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| Stuff About Prison; abzug [May 1, 2006] | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 7 2006, 10:16 PM (7,403 Views) | |
| abzug | Aug 30 2007, 12:46 AM Post #76 |
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In love with a prisoner
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And another one by the same reporter, this one about prison rape (but focused mostly on men). (This is on a new page, so in case you missed it, a minute ago I posted an article about consensual relationships between inmates and officers--click to the previous page to check it out--it's FASCINATING, and SO Helen-and-Nikki!) http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/i...ll=7&thispage=1 State battles prison rape, attitudes Crime - A new federal law has Oregon trying to reduce what's become a fact of life behind bars Wednesday, August 29, 2007 AIMEE GREEN The Oregonian Just a few months into his prison sentence, a 26-year-old burglar from small-town Oregon was lured into a secluded stairway of the Oregon State Penitentiary and raped by another inmate. Nothing extraordinary in a nation where aggressive, violent inmates have long preyed on weaker ones. At least 4 percent of prison inmates anonymously reported in a national survey that they had been sexually assaulted in the previous year. In Oregon, that equates to more than 800 prisoners. But what happened after the attack at the Salem prison stunned officials: The man reported the rape and agreed to testify. Prosecutors think the victim, a first-timer to the Oregon prison system, came forward only because he was naive: He didn't know that inmates who snitch on other inmates risk being savagely beaten or raped again. In Oregon and across the country, corrections officials are struggling to reverse decades of indifference toward rape behind bars and persuade more victims to report attacks. They are under pressure from a new federal law, the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which requires jails and prisons to take steps to reduce sexual assaults or face loss of federal funding starting next year. Each new arrival to the Oregon Department of Corrections is shown a 10-minute video providing tips on how to avoid falling prey and urging inmates to report attacks. Prison officers have been trained to notice signs that an inmate has been attacked. Staff are documenting each reported sexual assault in hopes of preventing future ones. Prison administrators say part of their work is eradicating old attitudes. No one, they say, deserves to be raped. "These are real human beings," said Joan Palmateer, of the Oregon Department of Corrections, who cringes at the flippant portrayals of prison rape in popular culture. "It's not something to be joked or sneered at." Multnomah County, a leader among Oregon counties in developing new rape-prevention policies, asks every inmate booked into its jails whether they've ever been sexually assaulted while locked up. A detective investigates each allegation, even if it is years old. Because most attacks happen in cells, the county has started installing cell doors with larger windows that allow jail deputies to more easily see inside. Some cells also have been converted from double to single occupancy. "It's the right thing to do," Multnomah County sheriff's Lt. Mary Lindstrand said of the push to protect inmates. Lindstrand said inmates who've been sexually abused leave jail angrier than when they arrived. They may lash out at strangers, their spouses or their kids. If they aren't treated, they may unknowingly spread diseases such as HIV. "They need counseling like any other sexual assault victim," Lindstrand said. Most attacks unreported Experts say most victims of inmate-to-inmate sexual attacks are targeted because they're small, young or seen by other inmates as effeminate. Eight of 10 victims are men. Studies estimate that as many as one in five inmates has been a victim of sexual violence while incarcerated. Almost always, experts say, victims don't report the attacks. Many feel enormous shame. Those who do come forward risk getting beaten or marked for future sexual attacks. The burglar who reported the rape in the Salem prison was transferred, and his attacker was sentenced to nearly 10 more years. However, the man lived in fear that inmates in the new prison would find out. He said he immediately started lifting weights, and in little more than a year his 5-foot-9 frame had grown from 140 pounds to 212 pounds. Now free, the man still is tormented by the attack. "It goes through my head every day: What could I have done differently so this would have never happened?" he said. Prosecuting prison rapists continues to be a challenge statewide. In the past two years, Malheur County prosecutors have convicted one inmate of raping another at the 3,000-prisoner Snake River Correctional Institution. One case is pending. Ten cases fell through because victims backed out or there was insufficient evidence, District Attorney Dan Norris said. "What it often comes down to," Norris said, "is he said-he said." Dean Gushwa, district attorney of Umatilla County, shares Norris' frustration. "I don't like the fact that the convicts in prison think they're immune to the law," Gushwa said. County forwards reports Since last December, Multnomah County jail staff have fielded nearly 100 allegations of sexual assault, most reportedly happening in prisons in Oregon and Washington and other states as far as Hawaii and Kentucky. Multnomah County sheriff's Detective Susan Lambert-Gates forwards the reports to institutions where the assaults occurred, in hopes that officials there will investigate. Many cases reported in Multnomah County can't be prosecuted, Lambert-Gates said. In some cases, the statute of limitations has expired -- the oldest case reported happened 15 years ago. Or too much time has passed to collect evidence, such as DNA, that would help a prosecution. But Lambert-Gates said she still refers inmates to a counselor and offers to console victims. Earlier this month, inmate Christopher Lauricella told how he had fought off a rapist while incarcerated at the Oregon State Penitentiary last year. The Oregonian typically does not name the victims of sexual assault, but Lauricella said he wanted to tell his story to warn other inmates. Lauricella said he frequently heard men being sexually assaulted at night. A strongly built man in his 40s, Lauricella was sent to prison for stealing copper pipe from a Northeast Portland construction site. He said he never thought he'd become a victim. But he began to worry last year when his 64-year-old cellmate -- twice convicted of sex offenses including rape -- made comments about Lauricella's body. One morning last year, Lauricella said, he awoke to discover his cellmate groping him. Lauricella fended him off until the cell doors opened for the morning. He successfully pleaded for a new cell. But Lauricella said some staff scoffed at his report of the attack. "The captain's first response was 'That old dude?' And I said 'Yeah, he's a lot stronger than he looks,' " Lauricella said. Prison records show that Lauricella reported the incident, but his cellmate was not prosecuted. Kimberly Hendricks, who is coordinating the Department of Corrections' efforts to reduce sexual assaults, said she wasn't familiar with Lauricella's case. Hendricks said other inmates have falsely alleged attacks for many reasons -- one ploy is to get a new cell or win a transfer to a different prison. Nonetheless, Hendricks said, officials need to take every allegation of sexual assault seriously. "We're trying to change the culture," Hendricks said. "It's a slow process." Oregon's system praised Oregon's prison system has been praised by Stop Prisoner Rape, an advocacy organization based in Los Angeles. Executive Director Lovisa Stannow said Oregon is taking many of the right steps to combat the problem. "It's really about prison management," Stannow said. "If you run a prison well, you will have few sexual assaults." As part of their plan, Oregon prison officials evaluate each inmate for his potential to become a victim or an attacker. Those who are younger than 25 or older than 65, first-time offenders and men who weigh less than 130 pounds or mentally impaired are more likely to be classified as "vulnerable" and housed where staff can keep a closer watch. In turn, inmates with a sexually violent history are more likely to be classified as "sexually aggressive" and housed in higher security areas. Prison staff also have posted a hot line throughout the prison system for inmates to report sexual assaults. Maintenance crews have installed more cameras and mirrors in areas that are difficult for correctional officers to see. And then there's the 10-minute video and orientation about how to avoid being raped. It advises inmates to avoid an effeminate posture, to always stay within sight of staff and to never go into isolated areas. Sharing snacks or gambling also is strictly forbidden -- and for good reason. "Never allow yourself to be put in a position of owing another inmate for anything," advises the video, explaining that inmates may be expected to repay their debt with sex. The video sometimes draws laughs and snickers from inmates, Hendricks said. "Then they have an opportunity to ask any questions," Hendricks said. "Of course, there never are any." Changing the culture of Oregon's prisons means getting inmates to buy in, Hendricks said. "It's very hard," Hendricks said. "We have so much work to do." |
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| solitasolano | Sep 17 2007, 09:54 PM Post #77 |
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Looks like faternizing with the inmates, even after the fact is forboden in California. But then, according to Sheriff Baca, there's wiggle room. From the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-sh...ack=1&cset=true Fired sheriff's employee alleges double standard Dismissed over visits to inmates, she says the son of a county executive who also visited prisoners was transferred and didn't lose his job. By Stuart Pfeifer, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer September 17, 2007 A Los Angeles County sheriff's employee who was fired for visiting friends in state prison is trying to get her job back by noting that the department didn't dismiss the son of a top county executive for a similar offense. Sheriff's Department policy prohibits employees from visiting inmates in county jail facilities or associating with people who have a "reputation in the community for criminal activity." Christopher Bunn, son of Sharon Harper, county deputy chief executive, was suspended for three days in 2004 after the department learned he had visited friends who were jailed at the Lancaster sheriff's station where he worked as an aide. After a second policy violation -- Bunn was found to have associated with a gang member and lied to an officer about the man's identity -- the department transferred him to the Department of Public Health. Cynthia Jaquez was fired in 2006 after officials learned she had visited state prison inmates more than 20 times and engaged in a romantic relationship with a felon. She and Bunn worked as law enforcement technicians, civilians who answer 911 emergency telephone calls, dispatch deputies to crime scenes and supervise inmates at their stations. Jaquez's attorney, Elizabeth Gibbons, has subpoenaed the Sheriff's Department to get all records related to Bunn's discipline. She said would argue that the department treated Jaquez differently from Bunn, so she should be reinstated. "He was given special treatment because of who he's related to," Jaquez said. "I never got that treatment. I was told, 'No, you're discharged.' I want the same sweet deal: three days off." Sheriff's officials said it was not appropriate to compare the two cases. In its termination letter, the department accused Jaquez of visiting one inmate 28 times and of having a romantic relationship with an ex-convict for six months after his release from prison. The department started investigating Jaquez in 2005 after homicide detectives noticed her in a photograph with wives and girlfriends of members of the Mexican Mafia gang. "It would be inappropriate to compare one personnel matter to another personnel matter because they're inherently different. If any punishment results, it would be different as well," said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for Sheriff Lee Baca. |
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| DontUWish | Sep 30 2007, 03:54 PM Post #78 |
Out of Dorm
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With Burma being in the news so much of late, I want to mention "The Lizard Cage" again. It's a book set in a Burmese prison -- absolutely amazing work, a page-turner that in my mind at least is along the lines of "The Kite Runner." I just read, by the way, that the reason India, China and other countries won't do more than say the Burmese junta should "exercise restraint" -- won't even impose sanctions of any kind -- is that those trading partners want to maintain access to the oil and gas in Burma. Surprise, surprise. How many lives do you suppose have been lost in the name of oil and gas? |
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| abzug | Oct 1 2007, 04:47 PM Post #79 |
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In love with a prisoner
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In case we weren't aware how barbaric the parole rules are in the US.... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/nyregion/30inmate.html September 30, 2007 The Oldest Inmate Is Ready to Confess. Sort Of. By SAM ROBERTS It could have been the perfect crime. A wealthy heart surgeon from Long Island injected his 48-year-old invalid wife, the mother of their six children, with a lethal dose of a painkiller. The death certificate recorded the cause as a stroke. But the police were suspicious from the start because the surgeon had signed the certificate himself and immediately shipped the body out of state for burial. Five weeks later, he was arrested at Kennedy International Airport trying to leave the country with more than $450,000 of his wife’s cash, negotiable bonds and jewelry. In 1977, he was convicted of second-degree murder after one of a turbulent decade’s most celebrated trials. He was sentenced to 25 years to life. He never testified, but was imprisoned still protesting his innocence. Fast forward 30 years. Today, the surgeon, Charles E. Friedgood, is the oldest inmate in a New York State prison. Suffering from a catalog of physical ailments and an emotion resembling remorse, he is seeking parole again next week. He is ready to admit that he did “it,” depending on how you define “it.” “You look back, you know, it’s you can’t believe how sometimes things happen that you did that it was completely unnecessary,” Dr. Friedgood said in a recent interview from prison. “If you don’t want to be with a woman anymore, you divorce. You know, you don’t have to resort to murder. So 32 years later, I begin to realize how stupid you can do things.” On Wednesday, Dr. Friedgood will mark his 89th birthday in Woodbourne Correctional Facility, a Gothic red-brick medium-security prison modeled after a monastery, in the foothills of the Catskills. Although he has terminal cancer and has undergone numerous operations, including a colostomy, at state expense, he has been rejected for parole four times since serving his minimum sentence. Critics say the rejections were a result of a blanket no-release policy by the Pataki administration for inmates convicted of violent felonies. In 2003, after the State Parole Board concluded that his offense “represents a propensity for extreme violence,” a state appeals court ridiculed that reasoning as “so irrational under the circumstances as to border on impropriety.” Two years later, the board denied parole again, because, it concluded, releasing Dr. Friedgood “would so deprecate the seriousness of this crime as to undermine respect for the law.” A newly constituted Parole Board is scheduled to convene at Woodbourne next week to hear his latest request. Among those who have supported his parole are several of Dr. Friedgood’s children — one of his daughters, a lawyer, is helping on his case — and the former assistant district attorney who investigated and prosecuted the case. “While it was a horrible crime and a terrible tragedy for the family, I think at 89 it’s time for him to be released,” the former prosecutor, Stephen Scaring, said. “He’s pretty much wasted his entire life. It’s just a matter of compassion.” Dr. Friedgood, who practiced in Brooklyn and lived in an 18-room mansion in Great Neck, on Long Island, was convicted of injecting his wife, Sophie, with an overdose — five syringes — of the pain reliever Demerol in 1975. Mrs. Friedgood had suffered a stroke years earlier and had been in pain and poor health. “I thought it was terribly arrogant that he would sign the death certificate and ship the body out,” said Mr. Scaring, the former chief of the homicide bureau in the Nassau County district attorney’s office. The investigation determined that Dr. Friedgood had a mistress, a Danish nurse who cared for Mrs. Friedgood and with whom he fathered two children, and that he had looted his wife’s estate. He was arrested, prosecutors said, as he prepared to flee to Europe and join his paramour. Dr. Friedgood insisted that he merely intended to deposit the funds in Britain to shield them from potential claims by the United States government, that he had a return ticket to New York and that he had operations scheduled the next day. (To which Ileana Rodriguez, a parole commissioner, responded: “You had just killed your wife, sir. What is the grander sin, killing your wife or leaving patients waiting in a scheduled clinic?”) “Frankly,” Mr. Scaring remembered, “we had insufficient evidence to get an autopsy. We were pretty much winging it, but we called his bluff, and he fell for it. He could have walked on this thing. If he had kept his mouth shut and answered no questions he never would have been prosecuted. He believed he could talk his way out of everything. Instead, he talked his way into it.” Dr. Friedgood was asked during the prison interview whether in his heart of hearts he had hoped the overdose would kill her. “No,” he replied, “I was glad that she went to sleep and she wasn’t hollering at me anymore — ‘Do this, do that.’” But might he have believed, even subconsciously, that his life would be better if she could never holler at him again? “Like you say,” Dr. Friedgood replied after a deep sigh, “maybe subconsciously.” At Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, where he had been imprisoned before being transferred to Woodbourne, he became an acolyte of Rabbi Irving Koslowe, the prison’s Jewish chaplain who was best known for escorting Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair. Dr. Friedgood became an Orthodox Jew, although he has identified only five practicing Jews among Woodbourne’s nearly 800 inmates, half the number required for a minyan, or quorum, under Jewish law. Dr. Friedgood is representative of another group that is growing in the nation’s prisons. He is one of more than 700 inmates in New York State’s prisons, about 1.2 percent of the population, who are 65 or older, a number that has been growing because of longer sentences and fewer paroles. Advocates of alternatives to incarceration estimate that older inmates who require medical care cost two or three times more than the $32,000 a year that the state spends, on average, for each of its inmates. “Certainly, from a safety standpoint, there is little reason to hold someone like Friedgood in jail,” said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and founder of the Project for Older Prisoners, which selectively advocates for their release. “The only rationale is pure retribution.” Dr. Friedgood is a plaintiff in a pending class-action suit against the state that argues that the Parole Board, under Gov. George E. Pataki, reflexively rejected requests for release without adequately weighing inmates’ records in prison, whether their crimes were an aberration, or the likelihood they would commit them again. Dr. Friedgood said he had reconciled with his children (he also has 20 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren) and that all 6 visited him in prison last year. “Thank God they didn’t end up like their father,” he said. As a doctor? “No, a prisoner.” One of his lawyers, his daughter Esther A. Zaretski, said of her father: “Did he do it? That I don’t know. But he served his sentence. Under New York law, he’s entitled to be paroled.” Not everyone agrees, including Dr. Friedgood’s brother-in-law, Sidney Klemow of Philadelphia. “I knew he was guilty the minute it happened,” Mr. Klemow, an 84-year-old retired shoe manufacturer, said. If he is released, Dr. Friedgood said that a Veterans Affairs hospital has agreed to admit him. His license to practice medicine was revoked in 1980. In a 90-minute prison interview not far from his first-floor cell, Dr. Friedgood was repeatedly asked whether he intended to kill his wife when he administered the Demerol. “She was suffering, always complaining that she couldn’t play golf like she used to, and she was lame on one side — one arm and one leg,” he said. “And she became a heavy drinker and always complaining of pain and pain. And that was a sad situation.” Noting that his wife had become “very belligerent with the children,” he said, “She was always asking for more injections, and I gave her an overdose.” Knowing what it would do? “I figured with her tolerance, it wouldn’t be lethal,” he said. “But evidently it was.” He didn’t really mean to kill her? “No.” But hadn’t he admitted his guilt to the Parole Board? “You want to get out of here, you don’t want to die in prison, so you try to appeal to their mercy and forgiveness,” Dr. Friedgood replied. “If you go to the Parole Board and you say you’re innocent, then they don’t take your hearing,” he added. “You have to go back to court. So if the only way you can get out is you have to admit you’re guilty and show remorse and repent and then they’ll — they might release you.” Then what is he remorseful about? “That I didn’t take better care of her and that I should have watched — been more diligent with the injections and that,” he said. “And I saw how she was deteriorating, drinking, and I didn’t stop it.” Dr. Friedgood said that he was not glad that she had died. “But I felt, you know, sometimes I used to say when a person was in terminal malignancy and suffering, sometimes it’s better you die and you not suffer so much,” he said. Again, he was asked whether his role was not merely as a passive angel of mercy, but as a cold-blooded killer. “Well, you see, it’s a thing that you try to feel that you’re not as bad as it appears,” Dr. Friedgood said. “And I really, I know that I’m guilty and I have to admit it and I can’t alibi, you know, bring in all the other extenuating circumstances. But I realize now that, sure, I was wrong. It was my fault. I have no one else to blame. I did a terrible thing. “And that’s why I’m happy that I was able to survive in the prison these 30 years and do some good to make up for the bad.” Invoking the Hebrew word for good deeds, he recalled his teaching and tutoring of other inmates, the fact that he saved the life of a guard who was having a heart attack and an inmate who was choking. He said that he hoped to continue good works outside prison, and that, on the cosmic balance sheet of his God, they will earn him a place in the afterlife. “You hope and pray that the mitzvahs will overbalance your heinous crime,” he said, “and you’ll be forgiven.” |
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| abzug | Oct 1 2007, 09:33 PM Post #80 |
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In love with a prisoner
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Wow, the NY Times is teeming with prison-related articles today. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/opinion/30patterson.html September 30, 2007 Op-Ed Contributor Jena, O. J. and the Jailing of Black America By ORLANDO PATTERSON Cambridge, Mass. THE miscarriage of justice at Jena, La. — where five black high school students arrested for beating a white student were charged with attempted murder — and the resulting protest march tempts us to the view, expressed by several of the marchers, that not much has changed in traditional American racial relations. However, a remarkable series of high-profile incidents occurring elsewhere in the nation at about the same time, as well as the underlying reason for the demonstrations themselves, make it clear that the Jena case is hardly a throwback to the 1960s, but instead speaks to issues that are very much of our times. What exactly attracted thousands of demonstrators to the small Louisiana town? While for some it was a simple case of righting a grievous local injustice, and for others an opportunity to relive the civil rights era, for most the real motive was a long overdue cry of outrage at the use of the prison system as a means of controlling young black men. America has more than two million citizens behind bars, the highest absolute and per capita rate of incarceration in the world. Black Americans, a mere 13 percent of the population, constitute half of this country’s prisoners. A tenth of all black men between ages 20 and 35 are in jail or prison; blacks are incarcerated at over eight times the white rate. The effect on black communities is catastrophic: one in three male African-Americans in their 30s now has a prison record, as do nearly two-thirds of all black male high school dropouts. These numbers and rates are incomparably greater than anything achieved at the height of the Jim Crow era. What’s odd is how long it has taken the African-American community to address in a forceful and thoughtful way this racially biased and utterly counterproductive situation. How, after decades of undeniable racial progress, did we end up with this virtual gulag of racial incarceration? Part of the answer is a law enforcement system that unfairly focuses on drug offenses and other crimes more likely to be committed by blacks, combined with draconian mandatory sentencing and an absurdly counterproductive retreat from rehabilitation as an integral method of dealing with offenders. An unrealistic fear of crime that is fed in part by politicians and the press, a tendency to emphasize punitive measures and old-fashioned racism are all at play here. But there is another equally important cause: the simple fact that young black men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes, which cannot be attributed to judicial bias, racism or economic hardships. The rate at which blacks commit homicides is seven times that of whites. Why is this? Several incidents serendipitously occurring at around the same time as the march on Jena hint loudly at a possible answer. • In New York City, the tabloids published sensational details of the bias suit brought by a black former executive for the Knicks, Anucha Browne Sanders, who claims that she was frequently called a “bitch” and a “ho” by the Knicks coach and president, Isiah Thomas. In a video deposition, Thomas said that while it is always wrong for a white man to verbally abuse a black woman in such terms, it was “not as much ... I’m sorry to say” for a black man to do so. • Across the nation, religious African-Americans were shocked that the evangelical minister Juanita Bynum, an enormously popular source of inspiration for churchgoing black women, said she was brutally beaten in a parking lot by her estranged husband, Bishop Thomas Weeks. • O. J. Simpson, the malevolent central player in an iconic moment in the nation’s recent black-white (as well as male-female) relations, reappeared on the scene, charged with attempted burglary, kidnapping and felonious assault in Las Vegas, in what he claimed was merely an attempt to recover stolen memorabilia. These events all point to something that has been swept under the rug for too long in black America: the crisis in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life, especially among the poor. Isiah Thomas’s outrageous double standard shocked many blacks in New York only because he had the nerve to say out loud what is a fact of life for too many black women who must daily confront indignity and abuse in hip-hop misogyny and everyday conversation. What is done with words is merely the verbal end of a continuum of abuse that too often ends with beatings and spousal homicide. Black relationships and families fail at high rates because women increasingly refuse to put up with this abuse. The resulting absence of fathers — some 70 percent of black babies are born to single mothers — is undoubtedly a major cause of youth delinquency. The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face — the lack of paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work regardless of the effect on their children’s care; the hypocritical refusal of conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on family values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes; the ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black men for the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into impoverished inner-city neighborhoods — all interact perversely with the prison system that simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and other leaders of the Jena demonstration who view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the result of white racism are living not just in the past but in a state of denial. Even after removing racial bias in our judicial and prison system — as we should and must do — disproportionate numbers of young black men will continue to be incarcerated. Until we view this social calamity in its entirety — by also acknowledging the central role of unstable relations among the sexes and within poor families, by placing a far higher priority on moral and social reform within troubled black communities, and by greatly expanding social services for infants and children — it will persist. Orlando Patterson is a professor of sociology at Harvard and the author of “The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s ‘Racial’ Crisis.” |
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| ekny | Oct 8 2007, 05:21 PM Post #81 |
In love with a prisoner
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DIVA mini-article about GLBT officers getting organized in the UK. Reference to Bad Girls so posted in Articles section, subthread ongoing Diva articles: http://z4.invisionfree.com/Nikki_and_Helen...dpost&p=1977413 |
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| abzug | Oct 17 2007, 03:25 PM Post #82 |
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In love with a prisoner
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Fascinating article about the US and extreme sentences for young offenders, as compared to countries in Europe and elsewhere: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/us/17teenage.html October 17, 2007 Lifers as Teenagers, Now Seeking Second Chance By ADAM LIPTAK American Exception Without Parole This is the first in an occasional series of articles that will examine commonplace aspects of the American justice system that are actually unique in the world. BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter. Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14. Mary Nalls, an 81-year-old retired social worker here, has some thoughts about the matter. Her granddaughter Ashley Jones was 14 when she helped her boyfriend kill her grandfather and aunt — Mrs. Nalls’s husband and daughter — by stabbing and shooting them and then setting them on fire. Ms. Jones also tried to kill her 10-year-old sister. Mrs. Nalls, who was badly injured in the rampage, showed a visitor to her home a white scar on her forehead, a reminder of the burns that put her into a coma for 30 days. She had also been shot in the shoulder and stabbed in the chest. “I forgot,” she said later. “They stabbed me in the jaw, too.” But Mrs. Nalls thinks her granddaughter, now 22, deserves the possibility of a second chance. “I believe that she should have gotten 15 or 20 years,” Mrs. Nalls said. “If children are under age, sometimes they’re not responsible for what they do.” The group that plans to release the report on Oct. 17, the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Ala., is one of several human rights organizations that say states should be required to review sentences of juvenile offenders as the decades go by, looking for cases where parole might be warranted. But prosecutors and victims’ rights groups say there are crimes so terrible and people so dangerous that only life sentences without the possibility of release are a fit moral and practical response. “I don’t think every 14-year-old who killed someone deserves life without parole,” said Laura Poston, who prosecuted Ms. Jones. “But Ashley planned to kill four people. I don’t think there is a conscience in Ashley, and I certainly think she is a threat to do something similar.” Specialists in comparative law acknowledge that there have been occasions when young murderers who would have served life terms in the United States were released from prison in Europe and went on to kill again. But comparing legal systems is difficult, in part because the United States is a more violent society and in part because many other nations imprison relatively few people and often only for repeat violent offenses. “I know of no systematic studies of comparative recidivism rates,” said James Q. Whitman, who teaches comparative criminal law at Yale. “I believe there are recidivism problems in countries like Germany and France, since those are countries that ordinarily incarcerate only dangerous offenders, but at some point they let them out and bad things can happen.” The differences in the two approaches, legal experts said, are rooted in politics and culture. The European systems emphasize rehabilitation, while the American one stresses individual responsibility and punishment. Corrections professionals and criminologists here and abroad tend to agree that violent crime is usually a young person’s activity, suggesting that eventual parole could be considered in most cases. But the American legal system is more responsive to popular concerns about crime and attitudes about punishment, while justice systems abroad tend to be administered by career civil servants rather than elected legislators, prosecutors and judges. In its sentencing of juveniles, as in many other areas, the legal system in the United States goes it alone. American law is, by international standards, a series of innovations and exceptions. From the central role played by juries in civil cases to the election of judges to punitive damages to the disproportionate number of people in prison, the United States is an island in the sea of international law. And the very issue of whether American judges should ever take account of foreign law is hotly disputed. At the hearings on their Supreme Court nominations, both John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they thought it a mistake to consider foreign law in constitutional cases. But the international consensus against life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders may nonetheless help Ms. Jones. In about a dozen cases recently filed around the country on behalf of 13- and 14-year-olds sentenced to life in prison, lawyers for the inmates relied on a 2005 Supreme Court decision that banned the execution of people who committed crimes when they were younger than 18. That decision, Roper v. Simmons, was based in part on international law. Noting that the United States was the only nation in the world to sanction the juvenile death penalty, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said it was appropriate to look to “the laws of other countries and to international authorities as instructive” in interpreting the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. He added that teenagers were different from older criminals — less mature, more susceptible to peer pressure and more likely to change for the better. Those findings, lawyers for the juvenile lifers say, should apply to their clients, too. “Thirteen- and 14-year-old children should not be condemned to death in prison because there is always hope for a child,” said Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which represents Ms. Jones and several other juvenile lifers. The 2005 death penalty ruling applied to 72 death-row inmates, almost precisely the same number as the 73 prisoners serving life without parole for crimes committed at 13 or 14. The Supreme Court did not abolish the juvenile death penalty in a single stroke. The 2005 decision followed one in 1988 that held the death penalty unconstitutional for those who had committed crimes under 16. The new lawsuits, filed in Alabama, California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Wisconsin, seek to follow a similar progression. “We’re not demanding that all these kids be released tomorrow,” Mr. Stevenson said. “I’m not even prepared to say that all of them will get to the point where they should be released. We’re asking for some review.” In defending American policy in this area in 2006, the State Department told the United Nations that sentencing is usually a matter of state law. “As a general matter,” the department added, juvenile offenders serving life-without-parole terms “were hardened criminals who had committed gravely serious crimes.” Human rights groups have disputed that. According to a 2005 report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, 59 percent of the more than 2,200 prisoners serving life without parole for crimes they committed at 17 or younger had never been convicted of a previous crime. And 26 percent were in for felony murder, meaning they participated in a crime that led to a murder but did not themselves kill anyone. The new report focuses on the youngest offenders, locating 73 juvenile lifers in 19 states who were 13 and 14 when they committed their crimes. Pennsylvania has the most, with 19, and Florida is next, with 15. In those states and Illinois, Nebraska, North Carolina and Washington, 13-year-olds have been sentenced to die in prison. In most of the cases, the sentences were mandatory, an automatic consequence of a murder conviction after being tried as an adult. A federal judge here will soon rule on Ms. Jones’s challenge to her sentence. Ms. Poston, who prosecuted her, said Ms. Jones was beyond redemption. “Between the ages of 2 and 3, you develop a conscience,” Ms. Poston said. “She never got the voice that says, ‘This is bad, Ashley.’ ” “It was a blood bath in there,” Ms. Poston said of the night of the murders here, in 1999. “Ashley Jones is not the poster child for the argument that life without parole is too long.” In a telephone interview from the Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Ala., Ms. Jones said she did not recognize the girl who committed her crimes. According to court filings, her mother was a drug addict and her stepfather had sexually molested her. “Everybody I loved, everybody I trusted, I was betrayed by,” Ms. Jones said. “I’m very remorseful about what happened,” she said. “I should be punished. I don’t feel like I should spend the rest of my life in prison.” Mrs. Nalls, her grandmother, had been married for 53 years when she and her husband, Deroy Nalls, agreed to take Ashley in. She was “a problem child,” and Mr. Nalls was a tough man who took a dislike to Ashley’s boyfriend, Geramie Hart. Mr. Hart, who was 16 at the time of the murders, is also serving a life term. Mrs. Nalls said he deserved a shot at parole someday as well. |
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| DontUWish | Oct 17 2007, 10:41 PM Post #83 |
Out of Dorm
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The picture of that girl is heartbreaking ... and of course at the very end of the article you get some inkling as to why she did what she did (not that anything could possibly excuse her actions). It is odd, though, how they set up Europe as a (from a liberal viewpoint) much better place for criminals than the U.S., but of course the people behind Bad Girls are adamant that the UK has a lot of problems and is not the rehabilitation paradise it's made out to be in this article. Although, that aside, it is chilling what Americans do -- to children, the mentally disabled, etc. -- in the name of being 'tough on crime.' |
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| abzug | Oct 18 2007, 02:31 AM Post #84 |
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In love with a prisoner
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No matter how bad the UK is from the perspective of Bad Girls, it's way better than the US. I mean, the average life sentence in the UK (in terms of actual time served) is something like 12 years. While in the US, it could actually mean your LIFE, like, the decades and decades until you die. Which most European countries consider to be cruel and unusual punishment. That said, I got the sense that the article was speaking more about Continental Europe (France and Germany each got a shout out) more than the UK. And the fact that we still have the death penalty would be embarrassing if it wasn't so horrifyingly barbaric. |
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| abzug | Oct 27 2007, 02:40 PM Post #85 |
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In love with a prisoner
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I think this article speaks for itself: http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/...s-discipli.html Guards disciplined for allowing 'lesbian wedding' between Fla. prisoners The Gainesville Sun reports that eight guards have been disciplined for allowing prisoners to hold a "lesbian wedding ceremony" for two inmates on March 17 at the Lowell Correctional Institution for women. The paper summarizes the official report: the incident began around 5:15 p.m. when inmates were released from their cells to go to a day room in the dormitory. One state bed sheet was used for a table cloth and another for a veil for one of the inmates. State issued Inmate Request Forms made of pink paper were torn to make bows and paper curls on the table and state-issued paper towels were used for other decorations. Human hair and dental floss were used to fashion rings that the two women exchanged. The event lasted until about 6:30 p.m. and the video recording shows five officers who observed the event. Since the review was completed, one guard has been fired, one has resigned and six have been suspended. The couple was split up, with one of the women reassigned to another prison, according to the Sun. State law doesn't recognize same-sex marriages and prohibits unauthorized contact between inmates. |
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| DontUWish | Oct 27 2007, 05:29 PM Post #86 |
Out of Dorm
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Oh my god, those poor women. Reading this felt like a punch in the gut. I wish we had more details about how the video got out -- did they know they were being videotaped? And about the guards -- male or female? And why did they decide to risk punishment for these two women? |
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| LahbibLover | Oct 27 2007, 07:55 PM Post #87 |
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I said SIT IN THAT CHAIR
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I know I should be shocked but I'm not. It may be 2007 but not in a great deal of the U.S. I live in Texas so I know whereof I speak, since we execute more prisoners than any other state. As Helen would say "Bastards". |
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| DontUWish | Oct 28 2007, 12:16 AM Post #88 |
Out of Dorm
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Yeah, I hear ya. It's not very shocking that these things happen in a country that would elect Bush. Twice. I wish it was bigger news, though, you know? I'd like to hear more about the people involved and have some sense that a lot of citizens are upset. But I guess it goes to show how people (incl. the press) prefer to stay away from certain issues -- and when you mix gay issues with prison issues .... well, there's nothing they'd rather sweep under the rug. |
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| DontUWish | Nov 6 2007, 11:22 PM Post #89 |
Out of Dorm
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Here's a follow-up to the article about the dastardly lesbian wedding proceedings in Florida: http://www.expressgaynews.com/2007/11-1/view/columns/ Fla. prison officials move against ‘threat’ of lesbian weddings Guards punished for compassion in allowing morale-boosting nuptials Thursday, November 01, 2007 The Florida Department of Corrections knows a threat to prison security when it sees one. It works diligently to prevent escapes, riots — and weddings. The department has disciplined eight correctional officers for allowing a gay wedding ceremony to take place at Lowell Correctional Institution, Florida’s largest prison for women. How comforting that the Florida Department of Corrections stands firm against clear prison perils like drugs, gangs and lesbian nuptials. According to The Gainesville Sun, the department’s official report on the incident at the Marion County prison states that, “Security staff allowed inmates to perform, decorate and participate in a wedding ceremony.” The date the correctional officers shirked their duty so extravagantly was March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. Perhaps gay leprechauns bewitched them. The event began about 5:15 p.m. when inmates were freed from their cells to go to a day room. Then the law breaking took off. One state-owned bed sheet was converted into a tablecloth. Another became the veil of one of the brides. State-issued Inmate Request Forms in the appropriate color of pink were torn, spindled and mutilated into bows and curls for the table and state-issued paper towels were fashioned into other decorations. Oh, the lawlessness — and under the guards’ very schnozzles. The brides exchanged rings made out of human hair and dental floss. I’d say that’s the epitome of using what you’ve got. The gala celebration wound up at about 6:30, presumably with onlookers throwing state-owned rice. For the record, prison rules forbid sex acts or unauthorized physical contact between inmates. The state of Florida prohibits same-sex marriage. And fashion designers consider any woman marrying in prison garb a crime against nature. Two days after the wedding, an inmate alerted prison officials that the event had taken place. A jilted ex, perhaps? The Florida Department of Corrections leaped into action. Investigators interviewed prisoners and officers. They reviewed a security camera video recording, which showed five officers watching the event. They also seized evidence from an inmate’s cell. The hairy ring? A paper-towel bouquet? The official word is the officers at Lowell Correctional Institution goofed by allowing the inmates to use state property for the occurrence. Investigators also determined that the wedding “was an unauthorized activity in a close-management dormitory, the most restricted living area for inmates,” and “allowing the close-custody inmates to gather for the event placed officers at risk,” the Gainesville Sun reported. Apparently the officers didn’t think so, but what do they know? They just work with these women every day. Allowing the inmates to put together a homemade ceremony might even have struck the guards as a strategic move to boost the general mood. I assume they’d rather have the residents whipping up flowers than fashioning knives. But the Florida Department of Corrections is in the business of laying down the law. The department flung it good and hard at those eight correctional officers. All were cited for failing to report the incident. Several were also found guilty of failing to maintain proper security, along with willful violation of department rules. One officer was fired, one resigned and six were suspended. With such serious punishment for such a small crime, I guess officers who commit whoppers, like dealing drugs or shaking down inmates, are immediately hanged in the break room. In allowing the wedding to proceed, the Lowell Eight were being either benignly neglectful, compassionate or practical. The real question is whether the excessive reaction of the Florida Department of Corrections is about a love of rules or a hatred of gays and lesbians. And the newlyweds? The department shipped one of them to another state prison. That is one tough department. |
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| abzug | Nov 7 2007, 02:41 AM Post #90 |
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In love with a prisoner
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Great article. Is it wrong of me to wish it came from the straight press rather than the gay press? |
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