Restorative Justice Bill Signed Into Law

COLORADO SPRINGS - An upcoming new law intended to give juvenile offenders a second chance, was introduced by Democratic State Representative Michael Merrifield of Colorado Springs. Merrifield will attend a ceremony at the state capitol Monday during which Governor Ritter signs the Restorative Justice Bill into law.

"It's really something I'm proud of," confessed Merrifield at his home Sunday. "I would guess maybe half the bills die before they get to the Governor. I've had pretty good luck."

Merrifield says the law will give judges another option in sentencing juvenile offenders. In some cases--based on the severity of the crime--judges may make probation, restitution and communuty service more of a consideration that jail or prison time. Under the law, a defendant before sentencing may face a panel of community leaders, law-enforcement personnel and victims who will provide input on punishment to a judge. The defendant must apologize, admit guilt and be willing to make restitution to the victim or victims.

DPA Report On Methamphetamine National Strategy

A new Drug Policy Alliance report, "A Four-Pillars Approach to Methamphetamine: Policies for Effective Drug Prevention, Treatment, Policing and Harm Reduction," evaluates current state and federal methamphetamine policies and recommends major reforms. The report, which was covered in several newspapers and featured at a forum on Capitol Hill for congressional staffers, is the first in the U.S. to lay out a "four pillars" approach to addressing methamphetamine abuse.

The report holds that the pillars of a successful methamphetamine strategy are prevention, treatment, policing and harm reduction. This four pillars approach is already in use in cities around the world, most notably Vancouver, and has resulted in a dramatic reduction in the number of users consuming drugs on the street, a significant drop in overdose deaths, and a reduction in the infection rates for HIV/AIDS and hepatitis.

The report highlights successful efforts taking place on the state level to move methamphetamine policy in the right direction.

Drug Policy Alliance

Federal Legalization Of Marijuana?

Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank is proposing a bill that would remove federal penalties for possession and use of small amounts of marijuana.

Why do we need a federal bill?

Because the rest of the country is far behind Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon in decriminalizing the herb, with Michigan on the verge of approving a similar bill.

We need a federal bill because we need to put an end to this fruitless, expensive prohibition once and for all.

We need a federal bill because of the growing number of people across the nation who are clamoring for the legalization of marijuana for medicinal and recreational uses.

We need a federal bill because the prohibition of marijuana is rooted in racism, fear and greed, not science.

The Cliff Notes version of a piece written for the Virginia Law Review on how marijuana became illegal begins in about 1910 with a cast of characters that runs the gamut from migrant farm workers to polygamist pot smokers; from Pancho Villa to William Randolph Hearst; from the nation's first drug czar Harry Anslinger - who led a vicious, unfounded assault on marijuana - to the DuPont chemical company. (For the full story on why and how marijuana became illegal, go to http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/LIBRARY/studies/vlr/vlrtoc.htm; http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm and http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/stories/2003/12/22/whyIsMarijuanaIllegal.html)

Frank's proposal would eliminate all federal penalties prohibiting the personal use and possession of up to 31â„2 ounces of marijuana. Adults who consume marijuana would no longer face arrest, prison or even the threat of a civil fine. In addition, the bill would eliminate all penalties prohibiting the not-for-profit transfers of up to one ounce of cannabis between adults.

The Spectrum

Jayci Yaeger Dies After She Sees Her Dad

This is one of those stories that just rips you apart.

LINCOLN, Neb. -- A 10-year-old girl has died, just a day after her wish to see her father was granted.Jayci Yaeger's imprisoned father, Jason, went to her bedside Wednesday -- a visit federal authorities allowed only after being deluged with letters and phone calls from across the nation.

Jayci had terminal brain cancer. Her family had been pleading with federal prison officials in Yankton, S.D., to allow her father to see his daughter before she died.On Wednesday afternoon, prison guards drove Jason Yaeger to a Lincoln hospice, where he spent time at her bedside. No one else was allowed in the room except Jason Yaeger, Jayci and the escorts.

Sources said Yaeger did leave the girl's side to consult with hospice counselors and get some direction on how to speak with the girl about what she was going through.Prior to Wednesday, the prison warden had allowed Jason Yaeger three visits to his daughter, but had denied requests for a longer furlough or an early transfer to a halfway house in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The warden told Yaeger it was not viewed as an extraordinary circumstance.Letters and e-mails from across the nation have reached the Yaeger family and appealed to the prison to allow the man to see his daughter.

The family asked the media to share their story with the hope of encouraging prison officials to allow the visit.He's scheduled to be released to a halfway house in August.

KETV NEWS

CCJRC On Colorado Matters

Prisoners Get Free Guide to the Outside

2008 Presidential Platforms on Criminal Justice

The Sentencing Project

Two Of Angola 3 Moved Out Of Solitary

After spending decades in 23 hour a day lockdown...

Louisiana - Two men held in solitary confinement in Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola since the 1970s were moved into a maximum-security dormitory with other inmates Monday, Assistant Warden Angie Norwood said today.

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, part of a group known as the Angola 3, have sued the state, claiming they are victims of cruel and unusual punishment for the years they spent in isolation. The two were convicted of killing a prison guard, though their attorneys argue they didn’t commit the crime.

Their move out of solitary confinement came as lawyers for the prisoners and the state are negotiating a settlement in the lawsuit, which is pending in federal court in Baton Rouge.

the Advocate

Budget Calls For More Prison Guards

The Long Bill progresses through Congress..

Republican lawmakers accused Democrats of courting disaster by adding 1,334 new state jobs in the state budget as the Colorado economy - and tax revenues - are tanking.

"Will the state have the money to pay for that?" Rep. Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, asked fellow members of the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday before they advanced the $17.6 billion budget bill. The state may be forced to lay off all the new hires, or raid coffers as it did during the 2001 recession, McNulty said.

But Gov. Bill Ritter and fellow Democrats said Republicans talk a good game about cracking down on crime and improving the state's economy, then duck the tab for hiring people to get the job done.

"Look at the places where the (jobs) are added: prisons and higher education," Ritter said. "There are people in this building that will build prisons 'til the cows come home and then they turn around and try to criticize you for staffing them."

Joint Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, echoed that frustration.

"I think it is the height of hypocrisy for this legislature to increase criminal penalties to lengthen sentences and then criticize the necessary steps that you have to take in order to put those individuals safely away (in prison)," he told the appropriations committee and McNulty.

The sharp exchanges foreshadowed today's House floor debate over the budget bill.

Ritter said there is a 750-bed prison being built now, and the state has a low ratio of parole officers to offenders, which he considers a public safety issue.

"Am I adding parole officers? You bet. Am I adding corrections officers? You bet I am," Ritter said.

Rocky Mountain News

DNA Bill Advances

Several sponsors of a DNA preservation bill defected Tuesday, but it wasn't nearly enough to topple the bill in its first test before the full state Senate.

Senate Bill 205, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, and 25 other senators, would grant new trials to criminal defendants in cases where DNA evidence was thrown out despite a court order requiring it be saved for testing.

The bill is inspired by the case of Clarence Moses-EL, who was convicted of a 1987 rape.

Moses-EL has said he is innocent, and in 1995 Denver police tossed the only physical evidence in the case, which a judge had ruled needed to be preserved.

"I hope this is the only time this has happened," said Sen. John Morse, a Colorado Springs Democrat who is one of the bill's co-sponsors. "I hope it never happens in the future. But the truth of the matter is, when it happens, someone's life is completely changed."

The bill passed on a stand-up, sit-down vote, with more than half the chamber standing in support of the bill. But several Republicans who are co-sponsors on the bill, including Sen. Tom Wiens, R-Castle Rock, stayed seated when the vote was called.

Wiens said he signed onto the bill early on but has since changed his mind after learning more. At least three other Republicans listed as co-sponsors on the bill also stayed seated.

Wiens said he would pull his name from the list of co-sponsors.

"I've been convinced that there are plenty of other opportunities to remedy that system," Wiens said.

Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, said there are already numerous appeals opportunities in the court system, and if those fail, a defendant can seek clemency from the governor.

"This legislation is about one person," Penry said. "And to me it's a precedent we should all be concerned about setting."

But Sen. Shawn Mitchell, a Broomfield Republican who is another of the bill's co-sponsors, said the bill could apply to many cases where defendants lose the ability to test the DNA evidence in the case against them.

"As awful as it may be for a victim or a victim's family to contemplate a retrial, our first responsibility here ought to be for justice," Mitchell said.

The Denver Post

State Asks For Time On ADA In Prisons

Colorado's prison system would have until May 2009 to better serve disabled inmates under an agreement presented Tuesday in federal court.

The improvements could include services such as sign language classes and ensuring that prisoners' wheelchairs work properly.

The Department of Corrections agreed in 2003 to settle a lawsuit claiming it violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

The lawsuit, first filed in 1992 by six disabled inmates, later became a class-action on behalf of thousands of prisoners.

The settlement gave DOC two years to make changes. When terms of the agreement weren't met by 2005, the deadline was extended to July 2007.

Both sides agreed Tuesday that while progress has been made, DOC still isn't complying with the settlement.

Paula Greisen, an attorney for the inmates, said services vary from prison to prison.

The Denver Post

Lawmakers Debate Budget

As the shortfall realities of the budget come true what will be left standing at the end of the day?
Higher education and revolving prison doors are priorities in the proposed 2008-09 budget, which "expresses what we as a state, as a Legislature, feel is important," said Democrats who introduced it Monday.

But Republicans say the $17.6 billion budget plan, which includes funding for 1,335 new employees, increases the size of government at the wrong time - with Colorado entering a recession.

"I am concerned that with this budget we have in front of us, we are manufacturing a fiscal crisis," Rep. Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, said. "It expands programs that we won't be able to keep up with in the future. It creates services that we won't be able to continue."

JBC members proposed a roughly 20 percent increase in funding for mental-health and substance-abuse programs and for the state's parole division in an effort to reduce recidivism. Half the inmates released from prison return within three years, Buescher said. While recommending $12.5 million for prison construction, they also proposed a general-fund increase of just 8.3 percent for the corrections department - the smallest increase in years.

The budget for higher education, meanwhile, is expected to jump a larger-than-usual 8.6 percent, with maximum tuition increases at public colleges and universities ranging from 5 percent to 9.5 percent.

Nearly $30 million is set aside also to get about 1,000 developmentally disabled Coloradans off a waiting list for state services after a bipartisan group of legislators pushed for increased funding.


Colorado Springs Gazette

10 Year Olds Dying Wish To Be With Her Dad

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - A federal inmate is asking President Bush for clemency so he can be with his daughter, who's dying of brain cancer in Lincoln.

Jason Yaeger is in a federal prison in Yankton, South Dakota, serving four years on methamphetamine charges. He's scheduled to be released next year.

But that may be too late for 10-year-old Jayci, who is too weak to respond when her father talks to her on the phone.

Yaeger says he's not trying to get out of his sentence. He says the request for clemency is a last resort after the warden refused move him to a Council Bluffs halfway house, as well as Yaeger's request for a furlough.

He's also filed a court injunction, asking for an immediate transfer to the halfway house, where he's scheduled to be transfered in August.

"Bureau of Prison officials have reviewed inmate Yaeger's request for a compassionate release and have determined his situation does not meet criteria," the statement said. "Inmate Yaeger's request for extended placement in a residential re-entry center is currently in litigation; therefore, we are unable to comment further on this request."

The governor of South Dakota's office has received more than 70 e-mails and calls. Press Secretary Mitch Krebs said there is nothing the governor can do because, though he has jurisdiction over state prisons, Yaeger is in a federal prison. Krebs said the office has called federal officials to let them know the governor's office was getting calls and e-mails.

Inmates ADA Not Being Implemented

The Colorado prison system has missed two court-ordered deadlines to improve facilities and services for disabled inmates, some of whom have gone without glasses, wheelchairs or hearing aids for months or even years, according to court records.

The claims stem from a federal lawsuit filed in 1992 by six disabled inmates who said Colorado prisons didn't comply with the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.

The case later became a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all disabled state prisoners.

In 2003, the state Department of Corrections agreed in a multimillion-dollar settlement to make changes by 2005.

The changes included making prisons handicapped-accessible, ending lower pay for so-called "handicapped" inmate jobs and ensuring that disabled inmates had access to sign language interpreters and Braille or large-print documents.

The state didn't comply by 2005, so the deadline was extended to July 2007.

Denver Post

$700,000,000 Budget Shortfall - What Gets Cut?

Unfortunately, it looks like we will choose building in prisons instead of building in schools.

The chicken wire holding up the Capitol's gold dome will have to do its job for another five years, as lawmakers grappled with the surprise news Thursday of a $700 million budget shortfall.

Lower-than-anticipated income- tax revenue spells the end to state building projects — dome repairs, community college expansions, safety-prompted renovations and the like — starting next fiscal year and for the foreseeable future.

Even after a grueling round of cuts to state building projects, Colorado's road and transportation money remains in jeopardy to the tune of a total of $168 million between 2008 and 2012, legislative analysts predict.

And lawmakers fear the crunch may eventually seep into the state's general fund, from which education, public safety and other critical money comes.

"I feel like I'm at a funeral," said Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West.

The legislative budget office released the estimate Thursday, saying the state will be $700 million short of previous projections through 2011.

The Denver Post

The Truth About Prison - Interview

Pamela White is the editor of the Boulder Weekly. She also writes very successful romance novels under the name of Pamela Clare. In her former life as a reporter she came across a story she felt very strongly about. So strongly that she actually got fired because of the story. The novel she has coming out called "Unlawful Contact" contains pieces of that story. She recently asked to do an interview for her blog so I reprinted it here.
You can read the entire article by clicking here.

Pamela Clare plays journalist
An interview with Pamela Clifton

A long, long time ago in about June 2001, I came across your federal lawsuit against the state of Colorado. You were at the Denver Women's facility. I know it’s not easy, but can you give us a quick overview of what happened to you there?

Nothing happened in Denver Women’s.

Ah. OK. Now that we’ve settled that, I feel like a dope.

I started out in Cañon City at the women’s facility. At the time Denver Women’s had just opened, and they did not have the capability to take care of women who were pregnant. I was about three months pregnant when I arrived. I was put on light duty and went to see the doctor every month. My pregnancy was progressing normally. The baby was due on about January 18. The week before Christmas I went in for a check up and was told that I should expect a daughter.

I woke up on a beautiful Christmas morning. I went out to walk laps for an hour, which I always did, and then went back to my room for the 11 AM count. During count you are not allowed to leave your cell, even though we had unlocked doors, except to go to the bathroom. Count usually took about 45 minutes, and then we were called for lunch unit by unit. It was Christmas dinner so things took a little longer.

I remember the first gut-wrenching hit about 10 minutes into count. I was alarmed but not upset. The second one came exactly 15 minutes later and the third one about 12 minutes after that. I saw one of the guards coming down the hall and I said, “ Something’s wrong, I think I am in labor.” She said there wasn’t anything she could do right then because it was count time, but I could go to the bathroom if I wanted. I went to the bathroom and then after 10 minutes I got another one. I started to pace the long unit down the hallway. I spoke to some of the other girls, and they watched over me through each pain. I have two other children so I know what labor feels like as opposed to Braxton-Hicks. I went to the dayroom, the guard was playing a video game, and I asked her to call down to medical, and she said that she did but no one was answering the phone. Finally, they called our unit to lunch and I told the girls that we could walk down to Master Control and tell the guard down there what was happening. The contractions were still about 10 minutes apart. We walked into the dining hall and I sat down. They were coming a little faster. Just so you know my water never breaks; the doctor had to break it with both my kids. My eldest daughter was a month early, and my son was two weeks late. I had passed this information on to the medical staff at CWCF early on in my pregnancy.

The pains were five minutes apart, and I knew something was happening because it was more than a pushing pain; there was a struggle going on in my belly. I went to Master control, and I told the officer to please call medical that my pains were five minutes apart. She said, “Go back to your unit. There are plenty of women down there who know how to birth babies.”

I remember standing there with my mouth open. And then the girls ushered me down the hall to my unit. I asked the guard again, and she said, “I’ll try” ....

I don’t remember much after that I was in my room between the chair and the bed for about 4 hours. The pains started becoming erratic at that point and when the guards changed shifts one of the girls went and told the new guard what was happening and suddenly medical was on the ball, or so I thought. They had me come down, and the nurse who was not a regular employee said that my water hadn’t broken and she couldn’t feel the distress. I asked her to check with the fetal heart monitor to make sure everything was okay, and she said she didn’t know how to use it. I made a remark about it not being that hard, and she said that there wasn’t anyone to call because it was Christmas. She sent me back to my unit.

I waited for someone to call me in the next day, but it was Sunday, and no one was there. That evening I went to an AA meeting, and I saw the nurse in the hall, and I looked at her and said, “Now I don’t feel anything.” She had me come into medical and called the PA. He came over from Fremont, checked me with the fetal heart monitor and had me rushed to the hospital. At the hospital my doctor showed up and did a battery of tests.

“I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat,” he said.
You can read the entire article by clicking here.

Executives Working On Reentry

Thanks to Doc Berman at Corr Sent for this story of how one on one mentoring in New York is helping people to get out and stay out.

Mark Goldsmith didn't expect to go to jail when he volunteered to be "principal for a day" at a New York City school. But after requesting a "tough school," he was assigned to Horizon Academy, a high school for inmates ages 18 to 24 at Rikers Island prison.

Mr. Goldsmith, a former executive at Revlon and Shiseido, was ushered through locked gates to the prison's classrooms. Standing in front of his new class, he looked at the young students and saw in them signs of his own difficult youth. He had never committed a crime; but he told the students he thought he was dumb, and graduated near the bottom of his high-school class. He enrolled in college at night because his wife insisted, but he didn't think he could achieve anything. Then, he landed his first business job at 29 at Coty, a fragrance company then owned by Pfizer, and proved his hard work could earn him advances.

PODCAST

"I started at the bottom, got in earlier than anyone and left later, and then I got promoted -- and you can do this, too," he explained to the class.

Mr. Goldsmith felt the teaching experience was rewarding for both sides and volunteered again for the program. After, he decided he needed more than just one day a year with these inmates if he were to help them turn their lives around. In 2005, he launched his own nonprofit, Getting Out and Staying Out. GOSO, as it is called, now is working with 275 inmates serving sentences in upstate New York prisons and 150 at Rikers.

Mr. Goldsmith and 14 other current or retired executives who volunteer at GOSO, based in Harlem, plus a paid staff of six, are working to counter the familiar story of prisoners getting released without skills, jobs, money or a place to live, and then resorting to crime only to get locked up again. Fewer than 10% of the 400 released inmates GOSO has worked with have been arrested again since the group was formed three years ago. That figure compares with two-thirds of prisoners released annually nationwide who have been rearrested, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Wall Street Journal

Masters Asks Lawmakers For DNA Evidence

DENVER (AP) - A state House Judiciary Committee meeting on Wednesday reunited Tom Turner with Timothy Masters, the man Turner and 11 other jurors convicted of first-degree murder and sent to prison for life.

Outside the hearing room, Turner caught up with Masters and apologized for the conviction, which was overturned Jan. 22. Masters became the first person in Colorado released because of DNA evidence.

"I told him, `I'm sorry."' Turner said.

The first meeting between Masters and Turner ended when Masters told him simply: "We'll talk later."

Both were at the Capitol to testify before lawmakers considering requiring law enforcement agencies to preserve DNA evidence.

Outside another hearing, Masters said he had forgiven the jurors, prosecutors and police who played a role in his 9 1/2 years of incarceration for the 1987 slaying of Peggy Hettrick in Fort Collins.
9 News

Let Judges Decide On Charges For Teens - Editorial

This winter I completed a nine-week program put on by the Denver District Attorney's Office to explain its program to the public. It was an interesting and well-run advocacy program that showed off the prosecutorial skills of the office, which are considerable.

It also emphasized a prosecutorial spirit that celebrates convictions and disdains reversals - as well it might, you could say, because the staff are all prosecutors. Correct, but then all the more reason that judges, not prosecutors, should make the all-important decision of whether or not to file against a juvenile as an adult ("Argument on kids vs. adults," Live from the Colorado Legislature, March 12).

The cool hand of justice - balancing punishment with rehabilitation - was not in evidence during my course. The strong voice of victims of crime was present at every stage. While victims certainly deserve the help of the city, they are ill-equipped to decide questions of justice. So I am strongly in favor of returning to our practice of allowing judges, whose mission is neither prosecution nor defense, to decide which court is appropriate for the accused.

Rocky Mountain News

Harm Reduction: A Practical Solution

Here's a little from CCJRC's March 2008 Newsletter:

A smallish unremarkable house on the west side of Denver bustles
with activity as people who have unique problems related to their
addictions come in for coffee, a place to rest, relate and regroup. This
house is home to the Harm Reduction Project.

The Harm Reduction Project opened the Denver drop-in center in
June of 2002. It is funded by the Colorado Department of Health and
Environment to provide HIV prevention and education to injection drug
users. They also distribute harm reduction tools to program participants
and community-based organizations, both locally and nationally.
These tools include: condoms and other safer sex materials, vitamins,
hygiene kits, clothing and food, safer injection kits, literature on
decreasing high-risk activities, and syringe disposal. The other services
they offer are around group level intervention, peer driven intervention,
motivational interviewing, risk reduction counseling, rapid HIV
counseling and testing, hepatitis testing, referrals, art therapy,
acupuncture, health education and outreach, and community gardening.

Harm reduction itself is a public health philosophy that is intended to
be an alternative to the prohibitionist model in addressing high-risk
lifestyles choices. One of the fallouts from the drug war is the unintended
consequence of the spread of communicable disease. The
principal theme behind harm reduction is that some people have and
always will participate in high-risk behaviors that are associated with
illicit drug use.

According to Harm Reduction: Pragmatic Strategies for Managing
High-Risk Behaviors, the main objective of a harm reduction philosophy is to
stave off the potential dangers and health risks associated
with high risk behaviors. Some harm reduction strategies have been in place for years. Designated driver campaigns, seat belt laws, the use of condoms,
methadone programs, and smoking cessation programs are widely accepted. Some more controversial programs are trying to gain a foothold here in America.

There have been very effective AIDS reduction programsin Europe that have involved clean needle exchange programs, clean injection sites and the legalization of certain drugs.
The Harm Reduction Project is working to get policies changed in Colorado, like getting the needle exchange ban lifted. There is only one place in the state where one can exchange dirty needles for clean ones. During the rise of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980's, Boulder County usurped state and federal bans by invoking archaic public health emergency laws.
Boulder continues to be the only place in Colorado where that program exists, but the project is shaky because it is always under the gun of interpretation by local law enforcement professionals.

Harm reduction is not anti-abstinence. Abstinence may well be the goal but the reality is that harm reduction allows there to be a continuum of care prior to the individual decision to abstain from high-risk behaviors. Harm-reductionists simply realize that the prohibition
of drugs is discriminatory, ineffective and counter-productive.

The United States has historically operated from a moral model when trying to curb social problems. A Puritanical, abstinence-only solution obviously isn't one that has been highly successful. We have seen the frightening spread of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C by
injection drug users over the last 25 years which may have been controlled through different policy choices.

“Nearly 30 percent of new AIDS cases in the United States can be traced to the sharing of

syringes by injection drug users,"

according to theU.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But most states continue to restrict access to sterile syringes by enforcing "drug paraphernalia"

laws against needle-exchange program participants and regulating the purchase and sale of syringes in pharmacies. “ This fact shows how there is a direct correlation
between the spread of communicable diseases and the policies driving the way we deal with people who are afflicted with the disease of addiction.

Click here for the entire newsletter

Death Penalty For Rape Doesn't Protect Children

A bill pending in the Colorado Senate that would authorize a death sentence on a second conviction of raping a child could backfire by giving some of society's most vicious criminals a perverse incentive to kill their victims.

Senate Bill 195 by Sen. Steve Ward, R-Littleton, would authorize the death penalty for people who sexually assault a child 12 years or younger if DNA evidence links them to the crime.

Ward's bill also could discourage victims from reporting abuse by relatives, fearing they'd get the death penalty.

The Senate Judiciary Committee amended the bill to allow the death penalty only for rapists previously convicted of a similar attack on a child. It then sent the bill to the Appropriations Committee, where it should receive a quiet burial.

The Denver Post

Parole Audit Given Green Light

State auditors got the green light Tuesday to start probing the practices of the state parole board, following the revelation this year that the number of early releases has recently jumped by about 40 percent.

Prompted by a seven-question inquiry penned by statehouse Republicans, the Legislative Audit Committee voted to allow the preliminary fact-finding. Staff could report its initial findings as early as June, when panel members will decide whether to launch a full investigation.

About 115 more inmates a month walked out of prison on early release in 2007 compared with the previous year.

Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, said the increase "raises important public-safety concerns" and suggests that the early paroles may be a way to alleviate budget woes in the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Not so, said department spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti.

"Our primary responsibility is public safety," Sanguinetti said, pointing out that the head of the state parole board is a lifetime law enforcement officer.

"He would not want to release anybody that (was not) ready to be released."

She attributed the jump to a lack of weekend transportation from two jail facilities. The change in bus service, which happened in 2005, means inmates must be released on Friday if their mandated release date falls on a weekend.

Denver Post

Lawmakers Want More Power Over Private Prison Rates

DENVER - The Legislature would have more flexibility in setting per diem inmate rates for private prisons under a bill introduced in the Colorado House.

Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, who introduced HB1363 with House Majority Leader Alice Madden, D-Boulder, said the bill is needed so the Colorado Department of Corrections may have more say in programs that private prisons should offer inmates to help the state reduce recidivism.

McFadyen is an outspoken critic of private prisons who often has said private prisons are in the business of housing inmates and don't care if they re-offend.

She said current practice gives private prison companies the maximum per diem rate without regard to the services they actually offer.

"The intent is we want more programmatically intense programs, especially for parole," McFadyen said. "We need to work harder making sure that we do have the programs available to reintegrate those inmates into society."

McFadyen said the bill, which is scheduled to be heard today in the House Judiciary Committee encourages private prisons to help the state reduce recidivism.

She singled out one such private prison company as Cornell, which operates the Cheyenne Mountain Re-Entry Center in Colorado Springs. Cornell specializes in programs designed to help inmates make the transition from incarnation to freedom, and it seems to be working.

McFadyen said the Legislature should reward companies such as that with a higher per diem so other private providers will see the benefit to offering similar programs.

Pueblo Chieftain

Video Visiting

Since she was 3, Amy Anderson's mother has been in and out of jail. She has no contact with her father, who also is locked up.

So, at the age of 12, the Broomfield middle schooler knows all about jailhouse visits.

Still, she and her mother were taken aback when they learned that a recent Sunday visit at the Denver County Jail would be conducted through a computer screen.

Amy could not hug her mother or sit on her lap, as she once did at the Boulder County Jail.

Instead, the skinny, talkative tween awaited instructions from a front-desk deputy in the jail's lobby, plunked down on a stool attached to a black computer terminal, and waited. Her 82-year-old grandmother, caregiver and confidante sat on a plastic chair next to her. Other families did the same.

At the stroke of 3 p.m., the deputy pushed a button and 44- year-old Jane Anderson appeared on the screen. At least part of Jane Anderson. At many points during the 30-minute conversation, Amy could see only her mother's forehead.

Welcome to the brave new world of jailhouse visitation. Across the country, jails are embracing technology to solve age- old logistical problems such as contraband sneaking into cells and the high cost of security.

In metro Denver, Douglas County is the latest jurisdiction to open a video visitation terminal. Arapahoe and Adams counties already have them. Elsewhere, Weld, El Paso and Mesa counties do, too.

Rocky Mountain News

Why The Governor Wants More Bars

Colorado Springs - Prisoners are a lot like corn. Like corn, prisoners are a commodity government pays for. That's why Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter wants more prisons, right away. Caught in a public-private entanglement, he serves a ravenous beast that feeds on criminal flesh and gets hungrier by the day. The state needs the beast; the beast needs the state.

When the Bush administration created massive subsidies for private enterprise to make fuel out of crops, the ethanol industry built plants and demanded corn. No corn, no government checks. As a result, we have a nation awash in corn - more corn than anyone ever dreamed we could need. Thousands of farmers, who once produced a variety of foods consumers wanted and needed, now produce only corn. Loads and loads of excess corn that serve no purpose other than satiating an artificial venture which will never stand on its own because it serves no genuine need.

Likewise, when states began paying private enterprise to house prisoners in the 1980s, a new industry built prisons and demanded flesh. No prisoners, no government check. The inmate population grew by leaps and bounds, a surplus generated by the war on drugs and bizarre new sentencing laws that keep non-violent offenders in prison for years. Today, more than one in 100 Americans live behind bars and the United States has more prisoners than any country in the world. Attach government checks to corn, and corn will be grown to fill an artificial demand. Attach government checks to prisoners, and the system will deliver them in droves.
Gazette

Prosecutors Resist Retrial

Days after a vast majority of Colorado lawmakers sponsored a bill designed to give prison inmate Clarence Moses-EL a new trial, state prosecutors pledged to fight the effort, saying the courts already provide sound remedies for evidence loss.

Attorney General John Suthers and leaders of the Colorado District Attorneys' Council on Monday also criticized the proposal, authored by Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon, D-Denver, as too broad and inconsistent with another bill requiring DNA preservation.

"A new trial just shouldn't be automatic," said Suthers, who added that a controversial Supreme Court precedent requiring that a defendant prove bad faith was behind evidence loss is a sufficient test provided by the courts for winning relief.

The Denver Post

Nacchio Conviction Overturned

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the guilty verdict in the criminal insider trading case of former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio and ordered a new trial before a different judge.

The 2-1 decision cited U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham's exclusion of expert testimony by Northwestern University law professor and private consultant Daniel Fischel.

Fischel was allowed to testify on Nacchio's behalf about the facts behind his stock sales, but was excluded from providing economic analysis.

"We conclude that on the record before him the district judge was wrong to prevent Professor Fischel from providing expert analysis, and that this error was not harmless," the majority decision from Judges Paul Kelly and Michael

The Denver Post

Colorado Weighing Its Options

DENVER - Colorado will be more than 4,600 prison beds short by 2014 if it does not start immediately on a nearly $800 million proposal to build or expand five correctional facilities, Department of Corrections Executive Director Ari Zavaras says.

But before it launches into such a high-dollar plan, the state must consider another statistic. The rate of inmate growth, which was about 90 per month last year, has been reduced to an average of 45 a month since July, meaning those beds may not be needed so desperately.

The number of new prisoners has fluctuated wildly over the past half-year, with some months recording a decrease and others producing jumps of as many as 125 convicts. Yet state leaders have little time to decide if the need for beds has lessened because of an increase in anti-recidivism programs or if the downswing is an aberration.

To add more than 5,400 new beds requires significant planning. Yet, with the fiscal 2008-09 budget proposal set to be released soon, the idea of putting large amounts of capital-construction money aside for prisons has yet to become a hot topic at the Capitol.

"Timing is everything, and the Legislature is not very cognizant of the bed-shortage problem," said Rep. Buffie Mc-Fadyen, a Democrat whose district includes all of the prisons in the Cañon City and Florence areas. "And we're coming up on time to do something."

Projections show the state getting by with existing facilities for two years. The system will add 1,010 beds in two projects in 2009, providing a projected 125-bed surplus. But because officials project a 4.6 percent annual growth in prisoners, the system could be short 900 beds by 2011.

Colorado Springs Gazette

The Population Of America's Prisons

The United States prison population is out of control. Minimalist efforts such as alternatives to incarceration and parole reform may be politically palatable, but they will have no significant effect.

The real magnitude of this issue can best be grasped through comparison with incarceration rates in Western Europe. The United States incarceration rate is five times that of Britain or Spain. If we reduced our prison population in half, then in half again, and finally in half again, we would have fewer than 300,000 men, women and children in our prisons and jails, rather than 2.3 million, yet our incarceration rate would still be greater than that of Germany and France.

The only way to meaningfully reduce our prison population is to decriminalize drug use and provide drug substitution and treatment to those in need. A national program of harm reduction is the only way to reverse what you have aptly described as a “Prison Nation.”

Robert L. Cohen
New York, March 11, 2008

Click here to read more letters at NY TIMES LETTERS

Scrutiny For Bush CCA Judicial Nominee

As the top lawyer for America's biggest private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), Gus Puryear IV is known to sport well-pressed preppy pink shirts, and his brownish mop of hair stands out among most of President Bush's graying nominees to the federal bench. A favorite of G.O.P. hard-liners, Puryear, 39, prepped Dick Cheney for the vice presidential debates — both in 2000 and 2004 — and served as a senior aide to two former Senators and onetime presidential hopefuls, Bill Frist and Fred Thompson.

Political connections, though, may not be enough to get Puryear a lifetime post as a federal district judge in Tennessee. Puryear recently confronted tough questions about his conduct, experience and potential conflicts of interest from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which must approve him before a full Senate vote. Now, a former CCA manager tells TIME that Puryear oversaw a reporting system in which accounts of major, sometimes violent prison disturbances and other significant events were often masked or minimized in accounts provided to government agencies with oversight over prison contracts. Ronald T. Jones, the former CCA manager, alleges that the company even began keeping two sets of books — one for internal use that described prison deficiencies in telling detail, and a second set that Jones describes as "doctored" for public consumption, to limit bad publicity, litigation or fines that could derail CCA's multimillion-dollar contracts with federal, state or local agencies.

Time Magazine

Drug Policy Alliance Introduces NORA

From The Drug Policy Alliance:

I am excited to announce that the Drug Policy Alliance Network (DPA’s lobbying arm) is sponsoring a ballot measure in California that represents the biggest sentencing and prison reform in United States history.

The Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act (NORA) is unprecedented in scope and magnitude. It will transform California's dysfunctional, $10-billion-a-year prison system, reversing its rampant and costly expansion. NORA will, within just a few years, reduce by tens of thousands the number of people unjustly and unnecessarily incarcerated, while maintaining public safety. At the same time, it will provide a comprehensive model for a public health approach to substance use.

Success in California will transform the drug policy reform landscape nationwide!

At a time when one in 100 adult Americans is in prison, California faces a prison overcrowding crisis that may be the worst in the nation. The system is at 175% of capacity. This is due in large part to excessive incarceration of nonviolent offenders, many of whom are drug law violators. Overcrowding has been exacerbated by the state's failure to provide meaningful recidivism-reduction programs, including addiction treatment and other rehabilitation services.

Drug Policy Alliance

Early Parole Warrants Audit?

Prison officials are blaming a 2-year-old policy change that ended weekend paroles for a spike in the number of inmates walking out of prison on early release.

But Republican lawmakers, concerned about the jump in discretionary paroles, aren't buying that answer.

Eight GOP legislators on the House and Senate judiciary committees have requested a state audit to investigate whether budget constraints at the Department of Corrections are influencing the number of discretionary paroles.

"This alarming increase in prison releases raises important public-safety questions that should be scrutinized in an audit," says the request sent this week to State Auditor Sally Symanski.

About 115 more inmates per month walked out of prison on early release in 2007 compared with the previous year, a trend prison officials said a month ago was the result of increased funding for programs to reduce recidivism.

Then the Department of Corrections released statistics this week showing that in a three-month period in 2007, about half of the inmates paroled early left prison only two or three days ahead of their mandatory release dates.

The reason is that in December 2005, Colorado prisons stopped letting out inmates on weekends and holidays. The change in policy was the result of private bus companies cutting off service in towns with prisons, including Cañon City. Inmates could no longer hop on a weekend bus to Denver.

Now, when an inmate's mandatory release date falls on a weekend or Monday holiday, he leaves prison the previous Friday. The department has been counting early releases of just one to three days as discretionary, boosting the state's discretionary parole numbers.

But the halt in weekend releases does not explain the hike in discretionary paroles from 2006 to 2007 — since the policy change came in 2005, lawmakers argue.

The Denver Post

Class Action Lawsuit Gets Ok

GLENWOOD SPRINGS — The American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit alleging prisoner abuse at the Garfield County Jail can go forward on behalf of all current and future inmates instead of only the four original plaintiffs.

U.S. District Court Judge Wiley Y. Daniel issued a a 42-page opinion on Thursday
certifying class action status on five of the lawsuit’s six claims for relief.

“It does mean the practices we’re challenging are sufficiently widespread,” Mark Silverstein, legal director for the ACLU of Colorado, said in a phone interview.

He said the judge’s opinion doesn’t determine whether the practices the ACLU is challenging are legal or illegal, only that they apply to a large number of prisoners.
“This is not a victory or defeat,” Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario said in a prepared statement. “Just part of the process we anticipated. This certification is based solely on the sensationalized complaint alleged by the ACLU. The judge at this point can only rule on the complaint as filed and has not yet been presented with the merits of this case. Further, we are considering appealing this ruling based on an existing case out of El Paso County already heard and pending a ruling in
the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. The El Paso County appeal, when handed down, will strongly play a part in determining if this class certification ruling is correct.”

The ACLU’s 85-page complaint, originally filed in July 2006, claims the jail violated prisoners’ rights by repeatedly using threats and excessive force with things like restraint chairs, Taser guns, electroshock belts, pepper-ball guns and pepper spray. The ACLU also contends that the jail fails to provide legally required mental health treatment and punishes prisoners without due process.

Judge Daniel’s opinion denied class-action certification to one claim for relief alleging that jail policy interferes with a prisoner’s right to meet with attorneys in a confidential setting. The ACLU contends prisoners are asked, “Who is your attorney?” and can only meet with the attorney if the prisoner provides a specific name instead of answering “the ACLU.” The opinion says that the ACLU did not demonstrate that the practice is widespread enough to move forward on a class action basis.

Glenwood Springs Independent

Morrissey Says No New Trial

Clarence Moses-El, who was convicted of raping a woman in the Five Points neighborhood in 1987, will not get a new trial despite lawmakers' efforts on his behalf, Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrisey said Friday.

"There is absolutely no indication, based on the totality of all the evidence and the thorough review conducted by myself and numerous judicial officials, that a new trial would result in any different outcome," Morrisey said in a letter responding to Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver.

Last Saturday, Gordon hand delivered a letter to Morrisey, with a request for a new trial for Moses-El or some other relief because the DNA evidence in the case was destroyed by Denver police after a judge's ordered it preserved.

Moses-El, now 52, was convicted despite the lack of physical evidence. The victim had named three other suspects before she told prosecutors that her attacker's identity came to her in a dream.

Rocky Mountain News

Prisoner And Family Reunite

Ernest L.C. Robison got off a plane at Denver International Airport in 1996 with almost 2 pounds of crack cocaine in his carry-on bag. He was immediately arrested by police who had been tipped off by an informant.

Robison, then 40, was convicted of distribution and possession of crack cocaine and sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.

Robison was a first offender. And if his bag had contained powder cocaine that day at DIA, he would have been sentenced to a maximum of six years in prison.

But at the time, crack carried a harsher penalty than powder, a situation that was remedied for Robison on Thursday morning when U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel ordered his release from prison. He could be out within 10 days.

"He's aged pretty gracefully, and the court is pleased you have the opportunity to leave the walls of prison sooner than later," Daniel said.

Robison is the first federal prisoner in Colorado to get a sentence reduction because of new government sentencing guidelines.

In December, the U.S. Sentencing Commission decided to implement new guidelines that could reduce the prison terms for 19,500 convicts in order to address the sentencing disparity that exists between federal powder- and crack- cocaine defendants.

In Colorado, 115 inmates are eligible for sentence reductions, and 24 could be released within the year.

Robison, graying and wearing baggy, tan prison pants, began to weep as he addressed the court. His family, sitting in the benches behind him, also started to cry as he thanked the judge.

The Denver Post

Boulder Weekly - LIFE SENTENCE

Sandy is a middle-class American success story. She holds a good-paying job. She owns her own home. She pays her taxes. You’d never know she has a criminal record — unless you checked.

About 25 years ago, she was convicted of forgery after signing her estranged husband’s name to a check. For that crime, she spent four years in prison. But like many former Colorado felons, Sandy is finding that a single criminal act — even non-violent ones — can carry a life sentence.

Sandy is one of tens of thousands of Coloradans whose lives were impacted by a 1988 law that aimed to “get tough on crime” by making criminal records permanently public. Lauded as a way keep the public informed, it’s had some unintended consequences, making it harder for those who’ve committed crimes to move forward with their lives.

But a bill making its way through the state legislature aims to strike a balance between the public’s right to know and the right to privacy for those who’ve paid their debt to society. If passed, House Bill 1082, sponsored by Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, would enable people convicted of a very narrow list of crimes to petition the courts to have their criminal record sealed after living crime-free for at least 10 years.

The controversial bill is similar to a bill Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat, vetoed last year and has drawn criticism from editorialists who believe that the public’s right to know outweighs the rights of people who’ve committed crimes, even when those people have turned their lives around.

Proponents of the bill say that the result of that approach is unintended hardship.

“It’s in the best interests of the public to allow people to become productive members of society following a conviction,” says Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, which supports the bill.

But Sandy, whose name has been changed to protect her job, knows exactly what the bill would mean for her.
“What it would mean for me is freedom,” she says.

Boulder Weekly

Nearly All Lawmakers On Board For DNA Bill

A majority of Colorado lawmakers are sponsoring a bill ordering a new trial for Clarence Moses-EL and any other prisoner whose case DNA is destroyed by authorities despite a court order to preserve the evidence.

The legislation, filed Wednesday and signed by 82 House and Senate members out of 100 — including several former police officers — could mark the first time state leaders have attempted to reverse a criminal conviction, according to legislative librarians. And veteran lawmakers called the number of backers unusually large.

If the support stands, the vote would surpass the two-thirds needed to override a veto.

Moses-EL has spent 20 years in prison for a 1987 Denver rape. But in 1995, after Moses-EL's previous attorney didn't retrieve case evidence in the weeks after a court ordered it taken for DNA testing, Denver police threw away the victim's clothing and swabbings of her body. The tests that Moses-EL argues would prove him innocent have never been conducted.

"You don't throw away people's lives accidentally," said Sen. John Morse, D-Fountain, a former police chief who signed on as a sponsor of the measure. "Clearly, some in the criminal-justice system will say he (Moses-EL) had his day in court, but we don't know whether we found the truth. I believe you must have truth to win justice."

The Denver Post

Republicans Ask For Probe In Rapid Rise In Parole Rates

Republican state lawmakers have requested a formal investigation into why Colorado’s parole rate spiked more than 80 percent between fiscal years 2006 and 2007.

“This alarming increase in prison releases raises important public-safety questions that should be scrutinized in an audit,” Republicans, including Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, wrote last week to State Auditor Sally Symanski.

Penry said the public deserves to know if there has been some change in policy or budgetary reason for the spike in parole releases shown in Colorado Department of Corrections statistics.

The governor’s office and the chairman of the state’s parole board, David Michaud, have denied any fiscal or political pressure on the state’s parole decisions.

GJ Sentinel

Personal Attack Hurts Anti-Pot Message - Rocky Editorial

Elizabeth Shaffer, Longmont

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Letter writer Robert Kladde ("Pot a thread in many 'calls for service,' " Feb. 26) resorts to the least credible form of persuasive argument, the personal attack, in criticizing officer Howard Wooldridge's opinion on marijuana's societal dangers. This is a common ploy when an argument lacks merit. It is apparent to any reasonable reader that Wooldridge means that in his 18 years of service he never received a service call generated by the use of marijuana alone, as opposed to alcohol alone.

If we buy Kladde's argument (and we shouldn't), then we need to ask how many fatal heroin overdoses (or cocaine or meth overdoses) occurred in a setting where alcohol is consumed. But that might lead to a reasonable discussion instead of a personal attack on a veteran policeman we have no reason to believe lacks credibility. It also might lead to a discussion on whether the owner of the local liquor store is pushing a dangerous substance, and whether or not taxation and regulation better protects our youth than prohibition does.

Rocky Mountain News

Cornell Admits They Will Try To Build A Men's Prison In Hudson

Click on the image and you can read the article. We know that there is actually negative growth now in the women's population and the men's prison population is only growing at the rate 43 people per month. Check out the population stats for February on the left hand column. That certainly doesn't warrant another private prison in our state. There are projects happening statewide to add beds to existing state prisons, not to mention the behemoth they are building in Canon (CSP II). The DOC and Governor Ritter have both started focusing on reducing recidivism, but those efforts have only recently started. A revolution isn't necessary, we need to help an average of two people a day statewide in order to have negative population growth in the men's system as well. There certainly hasn't been time to evaluate or modify new programs to meet the needs of those being released. It took a long time to break the system and we are not going to be able to fix it overnight. The last thing we need are private prisons that will have to import prisoners from other states when we get this Titanic turned around.

Will Ritter Veto Direct File Bill?

Even if a plan to spare some teenage felons from adult jails continues to win legislative support, it could face death at the hands of the state's most powerful former district attorney: Gov. Bill Ritter.

The bill would allow judges — instead of prosecutors — to decide whether 14- and 15-year-old defendants should face adult penalties, effectively undoing a law that Ritter helped craft in 1993 as Denver's district attorney.

A leading House Democrat on Tuesday predicted the governor would probably veto the proposal, which eked by the House on Tuesday on a 34-30 vote and heads to the Senate.

Ritter has not decided whether to sign House Bill 1208, despite his previous role as prosecutor, said spokesman Evan Dreyer.

"Yes, he does have firsthand knowledge of the genesis of the legislation," Dreyer said. "But that's not to say he is predisposed one way or another."

In his dozen-plus years at the prosecutor's table, Ritter's office tried more than 521 juveniles as adults, or an average of 43 teens a year, according to data from the Denver district attorney's office.

Ritter took the top lawyer post in June 1993, just as a number of innocent bystanders — many of them children — were hurt or killed in gang aggression that swept across Denver in the so-called Summer of Violence.

During the legislative session that followed, Ritter "had a very important hand" in crafting legislation that gave district attorneys sole power to try juveniles as adults, said Rep. Terrance Carroll, a Denver Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee.

"The likelihood of him signing (House Bill 1208) is not high," said Carroll, who supports the bill.

The Denver Post

Lawmakers Told That State Needs More Prisons

DENVER - The Colorado Department of Corrections on Tuesday outlined a massive five-year, $800 million plan to add state prisons, including expanding the Trinidad prison and building a mega-facility somewhere else in the state.

DOC Ex- ecutive Director Ari Zavaras said that despite aggressive efforts to reduce recidivism, an increase in parolees and any changes in sentencing requirements the Legislature might approve, Colorado still will need more prison beds as soon as it can get them. Zavaras, who was DOC director when former Gov. Bill Owens put the kibosh on state prison construction in 2000 in favor of contracting with private companies, said he warned lawmakers then not to allow the private/state prison ratio to surpass 20 percent.

As of this year, it's reached 22 percent, and without any new state beds coming online, will hit 40 percent by 2012, he said.

"I think they're very effective in helping us save capital dollars and we don't have to ask for that money from you, but when it comes to operating them there really isn't that much savings when you factor in everything," Zavaras told the Capital Development Committee.

"Currently, almost 90 percent of the inmates we have in private prisons are with one particular company (Corrections Corporation of America), and that gets to be a little heavy in one direction," Zavaras said.

Pueblo Chieftain

February DOC Statistics

DOC February

SECOND CHANCE ACT PASSES!

CSG Justice Center Lauds Senate’s Passage of Second Chance Act
President Expected to Sign into Law
The Council of State Governments Justice Center lauds the members of the U.S. Senate for their passage today of the Second
Chance Act of 2007. This landmark bill, introduced by Senators Joseph Biden (D-DE), Sam Brownback (R-KS), Patrick
Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), provides critical resources designed to reduce recidivism and increase public
safety. The legislation passed the Senate by unanimous consent and now proceeds to the President’s desk for signature.
“The passage of the Second Chance Act reflects the strong consensus that improving prisoner reentry is not a partisan issue,
but a matter of public safety, improving lives, and making effective use of taxpayer dollars," said Assemblyman Jeffrion
Aubry, Justice Center board member and chair of the New York State Assembly Correction Committee.
The Second Chance Act includes key elements of President Bush’s Prisoner Reentry Initiative, announced in the 2004 State
of the Union address, which provides for community and faith-based organizations to deliver mentoring and transitional
services. The bill will also help connect people released from prison and jail to mental health and substance abuse treatment,
expand job training and placement services, and facilitate transitional housing and case management services.
“It is vitally important that we do everything we can to ensure that, when people get out of prison, they enter our
communities as productive members of society, so we can start to reverse the dangerous cycles of recidivism and violence, “
said Senator Leahy. “I hope that the Second Chance Act will help us begin to break that cycle.”
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, an estimated 95 percent of all state prisoners will be
released—with half of these individuals expected to return to prison within three years for the commission of a new crime or
violation of their conditions of release. This cycle of recidivism not only compromises public safety, but also increases
taxpayer spending. A February 2007 report from The Pew Charitable Trusts stated that if federal, state, and local policies and
practices do not change, taxpayers are expected to pay as much as $27.5 billion on prisons alone from 2007 to 2011 on top of
current corrections spending.
“The Second Chance Act will provide an opportunity for realistic rehabilitation for the more than 650,000 inmates who
return to their communities each year,” said Senator Specter. “The bill’s focus on education, job training, and substance
abuse treatment is essential to decreasing the nationwide recidivism rate of 66 percent.”
The Council of State Governments Justice Center is a national nonprofit organization that serves policymakers
PR NEWSWIRE

Direct File Bill Passes In The House

HB 1208 The Juvenile Direct File Bill passed through third reading in house yesterday and will now presumably be reassigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The vote was 34 - 30.

HB 1082 The Record Sealing Bill is still in Appropriations.

Oh, I am going to miss the Wire. The ending was excruciating. No soft squishy feel good endings here for the corner boys. Thank you gentlemen for so eloquently articulating our mission. You will be missed.

Wednesday, Mar. 05, 2008

The Wire's War on the Drug War

By Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon

We write a television show. Measured against more thoughtful and meaningful occupations, this is not the best seat from which to argue public policy or social justice. Still, those viewers who followed The Wire — our HBO drama that tried to portray all sides of inner-city collapse, including the drug war, with as much detail and as little judgment as we could muster — tell us they've invested in the fates of our characters. They worry or grieve for Bubbles, Bodie or Wallace, certain that these characters are fictional yet knowing they are rooted in the reality of the other America, the one rarely acknowledged by anything so overt as a TV drama.

These viewers, admittedly a small shard of the TV universe, deluge us with one question: What can we do? If there are two Americas — separate and unequal — and if the drug war has helped produce a psychic chasm between them, how can well-meaning, well-intentioned people begin to bridge those worlds?

And for five seasons, we answered lamely, offering arguments about economic priorities or drug policy, debating theoreticals within our tangled little drama. We were storytellers, not advocates; we ducked the question as best we could.

Yet this war grinds on, flooding our prisons, devouring resources, turning city neighborhoods into free-fire zones. To what end? State and federal prisons are packed with victims of the drug conflict. A new report by the Pew Center shows that 1 of every 100 adults in the U.S. — and 1 in 15 black men over 18 — is currently incarcerated. That's the world's highest rate of imprisonment.

The drug war has ravaged law enforcement too. In cities where police agencies commit the most resources to arresting their way out of their drug problems, the arrest rates for violent crime — murder, rape, aggravated assault — have declined. In Baltimore, where we set The Wire, drug arrests have skyrocketed over the past three decades, yet in that same span, arrest rates for murder have gone from 80% and 90% to half that. Lost in an unwinnable drug war, a new generation of law officers is no longer capable of investigating crime properly, having learned only to make court pay by grabbing cheap, meaningless drug arrests off the nearest corner.

What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we've been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.

Click here to read the rest at Time Magazine

TIME - The Wire

Logan County Community Corrections Out Of Money

STERLING — Those convicted of crimes in the 13th Judicial District no longer have the sentencing option of Community Corrections. The program ran out of funds barely halfway through its fiscal year in late November.

Community Corrections — an alternative treatment program for prison inmates transitioning back into the community or non-violent offenders not eligible for probation — houses about 40 men at the Advantage Treatment Center in Sterling. Offenders are monitored through phone calls and check-in’s and are required to work and pay for room and board. Counseling and additional treatment for issues such as drug addiction and anger management are among the services provided.

“It’s a very powerful tool we have for cases where probation’s not going to wor,k but the (Department of Corrections) is too harsh for the crime,” District Attorney Bob Watson said.

Housing offenders at Community Corrections costs tax payers about $37.18 a day compared to $75.58 for prison. Non-residential clients costs $5.04 a day.

Public Defender Mike Boyce, who joined the Logan County Community Corrections Board last May, said not having the Community Corrections sentencing option is unfair to his clients.

“It’s an equality issue. People are being sent to prison here, while if they had committed the crime in another district or before we ran out of funds in November, they would be receiving specialized treatment,” Boyce said.

Journal Advocate

Private Prison Payments Increased 3 Percent

State lawmakers have approved of a compromise to increase the per diem rate Colorado pays its largest private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America, after a battle between the state and the company this year.

Rep. Al White, R-Hayden, said the Joint Budget Committee agreed to boost the amount of money the state pays the firm per prisoner per day from $52.69 to $54.27 — a 3 percent increase — as a gesture of “good faith” between the state and the private company.

“If we don’t have all the money they want, let’s give them a good-faith offer, and have some negotiation (over the Huerfano County) facility,” White said.

During negotiations this year between Corrections Corporation of America and the state, the company threatened to stop holding Colorado prisoners in the 752-bed prison to stay profitable.

According to committee reports, the company requested a 4.25 percent funding increase, but staff had recommended a 1.5 percent increase — the same rate increase lawmakers planned to give to all other private companies the state has contracts with.

Mike Feeley, a lobbyist for Corrections Corporation of America, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Grand Junction Sentinel

Prisoner Left In Cell-4 Days- No Food Or Water

A woman was locked for four days in a tiny holding cell in a northern Arkansas courthouse, forgotten by the authorities and left without food or water, the local Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday.

The woman, Adriana Torres-Flores, 38, a longtime illegal immigrant from Mexico, slept on the floor with only a shoe for a pillow, and with nothing to drink except her own urine, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. There was no bathroom in the cell.

A bailiff had apparently forgotten that he placed Ms. Torres-Flores, a mother of three, in the cell last Thursday, and simply left her in the empty courthouse, in Fayetteville, over the weekend, said the chief deputy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department, Jay Cantrell. A snowstorm meant that there were far fewer people than usual working at the courthouse on Friday.

“He just flat forgot about her,” Mr. Cantrell said
New York Times

Lane vs. Cheney?

Places where I would like to be a fly on the wall....

Watching David Lane depose Dick Cheney

The Denver Post

Is Salvia The New Marijuana

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- On Web sites touting the mind-blowing powers of salvia divinorum, come-ons to buy the hallucinogenic herb are accompanied by warnings: "Time is running out! ... stock up while you still can."

That's because salvia is being targeted by lawmakers concerned that the inexpensive and easy-to-obtain plant could become the next marijuana. Eight states have already placed restrictions on salvia, and 16 others, including Florida, are considering a ban or have previously.

"As soon as we make one drug illegal, kids start looking around for other drugs they can buy legally. This is just the next one," said Florida state Rep. Mary Brandenburg, who has introduced a bill to make possession of salvia a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

The Rocky Mountain News

Second Chance For Mentally Ill Teens

Life was spiraling in the wrong direction for Stephanie Winkler — 18 years old with a month-old son, an arrest for fighting with the baby's father and therapy for depression.

Colorado's first juvenile mental-health court program — designed to keep juveniles with mental-health diagnoses out of the criminal justice system — threw Winkler a life preserver.

"Everybody is really willing to help you get what you need," said Winkler, a full-time student at McClain Community High School. "You get more support, and it's more personal and has less punishment than the regular system."

The 1st Judicial District program, modeled after a similar one in San Jose, Calif., provides resources so juveniles ages 12 to 18 and their families can turn their lives around.

Winkler and 12 other teenagers have successfully completed the program, a collaboration among the Jefferson Center for Mental Health, the District Attorney's Office, the courts, probation, the Juvenile Assessment Center, the school district and other agencies.

"That's a lot of people who usually fight with each other," said Magistrate K.J. Moore, who handles the cases. "Instead, we talk about how we can help these kids and how we can help their families."

Referrals come from wherever contact is made with a kid who might have mental-health issues. A panel screens the candidates, who with their families must agree to a contract with a probation officer.

Contract conditions include counseling, frequent meetings with the probation officer, who drops in at school and home to see how things are going, and monthly reviews with the court.

The program works on incentives for positive behavior, such as small items given as rewards, and sanctions for negative behavior, including a weekend at a juvenile correctional facility.

The Denver Post

JOHNSON: Stupid Mistake At The Heart Of Record Sealing

DENVER - It would be more understandable, he says, if he were actually the violent monster some prospective employers fear he might be.

He has lost the hard count of how many companies have turned their back on him but believes the number has to be well over 200 since January of last year.

So, yeah, if he could rethink or - heaven please! - redo that stupid shoving and wrestling match of 12 years ago, William Britt would do it in a second.

Yet there are few do-overs in life. So every afternoon the 37-year-old man dresses in a security guard uniform and works the late shift stopping cooking, design and art students to ask for their IDs.

"It is a tough thing to do, knowing I can do full economic regressions and statistics, map an entire company's economic future," William Britt said Friday, as he dressed for work. "I made a stupid mistake, one that today still haunts me."

He wants me to tell his story to Gov. Bill Ritter, who last year vetoed a bill that would allow people convicted of certain misdemeanors to have their records sealed.

William Britt spoke with me in an effort to get an almost-identical piece of legislation, House Bill 1082, unstuck this year.

Sponsored by Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, it would do virtually the same things as last year's bill, only exempting the records of sexual predators and other such violent offenders.

Mark Ferrandino has said he believes as many as 1,200 people a year might apply to have their records sealed, a request prosecutors can argue before a judge to reject.

William Britt's story goes directly to the legislation's intent.

It was Valentine's Day 1996, and he was rooming at the time in an apartment with another man.

William Britt and his then-girlfriend went out to dinner then were having a nice, romantic evening back at the apartment when the roommate suddenly appeared, exhibiting totally inappropriate behavior.

A shoving and wrestling match ensued. Police were called. William Britt was arrested, charged with simple assault, a violation of city ordinance.

It was a break. The city attorney did not charge him with a misdemeanor but, rather, the legal equivalent of getting a parking ticket. Read the reat at the Rocky Mountain News

Big Business or Prison Slavery

GLOBAL RESEARCH = Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million - mostly Black and Hispanic - are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don't have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don't like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

There are approximately 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, "no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens." The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world's prison population, but only 5% of the world's people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.

What has happened over the last 10 years? Why are there so many prisoners?

"The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners' work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself," says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being "an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps."

Global Research

NY Times Editorial - Prison Nation

After three decades of explosive growth, the nation’s prison population has reached some grim milestones: More than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are serving time, as are 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men.

Nationwide, the prison population hovers at almost 1.6 million, which surpasses all other countries for which there are reliable figures. The 50 states last year spent about $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11 billion in 1987. Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much money or more to corrections as they do to higher education.

These statistics, contained in a new report from the Pew Center on the States, point to a terrible waste of money and lives. They underscore the urgent challenge facing the federal government and cash-strapped states to reduce their overreliance on incarceration without sacrificing public safety. The key, as some states are learning, is getting smarter about distinguishing between violent criminals and dangerous repeat offenders, who need a prison cell, and low-risk offenders, who can be handled with effective community supervision, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug treatment programs, combined in some cases with shorter sentences.

Persuading public officials to adopt a more rational, cost-effective approach to prison policy is a daunting prospect, however, not least because building and running jailhouses has become a major industry.

Criminal behavior partly explains the size of the prison population, but incarceration rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen. Any effort to reduce the prison population must consider the blunderbuss impact of get-tough sentencing laws adopted across the United States beginning in the 1970’s. Many Americans have come to believe, wrongly, that keeping an outsized chunk of the population locked up is essential for sustaining a historic crime drop since the 1990’s.

In fact, the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky. Some portion of the decline is attributable to tough sentencing and release policies. But crime is also affected by things like economic trends and employment and drug-abuse rates. States that lagged behind the national average in rising incarceration rates during the 1990’s actually experienced a steeper decline in crime rates than states above the national average, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group......
New York Times

DA Agrees To Discuss 1987 Rape Case

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey plans to meet with Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon early this week after he was hand-delivered a letter from Denver legislators supporting the cause of Colorado inmate Clarence Moses-EL.

Gordon and 13 other lawmakers — the entire Denver delegation except for House Speaker Andrew Romanoff — signed the letter highlighting why they believe Moses-EL is not guilty of the 1987 rape of a woman in a Five Points neighborhood.

The letter, dated Wednesday, also asked that Moses-EL receive a new trial or at least some form of relief because DNA evidence from the case was destroyed.

The letter was given to Morrissey at Saturday's Denver County Democratic Assembly.

"Tuesday, I'd like to sit down and talk to (Gordon) and to listen to what he has to say," Morrissey said Saturday. "I'm not going to discuss it until I see what the situation is."

Gordon believes that the DNA evidence could have been retested using advanced technology.

The evidence was thrown away by Denver police in 1995 despite a judge's order to preserve it.

The Denver Post

Lifers Forum

LIFERS FORUM
Presented By Metro State Criminal Justice Honor Society DGX

Thursday April 3 10:00-1:00 Tivoli Room 320

Five men who have served over twenty years each in Colorado State Prisons will participate in an open discussion about doing time and Re-entry into society.

There will be free refreshments

Fingerprint Removal Becoming Common

LAWRENCE, Mass. -- A growing number of criminals are cutting off or mutilating their fingertips to conceal their identity, officials said.Lawrence law officials said they recently had a case in which a man tried unsuccessfully to hide his identity by removing his fingerprints, WCVB-TV in Boston reported."In this particular case, an individual came in and all 10 of his fingers had been stitched up at the point where the fingerprints would be. The crude surgery, obviously, it wasn't done in this country ... it couldn't be done legally," said Lawrence Police Chief John Romero.
Channel 7 News

Juvenile Direct File Bill Amendments Pass

HB 1208 - The Direct File Bill Amendments passed the House yesterday. There will be a third and final reading on Monday the 10th.

Time Changes On Sunday

Does it feel too early in the year? It is...

Coloradans will spring forward Sunday morning, when 2 a.m. suddenly becomes 3 a.m. and daylight-saving time rules the clocks.

Sunday evening's sunset will be an hour later, at 7:01 p.m., and daylight should linger another half-hour or so after that.

But Monday morning, when most people return to work or school, it will look extra dark.

Some cell phones and computers will move forward an hour automatically early Sunday morning, but the rest of the clocks in the home, office or car will have to be changed by hand.

The shift to daylight-saving time also serves as a reminder to install new batteries in warning devices like smoke detectors.

Two states, Arizona and Hawaii, don't observe daylight time.

Starting in 2007, daylight-saving time was moved from the first week in April to the second week in March, with the hope that the extra three weeks of extended sunlight in the early evenings would help reduce the nation's energy budget.

Rocky Mountain News

Colorado Number One In Teen Depression

Colorado's teens top the nation in depression, and its young people drink, smoke and use dangerous drugs more often than their counterparts in most other states, a federal study shows.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration report is based on responses by 136,000 people to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

It shows a sharp contrast between the relatively good scores on substance abuse and mental health enjoyed by Coloradans older than 25 and the poor scores by the young.

"We see a lot of teens that are depressed," said Mary Thornton, director of family services at the Jefferson Center for Mental Health.

"I'm not overly surprised" by Colorado's No. 1 ranking, she said, noting that Colorado in past years sometimes has ranked No. 1 in teen suicides.

Rocky Mountain News

Marijuana Arrests Up - Resolution Sought

DENVER, Colo. -- Denver voters made it clear lastNovember that they don’t want police spending time and resources busting people who smoke marijuana.But marijuana activists have said possession arrests are actually going up, and they want to know why.In Wednesday night’s Marijuana Policy Review Panel, members questioned police and city prosecutors about whether their policies have changed since the successful 2007 ballot initiative to make adult marijuana possession the “lowest law enforcement priority.

New Job Track For Women In Wyoming

It's all about giving people good solid tools to take care of themselves.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The lunch table was full of people in the same boat: Single mothers who are trainees in the hydraulics and pipe-fitting trades, thrown together and traveling to a place none of them could quite imagine.

“I don’t know how I want to say this,” said Lillian McEwan, who is 31 and a mother of four. “But I trust you guys more than people that I’ve known all my life.”

For a moment, silence. Then it seemed everyone spoke at once. Hands reached out to touch. Heads nodded in understanding.

“We’ve all had our hearts broken,” said Shannon Heidelberg, 36, who is raising a 12-year-old and a 2-year-old. “But there’s no one here who’s going to turn around and hurt you.”

Here in a state with the highest gap in the nation between a woman’s wage and a man’s, and a divorce rate 30 percent above the national average, some women are finding a new way to storm the economic barricades.

They are working with an unusual nonprofit organization, Climb Wyoming, which takes women who have absorbed a few of life’s body blows — bad or absent men, drugs, public assistance and jail are all common stories — and combines free job training with psychological counseling.

But Climb Wyoming’s real core insight is female solidarity — that the group, trained and forged together more like a platoon than a class, will become an anchor of future success. New skills can go only so far in changing a life, the group’s trainers say; sometimes it takes a sisterhood.

“We look for groups that are ready to work together and make a change together,” said Ray Fleming Dinneen, a psychologist and co-founder of Climb Wyoming, which four years ago began training go-it-alone mothers for male-dominated jobs that rule the state’s industrial-energy economy.

Wyoming has a reputation, well-earned, as a rawboned place where the wind blows hard and a two-hour drive to a one-horse town is not uncommon. Suicide rates and the number of people working more than one job are among the highest in the nation. Methamphetamine use, as in many other rural states, has become a social scourge.

NEW YORK TIMES