Legislation to end the practice of prison-based gerrymandering in New York, included within the 2011 state budget, passed both the Senate and Assembly last week. Once Gov. Patterson approves the budget package, the bill will go into effect in time for next year’s redistricting efforts. Story in the Progressive States.

Seven of the current State Senate districts only meet minimum population requirements because of the prisoners they claim as residents, and 40% of an Oneida County legislative district is incarcerated – residents of those districts enjoy an unfair shift in representation as a result of their padded legislative districts. However, the bill will correct this distortion by accessing the home addresses of prisoners from the Department of Corrections’ database and adding them to the population counts for the appropriate areas. Thirteen rural New York counties already have a similar adjustment policy in place.

As the Prison Policy Initiative details, two million prisoners nationwide are being counted in the wrong place, significantly distorting both political representation and planning decisions made based on demographic data. Ironically, this means that “communities that bear the most direct costs of crime are therefore the communities that are the biggest victims of prison-based gerrymandering.”

New York is now the third state, after Maryland and Delaware, to take action to address this problem and pass legislation that counts incarcerated persons in their home districts.

jchev Legislation, New York

The Community Corrections Center is a brand new facility at the Sullivan County Department of Corrections, which focuses on treating substance abuse. Report from WPTZ.

“Our goals are to move people back into their community and give them the supports they need and the guidance they need, and give them a platform where perhaps they’ll be more productive in the community they live in,” Superintendent Ross Cunningham told Newschannel 5. “A day in the life of an offender here would probably start in the a.m., very early. Probably 7 o’clock. It would be regimented by course work that they have to do during the course of the day, probably ending with a work shift.”

Inmates will either be sentenced directly to the center, or earn their way into the 90 day program with good behavior. At the center, inmates will be given jobs in the laundry room or as cleaners, teaching them productive skills for when they are released.

“They’re actually immersed in that environment. Our clinicians are actually attached to the treatment room. They’re part of the behavioral change that we’re looking for,” said Cunningham.

He added that many inmates wind up back in jail after they are released. He hopes this new program, which is longer and more educational than the model they have used in the past, will cut the return rate by 20 – 30 percent.

“It will be a huge undertaking,” Cunningham said. “But I think we’re prepared and confident that it will work.”

Cunning said he hopes the center will be up and running later this week.

jchev Drug Treatment & Diversion, NY Sullivan County, Substance Abuse

A pair of longstanding academic programs for young inmates on Rikers Island, including one dating to the Koch administration that was a first for a United States correctional facility, are being merged into a single system, city officials said. The move is aimed in large part at recalling the roots of the policy’s educational mission from the mid-1980s: It will reintegrate curriculums so that students can stay on track to recover credits, take Regents exams and earn high school diplomas or equivalency diplomas in their time behind bars. News from the New York Times.

As a practical matter, blending the two programs — known as the Horizon and Island Academies — will also involve consolidating an array of disparate classroom spaces at the jail, in part to give more students greater access to core schooling materials, like computers, officials said.

Currently, many of the 13 locations around the nine jails on Rikers Island where teachers are assigned are “under capacity,” said Timothy F. Lisante, the deputy superintendent of District 79, who said that consolidating would also cut costs.

Under the plans, the merger will be completed in time for the start of the new academic season in September. Summer classes will not be affected.

Michael Mendel, the secretary of the United Federation of Teachers, the union representing teachers, said he was loath to criticize the substance of the policy changes and voiced support for any effort by the city’s Department of Education to improve the program.

But the process was flawed, he said.

In particular, he said the timing of the announcement, with the news circulating at the close of the school year, was jarring to many educators who did not see it coming.

The teachers, who are part of the staff of roughly 200 serving both schools, were notified of the planned merger last Monday, after administrators were told the preceding weekend, Mr. Mendel said.

“It is irresponsible to do this the last day of school,” Mr. Mendel said. “They did not wake up and decide these programs were no good in June.”

Consequently, he said, teachers will have to reapply for their positions on Rikers Island, and there will be a hectic time over the summer to prepare for the new system.

Also, the consolidated classroom space and academic curriculum will require a smaller staff, so some teachers will have to move to other schools within the district, officials said. While Mr. Lisante said there would be an effort to staff the new programs with as many current educators as possible, he said, “We want the best and brightest teachers.”

Mr. Lisante defended the timing of the announcement, saying it was meant to minimize distractions and to “keep the focus on the students and use the summer to plan the redesign.”

Dora B. Schriro, the commissioner of the Department of Correction, said a better educated population in the jail contributes to the “day-to-day safety and security of the correctional system.”

While head of corrections in Arizona, she said, she found higher educational achievement linked to less recidivism.

She said the new city program would offer a “richer and more sophisticated set” of academic offerings. Longer school days are being contemplated, she said.

When Island Academy opened in 1986, it was in response to parents who did not want jail to derail the high school education of children sent there, Mr. Lisante said. That program serves students 16 to 19. The Horizon Academy was set up for 19-to-21-year-olds, with an emphasis on equivalency diplomas.

Under one combined program, all students, regardless of age, will have more seamless experiences during usually brief incarcerations, he said. Credits will be earned in a more concentrated period, he said. And admissions will be more tightly controlled, to assess individual inmates’ language, academic and other needs.

Jessica Scaperotti, a spokeswoman for the Bloomberg administration, hailed the collaboration by officials from the city’s education and correction departments to revamp a school system she characterized as not working properly.

“What the city was looking to do was overhaul the system so that we could bring together the expertise of educators, youth development specialists and correction professionals so they can better support the distinctive academic and social needs of students that are incarcerated,” Ms. Scaperroti said.

jchev Inmate Education, Juvenile Justice, New York

They wore white jackets, hovered anxiously over the stove, and couldn’t wait to see the judges’ reactions as they sampled the food. An episode of “Top Chef?” Nope, the first-ever cooking competition at Rikers Island, where a dozen incarcerated women whipped up appetizers, main courses and desserts. News, with video, available from the New York Daily News.

The chefs-in-training are among the 60 inmates who take culinary arts classes at the correctional facility, even though it will be a long time before they can apply to be a professional sous chef or pastry chef in a restaurant.

The two teams, one of younger inmates and the other of older inmates, prepared their food for French Culinary Institute former dean Alain Sailhac and three other judges.

The younger women’s team won in the appetizer category for the corn chowder and the older women took top honors for their dessert: apple strudel with homemade whipped cream. There was a tie for the main courses, said Department of Correction spokesman Stephen Morello. Judges couldn’t decide between the oven-barbecued salmon and the sautéed tilapia with lemon caper sauce.

Rikers’ two city-run schools include the Island Academy, with students between 16 and 18, and the Horizon Academy, which enrolls slightly older students. All the teenage inmates must take the culinary arts course, plus basic courses like math and English.

Besides Sailhac, Tuesday’s judges included Melba Wilson, the owner/operator of Melba’s Restaurant in Harlem and Melba’s Catering; Danny Prince, co-author of the “Firehouse Cookbook,” and a retired NYC firefighter and Department of Corrections chief Larry Davis.

Some of the budding chefs hope to pursue restaurant careers, Morello said. In the meantime, they feel a sense of accomplishment. “It let them experience the gratification that comes from doing something right and from feeding people,” Morello said.

jchev Inmate Programs, New York

Gov. David Paterson’s juvenile justice task force was on the mark when it advised him to stop sending low-risk young offenders to faraway lockups and place more of them in lower-cost community-based programs. Editorial in The New York Times.

These programs closely monitor and mentor troubled children with curfew checks, reviews of their school performance, and after-school activities. They have been shown to get low-risk young offenders back on track without institutionalizing them. Instead of taking that advice, the governor’s budget virtually guts an already underfinanced effort intended to encourage localities to develop high-quality alternatives to detention programs.

Senator Velmanette Montgomery, Democrat of Brooklyn, is trying to fix that. She has introduced a bill that would require the state to begin reimbursing localities that keep children in effective local programs.

The current system encourages officials to do exactly the wrong thing. For example, the state reimburses localities for about 50 percent of the cost of operating centers for pretrial detention. And it pays 50 percent of the cost (which can go as high as $200,000 per child per year) for incarcerating children sent to far-flung juvenile facilities. The state gives localities nothing when they place children in community-based programs that can cost as little as $5,000 per year.

The Montgomery bill realigns state priorities. In addition to preserving about $12 million to encourage more community-based programs, it would require the state to provide a 65 percent reimbursement for community-based, alternative-to-detention programs. This proposal has already been included in the Senate budget. The Assembly should embrace it and so should Governor Paterson. It makes good sense for the children and for New York’s taxpayers.

jchev Juvenile Justice, New York

A black and white digital image of the human body first appears on a computer monitor. It is quickly followed by a number of blue squares which indicate hidden objects. Story, with video, from WNYT.

Nate Maloney with ELSAG North America says that by looking for the heat coming off your body and the contrast of that hidden object, these body imaging units can pick up practically anything.

“We’re able to read any kind of object, whether its metal, fabric, powder, liquid because its contrasting that object with energy coming off the body,” he explained.

As part of a pilot program, the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office has been using the portable body imaging system for the past month. Maloney adds it come in handy, especially on visitation days at the jail.

“Day one, we actually had someone in line. We announced we were going to do the screening, they got out of line, put the object in the locker, sheriff came through with the drug dog, sniffed the drugs and the visit turned into more than just a little visit,” Maloney said.

Right now the Orlando-based company says it has 600 of these body imaging machines in use around the world, including places like airports, courthouses, and correctional facilities. Rensselaer County Undersheriff Patrick Russo says the portable machine, which costs $125,000, has a lot of pluses.

“I think hopefully at some time, it may go out to state bid, maybe the county could purchase it on a grant for a multi-agency purpose because one of the selling points is its portable and could be moved from venue to venue,” he said.

jchev Biometrics, NY Rensselaer County

With his swollen legs and a throaty rasp that whistles like a kettle through his broken teeth, Eddie Jones is an unlikely man to make history. News reported in the NY Times.

He is 89 and dying, a former loan shark who, at 69, shot another man dead on a Harlem street in what he claimed was self-defense. Now he is serving a sentence of 25 years to life in a prison hospital bed in this upstate town, riddled with heart disease and probably cancer, though his doctors are not certain about the cancer because Mr. Jones has refused most every medical test.

Mr. Jones’s original parole date was in 2015, but he stands to go free in the coming weeks under a new state law that makes chronically as well as terminally ill inmates eligible for early release. Inmates must be deemed physically or cognitively unable to present a threat to society.

The law, passed with the state budget last April, expanded the eligibility list to add those convicted of violent crimes including second-degree murder (like Mr. Jones), first-degree manslaughter and sex offenses, so long as the ailing inmates have served half of their time.

But despite fanfare within the corrections industry about the humanitarian and financial benefits of compassionate release — New York is one of a dozen states that have expanded, enacted or streamlined programs over the past two years — the policy shift has had minimal effect. Experts attribute this to the fear that no matter how sick, freed inmates might commit further crimes, as well as to the difficulty of placing dying criminals in nursing homes.

“The problem is, when we start trying to put people out, there are others in the community who are sure we’re trying to make more crime in the community,” said Dr. Lester Wright, chief medical officer for the New York State Department of Correctional Services. “We’re also competing for beds. Some people think my patients aren’t as valuable as other people in society.”

The embrace of compassionate release comes as the nation’s prison population is at a historic high — 1.6 million people as of 2008, according to the Justice Department — compounded by a surge in aging and sick inmates serving longer sentences. In 2008, there were 74,100 inmates ages 55 and older, a 79 percent increase from 1999. New York estimates the cost of caring for a gravely ill inmate at $150,809 a year. Once released, they are usually cared for by family members or placed in nursing homes or hospices, their expenses largely covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

But while the new state guidelines led to a surge in applications for medical parole — 202 inmates last year, compared with 66 in 2008 — they have hardly changed the outcome. Mr. Jones would, in fact, be the first freed under the new guidelines (the seven inmates released last year were eligible under the old rules).

The National Conference of State Legislatures said 39 states had compassionate release programs, but many of them also have minimal impact.

In California, where federal judges ordered the state to cut the prison population by 40,000, three people were granted compassionate release last year. In Alabama, where prisons are at double their capacity, four sick inmates were let out on compassionate release in fiscal 2009; 35 other prisoners in Alabama died while their applications were being reviewed.

Since New York adopted medical parole in 1992, at the height of the AIDS crisis, 364 people have been released.

“Medical parole was designed to consider the humanitarian needs of inmates as well as the safety of the community,” said Brian Fischer, commissioner of the State Department of Correctional Services. “Anybody can tell us they want medical parole, but the numbers who qualify are going to be a lot smaller than the ones who want it.”

Advocates for prisoners argue that fear of recidivism is unreasonable, especially for convicts close to death. Corrections officials said during the 18 years the program in New York has been in effect, three medically paroled inmates have ended up back in prison, none for violent crimes.

“Politicians and high-level officials and bureaucrats don’t want to be accused of being soft on crime, even if the prisoners are terminally ill and there’s no possible risk to public safety,” said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, a prison advocacy group.

Indeed, the release last summer in Scotland of an ill Libyan man convicted in the bombing of an airplane over Lockerbie created an international furor. Last fall, anger over New York’s new law erupted when Gregory Felder, who was convicted of murdering a Radio Shack employee on Long Island in 2004 and is now gravely ill, was considered for parole. (He was turned down; and a legislative loophole that had made him eligible despite having not yet served half of his sentence was subsequently closed.)

Other cases have unfolded far from the public glare. Cinderella Marrett, 74, who was caught at Kennedy International Airport in 2007 smuggling cocaine in her girdle — to offset medical expenses, her daughter said — was released in May 2009. Stricken with cancer, she is living in a nursing home in the Bronx.

Since 2005, at least 16 New York inmates have died while waiting for the parole board to decide their fate.

Timothy McGowan, a once-burly high school dropout from Deer Park, N.Y., spent half of his 50 years behind bars for 11 felony convictions, including robbery and second-degree manslaughter. By the time he was thrown back in prison for a parole violation in April 2009, cancer was consuming his lungs, whittling away his body and creeping up his brain stem.

In July, when Mr. McGowan could barely walk, his prison doctors applied on his behalf for compassionate release; his final wish was to have one last cup of tea with his mother in their Long Island home. Instead, he died at Fishkill Correctional Facility on Nov. 7, two days before the parole board was to hear his case.

Among the prisoners in New York newly eligible but denied release last year was Sergio Black, 38, a former Marine who said he had fought in the first Gulf War.

Mr. Black was convicted in 2005 of raping his former companion, which he denied. In 2006, his spinal cord was injured in a prison basketball game. Now a quadriplegic at the Walsh Regional Medical Unit of the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, N.Y., Mr. Black is a “poster boy for medical parole,” according to his lawyer, Stephen Dratch, because it would be difficult for him to commit another physical crime. But the parole board rejected his application, saying Mr. Brown “exhibited little or no insight or remorse for the victim.”

Mr. Jones, the near-nonagenarian and former loan shark known by his hospice aides as the Harlem Knight, was supposed to go before the parole board in December, but the hearing was pushed back twice because the court had not yet sent a transcript from his sentencing. His next scheduled parole date is next month, and he remains bedridden in the hospice at Coxsackie Correctional Facility upstate.

A long-lost niece, Marcy Jones, who lives in Washington, has poured her heart into pushing corrections officials and the governor’s office to grant the parole. She is optimistic enough that she has bought her uncle a new wardrobe and has set up a battery of medical appointments for him.

“Once I get him out, I’m going to advocate for others,” Ms. Jones said. “There are other Uncle Eddies out there.”

jchev Early Release, New York

City and county officials in St. Lawrence County have launched an online petition drive to save Ogdensburg Correctional Facility. They hope to replicate the success of the online petition that convinced Governor Paterson to halt his initiative for new license plates. News reported by Newport Television.

The petition, at www.SaveOurPrison.com, is organized by Ogdensburg Mayor Bill Nelson and County Clerk Patty Ritchie with support from Sheriff Kevin Wells and other local leaders.

Governor Paterson’s proposed budget calls for closing Ogdensburg Correctional by April, 2011, eliminating its 287 jobs.

“If there’s one thing we showed with the earlier license plate petition, it’s that Albany can be forced to back down when the public stands united against a bad decision,” Ritchie said in a statement. “Once again, they have gone too far, threatening the livelihoods of families and pulling the run from beneath our entire county.”

Mayor Nelson also announced a task force to preserve the prison, chaired by Chuck Kelly, General Manager of St. Lawrence County Newspapers.

Ogdensburg Councilor Nicholas Vaugh says he has signed the online petition. “The fight to protect Ogdensburg correction jobs is a fight for the very future of our city and the North Country,” Vaugh said in a statement. “I urge all citizens across the North Country to join me, sign the petition, make your voice heard.”

jchev Jail and Prison Construction, NY St. Lawrence County

Gladys Carrión, New York’s reform-minded commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, has been calling on the state to close many of its remote, prison-style juvenile facilities and shift resources and children to therapeutic programs located in their communities. Her efforts have met fierce and predictably self-interested resistance from the unions representing workers in juvenile prisons and their allies in Albany. Editorial in the New York Times.

A recent series of damning reports have underscored the flaws in New York’s juvenile justice system and the urgent need to shut down these facilities. The governor and the State Legislature need to pay attention.

A report by a task force appointed by Gov. David Paterson describes a failing system that damages young people, fails to curb recidivism and eats up millions of tax dollars. Children should be confined only when they present a clear threat to public safety. But the most recent statistics show that 53 percent of the youths admitted to New York’s institutional facilities were placed there for minor nonviolent infractions.

The report also says that judges often send children to these facilities because local communities are unable to help them with mental problems or family issues. But once they are locked up, these young people rarely get the psychiatric care or special education they need because the institutions lack trained staff.

A report from the Justice Department, which has threatened to sue the state, documents the use of excessive and injury-causing force against children in juvenile facilities, often for minor offenses such as laughing too loudly or refusing to get dressed. And last week, the Legal Aid Society of New York City filed a class-action suit on behalf of youths in confinement, arguing that conditions in the system violate their constitutional rights.

Not surprisingly, these institutions do a terrible job of rehabilitation. According to a study of children released from custody between 1991 and 1995, 89 percent of the boys and 81 percent of the girls were eventually rearrested. New York’s facilities are so disastrous and inhumane that state officials recently asked the courts to refrain from sending children to them, except in cases in which they presented a clear danger to the public.

Mr. Paterson’s task force was rightly impressed with Missouri’s juvenile justice system. It has adopted smaller regional facilities that focus on rehabilitation and house troubled youths as close to home as possible in order to involve parents and community groups in the therapeutic process. Missouri also has cut recidivisim rates by smoothing re-entry and helping young people with drug treatment, education or job placement.

New York clearly needs to follow Ms. Carrión’s advice and adopt a Missouri-style system. That means the Legislature will finally have to put the needs of the state’s children ahead of the politically powerful unions and upstate lawmakers who want to preserve jobs — and the disastrous status quo — at all costs.

jchev Juvenile Justice, New York

Sister Amy Amadeus McKenna stood outside of St. Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church greeting parishioners as they arrived for Sunday morning Mass. But before the last arrived, she was northbound on the Saw Mill River Parkway, headed for another service held about an hour away at the women’s maximum security prison in Bedford Hills, N.Y. Story from the Riverdale Press.

Accompanied by church parishioners Helen Jansson and Pat O’Malley, Sister Amy, as she’s known, made her way through a metal detector and several checkpoints. They arrived at the prison chapel a few moments before about 30 prison “residents” — as the sister prefers to call them — sat down for a service smaller and less ornate than St. Gabe’s.

The visit was part of St. Gabriel’s prison ministry, a program formed in 2002 by the church’s then-pastor, Msgr. Thomas Kelly. After about a year of research to pick a facility, the church settled on Bedford Hills, the state’s only maximum security prison for women. Since then, about 15 members of the congregation have taken turns attending the prison’s Sunday services. They also make additional monthly visits to spend time talking with the inmates.

“I didn’t think of people in prison as worth visiting,” said Ms. Jansson, one of the three who made the trip, adding that being in the program has changed that view. The smiles and warm greetings exchanged between the free and imprisoned were easy evidence of the bonds that have been made.

“Our hope, our goal is to … be a source of encouragement, a source of support,” Sister Amy said, when asked how she thought the prisoners benefited from the visits. “[To know] that there are people outside the prison who really care about them. Who give of their time and their person to be with them, to share two or three hours on a Sunday.”

jchev Inmate Programs, NY New York City, Religious Issues

The first inmates moved Tuesday into a new state prison unit for disruptive mentally ill prisoners that was created in response to a lawsuit filed by an advocacy group in 2002. News reported by the Adirondack Daily Enterprise.

The 100-bed Residential Mental Health Unit at Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County was designed by the state corrections and mental health agencies under the terms of a 2007 settlement with Disability Advocates.

The nonprofit group sued to improve treatment of mentally ill prisoners and to stop putting inmates with serious mental illness and disciplinary issues in solitary confinement.

Inmates in the new unit will receive more mental health care, therapeutic programming and exercise.

Of the 58,690 inmates in New York state prisons, 7,844 are diagnosed with mental illness, including 2,359 with serious mental illness, said Erik Kriss, spokesman for the Department of Correctional Services.

Inmates designated as seriously mentally ill are those with schizophrenia, delusional disorder, psychotic disorder, major depression and bipolar disorder. The designation also includes suicidal inmates and those driven by psychosis or depression to harm themselves.

About 200 of those with serious mental illness have confinement sanctions for disciplinary violations, Kriss said. Traditionally, such inmates are moved to an S-block, a special housing unit with lockdown cells that reduce the need for security personnel.

The Disability Advocates lawsuit claimed that prisoners with mental illness throughout New York did not get adequate mental health treatment, and as a result, many of them were being punished with long sentences of solitary confinement, severe restrictions on property and visits, and no access to out-of-cell programming.

The lawsuit said isolation and idleness led to severe psychiatric deterioration in these isolation units, including acts of self-mutilation and even suicide.

The new mental health unit at Marcy has about 100 corrections employees and 26 Office of Mental Health employees, compared with 38 employees when it was an S-block, Kriss said.

Kriss said inmates in the new unit have constant access to both prison and mental health staff. Each inmate has at least four hours daily of programming and therapy.

”No other prison system to our knowledge affords the inmate patients the amount of time of out-of-cell programming and therapy, including group therapy and group interaction, as the RMHU,” Kriss said.

jchev Mental Health Issues, New York

The Dutchess County Office of Probation and Community Corrections has expanded its Juvenile Pre-Trial Services with Curfew Monitoring, a program where probation officers perform home visits at random for juvenile offenders to ensure they are where they are supposed to be. Reported by the Mid-Hudson News.

The program helps prevent a juvenile offender from violating the terms of probation and potentially winding up in juvenile detention, said county spokeswoman Betsy Brockway.

“Research tells us two things: one, you get better outcomes for young people if they don’t go off to detention, and two,  there is a great cost for the local taxpayers to pay for those detention beds without good outcomes,” she said. “The more likely a young person is involved in the juvenile criminal justice system, the more likely they will end up in the adult system.”

The Curfew Monitoring program can be court mandated, or it can be requested by parents or probation officers if they believe the youth is at risk for violating the terms of their probation.

The program is funded through a $70,000 state grant, which will run for one year and start in January. Brockway said the program will save local taxpayers $200,000.

jchev Community Corrections, Juvenile Justice, NY Dutchess County

A possible $10 million savings in the cost of building a new Sullivan County jail was one outcome of a meeting, earlier this week, in Albany, between County Manager David Fanslau and representatives from the Sheriff Department on the one side, and officials of the state Commission of Correction. Story from the Mid Hudson News.

The county has been under pressure to replace the dilapidated century-old jail in Monticello with a new facility, possibly housing up to 500 inmates.  That was scaled back, earlier, to a roughly 250 to 300-inmate jail, at a cost of $80 million.  Now, state officials are indicating they would accept a smaller numb er.

“Getting them to bring that down to 256 is a significant milestone,” said Fanslau, who concedes, however, the county is hard-pressed, right now, to afford even a bargain-basement jail.

Even some county legislators, after hearing the results of Fanslau’s meeting with the CoC, agreed no jail is ‘affordable’ at this point.

“The state needs to realize that we can’t afford this,” said Republican legislator Alan Sorensen, noting that Sullivan is among the top three counties in the state in debt per capita. “I don’t see how Sullivan County can begin to afford this.”

Sorensen warned of dire consequences, if the state does not back up its mandates with money.

“They’re forcing us into a position where we’re going to have to start exploring bankruptcy.”

Maybe a little too dire for Fanslau, who notes the county is still in the black, barely, with a positive fund balance.

“That being said, it becomes a scenario where debt service on a multi-million dollar project is going to have to be funded, in this particular circumstance, through a property tax levy, unless there’s other consideration for other new programs of revenue.”

jchev Economic Issues, Jail and Prison Construction, NY Sullivan County

From a feature article in the New York Times:

Allen Jacobs lived hard for his 50 years, and when his liver finally shut down he faced the kind of death he did not want. On a recent afternoon Mr. Jacobs lay in a hospital bed staring blankly at the ceiling, his eyes sunk in his skull, his skin lusterless. A volunteer hospice worker, Wensley Roberts, ran a wet sponge over Mr. Jacobs’s dry lips, encouraging him to drink.   “Come on, Mr. Jacobs,” he said.

Mr. Roberts is one of a dozen inmates at the Coxsackie Correctional Facility who volunteer to sit with fellow prisoners in the last six months of their lives. More than 3,000 prisoners a year die of natural causes in correctional facilities.  Mr. Roberts recalled a day when Mr. Jacobs, then more coherent, had started crying. Mr. Roberts held his patient and tried to console him. Then their experience took a turn unique to their setting, the medical ward of a maximum security prison. Mr. Roberts said he told Mr. Jacobs to “man up.” Mr. Jacobs, serving two to four years for passing forged checks, cursed at him, telling him, “‘I don’t want to die in jail. Do you want to die in jail?’  “I said no,” said Mr. Roberts, who is serving eight years for robbery. “He said, ‘Then stop telling me to man up,’ and he started crying. And then he said that I’m his family.”

American prisons are home to a growing geriatric population, with one-third of all inmates expected to be over 50 by next year. As courts have handed down longer sentences and tightened parole, about 75 prisons have started hospice programs, half of them using inmate volunteers, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. Susan Atkins, a follower of Charles Manson, died last month in hospice at the Central California Women’s Facility at Chowchilla after being denied compassionate release.

Joan Smith, deputy superintendent of health services at the Coxsackie prison, said the hospice program here initially met with resistance from prison guards. “They were very resentful about people in prison for horrendous crimes getting better medical care than their families,” including round-the-clock companionship in their final days, Ms. Smith said.  The guards have come to accept the program, she said. But still there are challenges unique to the prison setting. Some dying patients, for example, divert their pain medication to their volunteer aides or other patients, who use it or sell it, said Kathleen Allan, the director of nursing. She added that patients can be made victims easily, “and this is a predatory system.”   But she said the inmate volunteers bond with the patients in a way that staff members cannot, taking on “the touchy-feely thing” that may be inappropriate between inmates and prison workers.

At Coxsackie, 130 miles north of New York City, administrators started the hospice program in 1996 in response to the AIDS epidemic using an outside hospice agency, then changed to inmate volunteers in 2001. The change saved money and was well-received by the patients.   Perhaps more significant, said William Lape, the superintendent, was the effect the program had on the volunteers. “I think it’s turned their life around,” Mr. Lape said.

John Henson, 30, was one of the first volunteers. When he was 18, Mr. Henson broke into the home of a former employer and, in the course of a robbery, beat the man to death with a baseball bat. When he entered prison, with a sentence of 25 years to life, he said, “I thought my life was over.” At Coxsackie he met the Rev. J. Edward Lewis, who persuaded him to volunteer in 2001. “You go in thinking that you’re going to help somebody,” Mr. Lewis said, “and every time they end up helping you.”

Before hospice, Mr. Henson said he had given little thought to the consequences of his crime. Then he found himself locked in a hospital room with another inmate, holding the man’s hand as his breathing slowed toward a stop. Like many men in prison, the dying man had alienated his family members, who rejected his efforts to renew contact. In the end, he had only Mr. Henson for companionship. When the prison nurse declared the man dead, Mr. Henson broke down in tears. “They just came out,” he said. “I don’t even know why I was crying. Partly because of him, partly because of things that died within me at the same time.”   Mr. Henson, dressed in prison greens and with his blond hair buzzed short, spoke directly and without hesitation. “I was just thinking about why I’m in here and the person’s life that I took,” he said. “And sitting with this person for the first time and actually seeing death firsthand, being right there, my hand in his hand, watching him take his last breath, just caused me to say, ‘Wow, who the hell are you? Who were you to do this to somebody else?’ ”

Ms. Allan, the nursing director at Coxsackie, said that with a number of inmate volunteers, “You can identify in each of these guys something inside them driving them to do this. It’s a desire to redeem themselves, so even when it gets hard they’re able to plow through it. “  She added, “I think Mr. Henson made me a better mother.”

Benny Lee, 38, has spent half his life in prison for manslaughter, and for most of that time, he said, “the only thing I regretted was getting caught.” Four months ago he began as a hospice volunteer, feeling he needed a change. “I’m trying to offer some payback,” he said.   On a recent afternoon, Mr. Lee was scheduled to sit with Eddie Jones, 89, who was dying from multiple causes. Mr. Jones, who was convicted of murder at age 70, said, “I can talk with them better than staff members, because staff members have their minds made up about how things should be.”    Mr. Lee said he does not know how Mr. Jones’s death will affect him. “I’m hoping it will have an effect, period,” he said. “Growing up and in prison, I put up walls. But I have to be more emotionally receptive to these guys. This is going against everything I’ve tried to do. But I realize it’s a change I have to make.”

Mr. Lee said hospice was forcing him to learn to trust people. “It’s helping me mature,” he said. “My views of life and death are changing. I was unsympathetic when it comes to death. I’ve had friends die, and I was callous about it. Now I can’t do that. I’ve come to identify with these guys, not because we’re inmates, but because we’re human beings. What they’re going through, I’ll go through.”

jakking Aging Population, Inmate Health Care, New York

A prison may not seem like the most obvious place for self-actualization, with its imposing brick walls and barbed-wire fences. But a program at Fishkill Correctional Facility is trying to help mentally ill inmates learn more about their conditions.  Reported in the Auburn Citizen.

The hope is that the program will help inmates cope better in prison and after release, potentially reducing discipline problems and recidivism.  It’s the first effort of its kind for general-population inmates in the state, and organizers say the results will fuel a pioneering study …

Mentally ill inmates can have a difficult time in the regimented, controlled atmosphere of a prison, where a disciplinary infraction can be something as simple as not responding quickly enough to a direct order, said Jack Beck, director of the Prison Visiting Project for the Correctional Association of New York, a prisoner advocacy organization.  “You have this very intense regulation for people who have a very hard time coping,” he said. “These people find it very hard to survive in that environment.”   The program at the Fishkill prison in Beacon, about 70 miles north of New York City, encourages inmates to take active roles in managing their mental health and treatment. They are taught to identify stressors, coping tools and how medication can help. Participants meet in small groups for two hours a week in the 20-week course …

The Center for Urban Community Services, an advocacy group for the homeless and the poor, got a grant from the Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation to run the program for three years. The program, known as “wellness self-management,” soon will include the Sing Sing and Bedford Hill prisons in Westchester County.  “What wellness self-management is intended to do is to help people understand and manage their personal problem, their mental health,” said Tony Hannigan, executive director of CUCS. “Most importantly, it gives them hope and the belief that they can recover.”  Hannigan said data from 140 program participants will be compared to a control group of other inmates to gauge the program’s effects. It’s the first study of its kind in the United States.

About 15 percent of New York’s prison population — representing about 8,000 inmates — is being treated for some kind of mental illness, state officials said.  New York’s prison system has shifted its approach to inmates with mental illness in recent years, following the settlement of a lawsuit, said Howard Holanchock, assistant mental health commissioner for the state Department of Correctional Services.  “Before, maybe we were more about care, custody and control,” he said, but now, “it’s understood that we’re trying to have an impact on the population who come into our system.”

The state’s treatment of mentally ill inmates has improved but still needs work, Beck said. He said the Fishkill program had encouraging potential.  “This population, more than others, needs that sense of how they can take responsibility for their lives,” he said.  But he said the prison system’s culture needs to shift to make sure whatever gains inmates make aren’t negated in day-to-day life.  For the program to have real impact, “it has to be supported” in the prison staff’s dealings with mentally ill inmates, Beck said.  “You can’t do it in the classroom, then when they get out of the classroom, disempower them every other way,” he said.

jakking Mental Health Issues, New York

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has appointed Dr. Dora B. Schriro as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction.

Dr. Schriro served as Director of the Office of Detention Policy and Planning for the Department of Homeland Security, where she led an overhaul of the nation’s immigration detention system. Previously, she served six years as Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections; led the Missouri Department of Corrections as Director from 1993 to 2001, and served as the City of St. Louis Warden and then Commissioner of Corrections from 2001 to 2003. In both states, she was the first woman to lead the departments and is the only female in the country to head two State correctional systems. Dr. Schriro, who was born on Staten Island, served in the Koch Administration from 1984 to 1989, first as Assistant to the Deputy Director in the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and then as Assistant Commissioner at the City Department of Correction. Dr. Schriro succeeds Martin F. Horn, who resigned the post in July. The Mayor announced the appointment in the Blue Room of City Hall.

“Dr. Schriro brings a distinctive, dynamic style and innovative thinking back home to New York City,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Dr. Schriro’s executive experience in overseeing detention systems in the states of Missouri and Arizona make her uniquely qualified to carry on the important work here in New York City, with a clear focus on reducing violence, ensuring inmate and staff safety, while also preparing inmates to transition back into their communities and lives after release.”

“It is an honor to join this Administration in their continuing pursuit of excellence and accountability,” said Commissioner Schriro. “I am grateful to Mayor Bloomberg for this opportunity, and I look forward to the work ahead at the New York City Department of Correction. I expect it will be challenging, important and rewarding work, and am confident we will continue to contribute in new and meaningful ways to the City’s safety and well being.”

As Special Advisor to the Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Detention and Removal, Dr. Schriro focused on how to manage and reduce the significant growth in immigration detention over the last five years. Throughout her 30-year career, she has been involved in sentencing reform, supporting victims and innovative re-entry efforts.  She served for six years as Vice Chair of Missouri’s Sentencing Commission and was a founding member of the Vera Institute of Justice’s State and Local Sentencing Program. Dr. Schriro has co-led sentencing seminars at St. Louis University and Arizona State University Schools of Law, spearheaded passage of the country’s first restorative justice legislation and also has established offices of crime victims’ services in the State correctional systems in Missouri and Arizona.

Dr. Schriro served for nine months in 1984 as Assistant to the Deputy Director in the Office of the Criminal Justice where she supervised the Program Monitoring and Evaluation Unit for state and federally-funded projects, and administered grants associated with these programs. In 1985, she was appointed by Mayor Koch to the New York City Department of Correction as Assistant Commissioner where, through 1989, she was responsible for delivery of inmate educational programs, the Grants Office, Ministerial and Volunteer Services, Law Libraries, Recreation and Work Release, and Special Events.

Dr. Schriro, who will begin work on September 21, earned a law degree from St. Louis University, a doctorate from Columbia University, a Master of Science degree from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, and a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude from Northeastern University.  She has taught law, criminal justice, psychology and education courses at the graduate level throughout her career.  Published in the area of re-entry, detention, and supervision, Dr. Schriro has also received accolades for her work over the years.  In 1999, as Director of the Missouri Department of Corrections, she received the Michael Francke Award, recognizing her as the top correctional administrator in the United States; the National Governors Association Distinguished Service to State Government Award in 2006; and in 2008, her work in Arizona resulted in the Innovations in American Government Award for the comprehensive pre-release strategy, Getting Ready.

jakking NY New York City

The following opinion piece by Jeanne Woodward and Matt Powers was published in the Sacramento Bee this morning:

Although the recent budget deal reached in Sacramento included a $1.2 billion cut to corrections, legislators haven’t yet faced the hard part: determining how exactly those cuts will be made. Democrats have promised to hammer out such a plan later this month. Now is the time to put the old maxims and myths aside and implement the policy changes needed to protect Californians and the fiscal health of the state.

Republicans say that they cannot approve cuts to prison spending that include the early release of inmates, saying this would be unfair and hurtful to victims. We do not doubt the sincerity of such concerns, but the truth is that our current criminal justice practices in California are costly and ineffective, and do not serve public safety as they should. Nor have legislators adequately addressed the trade-offs and how these negatively affect public safety. Take as an example the recent cuts to education, when we know that the more education young people receive, the less likely they are to be involved in crime, victimization and incarceration.

As the debate to cut prison spending heats up this month, the danger is that politics as usual will lead Sacramento to ignore this bigger-picture understanding of public safety. Criminal justice should stop being painted as law enforcement and conservatives on one side and liberals and correctional researchers on the other. There is nothing further from the truth. We are all interested in public safety. No one wants to be victimized by crime, and law enforcement officials and conservatives all over this state understand that we cannot arrest or incarcerate our way out of this problem. It is too costly and ineffective.

If we are truly interested in public safety, we must understand the great myth. It is a myth that the more people you incarcerate, the safer your communities are. As crime rates have fallen all across the country, study after study reveals that states that have implemented treatment and alternatives to incarceration have experienced greater reductions in crime and costs than states that have simply put more people behind bars for longer.

The state of New York, for example, experienced an 8 percent decrease in its prison population in 1995-2005 by boosting reliance on more cost-effective alternatives to incarceration, including drug treatment and community-based services. At the same time, the state recorded a large decrease in all crime categories, ranging from 43 percent for property crimes to a 47 percent drop in the homicide rate.

California has also had a reduction in crime rates – from 32 percent for property crimes to a 38 percent drop in the homicide rate in the same time period – but that drop has been accompanied by a whopping 28 percent jump in the prison population. Meanwhile, despite our reliance on prisons and incarceration as a response to crime, California continues to have the highest recidivism rate in the nation. California is now an example of what not to do.

A recent Northwestern Law study, “Controlling Corrections Costs in Illinois,” advises that, in deciding how to resolve corrections’ impact on the budget crisis, “the choice lies not between ‘left’ or ‘right’ but between East or West.” The author of this study urges Illinois to follow New York, not California, in developing criminal justice policy.

Fiscally responsible public safety, then, is not a liberal (left) issue, nor a conservative (right) one. It is not a Republican issue nor a Democrat one. It is a question of efficacy.

We must have criminal justice policies that hold people accountable for change. We must recognize that often the most effective criminal justice policy is treatment, community programs and community supervision. We must move our funding from prisons to community programs for non-serious, nonviolent offenders. This approach is cheaper and more effective in reducing victimization in our communities.

Violent offenders should go to state prison. These offenders must be held accountable to participate in treatment and refrain from gang activity before they are released. Now violent offenders are released when their time is finished even if they have continued criminal behavior inside our prisons.

We should not fear the release of 27,000 carefully selected, ill and petty offenders as a way of reducing the budget. We should fear continuing the broken, expensive correctional practices of today. California must stop being an example of what not to do. We should again be a state that invests in our children through education – not funding a prison system that gives us little in return.

If our legislators really care about crime victims, then we must follow the example of New York. Sacramento must establish policies that reflect a concern for Californians and public safety. The future of this state depends on it. Let us invest in our communities and see a return by reducing incarceration, crime and the recidivism rates through a criminal justice strategy that works.

Jeanne Woodford is the former director of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and former warden at San Quentin; Matt Powers is a retired deputy chief of the Sacramento Police Department.

jakking California, Corrections History, Corrections Reform, Early Release, Economic Issues, Gangs (STGs), New York

States trying to fight recession by closing prisons are finding a Catch-22: what saves scarce money costs precious jobs.  Reported by USA Today.

New Hampshire, Tennessee and Kansas are among states that have closed prisons this year as they struggle to balance budgets. In 2008, states spent about $47 billion from general funds on corrections, four times as much as in 1988, according to the Pew Center on the States. Nearly 90% of corrections budgets were spent on prisons, as opposed to probation, parole or other programs.

States are closing prisons by moving inmates, reducing their numbers through increased use of electronic monitoring, boosting support for offenders on probation and declining to return them to prison for every probation violation. That’s been controversial: “Inmates are getting released that wouldn’t have been released in good budget times,” says Tom Tylutki, president of the corrections officers’ union in Michigan, where eight facilities are scheduled to close. “We believe (public safety) is being compromised.”

Towns that have relied on prison jobs for years now find the local economy jeopardized.

• In Michigan, plans to close three prisons and five prison camps will cost 1,000 jobs, including in the tiny town of Standish, where a 19-year-old maximum security prison is the county’s largest employer. If Standish shuts down on Oct. 1 as scheduled, “it will be catastrophic, there is no doubt,” for the town of about 1,800 people, says the Rev. James Fitzpatrick, who organized a rally and prayer vigil to protest the prison’s closing.

• In Vermont, cost-cutting plans to close a 122-bed prison in St. Johnsbury, in the thinly populated northeastern corner of the state, were shelved by the Legislature over concerns about the loss of jobs. The state had planned to send prisoners out of state at a savings of $2 million.

• In New York, three prison camps and seven prison annexes, all located in the northern part of the state, are to close this year, saving the state an estimated $52 million over two years. About 550 jobs will be lost in a region that has long relied on prisons as a major employer. Camp Gabriels, in Franklin, N.Y., provided jobs for three of Mary Ellen Keith’s sons, a daughter and granddaughter until it closed this year. Inmates also cleared the rural town’s roadsides of brush, something the town can’t afford to do. “Up here, there’s absolutely no industry or anything,” says Keith, Franklin’s town supervisor. Without the prisons as employers, her family “probably would never have been able to remain in this area,” she says. “It’s a hardship.”

jakking Economic Issues, Kansas, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Tennessee, Vermont

The national recession is taking its toll on what had been one of the fastest-growing areas of state government spending: prisons. Even though state corrections budgets have ballooned in the past two decades amid a surging U.S. prison population, at least 23 states slashed funding for prisons this year, according to a new survey by the nonpartisan Vera Institute of Justice, a research organization based in New York. Thirty-three states responded to the survey, paid for by The Pew Charitable Trusts.  This story is from the Pew publication, Stateline.Org.

A $1 billion cost-cutting plan announced last week by Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) will translate into layoffs for more than a thousand state prison workers. In Oregon, a voter-approved plan to hand longer prison sentences to those who commit property crimes was delayed by state lawmakers who said they could not pay for it. Tennessee’s department of corrections has sought to save money by offering inmates less milk and meat in their daily meals. And in Kansas — which has received national attention in recent years for shifting resources from locking up prisoners to rehabilitating them — the state eliminated 85 percent of the slots in its substance-abuse treatment program for inmates, citing budget constraints.

Six states — Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and Washington — cut funding for corrections by more than 10 percent from last year’s levels, according to the study. Kansas saw the biggest recorded decrease, spending 22 percent less than it did last year.

Corrections is the fifth-largest area of state spending after Medicaid, secondary education, higher education and transportation. State spending on prisons has swelled as the nation’s jail and prison population has climbed to 2.3 million people, or about one in every 100 adults. But grim budget realities are forcing state lawmakers’ hand.

According to the Vera survey, many states are wringing savings from their correctional systems by trying to reduce the huge operational costs of running prisons — including by laying off workers, freezing their wages or cutting services to inmates. They also are exploring new ways to reduce recidivism and achieve long-term savings, in some cases easing sanctions on “technical violators” who break conditions of their parole and frequently are sent back to prison. Some states, including Colorado and Oregon, are allowing more prisoners to reduce their prison sentences through “earned-time credits” for good behavior and other forms of early release.

Some of the cost-cutting moves — using videoconferencing to avoid physically transporting inmates for court appearances, for example, and cutting back on inmates’ meal offerings — have targeted the basics of daily prison life and reaped relatively modest savings. But other changes will save tens of millions of dollars and have not come without political fights.

According to Stateline.org’s annual review of states’ legislative sessions, at least seven states — Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Washington — this year decided to close prisons. In some states, those plans touched off resistance among prison unions and in hard-hit communities anxious about losing even more jobs.   New York’s prison workers’ union earlier this year accused the administration of Gov. David Paterson (D) of creating “the most dangerous conditions ever” for correctional officers by closing 10 prisons and packing inmates into other facilities. In Michigan, which has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) is trying to avoid closing some prisons — and laying off prison guards — by accepting inmates from California’s teeming system. Some state officials have backed the idea of housing detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Early releases also have caused alarm, particularly in California, where a federal panel of three judges last week ordered the state to free more than 40,000 inmates — or about 27 percent of its prison population — within the next two years to ease dangerous overcrowding. Attorney General Jerry Brown (D), who is widely expected to run for governor next year, attacked the decision and could appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The early release of thousands of inmates also is being considered in Illinois.   While some criminal justice advocates contend that early releases and other cost-cutting moves could endanger public safety, others say states have not gone far enough in cutting inmate numbers.

Some advocates say state lawmakers have avoided what they see as the “elephant in the room” — tough sentencing policies that have put many low-level offenders behind bars for longer and been a major factor behind the explosive growth in the nation’s prison population since the 1970s, when many of the laws were passed. The federal panel that ruled on California’s prison overcrowding cited sentencing laws as a factor behind the Golden State’s huge prison population.  While New York this year revised its drug sentencing laws to give judges more discretion to keep offenders out of jail, other high-profile sentencing changes in the states have been far more limited in their scope. Texas, for instance, eliminated life without parole for juveniles, a penalty that currently affects only seven inmates. New Mexico abolished capital punishment, but had only two men on death row when the bill was signed into law in March.

Washington state’s legislative session this year was “completely upside down in terms of criminal justice policy,” said state Rep. Roger Goodman (D), vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Goodman said lawmakers cut funding for the wrong programs — such as housing and other transitional services that can help ex-inmates stay out of trouble — and refused to make substantial changes to the sentencing policies that he said have put too many nonviolent and drug-addicted people in prison in the first place. Goodman explained lawmakers’ distaste for making sentencing changes this way: “There aren’t enough political points to be gained by taking this issue on. There are political points to be gained by attacking it.”

While broad changes to criminal sentencing laws remain a tough sell issue in many state capitols, corrections officials are pushing other, less controversial changes to reduce prison populations. Many states have made sick or dying inmates eligible for early parole. Other states, including Florida and Tennessee, have invested more heavily in drug treatment courts and community supervision programs in the hopes of keeping offenders from returning to prison.  “Changing sentences is a very difficult thing to do. And so we’ve gone around it,” Pennsylvania Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said during an annual summit of state legislators in Philadelphia last month.

jakking Budgets, California, Colorado, Early Release, Economic Issues, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington

Martin F. Horn, who has served as New York City’s corrections commissioner longer than anyone else in more than 40 years, is resigning to become a teacher at one of the nation’s top criminal justice universities, according to Newsday.

Horn, who also is in charge of the probation department, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he made the decision to take the teaching job at John Jay College in January after his vacation with his wife was interrupted by work for “about the 100th time.”   “These are hard jobs,” said Horn, 61, who has run public institutions for more than 20 years and has been corrections commissioner since 2003. “It intrudes on your personal life. It is all-consuming” …

Just running the city’s Department of Correction alone is a recipe for burnout. The department has a $1 billion budget and about 10,000 employees, and the city’s daily 13,500-inmate population is larger than many state prison systems. The city’s Department of Probation has an $84 million budget and 1,228 employees…

Mayor Bloomberg said: “I’m disappointed he is leaving because I think he’s done a very good job.”  Bloomberg said Horn notified him “a while ago,” and his office has already begun searching for a replacement …

Horn’s last day is expected to be July 31, said Stephen J. Morello, a spokesman for the Department of Correction.

jakking NY New York City, New York