October 06, 2008
CA: Justice issues collide on ballot
Justice issues collide on ballot
By Andy Furillo
Monday, October 6, 2008
Sacramento Bee
Law and order activists, critics of California's drug laws and victims rights groups independently have loaded three separate crime measures onto the Nov. 4 ballot, and they're not making it easy for state voters to sort them out.
Together, Propositions 5, 6 and 9 cover 115 pages, would change scores of laws and would affect billions of dollars in state spending.
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Posted by lois at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2008
Des Moines Register: Voters, demand change in sentencing laws
Guest column: Voters, demand change in sentencing laws
Des Moines Register
FRAN and RAY KOONTZ live in Des Moines. Their son, John, is serving his 12th year in prison on drug and weapons charges. Contact: October 4, 2008
When Americans go to the polls this November, they will elect state and federal representatives ultimately responsible for what's become a travesty of justice and a waste of taxpayer money: the long sentences being served by nonviolent offenders, especially in federal prisons.
In Iowa, we'll decide whether our current representatives in the U.S. House and one of our senators, Tom Harkin, deserve to continue in office. They do not, unless they pledge to follow their constituents' wishes and change unjust sentencing laws.
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Posted by lois at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)
Justice Policy Institute Report: Moving Target: A Decade of Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex
The Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released a new report this week examining the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC)--the relationship between government and private interests that use imprisonment, policing, and surveillance as a solution to social, political, and economic problems. Moving Target: A Decade of Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex, examines the progress of reform 10 years after Critical Resistance first launched its efforts to dismantle the PIC. The report underscores:
Despite crime rates at 30-year lows, the criminal justice system has under its control more people than ever.
Posted by lois at 11:46 PM | Comments (0)
Message from Justice Action in Austraila on Abolition
Message to "Discovering Balance" Conference, Perth October 2, 2008.
Justice Action attended the prison abolition conference "Critical Resistance" CR10 in San Francisco last weekend presenting a workshop and talking with key organisers. We also were in London in July for the International Conference on Penal Abolition ICOPA X11, and facilitated its final report.
Last week we achieved a landmark success forcing the NSW government to transfer the prison hospital from Corrective Services to Health, following a six month campaign involving the patients, nurses, psychiatrists, mental health and community organisations Australia-wide. It meant gaining hospital conditions
including late lock-in for the patients.
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Posted by lois at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)
CA: Prop 5 Would Overhaul Sentencing of Poepole with Non-Violent Drug Convictions
Prop. 5 would overhaul sentencing of drug offenders
The far-reaching measure would increase treatment and eliminate incarceration for those convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes. But opponents see another agenda.
By Michael Rothfeld
Los Angeles Times
October 2, 2008
SACRAMENTO — In a state that has consistently boosted penalties for criminals, packing California's prisons to bursting, sponsors of the far-reaching Proposition 5 are asking voters in November to go in the opposite direction.
The Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, funded in part by billionaire George Soros, would be "the most ambitious sentencing and prison reform in U.S. history," according to the Drug Policy Alliance Network, a primary sponsor.
By 2010, the measure would commit the state to spending at least $460 million a year, mostly to increase treatment -- and eliminate incarceration -- for those who commit nonviolent crimes involving drugs or fueled by them.
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Posted by lois at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)
OR: Measure 62 may take a bite out of crime as well as school budgets
Measure 62 may take a bite out of crime as well as school budgets
by Janie Har, The Oregonian
Thursday October 02, 2008, 12:07 AM
Oregon voters will have to choose between public safety and public schools on the November ballot.
Under Measure 62, a yes vote would set aside 15 percent of state lottery profits for district attorneys, sheriffs and state police investigations that measure co-sponsor Kevin Mannix says get short shrift by Oregon lawmakers. The 15 percent amount would be carved into the state constitution.
A no vote would allow lawmakers to continue to spend that money on schools. At stake is about $200 million every two years. Because roughly half of Oregon's lottery money is tied up by state law or the constitution, most of the $200 million would come from schools.
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Posted by lois at 11:31 PM | Comments (0)
Two and a Half Hours a Week. An Inside/Out Class at the Hampshire County (MA) Jail
Two and a Half Hours a Week
An Inside/Out Class at the Hampshire County (MA) Jail
By Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne '01
Greg was flipping through pages of class readings. He was looking for a specific example to support his point about changing gender roles among Cambodian refugees fleeing the Pol Pot regime. He flipped one page, then another and another.
“I can’t find it right now,” he told a classmate. “I don’t have a highlighter.... I’d like to have one, a couple different highlighters, so I could...” His voice trailed off as he mimed the act of marking up the passages by topic.
Greg had pored over the readings; every page bore the penciled-in marginalia of a determined student. But he isn’t just any Amherst student, and the giveaway was that he had only a pencil at his disposal. The Hampshire Jail and House of Corrections has strict rules, and as long as Greg was imprisoned there, he had to follow them, even during the two and a half hours each Wednesday that he spent taking Regulating Citizenship, an Amherst political science course taught by Kristin Bumiller, a professor of political science and women’s and gender studies.
Posted by lois at 06:55 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2008
Helping Mothers and Children Stay Connected-During and After Prison Coalition for Women Prisoners helps bring Family Reunion Program to New York's largest prison for women
Helping Mothers and Children Stay Connected-During and After Prison
Coalition for Women Prisoners helps bring Family Reunion Program to New York's largest prison for women
September 2008
Correctional Association of NY
The Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) has begun the process of establishing a Family Reunion Program (FRP)—which allows incarcerated people to have extended, overnight visits with family—at Albion Correctional Facility, New York’s largest prison for women. Our Women in Prison Project (WIPP) and its Coalition for Women Prisoners have long pressed for the implementation of an FRP at Albion and, with the efforts and full support of DOCS and Commissioner Brian Fischer, helped secure an allocation of $200,000 for the program in this year’s State Budget.
Posted by lois at 12:18 AM | Comments (0)
NEW POLL: Americans Oppose Mandatory Minimums,Will Vote for Candidates Who Feel the Same
NEW POLL: Americans Oppose Mandatory Minimums,Will Vote for Candidates Who Feel the Same
August 25, 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. – A new poll released today by Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) shows widespread support for ending mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenses and that Americans will vote for candidates who feel the same way.
· Fully 78 percent of Americans (nearly eight in 10) agree that courts – not Congress – should determine an individual’s prison sentence.
· Six in 10 (59 percent) oppose mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenders.
· A majority of Americans (57 percent) polled said they would likely vote for a candidate for Congress who would eliminate all mandatory minimums for nonviolent crimes.
Posted by lois at 12:06 AM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2008
CA: Billions for building jails may not materialize
Billions for building jails may not materialize
By Hudson Sangree - hsangree@sacbee.com
Thursday, October 2, 2008
As residents of rural Yolo County fight a proposal to build a re-entry prison near Madison, billions of dollars in funding for prison and jail construction are in jeopardy statewide.
State lawmakers failed to vote on a bill last month that would have allowed the state to issue more than $7 billion in bonds to finance thousands of new prison and jail beds.
Meanwhile, the nation's credit crisis has put in doubt the state's ability to sell bonds to pay for projects.
"Even if the legislation was in place, the credit window is closed; the capital markets are locked up tight," said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the state Department of Finance.
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Posted by lois at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2008
Race is a factor in this election
Guest Column: Race is a factor in this election
Tatishe M. Nteta
Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, MA)
Created 10/01/2008
Last week, Senator Barack Obama, in a nationally televised interview, was asked if his race will be a detrimental factor in his presidential run.
Obama, repeating the mantra of his campaign, emphasized the minimal role that race will play with presidential vote choice saying, "Now are there gonna be some people who don't vote for me because I'm black? Of course. There are probably some African Americans who are voting for me because I'm black. Or maybe others who are just inspired by the idea of breaking new ground. And so I think all that's a wash."
Obama's view of the impact of race on presidential vote choice, although optimistic, shields just how much of an influence race may have in the 2008 presidential election. According to a recently released AP/Yahoo public opinion poll, close to 40 percent of white Americans hold negative stereotypes of African Americans that include the belief that they are lazy, unintelligent and prone to criminal behavior. Partisanship does not undermine these beliefs, as one-third of both white Democrats and independents also support these views.
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Posted by lois at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
PA: Rendell orders halt to release of parolees
Rendell orders halt to release of parolees
By Andrew Maykuth and Mario F. Cattabiani
September 30, 2008
Inquirer Staff Writers
Responding to mounting criticism of the judicial system after a paroled felon killed a Philadelphia police officer, Gov. Rendell yesterday ordered a halt to the release of parolees until an independent expert can conduct "a top-to-bottom review" of how the state releases violent offenders.
The assessment will be conducted by John S. Goldkamp, chairman of the Temple University Department of Criminal Justice, who Rendell tapped to review a system that each month paroles about 1,000 inmates out of a prison population of about 47,000.
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Posted by lois at 12:03 PM | Comments (0)
