CA reduces prison population by thousands, almost meets Supreme Court target

Image via Wikipedia

 

California’s prison system has been shedding an average of 933 inmates a week since the governor’s realignment plan took effect this fall, and the state almost hit a court-mandated goal to reduce the population to 133,000 inmates by Dec. 27.

As of today, the state’s prisons held 134,804 inmates — just 1,800 short of the target and far closer to that goal than many expected.

California prison officials announced the numbers Tuesday and said they are in the midst of preparing a report, due by Jan. 10, that details the progress made toward meeting the court-ordered reductions.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in May that California must obey a lower court order to reduce its prison population, agreeing with federal judges who had found that overcrowding was the main cause of “grossly inadequate provision of medical and mental health care.”  In the 5-4 ruling, the high court agreed that the prison system — which has held nearly twice its designed capacity for more than a decade — should cut its population to 110,000 by spring of 2013. The court also and set a series of benchmarks for state officials to reach before then.

While state officials did not meet the first target — 167 percent of designed capacity, or 133,000 inmates — by Dec. 27, they got pretty close. In a short statement announcing the numbers, prison officials appeared to credit Gov. Jerry Brown’s realignment plan for the progress. The plan calls for most lower-level and nonviolent offenders to serve their prison sentences in local jails and report to county probation departments instead of the state parole agency upon release. In the written statement, prison officials said the plan — instituted Oct. 1 — has resulted in state prisons taking in an average of 933 fewer inmates per week.

The progress puts the state exactly where it said it would be in an August court filing.  In that filing, state officials predicted they would miss the 167 percent by two percentage points (the system is now at 169.2 percent of capacity) but would hit the next goal, a reduction to 155 percent, or 124,000 inmates, by June 27.

Via SF Gate

10 corrections resolutions for 2012

As we get ready to ring in the new year, a good plan is to develop detailed goals that are more realistic for lasting societal change in a correctional setting.

Image via Wikipedia

By Robert Hood

As 2011 comes to an end, it is time to make plans for 2012. Many people are thinking of resolutions for the New Year. Each year millions of adults resolve to “get in shape” or “lose weight.” While the effort to adopt resolutions shows an optimistic sense of good intent personally, the same idea can be applied to your profession as a corrections officer.

As we get ready to ring in 2012, it’s a good time to develop detailed goals that are more realistic for lasting societal change in a correctional setting.

During recent personal visits to jails, prisons, and community corrections facilities, along with criminal justice conference attendance, I heard recurring themes from colleagues across the United States. No specific order was used in preparing this list of initiatives for corrections:

1. Recommend changes for new FBOP director.

Since 1930 only seven directors served the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP). Harley Lappin retired on May 7, 2011 after eight years as the agency’s most recent director, and the agency has been without a leader for the past eight months.

On December 21 the Attorney General appointed Charles Samuels, Jr. to serve as the 8th Director. Samuals was the FBOP’s Assistant Director since January 2011. He was responsible for all inmate management and program functions.

Recommendations to improve the federal prison system include:
• Provide greater public/media access to institutions to enhance offender reentry initiatives
• Increase evidenced-based programs designed to reduce recidivism
• Develop proactive training to reduce the level of staff misconduct

The FBOP has 217,000 inmates and 38,000 staff. Most local and state correctional systems follow the federal system’s model. Director Samuels will be tasked to bring major changes during budget and staff reductions.

2. Discontinue glorifying hardcore sheriffs/jail administrators.

Greater recognition is needed for the men and women who effectively manage our nation’s 2.3 million offenders. Far too much attention is placed on controversial leaders using pink underwear, tent cities, roundups of illegal immigrants, and other “above the law” tactics.

3. Provide geographic uniformity in capital punishment.

Thirty-four states have the death penalty (16 states and the District of Columbia do not have capital crimes). More than 98 percent of the men and women on death rows across the United States are incarcerated as a result of state laws. If the public wants to maintain capital punishment, then provide more consistency among states.

4. Address mental illness in correctional settings.

There is an inherent disconnect between the security mission and mental health considerations. There are perhaps as many as 300,000 offenders in jails and prisons suffering from mental disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression. Mental health services are often limited to brief cell-side conversations with mental health staff, and excessive use of medication. Incarceration by its very nature has an adverse effect on mental health.

5. Reduce levels of incarceration.

America has one-quarter of the world’s prisoners. More than seven million people are under correctional supervision in this country. We are not just incarcerating dangerous predators. More than one million prisoners in the United States are serving time for nonviolent offenses. In the federal prison system, for example, 55.7 percent of the inmates are classified as minimum or low security. Approximately 50 percent off all federal offenders are in for drug offenses. Eleven percent are held for immigration offenses.

The prison population is growing 13 times faster than the general population and is cost-prohibited. State correctional spending has quadrupled in the last two decades and now totals $52 billion a year.

Reduce sentences for non-violent offenders. Start with the 100,000 youth under the age of 18 that are released from juvenile correctional facilities each year. Analyze their prison experience and reduce this target group currently inside institutional settings. We should invest in our public schools instead of schools of crime.

6. Assist children of the offender.

More than 54 percent of offenders are parents with minor children. One in every 28 children has a parent incarcerated. Two-thirds of these children’s parents were incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. Work to reduce the cycle of crime by helping to mentor children without ongoing parental support.

7. Start “correcting” in “correctional institutions.”

Far too many facilities are just housing offenders. The label “correctional institution” should be earned. It needs to be applied to public and private facilities exceeding the basic requirements used during internal and external audits. New facilities should be constructed with reentry to the community in mind. Remember 95 percent of all offenders are released to the community. How people are handled as inmates will determine how they interact in public.

Key indicators such as recidivism rates, evidence-based reentry programs, percentage of inmate enrollments, and other positive characteristics need to be measured. Institutions are public buildings. Engage families and community members in the entire incarceration and reentry process.

8. Close GITMO (The Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility).

The Gitmo facility holds only 171 detainees on 45 square-miles of a piece of island. The prison is the most expensive prison on earth, with base renovations estimated around $2 billion. The cost of housing each detainee is 30 times the cost of keeping a captive on United States soil. The nation’s most secure federal prison in Colorado currently holds only 451 sentenced inmates; mostly terrorists, gang members, and spies. Shut down Gitmo and place these detainees in a separate section of this facility. Administrators will just need to separate those sentenced from detainees. An inmate population totaling 622 should be no problem for the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”

9. Enhance evidence-based reentry programs.

Budget reductions often lead to diminished program opportunities for offenders.

Since most inmates will return to the community, effective programs should be identified and retained. Victim offender mediation, faith-based programs, education/vocational classes, drug treatment, parenting, alternatives to violence, and contemplative offerings (meditation, yoga, prayer) should be offered. Use of volunteers provides an invaluable asset for correctional staff. Without effective intervention programs, we are merely postponing the time when prisoners return to prison. If states could reduce their recidivism rates by just 10 percent, they could save more than $635 million combined in one year alone in averted prison costs.

10. Enhance staff training and address misconduct.

Staffing issues have become more critical in the face of budget reductions. Ongoing staffing analysis is needed. Quality training and proactive discussions on reducing staff misconduct would be of value.

Policy statements should identify an adequate number and types of staff to ensure the safety and security of staff, conduct operations, programs, and activities. The policy should also state the authority behind it (statutes, etc.). Staff should receive ongoing training on ethics using data from those who were found guilty of sustained misconduct.

Resolutions are much easier to make than to keep. Hopefully during 2012 correctional practitioners will strive to improve the correctional “system” by using the resolutions provided.

What is your corrections-focused resolution for 2012? What resolution do you think decision makers in the field should be making?

Via CorrectionsOne

California prisons ready to expand home detention program for women inmates

By Julie Small | KPCC

 

An inmate at Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla speaks to advisors during the process of applying for early release through a new program meant to reduce crowding. Photo Julie Small/KPCC

 

• 
  AP Photo/Gary Kazanjian

  The entrance to Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, California.

This is a benchmark day for California prisons. A federal court order requires the state to reduce its prison population by 10,000 inmates. The first progress report is due today.

Most of the 10,000 were low-level offenders shifted to California counties. But a small number were the result of a new law that allows some women inmates serve the last two years of their sentences under home detention. Only 20 women are in the program now, but the state is aiming to expand that quickly.

At Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, a handful of low-level offenders will be spending the final years of their sentences at home.

Twenty-three year-old Crystal Farfan is serving a two-year sentence for stealing cars. She did the first nine months at Valley State Prison for Women. She’ll do the rest at her mom’s home in Los Angeles, where she’ll reunite with her son and daughter. Crystal has to take parenting classes, go to school or get a job, stay in at night and get drug treatment. She says her “co-defendant” – her ex-boyfriend – encouraged her addiction. He’s in prison, too.

“My daughter’s dad was 17 years older than me and he used to beat me up and had me drugged up pretty good,” says Farfan. “And I feel like this experience, coming to prison has really changed me. I’m really grateful for this ACP program, you know, because I think I’d go crazy if I had to stay here a little bit longer. “

Different Gateways, Alternative Exits

California’s Alternative Custody Program (ACP) allows women convicted of non-serious, non-violent and non-sexual offenses to serve the last two years of their sentences at home. Parole agents use GPS monitoring devices to keep track of where they are.

Velda Dobson-Davis, the Chief Deputy Warden at Valley State Prison for Women, helped develop the Alternative Custody Program. She rallied a crowd at the prison gymnasium earlier this month to get more women to apply for the program.

“This is for persons to do their time. To do their time. Y’all hearing me?” she told her audience. “To do your time. So that means you’re still doing your what?”

“Time,” her crowd responds.

“So we’re not getting out of prison early,” she said. This is a virtual prison in your residence”

Continue Reading @ KPCC

The Ten Most Significant Criminal Justice Stories of 2011

Via The Crime Report
What we want to celebrate and take note of—more than anything else—are developments in criminal justice policy, practice and theory that challenge preconceptions and break new ground; and that are worth following up in 2012.

Lists are inevitably subjective. Your list may be different from ours—and that’s fine. We want to hear your comments, suggestions, ideas—and criticism.

Some of our choices cover ideas and approaches begun years before–but for one reason or another showed special promise or produced interesting and replicable results in 2011. Many of the programs that attracted headlines or commentary this year in fact had their roots in the paradigm-busting ideas of a few hardy thinkers as much as a decade ago.

The usual critique is that change in our criminal justice systems happens, for the most part, grudgingly.

But it can happen. Below are some examples that prove the point.

One final note, which we can’t over-emphasize: this list includes notable accomplishments on both the left and the right of the spectrum: we honor both the Right on Crime movement begun by conservatives and new civil rights activism by Eric Holder’s Justice Department—underlining The Crime Report’s rigorous non-partisanship.

 

1.Right on Crime

Corrections spending has expanded to become the second fastest growing area of state budgets—railing only Medicaid. So in one of the most surprising developments of 2011, a group of conservative thinkers decided to do something about it. In just a little more than one year since the group, Right on Crime, has been formed, it has gathered an impressive list of national signatories, including former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Edwin Meese and current GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich.

Their priorities this year have included: fighting over-criminalization, consolidating partly empty prisons and prison diversion programs, among others.

Props to Right on Crime for working on the underlying issues of criminal justice reform and not just calling for more tough-on-crime measures.

–Cara Tabachnick

2.Eyewitness ID

Concerns about the reliability of eyewitness identification have preoccupied legal experts for decades. On August 24, the New Jersey Supreme Court provided a major impetus towards changing the way eyewitness evidence is used in criminal cases, with a ruling that provides judges with a new set of ground rules. Citing a “troubling lack of reliability” in such evidence, Chief Justice Stuart J. Rabner, writing for the majority, declared, “From social science research to the review of actual police lineups, from laboratory experiments to DNA exonerations, the record proves that the possibility of mistaken identification is real.”

New Jersey judges from now on must look at nearly a dozen factors that could affect credibility, ranging from how long a time the witness observed the event to whether the witness was identifying someone of a different race. Although the ruling applies only in New Jersey, the national impact could be significant. In November, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the issue (for the first time since 1977). A ruling is expected by next spring. However the ruling goes, longtime advocates of re-thinking eyewitness identification such as the Innocence Project believe that the New Jersey ruling was a landmark step towards accepting scientific research that shows memories are as subject to “contamination’ as any physical evidence.

“Human memory does not operate as a videotape,” wrote TCR blogger and forensic expert James Doyle this year. “It is not stored in a reliable state and available for replay when needed.Specific memories are easy to contaminate, and the contamination (when it occurs) is hard to identify.”

—Stephen Handelman

Continue reading…..

Lee County Deputies Tied Suspect to a Chair, Gagged Him, and Pepper-Sprayed Him to Death

From Fox 13 in Tampa comes the horrifying story of Nick Christie, a 62-year-old Ohio man who was detained by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office for being publicly intoxicated. While Christie’s wife asked that he be taken to the hospital, Lee County cops decided instead to strip Christie naked, tie him to a chair, cover his face, and then pepper spray him repeatedly, until he died:

The District 21 Medical Examiner ruled his death was a homicide because he had been restrained and sprayed with pepper sprayed by law enforcement officers. But to this day, nobody has ever been charged with a crime, and the Lee County State Attorney cleared the sheriff’s office of any wrong doing.

It’s been more than two and a half years and his wife still can’t accept what happened.

“I was shocked. This was something out of a horror movie,” says Joyce Christie. She said her husband was depressed and was showing signs of erratic behavior a few days before leaving for Florida.

She called authorities and pleaded with them to take her husband to a hospital and be given his medications. Instead, he was taken to jail for disorderly intoxication.

Her lawsuit alleges he was pepper sprayed 10 times over a 48-hour period, at times while in a restraint chair.

Monshay Gibbs was a deputy trainee at the jail at the time. In a video deposition, she testified that she thought the way Nick Christie was treated was excessive.

“He had a spit mask on and was naked,” she said on the video while under oath. Gibbs testified that Christie pleaded with guards to take off the spit mask because he couldn’t breathe.

Link via Reason Magazine

We Killed Your Daughter; You’re Under Arrest

John Seiler:

Incredible. A Kern County sheriff ran down a couple in Oildale, then cops swarmed the scene and arrested the grieving friends and relatives. This is what happens when the law-enforcement unions have become so powerful that they get their bought-and-paid-for legislators to pass laws giving sheriffs and cops almost total immunity. California is a Police State.

Here’s the story from the great civil-rights reporter Will Grigg, as first reported today Lew Rockwell’s blog:

By Will Grigg

Daniel Hiler ran out of gas during an evening motorcycle ride in Oildale, California on December 16. While walking his bike to a gas station, the twenty-year-old father of two ran into a family friend named Chrystal Jolley. The pair was crossing a street at a widely-recognized intersection when they werefatally blindsided by a vehicle traveling at a speed well in excess of the posted speed limit. Despite the fact that darkness had descended, the driver hadn’t turned on his headlights. The victims were killed instantly.

Within minutes, police swarmed the scene, and arrests were made — none of which involved the driver, Deputy John Swearengin of the Kern County Sheriff’s Office. The four people arrested were relatives of the victims, who got into what the Sheriff’s Office described as an “altercation” with California Highway Patrol officers when they attempted to identify the victims.

“I was at home on Friday night working on my car when someone came running over and told me that a deputy ran over my daughter in the street,” recalls Jimmy Clevenger, Jolley’s father. “I ran down here, I was very upset…. The next thing I know, they had me by the neck and threw me to the ground and said I resisted arrest. My daughter was dead in the street and it was their fault.”

The outraged relatives were taken to jail, and face criminal charges. Swearengin, the killer, was taken to the hospital and wasn’t compelled to undergo drug or alcohol screening

The posted local speed limit (for Mundanes, of course) is 45 miles per hour.  According to several on-scene accounts from horrified witnesses, Swearengin blew through the intersection at a speed of 75–90 miles per hour. Despite the fact that he was obviously in a hurry, Swearengin didn’t activate his siren or running lights — or, according to at least one eyewitness, his headlights.

Sheriff Donny Youngblood told the Bakersfield Californian that the deputy “was responding to a report of a stolen vehicle with a suspect still at the scene” when he struck his victims. This would mean that he was not involved in a high-speed pursuit. Furthermore, as some skeptical witnesses pointed out, the main office of the Sheriff’s Department is about a mile or two west of the intersection where Swearengin killed Hiler and Jolley — and he was headed that direction at the time of the incident. This suggests that the deputy wasn’t motivated by an urgent call from an isolated and over-matched comrade, but rather engaging in a favorite pastime of uniformed adolescents — “Kickin’ ass and drivin’ fast.”

Some residents of Oildale, a suburb of Bakersfield, describe the Kern County Sheriff’s Deputies as notorious for their habit of speeding through the town’s narrow streets, blithely ignoring speed limits without bothering to activate their lights or sirens.

“They have no consideration for the other public,” objects Michelle Cameron, a distant relative of Jolley. Her assessment is seconded by Forrest Faulkner, an 11-year resident of Oildale who claims to know and be on good terms with most of the department. “They’re great people,” Faulkner maintains, even as he criticizes the department’s habit of putting the public at risk by needlessly reckless driving. “I’ve seen sparks fly from the car’s undercarriage when they hit a dip,” Faulkner recounts.

Under section 192 [c][2] of California state law, the deaths of Hiler and Jolley resulted from an act of vehicular homicide — one involving “gross negligence,” and therefore a felony. No charges have been filed against Swearengin, and the deputy faces only an “administrative” inquiry, rather than a criminal investigation.  The outcome of the administrative procedure isn’t exactly shrouded in mystery.

“What gets me is we already know the outcome,” complained Anna Rodriguez, one of Hiler’s friends, to a local reporter. “The officer will go on paid suspension. Then they will say he didn’t do anything wrong. And that will be the end of it.”

Via CalWatchDog

We are not about to let this get swept under the rug- we are taking action- Join us on FaceBook- Operation Kern County

 

Just sit there to rot away

Image via Wikipedia

Interview with James Horton released from prison in CA after spending years on death row and years more serving LWOP

“In a level four prison, there are no programs – there is nothing there except riots, misery, hatred and mentally ill people.”

 

This is an interview with James Horton who was released from prison in California in 2010 after spending years on death row and years more serving a life without the possibility of parole sentence. Pat Foley, a board member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP) and activist in the Bay Area, conducted this interview.

James, you spent over 27 years in prison, 12 of them on death row at San Quentin in California. Can you tell us about that and how you came to be released?
I was found guilty in 1985 and sentenced to death. In 1996, my case was finally heard before the California Supreme Court. It threw out the death sentence because the evidence that the prosecution had used from an old case in Chicago was found to be based on an illegal conviction. So the court threw out the death sentence and gave me life without the possibility of parole.
I was still going through the appeal process, and in 2006, at an evidentiary hearing, it was discovered that the witness who testified against me had received a deal. He had a two-year suspended sentence over his head, and they threatened him and then gave him a deal.
On March 9, 2006, the court ruled in my favor that this had been a Brady violation, because they had not disclosed the immunity deal. They threw out the conviction. I was transferred to LA County Jail, and the district attorney finally decided to reduce the charge to manslaughter. I served nine additional months on that sentence and was released on December 30, 2010.

Do you think that life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) is a just replacement for the death peanlty?
No, and this is the reason: In California, when someone has a sentence of, for sxample, 15 to 25 years, and they do what they are supposed to do inside and turn their life around, the parole board is still not letting them out. And in the cases where they do say they can get out, the governor is saying no.
So, it really doesn’t matter whether you get LWOP or not – either way, you are not gettin gout in California.
The sentence of life without the possibility of parole is just saying that the person is so deeply rotten that there is no way they can be a healthy, sane and intelligent person ever in their lirfe. And that is not the case. It just keeps a person locked up.
When you get LWOP you can never go to lower than a level four prison. And in a level four prison, there are no programs – there is nothing there except riots, misery, hatred and mentally ill people. No programs or vocational programs.
They are like the old prisons – like Alcatraz, Sing Sing. The only difference is you have a TV. That’s it – you just sit there to rot away. They should do away with both the death penalty and LWOP.
If a person changes their ways inside prison and does all the things the parole board asks them to do, they should be granted parole.
For some people inside prison, it can take awhile to snap to the reality that if they want something different in the cooking pot of their life, they are going to have to use different ingredients if they want life to taste better. It shows our lack of intelligence if we think that locking people up is going to solve the problem. We ned to end both the death penalty and life without parole.

What do you want to tell people about the death penalty?
That it’s not a deterrent. All you have to do is look at Texas. They execute more peopl in Texas then anywhere else, and yet it has the highest murder and crime rates. If it was a deterrent, you would see a defference in Texas, but you don’t.
All the death penalty does is waste money. If we didn’t have the death penalty in California, we could have money for many other things we need to do in this state, like education jobs and child care.
James can be reached at: lumumbaafreeman@yahoo.com

Published inNewsletter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty The New Abolitionist November 2011, Issue 55

California Prisons: Does Realignment Mean Reform?

Karin Drucker

In March, the Supreme Court ordered California to reduce its state prison population by 33,000 inmates by 2014. This is a herculean task. Even if the state accomplishes that reduction, California prisons will still be bursting at the seams with 40% more inmates than they were designed to house.

This dismal prediction is the unhappy background to the California Correctional Association’s plan for adult prison realignment. This plan, a product of Governor Jerry Brown’s June budget agreement, has the potential to accomplish changes in criminal justice policy that have been politically impossible since the 1990s. The legacy of California’s situation hinges on decisions made during the economically flush 1990s. At the time, “tough on crime” politicians gave residents of California laws like Three Strikes, which mandates life sentences for individuals on their third felony. The great recession of the last few years, ironically, may incite the state’s 58 counties to implement more effective, more humane and cheaper criminal justice practices.

The Supreme Court’s order challenges California’s behemoth state prison system to make itself fiscally sustainable; to treat incarcerated people with proper health care and dignity; and to rethink “normal” levels of sentencing in correctional systems. Will California’s solution, set out in Assembly Bills 109 and 118, do that? Criminologist Barry Krisberg answers this question bluntly: No one knows.

Realignment would be a quick and dirty fix if prisons were to open their gates and allow 33,000 inmates to flood the streets, a narrative that realignment’s critics try to craft. (State Legislator George Runner has instructed his constituents: “It’s time to get a dog and a gun.”) But AB 109 neither transfers nor orders early release of any inmates.

Instead, inmates will complete their sentences in state prisons and trickle into county post-release community supervision services. After October 1^st, all new offenders who are non-violent, non-serious, and non-sex offenders must go to county jails.

Without a direct transfer of prisoners or early release, prison de-crowding will happen slowly, and it will depend on the rate of those exiting and entering state prisons. It is unclear if, by 2014, the balance of prisoners exiting and entering the system will reduce the population by 33,000. Lengths of sentences will play massive parts in determining eventual reductions in prison population. All of these factors make it difficult to crunch the numbers about when, and how, California will comply with the Supreme Court order.

What is a county to do? The burden shifted to California’s 58 counties is enormous. For decades, it has been unambiguously clear that state prison systems need to shrink their populations, but not at all clear who should shoulder the burden. Counties have fought tooth and nail to evade the responsibility; there is a reason it took a Supreme Court ruling to send California politicians scrambling for a solution. Yet it is true that most counties are strapped for cash and 24 of the 58 counties lack the capacity to house the individuals they would otherwise send to state prisons in a single month.

The question has become: should those individuals be going to jail or prison at all? The “non-non-non” population’s offenses, as the Center on Criminal and Juvenile Justice has shown (CJCJ), usually revolve around drug possession, minor drug sales and addictions that contribute to property offenses. This population usually fares better under community supervision than it does entering confinement, which has a criminogenic effect—it is no accident that the state recidivism rate hovers at an astronomical 70%. Rhetoric used for political fear-mongering—evoking images of über-criminals who will walk the streets as soon as fewer individuals are made to serve time—is a costly hoax.

In fact, prison de-crowding and especially cost saving will rely largely on counties. Their behavior will depend on financial incentives, but so far, the state has done a poor job rewarding counties for new, cost-saving alternatives to incarceration. Some counties, including Santa Cruz and San Francisco, have been establishing alternatives since before realignment began.

Ironically, the state allocates funding for realignment using the number of new individuals becoming a county’s responsibility. Therefore, counties that have already assumed that burden (thus saving the state money already) receive less money than state-dependent counties, which have historically referred high numbers of offenders to state prisons. Small counties tend to be state-dependent because they lack resources. However even San Bernadino county, with roughly 1 million people, incarcerates 14 times as often as its counterpart, Contra Costa County. As Dan Macallair at CJCJ has written, justice in California is really justice by geography.

Continue Reading @ Sense and Sustainability

The Silent Treatment

Imagine serving decades in prison for a crime your sibling framed you for. Now imagine doing it while profoundly deaf.

—By James Ridgeway

 

Illustration: Brian Stauffer

 

 

“This is a collect call from a correctional institution,” says the robotic female voice at the other end of the line. After a moment of confusion, I realize it must be Felix Garcia, whom I’d visited several weeks earlier in a northern Florida prison. He is serving a life sentence for a robbery-murder for which his own brother now admits to framing him. I’d sent him a card for his 50th birthday. It had a picture of flowers—something he probably hasn’t seen in 30 years—and some lame words of encouragement. Now he’s calling to thank me and to plead for help. His words seem surreal, relayed in the emotionless drone of a TTY operator: Four of his fellow deaf inmates have tried to commit suicide—one somehow managed to swallow a razor blade. It sounds like he’s thinking about doing the same. “Please,” the voice intones, “will you phone my lawyers? I can’t get through to them.”

Felix has been deaf, for all practical purposes, since childhood. For most of his three decades behind bars, which began when he was 19, he’s been housed in the general population with few special services for his disability. His experiences are the stuff of TV prison dramas: He’s ignored or taunted by guards, raped and brutalized by other prisoners. Last year, he tried to hang himself.

“Felix,” I plead awkwardly. “You are not going to kill yourself. Please, please, hold on.”

“I won’t do it,” he says finally. “I have Jesus.”

I repeat: “Do not kill yourself.”

“Yes, sir.” The call abruptly cuts off.

Continue Reading @ Mother Jones

Prison psychologist arraigned for alleged faked assault

By Hudson Sangree

A prison psychologist accused of faking a sexual assault and robbery at her former Northgate home was arraigned Monday on two felony charges of conspiracy.

Laurie Ann Martinez did not enter a plea before Sacramento Superior Court Judge Gary Ransom, said her lawyer Michelle Spaulding. The hearing was continued.

Spaulding told The Bee that Martinez did not claim she was raped, as has been reported. “She repeatedly said in the police report, ‘I do not think I was raped,’” the lawyer said.

Martinez is still employed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation “for the moment,” Spaulding said.

She is a senior supervising psychologist at California State Prison, Sacramento, but a spokesperson said Martinez was moved to department headquarters in May after allegations of the false report emerged.

Continue Reading @ The SacBee