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January 31, 2005

NY Times Editorial: Building Unnecessary Jails

(Much of this editorial is based on the work of Dana Kaplan)
Published: January 30, 2005

New York started a disastrous national trend when it passed the draconian Rockefeller drug laws 32 years ago. These laws erased the common-sense distinction between petty drug users and kingpins, sending even first-time offenders to jail for periods of 15 years to life. The laws drove up the inmate population markedly, committed the state to spend billions to build and run new prisons, and did nothing to curb the drug trade.

Prosecutors who rightly viewed the laws as impractical and unfair began to get around them by never bringing novice offenders to trial at all, instead diverting them to drug treatment and other rehabilitation programs. The Pataki administration has also developed forward-looking programs in prisons and has begun to stress post-prison strategies that help people who get out of jail to actually stay out.

Gov. George E. Pataki took credit for this shift in his State of the State address. He told his listeners that the prison population had dropped by about 8,000 people, or 11 percent of the total, over the last five years. But county officials and prison rights advocates noted a glaring discrepancy between the governor's sentiments and the actual behavior of the State Commission of Correction, an agency with great influence over prison policy in New York and one that the governor essentially controls.

Founded in the late 19th century to promote humane treatment at state prisons, the commission has historically concerned itself with training and administrative issues. But recently it has been pressing counties around the state to build new local jails.

A recent study released by a watchdog group, the New York State Network for Jail Alternatives and Safer Communities, asserts that since 1995, 36 of New York's counties have built, are constructing or are considering new jails - thanks partly to pressure from the state.

This has made several counties unhappy. They do not believe they should be asked to build new jails while the prison population is declining. On Long Island, Suffolk County has recently sued the commission, accusing it of arbitrary and capricious enforcement of state law in a dispute over jail expansion. Tompkins County refused to expand its jail in a manner suggested by the state, and other counties are poised to follow suit.

The counties argue further that they should not be spending millions of dollars on jails at a time when the country as a whole is moving away from mass incarceration and toward rehabilitation, job training and other forms of nonjail approaches. Their complaints make sense; local jail populations are often made up mainly of mentally ill persons and other low-level offenders who would not be in jail at all if they could afford bail. Some critics of the building plan fear that the state is preparing to shift responsibility for incarceration to the local level.

Finally, the counties argue that state officials who got into the prison business in the post-Rockefeller years may be assuming that jail and prison populations can only go up, when in fact, as Mr. Pataki himself noted, they can go down as well.

The state should take these criticisms seriously. It should also make sure that it is not pressing the counties to build massive new jails that local sheriffs will then feel compelled to keep full.

Mr. Pataki should use his influence to straighten out this dispute. He should also make sure that the counties understand and have access to the methods that have successfully reduced the state prison population.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/opinion/opinionspecial/LI_boondoggle.html?
ex=1108184400&en=0aa38c517567c462&ei=5070

NY Times Opinion > N.Y. Region Opinions

Posted by lois at 06:16 PM | Comments (0)

January 30, 2005

Prisoners of the Census: Incarceration is concentrated in particular Brooklyn Neighborhoods

From Prisoners of the Census

ERIC CADORA SHOWS HOW INCARCERATION IS CONCENTRATED IN PARTICULAR BROOKLYN NEIGHBORHOODS

[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-24-1-2005.shtml
Website version contains links to more information and larger versions of the attached maps.]

The Importing Constituents: Prisoners and Political Clout in New York report was able to quantify the population loss to New York City from the Census Bureau practice of assigning prisoners residence to the prison location rather than their homes, and the report was able to determine how this benefits up-state prison districts. In 2000, New York City had 43,740 of its residents credited to the communities that contain prisons. As much as 7% of one upstate district's population is prisoners. Counting prisoners as prison-town residents reduces the number of actual residents in these districts, enhancing the weight of a vote in those prison districts. By extension, this vote enhancement dilutes the votes of residents elsewhere in the state.

Dear Colleague,

Welcome to this week's PrisonersoftheCensus-News, bringing you news of new research, analysis and opinion about the impact of the U.S. Census counting incarcerated people as residents not of their homes but of the prison towns. This week's column discusses some innovative research on prisoner origin in New York City.

* * *
We know that compared to the state as a whole, New York City disproportionately sends people to prison, but what about specific neighborhoods in the city? The Importing Constituents report talks of the potential impact on the assumption that prisoners are evenly distributed in the city. Even with that assumption, there was a clear problem in need of a fix. But when the report was written, nobody knew exactly where in the city prisoners came from. The Census Bureau doesn't collect this information, and the Department of Correctional Services does not publish this information in any more detail than the number of prisoners that come from New York City as a whole. As the Importing Constituents report said, prisoners are very likely concentrated in particular communities. This concentration would mean that specific districts suffer a measurable vote dilution beyond not receiving the same vote enhancement existing in the prison districts.

One recent analysis of prisoner origin in Brooklyn does suggest that prisoners are highly concentrated in origin. As part of a study looking to see where the state spends its criminal justice resources, Eric Cadora used judicial records to map the homes of prisoners from the Brooklyn borough sent to state prison in 2003. He found 35 blocks where more than $1million in state funds were spent to take people out of that community in 2003. The left portion of the attached map is a map of Mr. Cadora's research as published in the Village Voice. As Cadora used the figure of $30,000 per year to incarcerate someone, each of those 35 blocks would have at least 33 people sent to prison that year. The one "$5 million dollar block" would translate into 167 people that should have been credited by the legislature's map makers
to a single block in Brooklyn. This map isn't directly translatable
to a redistricting analysis, but it does make the very strong case that prisoners are highly concentrated in origin. The clear message is that some communities in Brooklyn lose far more population to prison -- and the Census counts of prisoners -- than others.

Eric Cadora's research and map also allows some additional analysis to be made of the communities that see large numbers of people go to prison. The right portion of the attached map is of the Black population in Brooklyn. Comparing the two maps, we see that what Eric Cadora identified as the blocks that send large numbers of people to prison are also the same blocks with large Black populations.

The Importing Constituents report showed that the Census Bureau's method of counting prisoners disadvantages the city of New York to the benefit of predominantly white rural areas. Eric Cadora's research provides more evidence for what many have long suspected -- that incarceration impacts certain disadvantaged communities much more severely than other communities. If we want to accurately count these communities and give them their fair share of political power in the legislatures, then the population of these communities needs to be counted in those communities.

Note: See also Eric Cadora's earlier analysis Criminal Justice
and Health and Human Services: An Exploration of Overlapping
Needs, Resources, and Interests in Brooklyn Neighborhoods,
(http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/410633_CriminalJustice.pdf )
[PDF] Urban Institute. January, 2002. That report only goes down
to the tract level and includes jail populations as well, but it
also creates extremely useful comparison maps of singe parent
households, youth concentrations, and people on various public
assistance programs. These are largely all co-incident
populations.

* * *

I welcome your feedback on the issue, the website, and this message. And as always, if you prefer to not receive these messages, just let me know.

Best wishes,
Peter Wagner

--
Peter Wagner http://www.PrisonersoftheCensus.org
pwagner@prisonpolicy.org http://www.prisonpolicy.org
Prison Policy Initiative PO Box 127 Northampton, MA 01061

Posted by lois at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2005

CA: Huge turnout to protest curfew at Jerry Brown's loft

Last night's protest, organized by Critical Resistance and All of Us or None, was a HUGE success!

For those of you who couldn't make it, we had over 200 pumped-up people outside of Jerry Brown's loft, led by the 11-member Brass Liberation Orchestra who marched with us from the CR office and helped energized the crowd, and with words from Dorsey Nunn, Rose Braz, Sitara Nieves, Tommy Escarzega, and Linda Evans (and others) rallying us all.

The news media was buzzing, and we were covered on 7 TV stations, 4 radio stations, and 6 newspapers, and met lots of new people and new allies.

Read on, for more words about Jerry Brown's response to this protest.

This protest was part of Critical Resistance's campaigns of: Shrinking the system - Through our campaign to change parole policy, reducing the chances that people will be sent back to prison on technical violations such as a 10pm curfew. California already sends 50% of parolees back to prison on small technical violations -at an enormous cost to both their families and to the larger community. (It costs $35,000-45,000 per year to lock somone up in prison - we don't believe that's a good use of our money and resources, and we don't believe locking people up keeps us safe.)

Organizing around police practices in Oakland -
A 10pm curfew means that Oakland police will be able to step up their established practice of racially profiling certain communities in Oakland after 10pm. The new curfew means that everyone who happens to live in certain neighborhoods can be stopped for suspicion of being a parolee or probationer. We've seen the devastating effects of these practices through our campaign around Operation Impact, which racially profiles communities in Oakland, stopping every car and pedestrian who passes through blockades set up in "high crime" neighborhoods, arresting scores of people, intimidating many more, impounding cars, and ticketing people for the smallest of infractions, like having broken taillights.

Building a movement to create safety without relying on prisons: We know what can keep Oakland safe -- and it's not a 10pm curfew. It's ensuring that our kids have decent schools that Oakland right now can't provide. It's about creating job opportunities, health services, and repairing the fragmentation of communities that mass imprisonment causes.

Research study after research study -- along with common sense -- shows that real safety is created when communities don't rely on incarceration and policing, and when tax money is spent on preventative programs that address the root causes of crime: unemployment, homelessness, poor schools, and lack of services.

Jerry Brown's office has started spinning - we've put him on the defensive.

He's started saying that this program is only for the "worst of the worst", that it's only affected 50 people, and that there is evidence to show that curfews reduce violence.

In fact:
1) The curfew can be imposed on anyone who is convicted for a felony at night.
2) The curfew has just started. There will be hundreds of people affected by this.
3) Every study we have seen shows that curfews are completely ineffective on reducing violence or crime. (http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v1n2/males.html,

http://ann.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/587/1/136,

http://wcr.sonoma.edu/v1n2/appendix_a.html)
4) Numerous studies show that former prisoners need SUPPORT to reintegrate into a life outside of a cage - not harassment. A curfew only further stigmatizes a population who is faced with incredible odds: who are forbidden from public housing, food stamps, university loans, and social programs, among other things.
5) A curfew means that more people will be returned to prison, further destabilizing Oakland already-fragmented communities (Just one great analysis of this is in "The Problem with Addition by
Subratction: The Prison-Crime Relationship in Low-income Communities," by Todd Clear in Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment,
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pub_invisible.cfm

Join us in this movement. Please call 510-444-0484 if you have questions about why we oppose the curfew, about CR in general, or to come to our monthly general meeting to start working for true safety in Oakland.

In solidarity,

Critical Resistance Oakland _________________________________________________________________

Posted by lois at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)

National Juvenile Defender Center

The National Juvenile Defender Center announces the launch of our new web site, http://www.njdc.info.

The site provides descriptions of their services and other work, announcments about latest projects, access to publications, and summaries of juvenile justice-related data for every state; it also allows visitors to join the mailing list, subscribe to listservs, or request information about arranging a training session.

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

New: Sentencing Project: Racial Disparity in Sentencing

Friends,

I'm writing to call your attention to a new publication of The Sentencing Project, Racial Disparity in Sentencing: A Review of the Literature. This review examines the research findings of major studies of racial disparity at both the state and federal level and finds that "while racial dynamics have changed over time, race still exerts an undeniable presence in the sentencing process." The publication can be found at http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/disparity.pdf

I hope you find this information useful in your work. Please feel free to share any comments or reactions.

Regards,
Marc Mauer

Marc Mauer
Assistant Director
The Sentencing Project
514 10th St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20004
mauer@sentencingproject.org
(202) 628-0871

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

January 26, 2005

CA: Ruling Limits Challenges of Parole Denials

"In dissent, Justice Carlos R. Moreno said the ruling required "judicial rubber stamping" of parole-board decisions. "Failure to grant parole where parole is due wastes human lives, not to mention considerable tax dollars," Moreno wrote."
...."Over the last 13 years, the parole board has denied release to more than 95% of the eligible inmates who applied.

Even the few approved by the board have not all been released. California is one of three states that allows the governor to override parole recommendations."

In a 4-3 decision, the state Supreme Court says the Board of Prison Terms may reject inmates' release based on nature of the crimes. By Maura Dolan Times Staff Writer

January 25, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO The California Supreme Court decided Monday to limit sharply the ability of inmates to challenge parole denials, ruling that the parole board has the right to keep a convict in prison simply because of the nature of the crime that sent him there.

The state Board of Prison Terms, which has a history of seldom granting parole, has wide flexibility to deny release to convicted criminals even if they have been model inmates deemed not dangerous by mental health officials, the 4-3 decision said. The ruling is expected to keep behind bars thousands of inmates who are eligible for parole.

Monday's ruling came in the case of John A. Dannenberg, 64, who was convicted of the second-degree murder of his wife in 1985 and sentenced to a term of 15 years to life. Dannenberg has a spotless prison record and favorable psychological evaluations, and his two adult children support his release.

In 1999, the parole board rejected his third request for parole, saying he had committed the murder "in an especially cruel or callous manner" and had "a very trivial" motive to kill. Dannenberg then appealed, saying his record since he was put in prison should have made him eligible for release.

A trial court and Court of Appeal both sided with him. But the Supreme Court disagreed. Even though Dannenberg's record has been clean, the board had the right to deny parole based solely on the nature of his crime, the majority said.

The board "may protect public safety in each discrete case by considering the dangerous implications of a life-maximum prisoner's crime individually," Justice Marvin R. Baxter wrote for the majority.

In dissent, Justice Carlos R. Moreno said the ruling required "judicial rubber stamping" of parole-board decisions. "Failure to grant parole where parole is due wastes human lives, not to mention considerable tax dollars," Moreno wrote.

If an inmate is denied parole because of the nature of the crime, the board should be required at least to compare the gravity of the offense and the time served to other cases with the same conviction, he wrote.

The majority rejected that idea, saying it would be too burdensome.

To require the board to compare the inmate's crime and time served to that of other inmates with the same convictions would "contribute significantly to backlogs," Baxter wrote.

Dannenberg killed his wife, Linda, during a fight in their home in Los Gatos. The wealthy engineer had a stormy relationship with his wife, and she had received counseling for trying to harm herself and her children.

During an argument over a blocked bathtub drain, Dannenberg beat her with a pipe wrench. He claimed she first attacked him with a screwdriver while he was attempting to fix the drain.

Dannenberg told police that he passed out momentarily and woke up to find his wife slumped over the edge of the bathtub with her head in the water, where she had drowned. He called 911 and was quickly arrested.

Dannenberg has been behind bars in San Quentin for 18 years. While in prison, he fixed the facility's electrical wiring and volunteered with an inmate education advisory committee and a Jewish religious group for prisoners, the court said.

In upholding the parole board's decision, Baxter, joined by Chief Justice Ronald M. George and Justices Ming W. Chin and Janice Rogers Brown, said Dannenberg had "reacted with extreme and sustained violence to a domestic argument?. "

"Though he vehemently denied it, the evidence permitted an inference that, while the victim was helpless from her injuries, Dannenberg placed her head in the water, or at least left it there without assisting her until she was dead."

Moreno countered that a second-degree murder conviction always means that a defendant acted violently, cruelly and out of proportion to the provocation.

Moreover, he said, the board had "an incentive to give only pro-forma consideration" to parole because of the risk that the person could re-offend and the parole board be blamed.

"Dannenberg's present record is not only unblemished in terms of disciplinary infractions, but showed many positive signs of contribution to the prison community in which he lived," wrote Moreno, whose opinion was signed by Justices Joyce L. Kennard and Kathryn Mickle Werdegar.

Over the last 13 years, the parole board has denied release to more than 95% of the eligible inmates who applied.

Even the few approved by the board have not all been released. California is one of three states that allows the governor to override parole recommendations.

So far, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has accepted about 36% of the board's parole recommendations. Former Gov. Gray Davis approved just 1.7%. His predecessor, Gov. Pete Wilson, approved 67% of the applications that came before him.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Susan Lee Duncan, who represented the state in the case, said the state Supreme Court had made it clear that the parole board has been acting properly.

"They don't have to consider whether this is more serious or less serious than any other offender's crime," Duncan said. "It is strictly a case-by-case consideration, comparing this man and this crime to public safety."

Kathleen Kahn, a lawyer who represented Dannenberg, said the ruling "ratifies" the board's behavior and "allows the board to be as frankly political as it wants to be."

"A few judges in a few counties have really stuck their necks out and said what the board has been doing is really a violation of the law," Kahn said. "I think this opinion is written as a reprimand to those judges."

Tip Kindell, a spokesman for the Board of Prison Terms, said it was pleased that "our position was validated by the Supreme Court."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-parole25jan25,1,3625179.story?coll=l
a-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true
CALIFORNIA

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

Posted by lois at 06:35 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2005

WI: State Legislators Re-Thinking Sentencing

State legislators rethinking sentencing because of budget deficit, costs of prison and low crime numbers

By PHIL BRINKMAN / Lee Newspapers
MADISON — Crime is down and deficits are up, a combination that might be bringing Democrats and Republicans together to craft a more cost-effective approach to public safety.

Corrections Secretary Matt Frank said he knew something had changed when he started meeting with legislators last year to discuss proposed budget cuts.

"I was very seldom asked the question, ‘Is this tough on crime or is this weak on crime?'" he said. "The more common question was, ‘Is this effective? Does this work?' And I was getting that from both sides of the aisle."

In the last session, the GOP-controlled Legislature approved a series of modest reforms by Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, including early release for certain offenders who complete drug and alcohol treatment.

And Republicans are introducing reform bills that only Democrats would have sponsored 10 years ago, including one measure by former GOP Sen. Bob Welch to move eligible offenders to halfway houses six months before their release from prison to aid in their reintegration to society.

Welch had been one of the strongest supporters during the 1990s for longer prison terms and abolishing parole.

"As far as I'm concerned, I was on the winning side of that and got my way," he said. "Now, I'm circling back and saying, ‘OK, now that I know we're going to lock up the bad guys for a sufficient length of time, now we've got to look at what happens when they get out.'"

Other factors are making compromise more possible:

* The overall crime rate is at its lowest point in Wisconsin since 1972. The incidence of violent crime is the lowest since 1988.

* Crime no longer ranks among the public's chief concerns. In 1994 and 1996, crime topped the list of the most pressing state problems, according to an annual survey conducted for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute. It came in second in five of the other six years between 1990 and 1997. That has been eclipsed in recent years by concerns about taxes, health-care costs and the economy.

* Wisconsin's prison population is at an all-time high, and the cost to house those offenders is soaring — $28,000 each. At the same time, the governor and Legislature are under pressure to eliminate a projected deficit in the next two-year budget of $1.6 billion.

Still, most of the legislative changes amount to tinkering around the edges, say advocates of more sweeping reforms aimed at stopping repeat offenders from committing crimes by helping them find work, housing and other support. And not even all of those are getting the green light.

Last spring, the Republican-controlled Senate unanimously approved a GOP bill to help counties set up programs to provide alternatives to prosecution or prison for certain nonviolent offenders with drug or alcohol problems.

Backers said it would reduce the number of people who re-offend, save the state millions of dollars in prison costs and give judges the power to order someone to undergo treatment without going to prison.

The measure was also endorsed by a committee in the Republican-led Assembly before it was scuttled by Assembly Speaker John Gard, R-Peshtigo.

"They came here with platitudes about, 'Oh, if we just would care more for these people . . . everything will be just fine,'" Gard said. "These are people who have been convicted of being drug dealers or other types of criminals. I don't immediately say we've got to find a way to keep them in the community."

But Sen. Carol Roessler, R-Oshkosh, the bill's chief sponsor in the Senate, said she expects the Legislature will take up many more such measures in the coming years. She said she hoped Republicans and Democrats would work together to change the old political calculus that held that anything other than more prisons and longer sentences was "soft on crime."

"If you want results and you want to save taxpayers money and you want to have fewer victims of crime, this is what you need to do," Roessler said.

Some common themes in the recommendations of judges, correctional officials and other criminal justice experts to achieve a more effective corrections policy:

*Put probation and parole officers in the neighborhoods where offenders live and commit their crimes so that they become more familiar with their clients' rhythms and habits. Having a presence in the community also increases the chances relatives or neighbors will report illicit activity, allowing agents to intervene as soon as problems arise.

*Recruit employers to consider hiring former inmates. Although offenders sometimes have poor work histories that interfere with finding a job, most are under some form of supervision, which typically includes conditions such as showing up at work sober and on time.

*Support more pilot programs involving local governments, neighborhood groups, churches and other organizations seeking to help returning prisoners re-integrate into society.

*While some people in alternative programs will commit crimes, policymakers should be careful not to use those to condemn the whole program. Criminals come from all walks of life. In fact, most people arrested are not under any form of correctional supervision at the time they committed their crime.

http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2005/01/24/news/z00lead.prt

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

January 23, 2005

NC Will Isolate Gang Members who are Incarcerated

Sunday, January 23, 2005

By DAN KANE, Staff Writer
With the number of gang members behind bars on the rise, North Carolina prison officials want to cut off the gang violence other states have seen by corralling those inmates in a special close-custody unit.

The N.C. Department of Correction plans to put all inmates involved in gangs in a separate unit at a prison in Morganton. And many of those inmates won't get out until they complete a program that teaches them to control their anger and drop their gang ties.

The growing gang activity across North Carolina is sending more gang members to the state's prisons. The Governor's Crime Commission concluded last year that about 390 gangs operate in the state, with more than 8,500 members. Durham and Raleigh are among several cities and towns that have seen rapid growth in gangs.

"We want to help them think in a different manner, help them resolve a potentially dangerous situation without resorting to violence and hopefully give them the skills to help them renounce their gang identification," said Bob Lewis, the Correction Department's assistant director of support services.

The department wants to open the 192-bed unit at Foothills Correctional Institution in Western North Carolina sometime this summer. It has received a $770,000 federal grant to train staff and complete renovations, such as adding a recreation yard and expanding certain areas. After two years, the state will have to assume the program's expense.

Some inmates are known gang members when they enter prison; others' affiliation becomes known after their convictions; still others are recruited behind bars.

Gangs bring particular problems for prison staff members and other inmates. Sometimes, inmates are required to assault other inmates or staff as part of their initiation. The gangs also intimidate other inmates, and they are often involved with drugs and other contraband being smuggled into prisons.

Lewis said the rising numbers of gang members in prison have not led to gang fights or rampant violence, but with nearly 500 identified gang members behind bars, the department sees trouble on the horizon if it does not act now. There are about 35,000 inmates in the prison system.

In North Carolina prisons last year, inmates attacked staffers 552 times and attacked other inmates 165 times. Inmates used weapons in 74 attacks on staffers and other inmates. Prison officials said they confirmed that 11 assaults were gang-related.

Several states have separate units for gang members. The first state to establish such a unit was Connecticut, 10 years ago. Prison violence in general has dropped by roughly 80 percent in that time, Connecticut officials say. The state has segregated male, female and youth gang members in special units.

"We had a lot of gang hits, a lot of gang assaults, and we had to realize that the gangs in Connecticut were running our prisons," said Capt. Armando Valeriano, the Connecticut prison system's security risk group coordinator.

Segregating gang members had an immediate impact, Valeriano said. Many inmates changed their behavior to avoid being transferred.

Those who didn't found themselves in a six-month program that teaches them how to serve their time with the least amount of trouble. The anger management part of the program is called "Cage Your Rage."

You don't get out if you don't pass the program, Valeriano said. So far, less than 5 percent of those who complete the program come back, he said.

New Jersey began segregating gang members in 1998, and since then assaults on staff have dropped 50 percent. North Carolina officials have visited both states' programs.

North Carolina's program will last at least nine months. Those who do not pass will stay until they do, unless they've completed their sentence, Lewis said. If they get in trouble back out on the street, they'll likely be returned to the unit when they go back to prison.

"If you don't shape up, you could stay there for a long, long time," he said.

They will continue to have the same privileges as other inmates in close custody, such as visitation and access to a telephone.

North Carolina prison officials began noticing gang members among the inmate population in 1996. Members of the Five Percenters gang were the first to draw prison officials' attention. Today, there are at least four gangs with members in prison. Lewis said prison officials have identified 471 gang members, with nearly half of them belonging to the United Blood Nation.

United Blood Nation, the Five Percenters and the Crips predominately draw African-American inmates, while the Folk Nation is composed mostly of white inmates, Lewis said.

Some of those gang members who have stayed out of trouble will be allowed to remain in their respective prisons, Lewis said.

Those who face transfer to the gang unit will be given the opportunity to appeal the decision in a prison hearing, Lewis said. But they will have to convince prison officials that they have not been involved in gang activity.

Michael Hamden, executive director of N.C. Prisoner Legal Services, said there have been cases when prison officials have incorrectly classified inmates as gang members. He said he wants to make sure they are correct before sending inmates off to a unit filled with gang members.

Lewis would not explain publicly how prison officials identify gang members. That, he said, would kill the unit in its tracks.

"The first thing that I say that we look for in terms of attempting to validate these guys -- we can throw it out the window because they will get rid of it," Lewis said. Staff writer Dan Kane can be reached at 829-4861 or dkane@newsobserver.com.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/2045908p-8430412c.html

Posted by lois at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)

LA: Prison and Parole Policies Only Make the Streets More Dangerous

THE MAYOR'S RACE
Stop L.A.'s Crime Engine
Prison and parole policies only make the streets more dangerous. By Joe Domanick Joe Domanick is a senior fellow in criminal justice at USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism and author of "Cruel Justice: Three Strikes and the Politics of Crime in America's Golden State.

Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton announced last month that violent crime fell 13% in 2004 - criminals assaulted, robbed or raped about 6,500 fewer Angelenos. That drop is impressive, and good news for James K. Hahn's reelection campaign, which promotes the mayor's crime-fighting record.

But I doubt that many black and Latino residents in the city's poorest neighborhoods feel any safer today than they did a year ago, or will five years from today, unless radical changes are made in the way we think about crime prevention. Arrests in L.A. have risen 13% in the last four years. Yet despite the fact that tens of thousands of young men and women have been imprisoned, areas like South Los Angeles remain plagued by a cycle of violent crime that began in the mid-1960s. The smallest decrease in crime last year was in South L.A., whose residents are caught in a double bind. They want more police protection but despair as their sons are arrested, convicted and sent off to prison in record numbers. If national trends continue, one in three African American males born today will spend at least one year in state prison.

A fixation on arrest and crime statistics to gauge police effectiveness is standard in law enforcement - and politics. But the question police chiefs should be asking is what strategies will both prevent crime, short-term and long-term, and help stabilize L.A.'s communities.

Most experts agree that between 15% and 25% of the historic national drop in crime from 1992 to 2002 was attributable to harsher sentencing. Demographic changes - the decrease in the number of 18- to 25-year-olds, who commit most crimes - a healthy economy and other factors account for the rest.

A 15% to 25% decline in crime is significant. But consider the cost. With 162,000 inmates, California has the second-largest prison population in the world (behind China), and a $6-billion-a-year corrections budget. In 2001, the cost of fighting crime in California - cops, courts, jails and prisons
- was $17.5 billion.

The heart of the crime problem in the state is its prison and parole systems. Last year, a panel commissioned by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger described the corrections system as "dysfunctional," lacking "uniformity [or] transparency," burdened by "too much political interference, too much union control, too little management courage" and the highest recidivism in the nation. Until last year and the appointment of the reform-minded Jeanne S. Woodford as director of the Department of Corrections, the department's sole mission was to punish prisoners, and its $1.5-billion-a-year parole program reflected exactly that. Currently, 65,000 to 70,000 parolees a year end up back in prison, with one-third of them from L.A. County. An additional 35,000 county residents are on parole.

The problem begins to crystallize when you consider that 93% of everyone who enters prison in California will be released, and that the vast majority of them will return to places like South L.A. where social services to assist parolees reentering society barely exist. As a result, ex-cons are unprepared to do anything other than commit another crime and go back to prison. A 1997 Department of Corrections survey of parolees found that 85% were chronic drug or alcohol abusers, 70% to 90% were unemployed, 18% mentally ill and 10% homeless.

Parole policies and laws that effectively stigmatize former inmates compound the problem. Until recently, the operating philosophy of the state's parole system was to return parolees to prison no matter how minor their violations. Typically, they return to their communities with little or no money. Employers routinely shun them. Laws deny them driver's licenses, access to public housing and other services.

The effect on communities is devastating. "As you incarcerate a few people from a neighborhood, crime rates drop," says Todd R. Clear, director of doctoral studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "But when you remove ever higher numbers [for low-level crimes], crime starts to go up at a very high rate because you're destabilizing a lot of [supportive family and financial] relationships. When high numbers of [parolees] are also being returned, [the neighborhood is hit with] a double whammy."

Bratton has been far better than most big-city chiefs in acknowledging that "we can't arrest our way" out of crime and in supporting prevention and intervention programs in South and East L.A. Laudable as his efforts have been, they don't come close to solving the problem, let alone challenging the indifference and hostility to intervention and rehabilitation among politicians, law enforcement and citizens. If Bratton wants to leave a genuine legacy of long-term crime reduction and community stabilization in Los Angeles, he'll have to lobby hard for changes in California's prison and parole policies, not just make more arrests.

Traditionalists will contend that this is not a police chief's job. But what if big-city chiefs began to think and lead boldly? Bratton has headed the New York and Boston police departments and now runs one of the country's most fabled forces. He has the national media's attention and the respect of his colleagues. The public is skeptical of and often uninformed about methods of reducing crime other than hard-nosed policing. It needs high-profile education on these matters, and who better to do the teaching than law enforcement leaders who can convert the public and give politicians fearful of being called "soft on crime" the cover to reform the corrections and parole systems.

Otherwise, L.A.'s meanest streets will get meaner.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-cop23jan23,0,5759459
.story
January 23, 2005

Posted by lois at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Dutchess Exec. Vetoes Jail Funding

Dutchess exec vetoes jail funding -- or does he?
By Patricia Doxsey, Freeman staff01/23/2005

POUGHKEEPSIE - Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus has vetoed a plan to spend $560,000 to design an addition to the county jail.

But with the veto coming after the close of business Friday, Dutchess County Legislature Chairman Bradford Kendall said he isn't certain it's binding.

Steinhaus delivered a seven-page veto message to the Legislature at 5:01 p.m. on Friday, the last day he had to act on the legislation.

Kendall, R-Dover, said 5 p.m. is considered the close of business, so he's not sure it was a "legal veto."

Adding to the uncertainty, Kendall said, is the fact that Steinhaus failed to sign the veto message.

"So that also calls into question the legality of the veto," he said. "We're going to look at it. If it is a legal veto, he just blew a $2.5 million hole into the 2005 budget of the county."

Kendall said he is not inclined to bring the legislation back to the Legislature for an override vote.

"We'll talk about it, but in reality, to have this whole project work the way it should work, everybody has to be on board," he said. "If the county executive's not on board, I'm not sure what would be accomplished by forcing him on board with a questionable veto."

The Dutchess County Jail has been overcrowded since it opened its doors in 1996. Since that time, the state Commission of Correction has given the county variances to house 32 inmates more than allowed in the 285-bed facility.

A current 30-day variance expires on Jan. 31, and commission officials have said that without immediate action, they will not issue future variances. The commission wants the county to add 300 cells to the jail.

Even with the variance, the county is forced to house roughly 30 inmates each day in facilities outside the county, at a cost of $100 per day plus transportation and staffing expenses. In 2004, the county spent more than $1 million to house inmates in jails outside Dutchess County.

The legislation vetoed by Steinhaus would have satisfied the state commission's demand and probably would have allowed the jail to continue to function above capacity until new cells are added. Without the variance, the county will be forced to house in out-of-county jails those inmates currently in the Dutchess jail under the waiver.

Commission spokesman Lyle Hartog said Friday that the commission is reserving comment until it officially is notified by the county of the executive veto.

In his veto message, Steinhaus called the jail expansion unaffordable and ill-conceived and said the anticipated expense would break the backs of county taxpayers. To build the jail the commission wants, he said, would cost the county $130 million over the life of the bond.

He also cast blame for overcrowding on the justice system, which he said places unreachable bails on nonviolent criminals charged with misdemeanors, and on the state, which he said uses the county jail as a "dumping ground" for parole violators.

"The state Corrections Commission has the obligation to help counties as a partner, not act as big brother," he wrote. "New York State Parole has the obligation to stop dumping its parolees onto the backs of county taxpayers. Our state senators and assemblymen have the obligation to meet with the sheriff and county legislative leaders to identify ways that state prisoners, as a result of their state policies, are not dumped from state prisons into parole, only to be dumped into county jails."

Kendall declined to comment on Steinhaus' specific comments, saying he had not seen the executive veto message.
©Daily Freeman 2005
This victory is due in part to the work of Dana Kaplan!

Posted by lois at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)

OR: State Re-Thinking Measure 11 Mandatory Sentencing

SALEM OR ‹ Prisons are going up and the state's violent crime rate is headed downward.

Since Oregon's landmark Measure 11 mandatory sentencing law went into effect a decade ago, the state has become a safer place ‹ violent crimes have fallen from roughly 500 to 300 per 100,000 people, Bureau of Justice Statistics figures show.

Lawmakers may rethink Measure 11
January 23, 2005

By James Sinks
(The Bulletin)
At the same time, rural Eastern Oregon has seen an influx of corrections jobs from the prison-building boom needed to accommodate thousands of additional inmates.

Next on the drawing board is a new 864-bed, minimum-security facility in Madras, scheduled to open in October 2006.

Yet, while nobody scoffs at less crime and more jobs, a growing number of state legislators say it may be time to take a hard look at Measure 11.

Dissatisfaction with the tough law is nothing new in some camps, but lawmakers have never seriously dallied with substantive changes.

But that may change this year: The assembly faces tough budget choices and politics are shifting at the statehouse.

For the first time since Measure 11 passed, the chairs of both the House and Senate judiciary committees are signaling they are willing to modify some of the sentences.

"There is a growing recognition in this building that the faster-than-anticipated growth of the prison system is having an impact," said state Rep. Wayne Krieger, R-Gold Beach, a former state police officer who now heads the House Judiciary Committee.

He said lawmakers still consider public safety their top priority, and he has no desire to turn murderers or rapists loose.

However, Krieger said he wonders if the high cost of Measure 11's prison terms is siphoning too many dollars from other important public safety priorities, such as dealing with the state's methamphetamine crisis and getting inmates into education and rehabilitation programs before they're released.

MEASURE 11

There are 23 person-to-person crimes with mandatory sentences under the law. The longest terms are 25 years for murder, 10 years for attempted murder and first-degree manslaughter, and eight years and four months for first-degree sex crimes such as rape and sodomy.

The shortest sentence under Measure 11 is five years and 10 months, for second-degree assault, second-degree kidnapping and compelling prostitution.

As of Jan. 1, the state had 5,066 inmates serving Measure 11 sentences, according to the Department of Corrections. That represents roughly 40 percent of the state's inmates.

The motivation for change isn't just financial.

Violent crime rates are on the decline nationally, which suggests Measure 11 may be getting more credit than it deserves for Oregon's safer streets, said Geoff Sugerman, lobbyist for the Western Prison Project, which supports reforming the law.

Judges and defense attorneys say the law has put too much power in the hands of prosecutors, who can threaten defendants with Measure 11 sentences if they don't agree to plead guilty in pre-trial negotiations.

Also, spurred partly by a Bend case from 2004, some critics say the law is too rigid when it comes to prison terms for some first-time offenders.

A Deschutes County 20-year-old with no criminal history was sentenced to more than six years in prison after the deaths of two girls in a street-racing tragedy, but even the judge questioned whether the penalty was appropriate.

Sen. Ben Westlund, R-Tumalo, said people want to justice to be served ‹ but he's not confident that occurred in the case of David Black. His co-defendant was sentenced to six months in a plea deal.

"There's always been a few people that wanted to overturn Measure 11," he said.

"What's different this session is that there are a considerable number of people ‹ while they don't want to overturn it ‹ that want to look at the bottom end of Measure 11 offenses, particularly for those individuals that have no prior record."

Lawmakers in 1997 allowed judges to exempt first-time criminals from Measure 11 sanctions in limited circumstances for three second-degree crimes.

But talking about Measure 11 is much easier than actually modifying it.

THE LAW IS POPULAR

Distrustful of judges and worried about crime, voters approved Measure 11 in 1994 by a 64-to-36 percent margin. It went into effect in 1995.

In 2000, 74 percent of voters rejected a ballot measure that sought to overturn the mandatory sentences.

Steve Doell, director of Crime Victims United of Oregon, which supports Measure 11, said the public is in no mood to see any sentences weakened, and said polling confirms that view.

The facts show that with criminals off the streets for longer, those streets and schools are safer, he said. Crime rates nationally are going down because other states have also adopted tougher sentences, he said.

"If the trend of crime had continued where it was before 1995, there would be more than 34,000 more Oregon victims of rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults and murders," he said.

Still, school advocates are crying foul about the growth in the prison budget, but education accounts for about 58 percent of the general fund budget when colleges are included ‹ while prisons and parole account for less than 10 percent, he said.

"School people and others see the corrections budget as something they can carve into," Doell said. "They want to twist this thing around and say we spend more to send people to prison in this state than to educate kids, and that is malarkey."

Gov. Ted Kulongoski's proposed general fund budget for the 2005-07 cycle calls for a 34 percent jump in Department of Corrections spending to $1.1 billion, compared to a 1.7 percent increase for K-12 schools to $5 billion.

The prison budget also includes community correction dollars, which go to counties to pay for monitoring of parolees and for housing inmates in local jails.

The state is expected to have $11.9 billion in the general fund in the next two years ‹ an increase of $300 million from the Legislature's budget in the 2003-05 biennium.

However, that increase in revenue won't be enough to maintain all programs because of inflation, higher pension costs and larger populations in prisons, classrooms and welfare rolls.

CORRECTIONS FUNDING

The cutbacks even touch corrections funding: Sheriffs say the projected state dollars fall far short of what's needed and the state may reduce alcohol and drug counseling for inmates.

The Department of Administrative Services projects the state's prison population will climb from 12,778 in July 2004 to 14,279 in July 2007.

A report due Monday from an adult sentencing task force convened by Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers won't recommend any changes to Measure 11, said Department of Justice spokesman Kevin Neely.

Department of Corrections director Max Williams, a former legislator, said no convenient silver bullets are handy for solving the ballooning prison budget.

"The public expects us to hold bad actors accountable for their actions," he said. "But it does beg appropriate policy questions, such as how do you sustain that level of growth over time."

Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, the chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said lawmakers need to "provide the maximum amount of public safety with the dollars we have available."

"Prison beds are the most expensive public safety option we have," she said. "Where those beds are necessary to protect public safety, we must use them. But if there are ways we can be creative and can move away from prison beds without compromising safety, we should."

Among her suggestions: Allowing convicts to reduce their sentences via good behavior and participation in programs like school and alcohol and drug intervention, and examining whether elderly and disabled inmates can be released early when they don't pose a safety risk, she said.

As a tradeoff, the state can invest more resources in programs to combat meth and to help criminals learn to function in society and stay clean, she said.

"We know 95 percent of them are coming back to our communities," she said. "What do we want them to look like when the get back? Do we want them to deal with their meth and drug or alcohol problems, or just keep them locked up as long as we possibly can and then dump them out in the street?"

In the Bend case, Circuit Court Judge Stephen Tiktin said he didn't want to sentence David Black to a 75-month sentence.

But because the 20-year-old was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter in connection with the deaths of two girls in an automobile wreck, the judge had no choice.

The fatal wreck occurred Aug. 9, 2003, on rural Alfalfa Market Road.

Danielle O'Neil, 16, lost control of her car and spun into the path of a van. O'Neil and her passenger, Stephanie Beeksma, 15, were killed.

Prosecutors successfully argued that Black and co-defendant Randy Clifford had raced Gates and were culpable.

Clifford negotiated a plea settlement with prosecutors, pleading guilty to criminally negligent homicide and fourth-degree assault. Neither of those are Measure 11 crimes.

But Black refused a similar offer and maintained his innocence ‹ and it ultimately cost him.

Clifford was sentenced to six months behind bars while Black was sentenced to 75 months under Measure 11.

That disparity that wasn't lost on Black's family or Sen. Westlund.

"You have to ask, was justice served?" he said.

Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli, R-John Day, said it often seems incomprehensible to families that a first brush with the law can lead to a Measure 11 sentence.

But, he said, that's the law the public wants ‹ and he can't justify loosening it because of the budget or other concerns.

Ferrioli expects lawmakers will ultimately take a pass on modifying the law.

"Cannibalizing Measure 11 that was adopted by the people is not my idea of living within your means," he said.

"The goal of the corrections division is rehabilitation and protection of the public, but first you've got to get criminals off the streets."

MEASURE 11 COSTS

Western Prison Project lobbyist Sugerman said lawmakers are coming to grips with the high cost of maintaining a one-strike-and-you're-out law.

"It doesn't recognize that some people who commit crimes will never commit crimes again," he said.

"We are seeing a tremendous drain on state resources into that corrections system and there is a greater recognition that something is out of balance."

He said lawmakers could postpone the need for the Madras prison by allowing for sentences to be shorted for both Measure 11 and non-Measure 11 convicts.

However, that's not likely to earn cheers in Madras, where the community has dealt with several false starts on the project. The prison is expected to create 500 family-wage jobs and be a catalyst for growth in Jefferson County.

But Sen. Avel Gordly, D-Portland, said it's "twisted" to look at the state's prison-construction spree as economic development.

"There is no end in sight to the prison explosion," she said. "We've got to get control of corrections costs and do it this session if we are to work our way out of this corrections crisis."

At the same time, the public is spending less on programs that help at-risk children and that help adults learn to be good citizens.

"We have to be very clear with the public we understand protecting communities is always the first priority, but how are we making a community safer when we warehouse prisoners, build more and more beds but then neglect prevention strategies when they are locked up?" she said.

"That doesn't help us once people get out, and they are going to get out."

Krieger, the head of the House Judiciary Committee, said lawmakers should ask tough questions about whether Measure 11 is the best approach.

If it turns out to be the most cost-effective public safety tool, then great, he said.

"Some people are afraid to touch it," he said. "But I'm not."

James Sinks can be reached at 503-566-2839 or at jamess@cyberis.net.
http://www.bendbulletin.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=15457

Posted by lois at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)

Boom in Jail Building Means Profitable Jails

Local jail could help as prisons run out of room 01-23-2005
The Herald Staff, From The Plainview Daily Herald
DANNY ANDREWS

While the Texas prison system considers the possibility of moving some inmates to county jails to alleviate the overcrowding it´s experiencing again, Hale County Sheriff David Mull says the local facility could accommodate some of that overflow.

In fact, Mull has been seeking contracts with other counties to handle some of their prisoners since the Hale County jail is currently about 70 below capacity.

³Part of the problem is that state prisoners are serving their time quicker
- getting more good time´ credit - but those are mostly non-violent people with crimes against property,² Mull surmised.

Mull, who is starting his ninth year as sheriff, was a deputy for nine years before that and also spent 18 months working for the prison system east of Plainview.

Prison administrators had known they were nearing this point. But a Legislative Budget Board report released last week projects that the prisons will reach the maximum capacity at which they can safely operate months earlier than expected.

The crowded prisons also have more to do with harsher sentences than growing crime rates, and the answer may be changing the way offenders are sentenced, the report said.

The crowding could trigger a request from the Legislature for an emergency appropriation to address the looming crisis because there is no money to lease facilities, officials at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said.

³We believe, just based on current trends, that we will possibly -- and I stress possibly -- need additional space by March,² TDCJ spokesman Mike Viesca said.

The local jail has a capacity of 192 prisoners -- 88 in the original building and 104 in an addition built in 1991.

Mull said he has seen the jail overcrowded only once.

³Back in 1993-94, just before the state began to build more prisons, we had 235-240 at one time. Some had to sleep on the floor,² he said.

The current population is 120 with about 130 being average, Mull said.

Hale County asks $42 a day to house out-of-county prisoners because ³it costs us $33 a day whether we have 130 or 180.²

After an analysis of the jail, the State Jail Standards Commission recently mandated hiring 15 additional jailers. Mull said part of the problem is the design of the two buildings isn´t as conducive to fewer personnel being able to keep an eye on the prisoners.

³We´re trying to work deals with other counties to house their prisoners and make some money,² said Mull.

As far as moving prisoners to the state system, Mull says, ³The TDCJ (Texas Department of Criminal Justice) requires us to have a ticket to get someone in. In the past, when you got the paperwork done at the courthouse, you could pretty well take them on down to Huntsville. In the old days, they´d take about 30 a month; now it´s about 16.²

Viesca said Friday that the state facilities house 150,886 inmates, which is 97.5 percent of the maximum capacity of 154,702. But administrators dislike exceeding 97.5 percent due to safety reasons, such as inmates who need to be kept separated.

The Formby-Wheeler units have a capacity of about 1,600 prisoners together and generally remain near capacity.

Viesca said the Clements unit in Amarillo has 3,599 prisoners -- 115 shy of capacity -- while the Neal unit there has 1,678 prisoners, just 12 shy of capacity.

Viesca said the state´s cost of housing a defender is $44.01 a day but it does not dictate how much it will pay an individual county if it houses prisoners there.

Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the state Senate´s Criminal Justice, wants to focus on making better use of probation. He said the state revoked probation for about 25,000 people last year, and many of those were for technical violations and not a new offense. That sent a significant number of people into the state´s prison system.

Whitmire also wants to look into ³community corrections facilities,² which confine offenders only for part of the day for a period of several months.

³You have a real opportunity to turn people´s lives around, and also save the state millions of dollars,² Whitmire said. ³Prison ought to be used for violent offenders: people who are a threat to society, not individuals who often just mess up.²

Changes like those would take time, and some would require legislative approval.

Texas spent nearly $2.5 billion on a massive prison construction program that stretched from 1988 through the 1990s.

When the most recent fiscal year ended Aug. 31, the state´s adult prison population stood at 150,709, up more than 18 percent since 1995.

Under the new projection, the state would need to find room for 165,324 inmates by the end of fiscal 2010.

(Sheila Hotchkin of the San Antonio Express-News contributed to this story.)
Posted to MyPlainview: JANUARY 23, 2005
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=13807440&BRD=517&PAG=461&a
mp;dept_id=473182&rfi=6

Posted by lois at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)

New Building at Prisons: Chapels

Foundation to place national emphasis on building chapels at prisons as Wardens deem places of worship as important in inmate rehabilitation.

January 23, 2005
By Vickie Welborn

What started as a desire to jump-start a fund-raising drive to build a chapel at Louisiana's women's prison has mushroomed into a plan to complete chapel construction at the remainder of the state's prisons as well as other states where officials have shown interest in faith-based programs.

The ambitious plan resulted in discussions to form a National Prison Chapel Foundation board that will be headed by the Rev. Troy Terrell, pastor of Southside Baptist Church in Mansfield. Warden Burl Cain of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola also will sit on the board as well as recommend other board members.

Those involved felt confident enough to expand the chapel construction plan into other states after finding swelling support statewide to provide a large chapel at Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women at St. Gabriel. Southside Baptist is spearheading that drive, which has been expanded to include the collection of more money to aid a fund-raising drive under way to build a chapel at Forcht Wade Correctional Center in Keithville. Jim Gallagher of Shreveport, a member of the Louisiana Prison Chapel Foundation, is a co-chairman of the Forcht Wade Correctional fund drive.

"It's just another mission field for us," Terrell said of Southside Baptist's involvement.

A "significant" donation plus lots of other smaller gifts have been given toward the LCIW project, Terrell said. But more donations are needed to reach the goal of at least $300,000, with the proceeds shared between the LCIW and Forcht Wade Correctional chapels, he said. The hope is to at least have half of the money in hand by March 17, when the Louisiana Prison Chapel Foundation will hold its annual gala at the Governor's Mansion in Baton Rouge. "We want to be able to present a check then," Terrell said.

That would enable construction of the LCIW chapel to begin by summer so inmates there can worship in their new sanctuary by Christmas. Providing a chapel at LCIW is one of Cain's passions. The "mamas" who have been afforded the opportunity to make changes in their lives can be a key to stopping the cycle of violence from one generation to the next, he has said. "We're doing it for the mamas, and we're doing it for the Lord," Cain said. Faith-based programming has worked at the men's prisons, most of which have seen chapels built on their properties within the past two years. Chapels are open at David Wade Correctional Center near Homer, C. Paul Phelps Correctional Center in DeQuincy, Avoyelles Correctional Center in Cottonport, Elayn Hunt Correctional Center at St. Gabriel and Louisiana State Penitentiary's Camp D and Camp C.

Projects are "going strong" at LCIW, Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson, Winn Correctional Center in Winnfield and Forcht Wade Correctional, according to Robin Dunne of the Louisiana Prison Chapel Foundation. Once those are under way, the only remaining state prisons without chapels will be Washington Correctional Institute in Angie, Louis Jetson Youth Correctional Center in Baton Rouge, Allen Correctional Center in Kinder, the remaining camps at Louisiana State Penitentiary and a few of the state's other youth facilities.

"Some of those only need renovation, but some need new chapels," Dunne said. "Why stop there?" Terrell said.

Georgia has implemented Louisiana's faith-based rehabilitation program in its prison system, and Florida is starting this year. Mississippi implemented its program last year. In December, a delegation of Illinois officials toured Louisiana State Penitentiary to see how the programs helped decrease violence. Moody Bible Institute has agreed to open an affiliate in an Illinois prison.

If Bible colleges are started there and in the other states, then it's only logical to follow with chapels, Terrell said. The goal is to see two chapels -- one at the men's maximum-security prison and one at the women's -- in each of the five states that have expressed interest in what Louisiana is doing. Estimated cost is $2.5 million. "The whole point of this is that it works. When you can take the bloodiest prison in America and make it the most gospelized, then it can work anywhere," Terrell said. "The faith-based programs and chapel ministries are working because of the Lord. Morals and ethics have been instilled in these men.

"If it works in Louisiana, then it can work in Mississippi, Georgia or anywhere else," he said. "Nothing else has worked. This not a 12-step program; it's a lifestyle change."

St. Gabriel inmates ready

Faith-based programming was introduced at Louisiana's only women's prison in December. "And we had 75 sign up just like that," Assistant Warden Helen Travis said.

There are more women interested in attending chapel services than current space allows. A small Catholic chapel is squeezed next to the gym and an administrative building. It's dimly lit, lacks an adequate stage and has little room in which to maneuver.

"It's too small for our services. We need a building built like a chapel is supposed to be," said Annie Mamon, an inmate who hails from Ruston. Mamon is active in LCIW's various ministries and supports the faith- and character-building programs that have been spreading in recent weeks throughout the various dormitories.

Mamon has witnessed a difference in some of the inmates' attitudes since the programs began. "It's getting better. We've learned to go to each other to work out our problems. Things are working so much better.

"But we need a real place to worship," she said. "That's going to be exciting. A lot more would attend the services if we have more space." Travis added, "Absolutely, there is a lot of interest."

LCIW Warden Johnny Jones said faith-based programs and chapels appear to be a national trend. "Warden Cain is leading the trend, and I didn't want him to leave me behind."

For Cain, the timing is nothing short of divine intervention. "They are ready to be evangelized now," Cain said of LCIW. "We saw a people who are ready. There is a desire to hear the word of God. The time is now."

Chapel is a need, not a want

Construction workers scurry around Forcht Wade Correctional, where cinder block walls reaching into the sky soon will provide the exterior of a $5.5 million skilled-nursing facility that will see to the needs of the geriatric inmates who make up the majority of the population. Another building is going up near the prison's entrance to house the IMPACT program, geared to younger inmates who are put through an intensive but shorter incarceration. And even though Warden Venetia Michael and Assistant Warden Anthony Batson welcome the construction, one thing both say is sorely missing is a designated place for worship.

"That skilled-nursing facility will be nice and we need it. But a chapel is just as important, and we don't have one," Batson said. "It's not something that we want. ... It's something that we definitely need."

From her main office at David Wade Correctional, Michael, who also has oversight of Forcht Wade Correctional and Steve Hoyle Rehabilitation Center in Tallulah, can attest to the difference a chapel can bring to a prison. David Wade Correctional's 300-seat chapel, built in the same format as others at men's prisons throughout the state, opened in April 2002 and is used daily for various religious activities. It replaces a small metal building and allows chaplain Ray Anderson to add about one-third more programs to the assorted nondenominational services that can involve up to 425 inmates a month.

"It's obviously a much better setting," Michael said. "Participation went up, and (the inmates) are very respectful of it and really take care of it. It has a very calming influence because it is sitting in the middle of the compound."

A meeting room off the chapel entrance allows for smaller religious groups to gather simultaneous to larger gatherings in the main sanctuary, Anderson said. For example, Muslims might use the meeting room while Christians worship in the chapel.

"Where else would you see that?" Anderson said.
At Forcht Wade Correctional, head chaplain the Rev. Richard Pusch must make do with an activities building, where religious services often compete with the comings and goings of inmates and prison employees. That's because the same building houses the prison library, canteen, mental health, X-ray and staff restrooms.

"And there's the constant roar of the vending machines," Batson said. "We really, really need a chapel."

Pusch estimates at least 200 of Forcht Wade Correctional's 500-plus inmates manage to attend at least one religious service a month. "The reality is when we connect them to a church here, then they'll connect to a church on the outside."

Batson likens the prison to a community, and every community typically has a church. "You've got to be able to look at that and take pride in that. Even if you're not a religious person, having a chapel will help us provide the beginning and the end of our circle of life here."

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050123/NEWS01/50
1230311/1002/NEWS

Posted by lois at 07:19 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2005

Read it and weep: "Under Revised Drug Laws, a Debt to Society Is Paid

January 21, 2005, NY Times
By ANDY NEWMAN
..."The proceeding took all of five minutes for Mr. Wright, who has been held since 1985 and was convicted in 1987 of selling three ounces of cocaine to an undercover officer."

Dolka's father was a drug dealer. He went away to jail when she was 11.

Now Dolka Fareaux is 30. She works in an office and has a child of her own.

Yesterday, Ms. Fareaux watched with tears in her eyes as her father, Ivan Wright, 69, appeared in a Brooklyn courtroom. He was, the authorities say, the first inmate convicted under New York's famously strict and recently overhauled Rockefeller drug laws to have the rest of his prison sentence set aside.

The proceeding took all of five minutes for Mr. Wright, who has been held since 1985 and was convicted in 1987 of selling three ounces of cocaine to an undercover officer. Justice Lewis L. Douglass of State Supreme Court, who had sentenced him to 25 years to life under the mandatory sentencing laws, simply declared that 19 years behind bars was enough. The Brooklyn district attorney's office supported Mr. Wright's application to be resentenced to time served.

Justice Douglass asked Mr. Wright if he would give up his right to appeal the reduced sentence.

"I give it up," Mr. Wright said very quietly.

"I wish Mr. Wright good luck," Justice Douglass said.

Before Mr. Wright was led off by court officers - it will take a few days of paperwork for his release to be completed - he was allowed a few minutes to speak to his daughter and to his wife, Monalisa Little. They sat on one side of the low wall that divides the business side of the courtroom from the spectators. Mr. Wright, a balding man in blue jeans and white sneakers, sat on the other, his tall, thin frame folded into his chair. His 19-year-old son, who has known his father only as a prisoner, did not attend the hearing.

"Till you're free," Ms. Little mouthed as her husband was escorted off.

"I'll see you," Ms. Fareaux said.

Mr. Wright will not be sticking around long. He is an illegal immigrant from Panama, and there is a standing deportation order against him. One of his lawyers, Lisa Schreibersdorf, said he would return to Panama voluntarily.

"That's where he grew up," she said. "He has cousins; his family has property there."

What about his family here, Ms. Schreibersdorf was asked.

"What they keep telling me," she said, "is that if he's out and he's there, we can go visit him any time we want. His son can go to Panama and see him."

Would they be moving down with him?

Ms. Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, said that remained to be worked out.

"People don't have time to change their lives in a week," she said. "We just started this proceeding a week ago. The beauty of getting out of jail is to open yourself to the possibilities that the rest of us have."

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said that Mr. Wright had certainly paid his debt to society. "We're very pleased," he said. "We try to put things in perspective. He was involved in multiple sales, but he certainly didn't deserve to spend the rest of his life in jail."

Correction: January 22, 2005, Saturday:

An article yesterday about Ivan Wright, an inmate who had the rest of his prison sentence set aside in Brooklyn under the recent overhaul of the Rockefeller-era drug laws, misstated his relationship to Monalisa Little, the mother of his son. The couple are not married.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)

War on Drugs: Loving those good old Georgia Prisons

Loving those good old Georgia prisons

Public policies made in Atlanta and Washington can easily take on a life of their own. Once prison operators, prison employee unions and community tax collectors learned they could profit from harsh, lock 'em up drug control laws, a powerful political force was born to keep prisons full. Here is how this blueprint fuels America's ongoing war on drugs.

Inmate Overload

During the 1980s and 1990s tough-on-crime policies, especially drug control laws, overfilled America's prisons. State and federal prisons held only 315,974 inmates in 1980. By 2000 that number had skyrocketed to 1,321,137. When inmates in city and county jails are added, America's total prison population topped two million in 2002.

Prisons, however, are not reserved for violent offenders. In 2002, for example, 1,235,700 simple drug possession arrests were made in the U.S. - about one-half of them for possession of marijuana. While not all of those arrested end up behind bars, the rush to lock up non-violent offenders was, in large part, responsible for setting off America's prison building boom.

Prison Boom

By tracing the 1980-2000 prison expansion, a new study by Sarah Lawrence and Jeremy Travis at the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center in Washington tracks how prisons became a growth industry in Georgia. In, "The New Landscape of Imprisonment: Mapping America's Prison Expansion" they conclude that when it comes to building prisons, "Fulton County saw the largest addition with three prisons opening between 1979-2000."

In 1979, only 18 state and federal prisons operated in Georgia. Between 1979 and 2000, more than one new prison was added every year. By 2000, Georgia had 42 state and federal prisons operating in 18 percent of the counties throughout the state. In addition to Fulton County, at least one new prison was located in Bibb, Chattooga, Habersham, Columbia, Clinch, Baldwin and Lowndes counties.

Aboard the gravytrain

The U.S. Census counts prisoners where they are incarcerated, and both federal and state agencies distribute funds based on this census data. The more prisoners counted in a town or county, the bigger will be its share of tax funded goodies from Washington and Atlanta.

This gravytrain includes a slice of $200 billion a year in formula grants from Washington to all state and local governments for Medicaid, foster care, adoption assistance and 169 other programs. In addition, the same data is used to allocate state funds for community health services, road construction, law enforcement and public libraries.

Regular pay checks roll in for 14,555 prison employees in Georgia. And don't forget the incomes of employees of private firms that directly sell food, fuel, clothing and furniture to prisons. No wonder Georgia towns become addicted to this prison economy.

Prison politics

Spreading prisons across Georgia can actually perpetuate a large prison population. As more towns become economically dependent on state prisons holding more than 55,280 inmates in 2002, the greater is the likelihood grassroots support will grow for politicians who favor putting non-violent people behind bars. After all, it's in the self interest of these towns to keep their prisons full and their local economies booming.

As the number of inmates goes up, so does the number, and political power, of prison guards. In 2000, for example, the 31,000 member California Correctional Peace Officers Association used its $7 million a year political action fund to run TV ads against Proposition 36. Why? Prop. 36 called for sending non-violent drug users to treatment facilities, not to jail, and promised to reduce both the state's prison population and the number of prison guard jobs. Despite the union's ads, Prop. 36 became law with a 61 percent favorable vote.

When prisons boom, everyone wins except the non-violent inmates and the taxpayers. Politicians in Atlanta and Washington can show how tough they are on crime. Private prison operators and their investors make money. Prison guards pay off their mortgage and support local businesses. Even the local tax collector gets his cut.

Think about it. The self-perpetuating prison economy was launched due to an exaggerated fear of non-violent drug users, and a failure to treat people rather than lock them up. But, now that the jailhouse economy is going strong, the political reforms needed to abandon this old drug war mentality will be much harder, if not impossible, to get through the legislatures in Atlanta and Washington.

Chances are taxpayers are stuck with the cost of keeping two million men and women behind bars well into the future - not because justice demands it, but because the economic benefits of the prison business are working to keep it that way.

Ronald Fraser, Ph.D., writes on public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization. Write him at fraserr@erols.com
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/opinion/10701086.htm

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

January 21, 2005

98% of NY's Prison Cells Are in Disproportionately White Districts

98% OF NEW YORK'S PRISON CELLS ARE IN
DISPROPORTIONATELY WHITE SENATE DISTRICTS

[URL: http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/news/fact-17-1-2005.shtml ]

The Census Bureau counts incarcerated people as if they were residents not of their homes but of the prison's location. When states like New York ignore their own constitutional requirement that incarceration does not change a residence and use Census data to draw legislative districts, the result is to transfer political power from high incarceration neighborhoods to the areas that contain the prisons.

I've previously written about the regional bias implicit in the arrangement. Sixty-six percent of the New York State's prisoners come from New York City, but 91% of the state's prison cells are located in the upstate region.

Even more critical is how this impacts the political power of Blacks and Latinos in the state compared to Whites. New York State is 62% White, but 82% of the state's prison population is Black or Latino.

Virtually all -- 98% -- of the prison cells are located in state Senate districts that are disproportionately White for the state.

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

NY Times: Op-ed: Sentencing and Sensibility

By MYRON H. THOMPSON
....."If the 600-plus pages of the most recent set of sentencing guidelines have taught us anything, it is that punishment cannot be reduced to an algorithm. As Congress begins to consider its response to the Supreme Court's decision, may all of us be mindful of both the past and the future, so that generations to come do not use our own lawmakers' names as synonyms for a harsh and unforgiving legal system. "

Montgomery, Ala.
MORE than 2,500 years ago, the Athenian leader Draco codified the laws of his city-state, which was then suffering from political and social unrest. According to Plutarch, "Death was appointed for almost all offenses, insomuch that those that were convicted of idleness were to die, and those who stole a cabbage or an apple to suffer even as villains who committed sacrilege or murder." However repressive Draco's code may have seemed to later generations - and it spawned its own pejorative adjective, "draconian" - it was well intentioned. Draco sought to replace a relatively arbitrary system of oral law that had been maintained by the nobility. His written code of crime and punishment provided more power to the state as an arbiter of justice and ensured greater uniformity in the meting out of punishments. Yet Draco's efforts to institute a one-punishment-fits-all system of sentencing eventually became viewed as barbarously severe, and his code was repealed. Draco's example is especially relevant in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision last week, in United States v. Booker, that the sentencing guidelines federal judges have used for criminal offenders for more than 20 years were advisory, not mandatory. Since the court's holding may increase trial judges' discretion in sentencing - and since the court itself invited a legislative response - some members of Congress are sure to propose more statutory sentencing rules, like more and harsher minimum sentences. Yet amid the confusion that will undoubtedly follow this decision, we should keep in mind one basic principle: neither consistency nor codification guarantees justice. While few if any are calling for a return to the practically unfettered discretion that judges had before the sentencing guidelines came into effect, the nuances of individual cases necessitate a certain fluidity in imposing punishment. Congress should seek to shape judicial discretion, not to lock it in a vise. A sentencing scheme that provides different punishments for offenders with similar backgrounds who are convicted of similar crimes under similar circumstances is clearly unjust. Yet so is one that provides comparable punishments for offenders with different backgrounds who are convicted of similar crimes under different circumstances. Ultimately, it is the trial judge who is in the best position to distinguish between these two sets of circumstances, although Congress's guidance is critical in ensuring that one standard of justice exists throughout the federal court system. It is the judge who can appreciate the full complexity of the offender and his crime, and no prescriptive set of laws can appreciate the subtleties in determining the punishment that justice demands. If the 600-plus pages of the most recent set of sentencing guidelines have taught us anything, it is that punishment cannot be reduced to an algorithm. As Congress begins to consider its response to the Supreme Court's decision, may all of us be mindful of both the past and the future, so that generations to come do not use our own lawmakers' names as synonyms for a harsh and unforgiving legal system.
Myron H. Thompson is a federal district court judge.
January 21, 2005, NY Times

Posted by lois at 06:23 PM | Comments (0)

Tourism at Sing-Sing

January 21, 2005
DAY TRIPS

Going Up the River, for a Visit
By SCOTT CHRISTIANSON
WHEN the Sint Sinck Indians settled in a pretty hillside spot overlooking the Hudson River, they could hardly have suspected they would lend their name to one of the world's most notorious prisons. But though the surroundings inspired Alexis de Tocqueville to write, "Except the view of the Bay of Naples . . . the world has not such scenery," New York State fastened on Sing Sing in the 1820's as the perfect spot to stash a growing supply of convicts. Not only was the town convenient to New York City, with its rapidly expanding population, but nearby was a handy granite quarry — perfect raw material for the prison's original grim gray walls.

The Sing Sing of James Cagney movies, with its busy electric chair, and of celebrity inmates like Willie Sutton and the Rosenbergs, yielded to Attica as the state's most infamous prison after the 1971 riot. The old village, long since renamed Ossining, is morphing from prison company town into commuter suburb with riverside condos. But the Sing Sing Correctional Facility is very much a going concern, a maximum-security home to 2,000 inmates and still an imposing and chilling sight. Though a close-up view can be hard to get, you don't have to be under sentence to take a properly distanced look. And while the Sing Sing museum proposed early this month by Andrew Spano, the Westchester County executive, is far from reality, two small museums in town already help to tell the Sing Sing story.

Sing Sing, an H-shaped complex of gray concrete walls, glistening razor wire and multicolored brick and stone, looms above one of the Hudson's widest and prettiest points. From the Metro-North station in Ossining, sightseers can reach it on Hunter Street by heading south via Secor Road, stopping at Hamilton and South Streets to enjoy a better view with the river setting and following State Street on the east side of the tracks as it skirts the walls and towers.

But don't linger to take any close-ups, or you will prompt a security check.

THE prison wasn't even built when the first prisoners arrived — they had to do the job themselves. Under the command of an autocratic warden, Elam Lynds, they transformed the local granite into what at the time was the world's largest cellblock. Today, only traces of this original structure still exist, but even Sing Sing's newer parts look pretty ancient.

From 1891 to 1963, 614 people were put to death at Sing Sing, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953. The executions gave the prison an especially dark mystique, and portions of half a dozen Hollywood movies, including "Angels With Dirty Faces" and "Castle on the Hudson," were filmed there. In 1916, Harry Houdini performed a three-hour magic act at the prison, and in 1931 Charlie Chaplin chose its auditorium to introduce his film "City Lights."

Though New York no longer charges admission fees and shows off its prisons like zoos, as it did in the 19th century, Sing Sing does allow carefully controlled public tours, with written permission and security clearances obtained in advance. Visitors who do make it inside are awed by the size of B Block, scene of a hostage-taking riot in 1983 — six stories high and twice the length of a football field — and by the lingering ghosts within the old death house, now a vocational-training building. And even when glimpsed from afar as they go about their daily business, inmates and correction officers tend to assume mythic proportions.

For a more accessible view of Sing Sing, visit the museum at the Joseph G. Caputo Community Center, a few blocks northeast of the train station. A favorite attraction is a replica of one of the ghastly cells from 1825, seven feet long, six and a half feet high, and just three and a half feet wide, complete with an original iron door. Also on display are a replica of the electric chair (in Mr. Spano's plan, the proposed museum would show the original) and a sobering collection of 19 homemade "shank" weapons confiscated in the prison in recent years, some still encased in plastic wrappers marked "Evidence."

Two examples of the prison's current cells, dating to 1929, are also on exhibition. Visitors who step close to inspect them may be startled to hear recorded prison sounds and then see their own images eerily reflected in a large mirror.

A more upbeat attraction is the Old Croton Aqueduct, which provided water to New York City from 1842 to 1991. By advance arrangement, visitors can descend into the original weir chamber, which controlled the water flow, and examine how the original tunnel was constructed.

About a mile north and inland from the prison, aficionados can find a trove of Sing Sing-related information at the Ossining Historical Society Museum, preserved in a tidy house that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Besides some prison artifacts, it has newspaper files, census records, books, maps and other material that probably represent the most extensive documentation about any prison in the nation. The 4,000 images in its W. Arthur Slater Collection of glass negatives show local street and prison scenes from 1890 to 1934 and can be viewed on computer disks.

When enough prison is enough, this museum can also direct the eye away, toward the glorious natural views the prisoners could only glimpse through iron bars. Its paintings include a Hudson River School landscape by Hugh Reinagle, "Village of Sing-Sing," and a work from about 1841, "Hudson River to Croton Point," by Robert Havell, who is perhaps best known as the master engraver for John James Audubon.

Grand Slammer

OSSINING is 30 miles from New York City via Metro-North Railroad. By car, take the Sprain Brook and Taconic Parkways, leaving the Taconic at Route 133, and drive west to Route 9.

The Sing Sing Correctional Facility (914-941-0108) is at 354 Hunter Street. To request permission to tour inside the walls, write to the Department of Correctional Services (Attention: Public Information), Building 2, State Office Campus, Albany, N.Y., 12226; or send the department a fax at (518) 457-7070. Applicants should provide the full names, addresses and Social Security numbers of every person wishing to tour, along with the requested date, and allow at least two weeks for processing. Prison officials reserve the right to deny visits but do try to accommodate interested and law-abiding citizens.

The Joseph G. Caputo Community Center (95 Broadway; 914-941-3189), where the replica electric chair and 19th-century cell are on display, is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. To arrange a guided group tour of the Old Croton Aqueduct, contact the Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct (914-693-4117) a week or so in advance.

The Ossining Historical Society Museum, (196 Croton Avenue; 914-941-0001; www.ossininghistorical.org) is open Sunday to Friday 1 to 4:30 p.m., Saturdays 1 to 3 p.m., and by appointment. Admission is free.

Docas Restaurant (125 Main Street; 914-944-9205) offers good Portuguese food. The Main Street Delicatessen and Fine Foods (143 Main Street; 914-762-0651) sells sandwiches and daily hot specials to go.

Scott Christianson, a former executive assistant to the New York State director of criminal justice, is the author of "Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Posted by lois at 06:20 PM | Comments (0)

NY Times Editorial: New Strategies for Curbing Recidivism

State and federal lawmakers are finally realizing that controlling prison costs means controlling recidivism - by helping newly released people establish viable lives once they get out of jail. A report just out from a group of 100 policy makers, including elected officials, established by the Council of State Governments argues that the country needs to reinvent its corrections system. In the place of a system that locks people up and shoves them out the door when their sentences are finished, the report, by the Re-Entry Policy Council, envisions "re-entry" services that reintegrate ex-offenders into their communities.

This line of thinking is long overdue. The United States has 2.1 million people behind bars on any given day - nearly seven times the number three decades ago. Corrections costs have risen accordingly - from about $9 billion a year two decades ago to more than $60 billion a year today
- making corrections the second-fastest-growing expense in state budgets, after Medicaid. The portrait of the inmate population offered in the report leaves no doubt as to why two-thirds of the people who leave prison are rearrested within a few years. These people were marginally employable before they went to jail - nearly half earned less than $600 a month. They are even less employable afterward, thanks to criminal records. In addition, many of them suffer from mental illnesses that often go untreated after release.
The social services necessary for successful re-entry are virtually nonexistent in most communities. The new report offers an exhaustive prescription for changing the status quo: states will need to coax disparate parts of their systems to work together. State officials will also have to re-educate voters, who have grown accustomed to a corrections philosophy that begins and ends with merely locking people up for the longest possible period of time. These policies will need to change, and quickly, if the states are to solve the recidivism problem and develop programs that help former inmates find homes, training, jobs and places in their communities. Until that happens, corrections costs will continue to soar, siphoning off billions of dollars that could be used for more constructive purposes.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
January 21, 2005

Posted by lois at 06:15 PM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2005

Report: Texas Could Need Up to 5 New Prisons

Inmate rise blamed on problems with probation system
January 18, 2005
By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN – Texas would have to build as many as five prisons over the next six years if the state continues to incarcerate offenders at the current rate, according to a new report by the state's budget monitors.
Texas' prison system holds 150,575 inmates, more than any other state. If incarceration trends continue, the system would add nearly 3,700 prisoners over the next two years, and more than 14,000 by 2010, according to the report by the Legislative Budget Board.

The prison population is already beyond the state's preferred capacity. A preliminary state budget, released last week, suggests spending an additional $40 million for contracted space in county jails and cutting funding for adult probation departments, whose rolls are falling.

But the report by the Legislative Budget Board – made up of the leaders who craft the state's budget – notes that many criminal justice officials believe the prison population is rising precisely because the probation system is not working.

The rate of felons having their probation revoked rose 18 percent between 2001 and 2004, according to the report, which will be released this week. A copy was shown to The Dallas Morning News.

"More attention needs to be given to the front end of the sentencing process in order to realize a decline in the state's incarcerated population," the report states, citing the feelings of criminal justice officials interviewed throughout the state.

That recommendation dovetails with the ideas of many key lawmakers, who have said Texas cannot afford to keep building more prisons.

"We don't want to build new prisons," Rep. Ray Allen, a Grand Prairie Republican who chairs the House Corrections Committee, said in a recent interview. "If you ask four or five of the top officials, they will say the same thing. Prisons are inordinately costly."

But how many prisoners are too many? If there is a magic number, it is typically an equilibrium that accounts for financial realities and a criminal justice philosophy, experts said.

"The legislators have to get through the session and balance the books," said Charles M. Friel, a professor at Sam Houston State University's College of Criminal Justice. "In corrections, we have to look at the long term. You need a plan you can sell that prepares you for the next 20 years."

To help reduce the prison population, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has asked for an additional $28 million to hire 391 more probation officers. Lawmakers such as Mr. Allen said that investment would be far less costly than building new prisons.

Officials interviewed for the budget board's report also recommended: reducing the probation terms for some offenses, revising laws to keep small-time drug users out of state jails and prisons, and trimming the probation terms of offenders who have successfully completed drug treatment programs.

Texas Youth Commission facilities are also expected to exceed capacity in the next two years. The report says 236 more juveniles would be added to commission facilities by 2007, which would put the facilities nearly 12 percent over capacity.

E-mail dmichaels@dallasnews.com

Posted by lois at 09:02 PM | Comments (0)

NY: Andrew Cuomo Op-ed: Prison Inmates, Republican Constituents

Andrew Cuomo
Albany Times Union, January 19, 2005
(Note from Lois: for more on how people who are incarcerated benefit those who make the decisions about their incarcreation go to: www.prisonersofthecensus.org
And, a note from Tracy Huling: "Andrew Cuomo was the commissioner of housing/development in his father's admin, most likely instrumental in crafting the arrangements whereby the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), one of the first --if not the first -- of those quasi public-private 'shadow agencies' used to bond state construction projects, was turned from an agency funding public housing for the poor into an agency funding prison construction." Now that he is running for Governor Andrew Cuomo is apparently seeing his past work in a new light.)

Nothing was more striking in Gov. Pataki's recent State of the State address than his use of the word "reform" no fewer than 31 times in a 69-minute speech. It's striking, because if there's anything New Yorkers will not get from this administration, it's genuine reform.

For the governor to pursue real reform, he would have to challenge some entrenched Albany special interests and Republican Party politics. A look at how the governor "reformed" the Rockefeller-era drug laws reveals how unwilling or unable he is to do that.

Last year, after a decade of promises to revisit the state's 30-year-old drug laws, the governor finally signed a "reform" measure. The need for real reform was obvious; the Rockefeller laws are a well-established failure. They impose harsh minimum mandatory sentences on first-time, nonviolent drug offenders, stripping judges of the freedom to base their sentences on the facts of each individual case. Under rigid sentencing guidelines, judges are forced to lock up thousands of nonviolent young people who would be better served by effective drug treatment. The "reform" legislation did little to change this injustice.

The Rockefeller laws have wasted millions of dollars, to say nothing of the unnecessary waste of prisoners' lives that can never be recovered.

As the Times Union editorial page has highlighted, the Supreme Court just last week affirmed the importance of judicial discretion -- which is absent in New York's law.

When the need for real reform of these laws is so obvious, why would the governor look the other way? Because, arguably, Mr. Pataki is more interested in protecting the interests of New York's Republican Party than in serving the interests of the people of New York.

Let me describe one example of this dysfunction. The population of upstate New York, the political base for the state's Republicans, has been steadily declining in recent years. We have the greatest out-migration of any state in the nation. Our upstate communities are losing jobs, too, and state government has pushed the problem from bad to worse by increasing the cost of doing business. Sadly, jobs in the prison industry are among the few employment opportunities the Pataki administration has protected upstate.

There are New Yorkers moving upstate, but they are prison inmates. In fact, prisoners from downstate represent a full 30 percent of all those "moving" upstate since 1990. While only 24 percent of New York prisoners come originally from upstate, 91 percent of all New York's prisoners are incarcerated there.

This works out nicely for New York's Republican Party. Why? Because the population figures that determine Senate and Assembly districts include prison inmates. It's simply not in the Republicans' political interests to support measures that would let those locked up under the old drug laws go free.

According to data from the Prison Policy Initiative, nearly 44,000 prisoners
-- mainly from downstate and mainly minorities -- are incarcerated in small, upstate communities and are counted as "residents" of the communities in which they are imprisoned. Their presence in a prison adds to a legislator's constituents -- even though, as prisoners, they can't vote.

This is politically powerful for the Republican Party. There are four upstate Senate districts that qualify as districts only because they include a large prison population -- and all four are represented by Republicans. The Democrats would have to take just four more seats for the Republicans to lose their majority.

The leading defenders of the Rockefeller-era drug laws are upstate Republican Sens. Dale Volker and Michael Nozzolio, heads of the committees on codes and crime, respectively. The prisons in their two districts account for more than 17 percent of all the prisoners in the state. It may not be fair to say Volker and Nozzolio actually "represent" the inmates who make their districts viable. Sen. Volker told another newspaper that the cows in his district would be more likely to vote for him than the prisoners. State population statistics show that, without the inmates, Volker's district is one of the four that would have to be redrawn.

Are decisions on the Rockefeller-era drug laws being made as sound public policy or are they politically motivated? The potential conflict of interests is obvious. We should not count prisoners as a political base for legislators who do not honestly represent them and for whom they did not vote. In other words, remove the partisan politics and secure the integrity of legislative decisions. These are important keys to "real" reform.

Such an agenda would replace partisan politics with sound public policy, deliver results not rhetoric and restore integrity to the process. It would focus on an economic development plan for upstate New York rather than a prison construction program. It would address the education-aid debacle and the dysfunction of state government. The "government for sale" attitude should be replaced with a strong ethical code for lobbyists and special interests.

For many years, voters ignored the state government's poor performance. But this past year has brought a new awareness and justified impatience with Albany. Elected officials who serve in Albany could not avoid hearing the message and after years of dysfunction they promised change. Even seasoned Albany veterans are contorting themselves to appear as "reformers." This year they must deliver.

Andrew M. Cuomo is a former secretary of housing and urban development and a former candidate for governor.

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=324659&category=OPINION&n
ewsdate=1/19/2005

Posted by lois at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)

Report: State of the Dream 2005

Under Bush, People of Color Slide Further from King's Dream

“Ownership, independence, access to wealth should not be the privilege of a few.”
–President George W. Bush

“Let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King

Under Bush, People of Color Slide Further from King's Dream

“Ownership, independence, access to wealth should not be the privilege of a few.”

– President George W. Bush

“Let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.”

– Dr. Martin Luther King

After steady economic gains in the 1990s, Latinos, African Americans and other people of color have actually lost ground since 2000, according to United for a Fair Economy’s newest report.

In two weeks Americans will observe both the second inauguration of President Bush and the 76th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King. Before visiting King’s grave in 2003, Bush said, “It’s important for our country to honor his life and what he stood for” -- but his actions have contradicted those words. The report finds that President Bush’s campaign promise of an Ownership Society slipped farther out of reach for most people of color during his first administration.

In 2000, the African American unemployment rate reached a historic low of 7.1%, but it has been 9.9% or higher since January 2002. Latino / Hispanic unemployment rates also dropped from 8.0% in 1988 to 5.7% in 2000, but rose again in the last four years.

About half of the progress in the median income of people of color from 1996 to 2000 was wiped out in the following three years. For the first time in 15 years, the average Latino household now has an income that is less than two-thirds that of the average white household. After slowly increasing from 55% of white income in 1988 to 65% in 2000, black median income fell again to 62% of the white median in 2003.

Throughout the 1990s, poverty rates fell across the board, declining fastest for African Americans and Latinos. But since 2000, more than one third of that progress in reducing poverty among African American families has been erased, as 300,000 African-American families fell below the poverty line from 2000 to 2003.

Private retirement income and inheritances remain scarce among people of color.

Ownership of homes, stock and businesses remains disproportionately in white hands. While homeownership is up for all races, most people of color still rent, while three-quarters of white families own their homes.

Business owners of color, who are largely small business owners, received only minor tax breaks from the four Bush tax cuts. Most tax breaks for business and investors have landed with those who are wealthy and white.

The report concludes that closing the racial wealth divide will require a new “GI Bill for Everyone,” a comprehensive federal investment in low-income families and communities, with an emphasis on people of color. Progressive taxes on wealthy individuals and profitable corporations are needed to fund a real Ownership Society.

The authors of UFE’s second annual "State of the Dream" report are Betsy Leondar-Wright, Meizhu Lui, Gloribell Mota, Dedrick Muhammad, and Mara Voukydis.

United for a Fair Economy is a national non-partisan non-profit organization that raises awareness of the dangers of growing economic inequality.
For the full report go to:
http://www.faireconomy.org

Press Release from United for a Fair Economy
January 10, 2005
Contact: Betsy Leondar-Wright, (617) 423-2148 x13

Posted by lois at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2005

One-piece monitoring system redefines prison industry

"STOP - or Satellite Tracking of People - claims to have the only one-piece GPS device that tracks the whereabouts of released offenders. The BluTag product is being marketed to federal, state and local corrections officials as a cost-saving alternative to incarceration."

By Chris Lewis, clewis@nashvillecitypaper.com
January 19, 2005

Having put in time behind desks in the private prison industry, a couple of seasoned corrections veterans have turned their sights toward the heavens.

The founders of Nashville-based STOP have tapped Global Positioning System (GPS), the satellite technology that allows tracking of automobiles through products such as OnStar, to provide a new approach to the nation's growing prison overpopulation problem.

STOP - or Satellite Tracking of People - claims to have the only one-piece GPS device that tracks the whereabouts of released offenders. The BluTag product is being marketed to federal, state and local corrections officials as a cost-saving alternative to incarceration.

"It costs $70 a day to lock somebody up, and it costs $10 a day to do this technology," said Steven Logan, STOP's chief executive officer. "Our view is there is a huge population of offenders who are not just on parole or probation but also who are incarcerated who are very eligible for this type of monitoring."

As former executive of a private prison company, Cornell Companies Inc., Logan had competed for many years with Doctor R. Crants, founder of Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America.

Having left their respective companies, the former competitors, along with other corrections industry veterans, teamed up to develop a system that combines satellite tracking of offenders with a crime scene correlation program.

With two key acquisitions last month, STOP gained control of the patents on its two primary product lines. It purchased the Verquis subsidiary from Strategic Technologies Inc., which developed the BluTag product, the one-piece GPS tracking bracelet.

The purchase of the Oracle-based VeriTracks business line from General Dynamics put into place the crime scene correlation program marketed separately to law enforcement agencies. The users can overlay the BluTag tracking system with their crime scene data to detect the proximity of the electronically monitored offenders near crime scenes.

The acquisitions paved the way for STOP to raise equity funding for its business plan from JHW Greentree Capital.

"We only wanted to go raise institutional funding when we could actually bring together both General Dynamics technology and the one-piece. It's only been until recently that this one-piece has come into production," Logan said.

Traditional electronic monitoring has integrated ankle bracelets with radio frequency to tether an offender to a specific location, such as his home. If the offender leaves the restricted area, an alarm alerts officials, who know only that the offender has left the area.

By contrast, GPS allows corrections officers to track the offender's movements in his restrictive zone 24/7 as dots on a computer map. Similar to the old system, a bracelet is affixed to the offender's ankle.

Until now, GPS systems haven't been able to interact with the ankle bracelet because the wearer needs a strong receiver to pick up GPS's faint signals. That has required the offender to carry around a separate lunchbox-type unit to house the battery and receiver. That two-piece system has proved ineffective and cumbersome, Logan said.

"The holy grail of the industry has been the one-piece. All of this in one piece," Logan said.

The smaller BluTag unit incorporates the GPS receiver into the ankle bracelet design, allowing the wearer freer movement. Logan admits the system isn't fool-proof.

"On any of these devices the straps can be cut off, but they're hard to get cut off. That's why this is not going to be appropriate for every inmate. There are some inmates that are going to have to stay locked up. But the biggest hammer on most parolees or probationers is the threat of going back to prison," he said.

The timing for STOP's products is on the mark, says Nashville corrections consultant Richard Cranes, a corrections consultant. Not only has the Bush Administration called for more alternatives to incarceration, but a recent Supreme Court decision gives federal judges more leeway in sentencing.

But Cranes said the company faces an industry that is often resistant to change, particularly as corrections budgets tighten.

"It's just finding the money that's going to be a difficult thing. But certainly this is a good time to be entering that market," Cranes said.

http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section_id=51&screen=news&news_i
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January 18, 2005

Wilbert Rideau Freed After 44 years

Wilbert Rideau, an acclaimed prison journalist and confessed killer, walked out of the Calcasieu Parish Courthouse in Lake Charles, La., a free man on Saturday night after serving 44 years for stabbing a bank teller through the heart in 1961.

By ADAM LIPTAK, NY Times, 1/17/05

In Mr. Rideau's fourth trial for the killing, a jury on Saturday found him not guilty of murder, which would have resulted in a life sentence. Instead, the jury convicted him of manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 21 years, effectively freeing him.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Rideau, 62, said he had wasted no time in leaving Lake Charles, a racially divided city near the Texas border that remains fiercely split about whether he has paid his debt for the killing or whether he should have been executed long ago.

"The first thing I did when we left Lake Charles was stop and get some sun shades," Mr. Rideau said cheerfully over the phone, suggesting that he needed to disguise himself. "I should get a baseball cap, too."

Three all-white juries sentenced him to death for the killing in 1961, 1964 and 1970. All three convictions were overturned by appeals courts for government misconduct. The last conviction was thrown out in 2000 when a federal appeals court ruled that the exclusion of blacks from the grand jury that indicted Mr. Rideau was unconstitutional.

"The first trial, I think, the decision was in eight minutes," said Mr. Rideau, who is black. "This time, we had only one white male."

The latest jury, which also contained seven white women, two black women, a woman of mixed race and a black man, was from Monroe, in northern Louisiana, in deference to the tensions in Lake Charles.

"They came from one of the most conservative regions of Louisiana," Mr. Rideau said. "We had some nervousness about that. These things happened 44 years ago, before many of them were even born."

This time, the jury deliberated for five and a half hours, returning with a verdict at 10:40 on Saturday night.

Rick Bryant, the Calcasieu Parish district attorney, said the jury had ignored the evidence.

"The verdict makes no sense," he said yesterday. "It's a subtle jury-nullification type of thing. The jury basically said, there is still a conviction and he's done a lot of time."

Mr. Rideau has never denied that he robbed a Gulf National Bank branch in Lake Charles on Feb. 16, 1961, that he kidnapped three white employees of the bank or that he shot them on a gravel lane near a bayou on the edge of town. Two of the employees survived, one by jumping into the swamp, the other by feigning death. But Mr. Rideau caught and killed Julia Ferguson, a teller, stabbing in her in the heart.

The two sides at the trial last week agreed on those basic facts. They differed about whether the killing was part of a calculated plan or the result of a bank robbery gone awry committed by a hapless 19-year-old.

"I've been saying for 44 years that, yes, I'm responsible," Mr. Rideau said yesterday. "But it didn't happen the way they said it. They said I lined them up execution-style. The evidence never supported that. Between the local media and the legal system, though, they pretty much did what they wanted. A lot of what the community thought, through hand-me-down word of mouth, never really happened."

Mr. Rideau testified in his own defense, a potentially risky move given his acknowledged responsibility for the crime. But George H. Kendall, one of Mr. Rideau's lawyers, said the testimony was crucial.

"The state's narrative was a very simple, understandable narrative," Mr. Kendall said. "We had to have an alternative narrative, and the only way we could get that out was through our client."

Mr. Rideau said his initial plan was to lock up the employees at the bank and take a bus out of town with the $14,000 he had stolen. When that was foiled by an ill-timed phone call from the bank's main branch, he said, he came up with a second plan. He would drive the employees far out of town in a teller's car and escape as they walked back. But they jumped from the car before he could accomplish that, and he started shooting.

"If I had intended to kill those people, eliminate witnesses, I would have done it right there in the bank," Mr. Rideau testified on Thursday, according to The Associated Press. "It never entered my mind that I was going to hurt anybody."

Theodore M. Shaw, the director-counsel of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which also represented Mr. Rideau, said he found it hard to reconcile Mr. Rideau's crime with the thoughtful and accomplished man he has become.

"I've never lost sight of the fact that when Wilbert was 19 he did something incredibly stupid and tragic," Mr. Shaw said. "On the other hand, he's not the man he was then. It's a story of redemption."

Mr. Shaw pointed to Mr. Rideau's journalistic work as proof of his transformation. As editor of The Angolite, a prison newspaper, Mr. Rideau won the George Polk Award, one of journalism's highest honors. "The Farm: Angola, U.S.A.," a documentary he co-directed, was nominated for an Academy Award.

Mr. Bryant, the prosecutor, said Mr. Rideau's achievements were irrelevant. "Rideau's actions were driven by greed," Mr. Bryant said, referring to the robbery. "It's not like he's been some sort of civil rights pioneer. He's a crook."

Mr. Bryant said the prosecution had been at a disadvantage throughout the trial.

"It's very difficult to try a case that's 44 years old," he said. "We had 13 witnesses who were unavailable, including the two eyewitnesses, and we had to present them by reading transcripts." One of the survivors of the crime died in 1988, and the other was too ill to attend the trial.

Mr. Rideau said yesterday that he had not dared make plans for what he would do as a free man. The pardon board recommended clemency four times, he said, but governors rejected each recommendation.

"When you've been turned down and ridden that hope train for so long and keep getting knocked back," he said, "you stop making plans."

He declined to say where he planned to live. "Undisclosed location," he said.

Then he started to collect his thoughts.

"I'll be 63 in about three more weeks," he said. "I'm walking around in sweatpants. Most people my age are retired, and I have no health insurance, no pension, no Social Security. I've got to start producing. I've got to get a job. I'd like to write. I've got so much to say. I'm going to continue, to the extent that I can, to be a journalist."

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