Drug Users: Problems and Opportunities

The Sentencing Project released this report last week.

On Wednesday, October 15, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) and the Administration of Justice Department of George Mason University hosted a symposium entitled “Drugs in America: Trafficking, Policy and Sentencing.”

The event featured a number of experts in the field to examine how drugs enter into the United States and how they are distributed to users; law enforcement practices pertaining to drug usage and drug-related crimes; and punitive vs. public health responses to drug abuse.

Since entering the U.S. Congress, Senator Webb has hosted two Senate hearings on the causes of America’s mass incarceration rate. He is committed to finding solutions that are both responsive to our needs for law and order, and fairer to those ensnared by the system.

Governor Presents Crime Package

The money is not being funneled into the community for reentry services, if you read the proposal you will see that it is mostly going to the Department of Corrections for treatment inside the prison. There needs to be more in the community to help people to reintegrate and provide the services they need once they get out.

DENVER -- After William VanOstol got out of prison the second time, he said he found a way to never go back."It's easy to get lost and get back into an unhealthy lifestyle, but as long as you got resources, you can get over the hurdles of getting back into society because you got people there to help you,” he said.At the John Inman Work and Family Center, a re-entry program is helping him find work and hope."It's constant, intensive case management," said Nicole Lewis, a community re-entry specialist.She said the program is designed to help offenders with issues ranging from housing to mental health."We can help reduce the recidivism rate because they know to come back if life happens," she said.It's that type of program that would expand under the package that Gov. Bill Ritter, a former prosecutor, presented before the Colorado Criminal and Juvenile Justice Commission on Thursday."There is a group that I think will respond to substance abuse counseling, mental health services and assistance in improving their education level," said Ritter.He said the plan would improve public safety, while saving public dollars. He said his proposal to reduce the number of felons who commit new crimes and go back to jail could save taxpayers $380 million over five years, including $336 million by eliminating the need to expand a prison in Trinidad."We think we can do enough that ultimately we can avoid building a $360 million addition to a prison in Colorado," he said.But some law enforcement agents are concerned that may be jumping the gun."I don't know how how realistic those assumptions are," said John Suthers, Colorado's attorney general.
The Denver Channel

Ritter To Cut Prison Costs By $380 Million

Gov. Bill Ritter used a joint meeting with the 27-member Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice on Thursday to announce his plan to save $380 million in skyrocketing prison costs over the next five years.

His proposed 2009-10 crime prevention and recidivism package, which carries a one-year price tag of $10.6 million, is part of his fiscal year 2009-10 budget proposal. It will be submitted this weekend to the legislature's Joint Budget Committee.

Done right, the governor said, Colorado could eliminate the planned 2,061-bed expansion of the Trinidad Correctional Facility. Its projected cost, $336 million, is included in the governor's projected savings.

The governor's plan would emphasize prevention services for youth, non-prison programs for non-violent offenders, substance-abuse treatment and offender education.

Ritter also praised the crime panel, which, in turn, presented Ritter with its own 10 months' of work embodied in a preliminary set of 66 recommendations on how to cut costs. The final report is expected in December.

Ritter, a former prosecutor, assured the panel that this was a cooperative effort and details of the two plans could mesh. His own package "doesn't take the place of your work ... this is a dynamic conversation," Ritter told the gathering of more than 100 people, including commission members, corrections experts and elected officials.

The key to reducing costs, Ritter said, is reducing recidivism — repeat offenders. The bad news is that adult recidivism increased from 50 to 53 percent in roughly the last three years. Ritter said that reducing recidivism would cost money at first, but ultimately save more.

"It's important for us to get this right," he said. In a stormy economy, when taxpayers are stressed and revenue numbers are difficult to project, it's important "to be prudent, frugal and responsible with taxpayer money."

Ritter acknowledged that for taxpayers and the public, "there's a great deal of nervousness when people in public office begin talking about public safety issues ... you have to understand public safety will remain the paramount concern."

Ritter also gave some opinions on the commission's preliminary recommendations, saying, "I affirm the direction you've taken," and singled out several reforms he agreed with.

The area of technical violations needs reform, he said, noting that many felons return to prison not because they commit new crimes but because they technically violate their probation. He agreed such breaches could be dealt, for example, with jail days, "not always the sledgehammer of a prison bed."

He agreed there should be a comprehensive review of the "overworked" parole system.

He also cited behavioral issues as a needed reform, given that 78 percent of inmates have substance abuse problems and nearly 29 percent have mental health issues.

He also liked the idea of offering inmates opportunities for higher education, subject to "fiscal realities."

He was far less enthusiastic about the commission's recommendation to increase "earned time," which would let inmates out early who had earned it in some way, such as by demonstrating good behavior or reaching an educational goal.

From his experience as a prosecutor, Ritter said, he knew that idea was controversial. "The devil will absolutely be in the details and we'll have to wait for those devils — those details — to emerge," Ritter said, to laughter.

Rocky Mountain News

Governor's New Recidivism Reduction

Governor Ritter's Recidivism Reduction Package

Gov. Bill Ritter today presented the Colorado Criminal and Juvenile Justice Commission with his proposed 2009-10 crime-prevention and recidivism-reduction package, which is projected to save taxpayers $380 million over five years.

The package will be contained within Gov. Ritter's fiscal year 2009-10 budget proposal, which will be submitted to the legislature's Joint Budget Committee this weekend. Gov. Ritter and Budget Director Todd Saliman will hold a news conference about the entire budget proposal at 11 a.m. Sunday in the Governor's Office.

"This package represents a strong commitment to preventing crime, keeping the public safe and protecting communities," Gov. Ritter said. "It is also a commitment to solid fiscal policy and protecting taxpayer dollars. We face economic challenges unlike any we've ever seen. Now, more than ever, we must make the wisest investments possible that ultimately will save us hundreds of millions of dollars.

"This package does just that by making strategic investments in programs and services that will keep offenders from committing new crimes, from victimizing innocent people and from returning to prison at great taxpayer expense," Gov. Ritter said.

This will be the third year of significant recidivism-reduction initiatives under Gov. Ritter.

Complaints Against Nottingham Dismissed

Will there be criminal charges filed now....or will those be dropped as well.

The chief judge of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an order dismissing complaints against former Chief U.S. District Judge Edward W. Nottingham who resigned last week amid allegations involving prostitutes.

Chief Judge Robert Henry initiated a misconduct complaint against Nottingham on Oct. 1 alleging that he had been a client of a prostitution businesses in violation of Colorado law and had misused his court-owned cell phone in making calls to prostitutes, and had made false statements during the court's investigation. The matter also was referred to a special investigative committee.

On Oct. 8, two committees submitted a joint report to the Judicial Council.

Two days later, another misconduct complaint was filed

against Nottingham by a prostitute who said Nottingham was a client and that on Feb. 29, he had asked her to lie to federal investigators about the nature of their relationship.

Henry dismissed the complaint because it is "moot" now that Nottingham has resigned.

The Denver Post

Voting Early From Jail

Writer:

Andrew Travers

Byline:

Aspen Daily News Staff Writer

Almost one-fourth of the inmates in the Pitkin County Jail have voted in Tuesday’s election by casting mail-in ballots from the inside.

Percentage-wise it may be the highest jail turnout in the state. But, being that there are only 13 inmates in the Aspen facility, the three inmate voter tally unsurprisingly falls below the numbers in counties with bigger facilities.

Statewide, the jail turnout is expected to reach new heights this year, as a Denver-based group called the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition (CCJRC) has spearheaded the first statewide voting rights education initiative for inmates and convicted criminals.

“You’ve got a lot of people in there who are eligible to vote,” said CCJRC’s re-entry coordinator Carol Peeples. “But there is a lot confusion and they are unsure of their rights, and we don’t want anyone to be disenfranchised.”

In previous election years, the extent to which inmates were given information on their right to vote was up to the initiative of jail staff. The Pitkin County Jail has long coordinated voting for those eligible in the facility and given them information on their rights or lack thereof. But some counties do nothing unless asked by an inmate.

“We are committed to making sure eligible inmates have the opportunity to vote,” Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, who oversees the jail, said this week.

In Colorado you are barred from voting only from the day you are convicted of a felony offense until you complete your prison time and any parole sentence.

So you can vote if you are in jail on a misdemeanor conviction, free on bail for any crime, if you are a pre-trial jail detainee, or have completed your sentence and parole. Colorado felons are allowed to vote while on probation.

Colorado stands among five states with the same felon-voting law, and is decidedly moderate in comparison with others around the country: 12 states permanently ban people from voting if they’ve ever been incarcerated for a felony, 18 bar them until they have completed a sentence and any probationary period.

There are 15 states with less restrictions on felon voting than Colorado — including Maine and Vermont, where convicts are not restricted from voting in any way, and are allowed to vote from prison.

Pitkin County jailer Jim DeBerge solicited the voter-eligible inmates here before the Oct. 6 registration deadline. A 25-year veteran of the jail, DeBerge has coordinated inmate voting before, but he said this was the first time an outside group sent him information packets to help register inmates in a vote-from-jail campaign.

“It just made it a step easier than it was in other years,” DeBerge said.

None of the men who voted from the jail had driver’s licenses or any of the identifying paperwork required to vote. But DeBerge printed their jail booking photos and information, which the Pitkin County Clerk and Recorder’s office accepted.

Denver County Jail tried the same thing for between 30 and 40 of its inmates who wanted to vote but did not have identification. They were rejected and not allowed to register, said Major Victoria Connors, who runs the 2,000-inmate facility.

Despite the rejections, Connors said she expects to more than double her 30-some inmate vote count from four years ago.

“Response has been really positive,” Connors said, though she admitted she had hoped more inmates would express interest. Just 150 of roughly 2,000 inmates requested mail-in ballots. About 400 in the jail, she estimated, were eligible.

One of their detainee voters, she said, was a man facing 19 felony accusations, likely convictions and the rest of his life in state penitentiaries.

“This is probably the last time he’ll vote in his life,” she said. “It makes you realize what a privilege it is that you’re taking away from people.”

Early voting has also opened what some might call a loophole for would-be felons, though. What happens if you are convicted before Election Day, but voted before that conviction? You’re all right, said Colorado’s Elections Communications Manager Richard Coolidge.

“If you vote while you are not a convicted felon, your vote will count,” Coolidge said Wednesday.

Aspen Daily News

DA Says Convictions Are Solid

DA: Convictions solid

Review of thousands of cases shows none need revisited

BY TREVOR HUGHES
TrevorHughes@coloradoan.com

Local prosecutors have concluded that no old convictions based on circumstantial evidence need to be revisited in light of new DNA testing techniques.

District Attorney Larry Abrahamson announced the review of thousands of cases shortly after a special judge on Jan. 22 freed Timothy Masters from a 1999 murder conviction.

A jury sent Masters to prison for life, based entirely on circumstantial evidence tying him to the 1987 stabbing death of Peggy Hettrick. Masters was freed in large part because new DNA tests pointed toward another suspect in the case, a man who had initially been cleared by police.

Per longstanding local policy, prosecutors and police kept pieces of Hettrick's clothing for the intervening decades, and new tests paid for by Masters showed no physical connection to him.

Abrahamson said his prosecutors examined 3,242 cases, ultimately narrowing the list to 36 that met his criteria: identity was an issue, the convict was still incarcerated, the conviction was based on circumstantial evidence, and DNA evidence still existed.

After pulling those files, Abrahamson said none of them seemed to fit the criteria.
The Coloradoan

A Win For Purged Voters

Ballots cast by voters who have been canceled from the state's voter rolls since mid-May will get extra oversight to make sure their votes are counted, under an agreement reached late Wednesday in U.S. District Court.

Common Cause of Colorado, Mi Familia Vota Education Fund and the Service Employees International Union sued Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman, alleging that his office had violated the National Voter Registration Act by illegally purging about 31,000 eligible voters from the rolls 90 days before the election.

The state insists the actual number is smaller.

The plaintiffs had asked Senior U.S. District Judge John L. Kane Jr. for a preliminary injunction that by Tuesday would reinstate voters who had been

VOTER INFO

• CONFIRM your registration status
• LEARN more about Colorado's voting process

EARLY VOTING LOCATIONS

• Adams County
• Arapahoe County
• Boulder County
• Broomfield County
• Denver City & County
• Douglas County
• Jefferson County

removed from the rolls. They also asked Kane to order the state to stop removing people until after the election.

Just before Kane was set to rule on the matter, the plaintiffs and the sec retary of state's office reached an agreement.

The morning after the election, the state will generate a list of voters who were removed from the rolls since May 14 and send it to county clerks and the groups' attorneys for review.

The Denver Post

Governor To Hear Recommendations

CCJRC has been heavily involved with this project. For a list of recommendations

2008 Recommendations

We will keep you updated on those that are approved and any other developments as they arise.

Should an inmate who cracks the books and earns a diploma get out early?

What about positive-reinforcement programs in prisons - do they work?

Those ideas are among 66 recommendations for reducing prison costs - and possibly, prison sentences - that will be presented to Gov. Bill Ritter on Thursday.

The list represents 10 months of work by the Colorado Commission on Criminal & Juvenile Justice, formed by Ritter in January. It would affect both adults and juveniles who make up the state's inmate population of 23,300.

The panel's overriding goals were to find ways to reduce soaring prison costs without compromising public safety or shuffling the costs from one agency to another, said Lance Clem, spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

It is up to Ritter to choose which of the ideas to push. Most of the points could be implemented through directives to state agencies, such as the Department of Corrections. But 13 of them would require legislative approval.

Prison and parole costs eat up about 8 percent of the state budget and likely will grow to 12 percent in a few years.

In the last fiscal year, the Department of Corrections received more than $636 million, which, adjusted for inflation, was more than four times what it received 20 years ago, according to a report done for the state earlier this year.

The recommendations were drawn up by a 27-member panel that includes representatives of law enforcement, as well as attorneys, victims rights advocates, elected officials and corrections experts.

Clem said the actual cost savings can't be estimated until the governor decides which recommendations to act on.

The proposals that would require legislative approval include:

* Abolishing laws that keep some ex-inmates from receiving driver's licenses. Driving is a key to employment and becoming a productive member of society, the panel said.

* Lifting any statutory barriers that would prevent funding of secondary education for inmates.

* Giving inmates opportunities to reduce their sentences by completing certain goals, such as education degrees.

* Offering positive-reinforcement programs and incentives to help inmates complete probation.

Rocky Mountain News

Texas Shakedown Leads To Phones and Weapons

HOUSTON (AP) — A systemwide shakedown of the huge Texas prison system is netting authorities more contraband than just illegal cell phones.

Officers have turned up 61 weapons, 52 instances of tobacco products and 14 discoveries of money — all prohibited for the some 155,000 inmates in the state's 111 prisons.

That's on top of the 120 phone and phone components like chargers found as the first full week of the inspections ended Monday.

A statewide lockdown of the system began hours after death row inmate Richard Tabler was caught making a call from his cell. The phone had been traced to a series of calls that began earlier this month to state Sen. John Whitmire.

Authorities said Tabler also shared the device with at least nine of his fellow condemned prisoners. Investigators determined some 2,800 calls were made from the phone from inside the Polunsky Unit near Livingston.

Tabler was moved Wednesday to a prison medical psychiatric facility after officers believed he was attempting to kill himself, and Tabler's mother and sister both have been charged with introducing contraband into the prison system, a felony, for buying minutes to keep the phone active.

Inspections at about 15 units were completed, meaning an easing of the lockdown that had confined prisoners to their cells and barred visitations of inmates by relatives. Authorities believe bribed corrections officers are responsible for a number of the contraband items.

AP Report

Conservatives Have Reshaped Appeals Court

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — After a group of doctors challenged a South Dakota law forcing them to inform women that abortions “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being” — using exactly that language — President Bush’s appointees to the federal appeals courts took control.

A federal trial judge, stating that whether a fetus is human life is a matter of debate, had blocked the state from enforcing the 2005 law as a likely violation of doctors’ First Amendment rights. And an appeals court panel had upheld the injunction.

But this past June, the full Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit voted 7 to 4 to overrule those decisions and allow the statute to take immediate effect. The majority argued that it is objectively true that human life begins at conception, and that the state can force doctors to say so.

Mr. Bush had appointed six of the seven judges in the conservative majority. His administration has transformed the nation’s federal appeals courts, advancing a conservative legal revolution that began nearly three decades ago under Ronald Reagan.

Earlier this month, Mr. Bush pointed with pride to his record at a conference sponsored by the Cincinnati chapter of the Federalist Society, the elite network for the conservative legal movement. He noted that he had appointed more than a third of the federal judiciary expected to be serving when he leaves office, a lifetime-tenured force that will influence society for decades and represents one of his most enduring accomplishments. While a two-term president typically leaves his stamp on the appeals courts — Bill Clinton appointed 65 judges, Mr. Bush 61 — Mr. Bush’s judges were among the youngest ever nominated and are poised to have an unusually strong impact.

They have arrived at a time when the appeals courts, which decide tens of thousands of cases a year, are increasingly getting the last word. While the Supreme Court gets far more attention, in recent terms it has reviewed only about 75 cases a year—half what it considered a generation ago. And Mr. Bush’s appointees have found allies in likeminded judges named by Mr. Bush’s father and Mr. Reagan.

CCJRC Helps Vote From Jail

By Naomi Zeveloff 10/23/08 2:58 PM

Hundreds of thousands of Colorado voters are sending their mail-in ballots back to county clerks this week, and among them are several dozen jail inmates who successfully registered to vote this year.

The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition recently launched a vigorous vote-from-jail campaign. And while some counties have been more receptive than others, in Denver alone the number of voting inmates quadrupled from 20 people in 2004 to 80 this year.

“People were really excited,” says CCJRC re-entry coordinator Carol Peeples. “They said, ‘Thank you.’”

In spite of the increased interest, voting from jail is no easy task. First of all, not everyone who wants to register to vote is eligible to do so. In Colorado, felons and felon parolees are barred from voting. People who are on probation may vote. And those in jail awaiting trial or serving time for a misdemeanor crime may also vote.

The CCJRC Web site recommends that eligible detainees re-register to vote, even if they had signed on previously, because “there is a good chance that your name was removed from the Secretary of State’s list of registered voters.”

Many eligible inmates never register to vote, however, because they lack the right identification. Major Vicki Connors at the Denver County Jail estimates that 400 of the facility’s 2,000 inmates are eligible to vote. Some inmates asked a family member to bring a driver’s license or a state identification card to the jail, while others gave jail staff permission to go through their property and find an ID. But many had no paperwork whatsoever. “Quite a few didn’t have any ID, not even on the outside,” she says.

Connors and Peeples appealed to Secretary of State Mike Coffman to allow inmates to use their booking sheets — which include a photo and a birth date — as identification in order to register. But, according to Peeples, Coffman denied the request on the grounds that the sheet doesn’t include a residential address.

Coffman’s office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

“The rule of thumb is if it is not acceptable on the outside, then we can’t use it on the inside,” says Connors. “It was like we were going over and above [the call of duty], and that is against the rules.”

Connors says she facilitated voting for inmates in other ways. She posted CCJRC pamphlets around the jail and distributed voter affidavit forms to interested inmates, who then returned them, along with a photocopy of an ID as well as the registration form, to the county clerk.

When inmates receive their mail-in ballots, they must fill them out in the jail library, since they can’t have pens elsewhere in the building. Then they use money from their own commissary funds to pay for the ballot’s $1.17 in postage.

Colorado Independent

Homeless Sweeps Suspended

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Map, News) - Colorado Springs is suspending publicly financed cleanups of homeless camps while it examines the legal and ethical issues involved in the monthly sweeps.

The Colorado Veterans Alliance claims that the cleanup campaign has illegally discarded VA paperwork, medications, IDs and service medals that belong to homeless veterans. The group has formally notified the city it plans to file a lawsuit in federal court.

Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful, which cleans up homeless camps under a contract with the city, says it only discards trash left behind after police order homeless people out of illegal camps.

The group denies conducting illegal searches or destroying personal property, saying anything of value is turned over to police, where the owners can go to claim the items.

The Examiner

Felons Learning They CAN Vote

>Reporting from Baltimore -- Before Kimberly Haven set out to register voters this month, she checked Baltimore city records to find a neighborhood with a surprising feature: a large number of felons.

There, on a litter-strewn street corner, her team ran into Lonnell Burke, who was waiting to catch a bus to a local drug rehab center. With cocaine and armed burglary convictions, Burke assumed he was barred from the polls forever. But thanks to a recent change in Maryland law, he found himself signing papers to become a registered voter.

"I didn't think the doors would ever open for ex-offenders to vote," said Burke, 50, who called the unexpected encounter "a blessing."

At least a dozen states have changed their laws since 2003 to allow more felons who are no longer in prison to cast ballots, reversing a long-standing trend.

And though studies show that felons lean Democratic, states led by Republican governors have loosened their voting rules, including Alabama, Nebraska, Nevada and Florida -- where officials have learned from the 2000 presidential race just how close an election can be.
States restored voting rights to about 760,000 felons in the last decade, according to tallies by voting rights groups, but data on how many have registered to cast ballots are sketchy. Whether these voters could tip an election in a presidential swing state is a matter of speculation.
LA Times

GEO Indicted For Murder

McALLEN, Texas — A private prison company based in Florida has been indicted in the death of a Texas prisoner just days before his release.

The indictment released Thursday alleges The GEO Group let other inmates fatally beat Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. with padlocks stuffed into socks.

He died four days before his scheduled release from a facility in Raymondville on the southern tip of Texas.

A jury ordered the company to pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a 2006 civil judgment. He died in 2001.

Calls to The GEO Group and the Willacy County District Attorney's Office were not immediately returned Friday. The GEO Group was formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp.

Chronicle

10 Tips For Voters

Just Vote Colorado offers the following 10 tips to ensure your vote is counted this election.


1. Verify your registration. Before going to the polls, confirm your voter registration at www.JustVoteColorado.org.

2. Confirm your polling location. Even if you’ve voted in the same place for 30 years, polling places can change, so make sure you know where to go on Election Day.

3. Vote early. Record turnout is expected this year, Colorado voters can vote early from October 20- October 30. Take advantage of it to avoid long lines and alleviate the strain on local election officials.

4. Remember your ID. Colorado law requires that voters provide ID at the polls. Many forms of ID are acceptable; visit www.JustVoteColorado.org for a full list of IDs.

5. Don’t give anyone an excuse to keep you out of the polls. In Colorado, electioneering at the polls, such as wearing campaign paraphernalia into a polling place —shirts, a buttons, etc.—is against the law. Cover up your campaign materials to ensure a smooth voting experience.

6. Report all voting problems to Election Protection at 1-866-OUR-VOTE or 866ourvote.org. You can also send us an update through our Twitter Report Your Vote page http://twitter.com/866ourvote.

7. Do not be intimidated by false rumors. Eligible registered voters cannot be denied the right to vote because their homes have been foreclosed upon, they are late on child support payments, they have outstanding parking tickets, or they are students at local universities.

8. If you have been convicted of a felony, know your rights. Colorado allows people who have been convicted of a felony and completed their sentence (and parole) to vote. Don’t be intimidated by misinformation.

9. Avoid the crowds. Voting lines are shortest in the mid-morning or early afternoon.

10. Bring your family, friends and neighbors. Help elderly voters, Americans with disabilities, and people without transport get to the polls – no one should be left behind on Election Day!

Fox News

The California Prison Disaster

The mass imprisonment philosophy that has packed prisons and sent corrections costs through the roof around the country has hit especially hard in California, which has the largest prison population, the highest recidivism rate and a prison budget raging out of control.

According to a new federally backed study conducted at the University of California, Irvine, the state’s corrections costs have grown by about 50 percent in less than a decade and now account for about 10 percent of state spending — nearly the same amount as higher education. The costs could rise substantially given that a federal lawsuit may require the state to spend $8 billion to bring the prison system’s woefully inadequate medical services up to constitutional standards.

The solution for California is to shrink its vastly overcrowded prison system. To do so, it would need to move away from mandatory sentencing laws that have proved to be disastrous across the country — locking up more people than protecting public safety requires.

In addition, the state also has perhaps the most counterproductive and ill-conceived parole system in the United States. More people are sent to prison in California by parole officers than by the courts. In addition, about 66 percent of California’s parolees land back in prison after three years, compared with about 40 percent nationally. Four in 10 are sent back for technical violations like missed appointments or failed drug tests.

Later this year, the state is expected to begin testing a new system that redirects the lowest-risk drug addicts to treatment. But that will only work if the state and the counties dramatically expand treatment slots.

The heart of the problem is that California’s parole system is simply too big. Most states keep dangerous people behind bars or reserve parole supervision for the most serious offenders. California puts virtually everyone on parole, typically for three years.

Under this setup, about 80 percent of the parolees have fewer than two 15-minute meetings with a parole officer per month. That might be adequate for low-risk offenders, but it’s clearly too little time for serious offenders who present a risk to public safety.

A good first step would be to place fewer people on parole. The second step would be to reserve the most intensive supervision for offenders who present the greatest risk.

State lawmakers, some of whom are fearful of being seen as soft on crime, have failed to make perfectly reasonable sentencing modifications and other changes that the prisons desperately need. Unless they muster some courage soon, Californians will find themselves swamped by prison costs and unable to afford just about anything else.

The New York Times

Starting A Business With Skills Learned In Prison

Now here’s something you don’t see everyday: A program that helps convicted felons turn the talents they’ve learned in prison – such as making and peddling “hootch” (bootleg liquor) and re-selling smuggled cigarettes – into entrepreneurial skills they can use outside the Big House.

The Prison Entrepreneurship Program does just that, working with former dope dealers and gang leaders at the Cleveland Correctional Center, a private facility in Cleveland, Texas, to redirect their skill set, as it were, so they can run legitimate enterprises upon release. Only prisoners nearing parole are eligible for the program. Those who get accepted spend 17 hours a week in the classroom (plus homework) and get mentoring from local business leaders.

The program is the brainchild of Catherine Rohr, who quit a Wall Street job with a six-figure salary to teach convicts (mostly violent criminals) about making an honest buck. Influential convicted felons, she says, are America’s most overlooked talent pool. View a recent lecture by Rohr here.

Rohr launched the non-profit program four years ago, thanks to a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo., nonprofit that supports entrepreneurship. Kauffman likes to fund innovative programs “where no man has gone before,” says Lesa Mitchell, a vice president at the foundation.

The prison program “literally does show that people from all walks of life can be an entrepreneur,” she adds. “You don’t have to go to Stanford or MIT. If people coming out of prison can do that, you can too.”

Business Week

Medical Marijuana A Halt To Liver Transplants

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2008) — The pain is debilitating. The only option: smoking medical marijuana. That's the reality for many hepatitis C patients whose road to health includes a liver transplant. Although Canadian transplant centres are more willing than those in the United States, not everyone says yes to liver patients who smoke marijuana, and a University of Alberta researcher says that decision-making process is unacceptable.

Karen Kroeker, along with three other students at various universities, sent out surveys to a number of transplant clinics across the United States and Canada. Results found that the difference between the two countries were obvious in some patient groups: around 60 per cent of Canadian centres would either do the surgery or consider it for a liver transplant patient who smoked marijuana, while 70 per cent of U.S. transplant programs said absolutely not. Kroeker also found that patients in both countries, who have no social support—meaning they have no family, friends or a social worker—aren't likely to receive the organ they need.

The problem Kroeker has with these results: the lack of literature to support the surgeons' decision. As a result of her findings, which will be published in the November issue of Liver International, Kroeker says physicians need to determine eligibility criteria for liver-transplant patients that pertains directly to the likelihood of a patient rejecting the organ and is based only on empirical medical evidence.

When a patient is being reviewed for eligibility, whether they smoke marijuana shouldn't be a factor, she says. "If we have evidence to say the patients don't do well, then I think that's a reason to exclude people," Kroeker said.

She cites alcohol use as an example. When transplants first began to be performed, those who drank alcohol weren't eligible for a new liver. Kroeker's study found, however, that surgeons conducted studies on the topic of abstinence and liver health and, as a result of that research, transplant rules changed. If the patient has been sober for six months, 94 per cent of the clinics in North America will now consider transplantation.

The same goes for HIV-positive patients. "When they first started transplanting, HIV was an absolute contraindication. No one even considered transplantation because the disease was a death sentence at that time." Kroeker adds that's no longer the case and that there is research being conducted on post-transplant HIV-patients that will help determine the viability of transplants in HIV-positive patients.

In reference to her findings, Kroeker said, "I think there should be a large-scale study," because too-little research is available on post-transplant patients whose eligibility may currently be in question.

"Unless you actually perform transplants for those people, how would you know how they do?"

Science Daily

Denver Inmates Cleaning Up....Yards

Augustine Narcisse has spent 30-some years in the tidy brick house on a well-kept Denver street.

But, as her children moved on and Narcisse grew older, then retired, it became too difficult for her to keep up the place.

The grass grew too long. The leaves piled up. Eventually, someone complained.

But instead of citing Narcisse and causing her more problems, Denver officials did something else — they sent inmates to Narcisse's home to clean it up for her.

"I don't know what I would do without them," said Narcisse, 73. "You know you get old and slow, and you do need the help."

Since May, Denver city jail inmates have been making weekly rounds to the homes of elderly and disabled residents who need help maintaining their yards.

"We take care of little minor issues," said Denver Sheriff's Deputy Michael Newtown. "If it's a tree branch that's fallen, or (at) a lot of homes, we'll take the trash out for them and stuff like that."

This winter, they'll shovel snow.

Rocky Mountain News