New High In U.S. Prison Numbers

New High In U.S. Prison Numbers
Growth Attributed To More Stringent Sentencing Laws
By N.C. Aizenman, Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 29, 2008; A01

More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more, according to a report released yesterday.

With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving far-more-populous China a distant second, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Center on the States.

The growth in prison population is largely because of tougher state and federal sentencing imposed since the mid-1980s. Minorities have been particularly affected: One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is behind bars. For black women ages 35 to 39, the figure is one in 100, compared with one in 355 for white women in the same age group.

The report compiled and analyzed data from several sources, including the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and Bureau of Prisons and each state's department of corrections. It did not include individuals detained for noncriminal immigration violations.

Although studies generally find that imprisoning more offenders reduces crime, the effect may be less influential than changes in the unemployment rate, wages, the ratio of police officers to residents and the proportion of young people in the population, report co-author Adam Gelb said.

In addition, when it comes to preventing repeat offenses by nonviolent criminals -- who make up about half of the incarcerated population -- less-expensive punishments such as community supervision, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug counseling might prove as much or more effective than jail.

For instance, Florida, which has almost doubled its prison population over the past 15 years, has experienced a smaller drop in crime than New York, which, after a brief increase, has reduced its number of inmates to below the 1993 level.

"There is no question that putting violent and chronic offenders behind bars lowers the crime rate and provides punishment that is well deserved," said Gelb, who as director of the Center's Public Safety Performance Project advises states on developing alternatives to incarceration. "On the other hand, there are large numbers of people behind bars who could be supervised in the community safely and effectively at a much lower cost -- while also paying taxes, paying restitution to their victims and paying child support."

Sociologist James Q. Wilson, who in the 1980s helped develop the "broken windows" theory that smaller crimes must be punished to deter more serious ones, agreed that sentences for some drug crimes were too long. However, Wilson disagreed that the rise in the U.S. prison population should be considered a cause for alarm: "The fact that we have a large prison population by itself is not a central problem because it has contributed to the extraordinary increase in public safety we have had in this country."

About 91 percent of incarcerated adults are under state or local jurisdiction. And the report also documents the tradeoffs state governments have faced as they devote larger shares of their budgets to house them. For instance, over the past two decades, state spending on corrections (adjusted for inflation) increased 127 percent; spending on higher education rose 21 percent.

Five states -- Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware -- now spend as much as or more on corrections as on higher education. Locally, Maryland is near the top, spending 74 cents on corrections for every dollar it spends on higher education. Virginia spends 60 cents on the dollar.

Despite reaching its latest milestone, the nation's incarcerated population has been growing more slowly since 2000 than it did during the 1990s, when harsher sentencing laws began to take effect. These included a 1986 federal law (since revised) mandating prison terms for crack cocaine offenses that were up to eight times as long as for those involving powder cocaine. In the 1990s, many states adopted "three-strikes-you're-out" laws and curtailed the powers of parole boards.

Many state systems also send offenders back to prison for technical violations of their parole or probation, such as failing a drug test or missing an appointment with a supervisory officer. A 2005 study of California's system, for example, found that more than two-thirds of parolees were being returned to prison within three years of release, 40 percent for technical infractions.

"We're just stuck in this carousel that people get off of, then get right back on again," said Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, who as New York City police commissioner in the 1990s oversaw a significant reduction in crime.

Because of these policy shifts, the nationwide prison population swelled by about 80 percent from 1990 to 2000, increasing by as much as 86,000 a year. By contrast, from 2007 to 2008, that population increased by 25,000, a 2 percent rise.

The U.S. Supreme Court has recently issued decisions giving judges more leeway under mandatory sentencing laws, and a number of states -- including Texas, which has the country's second-highest incarceration rate -- are seeking to reduce their prison population by adopting alternative punishments.

Last year, Maryland officials began developing a new risk-assessment system to ensure that low-level offenders are not kept in jail longer than necessary, said Shannon Avery, executive director of a policy planning division of the state's Department of Public Safety.

"That's what you have to do when you don't have enormous amounts of tax dollars available for building prisons," she said.

Among the early innovators that states can look to is Virginia, which overhauled its system for sentencing nonviolent offenders in the mid-1990s. Although the state's incarceration rate remains relatively high, Virginia has managed to slow the growth of its prison population substantially and reduce the share of its budget spent on corrections while still reducing its crime rate.

State judges use a point system to weigh factors believed to predict a lawbreaker's likelihood of becoming a repeat offender or otherwise pose a threat to public safety. Those deemed low risk are given alternative sentences. As a result, the share of Virginia prison beds occupied by nonviolent convicts has dropped, from 40 percent in 1994 to 23 percent in 2007.

"The idea is to make a distinction between the people we're afraid of and the ones we're just ticked off at," said Rick Kern, director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission. "Not that you shouldn't punish them. But if it's going to cost $27,500 a year to keep them locked up, then maybe we should be smarter about how we do it."

Interview with Paul Wright on Prison Profiteers

This is the video of the interview Paul Wright did with KEXP radio in Seattle last month about his new book, "Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration". The video also aired on community access TV in Seattle. It has now been posted on Youtube. It is 30 minutes long.

If you would like to check out the book, more information and ordering information is available at: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/104_ProductDetails.aspx.

Paul Wright, Editor
Prison Legal News
972 Putney Rd. # 251
Brattleboro, VT 05301
802-257-1342
pwright@prisonlegalnews.org
www.prisonlegalnews.org

New Site for Logging Abuse Complaints on Behalf of Prisoners

Do you have a love one in lockdown? Does he/she complain about physical or mental abuses ? Are they being denied medicines or are locked down in solitary confinement for month on end? Have you complain to the "proper" authorities with no avail..?

Well here is a website to log your abuse complaints and to link with other activism on behalf of prisoners as well.

http://emergencyresponse.cc/

This is the website to log abuses, name names, and let other know what is happening behind the walls. Find out what is happening in the prison industrial complex that your tax dollars fund without your input.

Torture and death happens everyday right here in the United States Prison System. Get in touch with the truth and let people know that prisoners are still human beings.

Log on to http://emergencyresponse.cc/.

Race and Ethnicity in America: Turning a Blind Eye to Injustice

RACE & ETHNICITY IN AMERICA: TURNING A BLIND EYE TO INJUSTICE

On December 10, 2007, the ACLU released a comprehensive analysis of the pervasive, institutionalized, systemic and structural racism in America. The report, Race & Ethnicity in America: Turning a Blind Eye to Injustice, is a response to the U.S. report to the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) released earlier this year. The U.S. report, which the ACLU called a “whitewash,” swept under the rug the dramatic effects of widespread racial and ethnic discrimination in this country, and fails to honestly assess the ways in which racial and ethnic discrimination and inequality persist.

Read the ACLU report >>

Prisoners’ Rights Violated in U.S

Prisoners in U.S. Suffer Discrimination
Based on Race, Gender & Sexual Orientation
Human Rights Activists Say Prisoners’ Rights Violated in U.S.

PHILADELPHIA, PA [DECEMBER 12] — The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and a coalition of more than 80 prison activists and human rights organizations have issued a report detailing the systemic racism and other forms of discrimination routinely experienced by people of color, women, and sexual minorities in U.S. prisons.

The report, issued to commemorate International Human Rights Day, is part of a larger effort spearheaded by the U.S. Human Rights Network (USHRN), which coordinated the work of more than 250 human rights and social justice organizations in preparing a shadow report rebutting the U.S. State Department’s (DOS) periodic report on compliance with United Nations Committee on the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), to which the U.S. is a signatory.

The State Department’s report, which claims great strides in identifying, correcting, and remedying racism and racial discrimination, was quietly submitted to the U.N. last spring and posted without publicity on the Department’s website. It has been characterized by USHRN as a “complete whitewash.”

Among its many conspicuous gaps, the official U.S. report failed to address the fact that Blacks and Hispanics together account for about only one quarter of the general population but make up more than 60 percent of the jail and prison population. According to the latest statistics from the US Department of Justice, as of June 30, 2006, there were 905,600 African Americans and 459,300 Latino/Latinas in prisons and jails.

The AFSC portion of the report notes that Black men comprise 41 percent of all men in custody, and Black and Latina women comprise 34 percent and 16 percent of incarcerated women, respectively. Native Americans, who experience the highest rate of incarceration of any ethnic group in the U.S., received no mention in the State Department report.

Although the State Department report discusses several mechanisms by which it can investigate and prosecute “torture, cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of prisoners,” it only explicitly mentions one instance directly related to racial discrimination in which it provided technical assistance to a corrections department that was segregating prisoners based on race.

In the prison report, AFSC points out that given the tremendous over-representation of people of color within prisons and jails, it is vital that a report on racial discrimination look critically at the means by which those who experience racial discrimination in prisons can receive redress. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly difficult for even the most egregious abuses to be remedied by the courts.

“When people of color constitute just 25 percent of the U.S. population but represent more than 60 percent of people in prison, the government can’t credibly claim that the prison system is operating without racial discrimination,” said Naima Black, National STOPMAX Campaign Coordinator at AFSC.

American Friends Service Committee co-chaired and wrote sections of the report on prisons as part of a broader Criminal Justice Working Group. The report examines a multitude of commonplace violations of Articles 1, 2 and 5 of the Convention in U.S. prisons and jails, including direct testimony from prisoners, and offers specific recommendations.

The report details numerous racial injustices and disparities with regard to: solitary confinement and supermax prisons; access to education; access to appropriate medical and mental health care; rape and sexual assault; preservation of family unity for people of color in prison; Native American prisoners; freedom to practice religion; effects of incarceration practices on the census and re-districting; and the treatment of prisoners in post-Katrina Louisiana.

“This collaborative shadow report provides critical information including data and personal testimonies from which the committee can draw their specific questions,” said Black.

The U.N. committee that monitors compliance with ICERD will meet in February 2008 in Geneva to review reports from around the world, including this report from the United States, and will question the U.S. government on its compliance with the treaty.

To view a copy of the prison report, please visit http://www.stopmax.org/.

To view the full report: http://www.ushrnetwork.org/files/ushrn/images/2008_shadow_report/Shadow_Report_2008_web.pdf.

To view a copy of a summary of the shadow report submitted by the U.S. Human Rights Network, please visit http://lacccenter.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/shadowrptsummary2008.doc.

# # #

The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to social justice, peace and humanitarian service. Its work is based on the belief in the worth of every person and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice.

Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/104_ProductDetails.aspx

Prison Profiteers: Who Makes Money from Mass Incarceration

Paul Wright & Tara Herivel


This is the third and latest book in a series of Prison Legal News anthologies that examines the reality of mass imprisonment in America. [The other two titles are The Celling of America: An Inside Look at the US Prison Industry and Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor, both available from PLN].

Prison Profiteers is unique from other books on the market because it exposes and discusses who profits and benefits from mass imprisonment, rather than who is harmed by it and how. Why is sentencing reform dead on arrival in every state legislature and congress? What is the biggest transfer of public wealth into private hands in recent history? Read Prison Profiteers and you will know! Hint: It has to do with prisons.

Positive: With the baby boomlet demographics, we foresee increasing demand for juvenile [incarceration] services. Negative: . . . it is often difficult to maintain the occupancy rates required for profitability.—FROM A REPORT PRODUCED FOR THE PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRY BY INVESTMENT ANALYSTS FIRST ANALYSIS SECURITIES CORPORATION

Locking up 2.3 million people isn’t cheap. Each year federal, state, and local governments spend over $185 billion annually in tax dollars to ensure that one out of every 137 Americans is imprisoned. Prison Profiteers looks at the private prison companies, investment banks, churches, guard unions, medical corporations, and other industries and individuals that benefit from this country’s experiment with mass imprisonment. It lets us follow the money from public to private hands and exposes how monies formerly designated for the public good are diverted to prisons and their maintenance. Find out where your tax dollars are going as you help to bankroll the biggest prison machine the world has ever seen.

Contributors include: Judy Greene on private prison giants Geo (formerly Wackenhut) and CCA; Anne-Marie Cusac on who sells electronic weapons to prison guards; Wil S. Hylton on the largest prison health care provider; Ian Urbina on how prison labor supports the military; Kirsten Levingston on the privatization of public defense; Jennifer Gonnerman on the costs to neighborhoods from which prisoners are removed; Kevin Pranis on the banks and brokerage houses that finance prison building; and Silja Talvi on the American Correctional Association as a tax-funded lobbyist for professional prison bureaucracies; Tara Herivel on juvenile prisons; Gary Hunter and Peter Wagner on the census and counting prisoners; David Reutter on Florida's prison industries; Alex Friedmann on the private prisoner transportation industry; Paul Von Zielbauer on the sordid history of Prison Health Services in New York; Steven Jackson on the prison telephone industry; Samantha Shapiro on religious groups being paid to run prisons and Clayton Mosher, Gregory Hooks and Peter Wood on the myth and reality of building rural prisons.

Tara Herivel is the co-editor of Prison Nation. She is a prisoner rights attorney and the author of numerous articles in the alternative press. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Paul Wright is the founder and editor of Prison Legal News and co-editor of Prison Nation and The Celling of America. He lives in Seattle, Washington and Brattleboro, Vermont.

This is an exclusive paperback printing made just for Prison Legal News.

Responding to Police Requests to Search YOUR Home

SAFE HOMES PROGRAM
What YOU Should Know

Members of the Boston Police Department may come to your door and ask to search your home. They may tell you they want to get guns off the street and will not arrest your child if they find a gun -- unless that gun is linked to a shooting.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts believes you should make an INFORMED CHOICE about whether to allow police to search your home.

HERE IS WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT SUCH A SEARCH.

You have the right to say NO to a search.
Then the police should leave.

If you say YES, any of the following can happen:

• If the police find a gun and test it, they may arrest someone who lives in your home, including your child.

• If the police find drugs or anything illegal, they may charge someone who lives in your home, including your child, with a crime.

• Anything the police find in your home may lead to school discipline for your child, including suspension or expulsion.

If you have any questions or concerns, contact the ACLU of Massachusetts: (617) 482-3170.

Prison system a costly, harmful failure: report

Prison system a costly, harmful failure: report
14:14 11/19/2007, Reuters: Top News
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of people in U.S prisons has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to taxpayers and society, researchers said in a report calling for a major justice-system overhaul.

Read the fine print

Making Criminals Serve Their Full Terms: Joe Biden has written legislation that provides funds to states for building prisons if they agree to keep their violent offenders behind bars for at least 85 percent of their sentence, currently state prisoners serve only 40 percent of their sentences behind bars on average.


http://www.joebiden.com/assets/pdfs/crime_plan.pdf

Exoneration Using DNA Brings Change in Legal System

October 1, 2007
By SOLOMON MOORE

State lawmakers across the country are adopting broad changes to criminal justice procedures as a response to the exoneration of more than 200 convicts through the use of DNA evidence.

All but eight states now give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions. Many states are also overhauling the way witnesses identify suspects, crime labs handle evidence and informants are used.

At least six states have created commissions to expedite cases of those wrongfully convicted or to consider changes to criminal justice procedures. One of them, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, will hold a hearing this month on remedies for people who have been wrongfully convicted.

Laws in several states, including Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina, have bipartisan backing, with many Democrats supportive on civil rights grounds and Republicans generally hoping that tighter procedures will lead to fewer challenges of convictions.

“Technology has made a big difference,” said Margaret Berger, a DNA legal expert who is on a National Academy of Sciences panel that is looking into the changing needs of forensic scientists. “We see that there are new techniques for ascertaining the truth.”

Maryland, North Carolina, Vermont and West Virginia passed legislation this year to create tougher standards for the identification of suspects by witnesses, one of the most trouble-ridden procedures.

Nationwide, misidentification by witnesses led to wrongful convictions in 75 percent of the 207 instances in which prisoners have been exonerated over the last decade, according to the Innocence Project, a group in New York that investigates wrongful convictions.

Legislatures considered 25 witness identification bills in 17 states this year, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers reported. Five states approved bills, while five states defeated them. Bills are pending in seven states.

“It’s become clear that eyewitnesses are fallible,” said Lt. Kenneth A. Patenaude, a police commander in Northampton, Mass., who is an expert on witness identification techniques.

Two states, Vermont and Maryland, passed laws this year to improve crime lab oversight to eliminate errors and omissions. Maryland recently passed a law that will hold its crime labs to the same standards as clinical labs, a much more rigorous requirement. Other legislative changes to crime lab oversight are pending in 21 states, including New York.

More than 500 local and state jurisdictions, including Alaska, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia have adopted polices that require the recording of interrogations to help prevent false confessions, according to the Innocence Project.

The California Legislature also passed a bill this year that requires informant testimony to be corroborated before it can be heard by a jury. Critics say such testimony can be unreliable, especially when it is offered by convicts or suspects in return for leniency. The bill awaits approval by the governor.

Advocates of efforts to use DNA to exonerate those wrongfully convicted say the changes in the state laws are welcome and long overdue.

“The legislative reform movement as a result of these DNA exonerations is probably the single greatest criminal justice reform effort in the last 40 years,” said Peter J. Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project.

But some law enforcement officials oppose some of the changes, saying they create legal minefields for the police and prosecutors. Any deviation from the new standards, no matter how minor, could be taken up by defense lawyers in an appeal, the critics say.

The California State Sheriffs’ Association is fighting two bills there that would mandate electronic recording of interrogations and corroboration of informant testimony. The bills have been passed by the Legislature and are awaiting final approval by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.

“Simply put, these two bills create loopholes for defendants to get an edge in court on technicalities,” according to a letter from the sheriffs’ organization to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. The association also opposed a state bill that would create guidelines for suspect lineups.

Even some proponents of the new standards balk at making them state law, insisting they are better dealt with by local law enforcement agencies.

“I’m not fond of legislation,” said Lieutenant Patenaude, the Massachusetts police commander. “I’ve been asked to review bills in several states, and I haven’t seen one that mirrors the best practices that we’ve put out here. I’d like to see police agencies mold the procedures instead of legislatures or courts.”

Studies of wrongful convictions suggest that there are thousands more innocent people in jails and prisons. The Innocence Project, the nation’s most prominent organization devoted to proving wrongful convictions, is pursuing 250 cases and at any given time is reviewing 6,000 to 10,000 additional cases for legal action. Approximately 1 percent of those cases will be accepted, and half of those accepted cases are closed because evidence has been lost or destroyed.

Other smaller efforts to overturn wrongful convictions also receive thousands of letters from inmates.

In a 2005 study, a University of Michigan Law School professor, Samuel R. Gross, estimated that 340 prisoners sentenced from 1989 to 2003 had been exonerated. Of those, 205 were convicted of murder and 121 of rape. Half of the wrongful murder convictions and 88 percent of the wrongful rape convictions included false eyewitness identification, the study found.

DNA evidence was used to exonerate 144 of those inmates.

In a 2007 study, Professor Gross analyzed 3,792 death sentences imposed from 1973 to 1989 and found that 86 death row inmates, or 2.3 percent, had been exonerated through 2004

Professor Gross said the total number of innocent prisoners was likely to be far higher. In his view, well-documented wrongful convictions in capital cases provided a window on systemic problems, with even larger numbers of convictions for less serious and less publicized convictions.

“Of the 340 exonerations I looked at” in the 2005 study, Professor Gross said, “96 percent are for rape and murder.” He added: “Does that mean nobody was wrongfully convicted for drug possession, or drunk driving or burglary? Chances are there are many, many more false convictions for lesser crimes.” The most recent prisoner to be
exonerated by DNA evidence was Dwayne Allen Dail, who served 18 years in North Carolina for a false conviction of child rape. Prosecutors had used the victim’s identification of Mr. Dail and hair found at the crime scene to convict him. Years later, after repeated inquires from defense lawyers, the police found a box of additional evidence in the case that contained the victim’s semen-stained nightgown. DNA analysis ruled out Mr. Dail and implicated another man. Mr. Dail was released from prison in August.

The proposed laws on witness identification are intended to reduce cases like Mr. Dail’s by requiring things like sequential photo lineups of suspects, in which police officers show witnesses photographs of one suspect at a time. Studies have shown that witnesses tend to compare photos when they are shown them simultaneously, a tendency that can lead to errors.

The legislation would also create “double blind” systems so that the police officers administering the photo lineups are unaware of the suspects’ identities in order to avoid influencing witnesses.

The North Carolina legislature adopted both lineup procedures this year.

Crimes labs are also getting additional scrutiny in some states.

William E. Marbaker, president of the American Society of Crime Lab Directors, an independent accreditation body, said the group had accredited more than 300 crime labs. But some law enforcement agencies are finding that even more oversight is needed.

A two-year review of the Houston Police Department’s crime lab called into question more than 600 cases. The review was initiated after a court found in 2005 that faulty forensic evidence led to the conviction of George Rodriguez in 1987 for kidnapping and assaulting a child. Mr. Rodriguez served 17 years of a 60-year sentence before his release two years ago.

Houston crime lab officials erroneously concluded that hair found at the crime scene belonged to Mr. Rodriguez. The crime lab also failed to rule out Mr. Rodriguez as a suspect after finding that semen collected from the scene matched that of another man.

Eight states — Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming — do not have laws that give inmates access to DNA evidence.

Advocacy groups, including the Innocence Project, said they intend to lobby for the passage of access laws in those states during the next legislative session.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/01/us/01exonerate.html?ex=1348891200&en=4d3cc5a0c8234964&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Influx of U.S. Inmates Slowing, Census Says

Number Incarcerated Still a Record High; Sentencing in '90s Cited as Factor

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 27, 2007; A12

After two decades of massive growth, the U.S. prison population began to level off in the first six years of this century, according to 2006 census statistics released today.

At nearly 2.1 million, the number of adults in correctional institutions remains at an all-time high. Still, that figure represents a 4 percent rise since 2000 -- nowhere near the 77 percent spike in the prison population from 1990 to 2000.

The data, from the yearly American Community Survey, represent the Census Bureau's first in-depth look at people in prisons since the 1980 Census. Although the numbers vary, the census findings generally track with trends in twice-yearly statistics compiled by the Justice Department.

Many analysts point to crack cocaine in the 1980s as a catalyst for the subsequent boom in incarceration rates. Attracted by the drug's low price, dealers in impoverished urban neighborhoods began selling it in open-air markets, where they and their customers were targets for arrest. Thirst for the drug also fueled other crimes by addicts.

Perhaps the most significant factor, however, was the introduction of tough sentencing laws in the 1990s.

Congress dramatically increased prison time for offenses involving crack cocaine compared with those involving powdered cocaine. The federal government also introduced guidelines limiting judges' discretion at sentencing, as well as rules that drastically curtailed states' ability to parole offenders convicted of violent crimes. Many states also passed mandatory minimum-sentencing laws.

The result was an explosion in the prison population even as crime rates began to drop.

"The growth wasn't really about increasing crime but how we chose to respond to crime," said Allen J. Beck, deputy director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. "When you increase the likelihood of a person going to prison for a conviction, and then you increase how long you keep them there, it has a profound effect."

Despite pending court challenges, most of those laws remain on the books. There are indications that the impact may be increasingly on women -- whose rate of violent crime has increased, and who often are arrested for low-level participation in drug conspiracies led by boyfriends or male relatives. In 1990, 8 percent of the prison population was female. By 2000, women were 9 percent of the population, and in 2006, 10 percent.

Still, the overall growth of the prison population has slowed substantially compared with the 1990s. Researchers point to a variety of reasons. First is the precipitous drop in crime rates since the late 1990s, possibly because of the declining popularity of crack cocaine, the introduction of innovative policing strategies and many would-be offenders already being behind bars.

Perhaps as important, many felons locked up in the 1990s are completing their sentences.

"All those people who were in prison are starting to come out. . . . So the number that is going in is approaching the number going out," said Christy Visher, primary research associate with the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center.

Indeed, said Visher, the prison population might even start to decline if it weren't for the high recidivism rate of those released: About half return to prison within three years.

And with a recent uptick in the crime rate, and increasing numbers of offenders being placed on probation, Beck said that the prison population may begin to significantly increase again.

Even if the prison population remains at its current level, the social and economic costs to the nation are enormous, Visher said.

She noted that the federal government and states are spending more than $65 billion per year on corrections alone. "We need to have a national conversation about how to transition this population into being productive," Visher said.

Just as worrisome is the persistent overrepresentation of blacks in prison. In 2006, blacks accounted for 12 percent of the general population but 40 percent of those in adult correctional institutions.

Hispanics are also overrepresented, but to a lesser extent. They made up 15 percent of the general population and 19 percent of the prison population.

By contrast, immigrants are underrepresented. Foreign-born inmates accounted for 9 percent of those incarcerated, compared with 13 percent of the total population.

Slavery: A Shark's perspective

Slavery: A Shark's perspective
A strange text sheds new light on the true roots of abolition
By Marcus Rediker | September 23, 2007

This year and next mark an important historical anniversary: Two centuries ago, both the United States and Great Britain abolished the African slave trade.

By the time they did, the trade had carried 9 million Africans to New World plantations, where they would live under the lash and produce the largest planned accumulation of wealth the world had yet seen. Abolition followed a long and determined campaign waged by antislavery activists on both sides of the Atlantic.

But who really brought the slave trade to an end?

In popular history, the people who abolished the slave trade are seen virtually as saints. They were somber, often dressed in black; they were devout, earnest, and good; they were the very embodiment of Christian virtue. In New England, many were descended from Puritans and reflected their austere and humorless ways. In England they were epitomized by the aristocratic evangelical William Wilberforce, the voice of abolition in Parliament. The recent movie "Amazing Grace" portrays him as a selfless, somewhat sickly angel who loved animals, servants, Africans, and God. Piety has long been seen as the hallmark of abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic.

If that were the full story, though, it would be exploded by this document. While working in the special collections library of Bristol University in England on a book on 18th-century slave ships, I found an almost completely unknown broadside entitled "The Petition of the Sharks of Africa." It looked like any other printed petition, elegant in its composition, suitable for presentation, addressed "To the Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled."

It was, however, a vivid and harsh piece of satire. In fact it claimed to have been written by the "Sharks of Africa," who declared themselves to be a numerous and flourishing group thanks to the many slave ships that visited the coast of West Africa. From these vessels, they explained, they got "large quantities of their most favourite food - human flesh."

When the dead were thrown overboard, the sharks devoured the corpses. Sometimes they got live flesh, when African rebels who preferred death to slavery jumped overboard. When slave ships were "dashed on the rocks and shoals" of the region, throwing "hundreds of human beings, both black and white" into the water, it was a feast.

The sharks were writing to the British Parliament kindly asking them not to end the slave trade. Taking a sensible conservative view, the sharks denounced the abolitionists' "wild ravings of fanaticism," confident that their benevolent lordships would not let His Majesty's loyal shark subjects starve. The petitioners were sure that they could count on "the wisdom and fellow-feeling" of the House of Lords. Sharks should stick together, after all.

Nothing I had read had prepared me for such a document. Here, unexpectedly, was a dark and daring kind of humor I had never known to exist among abolitionists.

Further research revealed that it had been republished widely, in Edinburgh, Philadelphia, New York, and Salem. I concluded that "The Petition of the Sharks of Africa" had been written by a Scot named James Tytler, who was a physician, poet, composer, an editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and Britain's first hot-air balloonist. For his radicalism, he was eventually arrested and charged with sedition, only to flee into exile in 1793, first to Ireland, then to Salem. His contribution has never figured in the histories of abolition - partly, I am convinced, because it does not fit the enduring image of abolitionists.

The document joins a long string of new findings that have changed our understanding of who the abolitionists were. Working-class men and women protested the trade through boycotts; sailors smuggled pamphlets and told their horror stories to activists ashore. The front line of the war against human bondage was occupied by the enslaved themselves, whose resistance sent shock waves around the world, terrifying many and inspiring some. Their names may be lost to the history books, but they anchored a complex and diverse social movement.

Why do we need to know this today? First, it is important to understand that the abolition of the slave trade, and of slavery itself, was not a gift from on high. William Wilberforce did not abolish the slave trade, as "Amazing Grace" might make it seem, just as a lone Abraham Lincoln did not free the slaves. It will no longer do to pretend that a "great man" did things that are more accurately described as a result of a complex historical situation and a many-sided resistance.

Second, it is important to people demanding justice and reparations today - whoever and wherever they may be - to know that their forebears played an important role in bringing the slave trade and indeed the entire institution of slavery to an end. We owe the end of the abolition of the nefarious trade not just to aristocrats and Puritans, but to enslaved rebels, to factory workers and sailors, and to at least one irreverent Scottish daredevil.

Marcus Rediker is a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh. His new book, "The Slave Ship: A Human History," will be published by Viking-Penguin in October.

Back From Behind Bars

Back From Behind Bars
Homelessness, Unemployment and Familiar Temptations Greet the 2,000 Prisoners Who Return to the District Each Year
By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 2, 2007; A01

Few people understand the criminal justice system like Wendell Poole. He spent 21 years, four months, 16 days and three hours in prison for assault with the intent to kill two people during an argument. He arrived home middle-aged and paranoid, flinching at the sound of passing cars. He needed a job, a place to stay, a plan.

He slept on sofas, convinced a friend to give him a job and now, four years later, counsels just-released prisoners, nudging them toward a fresh start.

Staying out, Poole tells them, is simple: Change your clothes, your friends and your frame of reference. Don't expect handouts or even much help. As a small first step, Poole decided before leaving prison to wear a necktie in his new life.

"You have to reinvent yourself," he said.

But reinvention requires help. For many ex-cons, help can be hard to come by. The reentry system is overwhelmed, and the pipeline of people returning from prison gets replenished daily.

About 2,000 prisoners come back to the District every year -- an average of five a day. As many as 60,000 D.C. residents -- one in 10 -- are felons, 15,000 of them under court supervision.

They arrive at the homes of relatives, at halfway houses and shelters. One-third end up homeless or close to it. Seven out of 10 have abused drugs. Half don't have a high school diploma. Employers, landlords and even family members often avoid them.

Most emerge ill-equipped to stay out of prison. Two-thirds are re-arrested within three years. Forty percent are sent back to prison. This means more crime, more victims and more money spent to send them through the justice system again and again.

The District is the only jurisdiction in the country where the federal government has direct authority for supervising its felons, a legacy of the city's bankrupt '90s under Mayor Marion Barry (D).

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) says too many inmates are not getting the services they need in prison or after their release.

"These people are out of sight, out of mind," Norton said. "There's been no oversight, not one hearing. The whole notion of what role this population plays in crime is not part of the crime-prevention strategy."

The federal agency overseeing ex-offenders in the District spends $135 million a year, but former D.C. police chief Isaac Fulwood Jr. said more needs to be spent to ensure that residents get homes and training that will lead to jobs. Allowing people to be idle, he said, is dangerous.

"What you're saying is," said Fulwood, a member of the U.S. Parole Commission, " 'Keep robbing us. Keep busting us in the head. Keep breaking into our houses.' "

* * *

The District used to incarcerate its prisoners and monitor them on release. But in 1997, Congress transferred that authority to federal agencies because the District was financially strained and its key prison, Lorton Correctional Complex in Fairfax County, was crowded, violent and corrupt.

Prisoners were sent to institutions run by the federal Bureau of Prisons. Parole authority was given to the U.S. Parole Commission in Bethesda, and the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, or CSOSA, was created to do pre-release counseling, supervise parolees and provide drug treatment.

The federal prisons, although generally considered safer and newer, evoke inmate complaints: Spread across 75 institutions in 33 states, inmates are cut off from their families, and 15 percent of about 7,000 inmates serving time are beyond the 500-mile limit Congress set. Many are housed in facilities that do not offer college-level classes or training in such skills as barbering. One in nine inmates in federal prison reports getting drug treatment.

Poole, 52, spent time in both systems. During seven years at Lorton, he got a GED and started college. "I got to see my kids two or three times a week," he said. "I got a chance to be a part of their lives."

Going to "the feds" meant a game of survival. Calling home was too expensive, and inmates said they often felt mistreated by guards. At least as big a problem is they lost touch with the city -- and the city lost touch with them.

* * *

When an inmate leaves prison, a reentry system is supposed to kick in before old habits set in, say government leaders, community activists and law enforcement officials.

For Poole, a counselor at the Anacostia Men's Employment Network, there was no halfway house, no job training.
Now, however, CSOSA makes a concerted effort to reach out to prisoners a few months before they are scheduled to leave and develop a plan of action. About half of those leaving prison are sent to a halfway house to serve their final months. It is not uncommon for release dates to be held up because an inmate has nowhere to live.

Of 2,200 offenders released in the past year, 370 listed their residence as a homeless shelter. Many times, all a parole or probation officer can do is refer inmates to programs and hope they get in.

Even after years in prison, inmates often need drug treatment. Some continue using drugs in prison. Others have no access to drugs but without treatment come out with their desire intact. Returning to old haunts and temptations can be too difficult to resist.

"It's the number one issue," said Paul Quander, who heads CSOSA. "There aren't enough resources."

Treatment is expensive. Seven days of detox, 90 days of residential care and 54 outpatient visits costs $17,141 for one person; the cost of a year in prison approaches $30,000.

CSOSA gets $11 million a year for drug treatment, enough to serve one of four addicts under its care. So Quander focuses on people with multiple convictions and long-standing addictions.

The crown jewel of the agency's efforts is the 102-bed Reentry and Sanctions Center in Southeast next to RFK Stadium, between the D.C. jail and the morgue. For 28 days, ex-cons fill 14-hour days with counseling, group chats, academic testing and personalized assessments. A 2001 review showed a 35 percent drop in re-arrests, a rate the agency hopes to replicate on a larger scale. No one believes recidivism can be wiped out, but CSOSA officials say increased funding can help reduce overall crime in the city.

Michael Washington, 37, said chasing drugs kept him cycling in and out of prison, at one point for a burglary conviction and most recently for a parole violation. He started drinking at 12 and then began using drugs. He has dealt drugs, been robbed and been shot.

Washington hopes a treatment program he started after being released in late June will help him stay clean. "In my mind and my heart," he said, "I know what to do, but I need some help."

Those who don't get treated through CSOSA are referred to the District's Addiction Prevention and Recovery Administration, which provides detox and inpatient care for all the District's addicts, not just ex-offenders. The District does not track whether the people it treats are ex-offenders but acknowledges drugs as a pervasive problem in the city.

APRA served 13 percent of an estimated 60,000 people in the District who needed drug treatment last year. Freed prisoners often have to join a long line. Some waiting lists stretch four or five months.

And treatment can cost $70 a week. To pay the fee, the felons need a job.

* * *

The census tracts with the highest concentrations of ex-offenders have unemployment rates up to 35 percent, a recent study by the Urban Institute found.

Dozens of job-training programs focus on life skills. Fulfilling a requirement of their release, inmates can cycle from one training program to another, never landing a job.

Many employers are reluctant to give ex-cons a second chance.
"If you check yes, they're not going to call you in for an interview. It happens all the time," said Lohren Robinson, 25, a cook who hasn't had run-ins with the law for the two years since he served time for convictions on stolen identity, breaking and entering and grand theft. He is unemployed but gets occasional temp jobs. "It takes away your ambition and your drive to want for something."

For a year, the D.C. Council has considered barring employers from asking applicants if they have a criminal history until after a job offer is made.

Opposition from business has been fierce. Business owners, colleges and security agencies say insurance premiums would rise, along with lawsuits from ex-offenders rejected for jobs. Some threatened to stop recruiting in the District. Business leaders said many emerge from prison lacking college degrees, certifications or training to qualify for jobs.

"While we will have some discrimination in our lives," D.C. Chamber of Commerce President Barbara Lang told council members earlier this year, "discrimination is not the major reason for the issue we are discussing today; preparedness for jobs is."

Sponsors said the measure is alive, although it has yet to come out of committee.
One hundred men and women showed up at a CSOSA job fair in June. A videolink was set up to Rivers Correctional Institution in North Carolina, where dozens of District prisoners were months from release. Agents for two construction companies were invited to offer tips on what to wear to an interview and how to create a good impression.

One audience member said he wanted to become a crane operator. Another, a man who had been sitting quietly, said, "I just need a job."

But Larry Barnes, a trainer in the D.C. Apprenticeship Office, which links District residents with employers in the skilled trades, said ex-offenders often sabotage themselves. "We show up late," he told them. "We're positive [for drugs] in our urine. . . . We got baby-mama drama. We rely on other people to get to work."

The Rev. Stephen E. Tucker, pastor of New Commandment Baptist Church in Northwest Washington, runs one of dozens of job-training programs for ex-offenders in the District. His is out of the church basement, mixing spiritual guidance with r?sum? writing and conflict resolution. The program forms partnerships with business owners who agree to interview and hire its graduates.

Since 1997, more than 1,000 have graduated. Eighty-five percent get jobs, Tucker said, and 90 percent keep them at least a year. Still, about half of those under CSOSA's supervision are without a job. Tucker said jobs, housing and drug treatment are parts of a whole.

"If you give a brother a job and he hasn't gotten over substance abuse, he's not going to have that job long," he said. "If he gets a job and doesn't have a place to stay, they're going to open themselves up to the same choices that got them locked up in the first place."

* * *

Inmates and their advocates, however, agree that programs and access to drug treatment do not guarantee success for those living on the margins.

Jason Kinney, 26, had been away for a year on a parole violation from a 1999 assault charge. Out of prison for two months, his job hunt was frustrating him, but he hadn't given up, his mother, Tawana Kinney, said.

He completed CSOSA's 28-day drug treatment and started a job-training program near his parents' home in Congress Heights. He talked about restarting his fledgling acting career. Once, he had a minor role in "Homicide: Life on the Street."

On July 13, Kinney stood in a crowd in his old neighborhood on Capitol Hill. A car drove past, and someone opened fire. Four people, including Kinney, were hit. The others lived. He died just before midnight.

Days later, 150 people gathered on a breezy afternoon as the summer sun eased into twilight. In death, Kinney had completed a familiar cycle: He got into trouble early. He went to prison. He died young.

The Rev. Roy Bowman, associate pastor of the Soul Factory in Forestville, told the gathering that the endless churn of black men through the prisons and the morgue has become so routine that it hardly warrants a passing glance. Help, he said, wasn't on the way.

"Ain't nobody coming, ya'll," said Bowman, a former police officer, looking from one teary face to another. "Ain't nobody coming to save us, to work this thing out. If you don't learn to read, ain't nobody going to show up to care. If you expect the police or the D.C. government to do something, it ain't going to happen. Nobody cares that we kill each other. . . . Ain't nobody coming."

Police have offered up to $25,000 to anyone who can help put the killer or killers behind bars.

Update on the San Francisco 8 case

From: NYC Jericho Movement
Date: 8/24/2007 2:08:19 AM
To: pickupthework@fifthhorseman.net
Subject: [Pickupthework] Wednesday 8/22 SF8 Court Report: bail, discovery, DNA

Bail Reduced!

Addressing a tense courtroom packed with both supporters and police, Judge Philip Moscone electrified supporters when he announced major bail reductions for the six bailable defendants in the SF 8 case.

Ray Boudreaux: $ 385,000
Richard Brown: $ 420,000
Hank Jones: $ 600,000
Richard O'Neal: $ 200,000
Harold Taylor: $ 350,000
Francisco Torres: $ 660,000

Moscone noted that "danger to public safety" was not an issue in his decision, and arrived at the varying amounts based on 1) the seriousness of allegations against each individual in the Ingleside charge and the overt acts of the conspiracy charge, and 2) likelihood of appearance, noting that all the men have had stable residences for a long time and have strong family and community ties.

Moscone preceded his announcement with the statement that "not everyone" would be happy with what he was going to do. Following the bail announcement, scores of police, including Detective Erdelatz (the SFDP zealot who has pursued the men for three decades) left the
courtroom.

Family members and supporters stated that they expected to be able to raise the reduced bails. Supporters who wish to discuss offering their property as collateral towards bail should call for an explanation of the process: (415) 226-1120.

Problems with discovery compliance

The rest of the morning addressed discovery issues.

Stuart Hanlon, attorney for Herman Bell, summarized a major problem: Although the prosecution has turned over the equivalent of more than 200,000 pages, the documents are so disorganized it is as if those pages were strewn on the floor randomly. After months of effort by 20 workers over hundreds of hours, the defense still cannot locate the documents it needs. In addition, countless portions of the documents, including contact information for every single witness, have been blacked out.

Hanlon also argued that the basis of the current prosecution was supposed to be "new" evidence relating to DNA and ballistics. But where was the evidence?

DNA

Michael Burt, attorney for Ray Boudreaux, added that the prosecution denied having DNA reports for over a year, but when reports were provided a few days ago, it was clear the government had had them since 2006 - and they were still incomplete. "We need every test that they have done," Burt said. The defense noted that the partial DNA reports released by the state recently not only show no matches to any of the eight, one of them matches the profile of one of the state's experts, indicating contamination of evidence.

Hanlon added that instead of ballistics reports the prosecution has given them statements by police. "Declarations don't mean a thing," Hanlon asserted. "After 25 years of seeing police lie outright in the case of Geronimo Pratt, I want to see evidence, not declarations."

Next court date

Moscone ordered the discovery issues to continue on Tuesday, August 28. He will meet with the attorneys alone at 9:30, and the official court hearing will begin at 1:30. Motions about timeliness and prosecutorial delay will be filed after discovery is resolved.

--
Free All Political Prisoners!
nycjericho@riseup.net • www.jerichony.org

Government Study Confirms Systemic Sexual Violence in Detention

PRESS RELEASE

Government Study Confirms Systemic Sexual Violence in Detention - Highlights Serious Under-Reporting of Such Abuse

LOS ANGELES, August 16, 2007. International human rights organization Stop Prisoner Rape (SPR) welcomes the release today of the third annual statistical report on prisoner rape, issued by the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The BJS study, which analyzes administrative reports of sexual violence behind bars, found that 6,528 official complaints were filed about such abuse occurring in 2006, or 2.9 allegations per 1,000 inmates. In 2004, the first year for which the BJS published these data, the number of complaints was 5,386.

While offering important insights into the patterns and dynamics of the sexual violence in detention that is reported to corrections officials, the study reveals only a small fraction of the overall problem. The BJS itself is in the process of conducting the first-ever large-scale, nationwide, anonymous inmate survey about sexual violence. In the pre-testing of its survey tool last year, the BJS found that 4.4 percent of inmates had experienced sexual abuse in the preceding 12 months - a rate 15 times higher than that captured in today's analysis of official administrative reports.

"We know for a fact that very few survivors of prisoner rape ever file a formal complaint. By comparing today's report with the early results of the BJS' inmate survey, it becomes clear that serious attempts to understand the problem of sexual violence in detention must go well beyond an analysis of formal reports of abuse," said Lovisa Stannow, Executive Director of SPR. "Survivors contact SPR every day, the vast majority of whom are too afraid or ashamed to report the abuse they have endured."

Today's BJS report also reveals a shocking failure on the part of corrections officials to respond appropriately to the sexual abuse of inmates. The report found that, even in substantiated cases of staff sexual misconduct and harassment of inmates, 76 percent of the survivors were offered no medical treatment or mental health counseling. SPR believes that all survivors of sexual violence in detention should be offered such services, to ensure that physical injuries, acute trauma, and the long-term psychological effect of sexual abuse are addressed.

"Corrections facilities must, as a matter of urgency, make sure that all inmates who have been sexually abused are given an opportunity to begin the healing process, especially when the abusers are the very people charged with protecting them," said Ms. Stannow. "This is not only a matter of human rights, it's about public health. Some 95 percent of inmates eventually return to their communities, bringing with them the full range of their prison experiences, including learned violent behavior, psychological trauma, and infectious disease."

The BJS report, which is based entirely on information provided by corrections officials, also found that officials concluded that "abuse of power" was a factor in only five percent of substantiated cases of staff sexual misconduct. "It's disheartening to see that corrections staff still do not recognize that there is an inherent abuse of power involved in every single one of these cases," said Ms. Stannow. Sexual contact between a corrections official and an inmate is illegal in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

SPR is the only non-governmental organization in the country dedicated exclusively to eliminating sexual violence against men, women, and youth in detention. SPR was instrumental in securing the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in 2003, which mandated the BJS to publish today's report and to undertake the anonymous inmate survey currently underway.

For a copy of the BJS report, "Sexual Violence Reported by Correctional Authorities, 2006," please go to http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/.

For more information, contact Lovisa Stannow at 213-384-1400 (ext. 103).

The Sentencing Project Examines Racial, Ethnic Prison Disparity in New Report

July 18, 2007

A new analysis by The Sentencing Project provides a regional examination of the racial and ethnic dynamics of incarceration in the U.S., and finds broad variations in racial disparity among the 50 states. The report, Uneven Justice: State Rates of Incarceration by Race and Ethnicity, finds that African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six (5.6) times the rate of whites and Hispanics nearly double (1.8) the rate.

The report also reveals wide variation in incarceration by state, with states in the Northeast and Midwest exhibiting the greatest black-to-white disparity in incarceration. In five states - Iowa, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Wisconsin - African Americans are incarcerated at more than ten times the rate of whites.

"Racial disparities in incarceration reflect a failure of social and economic interventions to address crime effectively and also indicate racial bias in the justice system," stated Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project. "The broad variation in the use of incarceration nationally suggests that policy decisions can play a key role in determining the size and composition of the prison population."

The report extends the findings of previous analyses by incorporating jail populations in the overall incarceration rate and by assessing the impact of incarceration on the Hispanic community, representing an increasing share of the prison population. The state figures for Hispanic incarceration also reveal broad variation nationally. Three states - Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania - have a Hispanic-to-white ratio of incarceration more than three times the national average.

Prior research from the Department of Justice has demonstrated that if current trends continue, one in three black males and one in six Hispanic males born today can expect to go to prison. Rates for women are lower overall, but exhibit similar racial and ethnic disparities.
To address the broad disparities in the criminal justice system, The Sentencing Project urges policymakers to implement a variety of measures. These include:

Revisit the domestic drug control strategy, including recalibrating sentencing laws, such as the federal cocaine statutes which result in disproportionate numbers of low-level offenders being prosecuted;

Revisit the wisdom of mandatory minimum sentencing and restore appropriate judicial discretion to incorporate individual circumstances in the sentencing decision;

Establish enforceable and binding standards for indigent defense that ensure the provision of quality representation for all defendants;

Mandate that all legislation affecting the prison population be accompanied by a Racial Impact Statement to document the projected consequences for persons of color.

VIEW UNEVEN JUSTICE: STATE RATES OF INCARCERATION BY ETHNICITY AND RACE

READ DES MOINES REGISTER ARTICLE

READ DES MOINES REGISTER EDITORIAL

VIEW THE SENTENCING PROJECT'S REPORT REDUCING RACIAL DISPARITY IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

VIEW THE SENTENCING PROJECT'S REPORT, SCHOOLS AND PRISONS: FIFTY YEARS AFTER BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION

News from the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons

One year ago, members of Vera's Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation on our then-newly published report, Confronting Confinement.

This June, on the first anniversary of that Senate hearing, Senators Richard Durbin and Tom Coburn, M.D., sent a letter to their colleagues urging them to re-read our report, saying, "the information and recommendations of the Commission are no less relevant than at their release." You can read their entire letter here.

Today, the Commission is continuing to assist government leaders, corrections administrators, and advocates in taking steps to improve the lives of those who work and live in correctional facilities across the nation.

Here are some highlights of recent developments:

• Citing the Commission's recommendations, the New Mexico House passed a memorial directing the state's attorney general to convene a task force to consider the creation of an independent entity to oversee the status and conditions of New Mexico's correctional facilities.
  
  
• Three Commissioners testified in April before the Pennsylvania House & Senate Judiciary Committees about the importance of creating safe and healthy correctional facilities.
  
  
• The Commission submitted a letter in support of a bill to create an Office of Corrections Ombudsman in the Washington State Senate.
  
  
• The Commission sponsored two roundtable discussions in Washington, DC, focusing on strategies for implementing the Commission's recommendation to extend Medicaid and Medicare to eligible prisoners, and on the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
  
  
• In April, the Commission's final report, Confronting Confinement, was favorably reviewed by the New York Review of Books.
  

What was true last year remains true today: what happens in jail and prison doesn't stay there. It is in the interest of everyone's safety and health—not only those who work in prisons, but also those who are sent to prison and the communities they return to upon release—that we continue to present these important issues and recommendations to decision makers in Washington, DC, and around the country.

Thank you for your support—past, present, and future—which helps to make this possible.

Sincerely,


Alexander Busansky
Executive Director, Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons
Director, Washington DC Office, Vera Institute of Justice

Confronting Confinement is available at the Commission's web site, www.prisoncommission.org.

Item of Interest

Read Earl Ofari Hutchinson on "The War on Drugs is Still a War on Blacks":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/the-war-on-drugs-is-still_b_54094.html

US prison population jumps by largest margin since 2000

US prison population jumps by largest margin since 2000
Jun 26, 2007, 19:07 GMT

Washington - The number of people jailed in the United States rose 2.8 per cent to more than 2.2 million in 2006, the largest climb in six years, the US Justice Department said Tuesday.
The heavy increases in prison populations since 2000, especially at state and federal levels, means many prisons are operating far over capacity, according to the department's annual report. At the end of 2005, federal prisons were operating on average 34 per cent above capacity, while state prisons were between 1 per cent below and 14 per cent above capacity, the report said. Local, state and federal prisons together held just over 2.245 million people as of June 30, 2006, up 62,000 from the same period a year earlier. The percentages continue to be skewed towards minorities. Black males made up 37 per cent of the country's prison population as of June 2006. About 4.8 per cent of all black men in the US are currently incarcerated - more than 11 per cent of those aged between 25 and 34 - compared to 1.9 per cent of Hispanic men and 0.7 per cent of white males, the report said.

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/usa/news/article_1322790.php/US_prison_population_jumps_by_largest_margin_since_2000

Re HB1723 testimony, next SHaRC meeting

Dear friends and colleagues,

The long path we stepped onto 5 years ago--to stop the Chicopee jail for women and to reverse the trend of wasted funds and ruined lives, continues. This is a long term job. On occasion we must stop to catch our breath and then move forward again.

Within a few days testimony in support of H.B. 1723 (a truly historic step), calling for a 5 year moratorium on jail and prison construction and expansion, will be on our web site. We'll let you know when it's up.

Our next SHaRC meeting will take place on Wednesday, June 27th at 6:00 PM (tenative location Community Church of Boston - we will confirm.)

If you'd like to get a jump on getting ready to work on this campaign please see the testimony on the fabulous SHaRC web site. Feedback is appreciated.

Hope to see on June 27th.

For Justice,
SHaRC
http://www.massdecarcerate.org/
info@MassDecarcerate.org