SENATORS GET TO EXPERIENCE SOLITARY CONFINEMENT LIVING CONDITIONS ON CAPITOL HILL

Capitol Hill saw the first ever congressional hearing on solitary confinement Tuesday. To illustrate living conditions within the Secure Housing Units common to many federal and state prisons, a Senate Judiciary committee had a cell replica erected inside the hearing room.

NPR’s Carrie Johnson has the story. Here’s a clip:

At any given moment, about 15,000 men and women are living in solitary confinement in the federal prison system, housed in tiny cells not much larger than a king-sized bed.

“It is hard to describe in words what such a small space begins to look like, feel like and smell like when someone is required to live virtually their entire life in it,” says Craig Haney, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

But Tuesday, Haney, who has studied life inside prisons for three decades, had an opportunity to paint that picture. Haney and other advocates had gathered in Washington to testify about solitary confinement to members of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on civil and human-rights issues. Committee members say they want to explore the costs of long-term isolation in U.S. prisons.

To help illustrate living conditions in solitary, committee members asked the architect’s office in the U.S. Capitol to set up a replica of a cell — a tall white box with no windows — right inside the hearing room.

The replica provided the backdrop for what lawmakers called the first-ever congressional hearing on solitary confinement.

All Things Considered also explains how other states are getting rid of Supermax facilities and reducing the number of inmates in solitary. Check it out here.

A LETTER FROM DEATH ROW INMATE

Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan sent letters to death row inmates with upcoming execution dates. Brett Hartmann, an inmate scheduled to be executed Nov. 13th, wrote back and shared his thoughts on life on death row–from food and health care to criminal justice and the death penalty. Here’s a clip:

People change, after 15 years you are no longer executing the same person that committed the crime. A fair sentence for murder? Personally I believe if you have not done at least some time in prison and experienced the hell that prison is you should not get to say what is an appropriate sentence for anything. We claim we are a nation of second chances yet we hate giving them! I would say 20-30 years, let a person have a chance to make up for their mistakes no matter how horrible, but I would put on also that if while in prison the person shows by his conduct in prison that he has not changed then you would go to a civil commitment to keep them in to protect society.

I would be against the DP in all cases, a respect for life is a respect in all aspects. Look at Manson, one of the most hated men next to Hitler, he has been locked away, he shows no remorse and might pose a threat if released so the Parole Board keeps him locked away. I believe execution just is not the answer, as humans we are prone to mistakes and execution is a mistake you cannot undo.

EL MONTE SCHIZOPHRENIC MAN DEAD AFTER FIGHT WITH POLICE

A schizophrenic man died after an altercation with police in which officers used a baton, taser, and choke hold to subdue him. Twitter users are saying that the incident may be the next Kelly Thomas-like case, but the details of the confrontation are still a bit hazy. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Dept. has taken over the investigation.

ABC’s Robert Holguin has the story. Here are some clips:

Denise Le says her brother got into an argument with her father last Thursday night, so she called police. But she says the argument was over by the time police arrived.

“I thought police came just to talk to Quah,” Denise Le said. “I really regret calling 911 for help. It turned out to be (the) murder of my brother.

The Le family says the two El Monte police officers who responded to the call began to attack Khoa Ahn Le. By the time officers got him to the driveway in handcuffs, his family says he was unconscious. He was transported to a local hospital, where he later died.

[SNIP]

The sheriff’s department says Le fought with the officers and resisted arrest. “Mr. Le continued fighting and one officer struck Mr. Le one time in the torso area with a flashlight. But Mr. Le continued to fight,” said sheriff’s Lt. Holly Francisco in a statement. “Another officer struck him three times with a baton in the torso, ankle and knee.”

In a fascinating and welcome turnaround, the LA District Attorney’s office has dropped charges against Bruce Lisker, the man who was recently released from prison after spending 24 years in prison due to what many believe was a wrongful conviction. Lisker is 44-years old.

When he was 17, Lisker was convicted of the beating and stabbing death of his mother, Dorka Lisker, whose body was discovered in a bloody scene at the Lisker’s Sherman Oaks home. Bruce Lisker was tried and convicted as an adult, and sentenced to life in prison in 1985.

Early last month, U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips overturned Lisker’s conviction stating that Lisker was convicted on “false evidence” and that his attorney (who is now a court commissioner) did not adequately represent him.

But although Lisker was released, the DA’s office strongly hinted they would go ahead with a new trial.

Initial doubts about the case had come to light when an LAPD Internal Affairs sergeant named Jim Gavin responded to an ethics complaint about the main officer on the Lisker case, Det. Andrew Monsue. The more Gavin looked into things, the more he began to believe that what he was looking at was no simple misstatement by an officer, but a rush to judgment in a murder investigation that might have the wrong person in prison.

However, his bosses at IA, then headed by Michael Berkow, thought Gavin was overstepping his bounds and told him to cease and desist.

He mostly did so—but handed over some of what he’d found to Lisker’s lawyer.

Gavin also began talking to LA Times reporters Matt Lait and Scott Glover who wrote an excellent 2005 account of the murder investigation and subsequent conviction that raised a great many troubling questions about Lisker’s guilt.

Since that time, Jim Gavin, who essentially acted as a whistleblower, calling attention to what he believed might be a grave miscarriage of justice, appears to have been marginalized by some sectors of the LAPD, a department where he still serves.

As to why the DA decided not to proceed, DA spokesperson Sandi Gibbons, stated that, while “…we remain confident in Mr. Lisker’s original conviction of the second-degree murder of his mother, Dorka…” the prosecution was unable to go to trial due to the fact that much of the original physical evidence had been “destroyed” (not comforting to know, whatever one believes about the Lisker case) and some of the witnesses had died.

“Given these factors and policy considerations, we cannot proceed to trial. ”

In other words, Gibbons said when we talked, although the prosecutors’ view of the case has not changed, the state of the available admissible evidence assuredly has.

This is obviously great news for Bruce Lisker, and in the view of many, very good news for justice in general.

After his release, amid TV cameras Bruce Lisker thanks private investigator Paul Ingles, one of those who worked on his case: the above photo and other photos from that day by Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

In a brand new study published in the July issue of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota pediatrics expert, Dr. Iris Wagman Borowsky, found that almost 15 percent of American teens believe they will die before age 35.

Dr. Borowsky also found that the adolescents who were the least hopeful that they would survive past 35, were the most likely to engage in risky behavior.

Those of us who have worked around at-risk kids have long noted that a hopeless kid is the one who is most likely to act out in dangerous ways. But seeing quantified the sheer numbers of American teenagers who believe that they will die young cannot help but shock us.

Dr. Borowsky arrived at her conclusions after she and her team analyzed reams of data collected by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, in which the attitudes and behaviors of 20,594 adolescents in 7th through 12th grade, were tracked over a three year period.

One of the reasons the study is important is that it topples a common fallacy that most kids engage in risk-taking behavior because of their naive belief that nothing bad will happen. The reality, Borowsky found, is actually quite the opposite—and far more complex.

“While conventional wisdom says that teens engage in risky behaviors because they feel invulnerable to harm [italics are mine], this study suggests that in some cases, teens take risks because they overestimate their vulnerability, specifically their risk of dying,” Borowsky said. “These youth may take risks because they feel hopeless and figure that not much is at stake.”

Nearly 25 percent of youth living in households that receive public assistance and more than 29 percent of American-Indian, 26 percent of African-American, 21 percent of Hispanic, and 15 percent of Asian youth reported believing they would die young—compared to just 10 percent of their Caucasian peers.

“Our findings reinforce the importance of instilling a sense of hope and optimism in youth,” Borowsky said. “Strong connections with parents, families, and schools, as well as positive media messages, are likely important factors in developing an optimistic outlook for young people.”

No kidding.

Borowsky noted specifically that the kids who believed they would die young were more prone to drug use or to acquire STDs.

Yet, this same model applies when we look at the likelihood of joining or staying in gangs.

In and around the gang world, the least hopeful kids are always the most deeply involved and the most dangerous—either to themselves or others.

“Hey, you gotta die sometime.…..” I’ve heard kids say right before they go do something life-theateningly stupid. These were the same kids who told me how they had already planned what they were going to wear to their own funerals.

It is for the above reasons that programs like “Scared Straight” and the ever more draconian juvenile laws that are aimed at getting young gang members or gang wannabes to “think twice”—are so entirely ineffective.

These strategies work wonderfully for the kids who don’t need them—the hopeful kids.

But if we want to help the kids who are the most at risk (and it seems according to Borokwsky and company, there are a great many of them) we need to find much more effective methods for infusing them with hope.