Welfare Recipients: Do You Voluntarily Want to Go to Prison?

Posted on September 6, 2010 by prm

As a non-partisan citizen of this country, it is extremely frustrating to watch and hear the current news cycle that has become enamored with some of the most outlandish ideas and concepts from both political parties.    One of these extreme concepts was presented by a Republican candidate for the New York governorship, Carl Paladino.

Mr. Paladino stated that he wanted to “transform some New York prisons into dormitories for welfare recipients, where they could work in state-sponsored jobs, get employment training and take lessons in ‘personal hygiene’.”   When questioned about his idea that is gaining some steam in the Tea Party, Mr. Paladino stated that “he doesn’t want to send welfare recipients to prison dormitories- it would be voluntary.”  Wow!  So, there you have it- a voluntary program to that will create more financial strain on the state of New York, train welfare recipients without a defined scope and purpose and teach the respective individuals how to clean themselves.

To many single mothers, individuals who have lost their jobs in this stagnant economy and the self-responsible poor who have tried to pick themselves up, what a derogatory, condescending and indifferent proposal that has been presented by Mr. Paladino.  Most non-partisan historians would agree that the welfare system that dates back to the 1930s during the Great Depression has helped countless families and individuals overcome difficult and destitute times.  In 1996, under President Clinton, the bipartisan Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 changed the nation’s welfare system into one requiring work in exchange for time-limited cash assistance and created the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program.

Many critics continue to question this legislation.  But, with over 40 million people in the United States currently living at or below poverty thresholds, the reformed welfare system is still sorely needed.  To be sure, continual accountability and oversight of the TANF program is needed, as there will always be those who will try to do the opposite of what is right.  But, to isolate millions of people in neo-housing projects (i.e., prison dorms) to implement actions that are already required by law is simply not a wise mechanism to solve any problems associated with the TANF program in New York or anywhere else.  And, as a candidate for governor, Mr. Paladino should know that his proposal is not sound from at least three perspectives.

First, the proposal would result in unnecessary costs and expenditures for an already struggling state.  The TANF program is only a temporary financial assistance program with a maximum of 60 months of cash benefits within one’s lifetime.  In New York State, this holds true for individuals who participate in the federally-funded TANF program or the state Safety Net Assistance program.  At the end of the 60-month period, studies have shown that most recipients have found jobs or have acquired necessary job skills.

Second, the TANF program requires that recipients participate in work activities (i.e., unsubsidized or subsidized employment, on-the-job training, community service, vocational training, job skills training, education directly related to work or satisfactory secondary school attendance) as soon as they are job-ready or no later than two years after coming on assistance, with a few exceptions.  This is another reason why most recipients find jobs or acquire necessary job skills.

Third, let’s consider a proposed law that embodies personal hygiene classes for those from the inner cities, as Mr. Paladino stated.   Thus, those from the inner city must learn how to wash their hands, brush their teeth, use deodorant, take regular baths, shampoo their hair, file their nails, etc.  Doesn’t this sound like an excellent public policy?  It is very interesting when politicians from both sides of the political spectrum attempt to play the race card from a subtle perspective.

It is simply not prudent for candidates, exclusive of race, to suggest that prison dormitories should be established for welfare recipients across the board.  It is extremely disrespectful to those who are trying their best to overcome and rise above antagonistic circumstances.

Anthony Jerrod is a bestselling author, speaker, and public policy expert.

Source: Atlanta Post

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California inmates still suffer from lapses in prison medical care

Posted on August 26, 2010 by prm

Michal Czerwonka/Getty Images

The California Institution for Men prison fence is seen on August 19, 2009 in Chino, California

Aug. 25, 2010 | Julie Small | KPCC

Changes ordered by a federal receiver have brought better doctors and better care to inmates in California state prisons. But, as KPCC reports, inmates continue to suffer from misdiagnosis and delays in treatment.

Two years ago, Frank Lucero was an inmate at the California Institution for Men in Chino serving time for a parole violation. For several years, he’d gotten care for glaucoma in his left eye.

Attorney Ron Kaye says to get that care at Chino, Lucero followed the prison procedures to see a doctor.

“He was complaining that he was having nausea, pressure, headaches,” Kaye said.

For four months, Lucero couldn’t get medication for his glaucoma. The prison eventually approved a visit to an ophthalmologist, but then rescinded it. Lucero appealed. The prison’s chief medical officer, Dr. Muhammad Farooq, denied the appeal.

Kaye said his client exhausted all the prison’s procedures for getting treatment.

“Essentially he was screaming on paper, ‘Give me my necessary medical care!’ And as a result of being ignored, the glaucoma manifested into an acute and serious stage and his eyeball exploded.”

After the swelling went down, doctors removed what was left of Lucero’s eye. Now he’s suing the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for willful neglect. The case goes to trial in federal court next year. A spokeswoman for Corrections said the Department could not comment on on-going litigation.

Farooq says Lucero got “appropriate care” in a “timely manner.”

But Kaye says what happened to his client resulted from problems that have plagued California prisons for decades.

“There’s no record keeping in a system that’s ripe for letting people fall through the cracks,” Kaye says.

Medical lapses blamed on shoddy record keeping

Federal receiver Clark Kelso says shoddy record keeping contributes to medical lapses in state prisons. Most records are kept on paper, not in a computer. They can lag behind inmates by weeks – and when they do arrive, they’re often incomplete.

“It’s a mess,” Kelso says.

His staff estimates that statewide, prisons have amassed 25,000 inches of unprocessed inmate medical records.

“They’ve been generated but they just haven’t made it to an inmate’s file, which means they’re kind of useless,” Kelso says.

Inmate found ‘unresponsive’ in cell

And in some cases those missing records can lead to deadly results.

At one prison in 2008, doctors prescribed medicine for a 21-year-old inmate with asthma. But when he transferred to a different prison, the medical record of his diagnosis wasn’t transferred.

He waited a couple weeks to see a doctor for a new prescription. On the day of the appointment, guards found the inmate “unresponsive” in his cell.

Some inmates say prison doctors and nurses don’t believe them when they say they’re sick.

Inmate recalls near-death experience

William Furr, an inmate at the prison in Lancaster, says that suspicious reaction almost cost him his life last year.

In a phone interview from prison, Furr says, “I understand this is prison and people fake stuff to try to get pills, but mine wasn’t pain medication, it wasn’t something you could get high on. It’s something I have to take for the rest of my life, and they know it.”

Furr, 32, needs a blood thinner to prevent blood clots in his leg.

Prison doctors tested the inmate’s blood once a week to make sure the blood thinner was working.

But he says nurses didn’t give him daily medicine like they were supposed to, so his tests came out wrong. The results prompted a prison doctor to boost Furr’s blood thinner dosage. For five days, he got a double dose.

“I started noticing bleeding when I used the restroom,” Furr recalls. “My gums would bleed. My nose would bleed. So I filled out a medical slip.”

On it, Furr wrote, “I am starting to bleed for no reason.”

He waited 11 days for a response, then asked the staff on his ward for help.

“I stopped the nurse,” Furr says, “and she said if I had been bleeding that way, I’d already be dead – so I must be lying.”

Finally the sergeant on Furr’s cell block sent him to the prison medical clinic.

“Once they seen my urine in a cup and seen how dark the blood was, they immediately rushed me to Lancaster Community Hospital.”

Furr said doctors there determined his stomach was full of blood.

“They say I was hemorrhaging out of my kidneys and stomach area.”

Furr spent seven days in a hospital.

An internal investigation at Lancaster prison found that staff failed to follow guidelines. The Federal Receiver’s office also investigated Furr’s case and “took corrective actions and resolved the issue.”

Steve Fama, an attorney with the Prison Law Office, which sued California over poor prison medical care – says he reports about one such near-death incident a month to the federal receiver — and about 60 other lapses in care that he calls “outrageous but not deadly.”

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Life without parole for children?

Posted on August 23, 2010 by prm

Courts, lawmakers, DAs at odds over sentencing for young killers

By Merrill Balassone

Jonathan Medina - Merced Sun-Star -
Jonathan Medina – Merced Sun-Star –

A 14-year-old boy who killed a young father at a child’s birthday party in south Modesto likely will die in prison. Angel Cabanillas, now 19, stands to serve at least 100 years behind bars.

But just 40 miles south in Merced, a boy who was 15 when he committed a fatal drive-by to impress his fellow gang members is set to be sentenced Monday to 31 years in prison. He could be out by the time he’s 42.

The disparity in their sentences reflects a divide in how judges and prosecutors handle violent crimes committed by children. Whether minors can be sentenced to die in prison has recently come under scrutiny by the U.S. Supreme Court and the California Legislature, and their discussions could change the rules for cases like Cabanillas.’

In May, the high court ruled juveniles cannot be sentenced to life in prison without parole for non-homicide crimes. Denying children who commit lesser crimes the opportunity to ever get out of prison constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and runs counter to a worldwide consensus against such harsh sentences for juveniles, the court wrote.

The decision did not specifically address what can happen to children convicted of murder, but legal experts say recent court rulings regarding juvenile justice have shown a trend toward leniency. In 2005, the Supreme Court banned use of the death penalty against minors in all cases.

“The court has made clear that juveniles are different than adults,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California at Irvine.

The California Legislature is heading in that direction, too. On Friday, it moved forward with a bill that would allow courts to take a second look at cases involving juveniles sentenced to life without parole.

It would not prohibit life without parole sentences for juveniles, but would let courts review such cases 15 years after sentencing, potentially allowing some young convicts to receive a lesser sentence of 25 years to life.

The bill’s author, Democratic Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco said brain development continues well through adolescence, which means impulse control, planning and critical thinking skills are not fully developed.

“This sentence was created for the worst of criminals that have no possibility of reform, and it is not a humane way to handle children,” said Yee, a child psychologist. “While the crimes they committed caused undeniable suffering, these youth offenders are not the worst of the worst.”

Said Elizabeth Calvin, a children’s rights advocate at Human Rights Watch: “We can keep the public safe without locking children up forever for crimes committed when they were still considered too young to have the judgment to vote or drive.”

Opposition by DAs

The California District Attorney’s Association opposes the bill. Prosecutors say the life without parole sentence is imposed mainly for teenagers aged 16 or 17 who were convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances.

“I believe that (life without parole) absolutely should remain available as a possible sentencing choice for judges to impose on minors who commit horrifying murders,” said Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager.

San Francisco attorney Victor Morse, who is appealing Cabanillas’ sentence, said two countries — the United States and Israel — impose sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for juvenile offenders. He said Cabanillas’ sentence of 132 years to life in prison is tantamount to life without parole.

By 2007, 73 children in 19 states, including California, had been sentenced to die in prison for crimes they committed at ages 13 or 14, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.

“We’re hoping the court of appeal will see fit to declare that Angel should sometime be able to at least ask the parole board to see the light of day,” Morse said.

Needed medications

Cabanillas was released from juvenile hall, where a psychiatrist prescribed an anti-psychotic medication along with pills for depression and a sleeping disorder, five days before the shooting spree.

Cabanillas called for help the day after his release because he didn’t have any medications. He didn’t get the pills until after his arrest, when a psychiatrist diagnosed him with depression and auditory hallucinations.

Without his medication, Cabanillas resorted to abusing alcohol the day of his crime, Morse said. As a result, a jury found Cabanillas guilty of second-degree murder rather than the first-degree charge prosecutors sought.

Cabanillas was convicted of spraying bullets at party guests, who tried to run for cover at the Almaden Way home June 10, 2006. Manuel Rayas, 28, of San Francisco was killed. Cabanillas shot and wounded a man on nearby Spokane Street and pointed a rifle at others on Montavenia and Parducci drives.

The attorney general’s office is expected to respond to Cabanillas’ appeal with the 5th District Court of Appeal in Fresno next month.

In the Merced case, prosecutors told The Merced Sun-Star they offered the more lenient plea deal to Jonathan Eduardo Medina, who faced a life sentence, because he was just a child when he committed the ultimate crime.

“We’re holding him accountable as an adult, but he was still 15 years old,” prosecutor David Elgin said.

Source: ModestoBee

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Life without possibility of redemption

Posted on August 22, 2010 by prm

By A Public Defender

I sat in a prison cell yesterday. And not your regular bullpen where they cram in 4 people who’re waiting to go to court. The real deal. Where our clients sleep at night (and often during the day). That of the 60 square foot variety.

There was a bed – a small bed – that was the length of the room. At the foot of the bed a metal toilet, with no cover. Just beyond that the heavy metal door, with a slit for a window. The door was maybe 3 feet wide, if that. At the head of the bed, if you were laying on your right side, you’d be about half a foot away from an ugly metal desk with holes that pretended to be drawers. This could not have been more than a foot long. The bed was flush with one wall. The desk with the opposite.

The bed looked hard, cold and dirty. And that’s it. This particular cell happened to have a window at the head of the bed. A window looking out onto nothing. Any future inhabitant of this particular cell would have it good. It was a single. Across the narrow passageway from this cell was another, identical in every respect except two: it was a double cell and there was no window. (Here’s a post I wrote a while ago about a different take on prisons in a foreign country.)

I didn’t have the courage to ask my escort to have them close the cell door for a minute, locking me in. It was nauseating and claustrophobic enough as it is. Maybe I was having a panic attack, or maybe the air in there was dead, like the spirits of the men that inhabit these cells, but I thought I was going to faint.

I willed myself to stand there, though, for a minute. To look around at the bare walls, the bare desk, the dirty toilet and imagine someone “living” there.

I even briefly closed my eyes and tried to picture myself there, day in and day out, for months, which turned into years, which turned into decades.

Would I survive? How does anyone? Would I give up and stop bathing, shaving, eating? Would I maintain my sanity or would I quickly decompensate? How long would it be before I’d want to kill myself?

Luckily, my stint in a jail cell ended rather quickly. As I stepped out and waited for my escort to guide me to the next location, I peeked into the cell across the way – the double – and it was occupied. Two men, sleeping ramrod straight (for these “beds” are as wide as the human body and no more), in a dark, dingy cell. One lifted his head as I was spying and looked at me. I looked away. I didn’t want to see his lifeless eyes.

People in cells are lucky, though. The next portion of the tour took me to the dorm-style housing. Which is nothing like any dorm you’ve ever lived in. Imagine instead the makeshift MASH hospitals, or perhaps the busiest train station in your neighborhood at rush hour, except instead of standing, people are milling about a hundred bunk beds on that tiny platform.

There is no privacy, there is no solitude, there is no being left alone. You are part of a large crowd. You are in someone’s face and they are in yours. You are a collective. Day in and day out. You share your bedroom with 125 other people.

Leaving the prison, I asked my colleague: cell or dorm? There’s no debate. Cell. I’d rather lose my sanity by myself.

—

Parole has got to be a sham. There’s no way that a group of 3 or 4 “regular folks” can decide whether one inmate is worthy of release over another. How can anyone better themselves in those conditions? Is there any choice but to give in to the atmosphere? The aura of despair, rejection and failure? How can we reasonably expect a person to prove to us on the outside that they’re worthy of a shot, when we give them no chance at redemption?

Parole hearings last 30-40 minutes. In that time, the board will try to determine who the person is that is sitting before them, what they’ve done to “change” and whether they’ll reoffend. It’s a crock of shit. It has to be. We spend our lifetime trying to figure out who we are and yet we ask others to perform this act and convince us of the goodness of their hearts and the errors of their ways in the time it takes for me to absent-mindedly watch the latest episode of crappy sitcom after crappy sitcom. They don’t stand a chance. Parole is a guessing game, much like poker. There’s a lot of bluster and bluffing and saying the right things and avoiding doing the wrong things.

It’s like locking a man in a room for 5 years with only a bicycle tire and asking him to manufacture the Bugatti Veyron in that time period and then punishing him when he is unable to. Why are we surprised? Why do we blame them?

How can one fault the inmate who, having served 30 years of his 40 year sentence, has done close to nothing, when it is we who have taken the tools from him. We, who have told him in no uncertain terms that his life, his potential, his talents, mean nothing, who have sucked the spirit out of him and confined him into submission, cannot then turn around and hold that man responsible for his failure to meet our arbitrary standards of rehabilitation.

Time slows down in prison. A minute seemed like an hour to me. I bet an hour seems like a year and a week like a decade. What of sentences of 5, 10 and 40 years? I can’t imagine what that must feel like. Hearing an imaginary clock tick every second of every day in your head, loud and unstoppable. Thinking about it is agonizing. Living it must be unbearable.

Why are we surprised that the lifer has given up? That he sleeps on the floor and not the bed, that he doesn’t eat or exercise or bathe or cut his hair? That he’s resigned himself to dying in prison? Because that’s what will happen. We’ve made that decision for him.

I do not believe that there is anyone who will not change, who will not repent or grow out of their childish bravado. Yet we send scores upon scores of our fellow human beings to these warehouses with no meaningful review of their development and growth for decades and decades.

Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. They cannot change because we don’t let them. Because if we did give them the tools to “better” themselves and they did, our draconian system of punishment would seem barbaric.

We cannot be wrong. We are never wrong. We are not them.

—

There is so much wrong with our criminal justice system: the way we treat inmates, the disparate sentencing of minorities and whites, the witchhunts of sex offenders. Yet there is nothing that you or I can change about this. And that’s a pity. Fear has won and will always win. Stereotyping still rules the day and will do so for eons to come. We are wonderful at recognizing the heterogeneity of those close to us and the homogeneity of everyone else.

Lots of people have lost faith in the goodness of the human spirit and have forgotten that man, at his core, is a fallible being. But he is not his actions; rather he is how he responds to them.

I could be snarky and say that visiting a prison cell should be required for all prosecutors and judges. Or I could be honest and say that it should be required for all defense counsel. We need to see where the people we represent live and how they live. We need to understand that they are unhappy when they come to court and we forget to see them. That our failure to do our absolute best eliminates any chance another human being has to escape these horrid conditions.

It is a sobering reminder of the consequences of our work. We must all place ourselves in our clients’ position and be aware of the awesome burden that is placed upon our shoulders. Prosecutors and judges may not care. We must.

No doubt those in jail have transgressed against our social and moral code. But we, on the outside, have abused that code and disfigured it beyond recognition. Just as those in jail may be responsible for pain and suffering and loss of human life, so are we.

Reposted with permission

Source:

A Public Defender Blog

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Prisons, Cages And Human Suffering

Posted on August 16, 2010 by prm

By Mary Hamer

16 August, 2010
Countercurrents.org

*HARM: We the good, holy, saintly people of society who are free of sin – Condemn, shame & hate the criminals & prisoners in our society. & Yet as Regush states: “Everyone is capable of causing harm or murder”. (1) All humans harm; We harm other humans with our anger & swear words; We harm animals: Killing them for food, clothes & medicine; & We harm the Earth with human Overpopulation, wars & nuclear bombs. So, To condemn, shame & hate criminals is To condemn, shame & hate ourselves. We humans are cruel in the way we judge others with our righteous attitudes.

*OBSERVATION & RECOMMENDATION: Prisons are a form of Caveman justice based on Newton’s 3 rd Law of Motion (2), the Revenge ethic & the Biblical eye for an eye principle; As a result of this punitive & retributive justice system, prisoners suffer many Human rights violations in prison systems such as the loss of Freedom, the risk of prison Rape & the risk of diseases such as Tuberculosis. Prison is society’s irrational, dysfunctional & vindictive method of putting people who do harm — in Cages. I argue for Prison reform, Restorative justice & improved Human rights for prisoners — To replace the current outdated, cruel & sadistic prison system.

* MISSION STATEMENT: The purpose of this essay is: #1. To explore the human rights abuses of the world’s prisons, #2. To examine people’s flawed thinking regarding Prisons & policing, #3. To understand society’s motives for incarceration & #4. To investigate: Alternatives to imprisonment. The Key sections of this paper are:

I. Human Rights Abuses in Prisons.

II. The Movement to End the Prison Industrial Complex

including A Review of the Critical Resistance Website.

III. Alternatives to Prison

including Definitions of Key Terms such as Restorative Justice.

IV. Manslaughter & Transformative Justice.

V. Final Comments & Questions.

I. PRISONS & HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES including PRISON RAPE:

*UNITED NATIONS: United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak describes the distressing & appalling conditions of the majority of the world’s prisoners & detainees: “In many countries I was simply shocked by the way human beings are treated in detention. As soon as they are behind bars, detainees lose most of their human rights & often are simply forgotten by the outside world”. Nowak comments on cells that are: “Dirty, crowded & without adequate light & fresh air; Cells with no beds, mattresses or blankets, No toilets apart from a hole or bucket, No toilet paper, water or food”. “The noise, smell, heat & violence in those cages was unbearable even for the prison wardens & absolutely intolerable for the prisoners, some of whom had survived many months or even years under these inhumane conditions”. “Nowak says the way societies treat persons deprived of their liberty … is one of the best indicators for the human rights culture in any country”. (3)

*PRISON RAPE:

*STOP PRISON RAPE Presentation to the UNITED NATIONS 2006: “In it’s 1994 decision in Farmer v. Brennan, the U.S. supreme Court explicitly recognized prisoner rape as a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition against cruel & unusual punishment”. The Supreme court held unanimously that officials have a responsibility to safeguard prisoners from violence perpetrated by other prisoners”. (4)

*PRISON CODE of SILENCE: This U.N. report describes the Prison ‘Code of Silence’ regarding Prison Rape: “A pervasive code of silence among corrections officials at the Corcoran State Prison in California contributed to the 1999 acquittal of 4 prison staff members charged with arranging the rapes of (Mr. D.). A 23-year old, 120 pound, first-time prisoner; (Mr. D.) was deliberately housed in solitary confinement with a sexual predator known as the ‘Booty Bandit’, in an effort by prison officials to ‘Teach him a lesson’ after he kicked a female corrections officer. The ‘Booty Bandit’ raped (Mr. D.) repeatedly over a 2 day period, as corrections officers passed by the cell & laughed”. (5)

*JUST DETENTION International states: “Victims of prisoner rape are left beaten & bloodied, contract HIV & other sexually transmitted diseases & suffer severe psychological harm”. (6)

*HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: “Statistics compiled by a U.S. Justice Department agency reveal that the rape & sexual abuse of prisoners by other prisoners & staff plague prisons nationwide”. “Certain prisoners are more vulnerable to rape & are targeted for sexual exploitation – Especially prisoners who are young, physically small or weak, gay, first offenders” (etc.) “Human Rights Watch research revealed that sexual abuse by other inmates often occurred because staff failed to adequately supervise inmates or respond appropriately to complaints of unwanted sexual activity”. (7) Human Rights Watch in the book No Escape, Chapter #8 Deliberate Indifference states: “Rape occurs in U.S. prisons because correctional officials, to a surprising extent, do little to stop it from occurring”.(8) Why does the U.S. criminal justice system allow this human rights violation of prison rape by corrections officer employees?

*Insideprison.com: “A study of four Midwestern states in 2000 found that about 1 in 5 inmates experiences some form of pressured or coerced sexual conduct while incarcerated.”(9)

II. INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT to REFORM or END the PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX:

REVIEW of the CRITICAL RESISTANCE WEBSITE:

* MISSION STATEMENT: The Critical Resistance organization’s Mission statement is: “To build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging & controlling people makes us safe. … Our work is part of global struggles against inequality & powerlessness.”

*VISION: “Critical Resistance’s vision is the creation of genuinely safe, healthy communities that respond to harm without relying on prisons & punishment.” CR is … (a) grassroots movement to stop using punishment to ‘Cure’ complicated social problems. … More police & prisons will not make our communities safer. Instead, we know that things like food, housing & freedom are what create lasting safety. We work to prevent people from being arrested or locked up in prison. … We organize to build power & to stop the devastation that … prisons & policing have brought to ourselves, our families & to our communities” “We seek alternatives to Cage based punishment & to reduce the number of prisoners & prisons”.

*FAQ’S: “Prisons are not about reducing harm in our communities & in fact, … Studies have found that imprisonment actually serves to destabilize our communities”. “Prisons are violent institutions that only perpetuate violence”. “Even the most horrendous forms of harm do not happen without a reason.” “People who commit acts of harm often have been harmed themselves in the past”. “Punishment creates the opposite of accountability – A sense of social isolation — instead of responsibility to others. … Punishment makes future harm more likely … People who have seriously harmed another need appropriate forms of support, supervision & social & economic resources”. CR provides an example of an alternative to prison: “In post-apartheid South Africa … rather than try, punish & potentially imprison those who had done harm to others under apartheid, the new government set up a Truth & Reconciliation Commission. The Commission heard testimony of people who took responsibility for their actions & were held accountable without imprisonment.”
*THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, (PIC): CR states: ”The United States uses prisons & policing as a Failed ‘solution’ to social, political & economic problems”. The PIC has many negative features including: “Oppressive systems of racism … human rights violations, the death penalty”, etc.. “The PIC is fueled by dramatic & racist reporting about ‘Crime’, ‘Delinquency’, & ‘Rebellion’, creating a culture of Fear”.

*ABOLITION: CR’S vision is “To reduce harm in our communities by creating lasting alternatives to punishment & prisons, investing in the things that truly build safe communities such as education, housing & employment, thus eliminating the ‘need’ for the prison industrial complex”. (10)

*PENAL REFORM INTERNATIONAL: Penal Reform International’s (PRI) Mission Statement is: “PRI is an international non-governmental organization working on penal & criminal justice reform worldwide”. “PRI seeks to achieve penal reform by promoting”: International human rights “In relation to law enforcement & prison conditions”, “The elimination of unfair & unethical discrimination in all penal measures”, “The abolition of the death penalty”, The reduction of imprisonment worldwide & “Support (for) the social reintegration (of) offenders whilst taking into account the interests of victims”. PRI’s Prison reform themes include: The death penalty, Health in prison, Juvenile Justice, Life Imprisonment, Prison Overcrowding & Women in Prison. (11)

III. ALTERNATIVES to PRISON:

*EDUCATION: Judge Mathis the host of “The Judge Mathis Show” has developed a Prisoner program called Prisoners Educated for Empowerment & Reform or PEER. Judge Mathis states: “I believe that anyone who was born with a right mind & maintains that right mind has an opportunity for redemption & rehabilitation”. Mathis says he “Was able to turn (his) life around through Education”; The Honorable Judge Charles Kaufman gave Mathis a sentence of probation & ordered Mathis to get a GED as a condition of his release from jail. Regarding the cost of housing prisoners: Mathis states: “We spend $30,000 on average to house a prisoner – for one year. & We spend approximately $12,000 a year for them to go to a major university”. (12) (13)

*DEFINITION OF TERMS:

*RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: “Retributive Justice is a theory of justice that considers that punishment … is a morally acceptable response to crime”. (14)

*RESTORATIVE JUSTICE: “Restorative Justice is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of victims & offenders, instead of the need to satisfy the abstract principles of law or the need of the community to exact punishment. Victims are given an active role in a dispute & offenders are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, ‘To repair the harm they’ve done – By apologizing, … or doing community service”. (15) “Restorative Justice involves a fostering of dialogue between the offender & the victim & has shown the highest rates of victim satisfaction, true accountability by the offender & reduced recidivism”. “The Little Book of Restorative Justice by author Howard Zehr (acknowledges the 3 questions of Retributive Justice): What laws have been broken? Who did it? What do they deserve? – Restorative Justice asks: Who has been hurt? What are their needs? Whose obligations are these?” (16) In the Restorative Justice program in Minnesota , “Trained mediators … facilitate meetings between the victim & the aggressor & (it) gives offenders a chance to voluntarily apologize & explain their actions”. (17)

*TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE: Transformative Justice: “Uses a systems approach, seeking to see problems, as not only the beginning of the crime but also the causes of crime & tries to treat an offense as a transformative relational & educational opportunity for victims, offenders & all other members of the affected community”. (18) Author Morris states that our current justice system is: “Expensive, unjust, immoral (& a) failure” & she argues for Transformative justice including a powerful discussion of Listening (including Victim-Offender Reconciliation) & Forgiveness. Morris states: “Victims need the healing release of contact with their offender(s)”. “We cannot experience transformative justice (un)till we are willing to let go of our particular graven images. & A part of letting go is both giving & receiving forgiveness to others caught up in this seductive illness”. (19)

*EXAMPLES of ALTERNATIVES to PRISON: Author Craig Russell offers examples of Alternatives to Prison including: Probation & Parole, Rehabilitation, Community Service, Boot Camp, Day reporting & House Arrest. (20)

*RESTITUTION: Also Author Anderson discusses Residential Restitution work programs coupled with probation or parole as an alternative to prison; Anderson references Lawrence : “The study shows that a state with a high incarceration rate & a large, crowded prison population can successfully divert a significant number of offenders to restitution centers at no greater risk to the community”. (21)

Legal Definition of Restitution: A “Program under which an offender is required, as a condition of his or her sentence, to repay money or donate services to the victim or society”. (22)

*ALTERNATIVES to PRISON: The Center for Community Alternatives (CCA) is a leader in the field of community-based alternatives to incarceration”. The mission of CCA is: “To promote re-integrative justice & a reduced reliance on incarceration through advocacy, services & public policy development in pursuit of civil & human rights”. CCA helps people who are seeking community reintegration & productive, law-abiding lives”. CCA helps “Reduce the collateral consequences of incarceration, strengthens families & builds safer communities”.

*Honorable Judge Weinstein of the U.S. District Court states: “The work of the Center for Community Alternatives has been extraordinarily helpful to the courts, defendants, probation & the United States in providing alternatives that protect the public while reducing unnecessary costs to the taxpayers & harm to the defendants & their families”. (23)

* NEW YORK STATE ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION PROGRAMS: New York State offers offenders Alternatives to Incarceration including: Mental Illness Programs, Drug & Alcohol Programs & Community Service Programs. (24)

IV. MANSLAUGHTER: Could a Transformative Justice program be offered to someone convicted of Manslaughter?

*DEFINITION of TERMS:

Manslaughter: i.e. The killing of a human being without malice aforethought. (25) The killing of a human being unlawfully, but not willfully – as opposed to murder. (26) Manslaughters is a legal term for the killing of a human being, in a manner considered by law as less culpable than murder. Murder requires either the intent to kill – A state of mind called malice – or the knowledge that one’s actions are likely to result in death; Manslaughter … requires a lack or any prior intention to kill or create a deadly situation. (27)

*Examples of Manslaughter by U.S. Law include: Provocation (with loss of self-control), Imperfect Self-Defense (an honest but unreasonable belief that deadly force was necessary) & Diminished capacity (e.g. diminished mental state – to be distinguished from mental insanity). (28)

*QUESTION: Could a Transformative Justice program be offered to a person convicted of Manslaughter? Yes, I believe that a person convicted of Manslaughter (who had No malice, No prior intention to kill) could be offered a Restorative Justice program – especially if that person has Remorse for that crime. Remorse is defined as “A feeling of deep regret”. (29) “Remorse is an emotional expression of personal regret felt by a person after he or she has committed an act which they deem to be shameful, hurtful or violent”. (30)

V. FINAL COMMENTS & QUESTIONS:

*MICHAEL JACKSON’S: They Don’t Care About Us Song & Video: Michael Jackson’s song & video They Don’t Care about Us, is about prison, shame, loss of liberty, hate & human rights abuses. (31), (32) (33)

*HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS: Prisoners do Not deserve the Human rights violations they are subjected to in prison such as Prison Rape. Human rights violations of prisoners is Not a part of their sentence. (34) Mecha Shiva states: Rape is never justified. (35)

*CAGING Prisoners: Can the people & societies of the world respond to Harm in a more dignified, less revengeful manner that to Cage & punish prisoners? Can the human race become more enlightened & offer people who violate society’s rules Alternatives to prison? It is important that we all ask ourselves: Do we all really feel safe in communities filled with police & prisons? – Or are the police & prisons creating greater fear in our lives? Has the Prison industrial complex brought happiness to our societies? – Or has it created more harm? I believe the Prison industrial complex is all about society’s Power, Revenge & Hate in response to other people who harm.

*PRISON RAPE: When will U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder pass the Prison Rape Elimination Act? (36)

*AMERICA ‘S HIGH INCARCERATION RATE: Mr. Rosemann comments on Marc Mauer’s book Race to Incarcerate & America’s high incarceration rate: “These numbers are not … due to high rates of criminal activity, but rather to factors such as Social inequality, inordinate media attention given to crime, political demagoguery (‘get tough on crime’) & a long legacy of racial discrimination. Mauer makes many suggestions for a more humane & effective response to crime than the current ‘Race to incarcerate’. (Mauer) concludes his book with the moving appeal to stop ‘Cag(ing) the least fortunate among us to solve our problems’”. (37)

*PREVENTION: Can the human race put a higher priority on the Causes & Prevention of crime – Rather than on the Punishment of crime?

*EDUCATION: Why can’t the human race offer those who have harmed: Education, housing & employment – Rather than hate?

*HARM: Critical Resistance states: “We know that people who commit acts of harm often have been harmed themselves in the past”. (38) How many human beings are at a higher level of consciousness & acknowledge the pain & suffering of those that harm?

THANK YOU:

*Thank you Nelson Mandela for your leadership in the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission & offering the world a good example of an alternative of imprisonment. (39)

*Thank you Mr. Bill Quigley for your excellent essay regarding the U.S. Criminal Justice System & your Internet references regarding this topic. (40)

Salaam. Shalom. Shanti. Peace.

Thank you. Respectfully, Mary Hamer, M.D.

Mary Hamer is a medical doctor who writes Earth, peace & human rights essays.

REFERENCES:

1. Regush, Nicholas. The Breaking Point: Understanding Your Potential for Violence. Key Porter Books. 1997. Pg 176.

2. en.wikipedia.org. Newton ‘s Laws of Motion.

3. www.ohchr.org. Prison Walls – Locking Prisoners In & Society Out. U.N. Special Rapporteur Manfred Nowak.

4. In the Shadows: Sexual Violence in U.S. Detention Facilities. Stop Prisoner Rape Presentation to the U.S. Committee against Torture. 2006. Referencing: Farmer v. Brennan. 511 U.S. 825 1994.

5. In the Shadows: Sexual Violence in U.S. Detention Facilities. Stop Prisoner Rape Presentation to the United Nations Committee against Torture. 2006. Referencing: Christian Parenti. Guarding their Silence. Prison Nation. Herivel & Wright eds. 2003.

6. www.justdetention.org. Just Detention International. Mission Statement.

7. www.hrw.org. U.S. Federal Statistics Show Widespread Prison Rape. Human Rights Watch. 12/15/7 .

8. Human Rights Watch. No Escape: Male Rape in U.S. Prisons. C. 2001. Pg 143.

9. www.insideprison.com. Prison Rape. By insideprison.com. May 2006. Referencing: Struckman-Johnson & Struckman-Johnson, 2000.

10. www.criticalresistance.org. Critical Resistance Mission Statement, Vision & FAQ’s.

11. www.penalreform.org. About PRI.

12. prisonnewsblog.com. by Michael Santos. 7/24/10 . Transcript of Larry King Show on Prison Reform. 7/23/10 .

13. en.wikipedia.org. Judge Charles Kaufman.

14. en.wikipedia.org. Retributive Justice.

15. en.wikipedia.org. Restorative Justice. Referencing: A New Kind of Criminal Justice. Parade. 10/25/9 .

16. salidacitizen.com. Restorative Justice. By Admin. Patty LaTaille. 4/24/9 . including a Reference to Zehr, Howard. The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Good Books. C. 2002. Pg 21.

17. www.forbes.com. 10 Alternatives to Prison. By Ruth David. 4/18/6 .

18. en.wikipedia.org. Transformative Justice.

19. Morris, Ruth. Stories of Transformative Justice. Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. C. 2000. Chapter #1, 2 & 6. including a Chapter 6 Reference to Henderson, Michael. The Forgiveness Factor. Grosvenor Books. London . 1996.

20. Russell, Craig. Alternatives to Prison. Mason Crest Publishers. C. 2007.

21. Anderson, David. Sensible Justice: Alternatives to Prison. The New Press. 1998. Referencing: Lawrence, Richard. Restitution as a Cost-Effective Alternative to Incarceration. Criminal Justice, Restitution & Reconciliation. Galaway, Burt & Hudson, Joe eds. Willow Tree Press. 1990.

22. legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com. Legal Definition of Restitution.

23. www.communityalternatives.org. Center for Community Alternatives. Welcome! & About CCA.

24. dpca.state.ny.us. Alternative to Incarceration Programs.

25. www.google.com. wordnetweb.princeton.edu. Definition of Manslaughter.

26. www/google.com. en.wiktionary.org. Definition of Manslaughter.

27. en.wikipedia.org. Manslaughter.

28. en.wikipedia.org. Manslaughter. Referencing: Manslaughter in the First degree, N.Y. State Penal law section 125.20. State Legislative web site (Search for Penal Law).

29. www.google.com. wordnetweb.princeton.edu. Definition of Remorse.

30. en.wikipedia.org. Remorse. Referencing: O’Hear, Michael. (1996-1997) Remorse, Cooperation & Acceptance of Responsibility: The Structure, Implementation & Reform of Section 3E1.1 of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. 91, NW, U.L. Rev. Pg 1507.

31. en.wikipedia.org. They Don’t Care about Us. HIStory album. 1996

32. www.azlyrics.com. Michael Jackson Lyrics. They Don’t Care about Us.

33. www.youtube.com. Michael Jackson They Don’t Care about Us (Official Prison Version).

34. www.justdetention.org.

35. www.rhrealitycheck.org. Lovisa Stannow’s blog. Comments: by Mecha Shiva. 5/5/10 .

36. www.justdetention.org. Federal Prison Rape Elimination Act.

37. Mauer, Marc. Race to Incarcerate. New Press. 1999. www.amazon.com . Reviews Section. Philipp Rosemann.

38. www.criticalresistance.org. FAQ’s.

39. en.wikipedia.org. Truth & Reconciliation Commission.

40. Quigley, Bill. Fourteen Examples of Systemic Racism in the U.S. Criminal Justice System. Countercurrents.org. 7/26/10 .

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Police Beating Caught on Tape: Denver Men Want Officers Fired

Posted on August 16, 2010 by prm

Independent Denver Police Watchdog Says Officers Should Be Fired After Beating, Exaggerated Incident Report

By CLAYTON SANDELL and SARAH NETTER
Aug. 16, 2010
A pair of Denver friends have settled a lawsuit against the city after a controversial police beating that was caught on tape.Beating victim Michael DeHerrera, 24, said he hopes the settlement will set the framework for the firing of the two Denver officers who threw him to the ground and beat him unconscious.

“It wasn’t about money,” DeHerrera told “Good Morning America,” sitting next to his parents. “It was about making a point.”

The April 2009 beating started when the two were kicked out of a Denver nightclub after DeHerrera’s friend, Shawn Johnson, 25, used the ladies restroom and then got into a scuffle with the club’s bouncer.

As Johnson was being arrested and roughed up by police, DeHerrera used his cell phone to call his father, a sheriff’s deputy, for advice.

“I didn’t know what to do. Because I’m not going to get involved with police,” DeHerrera said. “I was frantic. I was yelling into the phone, ‘They’re beating up Shawn, they’re beating up Shawn.’”

But when police officer Devin Sparks saw DeHerrera on the phone, he grabbed him and slammed him on the ground, repeatedly striking him with a metal club.

DeHerrera said he blacked out and doesn’t remember anything until he woke up in the hospital with bruises, stitches and broken teeth.

DeHerrera’s father, Pueblo County Sheriff’s Deputy Anthony DeHerrera, said he heard his son yelling about Johnson being beaten and then heard the phone drop and a string of obscenities, along with what sounded like his son being hit.

“The last thing we heard was, ‘We’ve got to get rid of the phone, they’re recording us,’” Anthony DeHerrera said.

Both Sparks and officer Randy Murr declined to comment.

The incident was also caught on tape by Denver’s H.A.L.O. camera system, a network of surveillance cameras meant to deter and capture crime.

When DeHerrera’s parents found him in the hospital after a round of phone calls ended with Denver police telling them there was no reason to come down, they were floored.

“Nothing could prepare us for what we saw,” Denise DeHerrera said, recalling her son’s swollen “lopsided” head and numerous stitches. “He was basically covered from head to toe in bruises.”

see video here:

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Did Camera Catch Excessive Force? Police Watchdogs Disagree

While the video may seem damning, Ron Perea, Denver’s manager of safety, said the video doesn’t tell the whole story. The camera, he said, missed Johnson and DeHerrera, both intoxicated, shoving police officers.

“I saw nothing that proved excessive force,” Perea said. “When you look at it in its entirety and see what occured, I don’t believe the officers acted excessively.”

But Denver’s independent police watchdog disagrees and said the officers should be fired. Richard Rosenthal, Denver independent monitor, pointed to Sparks’ police reported claining that DeHerrera “spun to his left attempting to strike me with a closed right fist.” The video, Rosenthal, proves Sparks’ report is inaccurate, calling it “pure fiction.”

Writing the report the way it was written, under penalty of perjury, was absolutely inappropriate and should have resulted in the officer’s termination,” Rosenthal said. “It was clear to me that they were trying to cover up what actually happened and make it look better than it was.”

When the video surfaced, charges against both men were dropped.

DeHerrera said he would never hit a police officer.

“I just wouldn’t. I have respect for law enforcement, pretty much because of my dad,” he said. “And that’s not the kind of person I am.”

Anthony DeHerrera said the entire incident has shaken his faith in his profession.

“It was very tough for me to put on a uniform after that,” he said.

Source: ABC News/Good Morning America

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California Cities Struggling Under Wave of Corruption

Posted on August 16, 2010 by prm

Scott Martelle

Scott Martelle Contributor

(Aug. 16) — Call it the New Jersey of the West.

Recent revelations of exorbitant salaries paid to top officials in the Southern California city of Bell are only the latest developments in a long-running saga of corruption embroiling a string of cities along the Los Angeles River.

The scandals encompass city councils paying themselves and city officials exorbitant salaries, but also involve the alleged conversion of city funds for personal expenses, Third World-style elections and, in one case, a police department so bad that insurance companies jacked up the coverage rates, sparking a fiscal meltdown.

The most recent scandals involve three cities that form an arc of alleged corruption and bad government from the industrial enclave of Vernon through the essentially employee-less Maywood into immigrant-heavy and working-class Bell, where until recently city officials were raking in CEO-level salaries.

Municipal corruption is nothing new, of course, but the spate of problems in three adjoining cities has made this corner of Southern California a model of government gone wild, sparking state-level investigations and broad calls for reforms.

Experts say the failings are caused in part by a lack of oversight by their own residents, and the absence of a local newspaper to cover such political decisions as the Bell City Council approving a contract that gave its manager 12 percent annual pay raises, 28 weeks of vacation and sick leave, and an annual pension of more than half a million dollars.

The conditions in Bell surfaced publicly after the Los Angeles Times, which covers the sprawling metropolitan region, turned its spotlight on the tiny city amid reports of official investigations.

“There’s just nobody paying attention,” said Robert M. Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. “There’s no newspaper. The citizens are not paying that much attention, and when they tried to get some information the city stonewalled them. So the citizens have to hire a lawyer, and they do not have the resources to do that.”

Part of the problem with Bell and some of the other cities is how they are governed. The cities adopted local charters for their own governance in lightly attended elections that gave the city councils wide latitude in setting salaries and making other decisions, Stern said.

All three cities lie along the western bank of the Los Angeles River just a few miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. Bell, with a population of just under 40,000, is the largest. It is followed by Maywood, with just under 30,000 residents, which fired nearly all of its employees in a budget crunch spawned in part by lawsuits against its police department that made insurers balk at offering coverage to the city.

Vernon, the third city in the arc, is an oddity of a place. It exists to serve factories and warehouses and, with fewer than 100 residents, has been the personal fiefdom of the Malburg family for a half-century. But its longtime city manager, Bruce Malkenhorst Sr., was making more than $600,000 a year before he retired amid corruption investigations that eventually led to his indictment (he’s awaiting trial).

The problems seem to be part of the neighborhood. Earlier scandals in nearby South Gate, Compton, Lynwood and Bell Gardens led to a wave of criminal charges, some prison terms and voter revolts that ousted suspect local political figures.

The most recent scandal in Bell, in which top officials were forced to resign over contracts that likely made them the highest-paid municipal employees in the country, has sparked wide calls for reform and led good-government advocates in other areas to post salaries of top local government officials.

State Treasurer Dan Lockyer proposed an annual report by the state Public Employees Retirement System listing the top 100 salaries covered by the program, and Assemblyman Hector De La Torre introduced a law that would penalize city councils in so-called “charter” cities by laying a 50 percent tax on exorbitant salaries and curtailing the municipality’s ability to use state-recognized local development corporations for projects, which could make it harder for offending cities to attract commercial and industrial development.

De La Torre, who entered politics in 1997 as part of a reform movement in South Gate, said his bill would force municipalities to set pay levels openly through ordinances — which require several meetings and public hearings — or through a voter referendum.

“The whole point here is we want to make it visible to the voters,” De La Torre said. “We’re just saying that if you’re going to” raise salaries, “do it right.”

De La Torre’s state Assembly district covers most of the cities caught up in the recent corruption, which he believes has been hard to erase because of the nature of the communities and a local political culture in which such behavior isn’t seen as wrong.

“It’s a heavily working-class community in which the people are just trying to survive and trying to live their own lives, and monitoring their local government is not a priority,” he said. At the same time, Bell officials likely took their cues from neighboring Vernon, where he said corruption exists as “part of the original sin” from the city’s founding in 1905.

“There may be some bad habits that some of the elected officials pick up from each other,” De La Torre said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Robert Rizzo, the city manager in Bell, was paying attention when Bruce Malkenhorst, the city manager in Vernon, was making gobs of money. I firmly believe that he went to his council in Bell and got them to match what Malkenhorst was making next door. … It’s a little bit of a daisy chain.”

David O. Friedrichs, a University of Scranton, Pa., professor who has studied corruption, believes local cultures often provide the structure for corruption — a sense of that’s just the way things operate. Similar problems have surfaced in northeastern Pennsylvania, he said, leading to indictments and convictions of political figures, including former National Football League lineman Greg Skrepenak, who was sentenced recently to up to 41 months in prison on corruption charges.

“People often see the answer as a kind of greed and personal lack of integrity, but that’s a one-dimensional answer,” said Friedrichs. “When it’s this pervasive and persistent, you have to look beyond the motivation factor into the factors that in effect create the whole structure, or the culture, that not only encourages this kind of activity but in many cases make it so ingrained that it almost becomes the natural thing.”

Friedrichs argued that corruption has been part of American culture from the beginning, and that fear of prosecution obviously has not been an effective deterrent. Greater citizen involvement, including formation of oversight committees on such issues as pay levels, could help, he said, by casting more eyes on the process.

“It’s a very difficult problem to address,” Friedrichs said. “It requires active, independent citizens groups that can provide truly independent oversight.”

Source: AOL News
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The Old and The Ill

Posted on August 15, 2010 by prm

banner_sick Today more than ever, inmates are growing old and dying in prison – and costing the state several millions of dollars. The most expensive California prisoners have medical bills ranging from $100,000 to $2.5 million each, according to the federally appointed receiver who oversees the state’s prison health care. A federal receiver was appointed to run the system after California was declared incapable of providing adequate heath care to its inmates as the result of a 2001 lawsuit.

The average 55-year-old inmate has the health of someone 10 years older because of substance abuse or poor health before incarceration and the hardships of prison life. Aging inmates cost two to three times more than younger prisoners – on average more than $100,000 per inmate per year, according to a the National Institute of Corrections.

The California Medical Facility in Vacaville was established in 1955 as a medical psychiatric institution for male prisoners. Today, it is the state’s leading prison hospital and operates with a $171 million budget.

Inmate patient and convicted murderer Kerry Jackson holds up a picture of his family in his room on June 30. He was convicted of second-degree murder in 1990, when he said he killed a man who molested one of his sons. Prior to the murder conviction, Jackson had been in and out of prison for grand theft, credit card fraud and passing bad checks.

Hooked to a catheter and wheelchair bound, 50-year-old Jackson is unable to stand without assistance. Jackson has reached the age considered to be “elderly” by prison standards. Prisoners, on average, have the health of someone 10 years older.

The facility houses about 2,800 inmates. More than 90 percent have chronic medical and/or mental health conditions, including Jackson. The top causes of death in the prison are liver disease, trauma, cardiac and pulmonary problems, infectious disease, substance abuse and cancer.

“I forget a lot of stuff and my doctor remembers it for me,” Jackson said. He couldn’t remember his birthday, but he recalled his age and his crimes with ease. Jackson said he had a heart attack, a stroke and broke nearly all of his bones when a truck once hit him, and head trauma has left him developmentally disabled.

Originally from Ontario, Calif., Jackson is carrying out his life sentence in this prison hospital room.

Jackson said he thinks he deserves to die behind bars. He said he thought he was doing the right thing when he committed his crime, but ended up causing more harm than good by leaving his six children fatherless.

Inmate patient David Terry lies in his hospital cell bed. The 40-year-old prisoner is slow moving and hardly able to talk. He said it hurt to move. Severe arthritis and AIDS wrack his body.

Terry shows off some of the tattoos that cover much of his body. Terry is serving a 25-year-to-life sentence for first-degree murder, and was committed in Orange County in 1990.

Terry was transferred to the California Medical Facility for treatment. He is one of more than 400 HIV-infected inmates at the prison.

Former inmate Frederick Gusta was convicted in 2002 for stealing a car, kidnapping and making terrorist threats. He was previously convicted for voluntary manslaughter. His terminally-ill condition earned him a spot in the prison hospice unit, the first licensed prison-based hospice in the world for terminally ill patients. It has 17 beds, but a needs assessment prepared for the federally appointed receiver who oversees prison health care concluded that the prison system would need 59 hospice beds by 2013.

Gusta was granted compassionate release after he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. He had less than six months to live. There are more than 2,000 inmates in the California prison system who need long-term care. That number is expected to double this decade, according to an assessment update prepared for the federally appointed receiver overseeing health care in California’s 33 adult prisons.

Compassionate release, granted to only a small percentage of applicants, set Gusta free about two years early from his sentence of nine years and four months. He was released the day after this picture was taken, his 46th birthday.

Credits

Photography by Armand Emamdjomeh
Web production by Elizabeth Peirce
Reporting by Karen McIntyre and Isabella Cota
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Debating the cost of a three-strikes sentence

Posted on August 15, 2010 by prm
Story by Alexa Vaughn<strong>By Emily Ling</strong>

Supporters and opponents bounce between salient statistics and tragic stories when debating California’s current Three Strikes and You’re Out law, which locks up criminals convicted of three felonies for 25 years to life.

Those who want to see the law amended often point to its costs: Since implementation, at least $19.2 billion has been spent on the additional nine years the average three-strike felon serves, according to the California state auditor.

Three-strike inmates make up a quarter of the state prison population, and more than half of them committed non-serious or non-violent offenses on their third strike, according to the bipartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office. Because the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation budget has more than doubled in the last decade – from approximately $4 billion for fiscal year 1998-99 to $9.7 billion for 2007-08 – the LAO recommended early parole for older convicts whose third strike was non-violent and non-serious. Two to 4 percent of this older, three-striker population re-offend, compared to 70 percent of the general prison population.

Opponents of the three-strikes law such as Paco Torres, a law student working for the Stanford Three Strikes Project, spotlight stories like one of the project’s clients, a three-strikes prisoner serving life for stealing three disposable cameras from a store. The project helps three strikers serving life for non-violent crimes appeal for shorter sentences. Though all three strikers have committed at least one serious crime – a legal term used for 28 types of crime including home invasion – the project does not help prisoners who have committed murder or sex crimes. More than 1,000 names are on their waiting list.

“The point isn’t that our clients are completely innocent. It’s that the punishment given should be proportional to the crime committed,” Torres said. “The way the law is currently structured is far from fair.”

Three strikes supporters point to victim stories like those of 17-year-old Lily Burk. During a visit to Southwestern Law School in Westlake on July 24, 2009, she crossed paths with Charlie Samuel, a 50-year-old parolee permitted to leave a drug rehabilitation center to visit the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Burk probably would have never met Samuel if not for a clerical error in a prosecutor’s records when he was sentenced for second-degree burglary in 1997. Without the error, the San Bernardino prosecutor could have given him a third strike and locked him away for 25 years to life. Instead, years later, he was free to kidnap Burk and slash her neck.

Preventing these kinds of murders is exactly what Fresno photographer Mike Reynolds had in mind when he wrote the ballot initiative for the Three Strikes Law, Proposition 184, which passed with 72 percent approval in 1994. Two years before, Reynolds’ 18-year-old daughter Kimber Reynolds was fatally shot in the head by two robbers. Both men were repeat offenders.

A year before the law passed, the national media put a spotlight on another repeat offender for the abduction, rape and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas from Petaluma.

Reynolds has seen many attempts to alter the proposition he championed in the name of his daughter. He said he doesn’t think any are necessary, including attempts to keep people like Torres’ client from getting life sentences for stealing three disposable cameras.

“If you lower rates of burglary, guess what else goes down? Rates for rape and murder,” Reynolds said. “Frankly, when he’s stealing food or whatever else from your house, there’s always the chance he’ll also take advantage of raping you or killing you so you’re not a witness.”

Violent crimes decreased from 336,100 in 1993 – before three strikes was implemented – to 191,493 in 2007, all while the state population grew by more than 6.1 million people. Reynolds admits no one can say with certainty that one change in the system is the cause for another, but he is confident his law has saved the state money and lives.

“Right now, the chances of you getting burglarized are the same as they were in 1952,” Reynolds said. “When you stop one burglar, many times you’re really stopping a one-man crime wave.”

Politically, Democrats and Republicans can be seen on both sides of the three-strikes argument. In 2004, Proposition 66 would have amended California’s three strikes law so that a second or third strike would have to be a serious or violent felony. It was endorsed by the grandfather of Polly Klaas, Joe Klaas, in a campaign ad, and two weeks before the election, 62 percent of voters supported the measure.

But a last-minute, bipartisan media campaign against the proposition led by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former governors Jerry Brown, Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and George Deukmejian changed the public’s sentiment. After warning that 26,000 dangerous criminals and rapists would be released if passed, the proposition’s approval dropped to 47 percent and ultimately failed to pass. Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo told reporters the turnaround was unprecedented.

Today, the Democrat and Republican candidates running for California attorney general want to see life sentences for non-serious and non-violent third strikes disappear. Steve Cooley, the Republican candidate and current district attorney for Los Angeles County, has been more active on the issue than his opponent, Kamala Harris. The list of more than 60 three strikers serving life for non-serious and non-violent crimes Cooley once made was the inspiration for the Stanford Three Strikes Project.

Buzz that Cooley’s election could lead to another shot at three strikes reform has shown up in international publications as recently as May in the New York Times and July in The Economist.

But Reynolds doesn’t expect any change to the law in the near future, especially with two tough-on-crime candidates for California governor, Republican Meg Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown.

“If it is ever undone, the results will speak for themselves.”

Source: Berkeley News21

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CDCR: No Goodbye’s, No Closure, and No Info….

Posted on August 15, 2010 by prm

Inmates’ deaths mean no chance to say good-bye

Before Daniel Martin went back to prison, he told his wife, “I’m not coming back this time. I’m going to die in there.”

Ten months later, on July 18, Yolanda Martin got an early -morning call. On the other end of the line, an unfamiliar voice said, “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your husband passed away last night.” Yolanda Martin and her sons, 20 and 27, said they could do nothing but remain silent and grieve. They say they were denied the common decency of saying their farewells.

In 30 of the state’s 33 prisons the policy is clear: Family will be notified of the medical condition of the prisoner only when the doctor determines he or she will not recover and is bound to die. Word occasionally comes too late. Due to security reasons, only then can family visit the inmate, according to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton in Sacramento. There was no prior notification in Yolanda Martin’s case.

On average, one inmate a day dies in custody, according to the latest report by the California prison receivership. Due to visitation rules imposed by the CDCR, a lack of communication and an apathetic, overworked staff, families outside are often left feeling helpless, ignored and unjustly punished.

With the exception of California Men’s Colony, Central California Women’s Facility and California Medical Facility, which have a hospice unit, the CDCR forbids family visits for inmates too ill to get to the visiting rooms. Inmates often die with no chance to say goodbye to their children, spouses, partners or parents, even when they spend days or months in a hospital bed.

“They didn’t even let him call me. They didn’t explain anything to me,” Mrs. Martin said, her voice breaking over the phone from her home in Costa Mesa.

Yolanda Martin said the watch commander who delivered the news told her Daniel Martin died in a hospital outside of the California Correctional Center in Susanville, where he was serving his term for sales and possession of drugs. She last spoke to her husband over the phone less than two weeks before he died. They last saw each other eight months ago.

Had the CDCR let her know her husband had fallen ill, Yolanda Martin said she would have flown to Susanville to stand by his bed and spend their last few hours together. But the call was too late, and their 35-year relationship ended without good-byes.

Daniel Martin felt he would die in prison because his health was fragile when he went in. After battling an almost 30-year addiction to heroin, he had an infection that left one of his legs swollen. He required clean bandages and antibiotics daily, his wife said. The Martins went to court, supported by Daniel’s physician, in an unsuccessful attempt to keep him outside prison and under medical supervision.

“When they called me, they said, ‘Did you know that he had Hepatitis C?’ I said ‘no’,” Yolanda Martin said. She didn’t think he knew either.

“They said he died of kidney failure.”

CDCR spokeswoman Thornton told News21 in an e-mail that the 51-year-old man died of natural causes.

Thornton said the inmate had been moved to a hospital unit inside the prison three days before his death, but this information was withheld from the widow due to CDCR rules. Yolanda Martin learned this through fragmented accounts from her husband’s cellmate and friends inside the prison.

This lack of communication between the CDCR and the families exacerbates the pain experienced by relatives in the outside, said Gretchen Newby, executive director of Friends Outside, an independent organization that supports around 200,000 relatives of inmates in the state.

“It’s a serious problem,” she said. “We have experience dealing with this. Unfortunately, in our experience, it is very often.”

Newby said that what happens in prison is a mystery to the family, and this makes them feel helpless. She said she thinks part of the problem is that the CDCR is not equipped to provide information to so many people on the outside since the system is overcrowded on the inside. When families approach Friends Outside, there’s not much left to do but help them understand the rules surrounding prisons.

Selerina Arteaga of Los Angeles County also lost a family member behind bars. Her father, Jose Arteaga, 79, was serving a 29-year sentence in Mule Creek State Prison for sexual assault. He died unexpectedly July 5. The daughter heard the news from a family friend and contacted the CDCR.

“First they said it was of natural causes, and then they said it was prostate cancer,” Selerina Arteaga said, speaking the day after her dad’s funeral in their hometown of La Puente.

“Nobody knew what was going on. They transferred me from one person to another, and it was really brief: ‘Oh yes, he passed away in San Joaquin County, natural causes — oh no, prostate cancer’,” Arteaga said.

“Why didn’t they let him call me?”

In Jose Arteaga’s case, the CDCR told News21 the inmate was admitted to a hospital 10 days before he died. Prison staff do not notify families when an inmate is transferred to a hospital. Selerina Arteaga was not informed when her father died, the department said, because her contact information was outdated.

“Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon event,” CDCR spokeswoman Thornton said, adding that it’s up to the inmate to keep these records up-to-date.

A lot of what happens when an inmate falls ill is in the hands of the correctional officers, said John Espinosa Nelson, 43, a former inmate of Wasco and Folsom state prisons as well as the California Rehabilitation Center.

“Nowhere in that chain is there an urge to call their families,” he said. “There’s nothing to obligate them to call their family members and tell them.”

During his four years behind bars, Nelson, who was convicted of robbing bookstores and banks at age 22, he said he witnessed many accounts of neglect toward inmates, some of which ended fatally.

In the case of one fellow inmate, Nelson said, after complaining of a migraine and pain in his back and neck, he banged on the nurse’s window to get medication for a week until he collapsed on the floor. He was taken away and never seen again. Next to his name on the daily inmate roster a few days later was the word, “dead,” said Nelson.

Because Nelson held a position as a clerk in prison, he said he had access to information the other inmates didn’t. During his work, he learned his fellow inmate had died of spinal meningitis, a highly contagious infection.

“Information is the most important currency of all in that environment,” Nelson said. “In terms of confirming what happened, we’re left to figure it out on our own.”

More than 330 inmates died in custody from the period of June 2008 to June 2009, according to the latest prison receivership’s report. The county coroner’s office opens an investigation and performs an autopsy when a cause of death is unknown. It is the last step in the process of an inmate dying in custody, before his remains are handed over to family or disposed of by the state.

During his 12 years in office, Marin County Coroner Kenneth Holmes has dealt with people who yearn to know more about their relatives’ death behind bars. His responsibilities include investigating deaths that happened at San Quentin State Prison.

“The CDCR is not as communicative as the families would like,” Holmes said. “Families typically will say to us ‘Geez, we’re not getting much out of the prison about what happened out there.’”

“I’ll tell them everything I know,” he said. But the only information Holmes can provide for them is medical. Sometimes, that means informing them of serious hereditary illnesses found in the autopsy.

What most families crave to know are details of their loved one’s last moments. But the felony conviction often prevents sharing these details with the bereaved relatives.

“We have to remember that, like a lot of things, there’s always two sides of every story,” said Gretchen Newby, from Friends Outside. The victims of the crimes committed by these inmates may not feel like justice is served if the law becomes lenient at the end of a criminal’s life, she said.

Coroner Holmes observed:

“Death is the great equalizer. You’re no different than me if we’re both dead.”

Credits

Reporting by Isabella Cota

News21 Berkeley

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