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 That telephone restriction ought to be rescinded at once.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 post Bad Leadership in the Bureau of Prisons appeared first on Prison News Blog.

America has too many people languishing in prisons for too many years, causing social and financial consequences that are destructive and wasteful.

 ****** Read Senator Webb’s Message to American Citizens****** 

http://webb.senate.gov/email/criminaljusticereform.html

The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009 that I introduced in the Senate on March 26, 2009 will create a blue-ribbon commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom. I believe that it is time to bring together the best minds in America to confer, report, and make concrete recommendations about how we can reform the process.

Why We Urgently Need this Legislation:

    * With 5% of the world’s population, our country now houses 25% of the world’s reported prisoners.

    * Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980.

    * Four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals.

    * Approximately 1 million gang members reside in the U.S., many of them foreign-based; and Mexican cartels operate in 230+ communities across the country.

Post-incarceration re-entry programs are haphazard and often nonexistent, undermining public safety and making it extremely difficult for ex-offenders to become full, contributing members of society. 

America’s criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation’s prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.

We need to fix the system. Doing so will require a major nationwide recalculation of who goes to prison and for how long and of how we address the long-term consequences of incarceration. 

The post Senator Jim Webb Brings a Voice to Prison Reform appeared first on Prison News Blog.

Carole learned about Congressional efforts to provide more funding to the prison system through her continuous scrutiny over all news issues pertaining to our lives as a prison family. She is a nurse and a responsible citizen, but since I am in prison, Carole considers it her duty to look after my interests. It is her opinion that rather than providing the Bureau of Prisons with another billion dollars, Congress ought to require prison administrators to implement prison reforms that would end the practice of warehousing humanity.

Carole understands that one step administrators could take to reduce bloated operating expenses would be to place more nonviolent, nonthreatening prisoners who have served substantial portions of their sentences in home confinement programs. She recognizes the absurdity of packing tens of thousands of prisoners in minimum-security camps. Such prisons do not have fences, and the people confined to such facilities could serve their sentences on home confinement while working or making contributions to society.

In the spring of this year, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has called for panel discussions and hearings to begin explorations on prison reform legislation. Carole will alert the readers of Prison News Blog with all she learns about to Senator Webb’s hearings. In the meantime, however, I feel proud for the role she has taken in our legislative process by expressing her outrage at Republican efforts to provide another billion dollars to the Bureau of Prisons.

As part of the stimulus, Congress included $800 million in funding for the Bureau of Prisons, and President Obama’s initial budget allocates $6 billion to the Bureau of Prisons. I expect that the Director will be required to appropriate those funds in accordance with the vision for America that our new President has. As I told Carole during our visit last Friday, that funding may be necessary to launch new efforts that would expand the community confinement centers or home confinement program. Such expenditures could work in our favor.

Carole’s proactive efforts to bring me home are some of the ways she expresses her commitment to our marriage, and they are some of the reasons I feel so privileged to have her love. More family members ought to take an active role in the push for prison reform and the legislative process. 

The post My Wife Opposes Funding Prisons in Economic Stimulus appeared first on Prison News Blog.

As the federal prison system operates today, prisoners do not have a mechanism through which they can work toward earning freedom. That is a tragedy. It is a flawed policy that contributes to high recidivism rates, higher prison budgets, and a growing us-versus-them subculture that threatens the fabric of society.

We need prison reforms that would encourage offenders to work toward meaningful incentives. Prison administrators do not serve the interests of society when they govern with policies that extinguish hope. Administrators rely upon a rigid disciplinary code to punish bad behavior; we need prison reforms that will introduce an equally objective incentive system to reward positive adjustments.

Incentives do not have to increase prison budgets. Prisons are total institutions, where administrators control the infrastructure by which all prisoners live. In setting prison policies, administrators dictate how much access prisoners have to telephone, visits, education, food, clothing, recreation, and housing. Through the use of incentives, they can encourage prisoners to strive toward graduated increases in freedom. They may earn more telephone access, more family time, more control over housing assignments through positive adjustments. A proper incentive system would encourage prisoners to work toward earning freedom through desirable adjustments.

In designing a meaningful incentive system, administrators could induce more offenders to prepare for law-abiding lives upon release. That would lower recidivism rates and make society safer. It is the reason I call for meaningful prison reform through which offenders can earn freedom.

The post Prison Administrators Can Lower Recidivism Rates by Offering Incentives appeared first on Prison News Blog.

When I began serving my prison term, in 1987, I was 23-years-old. Although I did not have a history of violence or previous incarceration, my judge imposed a 45-year sentence. With the length of confinement ahead, administrators locked me inside the walls of a high-security federal penitentiary. As sentencing structures then stood, the term translated into possible release 25 years later, in 2013, provided that I did not lose good-time credits through disciplinary actions.

What did our society expect to benefit through the imposition of such a term? Would the severity of the sentence deter consenting adults from engaging in cocaine transactions? Would it appropriately punish the wrong and illegal behavior of my early 20s? Would isolating me from society during my 20s, 30s, and 40s advance the principles of justice? Did the leaders expect rehabilitation would follow my confinement for multiple decades in a high-security penitentiary?

Our society now confines more than 2.3 million people. The costs to fund this massive system of human warehousing exceeds $60 billion each year. Taxpayers read of inadequate resources to invest in educational programs and teachers, yet budgets to maintain the massive prison system thrive year after year. With recidivism rates that exceed 60 percent, however, citizens ought to question and doubt the wisdom of this public policy. Any objective metric would validate the need for prison reform.

In the book Change We Can Believe In, I read many platform positions of President Barack Obama. Under an Obama administration, the book said, foreign policy would make use of strategies that included incentives to induce behavior from people in failed states. The example to which I refer suggested increasing foreign aid to $3 billion in Afghanistan. Those funds would encourage farmers to grow crops other than those used to make opium and heroin for the Taliban to distribute.

Prison reform ought to duplicate this wise strategy of using incentives to induce positive behavior. With millions incarcerated and high recidivism rates, prisons represent a failed state within our own borders. Just as in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other failed states, when circumstances extinguish hope among citizens, some people adjust in ways that threaten stability.

Without hope, or clearly-defined paths to good citizenship, high recidivism validates the reality that many prisoners neglect to prepare for the challenges that are certain to follow release. Instead, they focus on the perceived immediate needs of living in prison. With decades to serve, and without available mechanisms through which they can distinguish themselves in positive ways, few prisoners sustain the necessary commitment to emerge with skills and resources that translate into success upon release. Reforms to the failed state of American prisons would change such troubling and costly realities.

Legislators and administrators ought to offer incentives that would encourage prisoners to work toward reconciling with society. Judges may impose sentences that could result in the locking of offenders inside boundaries for years or decades at a time. Legislators and administrators ought to support policies that would induce prisoners to work toward redemption through merit. Such change would represent an advancement in our enlightened society. Incentives would empower our citizens, replacing the failed policies of vengeance with the promising policies of hope. Prison reforms ought to include an objective-path through which offenders could earn their way to freedom.

Making such a shift in strategy through effective prison reforms would reflect American values of hope and promise. Incentives would induce positive adjustment patterns in America’s prison population, thus making society safer through lower recidivism rates. As a long term prisoner, that is change I could believe in.

The post Prison Reform Like Foreign Policy Reform appeared first on Prison News Blog.

In my article Comparisons of Three Federal Prison Camps within The Bureau of Prisons, I described three separate prison camps where I have served time. Those camps include the camp at Florence, the camp at Lompoc, and the camp at Taft. There were significant differences between each. Yet if an individual adjusts well, he can succeed in either of the camps.

With regard to Eric’s question about judicial requests for specific camp placement, I do think the Bureau of Prisons takes a judicial recommendation into consideration. Yet the BOP is crowded, and sometimes administrators cannot accommodate the court by assigning an inmate to a specific camp. Yet the BOP has a policy of trying to keep offenders in camps that are closest to the individual’s recorded residence. I think the defendant should learn as much as possible about the various prison camps, and then he should certainly ask the judge to make a recommendation. In my experience of speaking with other prisoners, the BOP grants the judge’s request better than eight out of ten times, provided the security level is appropriate.

The key point to remember is that more than the specific camp, it is the security level that makes all the difference. Inmates in a camp, generally, are less volatile than inmates in higher security prisons. That is an excellent reason to pursue camp placement. For more information on prisons and the people they hold, I urge readers to check out the articles catalog and the daily content I provide at www.prisonnewsblog.com.

The post Should Prisoners Request Specific Prison Camp Placements? appeared first on Prison News Blog.

Many prisoners mistakenly believe that they will serve 85 percent of their sentences. Yet in the vast majority of jurisdictions, Bureau of Prison administrators calculate good time as a percentage of time served rather than a percentage of the actual sentence. In other words, for every year that a prisoner serves in prison, he may receive a good time award of up to 54 days. By using that calculation, administrators get away with requiring federal prisoners something closer to 87 percent of their sentences. Some prisoners have taken the BOP to court on the way administrators calculate good time. As of this writing, however, very few prisoners have prevailed in court.

My hopes are to see reforms that will bring significant relief to those of us in federal prison. I was sentenced under a sentencing scheme known as the old law, which provided for more good time allotments. Yet anyone whose crime was committed after November 1, 1987, falls under the new law provisions, which provides for a maximum of 54 days per year of good time. My article entitled Preparing to Self-Surrender offers more detail on the prison experience.

The post Federal Prisoners Serve More Than 85% of Their Time appeared first on Prison News Blog.

As a long-term prisoner, I have observed how prison administrators employ their own version of The Broken Glass Theory in managing their institutions. They are convinced that control and punishment represent society’s best response to shape human behavior.

At the United States Penitentiary in Atwater, for example, where a psychotic prisoner murdered a correctional officer earlier this year, high-level administrators responded with changes in prison management that promised more severe punishments. They drew plans to convert USP Lewisburg into a much more restrictive institution that would lock troublesome prisoners from across the country in more austere conditions. At USP Atwater, administrators brought in a new warden, the no-nonsense Hector Rios, to straighten things out.

According to media reports, Warden Rios came to the penitentiary with the intention of bringing more control. He ordered yellow lines painted on corridor floors and ordered guards to strictly enforce a code requiring prisoners to walk within the yellow lines. He ordered guards to frisk prisoners regularly and to rifle through their cells frequently in search of contraband. The new warden enforced the rules to the letter and threatened disciplinary action on anyone who didn’t comply.

In the Merced Sun-Star, Scott Jason reported on Warden Rios saying that “prison management comes down to control.” Like The Broken Glass Theory advocates, prison guards feel convinced that punishing trivial offenses like walking outside yellow lines with swiftness, certainty, and severity, they can lessen the possibilities for prisoners to commit more serious rule violations like murder.

I have been locked inside the Federal Bureau of Prisons since 1987. During those 21-plus years that I’ve served thus far, administrators have confined me inside prisons of every security level. I’ve been forced to share cells, tables, and shower space with many psychotic prisoners who thrive on mayhem. Certainly, order, control, and The Broken Glass Theory has a useful role in prison management.

Yet prisons fail society when promises of swift and certain punishments are the only factors in the equation. High recidivism rates show that oppressive institutions do not prepare offenders well to function upon release. I know the reasons behind these dismal results. Unfortunately, prison administrators ignore the need for incentives to motivate socially acceptable behavior.

Prison communities lock many hundreds of inmates inside close boundaries that extinguish hope. Prisons become societies of deprivation. They are brilliantly designed and constructed and operated to suppress the best aspects of humanity and to bring forth the worst. Despite the proliferating turmoil, some prisoners live lives of discipline. They commit to educating themselves, to building strong networks of support. They strive to generate resources that will help them transition into society as law-abiding citizens. In their lust to implement more controls, however, administrators show no interest in the individual striving to adjust positively.

Administrators express decisive views on the need for controls to discourage bad behavior. Ironically, however, the entire field of corrections resists the idea of meaningful incentives that would motivate more prisoners to prepare for productive lives upon release.

I know first hand how exposure to the degrading life of the penitentiary can paralyze an individual’s will to grow in productive ways. While serving time and struggling with patronizing rules that challenge a man’s dignity, men lose years or decades of their lives. Family members and loved ones desert them. They feel trapped, as if they are living a civil death.

Prisoners with weaker wills, or less vision for the future, sometimes succumb to the temptations of defiance. They lack the discipline or energy necessary to master English, math, or history. What’s the point? Prisons degenerate into primal societies where the most valuable currency flows to those who can instill fear in others, or to those who build coteries of recalcitrant followers who strive to disrupt the institution that holds them.

More controls can help keep the wicked in line. Yet for any “corrections” to take place, society needs prison reforms that will offer meaningful incentives to those who commit to work toward redemption and reconciling with society. I’ve been working to transcend the walls for many years, though I’m more hopeful now than ever.

The post Expanding The Broken Glass Theory for Prison Reform appeared first on Prison News Blog.

His release date approaches, yet he has no idea what kind of life he will lead. As we were watching the news this morning, we saw that a government agency had reported that more than 10 million Americans were unemployed. Dan is returning to Arizona, a state that has suffered one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation. If national unemployment rates exceed 6 percent on average, Dan knows that unemployment may be worse in the Phoenix area. For a 40-year-old man without a job history, with a substandard education level, and with a lengthy prison record, the unemployment rate might approach 100 percent. The prospects for Dan’s future do not look bright.

Dan lacks both financial and human resources. Administrators from the Taft federal prison camp are releasing Dan to a halfway house six months prior to the expiration of his sentence. While in the halfway house, administrators will expect Dan to stabilize himself. They will allow him out of the house each day to find a job. Once he finds a job, Dan will have to forfeit 25 percent of his gross pay to the administrators of the halfway house. Those funds will cover the costs of Dan’s room and board. Administrators will allow Dan to keep the remainder of his earnings to prepare for his life.

During the time that Dan has served in prison, he has lost everything. He does not own any clothes outside of the ragged sweats he has accumulated from other prisoners. He does not own a vehicle and he has no idea of the cost of living. Without a work history, Dan does not expect to find a job that will pay more than $400 per week. Yet Dan will lose $100 of that money for halfway house expenses. He anticipates that after taxes, he may be left with $250 in take- home pay for a full week’s work.

Dan hopes to find a job during his first month at the halfway house. If he can reach that goal, he will have an opportunity to work for five months before his term will expire. When Dan’s time in the halfway house concludes, he will have to pay the full cost of his housing and food expenses, and he expects those costs to run him far more than $100 per week.

Yet during those six months that Dan serves in the halfway house, he knows that he will have personal expenditures. He will have to purchase clothing, as he does not own anything. He will have to pay for toiletries, transportation expenses, and any food that he eats away from the halfway house. Tough times await him.

Dan has heard that he will need to save sufficient funds to meet the expenses of renting an apartment. With move-in costs including a prepaid first-month rent, last-month rent, and a security deposit equal to one-month rent, Dan anticipates that even an efficiency apartment will require $1,200 in savings. With expected take-home pay of $250 per week, Dan has no idea how he will manage to save enough money to live independently.

In the early spring of 2008, President Bush signed a law known as The Second Chance Act. That law made it possible for administrators to release offenders to a halfway house up to one year prior to the expiration of their terms. That extra time in the halfway house was supposed to provide offenders with more opportunities to stabilize themselves upon release from prison. Dan requested halfway house placement at the earliest possible time so that he could find employment and work toward stability in accordance with Congress’s intention of The Second Chance Act. Yet the Warden at Taft Camp denied Dan’s request, assuring him that six months in the halfway house would be sufficient for him to find a job and save enough funds to begin his life. When Dan appealed the warden’s decision to higher-level administrators, they too declined to grant Dan relief.

Recidivism rates in our country exceed 60 percent. More than six in every ten offenders who walk out of prison engage in some type of activity that returns them to confinement within three years. For some, it appears that the complications awaiting their release dwarf the harshness of living in prison.

Prisons don’t have to churn out so much failure. Rather than warehousing prisoners like Dan for 14 years, administrators could have designed meaningful incentive programs that would have encouraged Dan to develop skills and resources that would allow him to transition to society as contributing citizen. We need prison reforms that will reverse the troubling trends of high recidivism rates. The entire mindset of these institutions need to change, and that change should begin by replacing the Director of the Bureau of Prisons with a new leader who shares the promising vision of President-elect Barack Obama.

For prisoners like Dan, any change will come too late. He will be home for Christmas of 2008, yet I have a suspicion that he may miss the steady routine of the human warehouse to which he has grown accustomed. Dan is not ready for the challenges of society. With more than 600,000 people returning to society from prison each year, Dan is but one of many examples that we need prison reform now.

In my article entitled Strategy for Successful Prison Adjustment, I offer guidance other prisoners may follow to ensure they don’t walk out like Dan.

The post Dan is Getting Out of Prison appeared first on Prison News Blog.

I write from the perspective of a long-term prisoner. My time as a prisoner began in 1987, when I was initially confined inside the high walls of a United States Penitentiary. I was 23-years-old then, and Norm Carlson was the Director of the Bureau of Prisons. Since then, the BOP has expanded its population by a factor of five. With its shift toward more punitive policies, the system has become more violent and less likely to prepare offenders for law-abiding lives upon release.

A new Director who espouses President Obama’s vision would rely on more than threats of punishment to shape human behavior. Rather than extinguishing hope, as has been the policy of the current and past BOP Directors, a new Director of the BOP would implement policies that would encourage offenders to redeem their actions through merit and contributions to society.

As members of Congress stated in the Second Chance Act of 2007, the BOP’s own metrics show that strong family and community ties represent the most effective means to support successful re-entry for prisoners about to return to society. Yet Harley Lapin, the current BOP Director, supports policies that hinder those in prison from nurturing family support. One blatant example of BOP policy that deteriorates family and community relationships is the ridiculous limitations on telephone access. Federal prisoners cannot access the telephone for more than an average of ten minutes per day. Such limitations weaken family relationships. Marriages fall apart. Children lose contact with their incarcerated parents. Prisoners cannot use their precious phone minutes to build community ties without sacrificing family communications.

Visiting restrictions represent another flawed BOP approach to corrections. Rather than encouraging family members and supportive mentors to play an active role in the prisoner’s efforts to prepare for release, the current Director supports policies that frustrate and impede citizens from visiting with those in prison. Where I am incarcerated, for example, administrators implemented a strict points system that severely limits visiting opportunities. Each prisoner here is allocated only 20 visiting points per month. Prison administrators penalize prisoners and their families by “charging” 8 points for a Saturday visit and 6 points for a Sunday visit, and visiting on federal holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas “costs” 8 points per holiday. Such limitations make it impossible for me to build the network of support that I will need to overcome the challenges that will follow my release after more than 25 years of continuous imprisonment.

The current Director of the BOP sets policies that are designed to preserve the security of the institution. Rather than implementing creative, incentive-based programs that encourage offenders to work towards emerging as successful, law-abiding citizens, the current BOP Director embraces the failed policies of divisiveness. Those policies that strive to isolate prisoners from the values of America are diametrically opposed to the policies that President Obama supports.

To reverse the costly and destructive trends of high recidivism rates, President Obama should appoint a BOP Director who will abandon this flawed, architecture of human failure. Rather than presiding over an institution that warehouses humans and obliterates hope, a BOP Director under President Obama should set policies that motivate offenders to educate themselves. As former Chief Justice Warren Berger suggested, prison administrators should implement programs through which offenders can “earn and learn their way to freedom.”

Policies come from the top down. To realize the promise that President Obama so eloquently describes for America, we need a new Director for the Bureau of Prisons. We need a Director who will help, rather than block, prisoners striving to reconcile with society.

The post We need President Obama to appoint a new Director in the Bureau of Prisons appeared first on Prison News Blog.