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

As Older Addicts Seek Help - A New Generation Gap

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — All is peaceful and orderly on the older adult unit at Hanley Center, where substance abusers over the age of 55 are spared the noisy swagger of addicts half their age across the campus.

In their separate oasis, alcoholics and prescription drug abusers of a certain age do not curse at one another, raise their voices in anger or blast music at midnight. They don’t brag about their macho pasts or stage drama-queen breakups on the communal pay phone. They show up on time for therapy groups.

“We have different health issues, different emotional issues, different grief issues,” said Patrick Gallagher, 66, who was treated here for a dual addiction to pain medication and alcohol. “We need more peace and quiet and a different pace.”

Across the country, substance abuse centers are reaching out to older addicts whose numbers are growing and who have historically been ignored. There are now residential and outpatient clinics dedicated to those over 50, special counselors just for them at clinics that serve all ages, and screenings at centers for older Americans and physicians’ offices to identify older people unaware of their risk.

Addiction specialists and organizations for the elderly anticipate a tidal wave of baby boomers needing help for addictions, often for different substances and with different attitudes toward treatment than the generation that came before them. Federal data shows the shifting demographics: In 2005, 184,400 Americans who were admitted to drug treatment programs — roughly 10 percent of the total — were over 50, up from 143,000, or 8 percent of the total, in 2001.

The same report, by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, foresees 4.4 million older substance abusers by 2020, compared with 1.7 million in 2001 — numbers that are “likely to swamp the current system,” said Deborah Trunzo, who coordinates research for the agency.

The New York Times

American's In Prison

Editorial by Paul Campos:

If you knew nothing about Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama other than that Clinton is a 60-year-old white woman and Obama is a 46-year-old black man, you could still calculate the odds that each was in prison.

It won't come as any surprise that someone like Obama is, in this crude comparison, more likely to be found behind bars than someone like Clinton. What should shock people is how much more likely we are to incarcerate a 46-year-old black man than a 60-year-old white woman.

Here's one way of picturing the answer: During football games, the University of Michigan's stadium hosts about 111,000 people. If you filled the place with randomly selected 60-year-old white women, around 10 of them would turn out to be prison inmates. If you did the same with 46-year-old black men, about 5,500 would be current residents of our prisons and jails.

In other words, if we took into account only race, gender and age, Obama's chances of being in prison would be 550 times higher than Clinton's. Here's a good question for a presidential debate: "Do you think 46-year-old black men are 550 times more likely to deserve to be in prison than 60-year-old white women?"

I derived these statistics from a report published by the Pew Center last week. The report got a lot of media attention when it revealed that one out of every 100 American adults is in prison. That's startling enough, but not nearly as shocking as the fact that more than 10 percent of black men between the ages of 20 and 40 are incarcerated.

But of course other factors also play a powerful role in determining whom we choose to lock up and for how long. The most important of these is socioeconomic class. Poor people go to prison, while people with money, with rare exceptions, don't.

The extent to which we ignore that reality is highlighted by a glaring omission in the Pew Center's otherwise excellent analysis: There literally isn't a word in it about poverty. One would never guess, from reading the report, that a key factor in determining whether you go to prison and for how long is if you use powder cocaine rather than crack, or if you rob the U.S. Treasury instead of a gas station, or if you are represented by a team of private lawyers rather than a single overworked public defender.

Scripps News

American Drug War: The Last White Hope

Great new documentary on The American Drug War premiered tonight on Showtime.



SYNOPSIS - 35 years after Nixon started the war on drugs, we have over one million non-violent drug offenders living behind bars.The War on Drugs has become the longest and most costly war in American history, the question has become, how much more can the country endure? Inspired by the death of four family members from "legal drugs" Texas filmmaker Kevin Booth sets out to discover why the Drug War has become such a big failure. Three and a half years in the making, the film follows gang members, former DEA agents, CIA officers, narcotics officers, judges, politicians, prisoners and celebrities. Most notably the film befriends Freeway Ricky Ross; the man many accuse for starting the Crack epidemic, who after being arrested discovered that his cocaine source had been working for the CIA.AMERICAN DRUG WAR shows how money, power and greed have corrupted not just drug pushers and dope fiends, but an entire government. More importantly, it shows what can be done about it. This is not some 'pro-drug' stoner film, but a collection of expert testimonials from the ground troops on the front lines of the drug war, the ones who are fighting it and the ones who are living it.After 4 years of production including several sold out test screenings in New York, Austin & Los Angeles, the final version of American Drug War "the last white hope" is locked and loaded.
Showtime Documentary

Pre K Prevents Crime

Topeka — Putting more children in prekindergarten classrooms now will prevent having to build more prisons later, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

The group of police chiefs and prosecutors supports a $23 million increase in funding over two years for early childhood education programs proposed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

“We don’t want America’s most vulnerable kids becoming America’s most wanted adults,” said Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson.

Branson appeared with Shawnee County District Attorney Robert Hecht and police chiefs of Lenexa and Topeka.

The group appeared on behalf of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a nonprofit group that advocates for increased early childhood programs.

Jeff Kirsch, vice president of Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, said studies show that low-income children who receive high-quality early childhood education do better in school, are less likely to commit crimes and have a higher standard of living as adults.

JK Journal

Panel To Discuss Trends In Arrests

Denver's Marijuana Review Panel meets today to discuss an increase in arrests and citations after citizens passed two ballot initiatives, including one that directed city officials to make marijuana their lowest law enforcement priority.

The meeting is at 3:30 p.m. in the third-floor law library of the Denver City and County Building.

Mason Tvert, a proponent of the marijuana initiatives, said that 1,600 adults faced charges of misdemeanor marijuana possession in 2007, an increase of 18 percent from 2006, an increase of 36 percent from 2005 and an increase of approximately 50 percent from 2004.

Tvert said he will question the city attorney in charge of prosecutions about the increase during the meeting.

In 2005, Denver voters approved an initiative to allow adults to possess less than an ounce of marijuana. In 2007, voters told city officials that marijuana should be the city's "lowest law enforcement priority" and that the panel would monitor arrests and citations.

The Denver Post

Pot Arrests Up Despite Initiative

Citations and arrests for minor possession of marijuana continue to rise in Denver, even though voters have passed two initiatives to reduce such enforcement, a group says.

"More and more people want the police and prosecutors to stop, but they're citing and prosecuting more and more people," said Mason Tvert, executive director of Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation.

Tvert said that statistics he obtained from the Denver police's civil liability bureau show that the number of misdemeanor marijuana arrests has increased by almost 18 percent from 2006 to 2007.

Tvert said that arrests of adults age 22 and older were: 1,059 in 2004; 1,168 in 2005; 1,347 in 2006; and 1,587 in 2007.

If last year's figures are compared with those of 2005, the numbers show a 36 percent jump, he said. Compared with 2004, there has been a 50 percent increase, he said.

Rocky Mountain News

Jailhouse Blessings

This is a direct reflection on the work that was done to get the Community Reentry Project built. The Crime Prevention and Control Commission allocated the money to programs in order to reduce recidivism. An unintended consequence was the reduction of violence within the jail because they took the time to work with people one on one. The different avenues included putting case managers in place inside the jail.

Congratulations is on order for everyone who opened their minds and hearts to allow these changes to occur. Our dream is to have these programs in place statewide.

Inmates at the Denver County Jail are generally not a happy lot, so it's unusual for them to send thank-you notes.

But that's exactly what a number of them have done after they were placed in a new program at the jail designed to address the needs of mentally ill inmates.

Among the fan mail is a note from one inmate who says, "thank you all and blessings."

Another, who describes himself as a 20-year veteran of institutionalization of various types, wrote that the program "transformed me from a hopeless, severely depressed suicidal individual to someone who now can begin to look towards further continuing hope and the potential of successfully managing my mental health issues. I consider myself blessed to continue to benefit from the services provided."

Yet another wrote a two-page letter thanking the staff for changing his life. "You have shown me the most important lesson of all, human kindness," he wrote. "Thank you all from my heart."

The mental health program is one of several new programs implemented last year that jail officials credit for a dramatic drop in assaults and fights at the jail.

Officials report that incidents of jail violence in 2007 are down 23 percent from their levels in 2006.

Undersheriff and corrections director Bill Lovingier credits the decrease to the mental health transition unit and other programs put in place last year to assess inmates and prepare them to stay out of jail once they are released.

'Better shape'

"Ultimately we are turning people out in better shape than we used to," he said. "They are better prepared to cope and be assimilated in the community and hopefully not get re-arrested."

Jail fights dropped 22 percent, and assaults dropped 14 percent. Sexual assaults dropped from six in 2006 to four in 2006. Suicide attempts dropped from eight in 2006 to six in 2007, a 33 percent decrease.

"In each of these categories we are seeing a significant decline," Lovingier said. "Overall, all of these programs are making a difference."

The mentally ill have flooded the nation's prisons and jails since the movement to close state mental hospitals in the 1960s, said staff psychologist Margaret Reiland. The idea was to shift treatment to community mental health centers, but that plan failed when funding for the programs was cut.

Nationwide, 670,000 mentally ill people are put in jail each year, while only 83,750 are put in state psychiatric hospitals, said Reiland, who leads Denver's transition unit.

"Jails have become the new mental health centers," she said.

Denver's mental health transition program places inmates with mental illnesses in the same unit where they receive therapy and medications and are connected with community services to help them stay out of jail once released. The idea is not to just "warehouse" the inmates until their release, Lovingier said.

"For so long, that's all that happened," he said. "They were medicated and then released to the street."

Among other things, case managers help inmates obtain Social Security cards, birth certificates and Colorado identification cards necessary to receive benefits and treatment in the community. About 80 percent of the inmates lack these vital documents, he said.

Jailhouse Blessings

Bills Aimed At Giving Young Felons A Chance

Democratic lawmakers are trying to move Colorado back toward mercy for young felons by undoing some of the penalties born from the 1993 Summer of Violence — punishments that rank among the toughest in the nation.

A slate of bills would make juveniles less likely to serve life in adult jails, less likely to be judged as competent to stand trial as adults and more likely to receive second chances through child-tailored rehabilitation programs.

Critics say leniency with the most-heinous child felons endangers public safety and takes power from law enforcement working to curb gang violence and other scourges.

But lawmakers such as Rep. Claire Levy — armed with studies saying the juvenile brain is not fully developed — say teenagers have time to turn their lives around.

"They're so immature, so impulsive," said Levy, D-Boulder. "They are not capable of fully comprehending the gravity of their actions or long- term consequences."

Levy's bill would allow 14- and 15-year-old defendants to ask a judge — instead of a prosecutor — to decide whether they should be tried as adults.

Levy said Colorado is one of seven states that give their district attorneys sole discretion to prosecute adolescents as either juveniles — sending them into child-centric alternative programs — or as adults, who often land in state prisons.

Abuse potential seen

Public defenders say that that power can be abused and judges should have the option to require that kids stay in the juvenile system.

Of Denver's 134 teens eligible to be tried as adults last year, 13 faced adult courts, according to the district attorney's office.

At least 1,244 cases have resulted in juvenile convictions in adult courts between 1998 and 2006, the year that The Denver Post analyzed state court administrator data.

A district attorney's choice to seek adult punishments "is a tool they use judiciously," said Ted Tow, executive director of the Colorado District Attorney's Council. "We're talking about brutal assaults, aggravated assaults, rapes," he said. "Those bills . . . are simply bad for public safety."

Prosecutors did not always have powers so broad. Before 1993, teenage felons 16 years or older could be tried as adults for only the most serious crimes or if they were repeat offenders.

But stray bullets loosed during 1993's so-called Summer of Violence shook the public. Gang violence raged across Denver, hitting unintended targets. A 5-year-old boy was shot in a drive-by, and a bullet struck a 10-month-old on a visit to the Denver Zoo.

The ensuing three years saw laws allowing more teens — as young as 14 — to be tried as adults and for more offenses. Vehicular assaults and homicides were added to the list, among others.

Life sentences

Colorado has sent more than 18 of every 100,000 teens ages 14-17 to prison for life, according to research from advocacy groups Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. As of 2006, a dozen other states had more people serving life sentences for youth crimes.

In 2006, Colorado lawmakers repealed life without parole for juveniles.

The Denver Post

The Citizen's Guide To Surviving A Police Encounter

You Tube And Ira Glasser

Adjusting To Life On The Outside - NPR

by Kathy Lohr on NPR

Morning Edition, February 27, 2007 · Willie "Pete" Williams spent 22 years in a Georgia prison for a rape he did not commit. DNA evidence recently exonerated him — but not before he spent half his life in jail.

"Being free — there's nothing that can actually replace that," says Williams, who was released in January. "Freedom, it means everything."

The long years of incarceration have taken their toll on Williams, who continues to question whether his newfound freedom is real.

"I still have problems with that," he says. "I wake up 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, taking a look around, making sure that I'm not inside of a prison."

After a month of constant media attention, he's trying to figure out how to start his life over. He says he wants what everyone on the outside has: a job, a home and a woman who cares about him. One of his teachers is another man from Georgia, released from prison seven years ago.

The Challenge of Starting Over

Calvin Johnson was falsely convicted of rape and received a life sentence. He served 16 years before becoming the first man in Georgia to be freed by DNA evidence in 1999.

"Everything is new," says Johnson. "I mean, you come out, and it's a big world. Sometimes, you just want to look. You catch yourself just looking at everything, just watching people, actions, how to dress — just to see what's going on around you."

Not long after he was released, Johnson began working for Atlanta's rail system, the MARTA. As a supervisor, his job is to check in at the stations and make sure things are running smoothly. Johnson is so thrilled with his job and with his new life that he smiles almost constantly. He says he has a lot to smile about. He had some big advantages, including strong family support and a college education.

In prison, Johnson did hard labor. He worked in the prison library and with men in isolation. On his resume, he credited the state of Georgia as his employer.

Lisa George of the Georgia Innocence Project says exonerated prisoners are often released with little to support them in their new life of freedom.

"We watch these guys walk out of the courtroom, and everything they have to show for decades of their lives is contained in a Tupperware box," George says.

"If you walk somebody out of the courtroom, having gotten them exonerated after 20 years, and you shake their hands on the courthouse step and say, 'Thank you, have a nice life,' you're setting them up for failure," she says.

Compensation for Life Spent in Jail

The Georgia Innocence project took Calvin Johnson's story to the state legislature; ultimately, he received a half-million dollars. According to the national Innocence Project in New York, about half of those exonerated by DNA have received some kind of compensation — from a few thousand dollars to as much as $12 million. Twenty-one states have laws that allow such payments, but most hear each case individually before deciding whether to pay anything at all.

Johnson says he knows he's one of the lucky ones. He faced a number of challenges: learning how to use computers and cell phones, opening up a bank account and even getting a fair deal on his first apartment. The manager wanted to double or triple his security deposit.

Johnson persuaded the manager to rent the apartment at the regular rate. He says the key was never letting let the small problems deter him from his true goals.

"I have a steady job. I'm a homeowner. I have a lovely wife. I have a daughter. I have a little dog that wags his tail," he says. "Basically, you could say I'm living the American dream."

Johnson says he still catches himself looking around sometimes, unsure that his life is real.

Drug Sentencing Guideline Go Into Effect

NEW YORK (AP) — Marsha Cunningham was no drug dealer. But when authorities busted her boyfriend in the 1990s for selling crack and powdered cocaine, they also arrested her on a crack possession charge.

Her sentence: Fifteen years behind bars, only two less than her boyfriend got.

But Cunningham is now one of up to 20,000 inmates convicted of crack offenses who may see their prison terms reduced under new federal guidelines intended to bring retroactive fairness to drug sentencing.

"Marsha is a really good person," said her aunt, Ruby Jones of Houston. "She got caught up in this behind her boyfriend."

The sentencing guidelines went into effect Monday — the result of a December decision by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to ease the way the system came down far harder on crack-related crimes than on those involving powdered cocaine.

AP Story

Incentive To Cut Recidivism

Getting bonused to cut recidivism is a good place to start in getting those in corrections to do their job that much better. Could we penalize private companies contractually by this scheme?

A ground-breaking "payment by results" scheme will turn most prisons into self-governing bodies that will win cash rewards - including bonuses for governors - if they cut reoffending rates among former inmates, David Cameron pledged yesterday.

In a shake-up of criminal justice policy, a future Conservative government would allow prisons to hire private companies or voluntary groups to steer inmates away from a return to crime - or risk a reduction in funds.

Successful prisons, which prevent former inmates from reoffending for two years after their release, would be paid a "premium tariff payment" - a sum equivalent to the amount the state spends on processing an offender through the criminal justice system again.

Prisons that failed to meet their targets would be denied the extra payments and would have to rely on the "basic tariff" paid to house each inmate.

Nick Herbert, the shadow justice secretary, said the system would cut reconviction rates by 20% and cost the taxpayer nothing because it would redirect £259m that would be spent on future offenders into the new programmes.

UK

Costs Prison Population Going Up

KUSA - A new report by the Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project finds that the prison population in this country has crossed a sobering threshold, including here in Colorado.

The report shows more than 1 in 100 adults in America are behind bars–and details what that is costing state taxpayers. Last year Colorado taxpayers footed a bill of $599 million to incarcerate 23 thousand people–a slight increase from last year still making them the 22nd highest number in the country.

Pew's study, One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008, details state and regional prison growth rates. It identifies how corrections spending compares to other state investments, key reasons behind the cost increases, and what some states are doing to limit growth and costs while maintaining public safety.

The report points out that prison growth and higher incarceration rates do not mirror a parallel increase in crime or a corresponding surge in the population at large.

Rather, it flows principally from a wave of policy choices that are sending more lawbreakers to prison and, through popular "three-strikes" measures and other sentencing enhancements, imposing longer prison stays on inmates.
9 NEWS

Tess Damm Faces Up To 25 Years

BOULDER A Lafayette teenager whose troubled relationship with her mother ended in a grisly murder and cover-up that ensnared four young lives pleaded guilty Monday to charges that could keep her in prison into her 40s.

Dressed in black with her long, blond hair down, Tess Damm fidgeted in court Monday and whispered "guilty" to murder charges in connection with the 2007 stabbing death of her mother, Linda Damm.

The plea agreement reached in the case could keep the 16-year-old behind bars up to 25 years.

"We think this is a good deal," said one of Tess Damm's uncles, Dennis Comeau.

Comeau was in court along with Linda Damm's brother, John Schueller, and a few of the teenager's friends. One girl waved at Tess Damm as she was being led out of the courtroom, her feet shackled but her hands free.

The gesture brought a grin to Tess Damm's face.

"You made her smile," another friend said.

Moments earlier, Tess Damm pleaded guilty, as a juvenile, to second-degree murder and, as an adult, to solicitation to commit second-degree murder.

Rocky Mountain News

Number Of Prisoners Triples -- CCJRC In The News

The number of Coloradans in prison has nearly tripled in 15 years, costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars.

The prison population stands at 22,424. That number, plus 9,567 parolees and 13,200 people in county jails, represents more than 1 percent of the state's adult population, according to statistics kept by the Colorado Department of Corrections and County Sheriffs of Colorado.

The Pew Center on the States last week reported that 2,319,258 Americans were in jail or prison at the start of 2008 - one out of every 99.1 adults. Whether per capita or in raw numbers, it's more than any other nation.

The study found that 8.8 percent of Colorado's general fund - $599 million - was spent on corrections in 2007, compared with the national average of 6.8 percent. Only Oregon, Florida and Vermont had higher percentages.

Like the nation at large, Colorado has seen an explosion in the prison population the past 15 years, as law officers have pushed for longer sentences.

"We're averaging 98 new inmates a month," said Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti.

DOC needs to add the equivalent of one prison a year to the system, meaning that essentially "we're asking for more money all the time," she said.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers says the drop in the crime rate over the past 15 years proves that longer sentences are working, and so the cost of imprisoning more people for longer periods is money well spent.

"I don't think there's a lot of people in prison who don't belong there," said Suthers, who formerly headed Colorado's Department of Corrections.

Three quarters of prison inmates are behind bars for violent crimes or had a violent crime in their past, he said.

The drug dealers and drug users who make up most of the rest of the inmate population generally had three or four chances before a judge finally gave up and sentenced them to prison, Suthers said.

Critics point to the disparate number of minorities and poor people in prison, said Suthers.

"But the single most identifying characteristic is that seven out of 10 of these inmates never at any point in their lives lived with their natural father," he said. "We're paying a high price for the level of dysfunctional families we've had for decades."

Suthers said the other big factor in the burgeoning prison population is the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, starting 40 years ago.

The goal of treating them locally and making sure they stayed on their medications has failed, he said.

Differing sharply with Suthers is Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, a nonprofit group dedicated to lowering the prison population.

She notes that Colorado ranks 49th in the nation in spending on substance-abuse treatment and is way down the list on mental health treatment as well.

The revolving door to prison won't slow until people who are incarcerated or at risk of being so are treated for their drug addiction and mental health problems, she said.

"There is a huge gaping hole" in Colorado's treatment programs, Donner said.

She said she's never talked to a politician or county sheriff who didn't agree with her that more money is needed for treatment.

"People say they agree but that still they have to spend more and more money on prisons because more and more people are being sent there.

"It's a Catch-22. We spend money on prisons instead of on higher education or mental health. How do you turn around the Titanic?"

Donner says the 50 percent recidivism rate - higher for those on mandatory parole and those with substance-abuse problems - proves the system is broken.

As an example, Donner related a recent experience at a halfway house as a young man was being released from the corrections system.

"He was supposed to have 30 days of medications as he was released," she said. "He is schizophrenic, had been off his medications for five days and was starting to hallucinate."

But he would have to wait at least a week to get into a mental health center, she said. "His case manager told him to 'man up.' "

Rocky Mountain News

Alabama - Fight To Win Voting Rights That May Have Never Been Lost

DOTHAN, Ala. — The Rev. Kenneth Glasgow, onetime criminal and founder of a ministry called The Ordinary People Society, spent years helping people with criminal records regain the right to vote in Alabama, where an estimated 250,000 people are prohibited from voting because of past criminal activity.

Then he discovered that many of them had never actually lost the right.

Because of a quirk in its Constitution, Alabama disqualifies from voting only those who have committed a “felony involving moral turpitude.” Those who have committed other felonies — like marijuana possession or drunken driving — can cast ballots even if they are still in prison, according to the state attorney general.

But it has been slow work cajoling public officials to enforce and publicize the law. Until Friday, the secretary of state’s Web site advised, incorrectly, that those with any kind of felony conviction could not register unless they had served their time and their right to vote had been restored by the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Because neither the Legislature nor the attorney general has offered a definitive list of crimes involving moral turpitude, there is no way of knowing how many inmates are eligible to vote. But state agencies generally agree that those convicted of drug possession — at least 3,000 of Alabama’s 29,000 prison inmates and thousands more on probation — are eligible. Most felons and former felons, however, assume that they have lost the right to vote.

“This is an issue that’s never come up before,” said Richard F. Allen, the commissioner of corrections. “I would think that if there were any latent feeling out there that they wanted to vote, they would have expressed it by now.”

Mr. Glasgow, who is the half-brother of a far less obscure crusader based in New York, the Rev. Al Sharpton, believes that not only do inmates and former convicts want to vote, but also that their ballots could alter the political landscape in this Republican-leaning state, adding that his group has registered more than 500 people by visiting a handful of county jails.

“There would be a lot of difference in our legislators, our elected officials and our presidents that we’ve had,” he said. “It would definitely change the political spectrum of Alabama.”

Republicans agree. They railed against a statute passed in 2003 that made it easier for some former felons to regain their voting rights by side-stepping a lengthy and backlogged pardon process.

“There’s no more anti-Republican bill than this,” said Marty Connors, the chairman of the state Republican Party, according to news reports at the time. “As frank as I can be, we’re opposed to it because felons don’t tend to vote Republican.”

NY TIMES

Senator Leads Prisoners Charge

After the obvious debacle in Ft. Collins around the Tim Master's case, Mr. Morrissey shouldn't be so dismissive...

DENVER -Colorado Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon can't shake his belief that Clarence Moses- EL is innocent of the rape charges that have kept him behind bars for the past 20 years.

Gordon can't shake the notion that the victim said Moses-EL's face came to her in a dream. He can't shake the knowledge of Denver police tossing the DNA evidence into a Dumpster after a judge's order to preserve it.

And he especially can't ignore the old serology analysis that showed Moses-EL's blood type was different from what was found in semen swabbed from the victim's body.

Gordon, a former defense attorney, had no role in the case. But after immersing himself in the trial transcripts, the 16-year lawmaker is poised to create legislation giving a new trial to Moses-EL and any other prisoners who might have been prevented from pursuing DNA tests because their case evidence was lost.

The condition: A judge must have ordered it preserved.

"There should not be a wrong without a remedy," Gordon says.

It's a law that might have only one beneficiary: Moses-EL. Last year, a Denver Post survey of defense attorneys turned up no other examples where all the biological evidence in a case was discarded after a court order.

State law and current legislative proposals provide no remedies for evidence destruction, although Gordon, D-Denver, and a gubernatorial task force are seeking to require retention of DNA evidence in major felonies for the life of the defendant.

A spokesman with the Colorado attorney general's office declined to comment on Gordon's plans until the bill's language can be reviewed. Gordon said he expects to submit the legislation this week.

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey has refused to reopen the Moses-EL case at the request of new defense attorney Trip DeMuth — even though Morrissey's office prosecuted a man named LC Jackson, initially identified as a suspect by the victim in the Moses-El case, last year for a rape 18 blocks away.

Morrissey declined to comment on Gordon's effort....

more at the Denver Post

Prisons High On State Funding List

DENVER - State prisons in Las Animas, Pueblo and Fremont counties will see 280 more jobs and 173 more inmate beds if the Colorado Legislature goes along with a construction priority list approved on Thursday.

The list of major state construction projects that the Capital Development Committee forwards to the Joint Budget Committee each year includes adding more beds to the Fort Lyon Correctional Facility, but losing bed space at two other facilities in the region.

The prison changes were an addition to other Southern Colorado projects that also were included on the list.

In an effort to increase the number of beds the state has available for mentally ill prisoners statewide, the Colorado Department of Corrections wants about $10 million from the Legislature to make a series of changes at four facilities:

Add 74 administrative segregation beds at the San Carlos Correction Facility, but lose 103 therapeutic and special needs beds, for a net loss of 29 beds.

Add 32 therapeutic and 144 low security special needs beds to the Fremont Correctional Facility in Canon City, but take away 224 general population beds, for a net decrease of 48 beds. Add 96 high security special needs beds at the Centennial Correctional Facility in Canon City, no change to 144 close custody beds, but relocating the same number of inmates to the Colorado State Penitentiary, for a zero net change.

Add 96 close custody beds, but lose 96 medium custody beds for a zero net change.

To help make up the net loss in beds - 77 overall - the department also requested and received another $10.5 million to increase the 500-bed Fort Lyon facility near Las Animas by 250 beds.

That project also calls for expanding the facility's kitchen and dining hall, creating a new recreational facility, renovating its visiting and shop/vocational space and building a new 16 single-bunk segregation unit.

All of that also will require adding 115 new jobs to the facility.

Sen. Ken Kester, R-Las Animas, said he was pleased to see the Fort Lyon expansion get the CDC's nod, but added that the state also needs to look into expanding other state prisons in the region, such as turning the 480-bed Trinidad Correctional Facility into the "mega-facility" as was initially planned.

"What should be on the very top of our list now is the expansion of Trinidad," Kester said. "Fort Lyon and Trinidad, not because they're in my district, but because that just makes sense to expand those two facilities."

Though the Pueblo and Canon City facilities will see fewer general population inmate beds, they would gain in personnel. The DOC also is proposing increasing staff at San Carlos by 48 people, Centennial by 52 workers, Fremont by 64 people and Sterling by five.

Work at three Southern Colorado facilities also include adding kitchen and recreational space at San Carlos, installing air conditioning in cells at Centennial, and expanding the medical building by 1,970 square feet at Fremont.

If the JBC and the rest of the Legislature approve the plan, the department hopes to begin construction this summer and completing it by 2010.

Karl Spiecker, chief financial officer for DOC, said that while the department knows it will be losing beds at some facilities, it will gain much needed beds overall and help it deal with an increasing number of mentally ill inmates at the same time.

"Yes this takes beds off-line, but the upside is we're going to be able to deliver better mental health services to our inmates by having those beds on an available basis," he said.

The Pueblo Chieftain

The Tragedy Of Jail - Denver Post Editorial

"Coloradoans are rarely sent to prison for using drugs" Ninety percent of the people in prison have a drug or alcohol problem. Over twenty percent of our prison population is in prison for drugs. That's nearly 8,000 people. That's not a rarity. If the author of this article is intimating that people rarely go to prison when they are caught the first time with small amounts of drugs he is mostly correct. We do have drug courts in some places in Colorado but the failure rate on probation is nearly as high as the failure rate on parole. There still needs to be a funding stream for treatment in Colorado. We are ranked 49th in the nation for treatment dollars. If this administration is truly committed to slowing prison growth, they need to examine the roads to, through and out of prison.

Denver Post - Joseph Stalin once observed, "A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic."

So here's a statistic to ponder: More than one in 100 adult Americans are in jail or prison.

Putting it another way, that's 2.3 million individual tragedies.

Here are more tragedies:

• State governments spend nearly $50 billion a year keeping people locked up. Colorado alone is spending $704 million on prisons this year, an 8.2 percent increase over last year's budget and almost as much as the $746 million the state spends to support higher education. In 1980, prisons took just 2.6 percent of the general fund, while 22 percent went to higher education. Today, prisons and colleges each receive about 10 percent of the general fund.

• America leads the world in both the number and the percentage of its incarcerated population — with many more people behind bars than even second-place China, whose population of 1.3 billion residents is four times that of the U.S.

• The burden of incarceration falls most heavily on minority males. One-ninth of all black men age 20 to 34 are behind bars.

These statistics come from a report released this past week by the Pew Center on the States and this year's state budget.

The Pew report attributes much of the ballooning prison population to tougher state and federal sentencing rules imposed since the mid-1980s. Imposing longer sentences on repeat offenders has reduced crime rates somewhat. But the Pew report also documents that for the nonviolent criminals who make up about half of the incarcerated population, alternative punishments such as community corrections and mandatory drug treatment can be more effective than draconian sentences at reducing repeat offenses for far less cost.

Colorado, which has literally doubled and redoubled sentences for some crimes in the last 30 years, began some modest reforms in 2003 when Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, won passage of a bill that increased treatment for drug and alcohol abuse for inmates.

Coloradans are rarely sent to prison for using drugs, but drug or alcohol abuse is a factor in 75 percent of the crimes that land people in our prisons. In short, an offender may have been sent to prison for robbing a liquor store, but he committed the robbery to get money for drugs.

By treating the underlying addictions that often lead to crimes, Gordon's more enlightened approach — now being expanded by Gov. Bill Ritter — has finally begun to slow the growth of prison costs in Colorado. Ritter has asked for just a 6 percent increase in next year's prison budget, the smallest such increase since 1992.

That reduction in the rate of growth in our prison system is a modest first step toward reducing what can be the tragedy of crime and imprisonment. Colorado should continue pursuing better and more cost-effective ways to bring down our crime rate.

The Denver Post