AP Photo

Correctional officers stand watch over an inmate receiving treatment in the emergency room at California State Prison, Corcoran, in Corcoran, Calif., Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2009. A federal court-appointed receiver says the state needs to pay $8 billion to upgrade prison’s medical and mental health care.

A federal receiver in charge of California’s prison health care released a report Monday on inmate mortality. It says the inmate death rate has declined for a second year in a row. But as KPCC’s Julie Small reports, the number of deaths prison doctors might have prevented is up.

The report says that between 2006 and 2008, the death rate among California inmates declined 13 percent. But during that same period, the number of deaths that might have been prevented had doctors diagnosed and treated inmates rose from 44 to 66.

For the second year in a row, fewer people are dying in California prisons, according to a federal receiver who’s trying to improve California’s prison health care system in an inmate mortality report set to be released today.

The report says that between 2006 and 2008 the rate of death among California inmates declined 13 percent.

But that follows the highest inmate death rate on record.

Clark Kelso, the federal receiver who spent billions of state dollars purging bad doctors from prisons and replacing them with more and better qualified ones, says it’s not the doctors’ fault.

“It’s not that we’ve got bad clinicians,” Kelso said. “It’s that they’re working in a third world environment.”

Kelso says there’s only so much those clinicians can do to improve care when prisons are packed to near double capacity, and when the clerks who file paper medical records are backlogged by months.

Kelso said the problem isn’t that he lacks enough prison doctors somewhere, it’s systemic failure.

“I don’t have health records anywhere. I have overcrowding everywhere. I don’t have facilitates anywhere,” Kelso said.

The receiver’s review determines inmate deaths were preventable by noting when prison medical staff failed to follow correct procedures. Federal receiver Clark Kelso says one reason the number of preventable deaths is up since 2006 is that his office is doing a better job of identifying gross lapses in prison medical care.

One example from the report tells of an inmate who was diagnosed with asthma at one prison, then was transferred to a different prison. But the medical record that noted the asthma diagnosis didn’t go with him. The inmate had to wait two weeks to see a doctor at the new prison. On the day of his appointment, prison guards found the inmate “unresponsive” in his cell.

Three years ago, then-federal receiver Bob Sillen determined that asthma – for which inmates lacked the most rudimentary care – was the leading cause of those deaths.

Since then California has spent billions of dollars to hire better-qualified doctors and nurses.

The state also has hired prison guards whose sole purpose is to make sure inmates get to see the medical staff.

The current federal receiver, Clark Kelso, credits those changes for the drop in inmate deaths. But he says California still needs to build more clinical space in prisons for doctors to treat inmates.

He adds that the state must computerize prison medical records to ensure that doctors have access to inmates’ medical histories.

Source: KPCC

By James King

It seems as though America’s self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff” can’t live without hearing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in his jails this holiday season.

Sheriff Joe, despite being sued six times in the past two years for doing so, will again force inmates in the county jails to listen to Christmas carols throughout the holiday season.

In a press release from the sheriff today, which is written in a smug red and green type, Arpaio downplays the six lawsuits and says the roughly 8,000 inmates in the county jail system will get Christmas music all day long this holiday season whether they like it or not.

The six prior lawsuits have claimed Arpaio’s less-than-merry practice should be considered cruel and unusual punishment, or that the sheriff is forcing people to participate in religious celebrations.

The practice of forcing people to listen to crappy music all day long has been used in the past for interrogation purposes. For example, the U.S. military blared Metallica music at detainees in Guantanamo Bay with the intention of breaking them down psychologically.

If the GITMO detainees were breaking down over a little Metallica music, there’s no way that forcing someone to listen to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree isn’t cruel and unusual.

Source: Valley Fever Blog

California Men’s Colony

By KAREN VELIE

California state prisons are to begin implementing a plan for the unsupervised release of up to 40,000 non-violent inmates and are required to train staff on non-revocable parole eligibility by Jan. 21, according to a memo sent from the State Department of Corrections.

In an exclusive, CalCoastNews learned of the Nov. 25 memo sent statewide to prison wardens and counselors.

In September, lawmakers passed legislation that requires prisons to implement a program of prisoner release under non-revocable parole by Jan. 25, 2010. Parolees under the new release program will not be required to check in with parole, take drug tests, have a parole officer and are not subject to hearings for parole violations.

Under the new program, law enorcement agencies are permitted to make warrantless searches of prisoners’ abodes and property.

In the past, parole officials have returned between 70,000 and 80,000 parolees to prison each year for violations that include missing meetings, failing drug tests and committing crimes.

Prisoners convicted of sexually violent crimes or serious felonies are not eligible for the new program. As of Dec. 14, prison counselors will begin classes focused on how to determine if a prisoner poses a high risk of re-offending, according to the memo.

However, the program does not address a quagmire of prisoner release issues. Opponents fear the release of thousands of ill and indigent persons to the streets of California at a time of massive unemployment could have dire consequences.

In February, a panel of three federal judges ruled that because of overcrowding the state must reduce the prison population by as many as 57,000 people over two years. The 33 prisons in the California prison system are designed to house 80,000 inmates yet the population is over 150,000.

Source: CalCoastNews

Eligible prisoners can’t be refused early release just because of the
gravity of their crimes — ’some evidence’ has to show the inmate
would pose a threat to public safety, some judges have ruled.

Reporting from Vacaville, Calif. – During the 26 years that James
Alexander has spent in prison for killing a fellow drug dealer, he
has maintained a spotless behavior record and devoted himself to
helping other inmates shake addictions.

He’s been such a model prisoner that state parole commissioners — on
three occasions — recommended that he be released. All three times,
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger overruled them.

Alexander, 47, is among the hundreds of so-called lifers whom state
parole boards have deemed rehabilitated and ready to rejoin society,
but who sit behind bars because their crime was murder. In recent
years, some judges have sided with lifers, ruling that the state
can’t deny an inmate parole solely because of the gravity of his
original offense but rather must provide “some evidence” that he
would pose a threat to public safety if released.

The legal notion that corrections officials must, in essence, show
that an inmate remains a threat to society is being challenged in a
pending case before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

About 23,000 state prisoners serving life sentences are technically
eligible for parole. There are nearly 4,000 other inmates serving
“life without parole” sentences and 685 on death row, who can never
be considered for such a release.

Until the 1980s, when a succession of tough-on-crime governors came
to power, parole was routine for those sentenced to life who showed
evidence of rehabilitation. In 1983, Gov. George Deukmejian invoked
what was then a rarely used 1913 law to overrule the parole board
decision to free murderer William Archie Fain after an angry outcry
from the small Northern California town of Oakdale, where Fain’s
victims had lived.

Deukmejian’s successor, Gov. Pete Wilson, reversed parole grants with
more frequency, and Gov. Gray Davis embraced a virtual no-parole-for-
murderers policy, freeing only six during his tenure, five of them
women whose crimes stemmed from domestic abuse. Schwarzenegger also
has been loath to release killers, granting only four such paroles
himself but allowing more than 300 other parole board decisions to go
through without his review.

Despite a federal court order to reduce prison overcrowding in the
state, neither Schwarzenegger nor corrections officials have
suggested considering violent offenders for early release.

Victims’ rights organizations defend what they consider the
governor’s responsibility, as well as his power, to keep murderers
off the streets, especially in the current economic crisis, which has
cut funding for law enforcement and parole supervision.

“For the sake of public safety — that’s what we have life sentences
for,” said Harriet Salarno, head of Crime Victims United of
California, whose 18-year-old daughter, Catina, was murdered by a man
who comes up for his ninth parole hearing early next year. “That
should be a deterrent to crime: that you won’t ever get out if you
get a life sentence.”

Bill Schmidt, an attorney who specializes in representing lifers,
says the question of whether reformed prisoners should get parole is
often clouded by the horrific nature of their crime.

For example, he said, even though Charles Manson has shown little
remorse or rehabilitation for his 1969 cult slayings, some of his
accomplices have maintained unblemished records for nearly four
decades. Nonetheless, he said, they have been systematically denied
parole. Even prison authorities’ recommendation for release of Manson
follower Susan Atkins on compassionate grounds was rejected before
she died of brain cancer in September.

Though popular opinion may support keeping the most notorious killers
locked up forever, “where does the law give the subjective authority
for the governor or the board to say, ‘No, your crime was so
horrendous that we’re not ever going to let you out’?” Schmidt asks.

In the case now before the 9th Circuit, convicted murderer Ronald
Hayward challenged Davis’ reversal of the parole board’s decision to
release him after 27 years’ imprisonment for the stabbing death of a
motorcycle gang member who had attempted to rape Hayward’s
girlfriend. A three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled in January
2008 that Hayward’s constitutional right to due process had been
violated because the governor failed to cite any evidence that
Hayward was still dangerous.

The three-judge panel ruled that a parole board’s decision “deprives
a prisoner of due process with respect to this [liberty] interest” if
the decision is “not supported by some evidence in the record or is
otherwise arbitrary.” The judges’ decision was suspended four months
later by the court’s vote to reconsider the case by a full 11-judge
panel.

Supervising Deputy Atty. Gen. Jennifer Neill has urged the appeals
court to reconsider whether prisoners have a liberty interest in
parole decisions, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t
recognized a right to parole barring evidence that a prisoner remains
dangerous.

Life prisoners have no right to a term less than life, Neill argues,
so denial of parole “merely means that the inmate will have to serve
out his sentence as expected.”

Last year, two decisions by the California Supreme Court reiterated
the need for the state to show “some evidence” that the prisoner
poses a risk.

In the case of Sandra Davis Lawrence, who fatally shot her lover’s
wife and stabbed her with a potato peeler, the state high court held
that the heinousness of the 1971 crime wasn’t enough to justify
continued incarceration. In the case of Richard Shaputis, decided on
the same day as the Lawrence case in August 2008, the court also
referred to the “some evidence” standard but ruled that
Schwarzenegger had identified grounds for denying parole: that
Shaputis continued to suffer a “lack of insight” into how he came to
kill his wife.

The state high court decisions and the initial 9th Circuit ruling
have encouraged lawyers who represent lifers to hope that the appeals
court’s full panel of judges will agree the law is on their side.

But the 11 judges — five appointed by Republican presidents and six
by Democrats — make up an inscrutable bench that Hayward’s legal
team fears could instead establish the governor’s exclusive control
over parole.

“They scared me to death,” Carl McQuillion, a paralegal for Hayward,
said about questions from the judges following oral arguments in the
case last year. “It seemed clear to me that the judges are wanting to
reverse this decision.”

A murder convict who studied law during his 33 years in prison,
McQuillion secured a court-ordered release in 2003, marking a turning
point in the battle between state officials and courts over parole.

Legal scholars say the decision in Hayward’s case will depend on how
the federal judges interpret the intent of laws on sentencing.

“It goes back to the question of whether we want sentences to be
punitive and how to weigh rehabilitation versus punishment,” said
Pepperdine University law professor Laurie Serafino.

After 11 parole hearings and three revoked release dates, Alexander
won a court order from a San Diego judge last year that he be found
suitable for parole and a date be set for his freedom. A state
appeals court reversed the order this year, leaving him in prison and
sending his case back to the parole board.

He says he has no illusions about the Hayward case’s implications for
his future.

“It’s hard for me to have faith in the integrity of the system,”
Alexander said, “when the state agency charged with finding me
suitable for parole has done so on numerous occasions and I’m still
here.”

Source: LA Times

First of two parts

Randall Benton | RBenton@sacbee.com

• 

California’s prison health care employees work hard – or so it would seem by their schedules. Many average 12 hours a day; others routinely log 16- to 18-hour shifts for months on end, creating a costly overtime free-for-all in this budget-strapped state.

An abundance of forced and voluntary overtime has driven some nurses beyond human endurance. In the process, the long hours have opened the door for deadly lapses in a health care system just beginning to recover from decades of neglect.

“People who are pushing it to that level, working a ridiculous number of hours, usually crash,” said Yolanda Esparza, a certified nursing assistant who works evenings and some nights at the California Institution for Women in Corona.

“I myself have witnessed people sleeping at their posts – heavily, snoring, full sleep. They don’t even notice people walking by. It’s pretty common,” Esparza said.

Asked what happens when nurses are found sleeping on the job – a gross violation of prison rules – one prison nursing director said simply, “We would wake them up.” Often, she said, the nurse is then sent back to work.

A Bee investigation found that lax recruitment, worsened by the state budget crisis, and programs such as one for the suicidal that’s exploited by savvy inmates, have contributed to extreme staff work schedules. Correctional officials have tolerated the practice despite criticism about the price of prison health care, which cost more than $2.1 billion in the year ending in June 2008.

Click here to read the full article and view  chart on Nurses wages….also take a moment to read the comments.

Who we are

A must to check out while your surfing the web…..

Utah Prison Watch is an international weblog meant to make public the Human Rights Abuses going on in Utah´s prisons.
Documenting and exposing abuse.

We Are Not Your Bastards; We Are Your Children

94% of the inmates at Utah State Prison will one day be released back into society. This is a consensus taken by the prison; it is not my own fabrication. It is common knowledge that prisons have an 85% recidivism rate. On a weekly basis, people in Utah are being sent to USP as new inmates. I think I would be safe in saying that at least 15 new inmates are processed in every week. The population of Utah is a little over 2 million people. Recently, inside Gunnison Prison there was another max building was constructed which holds approximately 200 inmates.
I would like to emphasize that it was another MAX Unit that was built…and it was funded during a fading economy. Instead of building a learning center or a building for learning a trade, the money was spent to build another max facility to do nothing but warehouse inmates; Inmates who know nothing of a trade, nothing of education and nothing of a strong family.

click here to go to Utah Prison Watch

By BRIAN JOSEPH and TONY SAAVEDRA

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

bjoseph@ocregister.com or tsaavedra@ocregister.com

The Golden State has more people in prison than any other U.S. state.  The $8 billion annual tab has hamstrung state budgeting and taken money that could be used for education and infrastructure.  But by some measures, it’s still not enough.  In the second of our four-part series on the cost and consequences of California’s tough-on-crime mindset, we look at the systemic problems in our prisons.  Click here to read the first part, in which we show how concerns over public safety have given power and wealth to the state’s law enforcement community.

For 20 years, the gymnasium at San Quentin has served as overflow housing for the residents of California’s most notorious prison.

A San Quentin prisoner whittles the day away in his bed as 300 other inmates swarm around in the gymnasium where overflow inmates live.

MINDY SCHAUER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

MORE PHOTOS »

About this series

California’s decades-long obsession with public safety has tied the hands of budget-makers who want to spend more on education and social services – and has given power, influence and wealth to the state’s law enforcement community.

This is the second of four-parts examing the consequences of our state’s tough-on-crime mindset:

• California has the most expensive prison system in the nation, but no proof that it makes us safer. More than $8 billion a year is spent on a system plagued by outdated policies, severe overcrowding and a high recidivism rate. Efforts to reform the system are attacked as “soft on crime.”
• State and local governments are buckling under the weight of generous public safety pensions, given to police, firefighters and prison guards without sufficient examination of future costs. Pensions have driven one city to bankruptcy; others fear they are headed that way.
• California is more protective of its police than any state in the nation. Public safety lobbies have secured laws that keep police disciplinary records secret, making it almost impossible to publicly identify offending officers and determine whether they are being adequately punished.

Meanwhile, the California Dream has crumbled.

California has the highest general sales tax in the nation, the fourth highest individual income tax rate and the highest corporate income tax rate in the West, but spending per K-12 student is 25th out the nation’s 50 states. California roads are among the worst in the nation, with 2/3 rating mediocre to poor, fourth worst in the country. “Did California decide to be safe instead of smart?” asked Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton. “We’ve made a lot of decisions without examining the factual basis for them.”

Part 1: Tough-on-crime stance emptied California’s pocketbook

Part 2: Excess, deprivation mark California state prisons

Beneath rimless backboards, more than 300 inmates pass the time playing cards or working out among the long rows of metal bunks that crowd the gym. San Quentin is home to California’s Death Row and some of its most dangerous criminals.

But the most difficult post for the prison guards is the gymnasium, which houses murderers, parole violators and all manner of criminals in between.

Only four guards are assigned to the gymnasium at any given time; they watch from an elevated platform at one end of the floor. Traveling between the bunks, especially at the end of the gym, you are putting your life into the hands of bored criminals. The inmates are so close you can smell their sweat and stale breath.

“They got all these people in here and only two sinks work,” complains Richard Ferguson, a ripped 46-year-old with tattoos on his arms and no front teeth. Ferguson is in San Quentin for violating his parole after he served time for battery on a police officer. He also served time for two counts of resisting a peace officer and for domestic violence.

“We ain’t living good,” agrees Richard Howlan, 43, who was convicted of drug possession and is serving time on a parole violation. Howlan says there’s mold growing on the wall near his bunk. “I’ve been sick as a dog for three weeks,” he said.

And yet, San Quentin is part of the largest and most expensive state prison system in the country. California’s commitment to the tough-on-crime mentality has led to a prison system so large that it’s become untenable. Our only options now are to spend even more, or reform our justice system.

Change, however, has been virtually impossible because the prison issue is so politically charged. Any reform proposal, no matter how innocuous, risks the dreaded soft-on-crime label. Few lawmakers will support such proposals – even if it means perpetuating a flawed system.

“You’re keeping me for years for having four tablets of Tylenol with codeine,” said James Banlaki, 44, sitting in his cell at Donovan prison in San Diego County.

Indeed, Banlaki’s record shows the Tylenol was part of the reason he was returned to prison in August. Corrections spokeswoman Maria Franco said he had other parole violations as well—plus previous convictions for burglary and assault with a deadly weapon.

If nothing else, he’s a pretty good example of California’s failed correctional system.

CALIFORNIA DREAM

Fifty years ago, California was a promised land where workers could find jobs and their children a state-paid higher education.

Today, it’s not quite like that anymore.

Prisons have replaced the university as the state institution of priority. This fiscal year, the state General Fund plans to spend $8.2 billion on corrections – $3 billion more than what’s budgeted for the University of California and California State University systems combined.

In fact, California spends more per capita on its prisons than any state of comparable population. In 2007, California devoted nearly $280 to corrections for every man, woman and child in the state. New York spent $191 per resident.

From 1999 to 2007, California spent more than $60 billion incarcerating the state’s worst criminals. Over that time, Texas spent $22 billion. New York, $28 billion.

And California did see an improvement. Between 1999 and 2008, the violent crime rate here dropped nearly 20 percent, outpacing five of the eight largest states and the US as a whole, which saw a drop of 13 percent. Only two of the large states had a larger drop in violent crime – New York (32 percent) and Illinois (28 percent).

But California has not become much safer relative to other states.

In 1999, California had the third worst violent crime rate (627 violent crimes per 100,000 residents) among those eight large states. In 2008, it had the fourth worst rate (504 crimes per 100,000). In both years, California’s crime was well above the overall US rate, which was 523 per 100,000 in 1999 and 455 per 100,000 in 2008.

Why hasn’t all that money made a bigger difference?

The Orange County Register’s examination of California’s prisons found a system riddled with policies that were designed to maintain a tough on crime appearance or reward public safety workers, but sometimes have the opposite effect:

• California is one of only two states (the other being Illinois) to require all inmates to serve a period of parole upon release, regardless of the risk they pose to society. This means that a parole officer’s time and resources are frequently diverted from the truly dangerous to those who are less likely to re-offend, like a nonviolent but mentally ill parolee or a woman who killed her abusive boyfriend. According to state figures, 10.5 percent of the state’s prison population is there for a parole violation.
• California’s Determinate Sentencing Law, which stipulates the precise sentence for every crime, doesn’t allow the state to keep its most dangerous inmates in prison longer. Other systems manage that with indeterminate sentencing laws, which allow judges to offer shorter sentences and parole to inmates who work to change their lives. Under California’s system, there’s little incentive for criminals to reform – they’ll be released no matter what.
• California’s tough version of “Three Strikes” requires the law to be enforced unfairly. Two criminals who commit the same crimes can receive dramatically different sentences under Three Strikes, based on the sequence of their crimes. That’s because some crimes don’t count as first or second strikes, but are counted as third strikes. So someone who commits a theft and two burglaries, in that order, faces a sentence of 10 to 18 years while a criminal who commits two burglaries and then a theft faces 25 to life.

According to figures released by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 70 percent of California inmates are rearrested within three years of their release from state prison.

“We cannot reduce recidivism unless programs are funded that open up opportunities for ex-convicts to create alternatives to a criminal lifestyle,” wrote Stanford’s Joan Petersilia, an expert on California prisons, in 2008.

“Few inmates leaving California prisons today have participated in education, substance abuse, or vocational training, almost guaranteeing their failure after release.”

PUBLIC SAFETY LOBBY

Among all 50 states, California’s violent crime rate consistently ranked among the top 15 in the nine years ending in 2007. For property crimes, California consistently ranked among the top 35. In 2007, California reported about 191,000 violent crimes. Texas, with 13 million less people, reported about 122,000.

Is that a good comparison? It’s virtually impossible to know. Academics who study prisons say there are simply too many variables to judge whether California’s investment in 33 prisons, nine juvenile facilities and 36,000 correctional peace officers has actually translated into safer streets.

Over the past few decades, Californians have consistently thrown their support behind tough-on-crime polices. In the current fiscal year alone, public safety spending will consume $13.5 billion – 11 percent of the state’s total budget.

But the system we have today isn’t even good enough.

Three years ago, the federal government took over California’s prison health system after a judge ruled that its prison health care constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.” Today, a three-judge panel is calling for the state to release as many as 57,000 inmates to alleviate overcrowding.

“It’s not that we’re not spending enough,” says Jean Ross, executive director of the nonpartisan California Budget Project, which analyzes state spending. She says the problem is where we’re spending it. And politics can get in the way of spending it wisely.

The broad public support for anti-crime efforts has translated into tremendous power and influence to any interest group that can reasonably position itself as providing public safety.

Consider the state’s prison guard union, the California Correctional Peace Officer Association.

On its Web site and its literature, the union declares that its members “walk the Toughest Beat in the State.”

California’s prison guards also receive the highest salary and benefits in the nation. Their union is one of the wealthiest and most powerful political organizations in the state. Its 33,000 members contribute more than $25 million in dues each year.

Petersilia, the Stanford prison expert, says that by virtue of its political rhetoric and money, the CCPOA “has been more successful than any other correctional union in the nation at winning benefits for its members.”

In “California’s Correctional Paradox of Excess and Deprivation,” a book chapter Petersilia wrote in 2008, she estimated that 70 percent of the state’s prison budget goes to staff salaries and benefits. Those high costs impact California’s ability to devote more resources to rehabilitation, which she attributes to California’s high rate of recidivism.

The prison union agrees with Petersilia’s conclusions, but says you can’t blame its members for the state’s limited investment in rehabilitation. Union spokesman Lance Corcoran said that the state needs to offer prison guards competitive salaries and benefits in order to attract good employees. (Click here to see how much has been spent on lobbying).

“We’re in competition with a myriad of different agencies at the state and local level to try to get folks to come to a not very glamorous job,” he said.

So instead of cutting the salary and benefits of prison guards, Corcoran said the state should focus its remaining resources on trying to rehabilitate only those criminals who actually want to change their lives. Anyone who doesn’t want to change is a lost cause, he said, and should remain in prison.

“Write them off,” Corcoran said.

Matt Gray, lobbyist and executive director of Taxpayers for Improving Public Safety, said the public is uninformed about corrections issues. He said special interest groups, like the prison guard union, rely on the politics of public safety to convince lawmakers and voters into seeing things their way.

Instead of relying on data or studies to back up their positions, public safety groups paint grim pictures of criminals running in the streets. That’s a powerful argument. Nobody supports crimes.

“It’s a culture of fear,” Gray said. You seemingly can kill any prison reform plan by simply calling it soft on crime. … “I equate it to yelling ‘Fire!’ in a theater.”

PRISONERS, CRIME DOWN IN NEW YORK

When it comes to prison policies, it’s difficult to compare states – the differences are just enough to throw off any analysis. In Pennsylvania, for example, inmates serve their time in local jails unless the sentence is two years or longer. In California, the cut off is one year. In Florida, where tourism is big, economic conditions are different than those in Ohio, where manufacturing is important.

But even with those caveats, New York offers a stark contrast to California. Over the last several years, New York has increased its spending per inmate while at the same time decreasing its prison population. Meanwhile, the state’s crime rate has gone down. (Click here to see the charts).

“I don’t think anybody can say with absolute certainty that our prison policy has accounted for (a specific) percentage of the drop in the crime rate,” said Erik Kriss, spokesman for the New York Department of Correctional Services. “But we do think we’re trying to do the right thing here.”

Kriss said New York has made it a priority to protect rehabilitation programs in these tough economic times. The state has implemented a “graduated sanctions” policy for parolees, which offers alternative penalties, instead of additional prison time, for less-serious parole violations.

In addition, New York has adjusted its sentencing laws so that prisons hold only the most serious offenders. Kriss noted that the number of violent felons in New York prisons has remained fairly constant. It’s just that the percentage of violent felons in the prison population has increased.

“I think there has been a recognition in New York that long prison sentences aren’t the answer for a lot of nonviolent prisoners,” Kriss said. “The (Correctional Services) Commissioner likes to say, ‘We’re keeping the right people in prison.’”

Today, California officials are fighting the federal judges who want the state to decrease its prison population. Some, like the governor, say the judges are demanding that the state reduce its prison population too quickly. Others oppose any proposal that would result in criminals going home earlier than they would under current law.

“Sending thousands and thousands of inmates home in an early release line-up places California families in grave danger,” said Orange County State Sen. Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar, when the Senate originally approved the prison reform package. “There is no doubt that the state’s prison system is collapsing, but there are more reasonable and responsible ways in which to save money.”

New York’s strategy might work in California. It might not. But in today’s political climate, it’s unclear whether state leaders would even seriously consider it.

“There may be ways of reducing the prison population without being soft on crime. There are ways to rethink these situations,” said Bert Useem, a prison expert at Purdue University.

“There’s nothing soft on crime in New York. But they have done a rethinking. Perhaps California could benefit from a rethinking as well.”

Source: OC Register

By James Ridgeway

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Part two of our special report explores the movements in several states to relieve the burdens and tragedy America’s increasingly geriatric prison population

Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, members of the Angola 3, have spent most of the past 37 years in lockdown in Louisiana. A civil action currently in federal court claims that both men, now in their 60s, have suffered serious harm to their physical and mental health from their years in isolation, spending 23 hours a day alone in 6 x 9 foot cells.

What distinguishes this case in particular is that it not only challenges the constitutionality of long-term, continuous solitary confinement, but draws on its particular effect on aging prisoners.

According to medical reports submitted to the court, the men suffer from arthritis, hypertension, and kidney failure, as well as memory impairment, insomnia, claustrophobia, anxiety, and depression. Wallace, who just celebrated his 67th birthday, has also become hard of hearing, and has had increasing difficulty communicating with attorneys or friends, on the phone and during visits.

Under the Americans for Disabilities Act, he and other hearing impaired inmates should receive whatever special care they require. In Wallace’s case, according to one of his attorneys, the prison [he has been transferred out of lockdown at Angola to lockdown at Hunt near Baton Rouge.] gave him one—not two—hearing aids, which made matters worse by adversely effecting  his balance. (The prison has promised to provide a second hearing aid.)

Many older offenders suffer from serious mental illness–some of it produced or exacerbated by lengthy incarcerations. One study revealed depression among male prisoners was 50 percent higher than for those living outside. All in all, 54 percent of older prisoners met standards for psychiatric disorders. Williams and Abraldes write: “In one report from a maximum-security hospital, 75 percent of elderly prisoners were admitted between age 20 and 30 and the majority were schizophrenic.”

At Louisiana’s Angola Prison, the warden reported that 2,000 of over 5,000 inmates were on psychotropic drugs. Many mentally ill prisoners are simply warehoused and fed drugs to keep them under control. Even worse, some are labeled “discipline” problems, and end up in solitary confinement. A 2006 report from the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons found that mentally ill prisoners are increasingly being relegated to isolation cells where they live in “torturous conditions that are proven to cause mental deterioration.”

For the most part, however, old prisoners have far fewer disciplinary problems than younger inmates. A study to be released in January by Kristie Blevins and Anita Blowers, criminologists at the University of North Carolina, suggests that the older people present less of a disciplinary problem than younger inmates, and their offenses are relatively minor.  The 2004 study looked at 428 men between the ages of 55-84 in state correctional facilities around the U.S.. Past studies have found that many perceived behavior problems among the elderly can be attributed to “victimization,” that is, getting harassed and beaten by other inmates.

Low Recidivism

In addition to causing less trouble inside, older offenders released from prison have a low recidivism rate. They are also likely to cost taxpayers far less than the $70,000 a year which, according to Williams and Albraldes, is the average expense of keeping a geriatric inmate imprisoned. The continued incarceration of these aging and dying inmates, then, clearly does not serve to protect society. Its only purpose is punishment.

In 2008, the federal government launched the Elderly Offender Home Detention Pilot Program, under which prisoners aged 65 and over can be released into a kind of supervised house arrest. As outlined by Families Against Mandatory Mimimums, eligibility guidelines are strict: offenders must have served at least 10 years and 75 percent of their sentences; no lifers and no perpetrators of “crimes of violence,” including sex crimes and firearms violations. Total number expected to participate: 80 to 100 nationwide, out of a total federal prison population of over 200,000.

Pennsylvania’s onerous law on compassionate release, dating from 1919, was revised last year so that old dying prisoners might be released into custody of family or friends—provided the corrections department did not find them to be a security risk and they were equipped with electronic monitoring devices.

According to an analysis by the Pennsylvania Prison Society, which tracks the reform, “It provides for: release to a hospital, hospice, or other licensed provider for terminally ill prisoners or those dying within one year.  A home with licensed care may also be approved but then the prisoner will have electronic monitoring.” But the effect of this purported reform is unclear because the courts haven’t decided how to interpret it. Susan McNaughton of the Pennsylvania Department of corrections said statistics concerning compassionate release are scant, but in the past, “on average about six inmates are released from PA state prisons annually this way. I am not aware of any such releases since this new law was enacted.”

Before such releases can take place, attorneys for an old and ill prisoner will have to take the case through the Pennsylvania court system. It must go before the state superior court which, according to an attorney with the Pennsylvania Institutional Law Project, another group that has been involved in the reform, could take two years

This may well be too long for Tiyo Attallah Salah, 76, an inmate at Dallas prison near Wilkes-Barre currently serving life without parole. A former jazz musician, Salah has developed long-distance relationships with a large network of friends, including Lois Ahrens of the organization Real Cost of Prisons, Marina Drummer of the Angola 3, and historian Howard Zinn, whose support helped him earn a college degree and study law. He now tutors other inmates and has assisted 250 prisoners in earning their GED high school equivalency diplomas. Salah currently is sponsoring a prison abolition group from inside Dallas.

Salah suffers also from high blood pressure, arthritis and prostate problems, and nearly died from diabetes last year. The prison pumped the old man full of steroids to keep him  going.  Like all prisoners, he has to walk up and down flights of stairs, to the shower and to meals. Salah’s job was cleaning showers on his hands and knees, and even though increasingly ill, he didn’t want to give up the job because it earned him 20 –40 cents an hour, money he used to purchase  goods at the prison commissary, such things as socks, sweat pants, tea, maybe a hat.

In early November, he told Ahrens there was no heat in the cell block and he was trying to get more clothes. Ahrens, who is in close contact with Salah, says at one point he could scarcely walk. He has been saved by a broad network of friends inside as well as outside the prison, with younger inmates stepping in to take over his job, bringing him something special to eat from time to time, like a piece of fruit.

At Norfolk prison in Massachusetts, a state which has no compassionate care law–and where one in six prisoners is serving a life sentence—offenders have banded together in an organization called  Lifers’ Group. They have drawn up a model bill they hope can be introduced into the state legislature. Fred Smith of St Francis House, which currently helps newly released prisoners in adjusting to society, recently was invited by the group to give a talk inside the prison. He found more than 100 prisoners turned out to hear his offer of support.

The long-termers’  model bill would permit the corrections department to grant a medical release to prisoners who are not judged to be a danger to society, when they face terminal or when “confinement will substantially shorten the prisoner’s life.’’

Frank Soffen, whose case was described in Part One of this Special Report, is cited by Lifers’ Group as an example of an offender the new law could help. But Soffen, too, may die long before any reforms take place.

The final consequence of the aging prison population, and especially of life sentences, is that more and more offenders are dying in prison. Angola, home to 5,000 offenders, is well known for its hospice, where trained inmates ease the last days of fellow prisoners; the program is cited as a model for other prisons to emulate,. You can get an idea of what it’s like by looking at a documentary film on the hospice by Edgar Barens, called Angola Prison Hospice: Opening the Door.

The hospice sees plenty of use, since an estimated 85 percent to 90 percent of the prisoners who enter the gates will never leave. Angola’s warden, Burl Cain, is also proud of the fact that the prison has its own mortuary, coffin-making shop, and a cemetery called Point Lookout, and gives each prisoner a funeral service. “Two funerals a month,” Cain told one Christian publication, “that’s just about the only way out of here.”

Colonel Bolt, the former Angola prisoner who got out after 20 years in solitary, knows he is an exception to the rule. But he says that some men have spent so long at Angola that they can’t even envision living out their old age on the outside. “They’ve been down so long,” Bolt said, that “they don’t have no friends…don’t have no lawyers. There’s nothing out there for them.…They concentrate on things keeping you going… [They want to] occupy time…writing, drawing.” When these men think of what’s going on outside, he said, “they get so frustrated…don’t see no way out”—so some of them simply stop thinking about it.

Some prisoners can’t even imagine going home to die, because they’ve had no home but Angola for most of their lives. When they die, Bolt said, “If the family got the money—they can bury them outside. Send the body to the front gate and [someone] will come get it out.” But many prisoners who “get to certain age,” he said, no longer have family, and no one who is “going to spend that money” for a coffin or a funeral.

When this happens, he continues, they “bury you down on the plantation….Old partners, old friends can take care of you…Go down to Point Lookout.  A lot of cats want to be buried by their friends….[They say] ‘I’m going to live here and die here…if I got out what can I do?’ If you got three life sentences, four life sentences, what are you going to do?’’

Source: The Crime Report

With recidivism at 70% or better, cutting education and programs is NOT the answer to California’s deficit. When will we ever learn?

SACRAMENTO, CA (KFSN) — Hundreds of job cuts are coming to the state prison system. California is slashing $250 million from its prison education program and there’s concern this effectively guts rehabilitation.

Protesters say the state plan to lay off nearly 900 teachers and vocational instructors from California prisons in January virtually guts rehab programs aimed at preventing inmates from returning to a life of crime.

Cindie Fonesca got one of those pink slips after teaching graphic arts for 16 years and she says without rehabilitation, inmates will be more dangerous when they get out.

“They’re going to learn from their ‘cellies’. That’s what they’re going to do, which is how to be better criminals,” she said.

Studies show tackling low literacy rates and substance abuse among inmates saves states money in the long run. But Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says with revenues down, leaders are forced to cut billions from the state budget.

“You cannot pay out the same amount to prisons. We cannot pay out the same amount to education, to higher education, to in-home support services, to any of those things. Everyone has to cut back,” said the governor.

A hearing on the cuts revealed programs that help female inmates will be hit the hardest, in part, because they’re less likely to harm someone, even without rehab.

The Washington State Institute of Public Policy warned lawmakers recently, if the cuts go through, California will educate and rehabilitate the lowest percentage of inmates in the country, and fail to reduce crime.

Some who joined the rally on Tuesday are ex-cons who can attest to the successes of a high school diploma and vocational classes in helping turn their lives around.

“It’s a much better life. I wouldn’t change what I have today and I owe it all to the teachers that started me out at Valley State Prison for Women,” said former inmate Pearl Contreras.

The remaining programs in state prisons will likely see one teacher with up to 200 inmates per class.

Source: ABC Local

PDF: Read the rules

According to Rastafari.org, “Rastafari is a movement of black people who know Africa as the birthplace of mankind and the throne of  Emperor Haile Selassie I—a 20th century manifestation of God who has lighted our pathway towards righteousness, and is therefore worthy of reverence.“

Rastafarians smoke marijuana as a religious rite and oppose the combing or cutting of hair. “Their nappy tresses were allowed to mat and twine themselves into ropy dreadlocks,“ says Web site Bobmarley.com. Bob Marley, a reggae musician from Jamaica who died in 1981, was a famous Rastafarian.

By Frank Green

RICHMOND, Va. — Bill Clinton was president when a handful of Virginia prisoners entered segregation cells rather than cut their hair. The inmates, Rastafarians, complain the Department of Corrections’ grooming policy of Dec. 15, 1999, violates their religion. Followers of the Rastafari movement let their hair grow in dreadlocks and let their beards grow.

Among other things, the policy requires that male inmates’ hair be cut above the shirt collar and around the ears for security and health reasons.

Next week marks a decade that at least eight of them have been confined alone in small cells for refusing to comply — allowed out for three showers and five hourlong recreation periods a week.

Eric Balaban, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, has never heard of anything like it in any other state. “That really is remarkable — based solely upon the continued violation of grooming policy — to put somebody in the hole for 10 years,” he said.

“Why would you use up your valuable space in segregation for these guys?” Balaban asked.

Because they are in segregation, the inmates cannot be interviewed. Six, however, recently wrote to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. They said many were originally in segregation at the same prison but were later scattered to other prisons across the state.

“I can’t speak for all the others’ experience, but for me, being in seg. for as long as I have been . . . has created a deep rooted bitterness, frustration, and depression,” wrote inmate Allen McRae, also known as Ras-Solomon Tafari.

McRae, 32, serving a 20-year sentence for cocaine possession, said, “my normal day . . . is a repetitive cycle of stress and frustration.”

Elton L. Williams, 30, a Greensville Correctional Center inmate, forwarded a list of nine current inmates, including McRae and himself, who he says have been in segregation for 10 years.

Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, confirmed that eight of the nine have been in segregation for nearly 10 years. The total number of inmates in segregation for refusing to comply was not available.

Among other things, the policy is intended to help identify prisoners who could otherwise change their appearances from the mug shots taken when they first entered the system.

Female inmates’ hair must be no longer than shoulder length. One or two braids or ponytails are allowed, but hair must be kept out of the face and eyes. As of four years ago, no female inmates were in segregation for failing to comply.

The ACLU of Virginia challenged the grooming policy, alleging it violates the religious rights of Rastafarian and Muslim inmates under a federal law, but lost. The court ruled the state had a compelling interest in imposing the grooming policy.

Those in segregation say they are allowed one non-contact visit per week and two phone calls a month.

The department says they cannot participate in recreational, educational or treatment programs and are not earning any so-called “good-time” parole credits. But they are able to speak with inmates in adjacent cells and with staff.

A 10th inmate on Williams’ list is Ivan Sparks, once the “elder” of the Rastafarian community at the Buckingham Correctional Center.

Unknown to Williams when he wrote the new list was that Sparks, 59 — after spending nearly the last 10 years of his life in segregation — died Oct. 21 at VCU Medical Center from renal failure because of prostate cancer.

Sparks wrote to The Times-Dispatch in 2005 and identified 11 Rastafarians, including himself, who had been in segregation at that time for nearly six years.

“He was a great person,” said inmate Devon Sutherland, 50, who has also been in segregation for 10 years. “I knew he had two daughter he love, he had love his religious conviction.”

Evans Hopkins, a former prison inmate, award-winning writer and author of “Life After Life,” knew Sparks well when the two served a total of 16 years together in two different prisons. Hopkins mentioned him in his book and says Sparks was a sincere Rastafarian.

“I’m not a Rastafarian and don’t necessarily ascribe to all their beliefs . . . but I know Ivan Sparks believed with all his heart,” Hopkins said. Sparks, from New York, was convicted of murder in Danville in 1981 and sentenced to 51 years.

Hopkins plans to ask Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to provide some sort of help for the inmates. He said 10 years of segregation “should rule out anyone who only wants to wear dreadlocks simply to make a fashion statement.”

Hopkins and Sutherland question the adequacy of medical attention given those in segregation.

Another inmate in segregation, Kendall Gibson, 37, also known as Ras-Talawa Tafari, wrote that, “today I came out of the cell twice — I went for my twelfth parole hearing and took a shower. I don’t go out to the [recreation] cages when the weather is cold.”

Convicted of robbery, abduction and firearms charges and sentenced to 47 years, Gibson was first eligible for discretionary parole in 1998. He said that if not for the grooming policy, he might have already been released on parole.

Because he has been in segregation and cannot earn the good-time reductions, Gibson said, he is unlikely to be released until 2023.

But, he said, “I’m not going to bow.”

“I personally do not dwell upon all the down depression — I just try to make the best of my situation by keeping focus on the ‘good’ things I need to know and learn,” he said, adding, “I haven’t seen a TV since 1999.”

Williams, serving 14 years for robbery, says the Rastafarians are being punished more severely than serial killers or prisoners who attack officers or other inmates. Those inmates can re-enter the general population, “not us, though,” he said.

“Solitary confinement has become our doom,” he complained.

“The best way to describe it would be in comparison to a faucet drip . . . after 10 years I would think it’s now time for a plumber,” Williams wrote.

Source: Richmond Times Dispatch