A writ is the equivalent of a subpoena, meaning it’s a command by a court to make an appearance. Since prisoners can’t leave the institution to make an appearance voluntarily, courts issue writs for any number of reasons that instruct authorities to deliver the prisoner.

In many cases, courts issue writs at the request of prosecutors who want the prisoner to testify before a grand jury or perhaps to offer testimony in a criminal trial. In Ben’s case, the writ was for more troubling reasons. He expected to face new criminal charges for a case that was unrelated to his current nine-month sentence.

Ben has a problem that other defendants should be aware of as they proceed through the judicial system. When Ben pleaded guilty to his initial offense, he made a statement of remorse to the probation officer. As part of that statement Ben said that he regretted the crime he had committed, assuring the government that the crime was an aberrant act—one that he had not committed before and one that he would not commit again. The court imposed a lenient sentence because of Ben’s compliance in that case. As events turned out, however, Ben wasn’t completely candid when he expressed his remorse.  Had he been honest about all of his criminal involvement, the government might not be uprooting his life now to compel his appearance for a new set of criminal charges. When Ben faces prosecutors for the second time, they may not be so inclined to treat him leniently after his lack of forthrightness about all of his criminal conduct.

When defendants meet with defense attorneys to resolve criminal charges, it is wise to reveal everything to the attorney and to seek guidance on how best to resolve all criminal problems at once. The stress that comes with criminal charges is bad enough to face the first time, but going through that stress a second time is devastating—especially when the prisoner thinks all of his problems are in the past.

Because of the new criminal charges, Ben will be taken out of Taft Camp, locked in shackles and chains. Authorities will transfer him to a federal holding center. He may waste months in limbo as the legal process works itself out with plea hearings, findings of fact, presentence investigations, sentencing, and a return to prison. Weeks will pass, filled with uncertainty. I’ve gone through it before and my advice would be that defendants try to resolve all criminal problems at once so they can begin the healing process that I describe throughout my published writing.

The post Ben’s Problem: Going Back to Court For New Criminal Charges appeared first on Prison News Blog.

I was touched by this story in multiple ways: as the wife of a long-term prisoner, as the mother of a soldier being deployed to Iraq in weeks, as a nurse, and as a dog lover.

Please take a moment to look at the story posted below and watch the videos to see the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritutal rehabilitative benefits achieved for all participants through this very worthy program. It is a beautfiul story of love and redemption and rehabilitation.

There is much more to be gained by implementing positive programs like this in our prisons- in which hope, freedom, and rehabilitation become the tri-part outcome – than there is in implementing longer, more punitive prison terms.  We need prison reform like this.

 Check it out  – (from Oprah’s web site  – thanks Oprah!) :

Watch an emotional Puppies Behind Bars reunion.  

Go inside a training session.  

Where do these service dogs get their start? For some, it all begins behind prison walls…

Now, a groundbreaking program called Puppies Behind Bars is transforming these offenders. Inmates are given 8-week-old puppies and taught to train them to become service dogs for the disabled, including wounded soldiers. The puppies and prisoners are together 24 hours a day. The puppies sleep in crates in the inmates’ cells.

In return, the puppies give the prisoners something many of them have never experienced before—unconditional love. “I’m going to make my family and those around me proud of me again. Joining this program, it helped me to give myself a sense of pride again. To know that by nurturing and raising these dogs to their fullest potential, that I could give back.”

“We know the bond that can be created between humans and animals. And there is common knowledge that it’s a healing quality,” she says. “The bond that’s created between inmates—who never knew love, never knew responsibility, have only been told that they’re worthless—and the bond that they then train their dogs to establish with these wounded returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan is changing their lives.”

Roberto was chosen for Puppies Behind Bars and immediately bonded with his yellow lab, Frankie. “From the moment I got her, it was amazing,” he says. “There was some beautiful moments in here that I shared with my puppy.”

Eventually, Frankie had to move on—and Roberto had to say goodbye. “The first night I was without Frankie, I have to say it was a long night,” he says. “It was hard for me to realize that the next morning I was going to wake up and not actually feed her that morning.”

After a few months together, Sgt. Hill and Frankie return to Fishkill to meet Roberto. When Frankie sees Roberto, she takes off running. “She looks beautiful,” Roberto says.

Roberto is moved. “This is an overwhelming feeling, and to see you is breathtaking,” he says. “And to see what Frankie had done in your life.”

Now paroled, Roberto is expected to be released from prison this summer, but what he learned from Puppies Behind Bars will stay with him forever. “Being able to be involved in the puppy program has taught me to be a responsible person,” he says. “It has taught me patience.”

Gina says she’s starting to see her husband’s playful, energetic side come through once again. “We’re starting to see that side of him again that we haven’t seen in the year and a half he’s been home from Iraq,” she says. “Frankie has brought my sons their daddy home. She has lit the light back in him that had been so dark.”

Related Resources

From The Oprah Winfrey Show Amazing Animals

The post Puppies Behind Bars program appeared first on Prison News Blog.

A few years after graduating from Shorecrest high school, I joined a friend in a scheme to distribute cocaine. As I was, my friend was also the son of small business owners. Neither of us were without opportunities, yet we chose to venture into a lifestyle that we believed would bring excitement to our lives. At the time, popular culture was influencing young minds with the glamor of cocaine trafficking. We mistakenly believed that we could profit quickly and substantially without exposing ourselves to risks that we couldn’t control. Neither of us had experienced the wrath of the criminal justice system before, and we failed to appreciate the severity with which we would be judged.

Between 1985 and 1987, I presided over a scheme to purchase cocaine in Miami. Other friends from high school would transport the cocaine to Seattle, and my partner would distribute the cocaine to clients we had cultivated. All of the relationships were with consenting adults, and neither weapons nor violence played a part in our operation. Nevertheless, we now recognize that violence plays a role in many drug crimes.

As a consequence of my decisions, I was charged with numerous crimes related to drug trafficking. After being convicted, my judge imposed a 45-year prison term. I began serving my sentence inside the high walls of a United States Penitentiary with a few thousand high-security prisoners. The laws under which I was convicted offer opportunities to earn time off for serving my sentence without disciplinary infractions. I expect to serve about 25 years on my sentence before I will be released from prison.

As of this entry, I have more than 21 years of prison behind me. My focus has always been on preparing for the life I want to lead upon release. To that end, I have built a record that shows my commitment to reconciling with society. I worked to educate myself and to contribute to society in every way possible. The total focus I have made has enabled me to avoid confrontation and altercation with both prisoners and staff. I feel proud of the way that I have responded to the problems I created, yet still humiliated by the bad decisions I made as a young man – the decisions that led me to prison.

My belief has always been that the length of my sentence was too long and that it served no useful purpose for society. Despite those personal beliefs, I have done my best to serve the sanction with dignity. I look forward to my return to society and the opportunities that will open for me to contribute.

The post Seduced by the Glamor of Cocaine, I Deserved a Prison Sentence appeared first on Prison News Blog.

I felt surprise at the shift in emotions. My imprisonment began in 1987, more than 21 years ago. I began serving the sentence when I was 23, and I have nearly crossed the fulcrum that would disperse the greater weight of my life in prison than in society. This term has been my only period of confinement and I have no history of violence. For the most part, I have grown numb to the boundaries that surround me, and the stigma of my predicament. Prison has been my life.

From the beginning, I have worked hard and consistently to reconcile with society for the bad decisions I made as a younger man. During the early years of my sentence, I lived with the idealism that I could earn my freedom through merit. With that goal as my beacon, I worked for years to educate myself, to contribute to society, and to prepare in every way so that I could emerge from confinement as a contributing citizen.

When Bill Clinton won the White House, I naively clung to the beam of his campaign. Slightly more than five years had passed since steel gates locked me inside prison walls. By then I had earned an undergraduate degree and was enrolled in graduate school. With dreams that my transformative adjustment would influence a favorable decision, I submitted my first petition for clemency.

In 1995, Hofstra University awarded my Masters Degree and I was beginning a PhD program at the University of Connecticut. I was 31-years-old, and well educated. After more than eight years of prison, I felt as ready as possible to begin living in society as a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen. In 1996, however, my prison case manager delivered a terse statement from the Department of Justice. For reasons that did not merit an explanation or review, my petition for clemency had been denied.

With the beginning of my second decade in prison, I resolved myself to the reality that I would serve several more years. The new Congress, led by Newt Gingrich, passed more punitive legislation. The hope for relief that carried me through my first decade vanished. I settled in to the likelihood that I would serve longer than a quarter century in federal prison.

In letting go of dreams that I could somehow influence the advancement of my release date, I had to change my adjustment pattern. I committed to the pursuit of activities that might bring meaning to my life while I served a lengthy prison term. In some way, I hoped my work would contribute to society.

With help from mentors, I worked to develop writing skills. Those efforts comforted me through my solitude. Simultaneously, writing offered opportunities to help others understand prisons, the people they held, and strategies to grow through confinement.

Since that adjustment shift, I have come to accept my imprisonment. I passed through all of the Clinton years, and now we have come to the final days of the Bush years. With so much prison behind me, I believed myself immune to the disease of despondency. Yet when I read that President Bush had commuted the prison terms of two others, I felt a terrific sense of loss.

I called my wife, who has endured nearly 10 years of this journey beside me. She had not yet heard the news of the commutations. I asked her to research the prisoners whose terms had been cut. I wanted to know if they had done more to earn freedom. Carole, as always, expressed her unyielding support. She could sense my sadness and offered her characteristic encouragement to lift my spirits.

“Your release will be much more magnificent,” she said. I didn’t know what my wife meant, but I loved her for helping me through an unanticipated difficult moment. I put an end to the day quite early, stretching out on my steel rack of a bed before 7:00 in the evening. I read for a while, prayed for strength, and drifted into sleep. When I awoke this morning, I felt more in control of my emotions. The Thanksgiving holiday was only two days away. Many years of prison were behind me and more were ahead, but I could still feel gratitude for the blessings in my life.

The post A Long-term Prisoner’s Reaction to Bush’s Clemency Orders appeared first on Prison News Blog.

Others with whom I was associated in drug trafficking received sentences that were only a fraction of the length of mine. Some of those people cooperated with the government in exchange for more lenient sentences, and others lacked the level of culpability I had as one of the leaders of the scheme. I do not blame or begrudge any of my co-defendants. As far as I have always been concerned, I created my own problems.

I do not agree that long prison sentences are appropriate for offenders who have no history of violence. My crimes involved only consenting adults, yet I serve a sentence that is longer than many predatory offenders. Yet the length of time that other people serve has no relationship to what is going on in my life. I created my own problems.

Now I am nearly 45 years old and I have more than 21 years of prison behind me; I still expect to serve more than three more years. The time I have served inside has not crippled my spirit. In fact, many people who know me would say that I have sailed through the sentence unscathed. That has been my intention, to serve my sentence with dignity and integrity. I strive to make every day count, to contribute to the lives of others, to add value to the world.

Naturally, I want to leave prison. During the many years that I have served I have been blessed with multiple opportunities. I earned an undergraduate degree from Mercer University and a graduate degree from Hofstra University. I published several books that have helped me build a wide network of support. Most importantly, I have built a thriving marriage with an exceptionally beautiful and talented woman. These blessings have given me much to feel proud of, and they encourage me for the life I want to lead upon release.

As a long-term prisoner, I have had to fight the urge to feel sorry for myself. By embracing the sentence, I could focus on how I wanted to respond to the problems that I created. Otherwise I would feel like a whiner, a cry baby in prison. I serve time with a lot of people who whine about how they do not belong in prison. To me, that seems like the wrong approach. I do not want to be remembered for the problems I created, but rather I strive to be recognized for the way that I have responded to the problems I created. Somehow, that approach empowers me, makes me feel less like a victim of the system and more like I control my destiny. It has been an adjustment pattern that works for me.

The post Reflecting on the Long Prison Sentence I Serve appeared first on Prison News Blog.

While I was beginning my term inside of a jail cell, contemplating the decades my sentence would require me to serve in prison, I thought about steps I could take to redeem the bad decisions of my youth. Despite my having served more than 21 years in prisons of every security level, I have never engaged in an act of violence or rebellion. It has not been a fear of being taken to the Special Housing Unit that has kept me focused on goals. My discipline has come from a solid commitment to reconciling with society and preparing for the obstacles that I expect to face upon release.

Other prisoners struggle to see how their behavior in prison relates to the life they will lead once the sentence ends. The prison system itself supports an infrastructure that decimates hope. Whereas there are numerous prohibited acts an inmate may commit to raise his security level, extend his release date, and expose him to more onerous prison conditions, he has no path to distinguish himself in a positive way. An inmate who strives to educate himself, build a strong network of support, contribute to society, and create resources that will help him succeed upon release will not receive any recognition within the prison system. That individual will face interference from prison administrators who prefer to warehouse prisoners that waste their time watching television and playing table games.

By engaging in criminal acts, I had humiliated my parents and sisters. They stood beside me throughout my criminal proceedings. Yet when I saw the sadness and anxiety my imprisonment had caused them, I felt this deep desire to prove myself worthy of the support they had extended. Somehow, I felt that I had to make things right.

Naturally, I wanted to advance my release date.

The one factor I could control, however, was preparing a contributing citizen. The goal of educating myself was clearly defined. The effort I invested would determine whether I succeeded or failed. Prison administrators would not recognize my efforts, but I felt certain that academic credentials would enhance my standing with taxpayers and bring my family members pride. Those values added meaning to my life. They provided the motivation I needed to avoid the toxic influences of the penitentiary.

The post Why I Don’t Succumb to Prison Influences appeared first on Prison News Blog.

Many young people who engage in drug trafficking come from communities without much hope. Although difficult backgrounds may not excuse such decisions, they make the choices easier to understand. People who do not perceive choices they can make to advance their lives in legitimate ways sometimes choose crime as an alternative. Yet in my case, I had viable options that could have led to success. My parents reared my sisters and me in affluence. They were business owners who expected that I follow their example of hard work. Yet I lacked the character as a younger man to make good decisions. It was much easier for me to pursue the high life that came with trafficking in cocaine.

Rather than choosing the more responsible path to maturity, I chose excitement. I was not a drug abuser myself, and my social circle did not expose me to the devastation that drugs bring at the user level. My influences were shows like Miami Vice and movies like Scarface. While in my early 20s, I wrongfully pursued the quick path to perceived riches. Those decisions brought consequences that I failed to appreciate until long after I was caught by the DEA.

Upon my arrest, I continued to make bad decisions. I had never been imprisoned before and I was not ready to accept responsibility for my crimes. That resulted in my making bad decisions like pursuing a trial rather than a plea agreement that could have resulted in a lower sanction. I did not understand the criminal justice system or the options that were available to me. Because of that ignorance, I made choices that resulted in much stiffer penalties.

Since I have been in prison I have worked hard and consistently to reconcile with society for the bad decisions I made. I also strive to help others who are about to encounter the criminal justice system or prison. By reading my writings, I hope to help those individuals make better decisions.

The post Why I Regret that I Sold Cocaine and Fought the Criminal Charges appeared first on Prison News Blog.

While languishing in my prison cell, I realized the humiliation that I had caused my family and the disappointment that I had caused others in my community. Somehow, I wanted to reconcile with society. I wanted to undo the harm that I had caused by selling cocaine. The only manner I saw in which I could make a difference, I thought, was to educate myself. I wanted to develop communication skills, as I believed that by communicating, I could express my remorse and perhaps help others make better decisions than I had made as a younger man.

Those reflections led me to make a commitment. Although I could not comprehend the magnitude of a 45-year prison term, I could think about what I wanted to accomplish during my first decade of confinement. By working to educate myself, I would start the journey of becoming a positive role model. I felt fortunate to find universities that would work with me, despite my imprisonment. In 1992, Mercer University awarded me an undergraduate degree, and in 1995, Hofstra University awarded me a graduate degree. With those academic credentials, I felt as if I could speak for change and prison reform with more credibility.

During the many years that I served following my formal academic program, I thought about the steps I could take to reach others. Writing about my experiences, I hoped, would expose the consequences that followed criminal decisions. When I was making the bad decision to engage in drug trafficking, I never really considered that a criminal prosecution would be a part of my life. Many of the-people I have met in prison, even those convicted of white collar crimes, lived with similar delusions. Yet as a man who has experienced more than 21 years in prison, I now stand convinced that this system does not discriminate. Prosecutors will go after anyone who breaks the law, and those who are convicted will sacrifice much that others take for granted.

Cooperating with the prosecution was not an option that I was willing to consider, yet I should have accepted responsibility by pleading guilty to the charges against me. I knew that I had broken the law. Had I acted more responsibly, my sanction would not have been so severe. All in all, though, I am convinced that the long sentence I am serving will be a persuasive point as I work to convince others to make better decisions. Through articles I publish at www.criminal-indictment.com, I stand qualified to show others the whole journey because I have lived it.

The post Prison Led me to Reflect, Repent, and Reform appeared first on Prison News Blog.