Jean Trounstine : The Plight of California's Prisons

Cruel and unusual: Overcrowded California prisons. Image from TheBusySignal.com.

The plight of California's prisons:
Hunger strike, sterilization, and valley fever

While we complain of 100 degree heat and take solace in our air-conditioned homes, prisoners across the country are suffering -- and not just for their crimes.

By Jean Trounstine / The Rag Blog / July 24, 2013

It’s been two years since Governor Jerry Brown was court ordered to fix California’s ailing prisons and the situation is still life-threatening and possibly illegal.

It's been all over the papers and many bloggers are tackling the horrendous conditions in California. A prison system that in 2011 was ordered by the Supreme Court to figure out what to do with 30,000 people who because of the system's overcrowding were suffering "cruel and unusual punishment."

As Laura Gottesdiener wrote in The Huffington Post, "The state’s 140,000 inmates, jam-packed into 33 prisons only built to hold 80,000 individuals...commit suicide at double the national inmate average, experience unprecedented rates of lock-downs, receive inadequate medical treatment and sometimes live in continuous fear of violence."

In early July, the infuriating news broke that between 2006-2010, doctors who were under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates without anyone's approval. Corey G. Johnson, writing for the Center for Investigative Reporting wrote that these doctors were paid $147,460 to perform the procedure and that "at least 148 women received tubal ligations...during those five years -- and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews."

And it doesn't get better for prisoners, or for that matter, for any of us who care about how we treat those behind bars. California holds nearly 12,000 people in solitary confinement at a cost of over $60 million per year. The prisoners recognize that they have committed crimes but they are suffering under extreme isolation. U.S. News and World Report called these cells "living tombs."

I wrote about Massachusetts' current attempts and need to get rid of these dangerous solitary conditions recently online at Boston Magazine. And Texas prisoners have been known to die in 130 degree heat, reported The Coalition for Prisoners’ Rights, a prisoner-run newsletter.

One of the best websites about the plight of California, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity, says about the state’s Secure Housing Unit (SHU), "The cells have no windows, and no access to fresh air or sunlight. The United Nations condemns the use of solitary confinement for more than 15 days as torture, yet many people in California state prisons have been encaged in solitary for 10 to 40 years."

The hunger strike began on July 8, when more than 30,000 prisoners in 15 prisons refused meals. They are about to enter their third week. As reported on Democracy Now!, about 2,500 prisoners from across the state are still on “indefinite hunger strike,” calling for Governor Jerry Brown and the CDCR to meet their demands about the inhumane conditions they are suffering.

But as Lois Ahrens of the Real Cost of Prisons Project said in an email, California officials are trying in any way they can to discredit the strike. Brown has not been moved to act. Strikers' lawyers are not being allowed into the prisons.

Jules Lobel, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and lead attorney representing Pelican Bay prisoners in a lawsuit challenging long-term solitary, appeared on Democracy Now!. He said

If you’re found guilty of murdering somebody in prison, you’re given a definite term, which can be no more than five years in solitary. If you, on the other hand, are simply labeled by some gang investigator as a member of some gang -- and that could be done simply because you have artwork or because you have a tattoo or because you have a birthday card from somebody who’s in a gang… -- you then are given an indefinite sentence, which can go on for years and years and years and decades.

This is not the first hunger strike for California. In 2011, over 12,000 prisoners and their family and community members participated in statewide hunger strikes protesting the inhumane conditions in solitary. The core demands for the current strike, one of the largest ever, are below, in their own words, reprinted from the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity website.

1. End Group Punishment & Administrative Abuse
2. Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria -Perceived gang membership is one of the leading reasons for placement in solitary confinement. The practice of “debriefing,” or offering up information about fellow prisoners particularly regarding gang status, is often demanded in return for better food or release from the SHU. Debriefing puts the safety of prisoners and their families at risk, because they are then viewed as “snitches.”
3. Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement – [my note -- Why is this not so???]
4. Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food –
5. Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite Secure Housing Unit (SHU) Status Inmates.

While this strike rages on, another horrible plague has struck California's prisoners. Governor Brown has said that California has the greatest health care for prisoners "in the world," but San Francisco Bay View reported that over 3,300 prisoners in such facilities as Avenal and Pleasant Valley State Prison are at high risk of infection or death from a fungal infection called “valley fever.”

Since 2006, 62 behind bars in California have died from this disease which undoubtedly is related to overcrowding and other unhealthful conditions. And 80% of those contracting the illness have been African-American, reported the Bay View.

Many have joined rallies and protests and signed petitions -- all found at the websites I've mentioned above. However, while we complain of 100 degree heat and take solace in our air-conditioned homes, prisoners across the country are suffering -- and not just for their crimes.

[Jean Trounstine is an author/editor of five published books and many articles, professor at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, and a prison activist. For 10 years, she worked at Framingham Women's Prison and directed eight plays, publishing Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison about that work. She blogs for Boston Magazine and takes apart the criminal justice system brick by brick at jeantrounstine.com where she blogs weekly at "Justice with Jean." Find her contributions to The Rag Blog here.]

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Tony Platt : Prison Strike at Pelican Bay

Image from Los Angeles Times.
The shame of California:
Prison strike at Pelican Bay

This strike has drawn worldwide attention to the widespread use of torturous practices by the United States against its own citizens.

By Tony Platt / The Rag Blog / August 9, 2011

BIG LAGOON, California -- I’ve been eating well this summer, enjoying the local fruits and vegetables of Northwest California, while 60 miles away a group of men risked their health by refusing to eat for three weeks.

I’m in Big Lagoon, surrounded by ocean, lagoon, and forest in an area of coastal California described by National Geographic as among the top 20 “unspoiled” tourist destinations in the world. An hour’s drive north of here is Pelican Bay State Prison, a state-of-the-art hellhole that was recently the center of a three-week hunger strike led by prisoners in the Secure Housing Units (SHU).

Pelican Bay was California’s first supermax prison, built in 1989 on 275 acres of clear-cut forest near Crescent City. With an annual budget of $180 million, it has a payroll of more than 1,600 guards and service workers.

The prison was built for 2,280 prisoners, but its current census is close to 3,500, almost half of whom are housed in a prison within the prison, the SHU, an X-shaped cluster of brutalist concrete buildings, surrounded by guard towers, electronic fencing, and barren ground.

Here, more than a thousand men, whose families live hundreds of miles away, are imprisoned 23 hours a day in 8 x 10 foot, windowless, constantly lit cells, subject to sensory deprivation and social isolation, sometimes for years.

The hunger strike at Pelican Bay, which lasted from July 1st to July 22nd, was led by long-term prisoners in the SHU. It is estimated that on any given day in the United States, at least 25,000 prisoners are held in isolation, and perhaps as many as another 80,000 are kept in segregation units, typically in isolation. Writing in The New Yorker (“Hellhole,” 30 March 2009), Atul Gawande calls this practice “legalized torture,” resulting in long-term physical and mental damage to many of its victims.

Pelican Bay, like many of California’s prisons, was built on formerly agricultural land in a region seeking to resuscitate its depressed economy. The hardscrabble Crescent City, briefly a boomtown during the Gold Rush and once a beneficiary of the lumber and commercial fishing industries, has one of the state’s highest unemployment rates and among the most stingy public services.

When the state borrowed from public funds to build the high security prison at a cost of $277.5 million to taxpayers, it was supposed to boost the local economy. But the benefits primarily went to local landowners, and construction and utility companies; to national chains like K-Mart, Ace Hardware, and Safeway; and to the politically powerful guards’ union. Meanwhile, the county’s unemployment rate is almost 14 percent and one out of three people live in hand-to-mouth poverty.

Secure Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City, California. Photo by Adam Tanner / Reuters.
The city’s misery is compounded by its record rainfall and susceptibility to tsunamis. Unless work or family requires you to stay in Crescent City, this is a place to drive through on the way to somewhere else. No wonder that prisoners comprise about 46 percent of the city’s 7,600 population. Small towns that hoped for a bonanza by inviting prison construction, says Ruth Gilmore in Golden Gulag, are victims of a boondoggle.

California may lag behind many other states in high school graduation rates, welfare benefits, and investment in public health, but when it comes to punishment, we rank at or near the top. Between 1852 and 1964, California built only 12 prisons. Since 1984, the state has erected 43 penal institutions, making it a global leader in prison construction. Today, 90 penitentiaries, small prisons, and minimum-security camps stretch across 900 miles of the fifth largest economy in the world.

In 1982, the prison system cost taxpayers 2 percent of the General Fund; by 2006, it cost almost 8 percent. In 2008, more than one out of six state workers in California was employed by the Department of Corrections, almost three times as many as were employed in Health and Human Services.

In the last decade, “corrections” (with 61,000 employees) has increased its share of state workers, passing the state university system (46,000), second only to the University of California (86,000). Meanwhile, prison suicide and recidivism rates approach twice the national average. And we have one of the most extravagant penal systems in the country, costing taxpayers about the same as the state spends on higher education.

Most of the new prisons have been built in out-of-the way rural areas, like Crescent City, making it easier to lose sight of the humanity of the people we warehouse: mostly men (93 percent), mostly Latinos and African Americans (two-thirds), mostly from big cities (60 percent from Los Angeles), and mostly unemployed or the working poor, victimized by drastic changes in California’s economy over the last 20 years. The prison system is the shame of California, testimony to the persistence of institutionalized racism, the widening economic divide, and the gutting of social programs.

Prisons function as an unemployment program comparable to early capitalist workhouses, except they’ve become warehouses for unused labor rather than sites of production. When prisoners return to their communities, observes Gilmore, the cycle is repeated: they are locked out of “education, employment, housing, and many other stabilizing institutions of everyday life. In such inhospitable places, everybody isolates.”

On July 1st, a small group of prisoners in Pelican Bay’s SHU, calling themselves the Short Corridor Collective, initiated a hunger strike, calling for the abolition of long-term solitary confinement, improvement in programs for SHU prisoners, and an end to various abusive administrative procedures.

Unlike a similar action by prisoners in 2002, this strike drew the support of thousands of prisoners throughout the state. Moreover, Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity was so successful in getting out information about the strike that European human rights organizations urged the Governor to respond to prisoners’ demands and The New York Times carried an Op Ed condemning the “bestial treatment” of prisoners in Pelican Bay State Prison (Colin Dayan, “Barbarous Confinement,” 17 July 2011).

During the strike, according to the Short Corridor Collective, at least 17 strikers, including three leaders, were transferred to another prison for medical treatment. The Collective ended the action on July 22nd after gaining the right to wear cold weather caps, to have calendars in their cells, and to have access to educational programs in the SHU.

Though these concessions by prison authorities are modest, we should not underestimate the larger significance of the strike. It draws worldwide attention to the widespread use of torturous practices by the United States against its own citizens; it forces the government of California to sit down, face-to-face, and negotiate with people who have been demonized as semi-human beasts; and it raises the possibility of once again incorporating prisoners into a larger struggle for social justice.

The civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s regarded prisoners as an important constituency, forging intimate ties between community and prison. It fought for massive decarceration, abolition of capital punishment, and ending the racial double standard of arrest and incarceration.

It will take a similar movement today to expose the tragedy of American injustice and make prisoners human again. Thanks to the Short Corridor Collective and thousands of activist prisoners, we now have an opportunity to renew the struggle.

For more information about the strike at Pelican Bay and its consequences, go to Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity.

[Tony Platt is the author of 10 books and 150 essays and articles dealing with issues of race, inequality, and social justice in American history. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Truthdig, History News Network, Z Magazine, Monthly Review, and the Guardian. Platt, now an emeritus professor living in Berkeley, California, taught at the University of Chicago, University of California (Berkeley), and California State University (Sacramento). This article was also posted to his blog, GoodToGo.]

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Diana Claitor : Why We Need To Protect Texas Inmates

Texas Jail Project protests at Taylor County Jail in 2008. Image from Abilene Reporter-News.

Texas Jail Project director Diana Claitor will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin, Tuesday, October 19, 2-3 p.m. (CST). To stream Rag Radio live, go here. To listen to this show after the broadcast, or to listen to earlier shows on Rag Radio, go here.

Protecting Texas inmates:
Why do we need another law?

By Diana Claitor / The Rag Blog / October 14, 2010

I often hear about how stupid it is that Texas and other states have to pass bills and create laws to ensure care for pregnant inmates or to stop the shackling of nonviolent women during childbirth. Folks say, "Why don't people in charge just do the right thing?"


Of course, you can say that about everything. Why do we have to pass laws against pollution or bribery? Why do we have to enact standards or requirements for elected officials to follow?

Probably because those in charge are human beings and make mistakes -- and because they don't always do the right thing. Like when sheriffs and jail administrators release inmates in dangerous locations after dark.

Texas Jail Project recently found out about a man with a mental disorder who was shoved out of the Val Verde County facility, onto the county road outside Del Rio. Traumatized and lacking any information about where the town was, he walked up and down the road for hours in the dark until a deputy felt sorry for him and drove him into town.

A typical response to stories like that: "Well, that's an isolated case. You're going to have that happen with some 245 jails all over this huge state."

But it's turning out not to be so isolated. We have received detailed accounts of similar releases at night in Houston, and in Seguin over in Guadalupe County. Even worse cases are coming to light, including two releases outside Brownsville that resulted in women being hit by cars. Both woman died, one of them this past summer. Priscilla Falduto was 27.

Patricia Falduta, who was arrested for swimming nude in a Brownsville park fountain, was killed when struck by a car after being released from custody on a highway close to the jail.
Brownsville citizens wrote to their newspapers in outrage and contacted their elected representatives. Texas Jail Project brought these examples up to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards in the past month, but director Adan Muñoz says it is outside their purview -- that when and where people are released is under local control.

“The sheriff can’t be told when and where inmates are to be released,” says Muñoz.

Why not, Mr. Muñoz?

It seems to me that the legislature could pass a state law requiring that county jail inmates be released during daylight hours (like at Texas state prisons) at safe locations where transportation and a phone are available -- thus ensuring that inmates are not treated like so much garbage, to be put out at night.

The general idea of incarceration is that jails should hold people safely until it is determined whether they have broken the law or not. In the latter case, or after bail is made, they are released -- and we want that to be a safe release.

So it looks like we actually do need a new law, to require sheriffs and counties to be as careful in how they restore freedom as they are (or should be) when holding a person in custody.

If, however, any of you readers should discover that human nature has changed and that people in charge have started making sure that each inmate gets released safely, let me know -- it will be a huge relief.

Please help us at the Texas Jail Project to research and publicize this problem.

[Diana Claitor is director of the Texas Jail Project, an organization dedicated to improving conditions for the approximately 70,000 people incarcerated in Texas jails on any given day. Visit www.texasjailproject.org to learn more or to help support their efforts.]

Activist-author Diane Wilson.
Diane Wilson headlines Texas Jail Project bash.

The Texas Jail Project is having a fundraising event Saturday, November 6, from 7-10 p.m., at 3209 Hemlock Ave. in Austin. Special guest will be TJP co-founder and award-winning author and activist Diane Wilson. Wilson will speak about the history of the Texas Jail Project and her experiences in the Harris and Victoria County Jails, and she will also tell about being arrested in Washington D.C. after disrupting two Senate hearings on the Gulf oil disaster.

Wilson will also preview her new book, Diary of an Eco-Outlaw: An Unreasonable Woman Breaks the Law for Mother Earth, to be published in the spring of 2011. For more information on this event, please contact Diana Claitor at diana@texasjailproject.org or call (512) 597-8746.

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Prisoner Tortured to Death in Arizona

In this undated photo released by the Arizona Department of Corrections, Marcia Powell, 48, is seen. Powell died Wednesday, May 19, 2009 at a hospital after spending four hours in a holding cell the day before at Arizona State Prison Complex-Perryville in Goodyear, Ariz. Department of Corrections officials did not immediately explain why Powell was placed in the holding cell. Photo: AP.
Details emerge in inmate's heat-related death: Report describes miscommunications, policy violations
By Casey Newton / September 24, 2009

Disturbing new details emerged Wednesday in the death of Marcia Powell, an Arizona state prison inmate who died of heat-related causes after being left in an outdoor cage for hours.

The Arizona Department of Corrections' internal investigation of Powell's death on May 20 runs about 3,000 pages. The department announced this week that it has disciplined 16 people in connection with the incident, with five employees fired or forced to resign. A criminal investigation is ongoing.

Interviews with prison staff members, inmates and medical personnel illustrate how a series of policy violations and miscommunications led to Powell's collapse at Arizona State Prison Complex-Perryville in Goodyear. She later died at West Valley Hospital.

Among the report's findings:

• Powell passed out in her cell on the morning of May 19. A few minutes before, she had announced she was suicidal. She was taken to an outdoor cage to await transfer to a psychiatric unit. But the sergeant who saw Powell lose consciousness never reported the incident to supervisors, despite the fact that Powell said she was having trouble breathing.
• At least 20 inmates told investigators that Powell was denied water for most or all of the time she was in her cage, despite regular requests. Corrections officers said Powell was given water.
• Powell was taking psychotropic medications that made her particularly sensitive to the heat, but medical personnel did not convey that fact to corrections officers.
• After more than two hours in the sun, Powell requested to be taken back to her indoor cell. Her request was denied.
• Powell was apparently denied a request to use the restroom and defecated in the cage. A corrections officer discovered that Powell had soiled herself but left her where she was. Medical personnel would later discover feces underneath her fingernails and all over her back.
• The psychiatric unit to which Powell was awaiting transport should have accepted her hours before she died, the report found, but a series of miscommunications prevented her from being taken in.

Powell, who was serving a sentence for prostitution, said she felt suicidal at 11 a.m. on May 19 and was escorted to the outdoor cage to await transportation for psychiatric care at the prison complex detention unit.

Officers seeking to move Powell to the unit were first told that it did not have available beds. Later, another inmate in the unit refused to put handcuffs on to be taken back to her cell, causing the staff to trigger its incident command system. The incident took more than 90 minutes to resolve, during which time no other inmates were brought into the unit.

Officers monitoring Powell were wary of asking psychiatric-unit staffers to accept another inmate during the standoff, even though three beds had become available. But investigators said it would have been possible to transfer Powell, since the uncooperative inmate was locked in a secure cell.

Prison policy calls for inmates to be kept in outdoor cells for a maximum of two hours. The cells had no shade, and on the day Powell died, temperatures hit 107.5 degrees.

Officers did not properly log Powell's time in the outdoor cell or when they checked on her. When she collapsed, no one could say for certain how long she had been there.

Doctors on the scene said Powell's body temperature was at least 108 degrees but may have been higher, since their thermometers topped out at 108.

Charles Ryan, corrections department director, called Powell's death "unconscionable" and "an absolute failure."

The most bitterly disputed aspect of the case concerns whether Powell was denied water.

Nearly all of the inmates interviewed by investigators reported that Powell screamed out for water regularly but was repeatedly denied. Others said she was granted water only once or twice in nearly four hours.

"I need some water - just a drop," one inmate overheard Powell tell a corrections officer, who reportedly ignored her.

Another inmate reported that a corrections officer mockingly repeated Powell's requests for water back to her, without giving her any.

All of the corrections officers interviewed for the report said Powell had been given water throughout her outdoor confinement.

Both inmates and staff members said Powell's history of mental illness and frequent erratic behavior meant that some of her requests were not taken seriously. She did not get the staff's undivided attention until she collapsed at 2:40 p.m.

Timothy Johnson, a physician's assistant who attempted to revive Powell, swore repeatedly at investigators when asked about Powell's death.

"This should not have happened," he said.

Source / Arizona Republic

Thanks to Peggy Plews / The Rag Blog

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Children of Inmates: A Problem Needing a Solution

Children of inmates play during a party for the children inside Santa Monica women's prison in Lima, September 25, 2008. The prison allows children of the inmates to stay with their mothers till they are three years old. There are currently 50 children in the prison. Photo: Reuters Pictures.
Julia Steiny: Zero-tolerance policies wreak havoc on children’s education
By Julia Steiny / March 29, 2009

There are children who matter so little that no government agency even bothers to count or keep statistical track of them. They are the children of prisoners. Nationally, the justice systems have no interest in how children or families are affected by an offending parent’s imprisonment. The state ensures that the sins of the father are visited upon the son.

The number-one predictor of a child going to prison is having had a parent in prison.

The number-one drag on a child’s academic success is family chaos of any kind. And nothing is as chaotic as having a parent yanked out of their lives and branded as a convict.

Sen. Leo Blais, D-Coventry, has submitted Bill S0320 to the General Assembly, to reduce the penalty for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana to a fine of $100. Excellent. Hopefully this bill will pass. Hopefully it will start a trend of rethinking all of the state’s morally-righteous but destructive laws that don’t take families into account.

The 1990s surge of harsh zero-tolerance laws stuffed the U.S. prisons to the point where we lock up a higher percentage of our own people than any other country in the world. Some unlucky inmates got caught with an ounce or less of marijuana. In Rhode Island, 89 percent of the marijuana arrests are for possession. Is passing a joint among friends that much more pernicious than sharing a bottle of wine?

Well, some would say marijuana is the gateway to more serious drug use.

Sol Roderiquez, director of the Family Life Center in South Providence, would say, “Incarceration itself leads to worse drugs, often worse crimes. And with a prison record, it’s so hard for an ex-offender to get a job, crime is one of the few options left.” And so the cycle continues.

The Family Life Center helps ex-cons piece their shattered lives back together so they can live in the mainstream again.

According to the 2007 Pew prison report, Rhode Island spends $44,860 a year per inmate — the highest in the country. And that doesn’t include the court costs.

But neighboring Massachusetts passed a law similar to Blais’ that will save their taxpayers almost $30 million a year in arrests, bookings, and basic court costs alone. Eleven other states have also passed such laws. Vermont is considering one now.

Blais’ bill is not legalization of marijuana, but decriminalization. The mom, dad, uncle, or sister caught with a joint won’t have a criminal conviction on their record that makes supporting a family with legitimate work nigh impossible.

According to a survey done by RI Kids Count, as of Sept. 30, 2007, roughly two-thirds of the 3,081 inmate responders had children — 4,520 children, to be exact. When the parent goes to jail, many children go into foster or residential care, or stay with relatives who resent the unasked-for burden and cost. Families split up. Children act out. The stress is intense.

Roderiquez says, “When the state imposes such a severe punishment, it should take the whole family into account. Prison has huge consequences for the whole family. But we’ve dehumanized this population. They don’t have feelings or respond emotionally. No one pays attention to the fact that we’re pushing the families into falling apart.”

Roderiquez and her colleague Nick Horton, policy researcher at the center, have seen it all, and rattled off story after story.

There was the family with three daughters. When the husband and breadwinner went to prison, the mother went on welfare. In time, the youngest child had to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, and the oldest became a classically enraged young adolescent, getting involved in serious escapist bad habits. All three girls’ grades at school have tanked. Roderiquez and Horton add that children’s grades always suffer. Always. “It’s the first thing to go,” said Roderiquez.

Then there was the single father responsible for two children. When he went to prison, one dropped out of school immediately, and the other ran away.

I’ll gladly stipulate that smoking dope could be an indicator of growing or potentially dangerous social behavior. But wouldn’t it be more effective in the long run, more healing for everyone, to send a family-services worker to the home to help those families who are in fact dangerously drug-involved? The City of Providence has a nationally recognized “go-team” of family-service workers whom the police call to crime scenes when children are present or a family is traumatized. Use them for marijuana busts. If you must punish the offender, revoke a bit of the family’s privacy by investigating whether a family has unhealthy stresses driving the drug use. If we’re serious about “corrections,” the only real way to correct misbehavior is to get to the root cause, which prison does not.

When the best solution to a social problem is treatment, provide treatment. It’s cheaper than courts and prisons, healthier, and more long-lasting. For my money, the state should look at all their laws with an eye to the collateral damage that harsh penalties cause to an offender’s extended community. Is the damage worth it? Sometimes prison is necessary, but often it’s just vindictive.

And for heaven’s sake, start collecting data on the inmates’ children. Bring those children to light. They are our responsibility.

[Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, consults for government agencies and schools; she is codirector of Information Works!, Rhode Island’s school-accountability project. She can be reached at juliasteiny@gmail.com, or c/o EdWatch, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.]

Source / Providence Journal

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Crowded Classrooms and Crowded Prisons - Why Is It So Hard to See the Connection?

The Dog Eats Its Tail: Oversized Classes, Overpopulated Prisons
By Jesse Hagopian / March 7, 2009

One in thirty one.

As a public school teacher I am quite familiar with this figure — it’s a typical teacher to student ratio in the classroom. But now that proportion has taken on new significance: A report released on March 2nd by the Pew Center on the States found that one in every thirty-one adults reside in the US corrections system — now totaling some 7.3 million people.

That means roughly one student per classroom in America will end up in prison, on parole, or on probation.

As New School Foundation board member Lisa Fitzhugh notes in her January 19th Seattle Times op-ed, states like Washington even determine how many prison cells to build based on 4th grade reading scores and graduation rates. So rest assured, if your 9-year-old stumbles over syntax or has trouble sounding out the word “priorities,” the state has readied the necessary cellblock accommodations. Why flush money down the sinkhole of reading improvement teachers when there are solitary confinement cells to be built? As the Pew study reports,

“In the past two decades, state general fund spending on corrections increased by more than 300 percent, outpacing other essential government services from education, to transportation and public assistance. Only Medicaid spending has grown faster. Today, corrections imposes a national taxpayer burden of $68 billion a year.”

In Seattle, where I teach, our politicians have magnified this absurdity by simultaneously proposing two pieces of public policy:

1) Mayor Greg Nickels has proposed the construction of a new municipal jail, projected to cost taxpayers over $200 million.

2) Seattle’s School Board voted recently to close five schools and disrupt or discontinue eight other programs.

If you like these policies of planning prison construction based on elementary reading levels, and of closing schools while opening jails, you might consider a couple of other equally rewarding ventures: smashing holes in your boat and investing in buckets to bail out the water, or, equally clever, slashing holes in the tires of your car and subsequently investing in tire patches.

How do we end this illogical, anti-hope scenario and reverse increases in prison spending?

After years of deregulation and outlandish speculation that caused an implosion of the economy, many politicians and corporate heads are venturing out of their boardrooms to examine the rubble at “Main Street Middle School.” Realizing something must be done, they tout their education schemes as “school reform”—including paying teachers according to culturally biased/curriculum narrowing tests their students take, the breaking of teachers’ unions, and the privatization of education through charter schools.

But in an era when CEOs and bankers sabotage the economy and then get to float to the ground on golden parachutes worth tens of millions of dollars, it’s unclear how merit pay for teachers would be structured—in this new age, would it mean that the more students who flunk the test, the bigger bonuses teachers get?

Given the current free market meltdown, they can’t really believe that our public schools are better off following the laissez-faire predisposition for privatized charter schools run by CEOs.

A genuine first step on the path to improving education should center on what teachers, students, and parents have known for a long time: class size matters.

Unfortunately, this common sense approach missed Mayor Bloomberg who was quoted in the New York Times on February 22nd giving his explanation of how to improve education: "It's the teacher looking a child in the eye, and teachers can look lots of children in the eye," he added. "If you have to have smaller class size or better teachers, go with the better teachers every time."

I’ll go for option C: The skilled teacher with the smaller class.

Tennessee’s Project STAR (Student Teacher Achievement Ratio)—the most comprehensive class size study ever conducted—showed students who had been randomly assigned to smaller classes of 13 to 17 students in grades K-3 outperformed their peers in regular classes of 22 to 25 students (and in regular classes with an educational aide). Additionally, by eighth grade, those students who had been placed in small classes through Project STAR were still outperforming students who had been placed in regular classes or regular-plus-aide classes in K-3.

While proven to help, lower class sizes are not popular with the guardians of the bottom line because training and hiring more teachers costs money. I should admit I am not a trained economist like the financial intellectuals who managed asset-backed securities at AIG. However, I feel qualified to assert that unlike the purchase of collateralized debt obligations, spending on our children is a sound investment—morally and financially.

The American Economic Review, one of the longest running journals in the field, recently released a study revealing that only "A one percent increase in the high school completion rate of all men ages 20-60 would save the United States as much as $1.4 billion per year in reduced costs from crime incurred by victims and society at large."

Having missed this statistic, states across the country are reacting to the financial crisis with school closures and teacher layoffs. While some of the largest districts have postponed massive layoffs for now, recently the Los Angeles Unified Schools threatened 2,300 teachers with pink slips and New York City Schools said they could lay off 15,000. The Seattle School District is planning to terminate or disrupt 13 schools, and Chicago is shuttering 16 of its own. Federal stimulus dollars for education will help ease some of the cuts, but politicians—from governors to local school officials—have promised closures and layoffs nonetheless.

Activists in Seattle, however, are working on an alternative lesson plan for our city that may prove to be a model for saving schools and halting jails.

Representatives from all the schools slated for closure and other community members have formed ESP Vision: Educators, Students and Parents for a Better Vision of the Seattle Schools—rallying hundreds against the school closures, teaming up with the local NAACP to help parents file over 200 grievances with Department of Education, and assisting parents in a formal appeals process to block the closures. Moreover, ESP Vision has teamed up with the Initiative-100 campaign that is attempting to block the building of a new city jail by collecting the 23,000 signatures needed to put its construction to a vote.

Mark Twain once said, “Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the dog.” While Twain leaves us with a distasteful image, far more repugnant is a social order that invests in metal bars rather than in cultivating our children’s talents.

[Jesse D. Hagopian is a teacher, education journalist, and a co-founder of ESP Vision: Educators, Students, and Parents for a Better Vision of the Seattle Schools (espvision.org). He can be reached at: jdhagopian@gmail.com.]

Source / Common Dreams

The Rag Blog

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Life in American Prisons: Radicalizing the Masses

The Radicalization Of An American Prisoner
By George Peter Jr. / December 5, 2008

During a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2006, high- ranking F.B.I. officials testified that the Bureau considered U.S. prisons to be "fertile grounds for extremists", and that they were in the process of developing "threat assessments" for those individuals who may have become "radicalized" during their incarceration.

Listening to those officials postulate a variety of theories as to the perceived radicalization of American prisoners since 9/11, ranging from a misguided identification with terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden, to the radical preachings of jailhouse religious leaders, it became readily apparent that today's F.B.I. is as out of touch with reality as the one headed by J. Edgar Hoover, which for decades denied the existence of the mafia.

As one who has been confined in the Illinois Department of Corrections since 1967, I myself have observed a change in the attitudes and political philosophy of the average American prisoner, shaped not because of an external event occurring in some distant land, or the importation of some radical religion; but instead, due to the unrelenting assault upon prisoners by state houses around the nation, the unwillingness and/or inability of states to protect those who are imprisoned in their penal systems, the dual-standard of justice imposed upon prison guards who commit criminal acts against prisoners, and the daily vilification and demonization of those caught up in the criminal justice system, best exemplified in such television shows as "Cops", "Nancy Grace", and MSNBC's "Lockup" the ultimate in reality programming.

To help one get a clearer understanding of this issue, let us utilize the eyes of a hypothetical prisoner (we'll call him "Tony") returning to the Menard Correctional Center, after living in the outside world for the last decade; what would he observe? Probably the first thing he would sense is a feeling of abandonment, due to the near complete abolishment of any meaningful rehabilitative programming. Thanks to the efforts of William Jefferson Clinton, the college classrooms have been long shuttered, as have the vocational schools, due to the elimination of prisoner access to the federal government's Pell Grants.

Tony would further note that the prison has abolished every organizational recreational activity previously used to release tension and help maintain control of the facility. Now he would find himself confined in a space 4' 3" by 10', with another prisoner, for a minimum of 159 hours a week, with little but a television set to help while away the hours. His cell is so small that it contains no table or chair, and the space between the bunks is so small 26" that he must sit on the toilet if he wishes to write a letter. Other than that, his only options are to lie down, or stand up.

Although lockdowns occurred during Tony's previous incarceration, they were primarily used in response to large-scale confrontations between various factions of the prison community, and to conduct periodic searches for contraband. He will now see that they are routinely scheduled to facilitate employee absences over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, as well as the annual deer-hunting season.

When he walks into the dining room, he will discover he is now allotted only ten minutes to eat a barely palatable meal, but due to the miniscule portions, that will be more than a sufficient amount of time. Surprisingly, he will learn that the prison guard's union has publicly described the food served as "barely edible¹."

If he believes that the conditions he is confined under are unconstitutional, this is probably at least partially attributable to the fact that the federal enforcement of civil rights laws has dropped precipitously since 1999. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, the Justice Department has seen the prosecution of civil rights cases fall by one-third through 2005. Additionally, the state statute that allowed clergy and attorneys to monitor the constitutional rights of prisoners was repealed.

Borrowing some reading material from a neighbor, Tony reads multiple examples of the duplicitous nature of the criminal justice system, how it inflicted Draconian penalties upon those who committed trivial offences during incarceration, while those employed by the government would receive, at worst, a mere slap on the wrist, when discovered abusing those under their control. The penalty imposed upon Colorado prisoner Douglas Wilson for passing out an extra cheese sandwich to fellow convicts was three additional years in prison; while in May 23, 2006 Illinois prison guard Clarence Howard was sentenced to two years probation for smuggling drugs into the facility where he worked.² When Pennsylvania prisoner Darren Miller threw urine on a guard, he had 15 more years tacked onto his sentence, whereas Hawaiian prison guard Brian Freitas was placed on one year's probation for his rôle in the murder of prisoner Antonio Revera.³

However, what Tony found the most appalling were the direct assaults upon the minimal rights of those confined all around the country. When inmates had the audacity to actually seek the protection of laws enacted by state legislatures, they discovered the courts unwilling to ensure the safeguarding of these basic rights. When the mother of a Connecticut prisoner sued the state for the failure to treat her son in accordance with the state's "Patient's Bill of Rights", the prison system did not deny the allegations; rather they claimed in court that the Bill of Rights did not apply to prisoners. The state's supreme court agreed.

After receiving numerous complaints of employee misconduct against youths confined in Oklahoma's maximum security prison for youthful offenders, the state's attorney general's office declined to investigate, citing budgetary woes. This is the same state that chose to expend millions of dollars to secure additional life sentences against Timothy McVie's co-defendant, Terry Nichols, after he had already received a life sentence in federal court.

Closer to home, Tony gained a degree of understanding as to why Illinois' prisons appeared to be in a state of mismanagement. This came to light as he read about the investigation of the March 2, 2006 murder of an inmate at the Muddy River Correctional Center, where it was discovered that assistant warden Julie Wilkerson's only apparent qualifications for her job were the campaign contributions she made to Governor Rod Blagojevich. Ms. Wilkerson is a former music teacher, with no prior prison experience.

Tiring of this self-flagellation, Tony turns on the television, where he discovers that law and order shows appear to be the flavor of the day. As he looks in on "The Nancy Grace Show", he quickly discerns that Miss Grace routinely projects an attitude of unbridled anger and animosity towards anyone who disagrees with her prosecutorial mindset. Most frightening in her telecasts are the incessant and one-sided diatribes spewed forth against whichever criminal defendant she is focusing on in that particular episode. While her viewers may not be cognizant of her ability to appreciate the finer points of due process, the Georgia Supreme Court has, as it rebuked her on multiple occasions for her "unethical behavior" in securing criminal convictions. In comparison to this bubble-headed bleach blonde, Ann Coulter is a flaming liberal.

Flipping the dial, in search of something less intense, Tony tunes into "Cops", a program devoted almost entirely to showing slow-footed African and Appalachian Americans attempting to out-run the police unsuccessfully, I might add and then being body slammed to the ground when they get caught. While not a serious show, it still serves to humiliate and dehumanize those appearing on it.

Lastly, he tunes into MSNBC's "Lockdown", undoubtedly the most insightful of the crime programs he has seen, as the camera takes the viewer into prisons across the nation mostly maximum and super-maximum security for an up-close and personal view. Unfortunately, what it so clearly displays is the rampant brutality and stifling isolation these human beings are exposed to, year after year. Little mention is made to explain how these prisoners could possibly be expected to successfully re-enter society after surviving this man-made hellhole.

As this story comes full circle, Tony wishes that for just one day, those high-ranking F.B.I. officials could experience what prisoners around the nation have to live with on a daily basis. Only then could they begin to conceptualize the mis-treatment being inflicted upon those incarcerated in America's prisons, and the anger it breeds. Perhaps at this juncture they would realize that while there is a definite undercurrent of alienation and animosity within the country's prison population, it is not a radicalization born from the exposure to the vitriolic venom spewing from the mouths of psychotic mass murderers such as Osama bin Laden, an individual I would happily speed on the way to his reward of 72 virgins.

No, my "radicalization" as you describe it, has been incubated and nurtured by this cesspool you call a penal system, and every day your brutality adds yet another name on the rolls. At what point will you sit up and take note?

Notes

1. "Maximum Insecurity", at www.afscme31.org
2. Prison Legal News, June 2006, p. 42
3. Prison Legal News, June 2006, p. 35

Source / Information Clearing House

The Rag Blog

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Ritmo : Inhumane Texas Detention Center Should be a Crime. Cheney or No Cheney.

Federal detention center in Raymondville, Texas.

'Willacy County is home to the largest of a new generation of detention camps where thousands of undocumented immigrants live in massive tents with poor food, non-existent health care, facing months if not years deprived of their basic liberty.'
By Will Bunch / November 19, 2008

"I call it 'Ritmo' -- like Gitmo, but it's in Raymondville," said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration lawyer from nearby Harlingen.

Washington Post, Feb. 2, 2007

OK, first of all, the bad news. Dick Cheney is not going to jail, not any time soon, at least, and not because of the bizarre report that the vice president of the United States has been indicted in a small, obscure county deep in the heart of South Texas in a scandal over federal prison and detention abuses there. Aside from the obvious fact that a Willacy County, Texas, grand jury lacks authority over federal actions, the indictment of Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other is not even signed by a judge, and the result of a wacky -- controversial wouldn't do the man justice -- renegade lame duck DA.

It's almost not even worth noting that Cheney's alleged tie -- investing his millions in Vanguard mutual funds that are major owners of publicly traded federal prison contractors -- is weak beyond belief; by the grand jury's reasoning, one could surmise that others with Vanguard 401K plans (example: journalists at the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer!) could be charged as well.

That's a shame, because a) as noted here many times, Cheney's role in authorizing torture and other unlawful practices in the Bush administration deserves a real criminal probe and b) the strange false-alarm over this vice presidential indictment will probably obscure the fact that what has been taking place in Raymondville, Texas, during Bush and Cheney's time in office is a crime -- maybe statutory, maybe not, but definitely a moral one.

Willacy County, scene of today's indictments, is also home to the largest of a new generation of detention camps where thousands of undocumented immigrants -- the vast majority of whom have committed no crime other than seeking America's promise of a new life, without proper papers -- are now detained in conditions that could be described ironically as hot, flat, and crowded -- living in massive tents with poor food, non-existent health care and facing months if not years deprived of their basic liberty.

It wasn't always that way. For years, American policy was to catch and release undocumented immigrants, but that all changed with the GOP's politically charged crackdown on illegal immigration, which led in 2005 to a new policy of detaining undocumented non-Mexicans until they receive a deportation hearing and are usually booted from the country. The new policy meant doling out millions to politically connected prison firms and contractors (including the formerly Cheney-run Hallibuton) to hastily build these detention centers, including $65 million for the one in poverty-stricken Willacy County, some 260 miles south of Austin, that isn't even a structure but, as most simply call it, "Tent City."

Remember, these immigrants -- the majority at "Ritmo" hail from El Salvador, torn apart by years of civil strife -- have committed no crime beyond seeking to enter America without paperwork, and yet the Willacy County facility is in many ways quite simply a prison, like Gitmo, stark and surrounded by barbed wire. Here's how "Tent City" was described by the American Civil Liberties Union:

The Willacy County Detention Facility is the largest immigration detention facility in the country. The facility is made up of ten large tents, each of which is designed to house 200 people. The tents are windowless and lights are on around-the-clock, making it difficult to sleep. No partitions exist to separate the showers, toilets, sinks, and eating areas, and detainees report that they are occasionally forced to eat with their hands because no utensils are provided.

The Washington Post article fills in more details:

Because lights are on around the clock, a visitor finds many occupants buried in their blankets throughout the day. The stillness and torpor of the pod's communal room, where 50 to 60 people dwell, are noticeable.

Goodwin described a group of women who huddled in a recreation yard on a recent 40-degree day with a 25-mph wind. "They had no blanket, no sweat shirt, no jacket," she said. "Officers were wearing earmuffs, and detainees were outside for an hour with short-sleeved polyester uniforms and shower shoes and not necessarily socks."

Perhaps more troubling, lawyers said, large numbers of immigrants have been transferred from Boston, New York, New Jersey and Florida, far from their families and lawyers. Because some immigration judges do not permit hearings by teleconference, detainees are essentially deprived of counsel.

There have been other problems inside "Tent City" -- mealworms were found inside some of the food there last year, for example, and another study found a stunning lack of available healthcare at Willacy -- but by now you probably get the idea. In many ways, this immigrant detention program is a metaphor for what we've seen time and time again during the Cheney-Bush years, a rushed and ill-conceived federal action (despite the harsh impact on those captured, the program's effect on solving the undocumented immigration problem is fairly minimal) that's meant big bucks for a few connected contractors, with little or no thought toward its degrading impact on real human beings, or on how America is perceived by the rest of the world.

Now, a nation that famously asked for the world's tired, poor, hungry and sick is taking refugees from a war-torn and poverty stricken corner of our own continent, and making them more hungry and depriving them of sleep before sending then away. How sad. That's not just an indictment of Dick Cheney, though. That's an indictment for all of us who allowed a harsh tent city called "Ritmo" to rise on our watch.

Source / Philly.com

Also see Cheney and Gonzales Indicted in Texas : Abuse of Federal Prisoners / The Rag Blog / Nov. 18, 2008

Thanks to S. M. Welhelm / The Rag Blog

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