First California blocked the media from interviewing inmates. Now, they want to keep out legal workers.

New rules have been promulgated that are detailed in Another brick in the wall in Monday's San Francisco Chronicle.

The Department of Correction's proposed rules can be read online here. The public has until 5 p.m. on Friday to comment on the proposed rules.

If you live in California, and have any connection to the prisoners there, get out your pens. As Author Braz aptly points out, "With the media and now legal workers increasingly barred from California's prisons, one has to wonder if there's anyone left to monitor what goes on inside. "

Daniel Macallair, the executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice has some harsh words for Gov. Gray Davis's ill-conceived and implemented Turning Point Academy in Boot Camp Blunder.

The program was initiated as a response to the Columbine shootings. Politicians saw it as a quick fix and a means of showing the public they were not being soft on juvenile crime.

Turning Point was initially funded with $19 million. It was designed to hold 320 teens. The eligibility requirements were so strict that the first year, only one teen qualified. By the time it finally closed, only 34 teens had passed through, at a cost of over 12 million.

According to Macallair, "Political operatives instituted the policy without input from officials in public health, child welfare, or juvenile justice. "

"The Turning Point Academy represents the folly of instituting policies for political symbolism rather than public good. With the state's child-welfare systems overloaded and juvenile-justice services insufficient and ineffective, a responsible use for these public dollars could have been found."

Military training is not a quick fix. As Macallair aptly points out, "Decisions affecting the state's children should be based on concern for solving social needs -- and not on political calculations."

A new jail program in Thailand is providing a vegetarian diet and meditation to reform drug offenders. And it's working.

Those in the program practiced meditation at 4:30 a.m., ate vegetarian meals and listened to tapes of chanting.

We'd like to see it offered here.

European women marry U.S. death row inmates

From CNN....Although there are no statistics, authorities in several states said it was not unusual for men on death row to marry, often to women from Europe.

According to Death Penalty News, a newsletter published by death penalty foes, 10 women have wed men on Florida's death row alone since 1997. Hester Patrick knows of three other women married to inmates on Texas death row, all of them Europeans.

Marriages between condemned men in America and women from Germany and the Scandinavian countries, where opposition to the U.S. death penalty is strong, seem to be particularly common.

The New York Times reports that the prison growth of U.S. inmates is at its Lowest Rate in 3 Decades according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The number of state prison inmates fell, while the total number of inmates rose only 1.1%.

Considering there are still over 2 million people in American prisons, this is hardly something to shout about.

Instapundit today calls our attention to a UPI article about the spread of deadly diseases among inmates because of prison rapes.

This is a human rights violation that needs attention. We ask that you stop by the website of Stop Prisoner Rape, an organization that has been dedicated to fighting the problem for over two decades.

Some good news is that bipartisan legislation was introduced in June to reduce the problem by Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. Jeff Sessions, Rep. Bobby Scott, and Rep. Frank Wolf.

The bill is the Prison Rape Reduction Act of 2002. This is what it will do:

"The bill creates three programs in the Department of Justice: one dedicated to collecting national statistics about the problem, one to facilitate confidential reports of prisoner rape and provide training about how to address it, and one that will provide grants to combat the problem. The bill also creates an investigative commission which will produce a report and new national standards to address prisoner rape which states may adopt or opt out of. The bill has so far garnered a broad range of bipartisan support."

Of course, the bill addresses only part of the problem. “In addition to effective legislation, we need mental health services for survivors, lawsuits aimed at reform, and greater sympathy on the part of the public.”

Just last week we reported on the case of a 19 year old man who was repeatedly raped at the Jefferson County Jail in Colorado after deputies placed him in a cell with a sex offender who had attacked another inmate hours earlier. It was the 19 year old's first time in jail. He had been arrested for failing to complete his alcohol classes in connection with a D.U.I.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Act next Wednesday. Please support this legislation.

If you are looking for something different to read this weekend, how about some of the nicely presented websites maintained on behalf of prisoners who well may be factually innocent of the murders for which they have been convicted and have served major time.

Not every case has DNA available to re-test.

There are many causes of wrongful convictions, from false or manipulated confessions, mistaken eyewitness testimony and prosecutorial misconduct to junk science and lab fraud.

Here are some of the case websites we've been drawn to-- in mostly their words, not our's--the quoted material comes directly from their sites.

Free the WestMemphis 3
"Three murdered 8 year olds and three young men in prison for something they did not do"

Lisl Auman
"Lisl Auman was in police custody at the time of the crime and yet she serves a lifetime prison term" for felony murder of a police officer.

Journalist and author Hunter Thompson is among her biggest supporters.

Lisl is waiting for a decision from the Colorado Supreme Court on whether she will get a new trial.

Free Beverly Monroe
"In the evening of March 4, 1992, Roger de la Burde died of a single gunshot wound to his head.

Through a combination of forensic misrepresentation, police and prosecutorial misconduct, and jury error, Beverly Monroe was convicted of first-degree murder on November 2, 1992, and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

On March 28, 2002, Senior Judge Richard L. Williams of the U.S. District Court granted Beverly a writ of habeas corpus, vacating her decade-old conviction on the grounds that prosecutors concealed evidence that supported her innocence, and calling the case "a monument to prosecutorial indiscretions and mishandling."

Evidence proves that Beverly committed no crime...that no crime even occurred. Beverly, who is now 64 years old, was wrongly imprisoned for almost seven years. If the state wins an appeal, she will be forced to return to prison."

For a impartial look at the case which arrives at the same conclusion, check out Was Justice Denied?

Kenney Richey
"In 1981, at the age of eighteen, Kenny Richey left his home in Scotland to live with his American Father in Ohio.

In June 1986, one week before his return to the United Kingdom, Kenny was arrested for a crime the evidence shows was not a crime at all.

Since his conviction some months later, he has been sitting on death row, waiting to be strapped into "Old Sparky" Ohio's electric chair.

The State remains keen to execute him."

John Maloney: Innocent Man
John Maloney was convicted of First Degree Intentional Homicide, Arson, and Mutilation of a corpse.

"...there was no homicide, and no arson. John Maloney was convicted by overzealous prosecutors that only wanted a conviction and not the truth. It is hard to find true justice in this great country of ours, or at least in Green Bay, Wisconsin. "