Yesterday, I wrote about the book reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, “The Collapse of the American Criminal Justice System”, and after reading the table of contents at Amazon, I decided to not buy the book, which decision was validated by this excellent article about the book from the Crime & Consequences blog.
An excerpt.
“Prof. Doug Berman put up an entry today on Sentencing Law and Policy about the last book published by the late Harvard Law Prof. William Stuntz. The book is titled, "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice." Its thesis, not too surprisingly given the title, is that our criminal justice system has fallen into utter failure….
“The whole thing -- all of it -- is preposterous. Over the time this alleged disaster is supposed to have happened (roughly the last 20 years), the crime rate has fallen off a cliff. The property crime rate is down by 43%; the violent crime rate by 47%, and the murder rate by slightly more than 50%. The raw figures are here, and you can do the math yourself. If you look at the numbers, you'll see that the murder rate is lower now than it has been at any time in almost 50 years.
“Perhaps the most stunning figure, however, is this: The number of serious crimes annually 20 years ago was 14,872,900. The number last year was 10,329,135. That is a drop of 4,543,765. Four and a half million fewer crime victims….
“I will readily concede that the system looks "broken" to two categories of observers: (1) academics who never saw a criminal for whom an excuse could not be manufactured, and who thus lament their incarceration; and (2) the criminals themselves, now thankfully keeping each other company rather than the rest of us.”
Showing posts with label Prison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prison. Show all posts
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Criminal Justice, Keeping Informed
Every few months I buy a new book on criminal justice containing the newest research to help keep me informed, and this one looked interesting after reading the review from the Wall Street Journal.
I went to Amazon and after reading the table of contents, decided against buying it, primarily because I have already obtained a 2011 book, Crime and Public Policy, which is an edited text book with several essays covering a broad array of criminal justice subjects, and secondly because Stuntz's book looked a little too focused on one area and one opinion, and wouldn't necessarily add that much to my library.
However, I did purchase, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which looks to be an extraordinary research project on violence, and about which I will let you know once I get a chance to peruse it.
Here is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal review.
“How has the American criminal-justice system become one of the most punitive in the world without providing a corresponding level of public safety? In "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice," William J. Stuntz—a revered Harvard law professor who died of colon cancer earlier this year at the age of 52—offers a provocative big-picture answer.
“Perhaps aware that "collapse" in the book's title requires justification, Mr. Stuntz begins by reviewing some statistics. As he shows, in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, amid the largest crime wave in American history, the U.S. prison population declined. Imprisonment rates plummeted to some of the lowest ever seen in the modern Western world. High-crime neighborhoods, as Mr. Stuntz puts it, were "abandoned to their fate."
“The backlash to this crime wave was equally striking. Since the mid-1970s, America has punished crime more and more severely. New York's imprisonment rate, for example, has sextupled. In a span of a little more than 30 years, "America first embraced punishment levels lower than Sweden's, then built a justice system more punitive than Russia's."
“Mr. Stuntz readily acknowledges what many legal scholars do not: America's current lock-'em-up philosophy has dramatically helped to reduce urban crime. Since 1991, violent-crime rates have declined roughly a third nationwide and as much as two-thirds in a few cities (New York among them). Even so, Mr. Stuntz counts these declines as a pyrrhic victory, given that violence per capita in the U.S. today remains significantly higher than in 1950. And he is unwilling simply to assign all the credit for recent crime drops to increased punishment. He wonders, for example, why crime rates began falling only around 1991—two decades after prison populations started steeply rising.
“To unravel such complexities, Mr. Stuntz tries to place America's contemporary criminal-justice problems in their historical legal context. He first looks at the 14th Amendment's effort in 1868 to ensure that newly freed slaves received "the equal protection of the laws"—a promise that fell apart a few years later when the Supreme Court eviscerated the equal-protection guarantee and left generations of Southern blacks to be victimized by Klan violence. Mr. Stuntz argues that narrow equal-protection jurisprudence helps to explain why, nearly a century later, Chief Justice Earl Warren began spinning constitutional restrictions from the 14th Amendment's other important provision, the Due Process Clause.”
I went to Amazon and after reading the table of contents, decided against buying it, primarily because I have already obtained a 2011 book, Crime and Public Policy, which is an edited text book with several essays covering a broad array of criminal justice subjects, and secondly because Stuntz's book looked a little too focused on one area and one opinion, and wouldn't necessarily add that much to my library.
However, I did purchase, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which looks to be an extraordinary research project on violence, and about which I will let you know once I get a chance to peruse it.
Here is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal review.
“How has the American criminal-justice system become one of the most punitive in the world without providing a corresponding level of public safety? In "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice," William J. Stuntz—a revered Harvard law professor who died of colon cancer earlier this year at the age of 52—offers a provocative big-picture answer.
“Perhaps aware that "collapse" in the book's title requires justification, Mr. Stuntz begins by reviewing some statistics. As he shows, in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, amid the largest crime wave in American history, the U.S. prison population declined. Imprisonment rates plummeted to some of the lowest ever seen in the modern Western world. High-crime neighborhoods, as Mr. Stuntz puts it, were "abandoned to their fate."
“The backlash to this crime wave was equally striking. Since the mid-1970s, America has punished crime more and more severely. New York's imprisonment rate, for example, has sextupled. In a span of a little more than 30 years, "America first embraced punishment levels lower than Sweden's, then built a justice system more punitive than Russia's."
“Mr. Stuntz readily acknowledges what many legal scholars do not: America's current lock-'em-up philosophy has dramatically helped to reduce urban crime. Since 1991, violent-crime rates have declined roughly a third nationwide and as much as two-thirds in a few cities (New York among them). Even so, Mr. Stuntz counts these declines as a pyrrhic victory, given that violence per capita in the U.S. today remains significantly higher than in 1950. And he is unwilling simply to assign all the credit for recent crime drops to increased punishment. He wonders, for example, why crime rates began falling only around 1991—two decades after prison populations started steeply rising.
“To unravel such complexities, Mr. Stuntz tries to place America's contemporary criminal-justice problems in their historical legal context. He first looks at the 14th Amendment's effort in 1868 to ensure that newly freed slaves received "the equal protection of the laws"—a promise that fell apart a few years later when the Supreme Court eviscerated the equal-protection guarantee and left generations of Southern blacks to be victimized by Klan violence. Mr. Stuntz argues that narrow equal-protection jurisprudence helps to explain why, nearly a century later, Chief Justice Earl Warren began spinning constitutional restrictions from the 14th Amendment's other important provision, the Due Process Clause.”
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Medieval Prison
In perusing the book, The Medieval Prison: A Social History, I came across the following:
“Largely as a response to their persecution under the Romans, early Christian apologists developed a basic imaginary of the prison. Martyrological narratives set in and around Roman jails introduced literary “sweet inversion” of despair into hope, of physical suffering into spiritual empowerment, and of secular coercion into divine grace. In this way, theodicy helped disseminate incarceration as a leitmotif of Christian spirituality, first among ascetics and later in monastic circles. As we shall see, self-imposed incarceration became a common metaphor for the angelic life and soon assumed purgatorial qualities...
“The Martyrological literature conveying the experiences of Christian confessors presents the prison as a place of personal trial and eschatological triumph, and incarceration as a process of spiritual growth, potentially culminating in revelation. Thus, rather than precipitating apostasy, the harsh conditions of the Roman jail accelerated religious perfection: a classic “sweet inversion.” In the emphatic words that Prudentius (348-405?) attributed to Fructuosus, the martyred bishop of Tarragona (d. 259),
"Prison to the Christian faithful is the path to glory,
Prison propels to the heavens’ summit,
Prison unites God with the blessed."
“As a new locus of holiness, the prison attracted substantial attention from early Christians, whether laymen or clergy…
“In the words of Tertullian (140-230): “The prison serves the Christian as the desert served the prophet…Even if the body is confined, even if the flesh is detained, everything is open to the spirit.”
“By comparing the prison with the desert, Tertullian linked Christian asceticism with the formative experiences of the Israelites and Christ’s spiritual training….The metaphor subsequently found its way into monastic spirituality, which spawned a distinct new strand of carceral language. Thus, according to the Desert Mother Syncletica (d. ca. 400),
"In the world, if we commit an offence, even an involuntary one, we are thrown into prison; let us likewise cast ourselves into prison because of our sins, so that voluntary remembrance may anticipate the punishment that is to come.”
Geltner, G. (2008). The medieval prison: A social history. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (pp. 83-85)
“Largely as a response to their persecution under the Romans, early Christian apologists developed a basic imaginary of the prison. Martyrological narratives set in and around Roman jails introduced literary “sweet inversion” of despair into hope, of physical suffering into spiritual empowerment, and of secular coercion into divine grace. In this way, theodicy helped disseminate incarceration as a leitmotif of Christian spirituality, first among ascetics and later in monastic circles. As we shall see, self-imposed incarceration became a common metaphor for the angelic life and soon assumed purgatorial qualities...
“The Martyrological literature conveying the experiences of Christian confessors presents the prison as a place of personal trial and eschatological triumph, and incarceration as a process of spiritual growth, potentially culminating in revelation. Thus, rather than precipitating apostasy, the harsh conditions of the Roman jail accelerated religious perfection: a classic “sweet inversion.” In the emphatic words that Prudentius (348-405?) attributed to Fructuosus, the martyred bishop of Tarragona (d. 259),
"Prison to the Christian faithful is the path to glory,
Prison propels to the heavens’ summit,
Prison unites God with the blessed."
“As a new locus of holiness, the prison attracted substantial attention from early Christians, whether laymen or clergy…
“In the words of Tertullian (140-230): “The prison serves the Christian as the desert served the prophet…Even if the body is confined, even if the flesh is detained, everything is open to the spirit.”
“By comparing the prison with the desert, Tertullian linked Christian asceticism with the formative experiences of the Israelites and Christ’s spiritual training….The metaphor subsequently found its way into monastic spirituality, which spawned a distinct new strand of carceral language. Thus, according to the Desert Mother Syncletica (d. ca. 400),
"In the world, if we commit an offence, even an involuntary one, we are thrown into prison; let us likewise cast ourselves into prison because of our sins, so that voluntary remembrance may anticipate the punishment that is to come.”
Geltner, G. (2008). The medieval prison: A social history. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (pp. 83-85)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Domestic Violence
Women who are in prison for killing their husbands after a clear public record has documented the domestic violence visited on them and a determination that the battered woman has tried all of the other means to protect herself—restraining orders, previous calls to police, etc.—should not be in prison for what is often pure self defense, and this story from the Daily Beast examines a prison support group for those women.
An excerpt.
“When Brenda Clubine killed her husband in 1983, there were 11 restraining orders against him and a warrant for his arrest. He’d put her in the ER more than once—tossing her across the room, fracturing her skull, and puncturing her lungs. But “domestic violence” was scarcely on the public radar back then: local police considered it a problem to be worked out in private; there was no hotline to call and few shelters to escape to. So when Brenda says her husband locked her in a hotel room and told her to hand over her wedding ring—so it would be “harder to identify her body”—Brenda knew she had only one option: she had to kill him first.
“Her husband, a retired cop who was twice her size, lay down on the bed, and Brenda saw her chance. “Everything started flashing before my eyes,” Brenda, now 63, remembers. “I started thinking about my son, and I thought, how could I have ended up here?” She grabbed an open wine bottle and swung it toward him, but he grabbed it. She backed up and swung again—connecting with his forehead. “All I remember from that point is grabbing my keys, my ring, my shoes, and running six miles down Colorado Avenue home.”
“Brenda would spend 26 years in prison for her husband’s murder—the blow to his head shattered his skull. At her trial, a judge would not permit a psychologist to testify about her mental state, nor friends or doctors who’d witnessed the physical scars of her abuse. Battered women’s syndrome, at the time, was still an untested theory (it remains highly controversial). So Brenda would face a sentence of 17 years to life—trading, as she puts it, “one prison for another.” But Brenda, who was once a licensed vocational nurse, would also change the way lawmakers think about domestic violence in this country—where one in four women is a victim of abuse.
“Clubine is one of half a dozen women featured in a new documentary Sin by Silence, which premieres on Investigation Discovery on Oct. 17—the directorial debut of filmmaker Olivia Klaus. Set on the sprawling brick campus of the high-security California Institution for Women, the state's oldest women’s prison, it tells the story of the prison support group Clubine founded—aimed at women like her, who’ve been imprisoned for killing the men they once loved.”
An excerpt.
“When Brenda Clubine killed her husband in 1983, there were 11 restraining orders against him and a warrant for his arrest. He’d put her in the ER more than once—tossing her across the room, fracturing her skull, and puncturing her lungs. But “domestic violence” was scarcely on the public radar back then: local police considered it a problem to be worked out in private; there was no hotline to call and few shelters to escape to. So when Brenda says her husband locked her in a hotel room and told her to hand over her wedding ring—so it would be “harder to identify her body”—Brenda knew she had only one option: she had to kill him first.
“Her husband, a retired cop who was twice her size, lay down on the bed, and Brenda saw her chance. “Everything started flashing before my eyes,” Brenda, now 63, remembers. “I started thinking about my son, and I thought, how could I have ended up here?” She grabbed an open wine bottle and swung it toward him, but he grabbed it. She backed up and swung again—connecting with his forehead. “All I remember from that point is grabbing my keys, my ring, my shoes, and running six miles down Colorado Avenue home.”
“Brenda would spend 26 years in prison for her husband’s murder—the blow to his head shattered his skull. At her trial, a judge would not permit a psychologist to testify about her mental state, nor friends or doctors who’d witnessed the physical scars of her abuse. Battered women’s syndrome, at the time, was still an untested theory (it remains highly controversial). So Brenda would face a sentence of 17 years to life—trading, as she puts it, “one prison for another.” But Brenda, who was once a licensed vocational nurse, would also change the way lawmakers think about domestic violence in this country—where one in four women is a victim of abuse.
“Clubine is one of half a dozen women featured in a new documentary Sin by Silence, which premieres on Investigation Discovery on Oct. 17—the directorial debut of filmmaker Olivia Klaus. Set on the sprawling brick campus of the high-security California Institution for Women, the state's oldest women’s prison, it tells the story of the prison support group Clubine founded—aimed at women like her, who’ve been imprisoned for killing the men they once loved.”
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Prison Time is a Disease and Crime is not Criminal's Fault
Two more tomes suggesting that respectively, are reviewed in the Washington Post.
An excerpt.
“Ernest Drucker, an internationally recognized public health scholar, professor and physician, contends that mass incarceration ought to be understood as a contagious disease, an epidemic of gargantuan proportions. With voluminous data and meticulous analysis, he persuasively demonstrates in his provocative new book, “A Plague of Prisons,” that the unprecedented surge in incarceration in recent decades is a social catastrophe on the scale of the worst global epidemics, and that modes of analysis employed by epidemiologists to combat plagues and similar public health crises are remarkably useful when assessing the origins, harm and potential cures for what he calls our “plague of imprisonment.”
“As with any metaphor, the comparison falls short in both obvious and subtle ways. But Drucker is relentless in his pursuit of a paradigm shift, pointing out that even the most obvious differences may be less significant than we may imagine. Biology isn’t everything, he explains, even when fighting medical plagues. Many non-biological, social factors frequently determine who lives and who dies.
“In the case of mass imprisonment, it is possible to calculate potential years of life lost and to measure who is most at risk. It is also possible to identify the precise time of the initial outbreak, the means of transmission, intergenerational trends and the ways in which the epidemic has become self-sustaining over time.
“Drucker traces the moment of outbreak to the war on drugs. Beginning with the Rockefeller drug laws adopted in New York state in the 1970s, followed by President Ronald Reagan’s declaration of war in 1982, our nation set out to incarcerate millions of Americans for relatively minor crimes and drug offenses. Such arrests go a long way toward explaining how the “infection” has spread. Arrests and convictions for drug offenses, Drucker writes, “are the most important agent of transmission that creates new cases of incarceration.”
“Even in the South Bronx, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden communities in New York, only 3 percent of convictions are for felonies. The relatively minor offenses of vagrancy, loitering and drug possession account for half of all arrests, with marijuana possession becoming the most frequent drug charge.
“These seemingly minor arrests are the means by which young people contract the virus of imprisonment, which soon becomes a full-blown disease — one they struggle to overcome for the rest of their lives. A criminal record virtually guarantees a lifetime of discrimination in employment, housing, education and public benefits. Millions are locked out of the mainstream society and economy, increasing the likelihood that they will commit more serious crimes. In this way, the epidemic of incarceration has become self-perpetuating, like a plague….
“William J. Stuntz thinks he has an answer. A Harvard Law professor who died earlier this year, Stuntz argues in “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice” that the stunning surge in imprisonment of poor people of color can be explained by two factors: a dramatic spike in crime in the 1950s and ’60s, coupled with profound changes in how our democracy is structured. Urban residents, he observes, once had far more control over police and prosecutors and could exert more influence in the jury box. When those who bear the costs of both crime and punishment exercise significant power over those who enforce the law, a more balanced and empathetic approach to crime is the predictable result.
“Stuntz contrasts the experience of early European immigrants with that of African Americans to make his point. When European immigrants flooded our nation in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a crime wave followed, but it did not lead to mass imprisonment. The communities populated by recent immigrants held tremendous power. Then, as now, district attorneys and trial judges were elected at the county level, not at the city level, but suburbs were sparsely populated. As Stuntz puts it, back then, “cities contained the votes that mattered.” Spared harsh prison sentences and afforded considerable support, the young men who had left Europe for the United States eventually found work and turned away from crime.
“When African Americans flooded Northern cities during the Great Migration — fleeing Jim Crow segregation, white lynch mobs and severe poverty in the South — they faced a radically different political and economic landscape. Although they found work at higher wages, they were shut out of jobs and careers that offered any hope of rising paychecks and responsibility.
“They also confronted a changed political map. White flight and suburbanization resulted in a dramatic shift of power away from urban neighborhoods to counties. “This shift in local populations mattered enormously,” Stuntz notes, “because prosecutors and judges are usually elected at the county level.” The result was that predominately white suburban voters, who do not have to cope with high crime rates but who hold negative stereotypes of the urban poor, exercised far more power over urban criminal justice than in the past.
“Stuntz concludes that “one reason black criminals from poor neighborhoods have been treated with so much more severity than criminals from white immigrant communities in America’s past is because the former are more easily categorized as The Other, as a people whose lives are separate from the lives of those who judge them.” His answer to the “othering” of black America is to grant urban residents far more power over the criminal justice system than they have today.”
An excerpt.
“Ernest Drucker, an internationally recognized public health scholar, professor and physician, contends that mass incarceration ought to be understood as a contagious disease, an epidemic of gargantuan proportions. With voluminous data and meticulous analysis, he persuasively demonstrates in his provocative new book, “A Plague of Prisons,” that the unprecedented surge in incarceration in recent decades is a social catastrophe on the scale of the worst global epidemics, and that modes of analysis employed by epidemiologists to combat plagues and similar public health crises are remarkably useful when assessing the origins, harm and potential cures for what he calls our “plague of imprisonment.”
“As with any metaphor, the comparison falls short in both obvious and subtle ways. But Drucker is relentless in his pursuit of a paradigm shift, pointing out that even the most obvious differences may be less significant than we may imagine. Biology isn’t everything, he explains, even when fighting medical plagues. Many non-biological, social factors frequently determine who lives and who dies.
“In the case of mass imprisonment, it is possible to calculate potential years of life lost and to measure who is most at risk. It is also possible to identify the precise time of the initial outbreak, the means of transmission, intergenerational trends and the ways in which the epidemic has become self-sustaining over time.
“Drucker traces the moment of outbreak to the war on drugs. Beginning with the Rockefeller drug laws adopted in New York state in the 1970s, followed by President Ronald Reagan’s declaration of war in 1982, our nation set out to incarcerate millions of Americans for relatively minor crimes and drug offenses. Such arrests go a long way toward explaining how the “infection” has spread. Arrests and convictions for drug offenses, Drucker writes, “are the most important agent of transmission that creates new cases of incarceration.”
“Even in the South Bronx, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden communities in New York, only 3 percent of convictions are for felonies. The relatively minor offenses of vagrancy, loitering and drug possession account for half of all arrests, with marijuana possession becoming the most frequent drug charge.
“These seemingly minor arrests are the means by which young people contract the virus of imprisonment, which soon becomes a full-blown disease — one they struggle to overcome for the rest of their lives. A criminal record virtually guarantees a lifetime of discrimination in employment, housing, education and public benefits. Millions are locked out of the mainstream society and economy, increasing the likelihood that they will commit more serious crimes. In this way, the epidemic of incarceration has become self-perpetuating, like a plague….
“William J. Stuntz thinks he has an answer. A Harvard Law professor who died earlier this year, Stuntz argues in “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice” that the stunning surge in imprisonment of poor people of color can be explained by two factors: a dramatic spike in crime in the 1950s and ’60s, coupled with profound changes in how our democracy is structured. Urban residents, he observes, once had far more control over police and prosecutors and could exert more influence in the jury box. When those who bear the costs of both crime and punishment exercise significant power over those who enforce the law, a more balanced and empathetic approach to crime is the predictable result.
“Stuntz contrasts the experience of early European immigrants with that of African Americans to make his point. When European immigrants flooded our nation in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a crime wave followed, but it did not lead to mass imprisonment. The communities populated by recent immigrants held tremendous power. Then, as now, district attorneys and trial judges were elected at the county level, not at the city level, but suburbs were sparsely populated. As Stuntz puts it, back then, “cities contained the votes that mattered.” Spared harsh prison sentences and afforded considerable support, the young men who had left Europe for the United States eventually found work and turned away from crime.
“When African Americans flooded Northern cities during the Great Migration — fleeing Jim Crow segregation, white lynch mobs and severe poverty in the South — they faced a radically different political and economic landscape. Although they found work at higher wages, they were shut out of jobs and careers that offered any hope of rising paychecks and responsibility.
“They also confronted a changed political map. White flight and suburbanization resulted in a dramatic shift of power away from urban neighborhoods to counties. “This shift in local populations mattered enormously,” Stuntz notes, “because prosecutors and judges are usually elected at the county level.” The result was that predominately white suburban voters, who do not have to cope with high crime rates but who hold negative stereotypes of the urban poor, exercised far more power over urban criminal justice than in the past.
“Stuntz concludes that “one reason black criminals from poor neighborhoods have been treated with so much more severity than criminals from white immigrant communities in America’s past is because the former are more easily categorized as The Other, as a people whose lives are separate from the lives of those who judge them.” His answer to the “othering” of black America is to grant urban residents far more power over the criminal justice system than they have today.”
Friday, October 14, 2011
Living on Death Row
If you have to be in prison, especially in super-max, it is a good place to be, according to this article from the Atlantic Magazine.
It also points out that California is long overdue for capital punishment legislation that reduces the time it takes to carry out legal execution verdicts to a somewhat reasonable period, while still protecting the rights of the accused and convicted, and Texas comes to mind as one state that seems to have accomplished that by restricting the ability of lawyers to file numerous appeals.
An excerpt from the Atlantic article.
“AS AN ORANGE COUNTY jury debated in 2009 whether the white supremacist Billy Joe Johnson should live or die for murdering a fellow gang member, he asked to be sent to death row. Not because he felt any sudden remorse for the five people he’d killed over the years—“I commit crimes when people piss me off,” he once explained, matter-of-factly—but because Johnson believed he’d have better living conditions, including liberal phone privileges, a bigger cell, and daily human interaction, at San Quentin’s death row than he would at Pelican Bay, one of the state’s toughest maximum-security prisons, where he was serving a 46-year-to-life sentence, primarily in solitary confinement.
“He also knew that the odds were good that he might never be executed. Bogged down by constitutional challenges and appeals, California’s system takes an average of 20 years to move a prisoner from conviction to execution.
“Experts on both sides of the death-penalty debate have long agreed that California’s system is the nation’s costliest and least efficient. This June, a landmark report by Paula M. Mitchell, a professor at Loyola Law School, and Arthur L. Alarcón, a senior judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, unearthed new data that reveal just how bad the system is.
“Their report showed that since the current death-penalty statute was enacted in 1978, taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on only 13 executions, or roughly $308 million per execution. As of 2009, prosecuting death-penalty cases cost upwards of $184 million more each year than life-without-parole cases. Housing, health care, and legal representation for California’s current death-row population of 714—the largest in the country—account for $144 million in annual extra costs. If juries continue to send an average of 20 convicts to San Quentin’s death row each year, and executions continue at the present rate, by 2030 the ranks of the condemned will have swelled to more than 1,000, and California’s taxpayers will have spent $9 billion to execute a total of 23 inmates.
“I was stunned by the report,” said Loni Hancock, a Democratic state senator from Oakland and a member of the senate budget committee. Hancock had spent the previous five months agonizing over deep cuts to California’s general budget, and “it broke my heart,” she said. “That’s when I decided the time had come for Californians to reconsider the death penalty.”
“In late June, Hancock introduced SB 490, the first bill to propose replacing death sentences with no-parole life imprisonment, only to withdraw it eight weeks later when she realized she didn’t have the votes to get it out of committee. Now anti-death-penalty activists are taking their case to the people. Buoyed by the Alarcón-Mitchell report and the media coverage it garnered, California Taxpayers for Justice kicked off a ballot-initiative drive in October to get the required 504,760 voter signatures in time for the 2012 general election.
“Law-enforcement groups want to keep the penalty in place. “We share the frustration of death-penalty opponents,” says Cory Salzillo, the legislative director of the California District Attorneys Association. “But we should pursue remedies to fix the problems rather than repeal it altogether.” (Hancock’s own stepson, Casey Bates, is known as an aggressive prosecutor in Alameda County’s District Attorney’s office, with several murder convictions under his belt. He declined to comment on SB 490, but Hancock told me: “We haven’t talked about it.”) To many advocates for victims, the initiatives are an insult. “You can’t take justice away from the victims’ families, not after everything they’ve gone through,” contends Harriet Salarno, the president of Crime Victims United of California, which she founded after her daughter’s murder. “No-parole life sentences will never give them the closure they seek. Sure, the death penalty is costly, but that’s because it’s not executed efficiently. Look at Texas and Virginia. They limit the years of appeals. We should copy them.”
It also points out that California is long overdue for capital punishment legislation that reduces the time it takes to carry out legal execution verdicts to a somewhat reasonable period, while still protecting the rights of the accused and convicted, and Texas comes to mind as one state that seems to have accomplished that by restricting the ability of lawyers to file numerous appeals.
An excerpt from the Atlantic article.
“AS AN ORANGE COUNTY jury debated in 2009 whether the white supremacist Billy Joe Johnson should live or die for murdering a fellow gang member, he asked to be sent to death row. Not because he felt any sudden remorse for the five people he’d killed over the years—“I commit crimes when people piss me off,” he once explained, matter-of-factly—but because Johnson believed he’d have better living conditions, including liberal phone privileges, a bigger cell, and daily human interaction, at San Quentin’s death row than he would at Pelican Bay, one of the state’s toughest maximum-security prisons, where he was serving a 46-year-to-life sentence, primarily in solitary confinement.
“He also knew that the odds were good that he might never be executed. Bogged down by constitutional challenges and appeals, California’s system takes an average of 20 years to move a prisoner from conviction to execution.
“Experts on both sides of the death-penalty debate have long agreed that California’s system is the nation’s costliest and least efficient. This June, a landmark report by Paula M. Mitchell, a professor at Loyola Law School, and Arthur L. Alarcón, a senior judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, unearthed new data that reveal just how bad the system is.
“Their report showed that since the current death-penalty statute was enacted in 1978, taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on only 13 executions, or roughly $308 million per execution. As of 2009, prosecuting death-penalty cases cost upwards of $184 million more each year than life-without-parole cases. Housing, health care, and legal representation for California’s current death-row population of 714—the largest in the country—account for $144 million in annual extra costs. If juries continue to send an average of 20 convicts to San Quentin’s death row each year, and executions continue at the present rate, by 2030 the ranks of the condemned will have swelled to more than 1,000, and California’s taxpayers will have spent $9 billion to execute a total of 23 inmates.
“I was stunned by the report,” said Loni Hancock, a Democratic state senator from Oakland and a member of the senate budget committee. Hancock had spent the previous five months agonizing over deep cuts to California’s general budget, and “it broke my heart,” she said. “That’s when I decided the time had come for Californians to reconsider the death penalty.”
“In late June, Hancock introduced SB 490, the first bill to propose replacing death sentences with no-parole life imprisonment, only to withdraw it eight weeks later when she realized she didn’t have the votes to get it out of committee. Now anti-death-penalty activists are taking their case to the people. Buoyed by the Alarcón-Mitchell report and the media coverage it garnered, California Taxpayers for Justice kicked off a ballot-initiative drive in October to get the required 504,760 voter signatures in time for the 2012 general election.
“Law-enforcement groups want to keep the penalty in place. “We share the frustration of death-penalty opponents,” says Cory Salzillo, the legislative director of the California District Attorneys Association. “But we should pursue remedies to fix the problems rather than repeal it altogether.” (Hancock’s own stepson, Casey Bates, is known as an aggressive prosecutor in Alameda County’s District Attorney’s office, with several murder convictions under his belt. He declined to comment on SB 490, but Hancock told me: “We haven’t talked about it.”) To many advocates for victims, the initiatives are an insult. “You can’t take justice away from the victims’ families, not after everything they’ve gone through,” contends Harriet Salarno, the president of Crime Victims United of California, which she founded after her daughter’s murder. “No-parole life sentences will never give them the closure they seek. Sure, the death penalty is costly, but that’s because it’s not executed efficiently. Look at Texas and Virginia. They limit the years of appeals. We should copy them.”
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Evolution of Criminality
Like any business model, the business of crime evolves according to the needs of its customers and government sanctions, as this story from the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
An excerpt.
“In many ways, the reputed drug dealers on Grandview Place were good neighbors.
“Their two-story, red-brick home in the New York City suburb of Fort Lee, N.J., looked perfectly ordinary with its white trim, gable porch and manicured shrubbery. Neither noise nor sketchy visitors were an issue, authorities say.
“The only sign that something was amiss was the rented van that would disappear into a lower-level garage each day. The driver's job: To deliver immigrant workers from the inner city to package heroin in thousands-upon-thousands of glassine envelopes stamped with catchy logos like "LeBron James" and "Roger Dat."
“The Fort Lee operation represented the new, more serene face of the ever-thriving heroin trade in the New York City area, the drug's national epicenter, according to the Manhattan-based narcotics investigators who shut it down.
"It can still be a violent, dirty business, but it's changed," said Bill Cook, a longtime investigator with the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City.
“Absent are scenes out of films like "American Gangster," with kingpins flaunting their wealth, settling turf wars with brazen gunplay and serving a clientele of strung-out junkies queuing up to buy low-grade product.
“The new business model calls for more discretion and discipline, and better branding and quality control. The heroin is purer and the users more mainstream, including college students and professionals who snort rather than shoot up. Many have seamlessly transitioned to heroin after first getting hooked on prescription painkillers belonging to the same opiate family.
“Compared to past eras marked by images of junkies cooking the drug with a dirty spoon, heroin "doesn't have the same stigma attached to it," said John Gilbride, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York office.
“Authorities say more abuse by a broader customer base has taken a devastating human toll that's difficult to measure. Rehab centers have told them that more people are seeking treatment, and there have been recent reports of fatal heroin overdoses by teenagers on Long Island and Westchester County.
“That hasn't discouraged retailers - mainly Dominican immigrants supplied with Colombian heroin by Mexican cartels - from steadily expanding their operations throughout the city and its suburbs.
"There are more mills, and they're better at what they do," Cook said.”
An excerpt.
“In many ways, the reputed drug dealers on Grandview Place were good neighbors.
“Their two-story, red-brick home in the New York City suburb of Fort Lee, N.J., looked perfectly ordinary with its white trim, gable porch and manicured shrubbery. Neither noise nor sketchy visitors were an issue, authorities say.
“The only sign that something was amiss was the rented van that would disappear into a lower-level garage each day. The driver's job: To deliver immigrant workers from the inner city to package heroin in thousands-upon-thousands of glassine envelopes stamped with catchy logos like "LeBron James" and "Roger Dat."
“The Fort Lee operation represented the new, more serene face of the ever-thriving heroin trade in the New York City area, the drug's national epicenter, according to the Manhattan-based narcotics investigators who shut it down.
"It can still be a violent, dirty business, but it's changed," said Bill Cook, a longtime investigator with the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City.
“Absent are scenes out of films like "American Gangster," with kingpins flaunting their wealth, settling turf wars with brazen gunplay and serving a clientele of strung-out junkies queuing up to buy low-grade product.
“The new business model calls for more discretion and discipline, and better branding and quality control. The heroin is purer and the users more mainstream, including college students and professionals who snort rather than shoot up. Many have seamlessly transitioned to heroin after first getting hooked on prescription painkillers belonging to the same opiate family.
“Compared to past eras marked by images of junkies cooking the drug with a dirty spoon, heroin "doesn't have the same stigma attached to it," said John Gilbride, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York office.
“Authorities say more abuse by a broader customer base has taken a devastating human toll that's difficult to measure. Rehab centers have told them that more people are seeking treatment, and there have been recent reports of fatal heroin overdoses by teenagers on Long Island and Westchester County.
“That hasn't discouraged retailers - mainly Dominican immigrants supplied with Colombian heroin by Mexican cartels - from steadily expanding their operations throughout the city and its suburbs.
"There are more mills, and they're better at what they do," Cook said.”
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Nonviolent, Non-serious Offenders?
That’s the story on those being released from state prisons to local jails as a result of a federal court ruling, but, as with all things, the devil is really in the details, noted in this story from the San Francisco Chronicle.
An excerpt.
“Gov. Jerry Brown and others who supported the dramatic shift in California's sentencing law that took effect this week have said it will send only those convicted of nonviolent or non-serious crimes to county jails instead of state prison, a change designed to save the state money and reduce inmate crowding.
“Yet a review by The Associated Press of crimes that qualify for local sentences shows at least two dozen offenses shifting to local control that can be considered serious or violent.
“Among them: Involuntary manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, killing or injuring a police officer while resisting arrest, participating in a lynching, possession of weapons of mass destruction, possessing explosives, threatening a witness or juror, and using arson or explosives to terrorize a health facility or church. Assault, battery, statutory rape and sexual exploitation by doctors or psychotherapists are also covered by the prison realignment law and carry sentences that will be served in a county jail instead of state prison.
"These crimes include a variety of offenses that would strike many civilians as far from trivial," Public Policy Institute of California researcher Dean Misczynski wrote in a recent analysis of the new law.
“A list of 500 criminal code sections to be covered by the law was compiled by the California District Attorneys Association and posted late last month to its website. In response to a request by the AP, the state attorney general's office confirmed the association's review was accurate but said defendants with a previous felony conviction or those charged with enhancements would still be sent to state prison.
“Among those who could be affected by the new law if convicted is Dr. Conrad Murray, who is on trial for involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. Legal experts said he would serve his maximum four-year sentence in a Los Angeles County jail instead of state prison.
“The length of sentences won't necessarily change, but the realignment law does offer significant differences for inmates.
“Parole will disappear for offenders who serve their terms in county jails, including Murray, if he is convicted. Offenders who serve their full sentences behind bars will not be supervised once they are released. Parole officers will not be tracking their movements or making sure they comply with conditions such as substance abuse treatment.
“Judges also have the discretion to impose "hybrid" or "split sentences" in which offenders serve part of their sentence in county jail and the rest on what is being called "mandatory supervision," overseen by probation officers.
“Offenders convicted of more significant crimes still are likely get lengthier sentences, even if they are served in jail instead of prison, said Scott Thorpe, chief executive officer of the state district attorneys association. But sentencing more serious offenders to jail rather than state prison will likely force counties that already have crowded jails to release less serious offenders who are serving time for crimes such as auto theft, burglary, grand theft, forgery, counterfeiting and drug crimes.”
An excerpt.
“Gov. Jerry Brown and others who supported the dramatic shift in California's sentencing law that took effect this week have said it will send only those convicted of nonviolent or non-serious crimes to county jails instead of state prison, a change designed to save the state money and reduce inmate crowding.
“Yet a review by The Associated Press of crimes that qualify for local sentences shows at least two dozen offenses shifting to local control that can be considered serious or violent.
“Among them: Involuntary manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, killing or injuring a police officer while resisting arrest, participating in a lynching, possession of weapons of mass destruction, possessing explosives, threatening a witness or juror, and using arson or explosives to terrorize a health facility or church. Assault, battery, statutory rape and sexual exploitation by doctors or psychotherapists are also covered by the prison realignment law and carry sentences that will be served in a county jail instead of state prison.
"These crimes include a variety of offenses that would strike many civilians as far from trivial," Public Policy Institute of California researcher Dean Misczynski wrote in a recent analysis of the new law.
“A list of 500 criminal code sections to be covered by the law was compiled by the California District Attorneys Association and posted late last month to its website. In response to a request by the AP, the state attorney general's office confirmed the association's review was accurate but said defendants with a previous felony conviction or those charged with enhancements would still be sent to state prison.
“Among those who could be affected by the new law if convicted is Dr. Conrad Murray, who is on trial for involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. Legal experts said he would serve his maximum four-year sentence in a Los Angeles County jail instead of state prison.
“The length of sentences won't necessarily change, but the realignment law does offer significant differences for inmates.
“Parole will disappear for offenders who serve their terms in county jails, including Murray, if he is convicted. Offenders who serve their full sentences behind bars will not be supervised once they are released. Parole officers will not be tracking their movements or making sure they comply with conditions such as substance abuse treatment.
“Judges also have the discretion to impose "hybrid" or "split sentences" in which offenders serve part of their sentence in county jail and the rest on what is being called "mandatory supervision," overseen by probation officers.
“Offenders convicted of more significant crimes still are likely get lengthier sentences, even if they are served in jail instead of prison, said Scott Thorpe, chief executive officer of the state district attorneys association. But sentencing more serious offenders to jail rather than state prison will likely force counties that already have crowded jails to release less serious offenders who are serving time for crimes such as auto theft, burglary, grand theft, forgery, counterfeiting and drug crimes.”
Monday, October 10, 2011
Prisoners to Counties & Crime Rates
California has to reduce its prison population and has chosen to redirect about 30,000 prisoners to local control.
Virtually everyone in the law enforcement field knows that this will increase crime rates, as this article in the Los Angeles Times notes.
An excerpt.
“The Los Angeles Police Department will remove 150 officers from patrol and other assignments to deal with the fallout from a state-mandated plan to reduce prison overcrowding, a move that Police Chief Charlie Beck said will slow response times to 911 calls.
“Beck and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined forces Monday to criticize the state's attempt to relieve severe prison overcrowding, saying it has unfairly saddled the LAPD with a burden that the department does not have the resources to address. They warned that it poses a risk to public safety and threatens to reverse the falling crime rates Los Angeles has experienced in the last decade.
“The plan, which went into effect Saturday, shifts responsibility for thousands of inmates and ex-convicts from state to county agencies.
“As part of that change, the LAPD and other local police departments will have to assume a leading role alongside the county's probation officers in keeping tabs on an escalating number of ex-convicts who otherwise would have been under the watch of the state's parole department or behind bars, Beck said. By year's end, the LAPD is expected to be tracking 4,200 people, according to figures released by the mayor's office.
“Unlike the state's parole officers, county probation staff are not typically armed nor are they adequately trained to deal with potentially violent ex-inmates, Beck said. As a result, Beck said, LAPD officers will need to take on much of the workload — for example, making house calls to check on whether the newly arrived offenders and parolees are in compliance with the terms of their release.
“Beck declined to speculate on how much longer it would take officers to respond to emergency calls. To minimize the effect, Beck said he would try to place officers who are on desk jobs or in specialized assignments back into the field.
“That could prove difficult, however, because Beck has already made several rounds of such moves and the number of officers available is limited. The LAPD has about 9,900 officers
“Beck speculated that the increased number of ex-convicts walking city streets could lead to about 3,000 more serious crimes committed — about a 3% rise. The city has experienced a long and steady decline in all categories of crime over the last decade.”
Virtually everyone in the law enforcement field knows that this will increase crime rates, as this article in the Los Angeles Times notes.
An excerpt.
“The Los Angeles Police Department will remove 150 officers from patrol and other assignments to deal with the fallout from a state-mandated plan to reduce prison overcrowding, a move that Police Chief Charlie Beck said will slow response times to 911 calls.
“Beck and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined forces Monday to criticize the state's attempt to relieve severe prison overcrowding, saying it has unfairly saddled the LAPD with a burden that the department does not have the resources to address. They warned that it poses a risk to public safety and threatens to reverse the falling crime rates Los Angeles has experienced in the last decade.
“The plan, which went into effect Saturday, shifts responsibility for thousands of inmates and ex-convicts from state to county agencies.
“As part of that change, the LAPD and other local police departments will have to assume a leading role alongside the county's probation officers in keeping tabs on an escalating number of ex-convicts who otherwise would have been under the watch of the state's parole department or behind bars, Beck said. By year's end, the LAPD is expected to be tracking 4,200 people, according to figures released by the mayor's office.
“Unlike the state's parole officers, county probation staff are not typically armed nor are they adequately trained to deal with potentially violent ex-inmates, Beck said. As a result, Beck said, LAPD officers will need to take on much of the workload — for example, making house calls to check on whether the newly arrived offenders and parolees are in compliance with the terms of their release.
“Beck declined to speculate on how much longer it would take officers to respond to emergency calls. To minimize the effect, Beck said he would try to place officers who are on desk jobs or in specialized assignments back into the field.
“That could prove difficult, however, because Beck has already made several rounds of such moves and the number of officers available is limited. The LAPD has about 9,900 officers
“Beck speculated that the increased number of ex-convicts walking city streets could lead to about 3,000 more serious crimes committed — about a 3% rise. The city has experienced a long and steady decline in all categories of crime over the last decade.”
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Crime Rates Fall, Experts Stumped
As we have noted before, the reasons are simple, better policing through one form or another of broken windows policing and better incarceration through three strikes sentencing, yet, as this article from the Christian Science Monitor reports, it still confuses experts whose theories that poverty causes crime aren’t working out.
An excerpt.
“In a trend that has some experts "stumped," violent crime in 2010 dropped 6 percent from the year before – the fourth consecutive annual decline, according a report released Monday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“The numbers come as the housing market remains stagnant and unemployment remains persistently high – conditions that might lead to a rise in crime. Moreover, most law enforcement agencies throughout the US are undergoing budget cuts, with 1 percent fewer law-enforcement officers on the streets today than there were in 2008, the FBI data say.
“In this light, the continued decline in violent crime is forcing some criminologists to reexamine the what might be the causes of crime. “It will be years before we get the answer, if we do, to what’s going on right now,” says William Pridemore, a criminal justice professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. “Criminologists have been pretty stumped.”
An excerpt.
“In a trend that has some experts "stumped," violent crime in 2010 dropped 6 percent from the year before – the fourth consecutive annual decline, according a report released Monday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“The numbers come as the housing market remains stagnant and unemployment remains persistently high – conditions that might lead to a rise in crime. Moreover, most law enforcement agencies throughout the US are undergoing budget cuts, with 1 percent fewer law-enforcement officers on the streets today than there were in 2008, the FBI data say.
“In this light, the continued decline in violent crime is forcing some criminologists to reexamine the what might be the causes of crime. “It will be years before we get the answer, if we do, to what’s going on right now,” says William Pridemore, a criminal justice professor at Indiana University in Bloomington. “Criminologists have been pretty stumped.”
Friday, September 16, 2011
California State Prisoner Transfer, Health Costs
The increased health care costs the Counties will have to absorb from the transfer is an overlooked aspect of the debate, which is examined in this article from RAND.
An excerpt.
“The reality that tens of thousands of California state prisoners may soon be sent to local lockups is beginning to hit home. Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich likens the impending prisoner influx to a "bar scene — a violent bar scene that you saw in 'Star Wars.'"
“That may be overstating the case. But the fact is that the U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering California to reduce its prison population by 30,000 — to be achieved in part by having more low-level offenders serve their time in county jails — is going to have serious repercussions.
“The most obvious may be, as Antonovich alluded to, public safety. Jails, many of which are already overcrowded, are likely to become more crowded, and they often lack the capacity to provide the rehabilitative services needed by this population. Local criminal justice systems are also likely to come under additional strain.
“And there's another consequence that hasn't been talked about as much: The strain on local budgets of trying to meet the healthcare needs of this population. The chief reason the court ordered a reduction in the prison population was the failure of the state to meet the basic medical needs of prisoners. Can strapped local governments really do any better?
“Many of those incarcerated, whether in state prisons or county jails, have significant medical, mental health and drug treatment needs that counties are ill-equipped to handle. Many also have chronic conditions or infectious diseases that need to be treated and managed. And of course these prisoners ultimately return to our communities, bringing their medical needs to places where the healthcare safety net is fraying at best.
“The problems the prisoners contend with are serious. It is well known that California prisoners tend to be disproportionately sicker on average than the California population. The Rand Corp.'s ongoing study on the public health implications of prisoner reentry has found that 18% of California inmates report having been diagnosed with hypertension, 8% with cardiac problems and 5% with diabetes — all chronic conditions that require medical management.
“Moreover, 13% reported having been diagnosed with tuberculosis, 13% with hepatitis and 9% with sexually transmitted diseases. If left untreated, such infectious diseases have implications for the public health of the communities to which ex-offenders will return.”
An excerpt.
“The reality that tens of thousands of California state prisoners may soon be sent to local lockups is beginning to hit home. Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich likens the impending prisoner influx to a "bar scene — a violent bar scene that you saw in 'Star Wars.'"
“That may be overstating the case. But the fact is that the U.S. Supreme Court decision ordering California to reduce its prison population by 30,000 — to be achieved in part by having more low-level offenders serve their time in county jails — is going to have serious repercussions.
“The most obvious may be, as Antonovich alluded to, public safety. Jails, many of which are already overcrowded, are likely to become more crowded, and they often lack the capacity to provide the rehabilitative services needed by this population. Local criminal justice systems are also likely to come under additional strain.
“And there's another consequence that hasn't been talked about as much: The strain on local budgets of trying to meet the healthcare needs of this population. The chief reason the court ordered a reduction in the prison population was the failure of the state to meet the basic medical needs of prisoners. Can strapped local governments really do any better?
“Many of those incarcerated, whether in state prisons or county jails, have significant medical, mental health and drug treatment needs that counties are ill-equipped to handle. Many also have chronic conditions or infectious diseases that need to be treated and managed. And of course these prisoners ultimately return to our communities, bringing their medical needs to places where the healthcare safety net is fraying at best.
“The problems the prisoners contend with are serious. It is well known that California prisoners tend to be disproportionately sicker on average than the California population. The Rand Corp.'s ongoing study on the public health implications of prisoner reentry has found that 18% of California inmates report having been diagnosed with hypertension, 8% with cardiac problems and 5% with diabetes — all chronic conditions that require medical management.
“Moreover, 13% reported having been diagnosed with tuberculosis, 13% with hepatitis and 9% with sexually transmitted diseases. If left untreated, such infectious diseases have implications for the public health of the communities to which ex-offenders will return.”
Friday, September 9, 2011
State Prisoner Transfers to Counties
Is a horrible idea and the Los Angeles District Attorney nails it, in this article in the Los Angeles Times.
An excerpt.
“Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said a new state law to force counties, instead of the state, to jail non-violent felons is a “horribly flawed plan” that would increase crime on the streets.
“Public safety will be seriously jeopardized,” Cooley said Tuesday. “We’re not kidding. There will be tens of thousands of people let out all over California, who would otherwise be incarcerated…. I’ve been predicting ... that there will be a spike in crime.
"The state Legislature is abandoning their highest-priority core mission in terms of public safety, shifting it to the counties. And it is a bait and switch. They had a big fiscal problem, so they’re abandoning a core mission and the county’s going to pick up the pieces, and the public is going to pay the price,” Cooley told reporters outside the L.A. County Hall of Administration.
“Cooley said there’s not enough room in the county jails to house felons who would otherwise go to state prison. Already, county jails are being forced to release their own inmates early.
“Officials estimate that in Los Angeles County, about 7,500 non-serious, non-sexual and non-violent felons who would have gone to state prison will instead stay in county custody.
“Cooley’s comments come as the county Board of Supervisors is finalizing plans on how to handle the state felons in the county system. The state law will go into effect Oct. 1.
“A couple of supervisors cited some minor problems in the plan, and requested that a countywide committee, led by Probation chief Donald Blevins, resolve them and return it to the supervisors for final approval.
“Sheriff Lee Baca, however, told reporters he didn’t know if the state’s plan would lead to an increase in crime.
“That is an unpredictable reality. We don’t know. There’s a lot of reasons to believe it could go up. But there’s also a need for us to be cautious about that point of view and weigh it against how effective law enforcement can be integrated into this plan,” Baca said.
“The biggest challenge, Baca said, would be the felons, who will stay in county custody instead of going to state prison, beginning Oct. 1.
“The buildup of that population is going to be the challenging part,” Baca said.”
An excerpt.
“Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said a new state law to force counties, instead of the state, to jail non-violent felons is a “horribly flawed plan” that would increase crime on the streets.
“Public safety will be seriously jeopardized,” Cooley said Tuesday. “We’re not kidding. There will be tens of thousands of people let out all over California, who would otherwise be incarcerated…. I’ve been predicting ... that there will be a spike in crime.
"The state Legislature is abandoning their highest-priority core mission in terms of public safety, shifting it to the counties. And it is a bait and switch. They had a big fiscal problem, so they’re abandoning a core mission and the county’s going to pick up the pieces, and the public is going to pay the price,” Cooley told reporters outside the L.A. County Hall of Administration.
“Cooley said there’s not enough room in the county jails to house felons who would otherwise go to state prison. Already, county jails are being forced to release their own inmates early.
“Officials estimate that in Los Angeles County, about 7,500 non-serious, non-sexual and non-violent felons who would have gone to state prison will instead stay in county custody.
“Cooley’s comments come as the county Board of Supervisors is finalizing plans on how to handle the state felons in the county system. The state law will go into effect Oct. 1.
“A couple of supervisors cited some minor problems in the plan, and requested that a countywide committee, led by Probation chief Donald Blevins, resolve them and return it to the supervisors for final approval.
“Sheriff Lee Baca, however, told reporters he didn’t know if the state’s plan would lead to an increase in crime.
“That is an unpredictable reality. We don’t know. There’s a lot of reasons to believe it could go up. But there’s also a need for us to be cautious about that point of view and weigh it against how effective law enforcement can be integrated into this plan,” Baca said.
“The biggest challenge, Baca said, would be the felons, who will stay in county custody instead of going to state prison, beginning Oct. 1.
“The buildup of that population is going to be the challenging part,” Baca said.”
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Good Prison Program
Anytime you have prisoners working on something of obvious public benefit, beyond basic custodial work, it is a very good thing, as is this program reported by the Indianapolis Star.
An excerpt.
“PUTNAMVILLE, Ind. -- Ronald Hayne works in silence alongside other prisoners, dusting a lime green bicycle frame with a worn rag.
“He doesn't know whom the mountain bike once belonged to, or who would ride it next. Maybe a child, like one of his sons. He thinks of them often as he works -- at ages 7 and 4, they share their dad's passion for bikes. He will be going home in December.
“But for now, Hayne works in the bike room at the Putnamville Correctional Facility, surrounded by wooden tables, piles of spare parts and an American flag that hangs in the corner.
“Roaring fans swirl the heavy air, already hot at 9 a.m.
“The 26-year-old and four other men were part of a recent work line for Shifting Gears, a partnership of Bicycle Garage Indy, Volunteers of America and the Indiana Department of Correction. The donated bikes are refurbished, then given to nonprofit organizations and distributed to people, young and old.
“The program was originally based at Pendleton Correctional Facility but was moved to Putnamville -- where wider staff oversight was available -- in the spring.
“Hayne was excited when he got word of the move. As a kid growing up in Terre Haute, he worked on freestyle bikes just like the one he cleaned in the bike room. There wasn't much to do in his hometown, he said, so he started his own bike repair shop at home and found a hobby.”
An excerpt.
“PUTNAMVILLE, Ind. -- Ronald Hayne works in silence alongside other prisoners, dusting a lime green bicycle frame with a worn rag.
“He doesn't know whom the mountain bike once belonged to, or who would ride it next. Maybe a child, like one of his sons. He thinks of them often as he works -- at ages 7 and 4, they share their dad's passion for bikes. He will be going home in December.
“But for now, Hayne works in the bike room at the Putnamville Correctional Facility, surrounded by wooden tables, piles of spare parts and an American flag that hangs in the corner.
“Roaring fans swirl the heavy air, already hot at 9 a.m.
“The 26-year-old and four other men were part of a recent work line for Shifting Gears, a partnership of Bicycle Garage Indy, Volunteers of America and the Indiana Department of Correction. The donated bikes are refurbished, then given to nonprofit organizations and distributed to people, young and old.
“The program was originally based at Pendleton Correctional Facility but was moved to Putnamville -- where wider staff oversight was available -- in the spring.
“Hayne was excited when he got word of the move. As a kid growing up in Terre Haute, he worked on freestyle bikes just like the one he cleaned in the bike room. There wasn't much to do in his hometown, he said, so he started his own bike repair shop at home and found a hobby.”
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Laity’s Expertise
One of the strongest calls from the Holy Father is that of encouraging the laity to lead in areas where their competence and expertise outweighs that of the priests and religious of the Church, as expressed in the Apostolic Exhortation of John Paul II, Christifideles Laici which teaches us that:
“In the context of Church mission, then, the Lord entrusts a great part of the responsibility to the lay faithful, in communion with all other members of the People of God. This fact, fully understood by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, recurred with renewed clarity and increased vigor in all the works of the Synod: "Indeed, Pastors know how much the lay faithful contribute to the welfare of the entire Church. They also know that they themselves were not established by Christ to undertake alone the entire saving mission of the Church towards the world, but they understand that it is their exalted office to be shepherds of the lay faithful and also to recognize the latter's services and charisms that all according to their proper roles may cooperate in this common undertaking with one heart" (italics in original)
And as ratified by Canon Law:
“Can. 215 The Christian faithful are at liberty freely to found and direct associations for purposes of charity or piety or for the promotion of the Christian vocation in the world and to hold meetings for the common pursuit of these purposes.
“Can. 216 Since they participate in the mission of the Church, all the Christian faithful have the right to promote or sustain apostolic action even by their own undertakings, according to their own state and condition. Nevertheless, no undertaking is to claim the name Catholic without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority.”
There are, as noted by the modern spiritual classic, The Soul of the Apostolate, places in the world “to which no priest had access”.
“It is very certain that the primitive Church, as we have already hinted, knew how to organize magnificent and numerous shock troops, in the midst of the faithful, and their virtues both struck the pagans with astonishment and excited the admiration of honest souls, even those most prejudiced against Christianity by their principles, their traditions, and their social background. Conversions were the result, even in circles to which no priest had access.” (p. 163)
This is clearly true in the area of criminal justice, where the organized American Catholic hierarchical leadership has made costly blunders through the uninformed expression of opinions and policy suggestions whose adoption can present a great danger to the innocent.
Such is the case with this latest foray into criminal justice politics, as reported by California Catholic Daily.
An excerpt.
“A group of about 50 people gathered at the headquarters of the California Catholic Conference in Sacramento yesterday morning and then marched to the state capitol, where others joined them in a vigil to support of a bill that would allow judges to reconsider life without parole sentences meted out to juvenile criminals.
“The bill in question, SB 9, by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, would allow judges to review the cases of juveniles sentenced to life without parole after they have served 15 years of their sentence. Judges would be permitted to re-sentence such juveniles to a new sentence of 25 years to life, which would mean they could be considered for parole and perhaps not spend the rest of their lives in prison.
“According to Yee, his bill requires that juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole show remorse and progress toward rehabilitation before being allowed to submit a petition for consideration of the new sentence.
“The bill has the strong backing of the California Catholic Conference, the political action arm of the state’s bishops.
“Sentencing a teenager to prison with no opportunity for parole completely eliminates any possibility of rehabilitation,” the bishops said in a statement on SB 9. “Young people should have a chance to turn their lives around.”
“The bill, already approved by the state Senate, passed the Assembly Appropriations Committee on Aug. 17, and is scheduled for a vote in the state Assembly this week. If it passes, it would then go to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature.
“There is no question that youth who commit crimes should be held accountable -- but in a way that reflects their age and their capacity for rehabilitation,” said the Catholic Legislative Network in an Aug. 22 email. “SB 9 recognizes that young people have the capacity to change and should have access to the rehabilitative tools to do so.” (The Catholic Legislative Network operates under the auspices of the California Catholic Conference.)”
Fortunately, this effort failed, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News.
An excerpt.
“A bill that would have allowed juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole the chance to pursue freedom after a quarter-century in prison narrowly failed to pass the state Assembly Thursday.
“In an hourlong floor debate, Republicans seemed to sway wavering Democrats by recounting details of vicious rapes and brutal killings.
“Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia, argued that the bill was about much more than "whether we're going to give people a chance at redemption." He said it's about teens like Scott Dyleski, convicted of "slaughtering" his Lafayette neighbor in 2005, so he could steal her credit cards and buy marijuana. Right after the vicious crime, Donnelly noted, the 16-year-old had sex with his girlfriend.
“Senate Bill 9 "is sending a signal we don't actually value life," Donnelly added. "If you take a life, then the least we can do is say you have to give up yours, whether it's life in prison, or the death penalty."
“The bill by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, was backed by human rights advocates and child psychiatrists. It was approved by the full Senate and supported by all but a handful of key Assembly Democrats.
“In a dramatic twist, although Yee counted 40 votes late in the day -- one shy of passage -- his failure to convince enough Democrats ultimately doomed the bill in a 36-36 vote, with eight members abstaining when the final roll was called.”
“In the context of Church mission, then, the Lord entrusts a great part of the responsibility to the lay faithful, in communion with all other members of the People of God. This fact, fully understood by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, recurred with renewed clarity and increased vigor in all the works of the Synod: "Indeed, Pastors know how much the lay faithful contribute to the welfare of the entire Church. They also know that they themselves were not established by Christ to undertake alone the entire saving mission of the Church towards the world, but they understand that it is their exalted office to be shepherds of the lay faithful and also to recognize the latter's services and charisms that all according to their proper roles may cooperate in this common undertaking with one heart" (italics in original)
And as ratified by Canon Law:
“Can. 215 The Christian faithful are at liberty freely to found and direct associations for purposes of charity or piety or for the promotion of the Christian vocation in the world and to hold meetings for the common pursuit of these purposes.
“Can. 216 Since they participate in the mission of the Church, all the Christian faithful have the right to promote or sustain apostolic action even by their own undertakings, according to their own state and condition. Nevertheless, no undertaking is to claim the name Catholic without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority.”
There are, as noted by the modern spiritual classic, The Soul of the Apostolate, places in the world “to which no priest had access”.
“It is very certain that the primitive Church, as we have already hinted, knew how to organize magnificent and numerous shock troops, in the midst of the faithful, and their virtues both struck the pagans with astonishment and excited the admiration of honest souls, even those most prejudiced against Christianity by their principles, their traditions, and their social background. Conversions were the result, even in circles to which no priest had access.” (p. 163)
This is clearly true in the area of criminal justice, where the organized American Catholic hierarchical leadership has made costly blunders through the uninformed expression of opinions and policy suggestions whose adoption can present a great danger to the innocent.
Such is the case with this latest foray into criminal justice politics, as reported by California Catholic Daily.
An excerpt.
“A group of about 50 people gathered at the headquarters of the California Catholic Conference in Sacramento yesterday morning and then marched to the state capitol, where others joined them in a vigil to support of a bill that would allow judges to reconsider life without parole sentences meted out to juvenile criminals.
“The bill in question, SB 9, by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, would allow judges to review the cases of juveniles sentenced to life without parole after they have served 15 years of their sentence. Judges would be permitted to re-sentence such juveniles to a new sentence of 25 years to life, which would mean they could be considered for parole and perhaps not spend the rest of their lives in prison.
“According to Yee, his bill requires that juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole show remorse and progress toward rehabilitation before being allowed to submit a petition for consideration of the new sentence.
“The bill has the strong backing of the California Catholic Conference, the political action arm of the state’s bishops.
“Sentencing a teenager to prison with no opportunity for parole completely eliminates any possibility of rehabilitation,” the bishops said in a statement on SB 9. “Young people should have a chance to turn their lives around.”
“The bill, already approved by the state Senate, passed the Assembly Appropriations Committee on Aug. 17, and is scheduled for a vote in the state Assembly this week. If it passes, it would then go to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature.
“There is no question that youth who commit crimes should be held accountable -- but in a way that reflects their age and their capacity for rehabilitation,” said the Catholic Legislative Network in an Aug. 22 email. “SB 9 recognizes that young people have the capacity to change and should have access to the rehabilitative tools to do so.” (The Catholic Legislative Network operates under the auspices of the California Catholic Conference.)”
Fortunately, this effort failed, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News.
An excerpt.
“A bill that would have allowed juvenile offenders sentenced to life without parole the chance to pursue freedom after a quarter-century in prison narrowly failed to pass the state Assembly Thursday.
“In an hourlong floor debate, Republicans seemed to sway wavering Democrats by recounting details of vicious rapes and brutal killings.
“Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Hesperia, argued that the bill was about much more than "whether we're going to give people a chance at redemption." He said it's about teens like Scott Dyleski, convicted of "slaughtering" his Lafayette neighbor in 2005, so he could steal her credit cards and buy marijuana. Right after the vicious crime, Donnelly noted, the 16-year-old had sex with his girlfriend.
“Senate Bill 9 "is sending a signal we don't actually value life," Donnelly added. "If you take a life, then the least we can do is say you have to give up yours, whether it's life in prison, or the death penalty."
“The bill by state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, was backed by human rights advocates and child psychiatrists. It was approved by the full Senate and supported by all but a handful of key Assembly Democrats.
“In a dramatic twist, although Yee counted 40 votes late in the day -- one shy of passage -- his failure to convince enough Democrats ultimately doomed the bill in a 36-36 vote, with eight members abstaining when the final roll was called.”
Thursday, August 18, 2011
California’s Prisoner Shift to Counties Increase Crime?
Yes, that is the considered opinion of most informed professionals, as in this press release from the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, and beginning to arise in the popular press, as in this story from the Los Angeles Times.
An excerpt from the Times story.
“Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday condemned Sacramento's cost-cutting decision to keep some state prisoners in local lockups and have parolees be supervised by county agencies, asserting that both would lead to an increase in crime.
“While discussing a prisoner transition plan submitted by Sheriff Lee Baca, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said he expected county jails to quickly run out of space if they must continue to handle the 7,000 low-level felons that courts normally send to state prison each year. The already-strained county Probation Department will also see an increase in probationers it must oversee.
"It's a system that's meant to fail," Antonovich said, "and who is it going to fail? Every neighborhood, every community where these people are going to be running around....It's a Pandora's box. It's the bar scene — a violent bar scene that you saw in 'Star Wars' — except they're all crazy and nuts."
“Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky noted that the problem started when state legislators decided "to dump their financial woes on us. This is going to impact crime adversely in communities, without a doubt."
“Because of the state's continuing budget and prison overcrowding crisis, on Oct. 1 California will begin shifting some low-level nonviolent offenders from the state prison and parole system to its 58 county jails and probation departments.
“Antonovich said it is likely that Los Angeles County will run out of jail beds unless it "uses other models of supervisions such as electronic monitoring, work furloughs, weekenders and GPS tracking."
"It's irresponsible for us to turn around and dump these [prisoners] into our communities with an ankle bracelet and hope they don't re-offend," Antonovich said. Without finding a way to increase prison time, Antonovich said, "I believe we'll have a spike in crime."
“In the meantime, sheriff's officials expressed worry over how state parolees would be transferred over to the county probation system. Currently, when inmates are released from state prison and transferred to the state parole system, they are given $200 so they can buy themselves a bus ticket home with instructions to contact a state parole officer within two business days.
“But county authorities say that system could allow just-released prisoners to flee without making contact with a county probation officer. Baca is proposing that the state turn over Los Angeles-bound inmates to county jailers just before they are released, so they can be given a mental evaluation and linked with nonprofit groups able to help them adjust to life after prison.
“Baca's proposal seeks to help released prisoners adopt a law-abiding lifestyle, sheriff's officials said.
“Supervisor Gloria Molina, however, cautioned against the county taking on an added responsibility, and said she was worried about risking lawsuits should something go wrong.”
An excerpt from the Times story.
“Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday condemned Sacramento's cost-cutting decision to keep some state prisoners in local lockups and have parolees be supervised by county agencies, asserting that both would lead to an increase in crime.
“While discussing a prisoner transition plan submitted by Sheriff Lee Baca, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said he expected county jails to quickly run out of space if they must continue to handle the 7,000 low-level felons that courts normally send to state prison each year. The already-strained county Probation Department will also see an increase in probationers it must oversee.
"It's a system that's meant to fail," Antonovich said, "and who is it going to fail? Every neighborhood, every community where these people are going to be running around....It's a Pandora's box. It's the bar scene — a violent bar scene that you saw in 'Star Wars' — except they're all crazy and nuts."
“Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky noted that the problem started when state legislators decided "to dump their financial woes on us. This is going to impact crime adversely in communities, without a doubt."
“Because of the state's continuing budget and prison overcrowding crisis, on Oct. 1 California will begin shifting some low-level nonviolent offenders from the state prison and parole system to its 58 county jails and probation departments.
“Antonovich said it is likely that Los Angeles County will run out of jail beds unless it "uses other models of supervisions such as electronic monitoring, work furloughs, weekenders and GPS tracking."
"It's irresponsible for us to turn around and dump these [prisoners] into our communities with an ankle bracelet and hope they don't re-offend," Antonovich said. Without finding a way to increase prison time, Antonovich said, "I believe we'll have a spike in crime."
“In the meantime, sheriff's officials expressed worry over how state parolees would be transferred over to the county probation system. Currently, when inmates are released from state prison and transferred to the state parole system, they are given $200 so they can buy themselves a bus ticket home with instructions to contact a state parole officer within two business days.
“But county authorities say that system could allow just-released prisoners to flee without making contact with a county probation officer. Baca is proposing that the state turn over Los Angeles-bound inmates to county jailers just before they are released, so they can be given a mental evaluation and linked with nonprofit groups able to help them adjust to life after prison.
“Baca's proposal seeks to help released prisoners adopt a law-abiding lifestyle, sheriff's officials said.
“Supervisor Gloria Molina, however, cautioned against the county taking on an added responsibility, and said she was worried about risking lawsuits should something go wrong.”
Monday, August 15, 2011
Corrupted System
In a story—from the Philadelphia Inquirer—feeding the Marxist narrative so favored by many criminologists in the academy, of a corrupt system filling jails and prisons rather than criminals making individual choices, the judge at the heart of the corruption gets a well-deserved sentence.
An excerpt.
“SCRANTON - As his moment of sentencing drew near Thursday, former Luzerne County Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. was still trying to minimize his crimes. No way, he said, had he sold "kids for cash."
“The prosecutor would have none of it.
"In essence, Mr. Ciavarella's argument is, 'I was not selling kids retail,' " Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon A.D. Zubrod said. "We agree with that. He was selling them wholesale."
“Minutes later, U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik slammed Ciavarella, 61, with 28 years in prison. It appeared to be the longest federal prison sentence ever given in a U.S. political corruption case.
“In the Scranton area, Ciavarella was a key target among many in a sweeping and still-ongoing federal corruption probe. Prosecutors have brought charges against nearly 30 officials, including two other judges, numerous court officials, a former state senator, school board members, and county officials.
“Ciavarella, mild-appearing with metal-frame glasses and thinning hair, showed no emotion as his punishment was announced. He chose to begin serving his time immediately, not requesting the grace period of several weeks or months that many defendants seek before reporting for imprisonment.
“His lawyers pledged to appeal his sentence, saying they might argue it violates the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment. Even with time off for good behavior, Ciavarella is likely looking at a quarter-century in prison.”
An excerpt.
“SCRANTON - As his moment of sentencing drew near Thursday, former Luzerne County Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. was still trying to minimize his crimes. No way, he said, had he sold "kids for cash."
“The prosecutor would have none of it.
"In essence, Mr. Ciavarella's argument is, 'I was not selling kids retail,' " Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon A.D. Zubrod said. "We agree with that. He was selling them wholesale."
“Minutes later, U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik slammed Ciavarella, 61, with 28 years in prison. It appeared to be the longest federal prison sentence ever given in a U.S. political corruption case.
“In the Scranton area, Ciavarella was a key target among many in a sweeping and still-ongoing federal corruption probe. Prosecutors have brought charges against nearly 30 officials, including two other judges, numerous court officials, a former state senator, school board members, and county officials.
“Ciavarella, mild-appearing with metal-frame glasses and thinning hair, showed no emotion as his punishment was announced. He chose to begin serving his time immediately, not requesting the grace period of several weeks or months that many defendants seek before reporting for imprisonment.
“His lawyers pledged to appeal his sentence, saying they might argue it violates the Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment. Even with time off for good behavior, Ciavarella is likely looking at a quarter-century in prison.”
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Recidivism Reduction?
The question to be asked here—based on decades of rehabilitation program failure—in this story from Deseret News, is the drop a result of not sending people back to prison that were normally sent back and are now being sent to programs or an actual drop in their criminal behavior.
If you are just shifting people from one correctional program, prison, to another, drug abuse/mental health treatment, but only count as recidivism those going to prison, then what has really been accomplished?
Until the specific drug abuse/mental health programs have been rigorously evaluated and shows a corresponding result, claims of recidivism reduction may be premature.
That being said, we certainly wish Utah well in their efforts to help criminals.
An excerpt.
“SALT LAKE CITY — More than 50 percent of Utah ex-convicts commit crimes within three years of their release and end up back behind bars, but the most recent figures represent a drop compared to data from the late 1990s, according to a report released Wednesday.
“From 1999 to 2002, 65.8 percent of prisoners ended up back behind bars at some point, but the numbers dropped from 2004 to 2007, to 53.7 percent, according to the report by the Pew Center on the States.
“Jean Nielsen, director of Salt Lake County's Department of Human Services, credits Utah's improvement over the years to an increase in substance abuse programs and resources that help the mentally ill.
"Instead of putting the mentally ill in jail, we have teams of social workers and psychiatrists that help them," Nielsen said. "With education, training, substance abuse programs, various treatment, housing options, and counseling, we want to ensure they have a smooth transition back into society and don't go back to jail."
“Utah's recidivism rate remains above the national average of 43 percent. The Pew Center study showed only marginal improvement in the nation's recidivism rate even as spending on corrections departments increased to about $52 billion annually from around $30 billion a decade ago.
"Despite an enormous escalation in spending, the overall recidivism rates have not budged," said Adam Gelb of the center's Public Safety Performance Project. "A lot of the funding is being put into the wrong places. We know much more than 30 years ago and there are other options such as research-based strategies for non-violent offenders that are more effective."
“About 43 percent of prisoners in the U.S. who were released in 2004 were sent back to prison by 2007, either for a new crime or for violating the conditions of their release, the study found. That number was down from 45 percent during a similar period beginning in 1999.
“One of Utah's biggest challenges, according to Steve Gehrke, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Corrections, is funding for new programs that would lower the recidivism rates.
“Nielsen said those include substance abuse treatments, which have about a five-month waiting list.
"Our biggest cry is for more substance abuse treatment resources," Nielsen said. "Some of these people are recommended for treatment, but we just don't have the resources to support their needs, so they end up back in jail."
If you are just shifting people from one correctional program, prison, to another, drug abuse/mental health treatment, but only count as recidivism those going to prison, then what has really been accomplished?
Until the specific drug abuse/mental health programs have been rigorously evaluated and shows a corresponding result, claims of recidivism reduction may be premature.
That being said, we certainly wish Utah well in their efforts to help criminals.
An excerpt.
“SALT LAKE CITY — More than 50 percent of Utah ex-convicts commit crimes within three years of their release and end up back behind bars, but the most recent figures represent a drop compared to data from the late 1990s, according to a report released Wednesday.
“From 1999 to 2002, 65.8 percent of prisoners ended up back behind bars at some point, but the numbers dropped from 2004 to 2007, to 53.7 percent, according to the report by the Pew Center on the States.
“Jean Nielsen, director of Salt Lake County's Department of Human Services, credits Utah's improvement over the years to an increase in substance abuse programs and resources that help the mentally ill.
"Instead of putting the mentally ill in jail, we have teams of social workers and psychiatrists that help them," Nielsen said. "With education, training, substance abuse programs, various treatment, housing options, and counseling, we want to ensure they have a smooth transition back into society and don't go back to jail."
“Utah's recidivism rate remains above the national average of 43 percent. The Pew Center study showed only marginal improvement in the nation's recidivism rate even as spending on corrections departments increased to about $52 billion annually from around $30 billion a decade ago.
"Despite an enormous escalation in spending, the overall recidivism rates have not budged," said Adam Gelb of the center's Public Safety Performance Project. "A lot of the funding is being put into the wrong places. We know much more than 30 years ago and there are other options such as research-based strategies for non-violent offenders that are more effective."
“About 43 percent of prisoners in the U.S. who were released in 2004 were sent back to prison by 2007, either for a new crime or for violating the conditions of their release, the study found. That number was down from 45 percent during a similar period beginning in 1999.
“One of Utah's biggest challenges, according to Steve Gehrke, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Corrections, is funding for new programs that would lower the recidivism rates.
“Nielsen said those include substance abuse treatments, which have about a five-month waiting list.
"Our biggest cry is for more substance abuse treatment resources," Nielsen said. "Some of these people are recommended for treatment, but we just don't have the resources to support their needs, so they end up back in jail."
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Cell Phones in Prison
One of the reasons given by the capital punishment abolitionist movement—and even noted in the Catechism—is that current penal technology keeps prisoners from threatening society so effectively, that capital punishment is no longer needed to protect the innocent from the aggressor.
The Catechism says:
“2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
“If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
“Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."
This story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer is but another in a long line of articles noting the complete opposite.
An excerpt.
“Dimorio McDowell transformed his prison cell into a business office with nothing but a mobile phone and a lot of chutzpa.
“From 7 a.m. until midnight, seven days a week, McDowell worked tirelessly building a Cleveland criminal enterprise that did up to $1 million worth of work.
“Want a jumbo flat-screen, but don't have $2,000?
“McDowell and his unsavory team of Cleveland shoppers could fetch a 55-inch TV and anything else you wanted -- stainless steel refrigerator, hardwood flooring, laptop computer -- for half the store price.
“Just give them a few days. McDowell was serving time for credit card fraud at Fort Dix federal prison in New Jersey. But one of his associates would meet you at a Cleveland gas station with the loot.
“Incarceration in the largest U.S. prison was doing nothing to slow down McDowell's life of crime. Then, in October 2009, McDowell accidentally tripped across the path of a small-town Summit County cop.”
The Catechism says:
“2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
“If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
“Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."
This story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer is but another in a long line of articles noting the complete opposite.
An excerpt.
“Dimorio McDowell transformed his prison cell into a business office with nothing but a mobile phone and a lot of chutzpa.
“From 7 a.m. until midnight, seven days a week, McDowell worked tirelessly building a Cleveland criminal enterprise that did up to $1 million worth of work.
“Want a jumbo flat-screen, but don't have $2,000?
“McDowell and his unsavory team of Cleveland shoppers could fetch a 55-inch TV and anything else you wanted -- stainless steel refrigerator, hardwood flooring, laptop computer -- for half the store price.
“Just give them a few days. McDowell was serving time for credit card fraud at Fort Dix federal prison in New Jersey. But one of his associates would meet you at a Cleveland gas station with the loot.
“Incarceration in the largest U.S. prison was doing nothing to slow down McDowell's life of crime. Then, in October 2009, McDowell accidentally tripped across the path of a small-town Summit County cop.”
Monday, August 1, 2011
Human Behavior is a Mystery
A good article from the Wall Street Journal about the futility of the scientific pursuit of knowing why humans act the way they do.
An excerpt.
“Theodore Dalrymple worked as a prison doctor and psychiatrist in Britain for 15 years. He's known serial killers, petty thieves and everything in between. As he puts it, with a mischievous grin, "I've probably spent more time in prison than the average murderer."
“It's a beautiful summer day in the south of France, and Dr. Dalrymple is holding forth on what we can—and can't—know about the mind of a mass murderer like the Oslo shooter, Anders Behring Breivik. "I don't think we'll ever understand" what makes a person capable of this kind of premeditated murder, Dr. Dalrymple tells me over lunch. What's more, he says, "we don't even know what it is to understand. At what point do you say, 'Aha! Now I understand!'" he asks.
“Dr. Dalrymple is the pen name of Anthony Daniels, author of more than a dozen books of scathing social commentary on everything from crime to travel to, most recently, what he calls "the toxic cult of sentimentality" in modern society. In his writing and in conversation, he returns frequently to the criminals he's known and treated.
“Your garden-variety convicts, he contends, are much simpler subjects than a man like Breivik. To ask them why they steal, he says, "is like asking you why you have lunch." They want something, so they take it. "And since in Britain," he adds with a smirk, "the state does very little to discourage [thieves]," or to incarcerate them when they are caught, "the question is not why there are so many burglars, but why there are so few."
“A Breivik is a deeper mystery. Of him, "you can say, 'This man is highly narcissistic, paranoid and grandiose,'" and this may lead you to seek reasons for that in his past—"his father disappeared at the age of 15 and so on and so forth." But uncovering such facts doesn't solve the mystery because "whatever you find, you would also find among hundreds or thousands or even millions of people who didn't do what he did." There is, he says, "always a gap between what is to be explained and your alleged explanation. So there's always a mystery, and I think that's going to remain."
“Even so, we find irresistible the urge to understand an atrocity like Breivik's, even as we are repulsed by it. When asked whether we hope thereby to understand something about ourselves, the former prison doctor offers an arch denial: "Well, he doesn't tell me much about me." And then, with a morbid chuckle and wary look—"I can't say for you," before adding: "I suppose the only thing one can say is that he tells us about the range of human possibility. But we knew that already."
“The human impulse to explain the inexplicably horrific is revealing, according to Dr. Dalrymple, in two respects—one personal, one political. First, it says something about us that we feel compelled to explain evil in a way that we don't feel about people's good actions. The discrepancy arises, he says, "because [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau has triumphed," by which he means that "we believe ourselves to be good, and that evil, or bad, is the deviation from what is natural."
“For most of human history, the prevailing view was different. Our intrinsic nature was something to be overcome, restrained and civilized. But Rousseau's view, famously, was that society corrupted man's pristine nature. This is not only wrong, Dr. Dalrymple argues, but it has had profound and baleful effects on society and our attitude toward crime and punishment. For one thing, it has alienated us from responsibility for our own actions. For another, it has reduced our willingness to hold others responsible for theirs.”
An excerpt.
“Theodore Dalrymple worked as a prison doctor and psychiatrist in Britain for 15 years. He's known serial killers, petty thieves and everything in between. As he puts it, with a mischievous grin, "I've probably spent more time in prison than the average murderer."
“It's a beautiful summer day in the south of France, and Dr. Dalrymple is holding forth on what we can—and can't—know about the mind of a mass murderer like the Oslo shooter, Anders Behring Breivik. "I don't think we'll ever understand" what makes a person capable of this kind of premeditated murder, Dr. Dalrymple tells me over lunch. What's more, he says, "we don't even know what it is to understand. At what point do you say, 'Aha! Now I understand!'" he asks.
“Dr. Dalrymple is the pen name of Anthony Daniels, author of more than a dozen books of scathing social commentary on everything from crime to travel to, most recently, what he calls "the toxic cult of sentimentality" in modern society. In his writing and in conversation, he returns frequently to the criminals he's known and treated.
“Your garden-variety convicts, he contends, are much simpler subjects than a man like Breivik. To ask them why they steal, he says, "is like asking you why you have lunch." They want something, so they take it. "And since in Britain," he adds with a smirk, "the state does very little to discourage [thieves]," or to incarcerate them when they are caught, "the question is not why there are so many burglars, but why there are so few."
“A Breivik is a deeper mystery. Of him, "you can say, 'This man is highly narcissistic, paranoid and grandiose,'" and this may lead you to seek reasons for that in his past—"his father disappeared at the age of 15 and so on and so forth." But uncovering such facts doesn't solve the mystery because "whatever you find, you would also find among hundreds or thousands or even millions of people who didn't do what he did." There is, he says, "always a gap between what is to be explained and your alleged explanation. So there's always a mystery, and I think that's going to remain."
“Even so, we find irresistible the urge to understand an atrocity like Breivik's, even as we are repulsed by it. When asked whether we hope thereby to understand something about ourselves, the former prison doctor offers an arch denial: "Well, he doesn't tell me much about me." And then, with a morbid chuckle and wary look—"I can't say for you," before adding: "I suppose the only thing one can say is that he tells us about the range of human possibility. But we knew that already."
“The human impulse to explain the inexplicably horrific is revealing, according to Dr. Dalrymple, in two respects—one personal, one political. First, it says something about us that we feel compelled to explain evil in a way that we don't feel about people's good actions. The discrepancy arises, he says, "because [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau has triumphed," by which he means that "we believe ourselves to be good, and that evil, or bad, is the deviation from what is natural."
“For most of human history, the prevailing view was different. Our intrinsic nature was something to be overcome, restrained and civilized. But Rousseau's view, famously, was that society corrupted man's pristine nature. This is not only wrong, Dr. Dalrymple argues, but it has had profound and baleful effects on society and our attitude toward crime and punishment. For one thing, it has alienated us from responsibility for our own actions. For another, it has reduced our willingness to hold others responsible for theirs.”
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Prison Mentors
Lifers mentoring new prisoners is a terrific idea, as reported by the New Orleans Times-Picayune; but it is only terrific if the lifers involved have become truly reformed while in prison, otherwise it’s a deeper immersion into the criminal/carceral world.
An excerpt.
"Walking back to his dormitory at the Angola prison from the auto shop every day, Christopher Fauria passes grizzled men in wheelchairs who have grown old at Angola and almost certainly will die there.
"Fauria, 34, is determined not to become one of them. He is an inmate too, but a short-termer, sentenced to a new program called Re-entry Court that uses lifers to teach young convicts everything from welding to anger management to being a better father, in hopes that this will be their last time behind bars.
"Having these skills, witnessing what goes on here, I don't want to be in this situation no more," said Fauria, who has several previous drug convictions and pleaded guilty to a burglary charge last October. "I have nine kids. I can't afford to come back here."
"Re-entry Court was spearheaded by two Orleans Parish Criminal District Court judges, Arthur Hunter and Laurie White, who were tired of handing down prison sentences to offenders who would emerge no better than when they went in, unable to find a job upon release and likely to commit more crimes.
"Since last summer, Hunter and White have ordered about 40 nonviolent offenders with relatively short sentences to serve their time at Angola state penitentiary under the tutelage of inmate mentors. Those without high school degrees earn their GEDs.
All get certified in a trade and spend evenings in "life skills" classes while constantly being prodded by the older inmates to pull up their pants, stop cursing and respect others.
"Every instructor in the program, from the auto shop supervisor to the man in charge of the substance abuse class, is a long-term inmate who will live the rest of his life at Angola, barring a reprieve from the usually stingy parole or pardon boards.
The trump card in their teaching arsenal: "Don't end up like me."
"It is too soon to say whether most participants will stay out of trouble once back in New Orleans. But both mentors and mentees say the program has been life-changing. Mentors have a rare chance to exert a positive influence on the outside world."
An excerpt.
"Walking back to his dormitory at the Angola prison from the auto shop every day, Christopher Fauria passes grizzled men in wheelchairs who have grown old at Angola and almost certainly will die there.
"Fauria, 34, is determined not to become one of them. He is an inmate too, but a short-termer, sentenced to a new program called Re-entry Court that uses lifers to teach young convicts everything from welding to anger management to being a better father, in hopes that this will be their last time behind bars.
"Having these skills, witnessing what goes on here, I don't want to be in this situation no more," said Fauria, who has several previous drug convictions and pleaded guilty to a burglary charge last October. "I have nine kids. I can't afford to come back here."
"Re-entry Court was spearheaded by two Orleans Parish Criminal District Court judges, Arthur Hunter and Laurie White, who were tired of handing down prison sentences to offenders who would emerge no better than when they went in, unable to find a job upon release and likely to commit more crimes.
"Since last summer, Hunter and White have ordered about 40 nonviolent offenders with relatively short sentences to serve their time at Angola state penitentiary under the tutelage of inmate mentors. Those without high school degrees earn their GEDs.
All get certified in a trade and spend evenings in "life skills" classes while constantly being prodded by the older inmates to pull up their pants, stop cursing and respect others.
"Every instructor in the program, from the auto shop supervisor to the man in charge of the substance abuse class, is a long-term inmate who will live the rest of his life at Angola, barring a reprieve from the usually stingy parole or pardon boards.
The trump card in their teaching arsenal: "Don't end up like me."
"It is too soon to say whether most participants will stay out of trouble once back in New Orleans. But both mentors and mentees say the program has been life-changing. Mentors have a rare chance to exert a positive influence on the outside world."
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