Juvenile Killers and Life Terms--A case in point

New York Times

LA BELLE, Pa. — To this day, Maurice Bailey goes to sleep trying to understand what happened on Nov. 6, 1993, when as a 15-year-old high school student he killed his 15-year-old girlfriend, Kristina Grill, a classmate who was pregnant with his child.

“I go over it pretty much every night,” said Mr. Bailey, now 34, sitting in his brown jumpsuit here at the Fayette State Correctional Institution in western Pennsylvania, where he is serving a sentence of life without parole for first-degree murder. “I don’t want to make excuses. It’s a horrible act I committed. But as you get older, your conscience and insight develop. I’m not the same person.”

Every night, Bobbi Jamriska tries to avoid going over that same event. Ms. Jamriska, Kristina’s sister, was a 22-year-old out for a drink with friends when she got the news. Ten months later, their inconsolable mother died of complications from pneumonia. Weeks later, their grandmother died.

“During that year, I buried four generations of my family,” Ms. Jamriska said at the dining room table of her Pittsburgh house, taking note of her sister’s unborn child. “This wrecked my whole life. It completely changed the person I was.”

When the Supreme Court in June banned life sentences without parole for those under age 18 convicted of murder, it offered rare hope to more than 2,000 juvenile offenders like Mr. Bailey. But it threw Ms. Jamriska and thousands like her into anguished turmoil at the prospect that the killers of their loved ones might walk the streets again.

The ruling did not specify whether it applied retroactively to those in prison or to future juvenile felons. As state legislatures and courts struggle for answers, the clash of the two perspectives represented by Mr. Bailey and Ms. Jamriska is shaping the debate.

Resentencing hearings have begun in a few places, but very slowly.

The governor of Iowa commuted the mandatory life sentences of his state’s juvenile offenders but said they had to stay in jail for 60 years before seeking parole, which critics said amounted to life in prison. Some Iowa resentencing is starting in courts despite that proclamation.

In Florida, a few hearings are in early stages even though an intermediate court ruled that juveniles serving mandatory life terms did not have the right to be resentenced. In North Carolina, life without parole has been changed from a requirement to an option, with a 25-year minimum sentence for those seeking parole.

Here in Pennsylvania, which has the most juvenile offenders serving life terms — about 480 — the State Supreme Court is examining retroactivity while the legislature works on a bill that would put felons like Mr. Bailey behind bars for a minimum of 35 years.

The United States Supreme Court decision said that sentences of life without parole for juveniles failed to take account of the role of the offender in the crime (killer or accomplice), the family background (stable or abusive) and the incomplete brain development of the young. Recent research has found that youths are prone to miscalculate risks and consequences, and that their moral compasses are not fully developed. They can change as they get older.

Mr. Bailey was a good student with no criminal record. He is black and Ms. Grill was white, and many classmates thought of them as a chic couple.

“Reese was someone everyone wanted to be friends with, and so was Krissy,” said Shavera Maxwell, a former classmate, using the couple’s nicknames. “They were deeply in love, and she wanted to keep the baby. He didn’t.”

Kristina’s father, who did not live at home, was known for a bigoted attitude, so Kristina kept her relationship with Maurice secret from him.

Maurice’s father, an electrical engineer who had tensions with white co-workers, also disapproved of the interracial romance. One day when he came home early, he caught the couple in bed. He threw her out and beat Maurice, knocking his head into a wall.

Maurice’s mother, Debra Bailey, felt differently. She welcomed Kristina into her home. “Krissy’s 15th birthday was celebrated with a barbecue in our backyard,” said Ms. Bailey, a database coordinator at Carnegie Mellon University, who is now divorced from Maurice’s father. “Her family didn’t come. Those two were too young to be doing what they were doing, but I told her that if she got pregnant, we would deal with it.”

Kristina told a friend, Pamela Cheeks, the night before she was killed that she was about to tell her family about her pregnancy and that she was meeting Maurice the next day to discuss their future, Ms. Cheeks said in an interview. In her diary, Kristina wrote that Maurice “better show up” at their agreed time and place.

Maurice did meet Kristina that Saturday afternoon at an elementary school playground. He came with a knife, stabbed her repeatedly in the neck and upper body and left her on the ground. Before leaving, he told the police at the time, he zipped up her jacket in a vain effort to stem the bleeding.

He hid the knife in the woods and went home. In the prison interview, he said he remembered very little of the event except that right after stabbing Kristina, her mother, whom he had never met, suddenly came into his mind. When he returned home, the first person he saw was his father. He said he felt an odd sense of relief that the source of tension between them was gone.

Neighborhood youngsters came upon Kristina’s body. Police officers went to her home, where they found her diary with detailed entries of her relationship with Maurice. When the police went to the Bailey home in the middle of that night and woke up Maurice, his mother recalls that he said to them, “I figured you’d come.”

Maurice’s legal defense was built around the pressures he had faced. His father testified in court that he had told Maurice that if Kristina got pregnant, he would kill him. Maurice’s grades were declining as he spent more time with Kristina; he was trying unsuccessfully to break up with her, losing control, growing afraid.

His petition for a new hearing will argue that the pressures he felt as a 15-year-old — a violent father, a pregnant girlfriend — are unique to youth and therefore covered by the Supreme Court ruling. An adult, his lawyers will argue, would have reacted differently.

Prescription for Addiction

Wall Street Journal

Ann and Bruce Kinkade discovered a network of doctors and pharmacies that fueled the addiction that killed their daughter. More Americans now die each year from prescription drug overdoses than from cocaine, heroin and other illegal drugs. Weekend Review editor Gary Rosen discusses the problem with WSJ staff writer Thomas Catan.

Jaclyn Kinkade, a 23-year-old doctor's-office receptionist and occasional model, was a casualty of America's No. 1 drug menace when she overdosed and died, alone, in a tumbledown clapboard house in Dunnellon, Fla.
The drugs that killed her didn't come from the Colombian jungles or an Afghan poppy field. Two of the three drugs found in her system were sold to Ms. Kinkade, legally, at Walgreen Co. WAG -0.35% and CVS Caremark CVS -0.20% shops, the two biggest U.S. pharmacies. Both prescription drugs found in her body were made in the U.S.—the oxycodone in Elizabeth, N.J., by a company being acquired by generic-drug giant Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc., WPI -0.51% and the methadone in Hobart, N.Y., by Covidien Ltd., COV -0.96% another major manufacturer. Every stage of their distribution was government-regulated. In addition, Ms. Kinkade had small amounts of methamphetamine in her system when she died.

The U.S. spends about $15 billion a year fighting illegal drugs, often on foreign soil. But America's deadliest drug epidemic begins and ends at home. More than 15,000 Americans now die annually after overdosing on prescription painkillers called opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—more than from heroin, cocaine and all other illegal drugs combined.
Rising opioid abuse means that drug overdoses are now the single largest cause of accidental death in America. They surpassed traffic accidents in 2009, the most recent CDC data available.
Paradoxically, the legality of prescription painkillers makes their abuse harder to tackle. There is no Pablo Escobar to capture or kill. Authorities must contend with an influential lobby of industry representatives and doctors who argue against more restrictions, saying they would harm legitimate patients. And lawmakers have been reluctant to have the federal government track Americans' prescriptions, leaving states to piece together a patchy, fragmented response.
Ms. Kinkade's final days, and the path of the drugs that killed her, were reconstructed from medical and prescription records, police files and interviews. Many records were assembled by Ms. Kinkade's father and stepmother.
Shuffling through the documents at their living-room table, Bruce Kinkade, a garage-door salesman, and his wife, Ann, said they don't wish to absolve their daughter of responsibility. "We're not naive and want to say she was a perfect angel," said Ann Kinkade, Jaclyn's stepmother.

Addicted to opiates: An in-depth look at heroin in Denver

A life of panhandling on the streets of Denver is brutal, boring and soul-crushing.
Many of those who do it are long-time substance abusers, caught in a vicious cycle: You wouldn't stand out there 12 hours a day unless you desperately needed heroin, and then only another dose of heroin would get you through another 12 hours.
Angel Gamboeck was one of those stuck in that terrible, seemingly endless circle, for much of the past two years in Denver. A young, once-promising girl from the Wisconsin heartland, she ended up here after a failed move West to seek a new life with her boyfriend.
On Denver's streets, Angel lived her life in a series of $15 increments. She'd "fly a sign" for money along the city's busiest
streets, and buy more dope as soon as she'd made enough for the next dose. Most overnights were inside or next to a trash bin near 11th and Osage; dawn meant a "wakeup" shot of heroin and a long trudge back to a begging corner. Beginning Sunday, the Denver Post begins a three-day series based on Angel's trials on the streets. For six months a reporter and photographer followed her, documenting the harsh life and the everyday failures of addicts in the thrall of a dangerous drug.

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Dorothy Rupert on The Prison Industry and Being a Game Changer

Westword
There was a time in the mid-1990s when Dorothy Rupert, then a state senator from Boulder, made a point out of touring every prison in Colorado. No easy feat, since at the time the state had the fastest-growing corrections system in the country. "I was just appalled at the rapid growth," Rupert recalls. "It took a hundred years to lock up a thousand people in Colorado. By the mid-1980s, we'd tripled that. People said that it was just keeping up with the overall population, but that wasn't true."
By the end of the 1990s, thanks largely to harsher sentencing schemes and the war on drugs, Colorado's prison population had doubled again and was approaching 20,000 inmates. And Rupert had become one of the staunchest critics of the lock-'em-up mentality down at the statehouse. Rupert left the legislature in 2000, but this week, she and former state representative Penfield Tate will receive the inaugural Rupert-Tate Game Changer Award at a fundraiser benefit for the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition -- an organization launched in response to the two lawmakers' pioneering efforts to put the brakes on the burgeoning prison-industrial complex in their back yard.
In 1999, Tate and Rupert sponsored an audacious bill calling for a three-year moratorium on prison expansion and the creation of a task force to explore alternatives to incarceration for low-level offenders. "It was something that needed to be talked about," says Rupert, a Democrat who taught in public schools for 35 years. "The war on drugs was just a heartbreaking experience for me, for some of my students, for our country."
The bill didn't pass. "The prison industry has the same kind of relationship with state legislators that the Pentagon has with Congress," Rupert says. "There are all these heavy lobbyists, and the fear factor is immense. A lot of people said they would love to support me, but they just couldn't."
Yet the battle prompted some of the bill's supporters to build a statewide, grassroots reform organization -- the CCJRC, which has gone on to successfully push for major revisions in drug sentencing laws, parole conditions, and related issues.
The state's escalating prison population has leveled off in recent years and even diminished slightly, leaving corrections officials puzzling over what to do with a spare supermax and closing other costly facilities.
"The only good thing about being in a recession is that it has made us pull back on locking people up in crazy ways," Rupert notes.
Rupert is 86 now. She no longer tours public and private lock-ups with any regularity, but she teaches a class in democracy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. And she's full of praise for CCJRC and its executive director, Christie Donner: "I'm just so grateful for their voices."
Donner's group feels the same way about Rupert and Tate, who will be the first recipients of their eponymous award at the organization's annual fundraiser on Thursday, September 20, from 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Mile High Station, 2027 West Colfax Avenue. The event features dinner, guest speakers -- including two former inmates now active in assisting others in re-entry programs -- and a silent auction of trips, concert tickets, cooking classes and other goodies, including a Scarabeo scooter.
For more information or to purchase tickets, check out the CCJRC website or call 303-825-0122.

Criminal Justice Group Honor Lawmakers

The Spot (Denver Post)

The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition will honor two former state legislators during its annual fundraiser next Thursday.
In 1999, Sen. Dorothy Rupert, D-Boulder, and Rep. Penfield Tate, D-Denver, sponsored legislation calling for a three-year halt on prison expansion and the creation of a task force to explore effective alternatives to incarceration.
The bill failed but it helped inspire a statewide, grassroots movement for criminal justice reform.
Tate and Rupert will be at the fundraiser to accept the inaugural “Rupert-Tate Game Changer Award.” Tate and Rupert’s vision was “on-point but ahead of their time,” said Christie Donner, CCJRC’s executive director.
The event is scheduled for 5 to 9:30 p.m. Sept. 20 at Mile High Station, 2027 W. Colfax Ave., in Denver. Tickets for the event, which features dinner and silent and live auctions, are $75 per person. Tickets can be purchased online at www.ccjrc.org or by calling 303-825-0122.

Tate and Rupert’s “leadership inspired many of us in the community to come together and continue to push for a re-evaluation of policies driving growth in the prison population, like the failed war on drugs,” she said. “It seems perfectly fitting that CCJRC would circle back to the leaders who inspired our founding and honor all that they helped to achieve.”
Also at the event, Kris Dafni, program director for Turnabout, and Khalil Halim, client supervisor for It Takes a Village, will speak about their experiences as inmates who went on to provide counseling and support for those looking to end the cycle of poverty and crime.
For more information, visit www.ccjrc.org.

Bail Fail: Why the U.S. Should End the Practice Of Using Money for Bail

Justice Policy Institute
JPI's newest analysis shows that the practice of using money to decide release while awaiting trial unfairly impacts low-income communities and should be replaced with alternatives that better protect public safety and reduce social and taxpayer costs.

Bail Fail: Why the U.S. Should End the Practice of Money for Bail shows how the average bail amount for people who are detained has more than doubled from $39,800 in 1992 to $89,900 in 2006. This is despite evidence that higher bail amounts are not related to more public safety and that people who are unable to afford money bail are often a lower risk of dangerousness or failure to appear in court – the two legal justifications to incarcerate someone pretrial – than those who can make bail.

The report also highlights the fact that bail is a primary driver of growth in our jail populations and further states that people in U.S. jails are not convicted but are being held as they await the resolution of their charge. This time in detention hinders them from taking care of their families, jobs and communities while overcr
owding jails and creating unsustainable budgets.” 

The report is the first in a three-part series of analysis on bail, for-profit bail bonding and the community impacts slated for release throughout the month of September.

Federal Prisons Lock Up Latinos at a Higher Rate Than Colorado

The Denver Post

A decade ago, there were 3,578 adult Latinos in Colorado's state prisons. At the end of the last fiscal year, there were more than twice that, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections.
Colorado does not have the same problematic numbers as the federal prison system, where more than half of all prisoners sentenced to time behind bars last year were Latino. But the percentage of Latino prisoners in Colorado does outstrip the size of that population. Colorado's Latino population now stands at 20.9 percent. In prisons, Latinos account for 33 percent of all those locked up, Colorado corrections department figures show.
Latinos have consistently made up about 30 percent of the state's prison population for the past decade.
Part of that increase in total numbers is due to the increase in the Latino population.
But another factor, according to the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, is likely due to the fact that there is more street-level policing in neighborhoods with high Latino populations.
"There has been consistent evidence over time that people of color are significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated, particularly for drug offenses," said Christie Donner, executive director of the coalition.
Figures for Colorado's inmate population show some other disparities in prison populations related to race. African-American males and females now make up 20 percent and 15 percent of their respective prison populations, while that racial group totals only 4.3 percent of Colorado's population.
Meanwhile, Caucasian men and Caucasian women represent 44 percent and 52 percent of their respective prison populations in Colorado. But Caucasians, who are not identified as of Hispanic descent in the latest U.S. Census report, comprise about 70 percent of the general population in the state.
Colorado's incarceration figures for Latinos may be out of proportion to population, but they are more in balance than the latest national count for Latino prisoners in federal prisons. Latinos now outnumber all other ethnic groups sentenced to serve time in federal prisons for felonies, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
In 2012, more than half of all people being sent to federal prisons for felony crimes are Latino, commission numbers show. Latinos, who make up 16 percent of the U.S. population, added up to 50.3 percent of those sentenced to federal prisons. African-Americans made up 9.7 percent and Caucasians 26.4 percent.
Thirty-three percent of the Latinos sent to federal penitentiaries were there for immigration crimes, including illegal crossing and immigrant smuggling. Immigration crimes have been responsible for most of the increase in the number of Latinos sent to prison in the last decade, the commission's statistics show.

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Colorado Prison Inmate Wins Right To Outdoor Exercise

The Denver Post

For 12 years, virtually the only exposure Troy Anderson has had to the outdoors has come in a 90-square-foot room.
At one end of the room are two slits in the wall that are 6-inches wide and 5-feet tall. The slits are covered with metal grates. On one wall of the room is a chin-up bar.
This, Colorado Department of Corrections officials argued in a lawsuit Anderson filed, satisfied the constitutional requirement that Anderson, a prisoner at the Colorado State Penitentiary, be given outdoor exercise opportunities.
In a ruling issued last week, a federal judge in Denver disagreed and ordered prison officials to allow Anderson to exercise in a place with no roof where the rain can fall on him and the wind can blow at him.
"The Eighth Amendment does not mandate comfortable prisons," U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote in his ruling, "but it does forbid inhumane conditions."
Anderson's treatment, Jackson wrote, was "a paradigm of inhumane treatment."
The ruling could have widespread impact.
The Colorado State Penitentiary, or CSP for short, is the most restrictive prison in the state system and is used to house the state's most dangerous inmates. Prisoners are kept in their cells for at least 23 hours a day. Meals come through a slot in the cell door. The only window in the cell is difficult to look through.
There are 756 inmates at the prison, according to the Department of Corrections. Anderson, who has spent most of his adult life in prison for crimes that include a shootout with police, is one of nine inmates who have been housed in solitary confinement for more than 10 years, according to Jackson's ruling.
Anderson's attorneys — law students from the University of Denver and their faculty advisors — say the ruling could mean that all inmates at CSP must be given genuine outdoor exercise time.
"We're hopeful the ruling will be the catalyst ... to change that inhumane practice," DU law professor Brittany Glidden, one of the faculty advisers, said.
But, in an e-mail, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman said the department sees the ruling as applying only to Anderson. Jackson gave the department 60 days to come up with a plan for giving Anderson outdoor exercise for one hour at a time, three days a week.
One of the options, Glidden said, is that the department might just move him into a less-resrtictive prison.
"We just received the ruling and are now analyzing how we are going to implement the judge's orders," DOC spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti wrote in an e-mail.
Jackson noted in his ruling that one prison expert who testified at trial in the case said CSP is the only prison in the nation that does not provide true outdoor exercise for inmates. Instead, across the country, prisons are rethinking the use of prolonged solitary confinement.
"CDOC officials," Jackson wrote, "know that CSP is out of step with the rest of the nation."

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Turn out THIS is who's been eating your tax dollars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlwYnYQNv5U&feature=youtu.be

Inmate mysteriously shot while walking

The Denver Post

The Colorado Inspector General's office is investigating how an inmate at minimum security Four Mile Correctional Facility was shot in the knee while at the prison, authorities say.
The inmate, who is serving a sentence on drug charges, was shot in the knee on Aug. 21, said Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti. The tip of the bullet was removed by surgery on Tuesday, confirming that he had been shot, Sanguinetti said.
DOC has brought in correctional officers from Pueblo and other Cañon City prisons to search the prison for a gun, she said.
"They're doing a shake down right now," Sanguinetti said. "The facility is on lock down. This is really unique to say the least. To my knowledge it's never happened before."
Sanguinetti declined to name the inmate, who told investigators he was walking around the track when he felt a sharp pain in his knee and saw the wound. She said investigators are trying to confirm his account.
"They'll look at the possibility that he was targeted. But he's just an average Joe that happens to be in prison," she said when asked whether the victim was a high-profile inmate that someone wanted to target.
She said the inmate was exercising during recreational time, when the yard is filled with as many as 300 inmates pumping iron, playing team sports or jogging around the track.
No one reported witnessing anyone firing a gun or handling a gun, Sanguinetti said.
But prison culture discourages inmates from reporting violence,, she said. "Historically prisoners are reluctant to divulge information because they don't want to be labeled as an informant."
Investigators are considering many scenarios, including that someone smuggled in a gun or someone randomly fired a rifle from a distant bluff.
"They are truly looking at all possibilities," Sanguinetti said.
Correctional officers working inside the prison are not armed. Only perimeter guards carry shotguns and rifles, she said. Four Mile is a minimum security prison so it does not have any towers overlooking the facility.
Colorado Bureau of Investigation analysts will try to narrow down the weapon by the bullet fragments.
Correctional officers are searching cells and prison grounds.
They are also searching for a weapon in surrounding barns and animal pens, where minimum security inmates milk cows and train wild mustangs in prison programs. Those inmates are strip-searched before re-entering the prison.

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Colorado Department of Corrections - Population July 2012

Population and Capacity

Colorado Department of Corrections - July 2012

Dashboard Measures

130 Idaho inmates sent to Colorado

KBOI
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Idaho Department of Correction has flown 130 inmates to a prison in Colorado because Idaho's prison don't have enough room to hold the state's growing inmate population.

The inmates were flown Tuesday morning on a chartered jet to Denver, and from there they took a bus to the Kit Carson Correctional Center in Burlington, Colo. The prison is owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America.

Idaho's inmate population reached more than 8,000 for the first time in April. The Department of Correction has been renting beds in county jails to ease the pressure, but that wasn't enough to accommodate the demand.

Department Director Brent Reinke says the move is hard on families, but the state is simply out of room.

Longtime inmate carves out new life with help of program

The Denver Post

There are moments when Michael Wentz is gripped by overwhelming dread.
He'll be walking on a sidewalk in a grassy neighborhood and suddenly panic, sensing he must have broken some rule that would cast him in a punitive-segregation cell at Sterling Correctional Facility, where he has spent most of his life. Then he remembers: He has been legally released from prison and is on his own.
It isn't easy adjusting to freedom after spending 27 years in prison.
Still, with all the pressures of beginning a new life, Wentz, 45, has been able to accomplish goals that until months ago seemed abstract and unattainable. He has done it with assistance from a Colorado Department of Corrections program that helps prisoners adjust to life outside of prison.
State officials believe supporting him in this transition from prison to freedom could have societal benefits, including safer streets. It could help Wentz avoid future missteps that could land him in prison again.
"I want to be an asset to society, not a deficit," Wentz said.
In 1985, Wentz was locked up for good reason.
The then-19-year-old Army soldier and his brother, Theodore, who was two years older, beat up a man they found walking toward a gay bar in Colorado Springs. At the time, Wentz said, he hated gays, in his mind grouping them together with an uncle who had molested him.
The brothers had lured the man into an alley where Theodore hit him over the head from behind with a bat, Wentz said. They drove the man in his own car to a remote area of El Paso County, where Theodore stabbed him five times, he said. The man survived the attack.
The last time a reporter from The Denver Post spoke with him, Wentz was sitting in a circle of convicts deep within Sterling's "kill fence" in June 2011. The group of men participating in the "pilot" Lifetime Offender Program exchanged ideas about how to survive prison release to freedom after spending most of their lives behind bars.
"When I was in there, I told myself I have these goals in life and I wasn't going to let what I did in the past dictate what I would do in the future," Wentz said. "I didn't let anything stand in my way."
The weekly meetings helped prepare him for his release from Sterling in March to a halfway house.
Since his release, Wentz has been meeting with prison mentors every other week. During his first day of intensive supervision, he was confused about curfew and his limits and called another inmate who explained the rules to him.
He applied for and was hired at Pelsue Co., an Englewood engineering and manufacturing firm. He also got a job as a tattoo artist at Endless Ink Tattoo and Spa near Interstate 70 and Quebec Street.
Pelsue, which retrofits vans for utility companies and manufactures safety equipment and tents that go over manholes during maintenance work, hired him to help retrofit vans by installing clean laboratories used in the field by utility-company workers as they perform tasks such as fiber-optic splicing.
Wentz said that when he came to Pelsue, he didn't expect special privileges because of his publicized talent as a graphic artist that he had developed in prison. Many of the walls inside Sterling are covered with giant murals he painted. Wentz's paintings sold in galleries for as much as $2,000.
Wentz was a quick learner who eagerly worked overtime when called upon, said his former supervisor, Jose Rodriguez. Pelsue is a relatively small company and can't afford to have employees who are dead weight, Rodriguez said.
"He's very smart," Rodriguez said of Wentz. "He has a great attitude. He never complains and did whatever I asked."
In a few months, Wentz moved to a position in the company's fabrication shop. He was a full-time employee, getting medical benefits and paid vacations.
In May, another position came open.
Wentz got the job, which usually required applicants to have a college degree in drafting or engineering. In prison, he had earned an associate's degree in computer-aided drafting, but most of the computer software he uses to create schematic drawings he had taught himself to use.
On his computer, he has created three-dimensional drawings of how Pelsue products are assembled. He has created realistic drawings of products yet to be built.
In the afternoon, he dons another hat and works in the marketing office. He has been redesigning the company's catalog, giving it more of a commercial feel rather than an institutional one. He has quite an eye for it, said Pelsue chief executive Mark Pelsue.

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Colorado Death Penalty Law Unconstitutional

The Denver Post

Colorado prosecutors could seek the death penalty in the vast majority of first-degree murder cases in the state but instead pursue it so infrequently that the state's capital-punishment system is unconstitutionally arbitrary, three law professors argue in a new study.
The conclusion could be earth-shaking for the Colorado criminal-justice system, at a time when prosecutors in Arapahoe County are deciding whether to pursue the death penalty against Aurora shooting suspect James Eagan Holmes. It could have more direct implications in the looming death-penalty sentencing hearing of Edward Montour — whose defense team initiated the study and included it in a motion.
"This is a groundbreaking study," said David Lane, one of Montour's defense attorneys.
Colorado law says a person must be convicted of first-degree murder, the most serious murder charge, and also meet an extra aggravating factor to be eligible for a death sentence. To conduct the study, the professors — in a first-of-its-kind effort in Colorado — assembled a list of all homicide cases between 1999 and 2010, then identified which of those cases were first-degree murder cases.
The study finds that 92 percent of the state's 544 first-degree murder cases in that time span contained at least one of the aggravating factors that make the case eligible for the death penalty. But prosecutors filed notices of intent to seek the death penalty in only 15 murder cases during that span and pursued the death penalty at trial in only five of those cases — a 1 percent rate among death-eligible cases.
"Under the Colorado capital sentencing system," the authors write in their report, "many defendants are eligible but almost none are actually sentenced to death. Because Colorado's aggravating factors so rarely result in actual death sentences, their use in any given case is a violation of the Eighth Amendment."
The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
The study was conducted by University of Denver law professors Justin Marceau and Sam Kamin and Rowan University professor Wanda Foglia with funds provided by Montour's defense team.
Montour, who pleaded guilty to killing Colorado Department of Corrections Officer Eric Autobee, is facing the possibility of a death-penalty sentencing hearing as early as the end of this year.
Montour's team has now included the new study into a motion asking a judge to cancel Montour's sentencing hearing and find the Colorado death- penalty law unconstitutional.
Prosecutors from the 18th Judicial District attorney's office, which is handling Montour's case, have not yet had a chance to respond to the motion.
"A preliminary report has been filed by the defense regarding a motion that is presently pending before the Montour court," Chief Deputy District Attorney John Topolnicki said in a statement. "The merits of the defense motion are yet to be decided and are being contested by the prosecution."
John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.c

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County Jails Struggling With More Mentally Ill Inmates

The Denver Post

As county jails across the state face a quickly growing population of mentally ill inmates, the Adams County Sheriff's Office is looking for money to create a specialized unit to house those prisoners.
The Sheriff's Office has asked for funding either to renovate an unused portion of the jail for about $1.5 million or to build a new wing at a cost of about $3 million to house the most uncontrolled mentally ill inmates.
"It would give us an opportunity to have a unit where they can be efficiently seen by, treated by, our mental-health staff," said Adams County Sheriff Doug Darr. "When we have this many people coming in with these issues, it tells us something's wrong and we need to be on top of it."
The Adams County commissioners have asked for more information from the Sheriff's Office but aren't scheduled to take up the discussion any time soon.
Although the Adams County jail may be the only large county jail on the Front Range without a unit for the mentally ill inmates, Darr isn't the only one who wishes he had more space.
"There's an increase in people coming to jail with mental-health issues, and the mental-health issues we're having to manage are more severe," said Bruce Haas, administrative commander for the Boulder County Jail. "We have people in disciplinary housing units that belong in special housing units. There's more demand than we have space."
Haas said officials at the Boulder jail are also starting to explore options to find more room.
The two options Darr's staff has proposed would allow deputies to move mentally ill inmates from the shared infirmary unit of 15 double-bunked cells to a separate unit with 16 double-bunked cells.
Abigail Tucker, a psychologist who runs one of the support programs at the Adams County jail, said a bipolar inmate who was in detox once spent 12 hours screaming right next to irritated inmates who were physically sick and trying to rest.
"It's about making sure both are getting well," Tucker said. "Some people just have different needs."
Crowding the unstable inmates also creates a safety issue.
"Often we have inmates with severe mental illness coming in with minor charges, but while here they end up assaulting our officers and staff and rack up charges more serious than what they came in for," said Capt. Kurt Ester, commander of the Adams County jail.
But mentally ill inmates can also be the targets of violence.
"People that are mentally ill are sometimes vulnerable or potential victims. We don't want to put them in a position where they're going to be teased or abused," said Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle.
Though the state doesn't regulate many county jail operations, most large jails follow similar processes based on published national best practices.
Screening can start with the officers or deputies on the street, or when suspects are booked in the jail.
Staff members who range from certified nurses in Adams County to counseling staff in Jefferson County undertake the first evaluations on every inmate entering the jail.
Any warning sign of a mental condition or a previous diagnosis will earn inmates a referral, but screening staff prioritize the needs so that inmates who may have more severe problems are seen first — often within 24 hours.
That appointment is meant to be a more thorough screening, but at some jails, such as in Jefferson County, getting another referral to a psychologist who can make an official diagnosis and prescribe any needed medication can take up to two more weeks.
Haas, the administrative commander in the Boulder jail, points out that prescriptions aren't a solution if inmates refuse to take them.
"Jails do not have the legal ability — even if a psychologist has prescribed medication — to force inmates to take that medication," Haas said. "Often that's when we see the greatest volatility."
If a judge orders an inmate to a state hospital for an evaluation before trial, staff there can involuntarily medicate inmates to stabilize them, Haas said.
Inmates who aren't flagged in those initial steps also have the opportunity to send private messages to mental-health staff at any point during their stay.
Deputies, family members or other staff who notice irregular behavior also can flag an inmate for an evaluation.
Inmates who are transferred to the special housing units — or in Adams County's case, the infirmary — might then be evaluated daily to determine if they have become stable enough to transfer to the general population to make room for other incoming inmates who may have higher needs that day.
"Ultimately, the state and the counties have to do something different," Boulder Sheriff Pelle said. "When there's no more state hospital beds or there's a severe shortage, it takes a long time to get someone in for treatment. In the meantime, jail is an expensive alternative."
Yesenia Robles: 303-954-1372, yrobles@denverpost.com or twitter.com/yeseniarobles

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Inmates seek counseling

Metro-area jails keep track of inmates with mental-health issues. In this list, the first number represents the percentage of all inmates with clinical diagnoses, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The second number, which was not reported by all jails, is the percentage of inmates seeking mental-health counseling for any reason.
Adams: 22 percent
Arapahoe: 7 percent; 22 percent
Boulder: 35 percent
Denver: 3 percent; 60 percent
Jefferson: 16 percent
Douglas: 37 percent

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Immigrants Prove Big Business for Prison Companies

the Denver Post
MIAMI—The U.S. is locking up more illegal immigrants than ever, generating lucrative profits for the nation's largest prison companies, and an Associated Press review shows the businesses have spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers and contributing to campaigns.
The cost to American taxpayers is on track to top $2 billion for this year, and the companies are expecting their biggest cut of that yet in the next few years thanks to government plans for new facilities to house the 400,000 immigrants detained annually.
After a decade of expansion, the sprawling, private system runs detention centers everywhere from a Denver suburb to an industrial area flanking Newark's airport, and is largely controlled by just
three companies. The growth is far from over, despite the sheer drop in illegal immigration in recent years.
In 2011, nearly half the beds in the nation's civil detention system were in private facilities with little federal oversight, up from just 10 percent a decade ago.
The financial boom, which has helped save some of these companies from the brink of bankruptcy, has occurred even though federal officials acknowledge privatization isn't necessarily cheaper.
This seismic shift toward a privatized system happened quietly. While Congress' unsuccessful efforts to overhaul immigration laws drew headlines and sparked massive demonstrations, lawmakers' negotiations to boost detention dollars received far less attention.
The industry's giants—Corrections Corporation of America, The GEO Group, and Management and Training Corp.—have spent at least $45 million combined on campaign donations and lobbyists at the state and federal level in the last decade, the AP found.
CCA and GEO, who manage most private detention centers, insist they aren't trying to influence immigration policy to make more money, and their lobbying and campaign donations have been legal.
"As a matter of long-standing

corporate policy, CCA does not lobby on issues that would determine the basis for an individual's detention or incarceration," CCA spokesman Steve Owen said in an email to the AP. The company has a website dedicated to debunking such allegations. GEO, which was part of The Wackenhut Corp. security firm until 2003, and Management and Training Corp. declined repeated interview requests.
Advocates for immigrants are skeptical the lobbying is not meant to influence policy.
"That's a lot of money to listen quietly," said Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, who has helped lead a campaign to encourage large banks and mutual funds to divest from the prison companies.
The detention centers are located in cities and remote areas

alike, often in low-slung buildings surrounded by chain-link fences and razor wire. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents detain men, women and children suspected of violating civil immigration laws at these facilities. Most of those held at the 250 sites nationwide are illegal immigrants awaiting deportation, but some green card holders, asylum seekers and others are also there. The total average nightly cost to taxpayers to detain an illegal immigrant, including health care and guards' salaries, is about $166, ICE confirmed only after the AP calculated that figure and presented it to the agency.
That's up from $80 in 2004. ICE said the $80 didn't include all of the same costs but declined to provide details.
Pedro Guzman is among those who have passed through the private detention centers. He was brought to the U.S. by his Guatemalan mother at age 8. He was working and living here legally under temporary protected status but was detained after missing an appearance for an asylum application. Officials ordered him deported.
Although he was married to a U.S. citizen, ICE considered him a flight risk and locked him up in 2009: first at a private detention facility run by CCA in Gainesville, Ga., and eventually at CCA's Stewart Detention Center, south of Atlanta. Guzman spent 19 months in Stewart until he was finally granted legal permanent residency.
"It's a millionaire's business, and they are living off profits from each one of the people who go through there every single night," said Guzman, now a cable installer in Durham, N.C. "It's our money that we earn as taxpayers every day that goes to finance this."
The federal government stepped up detentions of illegal immigrants in the 1990s, as the number of people crossing the border soared. In 1996, Congress passed a law requiring many more illegal immigrants be locked up. But it wasn't until 2005—as the corrections companies' lobbying efforts reached their zenith—that ICE got a major boost. Between 2005 and 2007, the agency's budget jumped from $3.5 billion to $4.7 billion, adding more than $5 million for custody operations.
Dora Schriro, who in 2009 reviewed the nation's detention system at the request of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, said nearly every aspect had been outsourced.

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Volunteer Opportunity

The Colorado Innocence Project at CU Law is looking for a part time volunteer project coordinator. The position is in Boulder at the Law School. We are looking for someone for 15 / 20 hours a week. The person would assist in organizing and running the office, coordinating our student volunteers, screening applications, creating and organizing the flow of paperwork and files and working with our board. We are looking for someone who is a organized and has experience running a busy office and high tolerance and enjoyment of working with students and chaos. We are looking for  a commitment of a year.  The person does not need legal experience but we need someone who has a compassion for and an understanding of working with people who are incarcerated and have been convicted of very serious crimes including murder and sexual assault.

If anyone is interested please email me at ann.england@colorado.edu

Spirit and Struggle

Spirit & Struggle

Our Work For Liberation Continues

A Public Conversation Between Celebrated Civil Rights Activists

Dr. Angela Davis and Dr. Vincent Harding

An Event of the Loretto Community's 200th Year Jubilee

Saturday, August 11, 2012

7:00 - 9:00 pm

Colorado Heights University

Colorado Heights Theater

3001 S. Federal Boulevard, Denver

Performances by the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble and the SOAR Charter School

Buy your tickets at www.spiritandstruggle.com

For more information contact:  spiritandstruggle@yahoo.com

Spirit and Struggle will be a public conversation between Dr. Vincent Harding and Dr. Angela Davis, both of whom have been deeply involved with the civil rights struggle.  It will attempt to surface some of the connections between spirit and struggle as well as include some of the younger voices of today’s struggle. This public conversation will be one of the many events which will happen throughout the country to celebrate the 200 years of existence of the Sisters of Loretto.  It will reflect the historic faith-based call of the sisters to serve as educators and to stand with those who resist oppression and injustice.
Dr. Vincent Harding and his late wife, Rosemarie Freeney Harding, worked in various capacities as full-time teachers, activists and negotiators in the southern Freedom Movement. Coretta Scott King invited Dr. Harding to help her develop the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center in Atlanta. Dr. Harding served as senior academic advisor to the PBS television series Eyes On The Prize. In 1981 Vincent joined the faculty of the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. There he was a Professor of Religion and Social Transformation until his retirement in 2004.  In 1997, he and his wife founded The Veterans of Hope Project, a center for the study of religion, culture and democracy utilizing filmed autobiographical accounts of women and men who have worked for decades in spirit-based movements for compassionate social change.
Read his extended biography here.
Dr. Angela Davis has taught at a number of colleges and universities, and for the past fifteen years has been at the University of California Santa Cruz where she is currently Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness, an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program. Dr. Davis has authored eight books and has lectured throughout the U.S. as well as in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and South America. She is a founding member of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to the dismantling of the prison industrial complex.
Read her extended biography here.

 

 

Christie Donner, Executive Director

Pamela Clifton, Communications Coordinator

Ellen Toomey-Hale, Finance and Development Coordinator

John Riley, Coalition Coordinator

P.S.  Please donate today or consider joining our Freedom Fighters with a small monthly donation!

Many Drugs Remain Legal After Bath Salts Ban

The Denver Post
WASHINGTON—People are inventing so many new, legal ways to get high that lawmakers can't seem to keep up.
Over the past two years, the U.S. has seen a surge in the use of synthetic drugs made of legal chemicals that mimic the dangerous effects of cocaine, amphetamines and other illegal stimulants.
The drugs are often sold at small, independent stores in misleading packaging that suggests common household items like bath salts, incense and plant food. But the substances inside are powerful, mind-altering drugs that have been linked to bizarre and violent behavior across the country. Law enforcement officials refer to the drugs collectively as "bath salts," though they have nothing in common with the fragrant toiletries used to moisturize skin.
President Barack Obama signed a bill into law earlier this month that bans the sale, production and possession of more than two dozen of the most common bath salt drugs. But health professionals say that there are so many different varieties of the drugs that U.S. lawmakers are merely playing catch up.
"The moment you start to regulate one of them, they'll come out with a variant that sometimes is even more potent," said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
There are no back alleys or crack houses in America's latest drug epidemic. The problem involves potent substances that amateur chemists make, package and sell in stores under brands like "Ivory Wave," "Vanilla Sky" and "Bliss" for as little as $15. Emergencies related to the drugs have surged: The American Association of Poison Control Centers received more than 6,100 calls about bath salt drugs in 2011—up from just 304 the year before—and more than 1,700 calls in the first half of 2012.
The problem for lawmakers is that it's difficult to crack down on the drugs. U.S. laws prohibit the sale or possession of all substances that mimic illegal drugs, but only if federal prosecutors can show that they are intended for human use. People who make bath salts and similar drugs work around this by printing "not for human consumption" on virtually every packet.
Barbara Carreno, a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Agency, said the intended use for bath salts is clear.
"Everyone knows these are drugs to get high, including the sellers," she said.
Many states have banned some of the most common bath salts, which are typically sold by small businesses like convenience stores, tobacco shops and adult book stores. For instance, West Virginia legislators banned the bath salt drug MDPV last year, making it a misdemeanor to sell, buy or possess the synthetic drug. Conviction means up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Stephanie Mitchell, assistant manager of The Den, a tobacco and paraphernalia shop in Morgantown, W.Va., said the store hasn't sold bath salts in the six months that she's worked there. But strung-out users still come in and ask for them.
"They're pretty ... cracked out, I guess would be a good word," said Mitchell, 21, a student at West Virginia University. "They're just kind of not all there. They're kind of sketchy people."
Mitchell says she wouldn't sell bath salts even if she had them, "because it's horrible, and I could get in trouble for it."

Read more: Many drugs remain legal after "bath salts" ban - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_21153385/many-drugs-remain-legal-after-bath-salts-ban#ixzz21djvAeL5
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Too Little Mental Health Care for Boomers

The Denver Post

WASHINGTON — Getting older doesn't just mean a risk for physical ailments like heart disease and bum knees: A new report finds as many as 1 in 5 seniors has a mental health or substance abuse problem.
And as the population rapidly ages over the next two decades, millions of baby boomers may have a hard time finding care and services for mental health problems such as depression — because the nation is woefully lacking in doctors, nurses and other health workers trained for their special needs, the Institute of Medicine said Tuesday.
Instead, the country is focused mostly on preparing for the physical health needs of what's been called the silver tsunami.
"The burden of mental illness and substance abuse disorders in older adults in the United States borders on a crisis," wrote Dr. Dan Blazer of Duke University, who chaired the Institute of Medicine panel that investigated the issue. "Yet this crisis is largely hidden from the public and many of those who develop policy and programs to care for older people."
Already, at least 5.6 million to 8 million Americans age 65 and older have a mental health condition or substance abuse disorder, the report found — calling that a conservative estimate that doesn't include a number of disorders. Depressive disorders and psychiatric symptoms related to dementia are the most common.
While the panel couldn't make precise projections, those numbers are sure to grow as the number of seniors nearly doubles by 2030, said report co-author Dr. Peter Rabins, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University. How much substance abuse treatment for seniors will be needed is a particular question, as rates of illegal drug use are higher in boomers currently in their 50s than in previous generations.
Merely getting older doesn't make mental health problems more likely to occur, Rabins said, noting that middle age is the most common time for onset of depression.
But when mental health problems do occur in older adults, the report found that they're too often overlooked and tend to be more complex because physical health problems can mask or distract from mental health needs.

Read more: Too little mental health care for boomers, says report - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_21046749/too-little-mental-health-care-boomers-says-report#ixzz20Jvcvkna
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Woman Feels the Power of Restorative Justice

The Denver Post

AURORA — As Sharletta Evans prepared for her face-to-face meeting with the man who killed her son, she couldn't escape one uncomfortable but gnawing need — to touch his hands.
"The harm he caused me was through his hands," said Evans, whose 3-year-old son, Casson, was slain in a 1995 drive-by shooting. "The fact that he actually pulled the trigger, it was something about the hands that kept coming to me."
But when the opportunity arose May 23, Evans hesitated, uncertain whether she could follow through with her request of Raymond Johnson, the man serving life without parole for the murder.
There was so much else Evans needed from Johnson, and it had been so long. He was 16 at the time of his

Sharletta Evans' son Casson was 3 when he was shot to death in a car not long after this photo was taken.

crime, but he now stood a month shy of his 33rd birthday. She had spent the years grieving and adapting to the loss of Casson before realizing she had gone as far as she could on her own. When legislation last year cleared the way for a pilot program in restorative justice with the Colorado Department of Corrections, Evans — who had testified on behalf of the measure — embraced the opportunity to go first. She and her older son Calvin Hurd, who was 6 when gunshots peppered the car where he sat sleeping with his brother, began more than six months of preparation for a direct dialogue with Johnson.
Part of that involved revisiting the crime. Evans had driven with her two children to a northeast Denver duplex to pick up her grandniece because there had been a drive-by there the previous night. She left her sons in the car.
While Evans was inside, three teens drove by and sprayed more than a dozen shots at the house and car. One struck Casson in the head. It was later determined that Johnson fired the fatal shot.
Beyond a sheer willingness to participate in restorative justice, the offender has to meet a three-part test for acceptance based on demonstrating accountability, genuine remorse and

willingness to repair harm. Johnson met all the criteria, though on the last count the only reparations he could offer were honest answers to a mother's unanswered questions. Evans had no idea how the process would unfold — only that she needed to do it.
"I felt I'd reached a peak in the healing process from counseling, prayer, the support of my church," Evans said. "This was one final thing to receive my complete closure in the grieving process."
Effects kept quiet
Whatever impact the meeting has had on Johnson, the public won't know for a while, if ever. The DOC has declined requests to interview him pending conclusion of the process, which includes debriefing of all parties and assessment of the outcome — something that may take until the end of the month.
From initiation to completion, every aspect of the sequence remains victim-driven.
"This is not a short process," said DOC spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti. "We don't want this to be a venue for the offenders. This is about the victim, for the victim."
Although the DOC previously had expressed interest in restorative-justice options, funding has always been a stumbling block. Even the recent legislation, pushed by Rep. Pete Lee, D-Colorado Springs, came with no money attached — only a provision that all facilitators would be trained volunteers who wouldn't even be reimbursed for travel expenses.
Lee, a former criminal-defense lawyer,

Raymond Johnson, then 16, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder.

had his first experience with restorative justice as a volunteer. He saw how victim-offender conferences worked with juveniles and had an "epiphany" that they could be just as valuable in an adult setting. "Restorative justice is equally effective with severe and profound crimes as it is with minor offenses such as theft of property in a school," he said. "The effectiveness of the process depends on the mind-set of the offender and the willingness of the victim to participate."
The pilot project, in which victims or their relatives initiate the process, has no impact on an offender's sentence or status within the DOC. But Lee, who met with all parties before and after the Evans-Johnson session, noted that such conferences also can transform offenders and make them better candidates for rehabilitation — or, in the case of those serving life sentences, less of a management risk.
The preparation with Lynn Lee, the state representative's wife who served as facilitator, was exhaustive.
"There were so many issues," Evans said. "When it came to every emotion, she'd ask me where was I at. What did I want to say to him? I really had to dissect every emotion so there were no surprises."
Hurd underwent the same drill with his facilitator, Peggy Evans.
"They were trying to make sure I had my head clear about what was going on," said Hurd, who works as a landscaper. "I was ready to see results."
Though his participation was powered mostly out of concern for his mother's emotional needs, Hurd — who has only a few memories of his brother — still harbored his own anger and skepticism about Johnson's remorse.
"If he wasn't seriously remorseful," he said, "then I wouldn't care less what happened to him."
On the morning of May 23, neighbors drove Evans and Hurd to the prison, where they waited two hours while final arrangements fell into place. Then, Evans got to the door of the meeting room where Johnson awaited — and froze.
She felt pain and fear envelop her. She suspects her emotions must have shown on her face. At the table, Johnson rose from his chair.
"He dropped his head and shook it with such sorrow," Evans recalled, "as if to say, 'Look at what I've done to this woman.' That gave me the courage to start moving."
Opening with prayer
Evans requested that they open with a prayer.
Johnson recited an Abrahamic prayer, reflecting his conversion to Islam more than a decade earlier. Evans prayed in Jesus' name, asking that the dialogue go well.
Over the course of an intense morning, they each recounted the crime from their individual points of view. Evans talked about Casson — she had nicknamed him "Biscuit" — and what he meant to the family. She felt her voice tremble as she talked about how she had reared her children, how they shared their days.
Those difficult hours laid the emotional foundation for what would come later, as they worked through all the ways their lives had changed.
"At times," said Evans, "I let him feel my anger. And at times, we discussed the divine. Does God have a plan here? How did our paths meet?"
She told him how, long ago at his trial, she had forgiven him — had seen through him, straight to his heart, and knew he was more than the sum of his ill-fated actions that December night.
"And he asked me, 'Why do you think God showed you who I really am and didn't show my mother or grandmother?' " Evans recounted. "He said it in a very painful way."
They answered questions and exchanged explanations: Evans about how she had found the strength to forgive him; Johnson about everything that happened on the night Casson died, about the better man he had become in prison.
Hurd felt his anger abate and got the confirmation he sought — that Johnson's remorse was authentic and that he was "doing something right with his life." Evans and Johnson resolved to continue their relationship, a process she told him would require time and patience.
Afterward, she retreated to a downtown Denver hotel and unplugged the phone to rest, recover and reflect. The experience strengthened her belief in restorative justice — a message she now relays to the community.

Read more: Denver woman feels the power of restorative justice after son murdered - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_21040065/denver-woman-feels-power-restorative-justice-after-son#ixzz20E1pCdaE
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Colorado Must Compensate Prisoners Freed By DNA Evidence

The Denver Post

GRAND JUNCTION — When Robert Dewey walked out of prison a free man after more than 16 years of being imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit, he left empty-handed.
He wasn't given the $100 debit card that parolees receive on release. He wasn't offered shelter in a halfway house, as the guilty who have served their time are. He wasn't directed to any job training or educational resources.
In Colorado, there is no compensation and no help of any sort for those who have been wrongly imprisoned.
"I didn't even get the 'gate money.' All I got was an apology. The prosecutors said, 'We're really sorry. Have a nice life,' " Dewey, 51, said two months after his release from prison, which was prompted after new DNA testing identified a new suspect in the 1994 killing of a young Palisade woman.
Now, prosecutors across the state agree that Colorado needs to do something to compensate those who are exonerated by DNA evidence after being wrongly imprisoned. A national advocacy group is pushing for the Colorado legislature to craft a compensation law. And legislators are evaluating the introduction of such a law in the next session.

Read more: Prosecutors: Colorado must compensate prisoners freed by DNA evidence - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_21016525/prosecutors-colorado-must-compensate-prisoners-freed-by-dna#ixzz1zqJRkJn6
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Colorado DOC June Population Reports

CDOC

Idaho to send inmates to private, out-of-state prison | HeraldNet.com - Northwest

Idaho to send inmates to private, out-of-state prison | HeraldNet.com - Northwest
BOISE, Idaho -- State prison officials plan to house hundreds of inmates at a privately run lockup in Colorado to avoid overcrowding at home.

The Idaho Department of Correction expects to finalize a contract in early July with Corrections Corporation of America to house inmates at the prison company's Kit Carson Correctional Center in Burlington, Colo.

Idaho plans to send 250 males inmates to the out-of-state facility in late July or early August. That number is expected to reach 450 a year from now if Idaho's prison population continues to grow at its current rate.

The state's prisons are at capacity with 8,100 inmates, with some being housed in county jails. Prison officials have previously sent inmates out-of-state, but problems in Texas, as well as slowing inmate numbers in Idaho, prompted their return.