Sarasota Criminal Justice Reform

Should chronic pain sufferers be treated as criminals?

2012-01-31T06:21:00.000-08:00

The other casualties in the war on pain medication.

As crime drops, fewer prisons are needed

2012-01-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

The crime rate in Florida as fallen by almost fifty percent over the past 20 years. This means we need a lot fewer prisons.

Florida to close 11 correctional facilities

2012-01-13T05:41:00.000-08:00

The state of Florida is closing seven of its state prisons and four work camps for a savings of roughly $90 million through 2013. But what wasn't clear after Thursday's announcement was how many of the nearly 1,300 employees who work at those facilities, including corrections officers, would still have jobs. "I'm not going to guarantee we can place everyone," said Corrections Secretary Kenneth S. Tucker. He did say he would reach out to other state agencies and county sheriffs to find jobs for corrections workers. [Source: AP]

World Peace Day Observance January 7

2011-12-28T08:40:00.000-08:00

A celebration of World Peace Day will take place on Saturday, January 7, at the Unitarian Universalist Church on Fruitville Road in Sarasota. The event is sponsored by the South West Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice and will last from 9:30 am to 1:30pm, beginning with a complimentary continental breakfast.

The program will feature a presentation on Latino issues led by Kelly Kirschner, of Unidos Now and Louise Brumberg of Englewood, founder of Escuela Suenos De Luisa in Nicaragua. The annual Duisberg Peace Award will be presented to Rob Lorei, Director of Public Affairs at WMNF-88.5 FM and host of "Florida, This Week" on WEDU-TV. Lorei will moderate a panel of former peace award winners from this area, including Adam Tebrugge, Samar Jarrah, Andrea Blanch, and Mindy Simmons who will also present musical selections. A special appearance will be made by Faith Fippinger, human shield and first Peace Award winner, who returns to Sarasota for a family visit from three years overseas.

In addition to the formal program, over fifteen vendors will offer snacks and displays. Organizations participating are Veterans for Common Sense, WSLR, the Peace Education and Action Center, Transition Sarasota, Beyond War, Englewood Peace Initiative Coalition, Coalition for Concerned Patriots, Center for Religious Tolerance, Pax Christi- Manasota, and Peace and Justice Committees from St. Boniface, Sarasota Quakers, First Congregational Church, UCC, and Unitarian Universalists from Venice, Charlotte, and Manatee.

This event is open to the public free of change but donations are welcome for the school in Nicaragua. For further information, contact 941-721-3486.

Will Conservatives Help Advance Criminal Justice Reform in Florida?

2011-12-19T07:45:00.001-08:00

Little progress has been made on criminal justice reform over the past decade. Laws grow more harsh, more crimes are created, greater numbers of people are sent to prison for longer sentences. Our only hope is that our legislature's failures have now caught up with them. The best place to save money in our budget is with meaningful criminal justice reform. Now some traditionally conservative groups are starting to understand.

False Confessions May Lead to More Errors in Evidence, a Study Shows

2011-11-17T05:27:00.000-08:00

A man with a low IQ confesses to a gruesome crime. Confession in hand, the police send his blood to a lab to confirm that his blood type matches the semen found at the scene. It does not. The forensic examiner testifies later that one blood type can change to another with disintegration. This is untrue. The newspaper reports the story, including the time the man says the murder took place. Two witnesses tell the police they saw the woman alive after that. The police send them home, saying they “must have seen a ghost.” After 16 years in prison, the falsely convicted man is exonerated by DNA evidence.How could this happen?

“False confessions can corrupt other evidence, both from laypeople and forensic experts,” says John Jay College of Criminal Justice psychologist Saul Kassin, summarizing a new study conducted with Daniel Bogart of the University of California Irvine and Nova Southeastern University’s Jacqueline Kerner. The findings, which will appear in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, have far-reaching implications for judges and juries, prosecutors and defense attorneys.Confessions, when true, are an important tool in convicting criminals. But false confessions frequently play a major role in convicting innocent people. Experiments show that juries and potential witnesses are influenced by confessions even if they know they were coerced. Also in the lab, experienced polygraph examiners, fingerprint experts, and other experts, when informed of a confession, see what they expect to see—that is, evidence of guilt.

To back up these findings with real-life data, the psychologists thoroughly reviewed the trial records of 241 people exonerated by the Innocence Project since 1992. Of these, 59—or 25 percent—involved false confessions, either by the defendant or an alleged accomplice. One-hundred eighty—or 75 percent—involved eyewitness mistakes. The analysis revealed that multiple errors turned up far more often in false confession cases than in eyewitness cases: 69 percent versus fewer than half. And two thirds of the time, the confession came first, followed by other errors, namely invalid forensic science and government informants.

Kassin believes the findings “greatly underestimate the problem” because of what never shows up in court: evidence of innocence. Told the suspect confessed, “alibi witnesses back out, thinking they’re mistaken,” police stop searching for the real culprit. “We show that confessions bring in other incriminating evidence that is false. What we don’t see is a tendency to suppress exculpatory evidence.”The study throws doubt on a critical legal concept designed to safeguard the innocent: corroboration. Appeals courts uphold a conviction even if a false confession is discovered, as long as other evidence—say, forensics or other witness testimony—independently shows guilt. “What these findings suggest is that there may well be the appearance of corroboration,” says Kassin, “but it is false evidence that was corrupted by the confession—not independent at all.”Already, many states require that interrogations be taped, so that confessions are not coerced or taken when the suspect is in psychological distress. With this study, “Juries and judges have more reason to critically evaluate the conditions under which that other evidence was taken, too.”

###For more information about this study, please contact: Saul Kassin at skassin@jjay.cuny.edu.The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Confessions that Corrupt: Evidence from the DNA Exoneration Case Files" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Divya Menon at 202-293-9300 or dmenon@psychologicalscience.org.Copyright © Association for Psychological Science

Proposed Sarasota County Ordinances

2011-11-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

Two new ordinances are under consideration by Sarasota County Government. The ordinances concerns second hand dealers and recyclable metals. The present text of the ordinances can be found here.

I am against these ordinances. Whether you agree or disagree, you have an opportunity to comment by sending an e-mail to ordinances@scgov.net

Here is what I sent in:

Dear Sarasota County Commissioners:

My name is Adam Tebrugge. I have been a resident of Sarasota County since 1979. I purchased my home in the City of Sarasota in 1986. I operate my law practice, Tebrugge Legal, in the City of Bradenton, though I practice extensively in Sarasota County. Though I am a member of many organizations, I am writing solely in my role as a private citizen.

I appreciate the work effort of the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office and the Sarasota County Attorney's Office in drafting the proposed ordinances. They have invited me to make recommendations for improving the ordinances. However, for the reasons I give below, I am recommending that you vote against each of the proposed ordinances.

The Ordinances Are Duplicative Of State Law:
I work primarily as a criminal defense attorney. Every day I defend persons charged with burglary, criminal mischief, theft and dealing in stolen property. State criminal law already provides for substantial punishment for each of these crimes. I do not understand why Sarasota County would need to pass ordinances on the same subjects.

The Ordinances Are Not Needed:
In the preamble to each ordinance, I find the statement: "Sarasota County citizens and businesses have suffered recent losses in excess of $7.9 million." No foundation or citation is provided to support this assertion. Even if true, I do not understand why a separate ordinance is needed when theft and dealing in stolen property are already crimes.

The Ordinances Will Likely Have a Severe Impact Upon Existing Businesses:
Honestly I am astonished at the number of regulations that these ordinances will place on existing businesses. The amount of record keeping and compliance that is required will be extremely burdensome. Essentially these ordinances require intense work by private businesses solely for the purpose of aiding law enforcement investigations.

Second Hand Dealers and Recyclers Are Already Cooperative With Law Enforcement:
In practicing criminal law in this area for the past 27 years, I have learned that businesses in Sarasota County routinely go above and beyond the call of duty to assist law enforcement with investigations. Ordinances of this type will discourage voluntary cooperation because of the mandatory compliance requirements and threats of penalties.

Enforcement of These Ordinances Will Unnecessarily Burden Sarasota County Government:
From what I understand, Sarasota Sheriff's Deputies and Sarasota County Code Enforcement Officers will have mutual enforcement responsibilities. I am of the opinion that members of each of these departments already have enough to do. Therefore, it appears to me that Sarasota County would have to undertake significant expenditures to hire additional staff to ensure compliance with these ordinances.

The Ordinances Will Discriminate Against the Poor:
I have worked with indigent citizens for my entire legal career. I know a lot of people who have worked collecting recyclable materials or second hand goods in order to maintain a meager economic existence. I am very concerned that the requirements of these ordinances will have a disproportionate impact upon those citizens of Sarasota who live below the poverty line. Many of the people I work with have no identification or bank account. I do not believe that Sarasota County is allowed to prohibit cash transactions as the ordinance appears to do.

The County May Be Incurring Substantial Legal Fees to Defend These Ordinances:
I have reviewed the ordinances carefully and had great deal of difficulty understanding the purpose behind them, the requirements upon our citizens and businesses, the enforcement mechanisms and the punishment for violations. I believe that if these ordinances are passed, Sarasota County will be paying to defend them in Court for years to come. I sincerely believe that money could be better spent on other efforts.

Thank you for your consideration of my comments.

Adam Tebrugge

The high cost of death

2011-10-31T14:54:00.001-07:00

The death penalty exacts a cost in many different ways.

Criminal Justice Reform Making Progress in Florida?

2011-10-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

Smart criminal justice reform is picking up political speed in Florida. Remember, 2012 is an election year and our elected representatives and senators will be listening. Let them know that you support being smart on crime. This means more drug court and less prisons, more flexibility and less minimum mandatories, and more emphasis on rehabilitation for the incarcerated citizens who will be returning to the community.

Second Chances

2011-10-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

It is important to assist those getting out of prison if we don't want them to go back.

Drug Treatment Cheaper Than Filling More Prison Cells

2011-10-10T18:58:00.000-07:00

The St. Petersburg Times publishes this obvious but important editorial.

Prosecutorial Overreach

2011-09-29T14:56:00.000-07:00

Minimum mandatory sentences have helped ruin the criminal justice system. So has punishing people for exercising their right to trial. Prosecutorial overreach is also a problem.

Reduced prison populations equals ?

2011-08-19T05:44:00.000-07:00

We can reduce our reliance on prisons and be safer.

Smart Reform is Possible

2011-08-10T08:41:00.000-07:00

Here is an important new report, subtitled: State's Reducing Incarceration Rates and Costs While Protecting Communities.

Know Your Rights part 2

2011-08-04T17:14:00.000-07:00

The second part of my video on the Florida Criminal Justice System can be found here.

Know Your Rights

2011-08-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

My video on the Florida Criminal Justice system, starts here.

No Good Will Come From This Experiment

2011-08-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

Private Prisons take over our state.

Even DNA is not foolproof

2011-07-09T05:57:00.000-07:00

Because there is always a human element. Read about how a DNA analyst helped send an innocent man to prison here: http://www.8newsnow.com/story/15044406/dna-mix-up-could-result-in-the-re-opening-of-other-criminal-cases?clienttype=printable

The High Cost of Wrongful Convictions

2011-06-30T10:27:00.000-07:00

The Better Government Association has produced a fascinating report on the high cost of wrongful convictions. The subtitle is: A Tale of Lives Lost, Tax Dollars Wasted and Justice Denied. Just looking at Illinois between 1989 and 2010, the estimated cost to taxpayers was 214 million dollars. Read the full report here: http://www.bettergov.org/investigations/wrongful_convictions_1.aspx

Even Texas Takes on Criminal Justice Reform

2011-06-28T05:44:00.000-07:00

Florida failed to enact any meaningful criminal justice reform this past legislative session. But even the State of Texas has now passed reforms to make the criminal system more effective, fair and cost conscious. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/7586712.html

Chronic Problems For Capital Punishment in Florida

2011-06-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/os-ed-death-penalty-commission-06251120110624,0,3795160.story

Why is Crime Down?

2011-06-22T04:31:00.001-07:00

Probably not because of massive incarceration: http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/20/the-crime-rate-puzzle

Mississippi undertakes prison reform--can Florida follow?

2011-06-14T05:23:00.001-07:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20110612/us_time/08599207708900;_ylt=AnzTbJzUzFNGRq7ImI7IO802PcB_;_ylu=X3oDMTNhYTFubXRnBGFzc2V0A3RpbWUvMjAxMTA2MTIvMDg1OTkyMDc3MDg5MDAEY2NvZGUDdG9wZ21wdG9wMjAwcG9vbARjcG9zAzEEcG9zAzEEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawN3aHltaXNzaXNzaXA-

How many innocent Americans are Behind Bars?

2011-06-08T06:50:00.001-07:00

http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/07/wrongful-convictions

Let's Focus on People, Not Prisons:

2011-04-19T05:02:00.000-07:00

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released a report stating that the United States has the highest percentage of incarcerated citizens in the developed world and ranks ninth from the bottom in social spending. The report was included in what Business Insider calls a "massive pack of data" from the OECD discussing current social and economic conditions among the world's developed nations.

The United States imprisons 760 of every 100,000 citizens, according to the study. The only nation that comes anywhere close is South Africa, with a prison population of 329 prisoners per 100,000. The OECD average is 140.

Of the 34 nations included in the survey, the US ranks ninth from the lowest on social spending, above Australia, but below Ireland. France comes in at the top, followed by Sweden and Austria.
According to Business Insider, "Social spending is low on pensions, but high on prisons. Health spending is off the charts, but obesity and life expectancy are worse than average."
In spite of the fact that the US ranks low in terms of health care accessibility, Americans spend more on health care than any other nation in the world. It makes up 16% of the US GDP. The second highest is France, at 11.2%.

The OECD is a group of 34 countries founded in 1961 to "promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world".

How Do You Cut Prison Populations And Costs? By Focusing On Parole And Probation:

2011-04-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

The Pew Center on the States, which has done a lot of groundbreaking research on criminal-justice policy, has a new report out showing that corrections represent the fastest-growing costs to state budgets second only to Medicaid. The prison population has grown by more than 700 percent since 1973, while costs over the last 20 years alone have grown more than 300 percent. According to Pew, about 40 percent of ex-offenders return to prison within three years -- cutting that rate by 10 percent would save $645 million. Not all the money spent on incarceration was wasted, but the Pew study makes it clear that we're now beyond the point of diminishing returns. Even as the prison population has ballooned, the study states that only about a third of the drop in crime is attributable to incarceration, and notably, 19 of the states in the study that cut their prison populations also experienced a drop in crime. The recidivism rate alone doesn't always tell the whole story, since some policies can make it look like states have developed effective policies for preventing people from reoffending when they're really just incarcerating more people who are less likely to recidivate. There are two states in the survey that bear looking at as starkly contrasting examples. The first is Oregon, which has done an incredible job of reducing its recidivism rate through policies like graduated sanctions. Oregon cut its recidivism rate to 22.8 percent, an almost 32 percent drop according to Pew. How? Oregon focused on parole and probation, like the other smart states: The change in the handling of offenders who violate terms of their supervision was striking. In the past, parole and probation violators filled more than a quarter of Oregon’s prison beds. Today violators are rarely reincarcerated. Instead, they face an array of graduated sanctions in the community, including a short jail stay as needed to hold violators accountable. Results of the Pew/ASCA survey confirmed this—only 5.9 percent of offenders released in 1999 and 3.3 percent of the 2004 cohort were returned to prison on technical violations. Then you have California, which simply re-imprisons parolees for technical violations, which increases both its prison costs and its recidivism rate. Where graduated sanctions are tailored to the violation, California just locks people back up. Most of these people aren't committing actual crimes, mind you. Here's the chart from the report. The light blue are technical violations, the dark blue represents new crimes being committed: Pew concludes that California alone could save $233 million in a year by cutting its recidivism rate by 10 percent -- corrections makes up about 11 percent of California's state budget. Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed a bill designed to help cut the states' prison population and therefore its cost to the state, so we'll see how that goes. Again, it's easy to focus on prison costs. But the point here is that when ex-offenders don't recidivate, that means they're more likely to get jobs and be parents to their children. There is a serious negative cumulative impact created by ex-offenders being unable to find licit employment and lead productive lives, one that has a drastic effect on the poor communities in which their populations tend to be concentrated. So states have a public safety and fiscal interest in getting this right, but there's more at stake here than just money. By Adam Serwer Posted 04/13/2011 at 09:00 AM at the American Prospect

Illinois Proves (Again) That Ending the Death Penalty Saves Money

2011-04-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Illinois, we now have more proof: ending the death penalty saves money - a lot of money - and quickly. So what is California (and Florida) waiting for? It's less than a month since Illinois Governor Pat Quinn signed the death penalty repeal bill, replacing the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole and diverting the cost savings to victims' services. Just two weeks later savings had already reached $4.7 million! And that's just the tip of the iceberg. These first budgetary savings in Illinois came through the State Appellate Defender's office, which is the office that provides attorneys for men and women on death row who otherwise can't afford their own lawyer for appeals. With the end of the death penalty, that agency has been closed. Now the entire budget of nearly $5 million can be directed to victims' services. And some of the highly-trained and experienced attorneys from that office are elated at being out of work for such good reason. The 37 jobs once held by these lawyers perfectly illustrate why the death penalty is so expensive. When a poor person is sentenced to life without parole, the state goes to reasonable lengths to make sure the conviction was valid and due process was met by providing the person with a lawyer and paths to one appeal. But if the sentence is death, the state's responsibility is drastically more important. In order to make sure the state doesn't make the ultimate mistake and execute an innocent person, it provides poor people on death row with attorneys and investigators for habeas corpus, a whole other set of appeals. It's only in this second appeals process that people are allowed to present evidence that they are actually innocent, or mentally retarded, or were represented at trial by an incompetent attorney. And, because someone's life is at stake, capital appeals lawyers must be some of the best attorneys available and have more training and experience than their colleagues handling lower-stakes cases. Illinois had only 15 people on death row but it still needed an agency with 37 staff members and an annual budget of $4.7 million to defend them on appeal. California has more than 700 people on death row--almost 50 times as many. We have three state agencies that only work on death penalty cases, plus we hire private attorneys, costing the state $38 million each year. And that still is not enough to pay for all the attorneys needed: 45% of the people on death row in California do not even have an attorney for the habeas process yet. If California followed Illinois' lead, we could immediately close three state offices and lay off hundreds of death penalty attorneys, saving $38 million just as quickly as Illinois. And that's only the beginning. Prosecutors no longer charged with life and death decisions will be able to devote their time to other cases with lower stakes, saving the vast resources spent on death cases. Jurors will no longer have to go through exceptionally long selection processes to become "death qualified," or attend additional penalty phases to decide who lives and who dies. Those convicted will no longer reside in separate death row facilities with higher housing costs, and will have reasonably limited appeals that will never run the risk of executing an innocent life. In California, those changes would translate into these real dollars: » $4 million saved from cuts to the California Supreme Court» $12 million saved from cuts to the Attorney General's Office» $20 million saved by individual counties» $38 million saved by closing defense agencies» $63 million saved by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation» $400 million saved by avoiding the construction of a new death row Grand total: $1 billion in five years. These are the kinds of savings all of the other 34 death penalty states can expect to see if they follow Illinois' footsteps and repeal the death penalty. But here in California where we foot the bill for the nation's biggest, most expensive, and fastest growing death row, the numbers are astronomically high. Repealing the death penalty and replacing it with life without parole will provide real money right away that can make a real difference in people's lives. by James Clark

State Budget Crisis Pushes Sentencing Reform

2011-04-03T06:30:00.000-07:00

The bills are coming due for years of "tough on crime policies. With crisis comes opportunity as explained here.

Company urged Florida not to use its drug in execution 'cocktail'

2011-02-22T07:40:00.000-08:00

For years, Illinois-based Hospira Inc. worried about its drugs being used across the country for lethal injections. So, a company spokesman says, Hospira sent letters to all the states annually — including Florida — stating its opposition to the drugs' use to carry out death sentences.
But the states, including Florida, continued using at least one Hospira product in the three-drug "cocktail" approved for executions.

There was nothing illegal about that, but their continued use of Hospira products to execute inmates ultimately compelled the company last month to announce its decision to stop all production of its trademarked anesthetic, Pentothal. The supplies that states already have on hand are set to expire this year.

"Hospira provides these products because they improve or save lives and markets them solely for use as indicated on the product labeling," wrote Kees Gioenhout, Hospira's vice president of Clinical Research and Development, in a letter sent to Ohio in March. "As such, we do not support the use of any of our products in capital punishment procedures."

The Florida Department of Corrections has no record of any such letters sent to its headquarters in Tallahassee. "I have not been able to find the letter or anyone who remembers getting the letter," said corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger. In an earlier e-mail, Plessinger wrote, "I can't find that letter. They didn't send it to the Secretary or legal or Institutions."
But Hospira spokesman Daniel Rosenberg said, "We sent letters to all the states. It was sent to Florida."

Hospira sent letters each year during the past decade, Rosenberg said, sharing concerns about the use of Hospira drugs in executions. Hospira was the sole manufacturer of sodium thiopental, or Pentothal, which was specifically listed in Florida's lethal-injection procedures spelled out by the Department of Corrections secretary in an April 2008 document.

In announcing its decision to cease making the drug, Hospira said it could not ensure that third-party suppliers would never sell the drug to state departments of corrections for use in executions. Authorities in Italy, where the drug was made, were also concerned about — and opposed to — the drug's use in executions in the United States.

When the Orlando Sentinel and its attorney requested Florida's Department of Corrections vendor history for the drug, the department denied the request, citing a state statute listing certain department records and information as confidential.

'Botched' executions
The Hospira situation is the latest example of the dilemmas death-penalty states sometimes face in finding humane ways to carry out their executions.
Florida's use of lethal injections came under scrutiny after the December 2006 execution of Angel Nieves Diaz. The convicted killer took 34 minutes to die and required two doses of the lethal drugs.

The state's use of lethal injection as its primary means of execution was adopted in 2000 as an alternative to the electric chair: "Old Sparky." Death-row inmates today may still opt for the electric chair, but the change to lethal injections as the primary method came after concerns about "botched" executions surfaced in using the electric chair. During 1990 and 1997, flames or smoke arose from inmates during electrocution.

Now that Hospira no longer manufactures Pentothal, Florida and many other states must seek alternative drugs. Many states used Pentothal as the anesthetic, followed by pancuronium bromide to relax muscles and potassium chloride to stop the heart. "We are in the process of establishing a new lethal-injection procedure," Plessinger said. "Currently no death warrants are pending; however, we will be ready to carry out a humane execution if a warrant is signed."
Soon after the Hospira decision, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction announced it would replace sodium thiopental with pentobarbital in its executions. The Ohio department noted in a Jan. 25 statement that pentobarbital is "widely available and manufactured in the United States."

Pentobarbital, more commonly used in euthanizing animals, has been used by Oklahoma officials in that state's lethal-injection process. It is also the drug being considered for use in Florida, Plessinger said last week.

On Thursday morning, Ohio used its remaining stores of Hospira's Pentothal to execute Frank Spisak, a triple murderer and longtime death-row inmate in that state. Ohio's old protocol called for that drug alone to be used in its executions.

In the future, Pentobarbital will be the sole drug used, said ODRC spokeswoman JoEllen Smith.
When asked about the Hospira letter opposing the use of its drug in executions, Smith said she was aware of the letter. Asked how the state responded, Smith said, "I don't believe there was an official response by Ohio in regard to that letter."

Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said she was not aware of the Hospira letter being sent to her department. Texas still has a small amount of Pentothal on hand, but, like Florida, that large death-row state is still reviewing alternative drugs for future executions.

A number of state attorneys general have written to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder asking for the federal government's assistance in possibly obtaining overseas supplies of sodium thiopental, according to Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

But Dieter expects most states will look at pentobarbital and other substitutes. In addition, he said a group of death-row inmates from three states has challenged the federal Food and Drug Administration for failing to review the quality of lethal-injection drugs coming from overseas.
As for the letters sent out by Hospira, Dieter said they signal that many in the health profession — drug manufacturers, doctors "or even the FDA" — want to distance themselves from the death penalty.

"It may not be the best public relations for a health company to be associated with a killing drug," he said. Though the Hospira letters probably had no binding effect, Dieter said "they do symbolize the growing sentiment that the U.S. is isolated in its use of the death penalty and that others are willing to take concrete steps, even to their economic disadvantage, to discourage such use."

By Anthony Colarossi, Orlando Sentinel10:45 PM EST, February 21, 2011
acolarossi@tribune.com or 407-420-5447
Copyright © 2011, Orlando Sentinel

Time to Get Smart on Crime

2011-02-21T07:26:00.000-08:00

Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Administration and Congress provides the
112th Congress and the Administration with analysis of the problems plaguing our state and
federal criminal justice systems and a series of recommendations to address these failures. It
provides a comprehensive examination of the criminal justice system, from the creation of
new criminal laws to ex-offenders’ reentry into communities after serving their sentences.
Our broad recommendations range from helping to restore and empower victims to
identifying ways to protect the rights of the accused.

Americans depend on the criminal justice system to maintain our safety and security.
We expect the system to effectively deter crime and punish offenders, and rehabilitate those
who have served their sentences. We also demand that it treat victims and their families with
compassion and provide justice and safety for all Americans. We insist that it be fair, reliable
and accurate. Yet, too frequently, these laudable—but daunting—goals go unmet.
Central to our mission is offering recommendations that achieve these goals, while
reflecting the economic realities and acknowledging the new priority of return on investment.
Today, budget shortfalls and economic distress are plaguing states and placing greater
burdens on the federal government. States are confronting budge crises that threaten all
facets of the criminal justice system, including courts, prisons, police departments,
prosecutors, and public defenders.

To effectively tackle these challenges, we must abandon heated rhetoric and explore
policies based not on ideology, but on evidence. We must come together to forge a system
that works for everyone. For this reason, Smart on Crime incorporates cost-effective,
evidence-based solutions to address the worst problems in our system.

The efforts of the Smart on Crime Coalition are coordinated by the Constitution Project.
The Constitution Project (TCP) brings together unlikely allies—experts and practitioners
from across the political spectrum—in order to promote and safeguard America’s founding
charter. TCP is working to reform the nation’s broken criminal justice system and to
strengthen the rule of law through scholarship, consensus policy reforms, advocacy, and
public education. The full report is here: http://www.besmartoncrime.org/pdf/Complete.pdf

Let's Put Criminal Justice Reform on the Florida Legislative Agenda!

2011-02-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

As I travel around the state and meet FAMM supporters, I am asked again and again how you can help. Well, now’s your chance! The legislative session is right around the corner, and we need your help putting sentencing reform on the agenda!

Several important Florida state representatives and senators will help determine the direction of criminal justice reform this session. One of the most important is Senator Greg Evers (District 2), who is chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

To help convince Sen. Evers to help put sentencing reform on the agenda, I need each and every one of you to write a brief letter to Sen. Evers, explaining that you are a Florida resident, a FAMM supporter, and that you care about sentencing reform. After you’ve sent your letter, ask your friends, family members, and colleagues to do the same.

I posted a sample letter you can use as a guide on the Florida FAMM website.

If you want to use your own language, I suggest you cite some of the statistics available at the Florida FAMM page and mention the negative impact that our sentencing laws have on Florida’s budget problems. For better or worse, the budget has the attention of everyone in Tallahassee, and we should use that to our advantage. You should also feel free to share how mandatory sentencing laws have impacted you or your loved one.

Please remember that legislators are very busy, so shorter is often better; keep your letters to no more than one page. Also, and more importantly, keep your letter professional and polite!

You can contact Sen. Greg Evers by email at evers.greg.web@flsenate.gov. If you prefer to mail your letter, please address it to Senator Greg Evers, 24 North Tarragona, Pensacola, FL 32502. When you send your letter, please forward it on to me, both so I have a sense of how many have been sent and just as importantly, so I can thank you personally.

Let me add: it is vitally important that Sen. Evers receive as many letters as we can get to him. This is our first chance to let the legislature know who we are and what we want. Let’s let our voices be heard and heard loudly.

Finally, we have membership meetings coming up in Jacksonville, Daytona Beach and Orlando. Please keep an eye on your email for details about those meetings. And follow us on Twitter at @FloridaFAMM!

As always, thank you for supporting FAMM. We couldn’t do it without you.

Best,

Greg

Greg Newburn
Florida Project Director

Contact Florida FAMM
P.O. Box 142933
Gainesville, FL 32614
(352) 682-2542
gnewburn@famm.org

Trying to end the death penalty in Florida

2011-02-17T05:12:00.001-08:00

Ron McAndrew and I spoke out against capital punishment before a great audience in Naples last evening. Ron is a former warden from Florida State prison who presided over several executions. He gives powerful testimony against the death penalty. Read more about his journey here: http://www.ronmcandrew.com/p1003001.htm

Is Criminal Justice Reform Inevitable?

2011-02-13T07:09:00.000-08:00

Nationally, we’ve had two major developments in recent weeks that give whiffs of shifting political winds when it comes to what our criminal justice system should look like. Once thought of as liberal policies, calls for funding rehabilitation programs, keeping low-level offenders out of prison, and shrinking the size and scope of the criminal justice system are starting to come from some unexpected places.

First, there’s “Right on Crime,” an initiative launched in late 2010 by the Texas Public Policy Foundation that’s building a case for criminal justice reform from traditional conservative principles like small government and a heavy focus on program outcomes.

Then, this week, another group emerged in the national spotlight called the “Smart on Crime Coaltion.” Smart on Crime unites some traditionally unallied entities: the ACLU, the CATO institute, Heritage Foundation, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers among them. Their report, a series of policy recommendations to Congress is about 317 pages long and covers almost any crime policy you can imagine. The basic message? That our national patchwork of courts, prisons, and policies has not produced a sufficiently fair and effective criminal justice system. Among the recommendations are reducing the use of mandatory minimum sentences, increasing funding for rehabilitation programs, and ending the use of long term solitary confinement.

At the roots of both of these odd movements is the economic crisis. In a recent series of coming out op-eds, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, of all people, articulated his reasoning for joining with the “Right on Crime” campaign. Gingrich, a possible presidential candidate for 2012, seems to have completely left his calls in the 1990s for building more prisons and toughening criminal sentences behind:

“There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential. We spent $68 billion in 2010 on corrections – 300 percent more than 25 years ago. The prison population is growing 13 times faster than the general population. These facts should trouble every American.

Our prisons might be worth the current cost if the recidivism rate were not so high, but, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, half of the prisoners released this year are expected to be back in prison within three years. If our prison policies are failing half of the time, and we know that there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners.”

Already, this message is catching on with conservative politicians. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels has proposed cutting prison sentences and reducing parole supervision for lower level offenders. Florida Governor Rick Scott has proposed pouring money into rehabilitation programs aimed at keeping offenders from returning to prison–which would eventually save the state money.

Will the public go along with it? Polling seems to suggest that when couched under the auspices of cost-savings, efficiency, and government accountability, the public is pretty warm to the idea of softening the national focus on incarceration and punishment. Combine that with the face of the message–those same Republicans who pushed for tougher sentencing and more prisons and have an almost untouchable “tough on crime” credibility–and criminal justice reform starts to seem inevitable.

Is it? That may actually be up to liberals–who on a national level are not taking up the issue with comparable force. And it may be up to the economy: if the money comes back, the public may lose their ambition for the hard work of cuts and reforms.

By Rina Palta KALW News

Now is the time for criminal justice reform:

2011-02-06T10:26:00.000-08:00

The Sarasota Herald Tribune gets it right with this editorial:

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110206/OPINION/102061023/2198/OPINION?Title=Prison-reform-opportunity

To save money, Florida should kill death penalty:

2011-02-04T11:38:00.000-08:00

Now that the hunt is on to wring out every superfluous dollar in the state budget, how about getting rid of the death penalty?
Yes, the death penalty in Florida just might be the ultimate entitlement program we can't afford.
"The number of inmates since 2000 on Death Row dying of natural causes has now surpassed the number of inmates executed," Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon said recently.
Surely, Cannon must be wrong. That sounds preposterous.
But Cannon's right.
In the past 10 years, the state executed 25 Death Row inmates, which was fewer than the 30 who died of natural causes, according to a review by FactCheck.org.
Of the 392 Florida prisoners serving death sentences, 145 of them have been there for 20 or more years and 34 have been there longer than 30 years. The oldest inmate is 80. And another one, Gary Alvord, a Michigan mental institution escapee who fled to Tampa and killed three women, has been on Death Row for 37 years.
A long, expensive process
The state restarted executing inmates in 1979 and has averaged about two executions per year, a pace that far from keeps up with the supply of new arrivals.
Part of that is due to gruesome application errors with the state's execution methods, both in electrocution and lethal injections, that resulted in temporary moratoriums. But mostly, it's because the legal process involved in putting someone to death is long. And expensive.
It's cheaper to lock up inmates for life than to put them on the Death Row carousel of legal appeals. The annual difference in cost is about $51 million, according to a 10-year-old Palm Beach Post study. Another study by The Miami Herald estimated that it costs about $3.2 million to execute a prisoner as compared with $750,000 to lock that prisoner up for life.
Risk of killing innocent inmates
In some cases, their legal journey seems to border on never-ending.
Duane Owen, a sociopath who murdered a 14-year-old babysitter in Delray Beach in 1984, has had two trials and at least six unsuccessful appeals to the Florida Supreme Court.
Now, I know what you're thinking. The solution is to get in touch with our inner Texas and just start picking up the pace.
But recent developments in the analysis of DNA evidence have pointed out the unreliability of eyewitness testimony and have proven that people convicted of horrible crimes are sometimes wrongly convicted by over-eager prosecutors. The Illinois House of Representatives voted last month to abolish the death penalty eight years after its governor emptied Death Row after finding that a dozen innocent prisoners had been condemned to die.
And in Florida, Herman Lindsey was freed by the state Supreme Court a little more than a year ago, becoming the 23rd Death Row prisoner in Florida who had been exonerated since the death penalty was revived in 1979.
"The average time these exonerated prisoners spent on Death Row was eight years," said Mark Elliot, the executive director of Floridians for an Alternative to the Death Penalty. "If you speed the process up, you're virtually guaranteeing that you'll be executing innocent people."
And here's a little icing on this macabre cake.
The only U.S. maker of the lethal injection drug, sodium thiopental, got out of the business recently, and our would-be European suppliers don't want to export death-penalty drugs to America because of an unwillingness to enable our executions.
So there's a shortage of death-penalty drugs.
Ohio's response is to switch to pentobarbital - the drug veterinarians use to put down dogs.
So this just might be a perfect time for Florida to reevaluate.
As long as our Death Row inmates are dying of old age, getting rid of the death penalty could serve as a kind of twofer: We can rescue a bit of our humanity along with our tax dollars.

By Frank Cerabino Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Ohio Should be the Next State to Abolish Capital Punishment

2011-01-31T11:52:00.000-08:00

The man who helped craft the state's death penalty law wants to end capital punishment.
Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer wants the new governor, a fellow Republican, to abolish the death penalty and commute all death sentences to life without parole.
At his swearing-in ceremony Pfeifer told reporters, "I think the time's right on this. You have Republicans in every direction. With that political configuration, it would be the most opportune time to seriously debate and discuss whether or not we have the death penalty."
Pfeifer called capital punishment a lottery.
He's right. Too often those who end up on death row are poor, people of color, and have mental illnesses or extremely low IQs.
Right now, Ohio has 157 inmates on death row. Of those, 43 were sentenced before a 1996 law gave juries the option of life without parole.
Here's the race breakdown according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction: 81 are African American, 69 are Caucasian, four are Hispanic, two are Arab Americans and one is a Native American. Only one person on death row is a woman.
Across the country, we've seen over 100 men walk off death row because eyewitnesses lied or were mistaken, because the DNA didn't match, because police, prosecutors or lab techs made mistakes or mishandled evidence.
There have been 266 post-conviction DNA exonerations, according to The Innocence Project. Across the country, 138 death row inmates have been exonerated, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five have been in Ohio.
Kenney Richey spent 21 years on Ohio's death row. He is now a free man. An appeals court found his attorney was inept and the arson expert who testified in the case was no expert.
Joe D'Ambrosio was on Ohio's death row for 20 years. A judge ruled that prosecutors in Cuyahoga County withheld 10 pieces of evidence in his trial. He is now a free man.
We know we can't trust Ohio's justice system 100 percent. Just ask Michael Green, Donte L. Booker, Jimmy "Spunk" Williams, Brian Piszczek and Clarence Elkins. They were also wrongfully convicted.
And there are unresolved questions in other cases.
Tyrone Noling is still on death row for the 1990 murders of an Atwater Township couple. No physical evidence connected him to the crime. He was convicted based on what his three buddies said. They have all since recanted.
Arthur Tyler is on death row for killing a produce vendor. Minutes after the man was shot, another man confessed. He told friends, his mom, police and signed a confession. Then he got a deal with prosecutors and fingered Tyler.
Eleven years ago, the governor of Illinois declared a moratorium on executions after the death sentences of 13 people were overturned. Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, commuted all 167 inmates on death row. The committee he appointed to study the justice system came up with 85 suggested reforms.
Those reforms include having the police pursue all reasonable lines of inquiry even after a suspect has been identified, having all homicide suspect interrogations videotaped, not allowing the death penalty be considered for any murder convictions based on the testimony of a single eye-witness or accomplice, having all police, judges, prosecutors and attorneys working on capital cases get better training about the risk of false testimony by jailhouse snitches, the handling of forensic evidence, the risk of false confessions.
Unfortunately, we can't find and fix every flaw in the justice system.
Pfeifer is right. We need to do what Illinois did. Its House and Senate just passed a bill to abolish the death penalty.
Ohio should do the same.
Terry Collins watched the state of Ohio kill 33 men.
Every time he drove to work for each execution he wondered:
What if this one isn't guilty? What if somebody missed something? Are we really sure? What if we're wrong this time?
Collins retired last year as director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. He worked in the prison system for 32 years. He served as the warden of three prisons, Lorain Correctional Institution in Grafton, Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville and Ross Correctional Institution in Chillicothe.
When Collins started working in the prison system in 1977, Gary Beeman was on death row. Beeman was exonerated in 1979.
"We have the greatest justice system in the world, but we're all still human," Collins told me. "As great as the system is, there can still be mistakes made. If you execute somebody, you cannot correct that mistake."
Across the country, we know of at least 138 mistakes that got corrected before it was too late. That's how many men have been exonerated from Death Row. Six were from Ohio: Beeman, Dale Johnston, Timothy Howard, Gary Lamar James, Derrick Jamison and Joe D'Ambrosio.
I called Collins after reading an opinion piece he wrote this week for the Columbus Dispatch. Collins is against the death penalty even though he carried out the law. He's watched 33 men die in the death chamber. He's also walked free men out of prison.
One man had served 10 years for a crime he didn't commit. It's hard to shake that joyful yet haunting scene in the prison lobby when an innocent man walks out of prison into his family's arms, a free man.
It frustrates Collins to read bloggers and hear comments from people saying they'd willingly do the executing.
Related coverage
Jan. 25: Retire Ohio's death penalty: Paul E. PfeiferJan. 26: Ohio switching to a new drug for lethal injectionsJan. 21: Ohio should abolish the death penalty: Regina BrettJan. 21: Lethal injection drug maker halting productionJan. 20: Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer wants to scrap the death penaltyNov. 29: Tennessee justices halt executions over 'death by suffocation while conscious'More about death penalty
"It's one thing to say that, it's another to do that," Collins said.
Executions take a toll on the staff. No one is assigned to the execution team; it's made up of volunteers.
"Often their own families don't know they're on that team," Collins said. "It's not an easy job to prepare somebody to be executed."
He's against capital punishment for many reasons:
The state doesn't always put the worst of the worst on death row. Sometimes the worst offenders get plea bargains and lighter sentences.
The death penalty doesn't make people safer. "Having a death sentence hasn't stopped people from killing and viciously harming people," Collins said. There is no statistical data to prove it deters crime, he added. In prison, those serving life terms are the least likely to violate prison rules, according to Collins.
Life without parole is cheaper than the death penalty, he said. The trial would cost less without the death penalty phase. There wouldn't be endless appeals, attorneys and judges to pay. There wouldn't be a special death row unit to maintain.
Life without parole could actually be easier on victim's families. They don't have to return to court for endless appeals and suffer the roller coaster ride of stays of executions.
Collins believes a life sentence without the possibility of parole should replace the death sentence. An inmate would never have the chance to leave prison.
Instead of bragging about being tough on crime or criticizing others for being soft on crime, Collins believes it's time we got smart on crime.
"Putting people in prison for the rest of their life without the possibility of parole is not soft on crime," he said. "That penalty is severe enough."
Anyone who thinks life in prison isn't that bad has never been in prison, Collins said.
"The greatest freedom we have is our freedom. You take that away, we tell you what to eat, what to wear, who can visit," he said. "I've never had anybody come to me and say, 'Let me in the door.'"

Both articles by Regina Brett
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ask for the max on corrections reform: The State can Spend less, still protect the public, and turn lives around.

2011-01-24T07:41:00.000-08:00

This week, the Legislature will be told how Florida can stop spending too much on prisons and getting too little back for its investment.
Today, two Senate committees that deal with criminal justice policy and spending will hear from reformers advocating that Florida join a national movement toward what has been called Smart Justice. On Tuesday, the members of the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice will get the same message. Among the statistics they will hear are:
In 2000-01, 38 percent of new prison inmates had been convicted of crimes less serious than a third-degree felony, which comes with a maximum 5-year sentence. It is the least serious felony. Anything less is a misdemeanor. In 2008-09, 47 percent of new inmates had been convicted of those less serious crimes, many of them non-violent.
Most incarcerated juveniles are guilty of nonviolent or property crimes. Forty percent of juveniles are in custody for probation violations.
Half of Florida's prison inmates read at a sixth-grade level or lower. The number of mentally ill inmates has tripled in the past 15 years.
Roughly one-third of inmates who are released return to prison within three years. That rate has varied little over the past decade. But only 1 percent of the Department of Corrections budget is spent on programs to reduce what is called recidivism.
Gov. Scott's CEO-like approach to state government won't work in all cases. With criminal justice, however, his like-minded transition team zeroed in on these deplorable numbers and spent nearly 150 pages blasting the Department of Corrections. This business-oriented approach can reverse the get-tough political approach that created the problem.
Beginning in 1983, with the establishment of sentencing guidelines and the elimination of parole, Florida has focused on putting people in prison. Next came habitual offender laws and the elimination of "gain time" - earlier release because of good behavior. In 1995, the Legislature required that inmates serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. Then Jeb Bush brought 10-20-Life for crimes with a gun.
And while Florida's crime rate has fallen over the past decade, other states have adopted Smart Justice policies, saved money and seen crime rates continue to decline. Ironically, a leader in this reform has been Texas, hardly known as a criminal-coddling state. A former Texas legislator will be in Tallahassee this week to explain how he spearheaded the reforms.
Florida TaxWatch calculates that flexibility in the 85-percent rule could save $53 million a year. A slight change in sentencing guidelines could save $31.4 million. Greater use of electronic monitoring could save $43 million. More effective rehabilitation, including increased use of faith-based prisons, could cut recidivism.
Gov. Scott has appointed two reformers to lead the Department of Corrections and the Department of Juvenile Justice. Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, chairs the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee. While stressing that "our first job is public safety," Rep. Baxley said, "I'd like to put a sign on the prison door that says 'Don't Come Back.' ' To make that happen, smart and justice must go together in Florida.

- Randy Schultz, for The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board

Want to Save Taxpayer Money? Stop Building Prisons!

2011-01-19T09:59:00.000-08:00

The United States accounts for less than 5 percent of the world population, but if you're a prisoner, chances are you're locked behind bars in the land of the free, which accounts for 25 percent of the globe's incarcerated men and women -- nearly 2.4 million people.
Fueled by the war on drugs and “tough on crime” demagoguery, the U.S. prison population has surged over the past three decades, to the point that roughly one out of every 100 Americans is incarcerated – and one out of 32 is under some form of correctional supervision. As it stands now, an African-American male is more likely to be convicted of a felony than to graduate college.
That has to change.
Indeed, “There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential,” writes former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (!) in a recent Op-Ed coauthored by fellow conservative criminal justice reformer Pat Nolan of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
Writing in The Washington Post, Gingrich and Nolan argue that the over-reliance on incarceration in the U.S. is a problem the new Republican Congress needs to address – for both moral and pragmatic reasons. “We spent $68 billion in 2010 on corrections - 300 percent more than 25 years ago,” they write. “The prison population is growing 13 times faster than the general population. These facts should trouble every American.”
For years, debate over criminal justice policies has fallen into a traditional conservative-liberal trap, with Republicans on the one side calling for ever-more draconian laws to look “tough” on crime, and Democrats … well, doing the exact same thing, though presumably with not quite as much enthusiasm. Democracy!
But Gingrich and Nolan say the time for demagoguery is over, noting that throwing more and more non-violent offenders into prisons doesn't make us safer – more than half of those released from prison head right back within three years – and it's a practice both state and federal governments can ill afford to continue as they struggle with record budget deficits. While locking away prisoners and throwing away the key might make for a good campaign ad, “We can no longer afford business as usual with prisons,” they write, “and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it.”
Gingrich and Nolan's piece is part of campaign launched last month called “Right on Crime” – which includes the likes of former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese and the American Conservative Union's David Keene – that seeks to recast the debate over criminal justice policies by showing that even the most conservative right-wingers believe the country's prison building boom has gone too far, making the debate more about pragmatism than ideology. As they write in the Post, “If our prison policies are failing half of the time, and we know that there are more humane, effective alternatives, it is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners.”
While not quite ready to do away with the war on drugs, Gingrich and Nolan say it's a waste of taxpayer money to send non-violent offenders to prison, where criminality is often nurtured rather than extinguished. And, notably, they take head-on the argument that the country's prison-building spree over the last few decades is responsible for improved public safety.
“While crime fell in nearly every state over the past seven years,” they note, “some of those with the largest reductions in crime have also lowered their prison population. Compare Florida and New York. Over the past seven years, Florida's incarceration rate has increased 16 percent, while New York's decreased 16 percent. Yet the crime rate in New York has fallen twice as much as Florida's. Put another way, although New York spent less on its prisons, it delivered better public safety.”
Gingrich and Nolan aren't bleeding-heart liberals, and they aren't proposing that murders receive manicures instead of prison time. As conservatives, they're proposing modest, pragmatic reforms to the criminal justice system -- reforms Republicans would do well to consider if they're really serious about cutting the nation's deficit (I have my doubts). And really, if you're so concerned about the growth of state power, nothing says "Big Government" more than locking up a person -- literally taking away all their freedom -- over a non-violent offense that displeases some jerk in Washington.

by Charles Davis

California Ignores Obvious Budget Solution: Cut the Death Penalty:

2011-01-15T11:14:00.000-08:00

California's new governor Jerry Brown confronted the state's dire budget crisis this week when he released his budget proposal. True to his word, the proposal contains hard cuts to social services across the board, ensuring that California's most vulnerable will have an even tougher time staying healthy and making ends meet.
He was slightly less true to his word, though, when it came to his oft-repeated slogan that "everything is on the table." At least one overfunded, broken government program was allowed to keep its bloated budget without a single cut: the state's billion-dollar death penalty.
Did the governor miss this massive drain on funds, or is there a sacred cow in California's budget after all? Maybe he can be excused on the grounds that there's no "death penalty" line item anywhere in the budget. But, of course, the reason there's no "death penalty" line item is that the $1 billion the death penalty will cost over the next five years is hidden throughout a half-dozen judicial and corrections budget items — any one of which could be trimmed by the governor. Let's go down the line:
There's the $1 million per death penalty trial over and above the cost of non-death penalty murder trials, which comes from county prosecutors' budgets.
Then there's the $63 million per year extra spent housing people on death row and another $60 million spent on their appeals, again over and above the cost of housing and appeals for life without parole. Those costs are tucked away in the budgets for corrections, the Supreme Court, the attorney general's office and public defense.
Finally, the kicker is the brand new death row facility we're about to build that will cost $400 million.
Over five years, that tally comes to just over $1 billion.
Now, repealing the death penalty in California can only be done at the ballot box, but defunding the whole system can be done with a few strokes of the governor's pen: just ask any senior citizen, recipient of in-home medical care, or single working parent. They'll tell you how powerful that pen can be when it comes to cutting government programs.
Alternatively, if the governor converted the sentences of California's more than 700 residents of death row to life without parole, he'd save that whole billion dollars in one swoop: no more extra housing costs, no more extra appeals costs, no more new death row. That's a lot of money that could go towards much-needed programs and services.
And it's not as if the people of the state are clamoring for more death penalty spending over other issues, like, education, crime prevention, health care, or social safety nets. While Gov. Brown may have assumed that the death penalty really is precious to California voters, his own election proved otherwise. Even after Meg Whitman saturated the airwaves bashing Brown for his anti-death penalty record, Californians still elected the guy. We also voted down a Senate candidate who campaigned on being pro-death penalty, and elected an anti-death penalty attorney general, Kamala Harris, over a prosecutor known nationwide for his aggressive pursuit of death sentences.
Why did we vote in Jerry Brown again? Maybe we're ready for some realistic and pragmatic change. Maybe we're ready to prioritize victims, community safety, and health above executions. Maybe we're ready to Cut This. Send Gov. Brown a message that if he's going to cut anything from California's budget, he should cut the death penalty.

Hey Florida, this applies to you as well !

Reduce wrongful convictions: Florida's new innocence panel must start to change the rules

2011-01-10T10:31:00.000-08:00

When Linda Zavatkay identified her neighbor as the man who robbed and stabbed her in her Port Salerno home, she did so only after investigators pressed her to choose a suspect. She had been checking out the lineup for a while, and wasn't sure that she saw her attacker's face.
"It should have stopped right there," state Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart, said of the witness identification procedure. "But because of the detective, she continued to look and felt pressured to ID someone." That someone was Todd Patrick Neely. Despite evidence that he was having dinner at a restaurant 12 miles away at the time of the 1986 crime, a judge convicted Mr. Neely of attempted murder and burglary based on Ms. Zavatkay's eyewitness identification and sentenced him to 15 years.
Six months later, an appeals court ordered a new trial for Mr. Neely after ruling that prosecutors improperly withheld information about another suspect. Prosecutors then dropped the charges.
Mr. Neely's case attracted national attention. Yet more than two decades later, most area police and sheriff's departments have not changed the procedures they use to obtain eyewitness identifications. Sen. Negron, who represented Mr. Neely and sits on Florida's Innocence Commission, wants to change that.
When the commission meets today in Jacksonville, Sen. Negron plans to suggest that it review the recommendations issued by the U.S. Justice Department 11 years ago designed to make eyewitness evidence more accurate. As reported by The Post's Susan Spencer-Wendel, the majority of law-enforcement agencies in Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast have failed to adopt those recommendations in their written policies and procedures. It's time they do so.
The Florida Supreme Court established the Innocence Commission last summer to study of the causes of wrongful conviction and measures to prevent such convictions. A national expert on eyewitness misidentification told commissioners in November that more than 30 percent of all eyewitness IDs are wrong, resulting in a huge number of innocent people behind bars. Gary Wells of Iowa State University said 12 people have been exonerated by DNA evidence in Florida, but an estimated 200 innocent people probably are still being held.
Sen. Negron will push for a pair of Justice Department recommendations that he believes are most important - "cautionary instruction" and double-blind administration of photo lineups. "Those are the two," he said, "that I think are the most promising to reduce wrongful convictions."
Cautionary instruction involves telling an eyewitness that the suspect may or may not be in the lineup, and that the investigation will continue whether the witness chooses someone or not. Double-blind administration means the person showing an eyewitness a lineup has no idea who the suspect is, which keeps him or her from influencing the eyewitness' choice. Although double-blind administration was not included in the Justice Department's 1999 guide, it was mentioned as a "direction for future exploration and field testing." That future is now.
According to a survey by The Post, only three of 32 area law-enforcement agencies have specific eyewitness ID policies and include key elements recommended by the Justice Department: the Indian River County Sheriff's Office, and the Jupiter and Palm Beach Gardens police departments.
Although the Innocence Commission's final report is not due until 2012, Sen. Negron said members can agree to make certain recommendations sooner. If so, he will file a bill for the legislative session. If law-enforcement agencies will not adopt better procedures, the Legislature must act. Given the number of innocent people already exonerated, it's already been too long.
- Rhonda Swan,
for The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board
Posted: 11:50 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 9, 2011

Death Penalty Support Wanes Amid Errors and Debate:

2011-01-08T09:47:00.000-08:00

A little more than one generation after the United States Supreme Court reinstalled the death penalty as a sentencing option in criminal cases, and despite otherwise strong support for tough-on-crime laws, capital punishment in America is markedly on the wane. Executions are down dramatically. Death sentences are being recommended less frequently by juries and endorsed less often by judges. And wrongfully convicted death-row inmates in increasing numbers are being released from prison as a result of DNA testing and other exonerating evidence. Today, nearly half of the jurisdictions in the United States have not had an execution within the past 10 years.The statistics go on and on. Executions in America were down 12 percent in 2010 from 2009. They are down approximately 50 percent since 1999. Only seven states carried out more than one execution in 2010 -- almost all in the South or Southwest.The reasons for the decline are numerous and often interconnected. Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a clearinghouse for information about capital punishment, told me Thursday: "In essence, I believe that one issue, innocence, caused a cascade of other changes, such as improved quality of defense, more careful appeals, more thorough trials, and more acceptable alternatives for juries, all of which have contributed to the declining use of the death penalty."Indeed, in Texas, there have been 41 death-row exonerations in the past nine years, 21 alone in Dallas County. The Innocence Project, whose lawyers and investigators scour state court case files across the country for evidence of wrongful convictions, reported that its organization generated 29 exonerations in 2010. These are just some of the examples where the criminal justice system in the past has demonstrably made grievous errors in processing capital defendants. And what each of those specific examples has done is encourage both a renewed interest in examining dubious convictions (which in turn leads to more exonerations) as well as a heightened commitment by prosecutors, lawmakers, juries and judges to get capital cases right in the first place.Even though general support for the death penalty remains relatively high -- 64 percent of Americans supported it in an October Gallup poll and only 29 percent said there were opposed -- political and legal developments over the past decade or so have contributed to the slowing rate of executions and death sentences. As more Americans have become aware of parole restrictions -- as they have come to learn that "life sentences" can, indeed, be "life sentences -- they have eased their eagerness for executions. When given an option between capital punishment and life in prison, Gallup's respondents split almost evenly: 49 percent favored the death penalty, 46 percent favored the life sentence.These numbers are impacting the political dynamics of the debate over capital punishment. In 2007, for example, New Jersey became the first state to abolish capital punishment since it was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976 in Gregg v. Georgia. (Four years earlier, in Furman v. Georgia, the court had banned the death penalty across the country as a violation of the "cruel and unusual" clause of the Eighth Amendment). In Maryland, there has been a practical moratorium on capital punishment for at least the past year -- and it's going on six years since the last execution there. In New York, a judge struck down the state's capital statute in 2004, prompting lawmakers to study the matter in great depth but not reinstate it.Several other death penalty states, including Kansas, South Dakota and Colorado, have seen in just the past two years meaningful legislative debates over whether to repeal capital punishment. In Illinois, following a then-Gov. George Ryan-imposed moratorium against capital punishment arising from systemic abuse in the criminal justice system, lawmakers are poised to repeal the death penalty, a striking turnaround in a decade for a state that once had hundreds on its death row. Even in Texas, perpetually at or near the top in executions each year, serious talk about the repeal of the death penalty has emerged from the ashes of one embarrassing capital case after another.And while there is discernible movement away from the death penalty in some jurisdictions, there does not appear to be much movement toward it anywhere in the United States. In fact, even some conservative politicians and advocates have begun to make a fiscal case against the practice. In their view, the death penalty is simply too expensive to implement and an unnecessary drain upon precious state resources. California has spent, by many accounts, hundreds of millions of dollars since capital punishment was reinstated. Other states have spent similar amounts sending men and women to death row. The cost of a capital case, including appeals and other expenses, exceeds by an order of magnitude the cost of a non-capital murder case.Dieter says this trend could ultimately carve out a renewed push by the federal courts to again outlaw capital punishment everywhere. He told me: "If the current trend of fewer states using the death penalty continues, I believe the Supreme Court will eventually follow its Eighth Amendment precedents and find that our standards of decency have evolved to the point that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment. The number of states banning capital punishment will have to increase to numbers comparable to those that barred the execution of juveniles and the mentally retarded." He's referring here to the two big death penalty cases of the past half-decade or so in which the Supreme Court has sharply limited the circumstances in which capital punishment may be applied.
Analysis byAndrew Cohen

Prisoner reentry becoming a priority

2011-01-05T16:48:00.000-08:00

Attorney General Eric Holder today convened the inaugural meeting of the Cabinet-level "Reentry Council" in Washington to identify and to advance effective public safety and prisoner reentry strategies.
In addition to the Attorney General, the council includes Departments of Education Secretary Arne Duncan; Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack; Interior Secretary Ken Salazar; Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan; Labor Secretary Hilda Solis; and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki. Members also include Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Michael Astrue; Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, R. Gil Kerlikowske; Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Melody Barnes; Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Joshua DuBois; and Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Jacqueline Berrien.
The council will address short-term and long-term goals through enhanced communication, coordination and collaboration across federal agencies. The mission of the council is threefold: to make communities safer by reducing recidivism and victimization; to assist those returning from prison and jail in becoming productive, tax paying citizens; and to save taxpayer dollars by lowering the direct and collateral costs of incarceration.
"Reentry provides a major opportunity to reduce recidivism, save taxpayer dollars and make our communities safer," said Attorney General Holder. "More than two million people are behind bars, and 95 percent of them will be released back into their communities. By developing effective, evidence-based reentry programs, we can improve public safety and community well-being."
Among its goals, the Reentry Council will meet semi-annually to leverage resources across agencies to reduce recidivism and victimization; identify evidence-based practices that advance the council’s mission; promote changes to federal statutes, policies and practices that focus on reducing crime; and identify federal policy opportunities and barriers to improve outcomes for the reentry community.

I am pleased to hear that this "Reentry Council" is up and running, and I am hopeful that they can and will get a lot done in the months ahead. And I think it would be especially cool if the Council had a public event with high-profile former felons like Martha Stewart and Michael Vick and Marion Jones to talk about some of their (especially positive and uncommon) reentry experiences.

From the Setencing Law and Policy blog

Florida should move away from its expensive, ineffective tough-on-crime philosophy:

2010-12-30T08:25:00.000-08:00

To Floridians worried about Gov.-elect Scott's ultra-conservative bent, the only thing more alarming than news he is being advised to shake up the prison system might be news that Mr. Scott is being advised to use Texas as a model.
In fact, the recommended approach should be encouraging to Floridians regardless of party or ideology. Texas is at the forefront of states that have scrapped an ineffective, expensive punishment-first philosophy. If Mr. Scott follows suit, Florida could benefit from a focus on prevention and rehabilitation.
As The Post's Dara Kam reported Sunday, Mr. Scott's advisers are urging him to build a system that diverts nonviolent drug offenders to effective treatment programs that can end the problem instead of recycling them through the state's prisons - at great expense.
For offenders who do go to prison, the new approach would require education and vocational training. Education gives people released from prison a greater chance of getting a job, which is the primary factor in reducing recidivism.
Reforming prisons would be a major test of Mr. Scott's untried ability to lead the Legislature. In the past, lawmakers have made a lot of political mileage out of being tough on crime. Gov. Crist got some of his earliest notoriety as "Chain Gang Charlie" when he advocated a return to that mode of punishment.
Lawmakers also have had a penchant for ordering judges to impose minimum mandatory sentences for various classes of crimes. Getting the Legislature to return proper discretion to judges will take political skill.
It's not hard to see how lawmakers can be conflicted. For example, Gov.-elect Scott is being advised that courts should not be so quick to send offenders back to prison for probation violations. Compare that to four years ago, when incoming Gov. Crist, motivated by the murder of 11-year-old Carlie Brucia by a man with probation violations, pushed a bill through the Legislature to return more probation violators to prison.
A problem has been that crimes make headlines while prevented crimes, by definition, don't draw attention. Statisticians, however, are documenting the positive impact of prevented crimes. In Texas, policy changes saved $900 million in prison costs and preventing a 9 percent increase in the prison population. Encouragingly, Mr. Scott's choice to lead the Department of Corrections, Edwin Buss, advocated similar reforms as head of Indiana's prison system.
Florida spends $2.4 billion on prisons. The state's costs and prison population have been trending up. The goal is to stay tough on criminals who deserve it, but to give a second chance to those who can benefit from one. That isn't "conservative" or "liberal." It's the convergence of common sense and compassion.
- Jac Wilder VerSteeg,
for The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board published 12/29/10

The Death Penalty on the Wane--Is it time to abolish capital punishment?

2010-12-28T13:09:00.000-08:00

In the midst of the fall election campaign, Steven Hayes went on trial in New Haven, Conn., in one of the most horrific murder cases in memory. The killers invaded a home, beat a man with a baseball bat, sexually assaulted and strangled his wife, and tied up their two daughters before setting a fire that killed them.
It was the sort of crime that could only increase support for the death penalty. This effect had some relevance for the Connecticut governor's race, because it pitted a supporter of capital punishment, Republican Thomas Foley, against Democrat Dannel Malloy, an opponent.
When they debated, Foley promised to veto any bill to abolish the death penalty, while Malloy said, "We know that the application of the death penalty has not always been equal and even." A tough sell, right? But Malloy won.
That's just one of the parade of indications that capital punishment is on the wane. The popular impulse to put people to death is just not what it used to be.
Executions have fallen by half since 1999. The number of new death sentences is about one-third what it was at the 1996 peak. Even in Texas, long the leading practitioner, death sentences are off by 80 percent. Several states that retain capital punishment have not administered a single lethal injection in the past five years.
The exoneration of 138 death row inmates has weakened public support for the ultimate sanction. In a recent Gallup poll, 64 percent of Americans endorsed it, down from 80 percent in 1994, while opposition has nearly doubled.
A survey commissioned by the Death Penalty Information Center found that 61 percent prefer that murderers get some sort of life sentence instead. As a budget priority, the death penalty was ranked seventh out of seven issues.
Did someone mention budgets? They are no friend of an option that requires expensive trials, costly appeals, and pricey incarceration arrangements. Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, says capital punishment has become "an extreme luxury item."
Even the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog, which this year offers a charm bracelet for $248,000, has nothing to compare. Maryland has spent $186 million on capital cases over the past 30 years—which comes to $37 million per execution.
The typical Texas death case carries a price tag of $2.3 million. A 2005 study pointed out that "New Jersey taxpayers over the last 23 years have paid more than a quarter billion dollars on a capital punishment system that has executed no one."
You might surmise that death sentences and executions have subsided because the homicide rate has dropped so much. But Zimring finds that the biggest decline has been among murders that aren't eligible for capital punishment. Capital murders have declined far less. There are thousands each year for prosecutors who want to pursue them.
Even among lawmakers, this remedy is losing ground. The New Jersey legislature repealed it in 2007 and New Mexico followed suit last year. New York's death penalty law was overturned in court, but legislators have refused to pass a new one.
Illinois Gov. George Ryan declared an execution moratorium in 2000, and his two successors have maintained it. But the moratorium has been, in a sense, the worst of both worlds. While taxpayers continue to incur the costs of seeking death sentences, none is ever carried out.
The cost will disappear if the General Assembly abolishes capital punishment, which opponents intend to propose as soon as it convenes in January. "I really think we're going to get it done," Jim Covington, director of legislative affairs for the Illinois State Bar Association, told me.
That shouldn't be impossible in a state where death row inmates are more likely to be exonerated than executed. Given Illinois' horrendous budget problems, the point of keeping the death penalty on the books is mysterious to see. In the last seven years, taxpayers have spent more than $100 million on capital cases even though the death chamber has been turned into a Starbucks.
If it is repealed, some people will cheer, some will be angry, and most will pay little attention. In the United States, the death penalty may never die, but its best days are past.
by Steve Chapman--published in Reason Magazine on 12/27/10

Thanksgiving in Jail (by Katy Savage--The Mormon Worker)

2010-12-15T05:12:00.001-08:00

This last weekend I spent a day and a half in the Muscogee County Jail in Georgia. Soon I will write about the School of the Americas Watch Vigil, its fight and its power. Soon I will write about the fragility of First Amendment rights and how quickly I saw them disappear. But first I want to write about this:
I am out of jail. 2.5 million others in this country tonight are not. Maybe some got canned turkey on their plastic trays today, to celebrate.
Our country has the highest incarceration rate of any country—one in 31 adults—and the highest number of people locked up in cages.
More black men are currently in prison in the U.S. than were slaves in 1850.
7.2 million of us are in jail, in prison, on probation or on parole.
But these were all facts that I already knew.
What I didn’t know is that the vitamin-depleted food tastes and smells like Purina Cat Chow, served with some slimy iceburg lettuce and “milk” with seven ingredients.
I didn’t know about the weight of those slit-windowed rooms, the sense of being buried deep even though we were on the fourth-floor cell block, of being so easy to forget, which is the real horror of a dungeon. I didn’t know “outdoor recreation” meant a rare moment in a high-walled, concrete courtyard.
I didn’t know books would be contraband, a near impossibility. When I saw how much these women loved to read, I told them I’d mail them some books, only to discover that to give these women books I would have to come in person during visiting hours and give one at a time. There is, of course, no library in the jail. The aim of the place is to punish, shame, and deprive.
I didn’t know about Gwen, with the worn face and quiet patience of an Appalachian farmer, who is sitting in a cage because her boyfriend left marijuana at her house.
I didn’t know that 19-year-old Katie has been waiting for a trial date for six months now so the State can figure out if she actually stole that Wii or not. Katie was going to nursing school and caring for her two-year-old daughter when she was arrested, and because her parents now have this little girl to care for they can’t afford bail. It’s like a debtor’s prison: the longer you’re in there, the less likely you’ll be able to afford to get out. Katie, who seems tough, capable, stoic, cries when she speaks of her daughter. She told me she thought she’d be fine when she learned her mother and daughter could visit her twice a week, but she fell apart when she instead was only allowed to speak through a telephone to their images on a television screen. This is the case for all of them in Muscogee County Jail.
In sum, I didn’t know is that “innocent until proven guilty” was such an outrageous lie. If a cop brings you in, you’re guilty. It doesn’t matter what any facts say, you will be punished. If you’re poor, your guilt is heavier, your punishment more severe. For my own convictions for “picketing” and “demonstration without a permit,” I was sentenced to forty days in jail or $300 fines. If I hadn’t had that $300, I would be there until 2011. Forty days or $300—clearly, the punishment for one who can’t pay is far higher. In this reckoning, each day’s worth of freedom, of being with loved ones and feeling the sun and breeze and earth, is worth $7.50.
There is a payment plan for those who can only pay by installments—but I was told this would cost an extra $50 per month, making the option ridiculously cost-prohibitive.
What’s more, I was also charged with “unlawful assembly,” which is a state charge—if I didn’t have $1,300 for bail, I would be in there for weeks or months waiting for that trial.
And waiting for trials is what people in jail do. The women told me they expected to wait four to twelve months before they got a day in court. At that point some of them will be judged to be innocent, but by then they will already have paid heavily for the guilt of poverty.
And so this Thanksgiving I want to send out a call for the old Christian ideal of visiting those in prison, of learning the stories of our society’s most vulnerable. Though the prison figures large in sacred stories from both the Bible and Book of Mormon, we treat wrongful imprisonment as a thing of the past, something we have overcome in our enlightened democracy. We should instead learn that the well-spring of Right Living has always been a kind of steady unruliness, a wilfulness which no Empire can abide.
Also, for Thanksgiving I need to say I’m thankful for the women of the fourth-floor cell block of Muscogee County Jail. For Keisha’s polite explanations of what to do when I came in wide-eyed, dragging my mattress, and for letting me read her Bible and her copy of Twilight all night. For Bama’s kind sass and smile, and for dancing with me in the common area. For Mally and Toi and Miss Margie and Christine and all the others whose names I’ve forgotten because I had no pen and paper to write them down. All of them still laughing easily, still aware of their stories and their dignity after months of being treated with mechanized, organized violence.
A fearful and narrow-eyed State—the same sort of bullies that beheaded the non-conforming John the Baptist—has stripped them of the people and places they love. It acts with brutal efficiency when it comes to capturing them and putting them behind bars, and plods along tortuously when asked to figure out if anyone actually disobeyed its rules. It encourages a culture where being behind bars is taken as proof of shameful behavior: at worst, we condemn them, and at best, we ignore them.
In resistance, the women dance and make a home out of nothing.

A Smart Way Florida Can Reduce Prison Costs:

2010-11-21T09:44:00.000-08:00

Walter McNeil is a numbers man. He can rattle off statistics and cost analyses for as long as it takes his audience to get the big picture.
Mr. McNeil isn’t a CPA. He’s the secretary of Florida’s Department of Corrections, and he has an ambitious plan to reduce Florida’s recidivism rate — now at 32.8 percent — to 17 percent in three to five years. The reason? To save Florida taxpayers’ money.
Gov.-elect Rick Scott, who has said that he wants to cut state prison costs by $1 billion, should have a sit-down with Mr. McNeil before he wields that budget axe.
In 2008, Florida’s inmate population topped 100,000 for the first time. In 2008-09, 42.3 percent of those admitted to prison had been there before.
It costs $19,000 a year to house one inmate. The cost is expected to climb to about $22,451 by 2014. It costs $100 million to build a prison, and $20 million a year to run it.
Mr. McNeil’s fiscal logic is simple: Reduce the number of inmates who return to prison and you cut prison costs. You also restore safety as the crime rate will drop.
Another number Mr. McNeil points to: 88 percent of Florida’s inmates will be released back into society eventually. Eighty-eight percent! With no motivation for going straight, many will likely commit another crime.
Mr. McNeil decided it wasn’t enough just to release an ex-offender with $100, a suit and a bus ticket home. Working with Duval County Sheriff John Rutherford, Mr. McNeil’s staff came up with the “portal of entry” concept. The corrections staff wanted to hand off the ex-offender to key people upon release. Enter Sheriff Rutherford, a logical choice since all ex-offenders must register with authorities.
Using federal Second Chance grants, the two departments in December 2008 created a “single point” of entry for inmates returning to the community. When an inmate is set for release, the sheriff’s office is notified. A group of parole officers, social workers, educators and others assess the ex-offender’s needs for housing, employment, education, training. The ex-offender is given information about where to find help. Ex-offenders who participate have case managers as they re-enter the community.
Mr. McNeil’s department has gotten no new revenue for this project as it coordinates existing resources — such as work-release programs. The “portal of entry” concept is now in various stages of implementation at sheriff’s offices in Palm Beach, Baker, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. Mr. McNeil hopes it will expand to all major urban areas.
Empirically, the results of the “portal of entry” program can’t be judged for about three years. But in Duval it appears to be a hit. The sheriff’s office has even developed a job placement component.
So, we can just keep building more prisons to accommodate a growing inmate population, or seek effective ways to reduce crime by helping ex-offenders go straight. Mr. McNeil’s choice makes good dollars and sense for Florida.
A Miami Herald Editorial published November 21, 2010
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/21/v-print/1934085/a-smart-way-florida-can-reduce.html#ixzz15wLOgXAF

Exonerated prisoners campaign against the death penalty:

2010-10-22T12:34:00.000-07:00

Two men who spent a combined total of nearly 35 years on death row for crimes they didn't commit are now campaigning to help others who may be facing similar fates.
Working directly with Coloradans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CADP), Derrick Jamison and Shabaka WaQlimi said in an interview interviewed this week with David Sirota on Colorado’s Progressive Radio AM 760 that they are hoping to raise awareness about wrongful convictions and the likelihood that states across the country may be preparing to execute innocent people. The exonerees are staunch critics of the death penalty in general -- with good reason -- are currently on a nationwide tour to draw attention to their cases.
Derrick Jamison spent 20 years on death row in the state of Ohio before being cleared of all original charges in 2005. His case in 1985 had all the features of a typical wrongful conviction: unreliable eyewitness testimony, withheld evidence and a codefendant who testified against Jamison in exchange for a sweet plea deal. In initial photo lineups, one witness to the robbery and murder that Jamison was ultimately convicted of didn’t choose Jamison out of a photo lineup. Instead, he chose two other men.
Shabaka WaQlimi, formerly known as Joseph Green Brown, came within 14 hours of being executed before a stay was issued. He had spent 13 years on death row in Florida, the state currently leading the nation in wrongful convictions. What he believed to be his final three weeks were spent just 30 feet from the execution chamber in what’s known as the “death watch cell." He had been measured for the suit he would be buried in, though he refused to order the “final meal."
Mr. WaQlimi was accused of robbing, raping, and murdering the co owner of a Tampa clothing store, Earlene Barksdale, a woman who also happened to be the wife of a prominent area attorney. Again, like Jamison’s case, WaQlimi’s hinged on unreliable testimony and withheld evidence. The prosecution’s star witness had a personal vendetta against WaQlimi for a former robbery case and the jury never did hear expert testimony that would have shown the suspected murder weapon could not have been used in the commission of the crime. Despite the witness later admitting his lie, appellate courts offered WaQlimi no relief. It wasn’t until an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the prosecution had purposefully allowed false testimony at trial that the stay of execution was signed—less than a day before his execution.
The men aren’t bitter—only motivated. They also aren’t blind to the things which put them on death row and make some observations that even some legal experts, lawmakers, and politicians still refuse to see. When asked whether the real problem is the death penalty or how it is being administered, WaQlimi noted capital punishment isn’t just a system of executing people for horrendous crimes with a few mistakes—he called it a system of “elitism."
About the other men WaQlimi shared death row with, he recognized a few things they all had in common--“not one had the money to buy an attorney." He noted that the vast majority of death row inmates he knew personally were poor -- whether black, white or Hispanic. He also addressed the issue of race, observing the majority of victims in death row cases are white while questioning how people can really believe that a country founded on “300-plus years” of slavery can dole out true, fair justice, saying racism is deeply ingrained in the system.
After spending years incarcerated for offenses they didn’t commit, you would think Derrick Jamison and Shabaka WaQlini would be content to spend their remaining years with family, relaxing outdoors, or enjoying life’s simple pleasures. While they could be enjoying their freedom by living as many other Americans do, they instead choose to spend their time on the road, giving a voice to the men and women awaiting execution across the country, and speaking out against something that so nearly took their lives

Vote NO on Justice Cannady

2010-10-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

Charles Canady has spent most of his career in elected office. He was first elected as a “conservative Democrat” to the state legislature in the early 1980s, and switched parties in 1990. In 1992, he was elected to Congress, and became known as an extreme partisan ideologue. Canady was a leading pro-life force in the Congress. He has often been credited with coining the term “partial-birth abortion.” Canady left Congress after the 2000 elections, when he chose not to run for another term, after leading the charge in the impeachment and trial proceedings of then-president Bill Clinton. Canady was one of the impeachment managers appointed by the House to prosecute Bill Clinton in the United States Senate.
When then-governor Jeb Bush appointed Charles Canady to the district court in 2002, he made an overtly partisan and political choice. The same can be said of Charlie Crist, who appointed Justice Canady to the Supreme Court in 2008. Voters should take this opportunity to reverse these lapses of judgment. It is fine to have justices which represent a diverse point of views – liberal, conservative and all points in between – but we do not need political hacks making law from the bench.
From "Pinski on Politics" http://www.pinskipolitics.com/2010/09/pinski-recommends-fire-canady-but-retain-others-on-florida-supreme-court/#comment-2718

A couple of questions about court in Sarasota

2010-10-01T17:45:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago a client came to see me and asked if I could represent him. He was homeless and charged with a minor offense and the judge had been giving him a hard time because he wore shorts to court. His possessions were limited to those he could carry and he didn’t own long pants.

I agreed to take the case. Yesterday I bought him some pants at Goodwill. This morning I met him outside the courthouse. He had his duffle bag that contained all of his possessions. We got in the long security line to enter the courthouse. My client’s bag was put through the x-ray system and rejected. He had can openers and utensils and other odd objects. The bailiffs didn’t want to take the time for him to unpack and go through each compartment, not with a hundred people in line behind us They told him he had to take it away, that he couldn’t leave it there and he couldn’t bring it inside.

Now this story ended without problem. I took his bag and walked out and locked it in my trunk and we went to court. But what about everyone else with all that they own in their possession and a date with a judge? What are they supposed to do with their duffle bags and knapsacks?

And how are they supposed to pay their court costs? But let's make sure they wear long pants.

Bill creating blue ribbon commission to review criminal justice system:

2010-09-10T11:45:00.000-07:00

NAACP-SUPPORTED BILL CREATING A BLUE-RIBBON COMMISSION TO REVIEW OUR NATION'S CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM PASSED THE U.S. HOUSE IN JULY, MUST NOW PASS THE SENATE
PROPOSAL WOULD CREATE A BI-PARTISAN COMMISSION TO EVALUATE EVERY STAGE OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE PROCESS INCLUDING THE DISPARATE REPRESENTATION AND TREATMENT OF RACIAL AND ETHNIC MINORITIES IN AND BY THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
THE ISSUE:
On Tuesday, July 27, 2010, the United States House of Representatives passed, by a unanimous vote, H.R. 5143, the National Criminal Justice Act, which would create a national commission with an 18-month timeline to examine and review the myriad of problems that exist in our current criminal justice system. Specifically, this commission would review every stage of the criminal justice system, from initial contact to sentencing to the challenges facing those ex-offenders who are reentering society. The commission would also be charged with looking into the myriad of problems that have resulted in the staggering overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities from pedestrian stops to the use of the death penalty.
We must now encourage the United States' Senate to follow the lead of the House and pass this bill so it can be signed into law.
At every stage of the criminal justice process serious problems undermine basic tenets of fairness and equity. Perhaps the most glaring problem is the number of racial and ethnic minorities who are disproportionately treated more harshly and more often by our Nation's criminal justice system. At every stage of the criminal justice process - from initial contact to sentencing to the challenges facing those reentering the community after incarceration - racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the number of people stopped, arrested, tried, convicted, incarcerated and even executed. These disparities are particularly true for African American men and boys. Initial contacts with police officers are often driven by racial profiling and other racially tainted practices, and the disparities exist through the sentencing phase: African Americans routinely receive more jail time and harsher punishments. Although African Americans make up just over 12% of the national population, 42% of Americans currently on death row are African American. Nearly a million African Americans today are incarcerated in prisons and in jails, and unless there is a change, a black male born today has a one-in-three chance of going to prison in his lifetime. Furthermore, African American women have the highest rate of incarceration among women in our nation, a rate that is four times higher than that of White women.
This is not just a problem among African Americans or racial and ethnic minorities. Our nation has 5 percent of the world's population. We have 25 percent of the world's known prison population. We have an incarceration rate in the United States that is five times the incarceration rate in the rest of the world. The bottom line is that under our current criminal justice system too many people are being incarcerated and otherwise caught up in the criminal justice system and we still have too many Americans who do not feel safe in the homes or their communities. Furthermore, because of the disparities that result from our current system, entire communities within our country do not have confidence in the criminal justice system.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, HAS BEEN DESIGNATED "COMMISSION CALL-IN DAY", IN WHICH SUPPORTERS OF THIS LEGISLATION ARE URGED TO CALL THEIR SENATORS AND DEMAND ACTION. THE NAACP SUPPORTS THE NATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT, H.R. 5143, AND ENCOURAGES ALL SENATORS TO ACT QUICKLY TO ENSURE THAT THIS LEGISLATION BECOMES LAW.
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Rough justice in America

2010-07-23T13:40:00.000-07:00

Too many laws, too many prisoners. Never in the world have so many been locked up for so little. Read this great description of our out of control criminal justice system here.

http://www.economist.com/node/16636027/print

College or Prison?

2010-06-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

Do state colleges and state prisons really compete for money? Well, sort of. Emotions run high when considering this question, at least in part because college students are attractive and motivated and prisoners, in contrast, are rough and aggressive. Everyone wants his son to go to college; no one wants his son to go to jail. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone went to college and America had no prisons? Or, as Pat Wingert writes in Newsweek,

It may seem odd that state funding for college kids often competes with money for prisoners, but if you track spending in California over the past 30 years, you’ll see evidence of a long-standing tug of war between these two very different constituencies. Over much of the past decade, funding for corrections has gone steadily up, while spending on state colleges has tumbled. “The state seems to be saying we have more of a future in prisons than in universities,” University of California president Mark Yudof said in a recent speech.
Following months of protests by students, parents, and colleges, Schwarzenegger urged the California legislature to pass a constitutional amendment earlier this year that would require the state to spend more on college classrooms than prison cells. “What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison uniforms than on caps and gowns?” Schwarzenegger said, adding that “30 years ago, 10 percent of the general fund went to higher education and 3 percent went to prisons. Today, almost 11 percent goes to prisons and only 7.5 percent goes to higher education. Spending 45 percent more on prisons than universities is no way to proceed into the future.” The state’s priorities, he added, “have become out of whack.”
Now the trend to spend more on prisons and less on colleges is a very real one, and not just in California. But the “tug of war” phrase is a misleading metaphor. Colleges don’t brawl with prisons for money, anymore than they brawl with the state employees’ pension fund or the department of parks and recreation. State colleges and prisons don’t fight each other for resources; they fight the state.

As the Wingert article rightly points out, however, both of these expenditures have grown immensely in the past few decades. This leads some, like Schwarzenegger and Yudof, to conclude that their state should be spending more on state colleges than on prisons, because colleges are, you know, nicer.

In January Schwarzenegger proposed an amendment to his state’s constitution requiring California to spend at least 10 percent of its budget on higher education and less than 7 percent of the budget on prisons. Despite the fact that even the state’s accounting office called Schwarzenegger’s plan simplistic and bad this discussion seems not to go away.

This is not a prison blog, but the real problem here is that our prisons don’t work. Once someone spends two years in prison, he’s essentially part of the prison system for life. This is true even if someone enters the system for a nonviolent crime, for something like drugs. The cost of keeping someone is jail in California is about $52,000 a year. Most of this has to do with the fact that California’s prison guards are the highest-paid in the United States of America.

These things are very interesting and potentially worthy of improvement, but pitting colleges against prisons, even rhetorically, is trouble. It’s relatively easy for colleges to raise money independently, by simply enrolling richer students or forcing them into higher debt. Prisons don’t have that option. As long as the state keeps incarcerating people, it has to use state money to pay for that. [Image via]

by Daniel Luzer who is a higher education blogger for the Washington Monthly.

Order in the court: Innocence Commission Awaits Signature

2010-06-29T12:06:00.001-07:00

Incoming Senate President Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, found the money in a lean appropriation year to fund an "innocence commission" that would without doubt save the state millions of dollars from incarcerating the wrong person in Florida prisons. In 2008, lawmakers passed a law automatically granting wrongfully imprisoned persons $50,000 for each year they were incarcerated.
Nationwide, 245 post-conviction exonerations have been based on DNA evidence since 1989 and Florida has contributed to almost 80 percent of those cases — clearing 12 Florida Death Row inmates since 2000.
Mr. Haridopolos' support of the $200,000 makes a large investment in public safety, too. When the wrong person is imprisoned for a crime, the actual perpetrator remains at large. Law-and-order standards, he has pointed out, include expectations of having a system that doesn't make such mistakes.
Creating the Florida Actual Innocence Commission is now in the hands of the Florida Supreme Court, specifically incoming Chief Justice Charles T. Canady. It will be up to him to ensure that the commission, which is just now getting organized, will begin the serious work of examining cases where the system has broken down, or has the potential to, such as handling of eye-witness testimony, improper use of evidence, false confessions, crime-fighting tunnel vision and inadequate defense.
The commission won't look for inmates who might be innocent and it's not intended to assign blame or point fingers. Rather it will look after the fact of DNA exoneration at errors of such a magnitude that they undermine our state's reputation for justice and identify broken parts of the criminal justice system. And, obviously, grave errors of justice cause the innocent person to suffer loss of income and reputation and punish their children and families with untold stresses.
Outgoing Chief Justice Peggy Quince is considering an administrative order launching the commission, which has been championed by former American Bar Association president and Florida State University president emeritus Sandy D'Alemberte.
Mr. D'Alemberte's petition called for a permanent, court-ordered panel of legal experts, police and victim advocates that would continue this deliberative work — a pattern recommended by an American Bar Association's assessment team and used in other states.
But the real legacy could well belong to Mr. Canady if he takes the next step in assigning permanence to this body through a court order so it can do more than issue a report and depart. He has the opportunity to make certain that the Florida Actual Innocence Commission helps put Florida in the forefront of actual justice for all.

An editorial from the Tallahassee Democrat published June 29, 2010

Is This the End of the War on Crime?

2010-06-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

"Necessity," says Lorenzo Jones, executive director of the Connecticut-based A Better Way Foundation, "is the mother of invention." Jones, who has spent his adult life swimming against monster currents in his efforts to reform the country's criminal justice system, pauses to chuckle deeply at his own cliché. When it comes to drug policy, he continues, think of the present moment "as moving from a war economy to a postwar economy."

For decades, progressive policy analysts and criminal justice reformers such as Jones have argued that state and federal antidrug and, more generally, "tough on crime" incarceration strategies were counterproductive: that they were dramatically reshaping American society, at a staggering fiscal and moral cost, and they weren't succeeding. Drug use remained commonplace, and high recidivism numbers for paroled prisoners suggested that prisons weren't remolding criminals into model citizens. Far better, they argued, to keep prisons as a last resort for the truly hardened, violent criminals and to invest more resources in less expensive, and more effective, alternatives to incarceration.

True, crime rates have fallen dramatically since the early 1990s, in part because of those higher incarceration rates. But most experts believe they fell in larger part because of demographic shifts, changes in policing practices and an easing of the crack epidemic. The drop-off in crime has, in turn, finally allowed a public slightly less scared of crime to be slightly more willing to look for nuance rather than sound bites when it comes to policy. It has created what Bart Lubow, a juvenile justice advocate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, terms an "ideological space" for discussions of reform. "The overall context regarding crime policy," he says, "is much less hysterical than it was through most of the 1990s."

Faced with a growing body of evidence that carefully tailored rehabilitation models can reduce recidivism or drug use better than jails and prisons, and with a burgeoning crisis in local and state government finances, politicians and voters alike are turning their backs on basic tough-on-crime staples. Instead, they are looking for inspiration to programs such as the HOPE Project in Hawaii, the High Point project in North Carolina and an experiment in Multnomah County (home to Portland, Oregon) to divert low-end probation and parole violators to nonincarcerative settings. All these model programs view jail and prison sentences as a last option rather than a default, and swift responses to violations are considered more important than harsh ones. For reformers, it is a rare breath of fresh air.

"I think the criminal justice system is more under the microscope because of the fiscal situation," explains Mike Thompson, director of the New York–based Council of State Government's Justice Center. "Every state's facing fiscal problems, with the exception of North Dakota, and when you look at items where expenditures have risen in the last twenty years, corrections jumps out at you."

Around the country, legislators are essentially asking how they can get more bang for the bucks they spend fighting crime, drug use, mental illness and so on. And they're willing to consult reformers they would have shunned in the recent past as irredeemably "soft" on crime. "Nobody can sit here and say things are fine," argues Jones. "Something has to give. Now we can sit at the table with people we couldn't previously work with and say, 'What are you willing to give?' We are literally writing this narrative as we go."

In Texas a $600 million prison-expansion plan was shelved in 2007 in favor of a $241 million plan expanding community-based drug and alcohol treatment services, after researchers convinced legislators that the latter would lower crime rates more than expanding the state's penal infrastructure. As a result, the notoriously prison-tough Lone Star State, whose leaders used to boast about its extraordinarily high incarceration rate, is implementing some of the country's most innovative reforms, creating a network of in-prison and post-prison residential drug treatment and DWI centers, mental health facilities, halfway houses for inmates being released onto parole, and nonjail residential settings for low-end parole violators. In 2009 the state's prison population declined, perhaps signaling the start of a reversal of nearly four decades of expansion, which saw the Lone Star State's prison numbers grow from just shy of 16,000 in 1972 to more than 170,000 in 2008. Texas joined twenty-five other states that saw reductions in the size of their inmate population last year.

In Kansas legislators approved a large investment in drug treatment programs and services for parolees designed to stop so many offenders from simply cycling back into prison after their release. The result was a drop in Kansas's prison population significant enough to allow the state to close several facilities.

Michigan recently reformed its prisoner-release process to allow for shorter sentences, winning accolades from the ACLU in the process. The state closed eight prisons as a result and invested some of the $250 million savings expected to be generated over a five-year period in an expanded network of mental health and job training services, as well as drug treatment programs.

All told, ten states have embraced "justice reinvestment" strategies such as this, reducing prison spending, investing a portion of the savings in more effective anticrime infrastructure and using the remainder of the savings to plug gaps elsewhere in their budgets. As this model spreads, says Thompson optimistically, we'll get more results-oriented policy-making than we've had in the past. "These are bipartisan, data-driven approaches: figure out what's driving the [prison population] growth and what can be done differently."

Even states that haven't formally adopted such a reinvestment strategy are, of necessity, being pushed in this direction. In California, home to the country's largest state prison population as well as the country's most dysfunctional state budget process, the combination of federal injunctions against overcrowding and the worst fiscal crunch since the Great Depression has brought the race to incarcerate of the past quarter-century to an end. Over the next several years, to the dismay of politicians who have built careers on being tough on crime, the prison population, which stands at around 170,000, will be reduced by several tens of thousands, with more emphasis on parole, probation and local drug treatment.

New Mexico recently enacted a law banning employers from asking job applicants if they have a felony record. An increasing number of states, including conservative bastions like Alabama and Louisiana, are restructuring their juvenile justice systems to move away from incarceration. Drug and mental health courts are channeling more offenders into structured treatment. And many states are rolling back their most restrictive truth-in-sentencing provisions, allowing low-level offenders to return to their communities after serving only a small percentage of their sentences behind bars.

Some states and localities are also starting to invest in restorative justice models, putting offenders to work to repair the damage they caused the community rather than simply warehousing them in prisons.

Father George Horan, co-director of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles's Office of Restorative Justice, has spent a lifetime watching youngsters do stupid things and, as a result, ruin their lives. He has seen generations of kids graduate from being troubled children to hardened prisoners. And he has grown increasingly cynical about the ability of penal institutions to solve ingrained social problems. Far better, he has come to believe, to sit nonviolent offenders down with their families, teachers, peers, even victims, and force them to come to terms with the consequences of their actions.

Horan, 64, has a ruddy complexion and dresses casually. From his small office in the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Lincoln Heights, a bleak industrial area of Los Angeles just north of downtown, he works to help delinquent teens, many of them gang members, establish more productive bonds with their communities. When three teens broke into their school a few years back and trashed it, the Office of Restorative Justice persuaded the trial judge to consider a restorative justice solution. The kids had to face their principal and fellow students; they had to pay for the damage; and they had to spend their weekends doing community service at the school—cleaning classrooms, doing basic maintenance work, sweeping autumn leaves. The principal, recalls Horan, took the kids out to lunch, got to know them and encouraged them to attend to their studies. "She said the next year they were the three best kids in the school. What a better result than sending the kids to juvenile hall. They turned their lives around."

Horan is aware of the limitations of this strategy—he tried the same approach when three boys set fire to his church door, but this time the prosecutor insisted on seeking prison terms. Politically, he says, it would be next to impossible for prosecutors to embrace restorative justice for violent criminals. But Horan believes restorative justice models have to play a part in any revamping of America's criminal justice system. "Always, the first step is, the person has to take responsibility for what they did. That's the cornerstone," he explains. "What can a person do to heal the victim and heal the community?"

Meanwhile, extending the first-do-no-harm principles of the restorative justice movement, a growing number of politicians have started to identify sky-high African-American incarceration rates as a civil rights issue that, in tandem with high crime rates in poor communities, serves up a double whammy to already devastated neighborhoods. As a result, they have begun pushing legislation that characterizes the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans as a problem. Connecticut recently passed a "racial impact statement" law mandating all major legislative proposals for the criminal justice system be studied for their racial impact. Other states, looking for ways to preserve public safety without inflicting the kind of collateral damage on communities that mass incarceration unleashes, will likely follow suit.

No part of the criminal justice system has had more of a racially skewed impact than America's antidrug strategy. Over the decades, millions of young Americans, mainly poor and disproportionately black and brown, have been arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to jail or prison for their involvement with the drug trade. It has been a staggering exercise in futility.

Yet these days, the "war on drugs," which Barack Obama denounced as an utter failure during his presidential campaign, is showing the fragility of old age. At the urging of the Obama administration and top Justice Department officials, Congress is working to eliminate the infamous crack and powder-cocaine sentencing disparities. And over the next few years, the Justice Department's Task Force on Sentencing Reform will likely recommend more proportionate sentencing for many drug offenses.

The era of "Lock 'em up and throw away the key" seems, slowly, to be drawing to a close. And over the next few decades, that will likely have the effect of gradually drawing down the size of the bloated prison population. Even seasoned conservative voices are cognizant of the winds of change.

"My attitude has always been, speed and certainty are crucial aspects of running a criminal justice system, not length of sentence," argues James Q. Wilson, at one time the country's most influential conservative criminologist. "Many sentences could be shortened without endangering public safety." Wilson, who rose to intellectual fame as President Nixon's favorite sociologist and later became known as the philosophical father of the Broken Windows policing theory, doesn't regret his role in developing ideas that helped contribute to America's mass incarceration experiment. But he also doesn't think that mass incarceration is, or should be, an end in itself. If there are alternatives that have at least as powerful an effect on reducing the crime rate, Wilson, an empiricist, believes they should be tried. Parole and probation systems should be reformed, he argues, so that violators are dealt with quickly and minor violators, such as those who fail a urine drug test, receive "a swift but very short penalty—a weekend in jail, a week in jail. It need not be returning people to serve a full prison term."

Changes in drug policy don't stop with shortening sentences, however. The administration recently lifted the ban on federal funding for needle-exchange programs—long a bugbear of drug-treatment and public health professionals. And for the first time since the 1970s, marijuana legalization movements are gaining traction at the state level. Californians will vote in November on a ballot measure to legalize pot, and preliminary polling indicates it could well pass. The initiative is buttressed by a number of politicians, like Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and State Senator Mark Leno, who have argued that legalizing marijuana would allow California to tax the lucrative market. Other states could follow in California's wake.

"People are now making a lawful income from cannabis here in California and other states," argues 57-year-old Chris Conrad, of the marijuana-advocacy newspaper West Coast Leaf, at a hummus-and-wine soiree to celebrate the opening of the Drug Policy Alliance's swank new downtown San Francisco offices. Conrad is talking about how the medical marijuana industry is increasingly using its clout to push for broader, across-the-board rollbacks of pot prohibition. "They can put that money back to invest in change. The idea is, it should be brought under control and tax revenue brought in. The whole financial argument is only going to get better. I think the drug war is fatally flawed, and it's doomed. It's just a matter of time; it could be five years, it could be twenty years. But prohibition doesn't work. It creates crime; it doesn't solve crime."

A few years ago Conrad would have been a countercultural refugee on the hippie fringe; these days, he and his ideas are increasingly mainstream. In fact, the attendees at the party oozed their radical-chic credentials; they were lawyers, doctors, politicians, consultants, businessmen. "The trend is for people to regulate rather than prohibit," asserted Doug Linney, the well-coiffed, sharp-dressed campaign consultant for the legalization initiative. "They see the current drug wars aren't working, especially regarding marijuana. There's an interest in changing it, especially because of the state's finances."

Cumulatively, all of these changes are bearing significant fruit. For the first time since the Nixon era, America's prison population is shrinking. In 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the prison population fell in twenty states; in 2009 it fell in twenty-six states; and that trend is likely to continue in 2010. Moreover, as the number of drug-related sentences has declined slightly, so too has the appallingly high African-American incarceration rate edged slightly downward, off 9 percent from its peak a few years back. The gears of what journalist Joel Dyer, in the 1990s, tellingly labeled a "perpetual prisoner machine"—a self-sustaining interaction of conservative criminal justice lobbies, political opportunism, popular tough-on-crime sentiments, the economic needs of depressed prison towns and media sensationalism—seem finally to have gotten gummed up. Ironically, the federal government, which did so much to shift the country in a more conservative criminal justice direction for nearly fifty years, seems quite content to let the gears stay locked.

Most decisions about the criminal justice system are made at the state level. Despite the near-tenfold growth in the population of federal prison inmates since 1980, less than 10 percent of all inmates are serving federal sentences. But the federal government does perform some vital roles: it allocates resources directly (by, for example, patrolling the border and exporting the "war on drugs") and indirectly (by granting money to localities and states to set up antidrug task forces, funding drug and mental health treatment services, and putting more police on the streets). It creates overarching legal parameters within which states must operate (federal drug laws supersede state ones, which means that if California legalizes marijuana, for example, theoretically it would be setting up a conflict with DC). Perhaps most important, the federal government sets the tone for national conversations on crime and delinquency.

When it comes to tone-setting, sometimes what isn't said by federal officials is as important as what is. Over the past couple of years, President Obama's drug czar, ex–Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske, has chosen not to follow his predecessors with regard to medical marijuana. Whereas John Walters, Bush's drug czar, testified across the country against state medical marijuana laws, Kerlikowske has stayed silent. The effect, says Drug Policy Alliance executive director Ethan Nadelmann, has been to send a "green light to the states that they could have the freedom to go their own way on this." Kerlikowske, Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama himself steer clear of talking about the "war on drugs," and they generally don't use sound bites to trumpet their "tough" credentials when it comes to tackling the complex problem of crime.

But what is being said is also fascinating. "Too many of our citizens have come to have doubts about our criminal justice system," Holder told a Congressional Black Caucus symposium on June 24, 2009. "We must be honest with each other and have the courage to ask difficult questions of ourselves and our system. We must break out of the old and tired partisan stances that have stood in the way of needed progress and reform. We have a moment in time that must be seized in order to ensure that all of our citizens are treated in a way that is consistent with the ideals embodied in our founding documents. This Department of Justice is prepared to act."

Indeed, in a series of key speeches over the past year, Holder has delivered a commitment, unprecedented in recent decades, to use the might of the Justice Department to ensure a fairer, less coercive criminal justice system. Addressing the NAACP in July 2009, the attorney general talked of the devastating harm that harsh drug sentences have caused in poor communities. "It is not justice," he declared, "to continue our adherence to a sentencing scheme that disproportionately affects some Americans, and some communities, more severely than others."

The previous week, he told an audience at the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York–based think tank, that "getting smart on crime requires talking honestly about which policies have worked and which have not, without fear of being labeled as too hard or, more likely, too soft on crime. Getting smart on crime means moving beyond useless labels and instead embracing science and data, and relying on them to shape policy. And it means thinking about crime in context—not just reacting to the criminal act but developing the government's ability to enhance public safety before the crime is committed and after the former offender is returned to society." Taking their cue from Holder, a slew of top officials have begun revamping the language they use to discuss crime and punishment.

As Kerlikowske explained to The Nation in March, shortly after he returned from a UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs meeting in Vienna, the country should not continue to think of drugs merely as a public safety problem but should start to see them as a public health problem. "My colleagues, I never heard them talk of a war on drugs," he said. "I've heard elected officials talk about it, but not police chiefs, sheriffs or prosecutors. They talk about it with the complexity the problem deserves."

In reshaping the national discourse on drugs, Kerlikowske touts his law enforcement credentials. He's a tough guy, a strong policeman with thirty-seven years on the job, and he knows he commands respect. "For me, it's a little bit like Nixon going to China," he explains. Kerlikowske has "very little concern about being labeled soft on drugs." And so he wants to talk about being "smart on drugs," instead of merely "tough." In fact, when he explains his mandate, the country's drug czar is more comfortable using the language of public health professionals than political posturers. "The 'war on drugs' was a simplistic answer to this really complex problem," he says. "We have to look at talking about addiction as a disease rather than a moral failure or saying people should just stop using drugs."

For the first time in more than forty years, criminal justice trends are starting to move in a sensible direction. At the local and state levels, fiscal necessity is forcing a rethink when it comes to incarceration strategies. And at the federal level, the politics that allowed George H.W. Bush to batter Michael Dukakis with images of Willie Horton, Bill Clinton to sign an execution warrant on the brain-damaged Ricky Ray Rector and George W. Bush to push glibly for more teens to be tried and sentenced as adults is taking a back seat to smart, holistic thinking.

"Everyone I talk to around the country has been affected by drugs," Kerlikowske says. "But it's not talked about the same way as if you had a member of your family having cancer—or even alcoholism. When I look at the drug problem, what it costs in healthcare costs, police-community relations, the Southwest border, foreign relations—every one of those things, drugs are a part. If we could recognize how inextricably linked to all of these issues drug consumption and addiction is, if we could work to address it with the complexity it deserves, that would make more sense than holding a press conference and showing a ton of cocaine or five people led out in handcuffs."

Of all the changes in tone brought about by Obama's election, in the long run few will be more significant to the country's well-being than those around criminal justice and drugs. Without a whole lot of fanfare, the administration is laying the foundations for a new criminal justice system model that might, conceivably, end America's morally disastrous, fiscally ruinous, four-decade-long experimentation with mass incarceration.

by

Sasha Abramsky | June 16, 2010--The NATION

Former Attorney General Ed Meese warns: Overzealous laws fill prisons and jails

2010-04-27T04:48:00.000-07:00

America is in the throes of "overcriminalization."

We are making and enforcing far too many criminal laws that create traps for the innocent but unwary -- and threaten to turn otherwise respectable, law-abiding citizens into criminals. Consider a few examples from the new book "One Nation Under Arrest":

· A 12-year old girl arrested and handcuffed for eating a single french fry on the Washington subway system.

· A cancer-ridden grandmother arrested and criminally charged for refusing to trim her hedges the way officials in Palo Alto, Calif., were trying to force her to.

A former high-school science whiz kid sent to prison after initially being arrested by FBI agents clad in SWAT gear for failing to affix a federally mandated sticker to his otherwise legal UPS package.

· A 67-year-old retired husband and grandfather imprisoned because some of the paperwork for his home-based orchid business did not satisfy an international treaty.

I could go on, but all these stories share one thing in common -- they are about typical Americans. Most involve a man or woman who works hard and pays taxes, cares for family members and is a good neighbor. Perhaps above all, this person strives to stay on the right side of the law.

This typical American holds deep and often intuitive beliefs in basic principles about American government, including a belief that, if you do what's right, you have nothing to fear from your own government, and certainly not from the criminal justice system.

But the typical American's deeply held beliefs about the freedoms he cherishes and the fundamental principles of his government are no longer as well-founded as they once were. Today, he is far more vulnerable than ever before to being caught up in a criminal investigation and prosecution -- and to actually being convicted and punished as a criminal -- for having done something he did not even suspect was illegal.

Criminal law has changed in the past 50 years. Once criminal law was about criminal acts that everyone knew were inherently unlawful (like murder, rape and robbery). Limiting criminal punishment to conduct that is inherently wrongful restricted governmental power in two important ways.

First, and most important, it kept the range of governmental power small. Having few criminal laws and a short list of things not to be done limited the scope within which government can exercise its authority.

Second, a limited criminal law served a teaching function. It reflected the beliefs and understandings common to the vast majority of our citizens -- the very citizens who were subject to the criminal law.

Today, the criminal law has grown as broad as the regulatory state in its sheer size and scope. In 1998, an American Bar Association task force estimated that there were more than 3,000 federal criminal offenses scattered throughout the 50 titles of the United States Code.

Just six years later, a leading expert on the overcriminalization problem, Professor John S. Baker Jr., published a study estimating that the number exceeded 4,000. As the ABA task force reported, the body of federal criminal law is "so large ...that there is no conveniently accessible, complete list of federal crimes."

If "ignorance of the law is no excuse," then every American citizen -- literally, every single one -- is ignorant and in peril, for nobody can know all the laws that govern their behavior.

A just criminal justice system, in the best sense of the word "just," has a twofold goal. One is to see that criminals are prosecuted, convicted and appropriately punished. The other is to ensure that those who are innocent are either not prosecuted in the first instance or, if mistakenly prosecuted, are not convicted. Today, our system fails the second of those goals.

Much is at stake for our freedoms and the freedoms of future generations. The problem of overcriminalization merits extensive study and debate by legal experts and policymakers, as well as average Americans, whose fundamental liberty is most at stake. Many constructive changes could make our justice system fairer and more just, and improve its ability to deter wrongdoing and punish real criminals. Taking the steps necessary to ensure that American criminal law once again routinely exemplifies the right principles and purposes will require much work, but the alternative is to distort the American criminal justice system, and jeopardize the American people.

By EDWIN MEESE III, NATIONAL VOICE
April 26, 2010 12:05 AM
Meese, a former U.S. attorney general, is chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Criminal Justice Reform in South Carolina:

2010-04-23T15:55:00.000-07:00

Gov. Mark Sanford formally threw his support behind a far-reaching sentencing reform bill Wednesday, a bill that supporters say will reduce the number of non-violent offenders in prison and save the state millions of dollars. "You can only squeeze so much blood from a turnip," Sanford said. "This really is a taxpayer issue."

The 94-page bill is expected to reduce the state's projected prison population enough to negate the need for a new prison -- saving more than $400 million over five years. It's designed to increase training for nonviolent offenders to re-enter society without becoming repeat offenders. And it defines a laundry list of crimes as "violent," including many sex crimes against children.

It also provides, for example, a tiered approach to assault and battery crimes. Currently, the state has 90-day maximum sentences and 10-year minimum sentences and nothing in between, said state Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston.

And it provides a sentence of up to $10,000 and up to 20 years in prison for habitual offenders convicted of driving under suspension resulting in death -- and a fine of up to $5,000 and 10 years in prison in such cases where great bodily injury results. A version of that provision, rolled into the bill last month, has been championed by Spartanburg resident Lily Lenderman for eight years -- ever since she lost her grandson in a wreck caused by someone driving under a suspended license.

"The whole idea about any criminal law is to keep us safe," said Rep. Keith Kelly, R-Woodruff, chairman of the House Criminal Law Subcommittee. "This bill ... is strong by keeping the violent offenders segregated from South Carolina families. At the same time, it's smart, because it's taking non-violent offenders out of the Department of Corrections and puts them on alternative sentencing -- GPS monitoring, for instance, that they pay for, not you or me."...

Corrections Department Director Jon Ozmint said the Sanford administration had been behind sentencing reform since a scaled-down version of it failed seven years ago. Ozmint said South Carolina currently doesn't have a criminal justice system; rather, it has a patchwork of laws that have been cobbled together over the years. He and several supporters talked about this bill being ruled by statistics rather than emotions. "Don't underestimate that first step in this state's history," he said.

Program would stop wasting money, lives

2010-04-12T04:55:00.000-07:00

Florida spends more than a billion dollars a year warehousing people with mental illness in prisons, locked forensic treatment facilities and local jails. They are among the most wasteful dollars the state spends. Mentally ill defendants are provided treatment until they are competent to stand trial, then they are typically released only to be arrested again. An effort to change this paradigm has been in the works for years. On Tuesday, a Senate committee is expected to consider a pilot program to bring this population into highly managed community care. This an opportunity to stop wasting moneys and lives.

By using state resources differently, Florida's mentally ill residents can be treated and avoid the revolving door of jail and the streets. Under a plan proposed by the Department of Children and Families, the mentally ill accused of relatively low-level crimes would be diverted into locked community-based residential treatment facilities. Once stabilized, these individuals would be provided a continuum of care and monitoring in community-living settings.

Many mentally ill residents could live law-abiding lives if they had access to regular treatment and services. The DCF program would use case managers and other professionals to track their progress and help them obtain federal benefits to reach some level of self-sufficiency.

But DCF cannot launch its diversion experiment without changes to state law. The department needs the flexibility to shift up to 5 percent of funding from forensic treatment beds. It also needs permission to seek federal Medicaid dollars for indigent mentally ill criminal defendants in the program.

The Senate Criminal Justice Committee on Tuesday will consider a bill, SB 2612, that would create a forensic mental health probation and parole program in the Department of Corrections and authorize mental health courts throughout the state. Its sponsor, Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Brandon, should allow the changes that DCF seeks to be amended into her bill. That would get the pilot program moving this session.

A nudge from Senate President Jeff Atwater of North Palm Beach, who wants to be the state's next chief financial officer, also would help. Allowing this creative experiment would fit in nicely with a candidate for an office that looks out for Florida's long-term fiscal interests.

The mentally ill people who qualify for the diversion program would otherwise land in a state forensic hospital at a cost of more than $60,000. Then they would take a plea agreement — as roughly 80 percent do — and be released without any treatment or services. The sensible choice for Florida is to give the pilot program a try.

A St. Petersburg Times editorial
Published Friday, April 9, 2010

Planted Evidence Results in Conviction

2010-04-01T06:31:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately, some law enforcement officers are not satisified with collecting actual evidence in criminal investigations. Recently there has been documentation that evidence planting is a legitimate problem, as is shown in the article found at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-us-csi-evidence-tampering,0,1982587.story

"Cash Register Justice" in Florida

2010-03-24T05:40:00.000-07:00

Florida's practice of financing its criminal justice system with fees from the indigent creates a vicious cycle of debt for ex-offenders that threatens their successful re-entry into society, according to a new Brennan Center report released today.
Since 1996, the study shows, the Sunshine state has added more than 20 new categories of financial obligations to those accused and convicted of a crime. The fees are levied even on those who have no money and cannot pay. Increasingly, the result is a self-perpetuating cycle of debt -- and sometimes further incarceration -- for those re-entering society after prison.

The new study shows that the Florida legislature increasingly relies on "user fees" paid by indigent defendants to finance not just the criminal justice system but other state operations as well.

"As unemployment hovers around 10 percent, it is time to consider whether heaping more debt on those unable to afford it is a sensible and moral approach to financing state functions," said Rebekah Diller, author of The Hidden Costs of Florida's Criminal Justice Fees. "For many reasons, this is simply bad public policy."

The report also raises key questions about the efficiency of the practice. Many of these fees are uncollectible, leaving the court system underfunded. In some places, collection costs are borne partly by counties and court clerks, and the adjudication of fee payments incurs even more costs.

Among the findings:
1. The Florida Legislature has eliminated payment exemptions for the indigent, thus demanding revenue from a population unable to pay;

2. In Leon County, collection practices resulted in more than 800 arrests for failure to appear at debt hearings and more than 20,000 hours of jail time alone in one year.

3. Florida routinely suspends drivers' licenses for failure to make payments, a practice that sets the debtor up for a vicious cycle of "driving with a suspended license" convictions;

4. Florida allows private debt collection firms to add up to a 40 percent surcharge on unpaid debt.

Among the recommendations:
1. The Legislature should exempt those unable to pay criminal justice fees from legal financial obligations;

2. Payment plans should be tailored to an individual's ability to pay, as state law already requires;

3. Florida's Supreme Court should adopt court rules to end the new debtors' prison;

4. Counties can save money by eliminating debt-related arrests for failure to appear and resulting incarceration in already crowded jails.
Florida's increasing reliance on fee revenue coincides with a rising concern about policies that affect massive numbers of Floridians with a criminal conviction. Florida has the third-largest prison population of any state. Nearly 90 percent of the more than 100,000 people currently in Florida's state prisons will be released, and, if past trends persist, nearly one-third will be re-incarcerated for a new crime.

The report also offers longer-term reforms, such as reconsidering legal financial obligations in felony cases.

Do away with Collections Court

2010-03-09T03:27:00.000-08:00

I believe that that the "collections court" in Sarasota county is bad. Read more at http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100309/LETTERS/100309711/2163/OPINION?Title=Do-away-with-collections-court

2010-02-27T14:15:00.000-08:00

The role of the Grand Jury in investigating instances of public corruption is frequently overlooked. While the Grand Jury is given instructions by the Court at the beginning of their term, many who serve do not realize that they may investigate wrong-doing, independently, and not just at the direction of the State Attorney. At the link that follows is a great discussion of this issue, out of Broward County, where there have been ongoing problems with potential corruption in local government.

http://jaablog.jaablaw.com/2010/02/25/joe-kollin-on-the-grand-jury.aspx

Smart Crimial Justice Reform

2010-02-25T13:17:00.000-08:00

Subtitled: "Achieving a safer, more just, and fiscally responsible justice system in Florida." This is must read from the Collins Center for Public Policy.

If the link does not work, copy and paste the following into your browser:
http://www.collinscenter.org/resource/resmgr/smart_justice/justice_report_--_final_edit.pdf

True Reform Gains Support in Florida

2010-02-15T10:30:00.001-08:00

Gov. Charlie Crist, once known for his support of prison chain gangs, is embracing an inmate rehabilitation effort often seen as "soft on crime."

The new mind-set, also welcomed by top Republican lawmakers, is not a change of heart from the lock-'em-up policies that dominated the past decade. Rather, it indicates how Florida's dire budget situation is making officials rethink the link between crime and punishment.

The shift is notable, given that Republicans are leading the discussion during an election year.

"I think that justice calls for many facets," Crist said Friday. "But I also think if there are individuals who can turn their lives around and get a second chance, especially youth, that's a worthy cause."

Nearly 90 percent of inmates will eventually leave prison, and one in three will commit a new crime within three years. If state prison officials trim recidivism by just 1 percent, they will save $8 million a year.

"Particularly in austere budget times, re-entry (programs) really make good business and public safety sense," Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil said. "It comes from the lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key (policies) — the evidence shows it has not been very effective."

As the state's chief warden, McNeil began preaching these reforms years ago.

But the political winds didn't change until June when three former Florida attorneys general, a retired Department of Corrections secretary and the state's powerful business lobby wrote a letter to Crist asking him to halt spending for new prison construction as available dollars grew scarce.

Each inmate costs state taxpayers $20,000 a year, and the prison population now tops 100,000, statistics show. The number of inmates is projected to grow 15 percent in coming years — an unsustainable pace, the group said.

In his executive budget, Crist proposed no money for new prisons and diverted funding for prison work camps to re-entry centers where the state assists inmates' transition into the community through job training and social services.

The thinking is spreading even to the Legislature, which in recent years has approved measures to abolish parole and implement minimum required sentences for offenders.

"The prudence of spending has helped to humanize the issue of incarceration," said state Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, a lawyer who is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict.

For years when offenders left prison, the state gave them $100 and a bus ticket. But in recent presentations to lawmakers, state officials tout a program with space for 5,500 inmates that helps them find jobs and learn life skills — both keys to reducing recidivism.

It's about public safety, officials contend, not coddling criminals. And reducing crime means fewer victims in the future.

"We can measure the bad stuff but never capture all the bad things that didn't happen," said Rebecca Wolf-Reynal, a probation supervisor in Pinellas County who organizes re-entry programs.

The corrections agency is expanding these re-entry hubs in each of the state's four regions for inmates who have less than three years left in prison.

The re-entry facilities operate in conjunction with work release centers that help offenders find jobs before they are released.

Once the program reaches full speed, the state will serve nearly 7,000 inmates at any given time, though the agency wants to expand even further.

Gordon Lee Jr. participated in voluntary re-entry classes after serving 18 years in prison for a slew of drug charges. He left prison at age 40 with dim hopes after seeing others released only to return.

"They went back to the same environment with the same things and wound up with the same results," said Lee, now 42 and a supervisor at a car rental agency in Tampa. "But they taught me a lot of life skills. They made me feel like I had a chance."

The agency's new focus on helping offenders is bolstering a broader examination of how the state punishes criminals.

This year, House Bill 23, the "Second Chance for Children in Prison Act" — once deemed dead on arrival — is getting another look.

The legislation would allow the state's parole board to reconsider lengthy prison sentences given to youthful offenders. The sponsor, state Rep. Mike Weinstein, a Jacksonville Republican, is a prosecutor.

The bill also illustrates the difficulty faced by legislation perceived as being lenient on criminals. When Weinstein introduced the bill two years ago, he was labeled a "liberal." In a recent committee hearing, he began with a disclaimer: "This isn't a massive prison release system."

"Republicans worked a long time to do away with parole and some of them were reluctant to even crack the door," Weinstein said. "But the pendulum is coming the other way."

But not all lawmakers are softening their views. Other measures to add to the "hate crimes" statute and enhance the eligibility for the death penalty continue to get broad support.

"The No. 1 priority should always be public safety," said Republican Sandy Adams, the chairwoman of the House criminal justice budget committee and a former sheriff's deputy. "I don't believe we need to let criminals out of institutions just for budget purposes."

A number of law enforcement officials see it differently, including Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee. "The only way to take (public safety) to the next level is through a good re-entry and recidivism program," he said. "When people listen to the facts, they are starting to understand."

published in the St. Petersburg Times on February 15, 2010

Prisoners of Parole:

2010-01-10T12:15:00.000-08:00

IN 2004, STEVEN ALM, a state trial judge in Hawaii, was frustrated with the cases on his docket. Nearly half of the people appearing before him were convicted offenders with drug problems who had been sentenced to probation rather than prison and then repeatedly violated the terms of that probation by missing appointments or testing positive for drugs. Whether out of neglect or leniency, probation officers would tend to overlook a probationer’s first 5 or 10 violations, giving the offender the impression that he could ignore the rules. But eventually, the officers would get fed up and recommend that Alm revoke probation and send the offender to jail to serve out his sentence. That struck Alm as too harsh, but the alternative — winking at probation violations — struck him as too soft. “I thought, This is crazy, this is a crazy way to change people’s behavior,” he told me recently.

So Alm decided to try something different. He reasoned that if the offenders knew that a probation violation would lead immediately to some certain punishment, they might shape up. “I thought, What did I do when my son was young?” he recalled. “If he misbehaved, I talked to him and warned him, and if he disregarded the warning, I gave him some kind of consequence right away.” Working with U.S. marshals and local police, Alm arranged for a new procedure: if offenders tested positive for drugs or missed an appointment, they would be arrested within hours and most would have a hearing within 72 hours. Those who were found to have violated probation would be quickly sentenced to a short jail term proportionate to the severity of the violation — typically a few days.

Alm mentioned his plan to the public defender, who suggested that it was only fair to warn probationers that the rules were going to be strictly enforced for the first time. Alm agreed, and on Oct. 1, 2004, he held a hearing for 18 sex offenders, followed by another one for 16 drug offenders. Brandishing a laminated “Wanted” poster, he told them: “I can guarantee that everyone in this courtroom wants you to succeed on probation, but you have not been cutting it. From now on, you’re going to follow all the rules of probation, and if you don’t, you’re going to be arrested on the spot and spend some time in jail right away.” He called the program HOPE, for Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation With Enforcement, and prepared himself for a flood of violation hearings.

But they never materialized. There were only three hearings in the first week, two in the second week and none in the third. The HOPE program was so successful that it inspired scholars to evaluate its methods. Within a six-month period, the rate of positive drug tests fell by 93 percent for HOPE probationers, compared with a fall of 14 percent for probationers in a comparison group.

Alm had stumbled onto an effective strategy for keeping people out of prison, one that puts a fresh twist on some venerable ideas about deterrence. Classical deterrence theory has long held that the threat of a mild punishment imposed reliably and immediately has a much greater deterrent effect than the threat of a severe punishment that is delayed and uncertain. Recent work in behavioral economics has helped to explain this phenomenon: people are more sensitive to the immediate than the slightly deferred future and focus more on how likely an outcome is than how bad it is. In the course of implementing HOPE, Alm discovered another reason why the strategy works: people are most likely to obey the law when they’re subject to punishments they perceive as legitimate, fair and consistent, rather than arbitrary and capricious. “When the system isn’t consistent and predictable, when people are punished randomly, they think, My probation officer doesn’t like me, or, Someone’s prejudiced against me,” Alm told me, “rather than seeing that everyone who breaks a rule is treated equally, in precisely the same way.”

Judge Alm’s story is an example of a new approach to keeping people out of prison that is being championed by some of the most innovative scholars studying deterrence today. At its core, the approach focuses on establishing the legitimacy of the criminal-justice system in the eyes of those who have run afoul of it or are likely to. Promising less crime and less punishment, this approach includes elements that should appeal to liberals (it doesn’t rely on draconian prison sentences) and to conservatives (it stresses individual choice and moral accountability). But at a time when the size of the U.S. prison population is increasingly seen as unsustainable for both budgetary and moral reasons — the United States represents 5 percent of the world’s population and nearly 25 percent of the world’s prison population — the fact that this approach seems to work may be its biggest draw.

The HOPE program, if widely adopted as a model for probation and parole reform, could make a surprisingly large contribution to reducing the prison population. In many states, the majority of prison admissions come not from arrests for new crimes, as you might think, but from probation and parole violations. Nationwide, roughly two-thirds of parolees fail to complete parole successfully. Todd Clear, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, estimates that by eliminating imprisonment across the nation for technical parole violations, reducing the length of parole supervision and ratcheting back prison sentences to their 1988 levels, the United States could reduce its prison population by 50 percent.

Some in government are beginning to take notice. In November, invoking the HOPE program as a model, the Democratic congressman Adam Schiff of California and his Republican colleague Ted Poe of Texas introduced legislation in the House that would create federal grants for states to experiment with courts that deliver swift, predictable and moderate punishment for those who violate probation.

There also appears to be a national audience for a broader conversation about new ways to shrink the prison population. Last year, a three-judge panel in California ordered the overcrowded state prison system — the largest in the country, with more than 170,000 prisoners at its peak — to reduce the inmate population by tens of thousands of prisoners within two years in order to comply with constitutional standards for medical and mental health care. Facing a tightening budget crisis in September, California legislators added to the pressure by demanding a reduction in the prison budget of $1.2 billion. In the U.S. Senate, Jim Webb of Virginia is leading a crusade for prison reform, insisting that fewer jail terms for nonviolent offenders can make America safer and more humane, while also saving money. And in the Obama administration, Attorney General Eric Holder is questioning the value of relentlessly expanding prisons. In July, he declared that “high rates of incarceration have tremendous social costs” and “diminishing marginal returns.”

The most effective way to shrink the prison population, of course, is not just to reform probation and parole but also to deter groups of potential lawbreakers from committing crimes in the first place. If, in addition to bringing down the numbers of probation and parole revocations, police officers and judges could also address the core problems of drug arrests and street violence, the United States might even be said to have solved its notorious prison problem. Is such an ambitious goal possible? While it might sound too good to be true, the HOPE-style thinking about deterrence offers a promising road map for addressing all these challenges.

ALTHOUGH HE ACTED on his own, Judge Alm did not design the HOPE program without inspiration. In the mid-1990s, when he was a U.S. attorney in Hawaii, Alm heard a presentation by David M. Kennedy, who is considered the patron saint of the new thinking about deterrence. Kennedy, who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, spoke about Operation Ceasefire, a program he was designing to reduce youth violence in Boston. Along with his colleagues Anne M. Piehl and Anthony Braga, Kennedy worked with the head of the Youth Violence Strike Force, a division of the Boston Police Department. The police officer explained that while conventional deterrence hadn’t worked, he had begun to persuade gangs to behave by issuing a credible threat: namely, that when a gang attracted attention with notorious acts of violence, the entire gang — all of whose members likely had outstanding warrants or probation, parole or traffic violations — would be rounded up.

Kennedy recalls this today as a breakthrough moment in his thinking. Ever since the days of Cesare Beccaria, the 18th-century philosopher and death-penalty opponent, classical deterrence theorists had focused on credibly threatening individuals; Kennedy’s first innovation was to focus on increasing the legitimacy of law enforcement in the eyes of groups. “The legitimacy element has risen in my mind from being an important element of the strategy to the most important element,” Kennedy told me. Convinced that the best way to increase legitimacy was to enlist what he calls the “community’s moral voice,” Kennedy set out to deter the most dangerous young gang members by persuading their friends and neighbors to pressure them into obeying the law.

In May 1996, Kennedy, Piehl and Braga helped to design the first of what came to be known as “call-in” sessions, intended to put gangs on notice that they would face swift and certain punishments. Working with Kennedy, probation and parole officers ordered gang members to attend face-to-face meetings with the police. The gang members were given three warnings. First, they were told that if anyone in their group killed someone, the entire group would suffer consequences. Second, the gang members were told that if they want to escape from street life, they could get help and job training from social service agencies and churches. And finally, they heard from members of their community that violence was wrong and it had to stop. The results of the forums were striking and immediate. Within two years, youth violence in Boston fell by two-thirds and city homicide rates by about half.

Why was Operation Ceasefire so effective? One reason was that the warning hearings gave the gang members a sense of what to expect. Increasingly draconian sentences don’t always reduce crime, and sometimes increase it. (After increasing in the 1980s, crime fell by 25 percent in the 1990s, but states that put more people in jail had a smaller decline than states that imprisoned fewer.) In part, this is because many people actually don’t know the punishments they face.

In addition to offering knowledge, Operation Ceasefire provided certainty. The small numbers of gang members singled out meant they could trust that the police would be able to follow through on their threats. “If you can get people to behave by threatening them credibly, you’ll need less actual punishment than if you let them run wild and punish only occasionally,” says Mark A. R. Kleiman, author of the new book “When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment.” Kleiman, whom Alm consulted soon after initiating the HOPE program, became interested in swift, certain and moderate punishment when he was a colleague of Kennedy’s years before. Lastly, Operation Ceasefire gave gang members an incentive to obey the law by promising that they would get positive reinforcement from their families and neighbors for changing their behavior.

In all of this, Kennedy’s insights were supported by a variety of recent research suggesting that people are more likely to obey the law when they view law enforcement as fair and legitimate. Tom Tyler, a psychology professor at New York University, has found that compliance with court orders is highest for offenders who perceive that they have experienced a fair process. And in a recent book, “American Homicide,” the Ohio State University historian Randolph Roth argues that throughout American history, the homicide rate has decreased when people trust that the government is stable and unbiased and believe in the legitimacy of the officials who run it. Similarly, the legal scholar Paul Butler argues in his new book, “Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice,” that widespread incarceration in the 1980s and ’90s undermined the legitimacy of law enforcement in the eyes of the affected communities by converting a prison term into something heroic rather than stigmatic.

After Operation Ceasefire, Kennedy turned his attention from gangs to open-air drug markets. He set out to change how the criminal-justice system was viewed from the perspective of the offenders and their communities — and how the offenders and their communities were viewed by the police. As Kennedy told me, “I saw law enforcement believing plausible but untrue things about the communities they police” — namely, that the communities were corrupt and didn’t care about the violence that was destroying them — “and the communities believing untrue things about the police” — namely, that the cops were part of a racist conspiracy to lock up black offenders while overlooking white ones.

To correct what he calls a “corrosive and tragic mistake,” Kennedy came up with the idea of a kind of truth-and-reconciliation commission in which offenders would talk to the police accompanied by the people they trusted the most: their mothers. In 2003, working with James Fealy, the police chief in High Point, N.C., Kennedy arranged some preliminary meetings. Although Fealy had been shocked to learn that the community thought he and his officers were almost as bad as the drug dealers, Fealy, in turn, surprised community members by declaring that no one in law enforcement thought the drug war could be won.

These meetings prepared the groundwork for the strategy that followed. After identifying 16 active drug dealers, Fealy arrested four and then prepared warrants for the other 12 that could be signed whenever the police chose. He then called in the other dealers, nine of whom arrived accompanied by their mothers and other “influentials” like grandmothers, and delivered the following message to them as a group: “You could be in jail tonight. We don’t want to do that, we want to help you succeed, but you are out of the drug business.” The mothers and grandmothers, seemingly impressed by the decision not to arrest, cheered on the police. In subsequent meetings, the “influentials” shouted down naysayers, including a conspiracymonger who accused the C.I.A. of having created the crack epidemic to oppress black people. The drug market in the area dried up.

IN ADDITION TO influencing Judge Alm’s probation reform, Kennedy’s efforts to rethink deterrence have also inspired one of the most powerful recent models for national parole reform, which comes from Tracey Meares, a law professor at Yale. (Unlike probation, which involves a sentence instead of prison, parole involves supervision after part of the prison sentence has been served.) In 2002, Meares, who was then a law professor at the University of Chicago, was asked by the U.S. attorney in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald, to analyze how best to address crime in the city. She concluded that they should begin on the West Side, in West Garfield Park and the surrounding area, where rates of murder and gun violence were more than four times the city average. Fitzgerald suggested that they might implement a version of Project Exile, a controversial program in Virginia that sought to deter gun violence by threatening federal prosecutions — and a five-year mandatory minimum sentence — for repeat offenders convicted of illegal gun possession. But Project Exile had experienced only mixed success: federal prosecutors could prosecute only a small proportion of the gun cases submitted by the Richmond police. The threat of a severe sentence was, in effect, something of a bluff.

Meares told Fitzgerald that threats of zero tolerance wouldn’t work because they simply weren’t credible. Instead, Meares argued that law-enforcement officials should concentrate on specific groups of wrongdoers in ways they could accept as both reasonable and fair. Using Operation Ceasefire in Boston as a model, Meares identified everyone who had committed violent or gun-related crimes and had been released from prison and recently assigned to parole. She gathered them in random groups of no more than 20 for call-in sessions in what Meares calls “places of civic importance” — park buildings, local schools and libraries — where they sat at the same table as the police in order to create an egalitarian, nonconfrontational atmosphere. They then heard a version of Kennedy’s three-part presentation. The results of the program were drastic: there was a 37 percent drop in the average monthly homicide rate — the largest drop of any neighborhood in the city. Violent crime in Chicago today is at a 30 year low. “All these strategies are a way of signaling to groups of people that government agents view them with dignity, neutrality and trust, which is the best way of convincing them that the government has the right to hold them accountable for their behavior,” Meares told me.

From Kennedy and Kleiman to Alm and Meares, the judges and scholars developing new deterrence strategies are changing the way we think about parole, probation, gang violence and drug markets. But the strategies also present a rare opportunity to persuade the nation’s policymakers that the most urgent case for prison reform is not only economic but also moral and practical. Yes, it’s an outrage that the United States locks up citizens for so long with such uncertain effect; but it’s also self-defeating, because long sentences give rise to a crisis of legitimacy that can lead to more crime, not less.

A crisis of legitimacy may sound like a huge, perhaps intractable problem, but the tantalizing promise of the new deterrence thinking is that the crisis can actually be solved, practical step by practical step. The relative simplicity of the solutions, it turns out, is at the core of their radical potential.

by Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor at George Washington University, who is a frequent contributor to theNew York Times magazine. He is at work on a book about Louis Brandeis. Published 1/10/10

Fatal wounds for the death penalty:

2010-01-09T19:01:00.000-08:00

People tend to have hardened views about the death penalty. Me, I'm opposed to it and always have been. But I ask the indulgence of those of you who favor the death penalty to give this a read and see what you think.

The death penalty costs a lot to implement, a side issue to be sure but in these tough fiscal times, a consideration. Florida, for instance, spends about $51 million a year on its death penalty system or about $24 million for each execution. While another broke state, California, spends an estimated $137 million. The high cost is largely driven by the layers of additional court proceedings intended to make sure that due process has been afforded the accused and a guilty person is being executed.

I can hear the cries of "who cares what it costs?" or "let's make it cheaper by cutting out all those extra legal steps." But what should concern capital punishment proponents is that the system, even with these expensive safeguards, gets it wrong. Executing the innocent is a distinct possibility.

Nine men in 2009 who had been convicted and sentenced to death were exonerated of their crimes and freed. The total now stands at 139 since 1973. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, those nine men served a combined 121 years between the time they were sentenced to death and their exonerations, which means that all that extra due process and all the system's delays that pandering politicians always caterwaul about were necessary to avert a tragedy.

And then there are the cases where a convict's innocence emerged too late. In a 2006 case concerning the death penalty law in Kansas, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote with his typical crowing arrogance that there has not been "a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops."

Scalia's misguided confidence is troubling considering the infamous Florida case of Frank Lee Smith whose death warrant was signed in 1989 for a rape and murder. It wasn't until after Smith died of cancer while awaiting execution that a DNA test in 2000 proved his innocence and implicated a convicted rapist and murderer.

And there is also Cameron Todd Willingham of Texas who was convicted of killing his three young daughters by arson and executed in 2004. Forensic experts who have reviewed the case, including one enlisted by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, say there is no scientific basis to conclude that the fire that swept through Willingham's home was arson. The original fire investigators, according to these later experts, had no comprehension of fire dynamics.

By all rights this should be the first case where a state formally exonerates a convict after putting him to death. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, a man in a pitched primary battle to win another term against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, refused to grant Willingham a stay of execution even though Perry had before him new scientific evidence disputing the arson.

Perry has so little interest in doing what is right in this case that he's gone out of his way to hamper the work of the Texas Forensic Science Commission. Perry denies this. But after Perry replaced three members of the commission including its chair for no apparent reason the commission quickly put on hold further review of Willingham's case.

Another fairly recent action should jar death penalty supporters. The very group that laid out the modern framework for the implementation of capital punishment has now declared that the system is wholly unworkable and broken. In October the American Law Institute voted to repudiate the legal structure it had created in 1962 for death penalty cases as part of a Model Penal Code. According to the group, decades of experience tells us that there is no way to ensure "a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment."

What we have now is not adequate while being extremely pricey. It is likely at least one innocent man has died and probably numbers more. This is why we should abolish the death penalty.

By Robyn E. Blumner,St. Petersburg Times Columnist

Published Thursday, January 7, 2010

Prisons and Budgets

2010-01-06T04:10:00.000-08:00

The United States, which has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has about one-quarter of its prisoners. But the relentless rise in the nation’s prison population has suddenly slowed as many states discover that it is simply too expensive to overincarcerate.

Between 1987 and 2007 the prison population nearly tripled, from 585,000 to almost 1.6 million. Much of that increase occurred in states — many with falling crime rates — that had adopted overly harsh punishment policies, such as the “three strikes and you’re out” rule and drug laws requiring that nonviolent drug offenders be locked away.

These policies have been hugely costly. According to the Pew Center on the States, state spending from general funds on corrections increased from $10.6 billion in 1987 to more than $44 billion in 2007, a 127 percent increase in inflation-adjusted dollars. In the same period, adjusted spending on higher education increased only 21 percent.

In 2008, the explosion of the prison population ground to a near halt, according to data released last month by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. About 739,000 inmates were admitted to federal and state facilities, only about 3,500 more than were released.

One factor seems to be tight budgets as states decide to release nonviolent offenders early. This can not only save money. If done correctly, it can also be very sound social policy. Many nonviolent offenders can be dealt with more effectively and more cheaply through treatment and jobs programs.

Michigan, which has been hard hit by the recession, has done a particularly good job of releasing people who do not need to be in prison. As the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project details in a new report, Michigan reduced its prison population by about 8 percent between March 2007 and November 2009 by taking smart steps, notably doing more to get nonviolent drug offenders out, while helping in their transition to a productive, and crime-free, life.

Not every state has gotten the message. Florida, for example, has a state law mandating that all prisoners serve a high percentage of their sentence, which is both dubious corrections policy and terrible fiscal policy.

For many years, driving up prison populations has been an easy thing for elected officials to do, popular with voters and powerful corrections officer unions. The new incarceration figures suggest, however, that in the current hard economic times, strapped states are beginning to realize that they do not have the money to keep people in prison who do not need to be there.
A New York Times Editorial published January 5, 2010

"Judges Consider New Factor at Sentencing: Military Service"

2010-01-01T15:19:00.000-08:00

The title of this post is the headline of this new article in today's Wall Street Journal. Here are excerpts from the effective piece:
A small but growing number of judges say U.S. military veterans should be treated differently from nonveterans when they are sentenced for crimes.

As more soldiers return home from combat overseas and end up in the criminal-justice system, a number of state and federal judges are deciding to show former soldiers leniency in light of their service. Some veterans are receiving probation coupled with psychological treatment, generally for nonviolent crimes that normally would land them in prison.

That is raising concern among some legal experts, who say singling out veterans for special treatment indulges criminal behavior and risks establishing a two-tier system of justice.

Many veterans returning from war zones develop behavioral and psychological problems, which in some cases leads to alcohol and drug abuse -- and crimes. "We dump all kinds of money to get soldiers over there and train them to kill, but we don't do anything to reintegrate them into our society," says John L. Kane, a federal judge in Denver. Earlier this month, Mr. Kane sentenced an Iraq war veteran convicted of bribery to probation instead of prison.

Most U.S. courts don't have rules on giving veterans special consideration.... But in North Carolina, if a defendant was honorably discharged from the military, judges must use that fact as a mitigating factor at sentencing. And in several states, including Tennessee and Louisiana, courts have ruled that judges are allowed to use prior military service to lessen a sentence.

There are no special courts for veterans in the federal court system.... But momentum for special treatment is growing. Since last year, about 16 counties and cities -- from California's Orange County, to three cities in western New York, have started veterans courts, according to the National Association of Drug Court Professionals. Three counties in and around New York City launched similar programs in July, and state legislatures have approved the formation of such courts in places such as Harris County in Texas and the state of Nevada.

The goal of the courts, which serve veterans of any era, is to keep defendants out of prison. Veterans are put into treatment programs for war-related illnesses, among other problems, that aren't available in the prison system. Their probation includes rigorous drug testing. After veterans complete treatment, some prosecutors' offices drop the criminal charges as long as the veterans didn't have a prior felony conviction....

Some legal experts worry the movement could result in special consideration for all veterans, regardless of whether their criminal conduct was influenced by their military service. "What we think goes over the line is the creation of two separate systems based solely on somebody's status," says Allen Lichtenstein, the general counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in Nevada. "Police are under particular stress -- should there be a court for them?"...

Taking military service into account at sentencing isn't a new tradition. In the Civil War era, members of the military were routinely shown leniency by judges, notes Carissa Hessick, a law professor at Arizona State University. During the World War II and Vietnam eras, certain judges allowed criminal charges to be dropped if defendants enlisted in the armed forces. That practice is no longer allowed.

Sympathy for new veterans aided John Brownfield of Cañon City, Colo. The former U.S. Air Force firefighter pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe as a public official for illegally selling tobacco to federal prison inmates while working as a correctional officer in 2007, two years after he returned from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The federal prosecutor and Mr. Brownfield's lawyer agreed to recommend to the judge that he serve a year in prison. But the judge, Mr. Kane of Denver, instead ordered a psychiatric evaluation and earlier this month sentenced Mr. Brownfield to five years of probation.

In the Brownfield case, Judge Kane wrote a lengthy opinion explain his sentencing decision. The Brownfield opinion can be accessed at this link, and it starts this way:

I have written this sentencing memorandum, which is more extensive than most such findings and conclusions, because this case involves issues the Sentencing Guidelines do not address regarding the criminal justice system’s treatment of returning veterans who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. As I conclude that the Sentencing Guidelines’ advice is not persuasive in the circumstances of this case, I will make specific findings necessary to achieve the purposes of 18 U.S.C. § 3553 (2006). This memorandum opinion will be published and copies provided to the United States Sentencing Commission pursuant to the implicit suggestion in Rita v. United States, 551 U.S. 338, 357-58 (2007).

Overtime served: Reforming Florida's violent incarceration mentality

2009-12-29T18:03:00.003-08:00

Like other law enforcement officials in the state, Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson is sowing undue fear and misinformation about legislative proposals that would reform the state's overly harsh and unsustainably costly prison system. Johnson is following the lead of Brevard County Sheriff Jack Parker, who claims -- wrongly -- that "Florida is funding prisons less and less" while preparing to release offenders early.

Since 2001, when it was at $1.62 billion, the Department of Corrections' budget has increased by 50 percent. It's at $2.43 billion today, a 5.7 percent increase over last year's $2.3 billion. The department's budget devours almost 10 percent of the state's general revenue to maintain a total payroll of 30,500 that keeps 100,000 inmates in prison -- a 3-to-1 per-inmate ratio. That's about eight times better than the state's teacher-pupil ratio. Despite a crime rate that has fallen steadily through the decade, the inmate population has risen 46 percent since 2001.

Criminals aren't getting more violent or committing more crimes. The state's incarceration laws have been made harsher since the mid-1980s (when Florida abolished parole) and the 1990s (when Florida harshed up mandatory sentences on adults and youthful offenders and ended the release of any state prison inmate before he or she serves at least 85 percent of a sentence). Yet, criminologists cast serious doubt on the effectiveness of harsher sentences, which contradict the principle of rehabilitation. It's called a department of corrections, not a department of punishment.

At its current pace, the Florida prison system will need to build, at least, 15 more prisons in the next five years, a $2 billion expense before the cost of running them kicks in. It would be folly. Legislators are looking for a better way. Texas is their example. Texas sentences mirrored Florida's. So did its exploding population. So, Texas changed its corrections approach, focusing especially on drug rehabilitation and education for inmates and sustained rehabilitation programs after release. (Criminologists point to drug rehab's effectiveness: Just 6 percent of violent offenders who have undergone rehab recommit crimes after their release, compared with 33 percent of those who don't get rehab. Yet, in Florida this year, the prison system's drug-treatment programs were cut by $6.2 million, education programs by $3.4 million.)

Texas' new approach worked. The state's prison population steadied. So did the corrections budget. The state's crime rate didn't spike. Florida lawmakers are introducing bills that would replicate some of those approaches, although the focus is more on reversing harsh sentences (still a worthy objective) than funding rehab programs.

Writing on the Sheriff's Office's Web site, Johnson wants residents to oppose "a particularly bad proposal that would grant early release to certain inmates 50-years-old or older as long as they have already served at least 25 years of their sentence." He is also building opposition to another proposal that "would reduce the sentence of dangerous youthful offenders under certain circumstances" -- offenders 15 or younger who were convicted as adults.

Johnson makes it sound as if violent offenders are never released (or should never be released) from prison. He should have a look at Department of Corrections reports. Better yet, he should encourage his readers to do so. Last August alone, 3,073 offenders were released from Florida prisons. Of those, 814, or 26.5 percent, were violent offenders. On average, those violent offenders served 53 months. Johnson says, "This is not the type of person we want roaming our streets again." But every prison system in the nation eventually releases a portion of its violent offenders for the obvious reason that life terms are rare. Johnson also makes it sound as if the proposals, if enacted, would result in immediate releases. Not so. Prisoners would have to petition for their release and have their cases reviewed one by one. It's a restoration of parole by other means.

The question isn't whether they should be released, but when. For two decades Florida opted for longer sentences and fewer second chances, without appreciable results. Those laws are finally coming in for their own corrections.

An Editorial from the Daytona News Journal published 12/29/09

Overtime served Reforming Florida's violent incarceration mentality

2009-12-29T18:03:00.001-08:00

Why are innocent persons sentenced to prison?

2009-12-13T14:18:00.000-08:00

It took 35 years for the criminal justice system to face the fact that it had wronged James Bain, a man convicted of the heinous crime of raping a 9-year-old boy in Lake Wales and sentenced to a lifetime behind bars. For nearly a decade Bain was denied requests for a DNA test on the evidence. It took a state attorney finally agreeing this year for the test to be done. The results ruled Bain out as the perpetrator.

Bain joins at least 11 other Floridians who were convicted of crimes and imprisoned only to be later found factually innocent of the offense in recent years. The revolution in DNA testing makes it possible to identify these miscarriages of justice with absolute certainty, but it doesn't say anything about how these errors occurred. Florida needs a commission to study these cases, breaking them down to see the system's flaws, just like the National Transportation Safety Board analyzes every plane crash.

On Friday, a group of renowned attorneys that includes former Florida Supreme Court justices, former presidents of the American Bar Association and former Florida Bar leaders, petitioned Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Peggy Quince for the formation of an actual innocence commission. The request is modeled after a similar undertaking in North Carolina that brought together judges, police, prosecutors, defense lawyers, victims' advocates and academics for a two-year review of procedures in the criminal justice system. The commission isolated factors that helped lead to wrongful convictions and recommended changes.

Bain was convicted largely on the strength of the victim's eyewitness testimony. That sort of account by eyewitnesses has incredible power to sway juries even though it is notoriously faulty. Bain's blood type didn't match the semen found on the victim's underpants. He also had an alibi: Bain and his sister had been at home watching television when the crime occurred. But a jury convicted him anyway. Bain was 19 years old at the time and had no prior criminal record.

An innocence commission would comprehensively evaluate investigatory and court procedures, including those for eyewitness identification in cases like Bain's, and suggest new safeguards. According to the Innocence Project of Florida, witness misidentification contributed to almost 80 percent of the 245 convictions later overturned by DNA testing nationwide. (The Innocence Project works to find and free innocent people imprisoned in Florida. An actual innocence commission would look at established cases of wrongful conviction to determine what went wrong within the criminal justice system.)

The timing of a commission is important. Florida needs to know why it sends innocent people to prison, whether through individual errors or systemic problems. With DNA testing leading to exonerations of the wrongly convicted with increasing frequency, this is an ideal moment for public acceptance of a commission and its findings.

Once these old cases of injustice proved through DNA testing are exhausted there won't be another opportunity to demonstrate actual innocence with the same level of certainty. But there are still plenty of crimes such as embezzlement, where wrongful convictions occur but DNA is typically not part of the proof. In order to prevent these kinds of injustices, the nuts and bolts of the criminal justice system need reform.

Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte, former Florida State University president and a former ABA president, is behind the push for a commission. He points out that the state high court has regularly investigated administration of justice issues. Earlier efforts include commissions looking into racial bias in Florida courts, the impact of cameras in state courts and whether attorneys should be required to report their pro bono hours. An innocence commission falls within the court's scope of duties, and its establishment was one of the lead recommendations of a 2006 report from the ABA Florida Death Penalty Assessment Team. It's time to get started.

When an innocent person goes to prison it is a tragedy for society as well as for the wrongfully convicted and his family. His life is ruined, taxpayers pay for his upkeep and the real criminal is still at large. Florida needs to know how and why these mistakes happen so another innocent person doesn't spend most of his adult life behind bars.

A St. Petersburg Times Editorial Dec 09

Justice for mentally ill must evolve:

2009-12-13T09:22:00.000-08:00

It shouldn't require a hero to fix this.
Judge Steven Leifman certainly qualifies for the appellation, leading (or, more accurately, dragging) Miami-Dade away from ineffective, costly, cruel policies that turned the Miami-Dade County jail into the nation's second-largest mental-health ward (after the Los Angeles County Jail) .

Judge Leifman spoke at a symposium Wednesday morning about considerable progress that Miami-Dade has made these past few years, diverting the mentally ill, many of them serial recidivists, out of the criminal justice system.

Miami Police Lt. Jeff Locke talked about the evolution of police policies toward psychotic behavior. Before 1999, police essentially acted as ``goons'' when they dealt with mentally ill transgressors, he said, ready to answer violence with violence. And sometimes deadly force. ``I was one of those cops.''

A BETTER APPROACH

Locke now trains local police officers in crisis intervention. Most police agencies in Miami-Dade County now have trained squads dedicated to defusing these confrontations. Judge Leifman talked about results: Half the subjects of police calls involving psychotic episodes are now diverted into treatment programs.

But it never should have come down to cops and jailers and a heroic judge to fix this medieval system. Leifman and Locke and the criminal justice system have been forced to deal with a massive community failure, 40 years in the making. As Florida closed its mental hospitals, most for good reason, the state failed to provide the outreach to keep the mentally ill treated, sheltered and safe.

We left them to their own devices. Until they became a police problem.

Here's what neglect got us: Some 125,000 of our mentally ill will take up space in Florida's jails and prisons this year, most for minor transgressions. Leifman said that on any given day, Florida houses 17,000 mentally ill prisoners in the state correctional system, another 15,000 in local lock-ups. Yet another 40,000 are on community control, and given the paucity of treatment, twice as likely to flunk probation.

THE FINANCIAL TOLL

Treatment costs behind bars devour budgets. Jails make for massively expensive, utterly ineffective mental hospitals. But for 40 years, Florida has cycled the mentally ill from the streets to jail to the streets to jail. With in-jail treatment mostly consisting of a regime of pills designed to keep them placid, not manage their illness.

Leifman said Wednesday that the fastest growing sub-set of prisoners in the state's corrections system are mentally ill defendants sent to a state institution until they're deemed competent to stand trial. He pointed out that competency training is not about treatment, but only about meeting the legal threshold necessary to try a prisoner. The overwhelming majority (currently occupying about 17,000 beds) finally will be hauled into court, then turned loose, sentenced to time served. And they'll be back.

In the next 10 years, Leifman said, their number will double to 35,000. They'll require 10 new prisons and an annual budget of $3.5 billion in a state that's going broke. ``It's insane,'' the judge said.

Yet a bill to divert these prisoners into community-based managed care, at a fraction of the cost, has languished for two years in the Legislature.

It shouldn't take a hero to fix this.

Posted on Wed, Dec. 09, 2009

By FRED GRIMM
fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com

Right and Left Join Forces on Criminal Justice:

2009-12-10T10:57:00.000-08:00

In the next several months, the Supreme Court will decide at least a half-dozen cases about the rights of people accused of crimes involving drugs, sex and corruption. Civil liberties groups and associations of defense lawyers have lined up on the side of the accused.

But so have conservative, libertarian and business groups. Their briefs and public statements are signs of an emerging consensus on the right that the criminal justice system is an aspect of big government that must be contained.

The development represents a sharp break with tough-on-crime policies associated with the Republican Party since the Nixon administration.

“It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “The left and the right have bent to the point where they are now in agreement on many issues. In the area of criminal justice, the whole idea of less government, less intrusion, less regulation has taken hold.”

Edwin Meese III, who was known as a fervent supporter of law and order as attorney general in the Reagan administration, now spends much of his time criticizing what he calls the astounding number and vagueness of federal criminal laws.

Mr. Meese once referred to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of the “criminals’ lobby.” These days, he said, “in terms of working with the A.C.L.U., if they want to join us, we’re happy to have them.”

Dick Thornburgh, who succeeded Mr. Meese as attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and stayed on under President George Bush, echoed that sentiment in Congressional testimony in July.

“The problem of overcriminalization is truly one of those issues upon which a wide variety of constituencies can agree,” Mr. Thornburgh said. “Witness the broad and strong support from such varied groups as the Heritage Foundation, the Washington Legal Foundation, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the A.B.A., the Cato Institute, the Federalist Society and the A.C.L.U.”

In an interview at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group where he is a fellow, Mr. Meese said the “liberal ideas of extending the power of the state” were to blame for an out-of-control criminal justice system. “Our tradition has always been,” he said, “to construe criminal laws narrowly to protect people from the power of the state.”

There are, the foundation says, more than 4,400 criminal offenses in the federal code, many of them lacking a requirement that prosecutors prove traditional kinds of criminal intent.

“It’s a violation of federal law to give a false weather report,” Mr. Meese said. “People get put in jail for importing lobsters.”

Such so-called overcriminalization is at the heart of the conservative critique of crime policy. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce made the point in a recent friend-of-the-court brief about a federal law often used to prosecute corporate executives and politicians. The law, which makes it a crime for officials to defraud their employers of “honest services,” is, the brief said, both “unintelligible” and “used to target a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.”

The Supreme Court will hear three cases concerning the honest-services law this term, indicating an exceptional interest in the topic.

Harvey A. Silverglate, a left-wing civil liberties lawyer in Boston, says he has been surprised and delighted by the reception that his new book, “Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,” has gotten in conservative circles. (A Heritage Foundation official offered this reporter a copy.)

The book argues that federal criminal law is so comprehensive and vague that all Americans violate it every day, meaning prosecutors can indict anyone at all.

“Libertarians and the civil liberties left have always had some common ground on these issues,” said Radley Balko, a senior editor at Reason, a libertarian magazine. “The more vocal presence of conservatives on overcriminalization issues is really what’s new.”

Several strands of conservatism have merged in objecting to aspects of the criminal justice system. Some conservatives are suspicious of all government power, while others insist that the federal government has been intruding into matters the Constitution reserves to the states.

In January, for instance, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States v. Comstock, about whether Congress has the constitutional power to authorize the continued confinement of people convicted of sex crimes after they have completed their criminal sentences.

Then there are conservatives who worry about government seizure of private property said to have been used to facilitate crimes, an issue raised in Alvarez v. Smith, which was argued in October.

“A joint on a yacht, and the whole thing is forfeited,” said Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush.

Some religious groups object to prison policies that appear to ignore the possibility of rehabilitation and redemption, and fiscal conservatives are concerned about the cost of maintaining the world’s largest prison population.

“Conservatives now recognize the economic consequences of a criminal justice leviathan,” said Erik Luna, a law professor at Washington and Lee University.

The roots of the conservative re-examination of crime policy might also be found in the jurisprudence of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The two justices, joined by liberal colleagues, have said the original meaning of the Constitution required them to rule against the government in, among other areas, the rights of criminal defendants to confront witnesses.

“Scalia and Thomas are vanguards of an understanding by the modern right that its distrust of government extends all the way to the criminal justice system,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University.

The court will hear another confrontation clause case, Briscoe v. Virginia, in January. It is a sequel to a decision in June that prosecutors may not use crime lab reports without live testimony from the analysts who prepared them.

The conservative re-evaluation of crime policy is not universal, of course. Two notable exceptions to the trend, said Timothy Lynch, director of the Cato Institute’s criminal justice project, are Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

“Roberts and Alito are coming down consistently on the side of the government in these criminal justice cases,” Mr. Lynch said.

Some scholars are skeptical about conservatives’ timing and motives, noting that their voices are rising during a Democratic administration and amid demands for accountability for the economic crisis.

“The Justice Department now acts as a kind of counterweight to corporate power,” said Frank O. Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri. “On the other side is an alliance between two strands of conservative thinking, the libertarian point of view and the corporate wing of the Republican Party.”

Mr. Meese acknowledged that the current climate was not the ideal one for his point of view. “We picked by accident a time,” he said, “when it was not a very popular topic in light of corporate frauds.”

By ADAM LIPTAK New York Times

Instead of more prisons, less crime:

2009-11-28T07:05:00.000-08:00

One of the more encouraging things happening in Florida is the movement for "smart justice." The goal is to reduce the number of repeat offenses by ex-inmates.

This would be a good idea.

No, it would be a great idea.

As matters stand now, almost exactly 33 percent of those released from Florida prison are back behind bars within three years.

This means the population keeps growing, and we have to keep building prisons. They cost $100 million a pop to build, and $25 million a year to run.

We just passed 100,000 inmates in the state prison system. Last year the whole shebang cost us $2.4 billion.

So …

What if we could turn out inmates who were less likely to re-offend? We would save tax dollars, reduce future crime, and maybe even salvage some lives.

There's no single magic wand to do this. But there are several tools that seem to be working, such as:

• "Re-entry" programs that begin to prepare inmates for their return to society as the end of their sentence approaches.

• Treatment for mental health issues or substance abuse, which affect a large percentage of the prison population. This might be the best money spent ever — some programs have dramatically cut that 33 percent, three-year recidivism rate.

• "Character-based" programs based on broad networks of community volunteers working with inmates in a structured curriculum.

You will not be surprised to learn that the Florida Legislature has declined to expand or has even cut some programs in recent years, especially in substance abuse treatment.

This brings us to the group called the "Coalition for Smart Justice," which held a "justice summit" on Monday and Tuesday in Tampa. About 300 people attended.

The coalition has a fascinating array of signers: past state attorneys general and corrections secretaries, social and political leaders, law enforcement and prosecutors.

It's interesting that some of the backers are business groups: Florida TaxWatch, the Florida Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Associated Industries of Florida.

"If we're going to be taxed," Associated Industries chief Barney Bishop told the audience during a panel discussion, "we want to get the most bang for the buck."

Three department heads under Gov. Charlie Crist were there: Walt McNeil of Corrections, George Sheldon of Children and Families, and Frank Peterman of Juvenile Justice.

McNeil said he hopes that by expanding these efforts, Florida can reduce its 33 percent rate by 18 to 20 percentage points by 2014.

The main challenge to the Coalition for Smart Justice is political. It has to prove to the Legislature that reducing future crime is actually more "conservative" than just building prison after prison.

Nobody is talking about throwing open prison doors.

Nobody is talking about hand-holding, mollycoddling or feeling sorry for criminals.

Most of all, nobody is talking about not sending to prison the people who ought to be there.

What they are talking about is whether we can keep more of them from coming back.

Learn more about the Coalition for Smart Justice on the Web site of the Collins Center for Public Policy at Florida State University:

www.collinscenter.org.

By Howard Troxler, St. Petersburg Times Columnist

Published Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Do justice like Texas. Really

2009-11-21T13:13:00.000-08:00

For two days, conservatives and liberals told each other how much they agree on one of Florida's most important issues.

That issue is criminal justice, and the new choir sang Monday and Tuesday in Tampa at Justice Summit 2009. Sponsored by the Collins Center for Public Policy and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the gathering amounted to a pep rally for change that the state has needed for two decades.

What's different? The issues now include money, and Florida's leading business groups care.

For 25 years, Florida's criminal justice policy has been to lock up as many people as possible for as long as possible. The Legislature has approved sentencing guidelines and minimum mandatory sentences. The Legislature has required inmates to serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. Even Pinellas County State Attorney Bernie McCabe, one of Florida's most hard-line prosecutors, says, "We take away a driver's license for durned near everything."

It's the easy political call. No one ever lost an election by being "tough on crime." As more states are learning, however, it's more important to be smart on crime. Lock up only the dangerous. Try to rehabilitate the others. Don't criminalize mental illness or addiction. Treat it. Help ex-offenders reenter society. Turn around a person's life, and you prevent a crime. Smarter. Cheaper. Safer.

Sure, Florida's crime rate is down 16 percent in the past 10 years. But Florida's incarceration rate is up 47 percent, crime has decreased nationally and the tough-on-crime tab has come just when Florida is tapped out.

This year, the Department of Corrections informed the Legislature that Florida would need 19 new prisons. Each would cost about $100 million to build and $25 million to operate. Every year. At $3 billion, the DOC is the third-largest part of the budget. So the big news was that the Legislature approved no new prisons. The Legislature passed no laws that affect who goes to prison or for how long. The price tag was a show-stopper. DOC Secretary Walter McNeil, a former police chief, supports reform.

Most of those in Tampa had seen each other at similar rallies. They run the not-for-profit substance-abuse treatment centers. They serve on the boards of agencies that work to change lives. They minister in faith-based prisons, where the rate of inmates who return to prison — known as recidivism — is lower than for traditional prisons.

The new participants were representatives of the Florida Chamber and Associated Industries of Florida. As speaker after speaker noted, the Legislature, especially the House, listens first to business. AIF President Barney Bishop told the do-gooders not to sound like do-gooders when they lobby legislators next year: "You're business people. You have numbers to show that your business works."

Other numbers show that the status quo doesn't work. One-third of the 30,000-plus inmates released each year go back to prison within two years. Think of all those victims. Think of all that wasted human potential. We could spend a whole other column on the need to keep the Department of Juvenile Justice from becoming just a farm system for the Department of Corrections.

The real star of the show in Tampa was not someone from Florida. It was Jerry Madden, a self-described "hard-line conservative" Texas legislator who sponsored the bill in 2007 that shifted his state away from incarceration at all costs to rehabilitation and treatment where appropriate. "My god, Texas," exclaimed Vickie Lopez Lukis, a Republican who chaired the Governor's Ex-Offender Task Force in 2006. If Texas can be smart on crime, why not Florida?

As Rep. Madden explained: "We didn't touch any sentencing laws. We just started shifting money." In 2008, he survived a primary challenge from a Republican who charged that Rep. Madden was "soft on crime." In 2009, he fought off attempts to undercut the reforms. He's going to run once more in 2010 "because by 2011, we'll have all the numbers to show that it really works."

Florida hasn't done smart for a long time. Here's a good place to start.

By RANDY SCHULTZ Palm Beach Post
Published Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

Randy Schultz is the editor of the editorial page of The Palm Beach Post. His e-mail address is Schultz@pbpost.com

Criminal Justice Reform Conference this week:

2009-11-16T05:11:00.001-08:00

Florida ranks near the top of the nation on spending for its prison system, according to research by the Pew Center on the States.
A group of stakeholders who want to see that money used in other ways to reduce crime and rehabilitate offenders will spend the next two days in Tampa plotting a path to change.
"Florida has a huge prison system, enormous costs, and yet it isn't seeing anywhere near the crime reduction that it should be getting for all that spending," said Adam Gelb, director for the Pew Center on the States Public Safety Performance Project.
Pew, which drives initiatives to advance state policies that serve the public interest, has its sights set on Florida.
It wants to help the state reform its growing prison system by establishing cost-efficient alternatives for reducing crime instead of building more prisons and jails.
Gelb speaks today in Tampa to several hundred people attending the Justice Summit, a first-time event put on by the Collins Center for Public Policy, which has offices in Tallahassee, Miami and Sarasota.
"What we need in this state is some bold leadership around these things," said Angela Young, vice president for the Collins Center's Criminal Justice Initiatives. "We need a better-informed public that advocates for smarter justice."
Florida now incarcerates more than 100,000 people in state prison. Another 100,000 are under some form of court-ordered supervision, according to the state Department of Corrections. Within three years of release, about one-third of inmates are back in custody. The DOC is the state's largest agency with a budget of more than $2 billion.
"When we don't do transition preparation or some kind of rehabilitation in prison, we make it likely that folks will not be successful," Young said. "We know all that. We don't plan as if we know it. We don't make policy as if we know it. We don't budget as if we know it. We don't cooperate across agencies as if we know it."
Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Walter McNeil has acknowledged that prison systems cut programs first when budgets grow tight.
"We stop being the Department of Corrections and start being the 'Department of Incarceration,'" McNeil said.
The state has tried to fight that, he said.
McNeil will be among the those speaking during the summit. Joining him will be Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon for a discussion on the state's perspective and vision.
State attorneys, public defenders and business leaders are also scheduled to speak.
What the partners meeting in Tampa this week ultimately hope to do is get Florida legislators to share their vision, create laws that reflect their approach and shift money to pay for proven programs that work better than incarceration.
"It used to be that the only issue for state policymakers was, 'How do I demonstrate that I'm tough on crime?' " Gelb said. "They're starting to ask a very different question, which is, 'How do I get taxpayers a better return on their investment in public safety?' "
He said state leaders across the country are recognizing that prisons are a government spending program. As such, they should be subject to a cost-benefit test, Gelb said.
"When you can put together a package of policy options that's a win/win, less crime and lower costs, it's not a slam dunk," Gelb said, but "it's very hard to ignore, especially when the economy is in such trouble."

Criminal Justice Reform Conference this week:

2009-11-16T05:11:00.000-08:00

Let's talk death penalty in 2010 by

2009-09-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

Raoul G. Cantero III and Mark R. Schlakman

Three years ago, the American Bar Association released a Florida Death Penalty Assessment Team report that documented numerous concerns about Florida's death penalty process. Since then, neither the government nor The Florida Bar has done much to remedy the problems.

To study Florida's death penalty, the ABA assembled a highly credentialed eight-member team that reflected prosecutorial, defense, judicial and academic perspectives, among others. After almost two years of research and analysis, the team resolved that its findings and recommendations had to be unanimous to be included. Individual members' perspectives ran the gamut, but the final report was intended to promote fairness and accuracy in our criminal-justice system without regard to one's views on capital punishment.

Among the findings was that legal representation of death penalty defendants in postconviction proceedings is often abysmal. The report makes several recommendations, including reinstating the capital collateral regional counsel office (CCRC) in the Northern Region of Florida. This office was disbanded as part of a still-ongoing pilot project launched during Jeb Bush's tenure that, in effect, privatized the northern office of the CCRC, thereby relying almost exclusively upon private registry counsel to handle postconviction appeals in death penalty cases.

Gov. Charlie Crist has expressed support for reinstating the Northern CCRC office.

Another recommendation embraced a unanimous Florida Supreme Court opinion that called upon the Legislature to revisit the death penalty statute. The report, like the opinion, observed that Florida is the only death penalty state (out of 35) "that allows a jury to decide that aggravators exist and to recommend a sentence of death by a mere majority vote."

Despite the court's strongly worded opinion, the Legislature has been unresponsive. It was reported that Gov. Bush said the issue was "definitely worth consideration" and cautioned legislators not to ignore the court. Yet Gov. Crist has voiced opposition to the recommendation.

Another alarming problem with Florida's death penalty is the number of defendants on Death Row who were later exonerated. The Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that provides independent analysis on issues concerning capital punishment, advises that Florida has exonerated more death-sentenced inmates than any other state since 1973. One was exonerated after he died of cancer on Death Row.

The report also expresses concern about socioeconomic and geographic bias, the latter attributable in part to the fact that Florida's 20 state attorneys do not have uniform protocols to decide when to seek the death penalty. When prosecutors from different judicial circuits assess substantially similar criminal cases, prosecutors from one circuit might opt for the death penalty while prosecutors from another might opt for life without parole. This heightens concerns over whether the death penalty is applied consistently.

The report contains many other recommendations.

As the 2010 campaigns for statewide office and the Legislature take shape, conventional wisdom suggests that both Republicans and Democrats will resist taking positions that could be perceived as anything but tough on crime and strong on the death penalty. Circuit judges, who preside over capital cases, while nonpartisan and subject to the judicial canons, are not completely immune from such dynamics, given that they also face the voters periodically.

The challenge for those who hold and aspire to elected office, including Florida's 20 state attorneys, is to ensure that personal perspectives and the public outrage arising out of heinous crimes do not overshadow the fact that Florida's death penalty process is fraught with problems. Floridians expect a system of justice that engenders confidence based upon fairness and accuracy. With regard to the state's death penalty process, in many respects that standard has proven to be elusive.

We hope that this election cycle will provide an opportunity to openly and honestly discuss these issues and to seriously consider possible solutions.
Additional Facts
ABOUT THE AUTHORS

# Raoul G. Cantero III is a former Florida Supreme Court Justice appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush. He resigned in 2008, after six years, to return to private practice in Miami. Contact him at raoul41@hotmail.com.

# Mark R. Schlakman is senior program director for Florida State University's Center for the Advancement of Human Rights and is board chair for the Innocence Project of Florida. He was one of eight members of the ABA's Florida Death Penalty Assessment Team. Contact him at mschlakman@admin.fsu.edu.

Case is among string of bogus convictions

2009-09-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

The kid they tried to execute was just 15. An IQ of 67.
The Broward prosecutor demanded the death penalty. But the jury, queasy about killing a mentally deficient teenager with no more evidence than a questionable confession, voted to spare Anthony Caravella's life.

Circuit Judge Arthur J. Franza seemed disappointed. ``I'll tell you this, Anthony: If the jury had recommended death, I would have had you electrocuted.''

Broward was that close to executing an innocent teenager.

Twenty-six years after Caravella was sent off for life, Edward Blake, a leading forensic scientist and a pioneer in DNA analysis, obtained a genetic profile from sperm left by the man who raped and murdered Ada Jankowski behind Miramar Elementary School in 1982. Blake concluded: ``Anthony Caravella is eliminated as the source of the spermatozoa.''

So Caravella's case becomes yet another among the Broward state attorney's string of ignominious convictions of mentally challenged defendants, later found to be innocent.

SHAM CONFESSION

Once again, the deciding ``evidence'' was a sham confession elicited from a feeble-minded suspect after hours of interrogation.

The confession, of course, was the only actual evidence against Caravella. In fact, the cops elicited five contradictory confessions from the teenager, but the last, finally, coincided with the crime-scene evidence.

The new DNA findings suggest the interrogators provided the incriminating information. It must have been easy stuff, manipulating a frightened, mentally deficient suspect into self-incriminating statements. Just like John Purvis, a schizophrenic with the mind of a 12-year-old, who after a rambling, barely coherent confession, did nine years for a murder finally linked to someone else. Jerry Frank Townsend, IQ of 50, served 22 years after confessing to murders committed by Fort Lauderdale serial killer Eddie Lee Mosley. Frank Lee Smith, so mentally disturbed he shouted incoherent inanities at his jury, died of cancer after a dozen years on Death Row before DNA evidence cleared him.

FINE CAREER MOVE

Cops got their bogus statements. Prosecutors got their bogus convictions. And convicting mentally defective innocents proved a fine career move. Prosecutor Robert Carney, who nailed both Purvis and Carvella, now sits as a Broward circuit judge. William Dimitrouleas, who prosecuted Frank Lee Smith, has a lifetime appointment as a federal judge. Meanwhile, actual killers went free. Eddie Lee Mosley continued his hideous rape and murder spree. Miramar police never bothered to discover who stabbed Ada Jankowski 28 times.

In 2001, the Broward Sheriff's Office crime lab was persuaded to reexamine evidence from the Caravella case but failed, mysteriously, to isolate any DNA. Blake said Friday he received a ``harassing'' e-mail this week from the Broward state attorney's office indicating that, contrary to public statements about undoing a terrible injustice, the office would try to undermine his lab's credibility. If so, it would be a stunning tactic, given his national reputation. (With a list of high profile DNA cases that runs 51 pages, including the lab work that cleared Allen Crotzer and Luis Diaz, the wrongly accused Bird Road Rapist.)

``It appears they've gone into full scale cover-up mode,'' Blake said Friday. In Broward, we've been there before.

By FRED GRIMM
fgrimm@MiamiHerald.com

Louisiana death penalty: an eye for an eye or ineffective?

2009-09-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

Eighty-seven got a seat on "Gruesome Gertie" and were electrocuted.

Seven were put to sleep permanently by lethal injection.

In all, 94 people found guilty of capital crimes, such as first-degree murder or treason, have been executed in Louisiana since 1941. Eighty-two more, including two women, sit on death row today.

Their impending executions and those of others punished under Louisiana's death penalty have come under the scrutiny of media, victims, lawmakers, activists and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Some say the state's capital punishment law, like those of 34 other states, is bound in the biblical tradition that those who take a life may be killed. The death penalty brings justice to victims' families and deters would-be killers, proponents argue.

"Most people believe that some people ought to get the death penalty — there are some crimes that are so bad that the person who commits (them) ought to be given the death penalty, if convicted," said death penalty expert Burk Foster, a former University of Louisiana-Lafayette criminal justice associate professor now teaching in Michigan.

Others insist the law is distorted and ineffective. Eight Louisiana death row inmates have been exonerated of their alleged crimes. More sentences overturned in recent years paired with fewer executions have all but already abolished the state's death penalty, they say.

"It's not as easy to get a death penalty (verdict) and certainly not (easy to) get one at this point," said Sabine District Attorney Don Burkett, who helped put three men on death row while district attorney for DeSoto and Sabine parishes. "I don't know how effective the death penalty is because there are so few being carried out."

Dwindling executions

The last execution in Louisiana was in May 2002. Leslie Dale Martin was put to death by lethal injection for the 1991 rape and killing of a 19-year-old college student. No other execution is scheduled, said Pam Laborde, Louisiana Department of Corrections spokeswoman.

Of the 27 men put to death since Louisiana reinstated the death penalty in 1979, 18 were executed between 1983 and 1988. Seven more were put to death during the '90s and just two were executed since 2000.

That mirrors a national trend. There have been 1,171 executions nationwide since 1976. The annual number has steadily dropped from a peak of 98 in 1999 to 37 executions last year, the Death Penalty Information Center reports.

"Louisiana was one of the most active death penalty states in the first 10 years after the death penalty was reinstated," Foster said. "Then it began to slow down. When we switched from electrocution to lethal injection it slowed down even more."

The reasons for that trend are varied, but better, more qualified legal representation for death row defendants has contributed to a lull in executions and an increase in exonerations and sentences being reversed, Foster said.

Since 2007, 11 men, not including those exonerated, have been taken off death row for a variety of reasons, the DOC reports. Most have seen their death sentences reversed and were resentenced to life in prison.

At least two men recently taken off death row were put there by Caddo Parish juries. In one case, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled prosecutors made a mistake and ordered a new trial. Robert Coleman, accused of the 2003 slaying of retired minister Julian Brandon during a Blanchard home invasion, is scheduled to again stand trial in April 2010. His girlfriend, Brandy Holmes, also earned a death sentence for her role in the crime.

In the other Caddo case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a sentencing was unconstitutional. Richard L. Davis, who was found guilty and sentenced to death for the rape of a 5-year-old girl, was resentenced to life in prison.

Nationwide, 135 death row inmates have been exonerated, according to Death Penalty Information Center statistics.

Fewer prosecutions

As a result of those and other factors, prosecutors are seeking death sentences less frequently. Faced with higher costs, the need for a unanimous jury verdict and a lengthy, expensive appeals process, they instead are opting for life sentences with no parole. Today there are 4,280 life inmates in Louisiana's state prisons.

An estimated 111 death sentences were meted out in 2008 across the country — part of a continual decline since 1998. In Louisiana, nearly half of the inmates on death row were sent there by three parishes — East Baton Rouge, Caddo and Jefferson. Between 2000 and 2008, those same parishes also had the most death row commitments in the state. Orleans Parish, which has the highest per capita murder rate in the nation, had not sentenced anyone to death in at least 12 years until August.

"There are parts of Louisiana that are very pro-death, but more than half the parishes in this state have never returned a death penalty," said Richard Bourke, director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans. "The death penalty in this state is driven by a small number of individually, locally-elected officials."

A colorful history

Hanging was the means of execution in Louisiana until 1941. The last man legally hanged in Louisiana was William Landers, who was executed in 1941 — barely six months after he and three other escaped Arkansas convicts killed a posse man sent to capture them.

Jury selection for the quartet's trial was hampered due to public sentiment against giving the death penalty to all four men when it was likely only one, Frank Boyce, actually was responsible for the murder, according to a 2001 article written by Foster.

That's not the only time the state's death penalty has met societal pressure, according to LSU-Shreveport criminal justice professor Bernadette Palombo.

During the penalty trial of Timothy Taylor, who was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1999 shooting death of a Shreveport car salesman, defense attorneys and his parents pleaded with jurors to spare his life, Palombo said.

A man whose daughter was one of the 168 victims of the Oklahoma City bombing carried out by Timothy McVeigh spoke on Taylor's behalf, asking the jury not to give the death penalty. The man, who spoke as a representative of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, also was seeking to stop McVeigh's execution. Ultimately, Taylor was given life in prison. His co-defendant, Michael Taylor, no relation, received the death penalty a year earlier.

Others have expressed satisfaction in the state's death penalty. After the 2002 execution of Martin, the parents of his victim, Christina Burgin, said they were "ecstatic" over his death, news reports at the time stated.

Louisiana State Penitentiary Warden Burl Cain, who was at Martin's side when he died, said he feels compassion for the families of death row inmates but his thoughts focus on the victims and their families.

"I think about the victims," Cain said of what goes through his mind while sharing a last meal and standing by an inmate, sometimes holding his hand, as he is executed. "I wish I could have helped the victims. I wish I could have stopped (the victim's murder)."

After the state's last hanging, Louisiana switched to the electric chair. The oak chair, which was transported to the parish where the execution was to take place for nearly 16 years, was the method of choice from 1941 to 1991. The electric chair found a permanent home at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in 1957.

In that chair is where the only woman to be executed in Louisiana met her end. Toni Jo Henry, a Shreveporter, was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1940 killing of a 41-year-old tire salesman from Houston. She was executed on Nov. 28, 1942, in Lake Charles.

Two women, including Brandy Holmes, of Shreveport, sit on death row today. Both are housed at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel. Holmes' latest appeal is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The other woman, former New Orleans police officer Antoinette Frank, saw her pending December 2008 execution for a 1995 triple homicide canceled by the Louisiana Supreme Court just weeks before she would have received a lethal injection.

In 1967, all executions nationwide were suspended pending a final decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately struck down the death penalty. All death row inmates at that time were resentenced to life imprisonment, according to DOC records.

The state resumed executions in 1983 and switched to lethal injections in 1991.

Cain, who has led six of the seven men executed by lethal injection to their deaths, said the prison's method of execution, which offers the condemned a last meal of choice and time with families, offers dignity. He wishes more could be done for the victims and their families.

"You do what you can where you are," Cain said.

By Alison Bath
alisonbath1@gannett.com
Shreveport Times

Senator Jim Webb on criminal justice reform:

2009-08-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

The National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009 that I introduced in the Senate on March 26, 2009 will create a blue-ribbon commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom. I believe that it is time to bring together the best minds in America to confer, report, and make concrete recommendations about how we can reform the process.

Why We Urgently Need this Legislation:

With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses 25% of the world's reported prisoners.

Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980.

Four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals.

Approximately 1 million gang members reside in the U.S., many of them foreign-based; and Mexican cartels operate in 230+ communities across the country.

Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard and often nonexistent, undermining public safety and making it extremely difficult for ex-offenders to become full, contributing members of society.

America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration.

A letter to Senator Nancy Detert

2009-08-22T05:04:00.000-07:00

This past week I heard Senator Nancy Detert speak at SarasotA Tiger Bay. Following the discussion, members of Senator Detert's staff passed out a newsletter and survery to return to her. Rather than complete the survey I decided to write the Senator abour criminal justice. Here is an except from my letter.

" I thought I would write you a letter about my primary concern, which is criminal justice. I am of the opinion that our criminal justice system in Florida is in need of a complete overhaul. We need to make better decisions about imprisonment, alternative sentences, resources and procedures.

You may be aware that Senator Jim Webb has proposed formation of a national commission on criminal justice to study the federal system. This commission would include members from law enforcement, the judiciary, treatment professionals, prosecutors and defense attorneys. There will be no “scared cows” and everything would be on the table for discussion.

I would encourage you to discuss criminal justice issues with other members of the Florida Senate and see if there would be any support for a similar commission in our state. The commission would be charged with determining the goals for Florida’s criminal justice system, how to best use resources, how to compensate victims and how to rehabilitate offenders. Everything should be under consideration including capital punishment, minimum mandatory sentences, drug offender sanctions and independent forensic laboratories."

Getting Smart on Crime:

2009-08-17T14:46:00.000-07:00

After decades of supercharged incarceration rates, our bloated prison system is straining under its own weight, and policy makers are finally being forced to deal with the need to shrink it.

According to a study last year by The Pew Center on the States entitled “One in 100: Behind bars in America 2008,” the prison population of the United States has nearly quadrupled over the last 25 years while the nation’s population has grown by less than a third.

We now have more inmates per capita than any of the 36 European countries with the largest inmate populations, and our total number of inmates is more than all the inmates in those countries combined.

This comes at a cost. According to a report published last month by the Vera Institute of Justice, an independent, nonprofit research group, $1 in every $15 from states’ general funds is now spent on corrections. That doesn’t work in a recession.

Much of the rise in the prison population was because of draconian mandatory sentencing laws that are illogical — sociologically and economically.

On the sociological side, as the criminal justice expert Joel Dvoskin of the University of Arizona explained to me, data overwhelmingly support the idea that locking up low-risk, nonviolent offenders makes them worse, not better.

A study from a decade ago that was published in the journal American Psychologist put it this way: “Department of corrections data show that about a fourth of those initially imprisoned for nonviolent crimes are sentenced a second time for committing a violent offense. Whatever else it reflects, this pattern highlights the possibility that prison serves to transmit violent habits and values rather than to reduce them.”

On the economic side, putting nonviolent drug offenders in rehab is cheaper than putting them in prison. A 2006 U.C.L.A. study found that California’s Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act of 2000, which allowed nonviolent drug possession offenders to go to rehab instead of prison, saved taxpayers nearly $2.50 for every $1 invested in the program. (Unfortunately, funding for the program has been gutted.)

Put them in prison and make them worse criminals, or put them in rehab, possibly make them better, and save some money. Sounds like a no-brainer.

There are encouraging signs that policy makers are moving in the right direction. Many states have moved to repeal mandatory minimums, and there is a bill in Congress to repeal federal mandatory sentencing. Furthermore, Attorney General Eric Holder seems to be thinking about this issue the right way. Speaking to the American Bar Association last week, he said, “There is no doubt that we must be tough on crime. But we must also commit ourselves to being smart on crime. ... We need to adopt what works.”

By CHARLES M. BLOW and published in the New York Times on Saturday, August 8 2009

Breaking Our Addiction to Prison: by General Barry McCaffrey

2009-08-02T18:11:00.000-07:00

Our traditional justice system has been inadequate to the task of breaking the cycle of substance abuse and crime. Four out of every five offenses are committed by someone with a drug or alcohol problem; and we just keep locking them up!

In just the past 20 years alone, state prison systems have added 1 million new cells to incarcerate the 2.3 million adults now behind bars in the U.S. That's far more than any other country on the globe with 1 out of every 100 adult Americans currently serving time.1 Approximately one-half of these individuals are addicted to drugs or alcohol2 and most do not pose a serious threat to public safety.

Prison for these individuals has accomplished little to stem the tide of crime or substance abuse. Upon their release from prison, two thirds of drug abusers commit a new crime3 and virtually all relapse quickly to drug abuse.4 And yet, despite these disappointing figures national expenditures on corrections well exceed $60 billion annually.5 On average, states spend $65,000 per bed, per year to build new prisons and $23,876 per bed, per year to operate them. Despite the staggering cost to incarcerate these individuals, most return to their communities without treatment, without jobs and without hope.

Given the abysmal outcomes of incarceration on addictive behavior, there's absolutely no justification for state governments to continue to waste tax dollars feeding a situation where generational recidivism is becoming the norm and parents, children and grandparents may find themselves locked up together.

Author Judge Dennis Challeen (ret.) said it best about sending the addicted to prison:

We want them to have self-worth

So we destroy their self-worth

We want them to be responsible

So we take away all responsibility

We want them to be positive and constructive

So we degrade them and make them useless

We want them to be trustworthy

So we put them where there is no trust

We want them to be non-violent

So we put them where violence is all around them

We want them to be kind and loving people

So we subject them to hatred and cruelty

We want them to quit being the tough guy

So we put them where the tough guy is respected

We want them quit hanging around losers

So we put all the losers in the state under one roof

We want them to quit exploiting us

So we put them where they exploit each other

We want them to take control of their lives, own problems and quit being a parasite on society

So we make them totally dependent on us

An Investment Beginning to be Realized

The verdict is in on Drug Courts. It has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Drug Courts work. Drug Courts significantly reduce drug abuse and crime and do so at less expense than any other justice strategy.

That is why the historic 1994 Biden Crime Bill authorized $1 billion for the Drug Court Discretionary Grant Program, administered by the Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs. The intent of the Biden Crime Bill at the time was to expand Drug Court funding to $200 million annually by the year 2000. Unfortunately the DOJ federal appropriation has averaged only $40 million and saw its lowest level in 2006 at a mere $10 million.

The Center for Substance Abuse Treatment within the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has also supported Drug Courts through its discretionary funding. But it, too, is drastically under-funded with a meager $10 million a year available to enhance treatment services within Drug Court programs.

That is all changing. Earlier this year, Congress approved $64 million for Drug Courts; the highest federal appropriation for the program in its 20 year history. And President Obama has plans to take the ball further up field. In the Administration's budget for 2010, there is potentially $118 million for Drug Courts.

How Much Money Is Needed?

Drug Courts need $250 million per year for the next six years--essentially as was originally envisioned in the Crime Bill -- in order to put a Drug Court within reach of the 1.2 million adult offenders who need it and to truly begin to heal America's number one social problem...addiction.

What Will be the Return on the Investment?

A $250 million annual Federal investment would reap staggering savings, with an estimated annual return of as much as $840 million in net benefits from avoided criminal justice costs alone and another 2.2 billion in savings to our communities. A $250 million annual Federal investment would also substantially reduce the demand for illicit drugs and enable state and local governments to cease over-relying on expensive and ineffective prison sentences for nonviolent, addicted offenders.

If the past is any indication of the future, state and local governments can be expected to follow suit and leverage the Federal investment several-fold. In these down-turn economic times, there is no way to be certain whether the states will be able to continue to leverage Federal dollars at a 9:1 ratio as they have done in the past. But once states began to realize cost-offsets from criminal justice and prison expenditures, state funding can be reapportioned to expand and sustain Drug Courts. Assuming even a modest 5:1 state investment, a $250 million annual Federal investment could leverage as much as $1.25 billion in state funding.

Drug Courts are just good common CENTS! For more information about Drug Courts, go to www.allrise.org.

New Jails for Sarasota County? latest links

2009-07-29T15:10:00.001-07:00

People protest possible jail locations:
http://www.sunnewspapers.net/articles/llnews.aspx?articleID=13805&bnpg=0

Community corrections center comes up empty on site selections:
http://www.pelicanpress.org/content/1233_1.php

(cut and paste links into your browser.

Less crime is better than more prisons:

2009-07-16T04:14:00.000-07:00

Something important is afoot on the topic of Florida's prisons.

A growing group of prominent Floridians is questioning whether we can just keep building more of them.

Is this group, the Coalition for Smart Justice, made up of whiny, hand-wringing, soft-on-crime liberals? No.

Here's some who have endorsed the effort:

The president of the business lobby Associated Industries of Florida; the president of Florida TaxWatch; the executive vice president of the Florida Chamber Foundation; at least one former state corrections secretary; three former Florida attorneys general; the executive director of the Florida Police Benevolent Association; the executive director of the Florida Catholic Conference.

They are among the signers of a document titled, "An Open Letter to the Governor, Legislature and People of Florida," urging the state to do more than just build. The group continues to gather more signers.

"Too many ex-offenders (are) going back to prison," the letter says, "because, while behind bars, they received little or no job training, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and the necessary life-skills tools to legitimately re-enter civil society."

About 33 percent of inmates released in Florida are back behind bars within three years. This is costing us a fortune and will cost more.

We have just over 100,000 people in prison. The budget of the Department of Corrections this year is $2.4 billion.

And if we keep zipping along, we'll need 15 or more additional prisons over the next five years (on top of the 60 we have), costing a couple of billion more in construction, not including the money to run them.

Just to be clear here:

Nobody is talking about being "soft on crime" or coddling criminals.

What they're talking about is how to make inmates less likely to commit new crimes once they get out.

Here's an example: Remember that 33 percent of released inmates go back to prison within three years. But for inmates who go through substance-abuse treatment, that figure is 6.7 percent.

The Department of Corrections also is placing a new emphasis on the concept of "re-entry," taking extra steps to prepare inmates for their return to society.

Seven Florida prisons have some sort of "faith and character-based" programs staffed by volunteer citizens, and are reporting recidivism rates below 10 percent.

"A belief in something outside themselves," is how Allison DeFoor, a former sheriff and judge turned Episcopal priest, describes the goal in a recent article in the Journal of the James Madison Institute.

"I suggest God, but it could be Allah. It could be the arts, or secular humanism, or the labor movement."

(Let's skip, for today, the question of how much business a state prison has getting involved with "faith." The point is the recidivism rate.)

The Legislature needs to consider alternatives to building prison after prison. It might save money. It might save some of us from being future victims of crime. It might even salvage some lives.

To learn more about the Coalition for Smart Justice, visit the Web site of the Collins Center for Public Policy at www.collinscenter.org.

For more on faith and character-based education in Florida's prisons: http://www.dc.state.fl.us/oth/faith/

By Howard Troxler, St. Pete Times Columnist

Published Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Florida can challenge the injustice of mass incarceration

2009-06-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

Last year Florida hit a disturbing milestone: For the first time, the state's daily prison population topped 100,000, a figure that didn't include people locked up in county jails (about 60,000) or serving probation (nearly 160,000). Florida spends more than 10 percent of its general fund on corrections, and the prison system -- which saw a building boom in the late 1990s -- is again near capacity.

Nobody suggests turning dangerous offenders loose. But a growing number of Florida leaders -- across the political spectrum -- say the state has gone too far in locking up non-violent offenders and probation violators. Gov. Crist and the Legislature should heed the message.

Last week, Crist received an open letter from key opinion makers, including three former attorneys general, the former head of Florida's prison system, the Florida Association of Counties and the Florida Catholic Conference. "A bold and serious conversation about justice reform must begin today," the letter says, pointing out that prison costs have already begun to "crowd out" other priorities such as education, economic development and human service needs.

The letter follows a missive from Associated Industries of Florida, the Florida Chamber Foundation and Florida TaxWatch -- the most powerful business lobbying groups in the state -- which said essentially the same thing: Florida can't afford to keep building prisons and filling them indiscriminately.

Collectively, these groups have formed a "Coalition for Smart Justice" recommending immediate reforms that include the creation of an advisory council (mandated by the Legislature in 2008, but never established) that would review Florida's corrections system thoroughly. The legislation -- which passed unanimously in both chambers -- demanded an investigation of mental-health and substance-abuse treatment, diversion for low-level offenders and the impacts of repeated incarceration.

The council could start by looking at effective strategies in other states. Texas made a dramatic change in its corrections policies that focused on alternatives to prison -- including electronic monitoring of probationers and the addition of 6,000 treatment beds both inside prisons and in diversion centers. As a result, that state's prison system -- which was over capacity in 2006 -- should see a slight population decline next year, authorities say. Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are among other states tackling comprehensive corrections reform, with impressive results.

But Crist and lawmakers shouldn't wait on the council, especially when meeting a pressing need: Better mental-health and substance-abuse policies. More than half of all Florida prisoners struggle with addiction or mental illness. Providing treatment alternatives to incarceration could reduce the number of people who cycle through prisons and jails on minor offenses.

Florida also needs better rehabilitation programs for offenders before they leave prison, and support afterwards. Too many inmates are discharged abruptly, lacking the education and life skills to lead successful, crime-free lives.

The state's criminal-justice policy has become too costly, in ruined lives and strained budgets alike. Reform should focus attention on incarcerating truly dangerous criminals, providing meaningful rehabilitation for the 90 percent of inmates who will eventually be released and diverting people who don't belong in prison.

An editorial published June 28, 2009 in the Daytona News Journal

Coalition pushes for alternatives to more prisons:

2009-06-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

A call by Florida’s most powerful business lobby to halt prison construction and reform the criminal justice system is gaining surprising traction among policy makers in the wake of a deepening budget crisis and growing evidence that building new prison beds will not reduce crime.

Four months after the head of Associated Industries of Florida stunned lawmakers with his plea to slow prison growth, a who’s-who of business, religious and political leaders are asking Gov. Charlie Crist to consider alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders, particularly drug addicts.

Crist and state lawmakers this week received an “open letter’’ from opinion-makers calling for a “bold and serious conversation about justice reform.”

The statement was signed by three former state attorneys general — Jim Smith, Bob Butterworth and Richard Doran — along with retired Department of Corrections secretary James McDonough and the heads of the Florida Association of Counties and the Florida Catholic Conference.

“At a time when Florida is in serious recession and facing a deep state budget crisis, the $2 billion-plus budget of the Florida Department of Corrections has grown larger; and without reform, that budget will continue to grow at a pace that crowds out other mission-critical state services such as education, human service needs, and environmental protection,” the group wrote.

Calling itself the Coalition for Smart Justice, the group is asking state leaders to bolster education, drug and alcohol treatment and faith-based and character-building programs both within the state prison system and in community settings as an alternative to prison.

Coalition members also want Crist to “immediately implement’’ a bill passed by the Legislature in 2008 that created “the much needed’’ Correctional Policy Advisory Council to offer new directions for criminal justice administration.

Staying the course, coalition members wrote, will lead to “too many non-violent individuals being incarcerated, too many prisons needing to be built at astounding public cost (and) too many young people moving from the juvenile justice system into the adult justice system.”

At the root of the state’s failures, the coalition says, is the unwillingness of lawmakers to invest in programs — such as job training, education and substance-abuse treatment — that can break the cycle of crime and reduce recidivism.

McDonough, the state’s former drug czar and prisons chief, said Florida can avoid the need to build a new $100 million prison each year by spending one-fifth that amount on drug treatment. “The math is irrefutable,” McDonough said. “That’s $100 million right there that you don’t have to spend immediately.”

That’s an assertion former Manatee sheriff Charlie Wells scoffs at, as a veteran of the debate over the effectiveness of prisons in reducing and deterring crime. Wells said he is concerned the movement to turn the state away from building new prisons will lead to the repealing of legislation he pioneered in the 1990s that mandates inmates serve at least 85 percent of their prison terms.

“I think it is a bad mistake to be flirting with the idea of cutting back building prisons under the guise of looking for ways to cut costs,” said Wells. “If we stop building prisons, overcrowding will force legislators to repeal that law, which would be a serious mistake.”

Wells said advocates of diversion programs for non-violent offenders in lieu of prison time often do not tell the whole story about offenders sentenced to prison.

“That argument has been there since I started fighting this battle. But what always gets lost in translation is the length of someone’s record who is finally is sent to prison. Someone who is going to prison for a so-called ‘minor offense’ has most likely been arrested a significant number of times,” said Wells. “So I think it is absurd to start chipping away at the most significant aspect of crime prevention, which is sentencing and punishment.”

Gretl Plessinger, DOC’s spokeswoman, said the equation is far more complicated in response to the coalition’s claims. Since the prison system runs on a five-year cycle based on “strategic projections,” the corrections agency cannot simply “stop construction on a dime.”

By CAROL MARBIN MILLER
Miami Herald

Tackle prison overcrowding from the other end

2009-06-13T05:47:00.001-07:00

The Florida Legislature passed a ''just in case'' bill that its author, Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, calls a ''passive safety net,'' not a mandate. But the philosophy behind SB 1722, which becomes law July 1, is based on regressive thinking.
It would allow the corrections department to ship inmates to other states in case prison overcrowding forces early releases here.

Fund programs

This is a patchwork solution that misses the point. Florida should be fighting crime at the front end -- not shipping prisoners to be warehoused out of state.

To reduce prison beds the state has to adequately fund programs to reduce school drop-out rates and increase job-training and life-skills classes. It means counseling and access to needed services for troubled families with teens who have strayed but not fallen off the deep end yet.

It also means drug rehabilitation programs, well-resourced drug courts and mental-health counseling for teenagers. In the long run these preventive measures would save the state millions of dollars it now spends housing prisoners who could be contributing members of society.

The irony is that, until budget deficits hit this year, Florida's been on a prison-building spree even as it has cut back on programs to reduce recidivism. The 2010 state budget is the first in a long while with no money set aside for new prison construction.

Enter the private-prison lobbyists who have long urged lawmakers to imitate the 15 states that export prisoners to public and private lockups. Even though Florida's Corrections Secretary Walt McNeil isn't a proponent of sending prisoners out of state, the private-prison lobbyists prevailed in the Legislature.

Besides its regressive thinking, this bill is an example of bad public policy. As Mr. McNeil points out, one method of reducing recidivism is encouraging inmates to build ties to the community they will return to once they're released. It's detrimental to inmates' morale -- and no incentive to go straight -- to be incarcerated hundreds of miles from their families, making visitations rare.

Cutting corners

There are other concerns. The quality in private prisons is uneven, to say the least. Some private operators have been exposed for cutting corners by understaffing and chintzing on inmates' medical care. It would be impossible for Florida to monitor treatment of its inmates in a prison in, say, Tennessee.

Currently, Florida's prison population is stable at 101,000 and even a little below previous projections. The state's total bed capacity is around 106,000, so Florida probably won't be exporting prisoners any time soon. That gives state leaders time to craft a smarter, more cost-effective strategy to prevent prison overcrowding.

It's called crime prevention.

An editorial from the Miami Herald published June 13, 2009

Restoration of Rights workshop--THIS WEEKEND

2009-06-10T08:57:00.000-07:00

Do you know someone who has lost their civil rights, including their right to vote, due to a conviction for a felony? The Sarasota branches of the NAACP and ACLU are sponsoring a restoration of rights workshop at the Selby Goodwill at 1732 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Way, from 10 a.m -3:00 p.m. on Saturday June 13. Please help me get the word out.

OFFERING:
√ Assistance in preparing documents for re‐enfranchisement (your right to vote).
√ A road map for restoring and protecting your civil rights.
√ Direction to employment and training resources in your community.

Jailing the mentally ill strains justice:

2009-06-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

Every jailer in Florida knows the face of mental illness.

County jails throughout the state house thousands of people with serious mental conditions. Some of them can't maintain a life on the outside -- as soon as they are released, they commit a new, usually petty crime and end up back in jail. Counties pay staggering bills for psychiatric medications and treatment. They struggle to house inmates whose illnesses make them vulnerable (or in isolated cases, dangerous) in the jail's general population. And as community treatment centers close, the number of mentally ill people in prisons and jails increases, along with the burden on their families and the taxpayers who pay for fruitless rounds of arrest and incarceration.

Florida lawmakers had the opportunity this year to make a fundamental change in the way local jails and state prisons deal with people who have severe mental illness. But they fumbled, delaying action on a bill that would have created a new system for mentally ill offenders.

A study conducted by the Council of State Governments and published Monday in the journal Psychiatric Services illustrates how badly Florida leaders dropped the ball. Researchers administered psychiatric screenings to more than 20,000 inmates in five jails in Maryland and New York, concluding that 14.5 percent of men and 31 percent of women booked into county jails had at least one serious mental illness. The number includes only people with very serious afflictions such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depression -- excluding those with lesser (but often debilitating) diagnoses of anxiety disorders or other mental conditions.

The study didn't cover Florida, but the state's own numbers suggest similar concerns. According to a 2007 study, an estimated 15,000 inmates in Florida's jails on any given day have serious mental illnesses -- roughly one in four. And like the national study, the percentage of inmates with mental illness has climbed steadily in Florida.

The national study suggests several factors behind this increase. People with mental illness are more likely to be visible to police because they are less capable of controlling their behavior. They're also more likely to use illegal drugs, especially if they don't have access to treatment and psychiatric medication. The correlation between mental illness and homelessness is significant, and homeless people are far more likely to be arrested. Finally -- and this thread runs through the entire discussion -- the nation's mental-health treatment system is badly overburdened.

Many people believe the public is safer if people with mental illness are confined, even if that means imprisonment in an inappropriate setting like jail. The new study disputes that impression as well, pointing out the "weak correlation" between mental illness and violent behavior. In fact, many behavioral-health specialists believe that imprisonment increases the likelihood of violent crime, by further destabilizing people with certain mental disorders, and making them more likely perpetrators or victims of crime.

Counties are trying individually to confront the problems of mental illness in their jails. Volusia County, for example, recently hired Stewart-Marchman-Act Corp. to oversee treatment in its correctional facilities.

Still, it's not enough. The bill that failed to pass the Legislature this year would have sparked a comprehensive overhaul of Florida's criminal-justice system, setting up better community-diversion programs to keep people out of jail and creating transitions for people with mental illness who are about to be released from prison. But Gov. Charlie Crist shouldn't wait for the next legislative session -- many of the reforms the bill called for can be instituted by executive order instead, and the state Department of Children & Families can start planning others.

DCF Secretary George Sheldon says that the hundreds of millions of dollars Florida spends incarcerating people with mental illness is the "worst money we spend." It's time for a change, and Crist can help to bring it about.

Published in the Daytona News-Journal on June 7, 2009

A New Jail for Sarasota County?

2009-06-04T16:03:00.000-07:00

There's been lots of jail talk these days in Sarasota County; The current jail is over capacity. Now some local leaders are trying to find the money and a place for a new one. But not everyone is on board.
From Fruitville Road to Sumter Boulevard...even Buchan Airport in Englewood. Those are just a few of the 15 or so sites submitted and being discussed by a local committee, rating possible new jail sites. "We are moving geographically around the county," says Criminal Justice Policy Holder for the county Wayne Applebee.

The group meets every other week. First criteria is government-owned land or land submitted by property owners. 30 acres are wanted. Then there is the whole location thing. "The access, the ownership, development and construction costs, environmental impacts, costs going into the future by where its location is."

Thursday, Sarasota County and city commissioners were briefed on the latest. While the whole county is being explored, it seems north county might not be the best option. "We are probably looking mid-county or south county...the North Port area," says Sarasota County Commissioner Joe Barbetta. Some North Port commissioners have said they're not opposed to the jail there.

One location many have suggested is in mid-county, off Knight's Trail, right next to the dump. It's centrally located with plenty of land. However, there was already an attempt to put a jail near there in the past, says Barbetta. "It was probably the largest planning commission ever. Over 600 people showed up when the jail was proposed. It was at least nine or ten years ago...vehement opposition."

But also Barbetta says he's not sure he wants to spend the estimated $60 million to dump inmates anywhere. "Is something wrong with our system that we keep building these monstrosity-sized jails? Is the problem deeper and is it more social service related?"

The county is also looking for land for a community corrections center. That's different than the jail. "We are in need of a smaller community corrections facility for light to medium security; Somewhere in the county, but we don't want to impact the neighborhoods."

Future site selections that might not be popular when it turns out to be in your back yard. "It's a tough problem for all communities. I just think if we put money in bricks and mortar it's not really the solution."

The current plan calls for enough room to house nearly 1,000 more inmates by the year 2035 in Sarasota County. The group searching for sites says they would like to have their top picks by the fall.

You can go to the site rating meeting for yourself. They are every other Wednesday at the Sandra Sims Terry Community Center in Laurel. The next meeting is June 17th.

As Reported by ABC Channel 7

Restore Your Civil Rights

2009-05-28T15:41:00.001-07:00

Death Penalty Consequences:

2009-05-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

There are many ways to make the case for abolishing the death penalty in Florida.

First, consider the extra $50 million that the state spends each year on death-penalty prosecutions and appeals.

Then look at the deep flaws that the American Bar Association found with Florida's system of capital punishment -- and recognize that those legal inequities haven't been addressed in the three years since the Bar released its review.

Finally, consider the haunting probability that the state has executed innocent people -- mistakes it can never correct.

The last argument is the one that torments former Florida State Penitentiary warden Ron McAndrew, whose duties included participating in the executions (by electrocution) of three men during his tenure at the prison. In an opinion piece written for the Orlando Sentinel's online edition, McAndrew describes a gradual change of heart that culminated in a face-to-face meeting with Juan Melendez, a man who spent more than 17 years on Florida's death row before being proved innocent of a 1983 murder.

McAndrew isn't the only one to express doubts. And Melendez is not the only man to walk free: Florida leads the nation in death-row exonerations. Since 1973, 22 death-row inmates have had their convictions definitively overturned. Two other cases bring Florida's "official" roster of wrongful death sentences to 24: Frank Lee Smith was proven innocent by DNA but died in prison before his conviction could be overturned, and Sonia Jacobs walked free from death row after the case against her fell apart -- though she accepted a plea bargain, her murder conviction was dismissed.

Death-penalty proponents claim the exonerations as proof that "the system works." In actuality, they prove the opposite. Many of Florida's exonerations were only obtained after lengthy defense fights to obtain and test DNA evidence that proved someone else was guilty of a particular crime. But the first DNA exoneration didn't happen until 1993 -- and even after the technology became widely accepted, prosecutors fought hard (and often successfully) to keep DNA evidence from being tested in a contested conviction. In many cases of disputed convictions, DNA evidence either didn't exist, or has disappeared or degraded. And the system is currently set up to protect convictions, requiring extraordinary proof to even request DNA tests. It's likely that Florida has executed several innocent people, including Jesse Tafero, Jacobs' co-defendant, who was convicted on the same unreliable evidence used in her initial conviction.

The American Bar Association called for the state to create a commission to investigate potential wrongful convictions, and a separate commission that would study how Florida came to lead the nation in death-row mistakes. Thus far, lawmakers and Gov. Charlie Crist have ignored both recommendations, along with other common-sense suggestions that would force more justice on the state's death-penalty machine.

But there's one argument they might not be able to shove aside so easily. The state could save a considerable sum -- a reliable estimate suggests it's more than $50 million a year -- by converting every sentence on death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

That financial argument is swaying states away from capital punishment in a way that the possibility of miscarried justice never did. New York, New Mexico and New Jersey have rejected the death penalty in the last two years, citing costs. Last week, the Connecticut legislature did the same, though that bill faces a threatened veto. Maryland, Illinois and Kansas have all considered legislation that would eliminate or greatly reduce death-penalty prosecutions.

If Florida leaders won't kill the death penalty because it is wrong, they should accept that it costs too much. If they weigh that cost with a dollar sign -- rather than the moral burden of taking lives through a flawed, unjust and fallible system -- it should still tip the balance in favor of death-penalty abolition.

An editorial published by the Daytona Beach News Journal on May 28, 2009

Florida must abolish flawed death penalty:

2009-05-25T05:41:00.000-07:00

"Capital punishment: them without the capital get the punishment." Those were the last words of John Spenkelink, executed 30 years ago today in Starke for murdering traveling companion Joseph Szymankiewicz. Spenkelink was the first person executed in the state, the second nationwide after a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling reinstated capital punishment.

As a former Florida prison warden who carried out three electric-chair executions and shadowed five lethal-injection executions in Texas, I know that Spenkelink was correct: Most death-row inmates cannot afford experienced attorneys.

Once, I firmly supported capital punishment. Part of my job was to help strap prisoners into the electric chair, and signal the hooded executioner to administer the current. But each execution lessened my support. In Texas, I thought the more "civilized" executions by lethal injection would remove my repugnance. They didn't.

My change of heart was gradual and painful. At night I would awaken to visions of executed inmates sitting on the edge of my bed.

I began studying the reasons behind executions over the centuries. I was appalled to think I had been part of this ceremonial barbaric act committed to appease chest-pounding politicians attempting to appear "tough on crime."

An experience I had this January underscored my transformation. I was a speaker at the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty's conference in Pennsylvania. In the conference venue one day, a man turned to me as I approached. Shockingly, the last time I saw this gentle soul was inside a Florida death-row prison cell; I was his warden.

We embraced. It was Juan Melendez, an exoneree who had spent 17 years, eight months and one day on death row for a crime he didn't commit. As his warden, I could have taken this innocent man from his cell into the death chamber.

Melendez's case is typical for many on death row. Substandard representation and prosecutorial misconduct are among the reasons for exonerations over the years — 133 men and women since 1973. Three men were exonerated this year. Florida leads the nation in exonerations since 1973 with 22.

Race is a factor in death sentences. According to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund report "Death Row U.S.A. Winter 2009," 41.58 percent of death-row inmates nationally are African-American, although they comprise 13.5 percent of the U.S. The percentage is similar in Florida.

Since the Spenkelink execution, research revealed how capital punishment drains states' financial resources that could otherwise fund better law enforcement, crime-prevention programs, counseling and other support for murder victims' families, and reinvestigations of unsolved homicides. The cost issue figured prominently in several states' repeal bills this year, including New Mexico's, which abolished capital punishment in March. Florida executed 67 death-row inmates between 1976 and 2008 at approximately $24 million per execution.

In 30 years, Americans began realizing that capital punishment doesn't deter homicides. Florida, with 402 death-row inmates — the second-largest death-row-inmate population nationally after California's — has one of the highest murder rates nationally. The rate is 6.6 per 100,000 people, more than the average national murder rate of 5.5 people per capita and higher than the murder rate in states without the death penalty, 3.1 people per capita.

The lesson that I, and all of us, should learn post-Spenkelink is that capital punishment does not ensure public safety, and has no safeguards against wrongful executions. The 35 death-penalty states, Florida included, should abolish it, replace it with life without parole, and apply the savings where they would do the most good — helping homicide victims' survivors and funding effective law enforcement that protects our communities.

By Ron McAndrew, who spent 25 years in Florida corrections before retiring, working his way up from an entry-level corrections officer to a warden in the Florida State Penitentiary. He also served as the interim director of the Orange County jail in Orlando.

Published in the Orlando Sentinel on May 24, 2009

Restore Your Civil Rights

2009-05-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

Reforms coming in Federal Sentencing?

2009-04-22T16:51:00.000-07:00

Judge William Sessions, who was nominated Monday to be chairman of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, hopes to continue reforming federal sentencing guidelines to address prison overcrowding. "We're at a particular point in history where prisons are incredibly overcrowded," Sessions said. "We're also at a particular point in time in which there's a potential for real change."...

Options other than standard incarceration should be used more to address prison overcrowding, Sessions said. That includes drug treatment courts, placement in home confinement or community confinement, and split sentences in which part of a sentence is served in prison and part is served in the community.

Sessions also hopes to make rehabilitation a higher priority in federal sentences. "For the last 15 years there's been little interest in rehabilitation," Sessions said. Instead, punishment has been the priority. "A person commits a crime, and they get X," he said. "We're going back to, 'How do we get these people rehabilitated so when they get out of prison, they're not a danger?'"

Treat the Mentally Ill--Don't Incarcerate Them

2009-04-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

The current system for dealing with mentally ill people who commit crimes is, by all accounts, broken. And expensive: It costs Florida taxpayers tens of millions of dollars every year.

People with schizophrenia or other mental illnesses who get arrested are sent to expensive mental health facilities, where they're stabilized for the sole purpose of appearing in court. Most get released on time served, only to get sick again for lack of medication and treatment. They commit more crimes, and the process starts all over.

Florida spends $140,000 for each of 1,700 of these mental health beds, for a total of $250 million every year. That represents a third of all mental health funding in Florida.

"It's the worst money we spend," said Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon.

Miami-Dade Judge Steven Leifman, tapped by the Florida Supreme Court to help reduce the number of mentally ill in Florida's corrections system, calls it "the insanity of all insanities."

Now, nearly three years after Pinellas-Pasco Public Defender Bob Dillinger sued the DCF over its lack of mental health beds for criminals, the Legislature is close to overhauling Florida's treatment of the mentally ill. If the proposed legislation becomes law, Florida would become the first state to take such an innovative approach, Leifman said.

And in a recession year when saving money is at the top of lawmakers' priority list, the changes could save the state tens of millions in taxpayer dollars.

"This will save us money, and it will help these people," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey. "Because they're not going to get the services they need sitting in the county jail."

The Department of Corrections, the DCF and the Agency for Heath Care Administration all support the proposal (HB7103, SB2018), which would treat and rehabilitate some of Florida's mentally ill in more comprehensive but affordable community facilities.

The latter two agencies would develop a plan for long-term services for the mentally ill who are at risk of ending up in the corrections system. A mentally ill inmate would first go to a locked facility for stabilization, then to a step-down facility that provides job skill training, drug and psychological treatment, and a case manager.

Leifman said the treatment would cost $25,000 per patient. But it would cost Florida less than that because the bill allows the state to apply for Medicaid money to pay for about two-thirds of the costs, which now have to be covered by general revenue.

The changes also would help some of the 4,000 or so people with serious mental illness who are sentenced to Florida's prisons each year. About half of those prisoners reoffend after they're released, so the new system would provide them the treatment they need to be healthy, functioning citizens.

The Pinellas-Pasco Circuit has already changed the way it deals with the mentally ill, and Sheldon considers its success a model for what the proposed statewide overhaul can achieve.

Dillinger a couple of years ago used $80,000 from the DCF to expand its jail diversion program for the mentally ill. Now in its fifth year, the program has diverted over 2,000 people from county jails into community facilities that provide housing, transportation, job transportation and therapy. The sites cost $800 a month per person, compared to $3,000 a month to house them in jail, Dillinger said.

The proposed legislation would create three pilot sites, including one in South Florida and one in Central Florida, to serve up to 1,000 people in ways similar to what Dillinger's program does.

"If you divert 1,000 people this year, you're talking about saving tens of millions of dollars," Leifman said. "This is serious bucks. And you're going to improve public safety because these people are much less likely to reoffend."

The legislation, sponsored by Fasano and Rep. William Snyder, R-Stuart, is based on recommendations issued by the Florida Supreme Court in a 2007 report that was commissioned after Dillinger sued then-DCF Secretary Lucy Hadi for not moving mentally ill jail inmates to hospitals.

"This is the most important mental health bill since the Baker Act in the 1970s," said assistant DCF Secretary Bill James. "We are talking about changing the system."

The proposal is making its way through the House and Senate, but even supportive lawmakers have expressed some concern over the costs of the pilot sites. Sheldon said the savings are worth any investment. And he said he can gradually get the pilots going by using money that would have been budgeted for new mental health beds.

"Some say, don't do something innovative in a tight budget year," Sheldon said. "I think this is the perfect time. Otherwise, this population is going to bust the bank."

an article by Shannon Colavecchio published in the St. Petersburg Times on Saturday, April 19, 2009

Debtor Prisons?

2009-04-14T08:20:00.000-07:00

In a little-noticed trend blamed on the state's hard economic times, several courts in Florida have resurrected the de facto debtor's prison — having thousands of Floridians jailed for failing to pay assessed court fees and fines. The shortsighted plan threatens to run afoul of the U.S. Constitution. It appears to generate little additional revenue relative to the misery it causes, and it should be stopped.

A recent report by the nonprofit Brennan Center at New York University School of Law highlights the difficulty of trying to get what one researcher called "blood from stone." In Leon County's Collection Court, defendants who fail to pay their court-ordered costs and fines — often hundreds of dollars — are notified to appear at Collections Court and later arrested if they don't show. In the 12 months studied, there were 838 arrests for not appearing in court or failing to pay what was owed. Most people spent hours in jail, but some were held for a week or more.

At $53 per day of incarceration, it is an expensive way to try to collect from people who generally are struggling to meet the expenses of daily living. The center calculated that those incarcerated cost the system $62,085 to bring in $80,450 in debts.

Jail time for being broke is no way to help people get back on their feet after a run-in with the legal system. Judges should be exercising the option in state law that allows them to convert court-ordered obligations into community service. But with the Florida Legislature looking for revenue to fund the courts and other state services, judges are under pressure to wring every available penny out of those who owe.

The nonpayment problem is only likely to worsen. In Tallahassee, lawmakers are debating raising court fees and fines even further to raise general revenue for the state. Meanwhile, the state's rising unemployment rate will make it tougher for Floridians with a criminal record to find a decent job. Do we really want our jails filled with people whose only "crime" is that they are poor?

About a third of Florida counties use collections courts, but even those without them jail people for their debts. In Pinellas, Hillsborough and Hernando counties, collection agencies are used to extract the overdue fines and fees. But defendants who violate their probation by failing to pay can find themselves in jail if a judge believes they have not coughed up what they can.

Author Charles Dickens familiarized his readers with England's system of squalid debtors' prisons. Dickens' father was imprisoned in Marshalsea for debts and Dickens set Little Dorrit there. But that country saw the light in the mid 19th century and outlawed jail for debtors.

In the United States, it is unconstitutional to incarcerate someone solely for failing to pay a debt. Florida officials get around this by claiming the defendants are going to jail not for their debts but for violating a court order. That is what you would call a self-serving technicality. The truth is that Florida has enthusiastically resurrected debtors' prison. How Dickensian is that?

An editorial from the St. Petersburg Times published April 13, 2009

Crime-reduction means changing attitudes and treatment

2009-03-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

Of necessity, and with some common sense applied, Florida's way of dealing with inmates is changing.

Rather than build 19 new prisons at a cost of $100 million each over the next five years — the state's projected need — Department of Corrections Secretary Walter McNeil and other highly placed public state officials and the courts are working to change the lives of inmates through education and rehabilitation.

Their cost-saving goal is to build fewer prisons, redirect resources and be able to release those who aren't imprisoned for the most serious crimes with a far better chance of not re-offending and not returning, as about a third now do, to prison.

One avenue for change that's been proving successful here in Leon County emulates this call for change. That's the mental health court, which has for nearly three years been working to re-direct the lives of men and women who are charged with substance-abuse crimes by getting them into rehabilitation settings instead of cells.

Leon County Judge Jonathan Sjostrom told the editorial board of the Democrat on Thursday that the problem of jailing substance-abusers was becoming so undeniably large that law enforcement was first to call for relief. "They told us this is a jail, not a hospital," Mr. Sjostrum said, speaking of the Leon County Jail but knowing the situation is prevalent statewide. "But we'd found that, while there were many resources to fix things, the courtroom was an impediment," he said. Courts use a traditional criminal-justice model of dealing with offenders, he said, rather than recognizing and addressing the complex array of health problems and traumas that lead to the preponderance of drug-related crimes that crowd today's court dockets.

Legislation is being championed this session to continue this impulse to change the system. Mr. Sjostrum, as well as Dade County Judge Steven Leifman, special adviser to the Florida Supreme Court on criminal justice and mental health, are working with Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, sponsor of SB 2018, the Community Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment and Crime Reduction Act.

"The bill redirects resources from the criminal justice system to community-based care where people can be stabilized with medication and supports," George Sheldon, secretary of the Department of Children and Families, explained earlier this month. A national advocacy group recently gave Florida a "D" for its public mental health care system, which includes our habit of incarcerating people with mental illnesses and substance abuse problems, often on minor charges.

The evaluation by NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) was worse this year than in previous years, an indication of the steady decline in our approach to not only public safety but public wisdom.

"We need to face the fact that our current mental health system is in need of a major overhaul," said Mr. Fasano. Of some 600,000 individuals with mental illnesses in Florida, about 125,000 requiring immediate treatment are booked into jails and prisons annually and begin a downward spiral that cannot be broken with intervention and treatment.

"Fiscally we have no choice but to act," Mr. Fasano said. "Morally, this course is also the humane thing to do."

Key to the support of this bill, which enjoys bipartisan support, is that it is revenue-neutral, said Mr. Leifman. It moves money from incarceration to diversionary and rehabilitative programs such as the mental health court that being used in Leon County, and it amends the state's Medicaid plan so that 60 percent of the coordinated treatment efforts would come from federal Medicaid funds.

The legislation doesn't provide a pass for hardened criminals, said Mr. Leifman. "It is trying to decriminalize mental illness."

We urge lawmakers to support this exceptionally strong and commendable redirection of state policy.

An Editorial from the Tallahassee Democrat published March 23, 2009

Dollars for Death: Executions' moral, fiscal costs burden society

2009-03-10T12:59:00.000-07:00

The death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent to murder. Jurisdictions with capital punishment see no reduction in the rate of violent crime and the American south, where 80 percent of U.S. executions occur, has a considerably higher murder rate than the northeast, responsible for only 1 percent of American executions.

The death penalty is racially and economically biased. Murderers who kill Caucasians or can't afford private attorneys are more likely to be sentenced to death.

The death penalty creates a potential for irrevocable error. Florida leads the nation with 22 death row exonerations over the past 35 years, and it's almost a certainty that several innocent people were executed before DNA-testing technology became widespread.

The death penalty is barbaric. Most democratic countries have outlawed its use.

For a brief time, the second argument -- that the death penalty is racially biased -- convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to outlaw its practice. And the specter of executing people who were potentially innocent convinced then-Illinois Gov. George Ryan in 2003 to commute the sentences of 167 people from death to life in prison.

But none of these points has ever convinced the average American that the death penalty is barbaric or wrong. And for the most part, their elected state leaders have followed along.

One argument is making headway, however -- and it's the most venal of considerations. Last month, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley told that state's Senate that enforcing the death penalty simply cost too much, with the average death-penalty prosecution and appeals costing three times as much as a murder case bringing a sentence of life in prison. Maryland lawmakers are seriously considering O'Malley's recommendation to drop capital punishment; Montana and New Mexico are looking at similar measures.

Shutting down death row makes financial sense. One analysis by the Palm Beach Post showed Florida spent an average of $24 million apiece for each of the 44 executions the state carried out between 1976 and 2000, and that enforcing the death penalty costs about $55 million a year.

What did the state get for that money? A heaping dose of uncertainty. Last month the state executed Wayne Tompkins, convicted of the 1983 murder of a Pinellas County teenager. But despite the fact that Tompkins' case had dragged on for more than 25 years, the state fought efforts to conduct further scientific tests that might have cast doubt on Tompkins' guilt. Attorneys for the Innocence Project of Florida, which took Tompkins' case, say they aren't even sure the bones identified as those of Lisa DeCarr have been accurately identified.

Society would have been just as safe had Tompkins been kept in prison for life. The state would have had a chance to test his conviction against the latest scientific evidence. And the state would not have spent millions to put him to death -- money that could have, instead, been allocated to more police officers to keep all Floridians safer.

In a time when Florida lawmakers are struggling with billions of dollars in budget deficits, lavishing money on an archaic, ineffective and error-prone means of punishment makes little sense. If lawmakers won't kill the death penalty because it's wrong, they should kill it because it costs too much.

An Editorial from the Daytona News-Journal Corporation. ® www.news-journalonline.com published 3/11/09