Judge says witnesses, evidence disagree in inmate beating case

The investigation concluded that five prison guards pinned down, kicked and stomped a handcuffed inmate so violently that one nearby onlooker wept, closed her eyes and began to pray.

By Jon Ortiz

A second woman watched the officers beat the handcuffed African American male, according to a heavily redacted judicial narrative obtained by The Bee, and said it reminded her of the infamous Rodney King incident.

The crying woman didn’t respond, but a third observer agreed: “They’re kicking the s— out of him,” she said.

But a judge said there was no beating on that June morning two years ago at Susanville‘s High Desert State Prison.

The state board that referees contested terminations earlier this year agreed and ordered reinstatement for the five officers. The back pay, benefits and interest will come to about $1 million, their union estimates.

Now the California Correctional Peace Officers Association wants the investigators investigated.

Last month, the union asked the State Personnel Board to consider action against the three internal affairs employees who handled the case. The investigators’ names, like the names of all involved in the matter, are not public record.

Union leaders have multiple questions:

Why were eyewitnesses the judge referred to as “the Three Women” at the heart of the investigation allowed to commiserate over what they saw? Why did investigators ignore physical evidence exonerating the officers? Why didn’t they talk to eyewitnesses or consider some accounts – including statements from the prisoner himself – saying there was no beating?

The case highlights what the union claims is regularly slipshod work by the department’s internal investigative unit and those overseeing it.

“This isn’t an isolated case of a botched investigation,” said Chuck Alexander, the union’s executive vice president. “But this one is particularly egregious, and no one’s been held accountable for it.”

A Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman defended the investigation and declined to comment on the union’s request to file charges against the investigators.

“We are now considering our options for further appeal,” spokeswoman Deborah Hoffman said.

The 33-page decision by Teri Block, an administrative law judge who hears termination-dispute cases for the State Personnel Board, includes a rare glimpse into how the state investigates cases of inmate abuse. Her narrative is built on investigative records and testimony from a hearing conducted last fall:

On the morning of June 29, 2011, two officers were walking the inmate for a doctor-ordered psychiatric evaluation after the man threatened to harm prison staff members and himself.

The inmate, who weighed 120 pounds and stood 5-foot-7, was handcuffed behind his back with a guard on each arm. As they approached a secured area for vehicle transports, the inmate pulled his left arm away and turned toward one of the officers, who immediately shouted, “Get down!”

Those two words triggered a “Code 1″ alarm. Within seconds, other correctional officers, managers and medical staff members ran to assist, the court narrative said.

The escorting officers took the inmate to the ground, face down, in keeping with their training.

One “placed his arm on the (inmate’s) neck and shoulder area, and maintained control of the inmate’s arm,” according to Block’s description of events. The other pinned down the inmate’s legs and feet with both hands.

Two other officers arrived about 10 seconds after the Code 1. One “placed his knee swiftly and firmly on the right side of the inmate’s mid-back,” according to the court narrative, and the other did the same on the inmate’s left side, “consistent with CDCR use-of-physical-force training.”

The fifth officer arrived and stood near the left torso of the inmate, who briefly struggled. But with four officers restraining him, he gave up. He complained that he couldn’t breathe, according to the court record, so two officers adjusted their positions to give him relief.

Within 90 seconds, 15 to 20 medical staff members, correctional officers, a lieutenant and a captain were there. An officer fetched leg restraints.

Continue Reading @ SacBee

George Martorano-Longest Serving Federal Prisoner

Life without parole for weed.  Can you even fathom that? George Martorano has served 30 years of  that LWOP sentence. For POT. Non violent, first offense…and LIFE.  How can this be justice?

 

 

The Bureau of Prisons can verify that George is the longest serving non-violent first-time offender in the history of the United States, and possibly the WORLD. After being caught with a truck of marijuana, George was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. This was in 1982, when the War on Drugs had strong momentum. Other people who had committed similar crimes received a maximum of twenty years. Manuel Noriega, contrasted with George, is one of the most infamous drug traffickers of all time, yet only received a forty year sentence–with the possibility of parole.

So why was such a harsh sentence handed to George Martorano? We believe that in the prosecution’s effort to send a message to George’s father, Raymond “Long John” Martorano, an alleged mafia figure, he was given the maximum sentence allowed by law; life with no parole. Because he remained silent, they “locked him up and threw away the key,” put him in solitary confinement for four and one half years, and kept him in America’s most notorious prison: Marion, which is completely underground.

Then George began to write. He wrote and published a book about growing up in the old Italian-American neighborhood in Philadelphia, “South Philly.” He now has over twenty works depicting life in prison as well as life on the outside. He teaches reading and writing, yoga, and even counsels suicidal inmates. He has a spotless prison record without an incident of violence in all of his twenty-two years in America’s toughest jails.

By writing to President Obama, saying that a non-violent first time offender such as George deserves a second chance, you will be helping to send him home. Studies show that is costs $40,000 a year in tax payers’ money to keep a federal prisoner. The prisons are overcrowded with non-violent drug offenders who are “warehoused.” Why should this clearly rehabilitated man be kept in jail until the day he dies? If George is released, he plans to help educate young men who are on the wrong path in life. Until then, by writing President Obama, you could help George on his quest for freedom.

Take action

Contact politicians, urging them to grant George Martorano the Presidential Pardon for which he is currently nominated. Point out that under current sentencing guidelines, George has exceeded his due time. Keeping this man in jail for life is unconstitutional and inhumane.

Hard mail is known to have more impact than email. Please send a hand-written letter that includes your name and address to show that you are in full support of George Martorano’s human rights.

George thanks you.

Write to President Obama

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
USA

Write to Pardon Attorney

Download a .DOC file.

Pardon Attorney
Office of the Pardon Attorney
U.S. Department of Justice
500 First Street, N.W. Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20530
USA

 

George has no access to computers, let alone the internet. But he is an avid letter writer, and encourages people to write him with questions and opinions.

George Martorano
inmate number 12973-004
FCI COLEMAN MEDIUM
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
P.O. BOX 1032
COLEMAN, FL 33521

Otherwise, for other concerns, feel free to contact The Free George/WeBelieveGroup either by email or “snail mail” Feel it’s an emergency, call 727-452-2439

Free George/WeBelieveGroup–

PO BOX 41491

St Pete Fl. 33743
webelievegroup@msn.com

 

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One of the Darkest Periods in the History of American Prisons

Recent lawsuits and Justice Department investigations have uncovered grotesque abuses of mentally ill inmates at state and local prisons. Yet Washington refuses to investigate allegations of similar mistreatment at federal penitentiaries.

Andrew Cohen

It has been an extraordinary three weeks in the history of the American penal system, perhaps one of the darkest periods on record. In four states, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes, the systemic abuse and neglect of inmates, and especially mentally ill inmates, has been investigated, chronicled and disclosed in grim detail to the world by lawyers, government investigators and one federal judge. The conclusions are inescapable: In our zeal to dehumanize criminals we have allowed our prisons to become medieval places of unspeakable cruelty so far beyond constitutional norms that they are barely recognizable.

First, on May 22, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department released a report highlighting the unconstitutional conditions of a county prison in Florida. Then, on May 30th, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit alleging atrocious conditions at a state prison in Mississippi. One day later, the feds again sounded out on behalf of inmates, this time against profound abuse and neglect at a Pennsylvania prison. Finally, last week, a federal judge issued an order describing the unconstitutional “brutality” of the prison in Orleans Parish, Louisiana.

There were many common themes in the reports. In each instance, the mistreatment of mentally ill inmates was highlighted. Prison officials have failed to provide a constitutional level of care in virtually every respect, from providing medication and treatment to protecting the men from committing suicide. In the Louisiana court order, one prison expert is quoted by the judge as describing an “extraordinary and horrific” situation with the prison there. In the Florida investigation, federal investigators noted that local prison officials “have elected to ignore obvious and serious systemic deficiencies” in the jail’s mental health services.

Taken together, these developments shed welcome light on some of the worst government abuses of our time and demonstrate vividly the need for enlightened policies and more human decency and accountability from prison officials. But these lawsuits and investigations and court orders also beg a critical question: If the feds are so concerned with the constitutional rights of mentally ill prisoners in state and local prisons, why is the Justice Department so unwilling to undertake an equally thorough review of the similarly dubious practices and policies now being forced upon mentally ill federal prisoners by the Bureau of Prisons?

The findings from the Florida and California investigations, and the evidence and allegations in Louisiana and Mississippi, are remarkably similar to the evidence and allegations that have been made in two federal civil rights cases about inmate abuse and neglect within the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the ADX-Florence facility that includes “Supermax,” America’s most famous prison. Yet the Inspector General of the Justice Department has refused to investigate those allegations against federal prison officials. Nor has the Civil Rights Division of the Department. Nor has Congress. This is unacceptable.

Continue Reading @ The Atlantic

 

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Public Schoolteachers’ Pensions Are Partially Funded by Private Prisons

Photo via Flickr user Rennett Stowe

By Ray Downs

Public schools and prisons are becoming increasingly linked—police officers are now a constant presence in many schools, which has led to students getting hassled and arrested by cops for what could be described as normal kid stuff, including performing science experiments on school grounds. There’s even a name for this phenomenon: the school-to-prison pipeline, which takes kids, mostly minority students who live in poverty, out of the classroom and into the legal system, shuffling them into the prison-industrial complex before they’re old enough to vote.

But there’s another, less obvious way schools are tied to prisons. Retirement funds for public school teachers (as well as other government employees) in several states have a combined $90 million invested in Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, the largest private prison companies in the world. Though individual teachers didn’t decide to make their pensions partially connected to America’s gigantic, often abusive incarceration industry—many of them aren’t aware of all the investments made on their behalf—they are indirectly profiting from mass incarceration, thanks to choices made by their money managers who run public employees’ massive pension funds.

That $90 million figure is an estimate based on publicly-available NASDAQ data for public employee pension funds. Most of the money comes from three big states: California, New York, and Texas. Texas, through its Permanent School Fund and state employee retirement system, has about $13 million invested in CCA and GEO. California and New York, through their retirement funds for public school teachers and other state employees (which includes nonteacher school employees, like janitors and principals), each have about $30 million tied to private prisons.

These investments in the incarceration industry are piddling in comparison to these funds’ overall portfolios—the teacher retirement funds for California (CalSTRS) and New York (NYSTRS) are worth $167 billion and $96 billion, respectively—but they qualify as major shareholders in CCA and GEO Group.

If corporations are people, GEO Group shouldn’t be allowed within 100 feet of a child. In 2000, the company (then known as Wackenhut Corrections Corporation), was indicted by the Department of Justice for running a juvenile detention center in Jena, Louisiana, where boys were routinely beaten by guards. One kid who had to wear a colostomy bag because of a gunshot wound was beaten by a guard for not tucking in his shirt, which he couldn’t do because the bag was in the way.

It didn’t end there. In 2012, GEO was indicted again, this time for running a juvenile prison in Walnut Grove, Mississippi, where kids were frequently raped, beaten, and denied medical attention. The seediest detail might have been that Grady Sims, the 61-year-old warden who was also the former mayor of the town, took a young female inmate to a nearby motel and had sex with her, then later tried to get the girl to lie about it to investigators. He eventually got the sexual-assault charge dismissed and pled guilty to witness tampering. He was sentenced to a whopping six months of house arrest.

Despite this track record, the government is still handing over kids to GEO Group through Abraxas, the private prison conglomerate’s juvenile-detention arm. In addition to running prisons for kids, this subsidiary takes kids who have been expelled from public school and puts them in “alternative” schools, which are supposed to be designed for kids who have behavioral problems but in many cases are home for teens who have been victimized by a system that overreacts when kids act up.

Several teachers I spoke to about their pensions being invested in companies that engage in such morally questionable practices.

“Why?” said Darleen Guien, a retired adult ESL teacher who worked for several years in the LA Unified School District. “[The private prison investment] is just a fraction of the fund. Why do they need that?”

Guien said that due to the size of the teachers’ retirement fund, she assumed it would have a few ethically questionable investments, such as Walmart, but she was disappointed to find out it was making money from private prisons.

“Teachers provide a public service,” she said. “It’s troubling to know that they’re investing in things that are so much against the values many of us have.”

She also felt that teachers have no control over how their retirement fund is invested. “It’s not like we’re shareholders in a company and we vote,” she said. “I don’t think we have any say in anything. All we can do is maybe write a letter.”

Joe Martinez is a principal at Villacorta Elementary in South San Jose Hills, California. Although he wouldn’t comment on the private-prison investments in particular, he seemed to agree with Guien’s sentiments about there not being much that teachers can do about what provides the money for their pensions.

“More transparency could be a start, but even if teachers were given all the information about the investments, I don’t think there’s really much of a way for their voices to be heard, or even if it would make a difference,” he said.

I asked him if it really mattered in the end. After all, private prisons might be despicable entities, but they’re not illegal. In fact, they’re often very profitable companies and hence worth investing in from a purely capitalistic perspective. Is it OK to invest in ethically problematic companies if the profits go to teachers?

“I don’t think there necessarily has to be a choice,” he repilied. “The people who control these funds, which are basically a lot of other people’s money, could just be more conscious of what they’re investing in.”

When I reached out to spokespeople for the teacher-retirement funds of New York and California, both emphasized that the job of these funds is to make money so teachers can enjoy their golden years, and when you manage funds as vast as theirs, you might get into some ethically questionable territory. They also said that the private-prison investments are likely tied to index funds, which means they are part of mutual funds that mimic the ebb and flow of the market as a whole. In other words, no one is really deciding to invest in prisons, they just aren’t deciding not to invest in prisons.

However, a line can be drawn. John Cardello of the NYSTRS said they don’t invest in hedge funds. Everything else is OK, though. “I can’t think of anything else that we consciously stay away from,” Cardello said.

But CalSTRS, which is nearly twice as big as their New York counterpart, has made headlines for distancing itself from controversial corporations. In 2009, they stopped investing in tobacco companies, and shortly after the Newtown massacre, they announced they would divest from gun companies that make assault weapons considered illegal in California.

“There’s a moral component to our investing,” said Ricardo Duran, a spokesman for CalSTRS. He explained that the fund has 21 risk factors that go into deciding what to invest in. Those factors include respect for human rights, civil liberties, and political rights. It also includes racial discrimination.

By those standards, however, how are private prisons not unethical investments? Hopefully, these publicly financed funds will review what they’re making money off of soon and stop investing in companies that profit from America’s worst social problems.

Follow Ray on Twitter: @RayDowns

Previously on prisons and schools:

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

Why Are We Arresting So Many Children?

Silent But Deadly

 

Via VICE

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• “Hustle and Flow: Prison Privatization Fueling the Prison Industrial Complex” (sentencing.typepad.com)
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Texas Man Sentenced to 50 Years In Prison For Stealing … $35 Of Ribs?

Justice- Texas Style…..

Texas Man Sentenced to 50 Years In Prison For Stealing 35 Of Ribs

 

A 43-year-old Texan man named Willie Smith Ward just became the latest victim of a misguided justice system, having been sentenced to 50 years in prison for trying to steal a rack of pork ribs from an H-E-B grocery story in Waco, Texas.

A whopping $35 heist.

The jury deliberated for just two minutes over the case, and then about an hour deciding the punishment. Ward is a repeat offender, with five felony counts (burglary, attempted robbery, aggravated assault, leaving the scene of an accident, and possession of cocaine), as well as four misdemeanor convictions.

Assistant District Attorney J.R. Vicha, who prosecuted Ward alongside Chris Bullajian, was pleased with the outcome. “This verdict shows that the citizens of this county will not tolerate a continued disrespect and disregard for other people and their property,” he said.

“People who choose to do so will be dealt with seriously and appropriately.”

In this case that translates to an effective life sentence, with parole rates in the state hovering at just around 30%.

Texas has long been a proponent of the “Three Strikes” program, whereby repeat or “habitual” offenders are incarcerated for life to prevent recidivism. In 1974, the state became the first to enact such a policy.

Within two decades, 24 states and the federal government would have some variation of the law on the books.

Originally praised by politicians, many on the left championed such measures to avoid being seen as “light on crime.” It was a political gamble at the center of the Democratic battle to recapture middle America, led by Bill Clinton in the 1990s — who himself advocated for a federal Three Strikes program in his 1994 State of the Union Address.

“Homeless guys on drugs, that was your typical third-striker,” says Stanford Law School’s Michael Romano, co-founder of the Three Strikes Project. Romano is referring to California’s embattled 1994 ballot initiative, Proposition 184. The law is responsible for 10,000 imprisoned Californians, 3,000 of which are estimated to be eligible for release under a subsequent ballot initiative passed just last year to revise the law.

Enacted with the intent of locking up violent offenders — rapists, kidnappers, and murderers — most states have instead watched bloated prisons take on more and more petty criminals on life sentences, who are disproportionately poor, homeless, and mentally ill. The prison population in America has since exploded from just a few million in the early 90s, to around 2.3 million today — making us the proud global leader in both total prisoners and prisoners per capita.

“You could send hundreds of deserving people to college for the amount of money we were spending,” Romano adds.

In a blistering article for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi calls these programs “the world’s most expensive and pointlessly repressive homeless-care program,” costing California alone an average of $50,000 per year per prisoner. 40% of them are mentally retarded or mentally ill. 45% are black (compared to a 7% African American population in the state).

According to a 2011 report by the National Institute of Corrections, such policies have “no demonstrable effect on violent crime levels or trends.”

Willie Smith Ward is now the latest victim of these poverty-cleansing measures — striking a similar if-we-can’t-fix-it-let’s-lock-it-up-forever tone as so many recent headlines have. Consider him swept under the rug, lost to a uniquely-American penal system built upon the principles of retaliation and revenge — not rehabilitation — a thinly-veiled assault on the poor, the marginalized, the ill, the inconvenient, and the disadvantaged.

Should he be reprimanded for stealing some ribs — yes. Should it be for the rest of his life?

Probably not.

Picture Credit: WacoTrib

Via Policy Mic

California: Open letter to Assemblywoman Melendez: Prison is no country club

by PJ LaFever

Dear Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez:

I recently read an article in the Sacramento Bee where you were quoted: “‘I think we’ve done everything we possibly can to comply with the law and to make sure the accommodations if you will are adequate and lawful, but it’s not a vacation, it’s prison,’ the Lake Elsinore Republican said. ‘It’s not going to be resort-style accommodations. There are certain things we have to comply with under the law. I’m starting to feel now (the court is) pushing it further and further just because they can.’”

Approximately 85 percent of all Californians either have a loved one in prison or know someone who does. This little girl and her grandmother and hundreds more traveled to CCWF, California’s main women’s prison, in January for the Chowchilla Freedom Rally to demand, “Bring our loved ones home.” – Photo: Wanda Sabir

To begin with, Ms. Melendez, thank God for the three-judge panel. If they are “pushing it,” it’s because they have a moral obligation to do so. Had the CDCR been doing what it should have been doing all along, we would not even be facing this problem. And if rehabilitation and substance abuse treatment had been made widely available years ago, we would not have the numbers in prison that we do. CDCR, however, was intent on investing its money in expanding the prison population, not reducing it.

For you to state that the “accommodations are adequate and lawful” clearly demonstrate your ignorance of current prison conditions. Perhaps you need to take a tour of all 33 California state prisons; no doubt, if you did, if you have any heart at all, you would see that CDCR is still grossly out of compliance. While there have been some improvements, they still have a long way to go.

I’ve been volunteering as a prisoners’ rights advocate for 13 years. I have dealt first hand with the abhorrent abuse, neglect and dehumanizing conditions California state prisoners endure on a daily basis: the potty watches, the bogus, racially discriminatory validations of hundreds of Hispanics, and Hispanics and Blacks being locked down literally for years on end!

By “locked down,” I mean in their cells 24/7 with no fresh air or sunlight. And these are not SHU prisoners. These are prisoners in the general population. Patterns of guards setting prisoners up to fail on the yard are documented.

Medical care is still lacking! Physicians’ assistants are playing the role of doctors; prisoners rarely ever see an M.D. They get the wrong meds and have meds taken away from them that they were authorized to have. More than one PA has been fired due to overstepping their bounds.

One young man tried to get surgery for a badly dislocated shoulder for six years to no avail! Not until I contacted the Correspondence Control Unit and Prison Health Care Services did he get help. Prisoners are being charged $5 to go to medical when they never get to go. Then when they reschedule their appointments due to being overlooked, they are charged an additional $5!

The overcrowding at CCWF women’s prison is so bad, women are lucky to get a doctor’s appointment at all. Since VSPW has been made a sensitive needs prison for the men, CCWF is so incredibly overcrowded that there is more fighting, less food and fewer programs that served to assist the women in paroling successfully.

For you to state that the “accommodations are adequate and lawful” clearly demonstrate your ignorance of current prison conditions.

It seems to me that before you make flippant statements about our prisons being likened to country clubs that you would do well to tour our prisons, interview some of the inmates and get a real understanding of current conditions. I don’t mean a tour like Gov. Schwarzenegger took at Mule Creek. Mule Creek is “the country club prison” that all the legislators are invited to see; it is kept up for just that purpose and is not at all representative of California prisons.

I must say that I was pleased to hear Sen. Steinberg state in this same article that what we need is rehabilitation and money to invest in mental health and substance abuse treatment as well as vocational training for parolees and probationers. He is absolutely right: “The key is to reduce recidivism, not to keep building more capacity.”

I would add to his list “transitional housing,” as many of the prisoners have no resources after being incarcerated for so many years. To be successful once paroled, they need housing, jobs, food, clothes and money to initially get to and from their jobs. To release them with $200 in their pockets and nowhere to go and no resources to become responsible, contributing citizens simply sentences them back to prison and thus perpetuates the problem.

Sen. Steinberg is absolutely right: “The key is to reduce recidivism, not to keep building more capacity.”

I thank you for your time and your consideration of these most important matters. Please keep in mind, Ms. Melendez, that those are human beings behind those walls, not just numbers. Please keep in mind also that approximately 85 percent of all Californians either have a loved one in prison or know someone who does.

We are your constituency, and we would appreciate it if you were a little more sympathetic to the fact that our loved ones are “paying their dues.” Most often it is not our fault that they are imprisoned. Most often the cause has to do with using, selling or stealing to get drugs. That is a societal problem and needs to be addressed as one.

Sincerely,

PJ LaFever

cc: Sen. Darrell Steinberg, Judge Thelton E. Henderson, Sen. Loni Hancock, Alison Anderson

PJ LaFever is based in Vallejo and can be reached at pjlafever2002@yahoo.com. Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez can be reached by mail at State Capitol, Room 205, Sacramento, CA 95814, or by phone at (916) 651-4006.

Via SF BayView

 

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What it Costs When We Don’t Educate Inmates for Life After Prison

Inmates participate in a study program in Santa Ana, CA. (Spencer Grant/Getty Images

 

By EMILY DERUY

 

Right now, taxpayers spend up to $70 billion each year to house the nation’s two to three million prisoners. That works out to about $31,000 per inmate. One would think that with such a stiff price tag, we’d be doing a better job of rehabilitation. The truth is that the prison system still does a particularly questionable job of educating inmates for life after incarceration, with only about 6 percent of corrections spending used on education programs. And that matters more than the average person realizes.

Currently, less than 15 percent of students in juvenile detention centers finish high school or complete a GED. Few prisons offer opportunities for adult inmates to pursue college degrees. That can make finding a job and reintegrating into society in a positive way much more difficult.

Stephen Steurer, executive director of the Correctional Education Association, said there are efforts at the state and national levels — the U.S. Education Department has an Office of Correctional Education, for example — to educate prisoners, but there isn’t enough funding to back those initiatives up and there isn’t much consistency from state to state. In fact, rehabilitation efforts by most states have hardly changed in 40 years.

One reason is that people in the United States react very differently to the idea of funding education in prisons than many people in Europe, particularly Scandinavia. And the current economy hasn’t helped that.

“Who wants to send a crook to college when they’re having a hard time getting their own kids through?” Steurer asked.

That said, Steurer believes President Barack Obama is open to the idea of more education in prisons, but the current budget makes any major changes unlikely, even when those changes are life altering.

According to an infographic from data analysis company Knewton, inmates earn 40 percent less per year than if they had not been incarcerated. That’s often because they lack the education they need to succeed in the workforce. Also, they are prohibited from taking on some jobs that require background checks, so job opportunities are limited.

It’s no surprise then that at least 40 percent of the country’s incarcerated population ends up back behind bars within a decade.

For the few states that have turned to prison education programs to break that cycle, the results are clear. Ohio, for example, reduced recidivism rates by more than 60 percent among ex-inmates who completed a degree in prison. In New York, less than eight percent of the inmates who took college classes wound up back in prison within three years. The reincarceration rates for those who didn’t take those classes was much higher, at 30 percent.

For those who feel it’s unfair that you commit a crime and essentially get a free education, consider these facts. A study by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that for every dollar spent on correctional education, the state saved $12. Another study from the University of California, Los Angeles found that a $1 million investment in incarceration prevented just 350 crimes, while the same investment in education prevents 600 crimes.

There are concerted efforts by individual organizations like the Samaritan House to provide job training skills to inmates and by schools like Boston University to offer college classes to people in prison. But those initiatives are few and far between.

Via ABC-Univision (continue reading on page 2)

 

 

 

 

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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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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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