Writing for The Daily Beast, commentator David R. Dow says last week's landmark ruling on a racist application of the death penalty in North Carolina indicates "we’re finally beginning to have an honest discussion about how we justify legally killing people." In the first invocation of North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, a judge ordered that a death-row inmate’s sentence be reduced to life in prison, after finding that his trial had been so irreversibly tainted by racism that executing him would violate the Constitution.
Twenty-one years ago, Marcus Robinson shot and killed 17-year-old Erik Tornblom. He stole Tornblom’s car and took $27 from his wallet. But Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks concluded that despite Robinson’s horrendous crime, there was no doubt that racism infected the state’s criminal-justice system—specifically, that prosecutors intentionally kept blacks off of capital juries—and that this same racism presumptively infected Robinson’s trial too. He ruled that even abhorrent crimes do not nullify the Constitution’s guarantee of racial equality.
Read full entry »"Prison has become an almost ordinary life experience for poorly educated blacks" in the United States, Harvard University Prof. Lawrence Bobo told the National Institute of Justice annual crime research conference yesterday in Arlington, Va. Bobo, the W. E. B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences, cited data showing that at any given time, one in 18 black Americans is under the supervision of the criminal justice system. A survey found that more than half of African-Americans have a friend or relative incarcerated.
Bobo said the main problem is not overt racial discrimination but rather an "interplay of factors," including family breakdowns, the poor economy and longstanding legal and political forces in favor of long prison terms. The nation's "mass incarceration powerfully diminishes the already weak employment prospects" of many poor people, Bobo said. His suggested solutions included reducing prison stays for non-violent convicts.
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A long-ago essay charging prison guards with racism lands one Florida inmate in trouble
On Thursday, November 18, 2010, at 2:30 AM, I was awakened by the little, bald-headed, myopic prisoner in the next bunk telling me he was being transferred.
“You? Are you sure?” I asked. “Did you put in for a transfer?”
“No. I only have two months left before I go home.”
That didn’t sound right. I was still groggy, having been awakened from a dream about – I couldn’t remember. You know how dreams are. But I told him he should double-check with the guard, to make sure.
I had a sneaking suspicion they’d mistakenly awakened my neighbor in bunk 116, when they meant to wake me up. I’d been fighting the prison warden and his minions at Tomoka C.I. (Daytona Beach, Florida) since the previous February, when the self-righteous mailroom clerk informed me she had confiscated a book, Wordsmith 2010, an anthology of award-winning short stories, essays, and poems, published annually by the Tampa Writers Alliance, mailed to me.
Why was the book confiscated? She said she’d read the article I’d written, and felt it was “a threat to security.” A threat to security? How could that be? The article in question, “To Protect the Guilty,” was a 2,400-word excerpt from the Prison Diary Project” sponsored by the Anne Frank Center USA in New York City, in 2008, in conjunction with the PEN American Center’s Prison Writing Program. That particular essay—a memoir—recounted my negative experiences with Ku Klux Klan (KKK) prison guards at a North Florida prison several years before.
I couldn’t imagine how that could be construed as a threat to security.
Word came down a few days later that “The warden wants your ass in jail!” The mailroom clerk had gotten the formal complaint I’d filed about the improper confiscation, had taken the book to the warden, who read the KKK memoir and was offended by it, too. Hmmm…why was he offended? Had I touched a sensitive nerve? How deep did the KKK roots go in the Florida prison system?
With the head of the 30,000-plus employee Florida Department of Corrections being a black former police chief in Tallahassee, the state capital, one would think that any prison employees who professed white supremacist, racist organization links would keep their heads down, maintain a low profile, not draw attention to themselves.
Punishing the Messenger
But no, they couldn’t resist the impulse to retaliate against the messenger, the prisoner who talked about them, the urge to strike back was too strong.
And they did.
The offended warden ordered his subordinate to write a bogus disciplinary report against me for multiple unwarranted “mail regulations violations,” for violating the strictures against advertising for a pen pal (never did, don’t have any pen pals), running a business while incarcerated (absolutely false), entering contests and sweepstakes (nope-not even a Saturday night Powerball ticket), and commercially advertising for money, goods, and services (they should have checked my account—the court found me indigent, a fancy word for “poor”). Never happened. Didn’t matter.
They call prison disciplinary hearings “Kangaroo Courts” for a reason.
I don’t know why Kangaroos have such animosity toward us, but the two kangaroos who presided over my two hearings refused to listen to a word I said, as I was standing against the far wall with my hands cuffed behind my back. I presented evidence refuting the false charges, and requested staff witnesses who could verify my statements.
Denied without any reason. Guilty. Thirty days in solitary confinement, thirty days loss of gain time. Do not pass “GO.”
It snowballed from there. I went to lockup, served every day of the thirty, no “good behavior,” unlike those caught smoking pot, possessing drugs or other contraband, who got out early. The colonel told me, when I asked why, “There’s a reason for that.”
Yes, it’s called retaliation.
I fought and fought, on paper, lost every battle (of course), and finally filed a lawsuit in the circuit court in Leon County, the state capital. Once you get out of the prison decision chain (denied, denied, denied) and into judicial review, one’s chances of receiving a fair hearing are increased.
What else could the prison officials do to me, to fire another arrow, now that my appeal war is in the hands of the court? Punitive transfer!
My neighbor double-checked with the guard. He came back. “It’s you,” he said.
Just what I suspected. The guard had made a mistake, woke up the wrong guy. I packed.
We’d been hearing about it for weeks, even months. One dorm was falling apart, collapsing, had been condemned, and 150 prisoners had to be sent elsewhere before Thanksgiving. Like the tomato fields on the side of the road, it was “U-PICK-EM.” The very people who’d retaliated against me were the ones who picked the 150 chosen to go. The word was that they were taking the opportunity to get rid of all the “troublemakers.” I knew my time there was short.
Shipping out ‘troublemakers’
A “punitive transfer” can usually be identified by certain characteristics. Traditionally, it is accomplished by putting a prisoner on a bus and shipping him to a distant, less-desirable prison much farther from his family and loved ones. Not only does that get the troublemaker out of their hair, but it also punishes him by imposing physical and financial hardships on those who would visit him.
In this economy of foreclosures, unemployment and prohibitive travel expenses, the possibility of aging and infirm loved ones making difficult treks to distant prisons are greatly reduced, effectively punishing the prisoner’s family members, too, who are only guilty of caring about their loved one in prison and wanting to support and reassure him to keep him connected to the “outside” world.
A second characteristic of a punitive transfer is that it is un-requested. There is a procedure in the prison rules for requesting a “good adjustment transfer” to the prison of one’s choice. Maintain a clean record, behave yourself, don’t get in trouble, work hard, earn “gain time” each month, participate in programs, and the prison authorities will approve you to go to a better prison, usually closer to one’s family or visitors.
That is a great incentive for good behavior and positive accomplishments. “Give me a year of hard work and I’ll transfer you wherever you want.” We’ve all been told that. Some favorable prisons with good vocational programs, education, or paying jobs (PRIDE Prison Industries), have long waiting lists of a couple of years to get there.
Not so for “punitive transfer,” however. Few if any want to go to some distant prison out in the boondocks, far from the major population centers, unless they live down the road.
The third and most crucial characteristic in this anatomy of a punitive transfer is that it is retaliatory in nature. It punishes a prisoner for some act on his part. In my case, it is perfectly clear. They were offended by the KKK prison guard article. They retaliated by concocting false disciplinary charges and throwing me in solitary confinement. I responded by filing formal complaints and appeals to higher authorities, as the law says I am entitled to do.
Reprisals and retaliation have a “chilling effect” on prisoners, who already suffer hardships and denials of “due process” by the very nature of their incarceration. The message is clear to all—complain at your own risk, see what happened to him?—it will happen to you.
Former D.O.C. Inspector General Dave Brierton once said, “Prisoners are put in prison as punishment, not for punishment.” That statement was in response to an investigation into abuses and brutality by guards at Florida State Prison.
Chained in leg irons, carrying heavy bags of my court documents, I stumbled onto the crowded, rickety prison transport bus with 45 of my fellow prisoners. The vast majority were Jamaican, Latino, and Miami ghetto prison gang members, drug dealers, and strong-arm robbers who preyed on weaker prisoners. One older white prisoner was infamous for having castrated himself with a razor blade years before. The monthly testosterone shots he got at medical resulted in occasional rages and assaults, keeping him in and out of lockup, an obviously mentally-ill person..
Another transferee was a mentally-deficient younger man whose sole possession was a pair of flip-flops he carried in his back pocket. Not a toothbrush, nor a pair of socks. He helped carry one of my heavier bags, since his hands were free. And then there was me, the troublemaker.
‘Why did they get you?’
The first question the prison gang members asked me was, “What are you doing on the bus with us?” They knew why they were being transferred. “Norman, you never get in trouble. Why did they get you?”
I explained that I had filed a lawsuit against the administration. “Oh—okay.” That explained it. They knew the drill.
One thing about their strategy: ship out everyone who filed complaints and the assistant wardens’ workload drastically diminish---not that they have a lot to do anyway. For the past several months, a dozen or so “officials” from the warden down to the assistant wardens, colonel, majors, classification officers, and others spent one day a week going into each housing area “shaking down,” (searching bunks and lockers), and supposedly “inspecting” each dorm, ranking them in an arbitrary order of feeding. What a waste of taxpayers’ money! Close to a million dollars in annual payroll, and they are going around doing the dorm officers’ jobs for them.
That’s what I was up against at Tomoka. Hopefully illuminating the tactics will lesson the chances of more adverse actions. Or maybe not.
The law says that once a plaintiff makes allegations of reprisal, backed up by specific details and facts, the burden shifts to the defendants to prove that they would have taken the same disciplinary actions in the absence of the constitutionally—protected activity. That’s a legalistic way of asking whether they still would have locked me up if I hadn’t written the KKK article two years before, or punitively transferred me later.
The answer seems clear—no. Everything proceeded from the constitutionally-protected activity. If I were a functionally-illiterate prisoner, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
That’s the way it is in prison in Florida. Stay tuned for further developments.
Charlies Norman was born in Redwater, Texas and raised in Thonotosassa, Florida. His sentence is natural life, with a minimum mandatory of 25 years, for murder.
Photo by Travis via Picasa Web Album.
Read full entry »Joe Arpaio, the outspoken sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., has been sued by the U.S. Justice Department for refusing to cooperate with a civil-rights probe into police practices and jail operations, reports USA Today. Arpaio said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix, is disappointing given that he and his office were cooperating on the federal probe. "I thought we were really close to getting this resolved," the sheriff said. He said his deputies do not target Hispanic citizens because of their race, and said if the Justice Department had any evidence of racial profiling, they wouldn't be suing him to get records to prove that deputies profile.
The lawsuit comes after weeks of back-and-forth letters between the agencies, threats to strip the county of federal funding, and a meeting in Washington last week among attorneys to discuss the investigation. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department has said this is the first time in the last 30 years that a police or sheriff's agency has refused to cooperate with a Title VI investigation. Thursday's action marks the first time the agency is suing to compel access to documents and facilities. The investigation is being conducted under the authority of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids discrimination related to programs that receive federal funds.
Read full entry »While the Justice Department waits to impose new correction standards on sexual violence, a new national survey shows that rape in prison is a growing problem.
The numbers are in: Since 2007, the number of reported prison rapes has increased by 4,000. Female offenders are twice as likely to be sexually victimized as males and two-thirds of male inmates have been victimized by female staff, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey released today. Although some believe the figures underestimate the problem, the report is widely believed to be the most accurate survey of prison sexual violence to date.
The report, comes as the Department of Justice is two months past the legal deadline for enacting national Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) standards set by the commission developed to address these growing and troubling trends.
“The report continues to confirm this is a nationwide human rights crisis that needs to be addressed,” said Lovisa Stannow, Executive Director of Just Detention International, a Los Angeles based national not-for-profit that helped pass PREA legislation. “The national standards that have not been finalized have the potential to become most important tool to end sexual abuse in prison.”
On August 20th a broad coalition, including the ACLU, the American Conservative Union, Focus on the Family and the NAACP, wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder urging him to adopt the standards, which advocates say could bring a halt or significant slow down in prison rapes if correctly utilized.
In 2003, as awareness of sexual violence in prisons grew, the U.S. Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Under the law a national commission, National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, was formed in 2004 to create standards to prevent and detect incidents of sexual violence in prison. The group issued a report including new guidelines and standards in June 2009. Attorney General Holder was required to enact by June 23, 2010.
But June 23 came and went. In a letter Holder expressed regret at not being able to implement the commission’s standards by the required date. He wrote: “ I believe that it is essential that the Department take the time necessary to craft regulations that will endure.” Holder was concerned that prisons and jails do not have enough funding to implement strict new standards, which include staff training and inmate education, medical and mental health treatment for sexual abuse victims, and regular independent, external audits to hold agencies accountable for failures to keep inmates safe from abuse.
A month before the June deadline, the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA) sent a letter to the DOJ outlining their concerns with PREA implementation. While ASCA stressed their commitment to ending rape and abuse in prisons and jails, they were concerned about the standard’s lack of transparency, possible false allegations duplications of audit, the difficulties of restricting cross gender body-searches, and the cost of complying with the standards. The association estimated it would cost $1.9 billion to uphold the standards nationally.
“It is better for the DOJ to take the time to get it right and we have every confidence they are doing just that,” wrote ACSA Co-Executive Director George Camp in an emailed statement to The Crime Report.
But Pat Nolan, Vice President of Prison Fellowship, a national faith based organization that serves prisoners and their families and has been actively involved in PREA legislation, disputes ACSA’s cost estimates.
“They just pulled those numbers out of air,” said Nolan, who said Oregon and California implemented these standards with putting any more strain on their budgets.
“Frankly,” he said. “ Most of these standards are basic common sense. Provide medical care. Secure your facilities. Treating rape as a crime.”
In July 2009, the State of Michigan agreed to pay $100 million to settle a class-action suit by more than 500 female prisoners who said they were sexually assaulted by prison guards. Nolan points out that money spent defending abuse litigation could instead be spent on implementation of PREA standards.
According to the new BJS report, an estimated 88,500 inmates experienced sexual victimization in 2008-2009. Females are twice as likely to be victimized as males, and incidents occur almost three times more often in prison than jails. There were 64,500 incidents of sexual violence in prison and 24,000 in jails.
Just Detention International (JDI) said they receive 40 letters a week from survivors of sexual abuse in detention asking for help.
“Its important to remember that these are fellow human beings who are behind bars and should not be subjected to sexual abuse,” said Stannow.
Picture via Arizona Prison Watch.
Correction Appended: Female offenders are twice as likely to be raped as males has been changed to emale offenders are twice as likely to be sexually victimized as males
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Mass incarceration policies have taken a heavy toll on American families, neighborhoods and society. In an essay for The Crime Report, in advance of publication of a major American Academy of Arts and Sciences project, Prof. Glenn Loury of Brown University, calls for a profound change.
Over the past four decades, the United States has, by any measure, become a vastly more punitive society. This expansion, and transformation, of U.S. penal institutions—which has taken place at every level of government, and in all regions of the country―is without historical precedent or international parallel.
With roughly five percent of the world’s population, the U.S. currently confines about 25 percent of the world’s prison inmates. The American prison system has grown into a leviathan unmatched in human history.
This is not merely law enforcement and punishment policy. It is also social policy, writ large, and a uniquely American form of social policy at that.
The present American regime of hyper-incarceration is said to be necessary in order to secure public safety. This is not a compelling argument. First, the notion that crime can be prevented by incapacitating criminals is overly simplistic. It ignores the fact that for many crimes―selling drugs, for instance—those who are incapacitated are simply replaced by others, there being no shortage of contenders vying to enter the illicit trade.
What is more, almost everyone who goes to prison is eventually released, most after just two or three years. For these hundreds of thousands of ex-offenders released each year, time behind bars will most likely have actually diminished, not enhanced, their odds of living crime-free lives: by lowering their employability, severing their ties to communal supports, and hardening their attitudes. That is, sometimes mass imprisonment actually undermines public safety.
One reason for this anomalous outcome is that incarceration in American cities is highly concentrated spatially. The ill effects for individuals of having spent time behind bars can reduce social opportunities for others who reside in the most heavily impacted communities and who themselves have done nothing wrong.
Some urban neighborhoods have as many as one in five of their adult men locked-up on any given day. Such spatially concentrated imprisonment fosters criminality because it undermines the informal social processes of order maintenance, which are the primary means of sustaining law-abiding behavior in all communities. Families living in areas of hyper-incarceration have been rendered less effective at inculcating in their children the delinquency-resistant self controls and pro-social attitudes that typically insulate youths against law-breaking.
The impact of high incarceration rates on the sustainable level of public safety over the long term is therefore ambiguous, because what happens in San Quentin need not stay in San Quentin.
The Role of Race
The role of race in this drama is subtle and important. More African American male high school dropouts are held in prisons than belong to unions or are enrolled in any (other) state or federal social welfare programs. It has been estimated that nearly 70% of African American male dropouts born between 1975 and 1979 had spent at least one year in prison before reaching the age of thirty-five.
These racial disparities in the incidence of incarceration are not accounted for solely by overt discriminatory practices (though such practices surely exist.) Rather, what might be called “tacit racism” ―malign racial neglect—seems to be the culprit. America’s punishment institutions have garnered public support at times because of, and at other times despite, this massive racial disparity.
They would never have been allowed to expand to such an extent if those subject to their depredations had not mainly been people of color. Moreover, we punish for expressive, not merely instrumental, reasons. We have wanted to send a message to the “thugs” about law and order, and have done so with a vengeance. In the midst of such dramaturgy―necessarily so in America—lurks a potent racial subplot.
Defenders of the current regime put the onus on law-breakers. “If they didn’t do the crimes, they wouldn’t have to do the time,” it is said. Yet, this pure ethic of personal responsibility could never justify the current situation. Missing from such an argument is any acknowledgement of social responsibility―even for the wrongful acts freely chosen by individual persons.
In saying this I am not making a “root causes” argument: “he did the crime, but only because he had no choice.” Rather, I am arguing that the larger society is implicated in his choices because we have acquiesced in arrangements which work to our benefit and his detriment, and which shape his consciousness and sense of identity in such a way that the choices he makes, choices which we must condemn, are nevertheless compelling to him. Put simply, the structure of our cities with their massive racial ghettos is a causal factor in the production of deviancy amongst those living there.
Here’s a “narrative defining’ question for the reader: should we understand the racial disparity of punishment in America as an accidental accretion of neutral state action applied to a racially divergent social flux—the chips having fallen as they may, so to speak?
Or, alternatively, is this powerfully salient feature of contemporary American social life better understood as the residual effect of our history of enslavement, violent domination, disenfranchisement and discrimination?
In other words, is the massive racial inequality in the incidence of punishment in this country a necessary evil, given our need for order maintenance? Or, is it an abhorrent expression of who Americans have become as a people at the dawn of the 21st century?
As an African American male, a baby boomer born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, I incline toward the latter view.
Glenn C. Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of Economics, Brown University, is co-project leader, with Prof. Bruce Western of Harvard University, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences project, “The Challenge of Mass Incarceration in America,” which is published in a forthcoming special issue of Daedalus.
Read the Daedalus issue here.
Photo by Andy Callahan via Flickr.
Read full entry »The occupancy rate at Iowa’s nine prisons was up in fiscal 2010 after two years of declining inmate populations, says the Quad-City Times. Iowa ended the fiscal year on June 30 with 8,608 inmates, compared with 8,453 a year earlier. The uptick came in a year that saw the lowest number of prison admissions (5,130) in 10 years and the smallest number of releases (4,975) since fiscal 2002.
A major factor in last year’s increase was a jump of 203 in total new court commitments that offset clines in parole revocations and other areas. Paul Stageberg of the state Department of Human Rights does not think the rise was related to economic factors in Iowa or nationally. “The change that we saw during the year, with a drop in the first half of the fiscal year and then a rise during the second half, is pretty significant with what we predicted a year ago. So it wasn’t a surprise,” Stageberg said. “That said, it’s still a little bit worrisome.”
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The rising number of U.S. female correctional officers has spurred allegations of sexual misconduct behind bars. But the chief of their association calls it a ‘slap in the face.'
When Nevada Correctional Officer Tamara Bartel worries about prison sexual misconduct, she’s not always thinking of what happens between the inmates under her care.
As more women break the once all-male preserve of jail and prison correctional officers, reports of sexual misbehavior between female staff and prisoners have surfaced across the United States. And that particularly concerns Bartel, who is president of the National Association of Female Correctional Officers, founded in 2008.
“It’s a slap in the face to those of us who go to work and do our job,” says Bartel, 49, an officer in a high-security lockdown housing unit that is home to 119 male inmates at Nevada’s 1,600-bed Lovelock Correctional Center.
According to data from the American Correctional Association, more than 150,000 women worked as correctional officers in 2007, up 40 percent from 1999. Thousands more serve as nurses, counselors, maintenance staff and administration staff in prisons, jails and youth facilities around the country.
The reports about misconduct, particularly by women, threaten to overshadow the many improvements correctional officers and experts believe women have brought to the field.
A Moderating Force
“We used to think that we can act crude, and cuss, and do all sorts of negative things because it’s a prison,” says Susan Jones, 49, warden of the Centennial Correctional Facility in Colorado. “Women moderated that.”
But Jones adds that professionalism, good communications skills and a softer touch are not qualities inherent, or limited, to women staff.
“I have run into women who are very tough, very vulgar,” Jones said. “Women aren’t the pure race.”
Sexual misconduct in the world “behind the wall” has received increasing attention since 2003, when Congress unanimously passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The law mandated that the Department of Justice (DOJ) take surveys to gauge the scope of the problem.
The conversation about sexual abuse is not new, but for years it has focused largely as rape among inmates, or sexual coercion by male guards in female facilities. When the surveys indicated sexual misconduct by female staff represented a disproportionate amount of the incidents behind bars, the results surprised many in and out of the correctional community.
A 2007 DOJ survey found that female staff in state and federal prisons accounted for 58 percent of the 38,600 alleged cases of sexual misconduct reported (anonymously) by inmates in state and federal prisons—representing 2.9 percent of the inmate population. In a 2010 DOJ survey of youth in detention, 10.3 percent reported sexual contact with staff. More than nine times out of ten, they said female staffers committed the violations.
But the fact that the number was surprising was also an indication of double standards towards women who enter the corrections field, argues Brenda Smith, a law professor at American University who specializes in prison issues.
Smith sat on the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission to outline recommendations for stopping prison sexual abuse. The Commission, which submitted its report to the Department of Justice in 2009, emphasized abuse is preventable through leadership, rigorous oversight and the active participation of institutions willing to look candidly at the issues cropping up behind their four walls.
Sexual misconduct by women is one, Smith said, and given the major changes in the profession in the last two decades, the numbers should not be so surprising.
Women make up about 25 percent of officers in federal prisons, and more than 40 percent in some state facilities, according to federal and state statistics. The Department of Justice found that women officers, counselors, nurses and other staff fill about two of every five positions in juvenile facilities.
Bartel, like many of her peers, was looking for a job with decent pay and good benefits. Trolling the Internet one day, the California native, then 24, with an associate degree in criminal justice, came across a listing for openings at a new prison in Nevada. Fifteen years later, she is one of the prison’s two senior female officers.
And like many women officers, she works in a unit in which the 119 felons she guards are male. While the demographic of staff has shifted, about 90 percent of the more than 2.3 million people who live behind bars are men.
24/7 Contact
The 24/7 contact with inmates creates a challenge for training as well as monitoring guards and staff. “I have seen in the course of my career cases of every stripe,” says A.T. Wall, director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections. “Some look like traditional sexual assault. Some look like love. Some look like convenience and mutual gratification.”
In the eyes of the law, it makes little difference whether there is coercion or not. Prisoners cannot legally give consent. Sex between an officer and an inmate is a felony. Moreover, intimacies can also be dangerous.
“Sexual misconduct is the most combustible form of boundary violation,” adds Wall. “It’s especially serious if you are trying to run a safe and secure prison.”
In March 2010, Tasha Lass, an officer at Travis County jail in Texas, testified that she had developed a relationship with inmate Milton Gobert, who has since been sentenced to the death for the murder of his ex-girlfriend. She smuggled a $40 pre-paid cell phone to Gobert, who then asked for a gun with a silencer so he could escape. “He just made me feel needed,” Lass testified during the sentencing phase of Gobert’s trial. She was at the time a 17-year veteran of corrections.
A Texas jury indicted Lass in May for having a romantic relationship with an inmate. She faces 10 years and a $10,000 fine if convicted. Cases like hers have left many questioning how to gird female prison workers against the full range of hazards of the job.
Warnings about sexual misconduct were included in the 160 hours of officer training that Lori Miles received before going to work at Ohio’s all-male Toledo Correctional Institution in 2006. “Females were told not to carry on more than a two-minute conversation with the inmates,” recalls Miles, who is in her 30s.
Miles left corrections in 2008, after an inmate attacked her during a routine cell check. But it wasn’t the physical danger that soured her on the job. The problem with her training, according to Miles, was that it failed to give her a sense of what she would face in the world behind bars. “I don’t feel I was properly mentally prepared for it,” she says.
As more women enter the ranks of corrections officers, and exposed to the “complicated, sexualized” world of prisons and jails, institutions are still adapting, says Martin Horn, a former commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, who is now a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
But still, adds Horn, “what’s remarkable to me is how infrequently bad things happen given the gargantuan frequency of interactions.”
It’s a message that seasoned professionals like Tamara Bartel hope prison officials and the general public will remember whenever cases such as Tasha Lass’ make the headlines.
Lisa Riordan Seville is a freelance writer and reporter based in Brooklyn, NY.
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It's been seven years since Congress tied purse strings to the issue of disproportionate contact between non-white youths and the criminal justice system, but according to the newest bulletin on the subject, disparities are still stark. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention reports that African-American youth are still arrested at twice the rate of white youth, while white youth are seven times more likely to live in a neighborhood with an alternative detention program.
Click here to read the full report. Click here to read the accompanying manual.
Use The Crime Report for more information on Race and Sentencing, Juvenile Justice and Race and Gender in Prison.
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New York becomes sixth state to sign a law prohibiting the practice. The Editors of The Crime Report take a look behind the scenes of this trend.
Special Report
The movement to ban shackling pregnant prisoners is gaining national momentum. Last Thursday, New York’s Governor David Paterson signed a bill banning the practice for all but the most unruly inmates, making the state the sixth to enact such a law.
Prisons have been shackling women before, during and after childbirth for decades, but advocates say that a combination of new federal prison practices and increased pressure from human rights groups is accelerating reform.
The first state law banning restraints during labor passed in Illinois in 2000, but it wasn't until seven years later that one the movement's chief advocates, Malika Saada Saar, founder and director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, took up the issue after hearing tales of shackling from the former female prisoners in her leadership classes. Saar, with help from Illinois Senator Dick Durbin (who, in his nomination hearings, asked Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey if he agreed with the practice) began meeting with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service, with the hope of convincing them to stop shackling.
After what Saar describes as a full year of back and forth negotiations, in October 2008 both agencies agreed to stop routinely shackling pregnant inmates, and ban all use of belly shackles. Previously, pregnant women being transported to medical facilities (and during labor) were often restrained at the arms, legs and across their middle, even though the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has said the practice puts the woman and her unborn child "at risk."
“I think the change at the federal level signaled to states that this was a policy change they should implement,” said Saar, who is now planning a national push to encourage states to enact similar reform. “There might be a way to tie federal funding to the use of shackles, but that’s a punitive approach, which isn’t ideal.”
New York State Senator Velmanette Montgomery, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, has been trying to get legislative support for un-shackling for eight years. Sen. Montgomery was on vacation last week when her bill finally became law, but her Director of Communications Jim Vogel told The Crime Report that for years Montgomery couldn’t even find an Assembly member to co-sponsor the bill.
“Eight years ago this issue wasn’t on anybody’s radar,” said Vogel. But with a Democrat in the Governor’s mansion and Montgomery’s new role as the Chair of the Children and Families Committee, the stars were aligned.
But the movement has not been without set-backs. In May 2008, the Eighth Circuit upheld Arkansas's practice of shackling pregnant prisoners by the legs and arms during labor.
Here is what is happening in your state:
Only six states—California, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Texas and Vermont—have legislation regulating the use of restraints on pregnant women. Women detained in 44 states, the District of Columbia and the Federal Bureau of Prisons lack such legislative protection. Some state departments of corrections did not provide details on what type of restraints may be utilized during labor, nor did they provide their policy.
(Research provided by Amnesty International and The Rebecca Project for Human Rights.)
Alabama
Alabama stated that restraints depend on the security class of the woman, but that "often two extremities are restrained." Alabama allows the use of restraints during labor. Alabama may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Alaska
Alaska allows the use of restraints during labor.
Arizona
Arizona may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester. Arizona has no written policy governing restraints on pregnant women.
Arkansas
Arkansas reportedly has a policy stipulating that women with "lesser disciplinary records" will at times have one arm and one leg restrained by flexible nylon "soft restraints." Arkansas did not provide information on how women with other disciplinary records are restrained. Arkansas may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester. In Nelson v Norris, the Eighth Circuit upheld Arkansas's restraint policy.
California
California does not use restraints during labor and delivery. California has legislation regulating the use of restraints on pregnant women. California may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Colorado
Colorado has no legislation limiting the use of shackling on pregnant inmates.
Connecticut
Connecticut has a written policy stipulating that no restraints are to be used on inmates during labor and birth. Connecticut may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Delaware
Delaware allows the use of restraints during labor. Delaware may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Florida
Florida has a written policy stipulating that no restraints are to be used on inmates during labor and birth. Florida reported that placement of an officer in the delivery room is decided on a case-by-case basis. Florida may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Georgia
Georgia does not use restraints during labor and delivery. Georgia may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Hawaii
Hawaii reported that they have no policy but that the practice is not to restrain women during labor and birth.
Idaho
Idaho allows the use of restraints during labor. Idaho may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Illinois
Illinois allow restraints until the inmate is in "active labor" or arrives at the delivery room. Illinois has legislation regulating the use of restraints on pregnant women. Illinois may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Indiana
Indiana allows the use of restraints during labor. Indiana may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Iowa
Iowa reported that they have no policy but that the practice is not to restrain women during labor and birth. Iowa may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Kansas
Kansas has a policy on restraining pregnant women during transportation, but no policy governing the use of restraints on women during labor and birth. The practice is not to restrain women during labor and birth. Kansas may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Kentucky
Kentucky has no legislation limiting the use of shackling on pregnant inmates. The use of use of restraints during labor is based on hospital protocol and procedure.
Louisiana
Louisiana prisons have no restrictions on the application of restraints other than specifying that pregnant women should not be restrained facedown in four-point restraints. Louisiana also allows restraints, including leg irons to be utilized. Louisiana may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Maine
Maine allows the use of restraints during labor. Maine may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Maryland
Maryland has no legislation limiting the use of shackling on pregnant inmates. Maryland DOC did not answer survey questions about policy towards women in labor.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts allow restraints until the inmate is in "active labor" or arrives at the delivery room. Massachusetts may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Michigan
Michigan does not use restraints during labor and delivery. Michigan may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Minnesota
Minnesota allows the use of restraints during labor. Minnesota may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Mississippi
Mississippi allows the use of restraints during labor. Mississippi may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Missouri
Missouri does not use restraints during labor and delivery. Missouri may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Montana
Montana does not use restraints during labor and delivery. Montana may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Nebraska
Nebraska does not use restraints during labor and delivery. Nebraska may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Nevada
Nevada reported that "normally only wrist restraints" are used. Nevadamay use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
New Hampshire
New Hampshire stated that one foot maybe shackled to the bed during labor depending on security class of the woman in labor. New Hampshire may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
New Jersey
Women are not restrained in their third trimester, no restraints are applied during labor and an officer is stationed outside the door.
New Mexico
New Mexico does not use restraints during labor and delivery. New Mexico may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
New York
NY legislation passed Thursday prohibits state and local correctional authorities from using restraints on a pregnant female inmate who is being transported for childbirth, during labor and delivery, and in post-natal recovery. An exception to this rule is made under extraordinary circumstances where restraints are determined to be necessary to prevent the woman from injuring herself, medical or correctional personnel. In these instances, a pregnant woman may be cuffed by one wrist.
North Carolina
North Carolina allows the use of restraints during labor. North Carolina may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
North Dakota
North Dakota does not use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester. No other information was provided.
Ohio
Ohio allows the use of restraints during labor. Ohio may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Oklahoma
Oklahoma allows restraints until the inmate is in "active labor" or arrives at the delivery room. Oklahoma may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Oregon
Oregon reported that it does not use restraints during labor and delivery "unless expressly requested by the attending physician." Oregon may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania allows restraints until the inmate is in "active labor" or arrives at the delivery room. Pennsylvania may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Rhode Island
Rhode Island has a written policy stipulating that no restraints are to be used on inmates during labor and birth.
South Carolina
South Carolina allows the use of restraints during labor. South Carolina may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
South Dakota
South Dakota does not use restraints during labor and delivery. South Dakota may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Tennessee
Tennessee allows the use of restraints during labor. Tennessee may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Texas
Texas does not use restraints during labor and delivery. Texas may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Utah
Utah did not respond to survey questions on DOC policy for pregnant women.
Vermont
Vermont has no legislation limiting the use of shackling on pregnant inmates.
Virginia
Virginia did not respond to survey questions on DOC policy for pregnant women.
Washington
Washington has a written policy stipulating that no restraints are to be used on inmates during labor and birth. Washington may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
West Virginia
West Virginia reports that leg restraints would not be used during labor. West Virginia may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin allows restraints until the inmate is in "active labor" or arrives at the delivery room. Wisconsin may use restraints on pregnant women in the third trimester.
Wyoming
Wyoming has a written policy stipulating that no restraints are to be used on inmates during labor and birth.
Federal Bureau of Prison
Federal Bureau of prisons agreed to stop routinely shackling pregnant inmates, and ban all use of belly shackles in October 2008.
District of Columbia
District of Columbia has a written policy stipulating that no restraints are to be used on inmates during labor and birth.
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Newsweek visits the maternity wing of the Indiana Women's Prison, down a bright yellow cinder-block hallway adorned with stenciled images of stars and crescent moons. There are cells on both sides of the hallway. Each has a varnished crib that was made in woodworking class. Protective collars are fitted to the cell doors—there to prevent the steel from slamming on little fingers. A prison may not seem like the best place to raise infants. But researchers are finding that it's better than the alternative.
Joseph Carlson, a University of Nebraska at Kearney professor who recently completed a 10-year study, says such programs are "a win-win situation" for mothers and babies—and reduce crime by helping inmates to reform. Carlson also believes such programs can help "stop the generational cycle" in which children of inmates become criminals themselves. The nursery at the Indiana prison was opened a year ago. Since then, about 20 infants have joined an inmate population of more than 400. There is already a waiting list to get in.
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A new survey by the Pew Hispanic Center reports that confidence in the criminal justice system among Hispanics is closer to the low levels measured in the black community than the high levels in the white community. Fewer than half of those surveyed said they believed Hispanics were treated fairly by police and courts, and 56 percent reported that they or an immediate family member had contact with the criminal justice system in the past five years.
For more information and to read the report click here.
A report by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency documents what the authors call "disproportionate minority contact" (DMC) in the America criminal justice system. NCCD notes that while African Americans make up 13% of the US population, they constitute 28% of all arrests, 40% of all inmates held in prisons and jails, and 42% of the population on death row. In contrast, whites make up 67% of the total US population and 70% of all arrests, yet only 40% of all inmates held in state prisons or local jails and 56% of the population on death row.
The research was conducted for the Oakland-based NCCD by Christopher Hartney and Linh Vuong. They cite various causes for the racial disparity, including differential policing policies and practices, sentencing laws and racial bias. The report presents data on DMC in arrests, court processing and sentencing, new admissions and ongoing populations in prison and jails, probation and parole, capital punishment, and recidivism. At each of these stages, persons of color, particularly African Americans, are more likely to receive less favorable results than their white counterparts, Hartney and Vuong write. The weblink connects to a pdf version of the report.
Read full entry »For years, the Los Angeles County jail has been a revolving door for the vast majority of its female inmates, many of whom are homeless, poorly educated and struggling with substance abuse, according a watchdog's report released Wednesday. The findings in the report provide the most detailed examination yet of women in the nation's largest women's jail, reports the Los Angeles Times. According to a survey of inmates, 81% of women in custody had already served time behind bars -- most of them in Los Angeles County.
The report predicted that most of the inmates would be arrested again. "For [the] first time . . . in real detail we know who these female inmates are," Merrick Bobb, special counsel to the county supervisors, wrote in his semiannual report on the Sheriff's Department, which operates the jails. "It raises real questions about the need to end this recidivism." Bobb surveyed 330 female inmates in September and found that 45% were on probation and 22% were on parole at the time of their arrests. Nearly six in 10 had a history of substance abuse, and slightly more than half were unemployed or disabled when they were arrested. The inmates were disproportionately African American -- 43% of the jail population compared with 10% in the county. Most inmates were single women with children under age 18. Most were awaiting trial and could not afford the bail to get out.
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Explosive growth in the number of people on probation or parole has propelled the population of the American corrections system to more than 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 U.S. adults, according to a report released by the Pew Center on the States. The vast majority of these offenders live in the community, yet new data in the report finds that nearly 90 percent of state corrections dollars are spent on prisons.
Read the report: Pew Center on the States
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