Prison Administration & Conditions News

Prisons adapt to female inmates
Women are fastest growing segment of U.S. prison population
"SHAKOPEE, Minnesota (AP) -- Once the thin blue mattress rolls out from under the single bed, the prison cell is sleepover-ready.
The trundle bed is the best thing Suzanne Locke has here. Along with good behavior, it allows her to host her 6-year-old daughter, Marae, for monthly overnight visits during her 12-year sentence for arson in the state prison for women."

No release of DOC care audit, Brady won't comment on ruling
By Joe Rogalsky, Delaware State News
"DOVER — The state attorney general’s office declined Thursday to offer any additional explanation or clarification of its recommendation to the Department of Correction that an audit of the state’s prison health care system must be kept secret under Delaware law."

Facing their demons
By Ann Imse
"Despite evidence that treating inmates for their addictions pays off financially, Colorado legislators facing stark shortfalls in revenue cut state funding for drug and alcohol treatment inside prisons by around 40 percent in 2003."

Blunt to continue legal defense of inmate abortion policy
By David A. Lieb, The Associated Press
"Gov. Matt Blunt's administration is pushing ahead with its legal defense of a new policy effectively prohibiting most inmate abortions, despite a Supreme Court decision specifically allowing one Missouri inmate to get an abortion."

Court clears way for inmate's abortion
By Robert Patrick and Jo Mannies
"The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for a Missouri inmate to receive an abortion that was delayed for weeks by a new prison policy."

High court allows inmate's abortion
By Charles Lane
"Issuing its first abortion-related decision under new Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the Supreme Court refused yesterday to block the court-ordered transport of a female prison inmate to an outside clinic for an abortion."

Inmates billed for treatment
By Lee Williams and Esteban Parra
"While in a state prison last year, Delaware's private health contractor gave Motrin to Ed Brittingham to treat the bacteria that was eating away at his flesh."

DOC responds to safety abuses with more video cameras, not staff
By the Associated Press
"The Indiana Department of Correction has reduced staffing at the South Bend Juvenile Correctional Facility instead of adding more guards as the U.S. Justice Department recommends in a recent report on civil rights violations at the institution."

BEHIND BARS: Prisons can be cages or schools
By Joan Petersilia
JOAN PETERSILIA, a professor of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine, is the author of "When Prisoners Come Home: Parole and Prisoner Reentry." She is a visiting professor of law at Stanford Law
CALIFORNIA'S corrections leaders have again embraced rehabilitation, a shift from the 1980s, when prisons backed away from that goal and cut their education, work training and anti-drug abuse programs. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger supports the reforms. "Corrections should correct," he has said repeatedly. Reflecting the state's new priorities, the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency has been renamed the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation."

TX: Suit underscores state's prison rape problem
By Dianne Solis, The Dallas Morning News (registration)
"WICHITA FALLS, Texas - In the Allred state prison near this ranching and oil town, Roderick Keith Johnson says he was bought and sold for sex by prison gangs with names like Gangster Disciples, Mandingo Warriors and the Mexican Mafia."

Editorial: Sexual Slavery in Prison
New York Times
"When Congress issued the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, that should have put corrections officials on notice. The measure requires the Justice Department to study the endemic problem of sexual assault behind bars and develop a strategy for coping with it. But prison officials have continued to play down this problem. The costs of denial are on vivid display this month in a federal courtroom in Texas, where a former inmate has told jurors how corrections officers ignored his written pleas for help, and even laughed at him, while he was repeatedly raped and sold into sexual slavery by prisoners who viewed him as "property."

Lawyers Go Behind Bars as Guardians of Prisoner Rights
By Maura Dolan, Times Staff Writer
"SAN FRANCISCO — They exposed the state's locking up of juvenile offenders for 23 hours at a stretch in cells smeared with blood and feces.
They helped spark an unprecedented federal court takeover of California's prison healthcare system after revealing that prisoners were dying because of medical neglect."

Immigration Policy News

Most in poll would let immigrants stay
By Susan Carroll
"Despite their belief that undocumented immigrants are an economic drain on the state, most Arizona voters do not want to force them to leave the United States if they are established in communities and have no criminal record, according to a poll commissioned by The Arizona Republic."

Poll - Illegals seen as 'burden'
By M.E. Sprengelmeyer
"Most Coloradans still see the United States as the world's melting pot, but three-quarters believe illegal immigrants are a "burden" on the country, a new poll shows."

Lawyers file suit to demand visas for immigrant crime victims
By Laura Wides, The Associated Press
"LOS ANGELES ? Lawyers for undocumented immigrants who've been victims of violent crimes filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the Department of Homeland Security for failing to issue protective visas Congress created five years ago."

Poll - Employers should verify immigration
By Susan Carroll
"Requiring employers to verify the immigration status of job candidates is the approach to curbing illegal immigration most favored by Arizonans who voted on Proposition 200, according to a poll released earlier this week by ThinkAZ, a nonpartisan research institute."

C and D foes target illegal immigration
By Jim Hughes
"The state is spending too much money on illegal immigrants to deserve the $3.7 billion shot in the arm it is asking voters to deliver Nov. 1, leaders in the fight against Referendums C and D are saying this week."

Reentry News

Kemp Says Ex-Felons Should Be Able to Vote
By JEFFREY McMURRAY | Associated Press Writer
"WASHINGTON -- Jack Kemp, the former Republican vice presidential candidate and HUD secretary, urged Congress on Tuesday to require states to restore voting rights for felons once they complete their sentences."

State - Former convicts among `prison circus' performers
By Michele McPhee
"Among the strongmen, singers and other Operation Starting Line performers who entertained violent prisoners at state facilities last month were five ex-cons with their own checkered pasts, Department of Correction officials said yesterday."

A Call to Let Felons Start Fresh
San Francisco supervisors urge deletion of the question about prior felonies from public job applications.
By Lee Romney, Times Staff Writer
"SAN FRANCISCO — Elected leaders here Tuesday took a step unusual for politicians: They sided with felons.
With no debate, supervisors unanimously urged the city and county to delete the question about prior convictions from public employment applications."

Editorial: Voting Rights, Human Rights
New York Times
"The United States has the worst record in the democratic world when it comes to stripping convicted felons of the right to vote. Of the nearly five million people who were barred from participating in the last presidential election, for example, most, if not all, would have been free to vote if they had been citizens of any one of dozens of other nations. Many of those nations cherish the franchise so deeply that they let inmates vote from their prison cells.”

CA: GPS law stirs civil rights concerns Registration Required
By Jill Leovy, Los Angeles Times (registration)
"California probation officials have gained broad authority to latch global positioning system devices onto their charges under a new law that critics call unprecedented for government surveillance."

Montgomery Leaders Advocate Prison Reentry Reform
We've been staring at some of these statistics for decades. For the last 30 years, the re-arrest rate for people released from prison across the country has stayed between 67 and 69 percent. Even here in Alabama, the same holds true. Over half of our inmates serving time have been in prison before, so many people are saying this is a sign that prisons alone are not the solution.

Drug Policy News

Drug agencies in transition
Zeke MacCormack | Express-News Staff Writer
"A witch's brew of funding cuts, accountability mandates and public distrust has reduced the number of regional narcotics task forces in Texas to 23 — less than half as many as there were three years ago."

Opinion: Drug policy prevents higher education
The Minnesota Daily
"Students need to make their voice heard on the higher education drug provision.
With the recent study released by the Government Accountability Office showing that the higher education drug provision does not deter students from using drugs and the ongoing debate in Congress right now, it is important to revisit the issue.
The sole purpose of Higher Education Act was to strengthen the educational resources of colleges and universities and to increase access to higher education through financial assistance."

Hopeful -- Creative laws help drug war
By By Tracie Dungan
"SPRINGDALE, Ark. ? Attorney general hopeful Paul Suskie wants to expand to the state level the powers that cities and counties now have to fight drug houses, if he wins the race."

Death Penalty News

Court backs states' role on retardation and execution
By Charles Lane
”The Supreme Court reaffirmed yesterday that states have the authority to make their own rules for determining whether a capital defendant is mentally retarded and thus ineligible for the death penalty.”

The Bible and the death penalty
By Wade Hall
”When pressed, many Americans who support capital punishment will say it's because the Bible requires it. But does it? In "The Biblical Truth About America's Death Penalty," a long and detailed study of the huge American support for the death penalty, Dale S. Recinella presents convincing exegeses of both Hebrew and Christian texts and concludes that, in using Scripture to justify capital punishment, we misunderstand Old Testament laws and ignore the Gospels and the example of Jesus. “

High court rules in Tucson retardation case
”WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Monday that death row inmates do not automatically have a right to a jury trial to determine whether they are mentally retarded and therefore ineligible for execution.”

Court backs states' role on retardation and execution
By Charles Lane
”The Supreme Court reaffirmed yesterday that states have the authority to make their own rules for determining whether a capital defendant is mentally retarded and thus ineligible for the death penalty.”

Death sentence talk being renewed in Iowa
By Dan Gearino
”DES MOINES — The question of whether to reinstate the death penalty in Iowa is bubbling to the surface after months in the background.”

Supreme Court rules against Arizona death row inmate
By Gina Holland, The Associated Press
”WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court said Monday that death row inmates do not automatically have a right to a jury trial to determine whether they are mentally retarded, and therefore ineligible for execution.”

Death penalty opponents raise concerns over executions
CHERYL WITTENAUER | Associated Press
”ST. LOUIS - Family, friends and death penalty opponents raised concerns Tuesday about the conviction of Marlin Gray, who is scheduled to die by injection next week in the deaths of two sisters pushed from an abandoned Mississippi River bridge in 1991.”

Death penalty attack is a vile political tactic
Bristol Herald Courier
"Jerry Kilgore should apologize for a vicious new attack ad that suggests his political opponent would not support the death penalty for the world’s most notorious genocidal villain Adolf Hitler."

In the News: Justice Policy Institute

Quick and Dirty | Juvenile Justice
“While youth of color are one-third of American adolescents, they are two-thirds of youth in juvenile facilities,” the report notes. It says that youth of color receive “harsher treatment . . . compared to their white counterparts, even when charged with similar offenses.”Read More

Commentary:A Better Cure Than Abortion
"You could challenge the underlying premise that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of the nation’s crime -- which is what the Justice Policy Institute is trying to do." Read More

Democrats Go After William Bennett, Salem Radio Network, FCC
"BENNETT:…one of the arguments in this book "Freakonomics" that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up."
Read More

Youth of Color Disproportionately Incarcerated
"a new report by the Building Blocks for Youth initiative, documents effective strategies by advocates, policymakers, and public officials to reduce inequities in the justice system. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the issue of racial justice has returned to the forefront of the national ..." Read More

U.S. crime rate holds at 30-year low
The Justice Policy Institute, which advocates alternatives to incarceration, said the report offered good news and further reason to "begin investing in community-based policing and local organizations that succeed in increasing public safety." Read More

MARYLAND: Advocates call for review of sentencing guidelines
"The Campaign for Treatment Not Incarceration found that individuals currently convicted of a single drug offense in Maryland were treated more harshly than those convicted of assault, burglary or robbery" Read More

Sentencing Resources

Relief From The Collateral Consequences Of A Criminal Conviction: A State-By-State Resource Guide
Source: The Sentencing Project

"This comprehensive survey describes for each United States jurisdiction the laws and practices relating to restoration of rights and obtaining relief from the collateral disabilities and penalties that accompany a criminal conviction. It is the first-of-its-kind, and it illustrates the extraordinary variety and complexity of state and federal laws that impose a continuing burden on convicted persons long after the court-imposed sentence has been fully discharged. It is an important resource for policymakers interested in offender reentry and reintegration, for practitioners at all levels of the criminal justice system, and for people with a criminal record who are seeking to put their past behind them." Individual state tables in PDF format."

USSC Reports on Courts' Response to Sentencing Guidelines Decision
Source: US Sentencing Commission

"Federal courts continue to punish more than 60 percent of convicted criminals within guidelines set by the U.S. Sentencing Commission despite a Supreme Court decision that made the guidelines advisory, recent statistics show."

Racial Justice News

L.A. Unified Sued Over Race Issues
By Mitchell Landsberg | Los Angeles Times
"An anti-affirmative action group filed suit Wednesday against the Los Angeles Unified School District, charging that its efforts to racially integrate schools are in violation of Proposition 209, the 1996 statewide initiative that banned preferential treatment by race."

An education in segregation
By Eileen McNamara, Globe Columnist | October 12, 2005
"It is the elephant in the urban classroom, the resegregation of black and white public school students, despite Brown v. The Board of Education's assertion that a separate education is inherently an unequal education."

Poverty News

Fresno's Concentration of Poor Tops in U.S., Study Says
On heels of Brookings findings, city's mayor acknowledges problems but says great strides have been made to address inequities.
By Ann M. Simmons, Times Staff Writer
"The mayor of Fresno acknowledged Wednesday the findings of a new national study that casts a spotlight on poverty in his city, but he insisted that Fresno had done much to address past social and economic inequities."

Poor areas seen more burdened by waste
Study also finds racial inequities
By Adrienne P. Samuels, Globe Staff | October 13, 2005
"Several areas in Boston, including downtown, East Boston, Dorchester, and South Boston, are near the top of a list of communities overburdened with hazardous waste sites and pollution-causing industries, two researchers said yesterday."

How Computer Maps Will Help the Poor
By Thomas Ulrich | The Christian Science Monitor
"This winter, residents from some of the poorest areas of this city will canvass their communities with pocket PCs, GPS receivers, and digital cameras. The goal: to survey some of San Jose's most neglected neighborhoods and build a map of 19 underserved communities. "

In the News: Advancement Project

Creating a New Climate for Kids
Officer.com - Oct 12, 2005
... Judith Browne, co-director of Advancement Project, a national policy, communications and legal action organization in Washington, DC, sees a growing trend of ...

Tales told of uneven school discipline
St. Petersburg Times, FL - Oct 11, 2005
... Petersburg and Hillsborough County, co-sponsored the hearing with help from attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Advancement Project, a civil ...

NAACP Bemoans Discipline Disparity
Tampa Tribune, FL - Oct 11, 2005
... were told Tuesday at a news conference and hearing conducted by The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Advancement Project and the ...

Norfolk election officials, voter group clash over registration ...
WVEC.com (subscription), VA - Oct 10, 2005
... Lawyers from the Washington-based Advancement Project got involved at the request of Project Vote, which has submitted five-thousand voter applications in ...

Snags cloud vote deadline
Virginian Pilot, VA - Oct 7, 2005
... 8 that they haven’t. Into all this wade two out-of-towners: The State Board of Elections and the Advancement Project, a DC-based nonprofit. ...

Panel clears way for voter forms challenge
Miami Herald, FL - Sep 29, 2005
... Attorneys with the Advancement Project argued that the rejections had disqualified more than 10,000 people across the state, with a disparate effect on ...

LGBT Rights News

Appeals court: Same-sex partner can't sue for malpractice
"By By Larry McShane, The Associated Press
NEW YORK - A divided state appeals court ruled Thursday that a Vermont man cannot sue a Manhattan hospital for malpractice in the death of his longtime partner, saying it could not provide a "judicial imprimatur" for same-sex marriages."

Gay student's case is sent to high court
"By By The Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - A divided appeals court has asked the Florida Supreme Court to decide if a school chaplain should have protected the confidentiality of a gay student expelled in his senior year of high school."

Brizzi OKs hiring policy on gays
By By Brendan O'Shaughnessy
"Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi has approved a formal employment policy within his office prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation -- the same move that plunged Gov. Mitch Daniels into hot water with social conservatives."

Calif. court hears gay fertility case
"By By Elliot Spagat, The Associated Press
SAN DIEGO - A California appeals court heard arguments Tuesday in the case of a woman who sued her doctors after they refused to artificially inseminate her, allegedly because she is gay."

Prison Administration News

Prisons' abortion rule fails
By By Robert Patrick
"A federal judge ordered Missouri prison officials Thursday to take an inmate to a St. Louis clinic as soon as today for an abortion despite a new Corrections Department policy barring use of tax dollars to transport prisoners for that purpose."

Officials call for prison veto override
By By Kurt Erickson
"Union officials and state lawmakers say Gov. Rod Blagojevich sent the wrong message this summer when he vetoed legislation allowing Illinoisans to weigh in on plans to close state prisons or mental health facilities."

No release of DOC care audit, Brady won't comment on ruling
By By Joe Rogalsky
"The state attorney general's office declined Thursday to offer any additional explanation or clarification of its recommendation to the Department of Correction that an audit of the state's prison health care system must be kept secret under Delaware law."

Prison study bid denied; Paper's request for report on care turned down
By By Joe Rogalsky
"Acting on advice from the Delaware attorney general's office, the Department of Correction on Tuesday rejected a request from the Delaware State News to provide a copy of an audit performed earlier this year on the prison healthcare system."

Juvenile Justice News

School resource officers are more than just police to kids
By By Anna Webb
"Spend time on school grounds with Detective Jackie Wright, a school resource officer -- or SRO -- and you'll see the kaleidoscopic nature of her job."

Pa. leads nation in youths given life behind bars
By By Ervin Dyer
"Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of youths given life prison sentences without parole, according to two human rights groups."

Report -- State's young inmates put at risk
By By Richard D. Walton
"A culture of violence and rampant sexual activity at the Plainfield Juvenile Correctional Facility put hundreds of youths in harm's way, the U.S. Department of Justice says."

ACLU, state aim to protect files
By By Ken Kobayashi
"Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the state will try to reach an agreement to ensure the preservation of Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility documents that might be relevant to a pending lawsuit by the ACLU against state officials."

Young offenders behind bars for life
By By Van Jensen
"Today, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International released a report saying that, in 42 states, at least 2,225 people are serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed as children. Forty-six are in Arkansas, according to the report."

State faces scrutiny on juvenile prisons
By By the Associated Press
"Only a few months ago the Indiana prison system won its release from a judicial order governing how it treated the juveniles it detains. If all goes as planned, however, the system soon will find itself under a new federal court consent decree ordering it to change the way it treats the youths in its care for crimes they've committed."

Drug Policy News

State to host meth-fight summit
By By the Associated Press
"Governors and other officials from 13 Midwestern states are expected to gather for a three-day session in December to work on plans for combating the spread of methamphetamine production and abuse."

Remedy for a meth epidemic?
By By Michele McNeil
"The number of meth labs seized by police has plummeted in Indiana, a sign that increased law enforcement and new restrictions on the sale of cold medicines may be working, state officials said Wednesday."

Judge strikes down drug testing law
By By Tom Pantera
"North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenhjem said Wednesday he's disappointed with a judge's decision striking down a new state law requiring drug testing as a condition of bail in methamphetamine cases."

Meth threat in state described
By By Gregory Seay
"David Parnell once personified the worst of methamphetamine addiction. High on the stimulant, he mentally and physically abused his second wife and tormented their children. Paranoia led Parnell to shoot holes in the walls of his home and to stalk his postal carrier with a gun, thinking the mailman was an undercover agent."

States' meth laws inconsistent
By By the Associated Press
"RISING SUN, Ind. -- When Indiana restricted the sale of over-the-counter cold medicines this year, pharmacist Dan Beyer suddenly found himself a front-line defender in the state's war against methamphetamine."

Death Penalty News

Death row inmate will get life, court rules
By The Associated Press
"The Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday threw out the death sentence of Roderick Eskridge and ordered the Grenada County Circuit Court to re-sentence him to life in prison without parole."

Execution is set for Charlotte man
By Sharif Durhams
"The state set execution dates for three men Thursday, including a convicted killer who received Mecklenburg County's first death verdict for killing a spouse."

High court says execute Crips founder
By David Kravets, The Associated Press
"SAN FRANCISCO - The Supreme Court refused to take the case of California death row inmate Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a founder of the Crips street gang whose later work for peace won him Nobel Peace Prize nominations."

Death row pleas denied
By Howard Mintz
"The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday turned away the last-ditch appeals of two California death row inmates, setting the stage for what could be the busiest year in San Quentin's execution chamber in the modern death penalty era."

Execution date set for convicted killer
By Sean O'Sullivan
"A judge has set a date for convicted killer Brian D. Steckel to die. Superior Court Judge William C. Carpenter Jr. signed an order last week setting Nov. 4 as the day Steckel, 36, will die by lethal injection at the Delaware Correctional Center near Smyrna."

Iowan gets death penalty
By the Associated Press
"CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- Former drug dealer Dustin Honken was sentenced Tuesday to die by lethal injection, becoming the first person to be given a death sentence in Iowa in more than 40 years."