The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 100,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
By Jamie Fellner
Special to The Bee
California has a hard time letting dying and incapacitated prisoners leave: Over the past two years, an average of 37 prisoners a year received either medical parole (if incapacitated) or a sentence recall (if dying). That’s 0.028 percent of the prison population.
There are no national figures, but our research suggests state and federal laws permitting the early release of prisoners who are terminally ill, permanently incapacitated or simply too old to get out of bed are greatly underutilized.
Release on medical grounds is conspicuous by its absence.
In the Federal Bureau of Prisons – which with 218,000 prisoners, operates the largest prison system in the country – 30 prisoners received compassionate release in 2011 and 37 thus far in 2012. At 0.017 percent of the population, that’s fewer proportionally than in California. Texas is doing better, with 100 prisoners last year – 0.066 – although hardly a figure to feel good about. New York has never exceeded 10 medical parolees in a year.
Why so few?
Officials cite public safety.
Most people would agree that early release on medical grounds would be unwarranted for a prisoner capable of committing a serious crime and likely to do so. The head of the Texas Board of Parole recently suggested that a prisoner on death’s doorstep might have a miraculous recovery and commit a serious crime. She didn’t point to any statistics on the recidivism of dying or incapacitated prisoners who secure early release. We suspect the cases are few and far between.
All too often when a young person commits a violent crime he or she has some history of being abused. Granted, many people who have experienced different kinds of abuse grow into nonviolent adults. However, the simple fact remains that more often than not abuse is a factor when children or teens commit crimes.
While I acknowledge the existence of people who do not continue the cycle of abuse, I want to discuss the undeniable influence abuse has on a person's tendency to commit acts of violence on others either as a child or later on as an adult.
The following was posted in my PRM Facebook group. I had to share ( with permission, of course!) with you all….
Via Keri Driver “My husband is an inmate at Avenal State Prison in Avenal, CA. He has managed to stay in school through correspondence courses despite trips to the “hole” and adverse transfers. He wrote this paper as one of his English 102 papers. I wanted to share so maybe the public would look at prisoners in a different light.”
Abuse ranges from outright rape, groping, invasive pat-downs and peeping during showers — to verbal taunts or harassing comments.
Photo Credit: © trekandshoot/ Shutterstock.com
Allowing male guards to oversee female prisoners is a recipe for trouble, says former political prisoner Laura Whitehorn. Now a frequent lecturer on incarceration policies and social justice, Whitehorn describes a culture in which women are stripped of their power on the most basic level. “Having male guards sends a message that female prisoners have no right to defend their bodies,” she begins. “Putting women under men in authority makes the power imbalance as stark as it can be, and results in long-lasting repercussions post- release.”
Abuse, of course, can take many forms, from the flagrant – outright rape, groping, invasive pat-downs and peeping during showers or while an inmate is on the toilet – to verbal taunts or harassing comments. And while advocates for the incarcerated have long tried to draw attention to these conditions, they’ve made little to no headway. But that may be changing thanks to the promulgation of rules, finalized in June, to stem the overt sexual abuse of prisoners. The nine-years-in-the-making Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) is the first law in US history to address the sexual abuse of those in lock-up, and its passage made clear that the sexual abuse of the incarcerated – men and women – is a pervasive problem in prisons throughout the 50 states. But let’s hold off on PREA for a minute and first zero in on the reality of female incarceration more generally.
According to The Sentencing Project, between 1980 and 2010, the number of incarcerated women ballooned by 646 percent, from 15,118 to 112,797; most were convicted of nonviolent offenses. Add in females who are incarcerated in local jails and the number increases to approximately 205,000. In addition, more than 712,000 women are presently on probation, and another more than 103,000 are on parole.
Prisoners’ rights activists note that, more often than not, these women enter the criminal justice system with long histories of domestic and other abuse. Indeed, a 2007 study by The American Civil Liberties Union found that 92 percent of California’s female prisoners had been abused in some way prior to being taken into custody.
The Center for Child and Family Studies at the University of South Carolina corroborates this finding and notes that many teenage girls experienced their first arrest shortly after fleeing abusive homes. “What may be remarkable within this sample is the cumulative impact of cumulative victimization over the life span,” CCFS researchers report. “Many of the women suffered multiple traumas. They were victimized in multiple ways – child abuse and neglect, adult relationship violence, sexual violence, not to mention the number of times they experienced each type of victimization.” The Center calls it “poly-victimization” and cites women’s efforts to stop aggression or retaliate against an aggressor as a key reason many are behind bars. The researchers also note that a history of sexual abuse typically leads to other problems, including unplanned pregnancies, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, low self-esteem, depression and addiction – issues that can make incarceration exceptionally difficult.
Whitehorn acknowledges that many of the women she was jailed with, or has come to know since her release, were abused, and says that the daily pat-down searches that take place in federal prison sometimes cause flashbacks for those who’ve been molested; many subsequently become easy prey for exploitative guards and administrators, the result of a learned acquiescence to predatory behavior.
At the same time, she says, sex between staff and inmates happens, and when it occurs, it raises the ante of unequal power even further. “Even when it’s quote ‘consensual,’ for a prisoner to consent to sex with her ‘boss’ is troubling, especially since a refusal can be considered a refusal to obey a direct order,” Whitehorn continues. “The woman can lose her job or be thrown in the hole [an isolation cell] for saying ‘No,’ and even if her job pays pennies, it allows her to buy toothpaste and other necessities.”
Continue Reading @ AlterNet
As Christmas is celebrated in Incarceration Nation, it’s worth remembering certain things about the two figures who dominate this holiday.
As more than 3,000 Americans sit on death row, we revere the birth of a man who was arrested, “tried,” sentenced, and put to death by the state. The Passion is the story of an execution, and the Stations of the Cross trace the path of a Dead Man Walking.
Less well known is the fact that Saint Nicholas, the early Christian saint who inspired Santa Claus, was once a prisoner, like one in every 100 Americans today. Though he was beloved for his kindness and generosity, Nicholas acquired sainthood not only by giving alms, but in part by performing a miracle that more or less amounted to a prison break.
Nicholas was the 4th-century Greek Bishop of Myra (in present-day Turkey). Under the Roman emperor Diocletian, who persecuted Christians, Nicholas spent some five years in prison–and according to some accounts, in solitary confinement.
Under Constantine, the first Christian emperor, Nicholas fared better until the Council of Nicaea, in 325 A.D. There, after having a serious theological argument with another powerful bishop, Nicholas became so enraged that he walked across the room and slapped the man.
It was illegal for one bishop to strike another. According to an account provided by the St. Nicholas Center: “The bishops stripped Nicholas of his bishop’s garments, chained him, and threw him into jail. That would keep Nicholas away from the meeting. When the Council ended a final decision would be made about his future.”
Nicholas spent the night praying for guidance, and was visited by Jesus and Mary. “When the jailer came in the morning, he found the chains loose on the floor and Nicholas dressed in bishop’s robes, quietly reading the Scriptures.” It was determined that no one could have visited or helped him during the night. Constantine ordered Nicholas freed and reinstated as the Bishop of Myra, and his feat would later be declared one of many miracles performed by the saint.
Saint Nicholas lived on to serve the poor during the devastating famine that hit his part of Turkey in 342 AD. He is reported to have anonymously visited starving families at night and distributed gold coins to help them buy scarce food.
Here in the United States two thousand years later, Christians go to church to worship an executed savior and shop to commemorate an incarcerated saint. And most Americans give little thought to their 2 million countrymen who are spending this Christmas behind bars.
They say their only way out of the 8-foot by 10-foot cells with few creature comforts for many is to inform on other gang members, which they say is really no choice because they face deadly retaliation if they do “debrief.”
A recent system-wide hunger strike by 6,000 inmates called attention to the living conditions of the thousands of prisoners held in the units. But the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation says they are the worst of the worst — inmates who when not isolated threaten other inmates and run gang and drug operations from inside prison walls.
Nonetheless, CDCR is in the midst of what it calls a “dramatic” policy shift in how it determines who belongs in isolation and what SHU inmates need to do to return to the general population. It intends to review the case file of thousands of SHU inmates to determine if they should be transferred to better living conditions.
Since October, CDCR officials have reviewed 88 SHU cases and decided that 58 SHU inmates will be transferred. Another 25 have been placed in a “step-down” program and can work for their transfer to the general population.
Continue Reading @ SFGate
By Graham Kates, The Crime Report
For Kathy Boudin, at the time an inmate of the maximum security Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, it seemed like college programs “disappeared overnight.”
“When college was removed, instead of having a line of people walking to school, we had people sitting up in the day rooms playing cards, playing dominoes, getting in fights,” said Boudin, now the director of the Columbia University School of Social Work’s Criminal Justice Initiative.
Boudin — a former member of the counterrevolutionary group Weather Underground who served 22 years for her role in an armored truck heist that left three dead — and other inmates were determined to complement the prison’s GED program with a college education.
After the program’s launch in 1997, similar initiatives were started by New York’s Sing Sing prison and Bard College. Their successful struggle ultimately brought college back to a dozen prisons throughout New York, and helped form the backbone of a decade’s worth of inmate education advocacy. Today, there are programs that bring college to prison in half a dozen states.
Continue Reading @ Salon
Even in a year marked by heart-wrenching tragedy, we believe it’s important not to lose sight of developments in criminal justice that promise to improve the lives of millions of Americans—and even make us safer–as we enter 2013.
For our second annual ”Top Ten” list, The Crime Report asked readers, contributors and columnists to join us in nominating the stories and issues they believe have had the most significant impact during 2012—and will bear watching over the next year.
We won’t pretend the list is definitive. And, perhaps in a reflection of the kind of year it has been, not all the choices represent “positive” impacts.
But as we’ve also noted this year, criminal justice appears to be one of the few areas of our national life where there is broad bipartisan agreement on the shape of an agenda for change.
That’s worth celebrating in 2012.
Later this week, we’ll be running the second part of our annual feature: the top policymakers or newsmakers in criminal justice during 2012.
In some cases, we’ve credited your comments—although space doesn’t permit us to do more. But for those of you who took the time to suggest ideas—our heartfelt thanks.
And to all our readers, from our staff and contributors, we wish you a safe holiday period—and a rewarding and healthy 2013!
THE 2012 TOP TEN
1. Supreme Court LWOP decision in Miller v Alabama: progress on Juvenile Justice
On June 24, 2012, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that mandatorysentencing of offenders under 18 to Life Without Parole (LWOP) for certain major crimes such as murder violates Eighth Amendment prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment.
The decision “will have ramifications for years to come,” noted TCR essayist Matthew Mangino, noting that 39 states will now ‘need to amend their existing statutes for juveniles charged with first degree murder.”
And it capped a year of impressive and far-reaching progress in the area of juvenile justice, advancing what TCR contributor Barry Krisberg wrote this year was the “slow march to justice for children.”
Some of the most notable efforts include the closure of juvenile training schools and other youth detention facilities around the country, as authorities began a fundamental re-think of how they deal with juvenile offenders.
“The large congregate juvenile facility is a dinosaur,” Krisberg commented in a note to us, “as states increasingly move towards home-based care and the use of smaller facilities closer to home.”
Not coincidentally, “Close to Home” was the name of a landmark program launched by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2012, with bipartisan support, to create facilities for young offenders in their own communities rather than shipping them upstate—an innovative program which by its own merits would otherwise have earned special mention in the Top Ten.
Adding to the impact of the Court ruling and state actions, efforts to end such egregious practices as solitary confinement for young offenders and placement of youth in adult detention took a huge step forward during the year.
One example, cited by TCR contributor Liz Ryan of the Campaign for Youth Justice, a national advocacy group: the set of reforms instituted in Colorado to remove youths awaiting trial from adult jails and allowing judges discretion to decide whether to prosecute young people in adult courts.
Miller v Alabama, as The New York Times noted in a June editorial, underlined a “shift in how the U.S. judicial system views young felons—from irredeemable predators to victims of circumstance with a potential for rehabilitation.”
But it has also left plenty of tough issues to be settled in 2013. Most notably, what to do with the 2,100 persons currently serving life for crimes they committed as juveniles.
An even larger question, underscored by a story written by Daily Beast reporter Clark Merrefield, a 2012 John Jay/Tow Juvenile Justice Reporting fellow, is whether the judicial system can catch up with scientific findings about adolescent brain development.
2. Marijuana Legalization in Washington and Colorado
The nation’s so-called War on Drugs took a significant turn in 2012, when Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana use. Voters’ decisive approval of Colorado’s Amendment 64 and Washington’s Initiative 502 will permit those 21 years of age and older to purchase up to one ounce of marijuana.
Whatever your feelings on drugs, it’s hard to overlook the votes’ significance—as a sign of a new pragmatic approach towards grappling with the nation’s addictions. “It directly challenges the ‘reefer madness of the last century; and most importantly eliminates (in these two states) a widely used means of police control that’s resulted in criminal records for tens of millions of Americans,” comments TCR Los Angeles bureau chief Joe Domanick.
Any shift towards legalization or even modification of federal policies will also have international ramifications—particularly in Latin America, where governments have keenly felt the murderous impact of drug cartels serving the U.S. market.
How the federal government will react remains an open question. President Barack Obama has said that pursuing recreational pot users in Washington and Colorado won’t be a “top priority” of the Justice Department, but he’s given no indication that the feds will support any larger change.
Still, the growing skepticism (or weariness) of Americans towards current drug policies adds clout to the arguments of those who have been advocating treating our obsession with drugs (of all kinds) as a medical rather than a law enforcement challenge.
3. The Connecticut School Shootings and Mass Gun Violence
Milwaukee. Seattle. Minneapolis. Aurora.
Last week, Newtown CT was added to the sad list of places where a gun-toting stranger opened fire in a public place and left shattered lives and families in his wake.
The 15 separate mass shootings this year left 84 dead and dozens injured. Just as tragically, they challenged our assumptions of safety and immunity from the kind of murderous violence that is supposed to be confined to unstable, poorly governed societies “elsewhere.”
Criminologists and psychologists assure us that the kind of indiscriminate mayhem that occurred in places like the Aurora, CO movie theater, where 12 people died at the hands of a troubled young man with a semi-automatic weapon; or the mall in Portland OR, where earlier this month, two people were killed by a 22-year-old who opened fire randomly; is—and will always be—rare.
But that offers little comfort.
Predictably, Newtown re-ignited the nation’s ongoing debate about gun laws, about how we treat and detect mentally ill persons and even about our own cultural fascination with violence. Obama has called on the nation to ask some “hard questions.”
But as TCR’s Washington Contributing Editor Ted Gest notes in response to the hardest question of all—whether serious policy changes are likely to happen as a result of the Connecticut tragedy—“If past history is any guide, the sad answer is probably not.”
That doesn’t mean the discussion is not worth having. It was no coincidence that within hours of the Newtown shootings, educators around the country were advising teachers and parents on how to answer kids’ questions—and relieve their fears.
The essential challenge facing all of us following this year of unfathomable violence is how we can ensure that we never have to answer such questions at all.
4. Trayvon Martin and the intensifying conflict over gun control
One of the most controversial responses to this year’s spate of shootings was that their intensity—the number of deaths—might have been reduced if more “law abiding” Americans rather than less were allowed to carry guns.
Arguably, there was no more notable (or controversial) test of that proposition than the February 26 killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old African-American youth, in a gated community in Sanford FL.
He was allegedly shot at point-blank range by George Zimmerman, a community law enforcement volunteer, who claims that he was acting in accordance with Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” laws—which he said entitled him to use lethal violence to defend himself when his life was threatened.
That argument will get a full airing when the case comes to trial in 2013—but it has already become a cause celebre for those who advocate the spread of “Conceal and Carry” laws and other legislative statutes that supposedly reinforce Americans’ Second Amendment rights to carry and use firearms. Such laws are almost universally opposed by law enforcement authorities, who argue that it will make their own jobs harder—and further endanger public safety.
Advocates, on the other hand, say such laws will deter the most violent criminals—or at the very least reduce the toll they take.
But what is incontrovertible is that Americans are buying more guns than ever: gun sales have nearly doubled in the past decade, even as overall crime rates have declined.
And as law enforcement itself suffers from budget cuts, the growing use of neighborhood watch and other community law enforcement volunteers has come under sharp spotlight.
The fact that the Trayvon Martin case has turned into a major national battleground in the gun control issue is also a testament to the rising power of social media to affect our criminal justice agenda.
Many observers believe the Florida shooting—and the shortcomings of the initial investigation by local law enforcement—would have remained a local tragedy, were it not for the efforts of Martin’s parents and a dedicated group of supporters whose social media postings on Twitter and Facebook, along with old-fashioned lobbying, quickly went viral and grabbed national attention.
As TCR Deputy Editor Graham Kates observes, noting that both sides in the case are now using those tools, “It has been game-changing.”
5. Social Impact Bonds and DOJ’s “Investment in Innovation”
Can the private sector play a role in preventing recidivism? In August 2012, New York City formally launched an initiative in cooperation with Goldman Sachs & Co to support a program aimed at reducing reincarceration rates among young people, based at Rikers Island prison.
The idea was to attract private investor support for social investments that would pay modest dividends if the programs met their goals.
The novel idea has also been picked up by the Department of Justice, which announced two months later support for similar pilot projects—including one called “Pay for Success” in Cuyahoga County, Ohio—that would ‘work with philanthropic and other investors to invest in innovative, data-driven service providers that can achieve results.” That plus a similar program in Lowell, MA will receive $800,000 under the federal Second Chance Act.
It’s of course too early to know whether this kind of program has a chance at producing results, but it signals an impressive effort by the DOJ to start putting its money into innovative funding—even at a time when money is scarce. As Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech to the International Association of Chiefs of police, such programs are aimed at “the development, implementation and expansion of proven strategies for intervention.”
Other programs targeted by the DOJ this year for “investments in innovation” include: smart probation ($3.7 million, seven states); and neighborhood-level anti-crime project in 15 cities ($11 million).
6. Three Strikes Reform in California
The marijuana referendums last November nearly overshadowed the decision by California voters to reform the state’s mandatory-minimum sentencing practices, popularly known as the Three Strikes law.
First instituted more than two decades ago in response to fears of rising crime, the law proved to be one of the most draconian in the nation—consigning offenders to life in prison for even a minor offense such as shoplifting if it was a third conviction.
Passage of Proposition 36, which modifies the law, represents a “victory for human decency and common sense,” wrote TCR contributor Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Irvine School of Law who had argued unsuccessfully at the Supreme Court for a rejection of the law.
It was also part of a “larger nationwide story that has questioned the costs and efficacy of the lock-em up, mandatory minimums stampede of the 1990s,” writes contributor Dave Krajicek. “Bravo, California!” adds TCR essayist Robin Barton. We agree.
7. Camden (NJ) Fires its Cops
In November 2012 Camden (NJ) Mayor Dana L Redd submitted to the state’s civil service commission a long-awaited plan to lay off its entire 273-officer police force. The explanation: the city could no longer afford to pay them. Starting in 2013, law enforcement in the city will be contracted out to a county force of non-unionized officers.
A threatened suit could still halt the plan, but Camden’s dilemma underlined a grim year of belt-tightening that has affected every level of criminal justice spending across the nation. As reader Steven Jones wrote us, what happened in Camden could “very well provide a blueprint for the restructuring of the 18K+ local police departments in the U.S.”
8. Connecticut and Capital Punishment
In April, 2012 Connecticut became the 17th state to abolish the death penalty. Pointing out that just two people have been put to death in the state in the last 52 years—and ‘both volunteered for it,” Gov. Dan Malloy called it a “moment for sober reflection, not celebration.”
Indeed, Connecticut’s decision is particularly worth noting in the week following the state’s worst gun tragedy. Even though abolition continues to face fierce and powerful opposition, it’s part of an underlying trend away from capital punishment across the nation. Executions in the US have decreased by 50 percent in the past decade; and in 2012, Texas reported that the population on the state’s death row is lower than it has been in 23 years.
9. Prison-to-College Pipeline
Among the casualties of the ‘tough on crime’ policies of the last decade were programs designed to support prisoner higher education—on the grounds that such programs (for example, Pell grants for inmates) merely coddled felons. But in 2012, New York State signaled its willingness to re-think such policies with the decision to support the “Prison to College Pipeline (P2CP)”
P2CP, a pilot program launched in Otisville Correctional Facility, two hours north of New York City, was pioneered by professors at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. The program funnels inmates who pass college-level courses to a City University of New York college after release—and also brings John Jay undergraduates to the facility to study alongside the inmates. (Full disclosure: the TCR is housed at John Jay and is partially supported by the school).
In this, it is similar to prisoner education programs launched elsewhere, such as the Philadelphia-based Inside Out Prison Exchange, which reader Cherise Fanno Burden nominated as a ‘new and fresh approach to prison education—or education period!”
As such programs make headway around the states, with evidence showing a direct impact on lowering recidivism rates, the prospect of a return to federally supported higher education for prisoners education may no longer seem an impossible dream.
10. Pro Bono Requirement for New York Bar
Becoming a lawyer in New York state from now on will require spending time as champion of the poor and oppressed. In the first ever such requirement in the nation, New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman announced last May that every applicant to the New York bar must show at least 50 hours of pro bono service.
The program, which already affects some first and second year law students and will become mandatory for all by 2015, accepts a variety of legal cases as “credit”—ranging from legal aid services to legal work for nonprofit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity.
“On every level it makes sense, for new lawyers, for the profession as a whole, for legal providers, for the judges,” said Lippman. Adds TCR Managing Editor Cara Tabachnick: “It is a concrete step towards easing the burdens of public defense and definitely bears watching”—particularly as the nation prepares to mark the 50th anniversary next year of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Gideon v Wainright .
By Stephen Handelman Via @ The Crime Report
The United States Criminal Justice System is flawed, broken, yet fixable; Prison Reform and Sentencing Reform should be major agenda's for each state- we need to stop warehousing prisoners and ready those who are going to parole.
Inmate rehabilitation improves public safety and lowers prison costs.
“We have to care because we can't afford not to".
Posts here are NOT my work, unless noted as such. See my disclaimer in the 'about' section. This blog serves as a Public Service Announcement.
