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Stuff About Prison; abzug [May 1, 2006]
Topic Started: Jun 7 2006, 10:16 PM (7,402 Views)
DontUWish
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I'd say it's not wrong, just remarkably optimistic.
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ekny
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abzug
Nov 6 2007, 10:41 PM
Great article. Is it wrong of me to wish it came from the straight press rather than the gay press?

The first thing I did after reading the lead-in was scan the byline/origin. Just call me another crazy fool. Ok, or cynical.
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abzug
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If you want to read the official report of the lesbian wedding in the prison in FL, here it is:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years...071prison1.html
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DontUWish
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Got to love The Smoking Gun for posting the complete report, and thanks, abzug, for providing the link.

I read a comment by someone in response to one of the articles about this incident who said gays and lesbians should not be given "special privileges" not afforded to straight inmates -- in other words, if straights can't fall in love in prison, gays and lesbians shouldn't have that chance either.

Actually the more I think about this incident the more torn I am. These women did break the rules, and the rules are there for a reason. Certainly the punishment of being separated was way, way too harsh. But if you were running the prison, what would you do? Not about this incident particularly, but about the issue of lesbian relations in a women's prison. When, if ever, should they be allowed? How could you possibly control it? And if you can't control it, should you forbid it? Should you just turn a blind eye, as the guards did in this incident? Or, what, the women should come forward about their relationships so the guards know and can determine if the relationship should be sanctioned?

It just seems a mess.
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richard
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"The lunatics have taken over the asylum" - This is my reaction, stealing an immortal line from a Fun Boy Three song from way back. This goes further than anything Shed have written in Bad Girls. Just when you think this New Labour government couldn't do worse, it immediately does so. This is at a time when prison capacity is stretched to the limit. The truly worrying thing is that the end of this article where the Conservative opposition spokesman has got it absolutely right.

.......................................................................................................................

"Prison service faces drastic cuts

Nicholas Watt and Oliver Poole Sunday November 18, 2007 The Observer


A dramatic plan to slash the number of prison officers and streamline courts in England and Wales is being drawn up by the government in an attempt to deliver £1bn in savings.
A leaked internal document from the Ministry of Justice, obtained by The Observer, warns that jobs across the criminal justice system will be lost as it complies with Treasury-imposed 'efficiency savings' of 3 per cent a year.

'The efficiency challenge for [the Ministry of Justice] is substantial,' the document says. 'Identifying and delivering 3 per cent value-for-money savings will be a big challenge for us.'

Prison managers believe that jail wings will have to close to cope with an estimated £180m in cuts imposed in last month's spending review. Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation union, Napo, said: 'Cutting probation and prison budgets can only be achieved through cutting staff. This will lead to more crime, more victims and public protection being compromised.'

The government declined to comment last night. Senior ministry officials are to hold a seminar on imposing the savings. A similar meeting last month produced the document leaked to The Observer. The savings will bite across the criminal justice system:

· The courts service will lose £102m. This is likely to lead to the merging of some magistrates, civil, county and crown courts into the same buildings.

· The legal aid fund will lose £193m.

· The tribunal service will suffer savings of £39m. Many benefit and employment tribunals will merge.

· The National Offender Management Service, intended to cut re-offending rates, is likely to be dismantled.

The document makes clear that jobs will be at risk across the criminal justice system. 'It is likely that the improvements will result in a need for fewer staff. Each business will be asked to look at ways in which they can make processes more effective and develop a workforce plan for this.'

Cuts to the prison service will be particularly sensitive for the government as it copes with overcrowding. With prison numbers reaching record level - the total population reached a high of 81,553 on Friday - the government has promised a further 1,500 prison places on top of the existing building programme of 8,000.

But unions estimate the £180m saving in the Prison Service budget will lead to a hiring freeze at best, and to redundancies at worst.

Edward Garnier, the shadow Prisons Minister, said: 'Labour has decided to send more people to prison...They have created 3,000 more criminal offences but then failed to build more prisons.' "

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DontUWish
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My first reaction is good, at least they're cutting prison budgets rather than pouring more and more money into them like they do in the States. It's become a corporate machine -- send more people to prison so you can have this huge money-making industry around prisoners, many who shouldn't be there in the first place.

But then it's striking what they list as potential cuts. Legal aid, courts services and worst of all the service designed to cut re-offending rates. So, put more people in prison than ever before and then cut all the services designed to help the poor and prevent offenses and re-offenses. Brilliant.

I really hate it when the UK takes its lead from the US, especially when it comes to prison policy.
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ekny
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"Doctor Prison" radio show:
http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio...ves/topics.html
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DontUWish
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Here's a good summary of US prison issues based on a new report:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071119/us_nm/usa_prisons_dc
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abzug
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It's nice the liberals are producing some research, to counteract the right-wing's positions on issues like this. Of course I agree with their conclusions. I wonder if the report addresses crime waves like from crack use in the 1980s....
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abzug
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This is an absolutely fascinating and heartbreaking article about people who were falsely imprisoned and then exonerated using DNA evidence. They are given basically no services or support in pulling their lives back together. There are also links to other related stories, in a sidebar, and at the end of the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/us/25jeffrey.html

Free and Uneasy
Vindicated by DNA, but a Lost Man on the Outside
By FERNANDA SANTOS

As a boy, Jeffrey Mark Deskovic could swim the length of a pool underwater without coming up for air. On sultry days at the Elmira state prison, where he spent most of his 16 years behind bars for a rape and murder he did not commit, Mr. Deskovic would close his eyes under a row of outdoor showers and imagine himself swimming.

For months after his release in September 2006, he had been yearning for a chance to dive in, to test his endurance, to feel that familiar sensation of pushing his body through the water, to get to the other side.

On a late-winter afternoon before giving a speech on wrongful convictions, Mr. Deskovic giggled mischievously as he stood at the edge of a hotel pool in Latham, N.Y., an Albany suburb, then leapt in abruptly, hugging his knees to produce a huge splash. In shorts and T-shirt, he sucked in some air and dived under, holding his breath. And holding it. He made his way across the pool in hurried, sideways strokes, and emerged gasping but smiling.

“Yes! Yes! I did it,” Mr. Deskovic yelled, his fists clenched above his head like a victorious boxer. “I still have it in me.”

A grown man with a full bushy beard, celebrating the simple accomplishment of an innocent youth. A tiny yet transcendent moment, one among many such moments of recaptured pleasures and newfound problems since his exoneration and release from prison last autumn.

Having walked out of the Westchester County Courthouse vindicated yet petrified of the unpredictable tomorrows ahead, Mr. Deskovic found that his first year on the outside was more turbulent than triumphant. Still trying to recover what was stolen from him, he is, at 34, a free man who has yet to feel truly free.

At least 205 men and one woman nationwide have been exonerated through DNA evidence since 1989, including 53 who, like Mr. Deskovic, were convicted of murder. In gathering information on 137 of them over the past four months — one of the most extensive such efforts to date — The New York Times found that many faced the same challenges Mr. Deskovic has confronted, like making a living, reconnecting with relatives and seeking financial recompense for his lost years.

But given Mr. Deskovic’s age at conviction (he was 17, one of about two dozen of the 206 exonerated inmates imprisoned as teenagers) and length of incarceration (about 35 percent spent more than 15 years behind bars), he has faced particular challenges.

He could be the assertive adult who articulately lobbied at the State Capitol in April to require videotaping of police interrogations. He could also be the overgrown adolescent who stamped his feet and pouted at a Grand Central Terminal kiosk in August when asked if he wanted his smoothie with yogurt or apple juice.

Having spent nearly half his life locked up, accused of brutalizing a high school classmate he hardly knew, Mr. Deskovic was sent into the world last fall lacking some of life’s most fundamental skills and experiences.

He had never lived alone, owned a car, scanned the classifieds in search of work. He had never voted, balanced a checkbook or learned to knot a tie.

He missed the senior prom, the funeral of the grandmother who helped raise him, and his best friend’s wedding.

He said he had never made love.

For six months, Mr. Deskovic got by on $137 a month in disability checks and $150 in food stamps from the federal government, carrying cans of tuna in his backpack. Now earning money through speeches and newspaper columns about wrongful conviction, Mr. Deskovic paid rent for the first time in his life in August, for a cozy attic apartment in Tarrytown that the county subsidizes because of his depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

In September, he filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the police, the medical examiner, a prison guard and the governments of two counties, alleging that detectives falsified reports and coerced his confession, and that the prison guard groped and beat him. A separate lawsuit in the Court of Claims is planned seeking payment from the state for the wrongful incarceration.

Since January, he has been enrolled at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, and he expects to earn a bachelor’s degree in behavioral sciences in two months. Since June, he has studied daily for the Law School Admissions Test in hopes of soon going to law school.

At Mercy on a $22,000 scholarship, Mr. Deskovic has read Marx, Freud and Jung but has struggled to navigate the nuances of flirtation and friendship.

“These people are half my age,” he said one morning in a campus cafeteria filled with loud young men in baseball caps and baggy jeans. “They have their own social networks and I’m not part of it. They have direction. They’re going through the normal cycle of things.”

Mr. Deskovic’s life after exoneration has been punctuated by milestones like getting a driver’s license (and a $3,000 Pontiac Grand Am with a bumper sticker proclaiming, “Failure is not an option”), and new adventures, like playing table tennis at a Greenwich Village bar with people he had met online.

There have been confounding trips to the supermarket and painful reunions with his mother, hard-won victories over his fear of speaking in public and profound disillusionment over his own inability to accept his past.

And there was a bittersweet return to the courthouse in White Plains in May for the sentencing of the man found by DNA evidence to have committed the crime. There, the victim’s mother offered Mr. Deskovic an apology: “How I would like to turn back time and return to you what was cruelly taken away.”

Of course, she can’t. No one can.

“Sometimes,” Mr. Deskovic said one morning in his dorm room, “I feel that the only difference from here to prison is that I don’t have bars on my windows.” He was kneeling on his bed and staring at the neat lawn outside. “I’m free, but I’m trapped, and no matter how much I run, I’ll never make up for the lost time.”

Scarred Life, Severed Family

Carrying a box of religious and self-help books, a garbage bag full of legal documents and a few worn-out sweaters, Mr. Deskovic went from prison to Cobleskill, a speck of a town in central New York where his mother, Linda McGarr, settled after his conviction. He calls Cobleskill “the boondocks,” adding an expletive whenever he is angry at his mother, which is often.

While he was locked up, Ms. McGarr was Mr. Deskovic’s connection to the outside world (he has never known his father). He wrote letters and sent them to her to type. She, in turn, sent money for cans of oysters at the prison commissary. When he needed to badger a lawyer, she was his voice. But the relationship withered through the bars. Ms. McGarr, 60, said she tired of the lonely 150-mile drives to visit him. Mr. Deskovic said he resented her lack of urgency in tackling his legal appeals.

Two days after his release, Mr. Deskovic exploded: “How come you didn’t do more to help me?”

“I know you went through hell in there,” Ms. McGarr responded, “but I paid dearly, too.”

The next morning, Mr. Deskovic stuffed his possessions in plastic bags and boarded a train to Peekskill, the scene of the crime that scarred his life.

On Nov. 15, 1989, Angela Correa — a sophomore at Peekskill High, like Mr. Deskovic — slipped a “New Kids on the Block” tape into a portable cassette player and took her camera to a park near her home, snapping a picture of a dove perched on the roof as she left. Two days later, someone spotted her naked body in the woods.

The police retrieved hair and semen samples, which did not match Mr. Deskovic’s DNA; prosecutors argued that they were from earlier consensual sex. Mr. Deskovic, however, fit the description provided by a criminal profiler for the police, and raised investigators’ suspicions when he cried copiously at Ms. Correa’s funeral, though they were not close friends. (In a recent interview, Mr. Deskovic explained that he was always picked on in school and Angela was one of few students who were nice to him, once helping him with algebra.)

After repeated questioning over two months, Mr. Deskovic confessed during a seven-hour interrogation and polygraph test, telling the police he had hit Ms. Correa with a Gatorade bottle and grabbed her around the throat. In the lawsuit, Mr. Deskovic contends that detectives fed him these details, and promised that if he confessed he would not go to prison but would receive psychiatric treatment.

“I was tired, confused, scared, hungry — I wanted to get out of there,” he recalled recently. “I told the police what they wanted to hear, but I never got to go home. They lied to me.”

More than a quarter of all prisoners exonerated by DNA evidence had falsely confessed or made incriminating statements, according to the Innocence Project, the legal clinic that secured Mr. Deskovic’s release. Like many of those men, he had maintained his innocence since shortly after the confession, proclaiming at his sentencing hearing: “I didn’t do anything.”

“Maybe you’re innocent,” the judge conceded before sentencing him to 15 years to life. “But the jury has spoken.”

Back in Peekskill after his release, frosty raindrops pelting his skin, Mr. Deskovic ambled past the police station on Nelson Avenue where he was held after his arrest and up Brown Street toward Crossroads, the apartment complex where he grew up.

“I used to play kickball here, and when it snowed, I’d get a piece of cardboard and sled down this hill over there,” he said, staring at a slope between a tall brick building and a playground. “I used to have a life.”

“Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that there are people on other planets and that all of a sudden you’re dropped there, with no idea how these people live their lives, how their society works,” he blurted. “I’m this alien. I’m the man pretending he knows what the hell is going on around him when, in fact, he’s clueless.”

Growing up, Mr. Deskovic and his younger half-brother, Christopher McGarr, spent hours shooting hoops at Depew Park, swimming in a local pool or watching wrestling on television, then mimicking the moves of Hulk Hogan and Mr. T on the living-room carpet.

“I didn’t have no father growing up, so I looked up to my brother,” explained Mr. McGarr, now 30. “But when he went to prison, a part of me died.”

On the school bus, other children called his brother a rapist, a killer. So he stopped taking the bus. Eventually, he stopped going to school. Soon he followed Mr. Deskovic into the criminal justice system, racking up more than 20 arrests and several stays in jail for drugs, theft, assault and trespassing.

By the time of Mr. Deskovic’s release, the brothers had not seen each other for 12 years. They waited another six months, until Mr. Deskovic was speaking at Siena College, near Albany, where Mr. McGarr lives.

“I don’t see him,” Mr. Deskovic said as he entered the lecture hall.

“He’s right there,” his mother replied, pointing to a man on a couch.

Mr. Deskovic hesitated, pursing his lips to stop them quivering, then trudged over to his brother, who spread his arms. They hugged a long time — Mr. Deskovic in a suit and striped tie, Mr. McGarr in loose clothes and gold chains — as their mother snapped pictures and an uncle rolled video.

“It’s been so long,” Mr. McGarr said, rubbing his fists against Mr. Deskovic’s back.

But the brothers saw each other only once more, for a tense evening of bowling and pizza in April. Mr. Deskovic’s meetings with his mother have devolved into sporadic phone calls that invariably end in screams and tears.

“Too much time has passed; we have no connection,” Mr. Deskovic said. “My relatives don’t know who I am.”

Seeking Friends

In his canvas book bag, Mr. Deskovic carries a copy of a newspaper article about his exoneration, in case anyone questions why a convicted killer is walking the streets. The newspaper picture of him and his lawyers also adorns Mr. Deskovic’s new Web site and MySpace page, which until recently included a plea: “Is anyone up to showing a man who has been away for 16 years how to have a good time?”

In his loneliest moments, when he scans the few personal contacts on his cellphone and realizes he has no one with whom to share his angst, Mr. Deskovic misses the predictability of prison life, where decisions were made for him.

At Elmira, guards woke Mr. Deskovic at 5:30 a.m. and escorted him to the kitchen, where he helped prepare breakfast for 1,800 inmates. He stood outside his cell for each of four daily counts; after the last, at 10:30 p.m., what the guards call the “quiet bell” signaled bedtime.

“If I was looking for entertainment, I’d stand by the chess players in the yard until someone challenged me” for a match, Mr. Deskovic recalled. For kinship and protection, Mr. Deskovic — a former altar boy who converted to Islam during his first year in prison — sought out fellow Muslim inmates. “If it weren’t for my religion,” he said, “I would have taken my own life in prison, or I would have lost my mind.”

On the outside, life’s pace is his to establish. During the week, there are classes, college work, psychotherapy sessions, meetings with a social worker and with the lawyers handling his compensation suit, plus practicing table tennis. Most weekends, he sits alone in his apartment, scouring the Internet for phone numbers of colleges, churches and other institutions that might be interested in hiring him for a speech.

He also trawls the Web for companionship, joining a hodgepodge of groups: “Westchester/So CT Social and Active Group,” “Straight Edge NYC” and a table tennis club.

One June evening, Mr. Deskovic took the train to the Fat Cat, a cavernous basement bar in Greenwich Village, to meet the table tennis players. As a duo played Sinatra on piano and trumpet, Mr. Deskovic ordered a ginger beer and stood across the table from a 37-year-old stockbroker who runs the group.

Score: 13-10.

“I got the momentum, baby,” Mr. Deskovic said, bobbing side to side.

14-10. 15-10.

“I got the serve now!”

18-12.

“I’m going to win! I’m going to win!”

Speaking With Motivation

On a brisk March morning, Mr. Deskovic arrived at the Mercy College cafeteria ahead of the breakfast rush, wearing a suit and carrying three ties on a hanger. He approached a woman wiping counters and whispered in her ear. She grabbed the silver tie with white diamonds and knotted it around his neck.

“I’m an adult and I don’t know how to fix my ties,” Mr. Deskovic said.

He wolfed down a plate of pancakes, then called Darren Wilkins, a concert promoter he met in December and hired to manage his career as a speaker.

Weeks before, Mr. Wilkins took Mr. Deskovic shopping in Harlem, where he bought three four-button suits. For inspiration, they have listened to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. For technique, they have watched videos by the motivational speaker Tony Robbins.

Together, they drafted a lecture describing the mistakes that led to Mr. Deskovic’s wrongful conviction and outlining changes to prevent others from meeting the same fate.

That March day, before speaking to the League of Women Voters at an elegant home in Bronxville, he and Mr. Wilkins, a Christian, held hands, bowed their heads and prayed.

“Public speaking is a way for me to find some meaning to what happened to me,” explained Mr. Deskovic, who has not applied for traditional jobs since his release, but has traveled across New York and four other states for speeches, including one in Texas in September.

In Bronxville, Mr. Deskovic rested his hands on a plant stand in lieu of a lectern. His voice was flat and soft. He seemed to deliberately lock eyes with each of the 16 women sipping coffee.

“If anything I’ve said here today has moved you in any way, I’d like you to join me in a movement against wrongful convictions and to get the death penalty out of New York State,” he said. “Can you make a phone call? Can you join a demonstration?”

Between speeches, Mr. Deskovic counts on donations of food, clothes and cash from people who have heard his story in the news, as well as members of local mosques and the Westchester charity New Beginnings.

He rarely eats out, but for the occasional $4 kebab. Mostly, he survives on Cheerios, tuna, canned corn and shrimp-flavored noodle soup.

On July 27, Mr. Deskovic got the keys to a one-bedroom attic apartment, in a yellow house with green shutters in Tarrytown. The living room window overlooks the Hudson River, a view much like the one he had during a short stint at nearby Sing Sing.

He trimmed his beard that day, shedding perhaps the last visible reminder of the man prison had made him.

A month later, a dean at Mercy College, Shelley Alkin, who had helped arrange Mr. Deskovic’s scholarship after his release from prison, took him shopping at Pathmark to teach him about cleaning products, what types of food he ought to be eating and how much he should expect to pay.

“And I have a plan for when I go shopping on my own,” Mr. Deskovic said proudly. “I’m saving up the empty containers so I can bring them with me and buy the same things all over again.”
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Daughter's death prompted woman's prisons campaign

By Tim Castle Reuters - 26 November 2007

LONDON (Reuters) - Pauline Campbell last saw her 18-year-old daughter Sarah as she was led from Mold Crown Court on a Friday morning to start a three-year jail sentence for manslaughter.

By the Saturday evening Sarah was dead, killed by a self-administered overdose of prescription antidepressants, despite telling prison warders what she had done.

The shock of her only daughter's death in January 2003 almost killed Campbell, a 59-year-old former lecturer. But it also galvanised her into becoming one of the country's most tireless campaigners for the rights of women in prison.

"I go bananas every time someone refers to Sarah's death as suicide -- it's letting the Home Office off the hook. Sarah's death was effectively death by neglect," Campbell told Reuters in an interview.

Arrested 14 times for demonstrations outside women's jails where women have died, she eventually forced the Home Office last year into accepting responsibility for her daughter's death, but has yet to receive an apology.

"I was told on the phone that Sarah was dead, four hours after she had died -- she was in the morgue by then -- at which point I heart attack."

Campbell's relentless campaigning helped prompt the government to commission a review of female custody which in March recommended the closure of all 14 women's jails in England and Wales.

Its author, Labour peer Baroness Corston, said many women prisoners were on remand or jailed for minor non-violent offences and should not be locked up. Community sentences should be the normal punishment.

Only the most serious and violent female offenders who posed a threat to the public would be kept behind bars, in a network of small secure centres scattered around the country.

The recommendations are still sitting on the desk of Justice Secretary Jack Straw -- who has taken over responsibility for prisons from the Home Office -- while he considers his response to the radical advice.

An original promise to respond by autumn has slipped but last week Straw told a meeting of the Howard League for Penal Reform that he would reply "very shortly".

Earlier this month, Prisons Minister David Hanson told a meeting of crime reduction charity Nacro that he would be making a "positive response" to Corston's proposals, adding that the government would publish detailed plans by the end of the year.

The number of women held in custody across England and Wales has more than doubled to 4,500 in the last 10 years although fewer than one in five are held for offences of violence.

Unlike troubled men, who often react by attacking others, women in prison attack themselves.

Women commit 55 percent of all recorded self-harm in prison, even though they make up only 6 percent of the jail population.

Sarah Campbell was the third and youngest of six self-inflicted deaths at Styal women's prison in Cheshire between August 2002 and August 2003.

"They had a dead woman on average once every eight weeks for 12 months," Campbell said.

Sarah died three days before her 19th birthday. Sentenced to three years for manslaughter and with a history of self-harm, she was terrified she would be attacked by other inmates for "grassing up" her female accomplice.

A heroin addict at 16, she had been found guilty after the elderly man she and another woman harassed for money died of a heart attack.

Put in a segregated cell for her own protection, Sarah, who had been off heroin for eight months, took an overdose of prescription antidepressants and died hours later in a Manchester hospital.

"The death was not a suicide," said Campbell. "It was quite clear that my daughter did not intend to die. It was a cry for help."

Her inquest found that avoidable delays and a failure in the prison's duty of care contributed to her death.

"Everything they could have got wrong, they got wrong," Campbell said.

"It was a Saturday afternoon and Sarah, despite being on suicide watch in the segregation punishment block, somehow managed to ingest a quantity of tablets.

"But then she told prison staff what she had done. And the prison staff, including a nurse -- it's hard to believe -- walked out of the cell and locked the door, leaving Sarah unattended.

"Then there was an argument between a prison officer and a nurse about whose job it was to call an ambulance. Somebody else went off to look for some handcuffs.

"When the ambulance arrived at the prison gates it was held up for eight minutes before they let it through.

"By the time paramedics got to Sarah she was unconscious. She was taken to Wythenshawe Hospital, where doctors from three specialties tried to save her life, but she died at 7:56 p.m."

Since her daughter's death Campbell has led 26 protests at prisons where women have died.

"The only way I can deal with my anger and grief is that I hold prison death demonstrations," she said.

"We should not be having women suffocating themselves, hanging themselves, poisoning themselves when in the so-called care of the state."

Last year just three women died from self-inflicted deaths in prison, down from 14 in 2003, but so far this year the total has risen to seven.

Last week Campbell was in action again, upbraiding Jack Straw at a meeting of the Howard League for Penal Reform, where she is now a trustee.

"Since my daughter's death four years ago we have had 39 dead women prisoners. For a so-called modern Labour government this is utterly disgraceful," she told him.

Straw, who acknowledged that his reply would be little comfort to Campbell, said he and everyone in the prison service was concerned about women's self-inflicted deaths.

He said the Ministry of Justice would work with the Howard League and other organisations on the problem.

"I don't pretend we have a monopoly of wisdom on what kind of conditions are most likely to ensure that the depression that people can feel almost inevitably when they go to prison is not translated into self-inflicted harm or death," he said.

Afterwards Campbell said she was overwhelmed and close to tears from the emotion of the encounter.

"I want an end to women dying in the so-called care of the state.

"It takes me a lot of energy to stay calm and focused and say what I want to say without blowing my top."


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abzug
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Wow. There are no words to say in response to that article. The fact that she even got manslaughter in the first place is disturbing.
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abzug
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You know, there are a lot of fucked up things in this thread, but this article I'm about to post might actually be the worst of all. The injustice is astounding, as is the logic of the people who are defending it!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/us/04felony.html

Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers

Ryan Holle, 25, convicted of murder, is serving life without the chance of parole at the Wakulla Correctional Institution in Florida.

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: December 4, 2007

CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. — Early in the morning of March 10, 2003, after a raucous party that lasted into the small hours, a groggy and hungover 20-year-old named Ryan Holle lent his Chevrolet Metro to a friend. That decision, prosecutors later said, was tantamount to murder.

The friend used the car to drive three men to the Pensacola home of a marijuana dealer, aiming to steal a safe. The burglary turned violent, and one of the men killed the dealer’s 18-year-old daughter by beating her head in with a shotgun he found in the home.

Mr. Holle was a mile and a half away, but that did not matter.

He was convicted of murder under a distinctively American legal doctrine that makes accomplices as liable as the actual killer for murders committed during felonies like burglaries, rapes and robberies.

Mr. Holle, who had given the police a series of statements in which he seemed to admit knowing about the burglary, was convicted of first-degree murder. He is serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole at the Wakulla Correctional Institution here, 20 miles southwest of Tallahassee.

A prosecutor explained the theory to the jury at Mr. Holle’s trial in Pensacola in 2004. “No car, no crime,” said the prosecutor, David Rimmer. “No car, no consequences. No car, no murder.”

Most scholars trace the doctrine, which is an aspect of the felony murder rule, to English common law, but Parliament abolished it in 1957. The felony murder rule, which has many variations, generally broadens murder liability for participants in violent felonies in two ways. An unintended killing during a felony is considered murder under the rule. So is, as Mr. Holle learned, a killing by an accomplice.

India and other common law countries have followed England in abolishing the doctrine. In 1990, the Canadian Supreme Court did away with felony murder liability for accomplices, saying it violated “the principle that punishment must be proportionate to the moral blameworthiness of the offender.”

Countries outside the common law tradition agree. “The view in Europe,” said James Q. Whitman, a professor of comparative law at Yale, “is that we hold people responsible for their own acts and not the acts of others.”

But prosecutors and victims’ rights groups in the United States say that punishing accomplices as though they had been the actual killers is perfectly appropriate.

“The felony murder rule serves important interests,” said Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor in the Holle case, “because it holds all persons responsible for the actions of each other if they are all participating in the same crime.”

Kent Scheidegger, the legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a victims’ rights group, said “all perpetrators of the underlying felony, not just the one who pulls the trigger” should be held accountable for murder.

“A person who has chosen to commit armed robbery, rape or kidnapping has chosen to do something with a strong possibility of causing the death of an innocent person,” Mr. Scheidegger said. “That choice makes it morally justified to convict the person of murder when that possibility happens.”

About 16 percent of homicides in 2006 occurred during felonies, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Statistics concerning how many of those killings led to the murder prosecutions of accomplices are not available, but legal experts say such prosecutions are relatively common in the more than 30 states that allow them. About 80 people have been sentenced to death in the last three decades for participating in a felony that led to a murder though they did not kill anyone.

Terry Snyder, whose daughter Jessica was the victim in Mr. Holle’s case, said Mr. Holle’s conduct was as blameworthy as that of the man who shattered her skull.

“It never would have happened unless Ryan Holle had lent the car,” Mr. Snyder said. “It was as good as if he was there.”

Prosecutors sometimes also justify the doctrine on the ground that it deters murders. Criminals who know they will face harsh punishment if someone dies in the course of a felony, supporters of the felony murder rule say, may plan their crimes with more care, may leave deadly weapons at home and may decide not to commit the underlying felony at all.

But the evidence of a deterrent effect is thin. An unpublished analysis of F.B.I. crime data from 1970 to 1998 by Anup Malani, a law professor at the University of Chicago, found that the presence of the felony murder rule had a relatively small effect on criminal behavior, reducing the number of deaths during burglaries and car thefts slightly, not affecting deaths during rapes and, perversely, increasing the number of deaths during robberies. That last finding, the study said, “is hard to explain” and “warrants further exploration.”

The felony murder rule’s defenders acknowledge that it can be counterintuitive.

“It may not make any sense to you,” Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor in Mr. Holle’s case, told the jury. “He has to be treated just as if he had done all the things the other four people did.”

Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Charles Miller Jr., the man who actually killed Jessica Snyder, but he was sentenced to life without parole. So were the men who entered the Snyders’ home with him, Donnie Williams and Jermond Thomas. So was William Allen Jr., who drove the car. So was Mr. Holle.

Mr. Holle had no criminal record. He had lent his car to Mr. Allen, a housemate, countless times before.

“All he did was go say, ‘Use the car,’ ” Mr. Allen said of Mr. Holle in a pretrial deposition. “I mean, nobody really knew that girl was going to get killed. It was not in the plans to go kill somebody, you know.”

But Mr. Holle did testify that he had been told it might be necessary to “knock out” Jessica Snyder. Mr. Holle is 25 now, a tall, lean and lively man with a rueful sense of humor, alert brown eyes and an unusually deep voice. In a spare office at the prison here, he said that he had not taken the talk of a burglary seriously.

“I honestly thought they were going to get food,” he said of the men who used his car, all of whom had attended the nightlong party at Mr. Holle’s house, as had Jessica Snyder.

“When they actually mentioned what was going on, I thought it was a joke,” Mr. Holle added, referring to the plan to steal the Snyders’ safe. “I thought they were just playing around. I was just very naïve. Plus from being drinking that night, I just didn’t understand what was going on.”

Mr. Holle’s trial lawyer, Sharon K. Wilson, said the statements he had given to the police were the key to the case, given the felony murder rule.

“It’s just draconian,” Ms. Wilson said. “The worst thing he was guilty of was partying too much and not being discriminating enough in who he was partying with.”

Mr. Holle’s trial took one day. “It was done, probably, by 5 o’clock,” Mr. Holle said. “That’s with the deliberations and the verdict and the sentence.”

Witnesses described the horror of the crime. Christine Snyder, for instance, recalled finding her daughter, her head bashed in and her teeth knocked out.

“Then what did you do?” the prosecutor asked her.

“I went screaming out of the home saying they blew my baby’s face off,” Ms. Snyder said.

The safe had belonged to Christine Snyder. The police found a pound of marijuana in it, and, after her daughter’s funeral, she was sentenced to three years in prison for possessing it.

Not every state’s version of the felony murder rule is as strict as Florida’s, and a few states, including Hawaii, Kentucky and Michigan, have abolished it entirely.

“The felony-murder rule completely ignores the concept of determination of guilt on the basis of individual misconduct,” the Michigan Supreme Court wrote in 1980.

The vast majority of states retain it in various forms, but courts and officials have taken occasional steps to limit its harshest applications.

In August, for instance, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Foster, the driver of a getaway car in a robbery spree that ended in a murder.

Mr. Holle was the only one of the five men charged with murdering Jessica Snyder who was offered a plea bargain, one that might have led to 10 years in prison.

“I did so because he was not as culpable as the others,” said Mr. Rimmer, the prosecutor.

Mr. Holle, who rejected the deal, has spent some time thinking about the felony murder rule.

“The laws that they use to convict people are just — they have to revise them,” he said. “Just because I lent these guys my car, why should I be convicted the same as these people that actually went to the scene of the crime and actually committed the crime?”

Mr. Rimmer sounded ambivalent on this point.

“Whether or not the felony murder rule can result in disproportionate justice is a matter of opinion,” Mr. Rimmer said. “The father of Jessica Snyder does not think so.”
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From today's issue of The Independent.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article3226395.ece

The real prison numbers scandal

As the Government plans to build more jails, the shocking state of crime and punishment in Britain is revealed
By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent
Published: 06 December 2007
The Government was accused yesterday of trying to build its way out of the prisons overcrowding crisis as it outlined its vision for the construction of three supersize jails which would bring the number of offenders behind bars to almost 100,000.

Despite stark reminders from penal reform experts that more people are already locked up in England and Wales than anywhere else in western Europe, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, said he was pressing ahead.

The £1.2bn programme brought widespread condemnation from liberal campaigners through to seasoned prison officials, with penal reformers protesting that "cavernous warehouses on green-belt land" would do nothing to rehabilitate prisoners or to enhance security in the surrounding communities. Prison governors warned that the "super-jails", which would hold 2,500 offenders each, could be vulnerable to explosive riots.

The prison population now stands at almost 81,500, the highest figure on record and an increase of more than 20,000 in a decade. The Government is now planning for the prison capacity to rise to 96,000 by 2014. Its plans were unveiled as a new analysis by the Prison Reform Trust disclosed the disturbing scale of the problem. The soaring levels of imprisonment over the past decade were reflected in statistics which showed that, for every 100,000 of the population of England and Wales, 148 people are in prison, compared with 85 per 100,000 in France and 93 per 100,000 in Germany. The number of women inmates has increased from less than 2,000 in 1995 to 4,510 today.

The tendency for disproportionate numbers of prisoners to be drink or drug addicts was also emphasised, with 70 per cent of new prisoners having a drug problem and 63 per cent admitting to heavy drinking.

Perhaps the most worrying trend was that of prison suicide rates, particularly among young men. The suicide rate for men in prison is five times higher than in the population as a whole and 748 prisoners have taken their lives in a decade, the study calculated. The most recent was Liam McManus, an inmate at Lancaster Farms prison who was found hanged in his cell last week. He was 15 years old.

Despite accusations that the Government was pursuing "short-sighted" and "unsustainable" policies, Mr Straw insisted that the expansion was justified. He said: "Nobody likes locking up people unless it is necessary. But you have to have the prison places for dealing with criminals for whom community sentences are not appropriate."

Many observers were vehement in their criticism. "Building cavernous warehouses on green-belt land for people to lie on their bunks all day before being dumped into the community only to commit more crimes neither serves the taxpayer or past and future victims of crime," said Frances Crook, the director of the Howard League for Penal Reform.

Paul Cavadino, chief executive of the crime reduction charity Nacro, said trying to solve the crisis by simply building more prisons was a simplistic approach to reform which ignored fundamental questions over the effectiveness of imprisonment.

"Increasing the prison capacity to 96,000 is a depressing prospect," he said. "It will institutionalise this country's position as the prison capital of Europe and absorb vast resources which would be better spent on offenders' rehabilitation, crime prevention and victim support."

Concerns over the practical consequences of the prisons were also aired, with senior prison workers even warning that such large-scale systems ran the risk of mass riots.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation union Napo, said: "It goes against all previous advice, which has been for smaller units close to where prisoners live. It would be difficult to find sites, obtain planning permission and manage and recruit staff." Juliet Lyon, the director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: "Pouring money into jumbo jails will engulf any sensible plans to reform the justice system. Everyone knows that giant institutions don't work."

The plans were drawn up by the government troubleshooter Lord Carter of Coles after he was called in for the third time in a decade for advice. At their heart is the construction of three massive prisons, described as " Titan" jails by Mr Straw. The first would open in 2012, with a further two expected by 2014. The most likely locations are in the South-east, the North-west and the West Midlands.

Ministers were advised by Lord Carter to force through planning permission for the "super-jails", which are likely to be run by private companies, as quickly as possible. The most dilapidated prisons, holding 5,000 inmates, would be shut after 2013.

Lord Carter warned that the service faced a more immediate problem, with a shortage of up to 3,000 prison places by next summer and up to 6,000 in 2009.

Mr Straw told MPs that a former RAF base at Coltishall in Norfolk would be converted into a prison. He confirmed he was also looking for a prison ship.

Lord Carter also urged adjustments to sentencing rules that would have the combined effect of reducing the prison population by between 3,500 and 4,500.

Nick Herbert, the shadow Justice Secretary, said the Carter report was a " devastating indictment" of the prison system.

What Jack Straw said

* Three 'Titan jails' to be built, opening 7,500 prison spaces

* Run-down jails across the UK housing a total of 5,000 inmates to be closed

* MoD base in Norfolk to be converted into a prison

* Search for a prison ship

* Sentences for minor offenders to be reviewed

* Setting up a Sentencing Commission to review "sentencing ranges" to be considered


And -

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article3226394.ece

Blunkett and the mission to South Africa that inspired the strategy of 'super-prisons'

By James Macintyre
Published: 06 December 2007
In 2003, Martin Narey, Britain's first commissioner for correctional services and former head of the Prison Service, flew to South Africa to "think the unthinkable" on prisons. He was reporting to the Home Secretary of the day, David Blunkett, who was known to be frustrated by the inability of his department to counter headlines about prison overcrowding.

Completing his tour of a faceless, sprawling 3,000-space jail run by Group 4 at Bloemfontein, Mr Narey declared: "The prison I saw is much bigger than anything we have tried to build. I think the traditional view is that a prison of that size will be too big to be safe and decent."

But Mr Narey was "converted". And for Mr Blunkett, the South African example represented a welcome chance to break with a mainstream view both at the Home Office and in western Europe that jails on that scale were impossible to manage, and impersonal to the point of cutting people off from their previous lives. He drew up an "investment strategy" paper to be presented to the Cabinet, calling for the introduction of two super-size jails, each holding 1,500 inmates – a thousand fewer than those announced yesterday – as part of a package introducing some 5,400 new places for inmates.

Intriguingly, however, the plans fizzled out before gaining Treasury approval. Gordon Brown, it seems, was not convinced. Yesterday's announcement – designed to increase prison places from 81,000 to 96,000 by 2014 – shows the Treasury, armed with billions more to spend, has been convinced by the concept.

"This is an idea that has been considered for the past 10 years or more, " said Rob Allen, the director of the Institute for the Centre for Prisons Studies. "There is an issue about whether people are close to home, and have links with the local community," Mr Allen said last night. "This is very much based on the American model, of great penitentiaries." The US has since 2000 held the highest number of prisoners in the world – last year 2.2 million were incarcerated – with China and Russia following close behind.

But super-prisons are "unusual" in the rest of Europe, according to Mr Allen. "One outside Paris houses almost 3,000 – but for the bulk of western Europe they are unusual," he said. "In Scandinavia prisons of 60-80 places are much closer to communities." And in the UK, the only large-scale prison built since Mr Blunkett's attempt at breaking the mould was one with 840 beds, in Peterborough. Britain's largest prison is at Wandsworth in south London, which holds about 1,400 inmates. The average size is around 1,000 places.

Despite what critics describe as an inherently "illiberal" culture at the Home Office since Douglas Hurd left the department – boosted by Michael Howard's subsequent declaration that "prison works" – successive governments have until recently never quite embraced mass prisons.

But since Mr Brown became Prime Minister the ground for a fresh start has been prepared. In October Jack Straw, Tony Blair's first home secretary in 1997, said in a speech to the Prison Governors Association that " returning to the [prisons] brief as Justice Secretary, I recognise the different set of pressures that the current prison population creates... [of] maintaining order and control, of continuing to house prisoners with decency... difficulties around cell-sharing, risk assessments – all practical manifestations of prison population pressures."

Yesterday, the Government presented its solution. But if the new announcement represents a victory for elements within the new Ministry of Justice, another group will also be celebrating today: the private sector. Under Mr Blunkett's aborted proposals, the large-scale jails would have been designed, financed and directed by the private sector, for which the proposals would provide thousands of jobs.

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It is no fun catching up on the articles in this thread, but thanks to everyone who posts them.

Something struck me as I read the last few posts.

In the “Daughter's death prompted woman's prisons campaign” story, it says “women commit 55 percent of all recorded self-harm in prison, even though they make up only 6 percent of the jail population.”

In the recent Independent article, it says, “Perhaps the most worrying trend was that of prison suicide rates, particularly among young men. The suicide rate for men in prison is five times higher than in the population as a whole and 748 prisoners have taken their lives in a decade, the study calculated.”

So women self-harm far, far more frequently, but men (I don't know why they say "young men") commit suicide five times more often than in the population as a whole -- which is weird because women make up just 6% of that population.

It doesn't make sense to me -- not that I'm hoping women will win this very dark contest, but the first article indicated suicide is a big issue for women in prison. I wonder if the second article's statistics are correct.
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