The trend toward long-term imprisonment of nonviolent offenders has made us no safer while ruining countless lives.

Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009
by Stuart Taylor Jr.

The November 9 Supreme Court arguments on whether it is cruel and unusual to impose life in prison without parole on violent juveniles who have not killed anybody understandably got prominent media coverage..

But a far more important imprisonment story gets less attention because it’s a running sore that rarely generates dramatic “news.” That is our criminal-justice system’s incarceration of a staggering 2.3 million people, about half of them for nonviolent crimes, including most of the 500,000 locked up for drug offenses.

Forty percent of these prisoners are black, 20 percent are Hispanic, and most are poor and uneducated. This has had a devastating impact on poor black families and neighborhoods, where it has become the norm for young men — many of them fathers — to spend time in prison and emerge bitter, unemployable, and unmarriageable. (These numbers come from studies cited by Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a reform group.)

America imprisons seven times as many people as it did in 1972, several times as many per capita as other Western nations, and many more than any other nation in the world.

Yes, violent criminals should be locked up for long enough to protect the rest of us. But the mass, long-term imprisonment of nonviolent, nondangerous offenders in recent decades and excessive terms for others has made us no safer while ruining countless lives and converting potentially productive citizens into career criminals.

The 13-year-old rapist and the 17-year-old serial robber-burglar who are serving life without parole in two Florida cases inspired impassioned comments from justices with opposing views. But the outcome may not have much impact on these two prisoners or anyone else. Even if the Court strikes down their sentences, the state will be free to resentence them to serve, say, 40 years before being eligible for parole, and thereafter to deny successive parole applications until they die. And even if the Court upholds life without parole, the state will be free in the future to relent and release them.

Meanwhile, the damage done by America’s prison binge over the past 30 to 40 years dwarfs the importance of all of the Court’s pending criminal cases.

The damage done by America’s prison binge over the past 30 to 40 years dwarfs the importance of all of the Court’s pending criminal cases.

To be sure, budget problems in recent years have forced some states to hold down their prison populations by relaxing drug sentences. And California is under federal court order to release 40,000 people from its badly overcrowded prisons. Perhaps the budgetary pressure will open more minds to the impressive body of research suggesting that imposing severe prison terms on more and more people is not the best way to fight crime.

Another glimmer of hope is that a bipartisan group of senators, with Obama administration support, is working to ratchet down the overpunishment of mostly nonviolent crack cocaine offenders, 80 percent of whom are black. Tens of thousands are now locked up under grotesquely excessive federal mandatory minimum sentences of five years (for simple possession of 5 grams of crack), 10 years (50 grams with intent to distribute), and more.

But the crack penalties are just the tip of an overpunishment iceberg. And although it’s not growing as fast as before, it’s not shrinking either. “What we’re seeing so far is just a slowing of growth — a tinkering around the edges,” Mauer says.

At a cost of $60 billion a year, our prisons and jails do very little to counsel, educate, train, or otherwise prepare prisoners to get jobs and go straight after they’re released. They are barred from public housing, treated as outcasts by many employers, and often surrounded by other ex-cons in their neighborhoods. This makes for very high recidivism, with about two-thirds of those released being rearrested within three years.

The impact on black communities is especially dramatic.

* Blacks are imprisoned at a rate eight times as high as whites.

* Nearly 60 percent of black male high school dropouts, and nearly 30 percent of all black men (if current trends continue), will spend time behind bars — far more than in the worst days of segregation. The result: “In America’s inner cities, incarceration has become the more-likely- than-not norm, not the unthinkable exception,” Georgetown University Law School’s David Cole recently wrote in The New York Review of Books.

* The number of drug prisoners increased elevenfold from 1980 to 1997, and the number of black drug prisoners more than quadrupled from 1985 to 1991, according to Cole. Not many of them fit the “drug kingpin” label used by politicians to justify long prison terms.

I don’t attribute these glaring racial disparities to racist animus. Blacks do commit highly disproportionate percentages of violent as well as nonviolent crimes. And some rich white men also get savagely severe prison terms, such as the 25 and 24 years — more than most murderers — imposed on former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and former Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling, whose appeal is now before the Supreme Court, respectively.

But it’s fair to say that our criminal-justice system is helping to create “a racially defined pariah class in the middle of our great cities,” as Brown professor Glenn Loury says in his 2008 book, Race, Incarceration, and American Values.

The prison binge started out as a reaction to crime rates that began soaring in the 1960s, and the federal mandatory minimums were largely a response to the inner-city crack wars of the 1980s. But imprisonment rose more than crime, owing to adoption of draconian mandatory minimum sentences by state legislatures and Congress; restrictions on (and sometimes abolition of) parole; and other “tough on crime” policies.

The nascent countertrend noted above reflects not only budget pressures but also the efforts of reformers such as Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.; Mauer; Julie Stewart, founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums; and their counterparts at the state level. Although it has not yet reduced the prison population, there’s room for hope that it might.

How much could we reduce the prison population without turning loose a horde of violent predators? By a lot.

More than 20 states eased some criminal sentences between 2004 and 2006, including New York’s relaxation of its especially harsh Rockefeller drug law. Others have made it easier for well-behaved prisoners to win early release and diverted drug offenders from prisons to treatment programs. At least 19 states have also relaxed their felon disenfranchisement laws — one of the many indignities imposed on ex-prisoners who have served their time — since 1997.

At the federal level, there is an overwhelming policy case for abolishing all of the numerous mandatory minimum sentences that Congress adopted for drug offenses in 1986 and 1988, and relying instead on the common sense of the judges who know the facts of each case and the defendant’s history. Yes, some judges would be too lenient. But federal prosecutors can appeal lenient sentences.

So far, however, most of the Democrats who control Congress seem too worried about opening themselves up to unwarranted Republican attacks for being “soft on crime” to do away with mandatory minimums.

How much could we reduce the prison population without turning a horde of violent predators loose on the rest of us? By a lot.

Experts disagree about how much of the steep plunge in crime rates from about 1994 to 2004 is attributable to locking up so many criminals and how much it owes to demographics. But most of the estimated 1.2 million prisoners locked up for nonviolent offenses are not especially dangerous. Scholars including Mark Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California (Los Angeles), contend that for violent as well as nonviolent offenders, long prison terms — which most potential criminals don’t expect to incur — do less to deter crime than would swifter and surer imposition of less onerous penalties. Even probation, Kleiman writes, can be a real deterrent if accompanied by tough conditions and oversight.

In his recent book, When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, Kleiman argues that the correct reforms would lead to “half as much crime and half as many people behind bars 10 years from now.”

“Half as much crime” sounds pretty optimistic, in part because getting our criminal-justice system to do anything swiftly and surely would be a tall order. But reducing the number of people behind bars by several hundred thousand, or even 1 million, seems a reasonable goal.

After all, an incarcerated population of 1.3 million (down from 2.3 million) would still be four times as many — and well over twice as many per capita — as in 1972, when we had 326,000 prisoners.

But budgetary pressures and reformers can move us only so far toward more-sensible sentencing policies unless and until politicians become more enlightened about how best to fight crime.

And we cannot count on much help from the Supreme Court, which in 2003 upheld no-parole sentences, under California’s “three strikes” law, of 50 years for shoplifting $150 worth of children’s videos and 25 years for stealing three golf clubs.

Source: National Journal Magazine

California Prison Teachers Protest Layoffs

Here we have the highest recidivism rate by far at 70+ %- California is long known as the ‘revolving door’ system. I find this article a bit ironic!! And we all know there is NO REHAB and hasnt been for some time now!! CDCr doesnt cut admin, they cut all programs!

Neil Nisperos, Staff Writer

Posted: 11/12/2009

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will soon slash drug rehab programs for state inmates as part of $1.2 billion in budget cuts – though some fear the severe program reduction may be more trouble than its benefit.The system will have enough money to treat 2,350 inmates, down 80 percent from the current 12,164. State officials say between 600 and 900 counselors and teachers will be laid off in the corrections drug rehab and academic reduction plan.The California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, which specializes in substance abuse rehabilitation, will have its treatment load reduced from 914 to 225.

The 650 inmates receiving treatment at the California Institution for Men in Chino will be reduced to 150. The 752 at the California Institution for Women will drop to 175.

“Those inmates will have very little treatment service to deal with behavioral issues that they’ve spent years to develop, most of of which was put on them from an early age,” said Darrol Monfils, a drug counselor at the California Institution for Women. “Their chances of succeeding are slim.”

Treatment programs, which had normally lasted nine months to more than a year, will be cut down to about three months. Monfils said he fears not only the loss of his job, but a reduction in the effectiveness of prison substance abuse programs and a possible increase in recidivism.

“California prisoners will be paroling inmates with little or no

rehabilitation,” he said. “They will be paroling with the same behaviors as they did when they arrived. Now, having said that, there will be a few exceptions to the rule, but they will be the larger minority.Matthew Cate, state corrections secretary, said the state budget crisis has forced the department to make a “tough choice” with significant budget cuts and layoffs in order to meet a $1.2 billion shortfall. Cate and spokeswoman Peggy Bengs said Corrections is using the money it has to more carefully target substance abuse programs for the inmates most in need.

“One thing we are doing is we are now scientifically evaluating and assessing inmates, those at the highest risk of recidivism and so we are targeting our resources to that population group and identifying what their needs are,” Bengs said.

She said the new approach is a “research-based risk and needs assessment tool to assist us to place the right inmates in the right program at the right time.

“We had a first-come, first-serve sort of a system, and that was not always an effective use of resources,” she said.

David Conn, senior vice president for Mental Health Systems, Inc., the substance abuse rehabilitation company that contracts at CIW, said he has concerns, despite the targeting of resources.

“Let me say the state did not want to make these cuts,” Conn said. “These were sort of last-minute budget cuts to balance the budget, and everyone agrees it’s probably a foolish decision. Individuals who are incarcerated to support drug habits will not receive substance abuse treatment. The likelihood of them reoffending increases significantly.”

Still, Bengs said it is difficult to foresee the impact the reductions will have on inmates returning to prison. Corrections, she said, will encourage community programs for inmates who participate in the prison rehabilitation programs.

“Statistics show that substance abuse programs combined with a community program after release, reduces recidivism,” Bengs said.

“All of the inmates who participate in substance abuse in the prison have an opportunity to participate in community substance abuse programs. It’s voluntary but they are strongly encouraged to do it and we’ve had a good success with that.”

Contracts for substance abuse companies operating at substance abuse treatment programs in state prisons end by January. Monfils, like other rehabilitation counselors, won’t know if he will return to work next year until Corrections announces winning bids on new contracts by the first of next year.

Conn said the reductions will reduce his rehab workers from a high of 970 to 120.

“I’m somewhat heartbroken and sad and of course unsure about what I’m going to do,” Monfils said. “But the inmates are upset about it as well, because they love being here and they love coming here.”

Source: Contra Costa Times

By Sara Sandrik

Chowchilla, California (KFSN) — The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is planning to cut between 600 and 900 prison staff members across the state to deal with a more than one billion dollar budget deficit.

But employees at the two prisons in Chowchilla say the proposed lay-offs come with too high of a price for the public.

Dozens of staff members from the two women’s prisons in Chowchilla rallied outside the gates of the Central California Women’s Facility in hopes of sending a message to the community.

John Plain said, “The state of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to severely cut the number of teachers who work in prisons and that will severely impact public safety, and we want them to know what’s coming.”

Many of the protestors are teachers or vocational instructors. They say their classes and programs help prepare the women serving time inside these walls to be contributing members of society once their sentences are complete. They teach everything from reading and math to carpentry and landscaping.

Catherina Fowler said, “We also teach life skills which is important. We teach people how to balance a checkbook, how to read a contract, how to apply for a job.”

The teachers say without those skills, the women are more likely to commit crimes and end up back in prison. But prison officials say the state budget has left them with no choice but to scale back the programs.

Bart Fortner said, “We’re looking at anywhere from 30 to 50 percent cut in staffing in our education and vocation programs.”

Spokesman Bart Fornter says CCWF and the other state prisons will try to minimize the impact of those cuts by giving help first to the inmates who are closest to being released. There are also plans to use teachers aides instead of certified teachers … and to train inmates to mentor each other. But the protestors say those substitutes won’t be the same. And it will still leave them out in the cold.

Barbara Greninger said, “We are about to join one of the largest unemployment lines there is.”

The protestors say the programs also save taxpayers money by keeping released inmates from returning to prison. They’re asking residents to contact their legislators and demand they prevent the lay-offs.

Meanwhile, officials here at cCWF say they’re still waiting on word on exactly how many positions will be cut.

Source: ABC Local

State submits plan to reduce prison population

“We have thoroughly examined the court’s concerns and believe that this plan represents the best option to meet the court’s order,” said CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate.
“Although this plan meets the court mandate, we continue to believe our best option is the original plan already being implemented by the state that reduces the prison population over time without compromising public safety.”

Click here for CDCR’s Population Management Plan Filing
Click here for Three Judge Court Ordered Plan: Table A

SACRAMENTO – The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) today filed a revised plan with the federal three judge panel that addresses the panel’s concerns about the department’s previous filing submitted on September 18, 2009. The panel ordered the department to produce a population plan to meet the court’s operational capacity level of 137.5 percent by the end of 2011.

“We have thoroughly examined the court’s concerns and believe that this plan represents the best option to meet the court’s order,” said CDCR Secretary Matthew Cate.
“Although this plan meets the court mandate, we continue to believe our best option is the original plan already being implemented by the state that reduces the prison population over time without compromising public safety.”

The revised plan includes the proposals from the September 18, 2009 plan as well as additional options the court may consider.  The department can only reach the court’s population goals with changes in state laws or federal court orders.

The department has implemented or plans to implement measures directly available to it through the Administration’s executive powers, including:

• developing and deploying the Parole Violation Decision Making Instrument statewide;
• maximizing the use of the currently authorized California Out-of-State Correctional Facility program;
• considering eligible undocumented inmates for commutation and deportation;
• discharging from parole illegal aliens who have been deported by the federal government; and
• utilizing electronic monitoring systems, such as global positioning systems (GPS), for eligible parole violators as an alternative to incarceration.

Other measures require changes in state law.  In September 2009, the Administration was able to obtain legislative enactment of the following:

• summary parole –  low-level, lower-risk offenders will no longer be placed on active parole, which will reduce the number of offenders returning to prison for parole violations; and
• credit earning enhancements – reduces  time served for qualified inmates.

The Legislature declined to enact three of the Administration’s other proposed measures, including:

• increasing the monetary threshold for grand theft;
• providing alternative housing options for low-level offenders (alternative custody); and
• limiting sentencing options to county jail for certain criminal offenses.

The Administration is seeking a change in state law through the legislative process early next year to:

• increase the monetary threshold for grand theft;
• provide alternative custody housing options;
• seek authorization to continue the California Correctional Out-of-State Facility (COCF) program and to expand the number of inmates that can be held in custody out-of-state;
• seek legislative enactment of a law that would enable CDCR to accelerate construction of in-state capacity authorized by AB 900; and
• seek legislative enactment of a law that would expedite leasing, building and/or operating new beds through establishment of private vendor contracts to house inmates and operate private facilities in the state.

Today’s court filing does not derail the Department’s appeal of the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.  CDCR filed its appeal in September and submitted a jurisdictional statement to the U.S. Supreme Court on October 5, 2009.

The November 12, 2009 Population Reduction Plan submitted to the court today will be posted to CDCR’s web site at www.cdcr.ca. gov once it is filed with the court.

And:

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, November 12, 2009

(11-12) 20:32 PST SAN FRANCISCO — The Schwarzenegger administration bowed to a federal court order Thursday and submitted a plan to reduce California’s prison population by more than 40,000 in two years, largely by sending fewer people to prison for relatively minor crimes and parole violations.

Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate complied with the Thursday deadline set by a three-judge panel in San Francisco, while insisting that the court had no authority to order the population-reductio n plan or to issue additional decrees necessary to make it work. The state has already served notice of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The plan includes several of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’ s proposals that the Legislature has already rejected: allowing some elderly or ailing prisoners to finish their sentences in local custody or home confinement; sending criminals to county jail instead of prison for crimes such as drug possession, receiving stolen property and writing bad checks; and raising the threshold for felony grand theft from $400 to $950.

Back to Legislature

Cate said Schwarzenegger would resubmit those proposals to lawmakers. In the meantime, the state said the court could put the measures into effect by ordering prison officials to accept only inmates who met the proposed standards – for example, someone who had stolen $950 or more.

Those three changes alone would reduce the inmate level by nearly 19,000 in two years, state lawyers told the panel. They said another 5,000 inmates could be transferred to newly built private prisons in the same time period by waiving some environmental laws and other barriers to construction.

The plan also calls for imprisoning fewer parolees for minor violations, transferring some inmates out of state and a modest amount of prison construction.

The administration would prefer a plan that “reduces the population much more slowly over a greater period of time” and relies more on bond-funded expansion of the prison system, Cate told reporters.

But, he noted, “This plan wasn’t written to satisfy the Department of Corrections. We’re under court order.”

If the Supreme Court rejects the state’s argument that the court panel has exceeded its authority under federal law, the administration will comply with its orders, Cate said.

A lawyer for prisoners who sued the state said he was encouraged.

Lawyer for prisoners

At first glance, the plan appears to be “a reasonable and thoughtful way of approaching the legal issue,” said attorney Donald Specter of the nonprofit Prison Law Office. “The population reduction has to target the offenders who are coming in for the less serious crimes,” and that’s the approach that the state appears to be taking, he said.

One Republican legislator, however, predicted that lawmakers or voters would reject many of the proposed changes in sentencing.

Plans to send fewer people to prison, such as the change in the threshold for grand theft, are “an egregious compromise of justice,” said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber (Tehama County). He said the state needs to build more prisons.

By contrast, Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee, criticized the plan’s provision for some new prison construction, which would add about 2,400 beds in two years, in addition to the 5,000-bed private prisons.

“I think that doesn’t deal with the problem,” Leno said. “The overcrowding is a symptom. Building new beds doesn’t address the problem that caused the symptom.,” said Leno. He said the state should change its sentencing guidelines, a proposal that is not in the administration’ s plan.

The clash over prison conditions came to a head in August, when the three-judge panel ruled that overcrowding in the state’s 33 correctional facilities – now filled to nearly twice their designed capacity of 80,000 – was the main reason that health care for inmates violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco appointed a receiver to manage the health care system in 2006 after concluding that substandard care was killing one inmate per week.

The panel – Henderson, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento, and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – said the state could meet its constitutional obligations by reducing the prison population from 150,000 to 110,000 in two years.

The judges insisted it could be done without a massive prisoner release or other steps that might endanger the public, and suggested such measures as ending imprisonment for minor parole violations and shifting some low-risk inmates from state to county custody or in-home monitoring.

Defiant at first

Schwarzenegger had previously proposed changing the parole system along the lines suggested by the court, but his first reaction to the August order was defiance. He filed a plan on Sept. 18 that had a timetable of five years rather than two years, still fell short of the demanded 40,000 reduction, and was based on assumptions that lawmakers would accept measures they had previously rejected.

Lawyers for the prisoners asked the panel to hold the governor in contempt, but the judges gave him one more chance, setting a new deadline of Thursday and saying they would impose their own plan unless the state complied.

If  you have never read the following 9 articles in Mother Jones- click the link & please, share your thoughts!!

BY COLIN RIGLEY

Long waiting lists are hampering treatment for drug offenders in California

Every Tuesday afternoon people line up outside the last room in a long hall on the bottom floor of the SLO County Courthouse. On a recent Tuesday, the line stretched out the door and far down the hall. The people in line weren’t dope dealers or career criminals, but they had been caught for possession or being under the influence. It was a line of ordinary faces, many locked in nervous expressions. A week later two women sat outside the locked doors of that room consoling one another as they waited for loved ones to come out who never did; one woman left in tears. By law, treatment should be a ready option for everyone in the line—at least, that’s the way things are supposed to work. And before the state began lopping funding for court-run drug treatment programs, that’s the way they did work.

In SLO County, as in many counties throughout California, people who ordinarily would receive treatment instead of jail for drug and alcohol offenses are placed on a list and told to wait. Historically, drug offenders who took the treatment option were allowed to enroll in treatment almost immediately. Now, they wait a month on average but the delay often stretches to two months, or more.

People who are in the program and those who run it say it’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card, but treatment, the alternative to incarceration, is in very many cases too long delayed. Those who await the program are left on their own, expected to stay clean until help becomes available: Though they they’ve committed to the treatment option, nothing really changes beyond some paper shuffling.

In 2000, Californians passed the Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act, or Proposition 36, with a strong 61 percent of the vote. California’s law went into effect in 2001 following the example of a similar successful treatment program Arizona started in 1996. Proposition 36 gives nonviolent drug offenders an option to go into treatment instead of jail. The state originally pumped $120 million annually into the program through the 2005-06 fiscal year. And the program works.

Annual studies by the University of California at Los Angeles found conclusive data that Proposition 36 treatment successfully curbed repeat drug offenses by people who completed the program. Graduates from the program are less likely to commit crimes, the research showed, and the state saves millions of dollars by treating offenders instead of sending them to jail or prison.

But the economy went south and the state budget began to tank. First the Proposition 36 budget was reduced from $120 million to $100 million. Last year, the budget was further reduced to $90 million. This year, the funding was eliminated completely and no one knows whether it will be funded again.

In SLO County, those cuts resulted in the loss of four drug and alcohol counselors. According to one state official, most counties had to cut services in half. SLO County was one such county and going into this fiscal year, the local services are operating with about the same number of staff as when Proposition 36 began.

 

THE COUNSELOR Trevor Hardcastle of SLO County Drug and Alcohol Services is one of the counselors on Proposition 36 cases. Budget cuts, he said, have decimated the county’s ability to treat drug users. PHOTO BY STEVE E. MILLER

Getting off the list

New Times met with Steve in a small, dim conference room in one of the county’s Drug and Alcohol Services offices in Grover Beach. He was wearing a black Fender T-shirt and spoke with a groggy lisp through swollen cheeks. He had just had teeth pulled, but took only over-the-counter pain killers because he had to refuse narcotics the dentist offered, he said. Steve is a recovering methamphetamine user who, like many in his position, was placed on the waiting list to receive treatment.

After getting picked up for being under the influence, Steve took the treatment option offered by the court. He was told the next day to go to SLO County Drug and Alcohol Services for an assessment; basically a quick meeting with a counselor. That was on a Wednesday. At his assessment, Steve was told he would have to wait almost two weeks to begin treatment. Before budget cuts most local clients were able to begin treatment the day after assessment.

“So as soon as you walked through the door right then on that Wednesday you know well, gee, how long am I going to be waiting?” Steve said. “So the demon in the back of your head starts talking.”

He knew he had a court appearance the following Tuesday, six days before his first treatment appointment. And he thought it would be a routine appearance.

“So I decided I was going to get loaded one last time because I figured I was going to have to just go to court, show them the paperwork that yeah, I’m signed up to go come down here and meet with a counselor and start the program,” he said “So I got loaded over the weekend, showed up Tuesday at court, and they said, ‘We’ve got a pee test.’”

It takes three days for meth to clear the system, Steve said, and he knew there was no way he’d pass the drug test that day—he’d banked on passing the test when he went in for treatment. Steve admitted to the judge he’d used. By law, he had violated the terms of his probation, which meant he would have to spend three days in jail and devote 20 hours to community service. More disheartening, he said, was that testing dirty counted as a first strike; if he has two more strikes, he loses the treatment option.

“And then, after the weekend was up, I came in and met with Trevor and then started the program,” Steve said. Trevor Hardcastle is a county drug and alcohol counselor.

When New Times met with Hardcastle a few weeks ago, he said there were 23 people on the waiting list to start 12 to 18 months of treatment. Only four had come off the list and received treatment. Steve was one of the four. Hardcastle couldn’t say for sure what happened to the others.

“We know if we can just get people in, that the outcome is good,” Hardcastle said. “But we know that because of budget cuts and the wait-list scenario, we’re losing people who came in. They already decided they were ready; now we’re losing them. They’re picking up new charges, sitting out in the jail, losing custody of their kids.” He smacked his hand on the table, “And that’s a frustrating thing.”

By the end of the last fiscal year, before the cuts went into effect, 94 percent of the people who appeared for a Proposition 36 assessment made it into treatment. The county “no show” rate was 10 percent, compared to a statewide rate of about 25 percent. But between July and September, 83 percent of the people on the list hadn’t shown up for treatment.

“I have a family and I’ve been off and on using for 20 years,” Steve said. “And I’m done. I’m done using and I just don’t have the money, and health wise—there’s a lot of other reasons.”

By most accounts, Steve is the exception to the rule because even after his first probation strike, he went back for treatment.

“People make it on the wait list, most of them don’t make it off the wait list,” Hardcastle said. “And so when people come in the door they’re ready, for whatever reason, whoever decided, either them or the judge that they’re ready. That’s a critical time in treatment. We need to get those people immediately in because [Steve] said it well: The little demon or the last hurrah comes in if people have a lag time and they don’t make it. That’s why our wait list has been pretty much decimated.”

 

THE DEFENSE Attorney Matt Guerrero is the public defender for Proposition 36 defendants. He said people test dirty on drug tests in court all the time, particularly now because of a waiting list. PHOTO BY STEVE E. MILLER

Graduation day

A blare of laughter and voices bounced off the tile floor and echoed against high ceilings and wood-paneled walls as more than 100 people poured into the SLO Veterans Memorial Hall. Some looked like little-league soccer coaches. There were old men and women, middle-aged men and women, teenagers with bleached hair wearing T-shirts and baggy jeans, and bubbly teenage girls. Two women sat on one side of the room laughing and pointing as they scrolled through pictures on one of the girl’s pink laptop. A woman sat in a folding chair bouncing a little girl on her knee while in another corner of the room a young woman gently rocked a cradle on the ground next to her. Many mingled and laughed, a few hugged each other excitedly like long-lost friends. A young man insisted to a reporter, “This isn’t a program; it’s a family reunion.”

Above a stage at the front of the room hung a large white vinyl sign sporting the words, “Prop 36. It Works!”

Hardcastle walked through the room wearing a neatly pressed black suit over a green shirt and blue-and-yellow striped tie. He zipped around greeting people like a beaming teacher about to watch his favorite class accept diplomas. The noises quelled and Hardcastle walked on stage speaking to the crowd through a wireless microphone.

“I’ve been here four years and each year we fill the house,” he said.

SLO County’s Proposition 36 program has a 46 percent success rate and another 16 percent leave treatment in good standing, meaning they move and continue their treatment elsewhere, for example. Statewide the average success rate is 41 percent. Though the numbers may seem bleak to outsiders, those involved with Proposition 36 treatment say it’s overwhelmingly successful. As one official put it, the treatment success rate in jail or prison is about 0 percent.

Since 2000, there were 695 felony drug arrests per year in SLO County on average, according to the California Department of Justice. There were an average of 968 misdemeanor drug arrests per year during the same time period.

“It’s easier to sit in jail than to completely change everything in your life,” Hardcastle told the crowd.

Those graduates—people who were caught when treatment was more readily available—were fortunate. Shortly before the graduation ceremony, there were 38 people on the waiting list, according to a county report. In 2008-09, an average of 49 people were admitted to county Proposition 36 every three months. According to UCLA’s cost analysis, the state saves $2 for every $1 spent on someone in treatment. For people who complete treatment, the state saves $4 for every $1.

Probation officers, counselors, and a county judge paraded across the stage. Each was met with exuberant applause and cheering.

Judge Dodie Harman has presided over SLO County’s Proposition 36 cases for about six years. Asked why a judge would be applauded by people she’s convicted, Harman said most people facing a Proposition 36 sentence come to court feeling as though everybody’s against them. But the longer they’re in the program, the more they appreciate the system is geared to helping them.

“With drug addicts you’ve got to get to them right away … and if you don’t do that, they don’t have the tools and they’re going to use,” Harman said.

After her morning cases recently, Harman slinked through the narrow maze of courthouse hallways and sat behind a large wood desk in her chambers. She said sometimes people need a few days in jail “because it dries them out.” Every week someone comes to court and tests dirty, which counts as one of their three allowed probation violations and an automatic trip to jail.

People on the waiting list still must check in with the court regularly and they’re often drug tested on the spot.

In court, before Harman sat down for an interview, one man wearing a security guard uniform tried to explain why he hadn’t reported to the court when he was supposed to. Harman ordered him to submit to a drug test. His shoulders slumped and he quietly muttered, “Shit.” A bailiff took the man to a back room and a few minutes later there was the sound of a toilet flushing. The man had tested positive for cocaine. Though his was not a Proposition 36 case, Harman said it’s a regular occurrence.

Matt Guerrero said he sees people test dirty all the time, especially now when people are caught in limbo before treatment is available. He’s been practicing criminal law for nearly 10 years and is the assigned public defender for Proposition 36 cases.

“It’s like, dude, you’re coming to court—you can’t even be clean and you know you were coming?” Guerrero said. “That’s how bad the addiction is?”

But it’s not surprising, he added: “The phrase ‘just say no’ just makes sense to the non-addict, because they’ll [addicts] say, ‘How do I say no when my body is saying yes, yes?’”

 

THE JUDGE Judge Dodie Harman will soon retire as the Proposition 36 judge. During her time on the bench she’s tried to coordinate all things Proposition 36 to prevent people from slipping through the cracks between court and drug treatment. PHOTO BY STEVE E. MILLER

Does it work?

“To boil it down, yes, I think it’s done a lot of good and the people who do complete treatment, for them it’s made a lot of difference in their lives,” said Darren Urada, one of the UCLA researchers who conducts the annual research and reports on Proposition 36 programs. “I do think it could be better but right now with the funding being cut we’re not going to have a chance to do that.”

According to the 2008 UCLA report, of the 48,996 offenders who were referred to Proposition 36 between July 2006 and June 2007, about 71 percent entered treatment. Of those in treatment, most by far—57 percent—were in recovery from meth, 13.1 percent were in treatment for cocaine or crack, marijuana (12.5 percent), alcohol (8.2 percent), and heroin (8 percent).

Urada said there are plans to study the effects of cutting Proposition 36 funding, but funds for that research have been eliminated, too.

“It’s bad,” he went on. “These are people who need treatment and if they’re on a waiting list they’re going to go back and start using drugs again, and that shouldn’t surprise anybody.”

There’s hope the state will receive a $45 million Band-Aid from federal stimulus money for Proposition 36 programs. Still, most counties only have enough resources to treat about half as many patients as before the cut, explained Tom Renfree, executive director of the County Alcohol and Drug Program Administrators’ Association of California.

“You’re talking about trying to keep people out of prison, out of jail, and here we’re cutting a program that was one of the more effective ways of keeping people out of incarceration,” Renfree said.

So why cut a program that was proven effective and shown to save the state money in other ways?

“Frankly, drug addicts are not a popular constituency, to be honest,” Renfree said. Perhaps, he added, going easy on drug offenders can be seen as being weak on crime. “I think what people are a little bit short sighted about is, well, even if you feel that way, if these people don’t get treatment they do become a public safety problem.”

Walter Ling agreed. Ling is a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and the director of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs there.

“When things are good, we put [addicts] in treatment—with lots of barriers—and when things are bad we put them in jail,” Ling wrote to New Times. “Sometimes we advocate ‘prison treatment.’ We have always studied addiction as a disease and treated addicts as sinners; it’s the American way.”

Source: NewTimesSLO

Starting:  Thursday, October 29 (ongoing)

Where:  Over 60 Health Center

3260 Sacramento St.,

Berkeley, CA

If interested, please call:

Angela O’ Brien, MSW

(510) 428-4541

(you need to contact Angela O’Brien for the next dates and times)

By Kathleen ‘Cookie’ Ridolfi and Maurice Possley

Special to the Mercury News

Posted: 11/11/2009 08:00:00 PM PST

For the fourth time in as many years, Santa Clara County residents must cough up hundreds of thousands of their tax dollars due to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

Last month, the county authorized paying $750,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Donna Auguste, whose Colorado home was illegally searched by police six years ago. As the citizens of Santa Clara County feel the sting of the $750,000 settlement, they should realize that this is not an isolated instance. It raises the cost to taxpayers due to prosecutorial misconduct accusations since 2005 to more than $5 million.

Earlier this year, the county forked over $1 million to settle a lawsuit alleging, in part, prosecutorial misconduct brought by Jeffrey Rodriguez, who was wrongfully convicted and released after five years in prison.

Two years ago, the county settled a similar suit brought by Rick Walker, who served 12 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Santa Clara County paid $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars on top of $1.45 million paid by the county’s insurance carrier. The state of California paid an additional $409,500 to compensate him for the 12 years he lost.

In 2005, the county paid nearly $1 million to Glen Nickerson, who spent nearly 19 years behind bars before his murder conviction was overturned following evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Remarkably, not a single prosecutor faced discipline in these prosecutions, with the

exception of Santa Clara County prosecutor Ben Field. Field, who orchestrated the illegal search in the Auguste case and whose multiple prosecutorial misdeeds have been exposed by the Mercury News, has been ordered to surrender his law license for four years.

But the cost of prosecutorial misconduct goes far beyond the dollars removed from taxpayer wallets.

Donna Auguste, for example, spent $900,000 to free her nephew. There is the cost of the hundreds of hours racked up by attorneys in the office of Santa Clara County Counsel who defended the lawsuit. This is time that could have been spent on other matters of importance to the citizenry.

And what price do you put on the more than 40 years that Walker, Nickerson, Rodriguez and Damon Auguste spent behind bars before they were exonerated? The cost of housing them alone is more than $1 million. The personal cost to these men cannot be quantified. Those years are gone.

Perhaps most significant is the immeasurable cost and risk to society of having the real perpetrators still out there.

Prosecutors rarely suffer personal consequences for engaging in misconduct. They have absolute immunity for their official conduct as advocates, and when acting as investigators, they can be held liable for their misconduct only if it violates the law.

A recent study by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice examined California appellate court rulings and found that during the ten year period ending in 2007, prosecutors committed misconduct in 444 cases, yet only two were disciplined. Thirty of them committed misconduct more than once. Two of them did it three times. Virtually all of these prosecutors walked away unscathed.

In these difficult economic times, taxpayers might well wonder if they can continue to spend this kind of money to support a criminal justice system that allows prosecutors to avoid personal responsibility, innocent defendants to be locked up, and true criminals to go free. But this is not a decision that should be based solely on dollars, no matter what the economy is doing.

Too much is at stake.

KATHLEEN RIDOLFI is executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University School of Law. MAURICE POSSLEY, a Pulitzer Prize winning former investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune, is an investigator and researcher with the project. They wrote this article for the Mercury News.

Source: Mercury News

S

Published: November 6, 2009

//

Gretchen Cothron ‘10 has started her own nonprofit to help with the investigations of wrongful convictions.

The thought of an innocent person on death row being executed brings Gretchen Cothron to tears.

“We get mad when we get a parking ticket unjustly,” Cothron ’10 said. “I can’t imagine spending years behind bars.”

The UT Honors student, majoring in criminology and minoring in law and justice, began in the field with an interest in law enforcement, but her research on wrongful convictions and exonerations has led to a new calling.

As a junior at UT, Cothron worked on the necessity of recording interrogations, which isn’t required in Hillsborough County. She gave a presentation on the topic at the National Collegiate Honors Conference Oct. 31 in Washington, D.C.

Cothron’s work segued into an Honors Fellowship with Dr. Sean Maddan, assistant professor and chairman of the criminology department, researching a statistical formula to see how eyewitness testimony, faulty forensic science and false confessions contribute to wrongful convictions.

Cothron hopes to create a better understanding of cross-contamination, which she says occurs when one error in the criminal process, such as a false testimony, can lead to additional errors which can in turn lead to a wrongful conviction of an innocent person.

“Gretchen is a good example for students who are not just passionate about social problems, but also attempting to do something about it through substantive research,” Maddan said.

Cothron is working on the project with another student and professor at Creighton University and with The Innocence Project, a national organization that works to reform the criminal justice system and exonerate wrongfully convicted people based on DNA testing.

Cothron has presented her preliminary findings at the Southern Criminal Justice Association’s annual conference and is presenting an extension of the same project at the American Society of Criminology’s annual meeting in November. She credits UT faculty for the opportunities she’s been given for conference presentations, surprising herself at the level she’s reaching.

“At most of these conferences, I’m the only one there who isn’t a grad student or lawyer, and I’m presenting,” she said adding that most of the research in this area is conducted by lawyers and law students. “It’s going to be good for me academically, but there’s not enough being done on this issue.”

Cothron hopes to practice criminal appellate law after law school to help fund her real passion, a nonprofit she has formed called Screaming for Sunshine to assist with investigations of wrongful convictions.

“Florida leads the nation in the number of death-row exonerations,” Cothron said, “and there has to be countless others.”

Helping prisoners is pro-bono work and involves countless hours of research, whittling down the evidence. It’s what Cothron lives for.

“I’m a bookworm. I like the research and the end result, it brings you to tears,” she said. “But I love it. I’d rather read a case over than go to a movie.”

For more on her nonprofit, go to www.screamingforsunshine.info.

By Jamie Pilarczyk, Web Writer

Source: University of Tampa News

November 10th, 2009

posted by Teri Sforza, Register staff writer

You’ve heard that California’s prison system is reeling under the weight of the nation’s toughest Three Strikes law - which its employee union fervently backed, and which has swelled California prisons to their breaking point.

More than 15 years after voters approved it, California’s three strikes law continues to be highly controversial, and its fault lines were recently explored in a three-part series by National Public Radio.

Erwin Chemerinsky (pictured right), dean of UC Irvine’snew law school, is featured in the series. Chemerinsky was the attorney for Leandro Andrade, who was put away for 50 years to life after stealing videotapes from two different Kmart stores. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that a sentence of 50 years to life for shoplifting was cruel and unusual punishment; but the Supreme Court overturned that ruling on a 5-to-4 vote, concluding that Andrade’s sentence was not disproportionate because there was still the possibility of parole (though not until he’s 87).

• The series starts here, with an introdcution.
• The first part, “Two Torn Families Show Flip Side Of 3 Strikes Law,” is here.
• The second part, “Crime Locale Is Key In California’s 3 Strikes Law,” is here.
• The last part, “Cases Show Disparity Of California’s 3 Strikes Law, is here.

The basic problem, in many folks’ eyes, is that California’s law doubles the penalty for a second felony if the first felony was serious or violent; and the third strike – which carries a mandatory prison sentence of 25 years to life – does not have to be a serious or violent crime.

About two dozen states have similar laws, NPR notes, but only California counts any felony as a third strike, not just a serious or violent one. Voters came close to changing that in 2004, when a ballot initiative mandating that the third strike be a violent or serious crime was overwhelmingly ahead in the polls just 10 days before the election.

That, NPR notes, is when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s commercials against the change began airing. But it fails to note that those commercials were bankrolled by OC billionaire bad boy Henry T. Nicholas III to the tune of $3.5 million.

The ballot measure failed, but expect to see more challenges to the law in the future.

Source: OC Register

Death penalty is considered a boon by some California inmates

A guard checks cells on California’s death row at San Quentin State Prison. The condemned live in single cells that are slightly larger than the two-bunk, maximum-security confines elsewhere, they have better access to telephones and they have ‘contact visits’ in plexiglass booths by themselves rather than in communal halls as in other institutions. (Los Angeles Times / October 25, 2004)

Given the state moratorium on executions and an appeals process that can last for decades, inmates can expect to live a long time, and with privileges other prisoners lack.

By Carol J. Williams

November 11, 2009

White supremacist gang hit man Billy Joe Johnson got what he asked for from the Orange County jury that convicted him of first-degree murder last month: a death sentence.

It wasn’t remorse for his crimes or a desire for atonement that drove him to ask for execution; it was the expectation that conditions on death row would be more comfortable than in other maximum-security prisons and that any date with the executioner would be decades away if it came at all.

Although executions are carried out with comparative speed in states such as Virginia, where Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad was put to death Tuesday night, capital punishment in California has become so bogged down by legal challenges as to be a nearly empty threat, say experts on both sides of the issue.

“This is a dramatic reaffirmation of what we’ve already known for some time, that capital punishment in California takes way too long,” Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the law-and-order Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, said of Johnson’s bet that he will live a long life on death row. “This guy certainly feels like it’s worth the risk.”

Statistics suggest that Johnson may be correct in his calculations.

California has the nation’s largest death row population, with 685 sentenced to die by lethal injection. Yet only 13 executions have been carried out since capital punishment resumed in 1977 and none of the condemned have been put to death since a moratorium was imposed nearly four years ago. Five times as many death row inmates — 71 — have died over that same period of natural causes, suicide or inside violence.

Though death row inmates at San Quentin State Prison are far from coddled, they live in single cells that are slightly larger than the two-bunk, maximum-security confines elsewhere, they have better access to telephones and they have “contact visits” in plexiglass booths by themselves rather than in communal halls as in other institutions. They have about the only private accommodations in the state’s 33-prison network, which is crammed with 160,000-plus convicts.

Death row prisoners are served breakfast and dinner in their cells, can usually mingle with others in the outdoor exercise yards while eating their sack lunches, and have exclusive control over the television, CD player or other diversions in their cells.

“Death row inmates probably have the most liberal telephone privileges of anyone in state custody,” said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, explaining that they need ready access to their attorneys and can often make calls from their cells over a phone that can be rolled along the cellblock.

The condemned wear the same jeans and chambray-shirt prison garb, eat the same food as prepared in other prisons and enjoy the same access to mail-order and canteen goods paid for by their families, as long as they maintain good behavior, Thornton said.

Those on death row are also allowed more personal property inside their cells, to accommodate their voluminous legal documents without infringing on the 6 cubic feet of snacks and entertainment devices allowed each prisoner, said Lt. Sam Robinson, spokesman for San Quentin.

“It’s not that he thinks conditions will be better; they are better,” Johnson’s attorney, Michael Molfetta, said of his client’s request for death row. Johnson, 46, figures that he will be close to 70 by the time his appeals are exhausted, Molfetta said, “and he says he doesn’t care to live beyond that.”

Johnson was convicted last month of first-degree murder with special circumstances in the March 2002 killing of former gang associate Scott Miller. Johnson, a “shot caller” in the white supremacist Public Enemy Number One gang, was found guilty of orchestrating Miller’s execution-style murder for having revealed gang secrets in a television interview.

On Oct. 29, Johnson’s jury decided that he should be sentenced to death. Orange County Superior Court Judge Frank F. Fasel is expected to impose the execution order when he formally sentences Johnson on Nov. 23.

As an “L-WOPP,” a prisoner sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, Johnson could have been sent to any maximum-security facility in the state, where other Level IV offenders share an 8-foot-by-10-foot cell, a sink and a toilet. Gang leaders are often sent to the special housing unit at Pelican Bay State Prison, where they live in isolation with few of the comforts allowed elsewhere.

It costs the state about $49,000 a year to house each prisoner, according to corrections department statistics. Thornton said her department has never put a figure on the cost for “more staff-intensive” death row housing, but a state commission of experts last year estimated that the additional security and legal spending for capital inmates costs taxpayers $138,000 per death row prisoner each year.

Legal analysts say Johnson’s request for a death sentence highlights how delays in executions could undermine any deterrent effect of California’s death penalty.

“If you accept the premise that the death penalty is about retribution, about punishing someone for intolerable acts, you might argue that it is completely inappropriate to grant someone’s request to have a death penalty imposed because it is more suitable or convenient for him,” said Kara Dansky, executive director of the Criminal Justice Center at Stanford University. “It does seem to weaken the position of those who say the death penalty is a justified mode of punishment.”

Laurie Levenson, a former prosecutor now teaching criminal law at Loyola Law School, said Johnson is probably correct in gauging that he’ll be better off on death row.

“We have a perverse system, given that we have a death row but we don’t really have executions,” she said. Convicts seeking death sentences “don’t really feel like they are making life-and-death decisions.”

Executions have been on hold in California for almost four years, following a federal judge’s orders for review and reform of lethal injection procedures. Those orders came after concerns were raised that some of those executed by the three-shot sequence might not have been rendered unconscious by the first injection. That could expose the condemned inmate to pain from the final shot that would be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled in 2006, when he ordered the state to correct the alleged deficiencies.

New protocols were proposed earlier this year but are pending approval by corrections officials still sorting through thousands of comments and challenges, and are facing at least another year of procedural hurdles ahead of Fogel’s review.

Source: LA Times