| Welcome to Nikki And Helen. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Stuff About Prison; abzug [May 1, 2006] | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 7 2006, 10:16 PM (7,406 Views) | |
| abzug | Jan 8 2007, 10:58 PM Post #31 |
|
In love with a prisoner
|
Great article. One year and four months, eh? Hard to imagine how Karen surived for so long. And not so strange that Frances Myers or Lou Stoke remained for only a season or less. |
Visit the Bad Girls Annex!
| |
![]() |
|
| ekny | Jan 9 2007, 04:00 AM Post #32 |
In love with a prisoner
|
Wow, statistically Helen's tenure at Larkhall (& the issues she encountered) sounds dead accurate according to this article, very interesting. --what paper was it from? Thanks for posting! --e |
![]() |
|
| badgirlnuts | Jan 9 2007, 08:41 PM Post #33 |
|
G2 landing
|
Thanx for the response, Abzug and Ekny. Since there was a discussion on Helen's work performance I just cruised around on the net and found this article from Guardian Unlimited.
|
![]() |
|
| abzug | Jan 10 2007, 05:05 AM Post #34 |
|
In love with a prisoner
|
So, Pat and Sheena in the Xmas ep, not so far-fetched after all.... Behind bars, two lesbian prisoners tie the knot Paging the New York Times "Vows" column: Here's a tear-jerker about finding love in the most unlikely place that's guaranteed to make the anti-gay fundies foam at the mouth. Two women serving time at the Edmonton Institution for Women in Edmonton, Canada, got married on Sunday night, according to the Associated Press. Free from handcuffs, but under the watchful eye of guards, the two brides wore street clothes during the ceremony, which was performed by a minister. The Mrs. and Mrs. inmates' names were not released, but one is serving a 34-month sentence for breaking and entering, assault with a weapon and aggravated assault, while the other has been doing six years hard time for manslaughter, assault and assaulting a peace officer. The wedding night was reportedly chaste, since the prisoners must continue to sleep in separate cells. But both brides are scheduled to be released by the end of this year, on Nov. 18 and Dec. 6, respectively. Not everyone involved in the wedding shed tears of joy. The Canadian prison guards' union opposed the match. "It's the value and ethics of getting married in jail while they're serving time together in the same institution," said Kevin Grabowsky, president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers. "It's not Club Fed, where you go and meet your spouse." He raised the concern that the union might cause security problems; for instance, if the couple had a "marital spat," or if one spouse had a dispute with a guard, the other might try to exact revenge. Talk about a killjoy. C'mon, Grabowsky, lighten up, it's a wedding! Also, haven't you ever heard the one about how love will find a way? Gay marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005, and the happy couple in Edmonton are not even the first same-sex couple in the country to marry while doing time. Two male inmates at Ontario's Bath Institution were married in November 2006. -- Katharine Mieszkowski from Salon.com's Broadsheet |
Visit the Bad Girls Annex!
| |
![]() |
|
| Lisa289 | Jan 10 2007, 01:19 PM Post #35 |
![]()
Welsh Bad Girl
![]()
|
Wow, that's an interesting article. Thanks for that, abzug. |
![]() I'm Not Just Perfect - I'm Welsh | |
![]() |
|
| Canadabadgirl | Mar 3 2007, 12:26 AM Post #36 |
|
G3 Curtain and Duvet!
|
This was in the Guardian aka the "Grauniad". Can opera save our prisons? Inmates' lives are being transformed by musical education programmes. Former prisoner Rosie Johnston wishes they had been available during her time inside Thursday March 1, 2007 The Guardian In the chapel of Wandsworth prison in south London, a woebegone group of men and women beg for mercy. Not some weird lenten ritual, but rehearsals for Pimlico Opera's production of Les Misérables. The cast includes both professional singers, and prisoners; mostly black, mostly long-term inmates. "We're dealing with performers who have low expectations of themselves," says director Michael Moody. "Their society is based on fear and self-protection. The pecking order dictates who gets applauded, who gets laughed at. You can't rehearse with that energy. It takes two and a half weeks for them to turn the corner. Their commitment is 100% now." This is his fifth prison production for Pimlico; he knows the vagaries of the system. "About 40 sign up to begin with, but some don't clear security and some drop out when they realise it's bloody hard work." Article continues An inmate - tall, black, polite - offers me a bottle of water. Kelvin is part of the ensemble; I am suddenly, shamefully jealous. Twenty years ago, I myself was serving six months of a nine-month sentence in Bullwood Hall prison. Days stacked up; units of boredom ticked off on a calendar. I went on a DIY course on which I was told how to switch on an electric light. I would have put up with a lot for an opportunity like Pimlico Opera. At 21, Kelvin is five years into a life sentence for murder. "This project is teaching me how to control my anger; how to be told what to do without shouting back. I come from a violent background but this helps me express myself because I'm more confident." James is doing five years for armed burglary and GBH. He plays the bishop. "Guys who started off taking the piss are now really serious. I grew up in a rough situation and got addicted to drugs. I never thought I could do anything like this." "Lots of staff aren't happy about it," my escort officer confides, unlocking and re-locking an interminable series of iron doors. "They think these programmes don't work; that the prisoners are doing it to get parole. There are officers who think that being in here isn't bad enough, that they deserve more punishment." This schism between the punitive versus the rehabilitative runs deep within the penal system; prisoner access to creative projects depends on the attitude of individual governors. Wandsworth's governor, Ian Mulholland, is clear about his remit. "We give prisoners a chance to see what they're capable of. Some of them have never been praised. Positive feedback is fantastic for them. We need to do our best to reduce recidivism and I have to justify these programmes to the director-general of the prison service, but if I thought it was just a jolly for the prisoners, I wouldn't be interested." Taking an opera company into a fully operational prison is a logistical nightmare. Costumes pose a golden opportunity for smuggling contraband, and the fear of one of the inmates walking out with the audience makes the security department particularly twitchy. "Les Misérables has been tricky," says Nick Siequien, head of the prison's business management unit. "The subject matter is inflammatory; there are weapons and a barricade scene. But there is real value in programmes like these. If we don't help prisoners to change while they're in here, they're highly likely to re-offend." When Wasfi Kani founded Pimlico Opera in 1987, she didn't think the project would last. "I thought things would improve, that prisons would be empty. I was wrong." But it's not all bad news. "Officers are much less hostile. There's been a huge effort to change the cops-and-robbers roles in prisons." Kani and Moody also founded Grange Park Opera, an up-market summer opera festival in Hampshire. "It's a bit Robin Hood. We steal from the rich and give to the poor." Pimlico Opera's £120,000 budget for Les Misérables is largely funded by private donors. Brought up by struggling immigrant parents, Kani had a similar childhood to many of the inmates she has met through Pimlico projects. "If things had gone slightly differently for me, I could have ended up inside. I'm still doing the prison projects because I've seen people change." Jo Tilley-Riley, director of strategy and funding for Music in Prisons, a charitable project that organises creative music projects for prisoners, believes that self-esteem is crucial if ex-inmates are to stay on the right side of the prison gate. Music in Prisons runs a five-day intensive course, bringing musicians to work with inmates in groups of up to 10. They help prisoners write songs that can then be performed to other inmates, guests and even family members. The music is then recorded and everyone gets a CD. "They have to learn to talk and listen; communication is essential if you're in a band. For some, it's the first time they've ever done this," says Tilley-Riley. Music in Prisons is funded by the Irene Taylor Trust, which was set up in response to arts programs being phased out of prisons in favour of key-skills education. However, many prisoners find conventional courses hard, fail to complete them and become demoralised. "Finishing a project is crucial for confidence," says Tilley-Riley. "An inmate we've just been with had been banned from every educational course in the prison. He stayed for the duration and was brilliant." In a recent project at Holloway prison, Music in Prisons worked with a group of prolific self-harmers. None of the women self-harmed during the week, and incidents among course participants remained low for the following three to four weeks. "Positive outlets for creativity are proven to reduce self-harming," says Tilley-Riley, "But it's hard to sustain, as overcrowding has a direct impact on access to support and education. " Eileen, one former prisoner, undertook the Music in Prisons course during her time at Askham Grange prison. After five and a half years inside, she now works with Music in Prisons, facilitating projects with women in Holloway. "The project changed my life. I left prison without the stigma of being there. People inside need support; to know that their lives aren't finished." Clare Smith is the project co- ordinator of Sonic (dB), a partnership between Staffordshire Arts and Museum services and Youth Music that gives young offenders an opportunity to work with hi-tech music equipment. Inmates develop professional-level sound recording and software skills that they can hopefully use on release. At Swinfen Hall, a young offenders institution, Sonic (dB) helped 10 inmates aged between 18 and 25 produce Change the Way, a powerful rap song about gun crime. "We give them information on where they can go to carry on learning about and making music. Support for these projects varies from prison to prison, but for sustained benefits, the home office has to buy into it," says Smith. Radio 1's Tim Westwood will be playing the track this weekend. "This is as good as many records out there: it's the sound of the street," he says. "Maybe guys in trouble will listen to this; they're not listening to their parents or community leaders. There's nothing romantic about going to prison." Frances Crook, Director of the Howard League for Penal Reform agrees: "Security departments in prisons have such a negative response to creativity, but music and arts can reduce conflicts and violence. I think prison staff are beginning to realise that these projects can impact their lives, too, by making prisons a better place." This is a good thing, because prison sucks. There were no meaningful routes to learning available to us when I was inside, no real challenges to offending behaviour. The prison population as a whole has a very high rate of mental illness. The importance of music and creative expression are "well established in the recovery from mental illness" according to a 2004 Mental Health Foundation report, but why is the prison service left to mop up this failure in the care system? I find myself wondering what happened to bi-polar Tracy, who befriended me in Holloway at the beginning of my sentence. She was a hoot; singing and telling jokes when we were banged up. The last time I saw her, she was screaming and spitting as four screws dragged her to the punishment block. Perhaps expressing her frustrations through a music project would have stopped her stabbing the duty officer with a plastic knife; she'd have made a kick-ass Mama Morton in Chicago. · Pimlico Opera's Les Misérables is at HMP Wandsworth, London SW18 from tomorrow until March 10. Tickets: box@grangeparkopera.co.uk; 01962 868888. Music in Prisons: www.musicinprisons.org.uk; Sonic (dB) www.sonicdb.org.uk |
![]() |
|
| Baileysqueen | Mar 3 2007, 02:50 AM Post #37 |
|
I thought i could fight them, i was Stupid.
|
This article is incredible. My old primary school teacher did something similar on a smaller scale when she introduced a programme in Nottingham Prison with Christian Song. And she turned many lives around.
It shocks me as well that with all the advances in musical therapy that they could believe this. Yes I can agree that some may be there for parole but once involved, as the article states’, putting on a show, and especially one of such calibre, is not a walk in the park! Discipline and hard work are needed. Also the sense of achievement the prisoners will feel afterwards. How can an officer’s criticise that affect? I think this article relates to Nikki when she comments on that fact that their ‘not all idiots, they can read ‘, I forget the exact reference. These sorts of programmes should be introduced in prisons all over the world. Yes, prison is a punishment for breaking the law, but if people are just sat in prison doing nothing, what help will that be? Surely the idea is reform? Some of the people involved in this will have never had an opportunity to do this kind of thing; the whole event is so beneficial on many levels. Thanks for posting Canadabadgirl. This Article is really interesting. I would love to use my music degree in the future, with such a valuable scheme like this. x |
| |
![]() |
|
| abzug | Mar 5 2007, 03:32 PM Post #38 |
|
In love with a prisoner
|
This article is beyond disturbing. Many states have created this system whereby sex offenders can be kept locked up indefinitely, under the guise of receiving "treatment" for their sexual dysfunction. And this is AFTER they have completed their prison sentences! And it seems there's almost no process in place for them to get released. The article pays lip service to the civil liberty violations, but focuses much more on the efficacy of the treatment. Ugh. March 4, 2007 Doubts Rise as States Hold Sex Offenders After Prison By MONICA DAVEY and ABBY GOODNOUGH The decision by New York to confine sex offenders beyond their prison terms places the state at the forefront of a growing national movement that is popular with politicians and voters. But such programs have almost never met a stated purpose of treating the worst criminals until they no longer pose a threat. About 2,700 pedophiles, rapists and other sexual offenders are already being held indefinitely, mostly in special treatment centers, under so-called civil commitment programs in 19 states, which on average cost taxpayers four times more than keeping the offenders in prison. In announcing a deal with legislative leaders on Thursday, Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, suggested that New York’s proposed civil commitment law would “become a national model” and go well beyond confining the most violent predators to also include mental health treatment and intensive supervised release for offenders. “No one has a bill like this, nobody,” said State Senator Dale M. Volker, a Republican from western New York and a leading proponent in the Legislature of civil confinement. But in state after state, such expectations have fallen short. The United States Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the laws in part because their aim is to furnish treatment if possible, not punish someone twice for the same crime. Yet only a small fraction of committed offenders have ever completed treatment to the point where they could be released free and clear. Leroy Hendricks, a convicted child molester in Kansas, finished his prison term 13 years ago, but he remains locked up at a cost to taxpayers in that state of $185,000 a year — more than eight times the cost of keeping someone in prison there. Mr. Hendricks, who is 72 and unsuccessfully challenged his confinement in the Supreme Court, spends most days in a wheelchair or leaning on a cane, because of diabetes, circulation ailments and the effects of a stroke. He may not live long enough to “graduate” from treatment. Few ever make such progress: Nationwide, of the 250 offenders released unconditionally since the first law was passed in 1990, about half of them were let go on legal or technical grounds unrelated to treatment. Still, political leaders, like those in New York, are vastly expanding such programs to keep large numbers of rapists and pedophiles off the streets after their prison terms in a response to public fury over grisly sex crimes. In Coalinga, Calif., a $388 million facility will allow the state to greatly expand the offenders it holds to 1,500. Florida, Minnesota, Nebraska, Virginia and Wisconsin are also adding beds. At the federal level, President Bush has signed a law offering money to states that commit sex offenders beyond their prison terms, and the Justice Department is creating a civil commitment program for federal prisoners. Even with the enthusiasm among politicians, an examination by The New York Times of the existing programs found they have failed in a number of areas: ¶Sex offenders selected for commitment are not always the most violent; some exhibitionists are chosen, for example, while rapists are passed over. And some are past the age at which some scientists consider them most dangerous. In Wisconsin, a 102-year-old who wears a sport coat to dinner cannot participate in treatment because of memory lapses and poor hearing. ¶The treatment regimens are expensive and largely unproven, and there is no way to compel patients to participate. Many simply do not show up for sessions on their lawyers’ advice — treatment often requires them to recount crimes, even those not known to law enforcement — and spend their time instead gardening, watching television or playing video games. ¶The cost of the programs is virtually unchecked and growing, with states spending nearly $450 million on them this year. The annual price of housing a committed sex offender averages more than $100,000, compared with about $26,000 a year for keeping someone in prison, because of the higher costs for programs, treatment and supervised freedoms. ¶Unlike prisons and other institutions, civil commitment centers receive little standard, independent oversight or monitoring; sex among offenders is sometimes rampant, and, in at least one facility, sex has been reported between offenders and staff members. ¶Successful treatment is often not a factor in determining the relatively few offenders who are released; in Iowa, of the nine men let go unconditionally, none had completed treatment or earned the center’s recommendation for release. ¶Few states have figured out what to do when they do have graduates ready for supervised release. In California, the state made 269 attempts to find a home for one released pedophile. In Milwaukee, the authorities started searching in 2003 for a neighborhood for a 77-year-old offender, but have yet to find one. Supporters of the laws offer no apologies for their shortcomings, insisting that the money is well spent. Born out of the anguish that followed a handful of high-profile sex crimes in the 1980s, the laws are proven and potent vote-getters that have withstood constitutional challenges. “There has to be a process in place that prevents someone from rejoining society if they’re still dangerous,” said Jeffrey Klein, a Democratic member of the New York State Senate who has pushed for civil confinement there. Martin Andrews, 47, of Woodbridge, Va., who was abducted, buried in a box and repeatedly sexually assaulted for a week when he was 13, also supports the laws. “If they can’t control themselves,” Mr. Andrews said, “we need to do it for them.” But the myriad problems have concerned some advocates for victims of sexual abuse, who suggest the money is being wasted and that other options for dealing with dangerous sex offenders — such as giving them longer prison terms, preventing sentencing deals with prosecutors and mandating treatment during incarceration — would be more effective. “Civil commitment is a huge, huge assignment of resources,“ said Anne Liske, the former executive director of the New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault, a victims’ advocacy group. “This wholesale warehousing — without using the proper assessment tools and with throwing treatment in when they are not people who can be treated — has already proven not to be working, so why would we do it more?” A Series of Convictions Leroy Hendricks was a likely candidate for commitment as he prepared to leave a Kansas prison in 1994. Mr. Hendricks’s most recent crime, for which he had been convicted a decade earlier, had been “indecent liberties” with two 13-year-old boys in an electronics shop where he worked. All told, his convictions left a painful trail reaching back to 1955: exposing himself to young girls; molesting 7- and 8-year-old boys at a carnival where he was the ride foreman; molesting a 7-year-old girl; playing strip poker with a 14-year-old girl; preying on his own family members, including a boy with cerebral palsy. Like Mr. Hendricks was, thousands of soon-to-be-released prisoners are screened for commitment each year by state corrections departments, prosecutors and panels. The process varies widely from state to state, as do standards for the evaluators, but in most states, those recommended for commitment have trials before judges or juries. Mr. Hendricks may have sealed his own fate when he testified in 1994 that he could not “control the urge” to molest when he got “stressed out.” He said his mother, Violet, had wanted a girl when he was born and had dressed him as one when he was growing up. “I sure don’t want to hurt anybody again,” he told the court, but then conceded that he could not ensure the safety of children in his presence. “The only way to guarantee that is to die,” he said. More often, these cases come down to contentious duels between psychologists over how best to analyze an offender’s history and likelihood of repeating crimes. In most states, commitment is for an indefinite period, but offenders are allowed to have their cases reviewed by a court periodically. The results of the screening process are inconsistent. Some offenders are passed up for civil confinement, only to commit vicious crimes again; others’ physical ailments alone make them unlikely repeat predators. Even though Minnesota prison officials had classified Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., a convicted rapist, in a category of sex offenders most at risk to commit more crimes, Mr. Rodriguez went home when his term ended in May 2003. That November, he kidnapped and killed Dru Sjodin, a North Dakota college student who was beaten and raped. Likewise, Jerry Buck Inman was charged with raping and strangling a college student in South Carolina last June, nine months after his release from a Florida prison after serving 17 years for rape and other crimes. The authorities in Florida looked at his records but decided not to seek commitment. Meanwhile, some prosecutors seek commitment for others convicted of noncontact crimes like public exposure. In Florida, prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to civilly commit a man who was imprisoned for driving drunk even though his last sex arrest was decades earlier. “The population that is being detained is a very, very mixed group,” said Richard Wollert, a psychologist in Portland, Ore., who evaluates civilly committed offenders. “There are cases that are appalling in terms of being kept in custody at the taxpayers’ expense when there are probably alternative placements for them.” Predicting who is likely to commit future sex crimes has become more of a science over the last decade, but many still find the methods questionable. Actuarial formulas — akin to the tables used for life insurance — play a central role in deciding who is dangerous enough to be committed. They calculate someone’s risk of offending again by looking at factors such as the number of prior sex offenses and the sex of the victims. Men with male victims are graded as higher risk, for example, because statistics show they are more often repeat offenders. “The danger is that these numbers will blind people,” said Eric Janus, a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul who has challenged Minnesota’s civil commitment law in court. Politics and emotion also factor heavily into who gets committed, with decisions made by elected judges or juries who may be more affected by the raw facts of someone’s offense history or the public spectacle over their crimes than the dry science of risk prediction. “It’s so emotional for them,” said Stephen Watson, an assistant public defender who represented an offender in Florida. “They don’t even want to hear the research.” New Laws Follow Publicized Cases Earlier in the 20th century, many states had sexual psychopath laws that allowed them to hospitalize offenders deemed too sick for prison. But by the 1980s most such laws had been repealed or fallen into disuse. But a handful of horrific and highly publicized cases in the 1980s and ’90s spurred lawmakers to act again. Washington State adopted the first civil commitment law in 1990 after men with predatory histories killed a young woman in Seattle and sexually mutilated a boy in Tacoma. After state courts upheld Washington’s law, Kansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin passed versions in 1994, followed by California in 1996. Then, in a 5-to-4 decision in 1997, the United States Supreme Court found civil commitment to be constitutional in Kansas v. Hendricks, the same Mr. Hendricks still confined in Kansas. In the ruling, the justices found that a “mental abnormality” like pedophilia was enough to meet a standard to qualify someone for commitment, not the different standard of “mental illness” that had been traditionally used. The court also rejected the notion that civil commitment amounted to double jeopardy (a second criminal punishment for a single crime) or an ex post facto law (a new punishment for a past crime), noting that Kansas’s statute was not meant to punish committed men but, like other acceptable civil commitment statutes, intended “both to incapacitate and to treat” them therapeutically. “We have never held that the Constitution prevents a state from civilly detaining those for whom no treatment is available, but who nevertheless pose a danger to others,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority, later adding, “By furnishing such treatment, the Kansas Legislature has indicated that treatment, if possible, is at least an ancillary goal of the act, which easily satisfies any test for determining that the act is not punitive.” Since then, state officials, civil liberties advocates and lawyers have wrestled with exactly what that treatment requirement means. “There’s no question about it,” Professor Janus of William Mitchell College said, “it’s a very murky area of the law.” Since the Hendricks ruling, the courts have indicated that states have “wide latitude” when it comes to treatment for the civilly confined, meaning that unsuccessful treatment alone or an untreatable patient would not be enough to undo the laws. In 2001, the Supreme Court, in Seling v. Young, decided the case of Andre Brigham Young, a committed man in Washington State who argued that the conditions he was being held under were so punitive and the treatment so inadequate as to amount to a second criminal sentence. The court ruled against Mr. Young. A year later, in 2002, the Supreme Court made clear the limits of who may be committed by states, saying the authorities must prove not just that an offender is still dangerous and likely to commit more crimes but also that he or she has a “serious difficulty in controlling behavior.” Some civil libertarians and prisoner advocates, who still object to the laws, have not given up on finding a challenge that the Supreme Court might view favorably. Despite the court rulings, these groups insist civil commitment amounts to a second sentence for a crime. Even the look of commitment centers reflects the dichotomy at the core of their stated reason for being — to lock away dangerous men (only three women are civilly committed) but also to treat them. Most of the centers tend to look and feel like prisons, with clanking double doors, guard stations, fluorescent lighting, cinder-block walls, overcrowded conditions and tall fences with razor wire around the perimeters. Bedroom doors are often locked at night, and mail is searched by the staff for pornography or retail catalogs with pictures of women or children. Most states put their centers in isolated areas. Washington State’s is on an island three miles offshore in Puget Sound. Yet soothing artwork hangs at some centers, and cheerful fliers announce movie nights and other activities. The residents can wander the grounds and often spend their time as they please in an effort to encourage their cooperation, including sunbathing in courtyards and sometimes even ordering pizza for delivery. The new center in California will have a 20,000-book library, badminton courts and room for music and art therapy. Diseases like hepatitis and diabetes are common among the committed, and severe mental illness — beyond the mental “abnormalities“ described by the Supreme Court — a scourge. A survey in 2002 found that 12 percent of committed sex offenders suffered from serious psychiatric problems like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Most severely mentally ill men cannot participate in sex offender treatment and receive few services besides medication. Verwayne Alexander, a self-described paranoid schizophrenic who has been detained at the Florida Civil Commitment Center since 2003, has sliced himself so many times with razor blades that a guard often watches him around the clock, lawyers said. Mr. Alexander has sought unsuccessfully to be moved to a psychiatric hospital. Those who choose to participate in sex offender treatment spend an average of less than 10 hours a week doing so, but the hours differ vastly from state to state. The structure of therapy, too, varies widely, a reflection, perhaps, of the central question still looming in the field: Can treatment ever really work for these offenders? Admitting to previous crimes is a crucial piece of a broad band of treatment, known as relapse prevention, that is used in at least 15 states and has been the most widely accepted model for about 20 years. Some of the institutions, too, devote time to other therapies and activities that seem to have little bearing on sexual offending. In Pennsylvania, young residents take classes to improve their health and social habits called “Athlete’s Foot,” “Lactose Intolerance,” “Male Pattern Baldness,” “Flatulence” and “Proper Table Manners.” In California, they can join a Brazilian drum ensemble or classes like “Anger Management Through Art Therapy” and “Interpersonal Skills Through Mural Making.” But many of those committed get no treatment at all for sex offending, mainly by their own choice. In California, three-quarters of civilly committed sex offenders do not attend therapy. Many say their lawyers tell them to avoid it because admission of past misdeeds during therapy could make getting out impossible, or worse, lead to new criminal charges. For those who decline treatment — sometimes including hundreds of “detainees” awaiting commitment trials — boredom, resentment and hostility to those in treatment lead to trouble. Some sneak in drugs, alcohol and cellphones, sometimes with the help of staff members, or beat up other residents, sometimes coercing them into having sex. “There’s rampant sexuality going on in there,” said Natalie Novick Brown, a psychologist who has evaluated 250 men at Florida’s center. The people who run civil commitment centers say that a constant, nagging question hangs over them: How to keep order while not treating argumentative, sometimes violent offenders like prisoners? The low-level staff members are not prison guards and tend to be poorly educated, trained and paid. Their job titles — in Illinois, security therapy aide — reflect the awkward balance they must achieve between security and therapy. Because civil commitment centers are neither prisons nor traditional mental health programs, no specialized oversight body exists. None has been created, in part because its base of financial support, the 19 civil commitment programs around the country, would be too small, several experts who study the programs said. But the need, they said, is urgent. “They ought to be reviewed by an independent entity with the highest possible standards,” said Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic in Baltimore. Few Signs of Progress Around the country, relatively few committed sex offenders finish treatment and are released. “Every year I go to his hearing, and every year there’s no progress in his case,” said Armand R. Cingolani III, a lawyer with a client in Pennsylvania who was committed in 2004 after being adjudicated as a juvenile for sexual assault on two different minors. “It doesn’t seem that anyone gets better.” Nearly 3,000 sex offenders have been committed since the first law passed in 1990. In 18 of the 19 states, about 50 have been released completely from commitment because clinicians or state-appointed evaluators deemed them ready. Some 115 other people have been sent home because of legal technicalities, court rulings, terminal illness or old age. In discharging offenders, Arizona, the remaining state, has been the exception. That state has fully discharged 81 people; there, the facility’s director said records were not available to indicate the reason for those discharges. An additional 189 people have been released with supervision or conditions (excluding Texas, where there is no commitment center and those committed are treated only as outpatients). And an additional 68 (including 58 in Arizona) are in a higher, “transitional” phase of the program, but still technically committed and often living on state land. The backlogs have led to an aging population. Inside many facilities, wheelchairs, walkers, high blood pressure and senility are increasingly expensive concerns. Florida’s center filled 229 prescriptions for arthritis medication one recent month, and 300 for blood pressure and other heart problems. More than 400 of the men in civil commitment are 60 or older, and a number of studies indicate a significant drop in the recidivism rate for this group, many of whom have health problems after years in prison. David Thornton, treatment director of Wisconsin’s center and an expert on recidivism rates, said the decline was increasingly well-documented. The growth of the committed population has become a political quagmire. No legislator wants to insist on the release of sex offenders, but few are able to swallow the mounting costs of civil commitment. The costs of aging and sick offenders, such as Mr. Hendricks in Kansas, are especially high in part because of their special needs and physical ailments. From 2001 to 2005, the price of civil commitment in Kansas leapt to nearly $6.9 million from $1.2 million, a state audit there found. “Unless Kansas is willing to accept a higher level of risk and release more sexual predators from the program,” the audit said, “few options exist to curb the growth of the program.” But as more states consider granting some offenders supervised release, the cost is turning out to be nearly as prohibitive. For $1.7 million, Washington converted a warehouse in Seattle into a home for men on conditional release. It has 26 cameras monitoring residents, a dozen workers, a surveillance booth overseeing the living area and a 1,700-pound magnetic door. Two men live there so far. With the logjams and frustrations mounting, many states have lengthened prison sentences for sex offenders. Virginia last year increased the minimum sentence for certain sexual acts against children to 25 years, from 10, though it also sharply expanded the number of crimes that qualify an offender for civil commitment. Ida Ballasiotes, whose daughter’s rape and murder in 1988 helped spur the first civil commitment law, in Washington State, said that no sexual predator should walk free and that longer prison sentences should “absolutely” be considered. “I don’t believe they can be treated, period,” Ms. Ballasiotes said. After Release, Objections Even for those sex offenders considered safe enough to be released, going home is no simple process. Kansas authorities decided two years ago that Mr. Hendricks, who was the first person that state committed under its law and who after a decade had progressed to one of the highest phases of treatment, should be moved from Larned State Hospital to a group home in a community where he would be watched around the clock. Mr. Hendricks would not be allowed onto the home’s porch or patio without an escort, according to court documents. Besides, his medical problems, including poor hearing and eyesight, meant he could not walk down the 40-yard gravel driveway outside the house without falling, the documents said. But as with many men with his history, the community balked. In California, so many towns object to men leaving civil commitment that some of those released have to live in trailers outside prisons. “You can’t just sneak them in,” said John Rodriguez, a recently retired deputy director in the California Department of Mental Health. “You’ve got hearings, the court announces it, it’s all over the press.” In Mr. Hendricks’s case, residents of Lawrence, where he was initially to be moved, collected petitions. “You can tell me that he’s old, but as long as he can move his hands and his arms, he can hurt another child,” said Missi Pfeifer, 37, a mother of three who led the petition drive with her two sisters and mother. Then officials in Leavenworth County, picked as an alternative, said the choice violated county zoning laws. Mr. Hendricks lasted two days there, in a house off a road not far from a pasture of horses, before a judge ordered him removed. State officials said they had no choice but to move Mr. Hendricks back to a facility on the grounds of a different state hospital, where he still is. Through a spokeswoman for the state Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, Mr. Hendricks declined to speak to The New York Times. Two years ago, he told The Lawrence Journal-World that he would be living in a group home “if somebody hadn’t opened their damn mouth,” adding, “I’m stuck here till something happens, and I don’t know when that will be.” |
Visit the Bad Girls Annex!
| |
![]() |
|
| badgirlnuts | Mar 18 2007, 10:04 PM Post #39 |
|
G2 landing
|
Talking your way out A short course in oral communication skills is proving to be best way to stop prisoners reoffending John Crace Tuesday February 28, 2006 Guardian Rehabilitation is the holy grail of the prison service. Most of those working inside Britain's jails are constantly looking for ways to cut recidivism and reintegrate offenders into society. Rehabilitation gives everyone a quieter life - prisoners, guards and the public. The only real questions have been over the effectiveness of any individual approach. New research published today by the Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) at its annual research conference will show how a course in oral communication and thinking skills can improve prisoners' quality of life in custody and significantly reduce the likelihood of their re-offending. The project, which was started in 2003 and involved 211 inmates from four prisons, is believed to be the first UK study to look at the impact of a specific educational course on recidivism. And the results were startling. Reconviction rates in the first year after release among ex-prisoners who had begun a general education course between 2001 and 2002 ran at 28% compared with a national average of 44% for all offenders. The reconviction rates within the first year for those who studied the English Speaking Board's (ESB) oral communication courses were lower at just 21% Dramatic differences It is self-evident that there are huge differences in the quality of education provided at different prisons, but while researchers believe that the gap between general courses and the ESB is not statistically very significant, they argue that the average figure for reoffending of 24% is. "There is a growing recognition that cognitive behavioural psychology does not hold all the answers to the rehabilitation of prisoners," says David Moseley, reader at the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Newcastle University and coauthor of the LSDA research. "Instead, there is substantial evidence that education and training can help to reduce recidivism. Educational experiences in prison can help to build character, raise self-confidence and aspirations and reduce the likelihood of re-offending. The ESB course has proved especially beneficial for certain groups, particularly those with conviction for theft and burglary, repeat offenders, those with shorter sentences or with a high risk of reconviction." Maggie Greenwood, head of research at the LSDA, goes along with this. "What came across is the importance of speaking, listening, thinking and reasoning," she says. "In many cases, the focus in prison education is on literacy and job-related skills. What this research shows is the importance of helping prisoners to become more articulate, control their anger and interact with others, focusing on the "softer" skills like emotional intelligence. Research shows many offenders have failed to develop critical reasoning skills, resulting in thinking that is too concrete and rigid. Training in oral communication helps them to develop their ability to express themselves clearly, which helps them to become more tolerant towards others, less frustrated when they can't get their views across, and more flexible." The ESB oral communication courses are designed to be run for one afternoon a week over an eight-week period and can be used to support other learning or as a stand-alone course. Sue Walton is head of education at Lindholme, a category C training prison in south Yorkshire, where inmates are normally serving sentences of six months to three years. "Many of our prisoners have severe communication difficulties," she says. "They find it extremely hard to vocalise their problems and make themselves understood: often, that's why they end up in prison. The ESB course works holistically: it doesn't just help with communication, it helps teach them how to deal with their anger - how to be assertive not aggressive - and gives them self-confidence. The most common feedback we get is that prisoners have found their voice." Help with telephone manner The course is divided into several modules. The key component is a presentation - usually involving a PowerPoint display - to all the members of the group on a subject of interest to the learner - sport, geography and history are favourite topics at Lindholme. The research is often limited to what's in the prison library, as offenders do not have access to the internet, but it's the process of gathering, selecting and delivering information, rather than the content itself, that is the point. On top of this, students get modules in anger management - disguised as more general forms of learning - and help with their telephone manner. "Prisoners often find it difficult to communicate without using body language," Walton continues. "Telephone training teaches them how to get their point across in the most appropriate way using just their voice. "We've been running these courses for about four years and their popularity has spread by word of mouth through the prison. Now we're permanently over-subscribed and the external examiner has described the prison as a flagship deliverer." A few prison officers are still sceptical about these courses, saying they're "English to blag the Old Bill with", but far more common are responses, such as "we can see the difference when a prisoner has been on it. It helps them to be calmer and more open to persuasion, rather than getting angry and incoherent." The LSDA believes that their research shows that oral communication skills should be given greater prominence within prison education - the Learning and Skills Council has already funded one member of the research team to devise a two-level course for prison educators - not seen as just an add-on to written communication skills. And it will be shouting that from the rooftops today - as well as putting it in writing. |
![]() |
|
| abzug | Mar 19 2007, 03:39 AM Post #40 |
|
In love with a prisoner
|
Can I just say, I think this is right on. I'm mentoring a woman right now who is incarcerated, and she would benefit HUGELY from something like this. She really has very little ability to communicate, and I can imagine how difficult that has been for her for so many years. And it leads to her being very aggressive in order to get what she wants. It never occurred to me until just now that this is something which could be taught. |
Visit the Bad Girls Annex!
| |
![]() |
|
| badgirlnuts | Mar 20 2007, 12:18 AM Post #41 |
|
G2 landing
|
Hi Abzug, I quite agree with you. I mean who'd've thought that having good communication skills will keep you from trouble and/or prison! All the more reason to make finishing high school mandatory. |
![]() |
|
| invisicoll | Mar 26 2007, 06:21 PM Post #42 |
|
On safari
|
I saw this today and thought I'd pass it along. Some of the UK prisons are giving prisoners keys to their own cells. The way this article reads, you'd think the prisoners had been given keys to the gates AND the local bank. Here's the link Thousands of prisoners are being given keys to their cells in the latest farce to hit the criminal justice system. They can roam in and out virtually at will under a scheme designed to give them more "respect and decency". The astonishing measure prompted a furious response from MPs last night, who warned that the human-rights culture was out of control. It will provoke a furious public backlash at a time when prisons are overflowing and dangerous offenders are being tagged and freed into the community. Official figures revealed that 5,747 of the 9,577 offenders in Yorkshire prisons have keys for 'privacy locks' to protect themselves and their belongings. Although many of them are at open prisons and youth offenders' institutes, others are in standard closed prisons for those who have committed serious crimes such as muggings, burglary and theft. It also emerged that some youth prisons now call offenders 'trainees' or 'residents'. Governors in other parts of the country are also understood to have introduced the key scheme. Shipley Tory MP Philip Davies accused the Government of "turning prisons into hotels". He said: "People will be horrified to know so many prisons give inmates their own keys. It will reinforce their views that the regime is far too lax and cushy. "These people are banged up for a reason. But the Government seems more concerned about the human rights of criminals than those of their victims, who are footing the bill to keep them in increasingly pleasant surroundings." Blair Gibbs, director of the Tax-Payers' Alliance, said: "It is hard to believe we live in a serious country any more when you hear lunacy like this. Our politicians are clearly not capable of running anything that resembles an effective criminal justice system." Home Office Minister Gerry Sutcliffe said: "It's mainly used for people who are soon going to be released or in open prisons. "It's all part of providing incentives to encourage them to take more responsibility for themselves, to give them a little bit more respect and decency." He stressed that the prisoners' locks could be over-ridden by staff keys and insisted: "There are no security issues about this. The keys are for their own cells and nowhere else." The revelation will still reinforce concern that prisoners' 'rights' are increasingly being pandered to. In the financial year that ended last March, £8.8million in compensation was paid out to prisoners - almost 15 times as much as just two years earlier. Cases included: • £2.8million for medical treatment for a prisoner who failed in a suicide bid. • £750,000 for nearly 200 drug addicts who suffered withdrawal symptoms after they were forced to go 'cold turkey'. • £80,000 for three illegal immigrant convicts who were not deported quickly enough, opening the door for hundreds of similar claims. • £200 each for prisoners whose DVD players were taken away because they watched pornography. There was also the case of Gerry Cooper, who sued the Home Office after falling out of a bunk bed in his cell. Inquiries by Mr Davies showed that of Yorkshire's 15 prisons, six give keys to all their inmates and three based the decisions on category of offence and personal circumstances. The six who deny them to all offenders, include top-security Wakefield, where Soham murderer Ian Huntley is serving life. Governors at Hull Prison, where 50 per cent of inmates have keys, suggested the practice was there to help prisoners protect themselves from others. The prison said: "The facility is overridden by staff keys and is seen as of additional benefit to vulnerable prisoners by providing extra protection." The inquiries also unearthed the fact that young prisoners at Askham Grange prison are called 'residents', while at Wetherby they are 'trainees'. Earlier this year, Derbyshire chief constable David Coleman was accused of 'madness' after refusing to release pictures of two escaped murderers amid fears it might breach their human rights. He claimed they posed 'no risk' to local people. |
|
Hollamby – “Alright! Let’s have you!” Nikki – “In your dreams, love.” | |
![]() |
|
| abzug | Apr 5 2007, 01:38 PM Post #43 |
|
In love with a prisoner
|
From the New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2007/04/09/0...ta_talk_mcgrath The Castle by Ben McGrath April 9, 2007 Fortune Academy (”The Castle”); Parolees; Criminals; Ex-Convicts; Woods, Roland; 630 Riverside Drive; Meetings Not long ago, Roland Woods got an urgent call on his cell phone (“Yo, Ro!”) from one of the residents of 630 Riverside Drive, where he works as a kind of super. The caller, who had recently been in prison, had paid a surprise Valentine’s Day visit to his girlfriend’s apartment, equipped with a bouquet of roses, and found her entertaining another suitor. He was standing outside her door, enraged and beginning to panic. “Welcome back to the real world,” Woods told him. “Now put down the flowers and come back home, and we’ll talk.” Home, for the Valentine’s caller and about sixty other men (plus the occasional woman), is the Fortune Academy, or, as it’s familiarly known, the Castle, a five-story Gothic fortress on the corner of Riverside and 140th Street, which serves as dormlike living quarters for parolees and ex-cons. Woods, a former convict himself, is a residential supervisor there. Every Thursday evening, the Castle dwellers assemble in a conference room on the ground floor and discuss the difficulties of adjusting to life on the outside. Their odds aren’t good—two out of three former convicts are arrested again within three years of their release—and so they keep talking their problems through. At a recent meeting, a tightly wound forty-eight-year-old named John introduced himself. He’d arrived at the Castle the previous week, fresh from what he called a “small bid”—ninety days on Rikers Island—that had proved to be more destabilizing than either of his bigger bids (four and seven years, respectively). “I went to Social Security to get a card,” he said. “They told me to go to Medicaid. Well, Medicaid says you need a Social Security card. Then I go to Vital Records to get a birth certificate—they won’t give it to me because I don’t have an I.D.” He went on, “One plus one is two, two plus two is four, four plus four is eight,” continuing the sequence until he reached five hundred and twelve. “They don’t realize, when they release people, you have to have one.” Across the table, another man shook his head and said, “I got the same story.” A man wearing a skullcap, clam diggers, and a long, Merlin-like beard spoke up. His name was Yaseen. “They gave me an I.D. with an alias,” he said, “but a birth certificate with my real name. So here I am with this big beard . . .” As the meeting progressed, a theme emerged: bad choices do not necessarily make bad people, and parole affords little room for error. (As John put it, “Years ago, you had to be a criminal to go to jail. Now all you have to be is a fuckup.”) Fraternizing with other parolees in public, for instance, is not allowed. “But it’s inhuman not to,” a broad-shouldered man named Michael said. “If I see you, I’ll speak—and people are going to be going back to prison.” In 2004, of the ten thousand recidivists in New York State, eight thousand were charged with violating parole rather than committing new crimes. JoAnne Page, the C.E.O. of the Fortune Society, which runs the Castle, was serving as the moderator. She tried steering the conversation toward “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” by Stephen Covey. “Excuse me?” a man replied from the corner. “Seven habits?” Earlier, he had said, “I don’t like following rules. The law’s the law and it’s not made for us.” Not everyone was downcast. Mustafa, the house chef and a former resident, stopped in, wearing a Bluetooth device in his ear. “One morning in August of 1977, I made a poor choice, and it took me until now to get out of it,” he said. “I just got off parole with a violent felony.” “How many years?” Yaseen asked. “I did twenty-five.” “Good for you.” “But one of my goals was to vote,” Mustafa continued. “I’m going tomorrow to the post office to register. I’m fifty-one, I have a seven-month-old son, my own apartment, and another child on the way. The way I see it, I’m actually, like, twenty-six.” They all laughed. “It’s the new math!” the man in the corner said. Applause followed Mustafa to the door. “We need to tell you who to vote for,” someone called out. “Hillary!” Mustafa shouted, raising his fist. |
Visit the Bad Girls Annex!
| |
![]() |
|
| Canadabadgirl | Apr 5 2007, 07:18 PM Post #44 |
|
G3 Curtain and Duvet!
|
I think it's interesting that recidivism numbers include people who have gone back to prison for violating conditions of their parole. After all, people on parole have not completed their prison sentences and, as the article pointed out, don't necessarily have to "re-offend" (in a straightforward definition of the word) in order to be sent back to finish those sentences. Ok, a child-rapist being caught near a school as a parole violation is one thing, but a bank robber having a beer or the conversations described in the article, really stretch the meaning of recidivism for me. |
![]() |
|
| abzug | Apr 5 2007, 08:08 PM Post #45 |
|
In love with a prisoner
|
There are even more unfair scenarios than that, because people on parole have curfews, and if they are caught out after curfew, they can be sent back to jail. So imagine your curfew is 9 pm, and you get off work at 8 pm, and take a bus or train home from work, and there's traffic or it gets delayed for some other reason. You could wind up back in jail for that! |
Visit the Bad Girls Annex!
| |
![]() |
|
| Go to Next Page | |
| « Previous Topic · The Comfy Sofa · Next Topic » |










8:45 AM Jul 11