DRUGS WON THE WAR

by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

“We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs,” Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me.  “What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency.  It’s a dismal failure.”

For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists.  Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.

Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons.  The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average.  In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today.  Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad.  One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban.  Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources.  Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions.  We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment.  ( Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.  )

I’ve seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth.  Yet I find people like Mr.  Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of harmful drugs, we can do better.

Mr.  Stamper is active in Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, an organization of police officers, prosecutors, judges and citizens who favor a dramatic liberalization of American drug laws.  He said he gradually became disillusioned with the drug war, beginning in 1967 when he was a young beat officer in San Diego.

“I had arrested a 19-year-old, in his own home, for possession of marijuana,” he recalled.  “I literally broke down the door, on the basis of probable cause.  I took him to jail on a felony charge.” The arrest and related paperwork took several hours, and Mr.  Stamper suddenly had an “aha!” moment: “I could be doing real police work.”

It’s now broadly acknowledged that the drug war approach has failed.  President Obama’s new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, told the Wall Street Journal that he wants to banish the war on drugs phraseology, while shifting more toward treatment over imprisonment.

The stakes are huge, the uncertainties great, and there’s a genuine risk that liberalizing drug laws might lead to an increase in use and in addiction.  But the evidence suggests that such a risk is small.  After all, cocaine was used at only one-fifth of current levels when it was legal in the United States before 1914.  And those states that have decriminalized marijuana possession have not seen surging consumption.

“I don’t see any big downside to marijuana decriminalization, ” said Peter Reuter, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland who has been skeptical of some of the arguments of the legalization camp.  At most, he said, there would be only a modest increase in usage.

Moving forward, we need to be less ideological and more empirical in figuring out what works in combating America’s drug problem.  One approach would be for a state or two to experiment with legalization of marijuana, allowing it to be sold by licensed pharmacists, while measuring the impact on usage and crime.

I’m not the only one who is rethinking these issues.  Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has sponsored legislation to create a presidential commission to examine various elements of the criminal justice system, including drug policy.  So far 28 senators have co-sponsored the legislation, and Mr.  Webb says that Mr.  Obama has been supportive of the idea as well.

“Our nation’s broken drug policies are just one reason why we must re-examine the entire criminal justice system,” Mr.  Webb says.  That’s a brave position for a politician, and it’s the kind of leadership that we need as we grope toward a more effective strategy against narcotics in America.

Pubdate: Sun, 14 Jun 2009
Source: New York Times (NY)
Author: Nicholas D. Kristof
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc. org/people/ Norm+Stamper
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc. org/people/ Jeffrey+Miron
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc. org/people/ Gil+Kerlikowske
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc. org/people/ Peter+Reuter
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc. org/people/ Jim+Webb

Filed under: Crime, Education, Government Corruption, Rehabilitation, Sentencing Laws, The Drug War, law , Criminal Justice, NaBloPoMo09, Treatment/Rehabilitation

Let’s Get Free

Book Review

Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice

by Paul Butler

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“Paul Butler utilizes his years as a prosecutor and law teacher to dramatically describe this country’s war on crime as one encouraging what it seeks to eliminate, corrupting those commissioned to enforce its laws and, in the process, ruining more lives than it protects. Butler conveys this tragedy with a wry humor and through a careful review of studies, experience, and insight.”
–Derrick Bell, author of Faces at the Bottom of the Well and visiting professor at NYU Law School

“A provocative and intelligent analysis of U.S. justice. Butler has a fresh and thought-provoking perspective on issues like the war on drugs, snitches, and whether locking so many people up really makes Americans safer. Butler’s compelling writing makes Let’s Get Free a great read, and his insightful analysis has the potential to make the United States a more just society.”
–Anthony D. Romero, executive director, American Civil Liberties Union

“Let’s Get Free is a tour de force. This book is provocative and informative and creates a cross-generational dialogue that will enrich all those who read it. It helps us understand the complexity of crime and the need to moderate punishment. This is a good read and a must read.”
–Charles J, Ogletree Jr., author of When Law Fails, professor of law at Harvard and the executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice

Paul Butler was an ambitious federal prosecutor, a Harvard Law grad who traded in his corporate law salary to fight the good fight. It was those years on the front lines that convinced him that the American criminal justice system is fundamentally broken–it’s not making the streets safer, nor helping the people he’d hoped, as a prosecutor, to protect.

In Let’s Get Free, Butler, now an award-winning law professor, looks at several places where ordinary citizens interact with the justice system–as jurors, crime witnesses, and in encounters with the police–and explores what “doing the right thing” means in a corrupt system.

Butler’s provocative proposals include jury nullification–voting “not guilty” in certain non-violent cases as a form of protest, just saying “no” when the police request your permission to search, and refusing to work inside the criminal justice system. And his groundbreaking “hip-hop theory of justice” reveals an important analysis of crime and punishment found in pop culture.

Chock full of great stories and cutting-edge analysis, this accessible and lively critique will change the way you think about crime and punishment in the United States. As Butler eloquently argues, when we end mass incarceration and excessive police power, everyone wins. Let’s Get Free offers a powerful new vision of justice.

About the Author
A former federal prosecutor, Paul Butler is the country’s leading expert on jury nullification. He provides legal commentary for CNN, NPR, and the Fox News Network, and has been featured on 60 Minutes, and profiled in the Washington Post. He has written for the Post, the Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times, and is a law professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Let’s Get Free is his first book.

Filed under: Book Review, Justice, Sentencing Laws, law , Crime, Criminal Justice, incarceration, Justice, Prisoners/Inmates, Uncategorized

Giving Life, Wearing Shackles and Chains

Librado Romero/The New York Times

SEEKING CHANGE A protest in Manhattan over shackling of inmates in labor.

By JIM DWYER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“All children want to find about the day they were born,” Ms. Reynolds said. “You want it to be an expression of love, not of prohibition and trauma and restraint. The child didn’t do anything.”

Source: New York Times

Filed under: Abuse, Corrections/Correctional Officers, Health and Medicine, Human Rights, Prison Issues, Prisons and Prisoners, inmates , Corrections, incarceration, Uncategorized, women

Who Killed California?

By Amy Alkon | Jul 11, 2009

1. Arnold Schwarzenegger

The Terminator came to power with the support of much of the middle class and business community. But since taking office, he’s resembled not the single-minded character for which he’s famous but rather someone with multiple personalities.

First, he played the governator, a tough guy ready to blow up the dysfunctional structure of government. He picked a street fight against all the powerful liberal interest groups. But the meathead lacked his hero Ronald Reagan’s communication skills and political focus. Defeated in a series of initiative battles, he was left bleeding the streets by those who he had once labeled “girlie men.”

Next Arnold quickly discovered his feminine side, becoming a kinder, ultra-green terminator. He waxed poetic about California’s special mission as the earth’s guardian. While the housing bubble was filling the state coffers, he believed the delusions of his chief financial adviser, San Francisco investment banker David Crane, that California represented “ground zero for creative destruction.”

Yet over the past few years there’s been more destruction than creation. Employment in high-tech fields has stagnated (See related story, “Best Cities For Technology Jobs”) while there have been huge setbacks in the construction, manufacturing, warehousing and agricultural sectors.

Driven away by strict regulations, businesses take their jobs outside California even in relatively good times. Indeed, according to a recent Milken Institute report, between 2000 and 2007 California lost nearly 400,000 manufacturing jobs. All that time, industrial employment was growing in major competitive rivals like Texas and Arizona.

With the state reeling, Arnold has decided, once again, to try out a new part. Now he’s posturing as the strong man who stands up to dominant liberal interests. But few on the left, few on the right or few in the middle take him seriously anymore. He may still earn acclaim from Manhattan media offices or Barack Obama’s EPA, but in his home state he looks more an over-sized lame duck, quacking meaninglessly for the cameras.

Source: Mens News Daily

Filed under: California News, Government Corruption, State Budget/Money, Uncategorized , California News, Corruption/Government Corruption, Government, Politics, Uncategorized

California grants early release of parole violators

Dealing with overcrowding and fiscal constraints, officials have set free some inmates and approved early release for others.

By Michael Rothfeld

Reporting from Sacramento — California prison officials, facing severe overcrowding and a financial crisis, have been granting early releases to inmates serving time for parole violations.

State officials said the dozens of prisoners set free from the California Institution for Men in Chino and from lockups in San Diego and Shasta counties had 60 days or less left on their terms, or had been accused of violations and were awaiting hearings. The releases were approved by the state parole board.

At least 89 inmates have been freed or approved for early release during the last two months. Others have been sent to home detention, drug rehabilitation programs or similar alternative punishments.

They were screened to ensure that they had never been convicted of the most serious crimes, such as murder, manslaughter, kidnapping or sexual offenses, the officials said. The inmates may have been convicted of grand theft, weapons possession, driving under the influence of alcohol or other crimes. Their parole may have been revoked for missing an appointment with a parole agent, failing a drug test, committing robbery or any number of other offenses.

The move came as county authorities in Los Angeles and elsewhere said they could no longer house — and in some cases, threatened to release — inmates awaiting transfer to state prisons from their own teeming jails. Counties routinely hold newly convicted prisoners or those picked up on parole violations until the state can take them.

But California’s $26.3-billion deficit has left the state without enough money to pay for all of those its laws designate for punishment. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers are considering numerous ways, including the early release of inmates, to save money by reducing a prison population of nearly 170,000.

No budget decisions have been made, and Schwarzenegger spokesman Matt David said the governor had been unaware of the recent releases, most of which were in response to complaints by Los Angeles County that the state had left nearly 2,000 prisoners in its jails. That number represents about 10% of the prisoners in the county’s jail system, which has a court-ordered population cap.

“This was an emergent crisis,” said Terri McDonald, the state’s chief deputy secretary for adult operations at the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “We don’t want a system failure in the county jail.”

The inmates released from Chino opened up beds for some of those being held in Los Angeles County. McDonald said the state, to be “good partners” with the county, put other inmates in prison gymnasiums that officials had planned to stop using as dormitories, and took additional measures to free up space.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, however, said that the burden had not been alleviated and that the inmates, who cost the county $70 million a year to house, were the state’s responsibility.

“If they’re releasing them . . . that’s their call,” Baca said. “For them to blame me for their decision is absurd. All I’m saying is, ‘I don’t want them in my jail any longer. You’re not paying me, and we’re not offering a free ride.’ “

In a June 30 e-mail, a state parole administrator told agents that the Chino prison would be the “first target” for releasing parole violators. Because of the fiscal crisis, the e-mail said, “we are starting to experience some resistance and refusals of the counties to hold our prisoners” and the state was “incapable” of taking them.

Shasta County, for instance, had recently been forced to close a jail wing because sheriff’s deputies were laid off, wrote the administrator, whose e-mail was provided to The Times without a name attached.

The county had notified the state the week before that unless “30 or so” inmates were transferred, it would “release them to the streets over the weekend,” the e-mail said.

Five were evaluated and released early, with approval from the parole board; the rest were transferred to state prisons, corrections officials said.

In San Diego, 200 inmates are transferred from local jails to state prisons each week. After the state abruptly stopped accepting them in May, then-Sheriff William Kolender warned prison officials that he would release 138 parole violators to avoid exceeding his jails’ court-ordered population cap.

“We regret to take this drastic action, but we have no other alternative given our responsibility to adhere to a court order,” Kolender wrote in a letter dated May 5. He added that the county had been “burdened with holding state prisoners for an inordinate amount of time and cost.”

The county did not carry out its threat because the state approved two inmates for early release, sent some home on alternative sanctions and transferred others to state prisons.

California has one of the nation’s most stringent policies of supervising ex-convicts once they are released; parole violations account for 70,000 prison admissions each year.

Joan Petersilia, a prisons expert who has advised Schwarzenegger’ s administration, said it makes “good public-policy sense” to reduce that number and reserve prison beds for those who are most dangerous.

“We simply can’t afford the punishment that we’ve had in California,” Petersilia said.

Source: LA Times

Filed under: California News, Corrections/Correctional Officers, Prison Issues, Prison Reform, State Budget/Money, inmates , California Department of Corrections/CDCR, California News, Corrections, incarceration, Prison Issues, Uncategorized

Virginia Supermax: America is imperiled if inmates read Obama’s books

This is so stupid for so many reasons:

McLEAN, Va. – The federal government’s most secure prison has determined that two books written by President Barack Obama contain material “potentially detrimental to national security” and rejected an inmate’s request to read them. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush. Last year, Abu Ali requested two books wr

See the rest here:
Virginia Supermax: America is imperiled if inmates read Obama’s books

Related articles:

1. Audacity of Nope: Supermax prison tells inmate that Obama?s books harmful to national security
2. Biden Makes Stop in Virginia (11:13 p.m.) (CBS 6 Richmond)
3. Yes, Virginia, Obama is a Liar
4. Read Obama’s Lips – No New Taxes!
5. Biden will speak at Kingsmill event (The Virginia Gazette)

Source: Presidency News.com

UPDATE:

Yes he can: Prison decides Obama’s books are suitable reading for al-Qaida inmate after all

Filed under: Corrections/Correctional Officers, Federal Prison/Prisoners, Human Rights, Prison Issues, Prisons and Prisoners, inmates , Censorship, Human Rights, incarceration, SuperMax Prisons, Uncategorized

Friday Visiting Suspended at ALL California State Prisons

VERIFIED INFORMATION
Per Inmate Family Council:
Due to the Governor confirming the 3rd day furloughs, all Friday visiting
will be suspended beginning July 17th.

This affects ALL California Facilities

CA.GOV |

Filed under: California News, Corrections/Correctional Officers, Prison Issues, Prisons and Prisoners, inmates , California Department of Corrections/CDCR, Corrections, incarceration, Uncategorized, Visiting

Florida Supreme Court frees Death Row inmate in 1994 Broward murder

BY MARC CAPUTO
Herald/Times Tallahassee Bureau

The Florida Supreme Court unanimously ordered Thursday that a Death Row inmate be set free because there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him of murdering a Fort Lauderdale pawn shop worker.

Three justices went a step further than their colleagues, issuing a separate opinion that said the Broward County court ”erred” by allowing a prosecutor to inflame jurors when they were deciding whether to recommend the death sentence for Herman Lindsey.

Lindsey, 36, was convicted in 2006 of the murder of Joanne Mazollo at the Big Dollar pawn shop. That happened 12 years before, but the cold case was cracked by a Fort Lauderdale police detective.

During trial, prosecutors presented numerous pieces of evidence suggesting Lindsey and another man, Ronnie LoRay, committed the crime. LoRay later pleaded guilty. A damning statement against Lindsey, who has a long criminal record, came from a former Broward County jail inmate who said Lindsey admitted to having murdered a witness in a robbery.

”While we agree that the evidence here does seem suspicious, even a deep suspicion the appellant committed the crime charged is not sufficient to sustain conviction,” the court ruled.

After his conviction, Lindsey tried to persuade jurors to spare him from the death penalty. The prosecutor, whose name was not listed in the court ruling, should have asked Lindsey about his childhood during this phase of the case.

But the prosecutor, instead, asked Lindsey about the details of the crime.

”Why did you put a gun to her head and pull the trigger?” the prosecutor asked. ”I didn’t,” Lindsey said.

Lindsey’s lawyer objected, but he was overruled. The prosecutor continued, and then asked Lindsey, “so the jury is wrong?’

”I think the jury is mistaken,” Lindsey answered.

None of that should have happened, wrote Justice Peggy A. Quince.

”The trial court abused its discretion,” Quince wrote. “This error was not harmless. The prosecution’s comments were not only improper but were also prejudicial and made with the apparent goal of inflaming the jury.”

Neither prosecutors, the defense nor the Broward Circuit judge, Eileen M. O’Connor, could be reached.

Source: Miami Herald

Filed under: Death Penalty, Justice, Murder, Prisons and Prisoners, law , Corrections, Criminal Justice, Death Penalty, Release, Uncategorized

Court backs Folsom prison officials in inmate’s complaint

By Denny Walsh
dwalsh@sacbee. com

Published: Friday, Jul. 10, 2009 – 12:00 am | Page 3A

In a resounding victory for prison officials in California and throughout the Western states, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that an institution’ s inmates may be confined to cells for months at a time, even though only some of them are to blame for heightened violence.

The court ordered a Sacramento trial judge to throw out a challenge to an extreme denial of outdoor exercise at California State Prison, Sacramento, also known as New Folsom. But its ruling on immunity impacts prisons far beyond California’s borders.

Declining “to micro-manage officials whose expertise in prison administration far exceeds our own,” a split appeals panel ruled that targeted prison officials were entitled to immunity from legal attack.

Two judges on a three-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided that reasonable correctional officials could have rightly believed it is lawful to deny outdoor exercise when combating a wave of violent attacks by inmates on guards. Such a good-faith belief is the threshold requirement for immunity.

Quoting federal appellate case law, 9th Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of Pasadena and Judge Consuelo M. Callahan of Sacramento afforded wide-ranging deference to prison officials who must balance inmate and staff safety with prisoner rights and privileges.

“These decisions are delicate ones, and those charged with them must be given reasonable leeway,” the opinion noted.

In dissent, Judge Sidney R. Thomas of Montana wrote that the lockdown of Gregory Lynn Norwood violated the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The judge noted Norwood was confined to his cell for “more than a year out of a period of less than two years.”

A jury in Sacramento federal court found prison officers acted with reckless disregard for Norwood’s right to outdoor exercise, Thomas pointed out. That finding did not support a defense of immunity, he wrote.

The published opinion becomes the law in the nine Western states and two Pacific island territories over which the 9th Circuit presides.

Benjamin Rice, general counsel of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, on Thursday hailed the ruling as “a victory that should allow our managers in the field to run their prisons effectively and to protect officers and inmates without being micro-managed by the courts.”

Carter White, director of the School of Law Civil Rights Clinic at the University of California, Davis, along with his students, represent Norwood.

White said he is hopeful the circuit will grant a rehearing before an enlarged panel.

“The right to exercise was established in the 9th Circuit 30 years ago in an opinion written by Anthony Kennedy (now an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) when he was a circuit judge,” White said. “The fact the court would now find to the contrary is mind-boggling.

“The evidence at trial established these lockdowns were unnecessarily long. … Apparently the majority feels it’s acceptable to subject innocent people to draconian punishment.”

Norwood, 47, who is doing life without parole on first-degree murder and second-degree robbery convictions, represented himself from the inception of his lawsuit in December 2003 to midway through the trial in November 2007, when U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. appointed White, law students Erin Haney and Nagmeh Shariatmadar.

The jury awarded Norwood no compensatory damages and $11 in nominal damages, and assessed $39,000 in punitive damages against six high-ranking current and former corrections officials. Burrell later awarded $23,875 in attorney’s fees that would have gone to the law school. All of that was wiped out by the circuit’s ruling.

Source: SacBee

Filed under: California News, Corrections/Correctional Officers, Justice, Prison Issues, Prisons and Prisoners, inmates, law , California Department of Corrections/CDCR, California News, Corrections, Criminal Justice, inmates, Justice, Prison Issues, Prisoners/Inmates, Uncategorized

Just A Guy: Detached from humanity

Prison report: Detached from humanity

By Just A Guy

This morning, as the officers prepared paper trays with cold, soggy pancakes from a serving cart outside of my cell, I overheard a female officer chatting with a fellow officer. She was telling him that she had visited various historical sites, like the book depository in Dallas and the site of the Oklahoma City bombing, and that going to these places made her very emotional, so much so that when she was visiting Oahu she refused to visit the site of the U.S.S. Arizona because of the feelings such a visit would engender in her.

When I heard this, I couldn’t help but laugh at what she’d said as I considered where she works from the confines of my graffiti-scrawled 6-by-9 cell in which the view of the outside world through the 6-inch-by-4- foot window has been purposefully obstructed except for about half an inch along the edges.

A short while later this same officer was going from cell to cell picking up trash. When she arrived at my cell, she asked me if I was new. I asked her why. Was it obvious, because I had no personal property to speak of? She said no, that it was my mood—which probably wasn’t chipper. I then asked her if I might ask a question and told her that I’d overheard her discussion with respect to visiting tragic historical sites and was curious to know if she was aware of the irony of getting emotional at such sights, when going to work in a prison, specifically the “hole” in a prison, didn’t get her emotional.

Her answer, to me anyway, was a sad and tragic condemnation of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation system, and quite frankly, of society’s outlook on things as a whole. Also, her answer was quite disturbing—this I’ll explain further as I go on.

What she said to me is that she “detaches” herself when she comes to work. She then said that when talking to fellow officers, she can be herself, but then motioned toward me and said that when she’s dealing with us, meaning inmates, she detaches.

Wow! That’s really sad to me—that in order to make it through the day at work, you have to mentally confine yourself and detach from seeing inmates as people. One way or another, we’re a face with no name. Isn’t this what the harlot does before she pleases her john? Isn’t this what the worker in an abattoir does before he slaughters your dinner, or the terrorist before he slams a jet into a Twin Tower? This detachment, this removal of humanity from oneself is what it takes to work for CDCR? Is that what’s in the training manual?

All these thoughts occurred to me in an instant, but I didn’t let on in total. I was compelled to tell her that it was sad, and she replied, “It’s a job.”

My … Where to begin? I wonder if the nurses at Josef Mengele’s side thought the same thing and proceeded to slap the scalpel into Herr Doktor’s hand prior to the disfiguring surgery he was about to perform — so similar to the psychic surgery being performed on us daily?

Isn’t the system in California, and in the country for that matter, rather like a patient in a hospital for a simple surgical procedure — but the charts were confused and the patient’s appendix has been removed?

I’m not saying the officers — or the administration, or anyone else working for CDCR — are criminals. It’s gone far beyond that, and no one individual is culpable for the crimes we are committing on each other in the name of the “war on crime.” But we, as a society, have the responsibility to recognize and act upon that recognition when things have become as they are. We individuals have chosen to believe the stakeholders with the most to lose — rather than understand for ourselves the truth about the imprisonment of California!

It should be evident (when a woman who obviously has a conscience has to detach when she comes to work and justify that detachment with a statement like “It’s a job”) that something has gone seriously awry within this once great state.

This dialogue is all fine and dandy, but what use is it without offering some sort of solution after all? Complaining is not a strategy—not that I am complaining. Well, sort of I am, but I’m also considering and pointing out some things that I feel need to be pointed out.

What can I do? What can you do? What can we do? I guess the real question is: does anyone want to do anything to try and mend this torn fabric of conscience?

I don’t have the expectation of great waves of sympathy, but I do have the hope that some of you will check things out for yourselves and ask questions of our government. But I fear those questions won’t be asked because when the truth is known, then the responsibility lies on the individual to do something about it or just “detach.”

Since I’ve been communicating with you, I have been honest. I’ve tried to refrain from embellishment, as prisoners are already disbelieved, but let me say this: I’m in prison for possession, not lying. Ask yourselves: What do I have to gain other than the enmity of CDCR et. al.?

And know that I gain an honest night’s sleep because I’m trying to make a difference, however small, and open your eyes to the blinders you didn’t even know were put on you by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the CDCR, and the huge political machine supporting those two entities and those entities supporting that machine.

Source: SFBG.com

Filed under: California News, Corrections/Correctional Officers, Prisons and Prisoners, Uncategorized , California Department of Corrections/CDCR, California News, Corrections, incarceration, inmates, Prisoners/Inmates, Uncategorized