SB 1399 Medical Parole -approved

Lawmakers approve bills on pension spiking, slavery, sick prisoners

August 30, 2010 |  7:23 pm

The California Assembly voted to release extremely sick prison inmates, a move that would pass the cost of their medical care on to the federal Medicare program, saving the state an estimated $42 million a year.

The bill, SB 1399, written by Sen. Mark Leno (D–San Francisco) would apply only to inmates judged to be permanently medically incapacitated. “We’re paying prison guards, two of them, to overlook prisoners who are on a respirator,” said Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello).

Opponents warned that the measure was written too broadly and could lead overzealous prison administrators to release inmates purely to cut costs. “Do we trust the department not to use this as a budget management tool to the widest extent possible?” asked Assemblyman Curt Hagman (R-Chino Hills).

Source: LA Times

Runner Joins Supreme Effort To Overturn Early Release

Monday, 30 August 2010 12:00

Sen. George Runner announced that he and other GOP lawmakers, and California district attorneys, police and sheriff, filed a brief Friday in U.S. Supreme Court that seeks to reverse the order of the federal three-judge court requiring early release of some 38,000 California prisoners in order to improve health care provided to inmates.

“First of all, it’s doubtful the district court has the jurisdiction to order California to release or divert convicts from prison,” said Runner, the lead Senate Republican intervenor in the case before the three-judge court.

Runner believes the three-judge panel misinterpreted the law which limits the capacity of a federal court to takeover a state prison system. Known as the Prison Litigation Reform Act, and passed by Congress in 1995, the law states that a federal court “shall enter a prisoner release order only if the court finds by clear and convincing evidence that crowding is the primary cause of the violation of a federal right and no other relief will remedy the violation of the federal right.” Runner said: “We don’t believe an ongoing violation exists and we know that the three-judge panel’s decision affirmatively threatens public safety.” The federal three-judge court ordered the massive reduction of California’s prison population based on allegations of constitutionally deficient inmate health care. But federal documents establish that California inmates have lower mortality rates than inmates from 37 other states and even the general public. “Inmate health care costs California taxpayers more than $14,000 per year per prisoner,” Runner said. “Most California workers wish they had this type of health care access.” Source: Hometown Station n,

Unfit for Execution

Caroline Groussain / AFP-Getty Images

The view of an execution chamber from an adjacent witness room.

For six years, I regularly spent an hour talking and listening through a small slot in a metal door. On the other side was the only woman on death row in Virginia, an inmate who pleaded guilty to hiring two men to kill her husband and stepson, allegedly in exchange for a cut of the insurance money. Sometimes I was allowed to sit in a chair as I stooped down to hear her, give her communion, or just hold her hand; usually I alternated between half-squatting or

kneeling on the concrete floor. As chaplain at Virginia’s only maximum-security prison for women, I expected to minister under challenging circumstances. These visits were unbearable, however, and not because of the physical conditions. It was my feeling—at first fleeting, now certain—that this woman doesn’t deserve to die.

On Sept. 23, barring the governor’s unlikely pardon or the Supreme Court taking her case, Teresa Lewis will die in the electric chair or by lethal injection (she hasn’t chosen). She lost a federal appeal earlier this summer, putting her in line to be the first woman the state has killed in 98 years—and the 12th nationally since the high court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. She’ll be the first of at least 16 executions scheduled across the country in the next six months, and the latest in a long, sad list of mentally handicapped people to receive a punishment they don’t deserve. I’m not advocating for her release or making excuses for her crime. She isn’t, either. But I am calling for clemency. The death penalty is too blunt and final for a world about which we can never be certain. More than 130 death-row inmates have been released for wrongful convictions in recent years. Even when someone pleads guilty, as Teresa did, there’s almost always more to the story.

Greg Smith / Corbis

A history of execution methods in the United States

Put to Death: A History of U.S. Executions

Teresa arrived at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women the same day she was sentenced in 2003. She wore blue scrubs; chains around her ankles, waist, and hands; and a bewildered expression. It’s common for inmates to project you-can’t-hurt-me indignation. But Teresa seemed meek, almost pliant. When I hugged her—the only hug we ever shared—she was so grateful. She didn’t look like a remorseless killer, a “mastermind” who plotted two murders, as the judge put it (her original lawyers did little to dispute this image). In one of our sessions, she collapsed into great soul-shattering, body-heaving sobs and cried into my wrist, the only part of me I could get through the slot in the door.

Teresa stood out to me in other ways, too. Beneath a gloss of social pleasantries, she seemed slow and overly eager to please—an easy mark, in other words, for a con. A Duke University psychiatrist who testified at a 2005 postconviction hearing said she has an IQ of 72, placing her on the cusp of mental retardation as the Supreme Court defines it. Also disclosed since Teresa’s original trial: a 2003 letter from one of the two men who carried out the killings admitting that it was he, not she, who masterminded the murders. Still, the state Supreme Court, a U.S. District Court, and, most recently, a U.S. Court of Appeals, have upheld the ruling that Teresa deserves to die. The actual killers got life in prison.

Last year, as Teresa’s prospects receded, I left the prison ministry. On the inside, I was forbidden from speaking out. Now I can help her cause. My 5-year-old daughter recently asked me what an execution was, and I told her it’s when someone is killed as punishment for killing someone else. “But she didn’t actually kill anyone,” my daughter said. No, but she participated, I explained, and in the state’s eyes, that’s enough. “Don’t they know that doing bad to someone, even if they did bad to you, is wrong?” she responded. It’s a good question.

Litchfield was chaplain at Fluvanna from 1998 to 2009.

Source: Newsweek

Filling Up Prisons Without Fighting Crime: Mark Kleiman on America’s Criminal Justice System

UCLA Professor of Public Affairs Mark Kleiman is “angry about having too much crime and an intolerable number of people behind bars.” The United States is home to five percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, yet, says Kleiman, our high incarceration rate isn’t making us safer.

In his book, “When Brute Force Fails,” Kleiman explains that, when it comes to punishment, there is a trade-off between severity and swiftness. For too long the U.S. has erred heavily on the side of severity, but if we concentrate enforcement and provide immediate consequences for law-breakers, Kleiman says we can both reduce the crime rate and put fewer people in prison.

Approximately 7 minutes.

Interview by Zach Weissmueller. Shot by Alex Manning. Edited by Weissmueller.

Vicious, feared attack leaves Pa. inmate comatose

Posted at: 08/29/2010 11:35 AM
By MICHAEL RUBINKAM

(AP) SCRANTON, Pa. – If his diary and witness accounts are to be believed, Nicholas Pinto endured months of physical, sexual and mental abuse in prison. Guards roughed him up, made him stand naked in a cold cell for hours at a time, and taunted him relentlessly. A fellow inmate raped him night after night, beat him when he resisted, and stole his possessions.

And no one, he claimed, did a thing about it.

“The overall treatment I have received from both the prison and (the prison’s) medical providers (is) unconstitutional, insufficient, cruel, inhumane and shamefully unacceptable,” Pinto wrote in April.

He feared for his life, yet the officials responsible for his safety appear to have ignored his pleas for help _ nor did they heed a warning from the prison chaplain that Pinto was in grave danger.

An accused child pornographer, he was at the bottom of the prison hierarchy. So what came next was perhaps inevitable.

The 29-year-old former Connecticut man was heading back to his cell block from a recreation area when he was ambushed by an inmate with a history of violence who was supposed to be locked down _ but wasn’t. The inmate knocked him to the floor and stomped on his head at least 15 times “with all his might,” according to a police report. Pinto’s face was shattered, and he suffered brain injuries that left him comatose.

After the attack, his assailant had enough time to return to his cell and use a rag to wipe evidence from his black sneakers, police said.

The Aug. 8 assault raised troubling questions about prison justice and the culture of the scandal-plagued lockup where Pinto was supposed to be held in protective custody. Multiple investigations are being conducted by local authorities and the state Department of Corrections to try to get to the bottom of how and why Pinto’s attacker was allowed to get near him, and a federal civil rights lawsuit is being prepared.

Critics of Lackawanna County Prison in Scranton say the near-fatal assault is part of a pattern in which correctional officers target inmates they don’t like. The union flatly denies any malice on the part of the guards, and places the problems squarely on management.

“There’s a pattern, and there’s a mistreatment,” said Patrick Rogan, the lawyer hired by Pinto’s family to sue. “What does it arise from? Is it lack of training, or not enough personnel, or just a bad attitude toward inmates?”

Whatever the reason, the prison is certainly no stranger to scandal. Several years ago, the former warden and other officials were accused of using inmates as free labor at their homes. Guards have been previously criminally charged with abusing prisoners, and in 2007 an inmate who arrived at the prison six months’ pregnant gave birth, alone, inside her cell, after prison staff ignored her pleas to be taken to the hospital. Several federal lawsuits have alleged a toxic environment of physical abuse and intimidation.

“What goes on there, honest to God, is atrocious. It is serious, serious stuff,” said Scott Binsack, a former inmate who shared a cell with Pinto for nearly 10 months.

Sgt. Bill Shanley, a correctional officer at Lackawanna County Prison and president of the prison employees union, blamed the 12-year-old facility’s problems on grossly inadequate staffing and a lack of training and equipment, as well as policies that allow for excessive movement of inmates.

Shanley said he has repeatedly pressed his concerns with prison management.

“I said, ’Someone’s going to get seriously hurt. It’s not IF it’s going to happen, but when,’” he said.

Warden Janine Donate declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigations.

Pinto landed in the prison in 2008 following his arrest for taking explicit photos and videos of children. He immediately began a diary that would become a 20-page tale of abuse and humiliation.

He wrote that he was made to stand in cell No. 4 for hours at a time, allowed to sit only after lights out. “Can’t sleep in freezing cell, naked, cold concrete and no place to sit. … I stand for 3 or 4 days,” he wrote.

At one point, a guard came by and told him, “See how that s— works?” Other times, a voice over the public-address system chanted, “4-cell, kill yourself!”

A former inmate who lived on the same block as Pinto confirmed the abuse. The inmate, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears retribution against family members who hold local patronage jobs, told The Associated Press that he saw guards brutalize Pinto.

He said he saw guards force Pinto to strip down and stand for prolonged periods in his cell, stomp on his toes while parading him naked in the common room, slap him hard upside the head, and toss his meals in the garbage.

On at least one occasion, Pinto and several dangerous inmates were released into a common area from their cells, and a guard got on the PA system and urged: “Go get ’em, boys,” according to the former inmate.

“I watched numerous attacks on him,” he said.

Binsack, a former building contractor who recently pleaded no contest to writing bad checks, said he, too, was mistreated at the prison _ assaulted by guards and denied appropriate medical treatment for torn retinas and a serious fungal infection in his face and body. Binsack has sued the prison, collecting affidavits from inmates who likewise claim abuse.

He said Pinto lived “in great fear” of certain guards and other inmates.

“I saw him daily get harassed by specific officers. I saw him be spit on,” he said.

Shanley, who has worked at the prison for nearly 20 years, said his officers do the best they can but are overloaded and outmanned. He denied that guards are intentionally abusive, saying they are far more likely to be assaulted by an inmate than the other way around.

“Do I think there are officers here, in malice, trying to do something to harm somebody? No, I don’t. Is there physical abuse where an officer is bringing a guy down, or kicking him, or allowing one inmate to sexually assault another inmate? No, that’s not happening.”

Pinto’s diary, though, tells a different story.

He wrote that he was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an inmate he dubbed “the silverback.”

“First night is bleeding but no penetration,” wrote Pinto, who also referred to his rapist by name. “The next night (and never again, he lies) is full-on jailhouse Bubba.”

He reported the rape to authorities, but no investigation was conducted, said the Rev. William Pickard, a Catholic priest and the prison’s longtime chaplain.

Pickard wrote a letter to the Lackawanna County commissioners on March 30 of this year complaining that prosecutors had failed to look into Pinto’s allegations, “resulting in additional sexual assaults and continued denial of medical treatment.”

Pickard also warned that Pinto’s outspokenness about his prison experience made him “a likely target of severe institutional retaliation,” and suggested that he be transferred to another lockup.

District Attorney Andy Jarbola did not return messages left by The Associated Press.

In an interview, Pickard said he doesn’t believe the Aug. 8 attack on Pinto was simply a mix-up or a lapse in protocol.

“I don’t think it was just a mistake. I think there was something more going on here,” he said.

The chaplain, who has been ministering to inmates at the prison for a quarter-century, was banned from the prison earlier this month after being accused of pushing a guard who had refused to let him near Pinto in the hospital. Pickard said he was angry, but denies he got physical with the guard.

Pinto, who had pleaded guilty to a federal count of production of child pornography and was due to be sentenced in October, was recently moved from a Scranton hospital to a long-term acute-care facility.

Though he pleaded guilty to a reprehensible crime, Rogan, the attorney preparing to sue, said Pinto’s punishment should have been meted out in a courtroom, not a prison.

“We are a humane society. You don’t get to kick somebody’s brain in,” he said. “Or you shouldn’t get to.”

Source: KOB.com

In the News….

Folsom Prison riot ‘just seemed to explode’

By Carlos Alcalá
calcala@sacbee.com

Published: Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010 – 1:22 pm

A riot Friday that sent seven Folsom State Prison inmates to the hospital “just seemed to explode,” Department of Corrections Lt. Anthony Gentile said today.

The melee involving prisoners began in the main exercise yard at 7 p.m. and lasted about 30 minutes.

Corrections officers began to counter with gas “chemical agents,” Gentile said. “The desired result wasn’t achieved.”

Attempts by more than 45 staff to quell the fighting among about 200 inmates escalated to rubber rounds and then rifle fire, he said.

Having only seven inmates with non-life threatening injuries and no injured staff is significant, given the size and duration of the conflict, Gentile said. “That’s a good thing.”

Of the seven injured, two were injured in the fighting and five received gunshot wounds as guard took measure to end the fighting.

The prison has been placed on lockdown and the cause of the riot is under investigation.

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/28/2989598/folsom-prison-riot-just-seemed.html#storylink=omni_popular#ixzz0xykVkDR8

August 27, 2010

Bill cracks down on prison cellphone smuggling

California’s prisons are keeping up, it would appear, with the proliferation of cellphones and other portable communication devices in the wider society.
State prison officials say they confiscated 261 contraband cellphones in 2006, but the number zoomed to 992 in 2007 and 2,629 in 2008. The phones, they say, are used not only to keep in touch with friends and family but allow inmates – especially gang leaders – to continue their criminal ways by long-distance.
The phones, like drugs and other contraband, are smuggled into prisons by visitors, despite metal detector and personal searches, and by prison guards. The going price appears to be around $1,000 for a no-name “throwaway” phone that can be purchased for a few dollars outside prison walls.
The increasing traffic in contraband cellphones prompted Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, to introduce legislation, Senate Bill 525, that makes possession of a cellphone or cellphone components with intent to deliver to a prison inmate a misdemeanor crime with up to a $5,000 fine.
The legislation cleared the Senate on a 34-0 vote, but rather than send it to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Padilla held it back and it’s still pending in the Senate as the session nears its conclusion.
The measure, as now written, would also allow prison officials to confiscate any cellphone or other wireless device brought into the prison by a visitor, must return it when the visitor leaves the prison.

Categories: Bills (2009-2010 session)

Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2010/08/bill-cracks-down-on-prison-cel.html#ixzz0xuGun3aa

NC Woman Convicted of Resisting Arrest After Recording Traffic Stop from Her Porch

Posted by Joshua Holland

Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy

URL to article: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/08/27/nc-woman-convicted-of-resisting-arrest-after-recording-traffic-stop-from-her-porch/

Radley Balko brings us an odd case:

The resisting-arrest conviction last week of Felicia Gibson has left a lot of people wondering. Can a person be charged with resisting arrest while observing a traffic stop from his or her own front porch?

Salisbury Police Officer Mark Hunter thought so, and last week District Court Judge Beth Dixon agreed. Because Gibson did not at first comply when the officer told her and others to go inside, the judge found Gibson guilty of resisting, delaying or obstructing an officer.

Salisbury Police Chief Rorie Collins wouldn’t comment on the case specifically, but did discuss the charge in general terms with the Salisbury Post:

Post: What is “resisting arrest” or “resist, delay, obstruct an officer” in the performance of his/her duties?

Collins: “These are basically the same charge. Some call the charge simply “resisting arrest,” and some call it by its longer and more official title.

[...]

Post: If the police stop someone in a car in front of my house, do I have the right to stand in my yard or on my porch and watch?

Collins: “The answer to this question is not quite as clear cut as the first. The short and quick answer is, ‘yes,’ in general, you do have that right!

“However, just as with many other scenarios, it is important to remember that every situation is based upon its own merits/circumstances. There are some circumstances in which the police who have stopped the vehicle in front of your house may determine that it is in the interest of safety (the officer’s, yours or the individual stopped) to require that folks move. As with other circumstances, it is best advised that an individual merely obey by the officer’s commands.”

Fair enough. So, is that what happened here? No.

Gibson was not the only bystander watching the action on the street. She was the only one holding up a cell-phone video camera. But court testimony never indicated that Hunter told her to stop the camera; he just told her to go inside.

The police arrested this woman for recording their traffic stop. From her own private property. Cops don’t like video.

Seems to me that the judge should’ve thrown this case out. If the bystanders without cellphone cameras weren’t ‘resisting, delaying or obstructing’ the officers, how is it that she was?

PS: here’s video of someone getting arrested for little more than being a complete and total asshole, which, last I checked, isn’t a crime.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Study finds that 88,500 inmates nationwide sexually abused while behind bars

According to the study by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2008-2009, 4.4 percent of inmates in prison and 3.1 percent of inmates in jail report being victimized sexually by another inmate or staff member.

The study’s findings:

• Female inmates were more than twice as likely to report experiencing sexual victimization by another inmate.
• 13 percent of male prison inmates and 19 percent of male jail inmates were victimized within the first 24 hours of  being incarcerated.

Pat Nolan, vice president of Prison Fellowship said the study shows “the problem is even worse than we thought.”

Hat tip to Keith G. in P.V.

| Bob Cronkleton

Posted by James Hart on Friday, August 27, 2010 at 08:52 AM in Sex offenses | Permalink

Read more: http://blogs.kansascity.com/crime_scene/2010/08/study-finds-that-88500-inmates-nationwide-sexually-abused-while-behind-bars.html#ixzz0xym084BH

Va. cancels death row visit change

The Virginia Department of Corrections has canceled plans to end face-to-face visits between death row inmates and their families.

Spokesman Larry Traylor said Friday the department decided against changing the policy to require all death row visits be done via video beginning Sept. 1.

Traylor would not say why the department changed its plans, but said it would continue to review the policy “as well as other related issues and technical capabilities.”

Virginia would have been only the second death penalty state to end face-to-face visits.

Inmates’ families and prisoner advocates condemned the planned policy change, calling it “cruel and unnecessary.”

Traylor said video-only visitation was implemented for inmates in segregation on Aug. 1 and will remain in effect.

– Associated Press

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/crime-scene/virginia/va-cancels-death-row-visit-pol.html

Federal receiver downsizes turnaround plan for prison medical care

California Prison Health Care Services

The federal receiver spent $135 million on a new San Quentin Health Facility, and $18 million to expand medical space at Avenal – but California’s other 31 prison medical facilities still lack improvements.

Julie Small | KPCC

Nearly a decade ago, one state prison inmate a week died because medical care inside prisons was so poor. A federal judge decided to stop that – so for the last few years a court-appointed receiver has been working to improve the quality of prison medical care in California.

It’s taken billions of dollars to do it.

California spent eight times more on prison medicine last year than it did when inmates sued to get better care.

Fewer inmates dying

Prison officials, doctors and inmates interviewed for this series agree care is better today.

But, “it doesn’t matter. You can still kill people if you don’t have the right system in place,” said federal receiver Clark Kelso when he unveiled a recent review of inmate deaths.

A smaller percentage of inmates died in California prisons in recent years, but Kelso found a greater number of them might have lived with better care.

Kelso says prisons still struggle to schedule and track inmate medical appointments – and to keep paper medical records up to date.

“I think the problems really we’re dealing with are truly systemic ones,” he says. “It’s not we’ve got bad clinicians. It’s that they’re working in a Third World environment.”

California’s budget deficit poses problems for upgrades

A couple years ago Kelso intended to spend $8 billion to improve that “Third World environment.”

He wanted seven new prison hospitals that would include 10,000 beds for inmates with chronic or serious medical problems.

Lawmakers pointed to California’s budget deficit – and said no.

Kelso had to delay or drop parts of his plan to fix prison medical care.

That worries Ron Shansky. The prison medical care expert visited some of the prisons two years ago and found breakdowns in the medical system.

“The system now has high standards and is attracting high quality clinicians,” Shansky says. “However, high quality clinicians are not going to tolerate for a long time and without any hope a system that inhibits their ability to provide the standard of care that they feel is appropriate.”

Shansky says the medical staff hopes the court will keep the receiver in place.

“I think the receivership exiting any time in the immediate future would have disastrous morale consequences,” Shansky says.

Kelso expects to spend a couple more years on the job. But he’s returned some control of care to the Department of Corrections – and replaced his staff with Corrections employees.

Among those let go is Joe McGrath. The former chief deputy of Corrections says prison care isn’t cured. “No. And is it completed to the extent that I would feel like it’s going to operate effectively from now on?” McGrath says. “I don’t think so yet. I think the systems aren’t up to where they need to be.”

Hiring freeze prevents expansion of ‘doctor’s cops’

McGrath should know. He created a special squad of 2,400 correctional officers he calls “doctor’s cops” because they work on behalf of prison medical teams to escort inmates to medical appointments. He did that because back in 2006 inmates missed those appointments about half of the time.

McGrath wanted to hire 350 more doctor’s cops, but Kelso froze hiring. Kelso said he did that for “budgetary reasons.”

McGrath says there’s no question prison medical care’s improved. But has it improved enough to satisfy the federal judge who took it over from California?

“Does it meet the constitutional minimum at this point?” McGrath asks. “That’s a decision the court’s going to have to make.”

Federal judge Thelton Henderson is handling the prison medical case. He declined to be interviewed for this series. But at a University of San Francisco speech a couple years ago, Henderson said judges must balance inmate rights with the state’s right to manage prisons.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger insists California shouldn’t have to agree to a prison medical care overhaul it can’t afford. This year he pushed to cut the budget in half.

“The bulk of the cuts – $811 million – comes from making our prison medical system more efficient,” Schwarzenegger said.

If the legislature enacts the cuts, California will spend about the same on inmate care as it did before the receiver took over.

Big upgrades to medical records, clinic expansions planned

But lawmakers have set aside $800 million over the next few years to finish putting inmate medical records on computer. They’ve also shifted $2 billion to build a prison hospital and turn three juvenile justice centers into clinics.

Kelso says that’ll boost the medical staff’s morale.

“People will see then on a daily basis that it’s not as crowded, the facilities are better,” Kelso says. “I can work and feel like I’m working as a professional in this environment.”

Kelso thinks his scaled-back plan may suffice because there soon might be fewer inmates to treat.

Last year, a panel of three federal judges ordered California to reduce its prison population by 40,000 inmates.

They say fewer inmates will lead to better prison medical care.

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide if the order is legal.

Measuring results – Office of Inspector General’s Medical Reviews

A summary of medical reviews of 17 prisons released Thursday found that only two met minimal health care standards.

Inmate deaths

• From 2006-2008 the overall inmate death rate decreased from 249 per 100,000 inmates to 216.

• The number of deaths medical reviewers deemed “likely preventable” deaths dropped from 18 in 2006 to 5 in 2008.

• The rate of “possibly preventable” deaths jumped over that same time period from 48 to 61.

• Part of the reason may be that the receiver’s office raised the threshold for a death to be deemed “non–preventable.”

Money

• California spent $1.5 billion on inmate medical care in FY 2005-2006

• California spent $2.5 billion on prison medical care in FY 2008-2009

• The Legislative Analyst’s Office says that’s an average annual increase of 27 percent. But California will spend $1.5 billion on inmate medical care in FY 09-10.

• Per inmate CDCR spent $6,000 in FY-05-06 – the year the receivership was established.

• CDCR spent $16,000 per inmate in FY 08-09.

Staffing

• 2,400 access to health care correctional officers hired

• 85 clinicians dismissed or fired for incompetence

• 50 percent of all prison doctors board certified; all new doctors must be board certified

• Lowered physician and nursing vacancy rates at most prisons

Facilities

• San Quentin Health Facility constructed

• Avenal Health Care Administrative building, Yard clinic and Ad Seg clinic constructed.

• Legislature allocated $2.3 billion in June, 2010 for construction of:

– New acute care facility in Stockton with beds for 1,700 inmates with chronic or serious conditions

– Renovation of 3 juvenile justice facilities into subacute care facilities.

– Enhancements at 9 prisons.

Ray Chavez (for the Receiver)

San Quentin’s gymnasium housed more than 300 reception center inmates before improvements were made to the prison.

Related Stories

• Part 1: California’s budget woes thwart improvements to prison medicine (8/23/2010)
• Part 2: Chino prison sees some improvements in medical care (8/24/2010)
• Part 3: California Inmates still suffer from lapses in prison medical care (8/25/2010)
• Part 4: Central Medical Facility: The ‘gold standard’ for prison medical care in California (8/26/2010)

State Supreme Court limits discovery by inmates in appeals

The California Supreme Court on Thursday limited the ability of death row inmates and those sentenced to life without parole to obtain information from law enforcement that might help their appeals.

In interpreting a 2002 law, the state high court ruled 4 to 3 that such inmates must show the material they want exists to avoid a “fishing expedition” and decided that inmates can be denied information from out-of-state law enforcement agencies that assisted the prosecution.

The decision came in a case involving death row inmate Lee Max Barnett, condemned in Butte County in 1988 for a murder and other crimes. Justice Ming W. Chin, writing for the majority, said a 2002 state law on post-trial discovery did not entitle Barnett to the voluminous materials he demanded.

“We do not believe the Legislature intended the post-trial discovery right to extend so far as to permit a court to order discovery from 22 law enforcement officers working for six different out-of-state agencies, one outside the country, regarding crimes committed between 1965 and 1988,” Chin wrote.

In a dissent, Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar agreed that some of Barnett’s requests were excessive but said the majority’s decision was “intolerably unfair to the defense.”

She said the court had diminished the value of the 2002 law and invited the Legislature to “reassert its prerogative in terms that cannot so easily be ignored.”

“To hold that a defendant must prove specific undisclosed materials exist before requesting their production will inevitably have the pernicious effect of shielding both negligent and intentional failures to produce relevant evidence,” wrote Werdegar, joined by 6th District Court of Appeal Justice Conrad L. Rushing, who was sitting in for Justice Joyce L. Kennard.

Justice Carlos R. Moreno wrote separately to say he agreed that inmates should show the existence of materials they seek but dissented on the grounds that Barnett was entitled to information from out-of-state law enforcement that assisted the prosecution.

The entire court in Barnett vs. Superior Court, S165522, agreed that inmates sentenced to life or death do not have to prove the material they want would be exculpatory.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Eric L. Christoffersen praised the majority decision for putting the state law “in the proper perspective.”

The defense lawyer in the case was unavailable for comment.

–Maura Dolan

Source: LA Times

Why End Drug Prohibition? Stops Racism, Ends Violence

Opinion by jackacole

If drugs were legal, we could alleviate some of the more egregious forms of institutionalized racism within our legal system. For those of you who don’t believe this is the case let me suggest the problem is so bad that in order to find more racist policies one would have to return to the centuries of slavery in the United States. I understand that is a pretty harsh statement but I believe the statistics bear out its veracity.

According to the 1998 Federal Household Survey:

• Whites constitute 72% of all drug users in the U.S.
• Blacks constitute 13.5% of all drug users in the U.S.
• But 37% of those arrested for drug violations are Black.
• Over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations are black.
• African-Americans comprise almost 60% of those in state prisons for drug felonies.[1]

According to U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics:

• Of convicted defendants, 33% of whites received a prison sentence and 51% of African-Americans received prison sentences.
• In New York State prisons Nine in 10 of the 19,000 people serving mandatory sentences for drug offenses are Black or Brown
• According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, a young couple giving birth to a Black male baby today has an expectancy of one-in-three that their child will serve time in prison
• Disenfranchisement: Due to the fact that many state laws say no one convicted of a felony can vote, the fact that nearly all drug violations are felonies, and the fact that for drug felonies we arrest seven times as many black men per capita as white men, 14% of the total voting population of black men in the U.S. have lost their right to vote — In Texas 31% of black men have lost their voting rights.[2]

Racism drives the war on drugs. The estimated population of males 18-years-old and above in the US in 2008 was 113,215,601. Of that number the white population was 90,798,912, the Hispanic population was 16,303,046, and the black population was 14,491,597. In 2008 the number of those in prison by race were: Whites = 856,593 or 0.9% of that population; Hispanics = 451,862 or 2.8% of that population; Blacks = 966,106 or 6.6% of that population. That means blacks in the US are being imprisoned at 7‑times the rate that whites are being imprisoned.[3]

Another way at looking at this issue is in 1993, under the most racist regime in modern history, South Africa’s Apartheid Law, 851 black men were imprisoned per 100,000 population.[4] In 2008 under the United States’ Drug Prohibition Law we imprisoned males 18-years-old and above per 100,000 population at rates by race of: 943 white men, 2,777 Hispanic men, and 6,666 black men.[5] Remember that blacks are only 13% of the problem.

Although it is true that the U.S. imprisons more than twice as many Hispanic men per capita as we imprison white men, that statistic actually hides an even worse problem. Today police are monitored rather closely to determine if they are conducting racial profiling stops. By definition racial profiling stops are initiated by an officer because the driver of the suspect vehicle is a dark-skinned person. But most police departments give their officers a choice of three items to mark for this demographic; “Black,” “White,” and “Hispanic.” An officer who tends to stop dark-skinned people is very happy for the designation of Hispanic. If officers can say the people they stop are “Hispanic,” they do not have to record the race category as black or white. I suspect that if we could divide the list of Hispanic men imprisoned into two groups—identified as white or black—we would discover that the blacks in the Hispanic category also vastly outnumber the whites in the Hispanic category.

Drug prohibition is an effective tool used by the United States’ prison industrial complex to maintain the largest per capita rate of incarcerations in the world. There are more black men in US prisons today than there were slaves in 1840^[6] and they are being used for the same purpose; working for private corporations at 16 to 20 cents an hour. Now we are creating private prisons for profit and the owners of those prisons have banded together to hire lobbyists to go to Washington and demand longer mandatory-minimum prison sentences. Prisons for profit do not belong in a democratic society.

The June 2010 study “Targeting Blacks for Marijuana: Possession Arrests of African Americans in California, 2004-08,” proves that this institutional racism also exists in our war against marijuana users. The report shows African Americans are arrested for marijuana possession at double, triple or even quadruple the rate of whites—even though the U.S. government studies consistently find that per capita rates of marijuana use is lower among young blacks than young whites.[7]

And things are getting even worse with time. data from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice shows half of California’s marijuana possession arrestees in 1990 were nonwhite and 28 percent were under age 20, but in 2009, 62 percent were nonwhite and 42 percent were under age 20. Marijuana possession arrests of youth of color rose from about 3,100 in 1990 to about 16,300 in 2008—a surge about three times greater than that group’s population growth.

On the other side of the continent, despite the fact that New York State decriminalized an ounce of marijuana 30 years ago, since 1997 the New York City Police Department has arrested 430,000 people for possessing small amounts of marijuana. The vast majority were young people of color. Harry Levine reports:

[Y]oung whites use marijuana at higher rates than do young blacks or Latinos. But the NYPD has long arrested young blacks and Latinos for pot possession at much higher rates than whites.

In 2008, blacks were about 26% of New York City’s population, but over 54% of the people arrested for pot possession. Latinos were about 27% of New Yorkers, but 33% of the pot arrestees. Whites were over 35% of the City’s population, but less than 10% of the people arrested for possessing marijuana. In 2008, police arrested Latinos for pot possession at four times the rate of whites, and blacks at seven times the rate of whites.[8]

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[1] Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, National Household Survey on Drug Abuse: Summary Report 1998 (Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 1999), p. 13.

[2] US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 1999), p. 343, Table 4.10, p. 435, Table 5.48, and p. 505, Table 6.52;

Beck, Allen J., Ph.D. and Mumola, Christopher J., US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 1998 (Washington DC: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, August 1999), p. 10, Table 16.

[3] When you break down the 1,009 inmates per 100,000 adult residents by race and gender you find: Men 18+ imprisoned in the United States: All – one in 54; White – one in 106; Hispanic – one in 36; Black – one in 15. Source: “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008,” The PEW Center on the States: Washington, DC, 2008, p.5 & 26

[4] Mauer, Marc. Americans Behind Bars: The International Use of Incarceration, 1992-1993, The Sentencing Project, September 1994, p.1. http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/other/sp/abb.htm.

[5] “One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008,” Washington, DC: The PEW Center on the States, 2008, p.5 & 26

[6] U.S. Census Bureau, Table 1. United States – Race and Hispanic Origin:  1790 to 1990, Internet Release Date:  September 13, 2002

[7] Harry G. Levine, Jon B. Gettman, Loren Siegel. “Targeting Blacks for Marijuana: Possession Arrests of African Americans in California, 2004-08.” Drug Policy Alliance, LA: June 2010.

[8] Harry G. Levine, “Arrests in New York City: Marijuana possession is legally decriminalized in NY State. Nonetheless, NY City makes more pot arrests than any city in the world. How do they do it?” AlterNet, August 10, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/drugs/141866/the_epidemic_of_pot_arrests_in_new_york_city/.

Source: Opposing Views

Calif. inmate care lags despite billions invested

…and yet CDCr screams (and has us believe) that inmates get better health care than most  of us in the free world…follow the money. CDCr is the biggest waste & drain on taxpayers money….gross mismanagement of funds, to the tune of  $9-12 BILLION per year.

By DON THOMPSON

Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—California‘s inmate health care remains poor despite the billions of taxpayer dollars poured into the prison medical system in recent years, according to a report Thursday by the prison system’s inspector general.Just two of 17 prisons met minimal health care standards, and those just barely, according to the report. It covers half the 33 adult prisons where medical care has been overseen by a federal court-appointed receiver since 2006.A federal judge took control of prison medical care after finding widespread neglect and malpractice was causing the death of an average of one inmate each week.

Annual spending on prison medical care has since more than doubled, from $707 million to $1.55 billion, according to the state Department of Finance. The state has spent a cumulative $5.65 billion on prison medical care under the receiver, not counting other costs like transporting and guarding sick inmates and providing them with dental and mental health services.

But Shaw’s report finds the prisons continue to do a poor job of getting inmates basic care and medication.

“We feel that a lot of their suggestions are valid and we appreciate it,” said Liz Kanter, a spokeswoman for receiver J. Clark Kelso. “We’ve made tremendous reforms in a lot of areas, but we realize there’s a ways to go and we’re addressing those.”

The report found that most of the prisons did not meet minimum standards in four of five key areas,

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all of which involved getting inmates the medical examinations, treatment and prescriptions they needed. The two prisons that exceeded the 75 percent minimum score for moderate compliance with health standards scored just 76 percent and 78 percent.The 17 prisons together scored above the minimum in one of the five areas, providing nursing care. They did a particularly poor job in preventative care and treatment of tuberculosis.

Chief Assistant Inspector General Jerry Twomey said the report used the receiver’s own criteria for providing acceptable care.

“In any number scale, 60 is not a good number—80 is much better,” Twomey said.

Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office, said an abysmal medical system has seen some improvements since the receiver took control but not enough.

“What this report says is prison officials are not ensuring that prisoners are seen for routine, acute and even emergency services in a timely manner,” said Specter.

His firms’ lawsuit on behalf of sick inmates resulted in U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson appointing the receiver. Henderson and two other federal judges more recently ruled that the state must reduce its prison population by about 40,000 inmates over two years to improve inmate medical and health care.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the state’s appeal of that ruling. Specter argued that the inspector general’s report is more evidence that “the receiver’s efforts will be hampered until and unless the population is reduced to manageable levels.”

Gordon Hinkle, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, declined comment.

Source: Mercury News