Innocents in Prison

From: The Atlantic, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/08/innocents-in-prison/6148/

Innocents in Prison

Many thousands of wrongly convicted people are rotting in prisons and jails around the country.

By Stuart Taylor Jr

As recently as 20 years ago, it was extraordinarily rare for a convicted prisoner to establish his or her innocence conclusively enough to get public attention. That changed with breakthroughs in DNA science.

The 205th DNA exoneration since 1989 was recorded earlier this month by the Innocence Project, a group of crack defense lawyers who have made such cases their mission. The exonerated prisoners—including 15 who had been sentenced to death—have been found innocent by courts, prosecutors, or governors based on post-conviction DNA testing.
But America has been too slow to appreciate that the DNA exonerations, and other evidence, suggest that many thousands of other wrongly convicted people are rotting in prisons and jails around the country. And our federal, state, and local governments and courts have done far too little to adopt proposed criminal justice reforms that could reduce the number of innocent people convicted while nailing more of the real criminals.
The case of the most recent DNA exonoree, Byron Halsey, was typical: Based on a confession full of obviously false details, extracted by high-pressure interrogation, he spent 19 years in prison in New Jersey for two heinous child murders committed by another man in 1985. Halsey was able to prove his innocence only after a 2002 New Jersey law forced reluctant prosecutors to give his counsel access to DNA evidence. In Halsey's and some 70 other DNA-exoneration cases, DNA also helped to establish the guilt of the real perpetrators. All or almost all had committed other violent crimes before being caught.
The kind of DNA evidence that can conclusively prove innocence or guilt is available only in a small fraction of cases, mainly rapes and rape-murders in which sperm is recovered. But these cases are the tip of the iceberg. Extrapolation from DNA and other exonerations suggests that the overall error rate in violent-crime prosecutions is probably much higher than the estimates of less than 1 percent offered by many criminal-justice officials.
In a stunning non-DNA case that shows how low law enforcement can go, a federal District judge in Boston ordered the government on July 26 to pay $102 million in damages to victims of the FBI's "outrageous" role in framing four men for a 1965 gangland murder. The four spent a combined total of 109 years in prison. Two died there.
"FBI officials up the line allowed their employees to break laws, violate rules, and ruin lives," wrote the judge, Nancy Gertner. She found that the FBI had known all along that a mob hit man named Joseph Barboza was lying when he claimed he saw the four men kill a mobster named Edward Deegan. Barboza and the FBI protected the real killer, Vincent Flemmi, because Barboza and Flemmi were FBI informants.

Although that was decades ago, the FBI (like most police agencies) still insists on a policy—its virtual prohibition of tape-recording interviews—that allows agents to conceal or distort what suspects and witnesses say. The usual motive is not to frame innocent people but to fit evidence to preconceived (and often mistaken) theories of the case.

The FBI has defended its policy on the grounds that taping might deter suspects from talking and that jurors might be offended to hear police using lawful but deceptive interrogation tricks such as lying to suspects and feigning sympathy. But the first concern seems far-fetched in most cases and the second is illegitimate. Refusing to tape interviews hides important evidence from juries as well as lending itself to abuse.
Police and/or prosecutorial misconduct appears to figure in more than half of the 205 convictions that DNA has proven false. Specific reasons for those convictions are catalogued in "Judging Innocence," a study by Brandon Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia, slated for publication in January in the Columbia Law Review. Mistaken eyewitness identifications—often due to police subtly pointing witnesses toward the people the cops suspect—figured in 79 percent of these false convictions. Flawed or corrupt testimony by scientific "experts" (about hair, blood types, and the like) figured in 55 percent. False confessions, mostly by juvenile defendants, figured in 16 percent.
What percentage of the 2.2 million men and women locked up in state and federal prisons and local jails are actually innocent of the charged crimes? This is not knowable with any confidence. But we can extrapolate from a few data points.
Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan law professor, has calculated that 2.3 percent of all prisoners sentenced to death between 1973 and 1989 have been exonerated and freed. His research suggests that the vast majority in fact did not commit the crimes. And an unknown number of innocents have not been exonerated.

Nation of Criminals

From: CBN News, http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2012/April/ONLY-ON-CBN-NEWS-Nation-of-Criminals1/

ONLY ON CBN NEWS: Nation of Criminals

Experts say practically anyone could be convicted of some sort of federal crime. And it’s all too easy for anyone to violate one of these laws and never know it. One congressman tells CBN News, “We have made it dangerous just to be alive in America.”

   

   
Selling Prisons 'for Profit'It's a $74 billion industry: private companies selling prisons for profit. Critics charge the practice only increases the incentive to put people in prison and keep them there.

Gibson’s Blues: Endless Laws Criminalizing Business
Thanks to an overcriminalization, anyone could be convicted of a federal crime. It's not only bad for individuals, it's bad for business like Gibson Guitars.

Web of Laws Creating Hosts of 'Accidental Criminals'
Imagine you've lived an honest life, and then without warning, you're arrested for a federal crime. That's what happened to racing legend Bobby Unser.

'Overcriminalization' Making Us a Nation of Felons?
Experts say anyone can fall prey to "overcriminalization." CBN News investigated the growing phenomenon and how it's making America a nation of criminals.

The Evolution of Corrections

 From: Covering Crime and Justice, http://www.justicejournalism.org/crimeguide/chapter13/chapter13_pg02.html

Chapter 13
Covering Prisons and Jails
By Jenifer Warren

The Evolution of Corrections

Early Punishment
American corrections has been whipsawed through the years by countless conflicting theories about its desired objective and how best to achieve it.
 Is prison just about punishment and incapacitation, or should we help lawbreakers reshape their lives and rejoin society as productive citizens?
Can we really rehabilitate offenders, or is advancing age the only true antidote to criminal behavior?
Do all offenders deserve a stint behind bars, or should we reserve expensive prison cells for only the most violent, chronic criminals?
Given the dizzying number of pendulum swings within American correctional practice, it’s a good idea for journalists to have at least some familiarity with its history.
From the earliest accounts of civilization, punishment has been a central form of social control, a way to force people to behave according to communal rules and norms. The simplest expression is a parent disciplining a child. Criminal punishment is the most structured arrangement, allowing society to define the limits of acceptable behavior and impose appropriate sanctions that express collective outrage toward the transgressor.
Until the 1800s, punishment of lawbreakers in Europe and America was a highly public affair. Crowds bellowed with rage and excitement at whippings, burnings, beheadings, hangings, brandings and various other mutilations. These spectacles not only answered society’s desire for revenge but also served as a deterrent and vivid expression of the governing authorities’ power.
In Colonial America, most people lived within a system of laws adapted from England. But unlike that country, the colonies had little use for jails or other forms of confinement. Rather, according to criminologist Todd Clear of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the colonists used banishment, fines, and corporal punishments to inflict their desired retribution
The death penalty also was popular, and not just for a community’s most serious crimes. Pickpockets, burglars, rebellious slaves, horse thieves—all were liable to meet their maker by burning, hanging or other brutal means. No energy was spent on rehabilitating such offenders, as they were considered predestined to their sorry fate from birth.
In 1829, America gave the world its first penitentiary, near Philadelphia, which  Clear described as a place “to reform offenders within an environment designed to focus their full attention on their moral rehabilitation.” Its opening marked a significant change in thought about “human nature and the purpose of punishment,” Clear noted. Anchoring the new corrective approach was the belief that isolation—one prisoner, one cell, with visits only from occasional clergymen—would force prisoners to contemplate their transgressions and repent. (The word penitentiary comes from the Latin for penitence, or remorse—a powerful idea at the time.)
As prisoners proliferated, however, the isolation approach became too expensive. Moreover, Clear notes, critics began to sound alarms over reports that inmates were going insane because of their solitary living conditions.
From that point forward American corrections seesawed through a variety of models, including the “reformatory” phase, which emphasized education and training for offenders, and the later “medical” model, which rested on the notion that criminal behavior stemmed from a social, psychological or biological deficiency.
Tough on Crime
By the late 1960s, rising crime rates and doubts about the effectiveness of offender treatment programs propelled the country into a new, more punitive “crime control” phase. This era ushered in a wave of “tough on crime” policy making targeting violent and repeat offenders as well as drug dealers.
Determinate sentencing, or the imposition of fixed terms, became the rule in about half of the states, resulting in longer prison stays and the decline of discretion in release decisions. Rehabilitation fell out of favor, with incapacitation becoming viewed as the most desirable way to combat criminal behavior. Also during this time, the death penalty was suspended for several years and reinstated in many states in conformance with Supreme Court requirements.
Much of the legislating in this period was influenced by a series of sensational, headline-grabbing crimes. The most infamous was the violent 1987 rape of a woman by furloughed Massachusetts felon Willie Horton.
After Horton was used successfully in Republican campaign ads against former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential election, few politicians were willing to ignore the dangerous potential of a released offender. Overnight, it seemed, governors and other lawmakers concluded that you could not be too cautious when it came to the parole or furlough of a felon.
Similarly, the 1993 abduction and killing of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in Petaluma, Calif., spurred an outcry that led to passage of California’s “three strikes” law. The law, passed both in the legislature and by voter initiative, imposed a 25-years-to-life sentence on offenders convicted of two previous serious or violent felonies. Despite stories about “strikers” locked away for life on a third offense as minor as the theft of a loaf of bread, efforts to amend the statute have been futile, and it has been widely copied in other states.
The rape and murder of Megan Kanka in New Jersey by a released sex offender fueled a nationwide campaign to pass “Megan’s Law” beginning in 1994. While the law varies somewhat state by state, it generally requires official notification of neighborhoods when a convicted sex offender moves in.
A decade later came “Jessica’s Law.” Named after nine-year-old Jessica Lunsford of Florida, who was raped and murdered in 2005 by a previously convicted sex offender, it imposed a minimum sentence of 25 years on first-time Florida sex offenders who assault children. America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh, whose son, Adam, was abducted from a Sears department store and murdered in 1981, has been a vocal champion, and Bill O’Reilly, host of The O’Reilly Factor, has pushed every state to adopt a version of the law.
Many have complied. In California, for example, a sweeping 2006 voter initiative known as Proposition 83 banned sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park and subjected paroled sex offenders to electronic monitoring for life.
In all of these cases, media coverage—both of the original crimes and the subsequent legislative responses—has played a central, sometimes controversial role.

The Sad State of CA's Mailrooms

From: Prison Movement
http://prisonmovement.wordpress.com/

Strange Tides in the Mailroom at CCWF

Written under duress by Johnny Street

The process of inmates being rehabilitated is a many splendored one. No system has ever been imposed or thought of that can change a detriment of humanity into an asset, and to think that it would is beyond ridiculous. We are no stranger to an event happening and then days later find out what is really behind something, and usually it is a situation more disgusting than the initial one itself. Such is the case at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California- the largest women’s prison in the world. Internal Affairs (the cops who watch the cops) busted two officers for smuggling drugs, tobacco, contraband, and even a few cell phones into the prison were busted in January, 2012. This information came from a source close to such things, and this person is also an inmate.

No press was ever informed of this, and for good reason. California is broke. Beyond broke. It seems every attempt at solving our debt to banks is aimed at anything that is a tax paying blood bleeding citizen- except if you’re rich. There wasn’t even an attempt at a cover-up because the world by and large could give a shit less about what goes in prisons. They are menacing warehouses for the ones to dangerous to be seen with the likes of us, so as long as they are on the other side of the fence, this is safety enough for most. But that is neither here nor there in its relevancy of this article. A plan to decrease spending among the largest government funded industry in California has meant some lay-offs, decrease in pay and allowed hours of overtime, and cutting of rehabilitative programs for inmates. Since the canning of the two officers, there have been no attempts at hiring other guards to screen the mail. CCWF gets an average of 20,000 pieces of inmate mail a week, and with only two guards available to screen such a huge load, it is only natural that mail will be delivered far beyond its intended read date. During the Christmas season, mail is at its crux in volume, and this is understandable. Now, being that we are in March, mail is far worse than anything the holiday influx could make. The last piece of mail that was delivered to the inmate I wrote to was post marked January 10, 2012 and it arrived three days ago. Today is March 5.

Mail, is at times the only positive thing that happens for inmates subjugated in a system that neither corrects, nor rehabilitates. It allows the recipient of such things a chance to read of the world they are missing out on, if only for 5 minutes. Of course such aspects of humanity only cost money in the immediate way of handling things. Warden D.K. Johnson is the typical model of an old hack and could care less. She like, the last 8 Wardens at the prison have only worked there less than a year and do so with the aim of retiring on a Warden’s pension. Inmate rehabilitation means as much to her and all the other hacks as tossing a wrapper in the trash. I know this because she hung up on me when I asked what is being done about the mail, and why haven’t you made an effort to alleviate this? While programs and staff get cut there, it is the inmates who suffer the most. But this is not just a case of being short staffed and work not getting done in a timely way. No, the underlying tones are more sinister than the event itself.

Inmates have been filing official documented complaints en masse about this issue. But the CCPOA wants this to be solved for one reason- money. They are using this insult to the badge as a means to allocate more funds, and the means of this is for inmates to sue the CDCR, and create a stir of it in court. The inmates bring the issue to trial, a judge will rule on it, and most likely deem this delay in mail absurd, and then allocate money for the CCPOA to get more staff and allot more overtime. I am unclear if the two officers who were cited for introduction of contraband into a prison were ever arrested or face criminal charges. I would hope they are, but it would not be surprising if they were just let go- with some sort of severance to boot. Honestly, I don’t care how the forward thinkers in Sacramento waste our money at this point. They’ve had so many blunders that I am immune to the stupidity of them now. Every decision that’s been made since the majority of America voted a Bush into the White House has been a way to save money, spend less, and also how to give the elite (the job creators) the means to employ/enslave a desperate public teetering on the brink depravity. I should care, but I don’t anymore. I can’t think of one thing that the tax I pay on gas, cigarettes, food, income or anything else go to something that our society needs, so for that matter, the pigs won- Sellah, you assholes. Sure we can write the Warden or our congressman but they won’t give a damn either. California is now a Corporatocracy, every joker who wears an expensive suit and is expert at answering questions with half truths and diverting blame can be a sock-puppet for the thousands of entities who have the same rights as living breathing people, and be put into positions to make important decisions. And all the while we wonder why all those 99%ers do what they do. Why would the sock puppets give a damn about people who neither contribute to that system, much less oppose it? The oppressed do, and of course the only ones who do hold the keys to this vehicle don’t find such things important. All the while they try to solve a debt and keep them and their contributors rich, it is the incarcerated who feel this as well. People continue to remain jobless, joblessness leads to desperation. Desperation many times leads to committing a crime against the state- which will make you part of the business that is the CDCR. Somehow there is always money to lock you away, yet never enough to run a prison efficiently.