Cops Go Undercover at High School to Bust Special-Needs Kid for Pot: Why Are Police So Desperate to Throw Kids in Jail?

The school-to-prison pipeline strikes again.

Photo Credit: shutterstock.com

 

 

By Kristen Gwynne

 

Californians Doug and Catherine Snodgrass are suing their son’s high school for allowing undercover police officers to set up the 17-year-old special-needs student for a drug arrest.

In a video segment on ABC News, they say they were “thrilled” when their son — who has Asperger’s and other disabilities and struggled to make friends — appeared to have instantly made a friend named Daniel.

“He suddenly had this friend who was texting him around the clock,” Doug Snodgrass told ABC News. His son had just recently enrolled at Chaparral High School.

“Daniel,” however, was an undercover cop with the Temecula Police Department who ” hounded” the teenager to sell him his prescription medication. When he refused, the undercover cop gave him $20 to buy him weed, and he complied — not realizing the guy he wanted to befriend wanted him behind bars.

In December, the unnamed senior was arrested along with 21 other students from three schools, all charged with crimes related to the two officers’ undercover drug operation at two public schools in Temecula, California (Chaparral and Temecula Valley High School). This March, Judge Marian H. Tully ruled that Temecula Valley Unified School District could not expel the student, and had in fact failed to provide him with proper services.

 “Within three days of the officer’s requests, [the] student burned himself due to his anxiety,” Tully said. “Ultimately, the student was persuaded to buy marijuana for someone he thought was a friend who desperately needed this drug and brought it to school for him.”

In January, a juvenile court judge decided that extenuating circumstances applied to the student’s case, and ruled that he serve informal probation and 20 hours of community service, which would translate into “no finding of guilt.”

Since being allowed back to school, Snodgrass says his son has been “bullied” via suspensions and threat of expulsion. “Our son was cleared of the criminal charge, but the school continued to try and expel him,” Snodgrass said.

The Snodgrasses are now suing the school for unspecified damages. District administrators, they told ABC, should have protected their son, but instead “participated with local authorities in an undercover drug sting that intentionally targeted and discriminated against [him].”

“Sending police and informants to entrap high-school students is sick,” says Tony Newman, director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance. “We see cops seducing 18-year-olds to fall in love with them or befriending lonely kids and then tricking them into getting them small amounts of marijuana so they can stick them with felonies. We often hear that we need to fight the drug war to protect the kids. As these despicable examples show, more often the drug war is ruining young people’s lives and doing way more harm than good.”

Stephen Downing, a retired law enforcement veteran and former captain of detectives in the LAPD, said the behavior of the police in this case points to troubling trends in policy. ”It is evidence of just how far we have gone, and how callous we have become, in treating our children with the care and dignity they should be entitled.”

“The fact that the police officer chose to prey upon the most vulnerable” is “egregious” but not surprising, he said. He pointed toward  policing tactics and policies — like quotas, the increasing criminalization of America’s schools, and the war on drugs —  that put pressure on police to treat normal teen behavior as criminal.

Downing, who is a member of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, also pointed out, “The less fortunate are always targeted.”

“Do we ever hear of an undercover operation like this conducted in an exclusive private school, or on a university campus, or on the stages of a movie studio in Hollywood? No, we don’t. Why? Because those people would complain, get lawyers and make life miserable for the status quo.”

“The parents of this child are right to bring a lawsuit, to take that needed step that will, hopefully, bring about the kind of change that will stop this kind of tyrannical corruption and harm to our children,” he said.

Drug crimes are not the only charges unfairly leveled against students. Marginalized youths are regularly the targets of the school-to-prison pipeline, as in the case of  Kiera Wilmot, a 16-year-old girl who was arrested less than a month ago for accidentally causing a small explosion during a science experiment.

Via AlterNet

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Arrested for an old parking ticket, elderly woman dies in court “gasping for breath” after sheriff’s deputies refused to give her medication.

The deceased, who was fighting a traffic ticket, suffered from asthma — but deputies accused her of faking, suit filed in court argues.

A woman died on a courthouse floor because Alabama sheriff’s deputies refused to give her her medicine – after arresting her for an old traffic ticket, the woman’s daughter claims in court.

Ayunna Johnae London sued St. Clair County Sheriff Terry Surles, jail administrators Austin Nash and Terry Marcrum, Southern Healthcare Partners, and its employee Jennifer Eisel, in Federal Court.

London claims her mother, Dwana Voncia London-Richardson, died gasping for breath in court after callous and unconstitutional treatment from the defendants.

Richardson suffered from asthma and other serious health problems, but the defendants refused to give her her medication, accused her of faking, and let her die in the courtroom, her daughter claims.

Southern Healthcare Partners, which provided medical care to inmates at the St. Clair County Jail, failed to treat her mother properly, London says.

Her 45-year-old mother died in May 2011 at the St. Clair County Courthouse while in the sheriff’s custody.

Richardson was arrested on May 19, 2011, in Tarrant City, Ala., for failing to pay a 2008 traffic ticket. She was sent to the St. Clair County Jail.

London claims that when she visited her mom in jail two days later, her mother could hardly walk, had trouble breathing and complained of pain in both legs.

London claims the jail staff refused to give her mom her asthma medication and stopped other inmates from helping her.

“Ms. Richardson told Ayunna that she was sick, that both her legs were hurting her so badly that she could not walk to the tray area to pick up her food, and that they would not give her her medicine,” the complaint states.

“Ms. Richardson told Ayunna that several of the inmates were trying to help her out by going to get her tray for her, since she could hardly walk, but the jailers told them that they were ‘babying’ her, and moved Ms. Richardson to a different area in the jail, away from the inmates that were trying to help her.”

Jail staff refused to take Richardson to the hospital, despite her worsening condition, her daughter says.

On May 23, deputies took her mother to court and ignored her need for medical care until it was too late, London says.

“Ayunna headed to the St. Clair County Courthouse early that morning,” the complaint states. “She could not locate where court was being held. She saw deputy (or jailer) John Doe standing at the fire station, talking to a firefighter so she pulled into the station to ask where court was being held.

“When she pulled into the fire station, she saw her mother lying on the ground next to the police car with her legs extended under the police car.

“She asked them what had happened and her mother told her that she did not know, that she had just passed out. Ms. Richardson was sweating and struggling breathing.

“Ayunna had one of her mother’s asthma pumps in her car so she asked if her mother could sit in her car and get some air.

“Ayunna gave her mother the asthma pump but it was not working. Her mother’s breathing continued to get worse.”

London says the deputies still refused to take her mom to the hospital, and said would be locked up if she didn’t keep her court date.

“Ms. Richardson was unable to walk,” the complaint states. “Deputy (or jailer) Doe obtained an office chair from the courthouse and they used it to wheel Ms. Richardson to the courtroom.

“Ayunna set beside deputy (or jailer) Doe and her mother, fanning her mother, whose breathing continued to get worse.

“After sitting in the courtroom waiting for about twenty minutes, Ms. Richardson stated that she ‘could not take anymore,’ and she told deputy/jailer Doe that she needed help.

“Ayunna also pleaded with deputy/jailer Doe to get someone to help her mother.

“Deputy/jailer Doe responded as though he believed Ms. Richardson was just putting on.

“Ms. Richardson then stated ‘I need to lay down.’

“Ms. Richardson laid down on the courtroom floor and her body started to shaking.

“Deputy/jailer Doe took no action to assist Ms. Richardson or to clear the courtroom.

“Everyone in the courtroom watched as Ms. Richardson died in court, on the courtroom floor.

“Ayunna stayed beside her mother trying to do CPR to bring her back for about twenty minutes, but she failed.”

Emergency personnel arrived 45 minutes later and took Richardson, who was unresponsive, to the hospital.

London says her mother was pronounced dead within 5 minutes of arriving at the hospital.

She seeks punitive damages for constitutional violations, wrongful death and negligence.

She is represented by Charles Tatum Jr. of Jasper, Ala.

Via Courthouse News.

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CT prisoner Bill Coleman being Forcefed since 2008

Guards from Camp 5 at Joint Task Force Guantanamo escort a detainee from his cell to a recreational facility within the camp. (Flickr/Kilho Park)

By Ann Neumann

I know a hunger-striking prisoner who hasn’t eaten solid food in more than five years. He is being force-fed by the medical staff where he’s incarcerated. Starving himself, he told me during one of our biweekly phone calls last year, is the only way he has to exercise his first amendment rights and to protest his conviction. Not eating is his only available free speech act.

The prisoner has lost half his body weight and four teeth to malnutrition. He and his lawyer have gone to court to stop the force-feedings, but a judge ruled against him in March. If I asked you to guess where Coleman is being held, you’d likely say Guantánamo — “America’s offshore war-on-terror camp” — where a mass hunger strike of 100 prisoners has brought the ethics of force-feeding to American newspapers, if not American consciences. Twenty-five of those prisoners are now being manually fed with tubes.

But William Coleman is not at Guantánamo. He’s in Connecticut. The prison medical staff force-feeding him are on contract from the University of Connecticut, not the U.S. Navy. Guantánamo is not an anomaly. Prisoners — who are on U.S. soil and not an inaccessible island military base — are routinely and systematically force-fed every day.

The accounts of force-feeding coming out of Guantánamo, including Samir Naji al Hasan Moqbel’s “Gitmo is Killing Me” in The New York Times two weeks ago, are consistent with how Coleman has described the process to me — and to the Supreme Court of Connecticut.

On Oct. 23, 2008, medical staff and corrections officers first strapped Coleman at four points to a vinyl medical table and snaked a rubber tube up his nose, down his throat and into his stomach. When the tube kinked, they thought his reaction to the pain was resistance and tied him across the chest with mesh straps. They reinserted the tube and Coleman gagged as they drained Ensure, a nutrient drink, into it. He continued to gag. He bled. He vomited. He felt violated, not medically treated. Coleman is still being force-fed; sometimes the staff put a semi-permanent tube up his nose, sometimes they don’t. They no longer strap him down. He knows the staff. They are, he says, following orders.

Continue Reading @ Waging NonViolence

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This is Zero Tolerance in effect…

Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children – Police state madness – more and more children being arrested for trivial things….fueling the school to prison pipeline, mass incarceration…Zero Tolerance in full effect.

 

 

#1 At one public school down in Texas, a 12-year-old girl named Sarah Bustamantes was recently arrested for spraying herself with perfume

#2 A 13-year-old student at a school in Albuquerque, New Mexico was recently arrested by police for burping in class.

#3 Another student down in Albuquerque was forced to strip down to his underwear while five adults watched because he had $200 in his pocket. The student was never formally charged with doing anything wrong.

#4 A security guard at one school in California broke the arm of a 16-year-old girl because she left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning up some cake that she had spilled.

#5 One teenage couple down in Houston poured milk on each other during a squabble while they were breaking up. Instead of being sent to see the principal, they were arrested and sent to court.

#6 In early 2010, a 12-year-old girl at a school in Forest Hills, New York was arrested by police and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk. “I love my friends Abby and Faith” was what she reportedly scribbled on her desk.

#7 A 6-year-old girl down in Florida was handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#8 One student down in Texas was reportedly arrested by police for throwing paper airplanes in class.

#9 A 17-year-old honor student in North Carolina named Ashley Smithwick accidentally took her father’s lunch with her to school. It contained a small paring knife which he would use to slice up apples. So what happened to this standout student when the school discovered this? The school suspended her for the rest of the year and the police charged her with a misdemeanor.

#10 In Allentown, Pennsylvania a 14-year-old girl was tasered in the groin area by a school security officer even though she had put up her hands in the air to surrender.

#11 Down in Florida, an 11-year-old student was arrested, thrown in jail and charged with a third-degree felony for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.

#12 Back in 2009, an 8-year-old boy in Massachusetts was sent home from school and was forced to undergo a psychological evaluation because he drew a picture of Jesus on the cross.

#13 A police officer in San Mateo, California blasted a 7-year-old special education student in the face with pepper spray because he would not quit climbing on the furniture.

#14 In America today, even 5-year-old children are treated brutally by police. The following is from a recent article that described what happened to one very young student in Stockton, California a while back….

“Earlier this year, a Stockton student was handcuffed with zip ties on his hands and feet, forced to go to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and was charged with battery on a police officer. That student was 5 years old”.

#15 At one school in Connecticut, a 17-year-old boy was thrown to the floor and tasered five times because he was yelling at a cafeteria worker.

#16 A teenager in suburban Dallas was forced to take on a part-time job after being ticketed for using foul language in one high school classroom. The original ticket was for $340, but additional fees have raised the total bill to $637.

#17 A few months ago, police were called out when a little girl kissed a little boy during a physical education class at an elementary school down in Florida.

#18 A 6-year-old boy was recently charged with sexual battery for some “inappropriate touching” during a game of tag at one elementary school in the San Francisco area.

#19 In Massachusetts, police were recently sent out to collect an overdue library book from a 5-year-old girl.

HERE ARE THE LINKS:

http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/texas-student-sa rah-bustamantes-12-arrested-for-spraying-perfume/13250/

http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=150 77292

Check out this video on YouTube:<br/><br/>http://youtu.be/wk2b_twCCdw

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2012/jan/09/texas-police-schools?cat=world& type=article

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/new.york.doodle.arrest/index.html?hpt=C1

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/feb/11/port-st-lucie-schools-confines-6-year-old-with/

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/12/29/nc-high-school-senior-suspended-charged-possesion-small-knife-lunchbox/#

http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/2009/june09/zero-tolerance-states.html

http://m.tauntongazette.com/wkdTGazette/pm_/contentdetail.htm?contentguid

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/San-Mateo-pays-family-of-boy-pepper-sprayed-by -cop-2384518.php

http://django.medianewsgroup.com/mobile/interstitial/?r=http%3A%2F%2F www.middletownpress.com%2Farti cles%2F2011%2F06%2F14%2Fnews%2 Fdoc4df7b12331ec9768149316.txt %3Fmobredir%3Dfalse&d=iphone

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/cops-called-for-school-kiss-657831

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/01/27/hercules-family-battles-playground-sex-assault-claim-against-6-year-old/

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/01/02/charlton-library-sends-police-to-collect-overd ue-books-from-5-year-old/ — with Your Son or Daughter next

 

Related articles

• In Texas, Police in Schools Criminalize 300,000 Students Each Year (alternet.org)
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• Texas Student Sarah Bustamantes, 12, Arrested for Spraying Perfume (hispanicallyspeakingnews.com)

Who’s Getting Rich off the Prison-Industrial Complex?

This is definitely worth a blog post and some thought people…..

By Ray Downs

You likely already know how overcrowded and abusive the US prison system is, and you probably are also aware that the US has more people in prison than even China or Russia. In this age of privatization, of course, it’s also not surprising that many of the detention centers are not actually operated by the government, but by for-profit companies. So clearly, some people are making lots and lots of money off the booming business of keeping human beings in cages.

But who are these people?

Using NASDAQ data, I looked through the long list of investors in Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group, the two biggest corporations that operate detention centers in the US, to find out who was cashing in the most on prisons. When we say “prison-industrial complex,” this is who we’re talking about.

Henri Wedell
The individual who’s invested the most in private prisons is Henri Wedell, who started serving on CCA’s board of directors in 2000, when the company was struggling with scandals related to prisoner abuse and mismanagement. He now owns more than 650,000 shares in the company, which is far more successful these days. Those shares are worth more than $25 million.

I called Wedell to ask him what it was like to make a fortune from the incarceration of others, and whether it bothered him to profit off a system that puts more people in prison than any other country in the world.

“America is the freest country in the world,” he told me. “America allows more freedom than any other country in the world, much more than Russia and a whole lot more than Scandinavia, where they really aren’t free. So offering all this freedom to society, there’ll be a certain number of people, more in this country than elsewhere, who take advantage of that freedom, abuse it, and end up in prison. That happens because we are so free in this country.”

Presumably, when he’s referring to all the freedom Americans have, he’s not including the 80,000 inmates in 60 prisons operated by CCA.

George Zoley
Another prison profiteer who presumably has no moral qualms about the business is George Zoley, the CEO of GEO Group and the second-biggest investor in the incarceration industry. In fact, he’s so proud of his business, which has committed a laundry list of human rights abuses, he tried to get a college football stadium named after it.

Zoley made nearly $6 million last year through salary and bonuses alone, but the real money is in stocks—he owns more than 500,000 shares in GEO, and he has made $23 million in stock trades during one 18-month period. But you can’t accuse him of not earning his pay, exactly. GEO saw a 56 percent spike in profits in the first quarter of 2013, and the company’s executives reassured investors that the incarceration rate wouldn’t be dropping any time soon when announcing its earnings. Zoley will be mega rich for years to come.

Jeremy Mindich and Matt Sirovich
Both Wedell and Zoley are big donors to the Republican party, but that doesn’t mean those from the left side of the aisle can’t play their game. Matt Sirovich and Jeremy Mindich both donate to Democratic politicians and are involved with progressive-leaning organizations like Root Capital, a nonprofit lending company that offers loans to farmers in developing countries to alleviate poverty.

Their day job, however, is running Scopia Capital, a hedge fund that is the one of the largest shareholders of GEO Group. The fund owns about $300 million in shares in that company, which represents 12 percent of its entire portfolio. Like Zoley, they are good at what they do—their fund outperformed the market by 20 percentage points, and the State of New Jersey hired Scopia to manage $150 million worth of pensions.

I called them up to ask their thoughts about being politically liberal but heavily invested in private prisons, but Mindich refused to answer any questions and Sirovich was unavailable.

It should be pointed out that while being far to the left politically might seem incompatible with investing in prisons (or managing a hedge fund in the first place), the Democratic party is totally fine with the incarceration rate. Although Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan are largely responsible for the drug-war policies that caused the prison population to skyrocket, Bill Clinton was a “tough on crime” president who continued their ideas. And Vice President Joe Biden was a principal player in the Clinton era’s crime policies—he wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which, among other things, called for $9.7 billion in increased funding for prisons and stiffer penalties for drug offenders.

Though the US prison population is shrinking slightly, the number of inmates in federal lockup is increasing, and while Obama keeps saying he’s ending the war on drugs, he’s also proposed budgets that call for increasing the amount of money spent on the Bureau of Prisons. So it’s not such a stretch that a Democratic donor would also be in the men-in-cages industry.

Retired People and Probably You
The Vanguard Group and Fidelity Investments are America’s top two 401(k) providers. They are also two of the private prison industry’s biggest investors.

Together, they own about 20 percent of both CCA and GEO. That means if you have a 401(k) plan, there’s a good chance you benefit financially from private prisons. And even if you don’t, there are many more mutual funds, brokerage firms, and banks that invest in private prisons—it being a growth industry and all—so if you have money somewhere other than your wallet or your mattress, it’s a good bet you’re involved in some way with companies that are locking up and probably abusing inmates.

This is especially true for government employees like public school teachers because their retirement funds are some of the biggest investors in private prisons. According to NASDAQ data, the retirement funds for public employees and teachers in New York and California together have about $60 million ($30 million each) invested in CCA and GEO. Teacher retirement funds in Texas and Kentucky have $8.3 million and $4 million invested in prisons respectively, and public employees in Florida ($10.3 million), Ohio ($8.6 million), Texas ($5.6 million), Arizona ($5.3 million), and Colorado ($2.25 million) are also connected to the industry. Except for New York, which has only one privately run detention facility, each of these states has several prisons run by CCA and GEO Group facilities. And it’s not just Americans who have ties to prisons. Foreign investors have money in them as well, including the pension fund for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which recently sold off its $5.1 million worth of GEO Group stock.

Most of these employees are probably unaware that their pensions are tied to prisons—and it’s hard to say that these are “bad” investments from a purely capitalistic perspective, since these prisons are making money hand over fist. The private prison industry is entrenched in our society. And the only way to make sure that we’re not individually and collectively profiting off of it is to close these things.

Follow Ray on Twitter: @RayDowns

Via VICE

 

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Union Of the Snake: How California’s Prison Guards Subvert Democracy

• Sagar Jethani

Union Of the Snake How Californias Prison Guards Subvert Democracy

 

 

After being threatened with contempt by a panel of federal judges for failing to sufficiently reduce the number of prisoners in California’s jails, Governor Jerry Brown reluctantly unveiled a plan this month to further reduce the Golden State’s overcrowded prisons by another 9,000 inmates. Enthusiasm in Sacramento was in short supply.

Governor Brown argued that court orders were forcing him to jeopardize public safety by transferring prisoners to county jails and offering some of them early release.

Prisons chief Jeffrey Beard was more direct: “The plan is ugly. We don’t like it.”

Two years ago, California’s prisons held twice the number of inmates they were designed to hold, and that led to serious problems. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Plata that California was violating prisoners’ Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. The Court estimated that an inmate in California’s prisons died every six to seven days due to inadequate medical care caused by overcrowding. Suicidal inmates were forced to stand in metal cages for 24 hours without access to restrooms. California was ordered to reduce inmate populations over two years from 150,000 to 110,000. When Jerry Brown crowed this January that California had done enough to satisfy the court’s requirements, he was threatened with contempt unless he continued reducing prison rolls down to the mandated target.

How did California’s prisons get so crowded in the first place? Golden State voters contributed to this crisis by approving some of the most stringent sentencing measures in the nation, including the 1994 Three Strikes Initiative. The law mandates 25 years to life in prison for three-time felons, even for nonviolent crimes. Strict sentencing laws enjoy bipartisan support in Sacramento. Republican legislators exult in preaching a tough-on-crime mantra — especially to the older, white demographic that tends to vote for them. And Democrats are surprisingly among the loudest voices calling for tougher sentencing laws lest they be called-out for being soft on crime.

Enter the California Correction Peace Officer’s Association, CCPOA, better known as the prison guards union.

Continue Reading @ PolicyMic

 

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What Life Is Like For The 2 Million People Behind Bars In America

 

REUTERS/Jason Redmond

An inmate stands in his cell at Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles, California October 3, 2012.

 

Rebecca Baird-Remba

 

The United States keeps 2.26 million people behind bars, by far the world’s highest incarceration rate.

So many prisoners are expensive, costing taxpayers $68 billion annually.

So many prisoners are also exceeding available infrastructure, with capacity crises in Texas, California, Arizona, and other states. The war on drugs has quadrupled the number of prisoners behind bars since 1980. Nonviolent offenders now make up 60% of America’s prison population.

Overcrowding has led to rising levels of violence and unsafe and uncomfortable living conditions.

Click here to see photos

One injustice follows another

Marlene Martin tells the story of Santos Reyes, who was a victim of California’s unjust three strikes law. When he was finally released from prison, ICE agents were waiting to deport him. His story shows the relentless brutality of the criminal INjustice system.

Protesters in Boston oppose the new three strikes law

THE STATISTICS don’t lie: Barack Obama has become the deportation president.

The number of people thrown out of the U.S. for lacking proper immigration documentation started growing from the late 1990s through the 2000s, but it hit a peak during the Obama years. As the New York Times reported:

In four years, Mr. Obama’s administration has deported as many illegal immigrants as the administration of George W. Bush did in his two terms, largely by embracing, expanding and refining Bush-era programs to find people and send them home. By the end of this year, deportations under Mr. Obama are on track to reach two million, or nearly the same number of deportations in the United States from 1892 to 1997.

The Obama White House defends its record, claiming that rather than a general crackdown, the Department of Homeland Security under Obama has just been highly successful in making “[deportation] of criminal aliens the top priority,” according to the Times. The message is that the federal government is focused on getting rid of the “bad guys.”

In fact, immigrant rights activists point to studies showing that the government is still deporting huge numbers of people whose only “crime” was to enter the country without documentation. Even among deportees with a criminal record, the offense was minor in many cases. In a report last year, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency admitted that over one-quarter of “criminal immigrants” deported from the U.S. in fiscal year 2011 had been convicted of traffic violations.

But the case of Santos Reyes shows why the Obama’s administration deportation injustices extend even to immigrants with felony convictions.

Santos was finally freed from prison this year after spending 15 years behind bars as a victim of California’s draconian “three strikes and you’re out” law. He was convicted of a minor and completely nonviolent offense–taking a California drivers’ license test in the name of his cousin to help him get a license–but because he already had two felony convictions, he got a 26-years-to-life sentence.

This year, Santos finally won his long struggle against the cruel three-strikes sentencing law and was ordered released. But he then suffered another injustice–on March 28, ICE agents were waiting for him at the prison when he was released, to deport him to Mexico immediately because he was undocumented.

This society owes Santos the many years he spent unjustly imprisoned. Instead, the federal government is kicking him out of the country.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

SANTOS WAS sent to prison in 1998 after being convicted and sentenced under California’s three-strikes law, passed by voter referendum in 1994, which requires that anyone convicted of a third felony to be given a 25-year-to-life term, even if the third felony was nonviolent in nature. No plea bargains are allowed under the law, and the first chance at a parole is after 25 years are served. Even after that long, 80 percent of all parole requests are denied.

Santos had been working as a roofer steadily for the previous decade. He was married with two children, aged one and three. Little did he know his life was about to be turned upside down when he offered to help out a cousin who had failed the written part of a state drivers’ license test because he couldn’t read English well. When Santos sat in for his cousin and took the test, he got caught.

This “crime” should have been classified as a misdemeanor under California law. But the prosecutor decided to charge Santos with perjury, which is a felony. He had two prior felony convictions. In 1981, as a juvenile, he was found guilty of stealing a radio from the home of someone he knew, and in 1987, when he was 22, he was convicted of armed robbery. In neither case was anyone harmed.

So in 1998, Santos went to prison for what could have been the rest of his life–for nothing more than helping out his cousin.

The sentencing had a devastating effect on Santos’ family. He lost touch with his wife and never saw his children–he only recently started to correspond with them by letters. As he said in an interview with the Campaign to End the Death Penalty’s New Abolitionist in 2010:

At this time, I’ve been literally left behind, and my wife and children have moved on with their lives. It breaks my heart, but I also know that this is my experience, and to some degree, it is best that they don’t suffer with me. I yearn to someday some how see my children and, like any father, know how they are doing in school, give them sound advice, and ultimately love and encourage them.

I have not seen my children for over 13 years–the length of my incarceration. All I’m left with are the memories of them as little boys. I know that I’ve made mistakes in the past, and those growing pains/errors were used to bury me, but this injustice has affected every person in my family.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

CALIFORNIA STARTED a three-strikes avalanche in the 1990s. By the end of the decade, 24 states and the federal government had some form of the mandatory sentencing law–though California’s was considered the harshest because it didn’t matter if the third offense was nonviolent and minor, as long as it was classified as a felony.

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone chronicled some of the “crimes” that have landed people in jail for at least 25 years under “three strikes”: stealing a slice of pizza, three golf clubs baby shoes or five children’s videos, not to mention possession of small quantities of drugs.

Curtis Wilkerson has already done 18 years at California’s Soledad prison for the crime of stealing a pair of tube socks worth $2.50. On top of that, the judge imposed a $2,500 fine, which he is still working to pay off at his prison job, in the cafeteria. Wilkerson is paid $20 a day–and the state takes $11 of it. According to Taibbi, “Curtis will be in his 90s before he’s paid the state off for that one pair of socks.”

Wilkerson is Black, which is no surprise, since racism pervades every aspect of three strikes. A disproportionate number of African Americans are sentenced under the law. Why? Because district attorneys typically get to make a choice on how to prosecute each case, which determines whether three-strikes laws apply.

“After the police arrest someone, the prosecutor is in charge,” wrote Michelle Alexander in her book The New Jim Crow. “Few rules constrain the exercise of his or her discretion. The prosecutor is free to dismiss a case for any reason or no reason at all. The prosecutor is also free to file more charges against a defendant that can realistically be proven in court, so long as probable cause arguably exists–a practice known as overcharging.”

Alexander writes that prosecutors are well aware that racial bias, as long as it is not overt, will be tolerated–so they have free reign.

So is it any wonder, under a system where the vast majority of prosecutors are white, that Blacks, who make up only 7 of the California population, are 28 percent of the prison population and 45 percent of those subject to the three-strikes sentencing laws?

After a long battle, the three-strikes law in California was finally amended in November 2012 with passage of Proposition 36, which requires that a defendant’s offense be serious or violent enough to justify a 25-years-to-life sentence.

This gave prisoners like Santos a chance to be free.

The change in California’s three-strikes law was years in the making. Groups like Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes held protests and press conferences to push for the change. A previous ballot measure challenging three-strikes was narrowly defeated in 2004 after a last-minute influx of big money to pay for ads to scare people into voting against it.

Thus, Santos Reyes remained behind bars, despite the efforts of his energetic defense committee that worked to bring his case into the public light. The late socialist activist Peter Camejo, the 2004 vice presidential candidate on Ralph Nader’s independent ticket and three-time Green Party candidate for California governor, took up Reyes case during his statewide campaigns. He spoke from the podium often about the injustice Santos was enduring.

Now, after the passage of Prop 36, more than 150 people have already been freed, and many more will likely follow. But there is still work to be done–to get rid of the punitive three-strikes law altogether.

For Santos, he won his freedom, but at a cost. Because he was an undocumented, he could no longer live in the U.S. after his release. So on March 28, when Santos was finally released from prison, ICE agents were there to transport him to Mexico. There, Santos reunited with his elderly mother. Fortunately, reports David Warren of the Sntos Reyes Defense Committee, “we were able to raise around $4,000 to help him restart his life.”

Despite the injustices he has faced, a letter from Santos on April 12 strikes a note of optimism: “I am so happy. I am at my mother’s house now. I made it at the border without an ID, and I crossed about five checkpoints. So pretty much I did it. Now I’m going to my birthplace to get my birth certificate so I can start my new life here at Guadalajara.”

Via The Socialist Worker

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On Mothers, Mothering and Mass Incarceration

In this Mother’s Day tribute, law professor and advocate Sheila Bedi learns how “having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside your body.”

By Sheila Bedi , Truthout

(Image: Hand holding fence via Shutterstock)

 

 

When I was a teenager, my mother posted this quote on her mirror: “having a child is like letting your heart walk around outside your body.” Back then, the sentiment made me roll my eyes, but even then I knew I had an exceptional mother. She is fierce, yet gentle, demanding, supportive and self-sacrificing. My mother taught me to feel deeply, think rigorously and to find my own voice and use it loudly. I’ve carried a piece of my mother and her teachings into my work as an attorney and activist who works with and for people caught up in the criminal justice system. And I recognize my own mother’s fierceness and love in so many of the mothers I have worked with over the years – the mothers of children and young people who are imprisoned in this country’s prisons and jails.

I’m talking about mothers like Mrs. W. I represented her fifteen year old son, who was locked up in a maximum security adult prison. One day she and I drove together to the prison to meet with the Warden to discuss her son’s education. Once we arrived, the security staff wanted to shake her down – remove her head scarf, shake out her bra. I tried to put a stop to the intrusive and humiliating search, but Mrs. W. told me to fall back – she told me that the prison staff had her baby’s life in their hands and she wasn’t about to piss them off over her head scarf and a pat down. She directed me to save my fire for what mattered – protecting her son.

Mothers like Mrs. G., who testified before the state legislature about seeing the light going out in her fourteen year old son’s eyes after he spent months in solitary confinement. She told lawmakers about the pain and powerlessness she felt as she watched her son endure tortuous conditions in a juvenile prison. She channeled her pain into working to protect other children who were imprisoned in abusive prisons.

Let’s be clear about who these mothers’ children are. The vast majority of young people who end up behind bars are there because of non-violent offenses. They are overwhelming poor and come from communities of color. Communities where schools look more and more like jails. Communities targeted by prisons run on the cheap by corporations that exist solely to enrich shareholders.

Private prison companies only make money when they ensure that the revolving door to and from prison remains well-greased. Mass incarceration and the war on drugs have ravaged many of the communities these mothers and their children came from. But even in the face of these realities, many of these communities have developed strength and resilience: a deep faith, a strong sense of interconnectedness and family. My experience has been that when one looks to find the source of this strength – it’s the mothers. Watching each other’s children, attending a know-your-rights meeting in between working all day and getting dinner on the table, calling 100 phone numbers to find an advocate who can help her help her child. It’s the mothers who end up holding it all together.

After well over ten years of representing people who are locked up, I have had the privilege to know many mothers who move heaven and earth to fight for their children. Too often these mothers must fight against a criminal justice system that targets black and brown youth. Mothers who save and scrimp and travel hundreds of miles to visit their children behind bars for an hour a week. Mothers who endure in the face of learning that their children survived the unspeakable abuse that is endemic to our nation’s prisons and jails: sexual violence, prolonged shackling, months in solitary confinement, beatings, stabbings. I could go on and on listing the tortuous conditions that exist in this nation’s prisons and jails. Much of that story has already been told in lawsuits and consent decrees. What remains untold and largely ignored, is the strength and resilience of the people who lived through these abuses – the children and young people, their families and communities. And the mothers. Especially the mothers.

After spending over a decade working with mothers like Mrs. G. and Mrs. W. and after having many conversations with my own mother about the pain and the joy of mothering, I thought I had an understanding about what it meant to be a mother. And then a year ago, I became a mother myself. And I realized that I had no idea. None.

Motherhood is hard and wonderful and terrifying and humbling. During this past year, I’ve struggled to become the kind of mother my son deserves, I’ve thought often about the mothers I’ve known. The best part of my day is when I rock my baby boy to sleep, and I whisper to him: you are safe, you are loved, and I can’t wait to see how you’re going to love the world back. I simply do not know how I could keep breathing if he wasn’t safe. If he ever had to endure the conditions endured by the imprisoned children I’ve worked with and for. Yet, because of the United States’ addiction to incarceration, millions of mothers do it every day. They not only keep breathing – but they keep fighting. These mothers leave me in awe.

Continue Reading @ TruthOut

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California objects to moving 3,000-plus inmates due to valley fever, says more study needed

It is premature to move more than 3,000 inmates out of two state prisons until more is known about an airborne fungus that is being blamed for nearly three-dozen inmate deaths and hundreds of hospitalizations, Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration said in a court filing Monday night.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the affiliated National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health agreed last week to study problems with valley fever at Avenal and Pleasant Valley state prisons.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson of San Francisco should wait for the centers’ recommendations before enforcing an order last week by the federal official who controls prison medical care, the administration said.

J. Clark Kelso, the federal receiver, says more black, Filipino and medically risky inmates have contracted the illness, leading to his order that the state exclude them from the prisons.

That would mean moving about 40 percent of the 8,200 inmates at the two prisons just as the state faces a federal court order to reduce prison crowding statewide to improve conditions for sick and mentally ill inmates.

The state is preparing to move about 600 medically high risk inmates out of the two prisons by August, but the complexity of swapping thousands of vulnerable inmates with other inmates who are less susceptible to valley fever makes it difficult to comply with Kelso’s larger order, the state argued. It also says Kelso’s order is confusing about which inmates could stay and which would have to go.

Via The Republic

 

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