Overcrowding
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Shipping Prisoners Out of Sight
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Going Beyond Band-Aids to Stop Suicides in French Prisons
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Smart on Crime: More Safety at Less Cost
Hiding ‘Problem Prisoners’ to Pass Inspection
Published October 20, 2009 @ 03:48PM PT
A fresh scandal in the U.K. reveals that officers at two London prisons routinely shuffled prisoners between facilities in order to pass inspections.
Reports released today from an independent examiner find that the practice -- known as “ghosting” -- was commonly used at two London facilities, where prisoners were transferred from one to the other in anticipation of an audit, and then returned immediately after the review. Justice Secretary Jack Straw ordered a nationwide investigation.
The frequent moving of prisoners is a common practice around the world, and under normal circumstances it can be destructive -- interrupting medical care, education and positive relationships, moving prisoners far from families and support networks and causing violence by forcing prisoners to repeatedly prove themselves to new populations. But hiding prisoners from inspectors is a new low.
I’ve known people who have been moved more than ten times during a 15 year sentence -- some in New York call it the “upstate tour.” Of course, there can be legitimate reasons for moves as well -- prisoners can request transfers to facilities with certain programs or to avoid violent circumstances.
Kids Outside, Parents Inside
Published October 07, 2009 @ 05:47AM PT
The sprawling prison system in the United States doesn't only affect the 2.3 million people behind bars. These disappeared prisoners create holes in their communities, and their absence is often felt most profoundly by the children they leave behind.
A documentary film in progress, The Word is Love, gives us an intimate portrait of the lives and thoughts of kids with incarcerated parents. And filmmaker Marika Turano will be a guest on the web radio show Family Life Behind Bars for a live chat tonight at 9 p.m. ET. Click here to join the conversation (and to listen to archived episodes of the show, which launched in March).
‘A Really Bad Person’
Published September 29, 2009 @ 07:21AM PT
Steve Poizner, a candidate for governor of California, recently told the Sacramento Bee: “You have to be a really bad person to get into state prison.” He went on to explain that because everyone in prison must be dangerous, he can’t support any early releases.
Last week, I wrote about labels like offender, prisoner and inmate. Where does ‘ really bad person’ fall on that scale? This is about as clear as you hear it from politicians: any ideal of rehabilitation is false, once you go to prison, you may as well disappear.
Just A Guy, a California State Prisoner (and therefore a really bad person) who writes a blog at the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about Poizner’s blanket dismissal recently and the wrongheaded way California is confronting the court order to reduce its prison population from 150,000 to 110,000 by 2011.
Held Without Trial in Nigeria
Published September 22, 2009 @ 06:55AM PT
An NGO report released this summer uncovered serious problems with the criminal court process in Nigeria -- finding that more than two-thirds of the country’s approximately 40,000 prisoners are held without charges. Some prisoners have been behind bars for nine years without a trial, the report found. In some of these cases, the paperwork has been lost and there is little hope of piecing together a fair trial.
A May report from the Nigerian Centre for Social and Legal Studies (CSLS) found that 85 percent of prisoners in one facility were held without charge. Last year, Amnesty International found that 65 percent of the country's prisoners haven't been formally charged.
The Amnesty report also pointed to serious human rights abuses in Nigeria's prisons:
Living conditions in the prisons are appalling. They are damaging to the physical and mental well-being of inmates and in many cases constitute clear threats to health. Conditions such as overcrowding, poor sanitation, lack of food and medicines and denial of contact with families and friends fall short of UN standards for the treatment of prisoners. The worst conditions constitute ill-treatment. In many Nigerian prisons inmates sleep two to a bed or on the floor in filthy cells. Toilets are blocked and overflowing or simply nonexistent, and there is no running water. As a result, disease is widespread.
1,500 Prisoners Freed in Zimbabwe
Published September 13, 2009 @ 01:07PM PT
I've written in recent months about severe overcrowding and deadly conditions in Zimbabwe's prisons, and I wanted to share the news that the country finally started addressing the problem on Friday. President Robert Mugabe pardoned 1,500 people -- mostly women and children and men serving more than 20 years for a non-violent convictions. The prisoners were released on Friday.
Amnesty International has reported that more than 1,000 people had died in Zimbabwe's prisons this year alone due to starvation and disease. The mass release is a welcome step, but it doesn't go far enough to address conditions in the prisons or the inconsistent system that puts some people behind bars in Zimbabwe for crimes they didn't commit, or even for years while they await a trial.
Tension Boils Over at Crowded California Prison
Published August 10, 2009 @ 06:57AM PT
A riot on Saturday night at the California Institution for Men in Chino left 250 prisoners injured and several housing areas uninhabitable. At left, one of the prison's dormitories was burned.
By many accounts, the riot was ignited by fights between African-American and Latino prisoners, and the violence was starkly divided along racial lines. But overcrowding clearly had a role in this disaster. Chino was built in 1941 for 3,033 prisoners and currently holds 5,911.
As I've written here before, racial divisions and violence are serious problems inside prisons across the country. The prevalence of gangs - usually divided along racial lines - exacerbates the problem. Friends who have served time across the country have told me about the hyper-awareness prisoners develop to race - and the difficulty to shake prejudices upon release.
Skipp Townsend, who served time in California prisons and jails and now works as the executive director of 2nd Call, a community organization addressing violence reduction in L.A., spoke with NPR's Tony Cox about race behind bars last year.
"In the prison system, in the jail system, it's a tension that is immediate. As soon as being incarcerated... the tension is there," Townsend said. "The guy who might be my friend on the street, I can no longer be friends with him inside of L.A. County Jail."
But we can't blame this riot on unavoidable racial tensions and move on. There are deeper causes, and until they are addressed, we'll see more revolts like this across the country. Overcrowding and the lack of education and other services contribute to uprisings like this one. Until these issues are addressed, we'll see more violence inside prison, continued recidivism, and officials will have no choice but to crack down and punish prisoners after the fact.
Judges Order California to Cut Prison Population by 27%
Published August 05, 2009 @ 06:10AM PT
A three-judge panel, handling a series of class-action lawsuits that have dragged on for 15 years, took its strongest action yet yesterday in ordering the California Department of Corrections to reduce the prison population by 40,000 inmates (27 percent) in two years. The judges ruled that overcrowding in the system is so severe it is a violation of prisoners' constitutional rights, and causes one at least unnecessary death per week.
“In these overcrowded conditions, inmate-on-inmate violence is almost impossible to prevent, infectious diseases spread more easily, and lockdowns are sometimes the only means by which to maintain control,” the panel wrote. “In short, California’s prisons are bursting at the seams and are impossible to manage.”
The state said it would appeal, because the ordered changes will cost the state money it doesn't have. But columnist Dan Walters coined a new phrase in the Sacramento Bee (new to me at least), that applies well to the situation.
There's an old saying in police and prosecutorial circles: Don't do the crime unless you want to do the time. A political corollary should be: Don't crack down on crime unless you're willing to spend the dime.
