per inmate, the Silver statement emphasized, it costs New York more than $500 million a year to imprison drug offenders. The minimal changes enacted in 2004 have saved the state $100 million, it added.

"My Assembly colleagues and I continue in our pledge not to give up our fight for greater reform of New York state's ineffective and imprudent drug laws," Assembly Corrections Committee Chairman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, a longtime advocate of repealing the Rockefeller laws, said in a statement after the deal was announced. "While today's agreement brings us closer to our goal, we recognize the need to do more."
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/180895-New-York-Lightens-Up-on-Some-of-the-Harshest-Drug-Laws-in-the-Country

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

April 03, 2009

Prisons, Drugs in America: A Turning Point?

Prisons, Drugs in America: A Turning Point?
Neal Peirce / Apr 02 2009
For Release Sunday, April 5, 2009
© 2009 Washington Post Writers Group

An historic turning point in criminal justice and drug policy in America?

The fourth week of March was arguably just that:

On the way to Mexico City, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the first senior U.S. official to accept co-responsibility for the cartel-driven drug violence now ravaging Mexico. Clinton acknowledged that “our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” and that our three-decade long war on drugs has simply “not worked.”

In Albany, New York Gov. David Paterson and the Democratic legislative majority announced they’d reached agreement to roll back the punitive “Rockefeller drug laws” of the 1970s, starting with then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s insistence on mandatory minimum prison sentences for first-time, non-violent drug offenders.

But the biggest breakthrough of all may have come in the U.S. Senate, where Virginia’s Jim Webb (D), joined by two Republican and 13 Democratic colleagues, sponsored legislation for a high-level “National Criminal Justice Commission.”

This could be the official eye-opener, the crucial reexamination of America’s penal and drug policies that the nation has so sorely needed for years.

Why?

First, its chair would be appointed by the president–and President Obama has called Webb twice to commend his effort. A commission-endorsed reform agenda would provide Obama cover for major changes in this politically charged area.

Second, the Senate Democratic leadership is enthusiastically in favor and there’s smaller but significant Republican cosponsorship–Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter, ranking GOP member of the Judiciary Committee, and South Carolina’s Lindsay Graham, ranking member on the Crime and Drugs subcommittee.

A third positive: Jim Webb–highly decorated Marine combat veteran, Navy Secretary under President Reagan–can hardly be labeled a “softie” on crime. He and his staff have spent two years researching the prison and drug issues, hearing from prosecutors, judges, crime victims, former offenders, inmates and police. “It was like tapping a nerve,” Webb declares– “all are saying we have a real mess on our hands.”

Webb defines the base problem: with just 5 percent of world population, the U.S. has 2.3 million people behind bars–25 percent of all prisoners worldwide. “Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong.”

Webb contends that our prisons, many seriously overcrowded, have become “places of violence, physical abuse and hate,” costing federal, state and local governments a tough-to-justify $68 billion a year.

We’re “warehousing” the mentally ill in our prisons where, the senator notes, they get scant professional treatment. Then he focuses on “the elephant in the bedroom” –the rise in drug incarcerations. In 1980, the U.S. incarcerated 41,000 drug offenders; today the figure tops 500,000–a 1,200 percent increase.

The commission, says Webb, would have to wrestle with the fact that more than half of Americans age 12 and over have at some time used an illegal drug. “In talking of legality and illegality, what does that do to the fiber of our society? I saw more drug use at Georgetown Law School than anywhere else I’ve been. A lot of those people went on to be judges.”

Yet what’s the answer? Should we be arresting people for recreational drug use–or, Webb asks, for addiction?

Then there’s race: African-Americans, he observes, comprise 12 percent of our population, use drugs at close to the national average, but represent 37 percent of drug arrests and 74 percent of drug offenders sentenced to prison. How’s that to be explained?

Conversely, Webb underscores how seriously gangs are impacting American society. Some, though not all, ride on the back of the drug trade. Mexican drug cartels, the most violent and visible, are operating in 230 American cities, not simply along the border. MS-13 gangs, notorious for drug smuggling, gun running and hits for hire, have spread across the U.S., even recruiting 2,000, Webb notes, in Northern Virginia across the Potomac from Washington.

Then there’s the problem of rural towns, hard hit by globalization, actively seeking prisons as a source for jobs.

Many American guards receive only brief on-the-job training. Webb contrasts this with Japan, where guards have a year’s preparation and inmates legitimately regard them but “mentors, disciplinarians, and friends.”

Bottom line: Webb’s commission, if Congress approves it, will have a massive, complex agenda. Yet its findings could prove a vital turning point, not only for the federal government (which holds just 10 percent of prisoners) but state and local governments nationwide. Many might be inspired to create their own commissions.

Some say Webb, representing historically conservative Virginia, is threatening his own political future. But if Webb can get us off the dime, thinking and acting afresh on critical prison and drug issues, he’ll be serving America as vitally as the bravest of his erstwhile Marine colleagues.
http://citiwire.net/post/831/

Posted by lois at 12:04 AM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2009

Reversing Rockefeller: New York is set to repeal some of its harsh drug-offense-sentencing laws. But do the reforms go far enough?

"Prior to the just-passed modification, the Rockefeller Drug laws removed all judicial discretion from matters of sentencing. Possession of a certain amount of drugs automatically triggered a harsh sentence. Now, only those convicted of the sale of 2 ounces or more of a hard drug or possession of 4 ounces or more of a hard drug will be subject to mandatory sentencing. The changes mean that around 6,000 people currently imprisoned under the Rockefeller laws -- around 50 percent of those convicted of drug offenses overall -- will be able to petition a court for a sentence reduction. " "However, the reforms don't restore full judicial discretion in sentencing. Mandatory sentences remain for those convicted of selling more than half an ounce or possessing more than 4 ounces of a hard drug, with harsher penalties for larger amounts. The same is true of anyone convicted of a nonviolent drug offense who was previously convicted of a violent crime, and anyone who sells drugs to a minor. The primary criteria for triggering mandatory minimum sentencing remains the amount of drugs present, not the individual's role in the transaction. This means that had Terrance Stevens' companion been in possession of more than 4 ounces of cocaine, he would receive the same sentence even under the new laws. Despite the changes, more than 10,000 people will not be eligible to petition the court for a reduction in their sentence."

Reversing Rockefeller: New York is set to repeal some of its harsh drug-offense-sentencing laws. But do the reforms go far enough?
Adam Serwer | April 1, 2009 | web only
American Prospect

In 1992, Terrance Stevens was sentenced for 15 years to life under New York state's Rockefeller Drug Laws. Stevens was traveling on a Greyhound Bus to Buffalo New York City to visit relatives. He claims he was unaware that the friend he was traveling with was carrying 5 ounces of cocaine. Prosecutors offered him a plea bargain that would have given Stevens probation, but Stevens didn't have any information to offer.

"The judge knew I didn't deserve a 15-year sentence, but he was handcuffed," Stevens says. "According to the statute, he had to sentence me to 15 years to life."

Stevens' bid in prison was particularly difficult because he has muscular dystrophy, leaving him mostly paralyzed from the neck down. New York's prison facilities weren't prepared to address all of his medical needs.

"When someone who can't even wipe their own behind is sentenced for 15 years for a nonviolent drug offense," Stevens says, "that's an indication something is wrong with our criminal-justice system." Stevens served 10 years of his sentence, which was commuted in 2001 after then-Gov. George Pataki granted clemency to several individuals imprisoned under the Rockefeller laws.

Stevens has since dedicated his life to helping those most affected by New York's harsh drug laws. He formed an organization called In Arms Reach, which tutors children who have incarcerated parents and pays for them to visit their parents, who are often locked up in upstate prisons. Last Friday, however, New York state legislators struck a deal to reform the Rockefeller laws that might make stories like Stevens' a thing of the past. New York lawmakers are scheduled to adopt the budget, which contains the changes, later today.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and for reformers, New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws became a potent symbol of everything that's wrong with the criminal-justice system. The laws, which were instituted in 1973 by then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in response to a rise in drug use, remove judicial discretion in sentencing, mandating harsh penalties for nonviolent drug offenses. According to a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union, nine out of 10 convicted of drug offenses in New York are black and Latino, and 71 percent of New York City residents who are convicted come from the same seven poor neighborhoods.

The Rockefeller laws were overturned partially through the decades-long efforts of grass-roots activists, who recently formed an unusual coalition with criminal-justice experts, civil servants, and politicians. Nevertheless, the reforms stop far short of the full repeal trumpeted in headlines across the country: Mandatory minimum sentences are maintained under certain circumstances, and thousands of inmates will not be able to petition the courts for a reduced sentence. At the same time, the fall of the Rockefeller laws represents a nationwide trend in corrections away from the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" approach. Several states are refocusing their efforts on rehabilitation and re-entry instead of just incarceration, and last week Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia announced the creation of a commission that would look to reform the criminal-justice system in his state.

The change in New York's political leadership helped as well. Gov. David Paterson, who succeeded Eliot Spitzer in April 2008, was arrested as a state senator for protesting the Rockefeller laws. In November, the Democratic Party in New York regained control of the state Senate, marking the first time since the 1930s that Democrats have controlled both legislative houses and the governor's mansion. These factors, combined with a growing nationwide recognition that our current approach to corrections is unsustainable, formed a kind of perfect storm that made changing the Rockefeller laws politically possible. While Republican legislators often represent upstate constituencies, some of which are economically dependent on prisons, state Sen. Eric T. Schneiderman says that opposition to reforming the Rockefeller laws was primarily ideological.

"For years people were just terrified of being accused of being soft on crime," says Schneiderman, who has been leading efforts at reform. "And now the public wants us to be smart on crime, not just tough."

Brian Fischer, commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections, agrees. "People have come to realize that you can't build yourself out of the drug problem. You can't build enough jails to house everybody, and it doesn't solve anything," Fischer says. "Everybody who is in prison doesn't need to be in prison for as long as they are." Fischer emphasizes that the Rockefeller reforms come on the heels of a large policy shift in New York State toward reducing recidivism through re-entry programs and alternatives to incarceration and says that the changes have made things better. "You did not see an increase in recidivism or an increase in crime [as a result of reforms]," Fischer says. Not everyone is happy with the changes. New York City's Police Commissioner Ray Kelly blasted the changes, saying at a City Council hearing yesterday that the reforms were "a big mistake" and would "put criminals back on the streets."

Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, has been fighting the Rockefeller laws for 30 years. The Correctional Association runs the influential Drop The Rock Campaign, which has organized protests and information drives to educate the public about the effect of the Rockefeller laws. While calling the reforms a "significant advance," Gangi said there was still more work to be done. "The change does not represent the end of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. There are provisions left on the books which will require prison terms, sometimes long and hard prison terms for low-level drug offenses. So there is still work for us to do to promote full repeal."

Prior to the just-passed modification, the Rockefeller Drug laws removed all judicial discretion from matters of sentencing. Possession of a certain amount of drugs automatically triggered a harsh sentence. Now, only those convicted of the sale of 2 ounces or more of a hard drug or possession of 4 ounces or more of a hard drug will be subject to mandatory sentencing. The changes mean that around 6,000 people currently imprisoned under the Rockefeller laws -- around 50 percent of those convicted of drug offenses overall -- will be able to petition a court for a sentence reduction. The deal includes money for rehabilitation and re-entry services and calls for a greater role for New York's Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services in monitoring and administering drug-treatment services before and after release.

However, the reforms don't restore full judicial discretion in sentencing. Mandatory sentences remain for those convicted of selling more than half an ounce or possessing more than 4 ounces of a hard drug, with harsher penalties for larger amounts. The same is true of anyone convicted of a nonviolent drug offense who was previously convicted of a violent crime, and anyone who sells drugs to a minor. The primary criteria for triggering mandatory minimum sentencing remains the amount of drugs present, not the individual's role in the transaction. This means that had Terrance Stevens' companion been in possession of more than 4 ounces of cocaine, he would receive the same sentence even under the new laws. Despite the changes, more than 10,000 people will not be eligible to petition the court for a reduction in their sentence.

Gangi says the fight for a full repeal of the laws will continue. Despite the likelihood of a deal, and Gov. Paterson's public support for reforming the Rockefeller laws, as recently as last week hundreds of protesters gathered outside the governor's house to urge passage of the reforms.

On Friday, however, when the deal was first announced, Terrance Stevens had nothing but kind words for Gov. Paterson. "We thank him," Stevens said. "It's a great day for the state."

Correction: An earlier version of this story failed to attribute statistics on drug offenders to a report by the New York Civil Liberties Union.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=reversing_rockefeller

Posted by lois at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)

March 31, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 30, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maximum Security: The True Meaning of Freedom by Alan Gompers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 29, 2009

MA: Freedom watch: Jailhouse bloc The real reason law-and-order types love mandatory-minimum sentencing? It's money in their pockets.

News Features, The Boston Phoenix
Freedom watch: Jailhouse bloc
The real reason law-and-order types love mandatory-minimum sentencing? It's money in their pockets.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE AND KYLE SMEALLIE | December 9, 2008

With aromatic puffs of change, Bay State stoners rejoiced on Election Day. But even the haziest of revelers may have missed the full significance of Question 2, a statewide ballot initiative to decriminalize marijuana possession in small amounts. Not only will this bring more humane and responsible marijuana laws, it will also suppress — however slightly — an insidious, contemporary offshoot of what President Dwight Eisenhower famously referred to as the "military-industrial complex": the idea that if private industry and government joined in promoting ever-increasing defense spending, war as well as national bankruptcy were more likely.

Almost a half-century later, that mindset has extended to both the local and federal law-and-order sectors, which have argued for, and experienced, virtually unabated growth. Today, law-enforcement groups regularly lobby against criminal-punishment reforms, and for the creation of new criminal statutes and overly harsh prison sentences. While these efforts are cloaked as calls for public safety, they are essentially creating more business for themselves.

The problem has become so widespread that some private correctional corporations — companies that subcontract services, and even privately owned jails and prisons, to all levels of government — have even lobbied the government to enact and maintain ever broader criminal laws and higher sentences. Those private prisons are now rolling in the profit, and taking on more prisoners every day as federal and state prisons run out of room to house their inmates.

But these lobbyists' success — and that of various law-enforcement groups — has given rise to a veritable "prison-industrial complex" that not only uses fear to suppress these groups' true intentions — it leaves taxpayers footing the bill.

Bleak house of detention
It was with these self-aggrandizing interests in mind that the Massachusetts Districts Attorneys' Association (MDAA) and other tough-on-crime groups fiercelyopposedthe marijuana-decriminalization referendum.

After all, if the penalties for minor marijuana possession were to remain on the statute books, more police, prosecutors, prison guards, and parole officers — and their lucrative overtime — would also be retained.

To their dismay, however, Question 2 passed by an overwhelming 65 to 35 percent voter margin, and will be implemented 30 days after election results are certified. As a result, many law-enforcement officials may soon be without an important source of job security and additional revenue — namely, the $30 million a year (as one study by a Harvard economics professor estimated) spent enforcing the soon-to-be-history current marijuana-possession laws.

Never mind that the forthcoming statutory reform is, from even a moderate law-and-order perspective, relatively benign. According to Question 2, anyone caught with less than one ounce will forfeit the substance and pay a $100 fine, while minors will additionally have to complete a drug-awareness program (including group sessions and community service). Current penalties for growing and trafficking in marijuana, as well as the prohibition against driving while high, will remain exactly as they are.

These facts were conveniently left out of the MDAA's efforts to "inform" voters.The group could not legally make direct contributions to ballot campaigns — publicly funded groups are unable to do so, thanks to a 1978 Supreme Judicial Court decision — yet in opposing Question 2, it still managed to fuel a whisper campaign and add misleading info to its Web site (hosted, by the way, on the state's ".gov" domain).

Thus, these law-enforcement officials were able to avoid any technical wrongdoing while lobbying for an increased legislative arsenal — feathering their own nests at the expense of liberty and sensible public policy.

Bear in mind, though, that our First Amendment protects not only speech, but also "the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." So state and local law-enforcement personnel, like other citizens, do have the right to lobby voters and even members of the legislature to promote more expansive criminal laws and stricter penalties. But self-serving lobbying and public-relations offensives, disguised as seeking protections for society, should be treated with exceptional scrutiny and skepticism.

Though disheartening, their actions are an age-old fact of life best described by Charles Dickens in his classic 1853 novel Bleak House: "The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself."

Coke vs. crack
A similar battle waged in Massachusetts last summer, when law-enforcement groups sought once again to thwart criminal-justice reform. At the time, a legislative effort to help nonviolent offenders find employment opportunities by changing Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) laws was brought before the State House of Representatives — and, thanks to the efforts of state Attorney General Martha Coakley and other law-enforcement officials, essentially squashed.

The proposed bill would have restricted the type of personal information that some employers receive, thereby assisting the many individuals saddled with CORI records who struggle to find employment and end up back behind bars.

Massachusetts's recidivism rates are nearly 40 percent, according to a study by the Urban Institute Justice Policy Center. And the CORI law's branding of even the most innocuous offender is, by all accounts, partly responsible for this dismal situation. So advocates of the bill asserted that changing CORI could ease the massive overcrowding at the state's prison system, which the Department of Corrections recently estimated to be operating at "144 percent of capacity." (Currently, there are 12,000 inmates imprisoned — a disgraceful state record.)

Another aspect of that same failed bill would have reduced mandatory-minimum sentences for certain drug offenses, which advocates said also contribute to overcrowding.

As the law stands, anyone convicted of selling drugs within 1000 feet of a school zone automatically receives a two-year prison term — leaving no room for judicial discretion. That means a first-time offender with no record could receive more prison time than, say, an armed robber. And the mandatory nature of these sentences eliminates the possibility of parole.

Because of the numerous schools in dense urban areas, poor, black, and Hispanic populations are at a greater risk of facing the mandatory-minimum measures, according to a recent Prison Policy Initiative study.

Yet despite the clear inequalities in the current law, as well as the benefits that reform holds out to both taxpayers and public safety — not to mention liberty — the legislative term ended in July with no action taken on the reform legislation.

This problem with drug sentencing is nothing new. For more than two decades, prison-reform supporters have condemned the federal sentencing disparities for the mostly middle and upper-class defendants caught using cocaine, and the mostly lower-class, inner-city habitants caught with cheaper crack cocaine.

Part of the now-infamous war on crime, a 100-to-1 ratio was implemented in sentencing for crack cocaine. So, a person caught selling five grams of crack received the same prison sentence as someone dealing 500 grams of powder cocaine.

The mandatory-minimums were harsh, too. That same person caught selling five grams of crack received a five-year minimum sentence; 50 grams or more and the minimum was 10 years.

Despite clear racial, economic, and cultural disparities, cries from constituents fell on deaf ears while law-enforcement lobbyists successfully cajoled and frightened congressional leaders.

US Attorney General Michael Mukasey, for one, strongly opposed reducing the crack-cocaine minimums. The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a 325,000 member national organization that bills itself as "the voice of our nations' law-enforcement officers," also spent $550,000 lobbying Congress over the past three years. Among their interests: stopping the Powder-Crack Cocaine Penalty Equalization Act, along with promoting a litany of other Draconian measures.

Prison business
To be fair, government employees weren't the only ones to lobby against crack-cocaine sentence equalization. A little-recognized subset of this vast prison-industrial complex lobbying community is composed of private correctional corporations, which sign lucrative contracts with governments to house inmates for profit, often shipping them to facilities out of state.

It is, of course, in these private prisons' economic interests to see more people in prison serving longer sentences. And with current facilities bursting at the seams, times for this burgeoning industry are good. The country's largest private prison provider, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), spent more than $2.7 million from 2006 through September 2008 on lobbying for stricter laws. Last year alone, the company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, generated $133 million in net income.

For the past 25 years, the CCA has built itself into a corrections powerhouse — it operates nearly 70 facilities housing more than 75,000 detainees. As it does for, say, contractors in Iraq, though, privatization comes with an inevitable lack of oversight. The CCA has been involved in numerous wrongful-death lawsuits, and it has been a constant target of prison-reform groups who claim the private facilities are understaffed and their detainees abused.

Yet another private prison provider, the GEO Group, which has annual revenue topping $1 billion, has come under intense scrutiny for dozens — if not hundreds — of inmate deaths in the past decade. One such prisoner death led to the recent indictment of Vice-President Dick Cheney on November 18, in which a rather ornery Texas state prosecutor claimed that Cheney's substantial investments in the GEO Group made him partly responsible for prisoner abuse — a dubious prosecutorial theory (in fact, it was dismissed this Monday), but with a grain of practical truth.

Nonetheless, states facing prison overcrowding turn to these corporations to outsource inmates. California, for example, has commissioned the CCA to ship convicts as far away as Tennessee (where financially strapped relatives and friends frequently cannot visit). The CCA has exported nearly 4000 California prisoners to states across the country under a $115 million contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Over the next three years, 8000 more are planned to be shipped out of the Golden State.

The societal costs — both human and financial — of these policies and practices are enormous, and growing. California — which carried a $15.2 billion deficit into this fiscal year — spends $10 billion per year on more than 170,000 inmates. Like the Bay State, California also faces high recidivism rates; state records show that more than two-thirds of released inmates return to prison within three years. In this context, a ballot battle — possibly more contentious than Massachusetts's Question 2 scuffle — raged this past election season. Two separate initiatives, each from vastly different perspectives, concerned the state's approach to criminal justice.

The first, Proposition 5, would have expanded treatment programs for those convicted of drug-related and nonviolent crimes. While the costs for more rehabilitation were estimated at $1 billion a year, analysts said $2.5 billion would have been saved from the reduction in prison costs. But, much like what transpired in Massachusetts, the California District Attorney's Association, along with other law-enforcement agencies, vehemently opposed the initiative. These agencies raised nearly $400,000 and, through the Web site of their umbrella group, People Against Proposition 5, issued "facts" such as "Proposition 5 creates an 'Express Lane' for drug dealers to get back on the streets and peddling dope to our kids."

Conversely, nearly $1 billion would have been added to the cops' coffers under Proposition 6, which proposed new laws for prosecutors to fight gang activity. Many of the same law-enforcement agencies that opposed Prop 5 supported Prop 6, joined by some "tough-on-crime" lawmakers who slashed $3 billion in education from the state's 2008 budget. Included among the Prop 6 supporters was — you guessed it — the CCA.

The CCA's lobbying efforts, as well as those of publicly funded law-enforcement agents, wasn't enough to convince Californians, as nearly 70 percent of voters opposed Prop 6. Yet similarly high numbers opted against Prop 5.

Maybe the cops' Prop 6 push for more crime-fighting money and power were too transparent for voters. Interestingly, though, their appeals to public safety in opposing Prop 5 seemed to work. California voters were quite possibly unaware that, by maintaining strict criminal laws and closing off alternatives to incarceration, law-enforcement agencies maintained their strength.

The 1 percent solution?
From Niccolò Machiavelli to Rudy Giuliani, fear has been the foundation of ever-expanding political power (and, for some, job status and security). And it continues to drive the prison-industrial complex.

Just as the United States Department of Justice was able to pressure Congress to enact the infamous USA-Patriot Act in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, here in the Bay State, an appeal to fear ("protect the children") prevailed in stampeding the legislature. In late July, Governor Deval Patrick signed into law "An Act Further Protecting Children," a bill providing stricter mandatory-minimum sentences for sex offenders who target children.

The way this legislation was presented made opposition appear callous and irresponsible. Who, after all, wouldn't want to keep child predators off the streets?

Yet tucked away in this bill are provisions that do far more than simply protect the young. The proposal enables prosecutors to obtain private records from Internet and telephone providers by issuing an "administrative subpoena." Prosecutors, having only to assert that records are "relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation," were granted ever-expanding access into otherwise personal data. The telecoms, in turn, were granted blanket immunity from claims of privacy violation. There was no mass protest from the customers.

But at least one person did object. Newton's Democratic state senator Cynthia Creem voiced skepticism in a July 29 Newton TAB op-ed. Mindful that the most egregious provisions of the Patriot Act have been used to target not just terrorists but journalists, activists, and Muslim charities, she wrote: "I cannot support this attack on privacy rights when less-invasive and equally effective means are available. Our liberties should never be sacrificed in the name of prosecutorial convenience." A few other scattered voices in the State Senate echoed Creem. But perhaps Creem's reference to "convenience" missed the point — prosecutorial power appears to have been the more likely goal.

When the bill was passed by the Massachusetts House and presented to the Senate, Coakley, having learned that other politicians were questioning the bill's scope, lobbied hard so that no language would be changed (which would have required passage again through the House). With robust MDAA support, as well as the backing of key legislative leaders, 11 different role-call votes for amending provisions of the bill were voted down. Less than two weeks after this truncated debate, the bill became law. Experienced observers of the legislative process marveled at the ability of Coakley and her allies to forestall changes to the legislation.

The United States — "land of the free" — has five percent of the world's population, but it also, thanks to the lobbyists and officiants behind the prison-industrial complex, shamefully holds 25 percent of the world's incarcerated. It has a higher rate of imprisonment than the planet's most notorious despotisms. One in 100 Americans is in jail.

These citizens are not only unproductive, they cost the public $45 billion a year, according to a June report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. And yet they also keep a small army of officers and other law-enforcement support personnel on the job. The monumental taxpayer's tab that would be unnecessary with saner criminal-justice laws is virtually incalculable.

It is long past the time to re-think how much credence we should give to those who claim to be experts in law enforcement, but who, in reality, have simply discovered a steady and ever-increasing source of job security.

Their First Amendment right to lobby for endless new criminal laws and ever-tougher prison sentences is indeed constitutionally protected, but this does not mean that these law-enforcement officials' criminal "expertise" should endow them with a free pass from critical scrutiny. Legislators and the public need not sit by idly as their fellow citizens are unjustly arrested, prosecuted, and often incarcerated for increasingly lengthy periods of time as the law-enforcement industry's wallet grows fat. The next time prison-industrial-complex adherents tell us we need tougher laws and sentences for our own good, we should point out precisely whose good is being served.

Harvey Silverglate is a criminal defense and civil-liberties lawyer and writer. Kyle Smeallie, former associate editor of the Boston College Heights, is Silverglate's research assistant and paralegal. Silverglate's next book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, is forthcoming next year from Encounter Books.
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/73092-Freedom-watch-Jailhouse-bloc/
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Posted by lois at 11:22 AM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2009

NY: Press Release from Gov. Paterson on Major Changes to Rockefeller Drug Laws!!

(Scroll down for specific reforms.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
March 27, 2009

GOVERNOR PATERSON AND LEGISLATIVE LEADERS ANNOUNCE THREE-WAY AGREEMENT TO REFORM NEW YORK STATE’S ROCKEFELLER DRUG LAWS

Sweeping Reform Ends Harsh Sentences for Non-violent Addicts

Focuses on Treatment Rather than Punishment to End the Cycle of Addiction

Governor David A. Paterson, Senate Majority Leader Malcolm A. Smith and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver today announced a three-way agreement calling for sweeping reform of the State’s Rockefeller Drug Laws. The agreement eliminates the harsh sentences that the Rockefeller Drug Laws mandated by giving judges total authority to divert non-violent addicts to treatment and greatly expanding drug treatment programs. The agreement strikes a careful and appropriate balance to ensure that non-violent addicted offenders get the treatment they need while predatory kingpins get the punishment they deserve.

“I have been fighting to overhaul the drug laws and restore judicial discretion in narcotics cases since I began my career in public service as a State Senator nearly a quarter-century ago,” Governor Paterson said. “As a resident and representative of Harlem, I saw first-hand the devastating effect that drugs have on our communities, and the devastating effect that ill-considered drug laws and drug policies have had on individuals, families and neighborhoods.”

The Governor added: “I have seen too many lives destroyed by outrageously harsh and ineffective mandatory sentencing laws, and I have also seen too many lives ruined by despicable dealers who prey on the vulnerabilities and addictions of others. I believe this agreement strikes the right balance, and I urge the Legislature to enact it immediately, before more lives and communities are needlessly destroyed.”

Senate Majority Leader Smith said: “Today marks the beginning of a new era for New York’s sentencing laws. Rockefeller Drug Law reform will reverse years of ineffective criminal laws, protect communities and save taxpayers millions of dollars that were wasted on the current policy. With more money going toward treatment instead of costly imprisonment, our State will finally have a smarter policy, giving families a fighting chance in the war on drugs.”

Assembly Speaker Silver said: “Long before we had partners in either the Executive or in the Senate, the Assembly Majority was fighting for real reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. With this legislation, we have taken, at long last, a giant leap in establishing a more just, a more humane and a more effective drug policy in the State of New York. No longer will drug use and addiction be considered solely a criminal matter in this State, but a public health matter as well. This legislation recognizes that drug addiction is a disease which calls out for treatment rather than incarceration. I commend the tenacity and the dedication of my colleagues and the leadership of Assemblymembers Aubry, Lentol and Weinstein for their unyielding commitment to this issue.”

Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson said: “Today, the Governor and the Legislature have agreed on a major change in public policy. We have created a balanced approach to drug addiction and crime. Our ability to reduce the flow of drugs in our communities is dependent on our ability to reduce the demand. We are now shifting resources to treat drug addiction as a medical problem. By diverting addicts to drug treatment courts, we believe we can get people off drugs and thereby reduce the demand for them. Study after study shows that our policies will make our communities safer and save the taxpayers millions of dollars. Today, we begin anew, offering offenders an opportunity to receive treatment, while maintaining that the safety and security of our neighborhoods, cities, and State remains paramount.”

Senator John L. Sampson said: “This is a promise made, and a promise kept. The Rockefeller Drug Laws have decimated communities and destroyed lives. Our Democratic conference said that once in the Majority we would be instrumental in making changes that positively impact all people across our State. Taking on this issue in our first year as the Majority shows the people that the Senate is serious and will not back down from the big issues. Reforms we made in 2004 were just a down payment, we’ve now paid off the mortgage. So I congratulate the Governor and members of the Assembly. I also congratulate my colleagues, Senators Schneiderman and Hassell-Thompson, who along with myself, were at the table and the forefront of the push to reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws.”

Senator Eric T. Schneiderman said: “This legislation delivers a big dose of sanity to our State’s sentencing practices. It will make our communities safer, save money and, most importantly, save lives. Thousands of people from every corner of this State will benefit from these reforms. Today NewYork chooses treatment over incarceration—30 years is enough.”

Assemblyman Jeffrion L. Aubry said: “My Assembly colleagues and I continue in our pledge not to give up our fight for greater reform of New York State’s ineffective and imprudent drug laws. While today’s agreement brings us closer to our goal, we recognize the need to do more. We will continue to work with our partners to completely reform the Rockefeller Drug Laws.”

Assemblyman Joseph R. Lentol said: “Thirty-six years ago I voted against the enactment of the Rockefeller Drug Laws. It was clear to me that simply locking drug offenders away without treatment would not be effective. I am pleased that we are finally towards turning this travesty around and judges will once again have more of the discretion they need.”

Assemblywoman Helene E. Weinstein said: “Judicial discretion has always been one of the core principles for which the Assembly has fought. With the expansion of drug courts and other options to treat addicts, we are moving toward dealing with the underlying problems of drug offenders – giving them the opportunity to get treatment and reduce recidivism in New York.”

The agreement will give judges the discretion to divert non-violent drug addicted individuals to treatment alternatives that are shown to be far more successful than prison in ending the cycle of addiction. Crucially, it also commits tens of millions of dollars to existing and new treatment programs.

“It makes no sense to give judges the authority to place non-violent addicted offenders into treatment if there is nowhere to treat them,” Governor Paterson said. “We must not only overhaul the drug laws, but also provide an infrastructure to ensure that we successfully rehabilitate those who are addicted.”

There are three significant pieces of the agreement. First, it creates a drug treatment program to be administered by drug court judges.

+ Under this program, judges will have discretion to place addicted first and second-time drug offenders into judicially-approved alcohol and substance abuse treatment – over the objectionsof prosecutors.

+ This agreement also recognizes that drug-addicted persons often commit other crimes, such as property and theft offenses. This agreement will make treatment available to these non-violent addicted offenders who commit these offenses.
+ The agreement maximizes an addicted offender’s chance of success in overcoming addiction, by relying on New York’s highly successful drug courts to administer the new treatment model. Drug courts use specially-trained judges who build relationships with offenders, closely monitor their progress and reward their successes. They are also staffed with case managers and vocational and employment specialists to assist offenders in obtaining education and jobs.

+ For the first time, the agreement gives judges the authority to dismiss all charges or seal the arrest and conviction records of offenders who successfully complete a judicially-sanctioned treatment program. It also gives judges complete discretion to determine an appropriate penalty for those offenders who are unable to succeed in the treatment program.
+ The agreement recognizes that relapses are often part of recovery from long-term drug addiction. It would require judges to consider whether a non-incarceratory remedy, such as heightened supervision or more frequent testing and treatment, could effectively be used if an offender under court supervision suffers a relapse.
+ The agreement vastly expands the availability of drug treatment programs and commits tens of millions of dollars to inpatient treatment programs, outpatient treatment programs and community residential facilities.

+ Recognizing that some offenders may require more supervision than can be provided through community-based drug treatment programs, the agreement expands the use of programs such as the “shock” incarceration program and the Willard drug treatment program, to give judges additional sentencing options for these offenders.
+ The agreement also permits the State Division of Parole to discharge early from continued parole supervision those drug offenders who have demonstrated success and rehabilitation while serving a term of post-release supervision.

Second, the agreement relieves new offenders from some of the old Rockefeller Drug Law’s mandatory sentencing provisions and provides additional relief to offenders who remain incarcerated under the old laws.

+ The agreement eliminates mandatory State prison sentences for first-time class B felony drug offenders and second-time non-violent class C, D and E drug offenders, making them eligible for a term of probation that could also include drug treatment, or a local jail sentence.

+ The agreement permits class B drug felons who meet eligibility criteria and who are currently serving Rockefeller Drug Law sentences to enter the six-month shock incarceration program when they are within three years of release. If successful, they would be entitled to early release from prison.
+ The agreement also requires the Board of Parole to consider current, lower sentencing ranges when deciding whether to release a class B drug offender to parole supervision.

Third, the agreement ensures that offenders who are not addicted, but who profit from the addictions of others, are appropriately sentenced to State prison.

+ The Governor believes that law enforcement should target drug kingpins instead of low-level drug users and his agreement creates a new drug “kingpin” offense that targets organized drug traffickers who profit from and prey on drug users.
+ The agreement also creates new crimes to ensure that adults who sell drugs to children are appropriately required to serve time in State prison.

+ Finally, the agreement retains mandatory prison sentences for class B predicate drug offenders, but allows judges to impose lower prison terms that are similar to those in other states.

Posted by lois at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)

March 27, 2009

"The Jim Crow Laws of the 21st Century": Will New York Change?

March 27, 2009
"The Jim Crow Laws of the 21st Century": Will New York Change?
Odile Weissenborn
Posted March 26, 2009
Huffington Post

Our new president came in on a platform of change, and just a few months after his inauguration, we're seeing some exceptional things. The pristine fountains on the White House lawn were dyed green this year for St. Patrick's day. Big-shot executives are now giving back their bonus pay! New government is shaking things up--and not just on a federal level.

In New York, the 36-year-old Rockefeller Drug Laws may be massively overhauled. With Democrats in charge of both arms of the NY State Legislature and in the governor's seat, reformers--joined by celebrities like Russell Simmons, P. Diddy, Susan Sarandon and Mariah Carey--have their big chance.

Passed under Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1973, the Rockefeller Drug Laws put anyone caught with 2 ounces or more of drugs (4 ounces for narcotics) in prison for a minimum of 15 years. Five years ago the minimum sentence was brought down a notch, to 8 years (and the amount of drugs needed to convict on certain charges was raised).

Judges can't consider the circumstances when imposing a sentence--criminal background, for example, or role in a crime--since prison sentences are mandated without exception. And judges are prohibited from ordering treatment or rehab as an alternative to incarceration. As a consequence, prisons have been steadily filling up these past 36 years with low-level nonviolent offenders.

Proponents of reform argue these prison sentences are ineffective and an injustice. They say low-level drug criminals aren't cured in prison cells; they argue taxpayer money should be spent on drug treatment programs or mental health services. They say most low-level offenders come from disadvantaged communities, and they're overwhelmingly of color. A report released two weeks ago by the NYCLU charged, "The Rockefeller Drug Laws are the Jim Crow laws of the 21st Century."

Others say the Rockefeller Drug Laws keep criminals locked up; they're a great help to prosecutors and law enforcement. They say handing offenders off to treatment facilities will just absolve them of responsibility. They say druggies will repopulate the streets, and neighborhoods will become dangerous again.

The New York Senate has been debating the issue. Instead of voting on it, they decided this year to throw it in with the budget. Some say that was a neat way to avoid a vote that the slim majority might lose, but Democrats said through their spokesman that "it's as much of a budget issue as it is a sentencing issue." They reason that alternatives to incarceration--like drug treatment services--cost money.

Palladia, one of New York City's largest multi-service nonprofits, has forty years of substance abuse treatment services under its belt. It would welcome more funding, but with caution. I spoke with Debbie Pantin, Vice President of Outpatient and Centralized Services and Susan Ohanesian, Vice President of Residential Services. "We must be prepared for significantly increased demands on these systems," they said. How the funding is used--what programs are put in place and how they are implemented--is just as important as actually getting the money.

And they aren't foolishly ready to absorb every single low-level offender. "The professional treatment community in New York understands that not everyone who is arrested for a drug crime is a drug user," they told me, but "we know that treatment works and that treatment is a more rational and cost effective solution...than is mandatory incarceration."

So treatment works, okay. But why can't prisoners receive treatment in prison? Because data and studies prove that services offered in prison for addicts (or for those suffering from mental illness) are woefully inadequate. Last month, the abysmal level of care in its prison system prompted a federal court to order the state of California to simply release tens of thousands of inmates, up to one third of all its prisoners. The ruling reads, "There is no relief other than a prison release order that can remedy the constitutionally inadequate medical and mental health care."

And this brings us back to the Rockefeller Drug Laws which have been sending a stream of low-level drug offenders to prison. According to the Partnership for Responsible Drug Information, "The percentage of the prison population incarcerated for drug offenses has been increasing since 1973, the year the Rockefeller Drug Laws were enacted."

And the New York State Assembly's own website says the Rockefeller Drug Laws are the reason that "large numbers of drug offenders continue to be incarcerated in New York State prisons. As of January 1, 2008, 13,425 drug offenders were in state prison representing more than 21% of the male prison population and more than 33% of the female population." Nationally (remember California?), the prison population has nearly tripled.

But wait. The Big Apple is bucking the trend. "According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, New York had the largest decrease in the rate of incarceration of any state in the nation from 2000 to 2007, even as the incarceration rate increased in 37 other states," Brian Fischer, Commissioner of the New York State Department of Correctional Services, said last month. So if New York's prison population is declining, where's the problem? Why are reformers who say prison is a waste of money still protesting?

Because they don't just want a smaller prison population, they want better alternative-to-incarceration programs. In fact, many people attribute the prisoner decline to the success of these programs, for example the drug treatment programs offered by Palladia.

Some are afraid that "alternative to incarceration" are fancy words for being soft on crime. Who better to ask than a former federal prosecutor?

At the Department of Justice, Paul Butler handled drug cases and prosecuted a U.S. Senator, FBI agents, and other law enforcement officials. Now a professor at George Washington University Law School, Paul Butler is not soft on crime. "I think incarceration should play a role. There are some people who deserve prison," he told me. "But there are literally hundreds of thousands of people now who don't deserve to be there."

The low-level nonviolent drug offenders targeted by Rockefeller Drug Laws, says Butler, don't belong in prison. "When you lock someone up with a violent offender for years, in fact it makes us less safe. If it helped us by making it safer then maybe it would be worth it, but it doesn't have that effect," he points out. "And you can certainly get drugs in prison, so it's not like it's preventing you from using drugs."

After 17 years in prison, Paul Wright is now editor of Prison Legal News, which he co-founded while incarcerated. "If you ask me of a single positive aspect about going to prison," he said to me, "I'm at a loss to name one. Prisons in this country, they're not just brutalizing and dehumanizing, but the negative effects far outstrip the positives: job loss, loss of housing. Putting people in prisons is a pretty drastic step." He went on to say that drug crimes are best prevented through treatment. When I asked about drug treatment in prison, he said, "We should try to keep people out of prisons in the first place."

Butler, perhaps surprisingly, agrees. Beyond saying incarceration is inappropriate for those nabbed by the Rockefeller Drug Laws, he explains how mass incarceration isn't an appropriate solution to crime. "Although it's counterintuitive," he admits, "If fewer people go to prison, public safety will benefit." He says there's a tipping point; prisons reduce crime to a point, but when too many are incarcerated, society suffers. Reducing incarceration will lead to a reduction in crime. This is exactly what we're witnessing in New York, and the trend will continue, says Butler, if reform continues.

In Butler's forthcoming book, Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice, he explains why incarceration is innately harmful (this view is actually an academic theory). Perhaps the most interesting concept is that "the policy of mass incarceration creates the reasonable expectation that many people are going to go to prison." Prison becomes a rite of passage, and "mass incarceration changes the way that people think about crime and punishment....If you expect to do some time, the deterrent effect of the criminal law disappears."

Butler isn't alone in his views, and even for a former DOJ prosecutor, his support for alternatives to incarceration isn't that radical. The former presidents of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, fed up with the failure of the war on drugs, also recommend alternatives to incarceration. Their op-ed last month in the Wall Street Journal sounded like an ode to Rockefeller Drug Law reform: "We must start by changing the status of addicts from drug buyers in the illegal market to patients cared for by the public-health system."

New York's Governor Paterson agrees. In his first State of the State address, on January 7, he said, "I can't think of a criminal justice strategy that has been more unsuccessful than the Rockefeller Drug Laws." But he somehow has to satisfy his conservative constituents, like those at the Daily News who say reform of the Drug Laws would put "hardened criminals...in line for easy breaks."

Those who are afraid of being soft on crime may want to look elsewhere. The high cost of trials is what's making us soft on crime--not the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Richard Deiter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, was interviewed by Solomon Moore of the New York Times, who wrote, "in June, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice reported that the death penalty system cost $138 million a year." According to Deiter, "the economic meltdown and budget constraints were dissuading prosecutors from seeking capital trials, which usually cost millions of dollars and take decades to complete."

The expense of trials, and prison, is especially relevant in today's economic climate. Columnist and pundit Errol Louis has been reminding us that reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws could save us money. "With the state facing a $2 billion deficit, it's fiscally foolish," he writes, "to slap nonviolent, first-time drug offenders with 15-year mandatory minimum sentences." He says we can use the money we'd save on alternative-to-incarceration programs. "Justice reinvestment," he calls this. "Spending prison money in ways that cut down on crime and those expensive cells." Drug treatment, for example, is a lot cheaper than paying "rent" on a cell.

In October of 2002, some folks were arrested outside then-governor Pataki's office. They were protesting the Rockefeller Drug Laws. Among them, given a summons for disorderly conduct, was Nelson Rockefeller's very own granddaughter. An incredible reversal--kind of like Madoff going to jail, and like all the other change we're seeing now. Some things, though, shouldn't change.

Guess who was with Nelson's granddaughter in 2002, arrested alongside her in an effort to change the Rockefeller Drug Laws? Governor Paterson. I hope he still has that fighting spirit; I hope he hasn't changed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/odile-weissenborn/the-jim-crow-laws-of-the_b_178245.html

Posted by lois at 01:03 PM | Comments (0)

March 26, 2009

The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009- will undertake a top-to bottom review of our entire criminal justice system and offer recommendations for reform"

Senator Jim Webb of VA has introduced The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009 today.

I encourage you to take a few minutes and read the full-bill http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/CriminalJusticeReform_Legislation.pdf

Here is a fact sheet on the Bill (http://webb.senate.gov/email/incardocs/FactSheeti.pdf), which according to Senator Webb will be "undertake a top-to-bottom review of our entire criminal justice system" and to offer recommendations for reform."

Please encourage your Senators and Congresspeople to support passage of the Act.

Here is part of Webb's statement:

The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009 that I introduced in the Senate on March 26, 2009 will create a blue-ribbon commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom. I believe that it is time to bring together the best minds in America to confer, report, and make concrete recommendations about how we can reform the process.

Why We Urgently Need this Legislation:
With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses 25% of the world's reported prisoners.
Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980.
Four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals.
Approximately 1 million gang members reside in the U.S., many of them foreign-based; and Mexican cartels operate in 230+ communities across the country.
Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard and often nonexistent, undermining public safety and making it extremely difficult for ex-offenders to become full, contributing members of society.

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration.

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

March 25, 2009

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

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

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

OH: Prosecutors seek elimination of mandatory prison for some drug offenders

Prosecutors seek elimination of mandatory prison for some drug offenders
Tuesday, March 24, 2009 3:08 AM
By Alan Johnson
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Ohio's county prosecutors are recommending major changes to state drug laws, including the elimination of mandatory prison sentences for trafficking and possession of chemicals for the manufacture of drugs, except in the most serious cases.

The prosecutors also want to reduce several other non-drug crimes to misdemeanors from felonies, including assaulting a school teacher, administrator or school bus operator without physical harm; injuring a police dog or horse; illegal use of food stamps; and unauthorized use of a cable television or telecommunication device.

If approved, the changes would ratchet back some "tough-on-crime" laws enacted in the 1980s and 1990s.

John E. Murphy, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association, said the changes are intended to counter the Strickland administration's proposal to ease prison overcrowding by allowing inmates to accumulate seven days of "earned credit" per month by participating in programming. The credit would allow them to reduce their sentences -- even if they're serving definite or "flat" sentences -- so they can be released earlier.

"We do support a lot of mandatory penalties that deal with violence. But for crimes like drug trafficking, we have some reservation about whether there should be a mandatory prison sentence. It's still a crime. It still has a presumption for prison.

"It would still be up to the judge. In many cases, the judges would still send them to prison," Murphy said.

The prosecutors also want to give judges more flexibility in sending second-time offenders to drug treatment instead of incarceration. Now, only first-time offenders are eligible.

"There is a little bit different view on drug offenses than there was 20 years ago when many of these laws were enacted," he said.

Ohio prisons chief Terry Collins, who proposed the earned-credit idea to legislators as part of the administration's biennial budget, said he's glad prosecutors "are willing to help. We'll take their good ideas and put them with our ideas and improve the criminal-justice system."

However, Collins said, he's not throwing in the towel on the earned-credit proposal. He estimated it would save the state $11.4 million annually by removing 2,644 prisoners from the overcrowded system.

Ian N. Friedman, a Cleveland lawyer who is president of the 700-member Ohio Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, called the proposal "a realistic approach" that recognizes the overcrowding in Ohio's prisons and also acknowledges that there are alternative means of dealing with these cases other than prison.

David Diroll, head of the Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission who has been working with Ohio laws for more than 30 years, called the proposal "an historic change for the prosecutors"

"I'm not sure, as Terry Collins said, that we've lost the war on drugs, but we're in a holding pattern," Diroll said.

Under the prosecutors' proposal, the amount of drugs that would trigger a mandatory prison sentence would be very large -- a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of powder cocaine and 20 kilograms of marijuana, Diroll said.

"From the perspective of the judges, they have wanted more flexibility in these matters. It's one of those things where out of crisis comes opportunity."

Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost said many felony upgrades enacted by the General Assembly in recent years, including making felonies of some crimes against people in specific jobs, did not have the blessing of prosecutors statewide.

"A victim is a victim, no matter what. You bleed the same way."

Yost said the proposed changes would not mean drug dealers would be placed on probation, but judges will have more options in dealing with them.
http://www.dispatchpolitics.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/03/24/copy/DRUG_LAW.ART_ART_03-24-09_B1_Q5DB7A2.html?adsec=politics&sid=101

Posted by lois at 02:22 PM | Comments (0)

KS: Johnson County’s prison avoidance operation could lose more than $868,500 from the state

Johnson County’s prison avoidance operation could lose more than $868,500 from the state
Posted:03/21/2009

Mark Winton’s handshake was firm and his voice strong when he said he was a former drug addict on his last chance to stay out of prison.

“I know I can make it,” the Olathe man pledged.

Supporting him is one of the largest prison avoidance operations in Kansas. He’s among about 245 residents at a sprawling site at New Century AirCenter — a $12.8 million-a-year operation funded by Johnson County, the state, grants and user fees.

Most offenders there leave to work and make money. Governments save money.

These kinds of community alternatives are far cheaper than prisons. A recent Pew Center on the States report urged states to use them more and praised Kansas for helping fund the programs.

But when budgets are stressed, money for alternatives tends to shrink. The proposed state budget in Kansas now calls for cutting about $2 million that helps pay for the residential offender programs in Johnson and Sedgwick counties.

Johnson County stands to lose more than $868,500 from the state, and with its own tight budget, the county might have to reduce the $6.1 million it pays, said Betsy Gillespie, director of county corrections.

All that would boost other costs, Gillespie said, when offenders go to jail or prison instead.

It also would be a step back for a Johnson County operation that began with one building and 33 beds in the 1980s and gradually grew to four buildings, hundreds of beds and many operations.

Drunken drivers

Society and governments struggle with what to do with a constant flow of repeat drunken drivers, and the New Century complex provides one option.

Under Kansas law, a felony drunken driver can go to a county jail for up to one year but not to prison. This saves the state money on prisons but throws the cost onto the counties.

Two years ago, Johnson County started a work-release program for those with four drunken-driving convictions or more. The 60-bed unit generally runs near capacity, and 134 people were admitted last year. More than eight in 10 successfully served their time.

Repeat drunken drivers actually have more going for them than many other criminals, said Antonio Booker, a director at the county corrections center.

They tend to be older and have stable jobs, he said.

Michael Sesto, 47, of Shawnee, said last week that he was due for release in two days.

“This was a needed program for me,” the carpenter said, and it allowed him to keep working and keep his house. He got in trouble because he kept trying to meet the right woman in nightclubs, he said, and now he’s part of a church singles group.

For the DUI offenders, he said, alcohol treatment begins when they leave the program and start parole.

“That’s where the rubber meets the pavement,” he said, and more challenges are ahead.

‘Legal side of the law’

Don Womack, 34, breezed down a hallway waving a certificate of completion, which he got after serving 96 days for possessing cocaine.

He was among 155 criminals in another program, which allows them to work while attending self-improvement programs. They stay two to four months.

More than 500 people were admitted to that operation last year. More than three of four graduate successfully, according to past studies.

Here, as in the rest of the complex, residents can be seen by a nurse or mental health worker. Throughout the New Century complex, about 65 percent of residents get medicine for mental illnesses.

Womack, who came to the center from prison, stopped at the credit union on site, where people can deposit or cash checks and save money. Many can’t get a bank account on the outside or have never had one.

Womack found a good job at a Lenexa manufacturing company while serving time at New Century program and saved money toward a car.

“It gave me a chance to live on the legal side of the law,” he said. “I was at a point in my life when I was ready.”

Another building in the complex houses the therapeutic community, which is six months of substance abuse treatment and self-improvement work. It holds 40. Addicted clients can’t leave until they finish the six months. Many then move to work release.

Winton, 37, recently graduated from the treatment community into work release, where he hopes to learn to be an electrician.

He’s a cocaine addict who has been in and out of the system for more than 15 years, he said, including three stints in prison. He said the long drug treatment and improvement work got him past personal problems that fed anger, resentment and bad behavior.

“I came here with low self-esteem,” he said.

Winton said he intended to go straight and be a better father to his nine children by six women. He’ll really do it this time, he said.

He said he got to this point after using drugs while on probation. A judge sent him to New Century as a last chance to avoid prison.

Winton said he would make good on that chance.

So far, Booker said, “he’s done an excellent job.”

If Winton finally stops breaking the law, he’ll save the state the cost of locking him up. The Pew Center study puts the national average at $29,000 a year.

Every little bit helps.

In fiscal year 2008, the study reported, Kansas spent $341 million on corrections, or 5.6 percent of its general fund.
http://m.kansascity.com/kcstar/db_10893/contentdetail.htm;jsessionid=A7A42481212D882B1F56AE46E8669453?contentguid=XKtKydiX&storycount=19&detailindex=1&full=true#display

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

March 21, 2009

MA Bar Association: MBA-backed criminal reform legislation returns for 2009-10 session

Lawyers Journal
MBA-backed criminal reform legislation returns for 2009-10 session
By Kelsey Sadoff
March 20, 2009

Criminal reform bills that failed to make it through last year’s legislative session are being reintroduced for the 2009-10 session with high expectations for their passage, which would usher in significant changes to the state’s criminal policies.

Last year, the Massachusetts Bar Association championed reforms to both sentencing guidelines and the Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) law, but the legislation was released from committee too late to advance before the end of the 2008-09 session. Immediate Past President David W. White Jr. made sentencing and CORI reform a priority for his term, and 2008-09 President Edward W. McIntyre has continued the push for reform.

The MBA is supporting a CORI bill that the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute and a coalition of groups, under the name of Massachusetts Alliance to Reform CORI (MARC), are focused on having addressed by the Legislature. The MBA has proposed recommendations for the CORI bill, which includes addressing access (law enforcement access versus non-law enforcement entities), accuracy and sealing old records.

The MBA’s Drug Policy Task Force is also set to issue a report this year that will include comprehensive data and facts that will strongly support arguments for sentencing reform in Massachusetts.

“This new legislative session holds much promise in the advancement of criminal sentencing and CORI reform legislative measures,” said MBA General Counsel and Acting Executive Director Martin W. Healy. “Criminal justice reforms have been identified as a priority area of interest by a number of legislators. We are in the second half of the (Gov. Deval) Patrick administration and the governor is considered a veteran on the Hill. We are hopeful that Patrick will push hard on these greatly needed reforms.”

More than 20 years ago, mandatory minimum sentencing reforms for drug offenders were enacted in Massachusetts to deal with crimes including trafficking, possession with intent to distribute, distribution in a school zone and distribution to a minor. The mandatory minimum sentences effectively ended an offender’s opportunity for parole if incarcerated.

Speaking against the current mandatory minimum sentencing policy at the Jan. 15 MBA House of Delegates meeting, the Drug Policy Task Force received HOD endorsement on two pieces of drug and treatment legislation that the MBA will support during the 2009-10 legislative session.

HOD unanimously voted in favor of the proposed legislation, which would revise the drug sentencing structure by eliminating mandatory minimums for most drug dealing crimes and expand parole and work release opportunities for incarcerated drug offenders, while also enhancing the existing system of diversion of drug offenders to drug treatment programs as an alternative to incarceration.

“The MBA is taking a position because current drug policies have failed; because they are expensive (Department of Correction’s inmate cost is more than $47,000; county jail is $39,000) and growing exponentially,” said MBA President Edward W. McIntyre.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Correction, the state prison population increased by 384 percent from 1980 to 2008 and the number of drug offenders increased 2,394 percent, from 109 in 1980 to 2,610 in 2008. Since the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing reforms, drug offenders have made up more than 25 percent of the state prison population, as opposed to the 4 percent of drug offenders making up the state prison population in 1980.

“Essentially, the MBA’s position is about deploying a public health approach rather than a failed criminal justices paradigm to drug offenders,” said McIntyre. “It’s about treatment rather than incarceration; about accelerated reintegration into the family unit, the community’s social structure and workforce. Studies from across the country and around the world demonstrate that intelligent policies that move away from the incarceration model to a treatment, accelerated assimilation program, reduce the rate of crime and the staggering cost of incarceration — which is the second most rapidly growing budget item next to health care.”

“Parole is really a function of getting a person in a productive relationship with society and their community,” said MBA immediate Past President David W. White Jr. and founding member of the Drug Policy Task Force. “Offering parole allows prisons to make room for more dangerous criminals, reducing the rate of crime overall by restoring families, neighborhoods and communities by making ex-offenders better citizens, and saves the taxpayers money.”

In the November 2008 general election, Massachusetts citizens voted to decriminalize marijuana. Legislators, who for years have been focused on discussion revolving around the belief that constituents want stronger punishments for low-level drug offenders, now have proof that the public actually wants to reduce the resources designated to punishment of low-level drug offenses. White believes the “commonwealth, now in severe economic crisis, can handle the drug sentencing issues in a way to save millions and millions of dollars.”

Furthermore, current mandatory minimum drug sentences have disproportionately impacted cities and their minority populations. Current school zone laws, which increase punishment drug offenses within 1,000 feet of a school with mandatory sentences — regardless of prior knowledge if school is in session, intent to distribute, time of day or awareness of proximity to a school — have created a situation where almost an entire city can be considered a school zone.

“The result is an impact on minorities,” said White. “The bill didn’t have that intent when it was enacted, but it has discriminatory consequences. We would like the statute changed to 100 feet.” White pointed out that approximately 300 people are sentenced for school zone offenses each year.

“In the commonwealth, we spend more money on jails and prisons then on higher education,” White said. “It is time for more sensible priorities.”
ttp://www.massbar.org/for-attorneys/publications/lawyers-journal/2009/march/mba-backed-criminal-reform-legislation

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

March 20, 2009

MA: Round Two for Question 2 The battle over marijuana laws moves to the local level.

News
Round Two for Question 2
The battle over marijuana laws moves to the local level.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
By Maureen Turner
Valley Advocate (Northampton, MA)

Drug law reform advocates scored a decisive victory last November when voters approved, by a 65 to 35 margin, Question 2, which decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana. Under the new law, which went into effect in January, possession of one ounce or less of pot became a civil offense, punishable by a $100 fine but sparing the defendant a criminal record, sanctions like a loss of federal student loans, and even possible jail time.

But even with such a clear victory, reformers have not been able to rest easy. While Question 2 garnered support from some surprising sectors (law enforcement professionals who see prosecution for minor possession as unduly harsh and a burden on the system; conservatives who question the tens of millions spent in Massachusetts each year to arrest and process the defendants), it also faced formidable political opposition from the state's district attorneys, police chiefs and the Patrick administration. Indeed, no sooner had voters approved the law than opponents began strategizing to undercut its intent.

Their first line of attack: municipal ordinances. To the great irritation of some drug law reformers, Question 2 included a provision that allows towns and cities to create their own ordinances targeting small-time possession in public places. Prompted by a model ordinance distributed by Attorney General Martha Coakley, a number of communities have passed or are considering public smoking ordinances that would impose additional civil fines, sometimes triple the amount mandated by Question 2. Those communities include Springfield, where the City Council is poised to approve such an ordinance next week.

*

In Springfield, the public smoking ordinance was introduced by City Councilor Jimmy Ferrera, a state Trial Court employee who supervises people sentenced to community service. Under the ordinance, a first-time ticket for smoking pot in public would prompt a $100 fine on top of the $100 fine created by Question 2. The municipal fine would increase to $200 for a second ticket and $300 for any further tickets. Originally, Ferrera had proposed a $300 fine for all offenses; the fees were staggered after some councilors and members of the public expressed concern that the fine was too steep for first- and second-time offenders.

Ferrera told the Advocate he introduced the ordinance to create consistency in the law. Right now, he noted, police can arrest someone for having an open container of alcohol in public, but not arrest someone for smoking a joint in public."We're just trying to continue our fight on quality-of-life issues," he said.

Ferrera said he was also inspired by similar efforts in other communities. "I just didn't want to see Springfield kind of forgotten," he said. "We could be a leader in the region."

The ordinance, he added, would not create a dramatic shift in the Police Department's day-to-day business. "Believe me & [public marijuana smoking] is not a major priority for the police," Ferrera said. "Murder, rapes robberies—those are major categories for the police, especially with tough budget cuts when there a reduction in personnel."

Several communities—including Salem, Lynn, Methuen and Medway—have already passed public possession ordinances with fines ranging from $100 to $300. MassCann—the Massachusetts chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML—has been tracking similar efforts in other towns and cities. According to MassCann, at least 11 municipal governments besides Springfield—including Pittsfield and North Adams—have similar efforts underway. Others are likely to join the list; in Chicopee, for example, the police chief has called on the City Council to create a similar ordinance.

"These people who were opposed to Question 2—who we sometimes refer to as 'sore losers'—are trying to overturn the stated will of the voters," said Bill Downing, president of MassCann.

Question 2 was opposed by a long list of law enforcement professionals; the Massachusetts District Attorneys, in particular, threw considerable political capital and cash at trying to defeat the new law, which they warned would send a pro-drug message to kids. That comes as no surprise to Downing and other reformers, who note that police officers' and prosecutors' livelihoods depend in large part on drug arrests and prosecutions. "You have people who have a professional interest in maintaining the status quo in the drug war,"Downing said.

But for elected officials like Ferrera to try to circumvent the intent of Question 2 especially grates backers of the measure. "I think it's shameful. I think it's an insult," said Downing. "It should be up to the citizens of that city to decide, and the citizens of Springfield have already decided. They voted for a $100 fine."

*

Ferrera maintains there's nothing wrong with local governments adding their own marijuana fines; after all, when voters approved Question 2, they also approved its provision that allowed the creation of municipal ordinances.

In fact, the language of the law did not specify that these municipal ordinances had to be civil in nature—leading to an interpretation that cities and towns could, in fact, recriminalize minor pot possession. But that's a step Ferrera says he's not interested in taking. "I don't really think that was the original intent of Question 2, to make it criminal at this stage of the game," he said. "That would be pushing the envelope a little bit too much, I think."

The fact that Question 2 allowed for the creation of any municipal penalties was a point of some contention among various drug-reform advocates. "Unfortunately, the language of Question 2—which was not written by my organization—allowed for local ordinances," said MassCann's Downing.

Question 2 was drafted by the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy, a non-profit ballot question committee largely funded by billionaire drug reform activist George Soros. CSMP manager Whitney Taylor was unavailable for comment last week; her voice mail referred reporters to the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project.

"We really can't argue with the law," which allowed cities and towns to create their own civil fines, Dan Bernath, an MPP spokesman, told the Advocate. "That said," he added, "it seems that it's premature for localities to pass these ordinances before they really see how the law works." Eleven other states have already decriminalized minor pot possession, some as long ago as the 1970s. And studies show that in those states, marijuana use and crime rates have not increased as a result of the law, he noted.

Bernath laughed off an earlier statement made by Ferrera, who warned that if neighboring communities toughened up their public marijuana laws and Springfield didn't, the city would become a haven for pot smokers. "That's a frivolous fear," Bernath said. "To continue wringing our hands over this is silly and little bit embarrassing.'

*

Ferrera's ordinance received two necessary approvals from the City Council in February; on March 23, the Council will take a required third vote.

The ordinance will then go to Mayor Domenic Sarno for approval. According to mayoral spokesman Tom Walsh, it would be "premature" for Sarno to take a position on the ordinance, since he's yet to see it in its final form.

"Mayor Sarno will solicit input from public safety officials including Police Commissioner William Fitchet and Hampden County District Attorney William Bennett prior to reaching a decision," Walsh wrote in a statement to the Advocate. "Mayor Sarno is interested in knowing from the public safety officials whether this ordinance will serve as a valuable tool to combat crime in the city and help to create a better quality of life for our city's residents."

Fitchet has already stated his support of the ordinance, while Bennett, for whom Sarno used to work, was vocal in his opposition to Question 2.

Ferrera's ordinance has drawn some public opposition, including opposition from people who've spoken out against it at earlier Council meetings. They include Bill Newman, a Northampton civil liberties attorney, who urged the Council not to rush to create an ordinance and warned it could clog up the court system with people protesting fines that could reach $400.

Downing, of MassCann, said it's up to the public to pressure elected officials to respect the intent of the law voters overwhelmingly passed in November. In a case like this, that's not always easy. "It's difficult to get people to stand up in front of town officials and speak in favor of an issue that has such a heavy social stigma attached to it, especially if you've got police officials there," Downing said. "Unfortunately, it's up to the people themselves to assert their rights."
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=9376

Posted by lois at 10:06 AM | 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)

March 10, 2009

New look at sentencing guidelines for cocaine

"The U.S. Sentencing Commission tallied all 4,262 crack cases for 2006. It calculated a median drug quantity of 1.8 ounces."

New look at sentencing guidelines for cocaine
Claire Cooper
Sunday, March 8, 2009
SF Chronicle

Willie Mays Aikens has returned to Kansas City, where he's still a star. He's worked in construction and hopes to land a job with Major League Baseball, maybe as a counselor, he says, "talking to people about what drugs can do to a person."

People in Kansas City still talk about Aikens' four home runs for the Royals in the 1980 World Series. They seem ready to forgive the crack cocaine bust that earned him a 16-year prison term.

"It takes a big man to step back into the limelight after such a dark path," wrote one blogger.

Aikens' path was dark indeed, but not because his crime was large. The drug sale that sent him to prison was 64 grams, about a quarter cup. The federal cocaine sentencing statutes treat that much crack the same as a bucket of cocaine powder, the material from which crack is produced.

Aikens' case exemplifies all that's gone wrong because of these federal sentencing laws: The focus on petty crimes. The distortion of priorities in the war on drugs. The lopsided impact on African Americans - the 83 percent of federal crack defendants who are black, though a federal health survey found most crack users are white.

The problems have been documented for years. Now it's time for a change.

Finally, key congressional members seem to be in a negotiating mood, and the Obama administration wants the crack/powder disparity eliminated. In the last session of Congress, then-Sen. Barack Obama co-sponsored a bill introduced by then-Sen. Joe Biden to do just that.

The same bill is on the table again. HR 265, introduced in the House by Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, would increase federal penalties for big-time trafficking while reducing them for possession or dealing in trivial quantities of crack - offenses that should be left to state prosecutors or public health officials.

Cracking down on kingpins was the idea all along. When Congress established the crack sentences in 1986 and 1988, it expected to lock away major drug traffickers who were rumored to be preying on African American neighborhoods and creating an epidemic of crack-fed violence.

Support for the legislation crossed every line - left, right, black, white. In signing the 1986 bill, President Reagan named Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem as one of its "real champions," along with Strom Thurmond and the president's wife, Nancy.

But Congress got it wrong in every way. As the U.S. Sentencing Commission reported in 1995, "the stereotype of a drug-crazed addict committing heinous crimes" was simply fiction. And the crack laws shifted the focus to drug quantities that a neighborhood pusher might carry, not a national or international trafficker.

Commission records show that more than half of all crack offenders in the federal courts are street-level distributors, with crack weighing less than an ounce. The average crack case is less than 2 ounces. In the San Francisco-based judicial district, it's even smaller, according to the latest 2006 statistics.

So irrational are these laws that a crack retailer like Aikens could be punished more severely than his powder cocaine wholesaler, as the commission has pointed out.

The undercover agent who busted Aikens understood that. Aikens had offered her cocaine powder, not crack. According to the court's pre-sentence report, she told him "she thought he was going to get crack cocaine." So he made some for her. Crack is produced at the neighborhood level by cooking cocaine powder with baking soda and water.

Federal law enforcement has focused on neighborhood dealers, says Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Police Foundation, because "it's easy for U.S. attorneys to try cases against low-level offenders" but hard to find informants to testify against "genuine high-level traffickers."

Sterling, who was counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime when the crack/powder sentencing formula was established, says Congress "blundered completely." It failed to understand how much crack would signify major trafficking.

The mistake has been widely acknowledged in Washington, but reform has been stymied by congressional disagreements over the best way to correct it. Recently, the U.S. Sentencing Commission took matters into its own hands.

For two decades, the commission's guidelines reflected a decision by Congress that a crack sentence should equal a sentence for 100 times as much powder cocaine. But then in November 2007, the commission ratcheted down its crack guidelines by 20 percent. It made the change retroactive, allowing judges to review the sentences of many defendants already serving time.

As of six weeks ago, 12,723 inmates had been re-sentenced - and many of those have been released.

But the reforms by the Sentencing Commission are restricted by mandatory minimum terms set by Congress - five years for possession or sale of five grams of crack and 10 years for sale of 50 grams. Eighty-two percent of federal crack defendants are serving those mandatory minimum terms, which only Congress can change.

It's time to do so. As Clyde Cahill, a St. Louis federal judge, said in a 1994 crack case, "If young white males were being incarcerated at the same rate as young black males, the statutes would have been amended long ago."

Or, from the more personal perspective of Stacey Candler: "We're talking about somebody's life here. It doesn't take 10 years for you to teach that person a lesson."

Candler served more than 10 years for the crack that her boyfriend kept in their Fresno home. She was released from the federal women's prison in Victorville (San Bernardino County) a year ago, in the first wave of inmates to have their sentences re-evaluated under the Sentencing Commission's revised guidelines.

Originally, Candler was sentenced to almost 16 years for 2 kilograms of crack. She knew the crack was in the house, she says. She didn't expect to be held criminally responsible for it. Her boyfriend got 25 years to life.

She was 22, a nursing student and hospital aide living a modest lifestyle. She had no criminal record.

"I was just a young girl looking for love," she says. She hoped that her boyfriend, six years older, would follow her good example, "but, of course, it didn't turn out that way."

Candler is back in Fresno. She's working and going to college, now majoring in social work. She's confident about her future. "I have the family support and I have friends," she says. "I don't have kids, thank God."

The inmates who do have kids are Candler's saddest prison memory. She recalls the Children's Days that she would help organize once a year, how the kids would get to see their mothers' prison cubicles: "This is where Mommy eats and sleeps now."

As for Aikens, he got out of prison last June, five years early. At 54, he's getting his feet on the ground, he says.

He visited with his older daughter for the first time in eight years - she was 5 when he went to prison for selling a couple of ounces of crack cocaine. His younger daughter, 4, when he went away, won't see him yet. He's trying to build a relationship with her.

He blames only himself for getting in trouble. "All of us make a decision," he says. But he also knows that the stiff crack sentencing laws make no sense. As he puts it, "The ones who have control of this have it wrong."

Busts by the numbers

Median drug weights for federal crack cocaine cases

Nationwide 51 grams (1.8 oz.) 4,262 cases
Los Angeles 120 grams 27 cases
Sacramento 86.5 grams 35 cases
Chicago 76.3 grams 79 cases
New York 56.3 grams 78 cases
Seattle 45.7 grams 30 cases
San Francisco 30.2 grams 18 cases
Miami 30.2 grams 104 cases

Note: San Diego was not included because there was only one case (33 grams)

Source: U.S. Sentencing Commission, based on 2006 data
Local districts strict on crack quantities

Federal prosecutions target petty crack cocaine cases throughout the nation, destroying the lives of many small-time offenders and squandering resources in the war on drugs.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission tallied all 4,262 crack cases for 2006. It calculated a median drug quantity of 1.8 ounces.

Surprisingly, among the strictest jurisdictions was the Northern California district based in San Francisco. A single ounce of crack was involved in the median case here, enough to cover the bottom of a teacup.

In fact, crack quantities in Northern California prosecutions were the lowest in the state - and 17th lowest among the 94 federal judicial districts in the country.

The smallest cases were in Idaho and the largest in Wyoming.

Claire Cooper is an East Bay freelance writer. Her reporting was supported by the Justice and Journalism Fund, established by USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism with Ford Foundation funding.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/08/INM5165QMP.DTL

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

March 09, 2009

New book: Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women
By Vikki Law
PM Press
Now available

In 1974, women imprisoned at New York’s maximum-security prison at
Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion. Protesting the brutal beating of a fellow prisoner, the women fought off guards, holding seven of them hostage, and took over sections of the prison.

Why do activists know about Attica but not the August Rebellion?
Resistance Behind Bars documents collective organizing and individual
resistance among women incarcerated in the U.S. and challenges the reader to question why these instances and efforts have been ignored and why many assume that women do not organize to demand change. It fills the gap in the existing literature, which has focused mostly on the causes, conditions and effects of female imprisonment.

Women have significantly disrupted the daily operations of their prison to protest injustices and demand change. More often, however, they have employed less visible means such as forming peer education groups, clandestinely organizing ways for children to visit mothers in distant prisons and raising public awareness about their conditions.

By emphasizing women's agency in resisting individually as well as organizing collectively against their conditions of confinement, Resistance will spark further discussion and research on
incarcerated women's actions and also galvanize much-needed outside support for their struggle.

About the Author:
Victoria Law is a writer, mother, and photographer. She is also the co-founder of Books Through Bars—NYC and publisher of the zine Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison. Her new book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press, 2009), is the culmination of 8 years of research, writing and listening to the stories of incarcerated women.

Product Details:
Published by PM Press
ISBN: 978-1-60486-018-4
Pub Date: February 2009
Format: Paperback
Page count: 260
Size: 6 by 9
Subjects: Women’s Studies, Penology, Prisons, Prison Abolition
Ordering information: https://secure.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=91/

For more about the book and upcoming events: http://resistancebehindbars.org

"Written in regular English, rather than academese, yet full of fire, this is an impressive work of research and reportage. I hope you're able to get this to a greater audience, and that it sparks
awareness and resistance. Well done!" –Mumia Abu-Jamal

"There are too few books written about womyn in prison. Many focus on these womyn as victims only. But this book is different. Its focus is on the herstorical resistance of womyn prisoners! This is necessary information for all of us to have in our consciousness, especially our abolitionist consciousness." --Bo (r.d.brown), former political prisoner, founding mother of Out of Control: Lesbian Committee to Support Women Political Prisoners and volunteer with the
Prison Activist Resource Center

“Excellently researched and well documented, Resistance Behind Bars is a long needed and much awaited look at the struggles, protests and resistance waged by women prisoners. Highly
recommended for anyone interested in the modern American gulag.” --Paul Wright, former
prisoner, founder/publisher of Prison Legal News and editor of Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America’s Poor and Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration

“Victoria Law's eight years of research and writing, inspired by her unflinching commitment to listen to and support women prisoners, have resulted in an illuminating effort to document the
dynamic resistance of incarcerated women in the United States.” --Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz,
historian, feminist, indigenous rights activist, author, most recently of Roots of Resistance: History of Land Tenure in New Mexico

Posted by lois at 08:47 PM | Comments (0)

Derrick Z. Jackson: "Rectifying a 'mistake' in drug sentencing"

The Boston Globe
Rectifying a 'mistake' in drug sentencing
By Derrick Z. Jackson
Globe Columnist / March 7, 2009

CRIMINAL JUSTICE will never supplant the economy, war, or healthcare as a top priority, but when Attorney General Eric Holder called waterboarding torture, it ought to have signaled more than a reversal of a singular policy in the treatment of a few suspected terrorists. He said, "Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties. Not only is that thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good."

The big question is whether the Obama administration can rebalance the scales at home, where the corrosive underbelly of injustice is quiet terrorism. Consider the prison boom that accompanied Draconian federal and state laws, laws that became racist in their application.

This week, the Pew Center on the States released a report that found that states spent $47 billion on prisons last year, with spending rising faster than that for education. The spending continues to rise, even as crime rates have fallen by 25 percent over the last 20 years. States spend an average of $29,000 annually on each prisoner, 10 times what they spend on parolees and 23 times what they spend on those on probation. The great irony, of course, is that $29,000 is not only much more than in-state college tuition, it is more like the annual cost of tuition at a private university.

The waste has reached a point where in California, for instance, federal judges have ordered the release of one-third of the state's 150,000 inmates because the health services available in the grossly overcrowded system violate the constitution. At the beginning of the Reagan administration, one in 77 Americans was in prison, on parole, or on probation. Today the ratio is one in 31, led by one in 13 adults in Georgia and one in 18 in Idaho. Massachusetts ranks fifth at one in 24.

Huge percentages of the 1.5 million people in prison, particularly African-Americans (one in 11 African-Americans are under some form of correction), are there for nonviolent drug offenses that call out not for barbed wire, but for treatment, education, and job opportunities. The Pew study found that nine of every 10 corrections dollars went to prisons, not for rehabilitation programs.

So it is no surprise that another report released this week by Human Rights Watch found that in every year since 1980, African-Americans have been arrested on drug charges between 2.8 to 5.5 times more, relative to the population, than white Americans. This is despite the long, conveniently ignored fact that Americans consume illegal drugs at roughly their racial percentage of the national population. Drug possession made up 64 percent of drug arrests, with annual percentages reaching 80 percent in the just-concluded Bush years.

Part of the reason this spun out of control is nearly three decades of blind eyes and cowardice in the White House. What the conservative administrations of Reagan and the first President Bush started, President Clinton continued by capitulating to the conservative chorus in Congress in the 1990s to lock in laws that punished crack cocaine possession far more harshly than possession of powdered cocaine. There was no hope for change under the second President Bush.

In a meeting with columnists in 2007, Obama said the disparate crack-to-powder laws were a "mistake." He needs to tell Holder to work with Congress to rectify the mistake. The warehousing of those arrested for drug possession has been worse than a misguided zero-sum game with our liberties. For the cost of private college tuition per prisoner, we do more harm than good, removing tens of thousands of people from the path to productivity in their communities.

Ironically, Holder created a mild stir by saying America has been a nation of cowards on race. While the statement was largely needless, given that the nation now has a black president, he suddenly has a huge say in eliminating the most powerful symbol of the cowardice that remains. The issue of American prisoners will tell us how brave Holder and Obama will be.

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/03/07/rectifying_a_mistake_in_drug_sentencing/

Posted by lois at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)

MA: Towns Weigh Recriminalizing Marijuana Use

Towns weigh ban on pot use
By Scott Stafford, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Updated: 03/07/2009

Even though 65 percent of voters in Massachusetts agreed with the ballot initiative known as Question 2 — the decriminalization of less than an ounce of marijuana — last November, proponents are saying that members of the law enforcement community are trying to recriminalize it.

Question 2 reduced the violation's punishment to a citation, a $100 fine, and confiscation of the marijuana. It allowed towns to separately address public use of the substance. That is the clause, Question 2 proponents say, that some towns are using to recriminalize the possession and use of small amounts of the drug.

According to Emily LaGrassa, a spokes woman for the Massachusetts attorney general's office, the municipal law unit provided sample bylaw language at the request of the Executive Office of Public Safety.

The sample language gives three enforcement options for public consumption of marijuana — by criminal indictment, criminal complaint or noncriminal disposition.

'Why bother to do this at all'

ACLU officials argue that it is unnecessary to criminalize the offense, because under Question 2, public users of marijuana can still be fined $100 and lose their stash.

"The real question is why bother to do this at all when there is not a problem of people lighting up in public when they're still subject to a fine," said Sarah Wunsch, staff attorney for the ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts in Boston. "In places where states have decriminalized, this has not been a problem — they have not seen an increase in public use."

"We're not sure that any of this is necessary, unless there is there is some evidence that it has become a problem in a particular community with public use," said Bruce Mirken, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project based in Washington, D.C. "But we haven't heard any such reports."

He noted that the voters were clear in saying that "penny ante use" of marijuana should not be a criminal offense.

'Tactic clearly unacceptable'

"Our preference would be for folks to just relax and let the local enforcement play out as the law is written and see if any local adjustment is needed," he said. "If a criminal complaint is going to be used as an aggressive way of cracking down on people, that sort of tactic would be clearly unacceptable. Something like this could be used in a manner that's totally contradictory to what the voters wanted."

In Adams, town attorney Edmund St. John III pointed out the conundrum, and members of the board of selectmen reworded their bylaw on public consumption of marijuana to remove the criminality of the violation.

North Adams Police Commissioner E. John Morocco said he recommended that city council adopt the bylaw including the criminal charges.

"I do not have a problem with making that a criminal offense," he said. "I completely agree with it and I completely disagree with Question 2. Why should it be a criminal offense to drink a beer in public, and not a criminal offense to smoke a joint in public? It doesn't make sense."

The Pittsfield Police Department also forwarded the proposed bylaw to city council.

"My interest is that if it is (being smoked) at a bus stop or a city park where other people might be annoyed or alarmed, the officer would have discretion" to pursue criminal charges against the violator, said Capt. John Mullin, spokesman for the Pittsfield Police Department.

He added that public use of marijuana has not been a problem in Pittsfield.

Since the passage of Question 2, four citations have been issued in Pittsfield for the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, Mullin said.

Mayor James M. Ruberto favors the bylaw proposed, saying that like the public consumption of alcohol, it should be treated as a criminal offense.

Question 2 proponents urged caution in considering these bylaws.

"If there is a pattern of local police sidestepping (Question 2) and using these local bylaws as a way of doing that, that's a real problem and they could find themselves with some very unhappy constituents," Mirken said.

"The voters wanted it decriminalized," Wunsch said. "And this does seem to be an effort by those who opposed Question 2 to continue to treat possession of small amounts of marijuana as a big problem when it isn't. What's the need? Why rush into it? These towns have much more important things to deal with right now."
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_11859375

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

March 05, 2009

Video and 2 articles on today's (3-5-09) developments on the Rockefeller Drugs Laws

Tony Papa interview in today's video section of the NY Times......
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/ny-region/1194811622241/index.html#1194838345272

http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2009/03/04/assembly-to-pass-drug-reform/

Gotham Gazette
The Wonkster Blog
Assembly to Pass Drug Reform
March 4th, 2009

Today the Assembly is expected to pass drug law reform.

The bill would eliminate most mandatory minimum sentencing while giving judges more sentencing options.

Sponsored by Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, the bill represents a new fervor shown by Assembly Majority Leader Sheldon Silver for drug law reform.

Earlier this year, Silver released a position paper calling for an overhaul of the drug laws and for New York to address drug addiction as a health problem instead of a criminal matter.

Law makers say the reforms will restore justice to the legal system and save the state money by committing fewer offenders to prison.

“More than 35 years after the Rockefeller Drug Laws were enacted, it is clear that these laws mandating imprisonment for even lower-level offenders have failed to effectively combat drug abuse or reduce the incidence of violent crime,” said Silver in a prepared statement.

“This legislation restores humanity to drug policy here in New York. It expands the sentencing options available to judges, without endangering the public. Judges are in the best position to know who is deserving of prison and who is not. State prison and mandatory prison sentences are not the magic bullets to address drug abuse and its attendant problems; restoring judicial discretion is the solution.”

The Assembly has passed similar legislation in the past only to see it die in the Republican controlled Senate. Now that the Democrats are in control of the Senate it is not clear if they have a large enough majority to get the legislation passed.

However, the sponsor of drug law reform in the Senate, Sen. Eric Schneiderman, is reportedly trying to access whether he has enough votes to move the bill. The Senate will at least discuss their version of the bill today.

Advocates fear that if action is not taken in both houses in the next few weeks their issue will be put aside during heated budget discussions.

Here is an overview of the Assembly bill provided by Silver’s office:

Amends the Penal Law to make all non-violent first and second felony drug offenders (other than class A felony offenders) eligible for probation (5 years), a local jail sentence (up to one year) or a split sentence (jail plus probation) upon a plea of guilty or upon conviction —- the judge could always sentence the offender to the existing terms of state imprisonment.

Excepts from the benefits of this sentencing reform the following exclusion crimes, some of which are newly created, as well as other crimes arising out of the sale of drugs on school grounds and day care facilities:

Drug sale while in physical possession of a loaded gun;

Adult (age 21 or older) sale to a minor (under age 18);

Kingpin (multiple class B felony and above transactions).

Judges continue to have discretion to sentence offenders to the maximum terms available under current law, i.e., judges will still be able to sentence first time class B felony offenders to up to 9 years in prison and second time class B felony offenders without a violent predicate felony offense to up to 12 years in prison.

CREATES new sentencing options for judges without disrupting those options available under current law.

Judges can continue to divert offenders away from prison with district attorney consent (e.g., DTAP, STEPS); current law requires the same judicial consent which this reform continues.

Judges can order, upon application of defendant or district attorney alcohol or substance abuse assessment of defendant.

Subject to appropriation, requires that one court in each county be designated as a drug court with appropriate training provided for all participants.

Judges may specify candidates to be enrolled in DOCS shock incarceration programs (subject to DOCS safety considerations), including second-time, class B felony offenders (subject to exclusions).

Judges may order early entry to ASAT and CASAT (substance abuse treatment programs designed for offenders in DOCS custody).

Judges can directly sentence offenders to “parole supervision” (90 days incarcerated at the DOCS Willard drug treatment program followed by supervision and treatment in the community: CPL 410.91) by:

eliminating DA veto on class D felony crimes; and restoring to judges the discretion to order such a “parole supervision” sentence for specified class C and B drug felony crimes.

REFORMS technical aspects of the drug laws to make them more responsive and fairer.

Eliminates a plea restriction so that certain drug offenders may plead guilty to a reduced charge with DA consent (class A felony to a class B felony). Clarifies procedure for making motions to dismiss “in the furtherance of justice” by adding a new subdivision to CPL 170.40 and 210.40 to authorize dismissal, where a defendant charged with a non-exclusionary, drug crime has successfully complied with the terms of a judicial diversion order.

Increases the weight thresholds for certain class A felony level offenses following up the reforms made in 2004.

Revises the so-called “automobile/room” presumptions by converting the “presumption” into a “permissible inference” and ensures that the inference does not apply when the defendant was neither the owner nor the operator of the vehicle and the controlled substance was outside the area in which the defendant could readily grab it.

EXTENDS the benefits of drug law reform to those under sentence.

Permits class B felony drug offenders in prison (previously excluded from taking advantage of the 2004 drug law reforms) to seek courtresentencing to a determinate term under the new sentences;

Allows defendant appeals from denial of re-sentence and re-sentence orders.

INCREASES chances for drug offenders under sentence and after completing sentence to successfully reintegrate into society.

Mandates that DOCS assess drug treatment need for every inmate admitted to custody.

Requires that youths placed in or committed to OCFS facilities be assessed for alcohol and substance abuse.

Mandates substance abuse treatment as part of probation where appropriate.

Allows DOCS to enroll class B drug felons (on entry to DOCS or thereafter) into the Shock Incarceration Program, consistent with the Governor’s Article VII bill.

Requires OASAS certification for all persons performing drug abuse assessment and treatment and all programs providing such services for the Department of Correctional Services.

Enacts a sealing law authorizing judges, on motion so that the district attorney can respond, to conditionally seal a limited category of first-time, drug felony and misdemeanor convictions, upon application, if the defendant has remained crime-free for a specified period or has completed a court-ordered treatment program; existing statutory requirements barring individuals convicted of such crimes from being licensed for certain purposes would not be amended.

Provides transitional services to offenders leaving DOCS custody to better help them find housing, employment and apply for government benefits so that they do not relapse and continue moving through the revolving door.

QUANTIFIES the savings of reforming the drug laws.

Requires the State Comptroller to certify each year the number of days and number of persons diverted from state prison as a result of the bill and, to the greatest extent possible, quantify the savings generated as a result.

Requires that such amount certified by the Comptroller be segregated annually in a dedicated fund to be used exclusively for drug and alcohol treatment and related alternative to incarceration programs.

PLACES a premium on knowledge and information to effectuate reform.

Requires use of a community justice crime information mapping system to target efforts to further provide drug abuse treatment and reduce drug-related crime in different communities around the state.

Syracuse Post-Standard
No Rockefeller drug law reform in New York would be a real crime

By Anthony Papa and Gabriel Sayegh
March 05, 2009

New York's draconian Rockefeller drug laws represent a misguided and ineffective regime for addressing drug use and addiction -- health issues, not criminal issues. With legislation passing this week by the state Assembly, New York may be ready to shift toward a more reasonable -- and affordable -- approach guided by public health and safety.

Enacted in 1973, the Rockefeller laws mandate extremely harsh prison terms for the possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs. Supposedly intended to target major dealers, most of the people incarcerated under these laws are convicted of low-level, nonviolent offenses; many have no prior criminal record.

Approximately 12,000 people are locked up for drug offenses in New York state prisons -- nearly 21 percent of the prison population. Over 4,000 are serving long terms for simple possession. Nearly 90 percent of the people incarcerated are black or Latino, though whites use and sell illegal drugs at equal or higher rates.

As New York reels from the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, Gov. David Paterson and the Legislature are scrambling to close ever-expanding deficits. It costs New Yorkers $45,000 a year to keep someone locked up, while treatment costs a fraction of that.

Does it make sense to spend over $500 million every year on laws we know don't work? These laws did not stop the crack epidemic of the 1980s. They are completely incapable of stemming the accidental drug overdose epidemic hitting New York City and Long Island today. And they have turned the Department of Corrections into the state's largest, most costly and ineffective treatment provider.

The Assembly's bill would finally reform the failed Rockefeller laws. Sponsored by Corrections Committee Chairman -- and drug treatment counselor -- Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, Speaker Sheldon Silver and a host of others, the bill contains the four key elements: restoration of judicial discretion in drug cases, so judges can place appropriate people in treatment; expansion of alternative-to-incarceration programs and community-based drug treatment; fair sentencing reform; and retroactive sentencing relief for eligible people serving unjust sentences under the Rockefeller laws.

The Assembly's proposal would not allow people who commit violence to be resentenced.

The Assembly could have done even more, such as including full repeal of the second felony offender law. Even so, the bill represents a significant step forward. Modest reforms of 2004 and 2005 continue to deny people the right to apply for shorter terms, and do not increase judicial discretion. After 2004, more people went to prison under Rockefeller drug laws than before.

The need for reform is no longer in debate. The question is, what kind of reform will we see in New York? The Assembly has proposed real reform, advancing a public health and safety approach to drug use and addiction. This is the direction we need to go. Drug addiction shouldn't be a crime -- the real crime would be if reform was stymied yet again.

Anthony Papa, author of "15 to Life," served 12 years in prison under the Rockefeller drug laws.
Gabriel Sayegh is project director for the New York City-based Drug Policy Alliance.

Proposed drug law reforms

Assembly Bill A6085, introduced last week and expected to pass this week, includes the following provisions which balance safety and justice:

Ö Return discretion to sentencing judges to tailor the penalty to the facts and circumstances of each drug offense.

Ö Allow a sentence of probation and treatment where appropriate.

Ö Strengthen in-prison treatment and re-entry services.

Ö Expand the use of alternatives to incarceration, including community-based treatment, where appropriate.

Ö Allow certain eligible individuals incarcerated for low-level drug offenses to apply for resentencing; individuals convicted of violent crimes are not eligible.

Ö Expand use of drug courts throughout New York.

Ö Increase penalties for sale of a controlled substance to a child.

Ö Establish a new "kingpin" crime for organized drug-trafficking.

Posted by lois at 05:39 PM | Comments (0)

March 03, 2009

Human Rights Watch Report: Decades of Disparity Drug Arrests and Race in the United States

Decades of Disparity
Drug Arrests and Race in the United States
March 2, 2009. Human Rights Watch.
Download report: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/us0309web_1.pdf

This 20-page report says that adult African Americans were arrested on drug charges at rates that were 2.8 to 5.5 times as high as those of white adults in every year from 1980 through 2007, the last year for which complete data were available. About one in three of the more than 25.4 million adult drug arrestees during that period was African American.

Posted by lois at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)

March 01, 2009

NY: Legislation to Overhaul Rockefeller Drug Laws Moves Ahead Swiftly

Legislation to Overhaul Rockefeller Drug Laws Moves Ahead Swiftly
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: February 28, 2009
NY Times

On a fall afternoon in 2002, the New York City police broke up a protest in front of Gov. George E. Pataki’s office in Midtown Manhattan and hauled a dozen demonstrators away.

The Rev. Peter G. Young, an advocate of recasting New York’s drug sentencing laws, led a meeting at a halfway house in Albany.

The protesters were demanding that Mr. Pataki repeal the state’s 30-year-old drug sentencing laws, widely regarded as the nation’s most unforgiving. One of those placed in plastic handcuffs and carted off to a police station was a state senator named David A. Paterson.

Now, with Mr. Paterson in the governor’s mansion and Democrats in control of both houses of the State Legislature, an aggressive effort is under way to finally dismantle what remains of the stringent 1970s-era drug laws, which imposed stiff mandatory sentences as a way to combat the heroin epidemic then gripping New York City.

The Assembly is expected to pass legislation on Tuesday that would once again give judges the discretion to send those found guilty of having smaller amounts of illegal drugs to substance-abuse treatment instead of prison and allow thousands of inmates convicted of nonviolent drug offenses to apply to have their sentences reduced or commuted.

Meanwhile, the governor’s office is preparing legislation that it plans to present to Senate leaders on Monday that would also give judges discretion in sentencing, according to a senior administration official involved in drafting the bills. But for now, the governor is not taking a position on whether sentences should be reduced for some prisoners.

For its part, the Senate is expected to take up legislation in the coming weeks that would also be aimed at strengthening judges’ roles in sentencing.

“Returning discretion to judges is really the heart of where we want to go,” said Jeffrion L. Aubry, an assemblyman who represents Queens and has led efforts to overturn the statutes, known as the Rockefeller drug laws because Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller made them a centerpiece of his agenda.

“When we take away those mandatory minimums and restore judicial discretion, that’s when you can say Rockefeller is no longer there,” Mr. Aubry said.

The State Legislature has already eliminated the stiffest provisions of the laws, doing away in 2004 with life sentences for drug crimes and reducing other penalties for the most serious offenses.

But now Democratic leaders see an opportunity to take aim at the judicial underpinnings of the laws by untying the hands of judges, who are often bound to mandatory minimum sentences even for less serious drug crimes.

As lawmakers debate changing the drug laws in the weeks ahead, restoring judicial discretion will be one of the thorniest issues in the discussions. The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, said he thinks any plan that does not give judges authority to send drug offenders to treatment is doomed to fail.

“I think any bill that doesn’t provide that diversion option is really not something that’s significant reform, plain and simple,” Mr. Silver said in an interview. “There is nothing else at this point that would be meaningful in terms of reform.”

But the idea of restoring full judicial discretion is troubling to many prosecutors, who in a vast majority of drug crimes must give consent before a suspect is ordered to a treatment program.

“The district attorney’s input would be taken out of the equation,” said Bridget G. Brennan, the special narcotics prosecutor for New York City. “When I look at cases, I want to have the discretion as gatekeeper, to make sure that somebody I put back out in the community is not going to pose a public safety threat. A district attorney has a much clearer picture of a community’s concerns.”

But under the plans favored by the governor, the Assembly and the Senate, prosecutors would lose that veto power.

Senate Republicans, who hold 30 out of the 62 seats in the chamber and could block a bill that they deem too lenient by recruiting just one Democrat, are concerned about any drug laws that would allow offenders to use treatment as a get-out-of-jail-free option.

“We can give judges more latitude, but we have to make sure there’s someplace for drug felons to go, and that they don’t just walk out,” said Senator Dale Volker, who represents a district outside Buffalo and who led the Senate committee that oversaw the changes to the Rockefeller laws in 2004.

“There are a lot of questions to be answered,” Mr. Volker said. “How will these people stay in treatment? Will they just end up back on the street?”

The lack of what those involved in criminal justice considered successful treatment programs led Rockefeller to seek life sentences for the most serious drug offenses. Though Rockefeller initially helped build one of the most extensive state treatment programs in the nation, he became exasperated as drug felons slipped through the cracks and New York’s drug epidemic only grew worse.

“By 1973, Rocky was disgusted and frustrated,” said Pamala Griset, an associate professor of criminal justice and legal studies at the University of Central Florida. “So what he proposed was a 180-degree turnaround from the rehabilitative sentencing structure he first favored.”

Beyond undoing the last of the Rockefeller-era laws, those supporting the reforms being shaped in Albany say, New York should establish a treatment program that serves as a national model different from the one the state created 35 years ago, when the laws became the impetus for a nationwide movement toward extended mandatory drug sentences.

“This is an opportunity to reduce the number of people who are in prison for nonviolent drug offenses,” said Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, a Democrat who represents Upper Manhattan and the Bronx and is sponsoring legislation to repeal parts of the state’s drug sentencing code. “And frankly, it is an opportunity to shift the framework of drug policy in America from a model centered on incarceration.”

One possibility, favored by the governor, would be to include Rockefeller drug law reform in the budget negotiations, which under state law must be completed by April 1.

Regardless of when it happens, advocates of overhauling the drug laws say this is an opportunity that should not be squandered.

“I’ve been hanging around there at the Capitol trying to make changes to these laws all my life,” said the Rev. Peter Young, who directs a statewide drug rehabilitation program. “Now we have the best shot of any year I’ve seen.”
A version of this article appeared in print on March 1, 2009, on page A20 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/nyregion/01rockefeller.html?scp=1&sq=Rockefeller%20Drug%20Laws&st=cse

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

February 25, 2009

MA: Urban Penalty Do drug-free school zones unfairly target cities and people of color? And a response from Lois Ahrens

Urban Penalty
Do drug-free school zones unfairly target cities and people of color?
Thursday, February 26, 2009
By Maureen Turner
Valley Advocate (MA)

In January of 1989, Gov. Mike Dukakis was fresh off a failed presidential bid, but he wasn't ready to give up on all his campaign pledges. That year, in his State of the Commonwealth address, Dukakis reiterated an ambitious vow made on the campaign trail: to rid Massachusetts' schools of drugs.

At the center of Dukakis' campaign was a proposed law that would create mandatory minimum sentences of two to 15 years for anyone caught selling or distributing drugs within 1,000 feet of school property. The mandatory minimum sentence would apply regardless of the amount or kind of drugs involved, regardless of whether the person convicted had any previous criminal record, and regardless of whether children were present or school was even in session. These "sentencing enhancements" would come on top of any sentence for the underlying drug offense, and could not be served concurrently.

In a speech at a Brockton school that previously had a reputation for gang-related drug activity, Dukakis announced the proposed legislation in vivid language: "Too many of our schoolchildren are carrying Uzis and AK-47s instead of pencils and notebooks," the governor said.

In July, the Legislature passed the legislation, creating so-called "drug-free zones" around public and private schools. By summer's end, the first arrests were made under the new law: five men who were charged with selling cocaine in a private home located across the street from a New Bedford elementary school.

Backers applauded the law as an important tool to protect kids from having to "run a gauntlet of drug dealers" on their way home from school, as a spokesperson for the state Department of Public Safety put it. But others warned that the law, however good its intentions, had worrisome implications. Some questioned the wisdom of tying judges' hands in meting out sentences, or of sending to already overcrowded prisons people who might not have even faced jail time for the underlying drug charge. Others questioned the fairness or effectiveness of the law, given that a suspect didn't even have to know he or she was within the 1,000-foot zone to be charged under it.

Twenty years and countless drug-zone arrests later, those concerns have not abated. Indeed, a new report by the Easthampton-based Prison Policy Initiative contends that the law has largely failed at its goal of keeping drug activity away from schools, in part because the zones are drawn so widely as to be rendered ineffective. Meanwhile, the mandatory sentences have come at an enormous cost for the cash-strapped state: more than $31 million a year spent to incarcerate those sentenced under the law, according to the report, titled "The Geography of Punishment."

In addition, the report finds, the law has had a presumably unintended but nonetheless serious consequence: after analyzing years of data, the researchers concluded that the law unfairly subjects urban residents—who are much more likely to be poor, black or Latino—to harsher sentences than whites and rural residents, creating a "two-tiered system of drug sentencing in Massachusetts."

That disparity, the researchers found, is nowhere more evident than in Hampden County.

*

The Prison Policy Initiative report lays out some striking data about how school-zone mandatory minimums are applied, and to whom. To a large degree, the researchers found, it all comes down to where you live.

The report's authors—attorneys Peter Wagner and Aleks Kajstura and research associate William Goldberg—focused on Hampden County, which has a mix of both urban and rural communities. Using computer mapping techniques, they drew 1,000-foot circles around schools, Headstart facilities, daycare centers and other protected areas. (A 1993 law also added parks and playgrounds to the list, although with a 100-foot zone.)

The researchers found that urban residents in Hampden County are five times more likely to live in a sentencing enhancement zone than residents of rural towns. This effect was most dramatic in Springfield and Holyoke, where the large number of schools and daycare centers created overlapping zones that blanketed large swaths of the downtown or urban core.

According to the report, in the nine Hampden County communities defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as most "urban" (including Springfield, Holyoke, Westfield, West Springfield and Chicopee), 40 percent of the population lives in a school zone. In the nine most rural communities (towns including Blandford, Brimfield, Russell and Granville), only eight percent of the population does.

And because urban communities have higher minority populations than rural areas ones, the law has an inherent racial bias: Hampden's nine most rural towns are 97 percent white, while its nine most urban communities are 71 percent white. As a result, only 29 percent of the county's white residents live within school zones, while 52 percent of its black and Latino residents do. These racial disparities exist within urban communities, too. In Holyoke, for example, only 45 percent of white residents live in school zones, while 76 percent of Latinos do, the report noted.

"Because Blacks and Latinos are more likely to live in urban areas, a law that enhances the sentences of urban residents does more harm to Black and Latino populations than to Whites," wrote the PPI researchers.

"This racial disparity in the populations covered by sentencing enhancement zones is a large part of why almost 8 out of 10 people convicted of zone offenses in Massachusetts are Black or Latino," the report continued. Indeed, the researchers wrote, the school zone laws contribute to the disproportionate rate at which different races are incarcerated in Massachusetts. While African-Americans and Latinos comprise 12 percent of the state's population, they make up 58 percent of its prison population.

Wagner, the report's co-author and executive director of the Prison Policy Initiative, believes legislators didn't intend to cause such inequities when they created the school zone laws. "I don't think they realized it would be the majority of urban areas that would be covered," he said in a recent interview. "It's a really dangerous example of something that sounds good but is counterproductive."

*

But after 20 years in effect, say critics, the law's shortcomings are hard to ignore—including the fact that it's so farreaching as to be ineffective.

The school zones were created to be a deterrent to drug dealers, who, in theory, would stay away from schools to avoid the higher sentences they'd face if arrested there. But for that kind of deterrent to work, Wagner noted, a person has to know that the law exists, and know where the zone is.

"The whole purpose of this law is to change behavior. You want people to know about it," Wagner said.

But at 1,000 feet, school zones are, in many cases, so wide as to be indistinguishable, according to the PPI report. "A distance of 1,000 feet is extremely difficult to estimate reliably, making it difficult to infer where the zones are, but it is also often impossible to determine whether a particular location—particularly an urban one—is near a school at all," the researchers wrote.

Exacerbating the problem is the fact that school zones are not marked by any kind of signage. While there had been talk under the Dukakis administration of posting signs indicating school zones, that idea was dropped. Although some schools post "drug-free zone" signs on their property, the PPI report notes, those signs don't indicate the boundaries of the zone and, more important, don't mention that drug activity in that area carries an enhanced sentence.

Aerial photos included in the report show just how meaningless a 1,000-foot "school zone" can be. For instance, Chicopee's Bonner Street falls within 1,000 feet of the outer property line of Holyoke's Dean Technical High School, so a person arrested on drug charges on Bonner would face the mandatory minimum sentence—despite the fact that he or she would have to swim across the Connecticut River, or drive more than four miles and cross a bridge, in order to get to the school.

Similarly, a person arrested on Springfield's Darling Street would fall within the 1,000-foot zone that "protects" JFK Middle School. But it's hard to imagine that person would be targeting JFK students—in fact, there's a good chance he might not even be aware that he's anywhere near the middle school. The 1,000 feet between the school property and Darling Street includes obstacles like Long Pond and a cemetery; to actually get to the school from Darling, a person would have to travel 3,800 feet, the researchers found.

And while the law's stated purpose was to keep drug dealing away from kids on the school yard or nearby streets, often people charged under school-zone laws are, in fact, arrested in private homes, out of sight and contact with schoolchildren.

Certain urban areas—downtown Holyoke, Springfield's State Street corridor—are almost entirely covered by overlapping school zones, leaving the zones' "protective" status meaningless, Wagner noted.

"The Legislature wants to say certain people need to be protected, and certain places need to be protected," he said. But "if everywhere is special, then nowhere is special."

*

While protected school zones might appeal to parents nervous about their kids' safety—and to politicians eager to win those parents' votes—these laws are redundant, contend critics, who point to laws previously on the books that can carry strict penalties for selling drugs to minors or using children in the drug trade.

Indeed, the PPI report suggests, some judges find the mandatory minimums unnecessary. According to data from the state Sentencing Commission, in more than half of the 349 school-zone convictions in 2004, the judge sentenced the defendant to just one day of prison time for the underlying drug offense (see sidebar).

"Only two possible conclusions can be drawn from this fact: either the facts of the case reflect an insignificant offense and the judge gave the shortest sentence possible under the law, or the judge recognized that the two-year mandatory minimum was excessive and reduced the penalty for the underlying offense in an attempt to compensate for the injustice," the authors wrote.

"That's an indication that this [law] isn't responsive to what the judges see," Kajstura, the report's lead author, said in an interview.

Such data raises the question of whether school zones are even necessary. "I'd personally be in favor of using the laws that we have," said Wagner. "But the Legislature likes [sentencing enhancement zones]."

A pending bill could serve as a happy-enough medium. The bill, sponsored by Springfield state Rep. Ben Swan, would reduce school zones from 1,000 to 100 feet. It would also repeal the mandatory minimum for school-zone offenses, leaving sentencing to the judge's discretion, and would allow a school-zone sentence to be served at the same time as any other sentences handed out. In addition, drug sales that happen in private homes within a school zone would not be subject to the enhanced sentence, although the defendant could still be prosecuted for the underlying drug offense.

"The 100-foot zones still cover a lot of area," said Wagner. "But they don't cover a lot of extraneous area." In addition, he noted, smaller zones would be easier to mark with signs, so people could actually know when they're within a protected area.

The bill was written by the Massachusetts chapter of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a national non-profit sentencing reform group. To Barbara Dougan, an attorney and FAMM's Massachusetts project director, the evidence showing the ineffectiveness and inequity of the school-zone law is indisputable.

"The data is there. It's in black and white. And it's been provided by the state [sentencing commission] itself," Dougan said. "It has this obscenely racial disparity that cannot be explained away by who's using drugs. It's penalizing people based on where they live."

Amending the school-zone law would not mean ignoring other drug laws, Dougan added. "It's important to address the misconception that this cuts anyone slack—it doesn't," she said. "What people don't realize is we already have statutes with stiff penalties for selling drugs to minors, and for using kids in drug transactions. We've already got those bases covered. & We're just talking about not heaping on another two to 15 years, depending on where your home is located."

Swan's bill is not the first attempt to amend the school-zone laws. Similar changes were included in an omnibus crime bill that died during the last legislative session. While reformers see mounting support for their efforts—in part inspired by the savings the new law would create for the financially struggling state—there are still influential political forces that support the existing law, including police chiefs and prosecutors around the state.

That's because the law can be a powerful tool for the district attorneys, Wagner said. "What this is really about is prosecutorial leverage," he said. Prosecutors can use the mandatory minimums to expedite guilty pleas from drug defendants, especially those arrested for relatively minor offenses, by agreeing to drop the zone charge in exchange for a guilty plea for the other charge, the PPI report contends.

"As a result of this practice, only a small percentage of zone charges lead to zone convictions," the authors wrote. "This, however, leads to longer sentences than would otherwise be served for the lowest level nonviolent drug offenders."

"This sentencing structure is the double whammy for so many people," said Dougan of FAMM. "Basically, its use is to induce defendants to plead to a lesser charge rather than taking your case to trial, [since] know you're going to get hammered with this sentence regardless of the facts of the case."

"It's very worrisome to see the outcome," Dougan added. "It's not doing anything to stop the drug trade; it's just inducing people to plead rather than contest."

School-zone laws have been popular with the Hampden County District Attorney's office, at least according to older data. A study cited in the PPI report, using statistics from 1998, showed that Hampden prosecutors used them more than prosecutors in any other county in the state, and more than two and a half times the state average.

Hampden DA Bill Bennett did not respond to an interview request from the Advocate. Last year, he told the Springfield Republican that he supported limited changes to the school-zone law, such as allowing some sentencing flexibility for first-time offenders. "In practice, there have been incidents [when] you would not want to impose the two years because of a variety of reasons," he said.

Still, Bennett told the Republican he considered the law to be effective: "We don't have drug dealers hanging out in school yards, which was the whole idea to protect children."

*

Others within law enforcement support amending the law—including, notably, the Hampden County Sheriff's Department, which has built a national reputation for its programs to effectively reintegrate offenders into the larger community. Those efforts include education and work programs, substance abuse treatment and counseling.

"They come from the community, and they're going back," explained Jay Ashe, superintendent of the Hampden County House of Corrections. Each year, he noted, 6,500 people are released from the jail. "We move them into the community as quickly as possible. If they botch it up, then they come back. And then we send them out again. Because that's where they're going anyway."

But like judges whose hands are tied by mandatory minimum laws, the sheriff's department's hands are tied when it comes to working with offenders sentenced under school-zone laws. Under the law, these offenders are not eligible to earn credit for time spent in programs and cannot participate in "step-down" opportunities, like work-release and day reporting programs—valuable tools in helping people prepare for returning to their community, and for avoiding in the future the criminal activities that landed them in jail in the first place, Ashe noted.

"To walk out of jail with the same profile—they'll come back," Ashe said. "We certainly advocate for a step-down period, because that's where we think the public safety is."

Swan's bill would allow school-zone offenders to participate in work-release programs and earn credit for taking part in education, job training and other jail programs. Those changes would both reduce their odds of recidivism and reduce the public costs of keeping them locked up, Ashe said: "This is a better public safety program."

On a typical day, the jail has about 800 people awaiting trail, 15 percent of them facing school-zone charges, Ashe said. Another 1,200 people are already serving sentences in the jail, about 10 percent of them on school-zone mandatory minimums.

That's a significant portion of the total population, and they'd be served more effectively, and cheaply, if they could take part in lower-security reintegration programs. "I don't need to be holding these guys in hard beds," Ashe said. "Save the hard-cell beds for those who need it."

While the last effort to amend the school-zone law died in the State House, Wagner sees the fact that it went as far as it did through the legislative process as a promising sign. Indeed, as support for reforming the law expands, reformers are hopeful this legislative session will finally yield results.

Certainly, the changes proposed in the new bill would address many of the concerns about the existing law—it would save taxpayer money, end the geographic and racial disparities in how it's used, and make the law more effective at protecting kids from drug-related crime, said PPI's Kajstura. "There's just nothing to lose," she said.
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=9273

Response to the Editor of the Valley Advocate:
To the Editor:
School zone enforcement in Springfield and Holyoke includes aggressive policing, punitive prosecuting and the resulting penalty: jail. It appears more than a little disingenuous for the sheriff's brother, Jay, to maintain that they are against the kind of policing and prosecuting that helps fill their jails. After all, by the jail's own estimate, 120 people are incarcerated who can't make bail (and if they can't make bail it is almost certain they will take the plea resulting in a 2 year sentence all of which will be served at the jail) and another 120 people sentenced as a result of the school zone policing and prosecution in the urban areas of Hampden County. These 240 people (poor and Black and Latino) help to fuel the sheriff 's constant claim of "overcrowding" and the resulting need for more "hard beds" as Jay Ashe euphemistically calls cells. This same manufactured need resulted in a women's jail which, of course, made room for more men in what is now the men's jail and for many more cells for women. So-called "overcrowding" drives the long-standing claim the sheriff uses to push for even more cells for women in the new jail. If the sheriff and his brother want to end school zone enhancements then they need to do more than make statements to the press: they need to exert some pressure on their friends the police chiefs of Holyoke and Springfield and the Hampden county DA and ask them to turn off the faucet. However, if the faucet were turned off, maybe Ashe would need less than $69 million proposed for his department for 2010 and Gov. Deval Patrick's recommended a half a billion dollar bond bill for jails and prisons, bonds which do not have to be approved by voters, could be put to better use. Lois Ahrens
Real Cost of Prisons Project
Northampton, MA

Posted by lois at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2009

Wall St. Journal Op-Ed: Former Presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Columbia Declare War on Drugs a Failure

Former Presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Columbia Declare War on Drugs a Failure
The War on Drugs Is a Failure
Wall Street Journal
FEBRUARY 23, 2009
We should focus instead on reducing harm to users and on tackling organized crime.
By FERNANDO HENRIQUE CARDOSO, CéSAR GAVIRIA and ERNESTO ZEDILLO

The war on drugs has failed. And it's high time to replace an ineffective strategy with more humane and efficient drug policies. This is the central message of the report by the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy we presented to the public recently in Rio de Janeiro.

A soldier stands next to packages containing marijuana at an army base in Cali, Colombia, August 2008.

Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply haven't worked. Violence and the organized crime associated with the narcotics trade remain critical problems in our countries. Latin America remains the world's largest exporter of cocaine and cannabis, and is fast becoming a major supplier of opium and heroin. Today, we are further than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs.

Over the last 30 years, Colombia implemented all conceivable measures to fight the drug trade in a massive effort where the benefits were not proportional to the resources invested. Despite the country's achievements in lowering levels of violence and crime, the areas of illegal cultivation are again expanding. In Mexico -- another epicenter of drug trafficking -- narcotics-related violence has claimed more than 5,000 lives in the past year alone.

The revision of U.S.-inspired drug policies is urgent in light of the rising levels of violence and corruption associated with narcotics. The alarming power of the drug cartels is leading to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime. And the corruption of the judicial and political system is undermining the foundations of democracy in several Latin American countries.

The first step in the search for alternative solutions is to acknowledge the disastrous consequences of current policies. Next, we must shatter the taboos that inhibit public debate about drugs in our societies. Antinarcotic policies are firmly rooted in prejudices and fears that sometimes bear little relation to reality. The association of drugs with crime segregates addicts in closed circles where they become even more exposed to organized crime.

In order to drastically reduce the harm caused by narcotics, the long-term solution is to reduce demand for drugs in the main consumer countries. To move in this direction, it is essential to differentiate among illicit substances according to the harm they inflict on people's health, and the harm drugs cause to the social fabric.

In this spirit, we propose a paradigm shift in drug policies based on three guiding principles: Reduce the harm caused by drugs, decrease drug consumption through education, and aggressively combat organized crime. To translate this new paradigm into action we must start by changing the status of addicts from drug buyers in the illegal market to patients cared for by the public-health system.
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We also propose the careful evaluation, from a public-health standpoint, of the possibility of decriminalizing the possession of cannabis for personal use. Cannabis is by far the most widely used drug in Latin America, and we acknowledge that its consumption has an adverse impact on health. But the available empirical evidence shows that the hazards caused by cannabis are similar to the harm caused by alcohol or tobacco.

If we want to effectively curb drug use, we should look to the campaign against tobacco consumption. The success of this campaign illustrates the effectiveness of prevention campaigns based on clear language and arguments consistent with individual experience. Likewise, statements by former addicts about the dangers of drugs will be far more compelling to current users than threats of repression or virtuous exhortations against drug use.

Such educational campaigns must be targeted at youth, by far the largest contingent of users and of those killed in the drug wars. The campaigns should also stress each person's responsibility toward the rising violence and corruption associated with the narcotics trade. By treating consumption as a matter of public health, we will enable police to focus their efforts on the critical issue: the fight against organized crime.

A growing number of political, civic and cultural leaders, mindful of the failure of our current drug policy, have publicly called for a major policy shift. Creating alternative policies is the task of many: educators, health professionals, spiritual leaders and policy makers. Each country's search for new policies must be consistent with its history and culture. But to be effective, the new paradigm must focus on health and education -- not repression.

Drugs are a threat that cuts across borders, which is why Latin America must establish dialogue with the United States and the European Union to develop workable alternatives to the war on drugs. Both the U.S. and the EU share responsibility for the problems faced by our countries, since their domestic markets are the main consumers of the drugs produced in Latin America.

The inauguration of President Barack Obama presents a unique opportunity for Latin America and the U.S. to engage in a substantive dialogue on issues of common concern, such as the reduction of domestic consumption and the control of arms sales, especially across the U.S.-Mexico border. Latin America should also pursue dialogue with the EU, asking European countries to renew their commitment to the reduction of domestic consumption and learning from their experiences with reducing the health hazards caused by drugs.

The time to act is now, and the way forward lies in strengthening partnerships to deal with a global problem that affects us all.

Mr. Cardoso is the former president of Brazil. Mr. Gaviria is a former president of Colombia. Mr. Zedillo is a former president of Mexico.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123535114271444981.html

Posted by lois at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2009

MA: School Zone Laws Fail to Keep Children Safe from Drug Sales and Disproportionately Send More African Americans and Latinos to Prison & Jail

Go to the full report and excellent graph:
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/toofar/report.html

Report: Mass. sentencing laws not doing the job
Feb. 19, 2009
Bay State Banner
St. John Barned-Smith

Calls for reform of mandatory minimum sentencing laws received some added support recently from a report by a Massachusetts incarceration think tank that claims current policies are failing to keep children safe from the dangers of drugs.

At issue are so-called “sentencing enhancement zones,” according to the report unveiled last month by the Northampton-based Prison Policy Initiative.

The zones were originally designed “to serve as a geographic deterrent in order to protect children from drug activity [by] identifying specific areas where children gather and driving drug offenders away from them with the threat of an enhanced penalty,” according to the report.

But Massachusetts’ mandatory minimum laws have largely missed the mark, says initiative executive director Peter Wagner. Under the current law, certain drug offenses carry a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in jail if they are committed within an “enhancement zone,” defined as the 1,000-foot area surrounding a school.

According to Wagner, the abundance of Head Start centers, accredited day care centers and other schools leave few areas in cities and towns that are not considered special enforcement zones.

“If you make everywhere special, nowhere is special,” Wagner said.

The result, he argues, is legislation that not only fails to specifically deter the sale of drugs near schools, but also unfairly targets drug users caught possessing narcotics in these zones who are not intent on selling to schoolchildren.

“The legislature made the assumption that within 1,000 feet” of a school, people “were intending to sell to children,” Wagner said. “But only 1 percent of those cases involve children. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the law punishes people who weren’t trying to sell to children.”

The Prison Policy Initiative’s report recommends reducing the scope of the boundary to 100 feet, which Wagner said will create zones that would more effectively stop drug use near schools.

“One hundred feet wouldn’t cover an entire populated area,” Wagner said. “It would make certain areas special.”

The report also underlines other problems with Massachusetts’ mandatory minimum laws. One highly contentious issue is the claim that the sentencing requirements disproportionately affect minorities.

According to the report, blacks and Latinos account for 80 percent of the state’s special enforcement zone convictions, and are between 26 and 30 times more likely to receive a mandatory enhanced sentence.

Opponents of mandatory minimum laws also say the requirements unfairly handcuff judges by eliminating alternative options during sentencing. On top of that, Wagner said, by giving prosecutors more leverage to encourage defendants to plead guilty to lesser charges so that they can avoid the minimum sentences, the laws can actually result in people receiving longer periods of imprisonment.

The laws have practical downfalls for the state as well, said Wagner. Chief among them: They’re bleeding state coffers dry.

“With the state facing a $3.1 billion [budget] shortfall and incarceration costing the taxpayer $47,679 for each prisoner each year, the state can ill-afford this kind of inefficiency,” Wagner wrote in the report.

Mandatory minimum opponents have been trying to bring more attention to the matter by making their presence felt at a series of civil rights hearings being held throughout the state.

Barbara Dougan, executive director of the Massachusetts branch of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, recently e-mailed her members to encourage them to attend the last of the meetings (to be held on March 10 in New Bedford) to voice their opposition to the laws.

“People who live in urban areas get punished more severely than people who live in suburban areas,” Dougan said, even though “statewide, the data shows drug use is roughly equivalent.”
http://www.baystatebanner.com/Print?page=local14-2009-02-19

Posted by lois at 09:26 AM | Comments (0)

February 16, 2009

Some Find Hope for a Shift in Drug Policy If Seattle Police Chief is Named Drug Czar

Some Find Hope for a Shift in Drug Policy
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: February 15, 2009
NY Times

SEATTLE — Washington State law prohibits the possession of marijuana except for certain medical purposes. Hempfest is not one of them. Yet each summer when the event draws thousands to the Seattle waterfront to call for decriminalizing marijuana, participants light up in clear view of police officers. And they rarely get arrested.

The latest on President Obama, the new administration and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.

“Police officers patrolling are courteous and respectful,” said Alison Holcomb, drug policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.

One reason for the officers’ approach, said Ms. Holcomb and others who follow law enforcement in Seattle, is the leadership of R. Gil Kerlikowske, the chief of the Seattle Police Department and, officials in the Obama administration say, the president’s choice to become the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, known as the drug czar.

The anticipated selection of Chief Kerlikowske has given hope to those who want national drug policy to shift from an emphasis on arrest and prosecution to methods more like those employed in Seattle: intervention, treatment and a reduction of problems drug use can cause, a tactic known as harm reduction. Chief Kerlikowske is not necessarily regarded as having forcefully led those efforts, but he has not gotten in the way of them.

“What gives me optimism,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, “is not so much him per se as the fact that he’s been the police chief of Seattle. And Seattle, King County and Washington State have really been at the forefront of harm reduction and other drug policy reform.”

The White House has yet to announce the nomination of Chief Kerlikowske, and a spokesman for the Seattle police said the chief would not discuss the matter. His appointment would require Senate confirmation.

Chief Kerlikowske, 59, became police chief in Seattle in 2000, after serving as a deputy director for community policing at the Justice Department in the Clinton administration. While there he worked with Eric H. Holder Jr., then a deputy attorney general and now the head of the department.

Before going to the Justice Department, Chief Kerlikowske was the police chief in Buffalo and in Fort Myers and Port St. Lucie in Florida. Under John P. Walters, the drug czar during most of the administration of President George W. Bush, the drug office focused on tough enforcement of drug laws, including emphases on marijuana and drug use among youths. The agency pointed to reductions in the use of certain kinds of drugs, but it was criticized by some local law enforcement officials who said its priorities did not reflect local concerns, from the rise of methamphetamine to the fight against drug smuggling at the Mexican border.

“The difference is I’ll be able to call Washington and get ahold of Gil and he’ll answer the phone,” said William Lansdowne, the police chief in San Diego and a member of the board of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Chief Kerlikowske is the president of the association. “He listens. He’s very open to new ideas. He’ll build cooperation.”

Chief Lansdowne added, “He’ll take a look at prevention as much as enforcement.”

But Chief Kerlikowske also has critics.

Norm Stamper, whom Chief Kerlikowske succeeded in Seattle, said he was a “blank slate” on drug policy. Mr. Stamper, who left office not long after the riots that broke out during a 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle, supports legalizing marijuana and spoke at Hempfest after leaving the chief’s job. He said Chief Kerlikowske had not been a vocal supporter of some of the city’s drug policies focused on treatment, like a needle exchange program or a 2003 city ballot initiative, overwhelmingly approved by voters, that said enforcing the law against marijuana possession by adults should be the department’s lowest priority.

“The question is, if he were in a much more conservative community, would he attempt to turn that around?” Mr. Stamper said.

Others said that Mr. Kerlikowske’s role as a police chief put him in a delicate political position because he would not want to be accused of being soft on crime. They note that he did not actively oppose the 2003 initiative and that he instructed his staff to comply with it once it passed. They say that Seattle police officers in recent years have kept their distance from the sites of needle exchanges.

Drug arrests are down in the city and overall crime is at a 40-year low, though concerns have increased recently over gang violence.

Chief Kerlikowske has faced plenty of criticism during his time in Seattle. In 2001, a study found that more than half of adults arrested for drug crimes in the city were black, though less than 10 percent of the population was black. The chief vowed to address the disparity, and it has decreased.

In 2002, he received a vote of no confidence from the local police union. The year before, officers had been frustrated by his handling of a Mardi Gras riot in which one person died and dozens were injured. Some officers said they were prevented from intervening soon enough.

In 2007, a special commission found that the department had been too lenient in disciplining officers in certain situations.

In 2004, the chief’s duty weapon, a 9mm Glock pistol, was stolen from his unmarked police car while he and his wife shopped downtown on the day after Christmas. A police spokesman said later that the chief had accidentally left his car unlocked but that he had not violated department policy by leaving his gun in his car.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/us/politics/16czar.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Drug%20Czar&st=cse

Posted by lois at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2009

New Hazelden Study Finds 79% think War on Drugs a Failure

New Hazelden Survey Finds Strong Support for Treatment, Recovery
February 6, 2009

News Feature, Join Together
by Bob Curley

Advocates who say addiction should be treated as a public-health issue and not a criminal problem have broad public support, according to the results of a new survey from Hazelden that also found that about one in three families include members with addiction problems.

Public support alone, however, will not be sufficient to sustain recent victories like addiction parity legislation or to meet the economic and policy challenges now facing the addiction field, said William Cope Moyers, executive director of Hazelden's Center for Public Advocacy, which conducted the survey.
(Survey at this URL: http://www.hazelden.org/web/public/pr090209healthinsurance.page)

The Public Attitudes Towards Addiction Survey found that more than three-quarters (79 percent) of the 1,000 adults polled called the War on Drugs a failure, and 83 percent said that first-time drug offenders should be sent to addiction-treatment programs, not prison. Moyers said the findings illustrate the disconnect between public perceptions and policymakers who "are still waging the war."

Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), said the Hazelden findings are in line with other research on public attitudes toward the drug war and treatment alternatives to incarceration.

Similar majorities of Americans said that addiction treatment benefits should be included in healthcare insurance plans (71 percent) and in national healthcare reform plans (77 percent). Congress last year passed legislation requiring that most health-insurance plans cover addiction and mental health services on par with other health conditions, but only if such benefits are included in their plans.

Moyers warned that the hard-earned gains of more than a decade of parity advocacy could be wiped out amid the current economic crisis and the drive for healthcare reform, despite the high levels of public support indicated by the survey findings.

He expressed particular concern that addiction treatment providers struggling with internal financial crises, such as cutbacks in public funding coupled with rising demand for services, will fail to fight the broader policy battles on issues like inclusion in healthcare reform. Hazelden plans to use the survey findings to support a new national advocacy campaign aimed at increasing public understanding of addictive diseases and increasing access to treatment.

"I think this is our moment," Moyers said. "But the fact is that while parity has been passed, the rules have not been written or implemented. If we are not careful, we are going to lose this opportunity. The passage of parity will be a hollow victory if the field doesn't stay focused and committed to doing what we know works."

Lingering Stigma

The Hazelden survey yielded mixed results when it came to public attitudes about individuals with addictions. On the one hand, 77 percent of those polled said that people who complete addiction treatment can go on to live productive lives, and 78 percent said that addiction is a chronic disease, not a moral failing.

Yet discrimination against people with addictions persists, with stigma cited as the most common negative consequence of having a family member with addiction problems.

DPA's Nadelmann said that the stubborn use of pejorative language about people with addictions noted in the survey could be traced to the continued criminalization of drug use. "Everybody generally supports the notion that treatment works, but the public still has this fundamental inconsistency in their views," he said, adding that the battle against stigma should include "both people who have problems with using drugs and people who don't have a problem."

From a policy perspective, however, Moyers said the field can't wait for the battle against stigma to be won before tackling some of the fundamental questions that will be asked of the field as healthcare reform progresses, including what constitutes treatment success and even what standard terminology should be used to define addictive diseases.

"If we don't define these things ourselves, they will be defined for us," he said.
http://www.jointogether.org/news/features/2009/new-hazelden-survey.html?log-event=sp2f-view-item&nid=48992976

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

February 09, 2009

Singing the prison blues Incarceration rate has direct impact on Florida's finances

The News-Journal
February 08, 2009

Singing the prison blues

Incarceration rate has direct impact on Florida's finances

Everyone in Florida government is singing the Budget Blues. But underlying the melody is a drumbeat many state leaders profess not to hear: The sound of countless prison doors slamming shut. Like it or not, the state's incarceration policies have a direct and growing impact on the current budget crisis.

AN EXPENSIVE HABIT

Florida's prison system is growing faster than that of any other state. According to a report by the Pew Charitable Trust, corrections (which includes state prisons and probation) consumed 9.3 percent of the state budget in 2007. The only states to allocate a greater portion of their budget were Oregon and Michigan.

And that only accounts for direct prison and probation spending -- it doesn't encompass increased public support for the families prisoners leave behind, or the burden on city and county governments that have to build additional jail space and employ more public-safety workers. Meanwhile, the state -- whose daily average prison population is projected to top 100,000 this year -- will need to build new facilities this year or face overcrowding. Department of Corrections Secretary Walter McNeil has requested $439.2 million in the coming budget year to add capacity.

Few people are pushing for dangerous murderers and rapists to be released. But neither can they dispute that Florida's incarceration spree occurred at a time when crime rates were actually trending downward. Florida hasn't become a more dangerous place to live, it's just become one that has become politically addicted to the idea of increasingly harsh punishments.

HANDCUFFING JUDGES

One of the more important checks against legislative excess has been hobbled. Lawmakers have significantly eroded the ability of judges to determine fair, justifiable sentences for a wide range of crimes.

Florida, like many states, adopted sentencing guidelines as a way to keep sentences relatively fair across geographic and racial lines. After sentencing guidelines passed in 1983, courts used a "score sheet" that added points for the particulars of an offense, the criminal background of an offender and other relevant considerations. The resulting score was then matched to a "guideline" range of prison and/or probation time -- but judges could depart from the guidelines if they found good reason to do so. That approach used fairness as a base line, giving judges the ability to tailor sentences to circumstances.

That changed in the mid-1990s, when the Legislature passed a series of laws aimed at stripping discretion from judges. There were "minimum mandatory" laws that demanded specific sentences for specific crimes, regardless of circumstances. Habitual offender statutes added more prison time, again taking away judges' discretion and resulting in cases like that of a burglar who received a life sentence for stealing a handful of children's videotapes.

In 1997, the Legislature erased the "ceiling" for guideline sentences; judges were not allowed to sentence a defendant to a sentence lower than the guidelines called for, but were permitted (even encouraged) to levy the statutory maximum sentence even if the guidelines called for a much lower penalty. As a result, the state could see a dramatic growth in sentencing disparity, with more politically minded judges levying unnecessarily harsh sentences in an attempt to appear tougher.

A final change -- setting zero-tolerance policies for many prisoners on probation -- has pushed thousands more people back behind bars, often for relatively minor offenses.

FINDING A SOLUTION

Restoring the intent of Florida's sentencing guidelines, and returning discretion to judges, would be a good start. The state also can ease the burden on prisons by matching offenders with programs that reduce the chances that they will commit more crimes. Specialized courts -- such as drug or mental health courts -- generally operate outside sentencing guideline requirements. And these programs work, significantly reducing the number of offenders who are rearrested.

Last month, the state Senate Criminal Justice Committee heard about other measures that could reduce prison population -- such as a controlled release program or prison diversion measures. These are worth exploring, but they would be no replacement for a careful, analytical approach to each case that a judge could offer.

Undoing these dubious reforms would restore equity to sentencing in Florida, and help restore the emphasis of the state's correctional mission -- to reform prisoners and turn them away from a life of crime -- and reducing the burden on Florida's taxpayers, who are feeding ever-increasing sums of money into a prison system that doesn't make them any safer.

By The Numbers

· 9.3 percent -- portion of Florida budget (2007) spent for corrections (prison and probation)

· 100,000 -- state's projected daily average prison population for 2009

· $439.2 million -- requested in coming budget year to add capacity
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/opnOPN86020809.htm

Posted by lois at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2009

NY: Sentencing Commission Calls for Drug Law Reform and Critical Response from NY Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver

Sentencing Commission Calls for Drug Law Reform
February 3, 2009

Panel also recommends determinate sentencing, graduated sanctions for parole violators

A bi-partisan panel that spent nearly two years studying New York State’s sentencing statutes today called for further reforms to the state’s drug laws and provided the Governor, Legislature and Judiciary with several different options for historic reform.

The Commission on Sentencing Reform agreed on five major principles of drug law reform:

* Community-based drug treatment, especially when required in a criminal justice setting where the offender faces clearly defined sanctions for program failure, works and should be an available option in every region of the state.

* The state’s network of existing diversion programs and drug courts has been effective for thousands of drug-addicted offenders, and any new diversion model must be structured so as not to undermine these programs.

* New York should adopt a comprehensive plan to provide statewide access to substance abuse treatment programs.

* New York must continue to reserve costly prison resources for high-risk offenders and make greater use of alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders while not jeopardizing the state’s significant gains in public safety.

* While New York has a large network of successful drug treatment courts and prosecutor-based diversion programs (such as DTAP – “Drug Treatment Alternative-to-Prison), these programs are not always made available to deserving offenders in need of treatment. The result is a “hit-or-miss” system that leaves many non-violent, drug-addicted offenders ─ and particularly persons of color – without access to this potentially life-changing alternative. To help close this gap, the Commission supports the adoption in statute of a uniform statewide drug diversion model.

The Commission considered several different alternatives for achieving those objectives and included five different options for reform.

Under one of the proposals, the “judicial diversion” model, judges would have discretion to divert certain addicted, non-violent first- and second-felony drug offenders into treatment programs rather than prison. The Commission noted that if this model had been in place in 2006, approximately 3,000 offenders – 89 percent of them African American or Hispanic – might have been diverted from prison and instead steered toward treatment.

Other options are: the Court Approved Drug Abuse Treatment (CADAT) model that is part of a comprehensive drug reform bill pending in both houses of the Legislature; judicial diversion, but only with the consent of the prosecutor; and two variations of a proposal that would allow first-time Class B drug felons to receive a probation or local jail sentence in lieu of a one-year state prison term.

Denise E. O’Donnell, chair of the Commission and Deputy Secretary for Public Safety, said all of the five proposals have benefits and drawbacks that the Legislature should take into account before implementing drug law reform.

“The Commission has heard from the prosecution, the defense, and the judiciary,” Deputy Secretary O’Donnell said. “We have solicited advice from advocates and renowned experts from around the nation. We held public hearings in New York City, Albany and Buffalo. We formed focus groups. We studied drug courts and drug diversion programs around the state and visited drug treatment facilities and New York State’s prisons in an effort to determine which approaches are most successful at ending the cycle of addiction and incarceration.

“I believe our report provides Governor Paterson and the Legislature with the balanced, objective and evidence-based information they need to make informed decisions about the future of New York’s drug laws,” Deputy Secretary O’Donnell added.

The 11-member Sentencing Commission, which was established by Executive Order in March 2007 to perform a comprehensive review of New York’s sentencing statutes, also recommended:

* Adopting a largely “determinate” sentencing system to promote greater uniformity, fairness and truth-in-sentencing. Currently, New York utilizes a hybrid of “determinate” sentences where the court imposes a fixed sentence, and “indeterminate” sentences where the court imposes a minimum and maximum term and the Parole Board decides when the offender is actually released. Under a determinate sentencing system, defendants, crime victims, judges and the public have a clear understanding of how long an offender will actually spend behind bars. The Commission reviewed more than two decades of sentences that had been imposed through the indeterminate system and used that data to construct a proposed range of sentences for particular offenses.

* A comprehensive system of graduated responses, which would allow parole officers throughout the state to respond quickly and proportionately to technical parole violations. Since incarceration is an expensive and, often, unnecessary response to parole violations, the Commission recommends expanded use of “graduated sanctions” – such as curfews, electronic monitoring, increased reporting – coupled with use of evidence-based risk assessments to identify parolees who pose the greatest risk to public safety.

* Expanding effective and cost-efficient “shock incarceration” and “merit time” initiatives that reduce recidivism and reserve costly prison space for the most dangerous offenders.

* Enhancing the rights of crime victims. The Commission recommends moving all of the various victim’s rights statutes into a single article of law, or cross-referencing to a single article, so that victims, judges and practitioners can readily ascertain the rights and benefits that may be available. Additionally, the Commission recommends enhancing victim’s rights training requirements for prosecutors and judges, as well as new laws to enhance the ability of victims to collect restitution.

* Establishing a permanent sentencing commission. Over the past 40 years, portions of New York’s sentencing statutes have been amended and altered countless times, resulting in an overly complex, Byzantine structure replete with the potential for injustice. The Commission recommends the establishment of a permanent body of experts to advise the Executive and Legislative branches on proposed legislation.

Jeremy Travis, president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the “Sentencing Commission has performed a valuable service, at a critical time in the state’s history.”

“By focusing squarely on the connection between public safety and sentencing policy, the Commission has provided a roadmap that will guide the state during difficult fiscal times,” President Travis said. “The Commission’s recommendations, if followed, will bring clarity to our patchwork quilt of accumulated sentencing reforms, improve reentry outcomes, and support more rational uses of our prisons and our parole system.”

Deputy Secretary O’Donnell said the report is “the product of an extraordinary effort by an extraordinary group of professionals.”

“This comprehensive report reflects the wide diversity of experience represented on the Commission, and the seriousness with which every member approached this very difficult and time-consuming mission,” Deputy Secretary O’Donnell said. “Although we come from different areas, different professions and different backgrounds, our overarching goals were identical – justice, fairness and public safety. I believe that, with this report, we have met that goal.”

Also on the Commission were: Anthony Bergamo, Chairman, Federal Law Enforcement Foundation, Inc.; Brian Fischer, Commissioner, New York State Department of Correctional Services; Michael C. Green, Monroe County District Attorney; Joseph R. Lentol, member of the New York State Assembly; Michael P. McDermott, O’Connell and Aronowitz in Albany; Judge Juanita Bing Newton, Deputy Chief Administrative Judge for Justice Initiatives; Felix Rosa; Executive Director, New York State Division of Parole; Eric T. Schneiderman, member of the New York State Senate; Tina Marie Stanford, Chair, New York State Crime Victims Board; and Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., of Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer in Manhattan

“A lot of talented people put a lot of work into this report, which I believe will serve as a positive stepping stone for the legislature as we consider reforms to our state’s costly ─ and at times overly-punitive ─ criminal justice system,” said Senator Schneiderman, the new chair of the Senate Codes Committee. “I am especially heartened by the fact that the Commission is recommending by nearly unanimous agreement that judges be given the power to divert drug-addicted offenders to treatment, even without prosecutorial consent.”

Added Karen Carpenter-Palumbo, Commissioner of the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services: “I applaud the Governor and the Sentencing Commission for recognizing addiction is a chronic illness that is better to treat than to incarcerate. We know that 72 percent of state parolees have a substance abuse problem and effective treatment is the best way to help them return to their communities, not to prison.

“OASAS is proud to partner with the Governor and Legislature on insuring that appropriate treatment is available to those individuals who can be diverted from State prison to our not-for-profit system of care,” she added. “New York State is a national leader in diversion programs, such as drug courts, and the action of this Commission once again puts New York in the forefront.”

Commissioner Fischer said the “shock incarceration” and “merit time proposals would build upon effective and cost efficient programs already being utilized by the Department of Correctional Services.

“Expanding eligibility for shock incarceration and creating limited credit time for good behavior and enhanced program participation during prison are sound, common-sense ideas based upon many years of practical experience in what works best,” Commissioner Fischer said.

“Shock has saved state taxpayers nearly $1.3 billion directly over two decades through reduced need for prison space, in addition to lowering recidivism by better preparing its participants to return to society,” he added. “Credit time would build on our very successful merit time program by providing incentives that have been shown not only to help in the rehabilitative process for offenders but also to make our correctional facilities safer and to enhance public safety.”

Added Ms. Stanford, Chair of the Crime Victims Board: “I am pleased to note that victims’ rights and concerns were studied and considered as part of the extensive process of reviewing sentencing in New York. The final product reflects fairness and forward thinking in an effort to share practical suggestions and best practices to achieve just results.”

Mr. Vance said that the “Commission’s report provides sound and bold recommendations to reform New York’s complex, sometimes unfair and often incomprehensible sentencing laws. We hope our work will be a roadmap to a more fair and effective criminal justice system for all of us.”

http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us/pio/press_releases/2009-02-03_pressrelease.html
Critical Response to Report from Sheldon Silver, Speaker of the NY Assembly
http://blogs.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/11304/silver-thumbs-down-on-dru g-law-reform-report

Silver: Thumbs down on drug law reform report
February 3, 2009 at 12:51 pm by Casey Seiler

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has wasted no time in calling the drug law reform commission’s report a “missed opportunity.” Here’s his letter to commission Chairwoman Denise O’Donnell:

Dear Commissioner O’Donnell:

I write to express my deep disappointment with the final report of the Commission on Sentencing Reform. Unfortunately, the Commission’s report represents a historic missed opportunity to advance meaningful reform of New York’s antiquated “Rockefeller-era Drug Laws”. The Commission held in its hands a unique opportunity to help undo thirty-five years of failed drug policy and set New York on the path to establishing a more just, more humane and more effective approach to combat drug crime and drug abuse.

I am saddened that it failed to do so.

More than 35 years after they were enacted, it is clear that the Rockefeller laws have failed to combat drug abuse or effectively impact the incidence of violent crime across New York State. Rather, they have succeeded in imprisoning tens of thousands of low-level non-violent offenders, who are predominantly African-American and Latino, with no history of committing violent crimes at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to taxpayers. By restoring to judges their discretion not to mandate a prison sentence when they deem it inappropriate, non-violent drug offenders and taxpayers will be
better served by driving resources toward strategies that have been proven far more effective at combating substance abuse and the street level crime associated with it.

Fore nearly a decade, the New York State Assembly, led by Assemblymember Jeffrion Aubry, has passed legislation to reform these laws, with an emphasis on restoring discretion to judges and providing alternatives to incarceration where appropriate and drug treatment for offenders where needed. Policy reforms encapsulated in that legislation were proposed to this Commission by Assemblymember Joseph Lentol. I was very sorry to learn
that the Commission rejected them.

I am troubled that the Commission’s report fails to address a system that has ignored, and still ignores, the health and societal implications of drug abuse, and has ignored the failed laws that have led to African- Americans and Latinos constituting 90% of those incarcerated in our state prisons for drug offenses. This profound discriminatory impact is even more shocking when the rates of illicit drug use are 8.1 percent for Whites, 7.2 percent
for Latinos and 8.7 percent for African-Americans.

In 2004, under the leadership of the New York State Assembly and drug law reform advocates, New York undertook an important first step in correcting failed policies by lowering maximum prison sentences through converting indeterminate to determinate sentences, eliminating life sentences, doubling weights for the top 2 classes of drug offenses and providing other sentencing relief. Further amendments have enabled some of those who were previously sentenced under the laws to seek limited reconsideration of their sentences.

But still, more than 35 years after enactment of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, individuals convicted of a class B felony drug offense must go to state prison, often regardless of the quantity, quality or type of drugs involved and regardless of other options that combat drug crime and drug abuse.

While I believe the Commission missed a historic opportunity to address these issues, the Assembly is committed to ensuring that in 2009, New York finally enacts real reform of the Rockefeller-era Drug Laws. We believe the following principles should guide any efforts at enacting reform:

Mandatory minimum sentences for low-level non-violent offenders must go. Judges must have the discretion to impose sentences that make sense. Mandating that judges sentence drug users and very low level street sellers to state prison has not appreciably impacted crime or
reduced addiction but, rather, has led to a massive increase in New York’s prison population with a disproportionate number of Latinos and African-Americans being incarcerated. Thus, real reform means untying the hands of our judiciary by ending mandatory minimum
prison sentences for Class B felony drug offenses and second time,
non-violent drug offenders, and placing an emphasis on probation,
alternatives to incarceration, and treatment. Except for the most serious and violent crimes, judges in New York already have had and continue to have the discretion to fashion appropriate sentences for criminal acts. Judges should have the ability to make an informed decision whether circumstances warrant imposing a state prison sentence in drug crimes just as they do in cases of many assault, larceny, property damage and any number of other crimes.

Illegal drugs should remain illegal. Adults who sell drugs to children, individuals who use guns in drug deals, and drug kingpins deserve harsh punishment. In addition, existing maximum
determinate sentences for first and second class B level felony and below offenders should also be maintained so that if a judge decided circumstances warrant, those who commit the crime will do serious time.

District Attorneys should continue to play a key role in the process, but they should not be able to veto a judge’s discretion. Indeed, to the extent there are district attorney-sponsored initiatives, such as Drug Treatment Alternative to Prison (DTAP) programs that have proven success rates with the limited populations they serve, judges will have the discretion to continue them.

This approach is fair, sensible and cost effective. We spend almost $45,000 per year incarcerating each drug offender in state prison, many of whom are non-violent individuals suffering from substance abus