Judges Take Cash to Jail Juveniles

The Associated Press updated 6:56 p.m. MT, Wed., Feb. 11, 2009 WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses. The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers. “I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,” said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward. No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.

The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles’ records expunged. Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it. Many appeared without lawyers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.

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California Ordered to Reduce Prison Population

58,000 Non-Violent Prisoners Ordered Released

(CNN) -- Federal judges tentatively ruled on Monday that California must reduce the number of inmates in its overcrowded prison system by up to 40 percent to stop a constitutional violation of prisoners' rights. California must cut the number of inmates in its prison system by up to 40 percent, judges have ruled. "Overcrowding is the primary cause of the unconstitutional conditions that have been found to exist in the California prisons," the court concluded.

California state officials, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, immediately promised to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

"The governor and I strongly disagree with this ruling," said Matthew Cate, California's corrections and rehabilitation secretary. Implementing the court's ruling would result in up to 58,000 prisoners being released, Cate said, describing it as a threat to public safety. He disputed the court's contention that the prisons are unsafe the way they are now.

But in 2006, Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency because of "severe overcrowding" in California's prisons, saying it had caused "substantial risk to the health and safety of the men and women who work inside these prisons and the inmates housed in them." In court documents, the judges said the state's prison system was at about 200 percent of capacity.

The ruling is the result of two class-action lawsuits on behalf of California prisoners who said medical and mental health care in the state's prisons are so inadequate that they violate the federal constitution's Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

The judges said their ruling is tentative so that the parties involved can plan accordingly, essentially giving them an opportunity to work things out themselves before an official ruling is rendered. The court suggests a two- to three-year window for reducing the number of prisoners in the system.

Those who would be released would be very low risk, according to Don Specter, director of the Prison Law Office, a group that provides free legal services to California prisoners. He said the ruling would affect those in jail for three or four months because of parole violations, those getting early release dates, and those who might qualify for early release for taking part in rehabilitation programs.

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On the Brink

As I've waded through the rising floodwaters, so to speak, of our social and economic dilemmas this past several months, I find it difficult to maintain a positive attitude about anything. Yet I've been through enough hell in my life to know that a positive attitude is the only way out of any trouble...and I mean real trouble. Not that what we're facing isn't "real," but that if I could significantly alter the outcome of actual physical, mental and emotional endangerment and confinement in my past experiences with right choice of attitude, I know without a shadow of doubt that we can, too...collectively as a nation.

The preeminent psychiatrist, Dr. Victor Frankel, wrote in his classic book, Man's Search For Meaning, of how he and a few of his fellow Jews survived Nazi concentration camps and ultimately gained their freedom by fundamental attitude shifting, and he detailed how it was done repeatedly through the most horrendous circumstances that we who view history only think we know about from the books, movies and stories of that time. But his, and their, journeys were very real. He wrote later on, after 3 1/2 years of daily torture and constant threats of imminent death in every passing hour that our only "real freedom" was our choice of attitude.

I read that book while I was in federal prison in the mid-80's, and turned an almost certain 25 years in prison without chance of parole into what ultimately worked out to be 2 1/2 years...and in almost every instance, turned my adversaries into allies. How did I do that? I chose to find something for which to be grateful in every day, and discovered that even in my adversaries I could find something to be positive about...and even respectful. I didn't "kiss up" to anyone, nor did I compromise my values or beliefs. I just chose to view things from a different perspective than being a "victim" or reacting to what or who was confronting me at any point.

We're "on the brink" of financial and political disaster, according to everything in the news, and according to many...if not most...of my friends and associates in the business world. While that may be true, I'm choosing to look at the crises in the world as merely rapids ahead that need to be traveled through not with horror or doom and gloom, but with a healthy sense of keeping ourselves off the rocks and trusting the ride...and working together to make it through. There are calm waters behind these troubled ones, and we can only make it worse by reacting to, or resisting or fearing what's coming. We've all known for quite some time that it was coming, so the only thing to do now is to maintain a good and positive attitude about the outcome...and be willing to suspend our pre-conceived notions about who's who and what's what.

There's a huge shake-out and cleaning up going on right now, and it won't be easy. The rats and the cockroaches are coming out of the woodwork, and it's getting easier and easier to spot them and put them where they belong. Meanwhile, we need to keep our focus on the rocks ahead and stay clear of them. And we need to be willing to work together to bring about a better world where truth, honesty and integrity cease to be merely words but more a way of life.

To me, that's worth going over the brink for. I've had enough of words, posturing and promising. Let's embrace the coming times as our parents, grandparents and Forefathers (and mothers) did through numerous wars, depressions and other challenges. We're still pioneers in every sense of the term, just like them...only our "frontier" may be the most arduous one of all...that being the human mind. Only right attitude and a healthy state of being can change that for the collective betterment of society in this day and age. That "brink" may look pretty scary right now, but it may not be all that bad...or that deep. In any case, there's no avoiding it; we might as well get ready for it, and learn to do things less selfishly and fearfully.

Don Kirchner
Sedona, AZ

A Sobering Thought

"Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose" - Janis Joplin

Posted By: The Candid Blogger
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Courage

Courage

While there is much excitement about the many changes that are already coming out of the White House now, there is still the aftermath of what has happened over the past eight (or more) years that all of us have to contend with. Despite the near-euphoria that many of my close friends and associates are feeling about all the good things to come, there remains the reality of making a living and getting the bills paid that overshadows much of what they are doing…and trying to do. For many of them…myself included…this is a very scary time. Some of my more affluent friends are suddenly realizing that they don’t have the “safety cushion” they thought they had, and others are working rather menial jobs just to pay the utility bills…again, myself included. I understand that there is a very long waiting list just to get a job at Walmart now.

These pages of blog links and writings describe and detail many startling things about our society and what needs to be fixed, yet here we are…most of us…unsure of what lies ahead and how to pull out of the morass of social and financial upheaval in our lives. It seems daunting and even, to some, hopeless. We alone are responsible for whatever circumstances face us, and as a nation of people we are responsible for what comes of the decisions we make now…every day. We can’t blame anyone or anything else…not even people like Berny Madoff, or the idiot who jumped out of his plane in an attempt to fake his death and run off to God-knows-where with whatever money left over from having bilked his investors. They make Kenneth Lay (remember him?) and the guy from Tyco look like amateurs, in terms of living lavish lifestyles with other people’s money.

But guilty as they may be, and as outrageous as their lives may have been, they are products of our collective lifestyles. We created them, somehow, by having too long looked the other way and put into office people who not only tolerated such lunacy, they indulged themselves as well. George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and the plethora of senators, governors, big-city mayors and corporate leaders that all have come and gone now were products of our generation’s unwillingness to have the courage and the moral responsibility to do something about what’s been going on for a long time. Enron was but the tip of the iceberg…and a grim forewarning of what was yet to come. No wonder we can’t pay our utility bills, and many of us face the possibility that we might be homeless soon.

So, what can we do? How do we pull out of this? We’ve managed to elect a new President who seems to have the right attitude and willingness to do what needs to be done to make things right…but he has the equivalent of a national 9/11 to clean up, and he can not do it without every one of us being willing to take steps in our own backyards and in our neighborhoods and in our families and within ourselves to make the difference. We need to suspend disbelief and distrust, and we need to have the courage to own what is our responsibility for loss and damages in our lives. We cannot waste another hour worrying about what went wrong or what is bad in the world, and just focus on our individual lives…to clean up our own messes.

I’m not an economist, but I’m going to accept the fact that the only thing that stands between us and another real Depression is the extent to which we are willing to stop pointing fingers and blaming others for our problems, and have the courage to step up and do what is right in our lives to set things straight. We need to hear each other, and be willing to help…even if it’s only to care a bit more about others than we do about ourselves. That’s what brought us out of the last Depression, and a World War that makes what we’re going through now pale by comparison.

We’re on a global Titanic, folks, and we’re in the midst of huge icebergs. We need to apply what we’ve learned about the disasters of the past, and stop arguing over who did what and why, and look around us. We have great resources all around us…and we are they. It takes courage and compassion…and truth. That’s what all this is about. We’ve lived too long in denial, greed and avarice of our own, and collectively we have created the mess we’re in by either having supported the fools and the crooks we’ve put in office or have supported in business, or by having looked the other way and never took action to change things.

The time is now for each of us to buckle up, suit up and go to work. Obama and his team will do what needs to be done. Now, we need to do what needs to be done in our own backyards. That will take more courage and willingness to be clean and clear in all we do and say than we’ve known or done probably in our lifetimes. However, it really won’t take long to change things for the better…and in those lifetimes we can yet see and experience what the human spirit, and God, is capable of achieving.


Don Kirchner

War on Drugs an Economic Disaster for America

Re-entry Programs: an Idea whose Time is Now

About thirty-five years ago, Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Since then, we've spent more money on that war than in Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug crimes. Prisons are America's fastest growing industry, with 2.2 million Americans currently locked up. We're making 1.9 million arrests and spending $70 billion on drug crimes every year, yet drugs are cheaper, more potent, and far more available than ever before. What is the solution?

"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

-Abraham Lincoln

A Rand Corporation study conducted fifteen years ago resulted in a team of mathematicians calculating the most cost effective tactics: law enforcement, interdiction, foreign aid, treatment, and prevention. They found that only treatment was effective.

The hard evidence they presented has had no impact on drug policies that have failed to reduce drug addiction, crime, and/or juvenile drug use. The drug war continues and each of these problems continues to increase.

During alcohol prohibition, murder went up 13% and robbery, 83%. Prohibition ended in 1933, and violent crimes returned to their pre-prohibition levels by 1937. It is estimated that 80 percent of felonies are drug related. One of the drug war's hypocrisies is that its purpose is to prevent harm to users. While drug addicts do serious damage to their lives, the drug war destroys those lives.

The number of Americans behind bars for drug offenses, mostly nonviolent, has increased by 1,200 percent since 1980. Legendary NYPD crusader, Frank Serpico, describes the prison system as an industry. "They run it like real estate. They have so many rooms, they have to rent them out, and the police fill them."

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As states across the country confront historic budget shortfalls, more and more politicians are looking toward long-overdue criminal justice reform as a way to cut spending. Suddenly, the money local governments stand to save by slowing down incarceration rates is trumping the political costs traditionally associated with it. Good news. The nation's prisons have been dysfunctional and overcrowded for ages, reaching emergency levels in recent years. Around this time last year, a study released by the Pew Center found that 1 in 100 Americans was behind bars.

The cost of locking up parole violators has been a major drain on states' resources -- and no state knows this better than California. In 2002, a study by the Justice Policy Center calculated that the Golden State -- which leads the country in the size of its parole population and recidivism rates -- spent some $900 million a year to keep parole violators (who spend an average of five months in prison) incarcerated. That year, according to the same study, nearly 1 in 5 parolees lived in California.

President Obama is on the right track as it is definitely TIME FOR A CHANGE, and aftercare and re-entry programs are the solution.

Posted By: The Candid Blogger
visit our Job Search Blog at: The-Job-Specialist Blog

Obama Plans Support for Ex-Offenders

President Barack Obama

Taking off at a blinding pace to overturn many of the antiquated policies of the Bush administration, President Barack Obama set forth his current agenda including many new policies aimed at improving our criminal justice system. "

The teenagers and college students who left their homes to march in the streets of Birmingham and Montgomery; the mothers who walked instead of taking the bus after a long day of doing somebody else's laundry and cleaning somebody else's kitchen -- they didn't brave fire hoses and Billy clubs so that their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren would still wonder at the beginning of the 21st century whether their vote would be counted; whether their civil rights would be protected by their government; whether justice would be equal and opportunity would be theirs.... We have more work to do."

-- Barack Obama, Speech at Howard University, September 28, 2007

President Barack Obama has spent much of his career fighting to strengthen civil rights as a civil rights attorney, community organizer, Illinois State Senator, U.S. Senator, and now as President. Whether promoting economic opportunity, working to improve our nation's education and health system, or protecting the right to vote, President Obama has been a powerful advocate for our civil rights. Included in his agenda are the following:

Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: President Obama and Vice President Biden will strengthen federal hate crimes legislation, expand hate crimes protection by passing the Matthew Shepard Act, and reinvigorate enforcement at the Department of Justice's Criminal Section.

End Deceptive Voting Practices: President Obama will sign into law his legislation that establishes harsh penalties for those who have engaged in voter fraud and provides voters who have been misinformed with accurate and full information so they can vote.

End Racial Profiling: President Obama and Vice President Biden will ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal incentives to state and local police departments to prohibit the practice.

Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Support: President Obama and Vice President Biden will provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, so that they are successfully re-integrated into society. Obama and Biden will also create a prison-to-work incentive program to improve ex-offender employment and job retention rates.

Eliminate Sentencing Disparities: President Obama and Vice President Biden believe the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated.

Expand Use of Drug Courts: President Obama and Vice President Biden will give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior.

Click to read his entire Agenda on Civil Rights

Posted By: The Candid Blogger
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Heroes

We so often hear about, or talk about, "making a difference." How does one go about "making a difference," and what sort of "difference" will that be? Do you stop and think about that at all whenever you say it or hear it, or is it just something that feels important but doesn't really go anywhere? What does that really mean?

To me, making a real difference in the world is to say something or do something that changes others' perspectives enough to have a positive impact on their lives, and one that is lasting enough to change a habit or a behavior pattern. God knows we can all use some of that in our lives, no matter who we are. What's amazing about that is that it doesn't even take that much. The late Leo Buscaglia, who wrote and lectured extensively on the subject of Love, and having an impact on others' lives, once wrote "For most of us, there will be no ticker-tape parades, no awards banquets or medals handed out. But if we only knew the good that can be done, and the ripple effect that can happen with the simplest act of kindness...even sometimes just a hug or a smile at the right time...we would all be heroes."

As I travel around the country and speak to various groups about "making a difference," I am always taken with the great amount of exuberance displayed by people when I talk about how powerful acts of kindness and compassion can be, yet I'm also stunned by how gripped with fear people are. Fear of failure, fear of sickness, fear of financial loss, of strangers or what might happen or not happen, etc., etc. We learn much of our fears from childhood, then magnify and increase them with everything negative that happens to us...compounded by the nightly news about the terrible things that happen to everyone else. Before long, we're so caught up in the negative things and the problems in the world, there's no room in our heads for anything positive. If anything positive manages to make it in there, it's quickly overshadowed by all the negative things that intimidate us and cause us to shrink back and believe that we can't make a difference in the world...or even in our neighborhood or home.

But that's not true. We can make a difference. We just did, in fact. We spoke out in the election with a very loud voice that we want to see and experience something different...not just different faces and different names but something that will go deep and overcome and transform the doubts, fears and resistance we've allowed to diminish the hopes, promises and dreams of our childhood. We lost all that...if we had it at all...because it became easier to believe the bad things.

Learning to be positive in a negative world isn't easy. It runs against the grain of the majority thinking, and few people want to be seen as someone running against the majority in anything. Yet, on the other hand, we all admire the hero that shows up in the nick of time and causes us to think about or to see things differently. Well, it's time to quit waiting for and hoping that that hero will show up. We can't put it on Barack Obama to be that hero for us. We each have to start being heroes in our own lives...one little bit at a time. We do that by deciding right here and right now that we're going to start being the hero we're looking for. In order to do that, we need to start telling the truth, being more accountable and setting the right example. If we really want to make a difference in the world, we need to be the difference we want to see in others. If enough of us do that, like we did in this election, think of the difference we might make in the world...really.

King's Legacy Demands Criminal Justice System Reforms

For the last three years, I've celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Ryan Correctional Facility, a guest of prison members of the NAACP. It seems right to commemorate the holiday with some of the 2.3 million Americans locked up.

If King were alive, he would understand, as Malcolm X certainly would, that mass incarceration has become an economic, social and human rights problem the nation can ignore no longer. This year, Monday's event at the east-side Detroit prison took on deeper meaning. Even inside the walls, President-elect Barack Obama has sparked hope and joy. "People around the world are rejoicing," inmate Kenneth Foster-Bey, 55 and serving a life sentence, told nearly 100 other prisoners during a program of singing and speeches. "They can't wait until tomorrow." A nation where millions of African Americans couldn't vote 50 years ago has elected its first black president and embraced the change he represents. Still, King's dream of racial equality remains unfulfilled.

The world's most powerful democracy is also its leading incarcerator. African Americans -- 13% of the population -- make up nearly half of all those in jail or prison. The nation that elected its first black president also has 1 million black men behind bars. America's criminal justice system is a political land mine, but Obama will have some cover if he dares to step across it.

U.S. Sen. James Webb, D-Va., a decorated Marine who served as Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan, plans to push national prison reform. He has spoken with surprising candor about class, race and the criminal justice system, and the soft-on-crime tag won't work on him. With government budgets busting at all levels, the time is right. The country cannot afford a $60-billion growth industry that has ripped urban communities and failed to make us safe. Michigan now spends more on prisons -- $2 billion a year -- than on higher education.

U.S. prison populations have increased nearly eightfold over the past 35 years, while crime rates, like gas prices, have gone up and down. Recent crime rates are similar to what they were in 1970, before the prison-building boom started. Harsh drug sentences that have hit African Americans especially hard have fueled much of the race to incarcerate. One study showed that African Americans make up an estimated 13% of drug users, while accounting for 74% of all prison sentences for drug possession. More than one in 100 Americans are now locked up, and more than 95% of them will get out.

Mass incarceration actually increases crime by severing social networks, leaving one in 14 black children with a parent in prison, and creating lifelong barriers to employment. The collateral consequences of criminal convictions affect a big chunk of the population. In Michigan, one out of every six adults is a felon.

Even so, mainstream civil rights organizations remain relatively quiet about the human and economic costs of a criminal justice system that affects mainly poor people. "I think it is a class issue," ex-inmate Joseph Williams told me. "A lot of these leaders are more focused on the middle class." Williams, 55, earned two college degrees after getting out of prison in 1975 and now runs prisoner re-entry and other programs as the CEO of New Creations Community Outreach. When I think of Williams and other ex-inmates I've written about, like Raphael B. Johnson, 33, who spent 12 years in prison for second-degree murder, I understand why we shouldn't give up on people. After his release from prison 3 1/2 years ago, Johnson earned a master's degree, started a family and a business, and gained national attention for his work with ex-prisoners and young people.

No doubt, we need prisons. But when too many young men grow up in neighborhoods where most of their peers go to prison or jail, it's time to consider where the get-tough policies of the last 35 years have taken us. Getting the number of incarcerated to a rational level will take more than re-entry and training programs. It will take serious reforms in sentencing. Figuring out who should go to prison -- and for how long -- and who should not, must become part of a new urban and civil rights agenda, backed by the nation's leader. Obama's election tapped the pride and hope of millions of Americans. We've come a long way. But with one in nine young black men behind bars, we've got a long way to go.

BY JEFF GERRITT FREE PRESS EDITORIAL WRITER
JEFF GERRITT is a Free Press editorial writer.
Contact him at gerritt@freepress.com or 313-222-6585.

Correctional Officer Imprisoned for Assaulting Inmate

A former jail guard has been sentenced to 21 months in prison for violating the civil rights of a man in custody, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

On June 25, 2006, Jarrod Anthony Yates, while working for the Sequoyah County Jail in Sallisaw, Oklahoma, reportedly kneed, stomped and punched arrestee Donald Gene Allen resulting in serious injuries including a fractured eye socket and severe lacerations that required facial surgery. Yates was suspended while the FBI's Oklahoma City Field Office investigated the case. He was indicted on April 17, 2008, later to plead guilty on October 2, 2008. He faced a maximum of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

The case was prosecuted by First Assistant US Attorney Doug Horn and Trial Attorneys Roy Conn and Michael Khoury from the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

"While we all appreciate corrections officers have dangerous jobs, that doesn't give them license to abuse their authority with this kind of physical violence," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Grace Chung Becker on Wednesday. "The vast majority exercise appropriate restraint, and because the rule of law is paramount in our society, we have an obligation to prosecute those who clearly don't."

SOURCE: RAWSTORY.COM

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