The Private Prison Industry: Resistance Isn’t Futile

By

Eric Lotke

The private prison industry is on the march. In recent months the industry moved to take over 24 state prisons in southern Florida and buy five prisons in Ohio. Now it’s making moves in Michigan.

But the industry doesn’t always win. Resistance isn’t futile.

The industry wanted to buy five prisons in Ohio but had to settle for one. Community members pushed back and corrections professionals raised doubts about cost savings and program effectiveness. Policy Matters Ohio demonstrated that selling the prison will likely cost more money than it produces. Yes, the state gets $73 million immediately for the sale — but the lease commits the state to pay $4 million annually for 20 years. So depending how cost estimates are done, the sale will end up costing the state anywhere from $8 million to $15 million more than traditional corrections.

Florida shows that the prison industry can’t make an honest case for the product it sells. The move to privatize 24 prisons was slipped into the annual budget bill, and opponents were literally eliminated. The Corrections chief, Edwin Buss, was forced to resign after expressing doubt that a proper “business case” for cost savings could be made. Senator Paula Dockery (R-Lakeland), an outspoken critic of privatization, was stripped of her seat on the Criminal Justice Committee, where such legislation is ordinarily heard. Senator Mike Fasano (R-New Port Richey) was stripped of his chairmanship of the Committee on Criminal Justice Appropriations when he questioned the accelerated process, compressed hearing schedule, and absence of opposing experts.

The legislation institutionalizes secrecy. SB 2036 exempts prisons from the “applicable cost benefit analyses, business case analyses, performance contracting procedures, service comparisons, and impacts on performance standards” used in every other procurement. No such analysis would be done until after the contract has been executed.

SB 2036 turns procurement into a joke. First, buy my car. Then, after you buy it, you can check my car’s condition, compare it to your own car or see if you need a new car at all.

A truly heroic effort killed the bill. A lawsuit by the Police Benevolent Association enforced the state law requiring that such action be in separate legislation not buried in general appropriations. Organized labor, faith groups and local leaders rose up in opposition. The privatization failed in a 21-19 Senate vote on Valentines Day.

Now Michigan. Michigan is interesting because it holds a bleeding wound. The North Lake Correctional Center in Baldwin was private from the beginning, built by Wackenhut now known as the GEO Group. The prison opened in 1999, closed in 2005, and had nothing but problems in between.

The North Lake prison was more expensive than 33 out of 37 other Michigan prisons. The state was paying $75.81 per person per day for confinement that cost $64.89 per day in sufficiently secure state facilities — even though the contractor was failing to provide counseling programs or contractually required levels of staff. At the same time, North Lake was three times more violent than Michigan’s other maximum-security prisons. In the first five months of operation North Lake reported 110 critical incidents, including 46 assaults and 12 attempted suicides.

The state didn’t even need the secure space it thought it might — so it did the right thing. It served notice and closed the facility.

GEO sued to keep the prison open or compel the state to continue making lease payments anyway. But GEO lost the lawsuit and the facility sat empty for years. GEO spent $60 million renovating it from 500 juveniles to 1,700 adults and landed some inmates from California for a few months in 2011 — but the contract didn’t last and the facility again sits empty. GEO is paying capital costs and a skeleton crew for no reason.

Continue Reading @ HuffPo

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California: Over 300 Youth Face Life Without Parole

Legislature to Vote on Bill for Possible Review of These Sentences

• 
  [Clockwise from top left to right] William R. 16 in this photo and 17 at the time of his crime. Patricia L. was 15 in this photo and 16 at the time of her crime. Drachir P. was 16 in this photo and 17 at the time of his crime. Brian C. was 17 in this photo and at the time of his crime. Michael A. was 16 in this photo and 17 at the time of the crime. Saul Paul G. was 16 in this photo and at the time of his crime.
  All photos © 2008 Private

 

No one can predict who a teen will be at age 40. When California sentences a 16-year-old to die in prison, the state ignores what science, parents, and teachers have long known: young people have tremendous potential to change, grow, and mature.

Elizabeth Calvin, senior children’s rights advocate at Human Rights Watch

(Sacramento) – Approximately 300 youth offenders have been sentenced to die in California’s prisons for crimes committed when they were teenagers, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The United States is the only country in the world where people who were under age 18 at the time of their crime serve sentences of life without parole. Nationally, more than 2,500 youth offenders are serving these sentences.

The 28-page report, “When I Die, They’ll Send Me Home: An Update,” draws on six years of research, interviews, and correspondence with correctional officials and youth offenders serving life without parole. Despite mounting evidence of young people’s ability to change, California persists in sentencing youth to life without parole sentences, Human Rights Watch found.

“No one can predict who a teen will be at age 40,” said Elizabeth Calvin, senior children’s rights advocate at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “When California sentences a 16-year-old to die in prison, the state ignores what science, parents, and teachers have long known: young people have tremendous potential to change, grow, and mature.”

The state is at a critical juncture as the legislature considers a bill that would provide review and the possibility of resentencing in these cases. Senate Bill 9 passed the Senate, but failed by one vote in the Assembly in August 2011. The bill has been amended, and another vote by the Assembly is expected soon, possibly on Thursday, March 1, 2012.

Continue Reading @ HRW

Another Death Row Debacle: The Case Against Thomas Arthur

 

In Alabama, a death row prisoner could be exonerated by a DNA test. Why are the courts preventing this from happening — especially when another man has already confessed to the crime?

AP Images

By

Andrew Cohen

 

Another month, another man on death row, another excruciating case that illustrates just some of the ways in which America‘s death penalty regime is unconstitutionally broken. This time, the venue is Alabama. This time, the murder that generated the sentence took place 30 years ago. And this time, there is an execution date of March 29, 2012, for Thomas Arthur, a man who has always maintained his innocence. He also has the unwelcome distinction of being one of the few prisoners in the DNA-testing era to be this close to capital punishment after someone else confessed under oath to the crime.

Late last month, I profiled the wobbly capital conviction against Troy Noling in Ohio and there are remarkable similarities between it and the Arthur case. Both involve white defendants. Both include contentions of innocence and allegations of bad lawyering at trial. Both include a lack of physical evidence linking the defendants to the crime. Both include crucial witness testimony that borders the farcical. And both include state officials reluctant to permit sophisticated DNA testing that might definitively answer questions about whether the defendants committed the murders they will die for.

Arthur’s attorneys are even willing to pay for that testing, the few thousand bucks it would be, and the testing could be completed by the execution date. It is here where prosecutors and judges lose me when they prioritize “finality” in capital punishment cases at the expense of “accuracy.” It would cost Alabama nothing to let Arthur’s lawyers do the testing. And it might solve a case that already has cost the state millions of dollars. Instead, Alabama wants to finally solve its Arthur problem by executing him. No matter how the new DNA test could come out, the state is more interested in defending its dubious conviction.

THE TRIALS OF THOMAS ARTHUR

Thomas Arthur / AP

Apart from the fact that he may have spent decades on death row for a crime he didn’t commit — based upon the testimony of a convicted murderer with a motive to lie — Arthur isn’t exactly a sympathetic figure. In 1986, while awaiting his second trial, he escaped from jail by shooting one of his guards. But any reasonable person looking at the tortuous history of his case through the decades would see that there is something wrong here. Three times Alabama tried Arthur for murdering Troy Wicker on February 1, 1982. Three times the state got a conviction and death penalty against him. Three times there were problems at trial.

Some of this has been litigated – over and over again — at both the state and federal level (the back story alone raises important constitutional concerns). What’s important today, however, is that Alabama now seems to have based its entire case against Arthur upon the testimony of Judy Wicker, Troy’s wife, who said at the time of the murder that she had been raped by a stranger. Over and over again state investigators asked her if Thomas Arthur was involved in the crime. And over and over again she said no. So what happened?

What happened was that Judy Wicker was lying. Turns out she had hired someone to murder her husband — and got caught doing so! Several months after her husband’s death, Wicker was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. A few years later, however, she cut a deal with prosecutors. In exchange for a recommended early release from prison, she would change her testimony and accuse Arthur of the crime. And that’s what happened. Wicker’s testimony secured Arthur’s third and final conviction. And this time, for over 20 years now, all of the state and federal courts that have reviewed the case have endorsed that result.

Continue reading @ The Atlantic

 

When Justice Wore a Mask-Via Prairie Fire News

by Calico Blackie

on Prairie Fire News

“Zorro” Fighting for the “little man”

 

When I was growing up we had heroes on the Television.

They fought for justice.

They fought against corruption.

They fought for the oppressed.

They fought for the PEOPLE.

They fought for what is right.

They were heroes of a bygone era.

They’re all gone now.

When did we go from a society that valued truth and honor to a society that rewards  greed and success at any price?

When did we go from a society that was willing to pull together to help one another to a a society full of selfish pigs that shout “SCREW YOU. I GOT MINE. WHY SHOULD I HELP?”

The “Lone Ranger. ” Justice is needed, Tonto!

 

Where are our heroes today?

Although Zorro and The Lone Ranger were fictional characters of my youth, we all wanted to be like them.

So, where did we go wrong? We went, overnight it seems, from fighting for the “Truth, Justice, and The American Way” of Superman, to a media which started to glorify yuppies and greed as the “new” American Way.

And we bought it.

Why has honor taken a back seat to greed?

Why are we so upset about the revelation of secret government information exposing corruption instead of being livid about the corruption exposed by that information when it is finally brought to light?

Continue Reading @ Prairie Fire News

Criminalizing the Poor: From Welfare to Cellfare

By Christopher Petrella

The atrophy of the social welfare state and the growth of the penal state represent a double criminalization of poverty.

 

On August 22, 1996 President Bill Clinton signed into law his now infamous Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act thereby “end[ing] welfare as we have come to know it.” The Act replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). TANF establishes a lifetime limit of 60 months (5 years) for federal assistance, mandates that single parents participate in work activities for an average of 30 hours per week, and caps federal block grant contributions to states at $16.6 billion per year. (As a result of inflation the real value of the TANF block grant has already fallen by 28%.)

And despite few fluctuations in the poverty rate since TANF supplanted AFCD, the participation rate among eligible families has plummeted by 52% since 1995.

Over the same time period—and despite flat to declining crime rates— the U.S. prison and jail population has increased by 44%. Perhaps a quickly expanding prison population is precisely the unspoken foundation upon which “welfare to workfare” rests. We haven’t “ended welfare;” instead we’ve invisiblized it by shifting its beneficiaries from the public square to the prison yard.

The atrophy of the social welfare state and the growth of the penal state represent a double criminalization of poverty. Considering TANF/AFDC data alongside trends in incarceration is necessary for rethinking the role of the state in provisioning basic social services. The transition from welfare to workfare and the proliferation of bodies behind bars taken together “work to marginalize populations—by forcing them off the public aid rolls, on the one side, and holding them under lock, on the other—and eventually pushing them into the peripheral [and deeply precarious] sectors of the labor market.”

The shared historical roots and political convergences of the assistantial and penitential functions of the state are further validated by the fact that the “social profile” of their respective beneficiaries is uncannily similar. For instance, 50% of former AFDC recipients throughout the early 1990s lived at or below half of the poverty line. Today, 65% of inmates in the United States inhabit the same category.

Continue Reading @ NationOfChange

 

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AP Interview: Texas DA seeks death penalty review

By NOMAAN MERCHANT, Associated Press

In this photo made Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012, Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins talks about the death penalty in a courtroom in Dallas. Watkins, whose office has freed more than 20 wrongfully convicted inmates, questioned whether Texas has executed an innocent person and called for a statewide “conversation” about how capital punishment is administered. Watkins described himself as a moral opponent of the death penalty who has pursued it in several cases because it’s the law. He also talks for the first time about his great-grandfather, who was executed in 1932 after being convicted of murder and robbery. Watkins says that dark chapter in his family’s history made him more aware of what needs to be changed. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

 

The Texas prosecutor leading an aggressive push to free wrongly imprisoned inmates, in a county where more than two dozen wrongful convictions have been overturned, is calling for a review of the capital punishment system in the nation’s busiest death penalty state.

Craig Watkins’ tenure as Dallas County’s top prosecutor has earned him a national reputation. Now, as Watkins publicly acknowledges that his great-grandfather was executed in Texas almost 80 years ago, he called on state lawmakers to review death penalty procedures to ensure the punishment is fairly administered.

“I think it’s a legitimate question to have, to ask: ‘Have we executed someone that didn’t commit the crime?’” Watkins said in an interview with The Associated Press.

After becoming district attorney in 2007, Watkins started a conviction integrity unit that has examined convictions and, in some cases, pushed for them to be overturned. Dallas County has exonerated 22 people through DNA evidence since 2001 — by far the most of any Texas county and more than all but two states. An additional five people have been exonerated outside of DNA testing. Most of those exonerations occurred during Watkins’ tenure.

Texas has executed 55 inmates since 2009, including 13 last year, a 15-year low. Twelve former death row inmates have been freed since 1973.

“I think the reforms we’ve made in our criminal justice system are better than any other state in this country,” Watkins said. “But we still need reforms. And so, I don’t know if I’m the voice for that. I just know, here I am, and I have these experiences.”

Among those experiences was hearing about the execution of his great-grandfather, Richard Johnson. According to state criminal records and news accounts, Johnson escaped from prison three times while serving a 35-year sentence for burglary, and he was charged with killing a man after his third escape. He was convicted of murder in October 1931 and executed in the electric chair in August 1932.

Watkins said he did not get a full explanation of what happened until he became district attorney. His grandmother, who was a young girl when her father was executed, still struggles with the story, according to Watkins and his mother, Paula.

Watkins says he opposes the death penalty on moral grounds but doesn’t want those beliefs “pushed upon someone else.” He has sought the death penalty at trial in nine cases, with eight death sentences received. An additional four death penalty cases are pending, according to his office. A panel within his office reviews possible death penalty cases and votes on whether to pursue it.

While Watkins doesn’t take a position on his great-grandfather’s guilt, he said hearing about the incident made him think harder about whether defendants, particularly African-Americans, are being treated fairly by the courts.

Continue Reading @ AP/Google

No More Prison Medical Facilities For California

Julie Small, KPCC

No More Prison Medical Facilities For California

Aired 2/24/12

California’s legislative analyst says the state doesn’t need more prison medical facilities.

A couple years ago state lawmakers agreed to fund a new 1700 bed medical and mental health facility that’s set to open next year in Stockton. It’s for inmates who need around-the-clock nursing care. Inmates with chronic or complex diseases who can still function on their own were to be housed at converted juvenile justice facilities.

“We don’t think that those are going to be needed,” said Edwards. Aaron Edwards, who is with the legislative analyst’s office, said realignment changes the equation. “After realignment’s implemented, prison overcrowding is going to be reduced significantly. And as a result it’s going to be a lot easier for the department to deliver adequate care within existing facilities.”

California’s “realignment” law began shifting low-level felons to counties in October. The state’s inmate population has dropped by 16,000 since then. It’s expected to fall by 40,000 inmates within a few years. State lawmakers passed realignment to comply with a federal court order to reduce crowding in prisons. A three-judge panel found that overcrowding prevents inmates from getting adequate medical care. The federal receiver tasked with improving that care has said he still needs the additional medical facilities to treat inmates who require higher-levels of attention than standard prisons can provide.

Bradley Manning, Solitary Confinement and Occupy 4 Prisoners

By Bill Quigley

(Photo: wlcentral.org)

February 23, 2012

Today US Army Private Bradley Manning is to be formally charged with numerous crimes at Fort Meade, Maryland.   Manning, who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by members of the Icelandic Parliament, is charged with releasing hundreds of thousands of documents exposing secrets of the US government to the whistleblower website Wikileaks. These documents exposed lies, corruption and crimes by the US and other countries.  The Bradley Manning defense team points out accurately that much of what was published by Wikileaks was either not actually secret or should not have been secret.

The Manning prosecution is a tragic miscarriage of justice.  US officials are highly embarrassed by what Manning exposed and are shooting the messenger.  As Glen Greenwald, the terrific Salon writer, has observed, President Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers for espionage than all other presidents combined.

One of the most outrageous parts of the treatment of Bradley Manning is that the US kept him in illegal and torturous solitary confinement conditions for months at the Quantico Marine base in Virginia.  Keeping Manning in solitary confinement sparked challenges from many groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU and the New York Times.

Human rights’ advocates rightly point out that solitary confinement is designed to break down people mentally.  Because of that, prolonged solitary confinement is internationally recognized as a form of torture.  The conditions and practices of isolation are in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention against Torture, and the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination.

Medical experts say that after 60 days in solidary peoples’ mental state begins to break down.  That means a person will start to experience panic, anxiety, confusion, headaches, heart palpitations, sleep problems, withdrawal, anger, depression, despair, and over-sensitivity. Over time this can lead to severe psychiatric trauma and harms like psychosis, distortion of reality, hallucinations, mass anxiety and acute confusion. Essentially, the mind disintegrates.

Continue Reading @ Indypendent.org

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Occupy Wall Street Takes On U.S. Prison Conditions

By Laird Harrison

SAN QUENTIN, Calif., Feb 20 (Reuters) – Hundreds of anti-Wall Street demonstrators and prison reform activists joined forces outside San Quentin State Prison in California on Monday to protest high incarceration rates and living conditions for inmates.

Speakers said the state’s sentencing laws were too strict. They called for an end to solitary confinement and the death penalty and said children should not be tried as adults.

“I myself experienced more than 14 months of solitary confinement,” said Sarah Shourd, 33, an American imprisoned in Iran after being arrested while hiking near the Iraq border in 2009. “After only two months, my mind began to slip.”

She was joined at the protest by Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who spent more than two years in prison in Iran after being arrested with Shourd, and by former members of the Black Panthers African-American activist group who spoke of a history of problems at the San Quentin prison.

The prison is California’s oldest correctional facility and houses the state’s only gas chamber.

Activist Barbara Becnel said prisoners were drawing inspiration from the Occupy movement, which spread across the country last autumn with calls for greater economic equality. The movement has lost ground as many U.S. cities evicted protesters from their tent camps.

“We have merged the prison rights movement with the Occupy movement,” Becnel said, quoting a message she said came from San Quentin death row prisoner Kevin Cooper. “The 99 percent has to be concerned about the bottom 1 percent.”

Marin County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Keith Boyd estimated the crowd numbered 600 to 700 people at its height.

Demonstrators held a moment of silence for Christian Alexander Gomez, 27, who died on Feb. 2 while on a hunger strike in California’s Corcoran State Prison.

Gomez was among thousands of California prisoners who have staged hunger strikes in waves since July, starting with protests against isolation units at Pelican Bay State Prison.

The strikes began after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in May that California prison overcrowding was causing “needless suffering and death” and ordered the state to reduce the number of prisoners to 110,000, still well over the maximum capacity, from 140,000.

Continue Reading @ Huffington Post

George Soros gives $500,000 to effort to narrow three-strikes law

Image via Wikipedia

 

Billionaire George Soros has written a $500,000 check to help finance a potential ballot measure that aims to lower the number of criminals serving prison terms of 25 year to life under California’s three-strikes law.

The hedge-fund titan and longtime supporter of liberal causes made the donation on Jan. 30, according to records filed with the secretary of State’s office.

The donation was first reported by the Sacramento Bee.

The contribution from Soros came the same day that one of the measure’s co-authors, Stanford law professor David Mills, gave the campaign $250,000. That raises Mills’ contributions to a total of $603,000, making him the largest contributor to the effort.

Proponents of the measure are circulating petitions to get enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot, an effort that could cost as much as $4 million.

The initiative would narrow the circumstances under which offenders could be sentenced to 25 years to life under the three-strikes law, passed by voters in 1994. Third-strikers could get the maximum sentence only if the offense that brings them to court the third time is a serious or violent crime.

The measure would also allow some prison inmates sent away for nonviolent crimes under three strikes to become eligible for early release.

The state Assembly last month approved a similar measure for placement on the 2014 ballot, but it has not cleared the state Senate.

Via @ LA Times Blog

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