Check out: http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/990

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F34p0YiSp8g&feature=player_embedded

What it’s about:

1. Alienation of people: We are creating refugees amongst our own people. Inmates come back not feeling like they are part of their own community; not knowing “we the people” means them too.

2. Break up of families: unreasonable prison policies and a culture of oppression is further tarring up families and communities. How can this system support fathers in taking responsibility?

3. Transparency in government: We are turning one group of people to another (great majority of inmates are minorities) With Media barred from facilities and no independent oversight there is no accountability in Massachusetts DOC. Why isn’t media allowed in? If they want to investigate abuses and mismanagement why are they are constantly denied access.

4. President’s Leadership needed: How can President go and see Guantanamo Bay but doesn’t look into his own prisons? Can he assume that everything is right here? How come he can address schools, Middle Eastern countries, but will not address prisons?

5. System accountability: Every prison is different; there is no “system.” So who is responsible for outcome? Each State should be accountable about its prison system to the President. Focus on one place at a time. Find what’s wrong in MA to pass it on to another institution.

http://obamaanswerthis.com/

The Second Chance Act of 2007 provided federal prison administrators with the authority to release prisoners to halfway houses one year before their sentences expired. That Act also urged administrators to expand programs that would help prisoners build stronger family and community ties while the prisoners served their sentences. For whatever reason, the current BOP Director Harley G. Lappin chooses not to abide by the letter or the spirit of this Congressional legislation.

Director Lappin has led this agency since the Bush years. I am hoping that President Obama will soon appoint a new Director to lead the Bureau of Prisons. That new Director ought to embrace the Obama vision of enlightenment. Certainly, I understand that our country struggles through tough economic times. The BOP would not require additional funding, however, to implement the changes authorized by the Second Chance Act. It simply needs leadership that would advance prison policy from the dark ages.

President Bush signed the Second Chance Act longer than one year ago. It is inconceivable that during the past 12 months the Director could not have made changes within the BOP budget to provide more resources for community confinement centers. In the prison where I am held, where we have had a steady population in excess of 500 prisoners, only one many has been authorized for 12 months of halfway house placement during the past year.

Besides the BOP restrictions on halfway house placement, Director Lappin has kept policies in place that render it more difficult for prisoners to nurture family and community ties. The most blatant example of abusive policies that separate prisoners from family members is the 300-minute limitation on monthly telephone access for federal prisoners.

Prior to the George W. Bush presidency, federal prisoners could use the telephone to communicate with family much more freely. Monthly telephone limitations did not exist. The limitations began in 2001, and Director Lappin has kept them in place. That telephone restriction ought to be rescinded at once.

Congress did not pass the Second Chance Act haphazardly. The law passed with overwhelming bipartisan support because Congressional leaders recognized that prisoner recidivism rates were abhorrent. Those prisoners who built strong networks of support, who succeeded in finding employment, and who had time to decompress through halfway house placement stood the best chance for successful reentry.

America needs new leadership within the Bureau of Prisons. At the very least, it needs a Director who will embrace the enlightened prison reforms authorized by the Second Chance Act.

The radio news broadcast reported that Attorney General Eric Holder decided to drop the case against Senator Stevens, which effectively nullified his conviction. Although the evidence against Senator Stevens seemed overwhelming, government prosecutors relied on dirty tricks to convict him. Rather than focusing on the imminent sentencing hearing, the judge was concentrating on the prosecutorial misconduct. He even held the prosecutors in contempt for their failure to follow his order.

The Attorney General reviewed the case himself. Mr Holder’s inquiry led him to conclude that the Justice Department could not defend the manner in which prosecutors tried the case. Taking the defendant’s age into consideration, along with the fact that he is no longer a U.S. senator, Mr. Holder decided to send a message to other prosecutors that he would not tolerate misconduct and then dropped all charges against the former senator.

As a long-term prisoner, I had been hoping to serve time alongside the former lawmaker. I wanted him to experience the prison system and to share his experiences with his former colleagues. As Justice Kennedy reportedly told Senator Jim Webb, few judges have any idea about the culture of confinement. I suspect the same may be said about law makers, and even taxpaying citizens.

I write with hopes of shedding light on the need for prison reform. Although I may write volumes that describe the millions of lives that languish inside prisons, someone like a former U.S. senator could truly advance the call for prison reform. Once a man of power stands beside the ordinary citizens who serve years for nonviolent offenses, he sees more clearly the injustice in America and the need for immediate prison reform.

In the Second Chance Act, Congress made specific findings about appalling recidivism rates that cost taxpayers billions each year and threaten public safety. The Act cited the prison system’s own metrics suggesting that prisoners who maintained strong family and community ties were the most likely to succeed upon release. Congress charged the Director of the BOP to create programs that would help prisoners nurture family and community ties during the course of imprisonment. Despite the passing of a full year since Congress overwhelmingly passed the legislation, neither prisoners nor their family members have observed changes that would help them nurture family and community ties.

One terrible disruption to the possible nurturing of family and community ties began during the era of former Attorney General John Ashcroft. It concerned changes to the inmate telephone system. The telephone represents one of the essential links prisoners have to society. Prior to John Ashcroft’s leadership over the Department of Justice, inmates could use telephones freely to communicate with family members and friends. Since 2001, however, telephone policies have limited prisoners to 300 minutes of telephone access per month.

Besides restrictive telephone limitations, under Director Lappin’s leadership, the Bureau of Prisons places severe limitations on each federal prisoner’s ability to nurture family and community ties through visits. In the prison where I am held, for example, a rigid point system prohibits prisoners from receiving more than one visit per week. Prisoners who cannot visit during Friday work hours face even more restrictive time limitations; they may visit only two Saturdays per month. Such restrictive policies hinder rather than encourage the nurturing of close family and community ties.

The Director even authorizes policies that restrict federal prisoners from nurturing strong family and community ties through correspondence. In the prison where I am held, for example, policies prohibit inmates from using e-mail, or even typewriters for social correspondence. Those policies threaten disciplinary action against prisoners who use typewriters to nurture family ties; they may not even type letters to open relationships with prospective employers.

I may have only been in prison for 21-plus years, but as far as I know, prisoners have no more than three mechanisms through which they can nurture family and community ties. Those mechanisms include the telephone, visits, and correspondence. Congress published findings indicating that close family and community ties were the most important links that can lead prisoners to post-release success. Under Director Harley Lappin’s leadership of the federal Bureau of Prisons, however, restrictions exist to block rather than nurture those ties.

In this era of government transparency, the incongruity between Director Lappin’s statement to a Congressional committee and the policies he enforces should not go without notice. Telephone, visiting, and correspondence restrictions represent but three of the troubling policies that afflict all federal prisoners. Those policies belie any ostensible mission to assist prisoners with post-release success.

As a prisoner who struggles daily to hold his family together in spite of the Bureau of Prisons stifling restrictions, I found Director Lappin’s misrepresentation to Congress patently offensive. I would have preferred the direct honesty of my former unit manager, Ms. Ortega, who told me point blank: “We don’t care anything about what you’re doing to prepare for release. All we care about is the security of the institution.”

According to a report published by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, almost half of all the people who are sent to prison lack a high school diploma. The statistics seem to show that while the poor and uneducated are saddled with lengthy prison terms for criminal convictions, our system of justice gives more consideration to the rich and well connected.

My roommate, David, is a poor young man from a Hispanic family. He did not enjoy the life of power and privilege that criminals like Madoff and Libby exploited. David did not graduate high school and he made the bad decision of selling drugs to earn an income. He did not use weapons or violence, and he sold drugs to consenting adults. Yet his lengthy sentence suggests that our system of justice held David, a poor Hispanic man, to a higher standard than it holds the rich. That is an injustice, in my eyes.

Maria Perez is a criminal justice student who asked why I worked to help prisoners like David. As a long-term prisoner, I feel as if I have a responsibility and a duty to help all of my fellow prisoners. This is my calling, my ministry, the way I serve society and serve God. I strive to live as an example inside prison boundaries, and to inspire my fellow prisoners to work toward achieving their highest potential. Also, by writing about the prison system and the people it holds, I hope to apprise citizens of what goes on inside prisons and to influence prison reforms that will improve this wretched system.

There is a tremendous amount of hypocrisy when it comes to conservative viewpoints on confinement. When Republicans find themselves exposed to the wrath of the criminal justice system, they instantly find the wisdom of liberalism. Christina West, a criminal justice student, asked whether I thought prison reforms could include some kind of balance to appease conservative views that call for long prison sentences.

I do not think it is wise for American citizens to call for long prison sentences. Instead, they should call for an effective prison system. The conservative system of long-term imprisonment is one that is rife with corruption, and one that does not serve the interests of our enlightened society.

George Monbiot reported on Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan. They were two conservative judges recently convicted of ordering the imprisonment of 2,000 people in Pennsylvania in exchange for bribes from private prison companies. I doubt those conservatives argued for long-term imprisonment in their cases.

As Justice Kennedy stated, America confines too many people and American prisoners serve sentences taht are too long. We need prison reforms that will change the way we measure justice. Rather than the number of years or decades that an individual serves in a cage, we ought to measure justice in terms of an individual’s efforts to reconcile with society through merit. Those who earn freedom should not remain in prison for periods that are longer than necessary.

Statistics from the Pew Report show that Americans waste billions each year on corrections. Yet the longer society exposes an offender to corrections, the less likely that indivudal is to function upon release. The only people punished by long-term imprisonment seem to be the taxpayers who fund the system. The offender adjusts. Yet citizens must cope with lost resources for education, health care, and useful social programs. They must also struggle with the high recidivism that follows the myopic management of policies managed by vengeance.

This system needs reform. Prisons should only confine those who present a threat to society. For other offenders, society ought to demand alternative sanctions.

The United States Sentencing Commission recently released reports that show how federal offender demographics change. I think we need reforms that limit our reliance on prisons. our country should use prisons as one of many tools to respond to criminal behavior, not the only tool.

Certainly, some offenders behave in ways that warrant isolation from society. Those types of offenders come from every category. Bernard Madoff, for example, was a calculating white-collar offender who made victims of thousands. He was an educated man in a position of trust, and I feel that society ought to hold him to a higher standard than an uneducated offender who served time for having committed a crime against the public order. In every case, however, I feel that society would reap more rewards from its system of justice if prisons offered people opportunities to work toward redemption. I do not believe that warehousing human beings for decades at a time serves the interests of an enlightened society. What’s the point? As a man who has served more than 21 years, I can assure readers that the feeling of punishment diminishes over time. I’ve been in prison for so long that it feels normal to me. It does not seem to serve as an effective deterrent.

Justice means more than the turning of calendar pages. In my opinion, we ought to measure justice in terms of an individual’s efforts to reconcile with society. That is the response I give to the questions I received from Ralph Villejo.

When I think of correcting, I think of making something right. To me, when discussing the context of the prison environment, an emphasis on corrections would imply an emphasis on preparing offenders to emerge as law-abiding, contributing citizens. The irony is that statistics show that the longer society exposes an individual to corrections, the less likely that individual is to function successfully upon release.

Since statistics show that 70 percent of the people who serve time in prison return to confinement after their release, and independent researchers like those who produced The Pew Report show that prison expenditures divert tens of billions each year from social programs like education and health care, it would seem to me that the “institutionalized lifestyle” does not function so well as a tool for correcting. On the other hand, prisons perform brilliantly as a system for warehousing human beings. They are extremely effective at facilitating cultures where gangs and antisocial values proliferate. They encourage us-versus-them attitudes. Perhaps one of the greatest successes of the prison system is that, thanks to prison lobbyists, they have generated billions in profits for the businesses and organizations that provide the goods and services to keep the industry growing. Those accomplishments have come at the cost of losses in funding for programs that actually reduce crime, especially educational funding, but prisons have been booming for longer than two decades.

As a long-term prisoner, I have considered it my responsibility to overcome the challenges that confinement presents. I began serving my term at 23, and I felt a deep sense of remorse for the shame and disappointment my criminal convictions had brought to my family. That remorse motivated my prison adjustment. I wanted to adjust in a way that would help me redeem the bad decisions I had made as a younger man. By educating myself, I hoped to prepare for release and for reconciliations with society.

I’ve served more than 21 years in prisons across the United States, and I’ve lived through the pernicious influences of the penitentiary system. I feel as if I have a duty to help Americans understand more about the failure this system breeds. It is not because I expect changes will advance my release date. I’ve served my time and expect to continue until my sentence expires. Yet as a citizen of this country that I love, I feel as if I must debunk the myths that prison propaganda perpetuates.

Our country incarcerates far too many people and prisoners serve sentences that are far too long, as Justice Anthony Kennedy of the U.S. Supreme Court expressed. We need prison reforms that will serve the interests of American citizens, not the interests of those who profit from warehousing humanity.

I totally agree with Rachel. It is a travesty that any citizen in our country lacks the resources to advance his or her academic or vocational training. People who want to improve their qualifications to lead more meaningful lives and contribute to society ought to have ample opportunities to find support. It is in the interest of every American to improve the educational levels of our populace. The more we educate our citizens, the more we advance the goal of enlightenment in our society.

According to Solomon Moore’s article on 3 March 2009 in the New York Times, one reason that law-abiding citizens lack access to educational funding opportunities is that billions of dollars have been diverted from investments in social programs. Those funds have been swallowed by out-of-control spending to expand our nation’s prison system. Rachel is correct in that too much money is taken away from programs that can help advance our society; that money has been wasted on the pernicious system of the penitentiary.

Rachel’s concern about prisoners who earn degrees is misplaced, however. Although there has been a surge in prison spending, those funds have gone for construction costs, staffing, and the billions needed ot provide the goods and services necessary to keep millions of people locked up. Prisoners have not had access to Pell Grants since the mid-1990s. Even then, the emphasis was not on educating prisoners. I was confined in a high security penitentiary with more than 2,500 other prisoners, yet I was the only prisoner to earn a university degree in that institution.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission recently released a report available at www.ussc.gov. That report shows the overwhelming growth of our prison system. The Pew Report showed the criminal corrections spending quadrupled over the past two decades, outpacing all spending other than medicaid. Much of that spending is wasted, as our system incarcerates far too many people, and it keeps them in prison for far longer than necessary, as one of our supreme court justices expressed. A consequence of this misguided public policy is that funds are available to the prison system, and those funds were diverted from more useful social programs that can help law-abiding citizens.

I am but one example. I could have been released after I served eight years. By then I had earned two degrees. I had made significant efforts to reconcile with society and was well prepared to make contributions that would provide a return on the investment in my education. Instead of being released, however, taxpayers paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue my confinement. I’ve served 21 years now. Yet taxpayers will spend more than $100,000 to confine me for another four years. Will this serve the interest of justice? I don’t think so. Though it will divert tax dollars from funding education programs for worthy citizens.

Administrators want this gravy train of funding for corrections to continue. To believe they want to see recidivism rates drop would be akin to believing tobacco companies want people to stop smoking. It is bad public policy, but the expenditures keep prison lobbyists busy. Unfortunately, the expenditures are diverted from useful programs that can help ordinary Americans.

As I read her question, I understood that it came from the premise of the conservative principle that prisons deter crime. I am much more of a liberal. This philosophical debate goes back centuries, articulated well between Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes believed that man was inherently evil and that only strict laws and punishment would keep the beast in line. Locke, on the other hand, believed that we all began as a clean slate, and our behaviors were learned in accordance with our exposures to society.

I am convinced that society can deter crime best by educating its populace. People pursue crime, I believe, because they do not perceive mechanisms through which they can reach the American dream. At least that is what I believe to be the motivation that drives most financial crimes. Myriad factors drive violent crimes, including passion and lost senses due to substance abuse, depression, and hopelessness. I am not convinced that the threat of prison serves as an adequate deterrence.

The prison lobbyists that have an interest in expanding prison budgets would disagree, as they seek to deter funding from social programs to expand this system of human warehousing. The recently released Pew Report shows that prison expenditures have grown at a much faster rate than other social programs, though I don’t believe more prison has stopped anyone from criminal behavior.

Deterring crime in society begins with bringing more access to opportunity. As government leaders implement reforms that will provide all Americans with a path to fulfillment, I feel convinced that more citizens will strive to leave as contributing members of society. Hopelessness, racism, inequality, and other social injustices lead many to crime. With those afflictions, I do not think that prisons serve as a deterrent. But my perceptions, of course, have been influenced from the 21-plus years I’ve spent locked inside of prison boundaries.

I recognize that prisons serve a purpose in our society. They must isolate those who prey upon others and whose behavior demonstrates an unwillingness to accept the values that make America great. Yet prison lobbyists have succeeded in deluding others into believing that we need more and more prisons. This wrongheaded emphasis has resulted in public policies that lead to massive prison expenditures and reduced expenditures on education and health care. Take a look at the problem in the great state of California.

The corrections system has grown by massive proportions, though recidivism rates show that little correcting is going on. Meanwhile, education budgets are slashed to make room for more prison spending. People with last names like Santos or Diaz or Torres are told that there is no funding for college of unemployment. If they lack a strong set of personal values or moral code, they make bad decisions, as I did. The response that has guided public policy for at least 20 years has been to lock those people in prison, but I don’t think it has deterred crime. Perhaps I am wrong, though I feel more emphasis on education and social equality would lead to a safer society.