Learning to code can be an incredibly lucrative skill in today’s technical age, but is it a potential “threat to order and security?”

Ohio and Michigan prisons ban books that aim to teach computer programming skills, according to MuckRock, a non-profit site aimed at sharing public information via the Freedom of Information Act. The organization recently obtained a list of banned books in state prisons.

“Their decisions to ban educational texts related to programming, alongside erotica and literature published by neo-nazi groups, are in stark contrast with practices in other states and countries, where prisons include coding in educational programs,” writes MuckRock.

Ohio’s list of banned books contained titles like “Beginning Linux Programming 4th Edition,” “The Linux Professional Institute Certification Guide,” and “Operating Systems Demystified.” The state gave no explanation as to why the books were banned.

Ohio prisons ban books on learning @Linux alongside erotica and neo-Nazi literature https://t.co/kYNt6Qfb6E pic.twitter.com/9sUeg204Zw

— MuckRock (@MuckRock) August 18, 2017

In Michigan, prisoners were specifically banned from reading books the Department of Corrections believes “contains information about computer programs and applications.” Texts like “Windows 98 6 in 1” and “Windows Game Programming for Dummies” were banned because they represent a “threat to the order and security of the institution.”

According to MuckRock, 15 books are banned for including information about computer programming, including guides to web design and a book aimed at teaching the elderly how to use computers.

Stark Contrast to Silicon Valley

The decision to ban these kinds of books is a stark contrast from rehabilitation efforts in San Quentin, California. At the San Quentin State Prison, Chris Redlitz of The Last Mile helps to prepare inmates for successful reentry into society through web education and career training opportunities. In 2014, he launched Code.7370 San Quentin, the first computer programming curriculum in a U.S. prison.

Inmates in the program help build apps and other software for startups and established companies like Airbnb. Because they can’t use the internet, the development shop’s coders work on a closed network. The men in the program make $16.77 an hour.

In April, CNBC reported that none of the prisoners who had gone through the program had returned to prison. That is likely due to the fact that the program is exceptionally beneficial to inmates, because it provides prisoners with an entrepreneurial skillset that enables them to start a career for themselves upon release, rather than relying on limited job opportunities available to felons.

The Code.7370 curriculum has since expanded to five more prisons in California, including two women’s prisons, and Redlitz has hopes to create a national program within the next five years.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Why are Some Prisons Banning Inmates From Teaching Themselves to Code? appeared first on Law Street.

Welcome to RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through today’s top five controversial stories in the world of law and policy. Who’s ranting and raving right now? Check it out below:

Insert Mooch Pun Here

After an illustrious 10 days as President Donald Trump’s communications director (sort of), Anthony Scaramucci is officially out. Sources close to Trump have explained that his remarks to various news outlets–including Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker–”disgusted” Ivanka and Melania Trump. Newly minted White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told Scaramucci on Monday that his services were no longer needed as one of his first tasks on the job.

Twitter had an absolute field day, mocking Scaramucci’s incredibly rapid rise and fall.

I’m still laughing at the fact that Mooch was fired before his official start date. Only WH staffer in history to serve for negative days.

— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) August 1, 2017

gotta add “scaramucci” to the dictionary as a measure of time

— Desus Nice (@desusnice) July 31, 2017

These constant staff shake-ups have marred the White House in recent weeks, so insiders are hoping that Kelly will be able to chart a smooth course moving forward.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post RantCrush Top 5: August 1, 2017 appeared first on Law Street.

From a Pennsylvania prison’s mistreatment of mentally ill prisoners to prisons in Tennessee offering inmates 30 days off their sentences in exchange for undergoing birth control procedures, the United States prison system has a demonstrated history of subjecting inmates to substandard conditions. With a criminal justice system that has touted the “tough on crime” mantra, U.S. prisons have largely failed to rehabilitate inmates and prepare them for re-entry into society.

The U.S. has one of the highest recidivism rates in the world with 76.6 percent of prisoners rearrested within five years of their release. At 20 percent, Norway has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world. In an effort to curb some of the issues within their state’s criminal justice system, prison officials in North Dakota took a page out of Norway’s book to make prisons more humane. Leann Bertsch, director of North Dakota’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and one of her deputies, Karianne Jackson, ventured to Norway’s Halden and Bastøy prisons in 2015 to study how the inmates are treated.

Halden Prison is a maximum-security facility about 60 miles south of Oslo, Norway’s capital. Yet Halden stands in stark contrast to the high-security prisons found in the U.S. Halden, which Time named “The World’s Most Humane Prison,” houses its prisoners in private rooms that look more like college dorm rooms than the stereotypical prison cell or common sleeping area. The prison is outfitted with colorful interior decor, athletic facilities, a recording studio, and outdoor trails and seating areas, according to Time.

The Halden and Bastøy prisons were both featured in Michael Moore’s 2015 documentary film “Where to Invade Next.” At Bastøy, prisoners dress in regular clothes, stay in private rooms with their own key, and even work in a kitchen which–as Moore points out–is equipped with sharp knives. Yet it’s this culture of compassion, trust, and humanity that keeps Bastøy running. And if you weren’t yet convinced that Halden is about as close to paradise as prisons get, its orientation video features the prison guards singing a rendition of “We Are The World.”

After returning from Norway, Bertsch and Jackson took the lessons they learned at Halden and Bastøy and began implementing them at North Dakota’s Missouri River Correctional Center, nicknamed “The Farm.” At The Farm, prisoners are now housed in communal rooms with eight to 16 men, according to Mother Jones. They’re not the “interior design magazine” level of stylish that Bertsch and Jackson visited in the Norway prisons, but they’re certainly an improvement on traditional prison sleeping quarters. Plus, if an inmate is close to his release date and has proven good behavior, he can obtain a private room which shares a bathroom with only one other room.

Before Bertsch and Jackson’s trip, the state penitentiary’s administrative segregation unit was rampant with rules that placed prisoners in solitary confinement instead of addressing their behavior in a constructive manner. Now, only inmates who endanger somebody will end up in solitary, and the maximum time they can be held there has been shortened. Prisoners who have been isolated for long periods of time undergo behavioral therapy before they re-join the general prison population, giving them time to acclimate, according to Mother Jones. Another change was an effort to foster stronger relationships among guards and prisoners. Guards in the segregation unit are required to have at least two conversations with each inmate under their supervision per shift. Prisoners gather in sweat lodges and play handball outside on the court to build their relationships with one another, and seek on-site and off-site jobs to further their employment prospects once they are released.

If North Dakota, as a red state, can start taking steps to reform its prison system in a way that is actually beneficial to its inmates, then surely the rest of the country can too, right? Well, it might not be so easy. Shortly after being confirmed as Attorney General, Jeff Sessions doubled down on the use of private prisons despite several officials’ statements that private prisons put profits before the lives of inmates.

Likewise, the U.S. prison system has become increasingly overcrowded which is, in part, the result of convictions for nonviolent drug offenders instead of providing those individuals with treatment. That “tough on drugs” stance is likely to continue under Sessions. Sessions praised the anti-drug campaign Drug Abuse Resistance Education, more often referred to as DARE, at a DARE training conference in Texas on July 11, despite an abundance of research that has shown the program has been ineffective and may have even had a negative impact on substance abuse.

Providing substance abuse treatment instead of prison sentences to drug offenders would be in line with similar programs in Norway and could be a step toward reducing prison overcrowding, but it’s certainly not a magic bullet. The U.S. prison system also needs to focus on ways of rehabilitating violent offenders, reducing exorbitant sentences, and address the racial biases within the criminal justice system that disproportionately and negatively impact people of color.

Marcus Dieterle

Marcus is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is a rising senior at Towson University where he is double majoring in mass communication (with a concentration in journalism and new media) and political science. When he isn’t in the newsroom, you can probably find him reading on the train, practicing his Portuguese, or eating too much pasta. Contact Marcus at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post North Dakota Looks to Norway for Inspiration to Make Prisons More Humane appeared first on Law Street.

Christmas Prison Break: Six Inmates Escape Through the Toilet

Early Christmas morning, six inmates at a Tennessee jail made a run for it and escaped through a broken toilet. Police captured five of them pretty quickly, but one is still on the loose. David Wayne Frazier is considered the most dangerous escapee and was imprisoned for aggravated robbery and possession of a weapon.

The unusual escape was made possible by a water leak behind a toilet that had damaged the surrounding concrete wall and bolts. The men were able to simply remove the toilet and crawl out through the hole in the wall, according to the Cocke County Sheriff’s office. At least the men got a little bit of freedom on Christmas.

They were able to unscrew and remove the toilet’s bolts, exposing a hole big enough for them to wiggle through https://t.co/oiK4LzvgoA

— New York Post (@nypost) December 26, 2016

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post RantCrush Top 5: December 27, 2016 appeared first on Law Street.

President Obama’s time in the White House is coming to an end, but he’s staying busy. He has made an effort to get as much done as possible before leaving; such as announcing the biggest protected marine monument in the world, signing the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights, and commuting the sentences of 944 inmates. Now, John Legend has another suggestion.

The Grammy Award winning musician wrote an open letter to Obama, published in Rolling Stone, asking him to pardon federal inmates who are jailed for non-violent drug offenses before January. In the letter, Legend praises the Obama administration for doing so much to end juvenile solitary confinement and to reduce the use of private prisons. As it is unclear what will happen when Donald Trump takes office, he urged the president to “bring justice to the thousands of families of non-violent drug offenders who have waited far too long for Congress to act.” He wrote:

In 2014, you set out to reinvigorate our country’s approach to clemency. Your actions to commute the sentences of 944 individuals, including 324 life sentences, is unprecedented in the modern era. Nonetheless, more action is needed to dismantle the unjust policies of the past 40 years.

He also said that approximately 36,000 non-violent drug offenders currently behind bars have asked Obama for pardon under his clemency initiative, and it’s unclear how many will be reviewed in time. That’s why he is suggesting categorical commutations, to end the injustices.

I wrote a letter to the President: https://t.co/gIIFVSp8CA

— John Legend (@johnlegend) December 9, 2016

Legend points out that drug addiction is not a moral failing, but a chronic health issue. There is also a big discrepancy in how slight variations in drugs are treated differently before the law. Crimes involving crack cocaine, which is more commonly used by black users and sold on the streets, are punished more severely than those involving powder cocaine, which is more expensive and more likely to be used by white people.

And for Legend, it’s also a personal issue. His mother struggled with depression and drug abuse, and ended up in prison when he was a teenager. Earlier this year he started the initiative Free America, with Assistant District Attorney Adam Foss of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, in an effort to change criminal justice policies and keep teens out of prison. He told the Guardian in July:

You begin to realize how much trauma and pain and abuse [the inmates] have been victims of themselves before they got to prison, and since they’ve been in prison. And you realize that it’s just a cycle that keeps repeating,

Hopefully, Legend’s efforts will not be for nothing when the next administration takes office.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post John Legend Urges Obama to Pardon Non-Violent Offenders appeared first on Law Street.

The New York Times published a story on Sunday that delved deep into New York state penitentiaries, documenting a number of racial disparities in how inmates are disciplined and awarded parole. On Monday, in response to The Times expose, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D), ordered an investigation into racial bias in the state’s prisons.

Cuomo called The Times report “disturbing,” and said in a statement: “I am directing the state inspector general to investigate the allegations of racial disparities in discipline in state prisons and to recommend appropriate reforms for immediate implementation.” He also said he plans on nominating a number of minority candidates to New York’s Parole Board.

“I will be advancing new appointments to the Senate this upcoming session to ensure the state’s Parole Board is reflective of the population it serves,” he said. Only one of the 13 current board members is black; none are Latino, though the state prison population is about three-fourths black or Latino. Cuomo’s nominations would need to be approved by the State Senate, which is comprised of 31 Republicans and 31 Democrats.

The Times report was based on data from 2015, focusing on 60,000 disciplinary cases, and on interviews with inmates across the state. Most of the racial disparities documented took place in upstate prisons, where officers, a vast majority of whom are white, guard prison populations that are majority-black or Latino.

One instance of racial bias documented in The Times report happened at Clinton Correctional Facility, where only one of the 998 guards is black. The report found that black inmates were four times as likely as white inmates to be sent to solitary confinement. In addition, black inmates were held in isolation for 35 more days on average than whites. Here are some other findings from the report:

• A number of black inmates reported guards referring to them by racial slurs, like “porch monkey,” and “spear chucker.”
• Among inmates under 25 years old, blacks received far more disciplinary citations than whites, at 185 to 14 respectively.
• Over the past several years, white inmates were more likely than black or Latino inmates to be granted parole. Less than one in six black or Latino inmates were released on parole after their first hearing, compared to one in four white inmates.

The report also illustrated the discrimination black guards who work in prisons staffed with a majority of white officers experienced. One case from the early 2000s focused on a black officer at Elmira Correctional Facility named Curtis Brown. An investigation found that white guards wrote “token” on Brown’s locker.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Governor Cuomo Orders Investigation into Racial Disparities in NY Prisons appeared first on Law Street.

With the United States locking up more people every year, prison reform is a topic of national concern. The impacts of mass incarceration on communities and families have become an epidemic, one with lasting consequences. Jails are overcrowded–filled to the brim with non-violent offenders–even as rates for more serious crimes have declined. The number of women in jail is growing at a faster rate than men, according to a new report published by the Vera Institute for Justice and the Safety and Justice Challenge. Entitled “Overlooked: Women and Jail in an Era of Reform,” the research is unique and necessary, as most of the existing information on the criminal justice system focuses specifically on men.

HISTORY OF WOMEN BEHIND BARS

Jails are confinement facilities, run by counties or municipalities that hold people accused of a crime while they await case resolution. Over the past forty years, the number of people behind bars in the U.S. has increased five-fold. On any given day in 1970, there were 157,000 people in jail; in 2014, that number rose to 745,000. Now there are more than 11 million admissions annually. Jails have been transformed from housing extremely dangerous individuals to keeping those too poor to post bail or too sick for assistance in the jail system. Life challenges such as unemployment, extreme poverty, physical and behavioral struggles, substance abuse, and mental health issues plague many women in jail.

Around 1970, there were only 8,000 women in the jail system. Now, with nearly 110,000 women behind bars, they are the fastest-growing incarcerated population in the U.S. Women are now held in jails in nearly every county in the country, in stark contrast to 1970 when roughly three-quarters of counties held not a single woman in jail. Women can find themselves involved with the criminal justice system because of poverty, mental and behavioral health issues, substance abuse, or a history of trauma.

The majority of women behind bars are there for non-violent crimes, which amounts to roughly 82 percent according to the last batch of national data from nearly a decade ago. A survey from Davidson County, Tennessee revealed that 77 percent of women in the jails were charged with a misdemeanor. Moreover, women are not necessarily committing new offenses. More recent research has found that women are more likely to be in jail for breaking a condition of supervision in the community, like failing a drug test or missing an appointment with a probation or parole officer.

GEOGRAPHIC INCREASES

Small counties, with less than 250,000 people, are seeing the largest increase in jailed women. In 1970, these same counties had just 1,700 incarcerated women compared to 51,600 by 2014. Sparsely populated counties see an incarceration rate of 140 per 100,000 women. Using 2014 data, the Vera Institute found that on a typical day large counties had an average of 271 inmates per 100,000 people versus 446 inmates in rural counties. 

This is in stark contrast to another trend, which shows a declining rate of incarcerated women in the nation’s largest counties. The trend is illustrated in counties like Stokes County, North Carolina, where women made up 32 percent of the jailed population in 2013, far beyond the national average. Data is still unclear as to why jail populations have increased so significantly in rural areas. Research notes that it could be the demographics of rural and suburban areas, which tend to house poorer populations.

“Handcuffs” Courtesy of [davitydave via Flickr]

PREVALENCE OF HEALTH ISSUES IN INCARCERATED WOMEN

Research has also noted that a number of women behind bars suffer from health issues, particularly mental illness. Thirty-two percent of women in U.S. jails have a serious mental illness, including major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 75 percent of women in jails stated they had symptoms of a mental health disorder in the past year. This high percentage of serious mental illnesses among incarcerated women is intimately tied to the high rates of victimization reported: sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and childhood sexual abuse. The numbers are startling. Based on the research among women in jail, 86 percent report experiencing sexual violence, 77 percent report partner violence, and 60 percent report caregiver violence.

The complexity of mental illness means many incarcerated women are unable to receive effective assistance. One in five women in U.S. jails has experienced a serious mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance abuse disorder. This staggering number is met only with limited mental health care professionals and resources in the jail system. With a distinct lack of proper tools and support systems, many incarcerated women never have their severe mental health issues addressed.

WOMEN OF COLOR IN JAIL

For both men and women, people of color are disproportionately incarcerated. According to the most recent national data, roughly two-thirds of women currently behind bars are women of color. Forty-four percent were black, 15 percent were Hispanic, and five percent were of other racial and ethnic backgrounds, with only 36 percent of incarcerated women identifying as white. At a county level, the racial and ethnic disparities are even larger. In Cook County, Illinois, approximately 81 percent of women admitted in the jails were women of color.

Women of color are far more likely to experience financial instability and crisis, even before they enter a jail. Nearly half of all single black and Hispanic women have zero or negative net wealth, with black women five times more likely to live in poverty and receive public assistance. Staying in jail for even a short period of time can severely impact their basic survival needs, like suspension or even termination of public assistance.

INCARCERATION IMPACTS ON WOMEN

Women are heavily affected by jail, as the environment is often not designed for their specific needs and experiences. Women are assessed with the same assessment tools for men to determine where and how they are housed within facilities. Using a gender-neutral or male-focused tool ignores the research that shows women tend to pose less risk than men. As a result, the tools can classify women at a higher risk than they actually are, with over-classification barring them from educational, vocational, and rehabilitative programs.

Reproductive health needs are also a crucial issue for incarcerated women. Many jails fail to even meet basic hygiene needs for women. Muskegon County Jail was sued in 2014 by the ACLU of Michigan for failing to provide women menstrual hygiene products, toilet paper, and clean underwear. Other women in jails have reported being unable to receive hygiene products on a certain day because they are unavailable or only provided selectively. The health risks and emotional humiliation these policies create have caused some positive policy changes, like efforts to make free supplies readily available to incarcerated women.

WHAT DRIVES THIS GROWTH?

Shifts in police policy and enforcement over the decades contributed to a rising number of arrests of women. One particular policy departments embraced was “broken windows” policing; this policing theory focuses on low-level offenses like petty theft, loitering, and intoxication as a way to prevent more serious crimes. Moreover, in the 1980’s and 1990’s, policing priorities were expanded with the national “War on Drugs,” which escalated the enforcement and criminalization of drug offenses. These policies worked in conjunction to widen police power and entrap more citizens in the jail system.

The increase in these practices, however, had significant impacts on women specifically. Women are more likely than men to be involved in minor offenses like drug possession. Between 1980 and 2009, the arrest rate for women tripled while the arrest rate for men only doubled. Currently, women are arrested more frequently for “other-except-traffic” offenses, which includes activity such as criminal mischief and local ordinance violations, substance use, minor property crimes, and simple assault.

Another example of certain policies increasing the number of women in jail are prostitution diversion programs, which are present in many of the largest U.S. districts. These services may end up bringing more women into contact with the criminal justice system, particularly women of color and transgender women. Many jurisdictions use practices similar to drug stings to curb prostitution. Officers do targeted sweeps of specific neighborhoods and communities that may have high rates of prostitution. Police then may make arrests based on subjective characteristics or observations, such as walking or standing in a particular area or carrying condoms. This practice may be treating prostitution defendants as both victims and offenders, and creating an arrest record for women that can make life outside of the justice system and sex trade difficult to achieve.

CONCLUSION

Incarceration has become common practice in the U.S. for even the smallest, most non-violent of offenses. Considering the profound consequences staying in jail for even a few days can have, time in jail may be more effective when used only for dangerous offenders. Women, particularly women of color, have been a rising target of the criminal justice system for decades now. With current practices and rehabilitative efforts, it is clear that substantive change is needed.

Many questions remain about women in jail. The lack of current, comprehensive research on female incarceration impacts demonstrates a gap in addressing the rising number of jailed women. Reforming the U.S. jail system is within our grasp, if we take the reins and embrace positive, meaningful policy changes.

RESOURCES

Primary

Safety Justice and Challenge: Overlooked: Women and Jail in the Era of Reform

Bureau of Justice Statistics: Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates

Additional

New York Times: Number of Women in Jail Has Grown Faster Than That of Men, Study Says

Washington Post: How Mass Incarceration is Spreading to Rural Counties and the Suburbs

NPR: Study: The Growing, Disproportionate Number Of Women Of Color in U.S. Jails

ACLU: Facts about the Over-Incarceration of Women in the United States

The Sentencing Project: Incarcerated Women and Girls

Center for Court Innovation: Prostitution Diversion Programs

Nicole Zub

Nicole is a third-year law student at the University of Kentucky College of Law. She graduated in 2011 from Northeastern University with Bachelor’s in Environmental Science. When she isn’t imbibing copious amounts of caffeine, you can find her with her nose in a book or experimenting in the kitchen. Contact Nicole at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Mass Incarceration: Why Are There So Many Women Behind Bars? appeared first on Law Street.

In a move that surprised probably no one, but saddened many, a Texas grand jury declined to indict any of the jail staff for the death of Sandra Bland. Bland, 28, was found dead in her cell at the Waller County Jail after being arrested during a routine traffic stop. While her death was ruled a suicide, the entire nature of the situation–the seemingly excessive force used during the stop, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding her untimely death–raised suspicions and criticisms. The grand jury will be meeting again to determine charges against others, including Officer Brian Encinia who originally pulled Bland over and arrested her, but many are pessimistic that charges will not be filed against him either.

Sandra Bland is another entry on a horrifyingly long list of Black Americans who have died at the hands of police officers or in police custody; the police officers or other officials involved in their deaths have overwhelmingly not been charged with any wrongdoing. Bland’s family has called the grand jury procedure that ended in no indictments a “sham,” and the family is moving forward with a wrongful death suit against state and local authorities.

It’s surprising, in a legal sense at the very least, that the grand jury didn’t find any wrongdoing on the part of the jail staff. The forms filled out when she was brought to jail do indicate that she was depressed and had exhibited suicidal tendencies in the past–that should have led to jail officials keeping a closer eye on her, per procedures from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

But there are multiple other instances throughout Bland’s case where strong arguments can be made that the law was broken–beginning with the traffic stop that landed her in jail in the first place. What happened during that stop isn’t so much at issue; video from Encinia’s dash cam as well as a bystander video has long been available to the public. The stop itself was seemingly legal–although there are certainly very convincing concerns about whether or not she would have been stopped in the first place had she been white–but Encinia’s actions after that point are questionable.

The stop quickly escalated into an argument over Bland’s cigarette that ended with Encinia pulling Bland out of the car and arresting her–yet that flies in the face of a recent Supreme Court ruling that states that routine traffic stops can’t be extended unless there’s evidence that the driver has committed another crime, or there’s a safety issue in play. So, the question of whether or not the altercation that led to her arrest stemmed from a legal action on her part will be one that the grand jury has to weigh in its probing of Encinia’s actions.

So, questions about Sandra Bland’s treatment certainly aren’t over, but the fear that Encinia won’t face any charges seems warranted. As Cannon Lambert, one of the attorneys representing the Bland family, stated “if he [officer Encinia] was going to charged, you’d think he’d be charged already. The evidence that they need is flat out on the videotape.”

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Grand Jury Declines to Indict Prison Staff for Death of Sandra Bland appeared first on Law Street.

In the span of four days–between October 30 and November 2–federal prisons around the country released 6,000 nonviolent prisoners. This marked the largest single prisoner release in the history of the United States. The decision was the result of the government’s growing desire to address the overcrowding within the prison system. An additional 40,000 convicts could also be released in the coming months as new, more lenient sentencing rules can be retroactively applied to them as well. Read on to see what led to the recent release and how it compares to similar releases in the past. Now that the government is starting to deal with an issue that has been building for decades, what will a continued response look like and how will the prison system change in the future?

Releasing Prisoners

In the Past

While the recent release of so many prisoners all at once has drawn a variety of reactions, including warnings of increased crime, this is not the first time that a large number of prisoners has been released. In 2011, the Supreme Court ordered the state of California to release 30,000 inmates due to overcrowding in the state’s prison system.

On top of this are the prisoners that are also released over the course of a year as well–the federal government releases up to 55,000 prisoners each year. However, this is only a small portion of the inmates set free, as many as 10,000 are set free each week.

This Release

The recent release was a long time in the making. The final decision came about following the advice of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. The commission lowered maximum sentences for people convicted of drug-related offenses. The change could then be applied retroactively, meaning if a prisoner was already convicted and serving a sentence they could apply for early release. Ultimately, the decision was up to federal judges who reviewed eligible cases and determined whether the person in question would be a threat if released back into society.

Like the process, the release itself was not as straightforward as it may seem either. Of the 6,000 inmates, approximately a third were undocumented immigrants. This group will not be released into the public, but will instead be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which will begin deportation proceedings. Additionally, many of those who were released were already on parole or in half-way houses. On average, those being released already served nine years of their sentences and were only being released around 18 months earlier than expected. The video below details the recent release:

Current Issues

Overcrowding

One of the major reasons for releasing these prisoners is that the prison population is simply too big for the system to manage effectively. There are 698 prisoners for every 100,000 people in the United States, the second highest rate in the world. A 2014 estimate from the Prison Policy Initiative suggests that there are as many as 2.4 million people in U.S. prisons on any given day, including 1.36 million in state prisons. Perhaps most troubling are the findings of a Department of Justice report, which shows that there are nearly 71,000 children in residential placement facilities in February 2010.

In order to properly put this in perspective, it is necessary to look at the U.S. prison population in an international context. As the NAACP points out, the United States has about 5 percent of the world’s population, but it has 25 percent of the world’s prison population. Not only is the United States’ prison population disproportionately large, its racial makeup is also heavily imbalanced. Although Hispanics and African Americans make up approximately 25 percent of the total population, they make up close to 60 percent of all American prisoners.

While simply having a massive number of prisoners does not necessarily mean that the existing prisons are overcrowded, when you look at the concentration of these prisoners it becomes clear that overcrowding is clearly an issue for many states. In fact, California’s mass prison release in 2011 was due specifically to over-crowding.  There were so many prisoners that inmates were being packed into gymnasiums. The situation became so bad that the Supreme Court forced the prisoner release because it was literally a health crisis. California is not an isolated case. While it may be the most extreme example, as of 2014, 17 states had prison populations far above the capacity of their facilities. While overcrowding recently caused states to reconsider their justice systems, it also led to the rise of controversial for-profit private prisons.

Sentencing

Overcrowding is largely a product of the United States’ historically severe sentencing rules. The idea of being “tough on crime” swept the nation in the 1980s. Tough on crime policies continued through the 1990s and early 2000s and only now is the trend starting to reverse itself. The severity of these laws varied from state to state. California had some of the toughest policies, enacting a three strikes law in 1994 that created mandatory punishments for repeat offenders. In 2012, California voters passed Proposition 36, which amended the state’s constitution to limit the use of its three-strikes law.

These sentences are known as mandatory minimums. As the name suggests, these policies lead to mandatory sentences of a minimum length for particular crimes, removing much of the discretion that judges have in the sentencing process. According to Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), “Most mandatory minimum sentences apply to drug offenses, but Congress has enacted them for other crimes, including certain gun, pornography, and economic offenses.” A U.S. Sentencing Commission report found that 14.5 percent of all offenders in 2010 were subject to mandatory minimum penalties–a total of 10,605 prisoners.

What’s Next?

While there are some who fear that releasing so many prisoners, especially at the same time, will lead to a surge in crime, the numbers suggest otherwise. In the California mass release, only auto thefts increased after 30,000 of the state’s inmates were released. Furthermore, a Stanford University study, which involved 1,600 prisoners released when California changed its three strikes law, found a remarkably low recidivism rate. Prisoners released after the three-strikes law changed had a recidivism rate of just 1.3 percent compared to 30 percent for regularly released inmates.

Not all laws are created equally–perhaps the most infamous is the differing penalties for crack cocaine offenses compared to the one for cocaine in its powder form. Originally, the sentencing ratio was 100:1–with those sentenced for crack-related offenses facing much longer prison sentences. While that was reduced to 18:1 with the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010, a disparity remains. The troubling part of this issue is that most people arrested for crack-related offenses were black while most of those who were arrested for cocaine possession were white–reinforcing the racial imbalance in American prisons.

Post-Release Questions 

Another major issue is the question of what former prisoners will do once they get out. A notable concern is recidivism–when a prisoner returns to prison for another crime after his or her initial release. This worry seems warranted in light of a 2005 study by conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)–57 percent were re-imprisoned after one year, 68 percent by year three, and 77 percent by year five.

It should be noted that the way the Bureau of Justice Statistics records its numbers may not be the best way to understand recidivism. In a recent study, researchers found that recidivism is actually much lower than what is reported. Rates found in the BJS studies likely overrepresent people who are re-arrested after being released from prison.  However, even if these new findings are taken into account, which emphasize that certain offenders have a higher risk of recidivism, the issue remains a notable problem for American prisons.

Moreover, for those who do avoid re-offending, life can be difficult once they leave prison. While there are certainly a number of programs and organizations in place, it is still hard for someone with a criminal record to find a job. In a 2008 study from the Urban Institute, only 45 percent of ex-cons had jobs eight months after leaving prison. The following video discusses what happens to prisoners if and when they can make it out of prison:

Conclusion

The recent release of so many prisoners has reignited old fears that the reintroduction of prisoners into society will lead to a wave of crime. However, the evidence from past releases calls this line of thinking into question. Too many people, especially those of color, face long prison sentences, putting significant strain on American prisons. The current system is also costing the United States an estimated $39 billion each year.

To effectively reduce the size of the American prison population, changes beyond releasing prisoners need to be made. While recent sentencing reform, which led to this prisoner release, is an important step toward reducing the American prison population, it will not solve the issue. In addition to reducing the number of prisoners, policymakers will also have to deal with helping inmates readjust to society when they are released.

Resources

Vox: The biggest prisoner release in U.S. History, explained

Time: What happened when California released 30,000 inmates?

NPR: What You Should Know About the Federal Inmate Release

Newsweek: The Unconstitutional Horrors of Prison Overcrowding

FAMM: What are Mandatory Minimums?

The Economist: America’s Prison Population

CNN: Roughly 6000 Federal Inmates to be released

ACLU: Fair Sentencing Act

National Institute of Justice: Recidivism

Business Insider: Getting a Job after prison

NAACP: Criminal Justice Fact Sheet

Washington Post: Prisons in These 17 States are Over Capacity

Huffington Post: For-Profit Prisons are Big Winners of California’s Overcrowding Crisis

Slate: Why do so Many Prisoners End up Back in Prison? A New Study Says Maybe They Don’t

Michael Sliwinski

Michael Sliwinski (@MoneyMike4289) is a 2011 graduate of Ohio University in Athens with a Bachelor’s in History, as well as a 2014 graduate of the University of Georgia with a Master’s in International Policy. In his free time he enjoys writing, reading, and outdoor activites, particularly basketball. Contact Michael at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What A Massive Prisoner Release Means for the Criminal Justice System appeared first on Law Street.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is officially reducing a big burden for American prisoners–the huge cost of prison phone calls. On October 22, the FCC voted to lower the cost of jail and prison phone calls in both and state and federal prisons.

The FCC explained its motivation for changing the rules, disclosing:

Acting on its mandate to ensure that rates for phone calls are just, reasonable and fair for all Americans, the FCC is working to rein in the excessive rates and egregious fees on phone calls paid by some of society’s most vulnerable: people trying to stay in touch with loved ones serving time in jail or prison.

In most cases, inmates’ telephone calling options are limited to one or more of the following calling types: collect, debit account or pre-paid account. Also, incarcerated persons typically may not choose their long distance service provider. These factors, combined with unrestricted long-distance rates, often result in unreasonably high phone bills for inmates’ families.

Currently, phone calls in some prisons can run as high as $14 per minute. Traditionally, prisons or jails have entered into contracts with companies that provide the phone services. Those companies get a chunk of the charges, so there’s motivation to keep upping the prices.

But under the new regulations, phone calls from inmates will be as low as 11 cents per minute in some prisons. Fifteen minute calls, both in state and out state will be capped at $1.65. Additionally, certain service charges will be capped. For example, service charges on Telecommunications Relay Service equipment–equipment that allows deaf or otherwise disabled inmates to make calls–will be prohibited. Flat rate calls will also be eliminated. These new regulations will go into effect in 2016.

These high rates were a hugely prohibitive cost for families who have loved ones in prison. It can break families apart–more than 2.7 million American children have an incarcerated parent. Moreover, it could be dangerous to cut prisoners off from their families. Evidence shows that allowing prisoners to talk to their loved ones can reduce recidivism rates. Cheryl Leanza, an advocate for reforming prison phone policies explained to the Sacramento Bee, “Society and communities are safer because they’re not going to re-offend if they stay connected with a network that can check in with them and make sure they’re alright.” The FCC did a good thing this week by making sure that families can check in with their loved ones–regardless of legal status.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post FCC Lowers the Cost of Prison Phone Calls appeared first on Law Street.

The debate over illegal immigration often focuses on enforcement–how we are going to secure our border and protect Americans–but the consequences of stronger enforcement often generally get less attention from policymakers. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained 441,000 immigrants in 2013. A BuzzFeed News analysis of data from the Department of Justice found that Mexican immigrants are disproportionately detained pending deportation. This is true not only in terms of raw numbers, but also relative to detention rates from other countries–even when accounting for gender, legal representation, and those facing criminal charges.

According to BuzzFeed News,

Three-quarters of all Mexicans facing deportation on noncriminal grounds were placed in detention centers. For Guatemalans, the next most frequently detained group, the rate was 61%. For China and Cuba, longtime adversaries of the United States, the rates were 19% and 16%.

These findings are particularly striking because of how the website’s methodology looked only at people who were detained without facing criminal charges. BuzzFeed News’ article implicitly argues that the current focus on illegal immigration typically relates to immigrants coming from Mexico, and the detention disparity likely reflects an attempt to specifically deter Mexican immigration. The article also cites a Supreme Court decision, which ruled that civil detention cannot be used for deterrence or retribution–revealing a potential issue with ICE’s detention practices.

However, one thing that the analysis is unable to take into consideration is whether those who are detained have been previously deported or have criminal histories. To its credit, BuzzFeed News does acknowledge this and argues, that factors that are unaccounted for “…could explain at least part of the disparity — but probably not all of it, according to the experts consulted by BuzzFeed News.”

The article also highlights potential issues with detention when a detainee does not face criminal charges. A 2009 analysis by the Associated Press found that at one point in time more than half of those in ICE detention did not face criminal charges and had no criminal record.

In recent years, ICE has adjusted its detention policies to focus on high priority immigrants, who include criminals and repeat offenders. Jeh Jonson, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), issued new guidelines for the apprehension, detention, and removal of illegal immigrants to initiate a change from previous policies. DHS has also moved away from what have been called “bed quotas,” which was essentially an implicit requirement to fill every available bed in the department’s detention budget. The department’s budget required it to maintain “a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds,” which in practice became a requirement to fill nearly all of the budgeted beds in detention centers (see chart below). In an appropriations hearing this year, Secretary Johnson argued that this was no longer the department’s policy. Recent statistics also suggest that the actual number of detainees is around 78 percent of the required capacity for the first five months of the 2015 fiscal year.

Image courtesy of Congressional Research Service

Also important is the fact that convictions for immigration offenses caused a significant portion of the growth in the federal prison population. A Pew Research Center analysis of sentencing data found that between 1992 and 2012 the number of federal inmates (including citizens and non-citizens) more than doubled–going from 36,564 to 75,867. That growth is widely acknowledged and is a cornerstone of the criminal justice reform movement currently gaining momentum in the United States. But what is less known is the fact that 48 percent of the growth in federal prisoners is due to sentences for one specific offense: unlawful reentry, which in addition to other immigration offenses made up 30 percent of the federal convictions in 2012. As a result, non-citizen Hispanics make up the single largest portion of the federal prison population at 37 percent.

Tough on immigration policies are often discussed by politicians, but their effects–most notably the detention and imprisonment of immigrants–receive much less attention. Discussion of immigration should not be divorced from its costs and consequences, which despite recent progress in targeting higher priority immigrants remain significant. While supporting stronger border protections is a valid position, and may even be politically expedient, proponents should acknowledge how such a policy will affect prison populations.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Consequences of Stronger Immigration Enforcement Can Be Seen in Our Prisons appeared first on Law Street.

Praised as a “tremendous step forward” toward meaningful penal reform, the Mandela Rules provide a framework for what is and is not permissible in terms of detention conditions in prisons across the globe. With 10 million people in prisons worldwide, it’s easy to assume that there is a high demand for the humane treatment of prisoners. However, while the Mandela Rules have been commended for their progressive revisions of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMRs) that have been in place since 1955, there is still no guarantee that prisons, domestically or internationally, will improve.

For a document that is supposed to provide governments the guidelines necessary to ensure that basic rights are afforded to prisoners, the Mandela Rules fail to provide incentives to abide by them or a method of accountability for prisons that break them. Furthermore, the lack of widespread discussion on the new rules is shocking, and perhaps telling of the low level of importance that both the public and politicians place on reforming the criminal justice system. Just like under the previous SMRs that the Mandela Rules revised, prisons will continue to cut corners, mistreat prisoners, and break this agreement unless there is more legal pressure and incentives to treat inmates with dignity.

The SMRs have since 1955 acted as the universally acknowledged minimum standards for the detention of prisoners and for the development of correctional laws, policies, and practices. On May 22^nd of this year, however, the United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (the Crime Commission) passed a resolution approving the revised standards, named the Mandela Rules after the late South African President Nelson Mandela who was imprisoned for 27 years. These changes were prompted after a review of the SMRs in place concluded that advancements in human rights discourse since 1955 left the SMRs out of date. The Crime Commission identified nine areas for revision, agreeing that the new standards should reflect advances in technology and society.

Rules on health care, LGBT rights, and solitary confinement are the key modifications in the Mandela Rules, but a prison that does not want to be held accountable for treating inmates with dignity can easily dismantle almost all of the updates. One of the most acclaimed aspects of the new rules is that indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement is prohibited. Solitary is defined as confinement of a prisoner for 22 hours or more a day, and prolonged solitary is defined as confinement for fifteen consecutive days. So solitary confinement for fifteen consecutive days is not allowed, but what about fifteen days in confinement, one day out of confinement, and fifteen more days within? The new Rules have so many loopholes and almost no accountability for the “advances” they claim to make in the treatment of prisoners.

The Rules emphasize that prisoners should be protected from torture and inhumane or degrading treatment and punishment. The United Nations will adopt these Rules later this year, though nothing but the potential for an internationally-backed slap on the wrist will prevent prisons from operating under standard minimums. If anything, the Mandela Rules simply say, “Look, we know prisons are bad, and prisoners are being tortured around the world. There’s not much we care to do about that, but here’s some advice that you should follow if you want.”

Yes, state and federal prisons do have their own separate laws in place regarding the treatment of prisoners, but are those laws abided by? The answer, especially in the United States, is a resounding “No.” Even though prison guards are expected to keep inmates safe, there were more than 5.8 million violent crimes self-reported by inmates in 2012. Four percent of the prison population reports being sexually victimized while in prison in the past year, and over half of the incidents involved a prison guard or other staff member. Even though health care is supposed to be afforded to prisoners, 1,300 lawsuits have been filed in the past ten years in Illinois alone against the state because health care in Illinois prisons is so poor that it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. These are only a few examples of failures of concrete laws that have been breeched, and continue to be broken, in prisons across the country. If the initial SMRs were never fully realized in prisons across the world, what hope do we have that the Mandela Rules, which raise the standards that were never even abided by in the first place, will actually be implemented?

Several sponsors of the new SMRs note the importance of civil society in the success of the Mandela Rules. The American Civil Liberties Union’s David Fathi said, “The Rules are only as good as their implementation.” Fathi expressed that both the public and decision makers must be aware of the rules and see them as a national priority in order for the Mandela Rules to be effective. But what if we live in a society in which the public does not see the humane treatment of prisoners as a national priority? And what if we live in a society in which private groups are swaying lawmakers to extend prison sentences and to create harsher punishments? While the Mandela Rules do offer a sort of cheat sheet for evaluating a state’s prison performance, they do not do anything about the public apathy towards the inhumane treatment of prisoners and they do not erase the negative stigmas that pro-prison lobby groups and lawmakers have instilled in the minds of millions. None of the 2016 U.S. presidential candidates have mentioned the Mandela Rules in their campaigns or expressed a plan to ensure that they are implemented in our prisons. If civil society has a critical role to play in the humane treatment of prisoners, and the current campaign rhetoric by governmental leaders is any indication of what civil society cares about, the outlook for prison progress looks bleak.

How do we ensure that these minimum rules will be followed? While the Mandela Rules do call for a more humane treatment of prisoners, and require a more accepting environment and safer prison standards, which is certainly wonderful, they should not be praised as a revolutionary feat. What would be revolutionary is if the United States and other countries would actually adopt these rules in practice rather than merely going through the motions.

Emily Dalgo

Emily Dalgo is a member of the American University Class of 2017 and a Law Street Media Fellow during the Summer of 2015. Contact Emily at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Prisons Won’t Get Better Just Because We’ve Signed Another Document appeared first on Law Street.

This Thursday, President Obama will become the first sitting president to visit a federal prison. He is scheduled to visit with inmates and officials at the El Reno Federal Correction Institute near Oklahoma City. This is just the latest of many steps taken by the Obama administration in an attempt to reform the American prison system.

At the prison, Obama will also conduct an interview with VICE that will be a part of a documentary airing this fall on HBO focusing on America’s broken criminal justice system. The Federal Bureau of Prisons website confirms that El Reno is a medium security federal correctional institution, housing more than 1,000 inmates. Another 248 inmates reside at an adjacent minimum-security camp.

The visit is a part of a week focusing on criminal justice reform, beginning with a speech on Tuesday for the NAACP’s annual convention in Philadelphia. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that Obama will:

Outline the unfairness in much of our criminal justice system, highlight bipartisan ideas for reform, and lay out his own ideas to make our justice system fairer, smarter, and more cost-effective while keeping the American people safe and secure.

Obama has a long history of speaking out about prison system reform. The White House has posted a video of conversation between the president and David Simon, writer of the HBO television show, “The Wire,” in which Obama discusses the massive trend toward incarceration, for even nonviolent drug offenders, which began in the 1990s. He said:

Folks go in at great expense to the state, many times trained to become more hardened criminals while in prison, [and] come out and are basically unemployable.

In Obama’s State of the Union Speech in January, he highlighted criminal justice reform, connecting it to high profile clashes between law enforcement and minority communities.

While there have been years of discussion on the issue, we are just now really starting to see a change With 2.3 million Americans behind bars, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. Despite containing less than five percent of the world’s population, the United States incarcerates nearly a quarter of the world’s prisoners. With a criminal justice system that is marred by racial and class based disparities, these instances of inequality are visible at every step of the criminal process. They often lead to wrongful convictions and inconsistent sentencing that disproportionately affect people of color and low-income individuals. There are also many allegations of racial profiling, which specifically targets minority individuals of color. Finally, the criminal justice system has massive hidden economic and societal costs that reverberate throughout society, affecting us all.

The Executive isn’t the only branch getting in on criminal justice reform. The House has also introduced a new bipartisan bill–the SAFE Justice Act–proposing to reduce the United States prison population, while also cutting crime and saving money. The bill proposes a broad set of reforms to the U.S. justice system, including increasing the use of sentencing alternatives such as probation of certain non-violent offenders; encouraging judicial districts to operate mental health, veteran and other problem-solving courts; and prioritizing prison space for violent and “career” criminals by expanding the release of geriatric and terminally ill offenders. It would also expand earned-time policies to inmates who participate in programs to reduce their recidivism rates, introduce mental health and de-escalation training programs for prison staff, and require performance-based contracting for halfway houses, among other reforms.

The SAFE Justice Act has a lot of potential, as does Obama’s push for reform. But there’s so much more to be done, including a need to change the way we perceive felons. They are so quickly written off as criminals, murderers, or drains on society. They are separated from the rest of society as soon as they are released. So many are falsely convicted or just wait in prisons for months or years before they can even receive a trial. Changes to the system don’t just involve policies–they involve redefining how we treat prisoners as well. So while Obama is taking steps in the right direction by visiting prisons and speaking out about equality, there remains a long road ahead.

Angel Idowu

Angel Idowu is a member of the Beloit College Class of 2016 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Angel at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Obama Continues to Push for Criminal Justice Reform appeared first on Law Street.

Just as the search for New York prison escapees David Sweat and Richard Matt recently came to an end, an even bigger manhunt has begun in Mexico. Joaquin Guzman, also known as “El Chapo” and Mexico’s most powerful drug lord, escaped from Altiplano maximum security federal prison on Saturday night.

This isn’t Guzman’s first escape. In 2001 he escaped by hiding in a laundry cart with the help from prison guards who were later prosecuted and convicted. He was not captured again until 2014 during a raid in a condo in Mazatlan, a Pacific resort in Sinaloa state.

After spending almost a year and a half behind bars, the kingpin is on the loose again. Guzman used an intricate escape route that was somehow built without any authorities noticing. According to the National Security Commission, he was last seen in his shower area around 9pm on Saturday. Once he was lost by the prison’s security cameras, his cell was checked. Authorities found it empty and saw a 20-by-20-inch hole near the shower. He climbed down a 30 foot vertical hole and then escaped through a fully ventilated tunnel with lighting according to National Security Commissioner Monte Alejandro Rubid. Guzman’s cartel is known for building tunnels beneath the Mexico-U.S. border to transport cocaine, methamphetamines, and marijuana, often including ventilation, lighting, and even railcars to easily move products. The tunnel ended in a half-built barn, which according to an unidentified woman was bought by outsiders–possibly connected to Guzman–who began to build immediately about a year ago. Tools, oxygen tanks, and a motorcycle adapted to run on rails were also found by authorities.

#ElChapo‘s friends built him an underground tunnel and helped him escape prison on a motorcycle…. My friends don’t even text me back…

— JayDalton (@JayyDalton) July 13, 2015

While Guzman was a fugitive after his 2001 escape, he turned himself into one of the world’s most notorious drug traffickers with an estimated fortune of $1 billion. Forbes magazine listed him among the “World’s Most Powerful People,” and ranked him above the presidents of countries such as France and Venezuela. Michael S. Vigil, retired U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Chief of International Operations, stated that if El Chapo is not caught immediately he will most likely be back in full command of the Sinaloa cartel within two days. So far thirty employees from Altiplano have been questioned to see if Guzman received any inside help. His escape has embarrassed the Pena Nieto administration, which once received praise for its aggressive approach to top drug lords. President Enrique Pena Nieto said:

This represents without a doubt an affront to the Mexican state. But I also have confidence in the institutions of the Mexican state … that they have the strength and determination to recapture this criminal.

In an interview after Guzman’s 2014 arrest, the president said that allowing him to escape again would be “unforgivable.” The attorney general at the time, Jesús Murillo Karam, said the possibility of another Guzman escape “does not exist.” Clearly both men were wrong. Ana Maria Salazar, a security analyst and former Pentagon counter-narcotics official stated exactly what most people are thinking,

One would have assumed that he would have been the most watched criminal in the world, and apparently, that just didn’t happen. This is a huge embarrassment for the Mexican government. Obviously it’s going to raise a lot of questions as to what’s happening with the Mexican criminal justice system.

Authorities have launched a widespread manhunt to find Guzman and have also closed Toluca International Airport, which is a 45 minute drive away from the prison. The drug lord was very prepared and probably had his escape and post-escape plans well thought out. This scandal should serve as a huge wake up call for the the Mexican government. Officials need to thoroughly examine their prisons and improve the security so that there will be no more chances of criminals escaping. There was no trace of Guzman 24 hours after his escape and officials are going to have to work extremely hard to find him, given his track record.

Taelor Bentley

Taelor is a member of the Hampton University Class of 2017 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Taelor at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Manhunt For Mexico’s Most Notorious Drug Lord Begins appeared first on Law Street.

Columbia University made history last week when it became the first U.S. university to divest its endowment from the private prison industry. A student-led activist campaign has put pressure on the Board of Trustees to divest since early 2014 when a small group of Columbia students discovered that the school was investing in G4S, the world’s largest private security firm, and the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company in the United States. After a vote last week, Columbia’s $9 billion endowment will now be void of its shares in CCA and its estimated 220,000 shares in G4S. Divesting from an industry that makes its money by breeding human suffering is a move that should be loudly applauded.

The divestment vote occurred within the larger discussion of mass incarceration and the tribulations that stem from the systemic injustices that American prisons propagate. While local jails and state and federal prisons all seem to value a punitive rather than rehabilitative approach, private prisons are by far the cruelest. There is an inherent conflict between the supposed goal of the criminal justice system–rehabilitation–and companies’ profit motives. For-profit, private prisons make up a multibillion-dollar per year industry. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that as of 2013, there were 133,000 prisoners in private prisons, or 8.4 percent of the U.S. prison population. These numbers break down to 19.1 percent of the federal prison population being detained in privately owned prisons, and 6.8 percent of the state prison population.

Since 1990, violent crime in America has dropped 51 percent, property crime has fallen 43 percent, and homicides are down 54 percent. But incarceration rates since 1990 have increased by 50 percent. If crime is down, why do we have so many more people in prison? Due to the war on drugs and the increase of harsher sentencing laws, more low-level and non-violent offenders are sent to prison. Almost half of state prisoners are serving time for non-violent crimes, and more than half of federal inmates are imprisoned for drug offenses. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote, “This prodigious rate of incarceration is not only inhumane, it is economic folly.” The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s prison population. We incarcerate a greater percentage of our population than any other country on Earth, and our compulsion to incarcerate costs taxpayers $63.4 billon per year.

The overcrowding of jails and prisons across the country and a reluctance to adequately finance these correctional facilities precipitated the movement toward private prisons, which proponents claimed could result in overall prison cost reductions of 20 percent. However, allowing the facilities to be operated by the private sector has resulted in a meager 1 percent cost decrease. With crime rates on the decline, private prisons began doing everything they could to increase imprisonment rates so that they could stay in business and continue to make money. From 2002 to 2012, CCA, GEO Group, and Management & Training Corporation (MTC), a contractor that manages private prisons, spent around 45 million dollars lobbying state and federal governments, arguing for harsher laws and more arrests. These corporations also poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the election campaigns of governors, state legislators, and judges in order to ensure that their plans become laws that guarantee more people will be incarcerated, so they can continue to make money.

Some people try to justify this system with the thought that people who are in prison are there for a reason. But this wishful thinking is untrue. About 50 percent of immigrants who are in prison are detained in privately owned prisons, and the majority of these people are simply being detained while waiting for their cases to be decided in court. In other words, immigrants who have not been convicted of any crime are being housed in violent, corrupt, dangerous private prisons while they wait for months for courts—that are often illegally being paid off by corrupt companies like CCA to keep people in prison—to decide their fate. The private prison industry has an incentive to keep people in jail. If their business plans included imprisoning to rehabilitate and treating people for mental health or drug addiction issues that may have contributed to their arrests, the industry would collapse. Instead, private prisons are rampant with abuse, neglect, and misconduct; private prisons understaff their facilities to save money, ignore pleas for help and prisoner-on-prisoner violence within the prison, and even refuse healthcare to inmates. In order to make the most profit, the private prison industry wants harsher drug laws, longer sentencing, and wants to increase recidivism rates.

In New York, about $60,000 of government money is spent per year to keep just one inmate imprisoned, while just under $20,000 is spent to educate an elementary or secondary school student. This trend extends nationally: no state in the country invests more—or even an equal amount—on educating an individual student than on housing a prisoner. Maybe if we relaxed drug laws and unreasonable sentencing, focused more on rehabilitation than punishment, did not allow prejudiced and ill-intentioned companies like CCA to spend millions on lobbyists, and we invested more on education than on our corrupt criminal justice system, the United States would be a happier, healthier place.

Columbia University’s divestment from the private prison industry will not solve the issue of mass incarceration. It will not redesign the broken system that we call criminal “justice” in America. It won’t even put CCA or G4S out of business or make a sizeable dent in their net worth. But what divestment will do is beyond economic comprehension. Refusing to reap benefits from companies founded upon violence forced on people by virtue of their race, class, or citizenship status is a social stance that proves a complete rejection of everything private prisons stand for. When you stop investing in something, you’ve stopped believing in it. And no one should believe in the private prison industry.

Emily Dalgo

Emily Dalgo is a member of the American University Class of 2017 and a Law Street Media Fellow during the Summer of 2015. Contact Emily at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Columbia University Backs Away From Private Prisons: We Should Follow Its Lead appeared first on Law Street.

A New York man named Kalief Browder, who spent three years behind bars without a trial after being accused of a robbery in 2010, committed suicide this past Saturday in his Bronx home. His story is now raising questions for many about the prevalent injustices inherent in our prison system.

In 2010 Browder, then 16, was arrested on suspicion of stealing a backpack. He was eventually sent to Rikers Island where he would spend three years awaiting a trial that he hoped would prove his innocence. Browder spent roughly two of his three years in solitary confinement suffering intense physical and emotional abuse and was severely beaten by officers and other inmates. He also attempted suicide at least six times.

In a 2013 New Yorker interview with Jennifer Gonnerman, Browder recalled punishments he would receive from the guards for attempting to commit suicide. Browder recalled one incident where he ripped off the sheets of his bed in his jail cell and fashioned them into a noose. When he was about to hang himself, guards stormed into his cell, tackled him into his bed, and punched him repeatedly. As a punishment for this suicide attempt, the guards starved Browder for up to four meals at a time.

In 2013, he was allowed to go home after the charges against him were dropped. He never had a trial. 

His attorney, Paul Prestia, described the difficulties that he faced after leaving prison, saying, “every day was a struggle. He lived with a degree of sadness every day since his release.” Prestia said:

When he came out [of jail] and I first met him, he was completely broken — I had to show him how to use a computer; he had to get a job. These were issues he was going to have for his whole life. It’s not his fault. He didn’t deserve that.

After his release, Browder experienced deep bouts of depression and became increasingly paranoid. Six months after his release, Browder attempted suicide, and was hospitalized. During his time in the hospital, Browder was said to be gaunt, restless, and deeply paranoid. While he was eventually released from the hospital, and succeeded for some time–at one point earning a 3.5 GPA at Bronx Community College and tutoring GED students, these issues appear to have persisted. Browder committed suicide on June 6; he had just turned 22 years old.

Browder’s story is deeply tragic and problematic. Someone stuck in a prison for three years waiting for a trial should not be subjected to severe beatings, starvation and other mistreatments. Of the 10,000 inmates at Rikers Island, about 1,500 have been there for the last year without being convicted of a crime. It’s hard to determine how long the wait for a trial usually is; some statistics say a few months, while others wait several years. In Browder’s case, a real trial was never had, and he was released without the necessary resources.

The horrible facts of Browder’s incarceration echo multiple concerns about the way we treat our nation’s prisoners, particularly the racial inequalities in the justice system. The U.S. is said to currently imprison a larger percentage of its Black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. African Americans are incredibly overrepresented in prisons. Despite making up only 13 percent of the population, they made up 38 percent of state prisoners in 2011. This highly problematic reality is highlighted by cases like Browder’s: how many lives must end before citizens, particularly African-American men, are treated fairly in our justice system?

There are also concerns specifically about Rikers Island that are now coming to light. A report from the U.S. Department of Justice described “rampant use of unnecessary and excessive force” by guards against teenage inmates on Rikers Island. Surveillance footage obtained by Gonnerman shows Browder being beaten by a guard and assaulted by a large group of inmates. Prestia points out that the fact that this kind of treatment happened in the U.S. is shocking, stating:

When you go over the three years that [Browder] spent [in jail] and all the horrific details he endured, it’s unbelievable that this could happen to a teen-ager in New York City. He didn’t get tortured in some prison camp in another country. It was right here!

In April in a statement provided by the New Yorker, New York City Mayor Bill de Blaiso said that Browder’s “tragic story put a human face on Rikers Island’s culture of delay — a culture with profound human and fiscal costs for defendants and our city.” Since Browder’s release some progress has been made and de Blaiso’s administration has issued a series of major reforms at Rikers. For example, it was able to end the practice of putting 16 and 17-year-olds into solitary confinement. While that’s certainly progress, the tragic end to Browder’s story still brings up many seriously problematic issues that are far from being solved.

Angel Idowu

Angel Idowu is a member of the Beloit College Class of 2016 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Angel at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What Kalief Browder’s Tragic Story Tells Us About the Prison System appeared first on Law Street.

Two convicted murderers are still on the loose today after escaping a maximum security prison in New York over the weekend. The Upstate facility, only 20 miles from the Canadian border, and more than 250 law enforcement officials are conducting an extensive manhunt.

Prison personnel discovered that convicted killers David Sweat, 34, and Richard Matt, 48, were missing around 5:30AM Saturday, June 6.  They were last seen during a headcount on Friday evening. The prison immediately went into lockdown when guards realized that the convicts were gone.

Hundreds of law enforcement officials throughout the United States, Canada, and even Mexico are all on high alert since authorities are unsure as to how far the two men could have gotten since their escape. During the manhunt’s third day, the investigation ramped up with search dogs, roadblocks, and helicopters continuing to comb the area hoping to find clues as to what direction the men are headed.

News that missing escaped killers could be just about anywhere has many people on edge. Both men had been serving lengthy prison sentences for the heinous murders that they committed many years earlier. Sweat was serving a sentence of life without parole for brutally killing a Broome County Sheriff’s Deputy in 2002. Matt was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for kidnapping, killing, and dismembering his former boss in Niagara County in 1997. For Matt, this is actually his second time escaping from prison, as he did it once before in 1986 from Erie County Jail.

New York Gov. Cuomo announces $100K reward for info leading to capture of 2 prison escapees. http://t.co/3At6HDrwcG pic.twitter.com/kZl1AL2Y0K

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) June 7, 2015

This recent escape was very elaborate and well planned, given the prison’s level of security. Many are speculating that the two men had inside help. Sweat and Matt reportedly used power tools to break their way through a steel wall in their cells, then crawled through a catwalk and drilled their way through a brick wall. After that, they cut through a steam pipe, then broke the chain and lock of a manhole cover on the outside of the prison where they were able to flee the premises. The two convicts stuffed their beds with clothes in an attempt to fool the guards that they were sleeping, but decided to leave behind a taunting note on a pipe, which read “have a nice day!”

The Clinton Correctional Facility holds nearly 3,000 inmates and is monitored by approximately 1,400 correctional officers. It is also surrounded by farmland and forest, therefore officials believe that the men likely had help once they got outside of the prison.

Governor Andrew Cuomo said that Sweat and Matt’s escape has created a “crisis situation,” and that New York will provide a $100,000 reward for information leading to their capture. Cuomo believes that the pair definitely had help, although he would be surprised if any corrections officers were discovered to have been involved.

How were these men able to obtain power tools and how is it that none of the guards heard or noticed the escape happening? These are two of the biggest questions surrounding the mystery of this seemingly impossible escape. A female employee of the prison has reportedly been questioned by authorities to determine if she helped the inmates escape, and the New York Post reports that she has already been removed from her position.

Many are saying that Sweat and Matt had to have had help from the inside, especially to gain access to the tools used to break through the walls. All of the employees who work in this section of Clinton Correctional Facility are under extreme scrutiny, as well as many of the contracted workers of the prison. All of the tools that are used by prison employees have so far been accounted for, puzzling law enforcement officials from various agencies working this case. Extensive renovations have been underway in the prison lately, leading some to believe that the men might have gotten the power tools directly from the contracted workers, or perhaps they were left out by accident.

This is the first escape from the prison, which opened in 1845. The layout of the facility is reportedly confusing, so the men would have needed help from someone who worked there or had access to a map in order to execute this escape through the maze of prison tunnels.

Think prison breaks rarely happen? Unbeknownst to most citizens, Sweat and Matt’s escape is one of many that happen in this country–around 2,000 per year to be exact. Prison breaks from maximum security prisons are rare since they require more planning and extra tools, although prisons with minimal security are often plagued by this problem.

The only definite thing known at this point is that two highly dangerous men are at large somewhere in North America, therefore authorities urge all citizens to be extra cautious, especially those near the Clinton Correctional Facility.

Toni Keddell

Toni Keddell is a member of the University of Maryland Class of 2017 and a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Toni at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Prison Break: Manhunt Continues for Escaped Killers appeared first on Law Street.

As if Baltimore has not been in the news enough recently for civil and human rights abuses, yet another report of maltreatment surfaced today. The Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC) came under fire after the American Civil Liberties Union, the Public Justice Center, and the law offices of Elizabeth Alexander filed a legal motion on behalf of detainees of the center to reopen a suit against BCDC, claiming that the terms of a 2009 settlement have not been met. The motion claims that seven preventable deaths of prisoners have occurred in the last two years due to the appalling living conditions of the center. The motion accuses state officials, who are supposed to oversee that the jail is being run appropriately, of violating the detainees’ Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

Medical neglect is reported to be rampant in the BCDC with prisoners housed in moldy, vermin-infested cells with flooding toilets, exposing inmates to bodily wastes that worsen existing health issues. The motion claims that inspections of the center revealed not only horrifying living conditions, health hazards, and a lack of basic medical care, but also that detainees were routinely denied life-saving medications. An examination of the BCDC’s medical records exposed several cases of HIV-positive inmates’ antiretroviral drugs being discontinued. Comparably detrimental were cases of diabetic detainees being denied insulin and having food restrictions ignored and mentally ill prisoners denied psychotropic drugs. The motion claims that a complete lack of medical documentation and health planning is the probable cause for the seven preventable deaths inside the center.

Debra Gardner, the Public Justice Center’s legal director, stated in a press release today, “…detainees in need of medical attention and treatment for infections, injuries, psychiatric conditions, and other urgent health concerns wait for days and weeks, their suffering prolonged to the point of cruelty.” The case’s lead counsel, Elizabeth Alexander, recently stated,

I was struck by the huge number of cells that couldn’t be occupied because they were not habitable. This is a facility that has outlived its physical life.

While all inmates morally deserve human rights and are supposed to legally be afforded them, 90 percent of BCDC inmates are awaiting trial and are therefore still innocent in the eyes of the law. Black Americans make up 62 percent of Baltimore’s population, yet they form about 80 percent of the BCDC population, and 95 percent of all juveniles detained there. Extreme racial issues have proven to be widespread in the city of Baltimore, and the case of the BCDC only continues to shed light on the severity of human rights abuses in the state.

Given that these allegations involve practices that occurred under Presidential candidate Martin O’Malley’s tenure as Governor of Maryland, it is unclear if this case will impact his bid for President in 2017. Either way, O’Malley’s inability to ensure that jails within his state provided proper medical care and basic human rights to its inmates should not be disregarded.

Emily Dalgo

Emily Dalgo is a member of the American University Class of 2017 and a Law Street Media Fellow during the Summer of 2015. Contact Emily at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Horrifying Allegations Shed Light on Conditions of Baltimore Jail appeared first on Law Street.

Here in the United States we imprison a lot of people. Often we imprison them for a long time, and doing so obviously costs taxpayers a lot of money. So, for a long time, there’s been a conversation in this country over whether it’s productive to lock people up so much. Well, now prisons are trying to answer those questions themselves by using psychological assessments to determine whether or not it’s safe to release prisoners.

In an investigative report, Associated Press reporters found that for years, states have been using secretive psychological examinations to try to determine recidivism rates, in an attempt to figure out which prisoners should be released. The tests can also be used to help determine how the prisoner will be treated in prison.

These examinations vary from state to state, but most include a long series of questions about things like family background, education, income, and history. Each answer is given a score, although it’s unclear exactly what the parameters for scoring are. Then, those scores are tallied, and the assessment is used for a variety of things. If this seems vague, that’s because, well, it is very vague. Not only do these evaluations differ from state to state, but sometimes they differ within the state or jurisdiction. They don’t necessarily weight answers the same way–an offender could score differently on different tests, which is exactly what happened to Milton Thomas, an Arkansas inmate. But, most importantly, they’re basically kept secret. Some states never release the results.

There are also a lot of questions over whether the assessments are actually reliable. They do rely heavily on the offenders’ answers to the questions. If an inmate is lying, or does not remember something correctly, his scores could be different. Prisons don’t always check out the answers to make sure that they’re correct.

Furthermore, there are concerns that the tests unfairly discriminate against those offenders who come from lower income backgrounds or have attained lower levels of education than their peers.

There have, unsurprisingly, been incidents where the test results were “wrong,” and someone who was released because of his score ended up committing a new crime. One of the more prominent ones was Darren Vann, a sex offender released in Texas. His assessment labeled him as “low risk to reoffend,” but then a year later he confessed to killing seven women.

There have been some moves to reform these surveys. The Justice Department has been aiding and funding states in developing policies and tests; however, the tests aren’t currently used at the federal level, and there have been statements made by Attorney General Eric Holder that indicate that the use of such tests stands counter to DOJ policies. In August he stated,

Criminal sentences must be based on the facts, the law, the actual crimes committed, the circumstances surrounding each individual case, and the defendant’s history of criminal conduct. They should not be based on unchangeable factors that a person cannot control, or on the possibility of a future crime that has not taken place.

It’s definitely a good thing that prisons are trying to determine whether or not it makes sense to keep prisoners in for longer–we really do incarcerate a scarily large chunk of the population. That being said, there are clearly some big issues with the tests being used, and the total lack of transparency may mean there are even more issues that we don’t even know about yet. These tests may be a step in the right direction, but that doesn’t make them the right step.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Prisons Using Secretive Tests to Determine Release Eligibility appeared first on Law Street.

A record number of inmates imprisoned for crimes they did not commit were exonerated in 2014, according to a newly released report. The National Registry of Exonerations–a project by the University of Michigan Law School–released the report Tuesday boasting a total of 125 exonerations in the United States.

This was a significant increase compared to the previous highest total of 91 in both 2013 and 2012. In 2014, Texas led the list of number of exonerations with 39, followed by New York with 17, and Illinois with seven. The 37 percent increase is largely driven by an increase in drug related exonerations, most notably 33 separate exonerations in Harris County (Houston), Texas, due to an upped focus on reviewing arrests there.

Texas led the country in exonerations last year, with 39, followed by NY with 17 http://t.co/qMKDsPlNClpic.twitter.com/ARp6iwTbe1

— Tierney Sneed (@Tierney_Megan) January 27, 2015

Many of these exonerations involved inmates pleading guilty to drug possession when they had no such drugs. Inger Chandler, head of the Conviction Review Section in the Harris County District Attorney’s office, hypothesized the reasons behind this, saying:

Some probably thought the pills or powders they were carrying contained illegal drugs when in fact they didn’t; others – especially defendants with criminal records, who generally cannot post the comparatively high bails that are set for them and who risk substantial terms in prison if convicted – agreed to attractive plea bargains at their initial court appearances, despite their innocence, rather than remain in pretrial custody and risk years in prison.

Pleading guilty to something you didn’t do apparently isn’t that uncommon. According to the report, a record breaking 47 of the 125 defendants were exonerated of crimes that they actually pled guilty to, continuing a growing trend that was evident last year as well.

While groups like the Innocence Project have devoted themselves for years to helping the “not guilty” behind bars, this report attributes the spike in exonerations to growing law enforcement cooperation and newly formed prosecutorial “Conviction Integrity Units” (CIU). This shows that the legal system is beginning to take more action to address innocence claims that were traditionally ignored. Prosecutors among these 15 CIUs have begun to tackle what they call a serious problem of “erroneous convictions” by reexamining cases with claims of innocence, accounting for 49 of the 2014 exonerations. University of Michigan law professor and co-founder of the registry told USA Today:

I think there is a seachange in the thinking related to the fallibility of the criminal justice system. It turns out that (wrongful conviction) is a much more common problem than everybody realizes.

DNA testing wasn’t the magical cure-all for freeing these prisoners that shows like “CSI” would have you believe. Only 22 cases involved DNA evidence, accounting for 18% of the exonerations.

The crimes most commonly exonerated since 1989 have been either homicides or sex-related. Some of these prisoners (mostly male) have been behind bars for decades awaiting their freedom. Take Ricky Jackson for example, who was wrongfully convicted of murder, attempted murder and robbery in 1975. Jackson spent 39 years, the longest time ever served by an exoneree, in an Ohio prison until he was acquitted after a witness recanted the false testimony that put him behind bars.

According to the New York Times, the felony convictions system has a success rate of 99.973 percent, making the error rate .027 percent. As impressive as that may seem, given the high levels of incarceration in the United States, that means that there are still undoubtedly more inmates still incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. This report’s startling numbers may provide some of these prisoners hope in their own legal battles.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Exonerations of Wrongly Accused Hit Record High in 2014 appeared first on Law Street.

It’s a new year, and I for one am excited to see what it will bring. No matter what, there will definitely be a lot of legal issues to discuss, debate, and bring changes to all of our lives. The five cases below are the top five to watch in 2015; some have already appeared before SCOTUS and await decisions in 2015, while others will be heard throughout the year. Here are five fascinating Supreme Court cases to watch in 2015.

Anthony Elonis v. United States

Law Street has actually been covering this interesting case for a while–check out our coverage of the case, the University of Virginia law clinic that’s gotten involved, and the all the legalese behind it. The reason we’ve followed it so closely is because it really is fascinating. Anthony Elonis was convicted of threatening multiple people, including his wife, an FBI agent, the police, and a kindergarten class. But these weren’t threats in the classical sense. They were written on his Facebook page in the form of rap lyrics. He claims the posts are art, protected under the First Amendment, and that he never intended to hurt anyone. It will be up to the Supreme Court to decide if such intent needs to be shown when convicting someone of making threats. The case was heard on December 1, 2014, but the court has yet to rule.

King v. Burwell

In King v. Burwell, SCOTUS will yet again be asked to weigh the Affordable Care Act. This time, it’s all about the tax subsidies, and weirdly, the central question in really depends on one word: “state.” The way that the ACA reads, in order for an individual to qualify for a tax subsidy, he needs to be receiving healthcare “through an exchange established by the state.” So, can people residing in states that haven’t set up their own exchanges, but instead rely on the federal program, get those tax subsidies? The IRS certainly thinks so and has been granting the subsidies. It’s an argument based pretty much on semantics, but it could have a huge effect on the ACA itself. This case will be heard in March.

Peggy Young v. United Parcel Service 

This case will ask the Supreme Court to weigh in on how pregnant employees are treated. Peggy Young, formerly a delivery driver for UPS, is arguing that the company violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). The PDA says that pregnant workers should be treated the same as any other worker who is “similar in their ability or inability to work.” Young and her lawyers argue that other employees who sustain temporary injuries or something of the like are moved to other positions, while she was forced to take unpaid leave. UPS claims that those other workers are given different jobs based on policies that don’t apply to Young, and she was treated the same as she would have been had she sustained an injury out of work. It will be up to the Supreme Court to decide who’s in the right here. The case was just heard in December 2014; an opinion is forthcoming.

Holt v. Hobbs

Holt v. Hobbs will require the justices to look into prison procedures that prevent inmates from growing a beard in Arkansas. The plaintiff, Gregory Holt, wants to be able to grow a half-inch beard in accordance with his Muslim faith. The state is arguing that it could be used to smuggle drugs or other contraband. SCOTUS will have to rule on whether or not those prison procedures violate the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The question that the justices will consider is whether or not there’s a compelling enough government interest to prevent Holt from expressing his religion. The case was heard in October 2014; the opinion will be issued this year.

Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama

This case centers on the practice of gerrymandering. The justices will have to decide whether or not it was illegal for Alabama to redraw the districts in 2012 after the Census in a way that packed black voters into particular districts. The Alabama Black Caucus says that it relied too much on race when drawing those districts. While partisan gerrymandering is usually legal, racial gerrymandering is not–so the justices will have to decide which actually happened here. This case was heard in November 2014; the opinion is expected in the coming months.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post SCOTUS Cases to Watch in 2015 appeared first on Law Street.

For many people, Guantanamo Bay conjures horrific thoughts of terrorists, torture, and inhumane treatment. Many are surprised to hear that this dark stain in American history still exists and holds more than 100 detainees. While President Obama pledged to close Guantanamo Bay during his first campaign for the presidency, the process has been far from easy. Where can the United States send detainees to be released, and who will accept those deemed simply too dangerous to be set free?

What is Guantanamo Bay?

Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a U.S. military prison located at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Southeastern Cuba. Since 1903, the United States has been leasing the 45 square miles the base sits on from Cuba in an arrangement that can only be terminated by mutual agreement. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, existing detention facilities at the base were temporarily repurposed in order to hold detainees and prosecute them for war crimes in the “War on Terror.”

Since 2001, Guantanamo Bay has housed nearly 800 detainees. As of the beginning of 2015, there are 127 detainees at Guantanamo Bay. During President George W. Bush’s administration, the United States claimed that since the detainees were not on American soil they were thus not protected by the U.S. constitution. Their status as “enemy combatants” meant they could be denied U.S. legal protections and even protections from the Geneva Conventions. Many detainees endured cruel, inhumane treatment and various forms of torture while being held indefinitely without charges. The Supreme Court later ruled in various cases that procedures at Guantanamo Bay violated military law and the Geneva Conventions.

President Obama signed an executive order following his 2009 inauguration ordering the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay to be closed within a year. Despite this order, various obstacles have required that the facilities remain open.

Why haven’t the detention facilities closed?

The difficulty in closing the facilities at Guantanamo Bay comes in finding an appropriate place for the detainees to go. Many countries do not wish to take in detainees, and Congress objects to holding trials in the United States for any of the detainees who may have to serve longer sentences.

On December 19, 2014, President Obama signed the annual defense policy bill, titled the National Defense Authorization Act, into law. The Act prohibits him from closing Guantanamo Bay or transferring the detainees to U.S. soil. Negotiators even rejected a change that would have allowed detainees to come to the United States for emergency medical care rather than fly doctors and equipment to them. Despite signing, the frustrated President Obama hinted that he may claim constitutional powers to transfer some detainees against Congress’ wishes. According to the Washington Times, President Obama stated that since the law “violates constitutional separation of powers principles, (the) administration will implement them in a manner that avoids the constitutional conflict.” Watch the video below for more of President Obama’s sentiments.

At this point, the best way to whittle down the number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay is to transfer them elsewhere. Fifty-nine detainees have been approved for transfer but still remain at the facility. President Obama is allowed to transfer detainees to other countries willing to take them; however, the transfers can only take place after the Secretary of Defense certifies that they are not likely to join terrorist organizations. Frustrations linger between President Obama’s National Security staff and outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. While the staff has approved transfers, sign-off delays from Hagel and the Pentagon slow the process.

Has progress been made?

After a virtual halt in transfers between 2011 and 2013, a quickened pace for detainee releases was seen in 2014. Last year the Obama administration was able to transfer 28 detainees. Most recently they have been accepted by Kazakhstan, Uruguay, and Afghanistan, and they are not likely to face further detainment.

Transfers

Another 59 detainees have been approved for transfer but remain at Guantanamo Bay; 51 of those approved are from Yemen. The United States is not willing to send the detainees back to Yemen due to instability and prevalent militant activity. Concerns that the government there cannot ensure that the men will not join a terrorist organization rule out any chance they would be sent back to the country. The United States is instead looking to countries in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East to take some of the detainees. Countries must assure the United States the detainees will not return to the battlefield and will be treated humanely.

Detainees in Limbo

If the United States can find places to send all of the 59 detainees approved for transfer, officials can begin the more difficult task of deciding what to do with the remaining prisoners. An additional 58 detainees are expected to remain in limbo. They are considered too difficult to try in court due to insufficient evidence, but they are still too dangerous to release. Ten detainees, including five alleged to have helped plot the 9/11 attacks, are in the military trial stage and have been for months. Administration officials say that the detention center cannot be closed without sending at least some of the remaining inmates to the United States to be held for longer sentences.

Cost Issue

The hope is to decrease the population down to the low 120s within the next month, making it half of what is was when President Obama took office in 2009; however, this still leaves President Obama far from his goal of closing the prison. The White House has continually argued that Guantanamo is a propaganda symbol used by terrorists to fuel anger at the United States and so it should be eliminated; however, the Obama administration has increasingly made the argument for Guantanamo Bay closure from a financial standpoint. According to the Wall Street Journal, the cost to operate the prison is between $400 and $500 million annually. The annual cost per inmate at Guantanamo Bay is well above $2 million, while officials say the cost to hold an inmate at a U.S. supermax prison would be only around $78,000. As more inmates are transferred from Guantanamo Bay, the cost per inmate continues to rise. The hope is to reduce political opposition to the ban on transferring detainees to the United States by shrinking the number held at Guantanamo until maintaining the separate facility seems far too expensive.

Watch the video below for more information on the difficulty of closing Guantanamo Bay.

Does releasing detainees pose security risks?

It depends on who you ask. A 2013 report from the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) stated that 17 percent of the more than 600 Guantanamo detainees released or transferred since 2002 returned to militant activity. An additional 12 percent were suspected of doing so. In order to cut down on this recidivism the DNI recommended avoiding transfers to countries enduring conflict, instability, or active recruitment by terrorist organizations. President Obama noted, however, that over 90 percent of Guantanamo Bay detainees transferred during his administration are not confirmed or suspected of having reengaged in terrorist activity. Still, many critics contend that the increased pace of prison transfers raises national security concerns.

The risk of future terrorism  is not limited to released Guantanamo Bay detainees. For instance, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, head of the Islamic State, was once a prisoner at a U.S. detention center in Iraq before being released. Others note that recidivism in the U.S. legal system is higher than 60 percent, which is much worse than recidivism rates from Guantanamo Bay. While there are risks in releasing detainees, there are similar risks in releasing any prisoner.

With the goal of shutting down Guantanamo Bay, there are few other options than releasing detainees to other countries. Americans remain fearful of detainees being held on U.S. soil. A Gallup poll released in June 2014 said 29 percent of Americans support closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and transferring detainees to U.S. prisons. Sixty-six percent oppose the idea. While Americans may agree in theory that the prison should close, they do not want the detainees to ever be held on U.S. soil.

Watch the video below for more of the potential risks of moving prisoners to the United States.

Conclusion

Guantanamo Bay will not be closing anytime in the immediate future. Ultimately President Obama may have to threaten executive action if he cannot overcome congressional opposition to moving the detainees more quickly and shutting down the facility. With no place to put many of the remaining prisoners who are stuck in limbo, it is likely some would have to be sent to the United States for the prison to close anytime soon. At this time, that seems unlikely to happen; however, given fewer detainees and extremely high costs of running the facility, the American public may eventually warm to the idea of housing certain prisoners in the United States.

Resources

Primary

White House: Executive Order: Closure of Guantanamo Bay

Director of National Intelligence: Summary of Reengagement of Detainees

Additional

Washington Post: U.S. Prepare to Accelerate Detainee Transfers

CNN: Guantanamo Bay Naval Station Fast Facts

Politifact: Obama: ‘We’re Spending Millions for Each Individual’

The New York Times: Four Afghans Released From Guantanamo Bay

Washington Times: Obama Signs Defense Bill That Keeps Gitmo Open

CNN: U.S. Hopes to Transfer Dozens From Gitmo

CNN: What Happens When Detainees Get Out?

USA Today: Obama Faces Challenges in Closing Gitmo

Fox News: U.S. Releases Fives More Guantanamo Bay Prisoners

Wall Street Journal: Obama Weighs Options to Close Guantanamo

Alexandra Stembaugh

Alexandra Stembaugh graduated from the University of Notre Dame studying Economics and English. She plans to go on to law school in the future. Her interests include economic policy, criminal justice, and political dramas. Contact Alexandra at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What Will it Take to Finally Close Guantanamo Bay? appeared first on Law Street.

The death penalty has long been a topic of contention in the United States. Some states, like Texas, make heavy use of the ability to enact capital punishment against its worst offenders. Others have banned the practice altogether. Read on to find out about the arguments for and against the death penalty in the United States.

What does the death penalty look like in the US?

The death penalty is legal in the United States–although it is up to the state’s discretion to determine whether or not to make it permissible within its borders. Currently 32 states have capital punishment laws on the books. The death penalty was, briefly, rendered essentially illegal in the United States by the 1972 Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia but was reinstated in 1976 with the case Gregg v. Georgia. Between when the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, and the end of 2014, almost 1,400 prisoners have been executed.

The United States’ perspective on the death penalty is unique among many of its allies and peer nations. Japan is often described as the only other industrialized nation to use the death penalty. A full 140 other nations have abolished the practice. In 2013, the United States killed the fifth most people in the world, ranking only behind China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Pakistan, Yemen, North Korea, Vietnam, and Libya round out the rest of the top ten.

What does the legal argument surrounding the death penalty look like?

The debate over the death penalty in America typically rests on the Fifth and Eighth Amendments.  The Fifth Amendment established due process in the American legal system, stating that a person shall not “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”  On the other hand, the Eighth Amendment prevents the use of “cruel and unusual punishment.” Judges have interpreted these two amendments to mean that the death penalty is constitutional as long as it is carried out as humanely as possible and only after due process.

The juxtaposition of those arguments is actually what led to the de facto four-year stoppage of the death penalty between 1972 and 1976. In Furman v. Georgia, it was decided that particular death penalty statues were unconstitutional, not the act of capital punishment itself. The focus of Furman was on the arbitrariness of the statutes, rendering them unconstitutional. States rewrote the laws, a new suit called Gregg v. Georgia made it to the Supreme Court, and was ruled constitutional. Currently, the death penalty is viewed as constitutional, if states decide to use it.

What are the arguments against the death penalty?

Opponents of the death penalty claim that such punishment is immoral and violates the sanctity of life, while others argue that those claims are based on faith and religion, which should not be the basis of American law. Although there has been a trend in opposition to capital punishment, the majority of Americans are still in favor of such a penalty.  Deterrence statistics generally promote the effect of the death penalty, but a lot of doubt still remains. Certain organizations, like the European Union, have taken strong stances in opposition to the penalty citing issues of human rights.

Those who don’t believe in the death penalty also bring up concerns about the history of racism within American capital punishment. Forty-two percent of inmates on death row are black, despite the fact that black people are only around 14 percent of the American population. Particularly there’s concern that black defendants are sentenced to death at a disproportionate rate when their alleged victims were white. As Amnesty International points out:

A 2007 study of death sentences in Connecticut conducted by Yale University School of Law revealed that African-American defendants receive the death penalty at three times the rate of white defendants in cases where the victims are white. In addition, killers of white victims are treated more severely than people who kill minorities, when it comes to deciding what charges to bring.

In addition, arguments against the death penalty point out that sometimes those executed are exonerated after the fact, after new evidence, re-tested evidence, or changing testimony is made clear. While exact numbers are almost impossible to quantify, a study in 2014 estimated that more than 4 percent of prisoners on death row were probably innocent.

What are the arguments for the death penalty?

Those who believe in the death penalty argue that it’s a fair sentence, reserved for those who commit only the most heinous crimes. It prevents them from ever committing a horrible crime again with a finality that no other method of punishment could possibly guarantee. It can also act as a deterrent to others who would consider committing such crimes. In addition, it provides a level of closure for the family and loved ones of the victim. Many Americans do believe that some people deserve the death penalty. As Rick Perry put it in the lead-up to the 2012 elections:

No, sir. I’ve never struggled with that at all. The state of Texas has a very thoughtful, a very clear process in place of which — when someone commits the most heinous of crimes against our citizens, they get a fair hearing, they go through an appellate process, they go up to the Supreme Court of the United States, if that’s required.

But in the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you’re involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is, you will be executed.

Conclusion

The arguments for and against the death penalty in the United States are far from over. Politicians will still be asked their opinions on the controversial practice, passionate appeals will continue to be made, and states will still be free to make their own laws regarding the punishment. While the legality may no longer be as strong a point of contention as it used to be, the arguments over the death penalty are sure to continue.

Resources

Primary

Constitution: Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution

Constitution: Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution

European Union: EU Policy on Death Penalty

Additional

Boston: Execution Saves Innocents 

Heritage Foundation: The Death Penalty Deters Crime and Saves Lives 

LA Times: The Death Penalty: Valid Yet Targeted 

Washington Post: Md. Judge Advocates for Death Penalty, Says Convict May be Greeted by Devil 

Washington Post: Do We Need the Death Penalty?

DeathPenalty.org: California’s Death Penalty: All Cost and No Benefit

ACLU: The Case Against the Death Penalty

The New York Times: More Evidence Against the Death Penalty

US News: Conservative Case Against the Death Penalty

Columbia Law: Capital Punishment: Deterrent Effects & Capital Costs

Penal Reform: Key Facts

PBS: Is the Death Penalty Unjust? 

Gallup: Death Penalty

ProCon: Should the Death Penalty be Allowed?

Economist: Democracy and the Death Penalty: an Evolving Debate

Santa Clara University: Capital Punishment: Our Duty or Our Doom?

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Death Penalty in the United States: Why We Still Have It appeared first on Law Street.

The clock is counting down to the day Teresa Giudice must report to federal prison, but she isn’t going down without a fight. As Allison Dawson explained in October, the original Real Housewives of New Jersey cast member was sentenced to 15 months in prison for wire and bankruptcy fraud. This week, however, she filed suit against her former bankruptcy attorney, Jim Kridel, for malpractice.

U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, who also sentenced Giudice’s husband Joe to 41 months in prison, made a point of reprimanding the couple for not disclosing all their assets to the court during their bankruptcy and related proceedings.

It feels as if things have been hidden or concealed…It’s as if you thumb your nose at this court…If [Teresa] had put something down [on the financial disclosure forms], anything, I think [probation] would have been fine…She put nothing down, nothing.

It certainly seems from Salas’ statement that had Teresa’s disclosure forms been complete and accurate, it’s unlikely that she would be serving a 15-month sentence at the Danbury federal prison beginning January 5, 2015. Teresa has now filed suit against her former bankruptcy lawyer, claiming that his actions are why she is going to prison. According to the Bravo personality and best-selling cookbook author, James Kridel was responsible for accurately and completely filling out the family’s bankruptcy filings and that he is the one who didn’t disclose her salary from the Real Housewives, the family’s rental property income, and various other assets such as ATVs and jewelry. The $5 million malpractice suit was filed Wednesday, December 3, 2014 in Manhattan District Court.

Chelsey D. Goff

Chelsey D. Goff was formerly Chief People Officer at Law Street. She is a Granite State Native who holds a Master of Public Policy in Urban Policy from the George Washington University. She’s passionate about social justice issues, politics — especially those in First in the Nation New Hampshire — and all things Bravo. Contact Chelsey at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post UPDATE: Teresa Giudice Suing Lawyer Before Heading to Jail appeared first on Law Street.

Time and time again, celebrities have evaded prison sentences because they claimed to be too fragile for life behind bars. In the case of recently tried and convicted Olympian Oscar Pistorius, he may be able to serve just ten months of his five-year maximum for shooting and killing his then-girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. After those ten months, he can request to be moved to house arrest in his mansion. That’s a rough life right there.

In Pistorious’ case, it’s a bit tricky. He is a double-amputee, and because of this, many claim that prison is simply not suitable for him. Nooshin Erfani-Ghadimi, project coordinator for the Wits Justice Project, a civil society group, said before the sentencing that she believed Pistorius would probably receive far better treatment than the average prisoner and has throughout the entire judicial process thus far. However, she also noted “I don’t think anyone with a disability necessarily will be able to be provided for at the moment in a way that ensures that they would have the correct medical treatment, that they have the correct physical structures.”

Pistorius’ prosthetic limbs are not the only issue. Health risks such as tuberculosis are often cited as a problem in South African prisons due to poor air circulation, and many fear that he will be susceptible to contracting the illness. Some believe that his celebrity status will make him a target for gang violence.

While defending his client, Pistorius’ attorney, Barry Roux, argued that there is extreme overcrowding in South African prisons. This point is irrelevant, however, as his celebrity status would easily prevent him from sharing a cell. The other health fears such as inmates not receiving their medication because of the inadequate number of health workers in prisons are unlikely to be of valid concern. He is a celebrity. History shows that celebrities receive special treatment in prison.

Efraini-Ghadimi conceded that South African law has policies for accommodating physically disabled inmates. Zach Modise, acting National Commissioner of Correctional Services, pointed out that there are 128 disabled inmates currently doing time and therefore prisons are properly equipped with the appropriate facilities.

Currently, Pistorius is living in a single cell with everything he needs along with access to the medical care for any ailments both physical and psychological. In ten months, he will likely be permitted to move to his home in the Silver Woods Estate in Pretoria.

This case is undoubtedly tricky. If Pistorius did not have his celebrity status, his prison sentence would be of greater concerned because it would mean less special treatment behind bars. For example, a paraplegic man, Ronnie Fakude, struggled with very real concerns while serving a prison sentence; however, he did not enjoy the status as a famous individual the way that Pistorius does.

Just because you are in the media spotlight doesn’t make it okay to commit crimes, and hopefully this case will shed light on that fact, even though he is getting off relatively easily. Even Arnold Pistorius, Oscar’s uncle, said that the family accepted Oscar’s sentence and viewed it as a way for his nephew to pay back society. Perhaps in ten short months Mr. Pistorius can relax in the comfort of his own home again. Only time will tell…

Marisa Mostek

Marisa Mostek loves globetrotting and writing, so she is living the dream by writing while living abroad in Japan and working as an English teacher. Marisa received her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder and a certificate in journalism from UCLA. Contact Marisa at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Pistorius Can Opt for House Arrest in Just 10 Months appeared first on Law Street.

Hey y’all!

Last July a young woman named  Lacey Weld from Tennessee was sentenced to 12 years in prison plus five years of supervised release after being captured on video spending 40 minutes inside of a methamphetamine manufacturing plant by an undercover police officer back in July. Did I mention she was in the last few weeks of her pregnancy at the time? Federal Judge Thomas Varlan determined that “enhanced sentencing” guidelines regarding harm to a child justified six years of the total sentence.

I’ll admit, I had never heard of the enhanced sentencing guidelines so to hear this story was pretty shocking and honestly I have mixed feelings about the whole situation.

A gaggle of reproductive-rights-organizations have taken it upon themselves to call on one-foot-out-the-door Attorney General Eric Holder to come out and publicly condemn Weld’s sentence. I’m curious as to why any of these organizations would want him to do such a thing? His reputation isn’t the best and no matter what he does or says it will not change the facts or the sentencing. In an interview with Vice, Weld’s attorney John Eldridge said that “laws intended to prevent ‘substantial risk of harm to life of a minor or an incompetent’ do not mention harm against a fetus.”

This is where things get sticky. Shouldn’t women be held responsible for their actions even if they are pregnant and especially if they are knowingly doing harm to themselves and their unborn child? Yes, you can argue that abortion would fall under that umbrella point of view, but if a woman has made the conscious decision to give birth to her child and either put it up for adoption or raise it herself, she should be held responsible for her actions.

This case has some serious grey areas and Weld’s lawyers are doing a damn good job of finding ways to interpret the laws in order to benefit her. That’s what lawyers are paid to do. But Weld needs to take a good, hard look in the mirror before she gets out and takes on the responsibility of raising that child. It may be a while but at some point it will be her responsibility again.

Some jurisdictions allow pregnant inmates to raise babies they give birth to in jail for several years before giving them to family members on the outside. This is best exemplified by the Argentinian movie Leonera (Lion’s Den) in which a woman who is convicted of murder finds out she is pregnant and is placed in a special ward of the prison where she is able to give birth and raise her baby for several years before giving him to a family member. It is an interesting concept and it almost seems like a good idea until I realize that our tax dollars would be supporting not only an inmate but also her child. The film in particular explores the pain and struggle of raising a child behind the walls of a prison and the importance of the bond between mother and child.

Lynn Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, says that  “this case tells women who are pregnant and cannot overcome their addiction is, really, to get an abortion.” I do not believe that is what this case is telling any woman. The point of punishing a person for her crime is to deter her from doing it again and to make an example out of her. Perhaps there is a girl out there who has a drug problem and just found out she is pregnant. By reading this article and she might realize that if she gets caught doing something illegal and harming her unborn child that she has chosen to keep she might be better off focusing on getting clean and taking care of herself and the baby.

Weld missed that opportunity. Not only did she take that away from herself and her child but she has also done irreparable damage. Even breathing in the fumes through a shirt at a meth lab can do damage to a fetus. According to the Department of Justice there is video footage of Lacey not only working in the meth lab but also smoking the drug. Weld told the court back in July that she wanted to “apologize for all the harm and wrongdoing (she has) done to (her) children. He could have died, and (she) just pray(s) and thank(s) God that (her) sister has him and he’s OK.”  Why is Weld just now realizing that she did something wrong and why is she merely apologizing? Shouldn’t she have been more aware of what she was doing before she got caught?

The baby did test positive for opioids and methamphetamine. I think Lacey got the time she deserved and I don’t think that it was wrong for the judge in the case to “enhance” her sentencing because she actually, knowingly did harm to her baby. If you are willing to do the crime, you should be willing to do the time.

I wish Weld all of the luck in the world and hope that she can kick her habit, but I also hope that her little baby has a fighting chance.

—

Allison Dawson (@AllyD528) Born in Germany, raised in Mississippi and Texas. Graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University. Currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative.

Featured image courtesy of [Daniel Lobo via Flickr]

Allison Dawson

Allison Dawson was born in Germany and raised in Mississippi and Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University, she’s currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative. Get in touch with Allison at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Woman Gets Six Extra Years in Jail Due to Pregnancy appeared first on Law Street.

Hey y’all!

Two of my favorite things in the whole wide world have collided! The Real Housewives franchise on Bravo TV and the law! Real Housewife of New Jersey Teresa Giudice and her hubby Giuseppe “Joe” Giudice were charged with 41 counts of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, bank fraud, making false statements on loan applications and bankruptcy fraud back in 2013 and yesterday they were both sentenced.

First, “Juicy” Joe.

He received 41 months in a federal prison, has to pay $414,588.90 in restitution, plus a $10,000 fine, and has to complete an alcohol treatment program. It’s great that he has to do the alcohol program, but I think it is a little bit too late for that idea. Back in 2010, good ol’ Joe flipped his truck in a DWI crash but never really got punished for it. After losing his license in that crash, he posed as his brother to get a new driver’s license, and it’s that crime for which he might be deported to Italy — the country of which he is a citizen — after getting out of prison.

Teresa got 15 months in jail; prosecutors argued against house arrest because it would be a little fucked up for her to chill out in the house she basically defrauded others in order to build. The upside is the judge is allowing Teresa and Joe to go at separate times so that their four daughters do not suffer too much. Teresa will serve first and I imagine she probably won’t stay in for the whole 15 months. Think Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, or Nicole Richie jail time. Which makes me wonder if jails are sexist because these women were in jail for short periods of time but DMX and O.J. Simpson were not let out early (but we all know why O.J. is really in jail).

Naturally, Joe and Teresa will sit down and do their first interview after the sentencing with Andy Cohen of Bravo TV. Andy is the glue that holds all of the hot mess shows together on that network and he does a great job!

I am a huge fan of all things Real Housewives. You can get on that hot mess express and ride it around for an hour, hop off and go about your life until that next episode comes on. Originally when I started watching RHONJ I was not too fond of Teresa until she flipped that table.

Courtesy of Giphy.

Joe didn’t seem to be around much at first, but that was okay because there was enough drama to fill more hours than viewers could stand. Slowly but surely over the past few seasons Joe has stepped up his game in showing his face. I HATED Joe a season or two back when he basically made it seem like a phone call he received was from a mistress and then proceeded to call his wife a bitch. Tool bag!

But this season, if you’ve been watching, you get to see a better side of Joe and he has somehow turned into a decent guy. I can tell you one thing, even though I may have never been fond of him or how he treated Teresa he has always seemed to be a good dad!

Teresa and Joe have four little girls; Gia, Milania, Gabriella, and Audriana. Milania stole the show the moment that camera turned to her. She is one opinionated, mouthy kid but you gotta love her!

Courtesy of Tumblr.

What blows my mind about this whole situation is that there were 41 counts and all of this spanned a four-year time period. It is great to know that prosecutors were able to catch them and make them pay for their choices but I wonder how much of that is because they decided to join the Real Housewives of New Jersey. If the spotlight had not been on them would they have perhaps gotten away with it or even gone on to commit more fraud?

Our judicial system works, but does it work better when celebrities are involved?

—

Allison Dawson (@AllyD528) Born in Germany, raised in Mississippi and Texas. Graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University. Currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative.

Featured image courtesy of [Jennifer Marie Puglia via Flickr]

Allison Dawson

Allison Dawson was born in Germany and raised in Mississippi and Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University, she’s currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative. Get in touch with Allison at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Real Housewife of NJ Teresa Giudice: Go Directly to Jail, Do Not Collect $200 appeared first on Law Street.

Early last week the Bureau of Justice Statistics revealed that for the first time since 1980 the federal prison population in the United States has dropped. In the last year alone, the federal prison population decreased by roughly 4,800. With new counts projecting the number of federal inmates to continue to fall by just over 2,000 in the next 12 months and by nearly 10,000 the year after, I ask the questions how, why, and what effect will this change have?

Over the past few years the Justice Department has revealed that crime rates have been dropping. Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder aimed to change policies to reflect the belief that increasing the number of people behind bars does nothing to improve public safety. An example of such policies includes The Smarter Sentencing Act — which essentially seeks to eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for defendants found guilty of first-time drug offenses — and the more recent Clemency Act, which seeks to release offenders from prison who were unfairly sentenced by mandatory sentencing guidelines. Holder has worked in the last year to reduce a prison population he says is costly and bloated. He was not wrong: in 2014 the country spent approximately $60 billion to incarcerate offenders.

Even as someone who has completed a masters in criminal justice, including a core required course in statistical management (which let’s be honest, was as horrific as it sounds), I still struggle to understand the relevance of the numbers the media is throwing at us. I agree that it is a real achievement that fewer people are being sentenced to time in prison, but I really want society to understand why it is such an achievement, and what this really means.

The decrease in prison population is certainly an incredible start to the potential success of community supervision and its benefits. The one thing these articles fail to point out is just how much further we have to go to protect us as a society, and those who enter into the system. You may be thinking at this point that I am out of my mind for considering the safety and well being of convicted offenders; however, the majority of individuals arrested and convicted are non-violent drug offenders. What the article praising the decrease in the prison population failed to acknowledge is that although certain convicted offenders will not be sentenced to prison, the conditions of their sentence lived in society carry a higher risk of future incarceration than if they were placed behind bars in the first place.

Just because these individuals are not physically locked behind bars does not mean they are not locked behind the transparent bars of social isolation. Rates of unemployment, difficulty securing housing, and loss of family are just some of the hurdles most of these individuals  contend with. Why? Because they have been stigmatized by society with their criminal label. Virtually everyone on community supervision is at risk of being detained or incarcerated upon failure to comply with the conditions of supervision. Would you be able to follow a list of conditions if you felt like no one supported you? In order to support alternatives to incarceration, we really need to welcome the culture of supervision and understand the positives it can bring us. Not only will we be spending less money on the safekeeping of these individuals, but intervention and supervision can be accurately given to each offender to prevent re-offenses, interrupt the cycle of crime in families, and shake up the social disorganization within communities.

Regardless of whether you believe crime is a choice, crime is inherited, or crime is learned, the solid facts are that crime happens. By locking individuals up without any guidance, or even attempting to work on understanding the cause, the likelihood of reoffending is just as high if not worse than it was before that person was put in jail. Legislators clearly have been able to understand the reality that sending people to prison does nothing for public safety, so now it is time they invest money into supervision agencies to aid offenders in the right way. In order for this to happen, well-trained staff, evidence-based programs, and support from others is essential.

It is essential we maintain a safe environment for everyone in our communities. The notable decrease in the overall American incarceration and crime rates is something that hasn’t happened in more than 40 years. This hopefully marks the start of a revolutionary change for the U.S. criminal justice system.

—

Hannah Kaye (@HannahSKaye) is originally from London, now living in New York. Recently graduated with an MA in criminal justice from John Jay College. Strong contenders for things she is most passionate about are bagels and cupcakes.

Featured image courtesy of [Viewminder via Flickr]

Hannah Kaye

Hannah Kaye is originally from London, now living in New York. Recently graduated with an MA in criminal justice from John Jay College. Strong contenders for things she is most passionate about are bagels and cupcakes. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Incarceration Figures Drop, But Community Support is Essential to Public Safety appeared first on Law Street.

If you are an incarcerated individual in the United States, you can be found in one of two places: a government-run prison, or a private prison. Private prison is an interesting term though, as it doesn’t really explain what this kind of institutions is. A more appropriate label would be “for-profit prisons,” because at their essence, that’s exactly what they are. A small group of forward-looking thinkers in Washington, D.C. are starting to float the idea that there’s an alternative to these private, for-profit prisons. They base their concept on rehabilitation rather than punishment, and if their group continues to move forward, they could change the for-profit prison landscape for good.

Here’s a more in-depth look at private prisons and the problems they cause, but to sum it up, private prisons are the result of government prisons closing, and the government hiring private contractors to run prisons in their place. In 2011, there were 130,950 prisoners incarcerated in private facilities –more than 12 percent of the nationwide prison population. That number has grown quickly, nearly 700 percent from 1970 to 2005.

Given that the U.S. is pretty intent on locking up a larger proportion of its population than most any other country, it’s a smart business to be in. The top private prison contractor, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), posted $1.75 billion in revenue in 2012. And these contractors are smart enough to keep themselves in business — they have their own Super PACs and lobbying arms.

Finally, some individuals have started to point out that this isn’t a great idea. The whole purpose of prison is punishment,yes, but also rehabilitation. When the whole point of a business is making money off of those who have been incarcerated, what motive is there to rehabilitate them? Rehabilitation would almost certainly mean fewer repeat customers.

It was out of that idea that Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE), a prison reform group, was born. Here is the group’s mission:

We believe that prisons should be used only for those who absolutely must be incarcerated and that those who are incarcerated should have all of the resources they need to turn their lives around. We also believe that human rights documents provide a sound basis for ensuring that criminal justice systems meet these goals.

CURE, which is composed mainly of those previously incarcerated, wants to create the first non-profit prison in the United States. They are focusing on Washington D.C., particularly on the Correctional Treatment Facility, one of D.C.’s two prisons. Given that CCA’s contract with the city will be up in 2017, CURE sees the prison as a place where they could potentially become involved and make a real change in the way prisoners are rehabilitated.

Charlie Sullivan, CURE’s Executive Director, went into more detail about its motivation, saying:

What both the private and government-run prisons are doing is just holding people. They’re playing defense; we need to play offense. We need to give people an opportunity to change their lives.

Right now the plan is by no means concrete. But the idea is there — the idea that our prisons can become more than just holding areas. That we can help those incarcerated turn their lives around. That our prison population does not need to keep growing at such a high rate. Whether or not CURE is successful, its work to change the way we in the U.S. handle prisoners can definitely have an impact.

—

Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Still Burning via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Non-Profit Prison Group Aims to Change the Incarceration Landscape appeared first on Law Street.

As a part of the “war on drugs,” a law was passed in 1986 that criminalized the use of illegal substances. The two substances, powder and crack cocaine, were criminalized differently, leading to inconsistent laws and a notable lack of fairness in sentencing. In 2010, the Fair Sentencing Act was passed in an effort to remedy this disparity. Now, four years down the road, it’s important to look back and evaluate its impact. Read on to learn about the law, its supporters and dissidents, and results.

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed during the heart of the war on drugs. It was the first big piece of legislation, and it included mandatory minimum sentences for the possession of certain drugs.

Powder cocaine is white, and true to its name, powdery. There are many ways in which to consume cocaine, but the most well known is by “snorting” it, or inhaling through the nose. Under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, if you were found with at least 500 grams of cocaine, the minimum mandated sentence was five years without parole. Crack cocaine is smoked, and is created when cocaine, water, and baking soda are combined. Under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, if you were found with just five grams of crack cocaine, the minimum mandated sentence was also five years without parole.

That means that crack cocaine was criminalized at a 100:1 ratio in comparison to powder cocaine. In addition to being unfair, the standards have been criticized as inherently racist. Watch the video below for more information this.

Fair Sentencing Act of 2010

The Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), signed by President Obama, was passed by the 111th United States Congress. The law’s primary provisions reduced disparities in the differences between the amount of powder cocaine and crack cocaine needed to trigger federal penalties under the law. It also eliminated the mandatory five-year minimum sentencing provision required under the previous law. The FSA made fundamental changes to U.S. drug law, including the removal of the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for first-time possession of crack cocaine, an increase in the amount of crack cocaine that is required for a federal mandatory minimum prison term to apply, and the increase of financial penalties for trafficking a controlled substance. Sentencing judges are allowed to consider violence and other aggravating factors.

The FSA requires the U.S. Sentencing Commission to take specific measures regarding sentencing. These include raising sentencing guidelines for those convicted of violence in relation to a drug offense, include aggravating and mitigating factors in its consideration of punishments for drug offenses, and present a report to Congress detailing the FSA’s impact on sentencing for drug offenses.

What were the arguments in favor of the FSA?

Proponents of the FSA argue that studies show that crack cocaine and powder cocaine are equally addictive and the government never had any scientific basis for believing otherwise. Moreover, the previous law created significantly disproportionate sentencing rules for drug offenders.  For example, under the old law a person found possessing five grams of crack cocaine was given the same punishment as a person possessing 500 grams of powder cocaine. Also, ten grams of crack cocaine was enough for a 10-year minimum sentence, but 1,000 grams of powder cocaine were required for the same sentence.

That disparity evinces a probable racial bias in the old law. In 1995, the U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that the law created “racial imbalance in federal prisons and led to more severe sentences for low-level crack dealers than for wholesale suppliers of powder cocaine. … As a result, thousands of people — mostly African Americans — have received disproportionately harsh prison sentences.” Crack Cocaine users in the U.S. are composed of 52 percent whites and 38 percent blacks, yet 88 percent of the sentences for crack cocaine-related offenses were imposed on blacks while only 4 percent were imposed on whites. The DEA Administrator under the Bush administration stated that because of the disparity “the credibility of our entire drug enforcement system is weakened.”

What were the arguments against the FSA?

Opponents of the FSA argue that the new law may revive the dangers that the old law was intended to prevent. The severe sentences under the old law were justified by the facts that trafficking and distribution of crack cocaine more often involves violence and danger to the community than what generally comes with powder cocaine and the offenders more often have violent criminal histories.

Law Enforcement Organizations have also opposed the act, arguing that more severe sentences are justified because crack is often trafficked with weapons. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 29 percent of all crack cases from October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009 involved a weapon, compared to only 16 percent for powder cocaine. These police organizations advocate raising the penalties for possessing powder cocaine rather than lowering the penalties for crack cocaine carriers. Since crack cocaine distribution is generally conducted with more violence and risk to the public than powder cocaine distribution, it makes sense that the law treats participation in a more dangerous criminal culture as a more serious crime.

What has been the reaction to the FSA?

The Fair Sentencing Act was a step in a good direction. It changed the much maligned crack cocaine to powder cocaine possession ration from 100:1 to 18:1. While some advocates call for a complete eradication of any discrepancies in sentencing, others point out that crack is known to be slightly more addictive, and is more likely to be involved with respect to violent crimes.

There’s also an argument about the retroactivity of this law. Retroactivity essentially means that the FSA would be applied to the thousands who are still in jail under the 1986 law. This could lead to reduced sentences for those prisoners. In 2013, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FSA is in fact retroactive; however, the government asked for an en banc review, which means that the entire panel, not just the individual judges involved in that case, review the possibility of retroactivity. In the en banc review, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel reversed the original decision. At this point, the FSA is not applied retroactively.

The FSA has made headway. Around the time of its passage, it was estimated that ten years down the road, the federal prison population will decline by about 4,000 people. There’s still work to be done to make sure that everyone receives a fair sentence, based on his or her crime committed and not on arbitrary standards, but the FSA is absolutely a step in the right direction.

 Resources

Primary

U.S. Congress: Fair Sentencing Act of 2010

United States Sentencing Commission:
Sentencing Guidelines for United States Courts

United States Senate Sentencing Commission: Fair Sentencing Act Amendment

Additional 

Ron Paul: Statement on the Fair Sentencing Act

ACLU: Fair Sentencing Act

Sojourners: The Fair Sentencing Act: A (Small) Step Towards Making Things Right

Sentencing Law and Policy: Fascination and frustration with “finality fixation” in en banc Sixth Circuit Blewett arguments

Madame Noir: How the Fair Sentencing Act Is Still Not So Fair

Brennan Center: Smarter Sentencing Act of 2013

Progessive: Drug sentencing reform doesn’t go far enough

Youth Today: Congress Passes Law to Reduce Crack/Cocaine Sentencing Disparities

Nation: Beyond the Fair Sentencing Act

Huffington Post: Fair Sentencing Act

Mic: Fair Sentencing Act: Are Crack Cocaine Laws Intentionally Racist?

FAMM: Crack Cocaine Mandatory Minimum Sentences

John Gomis

John Gomis earned a Juris Doctor from Brooklyn Law School in June 2014 and lives in New York City. Contact John at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Fair Sentencing Act Aims to Align Drug Sentencing Disparities appeared first on Law Street.

When Jabbar Collins was arrested in 1994 for the murder of Rabbi Abraham Pollack, no one believed him when he said he was innocent. Now, after 16 years in a maximum security prison and three years following his exoneration, Collins is slated to receive $3 million from the state of New York in one of the largest wrongful conviction settlements ever awarded by the state.

Collins is one of the lucky ones. Only 30 states and the District of the Columbia provide compensation to exonerated criminals. A total of 1,405 innocent people have been wrongfully imprisoned since 1989. In 46 percent of these cases, the government and its officials were at fault. Official misconduct (police, prosecutors, or other government officials abusing their power) is responsible for putting 647 innocent people behind bars over the past 25 years. Despite these numbers, the road to compensation is far from easy.

Even in the states that have compensation laws on the books, the process for receiving money is fairly difficult, requiring years of waiting and expensive legal battles. On average there is a minimum of a three year wait (as in Collins’ case). Additionally, a successful lawsuit depends on the person’s ability to prove that their wrongful conviction was caused by intentional misconduct. This requires naming a responsible party such as a prosecutor, police officer, or witness. It also excludes compensation for legal technicalities and unintentional errors made during the original investigation and trial.

If that isn’t bad enough, compensation laws vary widely state-by-state, and most of the money that exonerees receive is taxed. Some states deny compensation to any exoneree that falsely confessed or pleaded guilty, while others deny money to those who were exonerated without the use of DNA testing. Florida refuses to compensate anyone that has an unrelated prior offense under its “clean hands” provision, and Montana offers no money at all, instead offering educational aid for state or community college. New Hampshire offers a flat maximum of $20,000 no matter how many years an exoneree spent wrongfully imprisoned.

According to federal standards, exonerees should receive up to $50,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment and $100,000 per year spent on death row, but these standards are currently met by only 5 states. More often than not, exonerees receive small amounts–if anything at all–which do not even begin to cover the damages they suffered as a direct result of their wrongful confinement.

One thing that all exonerees almost uniformly receive is the horrific experience of being falsely imprisoned. Most suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, institutionalization, and depression as a result of years they spent behind bars. They have to endure the censure for a crime they never committed and the psychological damage of being branded a criminal by the public.

Even after an exoneree is released from confinement, the consequences of their imprisonment has the potential to taint every aspect of their lives. For some exonerees, half a lifetime has passed them by; family members have died, children have grown up, and spouses have moved on with their lives while they spent years behind bars. Others suffer physically from years spent with sub-par prison health care, while others suffer professionally as they lack the job experience, vocational training, and educational skills that are needed to secure a job.

Perhaps worst of all is the fact that their wrong conviction is not even immediately expunged from their records upon exoneration and release, often appearing on background checks and inhibiting their ability to fully reintegrate into society years later. Despite all this, most states do not provide transitional services for exonerees, leaving a large portion without a means of transportation, a source of income, or even a place to call home upon release.

It seems rather counter-intuitive to not provide these people with immediate and automatic compensation. They have clearly suffered unjustly at the hands of a flawed criminal justice system and it seems only natural that the government should take on the responsibility to help them rebuild their lives, regardless of liability.

The fact that these people are left with no other option but to sue for the compensation they rightfully deserve is adding insult to injury. They have already proved their innocence-they would be in jail otherwise–and while you cannot put a price on freedom, exonerees should not have to suffer through an expensive, protracted legal battle in order to be compensated for the years they spent unjustly serving time for a crime they did not commit.

[Innocence Project] [National Registry of Exonerations]

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Nicole Roberts (@NicoleR5901) a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Luigi Caterino via Flickr]

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Compensation for Exonerees: A Fundamental Right? appeared first on Law Street.

The amount of prison time doled out by courts to perpetrators of non-violent, drug crimes are often excessively severe, sometimes more than 100 years in prison. In one particular case, a man was sentenced to a lifetime behind bars for possessing a bag with traces of cocaine. In another case, a man with no prior record is now serving a 25-year prison term for selling his pain pills to an undercover informant. These two individuals are just a few of the many serving years in prison due to harsh mandatory sentencing laws.

Keeping non violent criminals incarcerated for decades leads to overcrowded conditions and billions of taxpayer dollars. The mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses have led to prisons vastly exceeding their maximum capacity. The United States has seen a 500 percent increase in the number of inmates in federal custody over the last 30 years.

The goal of these harsh laws is to deter would-be criminals from committing crimes when they realize that they could spend for the rest of their lives behind bars. This plan sounds good in theory, but has failed in practice. Hosting them is not cheap; it costs around $50,000 to keep one person in prison for one year in California alone. Although America has only five percent of the world’s population, it hosts 25 percent of the world’s prison inmates.

The issue of overcrowded prisons is alarmingly prominent in the United States, as other countries have adopted more effective means of dealing with individuals who commit minor offenses. For example, in 2001, Portugal became the first European country to abolish all criminal penalties for personal drug possession, and since then many countries around the world have followed suit. Drug users in Portugal are also provided with therapy rather than prison sentences. Research commissioned by the Cato Institute found that in the five years after the start of decriminalization, illegal drug use by teenagers declined, the rate of HIV infections transmitted via drug use dropped, deaths related to hard drugs were cut by more than half, and the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction doubled.

Finally, the United States has realized the gravity of the situation and decided to take action. Recently, Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin and Senator Mike Lee introduced the Smarter Sentencing Act to reduce the number of harsh drug sentencing policies in the United States. Essentially, the goal of the Smarter Sentencing Act is to reserve the use of federal resources for the offenders of the most serious crimes. Lawmakers supporting this bill hope that it will cause judges to use less harsh punishments such as community service or drug therapy. Making these changes could save taxpayers billions in the first years of enactment alone.

Specifically, the Smarter Sentencing Act would amend the federal criminal code so that defendants without prior record who did not commit a violent crime receive a less severe sentence. The bill also aims to reduce the chance that prisons reach their maximum capacities and lower prison housing costs.

How would the Smarter Sentencing Act impact current laws?

Under current guidelines, a first-time drug offense involving at least 10 but not more than 20 grams of methamphetamine has a recommended sentence range of 27-33 months. Under the new guidelines, the same quantity of methamphetamine would have a sentence range for a first-time offense of 21-27 months.

Attorney General Eric Holder is urging lawmakers to fast track a solution to this problem, stating that “this over-reliance on incarceration is not just financially unsustainable. It comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate.”

Because Democrats and Republicans agree that the extreme sentencing problem is a serious one, prospects are good that this bill has a chance for success. Both parties more or less concede that there is a problem when looking at the prison system in the United States. Former Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan is one of the prominent conservatives expressing his support for reform of current mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

I think we had a trend in America for a long time on mandatory minimums where we took away discretion from judges. I think there’s an appreciation that that approach has some collateral damage—that that approach is missing in many ways…I think there is a new appreciation that we need to give judges more discretion in these areas.

-Paul Ryan

The push to pass the Smarter Sentencing Act is gaining momentum, as almost a year has passed since its introduction in the House in October 2013. Hopefully, with continued support for this legislation, it will soon become law and alleviate the growing problems associated with extreme mandatory minimum drug sentences.

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Marisa Mostek (@MarisaJ44) loves globetrotting and writing, so she is living the dream by writing while living abroad in Japan and working as an English teacher. Marisa received her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder and a certificate in journalism from UCLA. Contact Marisa at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured Image Courtesy of [Barnellbe via Wikimedia]

Marisa Mostek

Marisa Mostek loves globetrotting and writing, so she is living the dream by writing while living abroad in Japan and working as an English teacher. Marisa received her undergraduate degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder and a certificate in journalism from UCLA. Contact Marisa at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Are We Nearing the End of Failed Mandatory Minimum Sentences? appeared first on Law Street.

With barbed wire fences, armed-guard towers, extensive searching by guards, and locked rooms, prisons seem to be a place almost completely cut off from the world. Few would think marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and OxyContin are commonplace behind prison walls. The War on Drugs has led to nearly half of federal inmates being sentenced for drug crimes. If illegal drugs can easily be found behind bars in the most controlled of environments, what can be done to prevent substance abuse by inmates?

What are the statistics on drug use inside prisons?

Prisons seem to be the last place one would think to find drugs, yet prevalent gang activity and dependency on drugs has created a thriving black market. Drug use in prisons has become more relevant due to increasing calls for improved substance abuse treatment for inmates. According to CASA Columbia, 65 percent of inmates in 2010 met the criteria for substance abuse or addiction. Those who suffer from addiction and committed crimes relating to drugs or alcohol make up 85 percent of the nation’s prison population. A large segment of the prison population has been affected by drugs and alcohol prior to incarceration, but prison walls have not been a barrier to these substances.

Reliable statistics on drug use in prisons are difficult to attain. The frequency of drug testing is not standardized across facilities and can be random or can be issued with reasonable suspicion to specific inmates. Furthermore, prisoners have no reason to confess to using, and officials in prisons do not want to report unfavorable statistics. Technology has helped those behind bars to coordinate their drug trade while locked up. Cell phones allow inmates to track drugs via satellite and can even allow access to mobile banking. The prevalence of cell phones in prisons indicates the ease of obtaining contraband and the method for obtaining drugs.

The case of California

• Roughly 1,000 seizures of drugs are reported in California prisons each year.
• From 2006-2008, 44 of California’s inmates died from drug overdoses.
• From 2008-2009, California officers seized the highest amount of drugs in decades: 2,832 grams of marijuana and 92 grams of cocaine.
• In June 2013, 23 percent of California’s inmates tested positive for illegal substances and another 30 percent refused to be tested.
• In 2013, California alone confiscated over 12,000 cell phones from their prisons.
• More than 4,000 drug-related incidents were reported in California prisons in 2013.

These are far from the rates of drug usage outside of prison, but they still have strong implications. It is important to note that drug testing is often conducted by urine analysis, which will only detect drug use from the past several days. In contrast, testing hair can detect drug use from the past 90 days. In response to testing, drug use in prison often involves drugs that are harder to detect, such as heroin or prescription drugs.

How are drugs smuggled inside the prison?

From the Outside

Reports from the Washington Times and The Economist showed the limitless creativity exhibited by inmates to get contraband through extensive security. In some cases, drugs are thrown over prison walls in a ball or package. Some prisons do not scan all mail, so drugs can be delivered through mail and even on the backs of stamps. Oftentimes visitors may bring in drugs by “plugging” their body cavities or hiding drugs in a baby’s diaper. The drugs are then given to an inmate by way of a kiss, dropped in a shared can of soda, or food. Some inmates’ work detail, such as receiving deliveries, allow them greater privileges and more opportunities to bring in drugs.

From Staff

By the admission of those who work inside prisons, the most likely smuggling culprits are staff members themselves. Staff are searched before entering the facility but sometimes they are not as thoroughly searched as visitors. Staff have brought in drugs on their person or even hidden in their food. Some staff members do it for money to supplement their modest salary. Others are young and easily manipulated by seemingly friendly inmates. In April 2013, 13 correctional officers in Maryland were indicted for aiding the Black Guerrilla Family, a national prison gang thriving in Baltimore. The guards allegedly smuggled in cell phones, drugs, and other contraband on their person and in food. One indicted guard was reported to have made $3000-$5000 dollars a week for smuggling contraband to one inmate. Once guards are involved, drug use by inmates often goes overlooked.  ­­

The Market

Numerous inmates have verified drugs are as available in prisons as they are on the street, but not in the form of a cash market. Prisoners typically trade by using tobacco or items bought from commissary. Prisoners claim drugs inside a prison sell for more than 4 times the legal price outside prison walls. In an interview with The Fix, one anonymous prisoner claimed, “You can get whatever you want in here. Marijuana, heroin, whatever. They had oxy-80s on the pound for $160 each. It’s way more expensive than on the street, but if you got the money you can buy them… The sad thing about it all is, they lock you up for drugs and they can’t even keep the drugs out of the prison.” The shocking video below, made by inmates in Orleans Parish Prison, shows drugs, alcohol, guns, and gambling – all within prison walls:

What are the consequences of drug smuggling?

Consequences of drug smuggling vary. Drug use in prisons can pose security problems, escalate violence, lead to disputes regarding debts owed, and increase health and overdose concerns. Anyone bringing drugs into prison can be prosecuted, and inmates face write-ups and revoked privileges.

New York

In New York, if an inmate is caught with drugs or has tested positive, he is sent to solitary confinement for up to 3 months for his first offense. Prisoners in solitary are prohibited from any treatment programs they may have been in and those on the waiting list for treatment are removed from the list. Between 2005 and 2007, New York sentenced inmates to a collective 2,561 years in solitary from drug-related charges. Time in solitary confinement has negative emotional and physical consequences on inmates, who are potentially more vulnerable to using once they are released in the general population. These inmates are often sentenced to longer prison time with probation revoked or delayed and visiting privileges suspended.

California

Recently the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation proposed a plan where those who test positive for drug use will lose 90 days of pay from their work assignments, though inmates make only 8 to 32 cents per hour of work.

What do prisons do to treat drug addiction?

Access to Programs

Some inmates may not want substance abuse treatment. But for those who do, a 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office showed that while 31,803 inmates were enrolled in basic drug education programs, more than 51,000 inmates were on waiting lists for periods up to 3 months. Prison overcrowding, with federal prisons operating at 40 percent above capacity, has meant limited access to these programs. A 2010 CASA Columbia report showed only 11 percent of inmates with substance abuse and addiction disorders receive any treatment during their incarcerations.

Programs

Different facilities offer different programs to treat drug abuse. Federal inmates have access to residential programs, transitional programs, nonresidential programs, and drug education programs. Other treatment programs vary by state. Tight budgets have forced states such as Kansas and Pennsylvania to cut treatment programs inside prisons and instead divert offenders to less expensive treatment programs outside of prison. Some claim that prisons should be focused on punishment rather than rehabilitation. Others argue that prison is the best chance to treat those with substance abuse problems to help prevent future crimes, but oftentimes this opportunity goes unused.

Medical Treatment in Prison

Treating an addiction like heroin or opioids can require Methadone or Buprenorphine to help with withdrawal symptoms. However, a drug like Methadone requires strict regulation and is expensive for correctional facilities in the short run. Allowing Methadone in prisons means it may be  sold on the black market and could even lead to inmates robbing the dispensary. Only half of states provide these treatment drugs even though both are listed by the World Health Organization as drugs that should be available to prisoners at all times.

Cost Effectiveness

Human Rights Watch has reported that for every $1 spent on substance abuse programs, states save $2-$6 dollars in the long run from reduced recidivism rates. One study found that for each inmate who remained sober, employed, and crime-free, the United States would save $91,000 per year. There is a great demand for substance abuse rehabilitation programs which can lead to early release and save government money. Watch this video for more information on the benefit of substance abuse programs in prison:

What else can be done to prevent drug use in prisons?

Many consider the Pennsylvania plan to limit inmate access to illicit drugs among the most successful. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections instituted a zero-tolerance policy after facing increasing drug usage in its prisons. The plan called for:

• Criminal prosecution of inmates caught with drugs
• Increased surveillance of inmates and visitors
• Increased visits by drug-detecting dogs
• Greater number of cell searches
• Improved technology in detection and scanning systems
• Random monitoring of phone calls
• Drug testing by hair rather than solely by urine analysis
• Revoked visiting privileges for offenders

In 1996, 7.8 percent of Pennsylvania inmates whose hair was tested showed illicit drug usage in the past 90 days. With the addition of the measures above, only 1.4 percent of inmates tested positive two years later. Along with the falling rates of drug use, assaults on inmates decreased 70 percent and assaults on staff decreased 57 percent.

Many states have looked to follow Pennsylvania’s example. However, many of the strategies in prisons are not replicated in more lax county jails. Furthermore, once inmates leave prisons, they enter less strict programs or probation where drugs are easy to obtain. Limiting drug use in prisons makes little sense if inmates do not have treatment and are overwhelmed by the availability of illegal drugs once they are no longer behind bars.

Critics have taken issue with the level of strictness required to eradicate drug use in prisons. Prisons could always be made worse. States could require inmates to spend more time locked in their rooms, have less free time in the yard, and have very closely-monitored visits. The question becomes at what cost should prisons seek to be drug-free. Many facilities simply do not have the staff to better supervise the amount of visits they receive. Accommodative visiting policies are aimed at making family visits easier since contact with family is integral to an inmate’s success after prison.

Balancing what prisons can actually achieve with their limited staff, funding, and how they can best keep contraband outside without completely dehumanizing inmates remains a complicated act. Stronger substance abuse programs may be necessary to prevent drug use, but completely eliminating the supply of drugs could be a game of hide and seek that will never end.

Resources

Primary

US Code 1791: Providing or Possessing Contraband in Prison

US Code 14052: Enhanced Penalties for Illegal Drug Use in Federal Prisons

NCJRS: Reducing Drug Use in Prisons: Pennsylvania’s Approach

Additional

Nation’s Health: Report Finds Most U.S. Inmates Suffer From Substance Abuse

CASA: Behind Bars II: Substance Abuse and America’s Prison Population

Economist: Drugs in Prisons: Supply and Remand

Washington Times: Drugs Inside Prison Walls

Newsweek: The Case for Treating Drug Addicts in Prison

Daily Beast: With Cigarettes Banned in Most Prisons, Gangs Shift

Hills Treatment Center: Drug Rehab Programs in Jail and Prison

Syracuse: Prison and Drugs: State Often Denies Help

USA Today: Prisoners Face Long Wait for Drug-Rehab Services

The Fix: Drug Treatment in Prison

Columbus Dispatch: Drug Use in Ohio’s Prisons Spiked

CBS: California Prisons Find 1 in 4 Inmates Used Drugs

Alexandra Stembaugh

Alexandra Stembaugh graduated from the University of Notre Dame studying Economics and English. She plans to go on to law school in the future. Her interests include economic policy, criminal justice, and political dramas. Contact Alexandra at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Why the War on Drugs Takes on a New Form Behind Bars appeared first on Law Street.

Army dismissal, felony conviction, homelessness, law degree? While certainly unconventional, that is the path that Desmond Meade took to obtain his law degree from Florida International University. After graduating high school in 1985, Meade pursued a career in the United States Army, which ended after he was caught stealing liquor while stationed in Hawaii. He returned to Miami, and was convicted of several drug charges as a result of living the fast-paced life of a celebrity bodyguard. In 1995, his mother passed away and shortly after, his family home was foreclosed. In 2001, Meade was sentenced and served 15 years in prison for possession of a firearm as a felon. After his early release, he found himself homeless on the streets of Miami. According to Mead in an interview The Miami Times, “when you’re homeless, there’s a harsh emotional aspect, no one really cared one way or another if you lived or if you died.” It was at this point that he realized that he needed to do something drastic to make positive changes in his life.

Meade turned his life around and completed the Chapman Partnership drug treatment program, a program specifically designed to help the homeless through their recovery. After he successfully completed the program, he graduated summa cum laude in paralegal studies from Miami-Dade Community College’s North Campus in 2010. He then took the next step, and enrolled in Florida International University Law School, from which he just graduated this past May.

Now, at the age of 46, Meade stands proud and with a newfound purpose in life. He is using his personal experiences to drive him in his work. He said, “I realized all the pain and suffering I went through all my life became worthwhile when I used it to help someone else, I realized that was my purpose — to help those less fortunate.” Meade is now the director of Lifelines to Healing Campaign, a PICO United program that aims to address and end the root causes of violence in cities across the country. In addition, Meade is working with the program to end mass incarceration in Florida.

However, there is still one thing standing in his way: Florida state law prohibits convicted felons from practicing law. So while Meade spent the past three years taking classes to prepare him for practicing law in Florida, he is unable to do so. Rather than move to another state where convicted felons are free to practice law, Meade is prepared to stay and fight for change in his home state. He says, “I’m going to stay here. I’m going to fight. What I went through to get where I am today, I have no choice but to have faith.”

This raises an interesting question–should convicted felons be allowed to practice law? Nearly every state has rules about getting a license to practice law, most of which make it nearly impossible for convicted felons to get their license. According to James Hirby at The Law Dictionary, “the person to be licensed must have objective evidence that he or she is a person of good moral character, complete rehabilitation, and a member of the community” in order to get their license to practice law. Many feel that a felony conviction is a direct contradiction to these qualities, which is why in most states–such as Florida, where Meade resides–convicted felons are barred from getting their license to practice.

While there is certainly a strong argument for this rule, not every convicted felon has bad moral character. States like Florida should have processes that make it possible for convicted felons to redeem themselves in a way and be allowed to practice law so long as they can pass the bar and follow the guidelines like everybody else. For example, in the state of Washington, convicted felons that wish to take the bar exam must go before the state bar’s ethics and morality committee and argue why they are fit to practice law. While there is certainly a high standard when arguing before the committee, this process makes it possible for convicted felons to get a second chance. People do change, and like Meade, they grow and learn from the mistakes that they have made.  While it is too soon to say whether or not Meade’s actions will have any effect on Florida law, he has already been an inspiration to people everywhere. He has shown that no matter where you come from, you can accomplish your goals with hard work and perseverance.

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Brittany Alzfan (@BrittanyAlzfan) is a student at the George Washington University majoring in Criminal Justice. She was a member of Law Street’s founding Law School Rankings team during the summer of 2014. Contact Brittany at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [ACLU of Southern California via Flickr]

Brittany Alzfan

Brittany Alzfan is a student at the George Washington University majoring in Criminal Justice. She was a member of Law Street’s founding Law School Rankings team during the summer of 2014. Contact Brittany at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post From Felon to Lawyer: The Inspiring Story of Desmond Meade appeared first on Law Street.

Usually, when a crime is committed, the person responsible for the illegal action goes to jail. Although, this is the correct sequence of events, it is not always what occurs in reality. This was recently proven by the Connecticut DCF system, which placed a 16 year old transgender teen in jail despite lacking one important aspect; technically, she has never been charged with a crime.

On April 8, 2014 a superior court judge ordered the girl, who will remain as Jane Doe to protect her identity, to be transferred from DCF custody to the woman’s prison, York Correctional Institution in East Lyme. This decision was made after the judge heard an overwhelming amount of evidence regarding the girl’s violent acts over the course of six days. The treatment of this youth is deemed appropriate by the Connecticut Department of Children and Families. DCF referred to a legal statute which has not been used in 14 years, granting them the right to transfer dangerous juveniles who cannot be held at a treatment facility. According to DCF, this transfer was necessary because of her past violence against both staff and fellow patients at a number of treatment facilities.

The Jane Doe is a transgender teen who was born as a male and identifies as a female. She has been living within the DCF system since the age of 5, and when discussing her time with DCF explains, “I feel that DCF has failed to protect me from harm and I am thrown into prison because they have refused to help me.”

This has becomes a battle between DCF and the girl’s lawyer, Aaron J. Romano. DCF has made it clear that this youth is uniquely dangerous to both staff and patients alike, making it hard to provide her with proper support within the facility. On the other hand, Romano explains that the girl’s aggression is the result of the sexual abuse that she has faced in the DCF system and should not be the cause of her jail time. Instead, her attorney explains that the girl spends around 22 hours a day in solitary confinement and her condition is deteriorating due to a lack of counseling.

Here are the issues at play:

1. Gender

This case caused a wide spread legal debate, questioning the rights available to not only minors, but individuals who identify as transgender. Historically, the Department of Correction has chosen to place individuals with the inmate population that correlates to their biological gender. However, the court regarded the 2011 bill which makes it illegal to discriminate against an individual based on their gender and identity expression. This caused Jane Doe to be placed in a woman’s prison. While her rights have been granted, this becomes a double edged sword, allowing her to be in a woman’s prison, but forcing her into isolation. This is due to the fact that she is not only considered to be a violent inmate, but one with a male organ, calling into play the issue of rape.

2. No crime was committed.

Another issue is that this youth was never charged with a crime, but moved to an adult prison due to the lack of resources to support her treatment within an alternative facility. Many activists question, if this individual identified with her biological, male identity, would she have ended up in jail? Many agree that she would most likely have been placed into a treatment facility with other males, and much of this stems from DCF’s lack of transgender options.

Romano has filed a legal complaint against DCF and its commissioner, Joetter Katz as well as the State Department and its commissioner, James Duzrenda. The youth’s lawyer charged that the state law used to transfer the teen is illegal because it violates two federal laws. The Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 which provides funds to states in order to follow core protections for youth in the justice system and the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 dealing with the sexual assault of prisoners. Romano is hoping to overturn the “unconstitutional” transfer. The complaint further requires DCF to create programming and treatment specific to transgender children and youth.

While this youth has committed acts of violence, an adult prison facility is not the place for her. I would think that it would be more beneficial for a troubled youth to be working through her emotional turmoil rather than sitting in solitary confinement, where nothing can be done. This is partially the fault of the court system, which opted to place this youth in jail due to DCF’s lack of options. There are not many treatment options for transgender youth or even high risk individuals but changes need to be made. DCF should create new programming to accommodate such circumstances.

[The Huffington Post] [The CT Mirror]

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Taylor Garre (@TaylorLynn013)

Taylor Garre

Taylor Garre is a student at Fordham University and formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Taylor at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Transgender Teen is Imprisoned, But is it Constitutional? appeared first on Law Street.

A report released on Wednesday concluded that public opinion on drug offenses has started to shift, as a preference for treatment over jail time is growing, particularly for hard drug users.

The study conducted by the Pew Research Center details the results of public opinion surveys taken earlier this year, and concluded that 67 percent of Americans favor providing treatment to drug users for substances like cocaine and heroin. In contrast, only 26 percent of those surveyed favored the prosecution of drug users.

This survey reflects a notable change in public and policymakers’ opinions during the “war on drugs,” which President Nixon declared in 1971 in response to drug use in the 1960s. Decades later, U.S. incarceration rates have skyrocketed as a result of drug offenders, which make up a very large portion of the American prison population. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 52.1 percent of federal prisoners and 17.4 percent of state prisoners were convicted of drug related offenses. As federal and state governments face increasing financial pressures to save money, a trend to decrease prison sentences has started to emerge in the government as well.

Changing Opinions

The Pew Research Center’s report found that a change is occurring in the popular perception of mandatory sentencing policies for non-violent drug crimes. According to the survey, 63 percent of respondents believe that moving away from mandatory sentencing policies is a good thing, while only 47 percent held that view in 2001.

The research indicates that opposition of mandatory minimums and long prison sentences is not strictly based on financial reasons, rather public perceptions of imprisonment for drug offenses may be changing. Although the study found that most Americans see drug abuse as either a crisis or serious problem in the United States, the findings may not extend to marijuana as 69 percent of the public views it as less harmful than alcohol. Support for the legalization of marijuana has also experienced a recent boost, as now over half of Americans (54 percent) are in favor of such policies. Even more, people support the decriminalization of marijuana; 76 percent of the people surveyed, oppose jail time for possessing small amounts.

A news article that was published by Pew Research Center along with their report also noted how popular opinion of drug sentencing has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. A 1990 a survey found that 73 percent of Americans supported a mandatory death penalty for “major drug traffickers,” and nearly 60 percent thought police should be able to search known drug dealer’s houses without a warrant. The new research indicates that such attitudes may now be very different, marked by the public’s preference for treatment over prison sentences for hard drug users.

Pending Legislation

These findings come at an important time politically, as the Smart Sentencing Act (SSA) of 2014 was recently placed on the Senate’s legislative calendar. The bill, sponsored by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), calls for significant changes in the sentencing of drug related offenders. With bi-partisan support, the legislation would instruct the courts to create prison sentences without considering mandatory minimums if the defendant has no more than one prior offense. It would also amend the Controlled Substances Act and Controlled Substances Import and Export Act to reduce the minimum sentence times for several offenses.

The Smart Sentencing Act would make the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), passed in 2010, retroactive. This means that anyone sentenced for a crime prior to the passage of the FSA may appeal their sentence and have it modified to reflect changes made by the legislation. The primary intentions of the bill is to both increase fairness in sentencing while also taking the fiscal concerns surrounding imprisonment into account during the sentencing process. Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed the bill earlier this year, and urged Congress to prevent “excessive mandatory minimum sentences that are out of proportion with their alleged conduct – and serve no deterrent purpose.”

Holder has also recently testified in front of the the U.S. Sentencing Commission, an independent agency that sets federal sentencing policies, in an effort to support a plan to reduce federal sentencing policies for drug trafficking offenders. These changes would affect as much as 70 percent of the drug trafficking offenders, and would reduce the average sentence by 11 months. The commission is expected to vote on the proposal sometime this month.

The changing trends and public opinion and recently proposed legislation indicate the possibility of a rare sense of agreement between the public and U.S. policymakers. Although the Smart Sentencing Act still faces several hurdles in congress, if passed it would mark an important deviation from the “war on drugs” that has been going on for decades.

Pew Research Center: Survey

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Kevin Rizzo (@kevinrizzo10)

Featured Image Courtesy of [Wikimedia]

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Public Opinion Shifts on Drug Sentencing appeared first on Law Street.

A recent study concluded that private prisons are more likely to hold African American prisoners when compared to public correction facilities. The study argues that contractual provisions, specifically health care related exemptions, have a measurable effect on the racial makeup of private correctional populations and are the primary contributors to this trend.

This report was the second part of a research study conducted by Christopher Petrella, a UC-Berkeley graduate student, and sought to explain the existence of the disparities found in his initial research. Petrella argues that the existence of unique medical exemptions in private prison contracts has caused their populations to include more black Americans than public prison populations.

We have covered private prisons before, but this study marks another example of why private prisons have become controversial recently. Private for-profit prison companies hold over 12 percent of the total prison population. The total number of inmates in these facilities totals over 130,000, and has continued to rise in recent years. These prisons have grown dramatically in size over the years and continue to develop political influence.

According to Petrella’s research, the presence of health exemptions for private prisons, allow such companies to avoid holding prisoners with chronic medical conditions or who may have above average medical costs. Statistics further indicate that younger inmates are much more likely to be black, and older inmates are relatively more likely to be white. The study attributes this disparity to the recent “war on drugs” campaign, which has had a disproportionate effect on young black Americans.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Prisoners in 2010 report, the estimated sentenced prisoner rate per 100,000 people was significantly larger for blacks in every age group, particularly those under the age of 50. Consequently, age becomes what Petrella calls “a proxy” for race, as grouping inmates by age also tends to separate them by skin color. Petrella cites a study done by the ACLU to explain how age affects health care costs. The ACLU found that the annual cost of holding the average prisoner is $34,135, but the cost of holding a prisoner over the age of 50 years old is $68,270.

It is also important to note that Petrella decided not to use statistics from federal detention centers that are operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or local ones controlled by the U.S. Marshall’s Service in order to avoid inflating the statistics even further.

Steve Owens, the senior director of public affairs for Corrections Corporation of America, told NPR that he found the study to be “deeply flawed.” He cited the fact that the government agrees to the contracts and typically has a lot of control over what prisoners are held in private facilities.

Although, it does not appear that race was the motive for these exemptions and policies, it does point to another example of discrimination and racial injustice within the prison system. Profit is clearly the overriding rationale behind the actions of private prison companies, but this problem is simply a part of a much larger issue of racial injustice.

Racial Injustice in Prisons

Here is an infographic created by ArrestRecords.com, which outlines many prominent examples of racism in the criminal justice system. According to the infographic, African Americans represent 37.1 percent of the American prison population, yet makeup only 12.6 percent of the country’s citizens. Racism is arguably even more noticeable among prisoners on death row, as blacks represent 43 percent of that population. Furthermore, African Americans who have killed white people were sentenced to death 22 times more often than a white person convicted of killing a black person.

Statistics also show a growing trend in the proportion of blacks in the overall prison population. This holds true for men, women, adults and children, as prisoner totals have gone up dramatically since 1960. Not only are blacks more likely to be incarcerated during their lifetime, they are also more likely to receive higher bail totals, longer prison sentences, get stopped by law enforcement officers in public, and get convicted by all-white juries.

The infographic also indicates how the “War on Drugs” has adversely affected the black community in America. Although blacks represent just over 12 percent of the population, they constitute 38 percent of those arrested for drug offenses, and as many as 58 percent of the people in state prisons for such crimes. According to The Sentencing Project the average drug related sentence for African Americans is almost the same as the average violent crime sentence for a whites. This indicates that not only are black people more likely to be convicted of a crime, but are also more likely to serve more jail time than a white person would be for the same crime.

Finally, some statistics indicate that there is hope for the future, as the incarceration rate for both black male and females has started to decrease in recent years. These rates remain well above those of white males and females, but these trends may indicate that the gap is starting to close. However, there is a long way to go before the American prison system is equitable, and much needs to be done to combat the extensive history of injustice within the United States. Creating awareness and making reforms in the criminal justice system are an important part of addressing many of the existing issues.

[NPR] [The Color of Corporate Corrections]

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Private Prisons Much More Likely to Hold Minorities appeared first on Law Street.

Attorney General Eric Holder shined a spotlight on state voting laws this week when he spoke out against voting bans for felons. The laws vary across states, with the harshest in Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia where felons are banned from voting for life, with the exception of individual permissions granted by the governor. Other states require ex-convicts to abide by a waiting period prior to regaining the vote, and others still have long and complicated re-registration procedures. To prove the severity of these laws, Holder pointed to Florida where anti-felon suffrage regulations ban 10 percent of the citizens from voting.

While a significant portion of the country is barred from voting, even after they finish their time in prison, these laws also disproportionately affect minorities. African-Americans encompass a third of the approximately 5.8 million Americans who are barred from exercising their voting rights. Holder emphasized the large number of minorities affected by these restrictive laws, stating that they are remnants of the discriminatory policies enacted after the Civil War in order to keep minorities from going to the polls. And unfortunately their efforts were successful: 1 in 13 African-Americans are disenfranchised due to anti-felon voting bans.

Due to these, and other, restrictive policies, any attempt to protect minority voting rights is important, especially after key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were declared unconstitutional in a 2013 Supreme Court Ruling. The decision deemed Section 4 unconstitutional, which determined states with histories of voting discrimination would have to submit any changes to their voting laws to be pre-approved by the Attorney General. Without the coverage formula, states are able to pass discriminatory voting laws and the federal government cannot prevent the laws from going into effect.

In this context, the Voting Rights Act’s power is minimized, and any legislation that could help restore some minority voting rights would be welcome. Senator Rand Paul is currently drafting a bill that, if passed by Congress, would give many felons the right to vote in federal elections. However, Paul’s bill still contains restrictions: the proposed legislation restores the vote specifically to non-violent felons, which is a compromise with other legislators who are hesitant to restore these rights in the first place.

Holder also noted that the laws preventing ex-convicts from voting only enhances the stereotype and social stigma surrounding felons. Laws affecting felons, such as these restrictive voting ban, increase the feeling of separation from the rest of the community and increase the likelihood that felons will commit further crimes. Treating ex-convicts as second-class citizens is neither the proper nor the most successful way to reintegrate them into their communities.

These laws teach others that there are no second chances in American justice: once a convict, always a convict. Some may think that this is a good message to send, and that such laws could dissuade citizens from committing crimes in the first place. However, this philosophy mistakenly precludes the possibility that once felons finish their time, they could serve some benefit to the community. If societal attitudes continue to influence felons to go back to jail, states miss out on the potential for these people’s efforts to contribute to the workforce and other communal needs. By getting rid of some of the restrictive laws on felons after they return to normal life, they can better return as contributing citizens.

While Mr. Holder has no authority to enact changes to the laws himself, congressmen and state legislatures should listen up.

[Washington Post] [New York Times] [SCOTUS Blog] [The Hill] [Politico]

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Sarah Helden (@shelden430)

Featured image courtesy of [Daniel Lobo via Flickr]

Sarah Helden

Sarah Helden is a graduate of The George Washington University and a student at the London School of Economics. She was formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Sarah at staff@LawStreetmedia.com.

The post Holder Speaks Out Against Felon Voting Ban appeared first on Law Street.

The Human Rights Watch is an independent organization dedicated to protecting human rights domestically and around the globe. This week, they have released an extensive 126-page report called “An Offer You Can’t Refuse: How US Federal Prosecutors Force Drug Defendants to Plead Guilty.”

The argument focuses on the issue of mandatory minimums—certain crimes in which convictions automatically require a minimum punishment, such as a given amount of years in prison. One example of a mandatory minimum is the three-strikes law, which requires that if an individual is found guilty of a third felony charge, they have a mandated harsher sentence. Mandatory minimums are especially controversial in drug cases—there are certain types of drugs like painkillers and hard drugs that mandate harsh sentences.

Supporters argue that certain crimes deserve uniformly appropriate punishments. After all, we’ve all seen what happens when judges are allowed sole discretion in deciding punishments—the recent case of Stacey Dean Rambold, who was given only a 31-day sentence for raping an underage girl. Critics of the law argue that it does not allow the accused to be charged on a more appropriate case-by-case basis. They also argue that it leads to a countless number of unfair convictions and sentences, such as these examples. Ninety-seven percent choose to plead guilty.

Another issue with mandatory minimums is that they only refer to types of drugs and amounts, not the actual job of the person being charged. For example, a kid who is working as a courier can be charged with selling large quantities of drugs, instead of the actual drug dealer facing charges.

The report released by the Human Rights Watch details how these mandatory minimum requirements in drug cases are being manipulated. Prosecutors give defendants the choice: either go to trial, and if convicted, face harsh mandatory minimums, or plead guilty to a lower sentence than the mandatory minimum. According to this report, they also threaten to add charges to the crimes, such as prior drug convictions, or if they had a weapon at the time they were arrested.

Given that some of these mandatory minimums can be a life sentence, this offer is incredibly enticing.

The Human Rights Watch report looked at a number of cases in which defendants pled not guilty, and the results were devastating. For example, a woman named Sandra Avery, who was characterized as a small-time drug dealer, was offered a sentence of 10 years for possessing 50 grams of crack cocaine with intent to sell. She turned it down, and instead chose to go to trial. She is now serving life in prison without parole.

The HRW report calls this a “trial penalty.” They explain that a trial is a right within the United States, but that for those who have been forced to plead guilty for fear of an unreasonable sentence, that right has been taken away. The relevant statistics that the HRW gathered are convincing—as noted in the report, “the average sentence for federal drug offenders who pled guilty was five years, four months; for those convicted after trial, the average sentence was sixteen years.”

This report will most likely add to a growing sentiment that mandatory minimums need to be revisited. After all, Attorney General Eric Holder has made his feelings on them clear—he has stated that the laws need to change. Hopefully, this report will continue that discussion, and changes will be made to ensure that everyone does receive the due process of law.

[Human Rights Watch]

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Tori Rector via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post How U.S. Prosecutors Force Drug Defendants to Plead Guilty appeared first on Law Street.

Governor Jerry Brown and legislative leaders announced Monday a deal to seek an extension on the compliance order to cut California’s prison population by expanding rehabilitation programs.  This approach is aimed at reducing the number of former inmates committing new crimes through health and informational programs. If the request for an extension is rejected by the panel of judges then the state is prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to house inmates in private prisons.

The federal judges, who deemed California prisons unconstitutionally crowded, gave the state officials until December 31 to reduce the prison population by thousands. There has been a lot of controversy in the Capitol over how to handle the court order.  The Governor’s original plan was to spend $1.1 billion over three years to house inmates in private prisons, county jails and other facilities. Meanwhile, California Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg wanted to extend the court order for three years, allowing the state more time to expand mental-health and drug rehabilitation programs. Both proposals did not adequately provide a working solution within the time frame allotted.

[LA Times]

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Featured image courtesy of [Luis Argerich via Wikipedia]

Ashley Powell

Ashley Powell is a founding member of Law Street Media, and its original Lead Editor. She is a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post More Time Please: Deal Seeking an Extension on California’s Prison Compliance Order appeared first on Law Street.

On Wednesday, the attorney general, Eric Holder, stated “the war on drugs is now 30.. 40 years old. There have been a lot of unintended consequences. There’s been a decimation of certain communities, in particular communities of color.” Holder is spearheading sentencing reform and expects speak on the proposals in a speech to American Bar Association in San Francisco, next week.

Holder is not the only one calling for sentencing reform. Two senators Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin and Utah Republican Mike Lee, are promoting a bill called the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2013- a law to lower mandatory minimums for several drug crimes as well as reduce overcrowding in the prison system by 40 percent capacity. In addition, Republican Rand Paul and Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy are moving their own bill- the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013. Their bill differs by focusing on giving judges more power to impose lower sentences to all crimes, not solely drug crimes.

[JDJournal]

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Featured image courtesy of [Kate Ter Haar via Flickr]

Ashley Powell

Ashley Powell is a founding member of Law Street Media, and its original Lead Editor. She is a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Calls for Sentencing Reform in the War on Drugs appeared first on Law Street.