Ariz. halts use of outdoor prison holding cells

PHOENIX (AP) — The director of Arizona state prisons has suspended the use of unshaded outdoor holding cells in the wake of an inmate’s death.

Authorities said Friday that crews will retrofit the cells to provide shade and water.

The move follows the death last week of 48-year-old Marcia Powell. She was left in an unshaded enclosure for nearly four hours May 19 as temperatures topped 100 degrees.

Corrections Director Charles Ryan says Powell, who was serving a sentence for prostitution, should not have been left in the cell for so long. He placed three officers on administrative leave pending a criminal investigation.

The outdoor cells hold inmates temporarily when they are being transferred from one area in a prison to another.

Inmate made impact in death

by Laurie Roberts – May. 30, 2009 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

Today at noon, a group of people will gather to pay tribute to a woman they never met. Her name is Marcia Powell.

I wonder what they will say. Will they talk about the teenage girl who ran away from home? The woman who lived on the streets of Phoenix, doing the only thing she knew to survive? Will they talk about the drug addict and prostitute who long ago gave up on herself? Or will they talk about us and the systems we set in place that couldn’t – or wouldn’t – help her?

Until now, of course. Now that she’s dead.

Powell died last week in a metal cage in the middle of a dirt yard in the middle of a state prison.

Her chief crime was that she was mentally ill.

Corrections Director Charles Ryan called Powell’s death “a tragedy and a failure” and announced plans to get to the bottom of what happened. “The investigation, ” he announced, “will determine whether there was negligence and tell us how to remedy our failures.”

That will be some investigation, to tell us how to remedy all the ways that we failed Marcia Powell.

According to court and police records, Powell never knew her biological parents. At age 3, she was put into foster care and eventually adopted by a California couple who gave her their last name. When she was 14 or 15, she ran away “due to a poor family environment, ” according to one of the many public defenders she would have over her lifetime.

For most of her life, she lived on the streets, doing drugs and turning tricks. Oh, she did find work from time to time, but those jobs didn’t last. She was fired from every one. She bounced from street to jail to prison and back again, at times getting arrested within hours of her release. In all, she racked up two dozen or more felony convictions and 30 misdemeanors – most of them for prostitution or drug possession.

As far back as 1993, authorities recognized that she suffered from mental illness, but she didn’t want help, and we gave her exactly what she requested. Recent court records indicate she was considered seriously mentally ill and was a patient of Magellan Health Services, the for-profit company we pay to care for the Marcia Powells among us.

In July, she approached an undercover cop at 16th and Washington Streets and offered to perform oral sex in exchange for $20 worth of crack. Her attorney pointed out the obvious, that another stint in prison would lead only to still more stints in prison, that it wasn’t the answer to reforming Powell or protecting the public.

“Marcia is guilty of being a drug addict and a prostitute, two labels that are usually attached to individuals that have no support system, have been in and out of jail/prison and have given up on their own lives,” Deputy Public Defender Nathan Foundas wrote. “This is Marcia Powell. Marcia understandably coped with her lifestyle by using drugs as a form of self-medication. Now we are sending her back to prison for working at the only job that she has known, been able to hang onto and the only way she has been able to support herself.”

On July 31, Powell was sentenced to 2 1/4 years in prison. Last week, she was put into an outdoor cage in the Perryville prison and left to slowly roast for nearly four hours.

There are a lot of questions about how Marcia Powell lived and why she died. About why prison seems our only answer for the mentally ill. About why we would put anybody – mentally ill or not – outside in an unshaded cage on an Arizona summer afternoon.

About whether we would have even cared about Marcia Powell had she not died an ugly, awful death. And whether we care enough about the other Marcias out there on the street to question what’s being done to help the mentally ill among us.

Marcia Joanne Powell died alone. It appears she had no family, no friends. A public memorial service will be held at noon today at Encanto Community Church, 2710 N. Seventh Avenue.

“It’s an opportunity for the community to gather,” the Rev. Liana Rowe told me. “To acknowledge that we’ve failed people who live in our community, the homeless on the streets, the mentally ill, drug addicted . . . and to recognize that we’re called to do better.”

During today’s service, a collection will be taken to raise money to cremate Powell’s body, so that her ashes may be interred in the columbarium at Shadow Rock United Church of Christ.

It will be left to Donna Leone Hamm of Middle Ground Prison Reform to give the eulogy. “It’s important for her life to not have been in vain and especially her death,” Hamm said. “This is going to result in some changes for prisoners.”

It already has. On Friday, the Department of Corrections suspended the use of outdoor cages. From now on, no prisoner will be caged outside unless there is shade and water.

Marcia Powell may not have done much in her life. In death, however, she finally matters.

Source: robertsblog. azcentral. com

Proposed deal for Calif. inmate care

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California would build two prison hospitals under a proposed settlement to a long-running dispute between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration and the federal courts over inmate medical care.

The settlement, an outline of which was given Thursday to The Associated Press, would mark the first step toward ending a legal drama that appeared headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The agreement would call for a sharply scaled-down and far less expensive plan to improve prison medical care than the one previously presented by J. Clark Kelso, a court-appointed receiver who oversees prison medical care.

If accepted by the federal courts and the Legislature, the proposed agreement would call for a sharply scaled-down and far less expensive plan to improve poor inmate medical care than the one Kelso previously presented.

Kelso and California Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate said their plan includes building two prison hospitals to house 3,400 inmates. The cost: $1.9 billion.

The plan Kelso originally submitted to the court called for building seven medical centers to house 10,000 inmates, with construction costs of about $6 billion.

The settlement they outlined to the AP was a concession to fiscal reality as California faces a $24.3 billion budget deficit. Both said final details would be worked out in the next few days, and the settlement still needs approval from the federal courts and state lawmakers.

“We’re in a financial crisis,” Kelso said. “We’ve been able to figure out how to spend a lot less money than we’d been talking about last year.”

Under the proposed settlement, the state would end its lawsuit attempting to terminate the receivership, while Kelso would halt his effort to hold Schwarzenegger in contempt of court for failing to turn over construction money.

The Schwarzenegger administration and the court-appointed receiver had been working more or less cooperatively to resolve the legal dispute over inmate medical care until California’s budget crisis worsened.

Attorney General Jerry Brown, siding with the administration, had said Kelso was unaccountable and wasting taxpayer money. The state took the position that the receiver did not have the right to reach into the state treasury for prison-construction money and planned to wage its fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

The receiver’s original proposal also called for indoor basketball and handball courts, electronic bingo boards, and stress-reduction, music-therapy and yoga rooms — amenities that exposed the plan to ridicule.

Kelso said Thursday that the state’s declining financial condition was one of the factors forcing his office and the state to work together and resolve the legal dispute quickly.

A federal judge in San Francisco seized control of prison medical care and created the receivership in 2005.

The court determined that the level of care was so poor that negligence or malfeasance accounted for the death, on average, of one inmate a week. A second judge, in Sacramento, found that mental health treatment is so poor it often leads to inmate suicides.

Under the latest plan, two new medical facilities would be built at existing prisons, one in Northern California and one in Southern California.

The proposal by Cate and Kelso calls for converting at least one underused juvenile prison into a medical center housing physically or mentally ill inmates who require lower levels of care. Other sick or mentally ill inmates would be concentrated in prisons near urban areas where they could more easily get care from outside specialists.

Upgrading existing prisons to house those inmates will cost an additional $1.3 billion.

The two new medical centers would be paid for with bonds issued in a way that does not directly require legislators’ approval.

The proposal anticipates a reduction in the prison population as thousands of inmates are freed before completing their full sentences. A special panel of federal judges has tentatively decided that prisons are too crowded to provide proper inmate care and could order inmate releases as a remedy. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger has proposed releasing lower-level offenders to save money.

State Assemblyman Jim Nielson, a Yuba City Republican who previously chaired the state parole board, called the proposed settlement a “very positive” step toward California retaking control of its prison system.

Other Democratic and Republican lawmakers familiar with the prison litigation reacted cautiously to the announcement.

“Two billion is definitely an improvement over $6 billion, but the devil is in the details. We’ve been told they’re close to an agreement before, and it’s evaporated,” said state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.

Source: APNews

The value of a life.

By Mountain Sage

The story is a sad one.

A story of the life of a schizophrenic that ended in tragedy through the act of suicide.  Andrew Martinez suffered from schizophrenia and ended up in Santa Clara County Jail’s acute psychiatric ward where he took his own life at age 33 by suffocating himself with a plastic bag.

His mother filed a wrongful death lawsuit claiming the county staff was deliberately indifferent to Martinez’s safety and thusly contributed to his wrongful death.

It is not my intention to argue the merits of the wrongful death suit as there are too few facts reported to make a reasonable judgment or form a reasonable opinion.  What I have an extreme problem with is the idea that an adult life is only of value when there is earning potential attached to that life.

Debra Saunders who penned the following commentary is evidently of the opinion that Mr. Martinez’s life held little value….he was after all nothing but  a loser who couldn’t even make it in a half-way house and certainly had no ability to do what our society places the highest of values on – earn a living.

Ms. Saunders questions the value of the one million dollar award to other mentally ill inmates not seeing any value in punitive means to assure more diligent attention to inmates safety in the future.   She tosses off the severity of the problem by stating “Granted, the system fails whenever a mentally ill person kills himself in jail.”  I’ve heard more outrage at the death of a dog than Ms. Saunders demonstrates toward Mr. Martinez in her opinion piece.

I think often the people who defend the system against law suits of this nature are the first to complain when a criminal gets a slap on the wrist, yet when the system itself fails in the most egregious of ways a slap on the wrist is just fine with them.

If most of our society shares Ms. Saunders opinion that earning a living validates and bestows worth on a life, is it any wonder many adults fall into depression when they find themselves out of work?  I have to wonder if Ms. Saunders would feel the same way if this were one of her loved ones?  She states that this was a jackpot for mom, evidently not grasping that this woman’s child is DEAD.  Is our society so callous, so materialistic that a wrongful death suit’s merits must be boiled down to earning ability?    I fear it probably is and that fact is as sad as Mr. Martinez’s death.

A Naked Million
A Commentary By Debra J. Saunders
Sunday, May 24, 2009

In 1992, after he stopped wearing clothes to his UC Berkeley classes, Andrew Martinez was something of a walking only-in-Bezerkeley joke as the campus’ own Naked Guy. But his life was no laughing matter.

Around 1997, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 2003, he was arrested for assaulting a staff member at a halfway house where he was a resident. He spent the next two-and-a-half years in Santa Clara County jail, its acute psychiatric unit, Napa State Hospital, and Atascadero State Hospital — until at age 33, he killed himself by suffocating himself with a plastic bag in a jail cell on May 18, 2006.

Last week, Santa Clara County announced that it settled a wrongful death lawsuit and would pay $1 million to his mother, Esther Krenn.

The county also agreed to notify families when inmates try to kill themselves or have a breakdown, which the county’s lead Deputy County Counsel John Winchester told The Chronicle’s Henry K. Lee it already had been doing informally.

[snip]

To start, $1 million seemed an awfully large sum to award a mother for a son with little to no earning power. Granted, the system fails whenever a mentally ill person kills himself in jail. But if you agree with Krenn’s complaint that county staff “were deliberately indifferent” to Martinez’s safety, violated his civil rights and wrongfully caused his death, it’s still hard to understand what value there is for mentally-ill inmates in seeing $1 million go to Krenn’s and attorney Geri Lynn Green’s bank accounts.

[snip]

A mentally ill person can use the system to fight needed treatment — and if he harms himself in the process, it’s a jackpot for mom.

SOURCE

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Our Injustice System Hard At Work Serving The People

ATLANTA — Alvin Spencer told Channel 2 Action News reporter Jodie Fleischer that he can’t believe the punishment he received for walking in the street to avoid a sidewalk hole filled with water.“Twelve months probation and a $227 fine,” said Spencer.Spencer took pictures and showed Fleischer how rain easily accumulates inside the sidewalk hole along Memorial Drive in east Atlanta.”The majority of people walk on the side of the street. You don’t have a choice unless you’re going to walk in the water or the mud,” said Spencer.Spencer said the city has been using a fallen street sign as a makeshift cover for the sidewalk hole.”The city needs to do their part right because this is wrong …that’s wrong,” said Spencer.Spencer said the Atlanta police officer who wrote the ticket didn’t even look at the sidewalk’s condition.”He said, ‘Tell it to the judge,’ so that’s what I did … and she said ‘$227.’ I got to do something about this,” said Spencer.After going to Atlanta City Hall and not getting a response, Spencer contacted WSB-TV.”What they want you to do … walk in the hole?” said a passer-by who stopped to give his opinion. “That’s got to be crazy … I’m not going to walk in the hole.”It turns out, the passer-by is related to the developer of a nearby construction project that might have caused the damage.”Do you need to repair that sidewalk? No, DeKalb County does that,” said a woman with Citiheart Developers. She later corrected herself to say she’d call the city of Atlanta and report the hole.”I’m going to look into it,” she said.“And if they won’t, will you fix it?” asked Fleischer.“Absolutel y; that’s what I do — construction. I’m not going leave a hole there,” she said.Spencer hopes it gets fixed quickly, so no one else ends up in his legal hole, or worse.”How dangerous it is, somebody could get hurt very seriously,” said Spencer.

Fleischer contacted the Atlanta Police Department. It confirmed the incident but wouldn’t go on camera until it talks with the officer involved.

Spencer’s probation will be suspended if he pays the $227 fine, but so far, he has refused to do that.

How can you blame the people for turning to crime to survive hard times when our government does the same?

Source: wsbtv.com

Can Sheriff Joe Be Stopped?

by Jill Garvey

Sheriff Joe would like the public to believe that the thousands of inmates on hunger strike for the last three weeks are just complaining about food. He would like us to think that the biggest issue for detainees is rotting baloney. If only that were a good enough reason for over 1,500 individuals to go without food for days on end. Common sense and the human rights activists who have been visiting detainees tell us otherwise.

The real stories coming out of Arpaio’s four jails speak of rampant abuse and a severe lack of medical attention. The sheriff is infamous for erecting outdoor tents to house prisoners in scorching Arizona temperatures, forcing them to wear pink underwear and serving rotten food. Outside of his prisons he is known for racial profiling and terrorizing Latino neighborhoods with immigration sweeps.

The hunger strikes began a few weeks ago when human rights activists marched in protest of the abuses taking place in Maricopa County jails. This is the same day Sheriff Joe was videotaped canoodling with racist white nationalists who showed up to harass peaceful marchers. Organizers of the May 2 march say their event and the hunger strikes were not coordinated – there was no contact between them and the inmates, but most likely detainees were emboldened to begin striking by the thousands of supporters who showed up that day.

Sheriff Joe would also like us to believe the striking inmates are hardened criminals, convicted of murder and rape. But this is an extreme fabrication as a majority of detainees are being held on minor immigration charges related to documentation. In almost any other part of the United States these people would not be considered a threat to the public and law enforcement would consider it insane to detain them.

Last week Sheriff Joe put three jails participating in the hunger strike on lockdown, eliminating visitation and phone calls, and according to the ACLU infringing on the detainees first amendment rights.

“It is unconscionable that these inmates – many of whom have not been convicted of a crime – are being punished simply for protesting the inhumane conditions in Maricopa County jails,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona. “This has turned into a real crisis. Rather than addressing it, Arpaio is retaliating against the inmates for attempting to send a message to the outside world.”

As of yesterday, Sheriff Joe ended the lockdown amid rumors that it had not deterred the hunger strike. Perhaps this is a sign that Joe’s reign of terror is becoming less effective as more people bravely speak out for justice.

Source: Imagine2050.com

Prison Volunteer: Cage Is Inhumane

Jeff Butera

GOODYEAR, Ariz. — A volunteer worker at the Arizona State Prison Complex – Perryville in Goodyear said she was “enraged” when she saw inmate Marcia Powell died earlier this week, after being left outside in an uncovered cage at the prison for four hours.“You as the general public doesn’t know what’s going on behind those doors,” the woman, who asked to have her identity protected, said. “I saw it in an entirely different light.”The woman volunteered at the prison for multiple years, teaching inmates in an attempt to rehabilitate them.According to the woman, she saw inmates placed in a cage at the prison. The cage was surrounded on four sides by a chain-link fence. The inmates were given a jug of water but nothing else, according to the woman.She said inmates told her that they were being put in the cage as punishment. She also heard from inmates that it was at the discretion of a guard whether they could leave the cage to use a restroom.The prison volunteer said she believed the practice crossed a line of human decency.“Granted these individuals have committed a crime; there’s no doubt about that,” the woman said. “But I don’t think these individuals should be treated in such an inhumane fashion.”According to the Arizona Department of Corrections’ policy about temporary holding enclosures, they are not to be used for “punitive reasons.” They are supposed to be used only “to confine and restrict inmate movement on a temporary/short term basis.”A spokesman with the Department of Corrections denied the cages had been used for punishment.The policy also states that “water shall be continuously available” to inmates and that they should be in the cage for “no more than two consecutive hours.”Powell was held in the cage for four hours, double the limit outlined in the policy.According to a DOC spokesman, she was placed in the holding enclosure because she was being transferred to a new location and that location was not ready.

Because of what happened, the deputy warden, captain and shift commander have been placed on administrative leave.

A criminal investigation has been launched.

Source: kpho.com

Condron.us

Former San Quentin warden honored for speaking out against death penalty

Richard Halstead

Former San Quentin State Prison Warden Jeanne Woodford, seen here in 2003, received an award from Death Penalty Focus for her courage in speaking out against capital punishment. (IJ archive)

During her stint as warden of San Quentin State Prison, Jeanne Woodford oversaw the execution of four death row inmates without ever discussing her personal feelings about the death penalty.

On Thursday night, however, Woodford received an award from Death Penalty Focus for her courage in speaking out against capital punishment. Woodford, who went on to serve as both director and undersecretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, began sharing her thoughts about the death penalty about a year after retiring in 2006. Others honored by the San Francisco-based nonprofit included New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former California Attorney General John Van De Kamp.

Singling out Woodford and Van De Kamp, Death Penalty Focus director Lance Lindsey said, “They’re courageous because they’re coming out of communities that are often associated with a knee-jerk tough-on-crime position. What they represent is a smart-on-crime position.”

Woodford, 56, said she has always opposed the death penalty.

“Initially for me it was just a matter of, does this really make sense to be killing people to avenge the death of someone else?” Woodford said in an interview this week.

She said it is a debate that will never be settled.

“Some people believe in an eye for an eye, and some people don’t,” she said.

Woodford, who started her career as a prison guard at San Quentin, said there are more practical reasons for opposing capital punishment.

She said

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the death penalty is an ineffective deterrent because of the time it takes to execute condemned prisoners. She said that due to improvements in prison security, capital punishment is no longer needed to protect the public from the possibility that killers might escape. She noted that prisoners can now be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And, she said, it costs far more to execute a condemned prisoner than to keep one in prison for life.

“I just really worry about the state of California,” Woodford said. “I worry about the fact that we continue to spend so much money on issues that aren’t giving us any benefit. The death penalty is one of those.”

Woodford said the state also can no longer afford to incarcerate nonviolent offenders or to skimp on mental health and drug treatment programs, which keep people out of prison. She said money is being wasted by sending parole violators back to state prison for minor violations.

“We’re not making intelligent choices about who should be in state prison and who shouldn’t,” Woodford said.

During her stint as warden at San Quentin from 1999 to 2004, Woodford initiated a number of experimental programs aimed at reducing recidivism.

“We currently look back on that time with some nostalgia,” said Jacques Verduin, executive director of the Insight Prison Project, a San Rafael-based nonprofit that works with San Quentin to provide rehabilitative programs.

“Jeannie was one of the first to understand that the community could play a larger role in this prison, or prisons period,” Verduin said.

But Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, disputes Woodford’s economic critique of capital punishment. The foundation is a public interest law organization that files friend of the court briefs to speed the implementation of executions.

“The argument assumes that the present costs are necessary and will continue and that is not a valid assumption,” Scheidegger said. “The costs can be greatly reduced. The appeals don’t need to last 20 years. Virginia does it in five.”

In a guest editorial that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in October, Woodford recalled presiding over the execution of Robert Lee Massie. Woodford said she chose to write about Massie “because he would be the poster child for why people say we need a death penalty.” Massie was originally sentenced to death in 1965, but his sentence was later commuted to life. He was paroled in 1978, murdered a liquor store owner during a robbery eight months later, pleaded guilty, and was once again sentenced to die.

Massie was one of several death row inmates who effectively volunteered to be executed by dropping their appeals, Woodford said.

“So it’s really like assisting with their suicide,” Woodford said. “What that ought to say to people is that permanent imprisonment isn’t an easy punishment for anyone.”

Source: Marinij.com

Connecticut Senate Votes to Abolish Death Penalty

The Connecticut Senate voted to abolish the death penalty early Friday morning after a marathon debate, narrowly approving a bill that would make life imprisonment without possibility of release the state’s highest criminal punishment.

The Senate approved the death penalty bill, 19-17, shortly after 4 a.m., after nearly 11 hours of debate. The same measure had previously passed in the House of Representatives, and proceeds to Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who has appeared likely to veto the bill.

If signed into law, the bill would make Connecticut the 16th American state without an active death penalty statute.

Read more here @

Prison Blog – genpop.org

Medical Marijuana: Eddy Lepp Sentenced to 10 Years in Federal Prison

California medical marijuana grower, spiritualist, and activist Eddy Lepp was sentenced Monday to a mandatory minimum 10-year prison sentence on federal marijuana cultivation charges in a case where he grew more than 20,000 pot plants in plain view of a state highway in Northern California’s Lake County. US District Court Judge Marilyn Patel also sentenced him to five years probation. He must report to federal authorities by July 6.

Eddy Lepp (courtesy cannabisculture.com)

Lepp contended that the plants were a medical marijuana grow for members of the Multi Denominational Ministry of Cannabis and Rastafari and legal under California law. But during his trial, he was not allowed to introduce medical marijuana or religious defenses. He was found guilty of conspiracy to possess marijuana with the intent to distribute more than 1,000 pot plants and of cultivating more than 1,000 plants, which carries a maximum life sentence.According to California NORML (CANORML) and the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, there were gasps and sobs from Lepp supporters in the courtroom as Patel passed sentence. The sentence was “extreme,” Patel conceded, but said her hands were tied by federal law.

In a nod toward the current turmoil over the status of federal prosecutions of medical marijuana providers, Judge Patel said Lepp could apply for a rehearing if the laws changed. Lepp and his attorneys plan to appeal the verdict and the sentence.

Lepp attorney Michael Hall told Patel the sentence was “incredible.”

“Incredible is what the law requires,” Patel responded, adding that legalizing marijuana appeared to be Lepp’s driving passion. “Maybe you want to be a martyr for the cause,” she said.

Sentencing Lepp, a 56-year-old veteran in ill health, to prison is a travesty and a waste, said supporters. “This case sadly illustrates the senselessness of federal marijuana laws,” said CANORML’s Dale Geiringer. “The last thing this country needs is more medical marijuana prisoners. Hopefully, we can change the law and get Eddy out of jail before he completes his sentence.”

“Locking up Eddy Lepp serves no purpose and is a huge waste of life and scarce prison space,” said Aaron Smith, California policy director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “The community would be a lot better served if we taxed and regulated California’s $14 billion marijuana industry rather than continuing to incarcerate nonviolent people like Eddy, who are clearly of no danger to society.”

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #586, 5/22/09

Prison Abuse – When the Media Isn’t Watching

by Charmaine Fuller

Reports of inmate abuse are flying fast and furious these days.

In North Carolina, the sad saga of Timothy Helms has been unfolding for weeks in The News & Observer. It appears guards severely beat Helms, leaving him partially paralyzed. Last week we learned that guards doused the recuperating and wheelchair-bound Helms with pepper spray as he rattled a hospital room door at Central Prison.

In January, the News &Observer reported the allegations of an Anson County inmate that he was drenched with pepper spray and that guards wouldn’t allow him to wash off the burning chemicals or get prompt medical attention.  It’s enough to make one wonder what’s going on inside the prison walls when the media isn’t watching.

Even more troubling is that the state is moving in a direction that could lead to more reports of inmate abuse.  Legislators want to close several prisons and double-cell inmates to save money. At the same time, prison personnel are increasingly frustrated with pay cuts and longer hours. The elimination of popular rehabilitation programs won’t help matters.

A new coalition is organizing to help monitor prison conditions and advocate for the rights of inmates.  NC CURE, which already is looking into a plethora of letters from prisoners, is partnering with the Carolina Justice Policy Center to investigate those allegations even when the media isn’t watching.

Source: The Progressive Pulse