Do more prisons mean less crime?

By Rina Palta

Pew

After 30 years of prison boom in the United States, people are starting to question the usefulness of incarcerating large numbers of people, especially for less serious crimes. In New York, where prison populations skyrocketed after the state passed a series of tough sentencing laws for drug offenders, recent changes have dramatically reduced the prison population. In California, budget woes and federal lawsuits have inspired things like the introduction of non-revocable parole and an expansion in good-time credits for prison inmates–both policies designed to cut down the prison population.

Now, Governor Jerry Brown wants to do more. The current budget calls for less restrictive supervision for a whole host of lower level crimes. That means that fewer crimes carry the penalty of state prison, fewer people getting out go under the strict supervision of state parole, and those that violate parole would likely not go back to prison for the violation.

 

The Parole Agent Association is starting to push back against these changes–because less parole means the elimination of jobs, but also because parole agents and correctional officers believe in what they do.

In a recent memo to membership, Parole Agent Association of California President Todd Gillam wrote:

According to the Attorney General, California is experiencing the lowest level of criminal activity since the 1980’s. The crime rate is not only low, it is still declining. The entire California criminal justice system, to include CDCR and DAPO, are to be commended for the safety in which Californians live.

It’s an argument we’re likely to hear a lot in the coming months and years as California and states around the nation look to scale back their prison systems. And the timing is hard to ignore: over the past 20 years, as the prison population has skyrocketed, crime has gone down. Does that mean the prison boom and the dramatic rise in incarceration rates have cut crime and kept Americans (at least those not in prison) safer?

The consensus among scholars seems to be that are many factors that contribute to crime levels and its hard to pinpoint any one change as the source of their rise and fall–but that the uptick in incarceration likely accounts for about 25 percent of the nation’s drop in crime.

In 2008, the Pew Center on the States interviewed two preeminent criminologists, Carnegie Mellon’s James Wilson and Pepperdine’s Alfred Blumstein on the impact of incarceration on crime. The interview revealed the reasoning and meaning behind this 25 percent figure.

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Complaint: Texas illegally acquiring lethal drugs

By Mike Ward

In a new challenge to Texas’ execution procedure, two condemned convicts complained to federal and state today alleging that state prison officials have been illegally obtaining the prescription drugs used in most of its 466 executions.

In a complaint delivered to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Cleve Foster and Humberto Leal contended that a DEA registration number used to purchase the three execution drugs is registered to a non-existent hospital — in possible violation of state and federal law.

A prescription written by a doctor is needed to obtain prescription drugs under federal and state law.

The complaint seeks investigations by DPS and the DEA to validate that Texas’ drug-procurement procedure for its lethal injections follows state and federal laws.

“The DEA registration number used by TDCJ was … obtained and/or retained through false pretenses,” because it is registered to the Huntsville Unit Hospital, which has been closed since approximately 1983, the complaint states.

Attorneys for Foster and Leal asked the Department of Justice and DPS to investigate TDCJ’s potential violations and “take appropriate steps if TDCJ has violated federal (or state) law.”

The letter to Holder also alleges that the drugs used by TDCJ to carry out executions “are neither kept by a pharmacy, hospital, or clinic, nor dispensed by an authorized practitioner through a prescription.”

Instead, the complaint alleges, the drugs are kept by prison officials, who are not authorized by law to possess or distribute controlled substances.

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More Black Men Now in Prison System than Were Enslaved

Dick Price |

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“More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday, the first of many jarring points she made in a riveting presentation.

Alexander, currently a law professor at Ohio State, had been brought in to discuss her year-old bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Interest ran so high beforehand that the organizers had to move the event to a location that could accommodate the eager attendees. That evening, more than 200 people braved the pouring rain and inevitable traffic jams to crowd into the library’s main room, with dozens more shuffled into an overflow room, and even more latecomers turned away altogether. Alexander and her topic had struck a nerve.

Growing crime rates over the past 30 years don’t explain the skyrocketing numbers of black — and increasingly brown — men caught in America’s prison system, according to Alexander, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun after attending Stanford Law. “In fact, crime rates have fluctuated over the years and are now at historical lows.”

“Most of that increase is due to the War on Drugs, a war waged almost exclusively in poor communities of color,” she said, even though studies have shown that whites use and sell illegal drugs at rates equal to or above blacks. In some black inner-city communities, four of five black youth can expect to be caught up in the criminal justice system during their lifetimes.

As a consequence, a great many black men are disenfranchised, said Alexander — prevented because of their felony convictions from voting and from living in public housing, discriminated in hiring, excluded from juries, and denied educational opportunities.

“What do we expect them to do?” she asked, who researched her ground-breaking book while serving as Director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California. “Well, seventy percent return to prison within two years, that’s what they do.”

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Innocence does not matter…..

High court rejects Ga. death row inmate’s appeal

 

Troy Anthony Davis claims that he was wrongly convicted of killing a Savannah police officer in 1989. Some witnesses have recanted testimony that helped convict him.

Chris Dunn, cdunn@ajc.com Amnesty International USA member Mercedes Binns stands in front of the Georgia state capitol in support of Troy Davis on Tuesday, June 22, 2010.

 

By GREG BLUESTEIN

The Associated Press

ATLANTA — Georgia prosecutors who spent more than two decades trying to execute Troy Davis have won what may be their final legal battle in the U.S. Supreme Court, yet state prison officials still can’t schedule his execution.

This time it’s because federal regulators seized the state’s entire supply of a key lethal injection drug.

The Supreme Court’s Monday decision to reject Davis’ appeal clears the way for state authorities to execute Davis, who had been given a rare chance to argue his innocence but failed to convince a federal judge he was wrongly convicted of the 1989 murder of a Savannah police officer.

The high court’s decision came at an inopportune time for Georgia authorities, who have set three previous execution dates for Davis since 2007 only to have each postponed so judges could review the case. Federal regulators this month seized the state’s entire stockpile of sodium thiopental, a sedative used in the three-drug lethal injection cocktail, amid questions about how the state obtained it.

That means prison officials can’t schedule Davis’ execution until the Drug Enforcement Administration concludes its investigation or Georgia switches to another drug. Arizona, Texas and Ohio have already switched to another sedative, pentobarbital, amid a nationwide supply shortage, but Georgia prison officials won’t comment on whether they are considering a similar move.

Still, the court’s rejection is a crushing setback for Davis, who has become a cause celebre for the international anti-death penalty movement amid claims that he wasn’t the one who killed off-duty Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail — and that he had evidence to prove it.

Even Davis’ attorneys acknowledge his options are limited. Defense attorney Jason Ewart said the likeliest — and perhaps only — route is the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. The five-member panel has the power to commute or postpone executions, but rarely does so.

“We have to address the parole board. They said they wouldn’t execute someone if there’s doubt, and this case is so riddled with doubt,” said Martina Correia, Davis’ sister. “It’s a shame in the U.S. when people don’t value innocence. You would think the highest court in the land would have a lot more sensitivity to these issues.”

MacPhail’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, said she hopes the court’s decision has put to an end to Davis’ legal appeals.

“I’m relieved that it’s over now,” said Anneliese MacPhail. “Well, maybe. I’m not believing it until it’s over. It’s been going on for so many years now that every time we think we’re near the end, something else comes up. I just want this to end so badly, you won’t believe it. This has been a nightmare.”

MacPhail was working off-duty at a Savannah bus station on Aug. 19, 1989, when he was shot twice after rushing to help a homeless man who had been attacked. Eyewitnesses identified Davis as the shooter at his trial, but no physical evidence tied him to the slaying. Davis was convicted of the murder in 1991 and sentenced to death.

Davis has long claimed he could clear his name in MacPhail’s death if a court would give him the chance to hear new evidence. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2009 agreed he should be able to argue his innocence, a rare chance afforded no other American death row defendant in at least 50 years.

During two days of testimony in June, U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. heard from two witnesses who said they falsely incriminated Davis and two others who said another man had confessed to being MacPhail’s killer in the years since Davis’ trial.

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Second thoughts of a ‘hanging judge’

A death sentence in California rarely leads to an execution. Let’s stop the charade.

By Donald A. McCartin

(Illustration by Anthony Russo / For The Times)

• Done with the death penalty

In 1978, the first time Jerry Brown was governor of California, he appointed me to a judgeship in the Superior Court of Orange County. It was a gutsy move on his part, a liberal Democrat naming a right-wing Republican to the bench. I served there until 1993, after which I sat on assignment on death cases throughout California.

During that time, I presided over 10 murder cases in which I sentenced the convicted men to die. As a result, I became known as “the hanging judge of Orange County,” an appellation that, I will confess, I accepted with some pride.

The 10 were deemed guilty of horrifying crimes by their peers, and in the jurors’ view as well as mine they deserved to die at the hands of the state. However, as of today, not one of them has been executed (though one died in prison of natural causes).

I am deeply angered by the fact that our system of laws has become so complex and convoluted that it makes mockery of decisions I once believed promised resolution for the family members of victims.

That said, I have followed the development of legal thinking and understand why our nation’s Supreme Court, in holding that “death is different,” has required that special care be taken to safeguard the rights of those sentenced to death. Such wisdom protects our society from returning to the barbarism of the past. And though I find it discomfiting and to a significant degree embarrassing that appellate courts have found fault with some of my statements, acts or decisions, I can live with the fact that their findings arise out of an attempt to ensure that the process has been scrupulously fair before such a sentence is carried out.

I can live with it and, apparently, so can the men I condemned. The first one, Rodney James Alcala, whom I sentenced to die more than 30 years ago for kidnapping and killing 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, was, just last year, again sentenced to death for killing Samsoe and four other young women who, it has subsequently been determined, were his victims around the same time.

I need not go into the permutations of Alcala’s legal journey. Behind bars since 1979, he has not harmed, nor can he harm, any other young women. But harm has been done, and that’s what infuriates me. Robin Samsoe’s mother has been revictimized time and time again as the state of California spent millions upon millions of dollars in unsuccessful attempts to finally resolve the case against her daughter’s murderer.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have given Alcala and the others the alternative sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Had I done that, Robin’s mother, Marianne, would have been spared the pain of 30 appeals and writs and retrial. She could have dealt then and there with the fact that her daughter’s killer would be shut away, never again to see a day of freedom, and gone on to put her life together. And the people of California would have not have had to pay many millions of tax dollars in this meaningless and ultimately fruitless pursuit of death.

It makes me angry to have been made a player in a system so inefficient, so ineffective, so expensive and so emotionally costly.

Continue Reading @ The LA Times…..

California: An Archipelago of Prisons?

Image via Wikipedia

A colleague of mine sent me a very distressing article from the Economist this week. Titled “California reelin’: Lessons from a place that combines most of the shortcomings of the modern Western state” <read it here> The article chronicles the decline of California and the almost impossible gridlock that exists in what was once the dream state for people all over the world.

Probably the most chilling paragraph rads as follows. –

“Thirty years ago, when Mr Novey became president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), only 2,600 members walked what he calls “the toughest beat in the state”, and there were only 36,000 inmates in California’s prisons. Now, as Barry Krisberg of Berkeley Law School points out, some 170,000 people are locked up there, and CCPOA has 31,000 members. From the air California can look like an archipelago of prisons.”

How did prisons become such a big and non-productive industry in California?

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Millions spent on college for prison inmates in TX

For the past decade, Texas’ imprisoned criminals have been allowed to work on college degrees and take vocational courses while behind bars.

They’re supposed to repay taxpayers once they get out. But of the more than 22,000 felon-students who are out of prison, only 6,630 have repaid the state in full, to the tune of $4.2 million, according to state records.

The remaining 16,088 ex-convicts owe the state $9.5 million, the records show.

Over the 10 years the program has been in effect, the state has spent $26.9 million on higher education for inmates, while getting reimbursed only $4.7 million.

Overseen by the prison system’s embattled Windham School District, which legislative leaders last week threatened to whack from the budget to save money, the little program is now the target of a move to shut it down, as well.

“We don’t provide free college tuition for anyone else like this, so with the budget crisis we’re facing, why should we for convicted felons?” said House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden, R-Richardson, who said he wants the program eliminated.

“The idea of having anyone paying us back in a program like this is ludicrous. There’s no way to collect.”

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CA Correctional officers agree to new contract

Source DPA – California‘s Department of Personnel Administration and the union representing State correctional officers have reached agreement on a new contract that, if ratified, generates immediate budget savings by requiring correctional officers to pay a greater share of their pension cost and take a day of unpaid leave each month for a year.

The Legislature and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) must approve the agreement, which will run from April 1, 2011 to July 2, 2013. The last CCPOA contract expired in 2006. Negotiations for a new contract failed, and since 2007 the union has operated under imposed terms.

“The 30,000 members of CCPOA have been without a contract for three and a half years,” said DPA Director Ron Yank. “It’s about time they get an even-handed agreement that respects their difficult work and generates savings for the State. In particular, the changes in retirement funding we agreed to will help close the budget gap now.”

Under the agreement, pension contributions for correctional officers will increase from 8 to 10 percent of pay. Correctional officers will take one day of unpaid leave each month for 12 months, starting the month after the agreement is reached. This will effectively reduce their pay by roughly 5 percent. During this time, the furlough program will end for these officers. The combination of unpaid leave and increased employee pension contributions reduces the employees’ paycheck by 7 percent.

The employer health contribution, which has not been adjusted for CCPOA since 2006, will rise to current levels, creating a cost. In view of that, the union agreed to suspend State payments to the officers’ defined contribution plans through January 2014. The State currently pays 2% of each officer’s base salary into the plans, which resemble 401(k)s.

“Suspending payment to the defined contribution plans will easily cover half the cost of the increase health portion. It’s our position that, in the area of health care, all employees should enjoy roughly the same benefit,” said Ron Yank.

 

CCPOA releases highlights of tentative labor agreement

 

letter from Chuck Alexander, CCPOA’s executive vice president

Gov. Jerry Brown reaches deal with prison guards

March 15, 2011 |  1:33 pm

California prison guards, who are represented by one of the largest and most politically powerful state-employee unions, have reached a contract agreement with Gov. Jerry Brown.

Neither the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. nor the governor’s office would provide details of the long-awaited contract on Tuesday afternoon, but David Gay, a spokesman for the Department of Personnel Administration, confirmed a deal was struck early Tuesday morning.

The prison guards, who have a reputation for being among the best paid state employees, have been operating without a formal contract since reaching an impasse over wages and benefits with former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.

The union –- which represents about 30,000 employees — spent millions of dollars on Brown’s election campaign. Its annual conference in Las Vegas was one of the few public speaking engagements Brown made between his election in November and his inauguration in January.

– Jack Dolan

LA Times

Officials to overhaul prison education amid complaints

| Michael Montgomery

CDRC

State officials are moving to revamp educational classes in prisons across California following widespread complaints that the programs are poorly designed and could leave some inmates ill-prepared for life after release.

A draft report released last week by the California Rehabilitation Oversight Board cited ongoing problems including “increased class size, reduced time in class, administrative paperwork, student turnover, wrongly assigned students, inmate homework, and elimination of some vocational education programs.”

In some California prisons teachers are struggling to handle as many as 150 students while inmates get as little as three hours of classroom instruction per week.

The report warned ineffective programs could hinder the “rehabilitative outcomes” of inmates. This in turn could undermine efforts to reduce prison overcrowding by cutting recidivism.

Many of the problems arose last year after budget cuts led the department of corrections to develop five new academic models and a literacy program that attempted to maximize enrollment by adjusting the number of hours inmates spend in classes each week.

The department also reduced its vocational classes by almost 50 percent, keeping only “programs that are industry certified, market driven based on employment development outlook data, have a minimum starting pay of $15 an hour, and can be completed within 12 months.”

The report by the rehabilitation oversight board found the new educational models did not comply with recommendations of a 2007 expert panel and were not “evidence-based” programs.

Prison educators agreed.

“It’s a numbers game. It’s not education,” said John Kern of the Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which represents state educators.

Of the roughly 21,000 adult inmates enrolled in academic classes last year, many ended up in “Model 4,” which has a target student-teacher ratio of 120-1. Some 82 percent of the teachers assigned to Model 4 programs said they spent most of their time managing paperwork instead of working with students, according to union surveys.

“The classroom resembled more of a train station than anything else, with all the trains running slowly or canceled,” Kern said.

Prison officials conceded that program cuts were too aggressive and some educational models were poorly implemented.

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