California has declared an emergency at five prisons due to an upsurge in maximum security level prisoners:

California has declared a "state of emergency" in five of its 32 prisons because of an unexpected influx of inmates who have committed serious crimes, officials said on Tuesday. The decision, effective April 1 but only made public in a Los Angeles Times article on Tuesday, allows prison officials to put three inmates into cells usually used by two and suspends other rules for an open-ended but temporary period.

Perhaps if the state incarcerated fewer non-violent felony offenders, they would have more staff and resources available for those who are truly dangerous. The LA Times has more.

Update: Mark Kleiman has more:

Imprisoning people who need to be there is highly cost-effective crime control. But the voters can't repeal the law of diminishing returns. The larger the prison system, the lower the personal crime rate of the marginal prisoner.

Doubling the number of prisoners between 1980 and 1989 was probably a good investment in crime control, even accounting for the suffering of the prisoners and their intimates. Doubling it again between 1989 and today almost certainly wasn't worth it. Continuing to ratchet up the prison headcount as crime rates fall is madness.

Life on the Outside
by Jennifer Gonnerman

Elaine Cassell reviews Life on the Outside, A Reporter's Account of an Ex-Con's Struggle to Reenter Society:

In 2004, an estimated 600,000 people will be released from state and federal prisons. And in the near future, this number will increase exponentially -- as persons who began serving long prison terms in the late 1980's (for mostly drug offenses) return to their communities. Criminologists are poised to study the challenges and problems facing those who attempt "reentry" into society outside prison. Meanwhile, Village Voice staff writer Jennifer Gonnerman has put a human face on the data with her compelling book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett.

Bartlett served a draconian prison sentence for a first-time offense -- and is now trying to put her life back together. She, and others like her, deserve our compassion and support -- and Gonnerman's book beautifully illustrates why.

TChris wrote about the book here.

On April 2, we published pictures of Thomas Lee Goldstein, a former young marine who was released from jail after serving 24 years for a crime he didn't commit. The cause of his wrongful conviction was an unreliable jailhouse snitch and an eyewitness, both of whom subsequently recanted. Yesterday, Goldstein sued for damages.

Attorneys for Thomas Lee Goldstein, who spent 24 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, announced Wednesday that they had filed damage claims, alleging that police officers and prosecutors had committed egregious acts of misconduct that cost the Vietnam veteran the prime years of his life. "For the police to fabricate evidence and use perjured testimony to achieve their conviction" was an "egregious affront" to Goldstein and the Constitution that calls for compensation, said Ronald O. Kaye, Goldstein's attorney, at a Pasadena news conference.

Goldstein, 55, said he could never be compensated for the years lost to prison. "I was 31 years old. I never got married, I never had children, I never started my career. No human being should have to suffer what I went through," Goldstein said.

The road to freedom was a long one for Goldstein:

In recent years, five federal judges said Goldstein's constitutional rights had been violated at the trial, where he was sentenced to 27 years to life in prison. Campbell's testimony was improperly influenced by police officers, the judges ruled. And the judges found that police and prosecutors had sat mute as longtime jailhouse informant Edward F. Fink — who said Goldstein confessed to him in a jail cell — lied when he testified that he had received no benefit for his testimony.

The complaint for damages includes two retired prosecutors, four retired policemen and two detectives as defendants, among others.

Did Illinois let this man freeze to death in prison?

A McHenry County man who in December died of hypothermia in a Downstate prison wore only a hospital gown in his bare cell, while staffers wore winter coats, hats and gloves and drank hot beverages to keep warm, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit. The suit, filed by the father and brother of Charles Platcher, seeks more than $1 million from the state Department of Corrections and its health-care contractor, Health Professionals Ltd. of Peoria. It alleges abuse of Platcher, including that a sock was stuffed in his mouth and that he was pushed down metal stairs.

Platcher, 31, was serving a 40-year sentence in Menard Correctional Center for stabbing his mother to death in 2001. After being found unresponsive Dec. 25, he was taken to Memorial Hospital in nearby Chester, where he was pronounced dead. A coroner's inquest ruled March 30 that Platcher died of hypothermia. "He was allowed to freeze to death in their care," said John Julian, the Platchers' lawyer. "At the very least, their conduct was negligent and fell below the standard of care one would expect to be provided to inmates."

The country's first "faith-based prison" for women opened yesterday in Tampa. Florida also is home to the first such prison for men which opened in December, with Jeb Bush on hand to work the crowds.

President Bush is also trying to institute religious bias:

Bush is trying to get Congress to exempt religious groups from adhering to anti-discrimination laws on hiring policies. He wants the groups to be able to discriminate based on religion and sexual orientation.

Background here.

Why is the recidivism rate among felons so high? Because society punishes ex-convicts for life. Devah Pager and Jeff Manza explain:

Take the Higher Education Act of 1998, which bars ex-felons from eligibility for Pell Grants, the largest type of federal student loans. How can ex-offenders build better lives for themselves if they are not allowed to compete for the same kinds of educational opportunities as everyone else?

Many of the legal barriers that extend beyond the completion of a prison sentence were adopted by Congress or state governments as part of the "war" on crime and drugs. These include restrictions on occupational licensing that prevent work in many types of jobs; access to public housing and other types of social programs aimed at the poorest Americans, and a variety of political rights (such as the right to vote, to serve on juries and to hold public office). The unintended consequence of these policies can be to promote the very circumstances that led to crime in the first place....Crime policy in recent decades has emphasized harsh punishment over rehabilitation, and the problems of prisoner re-entry have become increasingly difficult to ignore.

Tre Arrow says he's an activist. The FBI says he's a terrorist. A fugitive for the past 19 years, Arrow is now in a jail in Vancouver awaiting trial. The charge: shoplifting bolt cutters. More serious charges await him in Oregon, on which he's fighting extradition. He's also begun a hunger strike:

Arrow is accused in Oregon of use of fire to commit a felony, destruction of vehicles used in interstate commerce and use of incendiary devices in a crime of violence. The charges carry combined penalties of up to 80 years in prison.

To the "environmental militants", he's a folk hero. The FBI thinks he's more than an activist and has links to the ELF.

"As an activist, I stand tall. I hold my head high," Arrow said in an interview with The Associated Press at the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre. Arrow, 30, was born Michael Scarpitti but says the trees told him to change his name. He gained notice by scaling the offices of the U.S. Forest Service in Portland in 2000 and perching on a narrow ledge for 11 days to protest logging on Mount Hood. Arrow says he is not a terrorist.

The European Court on Human Rights has overturned a ban on prisoner voting that dates back to 1870. The case was brought by a prisoner serving a life sentence. As a result of the ruling, 70,000 British prisoners will have their voting rights restored:

The law, brought in not long after transportation to the colonies was abolished and later enshrined in the Representation of the People Act of 1983, denies 70,000 sentenced prisoners the right to vote in parliamentary and local elections. Seven judges at the Strasbourg court ruled the ban breached article three of protocol one to the European convention on human rights, which guarantees "free elections ... under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature".

Eighteen of the countries which have ratified the European convention give prisoners full voting rights, while 13 ban all prisoners from voting. The rest, including Britain, allow some categories to vote. In Britain those remanded in custody who have not yet been sentenced and those imprisoned for contempt of court or failure to pay fines can take part in elections.

Here is a very sobering article about the problem of prison rape. It focuses on the Roderick Johnson case, (more here) but goes much deeper:

The feminist mantra that "rape isn't about sex, it's about power" may be even more applicable in the prison context, where it is common for men who would have never engaged in sexual contact with other men on the outside to become rapists when incarcerated. What's more, the relationship between rapist and victim in prison is often more than just a sexual one—it can devolve into out-and-out servitude. Victims are given women's names and made to perform household tasks such as cooking food, washing clothes, and cleaning the living space. Roderick Johnson cooked and cleaned for Andrew Hernandez. "It's slavery," he said. "It's being in a position where you have no choice but to do whatever it is you're being told to do. It's like you have no control over your position. You're totally powerless."

The traditional rationale for prison rape is the lack of women, but most psychologists consider this facile. They see prison rape mainly as a means by which people who have been stripped of control over the most basic aspects of their lives—when to eat a meal, take a shower, or watch TV—can reclaim some sense of power.

The $60 million passed by Congress to study prison rape last year is a beginning, but a drop in the bucket. American attitudes towards prison rape must change:

How stupid and counter-productive can prison officials be? In Illinois, they come close to being idiots:

Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet will not allow its prisoners to read a 16-page newspaper written by its own inmates. Officials decided not to distribute "Stateville Speaks" because the maximum-security prison has other priorities, including running the facility that houses more than 2,500 prisoners, Illinois Department of Corrections spokesman Sergio Molina said.

The idea for the newspaper, published in newsletter form, came from an essay contest organized last summer by convicted murderer Renaldo Hudson. After 41 inmates at six of the state's prisons submitted entries, Hudson suggested a newspaper, anti-death penalty activist Bill Ryan said. Ryan secured computers, instructors and donations, but prison officials cited safety concerns and refused to allow the newspaper to be published at the prison.

Ryan self-published the first issue, which includes poems and essays about the dangers of drug use, surviving in prison and the hopelessness of being sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

by TChris

A new book by Jennifer Gonnerman, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett (reviewed here), examines the problem of society's relationship with ex-convicts from the perspective of a woman who received a sentence of 20 years to life for her first offense -- selling cocaine in Albany, New York, exposing her to the unbelievably harsh Rockefeller sentencing laws. Elaine Bartlett was a young woman in Harlem "hoping for a quick score of $2,500, perhaps to buy some furniture and hold a nice Thanksgiving dinner for her family." Instead, she was arrested for selling drugs to an undercover cop, having been set up by George Deets, an informant who was allowed to continue his own drug dealing so long as he supplied the police with people who were easy to arrest.

[Deets] waltzed down to New York and lured the mark up to Albany County, making sure there was enough drug present for an A-1 bust. The mark sold the drugs to the cops, who were grateful for the collar, and Deets lived to traffic another day.

The book discusses Bartlett's sixteen years in prison (when she was finally pardoned), including her prison visits with her four children. Bartlett's experience exemplifies the sad reality that children of imprisoned parents often come to accept imprisonment as a normal part of life.

Her worst nightmare comes true when her teenage son, Jamel, who grew up in the visiting room, follows in his mother's footsteps and goes to jail himself. Jamel is visited inside by a 15-year-old girlfriend who is too young even to enter the gates but gets in with a fake ID. The girl becomes pregnant by Jamel, who has left jail briefly only to return, and the cycle begins anew.

But the book's focus in not on life behind bars, but on the new version of imprisonment that inmates face after their release.

Ex-cons are marooned in the poor inner-city neighborhoods where legitimate jobs do not exist and ... are commonly denied the right to vote, parental rights, drivers' licenses, student loans and residency in public housing -- the only housing that marginal, jobless people can afford. The most severe sanctions are reserved for former drug offenders, who have been treated worse than murderers since the start of the so-called war on drugs.

The book offers further proof that sentencing laws need radical reform, but reform can't end there. We need to return to the philosophy that people who have done their time are entitled to a fresh start; that having been punished, ex-offenders deserve a chance to reform their lives and to make better lives for their children. With almost 7 percent of our adult population having spent time behind bars, and with 600,000 "angry, unskilled people" being released from prison each year, society's unwillingness to help ex-offenders become productive will only perpetuate cycles of crime.

A bill to grant parole to sick inmates has passed the Iowa Senate:

Prison inmates who suffer from debilitating illnesses, even those serving life sentences, could be granted medical parole under a bill that cleared the Iowa Senate Monday. Supporters of the measure, approved on a 49-0 vote, argue that Iowa's Department of Corrections currently must cover the cost of treatment for inmates incapacitated by chronic or even terminal conditions. Placing them on parole would make them eligible for Medicaid and other benefits.

The Iowa Board of Parole would make the final decision on medical parole applications. Prison officials would make recommendations to the board. "Even in justice there's room for compassion," said Sen. David Miller, R-Batavia, the bill's sponsor. If an inmate's medical condition changed, under the bill, the parole board could return them to prison. Passage sends the bill to the House.

What a great line - it bears repeating: "Even in justice there's room for compassion."