Criminal Justice Reform Commission - Georgia Governor Deal

http://www.macon.com/2011/07/29/1647808/deal-spends-day-in-middle-georgia.html

Deal spends day in Middle Georgia

Georgia has a “huge problem of addiction,” and simply putting people in prisons is not going to solve it, Gov. Nathan Deal said during his swing through the midstate Thursday.

Deal, who in May appointed his new Criminal Justice Reform Commission, suggested that major changes are needed in the state’s court system.

“We’re incarcerating far too high a percentage of our population, and the problem is that has been the only answer we’ve had,” the governor told a group of community leaders at the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce.

The commission, he said, is meeting now to come up with recommendations “to change this pattern.”  “It’s not going to be done easily and quickly, but it is something we’ve got to make a concerted effort to try to do. It’s expensive for the public community. It’s expensive in terms of lives in the private sector.”

Thursday morning, Deal visited Robins Air Force Base and held an economic development roundtable at Macon State College, where he also was guest at the chamber’s board meeting. He was in his hometown of Sandersville on Wednesday to cut the ribbon on a new airport.

The governor, whose son is a Superior Court judge over a drug court in the Hall County circuit, said more of these accountability courts are needed around the state. He also suggested that technical colleges can play a role in rehabbing prisoners by teaching them a trade.

“We can’t try to continue to deal with the manifestations of the problem,” Deal said. “There ought to be a very clearly stated policy that you earn your way out of prison. We’ve got to do a better job of making resources available in our prison system. It doesn’t do us any good to lock somebody up for a number of years, only to turn them out with no more skills than as when they went in.”

State Rep. Nikki Randall, a Macon Democrat, arranged the afternoon roundtable with the Republican governor, inviting guests that included both elected officials from both parties, as well as representatives from local agencies that provide welfare and health services.  “I have bipartisan friends,” Randall joked.

Deal listened as local leaders touted their programs and departments, then pleaded their cases for help with issues and problems.

Bibb County Sheriff Jerry Modena said his jail, as are most others around the state, is overcrowded, as well as somewhat overwhelmed by the influx of mentally ill inmates. That problem was only made worse when the state closed its hospital in Milledgeville.  “These people need a treatment center, not a jail,” Modena said.

Bibb County school board members Gary Bechtel and Lynn Farmer asked that the governor allow school systems to use special purpose local option sales tax money for operating expenses.
“It would give us some flexibility in the school budget that we need, and it would not cost the state,” Farmer said.

She also cited improved inter-agency communication as an area in need of improvement, pointing out that school officials now do not have access to records when juvenile offenders re-enroll.

“They consider whatever crime was committed, however heinous, whatever that student did, to be that student’s private information,” Farmer said. “That student doesn’t have the right to privacy if the safety of the student of the other children at that school are threatened. It’s about protecting teachers, too.”

Deal said he expects to introduce a package of reforms dealing with “juvenile issues.” He also said he wants more focus on early childhood education, with the goal being that every child learn to read at grade level by third grade.

Macon City Councilwoman Lauren Benedict suggested sales tax reform that includes “point of sale” collection, similar to methods used in Alabama, to ensure accuracy.

“We’re going to thank you in advance for what you’re going to do to help us out,” Randall said. “We just want to make sure Middle Georgia is not forgotten.” In Warner Robins, Deal met with Maj. Gen. Robert McMahon and took a bus tour of the base.

Deal lauded the $4.27 billion economic impact of Robins and noted that the support of the community would help safeguard the base during another round of future base realignment and closure moves.

McMahon, the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center commander, said he doesn’t talk about whether there’ll be another BRAC. He noted that’s a political decision, and his job is ensuring that the center is at its best at all times.

The military briefings with Deal and the bus tour were closed to the media. Deal, and later McMahon, fielded questions from reporters afterward.

McMahon said discussions with Deal ranged from safety initiatives prompted by Occupational Safety and Health Administration findings to a Georgia-Robins Aerospace Maintenance Partnership, or G-RAMP.

The 30-minute bus tour included a drive-by look at the WRALC and flight line, the Georgia Air National Guard 116th Air Control Wing facility and the home of the 49th Marine Group, now based at Robins after relocating from Naval Air Station Atlanta.

State Rep. Larry O’Neal, R-Warner Robins, WRALC Executive Director Deryl Israel and military leaders also were on the tour.

Citizens for Prison Reform

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

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Maine's Dramatic Reduction of Solitary Confinement

From:  CURE NATIONAL

http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/inside-criminal-justice/2011-07-maines-dramatic-reduction-of-solitary-confinement

The state’s new governor and corrections commissioner have sharply reduced prisoners in solitary without a rise in violence. They may have shown other states a way out of the supermax morass.

Solitary confinement has become more contentious nationally. First there was the controversy over the isolation of Bradley Manning, the soldier arrested for allegedly giving classified documents to WikiLeaks.

Then, earlier this month, more than 6,000 inmates in California prisons began a hunger strike to protest its use at the Pelican Bay prison's Security Housing Unit or "supermax."

As of Thursday, several hundred California prisoners are still on strike, and the weakening condition of some may soon require officials to choose between allowing inmates to die or force-feeding them.

Surprisingly, on the other side of the country the new conservative Republican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, and his new corrections commissioner, Joseph Ponte, a veteran warden, may be able to show other states a way out of the sad, expensive morass that super-maximum-security solitary confinement has become.

Critics say solitary confinement is inhumane and counterproductive, and it costs two or three times regular imprisonment. Only the United States uses it for massive numbers of prisoners, a practice that has become common over the past 25 years.

Across the country, at least 25,000 inmates are in state supermax facilities — generally, in 23-hour-a-day isolation — and another 11,000 are in federal solitary confinement.

In a matter of weeks this spring, Commissioner Ponte dramatically reformed the Maine State Prison’s supermax, the Special Management Unit or SMU. Like others across the country it had been plagued by inmates "cutting up," by suicides and suicide attempts, hunger strikes, inmate assaults on guards, guard assaults on inmates and, in Maine's case, unexplained inmate deaths.

Like its counterparts elsewhere, Maine’s SMU had been increasingly accused of being a torture chamber, especially for the mentally ill.

Ponte's major reform has been to quickly shrink the number of supermax prisoners by almost 60 percent, from a nearly-always-full 132 cells to, recently, 54.

One immediate result is that the unit is calmer, and no great disruption has occurred from putting inmates back into the prison general population. Although wardens have defended supermaxes as necessary to decrease prison violence, academic researchers say there's no evidence this is so.

Maine's experience so far supports the research.

Shrinking Supermax Numbers

Maine is not the first state to shrink its supermax numbers. In recent years Mississippi reduced its Parchman supermax population by 90 percent, also without upheaval. But reforms there were forced by an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit.

In Maine the reforms came about after a grassroots political campaign — and the appointment of a commissioner willing to listen to reformers.

In this respect, Maine is unique. Although its prison system is small and not fraught with gangs, and the reforms are quite recent, activists in other states and the nation's capital are looking closely at Maine and drawing lessons for their own anti-supermax efforts.

"These reforms, if sustained, will make Maine a national leader in rolling back the excessive and unnecessary use of solitary confinement," says David Fathi, head of the ACLU's Washington, D.C.-based National Prison Project.

"We've followed our colleagues in Maine with admiration, awe and envy," says Laurie Jo Reynolds, organizer of the campaign in Illinois to limit solitary confinement at the Tamms supermax.

Maine's own prison reformers are in a mild state of shock at seeing many of their long-time recommendations adopted. Ponte even appointed two members of the Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition to a Department of Corrections committee coordinating the reforms.

"For the first time in years we have a good relationship" with the commissioner, Judy Garvey, a coalition leader, told the Republican-dominated legislature's Criminal Justice Committee in May.

Committee members appeared pleased with Ponte's actions. A year previously, many of the same lawmakers had sided with the former corrections commissioner in defending solitary confinement.
The change in thinking about corrections in Maine has been astonishing.

Officials Fired

A 64-year-old turnaround specialist who had straightened out some of America's most violent prisons, Ponte also quickly made personnel changes. In the spring he fired two associate commissioners; and last month he dismissed four Maine State Prison guard captains along with the prison’s controversial security chief, a veteran deputy warden whom prisoners, prison critics and former employees had long accused of dealing harshly with both inmates and staff.

Ponte's reforms go beyond the SMU, changing how discipline is enforced throughout the 915-inmate, all-male, maximum-security prison located in the coastal village of Warren.

In the past, guards threw prisoners into the SMU for small infractions, like getting themselves tattooed. Then, in a vicious circle, as an inmate's rage or mental problems grew because of the isolation, his protests added time to his supermax stay.

If he was driven to throw feces at guards — a common supermax phenomenon — he could have years added to his sentence subsequent to a conviction for assault.

Among other changes, Ponte:
* ordered that inmates not be placed in isolation longer than 72 hours without his personal approval;
* imposed a seven-day limit on supermax stays for inmates being investigated for in-prison crimes (in the past, a prisoner might languish for months as an investigation dragged on without him being charged);
* reclassified and moved out of the supermax many prisoners who simply appeared to be there unnecessarily;
* stopped the once-frequent brutal “cell extractions” of uncooperative and often mentally ill inmates; there have been none since May;
* required guards to use what Ponte calls “informal sanctions” to discipline unruly prisoners, like taking away commissary or recreation privileges, as alternatives to "the hole."

The Model: Success with Juveniles

Heading up the committee overseeing the reforms is Rodney Bouffard, superintendent of South Portland’s Long Creek Youth Development Center, a lockup for adolescents.

Reflecting his background (he has run both the chief state psychiatric hospital and the state center for the developmentally disabled), Bouffard has a psychological-treatment approach to corrections.
"Good treatment is good security," he says.

Bouffard got Ponte's attention because he can point to the low recidivism rate of offenders released from Long Creek.

Since he and his team took charge nearly ten years ago, the Department of Corrections claims a one-year recidivism rate drop from 75 percent to between 15 percent and 20 percent. Moreover, there was a reduction in two years from 419 to 15 annual instances of increasingly brief solitary confinement.

Ponte is using Long Creek as a model for the prison system, even though Long Creek's "residents" are kids.
This choice recognizes that many inmates have mental illness. In the Warren supermax, over half have been diagnosed as seriously mentally ill (16 currently are in a special mental-health unit).

Ponte's choice also recognizes that punishment has "negative results. There's no study ever done that shows a punishment model gets good results," says Bartlett "Barry" Stoodley, associate corrections commissioner for juveniles.

"The punishment is what the court gives, the sentence," Ponte says. "We're not in the business of punishment, but corrections. We've got a lot to learn from the juvenile system."  But, he adds, "It's going to take a philosophical change" in the department.

Quiet and unpretentious, Ponte surprised reformers with his receptivity to progressive ideas because he came to Maine from the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America, which has seen its share of prisoner-abuse scandals. But for most of his career he worked for public systems.

In the 1980s in Massachusetts Ponte cleaned up violent Walpole prison, earning him a Boston Globe accolade as "the boy wonder" of state corrections. In the early 2000s he did the same at Shelby County Jail in Memphis, where gangs had sponsored "Thunderdome" fights among inmates.

He went to Maine recommended not only by his correctional colleagues but also, for fairness and responsiveness, by prisoner-rights advocates.

An aide to Gov. LePage said at Ponte's confirmation hearing in February that Ponte was brought to Maine to fix the prison system's problems. Although LePage is a member of the Tea Party-supported crop of Republican governors, with an agenda that includes reductions in taxes and state spending, he is progressive in sharply condemning the fact that prisons and jails have become de facto asylums.

Not Just the Commissioner

By no means are LePage and Ponte solely responsible for the reforms.

Ponte landed in the state as a rethinking was taking place on the part of corrections and elected officials, newspaper editorial writers, and others. They became more concerned about the humaneness, health effects, usefulness and cost of solitary confinement.

The new ideas had been promoted by a home-grown prison-reform movement that made curbing solitary its top priority.

Ponte and his committee guiding the reforms have as their playbook a bold report commissioned last year by the legislature at the behest of these activists.  The report resulted from a study of solitary confinement that legislators ordered as a substitute for a bill they defeated that had been pushed by prisoner-rights, civil-liberties, religious, and mental-health groups.  The bill would have greatly restricted the use of isolation.

The bill had stirred up a statewide discussion, with the Maine branch of the ACLU and churches affiliated with the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) playing major roles.

National and Maine experts testified at the bill’s hearing that extended prisoner isolation deteriorates brains and behavior and, under international law, is increasingly considered torture.

Ed NOTE: For more on this, please see "The Anti-Supermax Battle Broadens," The Crime Report, May 17, 2010.

Although the corrections department had opposed the study, a group of mid-level corrections officials nevertheless worked for a year diligently researching supermax incarceration.

Delivered to the state’s Criminal Justice Committee early this year, their report signals a stunning turnaround in official thinking about the Warren supermax and the 22-cell SMU at the medium-security Maine Correctional Center at Windham, near Portland.

The report doesn’t oppose solitary confinement per se, but it offers pull-no-punches recommendations to reduce its use and make both SMUs more humane.  The report fell into receptive hands.

With Ponte, says the head of his department's clinical services, psychologist Joseph Fitzpatrick, "There's not a lot of meetings to talk about change.”

Eyes On Maine

In the only campaign similar to Maine's, the grassroots group Tamms Year Ten has tried for several years to improve conditions in the Illinois supermax.

The group twice had reform bills introduced in the legislature, "which we then dropped after reforms were promised. But the reforms never materialized," according to Laurie Jo Reynolds.

Recently, Tamms prisoners were allowed to make telephone calls, which had been promised "back in 2009 when they installed the telephones," she says.

Despite the slow pace of change in her state, Reynolds sees national consciousness of supermax issues expanding. "Maine is the model” for reform, she says, noting that the state has not only set a template for facing its problems, but included advocates in the decision-making process.

John Humphries, program coordinator for Washington-based NRCAT, says Maine's anti-solitary effort is "providing inspiration to similar efforts emerging in other states" — especially because NRCAT and the ACLU are promoting Maine as a model for political action.

In New Mexico, the legislature this year called for a committee to be established to study solitary confinement's impact on inmates, its effectiveness in "reducing problems," and its cost.  The committee will include representatives of the corrections department, the state psychiatrists' and psychologists' associations, the ACLU, and religious groups. A draft report is due next year.

In Colorado, legislators this year watered down a bill that would have made it harder to put mentally ill prisoners in solitary. The new law instead establishes guidelines for the use of solitary and finances more mental-health programs.

But Humphries says a new corrections commissioner "seems open to implementing reforms." Anti-solitary movements, he says, also exist in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Virginia.

The Jury Is Still Out

Interviewed at the Maine State Prison, Joe Jackson, vice-president of the NAACP inmate chapter, reports that some guards are not happy with the changes.  Jim Bergin, a Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition member on the supermax reform committee, says the committee is grappling with the issue of how to re-educate guards: It's "probably the biggest problem we’re dealing with.”

Ponte acknowledges resistance among the staff, but “I’m holding all of their feet to the fire.”

With time and training — he has increased guard training — he believes those who oppose what he’s doing will come around.  There are other obstacles. Apprehensive about inmates with isolation-exacerbated behavioral problems being released into the general inmate population, reformers have pushed for more prisoner mental-health care. (Mississippi provided considerable mental-health care for its ex-supermax inmates.)  But providing more mental-health care may bump into a financial obstacle.
Three times as much money is spent annually per-prisoner at Long Creek ($149,000) than at the state prison ($47,000).

Long Creek is a smaller institution and therefore its overhead is higher, but its treatment also involves a lot of psychotherapy, and its many high-school and college courses contribute to its success in maintaining order and improving recidivism numbers.

By contrast, little inmate mental-health care or education takes place at the prison.

With savings from reducing supermax incarceration, Ponte may be able to do more for the mentally ill. And "some things will be at no cost," he says. Plus: "We will use current staff in different roles, and we will see what additional cost remains after we get through that process."

So far there has been no big ramping up of inmate programs and, given a strained state budget, extra money for them would be hard to come by.  Still, the reformers are optimistic.

"It's still early, and the challenge will be to sustain these changes over time," says the ACLU's Fahti of the Maine supermax reforms. "But this is a very promising start."

Lance Tapley is a frequent contributor to The Crime Report and a 2010 John Jay/H.F. Guiggenheim Reporting Fellow. This article draws on reporting done for The Portland Phoenix in Maine. The author welcomes comments from readers.

WE HOPE MICHIGAN WILL FOLLOW SUITE!  Most certainly working with the legislation, as we are, has been most helpful in Maine and there is promising change for Michigan to come.

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Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

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MODERN PRESCRIPTION FOR MENTAL ILLNESS: Go Directly to Jail

Modern prescription for mental illness: go directly to jail

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/modern-prescription-for-mental-illness-go-directly-to-jail-20110728-1i20q.html#ixzz1TatMgw9B

 

A comfortably-off, middle-class woman from a nice suburb suddenly finds herself at the Silverwater metropolitan remand and reception centre. She's been charged with a serious driving offence and is awaiting trial.

The reception centre is a madhouse. It's so crowded people are swinging off the rafters. There are three or four people to a small cell. Our middle-class inmate shares with two others.

There's an Aboriginal woman clearly suffering a dreadful mental trauma, who spends the entire night screaming and bashing her head against the wall. There is blood everywhere.

The lady on the driving charge repeatedly calls the guard for something to be done, only to be told when someone in authority finally gets around to sticking their head in (twice in 12 hours), ''don't worry about it''.
The guards would have seen this sort of scene innumerable times. Someone might die, but the resources can't cope and the system is choked with mentally ill prisoners.

A group of us who attended the most recent forum of the Crime and Justice Reform Committee heard this story from Kat Armstrong, an articulate former prisoner who nowadays works for the Women in Prison Advocacy Network.

Former District Court judge Chris Geraghty, who chaired the lunchtime session of the CJRC, said he quite frequently had to sentence mentally damaged people to jail who said their heads were filled with voices. Sending these people to prison is unlikely to improve their capacity to function. It also compounds the difficulties of daily life for other prisoners and prison officers.

Prison is a concentrate of mental disorder. These illnesses run at three to four times the rate in the prison population that they do in the unimprisoned community. About 54 per cent of women and 47 per cent of men in prison are reported as having been assessed or treated for a mental health problem. This includes anxiety, depression, psychosis and bipolar disorders. The really deeply disturbed inmates have to find room at the limited facilities of prison forensic hospitals. Ninety per cent of women in the reception centres have experienced a mental disorder within 12 months of imprisonment.

In one sense, this is not surprising because the prison population is largely drawn from people with a profile of chronic unemployment, low level of skills and education and drug and alcohol dependence. What has been quietly happening under our noses is that the prisons have become the largest psychiatric institutions in the country, but without the therapeutic resources to deal with the problem.

Prisons are not entirely full of bad people. Most of them are just ill people locked in a system that can't provide proper treatment.

Eighty per cent of women in jail have been subjected to domestic violence, sexual abuse and drug addiction, or all three. Prisoners are released back into the community often in a more damaged condition than when they went in.

Twenty per cent of the prison population is on methadone. Prisoners who are really troublesome are given antidepressants and they wander about like zombies struggling to stay awake. From the prison officers' point of view, they are easier to control in that condition.

It's also pretty horrendous for most prisoners when they are released. They have no job, no skills and no money. Very soon they're back inside. In fact, some released prisoners plan to commit a crime fairly promptly after release so they can get back to prison - the only place where there are daily certainties.
Yet what are the alternatives? There's the MERIT scheme (Magistrates Early Referral Into Treatment), which allows the Local Court to divert people with drug and alcohol abuse away from the prison system and into treatment. It applies at the less serious end of the criminal spectrum.

There's also section 32 of the Mental Health (Criminal Procedure) Act, which also allows defendants to be diverted out of the criminal justice system. But these arrangements struggle to replace recidivism with treatment. In 2007, the latest figures available, just 1.6 per cent of defendants appearing before local courts were diverted under section 32. This does not reflect the numbers of accused, who most certainly would qualify for a section 32 order.

What is really needed is a massive injection of funds into addressing human dysfunctionality somewhere other than in the prison system. Judicial reinvestment is the buzz term.

Of course, the money is not there although there are some encouraging first steps, including a 300-bed drug treatment prison going in at the John Moroney Correctional Centre in Windsor.

At the moment conditions in the system are so dreadful that, as Kat Armstrong put it, ''You do your jail easier if you're off your face.''

justinian@lawpress.com.au
Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

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PLEASE JOIN HUMANITY FOR PRISONERS AND CITIZENS FOR PRISON REFORM Aug. 17th

MARK THE DATE!  HUMANITY FOR PRISONERS FUNDRAISER

AUGUST 17, 5:00 PM

Pickin' and Grinnin' set for August 17th Covenant Life Church invites you to enhance your happy hour with music Wednesday, August 17, from 5-7:30 pm at the church coffee house located in downtown Grand Haven.  Doug Tjapkes and John Mulder, pianist and guitarist/vocalist have invited several of their musical friends to join them for the fund-raising reception on behalf of HUMANITY FOR PRISONERS. The public is invited to just listen or to sing along, as the musicians delight the crowd with gospel and secular oldies but goodies.  Instruments are likely to include piano, guitar, cajon drum, bass, trumpet and whistles.  Expect some surprise musicians to participate. In addition to refreshments, there'll be interesting exhibits, displays, information tables and a silent auction featuring a small number of art pieces made by prisoners auctioned.  Please join us for some PICKIN' & GRINNIN’ and a great evening of fun, hope and inspiration! Citizens for Prison Reform plans to join and have a table with information and such.  If you wish to join and help show our support for both Citizens for Prison Reform and Humanity for Prisoners please email us at citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com                                                                                                                                      Citizens for Prison Reform "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" -Martin Luther King Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

HUMANITY FOR PRISONERS ASKS FOR HELP AND PRAYERS

http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=078c08956ff66b3a1329dc888&id=f96375dd51&e=ee3a16a522

 

Help for a friend

 

God had me to help, and now I need you to look into helping Mr. K, if you have any time.  I did my best. 

 

He has a head injury and has a hard time reading, writing and comprehending.  He is not getting help from health care.  He suffers from chronic liver disesase and chronic leg, back and neck pain that resulted from an auto accident.  He has plates and screws in his neck from a slip-and-fall accident and suffers constant pain.  He is presently confined to a wheelchair.  He was taken off some pain medicine, and none of the new medications that came to him relieve him of the pain.  He told them that being in the wheelchair is not doing anything for the pain.  Now they want to take the wheelchair from him.

 

Requests for helping fellow prisoners are almost always legitimate.  HFP adds the case of Mr. K to the work load, and asks you to add the name of Mr. K to your prayer list.

 

Donate Now

humanityforprisoners.org/Donate.html

 

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

The Inhumanity of Solitary Confinement - MORE ON PELICAN BAY HUNGER STRIKE

From the New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/25/opinion/l25confine.html?_r=1

Re “Barbarous Confinement,” by Colin Dayan (Op-Ed, July 18):

Mr. Dayan vividly captures the cruelty of long-term solitary or “supermax” confinement, which has increasingly become business as usual in American prisons. Supermax units like the one at Pelican Bay State Prison in California cost two to three times as much to build and operate as conventional prisons, and prisoners released directly to the community from solitary are more likely to commit more crimes than comparable prisoners released from general prison populations.

Fortunately, some states are beginning to change course. In Maine, the new commissioner of corrections has cut the population of the state’s supermax unit by more than half. Mississippi depopulated its supermax unit and eventually closed it entirely, leading to a dramatic drop in prison violence and a savings of $8 million a year.

Other states, and the federal government, should follow suit. The vast majority of prisoners are eventually coming home, and it’s in everyone’s interest to support humane conditions of confinement that promote successful re-entry to the community.


DAVID FATHI
Dir., National Prison Project, A.C.L.U.
Washington, July 18, 2011


To the Editor:
Supporting Colin Dayan’s call to action is a letter sent to me recently by a Pelican Bay Prison hunger striker. In the letter, the hunger striker said he was told in 2001 upon transfer to Pelican Bay that he was “a cancer to be cut out” and that he would ”die here one way or another.” He said that in 2003 he found mixed in among his legal materials an administrative memo entitled “The Function of the Control/SHU Units.” It outlined a plan of attack for administrators to follow.

The memo said “the function is to reduce prisoners to the state of submission essential for their ideological conversion ... that failing, the next step is to reduce them to a state of psychological incompetence sufficient to neutralize them as efficient self-directed antagonists ... that failing, the only alternative is to destroy them, preferably by making them desperate enough to destroy themselves.”

To “destroy” is to torture. Mr. Dayan is right: prisoners are human beings and deserve to be treated as such.
CAROL STRICKMAN
San Francisco, July 18, 2011

The writer is a lawyer working with the Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition.

To the Editor:
To its credit, New York is one of few states to see a dramatic decline in its prison population — down 22 percent since 1999 — due in part to reform of drug laws. But as rolls drop, the number of inmates in the “box,” as inmates call solitary confinement, has grown: 17 percent since 2006.

In recent years, more than 30 percent of state prison suicides have occurred in solitary confinement. Oscar Perez hanged himself in such a unit at Clinton Correctional Facility in 2008; an oversight report concluded, as others have, that he “was likely to decompensate [there] and would have benefited from an alternative placement.”

To be sure, improvements have been made to treat mental illness in recent years. Nonetheless, the system saw its highest suicide rate in 2010 in 28 years. The question is whether that is merely an aberration or a reflection of a system struggling with a population that includes nearly 8,000 mentally ill inmates and relying on housing methods that have long been thought to foster disorientation and sometimes insanity.

MARY BETH PFEIFFER
Poughkeepsie, N.Y., July 18, 2011

The writer is projects writer for The Poughkeepsie Journal.

To the Editor:
Though Colin Dayan notes one warden’s pride at his prison isolation cells, having once spent a long weekend inside New York’s equivalent, I can say that what I recall about those entrusted with the keys will haunt me forever.

When they enter their windowless, fluorescent-lighted workplace through clanging iron gates, lock up inmates behind steel doors with no openings or contours other than a service port and a tiny window of layered fiberglass; and when the tools of their trade are manacles — heavy, solid ones, wrapped and interlocked around wrists, ankles and waist — then one can be sure that eye never meets eye. And no one escapes.
“Outside,” too, eyes remain averted, with no less effect on the soul. That should haunt us all.

JAMES CORNELIO
New Preston, Conn., July 19, 2011

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

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Editorial: Jail beating case shows need for mental-health-care reform

From:  WINSTON-SALEM JOURNAL

http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/jul/19/wsopin01-editorial-jail-beating-case-shows-need-fo-ar-1218059/

A case in which a mentally disturbed man was beaten by some fellow prisoners at the Wilkes County Jail, and possibly sexually assaulted, should be fully investigated and corrective measures should be promptly taken, including hard punishments for the attackers. This is one more case that underscores just how terribly the state mental-health-care system is failing some of our most vulnerable residents.

The man was arrested June 12 after he went to seek help at the emergency room at Wilkes Regional Medical Center. But instead of being committed to a state mental hospital, the man was arrested after he became combative with a police officer. He spent three weeks in jail, where he was beaten. He also says he was sexually abused, the Journal's Monte Mitchell reported.

As one advocate for the mentally ill told Mitchell, "jails and prisons are not designed to be mental-health facilities."

Indeed. Neither are homeless shelters or the streets. But that's where hundreds of mentally ill people land every day in our state — even though many of them, like the man in the Wilkes case, are literally crying out for help.

The Journal does not usually name those who report sexual abuse unless they choose to indentify themselves. The man in the Wilkes case is in his early 20s, has lived in group homes in various parts of the state for nearly half his life and has had extended psychiatric hospitalizations. His problems include Asperger's syndrome, mental retardation and hyperactivity disorder.

After an emergency-room doctor at Wilkes Regional would not commit the man to a state mental hospital, he got mad and said he wasn't leaving. He slapped a police officer and was charged with assault on a government official and taken to the jail.

Mitchell's story details much of the beating he received there. Wilkes Sheriff Chris Shew said his office is investigating the man's claim that he was also sexually abused. That probe must be exhaustive and result in any corrective action needed.

The sad fact is that beatings and sexual assaults are commonplace in jails and prisons. But they're all the more egregious when they happen to someone who should have been receiving mental-health treatment.

The sheriff's investigation is ongoing. But what is certain so far is that the state mental-health-care system, once again, has terribly failed one of our most vulnerable residents.  The legislature should be demanding a better system, but it has only worsened the situation with deep budget cuts.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email:  citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

BREAKING NEWS!!! From Voice of Detroit - DETROIT MEETING ON CA HUNGER STRIKE & MORE

Friends, a VOD ALERT  due to two important activities tomorrow: PACK THE COURTROOM FOR MARYANNE GODBOLDO'S PRELIMINARY EXAM MON. JULY 25 8:30 AM; DETROIT MEETING ON PELICAN BAY CALIFORNIA PRISONERS HUNGER STRIKE, MON. JULY 25 7 P.M. Click on http://voiceofdetroit.net to read about these events and the most recent VOD stories, including:

·         BROAD SUPPORT AT MARYANNE GODBOLDO RALLY; PACK 36TH DISTRICT COURT MON. JULY 25 8:30 A.M.

·         DETROIT MEETING ON PELICAN BAY PRISONERS HUNGER STRIKE MON. JULY 25

·         FAMILIES ORGANIZE NATIONWIDE PROTESTS AGAINST GOVT. CHILD ABUSE

·         SF BAYVIEW CROWD ERUPTS IN ANGER AS POLICE CLAIM TEEN SHOT SELF

·         CATHERINE FERGUSON ACADEMY’S FUTURE AS A CHARTER UNCLEAR

·         THOUSANDS IN SOUTH AFRICA AND WASHINGTON PROTEST U.S. WAR ON LIBYA

·         US REP. HANSEN CLARKE CUTS UP CREDIT CARDS ON HOUSE FLOOR: BAIL-OUT THE PEOPLE, NOT THE BANKS

·         DYING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: CALIF. MASS SUICIDE IN PRISONS CONTINUES; 10 WAYS     TO SUPPORT PRISONERS

·         CALIF. PRISONER HUNGER STRIKE SOLIDARITY VIGIL, San Francisco

·         “WHY SHOULD YOU DIE FOR A TRANSFER?” SF POLICE KILL 19-YEAR-OLD, PROTESTS ERUPT

Additionally, look for new stories in the next several days, INCLUDING

1) BETRAYAL IN MICH. PRISONERS PHONE RATE HIKE STRUGGLE
2) JUDGE ALLOWS PART OF LAWSUIT VS. JUVENILE LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE TO GO FORWARD
3) UPDATE ON LAWSUIT SETTLEMENTS AGAINST BOOTY BOY RAPIST COPS OSMAN AND PARICH

 

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email: citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

POWER OF WORKING WITH A COALITION - Next meeting July 26th

From Monica Jahner (SDOP) :   FUTURE ADVOCATES AND LEADERS

Our first Advocacy workshop has been a huge success so far and it’s not over yet!! So far we have given our audience an amazing line-up of guest speakers and this week’s portion of the series will be no exception. We are both pleased and proud to announce Paul Elam, Project Manager for Public Policy Associates. Paul will introduce our attendees to the “Power of Working with a Coalition”. From 6PM until 8PM, Tuesday July 26^th, in the basement conference room of the Capitol Area District Library located at 401 South Capitol Street in Down Town Lansing.

If you have not yet attended it is not too late as each session offers its own dynamic message.

 

The series is brought to you by NorthWest Initiatives ARRO program,  thanks to funding provided by The Presbyterian Committee for the Self Development of People.

 

For more information or to confirm your attendance contact Monica or Jonathon at (517) 999-2894

 

Please pass this on to those you know who might be interested!!

Monica Jahner

Jonathon Bailey

SDOP

 

 

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email: citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

UPDATE ON HUNGER STRIKE IN CALIFORNIA - SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

Starving in solitary: California Prison Hunger Strikers’ Health Declines, But State Will Not Negotiate

July 16, 2011

 

http://sfbayview.com/2011/starving-in-solitary-california-prison-hunger-strikers%e2%80%99-health-declines-but-state-will-not-negotiate/

 

It’s been two weeks since a group of inmates in Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit stopped eating. Their hunger strike was launched to protest conditions in solitary confinement in California’s oldest and largest supermax, where they spend at least 22 1/2 hours a day locked down in their cells, and the remaining time alone in concrete exercise yards. Many have been in the SHU for years or even decades, with little hope of ever leaving it alive – an extreme situation that, to their minds, called for extreme measures.

 

Since the strike began, it has spread to 13 of the state’s 33 prisons, where – according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s own figures – some 6,600 have refused at least some meals. But the heart of the protest remains in the SHUs at Corcoran State Prison and at Pelican Bay, where a core group of several dozen men say they are “committed to taking this all the way to the death, if necessary,” according to strike organizer Todd Ashker.

Information from this prison-within-a-prison is by nature difficult to come by and impossible to verify, but news of the strikers trickles out through family members and supporters. Today, the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition reports that it received an “urgent update from medical staff” at Pelican Bay.

According to the coalition, a “source with access to the current medical conditions who prefers to be unnamed” said: “The prisoners are progressing rapidly to the organ damaging consequences of dehydration. They are not drinking water and have decompensated rapidly. A few have tried to sip water but are so sick that they are vomiting it back up. Some are in renal failure and have been unable to make urine for three days. Some are having measured blood sugars in the 30 range, which can be fatal if not treated.” Family members who visited SHU prisoners over the weekend have reported that they are visibly thinner, sicker and weaker.

How long does it take for a man on hunger strike to starve to death? The answer depends on what kind of physical shape that man was in to begin with – but in any case, it doesn’t take long. The body begins feeding on itself after just 24 hours without food. It usually begins to show severe symptoms of starvation, including organ failure, at about five weeks. Without fluids, death comes much sooner, typically in less than two weeks. In 1981, it took the 10 Irish Republican hunger strikers – who were drinking water – from 46 to 73 days to die in Britain’s Maze Prison outside Belfast.

Will it come to this is California? Based on the response so far from the state of California, it appears that it could.

The hunger strikers’ list of five “core demands” is far from radical. In large part, it is based on the recommendations of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons, which in 2006 called for substantial reforms to the practice of solitary confinement. Segregation from the general prison population, the commission said, should be “a last resort,” and even in segregation units, isolation should be mitigated and terms should be limited. Beyond this, the strikers want an end to group punishments, and to the system of gang “validation” and “debriefing” by which prisoners are held in the SHU indefinitely and released only when they “snitch” on others. And they want provision of “adequate food” and “constructive programming and privileges for indefinite SHU status inmates.”

Supporters say that the demands are negotiable, and the strikers have communicated that they would welcome outside mediators. But the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation “is not going to be coerced or manipulated,” spokesperson Terry Thornton told the New York Times, explaining the CDCR’s steadfast position against negotiating with the hunger strikers.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation “is not going to be coerced or manipulated,” spokesperson Terry Thornton told the New York Times, explaining the CDCR’s steadfast position against negotiating with the hunger strikers.

The responses thus far from the CDCR have been uniformly hostile and sometimes dismissive. Thornton told a California public radio reporter that prisoners might be clandestinely eating. “Some inmates have been seen eating food items that they’ve purchased from the canteen,” she claimed. “Some have not. Some inmates are refusing to be weighed. That may be an indication that they are eating. It’s really hard to say because they’re refusing that medical evaluation.”

California prisons are being monitored by the federal government, in response to conditions so poor as to be “intolerable with the concept of human dignity,” according to a recent landmark decision by the Supreme Court. But the court-appointed federal receiver in charge of prison health care likewise dismissed reports that some prisoners’ health problems were growing dire.

“I think the information that’s in the news release is largely exaggerated,” Nancy Kincaid told the radio station. “At this time we have no inmates who are refusing liquids and we have no report of inmates who are refusing medication. There are inmates who are refusing medical care. They have the right to do that.”

Thornton has also told the San Francisco Chronicle that the prisoners should make their demands heard through other means. “There are appropriate ways of registering your concerns,” she said, “and even though this hunger strike has been peaceful, this is not the way to register those concerns.”

But prisoners say they have pursued these other means and found them futile. “The basis for this protest has come about after over 25 years, some of us 30, some up to 40 years, of being subjected to these conditions,” Todd Ashker said in a statement released by lawyers. “Of our 602 appeals, numerous court challenges have gotten nowhere.”

In addition, some of the prisoners have been in the SHU long enough to remember the hunger strike that took place exactly 10 years ago, when 600 Pelican Bay prisoners stopped eating for 10 days, and the CDCR agreed to reviews its policies on gang validation and debriefing. A decade later, inmates say, virtually nothing has changed.

“They are protesting conditions that they say are torturous and inhumane,” Molly Porzig of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition told the Chronicle. “They feel the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will not make any meaningful or long-term change until they start dying, and they’re willing to take it there.”

Asked to comment on the strike, David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project, said: “It’s testimony to the suffering caused by solitary confinement that some prisoners are apparently willing to starve themselves to death rather than continue to live under those conditions.”

James Ridgeway and Jean Casella are co-editors of Solitary Watch, an innovative public website aimed at bringing the widespread use of solitary confinement and other forms of torture in U.S. prisons out of the shadows and into the light of the public square. A unique collaboration between journalists and law students, Solitary Watch’s mission is to provide the public – as well as practicing attorneys, legal scholars, law enforcement and corrections officers, policymakers, educators, advocates and prisoners – with the first centralized, comprehensive source of information on solitary confinement in the United States. This story first appeared on Solitary Watch.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email: citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

Restricting access to mental health drugs is penny-wise, pound-foolish!

From Mive.com Guest column:  By Mark Reinstein

http://www.mlive.com/opinion/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/07/guest_column_restricting_acces .html

Mark Reinstein, Ph.D., is president and CEO of the Mental Health Association in Michigan, a Southfield-based advocacy organization for persons experiencing mental illnesses.

As this is written, it is unknown whether Rodrick Dantzler had bipolar disorder and, if so, whether he was compliant with medications for that condition.

Whatever factor mental illness may or not have played in the Grand Rapids tragedy, there is no denying certain serious mental illnesses, if untreated or inadequately treated, carry increased risk of harm to self or others, and contribute to society’s mass incarceration of individuals with mental disorders.

There are many areas where Michigan must improve its mental illness safety net. One of the most important aspects of mental health care is medication therapy. In this critical matter, the Michigan Departments of Community Health and Corrections are doing a disservice to Michiganders with serious mental illness.

Severe mental disorders are highly dependent on medication therapy. Perhaps no other factor has been so important in society’s move from hospitals to communities as the focal point of care. In fact, the federal government has reported that 87 percent of adults with major mental disorders are prescribed medication.

Yet, there is great individual variability in how people react to mental health medications. The same drug that works for Person X with schizophrenia may not work for Person Y with the same condition.

Thus, there is great disappointment with the Department of Community Health’s proposal to remove legislative protections that since 2004 have fostered open access to mental health and epilepsy medications in Medicaid. The department claims the state will save $6 million in general funds if people who would otherwise be prescribed neuropsychiatric drugs that lack generic equivalents were forced to take generic versions of different drugs (the dangerous practice known as “therapeutic substitution”).

Even if the $6 million figure were accurate, it would mean Michigan turning its back on federal matching funds of $12 million. And the negative consequences of restricting access to neuropsychiatric medications far outweigh $6 million. A recent study in Ohio found that projected mental health drug restriction “savings” of $6 million would be met by more than $23 million annual spending on the several negative consequences that would ensue.

The Department of Corrections (where Mr. Dantzler was once incarcerated) has adopted mental health medication procedures so draconian that someone who has been successful on a brand mental health drug which lacks generics, is no longer assured of staying on that drug, as opposed to undergoing therapeutic substitution.

Using antipsychotic medication figures from DOC and the state’s Auditor General, we have calculated DOC is attempting to save $20 per prisoner per day by risking $140 a day in extra costs, if the prisoner’s stay is extended due to medication failure.

How likely are we to affect all needed mental health safety net changes if state departments can’t even get past the lure of short-term savings in an annual budget on something so eelemental and important as medication access?

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email: citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634

New corrections director says re-entry initiative is important, and so is cutting prison populations

From the Detroit Free Press:  http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2011107170426

Article written by Jeff Garritt:  New corrections director says re-entry initiative is important, and so is cutting prison populations

Before becoming the director of the Michigan Department of Corrections, former Jackson County Sheriff Daniel Heyns was best known statewide as a critic of the state's $33-million Prisoner Re-Entry Initiative. His appointment by Gov. Rick Snyder, effective June 1, disappointed many advocates of prison reform.

But in a surprising interview with the Free Press, Heyns expressed strong support for re-entry programs, while acknowledging that significant changes were coming, including shifting some money now spent on community programs into the state's 32 prisons.

He said he wanted to increase prison education programs and suggested he would back the restoration of good time -- the practice of rewarding prisoners for good conduct by shaving their sentences -- for Michigan's 43,500 prison inmates, a move that likely would elicit howls of protest from many prosecutors and legislators.

"It's easy for people to talk about getting tough on crime and throwing away the key, but the reality is we have to do a better job of turning people's lives around," Heyns said in his first comprehensive interview since assuming leadership of Michigan's sprawling prison system.

Jeff Gerritt: The new sheriff in town -- new Corrections Director Dan Heyns wants a real debate in the Legislature about restoring good time for inmates

Good time -- rewarding good behavior in prison by shaving sentences -- has kept a lid on populations and given inmates incentives to act right in the federal system, county jails and prisons throughout the country. Unfortunately, good time became two four-letter words in Michigan in 1998, when legislators trying to sound tough passed so-called truth-in-sentencing laws abolishing the policy.

Over the last decade, restoring good time has been one of my many lost causes. Year after year, good time bills have died in legislative committee, thanks mainly to prosecutors who won't rest until there's a prison on every block and the Department of Corrections sucks the last centavo out of the state's general fund.

But law enforcement isn't unanimously opposed to good time. In fact, good time may have just found an unlikely advocate whose law-and-order résumé is six pages long: the former Jackson County sheriff who became head of the Michigan Department of Corrections on June 1.

I say may have because Corrections Director Daniel Heyns understands the hazards of even talking about allowing inmates to hit the bricks sooner.

"We're getting into a hot-button issue, so let me be as diplomatic as possible," Heyns told me last week in his Lansing office. "I know the prosecutors are going to fry at the thought, but I think not to put it (good time) on the table would be crazy. ...

"It can play an important part in controlling behavior. When they took good time away from corrections people, they took away a very powerful tool. County sheriffs still have it. It works well."

Restoring good time would also reduce the state's prison population by the thousands, and bring Michigan in line with the rest of the country. Michigan is one of only a handful of states that have not adopted federal standards for truth in sentencing, which make inmates with good behavior eligible for parole after serving 85% of their sentence. Under a conservative Republican governor, Mississippi enacted good-time credits of up to 75% for nonviolent offenders.

Even with good-time credits, the Michigan Parole Board would have to approve a parole before the prisoner went home.

With 43,500 prisoners, Michigan has one of the nation's highest incarceration rates, largely because it keeps people locked up far longer than other states. Prisoners here serve, on average, 127% of their court-ordered minimum sentences, even though length of stay doesn't affect their chances of reoffending. Michigan's 32 prisons still hold at least 8,000 parole-eligible prisoners.

Critics of good time say convoluted calculations created uncertainty about an offender's sentence. But it's easy enough to devise a simple system that would enable all to know, on the day of sentencing, an offender's earliest date of parole eligibility.

Michigan's county jails already use good time. As sheriff, Heyns saw it work firsthand.

"We had a very simple system at the county jail level: You do 30 days and you could get five days of good time," he said. "Do the math. It's pretty simple. If you don't screw up, you're going to get the five days.

"Maybe we just need a simple system that everyone can calculate."

Good time also provides a powerful incentive for inmates to avoid trouble, Heyns said. Some states even grant earned good time for completing education and other programs.

After talking to hundreds of inmates over the years, I know good time would enable many of them to safely go home a little sooner to support families and pay taxes, instead of costing taxpayers $35,000 a year. Business groups like the Detroit Regional Chamber have also backed good-time plans, understanding that the state can no longer afford criminal justice policies that take nearly $2 billion a year from the general fund, or to ignore a reform that could save $100 million a year.

"If we're concerned about the cost of corrections, we've got to talk about ways to reduce length of stay -- and one of them is good time," Heyns said. "We need to at least talk about it in a thoughtful and rational way."

So far, Michigan prosecutors have stymied the debate on good time with hype and hysteria. With a new sheriff in town, those days may be over.

JEFF GERRITT is a Detroit Free Press editorial writer. Contact him at gerritt@freepress.com or

313-222-6585.

Citizens for Prison Reform
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

-Martin Luther King

Email: citizensforprisonreform@yahoo.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-for-Prison-Reform/171253319587634