THE BIG WALL STREET SWINDLE

Jon Stewart has a monologue about the bank bailout and related bits of rage-inducing foolery [posted above] and it should not be missed.

CALIFORNIA’S PRISON POPULATION DROPS—AND SO DOES THE NATION’S

The LA Times Shane Goldmacher reports:

California’s prison population declined in 2009 for the third straight year as the number of state prisoners fell nationally for the first time in nearly four decades, according to a new survey from the Pew Center on the States.

The overall decline was relatively small, 0.4% of roughly 1.4 million state inmates in the nation, but the study’s authors said it is significant because it represents the first year-over-year drop since 1972.

FORMER TEACHER AT LA COUNTY JUVENILE PROBATION CAMP ACCUSED OF GOADING KIDS TO GLADIATOR FIGHTS

Yet another chapter in the ever worsening news regarding LA County’s juvenile probation camps, the LA Times’ Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Richard Winton have this:

A former teacher at a Los Angeles County probation camp was arrested Tuesday on six counts of child endangerment for allegedly organizing boxing-style bouts — recorded by a security camera — between students during class, authorities said.

[SNIP]

Whitmore said Wesley can be seen and heard on the security footage organizing five bouts between rival gang members in response to an argument that began that morning between two students over gangs.

Wesley told students where and how long to fight, and instructed them to avoid blows to the face that would leave signs of injuries, Whitmore said.

According to a probation official who has seen the tape, Wesley stood inside the classroom door as students — who apparently told him that the security camera was broken — cheered on shirtless fighters. Wesley appeared to be on the lookout for passing probation staff or fellow teachers and can be heard urging the students not to tell anyone about the fights, according to the source.

As I read this, I thought of the tales told to me a month or so ago by a young man who had recently returned from camp and juvenile hall. He told me that guards would open the door to one kid’s cell so that other kids could come in and beat up the kid in the cell. That he’d not only seen it, he’d been part of it.

The Tea Party Movement objects to big government.

The newly-launched Coffee Party declares itself free of either party’s ideologies but to be guided by reason. (I’ll drink coffee to that.)

But, as Doug Berman points out at Sentencing, Law & Policy, neither drink-related party seems to be interested in taking on one of the biggest government growth industries of all:

I continue to wonder if (and hope that) the new tea party movement will take on the growth of government and government inefficiencies in the operation of massive modern criminal justice systems. …And… Unfortunately, it seems that so far the so-called Coffee Party is also decaffinated when it comes to engaging with criminal justice issues, which comprise among the most consequential forms of government interaction with citizens and also is among the most massive forms of government control and expense.

Of course, the vast majority of persons who have the luxury of the extra time and energy to get involved with the new Coffee or Tea Parties are not likely to have significant experience with state or federal criminal justice systems. Still, any and all politically savvy persons must recognize that an extraordinary amount of taxpayer money is spent on modern criminal justice systems. Moreover, any new party that is concerned about government spending on programs with uncertain returns ought to be asking hard questions about the costs and benefits of mass incarceration and marijuana prohibitions and a host of other related criminal justice issues.

Meanwhile, in the Democrat-controlled congress we hear the similar sound of….nothing.

A year ago, Senator Jim Webb introduced the National Criminal Justice Commission Act, which would form a commission that would study our criminal justice system from top to bottom. But despite bipartisan support, lots of press, and lots of enthusiasm, the House of Representatives has yet to introduce a companion bill.

Last Tuesday, Webb renewed his push.

“We start with two pieces of reality,” Webb said in Washington on Tuesday. “The first is that we are a country that’s got 5 percent of the world’s population and approximately 25 percent of the world’s prison population. We are doing something different than other countries and something not necessarily correct.”

Yes. And whatever one’s political beverage of choice, it’s time to face that fact.—and to do something about it.

Like California, a number of budget-strapped states are crafting legislation that allows certain inmates to use rehabilitative programs to earn time off their prison and jail sentences.

And as in California, in other states, the very same usual suspects are freaking out and predicting a crime wave in reaction to the various earned early release programs that are being instituted.

Refreshingly, however, at Stateline.org, the online publication affiliated with the Pew Center on the States, there is a wonderfully impartial rundown of what the states are doing in the way of incentivized early release—and the reactions against such policies.

Here’re a couple of clips:

As to whether accelerated-release programs lead to more crime by those who are released, research shows otherwise. A review by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency of at least 12 studies, for example, found unchanged or lower recidivism rates among prisoners who benefited from accelerated-release programs in states including Illinois, Wisconsin and Florida.

[BIG SNIP]

“Length of stay has nothing to do with the recidivism rate,” Todd Clear, the incoming dean of the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University in New Jersey, says. “If I let someone out (early), I’m not increasing the chances of them committing a crime. I’m just changing the date.”

Despite the studies, politicians and corrections officials are keenly aware that a single, well-publicized crime by an inmate who has been granted accelerated release can call entire programs into question, virtually overnight. In California, for instance, outrage over the state’s good-time credits has been exacerbated by the early release of a Sacramento County inmate who was arrested in connection with an attempted rape less than 24 hours after walking free.

For that reason, Clear believes, early-release initiatives are a recipe for political disaster. “The minute you let a bunch of people out early, you own everything they do,” he says

Sadly, yes. You do.

LA TIMES REPORT ON ABUSE IN JUVIE PROBATION LOCK-UPS PROMPTS ACTION—MAYBE

In the wake of the LA Times report on staff abuse of young inmates within LA County’ juvenile probation facilities, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas called for expansion of the Probation Department’s internal affairs staff.

Well that’s a start. Let’s hope there’s some follow-through.

And don’t forget, the LA Times report is the beginning, not the end of the problems.

CUTTING PRISON PROGRAMS HURTS US ALL

The Sacramento Bee’s guest column by Orson Aguilar articulates why the state should reject its penny wise and pound foolish plans to slash its rehabilitative prison programs.

The $250 million that California is about to save by slashing vital rehabilitation programs for prisoners will cost us many times that much money.

The money we think we’re saving will cost us many times over in more crime, more drug abuse and ruined lives.

Rehabilitation and alternative programs can save lives. I know. One of them saved mine.

I grew up in Boyle Heights, a rough section of East Los Angeles, in the 1980s. Poverty, gangs, drugs and violence plagued our community. But I was lucky enough to stay out of most of it – until one night, at age 19, I did something stupid.

A friend and I were attacked by a group of teens. In the struggle, I fired a shot from a handgun, scattering the crowd but striking one of the assailants in the forearm. Luckily, he was not seriously hurt. My friend and I also escaped with only minor injuries.

But I was charged with a felony. My friends urged me to fight the charges on grounds of self-defense. Instead, I took responsibility for my action. I pleaded guilty to felony assault with a deadly weapon.

Read the rest here.

ACLU’S RAMONA RIPSTON ANNOUNCES RETIREMENT

The ACLU’s longtime and extremely respected director, Ramona Ripston, has announced that she will retire a year from now. Ripston was the first woman to hold a leadership position in the organization. Some of her accomplishments include:

…Ending segregationist policies at the Los Angeles Unified School District, helping to spur meaningful reform in the, for years, notoriously hard-headed LAPD, fighting successfully for voting rights for Latinos, and providing leadership in battles for equal rights for the disabled, immigrants, gays and lesbians, and the homeless.

“Ramona Ripston has spent her entire career giving a voice to the voiceless,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said. “With the ACLU of Southern California as her megaphone, she worked tirelessly to protect the constitutional rights of the poor, disabled, homeless, and gays and lesbians, among many others….”

Yep, that’s about right.

All of us who live in Southern California, owe her a huge debt of gratitude—even those who have opposed her. We have all of us benefited beyond calculation from her passion and her commitment to our collective humanness.

SENTENCING PROJECT LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE

Anyone interested in justice issues likely knows the Sentencing Project.

They have just launched a new website that is replete with great new interactive features. Reporters and others with criminal justice-related research needs, take note.

This just came out in the Sacramento Bee. Am headed off to teach shortly so my commentary will have to wait until later.

But suffice it to say that there is so much about every piece of this that is so, so fraught with politics not common sense.

Saying it was a “formula for disaster,” a Sacramento judge today blocked the Sheriff’s Department from granting any more early releases to inmates it is holding in the county’s jail facilities.

Sheriff’s officials began the releases last week in response to a bill passed last year and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that will have the effect of reducing the state prison population by about 6,300 inmates, mostly through parole changes.

In his ruling today, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Loren E. McMaster granted a temporary restraining order that was requested by the deputy sheriff’s union. McMaster said in his two-page written ruling that the new state law only applies to state prisoners, not county jail inmates. The judge set a March 3 hearing date for the union’s request for a preliminary injunction.

The union’s lawyer, David P. Mastagni, argued in a hearing today that the release of the estimated 200 inmates since Jan. 25 before their previously-set release dates, combined with the layoffs of 122 sheriff’s deputies since August, posed a public safety problem for the county.

McMaster agreed.

“Releasing inmates early by the application of a law intended only for those in the state prison population at the same time that deputies in the field are being substantially reduced is a formula for disaster,” McMaster wrote.

Read the rest.

UPDATE: I wrote the above in something of a rush, so let me state more clearly why I think this is a perplexing decision.

The law that kicked in at the first of last month, plainly states that some of the law’s new credits that will shave days off a prison inmate’s sentence, also apply to jails> To wit:

This bill would also revise the time credits for certain prisoners confined or committed to a county jail or other specified facilities, as provided.

You can read it yourself.

Just to be sure, I spoke to the CDCR’s main spokesperson, Gordon Hinkle, the other day and he said that, yes, the new law, which among other things, expanded the credits an inmate would receive for time he or she had spent in jail prior to conviction, also applied to jails. BUT—and this is crucial—it doesn’t apply retroactively.

This lack of retroactivity is why not one single prison inmate has been released early under the program. Not one. They still have to qualify.

However, as Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton report, a large number of the state’s county sheriffs have elected to apply the new law retroactively anyway. They say they have done so on the advice of counsel. Maybe yes, OR maybe they wanted to ease some jail overcrowding, and took the opportunity to do so, while getting to complain that the Big Bad State made them do it. I don’t know. But whatever the case, several counties have dumped hundreds of prisoners out early.

Interestingly, the sheriff overseeing the largest county jail system in the California—namely LA’s Sheriff Lee Baca—does not thing the law requires him to retroactively start dumping inmates, as he told Blankstein and Winton. ( In fact, Baca didn’t the law applied to him at all.)

So were the jails’ early inmate releases really legally necessary? No. It doesn’t seem so.

But does the earned time off one’s sentence principle also apply to jails?

Despite what the judge has ruled, I don’t see how the llaw can be read otherwise.

WOMEN PRISONERS AT CHOWCHILLA AIM TO HELP VICTIMS

The best research (and my own anecdotal observation) suggests that one of the essential components to transforming one’s life away from gangs and/or a similar law-breaking past requires that one face squarely the harm that one has caused and then give back in some way to one’s community.

Here’s a story from the Fresno Bee about women who are taking a step in that direction.

They’ve robbed. They’ve stolen. They’ve murdered.

But despite their past crimes, nearly 100 women gathered in a prison gym Wednesday to hear how they can help victims of serious crimes. Some wanted to know how they could help the very people they hurt.

The inmates are part of a club at Valley State Prison for Women that focuses on raising money for charitable groups and, as they describe it, repay their debt to society. One of the women in the club, called the Long Termers Organization, sent a three-page letter in August to the Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board — a state agency that distributes about $100 million a year in funds to crime victims in need of health care, therapy or other services as a result of the crimes committed against them. The inmate, Crystal Potter, wanted to know whether the board would be willing to let her club know how they could help.

“We may never gain the trust or the forgiveness of our victims, but to do now what we should have been doing from the very beginning in providing community services would teach us further the morals and values so necessary as a productive member of society,” Potter wrote.

Read the rest.

AN EARLY RELEASE ISSUE? OR A MENTAL HEALTH ISSUE?

Much was made last week over the early release of a 22-year-old man named Kevin Peterson from Sacramento County Jail. Peterson was supposed to serve a four month sentence for whacking a family member in the face with a broom. Instead he was released 18 days early as part of the budget-cutting measures that California counties have put into place since January 1st. (Many counties, however, most notably Los Angeles County, had been shaving time of short jail sentences for the last several years in order to reduce overcrowding at a county level.)

Anyway, within hours after his release, Petersen allegedly attacked a female counselor and attempted to rape her.

And within minutes of Peterson’s rearrest, commentators and partisans were shrieking about the crime wave to come that he represented.

However one enterprising TV station—FOX40 News—bothered to look a little deeper into the story. Most notably, they interviewed Peterson in jail. And guess what? Even Peterson admitted he should be locked up—but not in a jail. He needs to be in a psychiatric facility, he said..

(On the right side of this page, you’ll find a longer version of the video.)

A confused Peterson says he doesn’t remember attacking anyone. He does however remember hearing voices.

“I’m a paranoid schizophrenic,” he said to the TV reporter.. He was hoping to get taken to the Sacramento Mental Health Evaluation Center so that he could get some help. He should be off the street, he said—but in a mental institution, not in jail.

Bottom line: Peterson’s alleged near rape has everything to do with the inadequate mental health screening and treatment inmates receive in county jails.

…But exactly zero to do with the issue of early release.

PS: On the issue of prison population reduction, the Press-Enterprise had a remarkably sane Op Ed on the matter.

THE FIGHT OVER DE-CLAWING CALIFORNIA’S CATS: IT MAY NOT BE OVER .

Annenberg grad student Chris Pisar of Neon Tommy reports that the much ridiculed rush last year by the LA City Council to pass a cat declawing ordinance wasn’t so ridiculous after all. The rush had to do with getting the damn thing passed before a brand new state law went into effect that would have prevented cities and counties from passing their own such regulations.

The California Veterinary Medical Association, which provided the main opposition to the LA ordinance, still wants to do away with the ban. Critics say the vets opposition to the ban is for monetary reasons not for moral ones. (Declawing is a pricey procedure.)

Here’s the rest.

A LOUSY BANK ROBBER BUT GREAT JAILHOUSE LAWYER

In Tuesday’s New York Times Adam Liptak has a story of a mediocre bank robber who, during his decade in prison, made good use of the prison library and transformed himself into a stellar jail house lawyer.

Here’s how it begins:

Shon R. Hopwood was not a particularly sophisticated bank robber.

“We would walk into a bank with firearms, tell people to get down, take the money and run,” he said the other day, recalling five robberies in rural Nebraska in 1997 and 1998 that yielded some $200,000 and more than a decade in federal prison.

Mr. Hopwood spent much of that time in the prison law library, and it turned out he was better at understanding the law than breaking it. He transformed himself into something rare at the top levels of the American bar, and unheard of behind bars: an accomplished Supreme Court practitioner.

Read the rest.

WANT TO READ SOMETHING REASONED AND SENSIBLE ON THE ISSUE OF TRYING KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED IN NY?

Try Jane Mayer’s excellent article on the controversy in next week’s New Yorker.

Photo of jailhouse lawyer Shon Hopwood by Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

My friend Joe Domanick is part of a new online criminal justice journal called The Crime Report.” It should be an every day destination for anyone who is interested in the many-faceted world of criminal justice.

This week Joe has a two-part story about the drop in crime in America-–and about what has, and what has not, caused it.

In Part I he looks at the role of smart policing and at the change in gang culture in California, including the tighter grip that the prison gangs have on the gangs in the street.

In Part II he talks to an A-list lineup of experts who nearly to a person agree that the one strategy that cannot be credited with the crime drop, is the ramping up of incarceration.

Here’s how the story begins:

During the 1990s, the favorite solution to reducing crime was incarceration. That is, mass incarceration: mandatory minimums and 25-to-life three-strikes sentences for stealing a slice of pizza. The consequence today is more than two million people behind bars, the world’s largest per capita incarceration rate. No one among the experts I spoke with, however, suggested that as a factor in 2009’s crime drop.

Quite the opposite.

“The dramatic increases in incarceration did contribute to the crime decline in the 1990s,” says Richard Rosenfeld, of the University of St. Louis-Missouri. “The bulk of the evidence shows that. But from 2000-2009, the rate of incarceration slowed. In New York, for example, it’s flat or in decline. So the current decline can’t be ascribed to incarceration.”

John Jay Professor David Kennedy agrees. Recent incarceration rates have been marginal,” he says, while decreases in crime have been dramatic; so any new increases “are likely to be grabbing low level [criminals]. Anything going on is taking place at the margins in terms of incarceration, and is not very powerful.”

Carnegie Mellon University Prof. Al Blumstein also dismiss incarceration as a factor. “We’re close to equilibrium in terms of changes in incarceration,” he says. On the average, the inflow is roughly equal to the outflow. We’re way down to less than one percent increase [in imprisonment], whereas for most of the ’80 and ‘90s the rate was going up by 6 to 8 percent a year.“

Meanwhile, Todd Clear, a noted criminologist from John Jay College, points to mass incarceration’s corollary: lengthy prison sentences. “The length of stay in prison in England and hasn’t changed that much and England’s violent crime rate has gone down very similarly to that of U.S; same with Canada,” he says. “The increasing length of prison stay in the US has been a pattern for about 20 years, so I’m not persuaded that that’s a big cause of the current decline.”

Read on.

I would love to have been at this event Wednesday night. The LA Times’ Carol J. Williams reports that U.S. Supreme Court Justice (and wildly powerful court swing voter) Anthony Kennedy addressed a crowd of LA lawyers with courtly humor—except for the part where he took a couple of hard round-house swings at the state’s prison policy and at the CCPOA, the prison guards union.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy criticized California sentencing policies and crowded prisons Wednesday night, calling the influence that unionized prison guards had in passing the three-strikes law “sick.”

In an otherwise courtly and humorous address to the Los Angeles legal community, Kennedy expressed obvious dismay over the state of corrections and rehabilitation in the country. He said U.S. sentences are eight times longer than those issued by European courts.

“California now has 185,000 people in prison at $32,500 a year” each, he said. He then urged voters and officials to compare that expense to what taxpayers spend per pupil in elementary schools.

“The three-strikes law sponsor is the correctional officers’ union and that is sick!” Kennedy said of the measure mandating life sentences for third-time criminal offenders.

POW! JAB! POW! POW!

Interesting. Particularly so in that the Supremes still have one more big case to hear in the near future regarding California’s prisons and the panel of three federal judges who are attempting to force a reduction in the state’s prison population.

MEANWHILE, THE LA CITY COUNCIL DELAYS PLANNED BUDGET-DRIVEN LAYOFFS IN RESPONSE TO EMOTIONAL PROTESTS BY COMMUNITY MEMBERS AND PRESSURE FROM VARIOUS EMPLOYEE UNIONS

As to how the council is going to trim the necessary $$$ off the budget, it is not clear. David Zahnizer and Phil Willon have the gory details.

Here’s a video of CDCR’s Secretary Matthew Cates’ Monday press conference in which he briefly explained the new programs that began this week, and answered questions about same. (You’ll hear my questions asked via the phone near the end.)

Those criticizing the program would do well to listen just so you’re operating from a fact-based position rather than responding to the rumor mongering and unfounded hysteria that seems to be running rife through the countryside at the moment.

UPDATE: A case in point: Tuesday afternoon I received a copy of the letter that Paul Weber, the president of the LAPPL sent to LA residents in which he wrote: ” …yesterday was also the same day that the state began its program to release over 6,500 prisoners from state prisons…”

NO, PAUL, IT WASN’T. Nothing of the kind happened. And, with all respect, if you don’t know that, you aren’t bothering to check the facts that are available for checking.

AND IF YOU DO KNOW IT, that statement of yours is deliberate and mendacious. Which is not okay. We expect better.

I just got off the phone 2 minutes ago with the CDCR’s Gordon Hinkle to find out if there was any crazed or pretzeled way that Weber’s statement could have any shred of truth behind it. There wasn’t.

So, what’s the deal? Facts no longer matter? If the falsehood gets you what you want, then what the heck, go for it?

Paul Weber’s letter is intended to get residents to pressure their city council members to vote for money to hire more police officers. Hell, I’m for hiring more police officers. But, here’s the thing: I don’t need to be told an hysteria-promoting lie to in order to get me there. (When someone resorts to such tactics, one tends to distrust everything they say.)

A CHALLENGE TO PAUL WEBER: Either stop trotting out that 6500 early release figure—or prove it.

On Thursday, the LAPPL—the LAPD’s union— vigorously protested the upcoming release of between 5000 and 6500 prisoners starting on January 25, which is this coming Monday.

Here is how one of the resulting stories opens:

Starting January 25th, thousands of dangerous criminals will be released early from California state prisons – and for the first time in nearly 30 years, sent back to local communities without any supervision,” stated the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

“The County of Los Angeles will be dramatically impacted, with over 5,000 felons to be released to our city,” said Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) President Paul M. Weber.

And so on.

Now admittedly, if an extra 5000 or more newly released inmates were to be disgorged in California, the majority showing up in LA (as is always statistically the case) given our current job market (or lack thereof) even for non-felons, plus the cuts to the state’s social services….It is not a cheery prospect.

However, my read of the law that goes into effect next Monday—SB 3X 18—the piece of legislation that will supposedly trigger the above-mentioned flood of felons, it suggests nothing of the kind. (Here’s the CDCR press release about the law that will kick in on January 25.)

As outlined by the CDCR, the purpose of this prison reform bill, passed during the height of the legislature’s budget wrangling last year, is to reduce the California prison population by at total of 6500 inmates over a year’s time. (Not a huge reduction, but something is better than nothing.)

However, the reduction is to be accomplished through three new strategies, which primarily have to do with sending fewer people to prison, and not with bouncing menacing hoards of inmates out early.

The strategies include:

Parole reform that will:

1. Help reduce the crippling number of technical violations of parole that have tens of thousands of inmates cycling needlessly in and out of prison (on our dime) for infractions such as testing dirty in a mandatory drug test, or missing a meeting with a parole officer.

2. Eliminate parole for certain inmates, in order to provide better and more rigorous supervision for the parolees who most need it. This would be in lieu of what we do now, which is to insist on non-rehabilitative, ineffective supervision for everybody that is provided by over-burdened parole officers who are far too swamped to help or control any of those who crowd their respective caseloads.

3. Establish and expand drug and mental health reentry courts for parolees who can most benefit from such highly-structured treatment to prevent recidivism.

In addition, the new law raises the bar on certain low-level property crimes.

And, yes, there is one thing in the about-to-be-instituted program that has to do with what may legitimately be called early release. It is an earned credit incentive system in which certain kinds of inmates can choose to earn day-for-day credit by participating in rehabilitation programs that have been proven to reduce recidivism.

Others will be given credit for working in fire camps (which already only accept the cream of inmates) and a few related programs. Those inmates will earn the right to get out a little earlier—and, with any luck, in better emotional shape—than they would have without the earned credit system.

This is not prisoner dumping, nor is it likely to cause the crime wave we’re hearing so much about.

But if I’m missing something here, please prove me wrong.

PS: In a statement released last night, the Police union has opposed the release of the Onion Field killer. For the record, I do to. For some people life should be life.