| Prison Legal News, a monthly print publication that covers criminal justice issues, is a project of the Human Rights Defense Center, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. |
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Unlocking the Box As Utah State Prison moves beyond using solitary confinement as punishment, mentally ill inmates struggle with its legacy When 25-year-old Jeremy Haas paroled out of the Utah State Prison in May 2015, he went to live with his mother. She took him to the still-blue waters of the Spanish Fork reservoir, where, for the first time in his life, he walked barefoot in sand. He had done eight years of a 1-to-15-year sentence for an attempted carjacking with a loaded gun. Doing time is never easy, nor is it meant to be, but Haas' prison stint was more difficult than most. He has a limited IQ, can barely write, struggles to read and has a need to please whomever he is with, according to documents prepared by Utah's Disability Law Center (DLC), which represented him for several years. Haas fell out of a third-story window when he was 5, and as a teen went from treatment facilities to juvenile delinquency, drug use and a brief gang affiliation. Multiple doctors have diagnosed him with a plethora of mental illnesses, ranging from moderate to mild mental retardation to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Despite such diagnoses, and having been identified by the prison as a high suicide risk, he nevertheless spent more than half of his first five years in prison in solitary confinement in part of the maximum-security wing known as Uinta 1 for misconduct issues-many of them related to his mental illness. Barely turned 18, Haas went to prison in November 2007 as, he told a Board of Pardons hearing officer, "a child in the mind, and then I had to grow up in prison." Inmates "spun him up"-which is prison speak for convincing him to do what he himself later termed "stupid things"-for their amusement. He broke sprinkler heads and flicked feces mixed with urine at correctional officers, resulting in further criminal convictions, thousands of dollars in unpaid fines that steadily accrue interest, and time in "the box" or "the hole," as solitary has been called. From January 2008 to September 2012, he spent 1,021 days out of a total 1,731 days in punitive isolation. That means more than half of his first five years in prison were spent 23-hours-a-day in a box a little larger than a parking space with a concrete bunk, a sink and a toilet. Read More |
Senators seek to reform justice system nationwide by launching National Criminal Justice Commission
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill Wednesday to create a National Criminal Justice Commission, which would work for 18 months to review every aspect of the nation's criminal justice system, from policing to prosecution to prisons, and then issue a set of proposed reforms for not only federal but state and tribal systems as well. The legislation aims to accomplish what a similar Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice did when it was created by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. That group produced more than 200 recommendations, which had a lasting impact on the justice system, such as calling for the creation of the 911 emergency call system, improving training for law enforcement and establishing research organizations such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The bill is being introduced by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) with 17 co-sponsors, including Republican Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah) and Thad Cochran (Miss.) and Democratic Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Kamala D. Harris (Calif.). The proposal also has the backing of numerous law enforcement and civil rights groups, such as the Fraternal Order of Police, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Urban League, the NAACP and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "Too many Americans see growing challenges in our justice system," Peters said in a statement, "ranging from overburdened courts and unsustainable incarceration costs to strained relationships between law enforcement and the communities they serve." He said he hoped the new commission would help "reduce crime, improve public safety and promote more equitable criminal justice practices." Read More |
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For the Families of Incarcerated People, Video Visits Replace In-Person Face Time On a recent Thursday afternoon, five-year-old Tahnyia Shirir walked into a basement room at the Brooklyn Public Library's East New York branch to visit her dad, Tahriek. Tahnyia and her mother, Jahnyia Land, were accompanied by Tahnyia's aunt and by her uncle's ten-month-old son. Tahnyia wiggled out of her black parka to reveal her school uniform. "Have you grown?" Tahriek asked his daughter from a television screen. Tahriek is currently incarcerated at Rikers Island. He's been there for about a year, but this was only Tahnyia's second time video-visiting with him through the library's twelve-branch TeleStory program, which allows families to talk with their incarcerated loved ones. Over the course of an hour-long call, Tahnyia told her dad about her day at school, opened a book, and danced around the room while her parents discussed an upcoming birthday, Tahnyia's asthma medication, and her mom's medical technology classes at Long Island Business Institute. Tahnyia is one of 105,000 children in New York State who currently have a parent in prison or jail. Nationwide, that figure rises to 2.7 million, while more than 5 million have had an incarcerated parent at some point in their lives. From 1980 to 2000, the number of American kids with an incarcerated father rose by 500 percent; African-American children are over seven times more likely to have an incarcerated parent than are their white peers. Latino children are more than twice as likely. Longstanding guidelines for maintaining the connection between incarcerated parents and their children stress the child's ability to speak with, see, and touch her parent. But that vital access is starting to disappear: According to a 2015 report from the Prison Policy Initiative, more than 500 prisons or jails in 43 states are experimenting with video visitation; 74 percent of jails using it have eliminated in-person visits. New York facilities have yet to do this, but Governor Cuomo recently proposed a new budget that would lower the number of days on which visits are permitted at maximum-security prisons. In their place, video visiting would increase. Read More |
Petition: Pass the Video Visitation Act - H.R.6441 Sign this petition asking Congress to ensure that correctional facilities do not ban in-person visits. This petition is in support of Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth's Video Visitation in Prisons Act, which would require the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that correctional facilities that have video visitation services do not ban in-person visits. U.S. jails and prisons are increasingly using video visitation to replace in-person visits. Some carceral facilities have even taken measures to end in-person visits entirely. Securus, for example, a company that provides phone services and video visitation for jails, requires jails and prisons to immediately suspend in-person visits after adopting their contract. Although video visitation is an important option for people with physical illnesses, disabilities, and limited time and finances, in-person prison visits help incarcerated people to maintain vital relationships with their family members and loved ones on the outside. Face-to-face jail and prison visits are one of the few available opportunities for connection granted to people locked behind bars. We must protect this basic human right. Read More |
Oklahoma: Medical staff told not to pronounce inmates dead at Tulsa Jail, former head nurse testifies The former head nurse in the Tulsa Jail's medical unit told jurors Wednesday that her staff was not allowed to pronounce inmates dead because it would bring "bad publicity." Tammy Harrington, who was director of nurses when Elliott Williams died at the jail in 2011, testified that staff members were instructed to perform CPR on unresponsive inmates until first-responders arrived and took over. Donald Smolen, an attorney representing Williams' estate in a federal civil rights lawsuit, asked Harrington why the administration felt it was important not to pronounce inmates dead at the jail. A primary reason, she said, was that the area where the person died would be considered a crime scene and wouldn't be available until it was no longer needed in the subsequent investigation. She also said jail officials didn't want the "bad publicity" from an inmate's death at the facility. Responding to questions from defense attorney Guy Fortney, Harrington said she recalled one instance in particular in which an inmate couldn't be resuscitated. A doctor wanted to stop CPR on the inmate, she testified, but his advisers yelled for him to continue because he "couldn't die there." Harrington took the stand on the 11th day of the trial. Read More |
New in our Bookstore! The Federal Prison Handbook 491 pages. The Federal Prison Handbook, by Christopher Zoukis, is the definitive guide to surviving incarceration in a federal prison. This handbook teaches individuals facing incarceration, prisoners who are already inside, and their friends and family everything they need to know to protect themselves and their rights. The thorough information was compiled by someone who has first-hand experience with the federal prison system, as Zoukis is an advocate currently serving time at a federal prison. His insider's view of this unknown world guides inmates through the mental stresses of confinement. In detailed chapters broken down by topical areas, readers discover: - What to expect on the day you're admitted to prison, and how to greet cellmates for the first time
- What to do about sexual harassment or assault
- The best ways to avoid fights, and the options that provide the greatest protection if a fight cannot be avoided
- Medical, psychological and religious services
- How to communicate with the outside world through telephones, computers and mail.
- What you can buy in the official commissary and the underground economy
- How to avoid scams, schemes, theft, and other problems
- Comprehensive analysis of Federal Bureau of Prisons policy and regulatory guidelines
Importantly, this text provides detailed instructions on how prisoners can protect their rights. The author is a college-educated prisoner who has fought extensively to preserve his rights and the rights of other prisoners. Read More and Shop Here |
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From the PLN in Print Archives The Financial Firm that Cornered the Market on Jails A year and a half ago, after a grand jury declined to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, protests swept the nation. Portland, Oregon, was no exception. More than 2,000 people rallied outside the Multnomah County Justice Center the day after the decision was announced. Danica Brown, 48, joined hundreds who swarmed the streets, blocking traffic and bridges. A PhD candidate at Portland State University and a seasoned activist, Brown was one of seven protesters arrested that day. Brown recalls the experience as unpleasant: As she knelt on the ground in handcuffs, one officer took a trophy photo. She was shuttled to a local police station, for a brief interrogation, then taken back to the Justice Center, where she was charged with disorderly conduct and interfering with a police officer. Brown was released at 2:30 am on November 26, 2014, at a loss about how to get home, nine miles away. Her wallet, cell phone and keys were in her backpack at the first police station. The $30.97 she had in her pocket was taken by the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office, which operates the Justice Center jail. Until May of that year, correctional officers would have simply handed her the money back, and she'd have been able to grab a taxi home. Instead, says Brown, an officer handed her a sheaf of papers and a piece of plastic - a Numi Prestige Prepaid MasterCard - that held her cash. The materials included a densely worded brochure explaining the terms and fees associated with the debit card, and a list of nearby ATMs. But Brown had left her glasses at home and the type was too small to read; the officer didn't offer any words of explanation. Standing on the steps of the Justice Center, after being released, "I was kind of freaking out," Brown says. "It's not a safe area. I had no money, no phone, there's no train that time of night." Brown lucked out when her partner showed up, hoping to find her. "I was so relieved he was there," she says. Over the next week Brown used the Numi card to purchase coffee and groceries. Five days later, she was charged $5.95 for a monthly service fee and then 95 cents for a declined service charge. The criminal charges against Brown were eventually dismissed, but according to transaction records, she lost 22 percent of her money to fees. Numi Financial describes itself as a "leader in stored value card solutions for the criminal justice and corrections industry." Its parent company, Stored Value Cards, based in Carlsbad, California, provides debit-card services to jails in 44 states through Numi Financial and Futura Card Services, issued by banks. The terms for the card used in Multnomah County list 11 possible fees - the $5.95 monthly fee, a $2.95 fee for ATM withdrawals, $0.95 for a declined transaction, $1 to check the balance and $9.95 to have the balance refunded by check. Some cards have as many as 19 fees, a maintenance fee as high as $15 a month and higher fees for international transactions. As for the banks that issue prepaid cards like these, they spent, on average, only 10.3 cents per transaction in 2013, including processing and third-party fees, according to the Federal Reserve Bank. Brown is currently the lead plaintiff in a class-action suit filed against Numi Financial's parent company in U.S. District Court. A judge ruled in February 2016 against Numi's request for arbitration. Read More Editor's Note: As the article mentions, the Human Rights Defense Center is currently suing NUMI in US District Court in Portland, Oregon over its practices in that state. We are interested in litigating other cases against NUMI and the other debit card companies that exploit prisoners and arrestees in this manner. If you have had your money taken by any of these companies and been charged fees to access your funds on a debit card after being released from prison or jail we want to hear from you. Please contact Carrie Wilkinson at cwilk...@humanrightsdefensecenter.org, or call (206) 257-1355, or write: HRDC, SPP Debit Cards, P.O. Box 1151, Lake Worth, FL 33460. |
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When wrongful convictions affect blacks more than whites, can we call it a justice system? Racial disparities have long been evident in the U.S. criminal justice system, but a new report drilling into statistics on wrongful convictions points up exactly how nefarious the problem is. African Americans are much more likely to be wrongfully convicted of a murder, sexual assault or drug offense than whites. The report, by the National Registry of Exonerations, found that "innocent black people are about seven times more likely to be convicted of murder than innocent white people," and thus also account for a disproportionate share of the growing number of exonerations. African Americans who were convicted and then exonerated of murder charges also spent four years longer on death row than wrongfully convicted whites (and three years longer for those sentenced to prison). According to the report, African Americans convicted of murder "are about 50% more likely to be innocent than other convicted murderers," and that such wrongful convictions, even when later corrected, expands the impact of violence on African American communities. "A major cause of the high number of black murder exonerations is the high homicide rate in the black community - a tragedy that kills many African Americans and sends many others to prison," says the report, written by Samuel R. Gross, a University of Michigan law professor, and registry researchers Maurice Possley and Klara Stephens. "Innocent defendants who are falsely convicted and exonerated do not contribute to this high homicide rate. They - like the families of victims who are killed - are deeply harmed by murders committed by others." Read More
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The Wrongly Convicted: Why more falsely accused people are being exonerated today than ever before For the third year in a row the number of exonerations in the United States has hit a record high. A total of 166 wrongly convicted people whose convictions date as far back as 1964 were declared innocent in 2016, according to a report from the National Registry of Exonerations released Tuesday. On average, there are now over three exonerations per week-more than double the rate in 2011. The number of exonerations has generally increased since 1989, the first year in the National Registry's database. There are 2,000 individual exonerations listed in the registry as of March 6. Experts say the increase in rate of exonerations can be explained, in part, by a growing trend of accountability in prosecutorial offices around the country. Twenty-nine counties, including Chicago's Cook County, Dallas County and Brooklyn's Kings County have adopted second-look procedures and special review units that are tasked with looking into questionable convictions. Historically, the convictions with the best chances of being overturned were those that got repeatedly reviewed on appeal or those chosen by legal institutions such as the Innocence Project and the Center on Wrongful Convictions. These cases tended to be high profile cases with defendants who received severe sentences. The recently established conviction review units, on the other hand, designate resources to both violent and nonviolent crimes like drug offenses. These offices have been involved in 225 exonerations, 70 of which were last year. Thanks largely to these cases, nonviolent crimes accounted for more exonerations (44%) than murder and manslaughter exonerations (33%) in 2016. The review units "reflect a growing recognition of the importance of the problem," says Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan who is co-founder and senior editor of the National Registry. "Many prosecutors, police officers and judges have learned that sending innocent people to prison is a constant risk-not a once-in-a-lifetime novelty." Read More |
Who should decide if an inmate is 'irreparably corrupt' or deserving of a second chance? When the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to send a teenage offender to prison for life without the possibility of parole, the court added a loophole: If the juvenile's crime reflects "irreparable corruption," then prosecutors can ask that such a defendant die behind bars. A debate is now raging about how "irreparable corruption" should be determined - and who has the responsibility of proving - or disproving - it. The ramifications for Philadelphia couldn't be more dire. The controversy comes as the city is in the midst of scheduling new sentencing hearings for the more than 300 prisoners whose first- or second-degree murder convictions resulted in life sentences without parole. On Monday, Bradley Bridge with the Defender Association of Philadelphia and Marsha Levick with the Juvenile Law Center argued before a panel of three state judges that prosecutors should have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that an inmate is impossible to rehabilitate before asking for a life sentence without parole. "Absent that finding, there can never be a life-max sentence" for juveniles, Bridge told the judges. Read More |
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