What’s On Your RAP Sheet?

By Katti Gray

Via @ The Crime Report

Paroled from prison in August 2010, Sandra France was bent on finding a job that steered young people away from the drug addiction and drug-related crimes that had her cycling in and out of prison for 35 years.

That job hunt, however, initially bore little fruit for the 50-year-old ex-offender.

Then she heard about Project ReNu, launched in early 2012 by the Brooklyn, NY-based Center for NuLeadership On Urban Solutions to help the formerly incarcerated figure out precisely whether their recorded criminal histories were undercutting their employment prospects and, where possible, boosting the ex-offenders’ image among potential employers.

Project ReNu’s sole counselor—one of four full-time members of NuLeadership’s staff—steered France through a process aimed at equipping ex-offenders with the details of their “records of arrests and procedures” (or RAP sheet) and correcting errors that those documents sometimes contain before a potential employer sees them.

France completed Project ReNu with what she hopes is a ticket for entry into a legitimate world of work with which she is barely familiar: a state-sanctioned “certificate of good conduct” granted to successful Project ReNu clients who, like France, have multiple felony convictions.

(A “certificate of relief” is available to persons with just one felony conviction.)

In addition to that certificate, France received a document detailing her criminal history, including the date and time of her convictions. And she was schooled in how to articulate other aspects of her life, such as her ongoing drug rehabilitation and involvement in peer support groups, her active church membership, and her on-the-job training in the field where she hopes to be hired.

“These documents show how far I came [and] that, although I have been incarcerated and I’ve been on drugs, I’ve been doing a lot of positive things,” said France, who is now interning at an outpatient clinic for substance abusers—a step toward becoming a certified alcohol and substance abuse counselor.

Those accumulated documents are a package that can be given, perhaps preemptively, to employers.

Reducing Recidivism

With several studies linking gainful employment to lesser rates of criminal recidivism, jobs—and housing—top the list of the most critical material needs of the formerly incarcerated, Shelli Rossman of the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. told The Crime Report.

And, notes Rossman, ex-offenders not only require the tools essential for what can be the monumental task of landing a job—especially during a lingering recession when employers have their pick of prospects who’ve never been to prison—but they also need help hanging on to the jobs a fraction of them do manage to get.

“My hunch is that part of the difficulty in job retention is the nature of the job to begin with,” said Rossman, a senior fellow at the Institute’s Justice Policy Center. “These are high turnover, like food service jobs, where … they’re constantly hiring and replacing staff, not just this population.

“These tend to be low-level jobs without benefits. They …not only undermine the individual financially, but also in terms of morale.”

Even so, findings of the Urban Institute’s five-year “Returning Home: Understanding the Challenges of Prisoner Reentry” study of ex-offenders in Maryland, Illinois, Ohio and Texas included this one: “Former prisoners who held an in-prison job, participated in job training while incarcerated, earned a GED during prison, and/or participated in an employment program early after release, work a greater percentage of time the first year out than those who did not.”

The key assumption of Project ReNu is that paid wages will reduce the likelihood that a previously convicted person will return to crime and to prison, , says  Divine Pryor, executive director of NuLeadership, which is housed in the same Brooklyn building as the agency where parolee France is interning.

Another foundational principle is that if potential employers can see that formerly incarcerated job applicants are confronting their past, and can articulate their achievements during a job interview, then that forthrightness just might work in the applicant’s favor, says Prior, whose organization offers a broad menu of prisoner re-entry services and criminal justice policy programs for both juveniles and adults.

“The best way to empower yourself is to know everything that other people know about you,” he adds. “If you’ve ever been arrested for anything, it’s on your RAP sheet—every single encounter you’ve had with law enforcement that causes you to be fingerprinted.”

According to Prior, the “labyrinth of challenges” facing ex-offenders as they re-enter society can include correcting errors that may have been made by the system or have cropped up through other means, such as identity theft.

Continue Reading  HERE

Related articles

• Viewpoint: Hiring ex-offenders is a step toward restoring the community (mlive.com)
• Testify: US Commission on Civil Rights Tackles Employment Discrimination (unprison.com)
• Live chat: Why hiring ex-offenders is important to Muskegon, or any community (mlive.com)

Jail Break: How smarter parole and probation can cut the nation’s incarceration rate

article from 2009 -very relevant even now.

By Mark A. R. Kleiman

n 2004, Judge Steven Alm was assigned to the felony trial court for the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Alm quickly realized that he had a problem. Probation officers for his court were overwhelmed with clients who kept using methamphetamine, Hawaii’s number-one problem drug. It wasn’t exactly difficult to pass the drug tests, which were scheduled weeks in advance. But on any given day 10 percent of the probationers scheduled to come in didn’t arrive for testing, and 20 percent of those who did show up tested “dirty.” By the time probationers were sent to Alm’s court for a revocation hearing, they had already racked up multiple breaches of the rules. Hawaii’s felony probationers have lengthy sentences hanging over their heads. An offender whose probation is revoked can be sent to prison for the rest of his term—anywhere from five to twenty years. To Alm and his fellow judges, this seemed an unnecessarily draconian response to a missed or “dirty” drug test. It was also impractical in light of Hawaii’s prison-overcrowding problem. (Not only are Hawaii’s own prisons full; the state also pays heavily to send thousands of its prisoners to for-profit prisons on the mainland.) As a former career prosecutor and U.S. attorney, Alm had more than a little political clout and was accustomed to getting results. Why, he asked the probation officers, was he only hearing about drug problems when they spiraled out of control? If this was the tenth violation, what happened the first nine times? The probation officers explained that each one of them had responsibility for at least eighty-five felons. (That was for those with “high-risk” caseloads; the other probation officers had caseloads twice that size.) Most of those offenders sporadically fell afoul of the rules. The officers couldn’t possibly spend two hours writing a report every time a probationer failed a test or skipped drug treatment or anger-management class—there would be no time for anything else. As the officers saw it, their job was to harangue those clients who would listen to get back into line, and refer those who wouldn’t listen back to court after they had accumulated enough offenses to justify sending them away. Alm could see the logic of the system, but he didn’t think it was the right kind of logic. “You wouldn’t raise a child that way,” he told the officers. “You wouldn’t train a puppy that way. You’d establish clear rules and have immediate consequences for breaking them.” So Alm devised a new plan. He asked the probation officers to select a group of seemingly incorrigible scofflaws, probationers just one slipup shy of a revocation hearing. Every time one of them missed or flunked a drug test (or broke any other probation rule) he would land in court—and in jail—right away. Alm enlisted the help of prosecutors and public defenders to ensure that a hearing could be held within forty-eight hours of a violation. He corralled the federal fugitive task force to chase down anyone who refused to come into court. To cut down on paperwork, he eliminated the long report, documenting a long history of misconduct, that had previously been required from a probation officer before a revocation hearing. In its place, he substituted a two-page fill-in-the-blanks form, which dealt with only a single missed or dirty test or other violation. Then, instead of “revoking” probation and condemning the offender to years in prison, Alm would “modify” probation, sending the offender to jail for a few days and then releasing him back to probation supervision. Alm reasoned that a brief stint behind bars would make the probationer more cooperative when he returned to his officer’s caseload. The probation officers feared that Alm’s proposal would be impossibly burdensome, but they agreed to give it a try. Alm held a contest among the officers to name the program, and the winning entry was “Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement,” or HOPE. HOPE started with thirty-four chronic violators. On the advice of the public defender, Alm brought them into court for what he called a “warning hearing,” with the defense counsel and the prosecutor present. He explained that, for them, the era of warnings was over. “If you fail a drug test, if you fail to meet with your probation officer when you are supposed to, or you fail with other terms of your probation … you will go to jail,” runs Alm’s script for such proceedings. “All of your actions in life have consequences, good or bad.” Later, Alm added a new twist to the program: random drug testing, with each probationer required to call in to a hotline every weekday morning to learn whether that was his day to be tested. Everyone braced for a flood of missed and failed tests and the consequent sanctions hearings. But then something strange happened: in the first two weeks, only five of the thirty-four broke the rules. The overall rate of missed and failed drug tests dropped by more than 80 percent. Before the program started, the HOPE group had more than twice the noncompliance rate of the comparison group; that’s how they were chosen. HOPE reversed that picture, with program participants testing positive at less than one-quarter the rate of the comparison group. The high level of compliance made the workload perfectly manageable for everyone involved, and Alm was able to expand HOPE to 135 probationers without hiring more people. Continue Reading @ Washington Monthly

Living with Intention: New opportunities for a life of sobriety

This article is a feature on my friend, John L.  Please join me in congratulating him by posting comments of encouragement for continuing sobriety and staying OUT!!

Story by Dixie Reid | Photo by Tim Engle

John Lewis Sullivan was addicted to drugs at age 13, stealing to support his habit and generally making mischief of varying degrees. He’s since spent 18 of his 42 years in jail or in California’s prison system.

“I’d never been out a whole year until I decided to change my life,” Sullivan says. “Don and his program helped me.”

Don Troutman, a recovering alcoholic, is the founder of Clean & Sober Intentional Living, a communal-living program for people committed to a lifetime of sobriety. It’s the oldest and largest such community in Northern California, with 15 residences in Orangevale and Fair Oaks.

“After they leave treatment, a lot of people think they have it made,” says Troutman. “You get a guy detoxed and send him through treatment and then put him back into his old environment, and he’ll start using again. The expectation is that he is what he is, and everything he’s learned goes away.”

Troutman got into the recovery-home business in 1989 as a way to keep himself sober after his brother died of an overdose. He calls himself “Resident No. 1.” He currently has 130 men and women in his program, all determined to stay clean for life.

Rent ranges from $450 to $795 a month, and the average length of residency is two and a half years. The longest anyone has been in the program is 16 years, making Sullivan a relative newcomer.

“Last winter,” Sullivan says, “I was pretty much homeless, running the streets, stealing copper to supply my drug habit. I was living in a tent on the river, and I just said, ‘God, there’s got to be more than this.’ I hit my rock bottom. I didn’t want to do it no more. I was freezing cold, and I was getting the flu. I went and told my parole officer that I needed help.”

Sullivan was sent to an intensive drug-use modification program and afterward moved into a recovery home.

“The people in the house weren’t serious about their program. They were still drinking,” Sullivan says. “So I got a hold of Don Troutman and told him my situation.”

Continue Reading @ ComstockMag.com

California plans to drop warrants for some parole violators

Officials will begin reviewing more than 9,200 warrants in an effort to ease the burden being passed on to counties in July.

Crowded conditions can be seen at Mule Creek State Prison. The warrant review aims to help keep crowding from worsening. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images / August 29, 2007)

 

 

By Paige St. John, Los Angeles Times

State corrections officials are poised to drop the arrest warrants of thousands of parole violators, releasing them from state supervision at a time when their detention would complicate efforts to ease crowding in state and county lockups.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation intends to begin a massive review next week of more than 9,200 outstanding warrants, starting with individuals who were convicted of nonviolent crimes and absconded from supervision. Over the next eight months, parole field offices across the state will be given lists of missing felons, 200 at a time, to review and determine if retaining them on parole “would not be in the interest of justice.”

The mass purge is an attempt to ease the burden on counties in July, when the state hands off responsibility for parole revocations to local courts, said agency spokesman Jeffrey Callison. Weeding out cases that are years old, or of parolees nobody is looking for, will make it easier to focus on those who pose a threat, he said.

It will not, Callison said, “allow some paroles to ‘get off the hook.’ “

“I have been told that discharging people is not the point of the exercise,” he said Friday.

Which is exactly the claim of some victims’ advocates who are infuriated by the state’s so-called warrant review project.

“It’s mass amnesty for felons,” said Assemblyman Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber), a vocal opponent of Gov. Jerry Brown‘s plans to ease state prison crowding by shifting responsibility for low-level offenders to counties.

When inmates are released from state prison, they are required to report to a parole officer. When a felon does not appear, or disappears later, an arrest warrant is issued. With low-level offenders now serving time in county jails, the state’s parole population is shrinking dramatically because those released from jail go to county probation, not state parole.

Continue Reading @ LA Times

 

Related articles

• Controversy lands at feet of new corrections chief (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• More paroled felons stay clean, but revolving door continues (latimesblogs.latimes.com)
• California Prisons Are Still Overcrowded (eastbayexpress.com)

Case study: How can prison inmates prepare for success?

The big idea:A sizable group of potential workers — former prison inmates — faces challenges in securing employment. Can they overcome the stigma of past errors and skill deficits?

The scenario: John is looking forward to returning to his hometown in April. He worries that while he’s been away, he may have fallen out of step with the technical and real-world skills employers demand. He would like an entry-level job in an athletic apparel store; his long-term goal is to own a retail store.

Over the past 18 months, he’s made great changes in his attitude and outlook. He has picked up important technical classes and worked on his “soft skills” — public speaking and interviewing. John sees his first job as a path to his new career, his redemption. He knows there is another conversation to prepare for: Explaining his felony conviction for drug distribution, and why his past doesn’t define or determine his future.

About 566,000 ex-offenders leave prison and enter parole each year. An estimated 95 percent of the 2.3 million others in prison will eventually return to society. Once released, probation officers will work with them to reintegrate into daily life, to find work and a stable home — not easy steps.

John recognizes that the people who hire entry-level workers worry about the risks of employee turnover, the risks of loss from theft and the comfort of co-workers or customers with any new employee. These uncertainties are balanced against real investments in training. John knows that adding a past crime can tip the balance away from hiring someone who is otherwise qualified. So how can he transition to productive employment and then, ultimately, as an employer, business owner and taxpayer?

Continue Reading @ Washington Post

 

Related articles

• New technology helps Oregon inmates stay connected (oregonlive.com)
• Inmates get first dibs on jobs through federal program (foxnews.com)

Bills seek to help ex-inmates as they seek jobs, re-enter society; would remove ‘felon’ label

Assemblymember Mark Leno (Photo credit: Confetti)

DON THOMPSON  Associated Press

Jeff Rutland was released from San Quentin State Prison nearly two years ago, ready to leave behind a 25-year criminal career.

But the 48-year-old former crack cocaine addict quickly realized that his past was not ready to leave him. Almost without fail, he would notice a chill descend on job interviews whenever he had to explain to potential employers why he hadn’t filled out the section of his application that asked about felony convictions.

“It’s very discouraging because a lot of these jobs I know I’m qualified for,” said Rutland, who sought in vain to land a manufacturing job. “As soon as I check the box, the demeanor changes.”

Prompted by stories like Rutland’s, California lawmakers are considering three bills ahead of a June 1 deadline that would make it easier for ex-convicts to get jobs.

One in the Assembly would make it easier for former prisoners to get their criminal records expunged, while another would make California the latest state to remove the felony conviction question box from public-sector job applications. In the Senate, lawmakers will consider a bill that would make possessing drugs for personal use a misdemeanor instead of a felony.

State Sen. Mark Leno said California should follow the lead of 13 other states that classify possession for personal use as a misdemeanor. Leno said the experience in those states, which include Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Wyoming, shows an increase in drug treatment and a decrease in drug use. The difference is that those states promote rehabilitation over incarceration.

Moreover, addicts avoid felony convictions that make it more difficult to get housing, an education and employment.

“Good luck getting a job that’s above minimum wage, if you can get a job at all,” said Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco.

He said a felony conviction is more than just a stigma.

“It is a real barrier to success in life,” he said.

The maximum sentence would be reduced from three years to one year behind bars for possessing drugs for personal use. Leno’s bill, SB1506, would not apply to possessing drugs for sale.

The shift would result in 2,000 fewer state inmates as California is reducing its prison population to comply with federal court orders, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. That’s partly because misdemeanors cannot be counted as a “strike” for those facing much longer sentences for repeat offenses, Leno said.

Opponents say the switch would send more offenders to increasingly crowded local jails, while removing much of the incentive for addicts to get treatment.

He says it’s also “a real barrier to success in life.”

“We’re now taking a wholesale step on dangerous drugs and saying it’s not as dangerous as it used to be,” said Cory Salzillo, director of legislation for the California District Attorneys Association.

The association opposes all three bills, although Salzillo said it is not opposed to helping felons get jobs and reintegrate into society after their release.

Leno’s bill is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, defense attorneys, drug treatment providers and advocates for changing the nation’s drug policies.

Meanwhile, Assemblyman Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, is promoting a bill that would prohibit cities and counties from requesting criminal background information on initial job applications.

California adopted similar standards for state employees in 2010. It would join five other states with similar restrictions if AB1831 becomes law.

The bill would let those with a criminal history “compete fairly for employment without compromising safety and security,” Dickinson said in a statement.

Local governments could still run background checks after they decide the applicant is initially qualified for the job and could request criminal history information immediately on applications for law enforcement jobs or those that require working with children, the elderly or disabled.

Associations representing prosecutors and police chiefs oppose the measure, saying it would waste time and money while delaying the inevitable by forcing local governments to initially consider ex-convicts who are unlikely to be hired.

The Assembly also will consider a bill by Assemblyman Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, that responds to the state’s realignment law that took effect Oct. 1. Under realignment, felons convicted of nonserious, nonviolent and non-sexual offenses serve their sentences in county jail instead of state prison.

AB2263 would let judges expunge the criminal records of felons who are sentenced to county jail once the offenders complete their probation.

The district attorneys’ association objects to making it easier for felons to clear their criminal records simply because they are now serving their time in local jails. It says the standards should be different because felonies, by definition, are more serious crimes and often reflect a more serious criminal history than do misdemeanors.

Rutland, who most recently completed a sentence for felony assault, has given up on finding the kind of job for which he feels most qualified. He considers himself lucky to have landed a part-time position at an urban agriculture program in the San Francisco Bay area.

He believes that for others like him, the ability to have a record wiped clean could mean the difference between being able to re-enter society and remaining on the margins.

“Anybody coming home, all we want is that one break,” he said. “Sometimes you’d be surprised by what that one little break can be that will change the course of a life.

Via @ The Republic

 

Related articles

• US prison inmates returning to society: How will they be received? (csmonitor.com)
• Bill Would Eliminate Criminal History Box On Some Job Applications (sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com)

AG Reverses Decision On Woman Who Killed Her Pimp

By Amita Sharma

AG Reverses Decision On Woman Who Killed Her Pimp

Aired 4/17/12

 

California Attorney General Kamala Harris has dramatically reversed herself today in the case of Sara Kruzan, who killed her pimp at age 16.

josephvbui / Youtube

Above: Sara Kruzan has spent more than half her life in a California prison for killing her pimp. Kruzan’s San Diego relatives and local advocates are pressing Gov. Jerry Brown to grant her clemency in a case they call an embarrassment to the criminal-justice system.

Document

Kamala Harris Letter

Download .PDF

Harris withdrew her position that Kruzan was not a victim of domestic violence in a letter filed with the California Supreme Court.

“Ms. Kruzan’s tragic circumstances and the fact that she was a sexually exploited minor is the antithesis of what is traditionally thought of as ‘dating,’” the letter read. “But we recognize that it may be applicable here or in other cases.”

Kruzan spent the last 17 years in prison for murdering her pimp. Kruzan met the pimp when she was 11. He molested her immediately, raped her at 13 and forced her into prostitution.

Last month, the attorney general told the California Supreme Court that Kruzan’s relationship with her pimp was at best professional and financial and at worst criminal. Therefore, Harris concluded Kruzan was not a domestic violence victim.

But this week, Harris did a turnabout. She told the state’s high court that it is perverse to suggest that a minor who has been sexually abused and exploited from the age of 11 should not be entitled to at least the defense afforded an adult who has been in an abusive relationship.

The attorney general also apologized to the court for its reversal. Kruzan’s lawyers are asking for clemency or a new trial.

Kruzan grew up in Riverside amid stress and chaos. Her mother admitted bashing Kruzan’s head on the floor. Kruzan was placed in foster care for a time after bruises were discovered. Kruzan was molested for the first time at age 5 by her mom’s boyfriend. Successive boyfriends did the same, court documents show.

In a five-year-old YouTube clip, Kruzan describes the one bright spot in her life:

“In school, I excelled,” she said. “I was on the honor roll, the principal’s honor roll. I was an overachiever. I ran track. I ran for student body president.”

But her love for school could not save her. Her mother kicked her out when she was 11. Kruzan was hospitalized for attempted suicide.

That’s also when a well-known pimp George Gilbert Howard, or G.G., befriended her.

“He was like a father figure. G.G. was there and he would talk to me and take me out and give me all these lavish gifts and do all these things for free,” she said.

At 13, Kruzan was raped on school grounds by three neighborhood boys. Then, G.G. forced Kruzan into prostitution.

“He had sex with me when I was 13 … and he uses his manhood to hurt,” she said.

She went to live with her grandmother in San Diego when she was 15. At 16, she began seeing a boy whose ex-con uncle ordered her to kill G.G. Her aunt, Anne Rogan, said the order was issued with a threat.

“And this guy said to her, ‘well I want you to get G.G.’s money and I want you to shoot him and if you don’t do this, I’m going to kill your mother’; and I believe he threatened her boyfriend at the time,” Rogan said.

Kruzan went to a motel room in Riverside with G.G. Her aunt said once inside the room, Kruzan felt trapped and desperate.

“Apparently when he started to pull out a sex toy, that is when she shot him. There was a fear that gripped her of all the abuse and that’s when she shot him.”

Kruzan took his money too. Her supporters say she never stood a chance in court.

Kruzan’s defense lawyer David Gunn urged the 16-year-old to reject a plea offer that would have sent her to prison for 30 years, with time off for good behavior. She took his advice and the case went to trial.

The government put on seven witnesses over two days. Gunn, now a judge, never called an expert witness to discuss impacts of her horrific childhood, or her forced prostitution.

In fact, the only witness the defense called was Kruzan.

But her appeals attorneys say 17-year-old Kruzan was unprepared. She was depressed and medicated. She was unable to joust with a skilled prosecutor.

Kruzan’s aunt says her niece never gave her side.

“She didn’t go into any of what happened to her and I don’t know why,” Rogan said. “All I can tell you is that she has this legal team and they went back and found all these records: How she tried to commit suicide at 11; how she tried again at 13; how she was gang-raped. There are police reports.”

In 1994, Kruzan was found guilty and sentenced to life without parole.

“She was a black girl from the hood,” said Nikki Junker. She directs “With More Than A Purpose,” a San Diego group which advocates for sex trafficking victims. “Nobody cared.”

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger commuted Kruzan’s sentence to 25 years to life, with the possibility of parole.

Kruzan has earned a bachelor’s degree in science in prison. She lives in the honor dorm at the women’s prison in Chowchilla.

Kruzan said she sorry she took G.G.’s life.

“I definitely deserve punishment,” she said. “You don’t just take someone’s life and think that’s OK.”

But she wants a shot at helping others on the outside.

“I believe I could set a positive example. I am very determined to show that no matter what you have done or where you have come from or what you have experienced in life, it’s up to you to change.”

Via KPBS.ORG

Opinion: California can’t afford vengeance as a public policy

By Vanessa Nelson

How I wish news organizations would revert to the professional ways of thoroughly vetting a story before rushing to publish tabloid-style cant. Case in point: a recent account in the Sacramento Bee on Gov. Brown’s affirming the release of “more killers” than his predecessors.

 

Wow, great headline.  Sounds dramatic, important and even a little scary.

 

It’s also incomplete.

The true part: Brown has indeed declined to review most life-term inmates’ parole grants given by the Board of Parole Hearings. That doesn’t mean he’s done a wholesale release of “killers.” And you may be interested to know that many life term prisoners are in prison for non-lethal offenses.

 

Brown’s office reviews each parole grant, looking for something missed by the parole commissioners in their grueling, often hours-long review of a lifer’s crime, circumstances and suitability at a parole hearing.

 

Keep in mind, most of the parole commissioners come from a law enforcement-connected background, are largely conservative and none could be described a flaming liberal on law and order.  If this review finds the parole board did their due diligence and their job, laws were followed and the parole grant duly given, the Governor allows the grant to proceed.

 

If there is something that catches the Governor’s eye, he can rescind the grant of parole. He’s done this before and it’s something his immediate predecessor did about 80 percent of the time.

 

And what then?

 

Usually, the prisoner files a court action on the governor’s reversal and this action takes its path through the courts, racking up expenses in court costs, legal fees and continued incarceration time for one, two or even three years.  And the outcome?

 

Under the Schwarzenegger regime, about 80 percent of his reversals were eventually overturned by the courts, reinstating the parole of the prisoner, but only after considerable costs in both monetary and human terms.  And to what end?  Pretty much nothing.  No great increase in public safety, no fanfare, just a lot of money wasted.

Want more truth?

 

Not all parolees are the same.  Until the recent realignment changes, nearly everyone who went into state prison, whether for a life term crime or for a determinate sentence, was placed on parole when released.

 

The vast majority of these parolees was never lifers, never had to go before a board to prove they were no longer a threat to public safety and never had to bother with rehabilitation. They were simply released on parole at the end of their sentence.  These are the individuals the media so often headlines in the “Parolee commits XYZ” stories.  The fact that these re-offending individuals were never life term prisoners is never mentioned.

 

California’s present recidivism rate for all prisoners released on parole hovers around 70 percent, pretty bad for a state agency that claims “rehabilitation” as a goal.

And what about the recidivism rate for those life-term prisoners who manage to rehabilitate themselves, turn their lives around and prove to both the parole board and the governor that they are changed and no longer a danger?  It’s less than 1 percent!

 

That’s right, less than 1 percent.

 

Continue reading @ Capitol Weekly

Related articles

• Brown allows parole for murderers at greater rate (mercurynews.com)

Women Who Kill the Men They Love

Jessica Bennett

 

From inside a California prison, a group of women convicted of murder is working to change the way we think about domestic violence.

 

When Brenda Clubine killed her husband in 1983, there were 11 restraining orders against him and a warrant for his arrest. He’d put her in the ER more than once—tossing her across the room, fracturing her skull, and puncturing her lungs. But “domestic violence” was scarcely on the public radar back then: local police considered it a problem to be worked out in private; there was no hotline to call and few shelters to escape to. So when Brenda says her husband locked her in a hotel room and told her to hand over her wedding ring—so it would be “harder to identify her body”—Brenda knew she had only one option: she had to kill him first.

Her husband, a retired cop who was twice her size, lay down on the bed, and Brenda saw her chance. “Everything started flashing before my eyes,” Brenda, now 63, remembers. “I started thinking about my son, and I thought, how could I have ended up here?” She grabbed an open wine bottle and swung it toward him, but he grabbed it. She backed up and swung again—connecting with his forehead. “All I remember from that point is grabbing my keys, my ring, my shoes, and running six miles down Colorado Avenue home.”

Brenda would spend 26 years in prison for her husband’s murder—the blow to his head shattered his skull. At her trial, a judge would not permit a psychologist to testify about her mental state, nor friends or doctors who’d witnessed the physical scars of her abuse. Battered women’s syndrome, at the time, was still an untested theory (it remains highly controversial). So Brenda would face a sentence of 17 years to life—trading, as she puts it, “one prison for another.” But Brenda, who was once a licensed vocational nurse, would also change the way lawmakers think about domestic violence in this country—where one in four women is a victim of abuse.

 

 

 

 

Brenda Clubine was convicted, in 1983, or murdering her husband. At the time of her arrest, there were 11 restraining orders against him for domestic abuse., Courtesy of Quiet Little Place Productions

 

 

 

 

Clubine is one of half a dozen women featured in a new documentary Sin by Silence, which premieres on Investigation Discovery on Oct. 17—the directorial debut of filmmaker Olivia Klaus. Set on the sprawling brick campus of the high-security California Institution for Women, the state’s oldest women’s prison, it tells the story of the prison support group Clubine founded—aimed at women like her, who’ve been imprisoned for killing the men they once loved.

Over the course of the one-hour film, we hear from LaVelma, whose husband was pastor by day and tormentor by night—but who was too ashamed to tell anybody what was going on (she’s serving 25 years to life). We meet Joanne, a mother of three, who—like many women stuck in a cycle of abuse—tried endlessly to leave but couldn’t support her children on her own. (Leaving an abuser, say experts, can often be more dangerous than staying.) She is serving a 15 year to life sentence. And we hear the dramatic story of Glenda Crosley, a soft-spoken, gray-haired grandmother who—after 25 years of marriage to her husband, Sam—ran him over in the parking lot of a Bakersfield, Calif., shopping center, as bystanders looked on. “It’s a hard thing, even today,” says the woman, now 65, speaking softly into the camera. “Why did I do it?” Glenda has been in prison for 24 years.

Over the years, Clubine’s own story has been criticized, by both lawmakers and the press. But she firmly believes that, in her case, anyway, she had no other option. And so, from her eight- by six-foot prison cell, she began organizing the women around her, shocked by how many of them had similar stories. By 1989, a group of 60 women—calling themselves “Convicted Women Against Abuse—was formally recognized by the state as the first inmate-run support group in the nation. Brenda launched a letter-writing campaign to any politician whose address she could get her hands on. And she started sharing her cellmates’ stories. “Murder is what defines us: section 187 of the penal code,” she tells Newsweek. “But these are normal, everyday people. Inmates, but also victims. We wanted our stories to be heard.”

Continue Reading @ The Daily Beast

 

Advise for Parolees Seeking Employment

By Johnny Street

July 29, 2011

Make no mistake, parole is technically a duration of a sentence served outside of an institution, not an ending or completion of your sentence. It is treated like a step towards being completely free from obligation to the Corrections Department, but all those parameters (checking in, pissing in a cup, paying restitution) are all part of your sentence. This is also where it is really easy to violate your sentence, and wind up back in prison or jail. A key aspect that would make someone violate their parole is destitution, and what a horrible time to be destitute.

It is common knowledge that unemployment statistics are appalling. Depending on where you live, anywhere from 10% to 25% of a population is without work. This does not even factor in those who’s unemployment benefits have expired, or the ones who are under employed. We’ve all heard our own horror stories of downsizing, lay-offs, and the random doctor who has to bag groceries to supplement their income. With all sorts of people desperate for work, any work, the ones on parole are now even lower on the employment food chain.

If you are in such a mess, I hope these ideas help. Landing employment could very well be what makes you complete your parole, and stay out of institutions.

1. Start Looking For A Job Before Parole Is Granted. Inmates who are eligible for parole are notified before their hearing by a case manager.
2. Get As Many Good Letters Of Recommendation As You Can. With virtually every new place of employment running background checks on you, it is almost futile to think they won’t find out if you’ve been recently incarcerated. Be honest. Your word will only be taken at face value by a prospective employer, but what will help is by getting a recommendation from a third party. This can be a former employer, a religious figure, or even your parole officer.
3. Call Your Parole Officer. Part of a Parole Officers job description is helping a parolee find long term employment. Obviously this can vary.
4. Utilize All Social Services And Job Placement Agencies. The US Department of Justice can help you locate employers who hire parolees in your area.
5. If You Believe You Are Being Discriminated Against During Your Job Hunt, Contact The ACLU. This is a very large grey area. You can be denied employment for a number of reasons. Obviously employers cannot deny you employment based on race, sex, sexual preference, or religion- but they can as long as they don’t cite one of those as the reason for it. All the same, you as a parolee still have rights, and the ACLU can inform you of what rights you have and if you are, in fact, being discriminated against.
6. Contact The Head Of Your Local Place Of Worship. Churches are very connected within a community, and they can possibly suggest employers who are sympathetic to your situation.
7. Persistence, Perseverance, Patience. It is not uncommon for a parolee to look for work and have nothing come of it. Even day labor can deny you employment based on you having a record. We live in a very unforgiving time when it comes to people out of work, and how much more that is amplified when you have been incarcerated for however long. Keep in mind your first line of getting back on your feet is your Parole Officer.

It is a shame that the concept of incarceration impairs you from living a prosperous life. It’s as if not only it is a system set up to promote failure on the parolee’s part, but your struggle is in fact an undocumented part of your sentence as well. To the victims of a crime you committed, the “serves you right” mentality is common. Either that or the altruistic “I forgive you”. No matter what put you in the situation of being on parole- being a raw deal, a plea to a lesser charge, or on a very rare occurrence of the punishment actually fitting the crime, parole is a very real and savage step when it comes to sentence fulfillment. In this cruel era of economic depression, never has getting back on your feet been harder for the parolee.

 

Johnny Street is the socio/political and biographical author of “A Defiance Of The American Dream” (available now on amazon.com), “Nacirema”, “Some Day In November: The Biography of Amber Bray”, and “Fourth And Life: The Biography of Marlin Carey” (available late 2011- early 2012)