By Casey Toner | ctoner@al.com
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on November 12, 2014 at 6:15 AM, updated November 12, 2014 at 1:36 PM

Charging an inmate $125 for a 30-minute phone call to a family member, mixing in juvenile offenders into adult prisons, refusing to allow an elderly diabetic mother to visit her inmate daughter because her “breath smelled.”

These are some of the allegations the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative leveled against the Alabama prison system in a report published on Tuesday.

Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initative executive director, told AL.com that his organization issued the report to expose what he says are the lingering ills affecting the Alabama Department of Corrections.

“There is so little transparency and access for us, the media, and anyone else, so it’s easy for the (prison system) to say ‘We have done all of these things and things are getting better,’” Stevenson said. “Until there is evidence there, we cannot take it seriously.”

The ADOC, which received more than $365 million in general fund money last year, could achieve meaningful reforms with limited costs by replacing the wardens of the more troubled prisons and ensuring that juveniles stay out of state prisons, Stevenson said.

Previously, the EJI issued a report into sexual abuses at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women that sparked a federal investigation into sexual abuse allegations.

They are also suing the Alabama Department of Corrections, claiming that poor leadership, inadequate security and unsafe conditions have caused inmate violence to spike at St. Clair Correctional Facility, which has had six homicides in the past 36 months. The ADOC has yet to formally respond to the lawsuit in court.

“These problems have been created by poor correctional staff management, non-compliance with departmental protocols and procedures, and corruption at the severely overcrowded facility,” the report states.

The EJI gave hundreds of reports, documents and files to the U.S. Department of Justice in the hope that they will expand their pending investigation of Tutwiler to address “illegal and unconstitutional conditions of confinement at several Alabama prisons,” according to the report.

An AL.com investigation revealed that St. Clair Warden Carter Davenport punched a handcuffed inmate in the head during a routine transport in 2012, an issue that is raised in the federal lawsuit. Davenport was suspended for two days in the matter, which the ADOC never investigated.

Stevenson, an attorney, told AL.com that neither the report nor the lawsuit is about making money. He says the EJI is losing money with the lawsuit and is not receiving any attorney fees.

“In four years of talking about prisons, we have filed one lawsuit,” Stevenson said. “We have never filed a lawsuit in (the Tutwiler cases) because we didn’t want to engage in litigation … If we were really interested in generating fees, we’d file 25 lawsuits for each person who got beat and we’re not doing it.”

The new EJI report makes reference of the sexual abuse allegations against Tutwiler as well as the incident when Davenport punched the handcuffed inmate in the head. It also makes shocking claims that there were nearly a dozen instances where inmates at Elmore Correctional Facility were handcuffed, stripped naked, and then beaten by officers.

Furthermore, male guards at Donaldson and Bibb Correctional Facilities forced young male inmates to perform sex acts, the report claims.

“We issued the report because we think that people need to know that these prisons are in very, very bad shape and there is a profound absence of leadership and immediate reform,” Stevenson said.

An Alabama Department of Corrections spokeswoman told AL.com on Tuesday that they could not comment since they had not yet read the report.

The EJI report also claims:

• The EJI investigated more than a dozen instances in which a correctional officer confiscated a cell phone without following protocol and then threatened disciplinary action against the inmate unless the prisoner or his family paid the officer several hundred dollars. In several instances officers sold confiscated contraband to other inmates. This widespread distribution of contraband by prison staff is policed by physical violence, leading to a dramatic rise in serious physical assaults, stabbings, and homicides in ADOC facilities during the past year.
• Karla Jones, former Tutwiler deputy warden, was promoted to warden at Easterling Correctional Facility. The EJI is receiving a wave of complaints about arbitrary new policies and procedures that it says have increased violence and tension at that facility. Records show Jones was suspended for three days in July 2002 while working as a correctional officer supervisor at the Birmingham Work Release Center. In that case, she reported that she couldn’t find an ounce of marijuana and $100 that had been seized from an inmate. Her boss threatened to call in ADOC investigators to search for it. Jones called two days later and said she had forgotten that the marijuana and cash were in her desk drawer.
• The Alabama Department of Corrections continues to house children prosecuted as adults in adult facilities where they face an increased risk of sexual assault and violence. Even though the number of offenders in state prison facilities under age 18 is small and these juveniles could be housed at appropriate detention facilities for juveniles, ADOC has refused to act.
• ADOC’s Investigations and Intelligence (“I & I”) unit does not conduct effective and reliable investigations of sexual misconduct by staff and other staff misconduct. The close relationship between I & I investigators and correctional staff make independent and reliable investigations very difficult. Additionally, DOC investigators have not consistently responded to or taken seriously complaints about sexual misconduct and abuse. EJI has interviewed male prisoners who report that investigators took months to respond to complaints about sexual misconduct.
• The ADOC no longer reports on the incidents of staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct or the use of excessive force in its annual reports to the legislature.

• Over the past decade, facilities across Alabama have implemented practices that make it increasingly difficult for families to communicate and maintain ties with incarcerated family members.

• Depending on the prison, a 30 minute phone call once a week could put a $125 or higher dent in the family’s monthly budget.
• One elderly mother was refused a visit with her daughter after having traveled two hours with her four grandchildren when the visitation officer told her that her breath smelled, so she was refused entry into the prison. The mother was diabetic and dehydrated from the long drive and wait in line at the facility, but she was not given the opportunity to explain that the odor was caused by her diabetes.

• Another mother, who was recovering from chemotherapy and visiting her son for the first time since her diagnosis with cancer, was confronted during her visit by three officers and ordered to enter a closet area where she was ordered to remove all of her clothing in front of the officers. When she asked what was happening the officers refused to respond to her questions. Nothing was found and she was allowed to return to her visit with no explanation.
• Numerous family members have reported that prison officials contacted them after a loved one died but they were given little if any information about the circumstances of the death. The siblings of an elderly female prisoner who had a stroke and was on a ventilator were not allowed to visit their sister while she was in the infirmary. Counsel was also denied visitation. Within one week, the inmate passed away.
• The parents of Rocrast Mack, who was beaten to death by correctional officers, were phoned by the prison chaplain after their son, who was badly beaten and unconscious, was transported by ambulance to Jackson Hospital in Montgomery. At the hospital, his father, Larry Mack, was forbidden from seeing his dying son, on orders of the warden. When the warden relented several hours later, Mack found his son’s room full of prison guards. “They wouldn’t let me touch him,” he recalled. “It was up to the warden.” His son died later the next day.

Voters approved two ballot questions — one to replenish a virtually bankrupt open-space preservation program and the other to make fundamental changes to who is eligible for bail and who is not in New Jersey.

Both questions, which would amend the state’s constitution, proved controversial.

Unlike previous open-space ballot questions this one proved contentious, even among environmental groups who typically back such proposals in unison.

Still, it passed comfortably as did the question on bail reform, which would allow low-level defendants who cannot afford to post bail to be released without it. More controversially, it would deny bail to those accused of more serious violent crimes, such as murder, kidnapping, and robbery — among other offenses.

In not-yet-final tallies, both questions seemed assured of passage, with open space winning by a surprisingly margin of 64.6 percent of voters supporting the issue with 35.4 percent opposed. The bail reform question also passed with nearly 62 percent of voters backing the measure.

Dedicated funding for open space

For open-space advocates, the passage of the constitutional amendment capped a long and difficult fight to establish a so-called stable source of funding to preserve undeveloped land, farmland, and historic structures. It is not as much money that has been spent in the past, but it provides funding over a 30-year period by dedicating a portion of corporate business taxes to the effort.

Initially, it would provide about $71 million annually — far less than the state typically spent on open space, which often ran up to $200 million a year. Beginning in 2020, a bigger portion of the corporate business taxes would increase the amount to at least $117 million.

Some environmentalists, however, opposed the measure, saying it would deprive money currently dedicated to existing environmental programs for hazardous waste cleanups, water-quality monitoring, and making sure that the water supply in aquifers is not depleted. Those same concerns were raised by the state Department of Environmental Protection. Gov. Chris Christie also opposed the diversion of funds, saying he would vote against the proposal.

Those objections were not enough to override historic support for open-space preservation on ballot questions in the past, which mostly relied on bonding to fund the effort — even though that is more costly than a pay-as-you-go program. With the state debt levels rising, most lawmakers wanted to avoid that approach even if it meant diverting money from the general fund at a time of periodic budget crises .

“It finally puts a stable source of funding in place,” said Tom Gilbert, chairman of the NJ Keep It Green Coalition.

“This is a huge win for open space and the environment,” said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. “Voters have rejected Gov. Christie’s anti-environmental agenda.”

Opponents of the measure disagreed.

“Approval of this question means that, starting in a few years, New Jersey will be diverting about $1.5 billion every decade that would otherwise go to the state’s pressing needs,” said Gordon MacInnes, president of New Jersey Policy Perspective, a liberal-leaning think tank.

Mike Proto, communications director for the New Jersey branch of Americans For Prosperity, which opposed the question, noted that his group faced an uphill battle — given the historic support for open space by voters. He noted that his group was outspent 10-to-1 by supporters of the measure.

Who should really get bail?

The bail reform question was no less contentious.

Its supporters included the New Jersey American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that normally advocates for the rights of the accused, saying its passage is needed to implement a bill enacted by the Christie administration that guarantees a speedy trial and release without having to post bail.

But criminal defense lawyers questioned why the right to post bail — guaranteed by the constitution — is being eliminated. They also questioned whether the Legislature would ever properly fund those low-level offenders released on bail who may need to be monitored to make sure they do not get in trouble with the law again.

Among other things, the changes will establish speedy trial deadlines for pre-and post-indictment for all defendants. It also changes the setting of bail from one based on the defendant’s ability to pay to one based on the likelihood the accused might flee. It also allows judges to order pretrial detention for those accused of serious crimes who are considered a flight risk or who might harm others.

Udi Ofer, executive director of the ACLU, praised the passage of the question.

“Within a few years, we will no longer see thousands of people languishing in New Jersey jails simply because they cannot afford to post bail,” Ofer said. “Society does not benefit when people are made to await trial behind bars for months or even years simply because they cannot afford a few thousand dollars in bail.”

____________________________________________

NJ Spotlight, an independent online news service on issues critical to New Jersey, makes its in-depth reporting available to NewsWorks.

Tina Brown – Strange Cellmates: Here’s a Reform Even the Koch Brothers and George Soros Can Agree On

From The Justice Imperative Editors: I attended The American Justice Summit at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City on Monday, Nov. 10, 2014.  It was not only led by of some of the most notable and influential voices in criminal justice today, it was a gathering of the tribe; a place where our community came together to breathe the same air and know that we are not alone in our noble cause. I will be writing more about this event on prisonist.org and on thejusticeimperative.org/blogs as my wife/partner Lynn and I move through this momentous week.  Next up, on Wednesday evening is JustLeadershipUSA’s benefit and launch at the Tribeca Rooftop in NYC, hosted by its CEO Glenn E. Martin (who did an outstanding job speaking at the American Justice Summit).  Our ministry, the Progressive Prison Project/Innocent Spouse & Children Project has been selected to have its work highlighted among fifteen Leaders in Criminal Justice at the JustLeadershipUSA event, chaired by Piper Kerman of Orange is the New Black.  We are humbled and honored.

A huge week for the advancement of criminal justice in this country.  Below is Tina Brown’s terrific article that was published in The Daily Beast leading up to the American Justice Summit.  – Jeff

Tina Brown – Strange Cellmates: Here’s a Reform Even the Koch Brothers and George Soros Can Agree On

Reprinted from The Daily Beast, Nov. 9, 2014
The Koch brothers and George Soros might have been on opposite sides last Tuesday, but they were united on one issue—our system of mass incarceration needs urgent reform.

Do you like lists? Of course you do! It’s the Internet! So try this one:

1. Koch Brothers

2. National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

3. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)

4. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)

5. George Soros

6. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)

7. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)

8. Newt Gingrich

9. American Civil Liberties Union

10. Grover Norquist

Apart from a passionate certainty that either liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans (pick one) are a danger to the republic, what does this motley crew have in common?

Here’s what: They all agree that America’s practice of mass incarceration—unique in the world—is at worst a moral and practical failure or at best an outdated policy badly in need of adjustment.

That’s why they have busted out of their party and ideological boxes to try to do something about a dilemma that has become the ugliest face of America’s social, economic, and racial divisions. That’s why, for example, Gingrich and some prominent Christian conservatives joined hands this fall with the Soros-affiliated Open Society Foundation and the ACLU to back Proposition 47, a California ballot measure that redefines many lower-level felonies as misdemeanors. (Prop 47 passed comfortably last Tuesday.) It’s why the Kochs and the defense lawyers’ group just teamed up to train public defenders and help indigent defendants get counsel. It’s why Democratic and Republican senators are daring to co-sponsor bipartisan legislation like the Redeem Act—which, among other changes, would curb solitary confinement for youths and make it easier for nonviolent ex-offenders to survive without returning to crime.

There are 2.3 million Americans in prison right now. And the support of prisons and prisoners is costing taxpayers as much as $74 billion a year. No wonder criminal-justice reform is no longer the sole concern of balladeers and bleeding hearts. The United States of America locks up more of its population than any nation in human history.

Between mandatory sentencing, the war on drugs, the profiteering of private prisons, and the political glee of being “tough on crime,” the land of opportunity has become a vast empire of imprisonment. And the insane cost of keeping so many nonviolent people locked up is an investment in failure. It breaks up families, burns hope, and perpetuates cycles of misery. If you are poor and black and can’t afford the right lawyer, you’re likely to vanish into the system and enter a forever world of forgotten pain.

Our criminal justice system isn’t simply bloated and cruel. It’s also, on the face of it, unjust.

One in three black men in America is incarcerated in his lifetime. African-American males are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white males, and although black folks and white folks use drugs at roughly the same rates, blacks go to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of whites.

We have 10 times as many mentally ill individuals behind bars than in psychiatric hospitals. Our prisons are literally madhouses.

In North Carolina, they let a 54-year-old untreated schizophrenic die of thirst after 35 days in solitary confinement. In Texas, prisoners die from the heat of the jail cells. In Alabama, an arrested 19-year-old shoplifter got gangrene and died naked on the floor of a “medical observation cell.” His minders now stand accused of leaving him without water and treatment. In New York, a 16-year-old high school sophomore, falsely accused of stealing a backpack, spent three years in the Rikers Island jail because he maintained his innocence and rejected a plea deal. For more than two of those years, he was in solitary confinement. That’s a practice the New York Department of Corrections has belatedly banned for juveniles. But for adolescent inmates, says U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara, “Rikers Island is broken.” As he said at a news conference in August, “It is a place where brute force is the first impulse rather than the last resort, a place where verbal insults are repaid with physical injuries, where beatings are routine while accountability is rare.”

*******

Maybe a prison tour should be included in travel brochures about the glories of the United States. Visitors would find it a lot less enjoyable—and a lot more grimly enlightening—than the parade of mouthy comedic characters being “gay for the stay” in Orange Is the New Black, the hit Netflix show about a women’s prison.

I recently visited Graterford, a maximum-security state penitentiary in Pennsylvania, 30 miles from Philadelphia. I’ve led a pretty sheltered life in a lot of ways, and what I saw and heard there shook me up quite profoundly. Graterford is a forbidding, shabby, woebegone facility built in 1929. Thank God it will soon be evacuated and replaced by two new prisons, SCI Phoenix I and II, just next door.

Graterford houses some 700 lifers, ranging in age from 18 to 70—and in Pennsylvania life means life: No parole, no exit except on a slab. Which means it also means death: You are locked up until you die. Sixty of those 700 are “juvenile lifers,” men who came in as adolescents and are serving a life term. (We are the world’s only nation where it is legal to sentence a juvenile to life in prison without parole.) In Pennsylvania, an appeal by juvenile-justice advocates to revisit the sentences of juveniles serving life in prison was recently shot down by the state’s supreme court.

These men have done sick and scary things. But there are also many lifers in the general population of Graterford who are there because of desperate circumstances and deadly juvenile folly.

One in five Pennsylvania inmates are classified as mentally ill. But you wonder how even the sane keep from losing their minds when you step into a cell—or rather a cage—at Graterford.

I was taken into one by Maurice, a gnarled old Vietnam vet in a wooly hat. Maurice has been in prison for 46 years for a homicide committed at the age of 22. He was pleadingly ingratiating. When I stepped into his 6- by 13-foot cell, I had instant claustrophobia. The tininess of it was a shock. Two occupants can barely stand up in it at the same time. It is an airless closet. Its only window is a slit in the wall. Half of it is taken up by the bunk beds and improvised benches. On a ledge is a small TV set and a cabinet with a few sad possessions spilling out. An open toilet is the only other article of furniture.

I was taken for a walk down Death Row. The cells that hold its 49 inmates for 22 hours a day were a few feet bigger, and no one shares. But the light was dingy, the atmosphere more menacing. The inmates got off their bunks in their grimy cages as we passed and pressed their faces close to the bars to shout their beefs—about mail they hadn’t got, food they didn’t like, small privileges they had lost—the small agonies of their shrunken world. Their faces haunted me when I left.

These men have done sick and scary things. But there are also many lifers in the general population of Graterford who are there because of desperate circumstances and deadly juvenile folly. They drove getaway cars for robberies that went awry or did drug rolls that ended badly, or shot another frantic kid in a street skirmish when they were high. Imagine if you were doomed forever to live inside a youthful mistake. These middle-aged and old men are now such different people from the testosterone-fueled, unparented, hair-trigger people they were decades before in their teenage years and their twenties.

But all that isn’t the whole story. In that sobering place I also found selfless, dedicated people—people who are trying valiantly to bring hope through education, medical help, and psychological support.

I was taken around Graterford by the state’s buoyant and humane secretary of corrections, John Wetzel, who runs the entire Pennsylvania prison system. He and Mike Wenerowicz, Graterford’s superintendent, are committed professionals who believe in rehabilitation and reform.

Under their leadership, Graterford is conducting studies on the effect of post-traumatic stress disorder on criminality—many inmates have seen such shatteringly awful things in their lives that it has permanently affected their psychology and behavior—and on the high proportion of prisoners who have experienced blows to the head that loosen impulse control. (In 100 men tested, 60 had some form of brain injury.) Wetzel, a plain-speaking, physically imposing African American in his mid-forties who looks every inch the semipro football player he used to be, has taken flak for installing air conditioning in the new prison. He patiently explains that overheating prisoners is not just a human-rights issue. It’s also a safety issue: Severe heat changes a person’s response to psychotropic drugs. It makes crazy people crazier. That’s more relevant than ever in Pennsylvania, which used to have three state mental hospitals but now has only one. Prisons are left to take up the slack. “I’m worried we’re getting too good at it,” Wetzel says wryly, “because we keep receiving more mentally disabled inmates.”

Wetzel told me that at approximately the 10-year mark, lifers tend to become altruistic and “start getting involved.” A group of them mentor the turbulent, desperate kids fresh off the streets who are at their most violent when they first arrive. Many of these boys come from homes where a father has never been present. They have never needed a father more than they do now.

The tragedy is they will need them even more when they get out. Who will be waiting for them then?

Tina Brown Live Media is co-hosting The American Justice Summit on Monday, November 10, from 1:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, with John Jay College President Jeremy Travis, author Piper Kerman, activist Harry Belafonte, The New Yorker legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson, head of private banking and new markets for Credit Suisse Pamela Thomas Graham, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker, and The Marshall Project President Neil Barsky.

The summit is sponsored by Credit Suisse, the Ford Foundation, and the Investigation Discovery Network.

VICE News and The Marshall Project join as media partners.

To watch free livestream of this event, go to vicenews.com.

You can find a full program here.

Jeff Grant and John Wetzel – Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections

Darwin’s Nightmare: The Unintended Consequences Of Hyper-Incarceration, by Brian Moran, Esq.

I recently traveled to Kenya to visit my daughter. She works for an NGO that runs a high school for girls in Muhuru, a rural fishing village alongside Lake Victoria. At one point, we stopped for lunch at a lakeside restaurant. Our local host proudly suggested we try the local perch.

The lunch brought to mind the Oscar-nominated documentary film from 2006, Darwin’s Nightmare. The movie chronicled the ironic unintended consequences brought about by the introduction of the Nile perch to Lake Victoria about 50 years ago. The Nile perch was introduced in an attempt to replenish the over-fished waters. Such over-fishing threatened the extinction of hundreds of indigenous species. The Nile perch was an oily-fleshed fish that reached six-feet in length.

The Nile perch proved to be a voracious predator. It fed upon not only hundreds of endemic species of fish, but also its own young. It quickly came to dominate Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest fresh water lake. The Nile perch destroyed an ancient and diverse eco-system, wiping out most of the native fish species. The World Conservation Union deemed the Nile perch one of the planet’s 100 “worst invasive alien species”.

The Nile perch’s dominance caused havoc not only with the eco-systems of the lake, but also the local economy and population. The Nile perch were processed into frozen fillets that were shipped to Europe and Japan, leaving the locals without the supply of fish upon which they historically had relied. Locals were forced to feed on the festering carcasses of gulleted perch. The economic spoils from the exporting of Nile perch were enjoyed by a scant few. Notwithstanding an abundant supply of Nile perch, Kenya and Tanzania have experienced famine and poverty. It has been estimated that the number of people outside Africa who are fed daily with exported Nile perch is of the same magnitude as those who starved to death during the famine in Tanzania. Half the children living around Lake Victoria are considered malnourished.

Just as the effort to replenish the supply of fish in Lake Victoria had disastrous unintended consequences, so too has our country’s forty year war on crime. In our effort to make our streets safe once again and rid our communities of violent criminals, we failed to foresee that such efforts might upset the economic and social balance within our communities, particularly our cities.

The unintended consequences of our voracious war on crime are profound. They include:

• a corrections system that incarcerates for prolonged periods of time not only violent offenders, but thousands and thousands of non-violent drug offenders.
• a system where the vast majority of those arrested for drug offenses do not have a history of violence or significant selling activity;
• a system where, during the 1990s, arrests for marijuana possession accounted for nearly 80% of drug arrests;
• a system that largely takes away discretion from sentencing, probation and parole decisions, resulting in mandatory imprisonment or re-incarceration (irrespective of the individual circumstances of the offense, the absence of violence, the lack of victims or the impact on offenders’ families);
• a system that inhibits the use of time off for good behavior and early release;
• a system that releases a high percentage of offenders at the end of their sentence, at which point they are no longer subject to supervision;
• a system that places almost insurmountable obstacles on ex-offenders, such as deprivation of public housing, welfare, forfeiture of one’s driver’s license and disqualification from educational grants, thereby almost guaranteeing their return to prison;
• a system that fails to adequately treat offenders’ addictions and mental health conditions;
• a system that effectuates a revolving prison door, through which about two-thirds of offenders released in Connecticut spin and find themselves back in prison within three years, about 20% above the national average;
• a system that takes mothers and fathers, the principal breadwinners in their families — most of whom are non-violent and are themselves the victims of abuse and violent crimes — from their children, families and communities for lengthy periods of time;
• a system that places a huge financial strain, both directly and indirectly, on our state and local budgets;
• a system that costs taxpayers in the State of Connecticut more than $1 billion and $51,000 per bed annually, the third highest rate in the Unites States;
• a system that exacerbates the minority academic achievement gap;
• a system that perpetuates the cycle of poverty in our inner cities;
• a system that has driven the number of Americans in prison from 160 for every 100,000 citizens in 1972 to about 760 per 100,000 today, the highest rate in the world;
• a system where 1 in every 48 working men in the United States and one in eleven black adults is now under the control of the corrections system (i.e., in jail, on probation or on parole), as compared with 1 in 156 in 1980;
• a system where 1 in 3 black males in the United States will at some point serve time in prison, if current trends continue;
• a system where, in certain U.S. cities, more than half of young adult black males are currently under correctional supervision;
• a system where Blacks and Hispanic, who make up 24% of Connecticut’s population, constitute 66% of its inmates;
• a system where the United States has 4.6% of the world’s population, but 22.4% of its inmates;
• a system where the United States during the 1990s built a new prison every two weeks;
• a system where continued mass incarceration not only yields diminishing returns relative to public safety, but arguably generates more criminal behavior;

A viable alternative exists. By right-sizing our prisons, we can lower costs, reduce recidivism, increase public safety and improve upon rehabilitation. Other states, both blue and red states, have successfully right-sized their prisons and invested the cost-savings in drug treatment, mental health services, post-release support programs and diversionary alternatives to incarceration. In so doing, they have saved millions and improved public safety.

In view of the fact that Connecticut, in terms of its crime rate, is the safest it has been in 44 years, it is time to reform our system. Our failure to act will subject yet another generation of our youth to the ironic nightmarish consequences of our forty-year war on crime.

Brian E. Moran of  is an attorney with Robinson + Cole in Stamford. He is the Lead Writer and an Editorial Board Member of “The Justice Imperative: How Hyper-Incarceration Has Hijacked The American Dream.”  Copies can be ordered at amazon.com.

The Justice Imperative: Punishment Beyond Incarceration – Life On The Outside

Maurice has just completed a mandatory minimum sentence for a felony marijuana possession. He has been a model inmate. He earned his GED and successfully completed drug counseling and treatment while behind bars. He is looking forward to starting over and being reunited with his family. His wife and three young kids have had a rough time during his incarceration. Maurice had been the principal bread winner. His family was forced to move in with his wife’s mother in her public housing unit. Maurice leaves prison with $3,000 in debt in respect of court and drug treatment costs. Unbeknownst to Maurice, as a consequence of his conviction, he is now ineligible for federally-funded health and welfare benefits, food stamps, public housing and federal education assistance. His driver’s license has been automatically suspended.

Upon his release, Maurice moved in with his mother-in-law. Following his release, Maurice applied for various jobs without success. Each time he was required to check a box, inquiring as to whether he had ever been arrested or convicted of a crime. Maurice has been forced to take part-time minimum wage jobs in the fast food industry. His paychecks were subject to garnishment orders owing to his indebtedness for his court and drug treatment costs.

After six months of not being able to drive, get a job, find housing or qualify for public benefits, he started doing drugs. Two months later, he was arrested for possession of a small amount of marijuana. He is sent back to prison as a repeat offender for violating the conditions of his parole. His mother-in-law is presented with an eviction notice because her lease is governed by the federal government’s “one strike, you’re out” policy. Such policy mandates the termination of a lease if the tenant or a member or guest in his or her household engages in drug-related or criminal activity either on or off premises.

See More: Please go to Chapter Nine in “The Justice Imperative”

www.TheJusticeImperative.org

Major victories for marijuana legalization and minimum wage drew enormous fanfare on Election Day, but a ballot measure quietly passed in California could mean even more for the future of the country.

Proposition 47 downgrades penalties for a number of nonviolent drug and property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor. It passed with support from 58% of voters.

It may not sound revolutionary to lessen the intensity of punishment for a set of crimes, but in a state whose criminal justice policies have become a dark icon of the United States’ unparalleled zeal for incarceration, the measure is a crucial shaft of light.

More prisons, more problems: California’s criminal justice system is one of the harshest in the country. The state is most notorious for its 1994 “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law, which imposed a life sentence for almost any crime, no matter how small, if the defendant had two prior convictions deemed serious or violent by the California Penal Code. The state is under a Supreme Court order to cut down its massive prison population, which suffers from the kind of overcrowding that led then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to ship inmates off to private prisons in Mississippi and prompted a federal judge to estimate that a prisoner died every week purely due to medical neglect.

Experts see the new proposition as a necessary step toward correcting California’s mass incarceration debacle. “It would officially end California’s tough-on-crime era,” Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, told the Washington Post.

It’s not the state’s first attempt to mitigate the extremity of the three-strikes law. In 2012, a measure was passed that prevents a life sentence when the third conviction is for a minor crime.

Proposition 47 is the next step in dismantling the three-strikes regime. People convicted of the offenses that have been reclassified under Proposition 47 will now face shorter stays in jail or community supervision. According to the Los Angeles Times, the annual number of felony convictions in California should be reduced by 20%.

As important as these reforms are, if California wants to seriously reduce its prison population, it must reckon with how it views violent and serious crimes, of which a vast majority of its prisoners have been convicted. The Urban Institute has argued that California is going to have to become far more ambitious in reducing its sentencing for violent and serious crime, even if only to maintain the reductions brought about by recent reform.

Where next? For critics of America’s criminal justice system, the hope is that reform in California will help carve out reform across the nation. Federal reform is an urgent matter. More than 2.4 million Americans are behind bars today — more than the combined population of 15 states or the U.S. armed forces. And that problem is racialized: The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid.

For serious changes to take place, we need to rethink why we put people in prison in the first place. Is it to rehabilitate them? Or is it, as recidivism rates and institutionalized discrimination in employment, housing, education and voting rights suggest, to debilitate them? People are starting to catch on.

Zeeshan Aleem Politics staff writer at Mic. Experience: The Huffington Post, Politico, The Atlantic Wire, BBC. Education: Sidwell Friends School, Oxford University, George Washington, University of Chicago.

Stamford Advocate: Are victims’ rights and prisoner redemption compatible? By Brian E. Moran, Esq.

Reprinted From The Stamford Advocate, Thurs. Nov. 6, 2014

California approved a major shift against mass incarceration on Tuesday in a vote that could lead to the release of thousands of state prisoners.

Nonviolent felonies like shoplifting and drug possession will be downgraded to misdemeanors under the ballot measure, Proposition 47. As many as 10,000 people could be eligible for early release from state prisons, and it’s expected that courts will annually dispense around 40,000 fewer felony convictions.

The state Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the new measure will save hundreds of millions of dollars on prisons. That money is to be redirected to education, mental health and addiction services — a novel approach that reformers hope will serve as a model in the larger push against mass incarceration.

The approval of the ballot measure could also help California grapple with massive overcrowding in its state prisons, which are still struggling to release enough inmates to comply with a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court order.

Although California once led the nation in tough-on-crime policies, like the state’s infamous three-strikes felony law, Proposition 47 has led in every poll conducted since it was certified in June. The measure’s supporters have been an eclectic bunch, from conservatives like Newt Gingrich and business tycoon B. Wayne Hughes Jr. to liberal performers like John Legend and Jay-Z.

The most vocal opponents of Proposition 47 were law enforcement officials who warned that the measure could make it harder to prosecute felony gun theft orpossession of date-rape drugs.

At the same time, a few scattered law-and-order voices, like San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, did come out in favor of the proposition, dismissing those concerns.

Reformers also vastly outspent law enforcement officials and their allies. The main coalition in favor of Proposition 47 raised $7 million as of mid-October, buoyed by contributions from the likes of Hughes, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and a foundation backed by the financier George Soros.

Californians Against Proposition 47, meanwhile, garnered less than $500,000 in the same time period. The state prison guard union — often a formidable force in debates over mass incarceration — sat the ballot measure debate out.

“The country seems to have come to a different place […] I think, most fundamentally, because crime is down,” Keith Humphreys, a drug addiction expert who supported the measure, told The Huffington Post in October. “When people are not feeling terrified, they’re more willing to back off on the tough-on-crime stuff.”

Reposted from Huffington Post Black Voices by Matt Sledge msledge@huffingtonpost.com

The Justice Imperative: Inside Connecticut’s Prisons – What’s Going On?

Shenaya, 16, couldn’t seem to follow prison rules. She was always angry, always getting into fights. As a result, she always ended up in administrative segregation, where she was denied programming, visits, and she was locked up 23 hours a day by herself. She would scream, yell, and cry to the guards to let her out, but when they came, she would spit at them or hit them, earning her another 30 days in seg. After spending the better part of her 16^th year in solitary lockdown, she began therapy sessions and a writing class. She began to tell her own story, one full of trauma, abuse, and anger – including anger at being taken from her family, first by the foster care system and later by the prison system. She learned to speak about her anger instead of just acting on it. Now she works in the library, ticket free.

See More: Please go to Chapter Eight in “The Justice Imperative”

www.TheJusticeImperative.org