City leaders rolled out the welcome wagon today for officials from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who are considering buying a shuttered local state prison to house federal inmates. The Standish Max Correctional Facility, which the state of Michigan closed last October in a budget-cutting move, was once considered as a home for prisoners currently housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Those plans were dropped, but federal official are considering using the former state facility as a standard federal prison. News and additional photos in the Detroit Free Press.

About 350 people worked at the facility when the state ran it, though it’s unclear how many people would be needed to operate it as a federal prison.

City leaders, state prison officials and Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Menominee, led federal officials on a tour of the facility this morning, then drove them into town for a private lunch at a local golf club.

Along the route into town, a dozen or so freshly printed campaign-style yard signs read “Federal Bureau of Prisons — Welcome to Standish.”

“It was great to see the signs out there,” Stupak told reporters this afternoon outside the prison’s administration building. “It’s very early in the process, but right now everything looks very positive. I’m optimistic it will happen.”

Stupak noted that no recommendation had yet been made. Federal prison officials plan to meet privately with property owners surrounding the prison Wednesday to discuss what comes next.

Patricia Caruso, director of the Michigan Department of Corrections, said she hopes the federal officials will pursue the next step, which would be an environmental assessment of the property. She said the state’s inmate population has dropped from more than 50,000 to about 44,000, and the property is no longer needed. She said she can’t see any way the state would reopen the facility.

“We have no intention of doing that,” she said.

Some former workers at the facility protested outside the prison during the day, arguing that the state will need the facility again and that selling it now would be foolish.

“Is the sale of this going to balance Michigan’s budget?” asked Paul Piche, 53, of Omer, who has worked in state prisons for 25 years.

When the prison closed last year, Piche was transferred to another state prison in St. Louis, Mich., about 90 minutes away. He and 15 coworkers now ride to work together in a van, spending three hours a day on the road. Others in town are worried about the possible sale, too.

“My contention is that the prison will open sooner as a state facility than as a federal one,” said Dave Munson, a local bar owner.

He said he’d like to wait until a new governor comes in and reviews corrections policy before selling the property. But city leaders are convinced the facility’s days as a state prison are done.

“The state’s not going to open that back up,” said Clark Sanford, a longtime Standish city councilman who backs the plan. “What do you want to do, leave it empty?”

Standish city leaders say the entire community stands to benefit if the prison is reopened as a federal facility. Workers would spend money in the local community and the federal government would start paying for water and sewer at the prison. Local residents were socked with a 40% increase in water and sewer bills when the prison, the system’s largest user, closed and usage dropped off dramatically.

“If it happens, this will be a very positive thing,” said Mayor Mark Winslow.

jchev Federal Systems, Jail and Prison Construction, Michigan

The nation’s unemployment crisis is now reaching far inside prison walls. Since 2008, thousands of inmates have lost their jobs as federal authorities shutter and scale back operations at prison recycling, furniture, cable and electronics assembly factories to try to make up $65 million in losses. Story in the USA Today.

The job cuts, prison officials say, mean a dramatic reduction in job training for inmates preparing for release, lost wages for prisoners to pay down child support and other court-ordered fines, and more tension in already overcrowded institutions.

“Anytime we have a loss of inmate jobs … it becomes more challenging to keep inmates constructively occupied,” federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley says. Bureau records show the job cuts during the past two years coincide with slight increases in serious inmate assaults on staff and other prisoners.

Slightly more than 7,000 federal prisoners have been cut from the work rolls in the past two years, and up to 800 more are expected to be dropped in the next several months, according to Federal Prison Industries records.

The latest cut, announced last week, will closenine factories scattered from Pennsylvania to California and includes reductions in staff at 11 others, Federal Prison Industries spokeswoman Julie Rozier says.

She says the cuts represent some of the largest reductions in the 75-year history of the federal prison workforce. “We’re feeling the same pressures that are present in the overall economy,” she says. This year, 16,115 of the system’s 211,146 inmates are working in the factory jobs, down from 23,152 in 2008.

Federal Prison Industries is a government corporation established by Congress in 1934 that provides training for federal inmates. The industries generate about 80 products and services for sale to the federal government. In return, inmates are paid up to $1.15 per hour. Much of that goes to child support, fines, restitution and other court-ordered obligations.

Prison guards and others fear the cuts could spark inmate unrest in overcrowded institutions where jobs — however menial — have kept prisoners occupied.

Last year, serious assaults on staffers increased to 105, up from 100 in 2008, while inmate-on-inmate assaults totaled 524, up from 475 in 2008. “This is a big concern for us,” says Bryan Lowry, president of the federal prison employees association. Because of yearly prison population increases, he says, the federal system is running 37% over capacity.

Fewer jobs mean more downtime for inmates and more crowded recreation yards and housing units. In some places, Lowry says, there is only one prison officer for about 150 inmates: “It’s not a good situation.”

jchev Economic Issues, Federal Systems, Inmate Labor

The Conservative government is promising to cut off monthly old-age security payments to hundreds of federal prison inmates, including infamous serial killer Clifford Olson. News from the London Free Press.

Olson is regarded as Canada’s ultimate portrait of evil, a vile and unrepentant psychopath doing life for the grotesque torture, rape and murder of 11 children as young as nine years old.

Yet as QMI Agency columnist Peter Worthington recently revealed, every month since 2005 the federal government has been sending Olson the same old-age security cheque that the average law-abiding Canadian grandma gets.

The latest available figures indicate about 325 jailed killers, rapists and other assorted criminals over 65 receive up to $1,200 a month in old age security.

All of this apparently came as a shock even to the federal minister responsible for the administration of old age security.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said Wednesday she was “very disturbed” to hear that old age cheques are going to inmates.

In an exclusive interview with QMI Agency, the minister said flatly: “We don’t think it’s appropriate, and we want to prevent it from happening again.”

Most right-thinking Canadians would applaud.

This rather extraordinary act of public generosity towards some of the worst of the worst behind bars in Canada today is expected to cost taxpayers more than $4 million this year alone.

But this issue isn’t just about tax dollars, nor the public hatred for killers like Olson.

Giving old age pensions to prison inmates simply doesn’t make sense.

Inmates can’t spend the money while they are in prison, and many who are behind bars at age 65 are lifers who will die there.

They have all the food, clothing, shelter and health care they need to sustain themselves – often at a higher standard than the thousands of Canadian widows forced to survive in society on less than $13,000 a year on old age security.

In fact, more than half the amount Olson is getting every month comes from the guaranteed income supplement that is only available to the poorest of the elderly poor in our society.

It was never intended to go into an inmate’s savings account while taxpayers shell out up to $150,000 a year to keep him fed and housed.

The human resources minister says the government is exploring its options to cut inmates off the dole without unduly punishing their spouses and families.

Finley’s officials are also concerned about possible court challenges on grounds that old-age security is a universal Canadian right of citizenship which, like voting, is not forfeited during incarceration.

Even if that is true, the federal government already tax back old-age security payments from any Canadian over 65 earning more than $66,000 a year.

jchev Canada, Federal Systems

Officials say a private jail in Hardin MT has signed a 10-year contract agreeing to house federal prisoners.  Story from KMXC.

Greg Smith, the head of the town’s economic development authority, says the contract with American Private Police Force Organization Incorporated calls for 80 percent of the jobs at the facility to be open to local residents.  The contract says more than 200 medium to minimum security inmates will be housed in the prison by mid-January.  The $27 million detention center has sat empty since it was completed in 2007. It has a maximum capacity of 464 prisoners.

jakking Federal Systems, MT Hardin, Private Prisons

A planned overhaul of the immigration detention system might result in fewer concrete cells and lower fences — but it won’t mean more releases, even with electronic ankle monitors, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said Wednesday.  Report from the AP.

Morton announced last week that his agency would re-evaluate the scattered, 33,400-bed system that holds immigrants awaiting court hearings or deportation. He said it would seek to treat nonviolent people who aren’t a flight risk differently from those with felony convictions facing mandatory detention and deportation.

That raised hopes — and worries — that ICE might reduce the number of incarcerated immigrants by counting electronic ankle-monitoring, house arrest or some other non-institutional confinement as “detention.”  But Morton told The Associated Press on Wednesday that “I don’t think the overall number of detention beds will decrease significantly. It will remain roughly the same.”  The agency will still look at whether alternatives, like electronic monitoring, can be used to ensure immigrants attend court hearings and comply with deportation orders — but will not use them to replace the housing of substantial numbers of people in government-funded facilities, he said.

“That’s incredibly disappointing,” said Andrea Black, coordinator for Detention Watch Network, which represents immigrant advocacy groups. “The changes aren’t going to address the fundamental problem, which is the overemphasis on the use of detention.”  Currently, most detained immigrants, including elderly women, families and asylum seekers, are held in jail-style facilities converted or contracted for ICE use. Morton said such space will still be appropriate for immigrants convicted of serious crimes or others deemed to be dangerous, but many people could be held in facilities that are more like dormitories, with lower exterior fences and fewer restrictions inside.   Some existing ICE facilities could be converted, or new structures specifically designed for ICE may be sought, he said. The overhaul is expected to take several years.  “We detain a whole host of people and they often have different characteristics, and our system needs to recognize that,” Morton said.   ICE detainees face only civil immigration proceedings, not criminal charges, and Morton said the agency needs to recognize its power to hold people is civil in nature — a distinction that immigrant advocates have applauded.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said his group, which supports lower immigration, was concerned about Morton’s announcement last week. It wants to ensure that previous policies allowing immigrants released with an order to appear in court — known as “catch and release” rules — aren’t reinstated. Such policies allowed most immigrants to ignore court hearings or deportation, he said. “Everyone concedes that catch-and-release was a complete failure and waste of resources,” he said.  But he said the group does not oppose the use of less jail-like conditions to detain immigrants.  “Our position is that people ought to be held in appropriate facilities, especially where families are concerned. If they have those facilities available, by all means, they should be using them,” Mehlman said.

Morton said last week that the much-derided T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor, Texas, would be emptied of families and converted to a women’s facility. The use of the former prison to hold families with young children outraged immigrant advocates, and Black said she and others were pleased Morton decided to end the practice. Morton said Wednesday that families were already being moved out of the facility, and he expects everyone to be out in the next several months “at the most.”

jakking Federal Systems, ICE, Illegal Aliens

Pennsylvania DOC has expressed interest in exporting prisoners to Michigan — but they’ll have to stand in line behind California and the federal government, which is thinking about shipping in terror suspects from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the Detroit News.

State Department of Corrections officials confirmed Tuesday that Pennsylvania has approached Michigan about off-loading some of its prison population, which has grown from 48,000 to 51,000 since December.  The Michigan House Judiciary subcommittee on corrections reform will hear testimony today about the impact of shipping in prisoners at a hearing in Lansing.

Pennsylvania Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton confirmed sending prisoners to Michigan “is something we are considering.” She added that Pennsylvania Secretary of Corrections Jeffrey Beard has spoken with Michigan Corrections Director Patricia Caruso on three occasions.

Department of Corrections spokesman Russ Marlan said Michigan e-mailed queries to each of the 50 states in March asking if they would be interested in housing prisoners here. Florida and Wisconsin expressed minimal interest, Marlan said. Michigan submitted a request for proposals from Alaska and learned last week Michigan lost the bid, Marlan said.

Vermont offered to send Michigan some prisoners but not enough to significantly increase revenue for Michigan, Marlan said.  “They were looking for 100 beds, so it’s nothing that would benefit us,” Marlan said.

jakking Alaska, California, Economic Issues, Federal Systems, Florida, Fundraising, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Wisconsin

Attorney David Kennedy says clients of his who have been held in immigration detention centers in South Georgia and eastern Alabama routinely are denied fundamental rights. On the eve of a new immigration detention center opening in Gainesville GA, a report issued this week by National Immigration Law Center appears to validate Kennedy’s complaints.  Reported by the Gainesville Times.

The report, based on confidential Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents obtained in litigation, alleges there are pervasive problems throughout the country’s immigration detention facilities, many of which are operated by private contractors. Detainees are routinely denied visitation with family members, access to legal materials and regular recreation, according to the report. Many never get an explanation of their rights while being detained, the report claims.  “The conditions are much more harsh than they ought to be,” said the report’s co-author, Ranjana Natarajan. “This is a civil detention, and these folks are being treated like hardened criminals.”

The Corrections Corporation of America could begin boarding immigration detainees at its new North Georgia Detention Center on Main Street as soon as next week. The site of the old county jail adjoining the Hall County Sheriff’s office underwent $4 million in renovations and is being leased from Hall County for $2 million a year. CCA operates the detention center through an agreement with ICE and the county.

This week, ICE officials did not deny the allegations contained in the report, vowing to continue to improve conditions. But Department of Homeland Security officials recently decided against creating uniform detention center standards that the National Immigration Law Center wants. ICE is supposed to conduct yearly evaluations of every detention center, but has no enforceable, binding legal rules on how inmates are treated, according to the report. It creates a lot of gray area,” Natarajan said. “Because (detention centers) are not expected to follow the rules, they’re all over the map.”

ICE spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said agency officials “feel the NILC put together a very thoughtful report, and we will carefully review and take seriously this report, as we would any report. We are committed to continuously improving our immigration detention system.”  Gonzalez noted that within 10 days of taking office, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano ordered all immigration enforcement policies to undergo a review, “including detention.” In February, Napolitano appointed former Arizona Department of Corrections director Dora Schriro as a special advisor for detention and removal. “Her position was created to focus exclusively on the significant growth in detention and detainment in the last few years,” Gonzalez said.

On any given day, ICE holds about 33,000 immigration detainees in facilities across the country, and supervises another 17,000 people facing deportation through electronic monitoring and other means. The National Immigration Law Center estimates that in 2008 about 220,000 people were held in detention centers prior to deportation. The typical stay is 30 to 90 days.   The Gainesville facility operated by CCA is expected to hold about 500 low- and medium-security immigration detainees, many of them from North Carolina.   CCA spokeswoman Louise Grant referred questions on this week’s report to ICE officials, but noted that “CCA does adhere in every one of our ICE detention facilities to the detention standards set by our customer.” The company also has ICE officials on site for detainee access, Grant said.

This week’s report prompted two U.S. senators to call for a change to the system. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., on Thursday introduced the “Strong Standards Act,” a proposed bill that would set minimum detention standards and require the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that laws concerning the treatment of detainees are enforced.  “These legislative initiatives will help reinforce what our great country has always stood for: liberty, the rule of law and basic human rights,” Menendez said in a statement.  To Kennedy, anything would be an improvement.  “If we’re comparing these (detention centers) to their Turkish counterparts, they’re pretty good,” Kennedy said. “But by U.S. standards, they’re pretty poor.”

jakking Federal Systems, Georgia, ICE, Illegal Aliens

Budget-strapped cities and towns are being crushed by the costs of incarceration. But there are solutions. Full article with additional pictures available at Forbes.com.

Out the 20th floor window of the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, the sprawl and elevation of buildings look like the campus of a law enforcement university, filling up the northeast corner of downtown. A juvenile justice center as big as a hospital. Two high-rise courthouses. An overrun booking tank. Beneath it all, tunnels run like veins through the complex, filled with inmates shuffling to hearings from the third biggest jail in America.An average of 10,000 inmates were held per day in the Harris County Jail in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, not including an additional 1,100 bused six hours to and from northern Louisiana. With an average stay of 45 days in three drab detention facilities, the jail is consistently overcrowded.

“This really wasn’t built for this,” says John Dyess, chief administrative officer of the sheriff’s office, which oversees the jail. “I don’t know if we can build our way out of where we are today.”

Money may decide the issue. A stunning 25% of Harris County’s annual $1.5 billion budget goes to law enforcement, with more than $750,000 a day spent on detainees. A shortage of guards means the jail shells out $35 million a year on overtime; some guards are topping out at $100,000 a year in total pay.

Houston is far from alone. Amid budget crises, falling tax revenue and national unemployment approaching 10%, jails–usually city- or county-run holding facilities for those serving short sentences or awaiting trial–saw their populations grow nearly twice as fast as state and federal prison populations during the first half of the decade, according to a 2008 report by the Justice Policy Institute. The report says that local governments spent $97 billion on criminal justice in 2004, up 347% since 1982, while detention expenses climbed 519% to $19 billion.

Complete article on Forbes.com.

jchev County-State Issues, Federal Systems

The United States Sentencing Commission should work to simplify federal guidelines and keep them advisory, rather than return to a mandatory system, a group of federal judges said. The judges spoke today at the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York, where the commission is holding the third in a series of public hearings on policy issues. Complete story on Bloomberg.com.

The seven-member commission should work with Congress to create a “politically viable” plan to simplify the sentencing rules, which are “ridiculed” in other countries, said Jon Newman, who sits on the appeals court in New York. Several other judges said they agreed with him.

The guidelines grew out of a congressional effort to eliminate sentencing disparities and standardize the punishment for similar crimes committed by similar offenders. Congress set up the U.S. Sentencing Commission in 1984 and gave it the power to issue binding guidelines on federal judges.

Under the guidelines, a convicted defendant’s crime served as a starting point, putting him in a range of permissible sentences. Judges then increased the prison term by a specified period if, for example, a gun was fired during the crime. Other factors, such as acceptance of responsibility for the offense, led to a sentence reduction.

Advisory System
In 2005, the Supreme Court decision U.S. v. Booker converted the sentencing guidelines from a mandatory system to an advisory one.

Denny Chin, a district judge in Manhattan, praised the Supreme Court for its Booker decision.

“Most if not all of my colleagues in the Southern District of New York would agree the system is better post-Booker,” Chin testified today. “We have more flexibility to do what we are supposed to do — to judge — and we are not limited to merely applying mechanical rules and doing mathematical calculations.”

Last month, Chin sentenced Bernard Madoff to 150 years in prison for a decades-long fraud that cheated investors of billions of dollars.

Richard Arcara, a district judge in Buffalo, New York, also praised the Booker decision for returning sentencing discretion to judges.

“Booker has improved the quality of the sentencing jurisprudence,” Arcara testified.

Time-Consuming
However, the new system is even more time-consuming for judges, Arcara said. In addition to performing guideline calculations, resolving objections and addressing motions for a reduced sentence, they must also now address motions for a sentence outside the advisory range, elaborately justifying each sentence, he said.

Arcara, who said he had 230 criminal cases on his docket last week, called for simpler guidelines.

Newman, who has served on the New York appeals court for 30 years, mocked what he called the “basic premise” of the sentencing guidelines, which is that “for every discrete increment of criminal misconduct there must be a discrete increment of punishment.” He said the system was designed to “satisfy the statisticians.”

The judge then asked the commission to rewrite the guidelines “with a view to making it truly a simplified system that provides guidance for imposing punishments, instead of requiring precise calculations and precise determinations of numerous factors that no other sentencing system in the world requires a sentencing judge to make.”

Personal Views
The lone dissenter was Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who serves on the appeals court in Washington. Before becoming a judge, Kavanaugh worked with former independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr on the investigation of former president Bill Clinton and later worked in the White House under George W. Bush.

Acknowledging that Booker is “here to stay,” Kavanaugh argued that the Supreme Court’s Booker decision has increased disparities and that it invites judges to improperly apply personal and policy views when imposing a sentence.

William Carr, a vice chair of the Sentencing Commission, singled Kavanaugh out.

“Judge Kavanaugh, you are unusual in longing for a return to the mandatory system,” Carr said. “Most district judges are happy with the advisory system.”

Kavanaugh proposed a remedy that would be a hybrid of the mandatory and advisory systems. Newman said that he could live with that, as long as the proposed Congressional reform reduced the infinite calculations in the current system.

jchev Federal Systems, Sentencing

Although too long to post here, CBS News has an updated look (from a distance) at the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum, also known as “Supermax.”

jakking Federal Systems, Super-Max

The Obama administration is expanding immigration checks to nearly all local jails, which could sharply increase U.S. deportation cases, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

By matching inmates’ fingerprints to federal immigration databases, authorities hope to pinpoint deportable illegal immigrants before they are released from custody. Inmates in federal and state prisons already are screened. But authorities generally lack the time and staff to do the same at local jails, which house up to twice as many illegal immigrants at any time and where inmates come and go more quickly. The effort is likely to significantly reshape immigration enforcement, current and former executive branch officials said …

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has made it “very clear” that her top priority is deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes, said David J. Venturella, program director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We mean this, we’re serious about it, and we believe we need to put in an all-out effort to get this done,” said Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee for homeland security …

The program began as a pilot effort in October and operates in 48 counties across the country, including Fairfax County. This year, fingerprints from 1 million local jail bookings will be screened under the program. It also operates Dallas, Houston, Miami, Boston and Phoenix, according to ICE, and will expand to Los Angeles this year and nearly all local jails by the end of 2012. The effort differs from programs in several Northern Virginia counties where local law enforcement officers have been deputized to question suspects about whether they are in the country legally.

Under the new program, the immigration checks will be automatic: Fingerprints currently being run through the FBI’s criminal history database also will be matched against immigration databases maintained by the Department of Homeland Security … Based on the pilot program, the agency estimates that if fingerprints from all 14 million bookings in local jails each year were screened, about 1.4 million “criminal aliens” would be found, Venturella said. That would be about 10 times the 117,000 criminal illegal immigrants ICE deported last year …

Venturella said ICE will give priority to deporting the most dangerous offenders: national security risks or those convicted of violent crimes. Based on initial projections, the agency estimates that 100,000 of these are “Level 1 offenders” and that deporting them would cost $1.1 billion over four years. Removing all criminal illegal immigrants would cost $3 billion, ICE estimated last year.

The long article in The Washington Post has more detail and background.

jakking Federal Payments, Federal Systems, ICE, Illegal Aliens

The President’s Department of Justice (DOJ) budget will likely lead to growing incarceration rates, according to an analysis by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), a Washington, D.C.-based public policy organization.

JPI’s analysis of the budgets released by the Administration late last week points to increases in spending for law enforcement and decreases in juvenile justice expenditures … “Police serve an important role in the United States, but overpolicing can be just as problematic as underpolicing,” said Tracy Velazquez, executive director of JPI. “What we have seen is that the more money spent on law enforcement, the more people are arrested for nonviolent drug offenses. This results in millions of dollars in incarceration costs for states, with little impact on public safety or, for that matter, rates of illicit drug use” …

Velazquez indicated that the lack of investment in juvenile justice programs was especially troubling.   “Back in 2002 we spent over $546 million on programs to prevent and address youth delinquency. Unfortunately, this Administration is choosing to keep juvenile justice funding at the levels of the last eight years — their 2010 budget is less than 60 percent of the 2002 budget, not even taking inflation into account. Getting and keeping kids on the right track is a proven way to improve public safety, and it means more kids going on to become responsible adults that contribute to their communities and the economy” …

“We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with little to no evidence that these increasing rates are improving public safety,” said Velazquez. “We can’t arrest and incarcerate our way to public safety. We hope the Administration takes a harder look at where they want to spend their money. While politicians may think that ratcheting up law enforcement spending is politically popular, it may not be the best investment if the goal is to build safer, healthier communities rather than more prisons.”

jakking Economic Issues, Federal Systems, Juvenile Justice

The following brief report is from WSFA12 News.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held Wednesday for [Alabama]’s first all-female federal prison.  The prison will be built on 120 acres in Pickens County near Aliceville.  It will house 1,300 medium security inmates and have 350 employees at a price tag of $185 million dollars.  It will open in 2011.

jakking Federal Systems, Female Inmates

Corrections Corp. of America said Wednesday it has won a 4-year contract worth up to $226.4 million to house federal inmates at a new prison in Mississippi.

Under the 4-year contract with the federal Bureau of Prisons, the company would house up to 2,567 inmates the company’s recently completed 2,232-bed Adams County Correctional Center … The contract carries up to three 2-year renewal options and a guarantee of 50 percent occupancy at the beginning and eventually 90 percent.

The Nashville-based company houses more than 8,500 Bureau of Prisons inmates at several facilities and expects to begin taking inmates at the new prison during the third quarter of this year.

jakking CCA, Federal Systems, Private Prisons

New Hampshire’s newest correctional facility is a three-story brick walk-up that looks like any other along Manchester’s upper Elm Street. But step inside Hampshire House and enter the highly structured and supervised world of a federal prison inmate.  This report from the Manchester Union-Leader.

The newly renovated townhouse … is a locked facility laced with surveillance cameras. Here federal offenders serve out the final two to six months of their sentences. Inmates must submit to random and routine drug testing, thrice nightly head counts, spot room checks, pat downs and, once employed, rigorous staff oversight.   “Everything they do is structured,” Hampshire House Director John L. Sullivan explained during a tour of the building yesterday.   “They are still technically inmates. If they fail our program, they go back to prison,” he said.

The first inmate arrives tomorrow. By June, there should be a waiting list to get one of the 30 beds — 20 for men and 10 for women, Sullivan said … Up until now, the only halfway houses available to federal inmates convicted of New Hampshire offenses were in Boston …

Inmates first undergo a skills assessment and training for employment readiness, money management, parenting and other life skills, Sullivan said. They then must get full-time work and connect with counseling or other social service programs. Inmates gradually earn more freedoms — such as a pass to briefly visit with family or go out to dinner — as they prove they can handle them, Sullivan said.   “When they leave here, they will have a pretty good chance of making it in a community,” he explained …

There aren’t enough halfway houses to accommodate every returning inmate, Sullivan said. But every inmate isn’t suitable for a halfway house …”The Bureau of Prisons does not send out serious, violent criminals and serious sex offenders,” he said.

jakking Federal Systems, New Hampshire, Re-Entry

Latino convicts now represent the largest ethnic population in the federal prison system, accounting for 40 percent of those convicted of federal crimes, according to a study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan research organization.

Nearly half of Latino offenders, or about 48 percent, were convicted of immigration crimes, while drug offenses were the second-most-prevalent charge, according to the report. As the annual number of federal offenders more than doubled from 1991 to 2007, the number of Latino offenders sentenced in a given year nearly quadrupled, to 29,281 from 7,924 …

“The immigration system has essentially become criminalized at a huge cost to the criminal justice system, to courts, to judges, to prisons and prosecutors,” said Lucas Guttentag, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. “And the government has diverted the resources of the criminal justice system from violent crimes, financial skullduggery and other areas that have been the traditional area of the Justice Department.”

The federal justice system accounts for 200,000, or 8.6 percent, of the 2.3 million inmates in federal and state prisons and city and county jails. Nineteen percent of state prisoners and 16 percent of jail inmates were Latinos, the Pew study found. African-Americans, who make up about 12 percent of the national population, make up 39 percent of state prisoners and jail inmates.

Deborah Williams, an assistant federal defender in Phoenix, said that the large number of Latinos in the federal system, particularly those who are not citizens and have limited English proficiency, had sharply changed federal prison culture. “I have Anglo and Native American clients who tell me about being the only non-Spanish speaker in their pod,” Ms. Williams said. “Ten years ago, it just wasn’t that way.”

The full New York Times article has more information.

jakking Federal Systems, Illegal Aliens

The construction management contract has been issued by the Federal Bureau of Prisons for the building of a new facility at Aliceville AL, according to a press release from Jacobs Engineering.

Officials did not disclose the contract value, yet estimate the construction value at over $130 million. This design-build project encompasses a total building area of approximately 45,000 square meters with living units and support facilities for a rated capacity of approximately 1100 to 1500 inmates. The facility will be a “campus plan” type of institution consisting of several one- and two-story buildings, a Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR) factory, and three general housing units of four levels each all within a secure compound. A minimum security Federal Prison Camp with living units and support facilities with a capacity of 256 inmates also is included. A central utility building, outside administration building, firing range, and associated parking and roadways will be constructed outside the secure perimeter.

jakking Alabama, Federal Systems, Jail and Prison Construction

In a new report that captures how federal sentencing caseloads have changed over the last 17 years, the U.S. Sentencing Commission found the rate of offenders sentenced to federal prison time has increased while alternative sentencing (probation, probation with confinement) has declined. A partial reason for the drop in alternative sentences is that a significant number of offenders (37.4 percent) are non-citizens and mostly illegal foreign nationals.

Other Findings:

• In fiscal year 2007, 81.1 percent of sentences imposed on citizens involved prison time, probation (8.4 percent), probation with confinement (5.8 percent), prison split with community confinement (4.7 percent);
• For citizens, the average prison sentence was 76 months, offenders sentenced to a prison/community split received an average of 9 months, the average probation only sentence was 33 months, and offenders sentenced to probation with confinement was 39 months;
• Offenders with higher levels of education are more likely than less educated offenders to receive an alternative sentence.

jakking Corrections History, Federal Systems, Sentencing

Just two years ago, the Pinellas County FL Jail was chronically overcrowded. The facility at times housed 1,000 more inmates than it was designed to hold. Some slept on the floor.  However, as the St Petersburg Times reports, things have changed.

But an effort by justice officials to reduce the jail population has worked. In addition, a new medical building opened and an old bus garage nearby was converted into an annex.  Now, the jail has hundreds of empty beds. Sheriff Jim Coats hopes to make that pay off — literally.  The sheriff will meet with Florida Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil in Tallahassee on Friday to discuss housing state prison inmates in the jail — for a price …

As of Wednesday, the Pinellas jail had 2,942 inmates. In its current configuration it can hold nearly 3,600. But Coats said it was as low as 2,700 just a few months ago.  The sheriff said his agency might be able to lease as many as 400 empty beds to the state without incurring extra costs or risk overcrowding at the jail again.  But Coats said the jail will only accept minimum security, low-risk prisoners with just a few years left on their sentences …

The jail overcrowding problem was alleviated when Pinellas’ court system began moving cases quicker and getting non-violent offenders out sooner.  A new 432-bed medical facility and an old bus garage converted into a 256-bed annex also helped.  But even the sheriff had to admit his shock at all this, considering recent overcrowding.  Said Coats: “Two years ago at this time I would find it hard to believe that we would be in this situation.”

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A Michigan lawmaker has introduced legislation to transfer some of the state prisoners who have deportation orders to federal custody. From the Chicago Tribune:

Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith said Wednesday the idea could save the state up to $9 million by moving the convicts out of state prisons.  The Democrat from Washtenaw County’s Salem Township said that under current state law prisoners must serve their full sentences in Michigan prisons before being deported.

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